**  On 13 Dec. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his latest role as Governor of California, killed Stanley Williams. Williams had been on death row for 26 years (6 in solitary); written 7 books condemning violence and was nominated 4 times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Accused of murdering 4 people; he himself was murdered because he refused to admit to a crime he didn't commit. What purpose did this killing serve?  Will it really deter other semi-illiterate gang members in American cities?

**  In Michigan, the local Bank offers you a choice from over 200 rifles - free of charge - if you open an account with them. Credit Agricole gave us a free plastic ball point pen but the clip broke off - hope the rifles work OK.

**  The Shell gas project off Russia's east coast (worth £11bn) will go ahead despite protests from WWF. So it kills the last remaining 100 Western Pacific whales – 'You can be sure of Shell'. Where do you buy your petrol?

**  Asda has lost market share and is under pressure from US owners Wal-Mart to reduce prices even further. CEO Andy Bond says we will be 'addressing our sourcing' – a euphemism for increasing the poverty amongst the starving farmers in developing countries. Still, 'That's Asda Price'. Where do you shop?

**  Maya Evans was prosecuted under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act; he was given a conditional discharge but ordered to pay £100 costs. His Serious Organised Crime? - to stand next to the Cenotaph in Whitehall and read aloud the names of the British soldiers who have died in Iraq. Still, better than imprisoning septuagenarians for refusing to pay Council Tax? Ooops probably said too much already.

**  Bush goes 'Green', as if; but he has been forced to drop his plans to drill for oil in the Arctic regions in order to win the support of moderate Republicans worried about their prospects of re-election. Who said politicians were devoid of morals?

The US, WMD and World Peace

The US continues its rhetoric of bringing freedom and democracy to those parts of the world that the 'Washington Mafia' has decided need to be brought to order. It claims the moral high ground, arguing that US values should be available to the rest of the world. The Bush administration condemns terrorism yet fails to find a definition that would not include US actions over the past three years, let alone US interventions over the past twenty, or even two hundred years.

Their quest for more sophisticated and deadly weapons, 'to bring about world peace', has resulted in record spending of taxpayers money on 'defence', paid for by cutbacks in social and medical welfare provision thus affecting the lives of millions of the poorest  Americans. It has caused the largest-ever budget deficit in history, one of such proportions that were it to be incurred by a 'developing' nation, the World Bank and the IMF would be imposing 'economic restructuring' (a euphemism which allows western corporations to privatise a 'developing' country's resources). Whilst the US exerts international pressure on its so-called allies, calling for world peace and an end to the proliferation and use of WMD, they remain the world's largest manufacturer, distributor and user of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Only their control over the 'civilised' world's media enables them to reconcile such incongruence.

The US is no stranger to the overt and covert use of WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear. Biological warfare was introduced to the US in the 1760's by the British, who traded smallpox-impregnated blankets with the indigenous population resulting in the slaughter of tens of thousands of North American Indians. A lesson not lost on the US following their independence in 1776. More recently, for over forty years Castro's Cuba has been a target for successive biological and chemical attacks by successive US governments. In 1962 sugar exports were regularly 'intercepted' and 'contaminates' added; 8,000 turkeys were killed when the US paid a Canadian Agricultural technician to infect them with a virus producing the fatal Newcastle disease. In 1971, the CIA handed Cuban exiles a virus which causes African swine fever, 500,000 pigs were destroyed, not only disrupting the Cuban economy but once again robbing the nation's poorest peasants of vital food.

The widespread use of napalm and Agent Orange on the civilian population of Vietnam is widely chronicled, substances subsequently banned by the United Nations. However, Agent Orange is currently being dropped on parts of Colombia by US jets, not to drive the peasants from the mineral rich lands much sought after by US corporations you understand, but to stem poppy production (which, in US controlled Afghanistan, is now at record levels). Who can forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; even the co-pilot of one of the bombers asked in disbelief 'what have we done'? To this day, the US remains the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons. Historically they claim it brought an early end to the war with Japan, however many believe it provided the US with an opportunity to test their latest weapon of mass destruction on an already defeated country and to demonstrate the enormity of their power to the rest of the world, particularly communist Russia.

During the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, the Pentagon monopolized, filtered, and shaped all news coming from the 'theatre of operations'. However, researchers have recently learned (through the Freedom of Information Act) that the U.S. government expressly destroyed Iraq's sewage and water treatment facilities, knowing full well that the result would be widespread disease and epidemics; in short, biological warfare. Throughout the twelve years of sanctions before Iraq was invaded in 2003, the U.S. refused to allow Iraq to import chlorine to purify water. According to the UN 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, have died from disease and malnutrition caused by U.S. sanctions. Thousands more Iraqis have died from cancers linked to U.S. depleted uranium munitions. When asked about this huge toll, the then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright memorably replied, 'the price is worth it.' To this day, the number of Iraqis killed by U.S. bombing remains secret; Bush would have us believe that these innocent civilians were killed by conventional weapons and not by WMD.

In the same way as the US Administration has difficulty in defining terrorism without implicating itself, it has problems with explaining to the rest of the world what Weapons of Mass Destruction are – and, as the world's only superpower, why should they bother? Since the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US has used chemical and biological weapons against Iraqi civilians as well as weapons and munitions banned by the United Nations. They have used torture and illegal imprisonment in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention, the Declaration of Human Rights, International Criminal Justice Act and their own Declaration of Independence. They have dropped thousands of bombs each containing several thousand 'bomblets', in effect anti-personnel mines banned by the UN. They are the size and shape of a can of 'Coke' which have reportedly killed, maimed and disfigured thousands, mainly children.

The US has 'modified' the formula for napalm, changed its name and used it with the same excruciatingly painful and disfiguring results. White phosphorous, an extremely volatile chemical known by every sixteen year old chemistry student, has a legitimate use in warfare as a smoke screen or to provide nightlight; only a couple of weeks ago the US admitted using it as a chemical weapon – but only against insurgents. As insurgents, by their very nature do not distinguish themselves from civilians, this must be a difficult argument to sustain – even for the US. All this and more against a third world country whose medical capabilities and infrastructure had already been decimated by 12 years of sanctions.

Setting aside the US's futuristic 'Star-wars' programme which will enable them to 'bring about world peace' using WMD from outer-space, the military are currently enhancing their nuclear capability despite beings signatories to the non-proliferation treaty. The so called 'mini-nukes' are smaller nuclear bombs and whilst they will still completely devastate areas of the planet's surface, the target areas will be smaller and therefore the time needed for humanity to reclaim the land will be reduced – good news indeed. The US currently has more armaments than the next 10 largest developed nations combined.

An even more subtle example of WMD has been the American Government's introduction to the World Trade Organisation of TRIPs (Trade Related Intellectual Property). TRIPs enable American multinational corporations to appropriate traditional and indigenous knowledge from around the world and patent it. There are limitless examples of their aggressive, restrictive practices. Pharmaceutical companies can prevent generic strains of life saving drugs from being copied by poor countries thus condemning to death millions, mainly Africans, because they cannot afford to buy the readily available drugs.

In 1994 two researchers were granted a patent over the male sterile plants of the traditional Bolivian Alelawa quinoa variety, now Andean people cannot use a plant which is a natural part of their ecosystem and their $1 million export market has been destroyed. The same laws also affect the poorest farmers in India who now must buy their Basmati rice seed from large multinational corporations such as Monsanto, seed that has been grown and developed by local populations, and that has been free to them for thousands of years; just some of the economic weapons of mass destruction.

Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, Dubya Bush, grinningly invited the insurgents 'to bring it on'. Little did he realise that they had their own WMD; homemade roadside bombs and sufficient numbers of disaffected youth to volunteer to rid their country of the invaders/occupiers. Now with over 2,000 US troops killed and 20,000 others wounded the smirk appears to have disappeared. They have 'brought it on' as did the North Vietnamese in the 1960's, and Bush's national and international status (together with that of B.Liar) has been revealed for what it is, the rhetoric of playground bullies being faced by the little guy who doesn't know when he's had enough. Bush and B.Liar now prepare their long awaited 'exit strategy'; to many this is political spin for 'surrender', the invasion of Iraq by the world's greatest purveyors of WMD has been and will remain a complete and utter disaster – for the entire world.

Since the end of the Second World War, the US has bombed 23 countries, deployed troops and naval vessels (including nuclear warships) around the world to intimidate other governments and intervened in the political, economic and social affairs of scores of other sovereign nations, bringing down democratically elected governments in the process. In recent international polls, the US has been voted 'the most feared country on the planet'. Perhaps we should remind ourselves of James Woolsey's (US Defence Dept Policy Board) comment two months after the bombing of Afghanistan started in 2001 – 'only fear will re-establish respect for the United States'. Perhaps it was this to which Bush referred following the bombing of Baghdad in 2003 – 'mission accomplished' - he certainly wasn't referring to world peace.

The Age of Consent

For decades, psychologists have been discussing, theorising and experimenting with the notion of perception i.e. what we see, or what we think we see and the sense we make of what we see. Countless sociological experiments have been carried out by a plethora of interested parties, practitioners and academics alike, but none more than the marketing gurus working for the large multinational corporations keen to discover how best to persuade the rest of us to buy their products. Their success has been phenomenal: how else could we have been persuaded to pay extortionate amounts of money for talcum powder, throw it  over our living-room carpets and then spend half an hour vacuuming it up again whilst singing 'do the shake and vac, bring the freshness back'? As if this wasn't bad enough, over the past twenty years western politicians have realised the value of such persuasion in order to maximise their control. Now we are all willing slaves in an artificial construction of reality; we have agreed to be part of a collective perception, we have been 'normalised'.

We readily accept that there is a phenomenon which we call reality; we need it in order to be able to make sense of the world around us. However, the reality we each perceive is based primarily on our memory; everything that we 'know' at any given time is retrieved from our memory. As individuals, we spend much of the time communicating with each other in a human society that follows the same rules, as opposed to, for example, exploring the ubiquitous aspects of our environment. Our fear of failing to fit into the 'real world' and to be accepted, forces us into the hands of the conformity police whose power and subtlety almost defy belief. Elisabeth Loftus' experiments into memory coupled with Solomon Asch's research on the slavish nature of perception and Janis' 'group-think' conclude that when piecing together our memory, 'hints' by fellow human beings frequently override scenes we have personally witnessed and that we are more willing to succumb to peer pressure than rely on the validity of our own memory.

We are willing to replace external fact with information given to us socially. Even by the age of six, we are obsessed with being accepted by the group and this tyranny of belonging punishes those whose perceptions do not fit with those of the majority i.e. normal people. Understanding this enables corporations to market their brands and politicians, using the same techniques, to sell their social and economic ideologies in such a way that they appear natural and normal and that to challenge, question or criticise would appear foolish, inappropriate or unpatriotic. As most of us now experience life through the TV, with its plethora of 'reality' shows, then that  which is portrayed by the media becomes reality.

Whilst the advertisers' use of psychological interventions to influence our purchases is widely recognised, whether directly or indirectly through the manipulation of our young children, we have yet to realise fully the extent to which we are being controlled by politicians and the multinational corporations with political agendas. Mel and Norma Gabler are deemed to be the most influential couple in American education today; they have been responsible for the rejection or significant revisions of between 50%-70% of textbooks used in Texas, with a knock-on effect throughout the US. To gain their acceptance, textbooks must 'encourage loyalty' and avoid 'defaming the nation's founders' and 'criticising parents'. The Gablers criticise many textbooks for 'leaving students free to make up their own minds about things.'

John W Rendon, a PR Consultant to the Pentagon and the CIA addressing a group of US Air Force cadets said 'I am a politician and a person who uses communication to meet public or corporate policy objectives. I am an information warrior and a perception manager.' According to the Pentagon, such a role involves 'actions to convey or deny selected information … to influence emotions, motives and objective reasoning'. It certainly worked following the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan. The whole world watched the imagery whilst politicians and the media told us what to believe about it. In the UK we have our own Alistair Campbell who last year was forced to resign as the government's Director of Communications (a nice Orwellian title). However, recently he has been reincarnated and utilises the same political illusions as before; his dodgy dossier was well reported but his other media manipulations together with scores like him, are less well known.

Both in the UK and in the US there are two types of media: elite and mass. The UK elite media e.g. Times, Financial Times, Guardian and Telegraph, Radio 4, Channel 4 News and Newsnight, are aimed at the most privileged and wealthy in our society. Their audience is made up by the decision-makers and controllers, political and corporate managers and managers in schools and universities together with a wide variety of journalists from other spheres whose job it is to determine and communicate 'reality'. The mass media e.g. the Sun, Mirror and Mail, together with TV programmes, soap operas and so called 'reality TV' is aimed at a mass audience, not to inform but to entertain; thus saving us from having to concern ourselves with serious issues. Most of our media is owned by wealthy men who have vested interests in ensuring that only certain things reach the public, or for them to be presented in a particular way. They have been through an elite education system where they have learned the lessons of socialisation i.e. conformity and obedience.

We were led to believe that Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was about ridiculing the Soviet Union and its totalitarian structure. However, some thirty years after its publication, in an unpublished introduction Orwell disclosed that it was about 'literary censorship in Britain'. Why should politicians and their corporate conspirators allow critical analysis of their decisions and actions, when it is in their interests to determine what we should think about and what to think about it? Every four years we are privileged to be able to vote for a select band of professional politicians marketed by professional media; beyond that, we are expected to be spectators rather than participants in the decisions and policies that affect our lives. The last thing politicians, media moguls and the corporate elite want are 'consumers' asking questions.

It is difficult to know the exact reasons why 40% of the British population did not vote last May. Perhaps people are beginning to realise that, regardless of political party, their votes would not alter the status quo. For years politicians have feigned concern by low turnouts but despite his promise in 1997, B.Liar as ever, lied about debating and reviewing proportional representation as a means of forming a government that represented more readily the views of the people. Why would anyone want to change a system that brings about an overall majority of 67 seats with just 22% of the vote? Yet we appear very disinterested in living under what can best be described as either a paternal dictatorship or a quasi-elected tyranny. We fail to comment on, let alone demand, opportunities for debate on issues of national importance.

We give our consent to the media by watching banal programmes and not calling out for critics of government to be allowed air-time or dissenting voices to be heard. Truth, justice, freedom and democracy are some of the words bandied about by politicians whose understanding of them is questionable and whose willingness to debate them, lamentable. Those who continue to ask questions are repeatedly patronised and told to move on, but governments fail to recognise that the lack of debate only serves to marginalise those who do not share the same view. Moreover, the masses become complicit in this elaborate charade presented to them as 'reality'.

In the same way that we accept without question the morality of McDonalds and Nestlι's worldwide advertising and turn a blind eye to Shell and BP's murderous activities in Nigeria and Venezuela and Nike and GAP's use of slave labour, we rarely threaten the antics of our government. We literally let them get away with mass murder, participate in State terrorism, repression, rendition and illegal imprisonment simply because their Marketing Department is so effective in presenting such blatant abuses of power as necessary and in our best interests; they expect us to accept such tyranny as 'normal', and we do. We now live in a world where institutionalised lying by western governments and corporate leaders is not only accepted, it has become the norm.

Problems of social control have always been an issue for those seeking power, whether it be political, religious or economic but why do we consent so readily? Karl Marx wrote of a 'false consciousness' amongst the working classes, more recently commentators speak of 'knowledgeable ignorance'; where important issues are 'dumbed down' to such an extent that the general public actually believes that they understand them – and consequently have an opinion about them. Dumbing down, involves reducing extremely complex notions such as justice, freedom and democracy to a binary level e.g. you're either a patriot or a terrorist, civilised or barbaric, with us or against us, Christian or 'others' – and woe betide you if it's the latter. Such myopic, uncomplicated analysis has real appeal to the busy people in the western world, easily seduced by media and political propaganda. Dangerously, because the majority are willing to accept without question what they are told, the power brokers begin to believe their own lies.

Chomsky writes 'If ordinary folk are free to reflect on the causes of human misery they may well draw all the 'wrong' conclusions. Therefore they must be indoctrinated or diverted, a task that requires unremitting efforts. The means are many; engendering fear of a threatening enemy has always been a powerful tool in the kit.' For over 50 years we feared the 'Communist threat' now we are told to fear the 'terrorist threat' – and we are more than willing to consent.