Wiki: Deprogramming refers to actions that attempt to force a person to abandon allegiance to a religious or political group. Methods and practices typically involve violent kidnapping and coercion.

Ted Patrick, one of the pioneers of deprogramming, used a confrontational method:

“When you deprogram people, you force them to think…But I keep them off balance and this forces them to begin questioning, to open their minds. When the mind gets to a certain point, they can see through all the lies that they’ve been programmed to believe. They realize that they’ve been duped and they come out of it. Their minds start working again.”

Political and Religious CULTS are the target of deprogrammers. Someone has to care a lot to implement deprogramming. It is expensive. The sad truth that there are so many cults, where does one start and another begin? Both extreme political wings in America consider the each other ‘brainwashed’. Both extremes take steps to ‘deprogram’ the other. Taking sides is risky … it all depends who frightens you the most. One side wields ‘god’ as the weapon of choice. Another side wields the ‘devil’ as the weapon of choice. Heaven and hell belong to the most charismatic of the bunch.

America is accused of being sheep. Why is that. Our minds are programmed by marketing gurus. Our pockets are emptied into the coffers of big business, because that is how ‘free enterprise’ works. Create a need where ther is none and sell it!

Political marketers sway voters through fear. History has demonstrated over and over how that works, maybe that is why America’s history I.Q. is so lacking. That made it easier for politicians to spin events into justifying their actions … before the internet. Good or bad, right or wrong, the internet has opened the uncensored part of the world to other views. There are internet scam and internet revelations. Most smart surfers can distinguish the truth just by researching. There will always be those who only seek information that supports their personal delusion.

So, can we assume that all religions are cults? Are all politicians marketers for powerful enterprise? At least most politicians must answer to their voters at the end of their term.

Wiki: Some anthropologists and sociologists studying cults have argued that no one has yet been able to define “cult” in a way that enables the term to identify only groups that have been identified as problematic.

In the 1960s and 1970s deprogramming was the fashion for parents to rescue their children from cult mind control. Today, with religious extremism and more sophisticated mind control techniques, this practice is being used by both sides of an issue.

Today we see extreme religious sects using children to satisfy god’s sexual plan. Children from the extremist wing of LDS will be the focus for child psychologists. We see powerful Chinese Government try to wring the Dalai out of his monks. China tries to reeducate, or deprogram Tibetan Monks. Question, could deprogrammers have made a difference at the Waco disaster? Can deprogrammers help returning Iraq and Afghanistan PTSD victims? Can deprogrammers help America’s sheepish compliance to the false, supreme being called currency? The church of ‘Gotta Have It” has made Americans into consumer sheep. Picture how Americans will behave when the lights go out … oh, yes, Katrina was a sneak preview.

Is George W Bush the real Manchurian Candidate? Is George the one most vulnerable to the mind control expertise Cheney learned during his darker days? Is Cheney the Cult Leader for the PNAC agenda?

Can George W Bush ever be ‘deprogrammed?

Do we really care at this point? Only if we seek to punish treason and conspiracy …

Cross posted on BlueBloggin

The Art of War was the Annotation of Sun Tzu’s Strategies by Cao Cao, the founder of the Kingdom of Wei. The last verse of Chapter 3:

“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.”

Excerpts from Asia Times: Tibet, China and the West: Back to stereotypes By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - For China watchers who hope that mutual understanding and tolerance between Beijing and its Western counterparts will both broaden and deepen as China’s international coming-out party - the Summer Olympic Games - approaches, the riots in Tibet have proved a sobering disappointment. And for all those hoping that the Beijing Olympics will not be politicized - it’s too late, they already have been.

Once again, Chinese and Western leaders have shown us that when things get really tough in China - and the separatist-inspired riots targeting not just the central government but also innocent Han Chinese now living in Tibet and nearby provinces qualify as just that - both parties revert depressingly to form.

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If you are running for president in the US during a Chinese crackdown on anything - from democracy advocates to separatists to Falungong worshippers - the script is the same, no matter your party: stern condemnation is required. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, along with the two remaining Democratic candidates - fellow senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama - have followed that script, winning easy applause along the campaign trail but doing nothing to help America understand its increasingly important and rapidly changing relationship with China.
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To most Americans, China represents two things: totalitarian oppression and loads of cheap, often tainted and dangerous manufactured goods. After that, there is a huge void that needs to be filled, but don’t count on that happening in an election year.

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The prominent coverage, given Pelosi’s comments, helps to explain the conviction of Chinese leaders that the Western media game is a losing proposition for them, especially in times of crisis. It is no wonder they expel foreign reporters from troubled areas, call news blackouts and then mount their own media campaign against Western powers. To the West, this is a gross violation of the basic principles of a free press. To the Chinese, it is a simple matter of protecting national interests from attacks that are rooted in ignorance and prejudice.

And it’s true: not many in the West understand China’s concern that separatists in Tibet could feed the flames of separatism in other places, such as the large northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang, which borders Tibet.

Xinjiang, despite years of Han Chinese migration to the region, still has a majority Muslim population and a sometimes violent independence movement. Earlier this month, again according to state media, authorities foiled a terrorist attack on a China Southern Airlines flight that took off from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi for Beijing. Details of the alleged attack were maddeningly sketchy, however, so it is hard to say what really happened.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Chinese leaders live in constant fear of those who would break up a nation that it has taken so much work (and so many lives) to put back together - and those fears are not confined to sprawling autonomous western regions but also include Hong Kong, and Taiwan - which Beijing claims as another stolen child and where China-friendly Ma Ying-jeou won a landslide victory in the presidential election last weekend over his more independence-minded rival, Frank Hsieh Chang-ting - also figures into the Tibet equation.

How much of this complex story will figure into the ongoing US presidential debate? Obama has courageously called for an honest national dialogue on racial differences. Who will be brave enough to call for an equally honest dialogue on US-China relations?

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China’s senior religious official today vehemently rejected proposals, to be advanced by President Bill Clinton during his summit meeting on Saturday, that China engage in discussions with the Dalai Lama over greater autonomy for Tibet.

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Obama: On China’s treatment of Tibet: “I’ve already made a number of statements that we can’t back off of human rights. And Tibet has been a chronic source of tension between the Chinese government and the American government,” he says, saying what’s important now is to not let the situation escalate. “Whether it’s the situation in Tibet or their support of the government in Khartoum helping perpetuate the genocide in Darfur, we’ve got to speak out forcefully and clearly on these issues.”

March 28: Obama sent a letter to President Bush, calling on him to employ every diplomatic tool to persuade Chinese President Hu Jintao to make significant progress in resolving the Tibet issue. Letter Text Here

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Clinton: “I think that what’s happening in Tibet is deeply troubling, and this is a pattern of the Chinese government with respect to their treatment of Tibet,” she told reporters after a campaign event in Pennsylvania.

“I don’t think we should wait until the Olympics to make sure that our views are known,” Clinton said, while saying she did not have an opinion now on whether the U.S. team should not go to the games.

Clinton said President George W. Bush’s administration should be more forceful about the Tibet issue.

“I think we should be speaking out through our administration now in a much more forceful way and, you know, supporting people in Tibet who are trying to preserve their culture and their religion from tremendous pressure by the Chinese.”

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McCain: China’s crackdown “is not correct,” McCain said in the courtyard of the French presidential Elysee Palace.

“The people there are being subjected to mistreatment that is not acceptable with the conduct of a world power, which China is,” McCain said in response to a question by a Chinese television journalist.

“There must be respect for human rights, and I would hope that the Chinese are actively seeking a peaceful resolution to this situation that exists which harms not only the human rights of the people there but also the image of China in the world.”

It is about time the focus is changing to understanding the full issue. Speaking without the authority of knowledge has cost too many lives, not just in Tibet. The candidates, the press and the readers must educated themselves to the whole picture and history before they speak. Indeed, countries th