a democracy in name only – a bumbling empire for sure

June 17, 2015

The China Mirage, supported by overwhelming factual evidence that was willingly suppressed or ignored for decades, clearly reveals that America is not the peace loving democracy that most Americans think it is.

The reality is that the U.S. is a global empire that took its first step toward World War II in the Pacific on July 8, 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry commanded a U.S. Navy squadron that sailed into Tokyo harbor. Perry—under orders from President Millard Fillmore—demanded a treaty permitting trade and the opening of Japanese ports to U.S. merchant ships. The reluctant Japanese leaders, who wanted to be left alone, were not given a choice if they wanted to avoid the same invasions China had suffered mainly at the hands of the British and French during the Opium Wars.

After being forced to open its doors to Western trade so American corporations could profit—to protect itself in the future—Japan industrialized and built a powerful and ruthless modern military.

The second step toward war in the Pacific took place about fifty years later when President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt started to meddle in Asia’s affairs. The book reveals that Teddy urged Japan to invade Korea leading eventually to Japan’s invasion of China, because Teddy was obsessed with the Japanese and felt strongly that Japan’s role should be to protect Asia from being colonized by the European colonial powers even if it meant Japan’s military would dominate all of Asia.

The third step toward war in the Pacific would be the bumbling, ignorant, secretive, back-stabbing, dysfunctional and manipulative administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt—with help from the powerful and wealthy lying Christian China Lobby that based its thinking on a faulty premise that the Chinese loved democracy and wanted to become a Christian country just like the United States.

The powerful China Lobby’s ignorant and severely flawed agenda would cause the deaths of more than 25 million civilians (mostly Chinese) and 6 million troops (mostly Chinese) in addition to the bombed out devastation of Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan.

Following World War II and the Korean Conflict, the same ignorant and arrogant thinking led to the Vietnam War where U.S. troops fought for almost 20 years, and the United States dropped more bombs on Southeast Asia than it did in all of World War II.

Readers will discover that Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life Magazines, who was called the most influential private citizen in America at the time, was a perfect example of how anyone who has too much power and wealth can create their own reality based on lies that often evaporate later leaving future generations to deal with the damage caused by these fools.

Today, Henry Luce had been replaced by other ignorant, arrogant, wealthy and powerful fools, and they go by the names of, for instance, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Koch brothers, and the Walton family. I think if we looked at history closely we would discover that the rich and powerful have often meddled with the lives of others and then either die or refuse to admit they were wrong.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that protects the media from government intervention and meddling does not mean the media is balanced and honest. In fact—most of the time—the opposite is true. The so-called free U.S. media is often a propaganda machine that churns out fictions masquerading as truth—mostly owned and controlled by six corporations and at the top six powerful dictatorial oligarchs just like Henry Luce.

To be clear, those media corporations might be doing business in a democracy, but they are not democracies, and they have the power to fool and manipulate the people, the U.S Congress and even the President of the United States.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

IMAGE with Blurbs and Awards to use on Twitter

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China’s Holistic Historical Timeline


Manipulating Public Opinion: China vs the U.S.

September 17, 2013

Have the Tea Baggers in the United States been learning from China, or is it the other way around?

“Another strategy is manipulation. In recent years, local and provincial officials have hired armies of low-paid commentators to monitor blogs and chat rooms for sensitive issues, then spin online comment in the government’s (China’s) favor.

“Mr. Xiao of Berkeley cites one example: Jiaozuo, a city southwest of Beijing, deployed 35 Internet commentators and 120 police officers to defuse online attacks on the local police after a traffic dispute. By flooding chat rooms with pro-police comments, the team turned the tone of online comment from negative to positive in just 20 minutes.” Source: New York Times

Isn’t this what Fox Network’s Glenn Beck, then Rush Limbaugh—who is heard on more than 600 radio stations—have been doing for years. Filling the airwaves with their opinions controlling what people hear and think. The American Tea Baggers are doing the same thing with the same results—behavior control.

For an example of how the media twists facts to influence public opinion one only need look closer at the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin incident. What does the public really know about these two individuals?

Is America really that different from China and is there anyone we can believe?

Discover China’s Holistic Historical Timeline

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

His latest novel is the multiple-award winning Running with the Enemy.

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The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 5/5

July 13, 2012

Global Issues.org reported on War, Propaganda and the Media: “When it comes to propaganda for purposes of war, for example, professional public relations firms can often be involved to help sell a war… Media management may also be used to promote certain political policies and ideologies. Where this is problematic for the citizenry is when media reports on various issues to not attribute their sources properly.”

For example, to sell the Gulf War in Iraq in 1991, John Rendon, the founder of a Washington PR firm, told the cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1996, “I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception manager…”

In varied ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover, and deception, and psyops [psychological operations].

“In March 2005”, Global Issues said, “the New York Times revealed that there has been a large amount of fake and prepackaged news created by US government departments, such as the Pentagon, the State Department and others, and disseminated through the mainstream media.”

In addition, smear tactics often used to discredit, stain or destroy the reputation of someone are increasing in sophistication. With the increasing popularity of the Internet, and search engines such as Google, smearing is taking on additional forms and techniques.

In fact, negative campaigning through the media in America was launched by two lifelong friends, John Adams (second US president–1797-1801) and Thomas Jefferson (third US president–1801-1809), when they ran against each other for the office of President of the United States.

CNN.com says, “Things got ugly fast. Jefferson’s camp accused President Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

“In return, Adams’ men called Vice President Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.

“As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.

“But the key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callendar to do his smearing for him. Adams, on the other hand, considered himself above such tactics.”

Jefferson’s tactics won him the White House but his hatchet man, Callendar, went to prison for slandering John Adams.

Fast forward to December/January 2005, and a piece in the American Journalism Review, which said this of Dirty Politics, “These political campaigns are corroding our electoral process. Who wants to participate in character assassination, Orwellian “doublethink,” dreamland oratory, and outright lies and inflated claims?… The news outlets that used to educate voters are no longer independent (and presumably neutral) sources of impartial information.”

I close this series of posts with the following questions—comparing the media in China and in America, how much of a difference is there in how the people get their news? Either way, can you trust what you read and hear? Is there a difference between a politician, a government official or corporate employee?

In China, the government owns the media and sensitive news is censored. In the US, politicians and the government-manipulate news fed to the media, which in turn manipulates the news to support the political beliefs of the corporate bosses that control the corporations that own the media.

In both countries, the Internet Blogosphere is a free-wheeling madhouse of opinions and news, which may be correct but there is no guarantee. In the end, American and Chinese citizens will believe whatever they want no matter what they read or hear from the media/government.

Return to The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 4 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 4/5

July 12, 2012

PBS ran a special on Milestones in the History of Media and Politics. From this PBS special, I learned that “In 1690, the first newspaper published in America was printed by Richard Pierce and edited by Benjamin Harris. Since it was published without consent of the government, it was immediately suppressed, its publisher arrested and all copies destroyed.”

PBS said that in 1798, the Sedition Act made it a crime to print “any false, scandalous and malicious writing…against the government of the United States.”

“Introduced by President John Adams as the US was on the brink of war with France and rabble-rousing from French immigrants was feared, the Sedition Act made it illegal to criticize the government, under penalty of a $2,000 fine and 2 years in jail. The Act directly contradicted the First Amendment, which had already been ratified in 1791. Everyone from writers, editors, printers, and “even drunks who were overheard condemning (President) Adams” were prosecuted.”

“In 1841,” PBS said, “Horace Greeley launched THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE, which…was strongly antislavery, and as a reform-minded journal of ideas, reported on women’s rights, socialist experiments, temperance, and other reforms. Greeley explained, “I founded the New York Tribune as a journal removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged and mincing neutrality on the other.”

In the 1880’s, Joseph Pulitzer, a key figure in developing the big-business model of the newspaper, and William Randolph Hearst, seeing the press as both political agency and business, competed for mass circulation. The sensational reporting they turned to became known as “yellow journalism.”

Starting in the “1890s,” PBS said, “many independent newspapers were swallowed up into powerful “chains.”

“During and after WWI, the government suppressed radical newspapers and German language papers, but in 1925, in Gitlow v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld a conviction of radical pamphleteers…”

Continued on July 13, 2012 in The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 5 or return to Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 3/5

July 11, 2012

A UCLA Political Scientist studied the media and discovered it was biased. “While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.” Source: Media Bias is Real Finds UCLA Political Scientist

Then there is Murdock’s News Corp. Its television operations capture more viewers, more desirable demographics… than perhaps any other television group in the world and it is the world’s leading publisher of English-language newspapers, with operations in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the US. The Company publishes more than 175 different newspapers, employing approximately 15,000 people worldwide and printing more than 40 million papers a week.

Fox News, which is part of News Corp, has been accused of having a bias favoring the political right and the Republican Party. Fox News has publicly denied such charges, stating that the reporters in the newsroom provide separate, neutral reporting.

However, it’s well known that Fox News executives exert a degree of editorial control over the content of daily reporting. In the case of Fox News, some control comes from daily memos. For example: In December 2010, Media Matters for America released a leaked October 2009 e-mail between Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon and the network’s senior producers, which seemed to issue directives slanting Fox News’ coverage of President Obama’s health care reform efforts.

While it may be true that most Western media reporters are not pressured to slant the news they write, the reporters do not control the final content that appears in newspapers, or on radio and television. Editors and publishers may edit, add, cut and revise. In addition, the wording of a headline may be written to mislead and most headlines are written by an editor—not a reporter.

In fact, once, when I was a reporter, 90% of one story I wrote was cut to make room for an advertisement that came in at the last moment, which reveals that profit is more important than news.  Unknown to me, the cutting and revising was done by an editor under deadline pressure, and the balance in the piece vanished as facts were cut and/or moved around to fill the remaining space.

Breaking news or the death of someone rich and famous may also shorten other news stories or cause them to vanish so the public may never see them. The media beast is voracious and unpredictable. Its hunger for news runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and it never rests. In this rush to report the news, mistakes happen but there is more to the news than that as you shall discover.

Continued on July 12, 2012 in The meaning of Democracy’s Freedoms and the Nature of the Western Media Beast – Part 4 or return to Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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