Special Report from Sister Ciara

Over the past week, like many others around the world, my attention was riveted to the events surrounding the Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting in Parkland, Florida—but as an historian, my central focus was on the control over social memory this horrific event showed was being employed against the American people.

One of the best intellectual guides for one to use in exploring the uses, and more frequently the abuses, of social memory, as it pertains to population manipulation, is CONTROLLING THE PAST: Documenting Society and Institutions - Essays in Honor of Helen Willa Samuels—that was written in honor of Helen Willa Samuels, the esteemed retired institute archivist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was published, in 2012, by the Society Of American Archivists.

The themes prevalent throughout this “CONTROLLING THE PAST” book revolved around the critical importance of archiving historical documents so that future generations would have available to them an accurate record of the social memory of past generations—but whose headwinds for doing so were explained by the late American author and media theorist Neil Postman in his seminal 1992 book Technopoly: The Surrender Of Culture To Technology wherein he defined “technopoly” as a society in which technology is deified, meaning “the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.

 

 

In 1985, Neil Postman expounded on his “technopoly” theme with his groundbreaking book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business—and that posited one of the most important questions facing our world today: “What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment?”

In 2016, 31 years after Neil Postman posited this question, a presidential election in the United States answered it—and whether for good or ill (as only time can answer that question), America now has its first reality television show presidency with Donald Trump that no historical comparison can be made with—and whom, without any doubt, has successfully merged both media and politics to become the greatest entertainer the world has ever seen.

Though attributed to the 19^th Century American showman and circus owner Phineas (P.T.) Barnum, but most probably first used by the Irish Republican and “drinker with a writing problem” Brendan Behan, the phrase “there is no such thing as bad publicity” has been wholeheartedly embraced by the master entertainer Trump in his merging media with politics—but whose main casualty is the social memory of the American people.

To best understand this you need to remember that showmen need publicity more than anything else to ply their trade, but whose success depends upon a willing and compliant media establishment—with both the showmen and the media then forming a symbiosis—an interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both—and in this case saw Trump catapulted into the presidency, and the media becoming fabulously rich because of his being there.

 

 

Last year, in early 2017, the noted American author Andrew Postman (the son of the late Neil Postman) wrote an excellent article for The Guardian titled My Dad Predicted Trump In 1985 – It's Not Orwell, He Warned, It's Brave New World wherein he explored this issue in great detail by comparing the dystopian futures of media and politics becoming entertainment as envisioned in the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell—with his writing:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.  What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.  Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.  Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.  Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.

 

Andrew Postman further detailed that the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this is not a typo – is 74 hours (and still going up)—the consequence of he wrote: “We watch when we want, not when anyone tells us, and usually alone, and often while doing several other things. The soundbite has been replaced by virality, meme, hot take, tweet. Can serious national issues really be explored in any coherent, meaningful way in such a fragmented, attention-challenged environment?”

Knowing, too, that the complete social memory of the entire American populace was being destroyed, Andrew Postman provided a common sense strategy for combating the destruction of the past—and whose tactics he described are:

First: treat false allegations as an opportunity. Seek information as close to the source as possible. The internet represents a great chance for citizens to do their own hunting – there’s ample primary source material, credible eyewitnesses, etc, out there – though it can also be manipulated to obfuscate that.

Second: don’t expect “the media” to do this job for you. Some of its practitioners do, brilliantly and at times heroically. But most of the media exists to sell you things. Its allegiance is to boosting circulation, online traffic, ad revenue.

Finally, and most importantly, we must teach our children, from a very young age, to be skeptics, to listen carefully, to assume everyone is lying about everything. Check sources.  Consider what wasn’t said.  Ask questions.

 

 

Now what’s amazed me most about the Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting, especially when viewed in the light of understanding of what I’ve written here, are that thousands of ordinary American people organically began investigating this tragedy for themselves—and who believed that they were being lied to, refused to believe what the money making mainstream media was telling them, and sought their own information as close to the source as possible—and was the exact strategy outlined by Andrew Postman in order to insure this event’s true social memory.

And by their actions, these Americans on their own discovered a mystery involving a Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting survivor named David Hogg—who immediately after this massacre was prominently featured on all of the US mainstream media outlets railing against guns—and who told CNN that he was proud of his father who is a retired FBI agent. 

 

David Hogg (right) presenting himself to US mainstream media as a survivor of Stoneman Douglas High School massacre on 15 February 2018

 

Discovered by these Americans about David Hogg, though, was how he could have possibly been a student at Stoneman Douglas High School when this shooting occurred when even the simplest internet search showed him having graduated from Redondo Shores High School in California in 2015. 

 

David Hogg (second row middle) pictured as graduating senior in 2015 Redondo Shores High School yearbook

 

Quickly, also, discovered by these Americans questioning how David Hogg could have been a shooting survivor in Florida when he had already graduated from a California high school in 2015, was how brutal the US “technopoly” actually is whenever its questioned—with the Google owned YouTube video site banning one video about this when it reached over 200,000 views, their banning another user for 90 days after they raised questions, and their permanently banning the popular Richie Allen Show deleting all 76,000 of their subscribers and 1,400 videos they had.

Along with YouTube conducting its massive crackdown against anyone questioning the “official narrative” of the “technopoly”, Twitter, likewise, has begun deleting thousands of accounts of conservatives—with the online publishing platform Medium quickly following by its banning all of its conservative users too—with it being noted:

In its previous set of rules, the Medium had billed itself as a “free and open platform for anyone to write their views and opinions,” and said it believes “free expression deserves a lot of leeway, so we generally think the best response to bad ideas is good ideas, not censorship.”

This language has been scrubbed from the current version of its platform rules.

 

 

There are only a handful of times in the past nearly 50 years that I’ve agreed with the American-Hungarian billionaire socialist George Soros—but when he spoke last month at the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, his words echoed through me, as they should through you, and who warned:

The international community needs to take seriously the threats posed by Facebook and Google who are spinning a web of totalitarian control...and if they are not reined in, the result will be a strain of authoritarianism the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have ever imagined.

 

 

To the “Brave New World” the American people are being forced into by their new “technopoly” overlords makes me wonder sometimes if our Lord will one day destroy them like Sodom and Gomorrah—with the latest affronts to all human decency being displayed by them saw fashion models demonically carrying their own severed heads down a runway, while the popular Netflix television service is preparing to air the most sadistic programme ever imagined called “The Push” to see if the “contestant” can be pushed into committing murder by pushing another man to his death. 

 

“And God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter.” 2 Peter 2:6-9

 

With the memory wiping of the American people by their “technopoly” overlords constituting a grave threat to the entire world, as without the knowledge of their past no future for them can be envisioned, it remains the Holy duty and obligation of all of God’s children to keep this atrocity from happening—but that can only be accomplished by our banding, and then holding ourselves together against the vile evil that confronts us.

Therefore, as our duty before the Lord is to keep you as informed and knowledgeable as possible to true things, your duty must be to keep us able to do that—with your guide being our Lord’s words that say: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” [Proverbs 3:27]

As times of war, also, demand great sacrifice, our respectful request for you to aid us is really but a pittance for what you receive in return—after all, and as we always say:

Our needs today are dire indeed, but, if every one of you reading this gave just $20.00 today, our budget for the entire year would be met!  So, before you click away, ask yourself this simple question….if your knowing the truth about what is happening now, and what will be happening in the future isn’t worth 5 US pennies a day what is?

With God,                                                                                                                                                                         

Sister Ciara

Dublin, Ireland

23 February 2018

http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/