Since then, propaganda and public information control has gotten a lot more sophisticated.  Now, they use cartoon bunnies with Brezhnev eyebrows. The idea now is not so much to control what you see, but to control how you’re going to react to it. What will you take seriously? What will you reject as absurd? What will cause you to go out and smash a store window, or buy your third cousin flowers, or both? Yes, we live in a whole new Orwellian world of propaganda, and this opens the door to all sorts of actors to shape you in all kinds of ways. And the only way to open your eyes is to know their techniques. Which brings us to the Trix rabbit.

Now some of you are already rejecting this idea as absurd, and you don’t even know what the idea is. Think about that when you evaluate the effectiveness of the post-war propaganda complex. We all know the Trix rabbit, that pathetic sugar junkie, jonesing for a fix since 1961, willing to wear the stupidest, most ineffective disguises to get his hands on a bowl of cereal. We also know what usually happens to him. He gets flippantly laughed off by some kids as they eat whole boxes of the stuff right in his face.

Okay. Here is a surface analysis of the Trix ad campaign. Then, we’ll go through the mirror and look at the deep shit. On the surface, the Trix ads are all about socializing you, from a very early age, that it’s normal not to share your resources with those who are different from you. Especially with those who aren’t “supposed” to have access to those resources. Nice.

Now for the really scary stuff. In 1968, when Tricky Dick Nixon (oh look, a linguistic coincidence!) was running for the White House, General Mills had a ballot in which kids were asked to vote on whether the rabbit should get a bowl of Trix. The rabbit won in a landslide. Same in the Reagan year of 1980, and again in 1984. Every time, one TV commercial showed the rabbit having one bowl of Trix. Then the kids went back to their denigrating, denying ways.

The election of 1992 was different. Instead of holding a ballot, General Mills issued a statement that the President of kids everywhere had decreed that Trix really were for kids, and that the rabbit wouldn’t get any. There hasn’t been a ballot since. So in 1992, the year Bush puppet Bill Clinton took the White House, the kids were told that some unelected official had cancelled the election. I don’t remember a toddler revolution in 92.

Think about it. There is a generation of kids out there, now in their early 20s (that would be you lot), for whom it is normal to have some anonymous figure announce that there is no election.  Who cares, right? Elections don’t make a difference anyway! They won’t change the distribution of resources, and they won’t change who sits at the breakfast table and who gets to go hungry. That’s what you’ve been led to assume since you were a five year old laughing at the antics of a silly rabbit on a 20-inch CRT. What else has been conditioning you to accept the end of democracy? What else has been encouraging you not to worry about silly things like Continuity of Government? Keep your eye on the ball kids. Keep your eye on the ball.

~ Professor X

Okay, so the appointment of some old guy you’ve never heard of to be the White House lawyer to the man you idolize doesn’t strike you as all that threatening. Well, let me tell you why it should. This is all the evidence you need that the Americans are slaves living in a country that was once a Republic, but where the ballot has long since been replaced by the bullet. And what happens in the US usually happens in Canada about six months later, so pay attention.

This is a complicated story with lots of twists and turns, and it is really hard to follow, so I am going to use a cognitive map. For you freshman reading this, that means a diagram.  And for the really slow, diagrams are drawings.  Ok, try to stay with me as we attempt to disentangle this literal spaghetti of twisted relationships and blind alleys down the paths of recent history.

I know this is a lot for your little untrained brains to absorb at once, but try to follow the mess of confusing arrows from President Obama to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.  Now, Professor X isn’t implying anything outrageous, like that Obama somehow had something to do with Reagan being shot. First of all, Obama was all of 19 when it happened. Second, Professor X is hoping his passport is still good for at least a few entry visas to the US.  No, I am merely pointing out that presidential violence and presidential history have a tighter relationship than might at first glance appear.  And I’ll give you three chances to guess who would have become president had Hinckley succeeded. Hint: both he and his son have been Presidents, and he’s not John Adams. Now keep thinking that Obama is the anti-Bush. I dare ya.  Keep your eye on the ball, kids.

~Professor X

This is Prof X reporting, special from Iceland, epicentre of the Global Economic Meltdown.  Sadly, the acronym for that, ECOGEM, doubly describes Iceland. I am sitting here in a Reykjavik hotel, watching Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 48 Hours on British TV, which seems to be the only kind of television you can get in Iceland.  Actually, 48 Hours is exactly the kind of silly buddy comedy that can help the hapless Icelanders keep their minds off the fact that their entire country is now worth less than a Japanese super-tanker full of crude, and that’s after the recent fall in commodity prices. Plus, it brings to memory the early 80s, the early pre-classic Reaganomics era, back when we still stood a chance.  But since we failed to fight back, here I am reporting from Iceland. Seriously.

Since I was here on academic business anyway, I spent part of one afternoon doing all my Christmas shopping for the price of a really good dinner for two in Montreal.  All the Icelanders are wondering what the hell happened.  I started explaining it to the nice older gent who gave me a lift from Reykholt to Reykjavik through a raging snowstorm.  So while I’m at it, I’ll explain it to you as well. That way, when it happens to us, you won’t have to wander around in a daze for a couple of months, trying to decide whether you’re awake or dreaming. I’d hate to see Montreal like that.

It all started in the mid-60s, half a world and several climate zones away from Iceland, in Indochina (look it up – now).  Back then, everyone in the US was afraid of the Communists, especially bankers.  Somehow, it was felt that fighting Communists involved doing things like watching helplessly while the Social Democrat president of Chile committed suicide by repeatedly shooting himself in the back with several automatic weapons, or maybe by mixing up your Christmas card list, turning the ARVN against Ngo Dinh Diem (look it up – now).  The thing is, all those pleasantries costed money.  Political assassinations are 90% logistics and 10% trigger happiness.  Worse, they cost political capital.  As that well-groomed Michael Corleone used to say, blood is a big expense.  The people in the White House usually aren’t bothered about a bit of blood, but the people in Congress are paid to watch the expenses, both in money and in blood, and there are many more of them to convince about the value of any “investment”.

Sometime in the early days of the Viet-Nam unpleasantness, the CIA was arming Montagnard tribes (look it up – you know what I am about to say) near the Laos border.  The Montagnard didn’t like the Viet-Cong at all. But instead of going through the quaint, properly republican, but incredibly boring formality of getting appropriations from Congress for those weapons, someone at CIA had the bright idea of doing a bit of commerce.  After all, they were operating in the border areas of Indochina.  A bit of drug running would be easy to setup, completely under the radar, would generate a bit of money, and besides, the Brits had done it for decades.

Lack of oversight is like crack laced with meth, dipped in heroin.  Not only does it make you feel fuzzy all over, but once you’ve had it, you’ll do anything for more.  By the early 80s, the CIA was financing significant international operations from the proceeds of the triangular Nicaragua-US-Iran trade in drugs and weapons.  Not only did the CIA have a black budget allowed them by Congress, they had a black budget of their own.

That’s when the real trouble started.  It was inevitable that some highly paid federal employee with a geostationary clearance would eventually connect the dots.  If the CIA can finance its unsavoury operations largely with its own independent funds, without having to ask the bleeding hearts and girly men in congress, can’t the whole executive branch find a way to finance itself?  Imagine the party.  Invade insolent small countries at will.  Crash the commodities market as a practical joke on your Russian pals.  Redistribute wealth to your friends and family.  Be a big man.  Who could resist?  Well, I probably could, but I’m Professor X, not W, Y, or Z.

The first idea was to setup a situation in which Congress couldn’t possibly refuse appropriations requests.  A sort of new Pearl Harbor, maybe.  Then, you could ask for 400 billion to pacify Iraq, and not pacify it, but say you did.  Meanwhile, you could funnel the money to various corporations that would invest it for you (minus their cut) so you could work off the proceeds.  This was the Montagnard drug-running thing times a gazillion.  No more penny ante assassinations.  Now, you don’t have to stop at murdering Lumumba or something (you know what I’m gonna say), you can just invade the country and take over the mines.  Much less uncertainty.

It worked for a while, but the need is powerful, and the addiction is great.  Besides, there’s still some money left in the treasury, and that damn Congress is starting to ask questions.  Even the tame media is getting uppity, but not often, and very politely.  Almost like they’re afraid of a “Classic one-car sleeping-driver accident” (Google that).  So how do you get the remaining money?

First, you get the taxpayers to give you a trillion dollars in bank deposits.  Then you give yourself the trillion, and you invest it in the stock market, driving it to ridiculous heights.  When the bill is due, you tell congress that the trillion is gone, and if they don’t do something right quick, the world is going to end.  The taxpayers, scared out of their minds, give you a trillion dollars to bail yourself out.  You sell everything that the original trillion bought you, thereby crashing the market.  You take the new trillion, and you buy low.  Savvy?  You’re set.  Congress and the American people are broke, the executive has got a stash that’s paying off nicely, all the right people have made money, and will keep doing so, and the Chinese are holding a bunch of worthless paper.

Meanwhile, you continue to wonder whether McCain or Obama is the least worst.  Keep your eye on the ball, kids.

~ Professor X

Enter Benjamin Fulford, former Canadian journalist living in Japan.  Mr. Fulford has been a vocal critic of what he calls the New World Order (NWO) conspiracy, hatched according to him by the Illuminati, an ancient Bavarian secret society revived by Adam Weishaupt in the 18^th century.  Now put the paper down, take a couple of hours to Google all of that, come back, and keep reading.  Or do yourself a favour and expose your fragile young mind to Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus trilogy.  You can thank me in ten years when you finally realize what a gift I’ve just fnord given you.

Fulford claims, in line with some pretty mainstream Club of Rome conspiracy talk from the early 1970s, that this NWO, led today by the usual suspects (Rockefellers, Bushes, the allegedly reptilian Queen of England, etc.) is planning to depopulate the planet by killing about 5 billion people, just to make it safe for the elite and their children.  He also claims, and this is where the story gets interesting, that a shadowy alliance of targeted groups intended for depopulation, led by Chinese gangsters, have been in touch with him. For some reason, they’ve picked him as a messenger boy to the NWO. They’ve told him to tell the Rockefellers and the Bushes, that if they persist with their zany multi-genocidal plan, the Alliance (lets call them that) will sick 2000 ninjas on them and their families, and pre-emptively exterminate them, before they have a chance to exterminate… well, them.  English should really have more pronouns. He’s even said on occasion that the NWO are actually taking this seriously and have promised to put their plan on hold… for now.  That’s pretty convenient for Fulford, because his evidence that he’s telling the truth about all this would be that nothing is happening.  So that’s all there is to the story, right?

Not exactly. There are layers upon layers of conspiracy goodness in this particular onion (I tried for something with fish, but herrings don’t really have layers, and onions are smelly too).  Fulford, turns out to be the great-grandson of George Taylor Fulford.  Now, if you’re from anywhere near Brockville, Ontario, or maybe Morrisville, New York, or if you’ve ever taken a Thousand Islands cruise and were listening to the tour guide, that name should be familiar.  Those three categories should cover most of the readership right there.

The cruises make a special stop at Fulford place, the Fulford family estate.  G.T. Fulford was a prominent Canadian businessman who made his fortune selling an iron supplement developed by a McGill doctor.  The amazingly alliterative Pink Pills for Pale People (I am not making this up) created a fortune with which G.T. Fulford became the biggest shareholder in General Electric, currently one of the top defense contractors in the US, and a major component of Eisenhower’s dreaded Military-Industrial Complex.

Then, in 1905, he became the first Canadian to die in a car accident.  His car was demolished by a tramway in Massachusetts. But not before he had decided to do two important things, without actually having time to accomplish them: buy General Motors (Tycoons had balls back then), and finance the electro-magnetic experiments of Nikola Tesla.  Now there’s another highly Google-able name.  And as a friendly warning, only google “Tesla conspiracy” early on a Friday evening when you have no assignments or other reading for the weekend, and when you don’t care how much sleep you get until Monday.

Tesla was working on some way to transmit electricity wirelessly without killing everyone within a 100-metre radius.  Word in the conspiracy fringe is that his work lives on in the form of HAARP, an extremely powerful transmitter in Alaska, ostensibly used by the US Navy for low frequency radio experiments, but rumoured to be a weather control machine that works by heating the upper atmosphere, and whose main purpose will be… to create natural disasters that will depopulate the planet by about 5 billion people. Of course.

In summary, we have the great-grandson of a tycoon displaying a shocking lack of class-consciousness by accusing the great-grandchildren of another bunch of tycoons of wanting to destroy the world through the use of a technology that his own great-grandfather was going to finance.  That is, before he met with an untimely, historic, and suspicious death.  I mean, it isn’t like you can make a statistical argument about G.T. Fulford’s accident.  When it happened, he nudged the n counter over to 1.

Ninjas, Tesla, weather control, and mass extermination make a much more riveting story than the looting of Fannie Mae, or the financing of the Taliban.  You’re much more likely to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon laughing yourself silly reading about the first one than the other two.  And all three stories involve many of the same characters.  Keep your eye on the ball, kids.

~ Professor X