November 21, 2007 (#41)
ALAN WATT
"CUTTING THROUGH THE MATRIX"
LIVE ON RBN
Title Copyright Alan Watt November 21, 2007:
"SHOOT TO THRILL, TEACHING TO KILL -
SO JOHNNY (OR
JENNY) GOES MARCHING OFF AGAIN"
© Alan Watt November 21, 2007
Title & Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - November 21, 2007 (Exempting Music, Literary Quotes and Callers' Comments)
WWW.CUTTINGTHROUGHTHEMATRIX.COM
www.alanwattsentientsentinel.eu
"Code of Silence" by Bruce Springsteen
There's a
code of silence that we don't dare speak
There's a wall between us and a river so deep
And we keep pretending that there's nothing wrong
But there's a code of silence and it can't go on
Is the
truth so elusive, so elusive as you can see
that it ain't enough baby
To bridge the distance between you and me
There's a list of grievance 100 miles long
There's a code of silence and it can't go on
Hi folks. I'm Alan Watt and this is Cutting Through the Matrix on November 21st, 2007. Newcomers, go into cuttingthroughthematrix.com and download as much as you want on the histories of this poor old planet of ours that we find out isn't ours at all. You can download it until your heart's content, lots of information to do with the players and all the groups and associations and foundations that all work meshed together in this big system which they control. Look into alanwattsentientsentinel.eu for transcripts in the tongues of Europe.
I spent the last few days going over a lot of the photographs you don't get on the mainstream news, where they show you the sanitized war, smart bombs and soldiers giving out chocolate to children, and it's what the American troops and the British too and others are doing over in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's awfully disgusting, incredibly disgusting, but at the same time it's what I expected. I knew what was going on because they have raised one purpose, the generation, the particular generation to do exactly what they're doing. They created the culture for them.
They gave them their “mortality” if you like, just like Bertrand Russell said they would do from kindergarten onwards and they also gave them video games. Video games which were designed initially years ago long before we had the internet, designed for the military alone because it was to desensitize soldiers so they would kill their target without thinking. Without having any idea really there's a real human being there. That was just a target to kill on impulse. A Pavlovian type training and that's why they had the big push many years ago now to give this kind of game playing role to the children to bring them up on it, to desensitize them, and now of course they're coming out and admitting that in some of the papers. Not only admitting it but telling us they're going to push it further and that the military-industrial complex and the governments are behind it because they want a militarized desensitized next generation to take over and perhaps be even more ruthless, because this is to be a hundred years war like Mr. Rumsfeld said. We should listen to what they say because these characters, in amongst all the lies they give us, will tell us little things, little statements they make where they well us the true psychopathic truth and we ignore it because we don't want to hear it. It's the bad news and I'll be back with more of this bad news and telling you what's behind it after the following messages.
Hi folks. Alan Watt back with Cutting Through the Matrix, and just to confirm what I've been talking about for a long time in that the culture you live in is basically promoted and indoctrinated to you. There's nothing in it that doesn't have a purpose that serves the elite. Nothing at all. There's nothing in it whatsoever for you. You're taught to think there is. You're taught to think you just compete with everyone else and you get to the top, and nothing is further from the truth. Even your hobbies and the things that you do are promoted to you and your children who are indoctrinated from kindergarten onwards and you even buy them games that they demand from you, because the advertising industry ensures through their cartoons and all the rest of it these video games are shown and they'll demand it from you.
Everything is highly manipulated. In Australia I think it's already the 22nd. They're ahead of us because that shows you the world is really a cube. Just like a big ice cube, and I'm joking about that, joking. In reality, in Australia the marsupials were created because if they didn't have pouches their little babies would float off into space because the lack of gravity, and that's also why the guys drink so much beer so quickly, because if they didn't drink it up right away they'd just float up into the sky. At least that's what they tell me down under.
Getting back to this particular newspaper: It's from a Sidney newspaper by Fran Malloy, who’s written this up for this Sidney Morning Herald, 22nd it will be because as I say they're ahead of us and it said here:
"Various commentators have accused Generation Y, those born after 1981, of being disrespectful, constantly distracted, unable to live without a mobile phone, contemptuous of authority, cynical and precocious. A more unlikely batch of soldiers just couldn't be imagined. But this much-maligned generation is precisely the target that the US and Australian defence forces are homing in on in their efforts to keep the "war on terror" well manned. And their key recruitment strategy? The humble video game."
Alan: Now this goes for Britain and all the Commonwealth countries, Canada and the U.S. as well. In fact they just had a tank, a military tank a couple of days ago come up Yonge Street in Toronto with some cup that some team had won, so once again they're using it as an advertising promo for recruits, so a tank going up Yonge Street certainly dispels Canada's old image of a peace-loving country.
I'll continue with this newspaper article. It says here:
"Their key recruitment strategy? The humble video game. More than 3800 US soldiers have been killed in action since the war in Iraq began more than five years ago. And as the conflict drags on with no end in sight, the US military is running desperately short of the 80,000 new recruits it needs each year. As the horrific reality of the bloody conflict deters potential recruits back home, it seems that the US Army is pinning its hopes on a video game to solve one of George Bush's biggest headaches. America's Army (www.americasarmy.com) is a key component of a drive by US forces to sell military careers to an increasingly cynical young demographic who ignore billboards and TV advertisements and who, by being plugged into the internet, fly firmly under the radar of traditional marketing. Military recruitment has huge support from the US Government."
Alan: And ain't that a fact?
"…Controversial legislation passed in 2001 compels high schools to release contact numbers of graduating students to recruiters."
Alan: Your personality profile will be in there too so they'll know exactly how to hit on you to get you in.
"…But with an estimated 73 per cent of US teenagers surfing the web at least weekly, nowhere is youth more readily accessible than in the gaming space. And with more than 8.6 million users registering to play since 2002, America's Army is successfully hitting its mark. The game is a realistic and immersive tactical first-person shooter, a free download with online multiplayer capabilities and extensive input from some of the world's top game developers. Reviewers have raved about the high production values, with sound effects and visual detail among the best in its genre. The game requires a relatively significant commitment of time. Experienced gamers estimate that it takes at least two hours to go through the training modules before you can log on to play the game. The realism of the game is no surprise given its source."
Alan: Then it goes on to list a lot of the other ones who participated in creating this game and it's all the biggies. It goes on to tell you that the U.S. military is putting lots and lots of money into this and so is the American government, so, of course, will be the British, Australian and every other Commonwealth country. They're putting money into video games to get the children hooked on a fantasy. A fantasy and also to train them to just kill the enemy target when they go over abroad and no doubt in this game they'll be using the clothing of the target that they'll eventually be set against. That's the kind of world we're living in now and you think you're all free. You think that your children are free, and here you are being indoctrinated and allowing your children not to just be indoctrinated but to be basically brought up with a military mentality and a killer mentality, and you think that's okay.
It's astounding. It's astounding to me to know what I know and to have read all the old books of how they were going to scientifically create this reality all around us through indoctrination from a very early age. An ongoing indoctrination through television for the adults and has it ever been successful, because the average person is so out of touch, so incredibly out of touch with the only true reality there is, that it's a different world all together. They cannot tell fact from fiction anymore. Most people have watched so many gory movies and blood movies and guts movies put out by Hollywood and Hollywood itself has admitted a few years ago they were getting massive funding from the Pentagon to put these war movies out by the way.
You cannot be entertained today and enjoy it. If you watch any of these movies you have to sit and analyze them; as soon as you identify with the characters, you've lost it and you're being indoctrinated. They're downloading into you. That's what's happening, and people today as I say have no idea what's really going on. They hear the sanitized sterilized stuff that comes across the mainstream news and they haven't seen their heroes over there booting children. Booting them as they come out of houses because they're not going out fast enough and knocking them to the ground or hitting them with their rifle butts and that kind of stuff. They don't see that. It's all sanitized news that you get, so they think everything is some sort of big Hollywood production with John Wayne in it, where everyone has 1950’s morality or something, and even that was all fake because again it was Hollywood.
However, that's what they’ve done. They've given the adult generation that's got the children a completely fake reality and they're actually training your children to grow up and be soldiers. Soldiers who will fight for a cause that they won't even care about. They won't care why about anything. They just want to wear that uniform and be like the warriors in the Star Wars movies, faceless armor-clad beings, just numbers that do what they're told and shoot and kill. That's the unfortunate part of it and not to stop there. The suicide rate within the army has shot up and it's three times higher than the 6,000-odd per year they're telling you; and that's not attempted, that's suicide, that's successful.
Now another report has just come out where they've talked about autopsies on the brains of a lot of these troops and the frontal lobe part of the brain has shrunk. My, my, my. What would cause that? The experts are stumped. They think, oh, it could be Gulf War, this mysterious Gulf War Syndrome or something. They forget all about the testing even as far back in Vietnam and repeated in the Jane’s magazines and others since then (the official military equipment magazine) on the Pentagon's desire and striving towards the super-solider through chemical means, eventually becoming cyborg but first through chemicals.
The Canadian troops who are in Somalia – this is from a documentary on the CBC News (that's a government owned station, that's like the BBC for Canada) talked to some of the troops back from Somalia a few years ago and they all complained of massive hallucinations during their whole tour there. They put it down to – this is what they told the public. They put it down to the new type of anti-malarial drug they were being given, which the French themselves had banned because of these effects. One solider said he couldn't believe what he'd done afterwards because he was hallucinating through all these colored scenes, just like LSD, and going through villages and pulling his pistol out and pointing it at children's heads wondering whether to pull the trigger or not just for fun.
You see soldiers are disposable. You'll find most presidents have utter contempt for them. Contempt because they know the mentality of them and the mentality isn't too high. It's juvenile. It's juvenile and it's kept that way and reinforced now with conditioning. I'll be back with more about it after the following messages.
Hi folks. Alan Watt back with Cutting Through the Matrix, and trying to shatter some of the conditioning you've had by trying to make people more empathetic to their own children. It seems they've lost contact all together, which was always the plan, of course, according to Bertrand Russell and others, Aldous Huxley et cetera. All the ones who worked for Tavistock they're pretty successful. Before I go on to callers, I'm just going to read a little bit more from the article that I was reading from.
It says:
"And the game is having an impact: America's Army has consistently been rated by GameSpy in the global top 20 most popular online games with thousands of players logged on around the clock. In the online gaming world dominated by products such as Quake and Half-Life, America's Army rates as a strong contender with 24 updates to the PC version released."
Alan: It goes on and on and it tells you right here that this isn’t just a game. It's a propaganda tool.
"While it may rate up there with the best in gaming, America's Army is not an exercise in largesse towards the gaming community. It's essentially a propaganda tool funded to the tune…"
Alan: Now listen to this.
"…of more than $US10 million ($A11.1 million) of US taxpayers' money designed to attract young people to military life."
Alan: Attract? No, this is to condition them into going, just like Manchurian Candidate. There will be buzzwords et cetera in those games and they'll hear the recruiters use them and they'll go.
It says:
"…The US Army spends an estimated $US1.5 million annually to support the game…"
Alan: That's just to support it. That's not to create it, 10 million initially.
"…a drop in the $US583 million ocean of the army's recruitment advertising budget last year. But the modest expense is reaping big dividends with 28 per cent of players clicking through to the US Army's recruitment site and about 40 per cent of new US Army recruits in 2005 having played the game before signing up."
Alan: Of course you think advertising indoctrination doesn't work, eh? You're too clever for that. It won't effect you, will it? People should look into this particular article. I'll put it up on my site and read it for yourself. Unfortunately, most people have little memory today. They can't retain too much and after they've read it they'll be shocked and then they'll forget it and watch the sports or watch military tanks coming up Yonge Street in Toronto with a cup on the commemoration of some team that won some game some where, because these guys like to play with balls. This is grown men playing with balls. What does that tell you?
I'm going to go on to the callers now and get my mind off of this for a second or two. We've got Laurie from New York there. Are you there, Laurie?
Laurie: Yes. Hi, Alan. How are you?
Alan: Not so bad.
Laurie: Thank you for taking my call. I've been listening to you pretty regularly for about four months now and I've learned so much. Thank you so much.
Alan: It's a pleasure.
Laurie: I have a question. Can you just hear me out a little bit? You've talked about how we live in a – I guess you use the term “pathocracy.” You were using it for – okay and basically what it comes down to is like you say the elite are psychopaths. They have no feelings for anyone but themselves, right? And they would even turn – I've heard you say that they would even turn against their own children. They don't care for anyone, right?
Alan: They have a hard time. People who have purpose for them, people they can use or live through, I mean psychopaths do one thing all down through the ages and that's they ensure they have children, mainly the sons as offspring, and they live their lives through them. That’s who takes over from them. They're proud of that.
Laurie: I've also heard you say that you don't need to look at the supernatural to understand these guys. They're in it for the power. Like you wouldn't go to a David Icke or someone like that and talk about reptilians and this and the other, because these guys the ones that are into eugenics and all this; they've been planning this. They know it's not going to be an easy deal; it could take 200 or 300 years. Do I understand you correctly when you talk like that? That in other words they're not expecting to see this in their lifetime?
Alan: That's correct, each part, each person. George Bush, Jr. there I'm sure was coached for a good part of his life for his present role, so he does have a certain part to fulfill and he'll go down and get a few statues made and a few libraries named after him, but he knows too that their family offspring will take over.
Laurie: Right. But what I don't understand is if they don't care for others and they're so cold down to the core and they know they're not going to see the so-called rotten fruits of their efforts, they must believe in something beyond this. Some evil master, somebody that's going to give them a reward, or else why would they do it? Why are they setting it up for 200 or 300 years? If you look at freemasonry or any of these illuminati type things, why would they do it if they don't care for the person next to them, their children, just so – in other words, do you know what I'm saying? I'm saying if you don't factor in the supernatural that they think there is something beyond this that they're going to get a reward from, like if you want to say the devil or Satan or whatever?
Alan: What they do know and what they're working towards and have been for quite some time and they do have this, by the way. David Suzuki announced it on national television in Canada a few years ago. They have good life extension for those who serve this “great work,” but their goal of course is to eventually make themselves physically immortal.
Laurie: That's the only thing I could think of.
Alan: It's an odd thing because in ancient times they used to talk about fixing spirit and matter within matter. Hold on and I'll talk about this after I come back.
Laurie: Okay Alan, thank you.
Alan: Hi folks. Alan Watt back with Cutting Through the Matrix, and we're talking to Laurie from New York about this odd phenomenon. It's not really so odd when you look down through history and going back even to the pharaohs and before the pharaohs. The pharaohs had themselves mummified trying to preserve their physical body and they did have ceremonies, sometimes when the son was away, as he often was, because sons were farmed out. They were put out to other relatives who were lords over satrapies of Egypt, exactly the same as the Normans did. They put their sons as basically an apprentice to a knight and he'd be a page to a knight and eventually he'd become the knight himself. The Egyptians did the same thing. When their sons were away, sometimes the pharaoh died and the son didn't get back in time, but they'd put the son next to the pharaoh and go through this process of supposedly bringing the spirit of the pharaoh into the son so all knowledge was then passed on to the son. They even had an idol where they could put the spirit and hold it for a little while. At least that's what they told the public and so they were obsessed with eternal life in the physical world.
Now you've got to realize that even as far back as those days the elite lived a life of incredible luxury, incredible luxury even by today's standards and lots of partying and all the rest of it and they lived of course on slaves. The majority of the public were slaves, with a small trading class that came and went and that was what they did. Now if you jump into even older records of the whole idea of evil. Now it's so easy to believe in a devil because when we look around the world and what's happening, especially when you understand how this world has been run over thousands of years, you can see lots and lots of incredible evil, even when it's been printed up and sanitized by authorized authors and historians; there's still an awful lot of hell there. In fact, that's why they call it hell in the north, the Nordic language, hell is the earth, this place here; and so it's easy to believe in utter evil or a force of utter evil. Of course, even talked about in demonology of ancient times – what was hell to a demon was the absence of the physical world. That was hell to a demon. They had no senses of touch, taste, anything or any sensual understandings, because it's like if you were a mind with no attachments just stuck in space somewhere you'd be awfully bored for thousands of years, so they used to say that hell to a demon or a pure evil entity was absence of the physical world. It is odd to see that down through the ages these religions try to preserve the bodies of the very important people that ran their system and these guys were bloodthirsty and utterly cruel to keep their power. They had mass executions and so on.
Laurie: So to sum it up – I don't want to monopolize anymore time. Thank you for taking so much time with me, but you would say that it would have to be that they're going for immortality? Because I can't understand why else they would do it, if you don't factor in this idea of an after world where there's a devil that's going to say here you're rewarded for all the stuff you've done, then it would have to be – do you think that the science – I mean I know we don't hear really how advanced things are, but do you think they don't have it yet, right?
Alan: They have it.
Laurie: They do?
Alan: They can give it to certain ones and David Suzuki who is a geneticist--
Laurie: I know. I'm going to look him – I've heard of him of course, but I'm going – does he have a book? Maybe I'll just look him up online and see if I could read some articles.
Alan: Remember, he works for the United Nations and the World Wildlife Fund, but he said on national television in Canada at the end of one of his shows that they have – they now have. They have it now the ability to extend a person's life to 500 years if they wish to.
Laurie: Oh boy. Okay. Thank you. That clears up a lot for me and now I'll have a lot more to research. Alan, thank you again for everything, okay?
Alan: It's a pleasure. Now we've got Ryan in New York. Are you there, Ryan?
Ryan: Hey. Can you hear me?
Alan: Yes.
Ryan: In New York there's a county, Nassau County, and when you driving in to the village it says "incorporated village of Freeport. Partners with Waldorf, Germany." What would that be about?
Alan: I'm not so sure about the Waldorf, Germany, but I know about the Waldorf Hotel and all the rest of it, very, very famous family. See anything that has in it the NSA word, for instance, in Hebrew a NASI, almost like Nazi, means the head, the head man of the Sanhedrin; and it's the same thing with the NSA (National Security Agency). If you speak it, it's “nasa,” same thing, or NASA is the same thing. Again, they love these words over and over and all around you, especially in the high sciences that are running the world for you. They're talking about the head, in a sense. There's a lot of interesting places around New York and even the fact they have Rhode Island there and New York is what they call the Empire State – what empire are they talking about? It's a world empire because the whole country was set up to be a New World Order to run a new secular order, NOVO ORDO SECLORUM, and that's what they're fulfilling. This is why they set the United States up and Franklin himself said that he hoped it would be the embryo and so did Jefferson. The embryo, these consolidated states of a consolidation of world states, eventually, run by a council or a government of 12 wise men, because they were all cabalists as well you see and High Masons. The ancient Rhodes in the upper Mediterranean or Aegean Sea area at one time was the trading capital of the ancient world and that's why you have a Rhodes there, too, and the statute they had, the Colossus of Rhodes, was the same thing you've got down there with the Statue of Liberty with the light held up as well. It was the same thing.
They built a massive one in Rhodes and it fell down during an earthquake a long time ago. Everything they’ve done in the past is brought back again into the present and these characters have gone down through the ages; and I'm not talking about a particular big group of people. I'm talking about the ones who hold the power and the money and who can be the head of all types of denominations as well. They always make sure they are, and money is the key to it and whoever controls the money controls the world. It's very, very simple. We're all trained for money, nothing else, just money, and we can starve to death if we have no money, even though there's plenty of food around. It's a crazy system but they've conditioned the Ancient World up to the present world with this particular system and they use their old symbols over and over again. They also have I think it's a New Babylon as well down there in New York as well. I mean why would you put a Babylon up there if you were held there as captives? Why not a Dachau or something? Would you name it that? Of course you wouldn't, so why would they name a place like that and give it that kind of name? There's a lot of societies within groups of people that keep themselves very secretive, but you'll find the tops of some of these societies have incredible ancestries and again they interbreed with people of all denominations. They run all denominations, all major religions and they have for an awful, awful long time.
Ryan: Yes. It's funny the villages there was in a time in the mid to the late '90’s the cop cars turned black.
Alan: Yes. Then too you have Manhattan and that's anything with ATON in it. ATON is a sun god from Ancient Egypt, so it's the man of the sun god as well. It's amazing when you look at maps and you see it all. You've got Memphis (Tennessee) – why would they call a place Memphis in this so-called "Christian Country" that came mainly from Europe? The symbols are everywhere and you're looking at very ancient symbols of some very powerful families that control the monied system, the commerce system and the people that actually respect and look up to them. They control all of that. They own it basically.
Ryan: It seems like the instinct to fight back has been bred out, as so many people know, and nobody is really doing anything.
Alan: They won't because most folk don't care. In this world and they've done study after study and they did at universities across the western world for the last 80-odd years and asked them would they really care what flag they wore or who ran the world, if they can still continue doing the things they like to do the most? Consistently the studies show that 85 percent of the public don't care. They don't care as long they can fulfill their happy habits and so on and do their little routine things. They really don't care, so I think that's always been that way, to be honest with you, and 3 percent of the population run the world. They own the world basically; 7 percent or so are their helpers: military, police et cetera and bureaucrats; and 3 percent are the ones who know but don't belong to the societies. They don't have the financial power in this financial system to do much about it.
Ryan: And the tactics of some of these – because even when I show people the [Nicolas cancer] video on YouTube. They just resort to they don't like the way Nicholas doesn't sound educated or something. They think it's something to say.
Alan: As I say, people are conditioned again to only listen to experts – and this is why even the patriot radio and so on they'll bring out professors and they'll bring out doctors and people who worked for the military in high positions and the more so, because they've indoctrinated you. You've been indoctrinated into a military style culture and so when these guys come out from the spook agencies or spy agencies or whatever and start telling little bits and pieces, you swallow everything you say without questioning the fact that every one of them signed a National Security Statement saying they could never divulge anything under the Security Act, so how come they can tell the public? They're still working for the government generally. They've kept the patriots running in circles for decades and decades.
Ryan: There's so much going on in the screen that you kind of just coil up like a Pavlovian dog and you just resort to what's familiar, like, oh, she’s pretty and it’s pleasant what she’s saying. He’s a father figure, you know a Dan Rather guy.
Alan: Now that's correct. You get the same things over and over and over again and I always tell people to question everything, even what I say, go and check it out and try and I try and get the details where they can check out what I say; and I don't give opinions generally on things. I don't tell people how to vote. I don't believe the voting makes any difference whatsoever. I mean Carroll Quigley told us the truth. He said that they always put their own men in at the top of all parties and the top advisers as well. That's all you have to do. The lesser politicians are allowed a form of competition to get brownie points, but everyone at the top is already vetted long before the public even hear their names. That's why the agenda continues intergenerationally. It doesn't matter who you vote in or out; and then for the other groups, the ones who are trying to get things changed and patriots and so on, they always give you a middle person who says all the right things, but we know. You see, when you have a military-industrial complex and the U.S. is made up – a good part of its industry has always been military-industrial complex, so much so that Truman had a meeting right at the end of World War II and they decided then they'd have to have ongoing wars, he says, because the economy would collapse and we'd go back into 1920’s type Depression.
They always have wars going and any one person who is put up there, even by some incredible fluke and miracle, who came out of the blue somewhere and got in there, he'd be dead before he opened his mouth. We saw that with Kennedy. Kennedy talked about the secret societies that run and he was meaning as well, not just the Masons, them too, he was also talking about all the other sects including the Council on Foreign Relations that make your policy for the future and they give it. They write it out. They wrote out the implementation for the Americas and gave it to the governments. They boasted about it on television here.
These are societies, we know their names and so on, but these societies are essentially very secretive. They give out stuff for the public consumption, but the rest you have to be members to get the nitty-gritty and the minutes of their meetings. They pick basically – Professor Carroll Quigley was the official historian for the CFR. He was in the record-keeping place at the Pratt Building in New York and he had access to all that. He also had access to the Chatham House one in London, England, the main one, The Royal Institute of International Affairs and he had all the records and he gives you another version of history. That's why he filled in all the blank bits and gave us the reasons and the purpose and the kind of world they were bringing us into. It's a world where we won't need politicians anyway and you'll be run by experts.
Officially authorized experts will run every facet of your life and we're now going through the conditioning process to bring us to that stage. You’ve got government intrusion in homes now, even though you thought they were private. Well, let's not kid ourselves. You don't own anything if you can be taxed out of it. You can't own it and be taxed out of it at the same time. It's one or the other. Now they want intrusions into your homes to check your furnaces, check this, check that, your fire alarms and yah-de-yah-de-yah. This is what they did in the British system. That's where they got it from because in the majority of homes up to Maggie Thatcher's day were owned by the local councils. Your taxpayer money paid for all these homes. She privatized them and sold them off, but you had inspectors coming round all the time and making you feel so inadequate like a peasant and everybody scurried and looked down at the floor when these inspectors came. That's all to bring you down to a groveling inferior type of being. That is the whole purpose of it to get it through our heads that we own nothing.
Ryan: Well thank you and I enjoy your books. It's like a different book every time you read it.
Alan: Yes it is. Thanks for calling. We've got John in California. Are you there, John? Hello John?
John: Hello. How are you doing tonight, Alan?
Alan: I'm surviving here.
John: Ah, gee. You disappointed me. I wanted to hear you say that you're not doing so bad. Anyway, I just thought I'd ask anyway.
Alan: It's starting to snow. That's why I'm saying I'm surviving.
John: Okay. Hey real quick Alan. I noticed your comment about the influence of the Pentagon on Hollywood movies and I'm guessing also just normal TV programming and various other theories. I was just wondering what you knew about this series in the States called “24.” Are you familiar with that?
Alan: I don't know it, no.
John: Oh, okay. I'd heard about it. I hadn’t seen it. I guess it's been out for a few years. It sounds like one of these – I guess maybe I should look at it before I even try to talk about it. I just wanted to know if you'd ever heard about it. Then some of your comments about influence. They've got a new series on the PBS channel about--
Alan: Hold on and we'll talk after the break here. Alan Watt back with the last few minutes of Cutting Through the Matrix for tonight and we're talking to John from California and you were going to mention another show that's on.
John: I guess what struck me was all through this past summer I believe it was PBS but what they were doing was advertising for this great big humongous series just entitled simply "The War." I think they started advertising in the spring and it was supposed to start in September. It has and all it really is is just a rehash of the Victory at Sea series I saw when I was a kid back in the '50s and then they got some other footage of the army in Europe and so forth and D-Day and all this kind of stuff. When you made your comment about the influence of the Pentagon on programming it just kind of struck me that I can't prove that there's any linkage, but why would they do all this advertising for something as mundane as this? I don't know.
Alan: It's interesting because once again in Canada – we get more information here than they do in the U.S. because you're restricted in what you see actually there. You may have more variety of trivia, but you're restricted in what you're taught on purpose. There was a program on some time ago about Hollywood's involvement even from the beginning of World War II onwards and how they had actors dressed up, well known famous actors of their day with military gear going around telling young men in military and new recruits or guys getting shipped off abroad why they were fighting the war and to go over and give them hell and all that kind of stuff. These young guys looked up to these actors as heroes, the John Wayne types, and of course were just children really. That's why they don't recruit old men for military combat, because they've got too much common sense.
John: We would like to think so. Like that old stuff Alan. Anyway, one other thing was I'm sure you know of a guy named Dr. Stanley Monteith. He made the observation and I thought this was very pertinent. In the year 2002 right before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq he loudly exclaims that we are preparing and celebrating a party to have a war. What he was talking about was all of the country music, Brooks & Dunn and some of those other country singers talking about kicking ass and pretty much in September of 2002 there was this great big Hollywood Country Music extravaganza for no particular reason and it wasn't an awards festivity, but it was just a bunch of gung ho battle for the flag, singing the Star Spangled Banner. It just kind of struck me, that's all, when you made that comment.
Alan: You see certain actors taking brownie points again and actually mentioning that they promote the war. Actually admitting it and it's the same in the complete entertainment industry. They do come forward, some of the big players, and pay them off. They're bought off and they give them a salary for doing it and bring them around certain functions and recruitment drives et cetera or writing songs that are all gung-ho pro-war.
John: These very cycles say that Toby Keith was the guy and then of course there was the Dixie Chicks ended up saying the wrong things and they were banned. Anyway, thanks a lot Alan. Good talking to you and keep up the good work.
Alan: Thanks for calling. That's it tonight from myself up in Ontario, Canada, and Hamish is sleeping here right beside me and it's snowing outside. Buy my books. Help with donations. Keep me going. It's all the best from me. Good night and may your god or your gods go with you.
(Transcribed by Linda)