In his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture, Harold Pinter said

[America] has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

According to a 1977 New York Times article, [subscription wall] one of the weapons in America's manipulation of power has been Business International Corporation.

Another who acknowledged a connection was Elliott Haynes, with his father a co-founder of Business International, a widely respected business information service. He said his father, Eldridge Haynes, had provided cover for four C.I.A. employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960.

In his eye-opening lecture from 2009 John Pilger was more specific. He says BI Corp

has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert actions and infiltrating unions and the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia.

I don't know of any more blatant example of hypnotism than the fact that there is virtually zero discussion of Barack Obama's "little more than a year" working for Business International Corporation in 1983-1984. In his biography, Obama declines to name the company, simply calling it "a consulting house to multi-national corporations." Thank heavens for John Pilger, who still investigates. It was from him that I learned this widely ignored and extremely interesting fact. As Pilger says carefully, "There may be absolutely nothing sinister, but it seems worthy of inquiry."

Wouldn't you think this would be of interest to people, all the more so in light of what we have seen the last three and a half years? I openly acknowledge that I have paranoid tendencies. I will also point out that it has been proven that paranoid people are more apt to see approaching danger, such as an out-of-control car bearing down on them, than are the "healthy" minded. In other words, I like to think I enjoy a healthy version of what Hemingway called a "bullshit detector." The aromas began wafting off Obama the moment he appointed Tim Geithner and sent his shiny new Chief of Staff to announce to Congressional members that progressives are "f**king retards".

I was thinking about this today when I looked up the wikipedia entry for BI Corp. The wording certainly made me think of Barack Obama, self-proclaimed liberal whose every significant action has served to consolidate and extend the power of the military-industrial-banking-congressional-prison complex. The entry I found this morning included a description of BI as very "leftist", even quoting a former member of Students for a Democratic Society as saying BI had once offered to sponsor a demonstration by this short-lived, fiery, and polarizing group. I wonder how many corporate sponsors SDS enjoyed over the years--seems an unlikely marriage of radically variant aims. Of course, fake left extremism has been a CIA tactic for decades. How better to rally support for right-wing governments than by blaming a radical left group for mowing down civilians at a shopping center, to mention one example of many over the decades.

It was surprising, not to say creepy, to return to the wikipedia entry while writing this essay, only to find the "leftist" language gone and a reference to CIA connections added. Nice to see I'm not the only person who finds this interesting. But the fact remains that the vast majority of even highly informed activists, even radical activists, have never heard of this. Hypnotism. It is certainly more comfortable to think of our President as a well-meaning but ineffectual liberal, or as a person whose pure intentions have been thwarted by entrenched power of the military and intelligence establishments. Other than in speeches, there is very little evidence to support this view and considerable evidence that argues for person who is doing precisely what he hoped to do as President.

Of course, it would be easy to label the current speculation as absurd CT, unworthy of further discussion and embarrassing to the author. Those who still insist, in level-headed tones, that Obama is liberal, are much less likely to find their ill-supported views labeled as completely delusional, as bordering on lunacy. Even committed radical activists are fearful today of going too far out on a limb. Pilger reports that an Italian communist newspaper rejected one of his submissions, writing. "We would not like to think that he [Obama] will make no difference." Hypnotism.

It is instructive to compare the reflexive howls of CT in response to attempts like the present one to clarify the dark forces manipulating public awareness with the more reasonable responses to such patently absurd claims as that climate scientists are engaging in a conspiracy or easily disproved depictions of the Occupy Movement as intent on violence. The latter claims, usually made without circumspection and by organizations with readily discernible motivations, receive reams of print, hours of talking head discussion. Is it true or false that ocean levels are rising? We must investigate thoroughly, we must talk this through and demonstrate fair and equal coverage of "both sides" of the argument, being careful not to be hasty with our conclusions. Is it significant that a U.S. President who ran as a liberal before governing as an oligarch spent over a year with a corporation known for infiltrating leftist groups? "Why you delusional fool--that's CT," comes the deadening response, the response calculated to shut down further discussion. You are feeling sleepy, very very sleepy.

I got satisfaction from reading that Anonymous had hacked the IRS and brought Romney's tax returns into the public realm. I'm sure it matters, and might even sway some votes. But I have a hypothetical question which I think much more important, "Would it matter to Obama supporters if it were shown that Obama was a hand-picked fake left candidate, trained by the CIA to defuse the anticipated wave of public enthusiasm for a new course for the ship of state? Would it matter to learn that Obama's election was manipulated covertly for the purpose of thwarting left-wing gains and the public will?" I wonder how many people would remain unmoved from their stance that, even so, he is still better than Romney.

Or how about an even more rigorous challenge to the adamantly argued pressure to vote for the lesser of two evils: If it were proved that Obama represents dark anti-democratic forces, while Romney is a mere self-serving oligarch, would we find liberals arguing that it is incumbent upon us all to vote for Romney, the lesser of two evils?