DANCE OF DECEPTION


We were an ant farm ... so consumed in our busyness we
often scurried over each other moving from here to there and
traveling in tunnels. Without exception, we followed in tired
echo the same paths long rutted by habit and tradition.

But we were less than ants, for their industry favored
community, at least. We were content by the illusion of our
kindest moments that we actually cared about one another,
though in our deepest heart we were as selfish as those with
less pretension. Exceptions were but raindrops to an ocean.
We marched in faithful lockstep to the rhythms of the
day, mindfully aware of the merits of allegiance. Those who
most visibly met communal expectations ranked higher in the
communal mind, while those of less apparent conformity were
accorded less regard. But illusion of merit counted more than
reality.

Seldom was any bluff called, for confrontation and
exposure were anathema ... there were skeletons in many
closets. And if the bright specter of truth should
occasionally threaten narrow eyes too long accustomed to the
dark, firmly entrenched supports of status quo still spring
into rigorous defense and denial.

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Much is invested in acceptance of the way things are.
Perception is paramount, for power and wealth are as easily
threatened as the comfort of the complacent. Truth is a
shabby mistress, compared to the whore of pretty lies.

It is the cliche' of the Emperor's new clothes. Who will
dare say he's naked? That might cost your head. Though it's
painfully obvious and everyone certainly knows it, even the
social penalty for voicing it is too often greater than quiet
allegiance. So, we allow it. We accept the lie. And we
punish those not equally blinded, for truth is imposing and
arrogant. This was recognized by John Stuart Mill, who
stressed that government, alone, was not the only oppressor of
individual spirit. It was also the force of common acceptance
and majority rule that served to dampen the voice of truth and
a spark of difference.

It's much easier to conform. Less stress, to compress.
Fewer headaches with your head in the "right" place. Get
social. Get socialist. Think less of personal preference or
even what's right and more of what works for the group ...
step in the footprints decreed for the path. Be a good little
citizen. Accept the bland pronouncements that all is well.
Ignore any rumors of disquiet. Damn them, rumormongers!

The status quo is not some hard-to-fathom concept; it is
simply the notion to leave things alone ... that one should
not rock the boat and change anything. We like things to stay
the way they are in order not to deal with the way they might

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become. With any luck, lives or fortunes can maintain ground
or even gain when change comes only in steady or bite-sized
pieces. Predictable portion. But such merely urges the stock
market caveat: past performance is no guarantee of future
success. When the status quo is based on lies -- political,
economic, scientific, religious, etc. -- revealing the truth
could mean uncomfortable change for those invested in such
lies ... loss of fortune, status, position, support or trust.

Consider: a stunning breakthrough was announced in 1989 which
proved to be the long-awaited answer to our search for a
cheap, clean and infinite energy source. It also provided the
solution to another huge problem -- the immediate
nullification of radioactivity. Instead of burying nuclear
waste, its threat could now be eliminated as easily as that
from other natural resources.

This was a new paradigm for the planet, for it meant the
end of fossil fuels and their pollution. It also meant the
end of their profits -- no more oil barons, refineries,
reliance on Iraq ... no more Chevron, Arco, or OPEC ... no
more liquid gas or natural gas ... no more coal mines or
"black lung" ... no more status quo.

And that was too much change to accept. Such profits
held great power to influence and ensure protection of those
profits and the infrastructure of their industries. Convincing
power was therefore needed to denounce the disturbing
discovery. And that is why CalTech, MIT, the

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Department of Energy and other authority voices were compelled
to unite in condemnation of Pons, Fleischmann, and Cold
Fusion. A similar fate met the quiet and equally stunning
announcement of the Patterson Fuel Cell, which would have
further upset established order and the longstanding alliance
of auto makers and the fossil fuel industry.

Vested interests pervade the status quo and require a
constant battle against bitter truths or revelations which may
threaten the wall of illusion carefully crafted and
maintained. Spindoctors are highly paid to repair cracks in
that wall, for they put a different "spin" on damaging facts,
making them seem less important or obtrusive. They spin, we
accept, and the illusion maintains. We trust them. We
believe they would not lie. We have to believe that, for the
alternative is unthinkable. We'd have to do something about
it. About them. We'd have to change things. Oh, and the
effort that would take ... the mess! Don't let it be true,
please. And another lie is usually all it takes to restore
comfort in the illusion.

On Frontline, in a PBS program of January 19 and 25, 1998
(Last Battle of the Gulf War), the Gulf War Illness was again
officially determined to be nothing more than a tired
soldier's imaginary construct, born of "psychological stress."
Joyce Riley was a flight nurse in that Gulf War of 1991. Her
research into this "imaginary" illness has now revealed over
20,000 deaths and 200,000 afflicted with compound symtoms

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commonly known as the Gulf War Syndrome. But as the cost of
culpability is prohibitive, artful science can make darkness
relatively bright. By dismissing trees, the Pentagon can deny
a forest. The Khamisiyah bunker, full of chemical and
biological weapons sold to Iraq by the U.S. and other
countries, can be destroyed with impunity. Hillary Clinton's
association with a company that sold those chemicals can be
obscured.

The illness has now been shown to have infected families
and friends of those who returned from the war. It takes
little intelligence to realize that imagination is not
contagious. Whatever the true nature of this disease, the
U.S. Government refuses treatment of its victims, thereby
avoiding admission of its cause.

George Washington Carver did more than play with peanuts.
His research with that and other plants and earth, itself,
brought much needed solutions to past and current problems and
added greatly to the lexicon. Why is that knowledge avoided?
Luther Burbank did more than fashion a better potato. His
research in Santa Rosa brought forth more than 1,000 new
varieties of flower, fruit, and vegetable life. Why is that
bounty ignored? Dr. Ruth Drown of Los Angeles received a
British (!) patent for a device in the early 1940's which
threatened the medical status quo: "Drown's most startling
accomplishment was ... a camera which could be used to take
pictures of organs and tissues of patients using nothing but a

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drop of their blood.... Even more startling, she could take
pictures in 'cross-section,' which cannot (even) be done with
X-rays." (The Secret Life of Plants, Tomkins and Bird, Avon
Books, 1973). This genius, much as Carver and Burbank, was
dutifully ignored in her lifetime.

Despite the billions raised and spent every year in
vainglorious fight against debilitating disease, the medical
status quo must remain intact, for keeping people sick is more
profitable to drug makers and doctors than allowing them to be
healthy. Why else would we not embrace the safe cancer
treatments of Hydrazine Sulfate or Stanislaw Burzinsky? Why
do we allow chemo- and radiation-therapy to kill our immune
systems? How many brilliant others, with vital contributions
to the improvement of our lives and our planet -- how many
others have we, or will we, continue to ignore? How much
longer will we allow the seduction of profits to keep us in
sickness?

We might, perhaps, be forgiven our preoccupation.
Largely, it's a question of time and space. We don't have
enough of it. Everything competes for it. From the beginning
of the day to the end of it, we are compelled to put in time
on this task or that, to be here or there, to make things
bigger, or make them smaller. We move about in defined
spaces, or move things about within them. Our attention quite
firmly to the task, we are much relieved when finally free to
then focus on yet another diversion, fill another space,

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another hour. Beyond our consuming commitments, there is
little time or space in well-filled lives to think or see
beyond their confines.

And it was ever so. As today, we were good little
citizens in the past, living then and now the American Dream
with a Donna Reed innocence and the fervent belief that our
governmental father knows best. That he would always protect
and never intentionally harm us. But that blissful naivete'
is steadily eroded by constant revelations to the contrary ...
our military and civilian populations unwittingly exposed to
nuclear radiation and bacterial agents or psychotropic drugs
... the Tuskegee experiment to see how syphilis would kill
people ... mind control techniques of MK-Ultra and MK-Naomi to
define the willing slave or to make modern "Manchurian
candidates" ... Project HAARP in Alaska to influence and
control localized populations with low-frequency waves bounced
off the ionosphere ... biochemical "contrails" polluting the skies
over countless major cities to secretly "inoculate" us against a
perceived future terrorist threat ....

Such atrocities continue to the present, but we tend to
ignore the writing on the wall. As ever. Past became
prologue. Our easy optimism was intact ... and movie titles
betrayed a reflection of culture. We were Senseless,
Clueless, Dumb and Dumber, The Man Who Knew Too Little.
Humor became sardonic, with clowns in a contest for surface over
substance ... meaning was meaningless to an audience weaned
away from it. The dominant standard favored visceral over
cerebral.

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Attention spans grew ever shorter, with news or
entertainment now offered in bite-sized pieces and measured by
superlative: the biggest, the best, the worst, the most
repugnant, the ironic least. Intelligent scrutiny was not
required, only the capacity to shock, impress, impugn, disgust
or distract. With merit thus assigned, improvement was
impossible, for true worth had less value than imitation or
mockery. It was an invitation to oblivion, for competition
without quality produces only the best of the least.

We appeared to revel in acceptance of yet another nadir.
How low could we go? Further, yet further, for standards and
limits were no longer restricted by a common sense of
propriety. Feeling powerless to change what once might have
been disturbing, we retreated further inside with a credo of
selfism and magnified our minimal accomplishments ... in lives
of small focus, the little must become large. We no longer
cared how mad the world became, as long as it didn't knock on
our door. We were all that mattered; to hell with the rest of
them. But this was damaging, at best, for if we cared little
about others, they would surely be as kind.

Without complaint or consideration, we allow the standard
deviations to punctuate those measured lives in clockwork
rhythm ... birthdays, anniversaries, holidays ... Christmas
with its fantasy figure and the killing of a tree, compulsion

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for gifts easily forgotten... Easter and the fantasy pairing
of rabbit and rainbow egg... this blessed observance and that
special day, and never a thought about why it may not seem so
special, after all.

But we follow them, all the same, lockstep to tradition,
as if in fear of consequence for their discontinuance.
Indeed, with tradition of remembrance amok, we add yet more: a
day for secretaries, or groundhogs. Celebration of quality
has been steadily displaced by an eager acceptance of the
mediocre. We celebrate, still, applauding an empty stage.
New heroes are absent and true heroes forgotten, their
pedestals now occupied by cartoon or cardboard. Stumbling
efforts of fools or children are celebrated, wisdom and
discipline obscured by dust. We carelessly accept profanities
of culture, giving liberal stage to base or banal in mindless
challenge of consequence: if nothing is sacred ... nothing
will be sacred.

In such era of indifference, where the trivial is allowed
importance and every voice given equal ear, a lonely cry of
reason will not be heard above the clamoring crowd. Yet
celebration continues, and often only for celebration, itself.
Manquer de raison est raison d'etre.
We know no other way. There is no mandatory classroom or
culture for alternative thoughts on what might be a more
worthy or satisfying life. A life where merit is of value and
illusion expelled, where hypocrisy and other falsehoods die of

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loneliness or contempt, and a life where an individual or an
idea can succeed or fail according to worth and free from
politics.

In lieu of such impossible dream, we'll seek the path of
least resistance and continue the dance of deception. We
won't care that continuing things the way they are may
actually force the changes we now avoid. We won't believe it.
But we'll note with amused surprise the more frequent reports
of cracks in the armor ... frogs with five legs, or three eyes
... millions of fish with gaping red sores ... whale and
dolphin beaching themselves more often, and more of them ...
quiet volcanoes now coming to life ... earthquakes more
frequent and violent ... fewer crops because the bees are
dying off; and fewer still when the locusts are done ...
animals everywhere on the attack, a living barometer of change
.. bizarre weather, even before El Nino ... increasing
attacks of rage against our families and our fellows here and
afar, so little is a life ... the almost mythical Chupacabra
sucking all blood from goats and other animals in many
countries ... rampant viruses and bacteria, impervious to
current science ... UFOs over Mexico now so common they are
seen as natural; and one over Phoenix on 3/13/97 that measured
about two miles across and was a campaign cause of Frances
Barwood in her bid as Arizona Secretary of State ... images of
other-worldly aliens steadily pervasive throughout the media,
as if to condition us for eventual confrontation ... animal

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mutilations and crop circles of immaculate complexity that
continue in secret, unabated and unexplained ... David John
Oates's discovery of the truth we speak in reverse ... the
birth of a second white buffalo calf, which some believe
significant of global change ... a stock market reaching ever
new highs while our personal dollars buy ever less and more of
us face bankruptcy ... and the disturbing portents of Edgar
Cayce, Nostradamus, current seers Gordon Michael Scallion,
Sean David Morton, Robert Ghostwolf, Robert Morningsky, and
others.

Ironically, fewer believe in church than in angels. More
believe in aliens from other worlds than in eventual Social
Security. And Clinton is a White House enigma: the more he's
admired, the less he's trusted. How can admiration so equate
with distrust? Either the polls are flawed or we are a little
confused. Some of us still know the difference between right
and wrong, but others have been raised or conditioned in the
liberal wilderness where such distinctions are relative. And
in that wilderness, untamed by the fundamental order of
reason, lie the spores of destruction; for if good and bad can
be measured merely by opinion, then either can easily become
the other. Whether some know this distinction or not, our
task is not made easier by official voices, perhaps because of
the steady barrage of conflicting or absent news reports from
the press.

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We don't know what to believe, anymore. Sadly, this
prompts a steady surrender of interest in our most vital
issues. What's perceived as too difficult or confusing is
left for others to figure out. Any others. We retreat to the
familiar, the understood, the bright and clear and easily
digested. We surrender to the distractions of childhood:
we buy something, or eat, or play, or entertain ourselves.
Stuff that void with material satisfactions and the ache will
abate ... for a while. We must begin our upward climb.

Human evolution toward a greater nobility of spirit,
inarguably our genetic and manifest destiny, is directly
proportionate to the stress of the age. Eras of abject
cruelty, strife or deprivation are naturally more fertile
ground for reflections of soul, which tend to starve in the
neglect of prosperity. It is perhaps no irony that material
well-being of the physical, mental and emotional should come
at the expense of the spiritual.

Whatever slight progress may have accrued by the time of
the Korean War was certainly forestalled in the half-century
picnic which followed. Relief from the previous rigors of
world war conflict had inspired the greatest drive ever for
some long-delayed self-indulgence and material comforts.
It was a reward whose pattern we could not break or
alter. Consumerism became synonymous with patriotism and
then, simply, Americanism. We became unified and motivated
solely by the seductive vision of prosperity. National
sybarites. More and bigger and better was better. And except

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for token trinkets to those with less, not many lost sleep for
being too generous. With both eyes on the prize, it is
difficult to see anything else.

And so it goes -- one generation to the next -- doing the
expected, marching in place, buying and consuming. We are a
painting-by-the-numbers, every color and shape exactly where
it's supposed to be and always within the lines. No single
color would dare question the grand purpose of the painting;
all are content to merely occupy the well-defined space.

No one challenges the painter. Very few even know who
really holds the brush. For there are secrets in our
government, even from the President. "Top Secret" may sound
like the top, but it's really the bottom of many more layers
of secrecy, all kept secret from those below. Some say there
are 28 levels above Top Secret, and the President is only
allowed access up to Level 17.

This would suggest, of course, that the leader of the
currently most powerful country is really only a follower,
that at least eleven others make vital decisions without
concern for his consent. Such would imply the existence of a
second, shadow government, a rogue cabal not answerable to
President or Congress, and oblivious to a basic respect for
law or the public purse.

It is well known that at least one other group conducts
affairs beyond the scrutiny of others in government: the
National Reconnaisance Office, who operate in secret, in the

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dark, funding "black" projects at their whim with an annual
$50 billion of taxpayer money.

That sum, of course, is in addition to all the other
steady government waste. And despite the Washington boast of
a balanced budget in 1997, meaning politicians have become
frugal overnight and no longer spend more than taxes bring in
... can anyone really believe it? Are drunken sailors
suddenly sober? Or is it another lie? Even if that
impossible task was achieved -- no deficit for one year, as
claimed -- it does not erase all the yearly deficits from all
the other years up to that time, the total national debt.
We're still in the red for at least six trillion dollars and
profligate politicians still spend a billion a day. And, yet,
we're even told there is a "surplus."

Figures can be fudged to achieve the illusion; items can
be placed "off-budget" -- not even listed in the visible
account. It's easy to claim a balanced budget when the
Secretary of the Treasury can find creative ways to help the
President make ends meet. We've "borrowed" from Social
Security, Medicare, Highway and other Trust funds ... about
one-and-a-half trillion. Does anyone believe that money won't
have to be replaced? No, but those who stole it know it won't
have to be addressed until they're safely retired, bridges
burning brightly, thumbs to noses.

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And the false assurance of a "balanced budget" or surplus
will later be seen as a damnable lie: government figures for
February of 1998 reveal that Clinton actually increased
spending by $150 billion and raised taxes by $100 billion to
pay for 85 new programs in a bureaucracy amok. Incredibly, his
target budget for 1999 was $1.7 Trillion. And that's not even
counting the billions we'll spend to fix what we did to Kosovo.

By denial, obfuscation and delay of cooperation from the White
House, and the lame echoes of a palliative press, the public
can be gradually convinced that the government was neither
collusive nor culpable for deaths at Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma
City, Flight 800 or Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's flight.
Ruthless reinforcement of the lie can even make a President and
his wife seem quite likable even if that, too, is a lie.
A public too eager to believe will accept and wear restraints
in stride, and any who shout "Handcuffs!" will be shouted down
by the eager flock.

As a high official with something to hide, public perception
is your most valuable tool. Credibility is sacrosanct.
The illusion of your "proper" image is the province of
professional liars ... the spinmeisters, damage control
experts, collision deflectors. At all costs, the juggernaut of
corruption must remain on track. And despite the niggling
fleabites of those who sense the lie, there are many methods
long tested in the crucible of Socialist philosophy which
handle fleas effectively.

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One way to deflect attention from your own wrongdoing is
to focus it on your critics. Accuse your accusers of
conspiracy, say it often enough until the very word is
tiresome, and no one will even think to consider your own
guilt of such a thing. In simple terms, conspiracy means
"breathing in a common air of illegal intent or commission,"
participating in misdeeds against others or allowing a
fruition by silence. But it's not enough to claim you had no
part in a crime; allowing it to continue without speaking up
to stop it makes you equally guilty. Likewise, as reinforced
by Nuremburg, no one can feebly claim innocence of a crime for
which they were "only following orders": participation is
tantamount to guilt. These criteria will later be seen to condemn
all those who now profit or remain on Capitol Hill and the national
press who allow it without scrutiny. Enabling is also conspiracy.
History will record this as the most corrupt administration in
American politics, an age of the "Federal Mafia" in which greed
coerced a perversion of the noble ethic into a free-for-all of
selfism and abuse of power.

The festering disease in our country's moral health will
be traced directly to the continuing example set by its
leaders. Delegation of such corruption from the top can be
seen in the compromise of the Department of Justice, where
manipulation and fabrication of evidence by the FBI Crime Lab
allowed coverup in such cases as The Oklahoma City Bombing,

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TWA Flight 800, and countless others of the last quarter
century. Such damning allegations were recently confirmed
when the Supervisor of that lab, Dr. Frederick Whitehurst, won
his lawsuit against the government for persecution after he'd
blown the whistle on such crimes.

Cocaine and other drugs have been smuggled into this
country for decades under the aegis of the U.S. Government,
which adds ignominy to insult by shipping some of it in the
body bags of dead soldiers. Yet the public is led to believe
there's a real war on drugs and is placated by the farce of
Iran-Contra hearings and other official fictions which end in
collusive pardons for the guilty.

Ample proof of government-sponsored drug flow can be found
in such first-hand book-length accounts as The Big White Lie or
Triangle of Death or Deep Cover by Michael Levine;
CIA: Cocaine In America? by Kenneth C. Bucchi; The Politics
of Heroin by Dr. Alfred McCoy; Dark Alliance: The CIA,
The Contras, and The Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb;
Powderburns by Celerino Castillo; Compromised: Clinton, Bush,
and The CIA or the Mena Connection by Terry Reed; Or, in
Penthouse magazine: The Contras and Cocaine by Brian Barger,
12/87; George Bush: Spymaster General by Frank Snepp and
Jonathan King, 1/91; The Crimes of Mena by Sally Denton and
Roger Morris, 7/95; and in many other sources.

Common to all these accounts is that crimes committed at
the highest levels of government include drug and weapons

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trafficking; drug money laundering; secret bank accounts to
hide illegal gains; libel, slander, buyoff, threatening or
murder of those too close to the truth; subversion of The
Constitution, local, state, or federal laws; fatal compromise
of Congress and the Judiciary; treason by greedy intercourse
with ideological enemies; and conspiracy by commission or
silent allowance of these and many other crimes.

Politics is, like the military, a labyrinth of
bureaucracy. There is no democracy on Capitol Hill but,
rather, a well-defined pecking order. One will advance not
because of good works or merit or hard-earned status, but only
through the good graces of a good-old-boys network ... a web
of quid pro quo and influence where elections are easily
controlled through manipulation of votes and the strategic
winnowing of candidates. Where men and women of principle,
worthy candidates who might actually do some good for the
country, will find they cannot prevail in an atmosphere of
dangerous compromise.

Contrary to the cultivated illusion, politics is not
about truth or justice or decency. It is about power. Those
who have it, those who want it, and how much they're willing
to pay for it. Progress through the maze depends on how well
you play the game. Go along to get along. Leave your
principles at the door, drop your ethics and prepare to
compromise every last vestige of honor. These are not the
capital of the Hill.

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Without the cumbersome restraints of propriety, anything
is possible. As long as you play the game. And seldom do
these perversions meet the light of day. Very few of us will
remember the "House Banking Scandal," where hundreds of
elected officials were allowed to write bad checks with impunity,
spending money they knew they didn't have, bouncing paper all
over town. Could you or I get away with that? No. We'd be
in jail. And where did they go? Back to the Hill as if
nothing had happened.

Or, you may remember the "White House Page Scandal":
want to sleep with boys? Step right up, we've got one for
you. Want them even younger, boys or girls or both? Come on
in. Have some drugs, too. This was brought to light by
Senator John W. DeCamp in his book, The Franklin Cover-Up:
Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska, (AWT, Inc.,
1992, 1996). But did it make the nightly news or the front
page of your paper? Of course not. Think about that.

When ignorance allows the wholesale abandonment of
reason, propriety or decency, it is no longer bliss. It is
reprehensible. We are responsible to each other in a mutual
pact of awareness no different than in our common past when
we'd watch each other's back. It was unspoken and ultimately
necessary for mutual survival. We've grown in many ways since
then but still are bound to that silent pact, to inform the
other of potential threat that other may not have seen, and to
listen if he should come to us in similar warning.

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If a politician's peccadilloes become too burdensome for
his compatriots to bear, they'll release that albatross to
sink of his own weight. But if your President is corrupt, how
will you know? He has more power than anyone else in the
world ... his own army of confederates, an unrivaled military,
his own propaganda machine (a willing press), unlimited funds,
a battery of lawyers and judges long bought and paid for.

So, to repeat: if your President is corrupt, how will you know?
Important facts can be artfully obscured or kept out of the media
to keep you from knowing what's necessary. Newspapers and
magazines, TV and most radio shows will only reinforce
the party lie -- discrediting anyone with facts against
the President and maintaining the comfortable status quo.

How will you know? If good and honest people have
unimpeachable evidence of such corruption but are loudly
shouted down by the propaganda machine ... if the only people
speaking the truth are labeled pariahs by White House
damage-control experts ... or when the FBI, CIA, NTSB and
other once-trusted agencies can be effectively nullified by
the White House and the lapdog press refuses to examine why
or to investigate evidence of treason or other capitol crimes
... if things begin to unravel and your economic life is
threatened ... if more children get sick because of toothpaste
they swallow and no one tells you that flouride is a known rat
poison ... if NASA had a secret agenda not to tell us what it

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knows about structures on the Moon and Mars, borrowed alien
technology, Clementine and Phobos II and Observer and
Pathfinder, STS-80 and electro-gravitics or scalar technology
filmed from the Shuttle ... if life as we know it will soon be
changed for good and forever but the controlled news media
fail to give any warning of its imminence ... how will you know?
The answer is ... you won't ... as long as good little ants keep
on marching in place and traveling in tunnels, those who run
the farm have no worries.