Slashdot Mirror
Mars Attacked, 65 Years Ago Today
Jodrell writes "Forget solar flares, and the upcoming Halloween festivities - tonight marks the 65th anniversary of the broadcast of Orson Welles' radioplay version on The War Of The Worlds."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
The Martian Government has determined that the people of Earth are harboring biological weapons. Prepare to be liberated.
I wonder what sort of panic would ensue if someone were to do a similar broadcast now?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I thought Earth was attacked by Mars.
They could have just checked Snopes
When this was first broadcast on American radio, a lot of people thought it was realy. Just goes to show you how powerful and realistic some Dramas/Plays can be (especially classics).
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
It just had to be said!
http://macbros.dnsalias.com/
looks like I also need to learn how to spell... corrections here... wish there was an edit post button.
I was just as afraid when Bush announced we were going to war with the "terrorist" as when people first heard that broadcast.
It would have been better expressed as "Earth Attacked by Mars, 65 years ago". Maybe I'm just picky.
Just thinking about Mars Attacks makes War of the Worlds seem Utopian.
No, but the 65th anniversary probably is ;-) .. sort of.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
You can get the audio for the show here. Not the best fidelity, but still...
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble... can't we just go to Starbuck's for coffee?
Did anyone else read the headline as we attacked Mars?
...even if only to get the Martian Terrorists.
Maybe if an updated modern-day equivalent reading (perhaps, special effects on the news) were to happen today, we could scare the current administration into launching a manned Mars mission
John Bigboote points out:
"It's not my goddamn planet, understand, monkey boy?"
Where are we going?
Planet 10!
When?
Real soon!
You can find an MP3 version of the original broadcast at http://www.unknown.nu/mercury/. (Be nice -- the server is slow even when not being slashdotted.)
It reminds me of an april fools documentary which seemingly had evidence and proof that the moon landing was faked. It had all sorts of high profile people finally coming out and stating that it was faked. Even Buz Aldrin was in on it.
The documentary gets sillier and sillier until in the final credits, the interviewees start asking to see the script again etc. etc. Had me going for a while too.
Then isn't it about time for some payback?
I am sick of living on a planet so full of peaace lovers.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Speaking of said invasion, what has become of YoYoDyne Propulsion's assets, anyways. I'd be interested in seeing what company took advantage of the severe drop in their stock prices after Buckaroo Bonzai "visited" their HQ back in 1984...
then again, it was probably Enron, which is why it still has no value today...stupid monkeyboys...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
HERE
Most of the "Golden Age of Sci Fi" writers were/are scientists and engineers. The things they wrote/write about actually have some basis in physics. Heinlein spent days and sometimes weeks
calculating orbits by hand (this was before the advent of the PC, remember), for example. Much of our scientific and engineering achievement today was first written about by Sci Fi authors, including personal computers, world wide networks, men traveling in outerspace, satellites, genetic engineering, waterbeds and much more. I personally hope we continue building what Sci Fi writers write about. Idealism and dreams lead to greatness. Pragmatism and "being realistic" lead to boredom and stagnation.
You were fooled by our insidious language, which makes it virtually impossible to distinguish between simple past tense and passive voice.
What the headline said was:
Mars attacked [Earth], 65 years ago today.
What you thought it said (and what it actually might have said if Slashdot were a newspaper) was:
Mars attacked [by] Earth, 65 years ago today.
Bloody hell..and they call this a language?
Seriously, with the widespread nature of the media, could you ever pull something off like that today and have so many people scared shitless
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
From my grandfather, who worked at a gas station about 20 miles from the "landing site" He said of all the people that stopped at the station that night, half were leaving to get away from the aliens, and the other half were driving towards it!
I've heard parts of the original Orson Welles broadcast. With all the media we're exposed to, there is absolutely no way we'd be fooled by it today.
Even with good editing and falsified television footage, I still doubt such a thing would fool us. We've seen way too many alien movies and such to be fooled. Something more believable and fear-inducing, such as falsified terrorist threats and terrorist attacks might do it.
I would also point out that it would make it even more difficult to pull such a hoax now due to the fact that we have so many more media sources now. Back then there were only a few radio stations. Now we have the Internet, radio, television, etc. It would certainly look strange if one channel/station was covering it and everyone else seemed oblivious to it.
the farmer who took his rifle and fired shots at the town water tower, thinking it was a spacecraft.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
"I've got positive karma, I don't need your stinkin' mod points!"
Something like it happened in 1984. Excellent made for TV movie called Special Bulletin. Made up to look like a realtime broadcast of a nuclear terrorist incident. I remember people were alarmed when they saw it, despite the disclaimers and the fact that it took place in the fictional studios of the "RBS" network. Occasionally hokey, it was well written and acted, with a humdinger of an ending.
Yeaaaaah booooyyyy
*Chorus*
puh uh huh uh huh uh
*Chorus*
I said Mr. Smyth, you a crazy mofo
You got a piece of taco stickin out yo' booty ho'.
*Chorus*
I said Mr. Smyth, wtf dude.
*Chorus*
wtf man?
*Chorus*
*Chorus*
..quite like stories of the gulibility of your average person.
It just makes me giddy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
...we have assumed control.
evil adrian
Likening people being scared out of their wits of alien attack to a singer who doesn't really sing? I think the writer could have come up with a better example. To me, Milli Vanilli lip-syncing just isn't up there on the catastrophe scale with a martian attack. They just didn't have the same effect.
This reminds me why we need this sort of program.
Its just not good enough to hope nature will save us from the bugeyed invaders.
Love turned my head today,
I turned away.
...SCO announced it was dropping all lawsuits and putting the Unix V source into the public domain. Also, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would be releasing documentation for all file formats for the companies products. Finally, the patent office today revoked the Amazon one click buying patent.
Stay tuned to this program for more details.
Instead today, the public is often manipulated not by what they see/hear through the media, but what they are kept from seeing/hearing. Through censorship or spin, you are told what you need to be told so that your opinions and beliefs about what is "true" match what the teller has in mind, and you are not told things that will counter those goal beliefs.
ONe has only to compare the major U.S. news outlets with news reporting throughout the world to see examples. Not that news reporting in other countries is any less censored/spun to advance THEIR goals.....
My grandfather, for one, welcomed our new Martian overlords.
A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.-Mark Twain
here!!!
You would be hard pressed to accomplish the same level of general panic today, even intentionally.
Which isn't to say that people have gotten smarter, consider virus hoaxes. The oft found phrase "Microsoft in an email advised..." is essentially the same as the disclaimer that Wells' radio program had. Interestingly enough, that phrase is as easily ignored now as it's corollary was then.
There must be something about the human condition which renders our societies vulnerable to this kind of thing. It's hard to believe that after 65 years the same basic hoax recipe works. The only thing Wells' show improved was a narrowing of the scope that these hoaxes are capable of covering.
Things like this make it hard to have any faith in your fellow man...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
So how are we to tell whether we've been taken in or not? When a hurricane hits some remote part of the country, a newscaster tells us. When somebody famous dies, a newscaster tells us. These are things that can be independently verified. But when we are told by a newscaster that we are being targetted by weapons of mass destruction (or invaded by aliens) - where do we go for the so-called real information? For everything I read or watch, there is someplace I can go to hear the exact opposite. Other than descending into apathy, I don't believe there is a way that you can be sure that you are not an unwitting pawn in this game of global spin... all you can do is decide which side you'd like to be the pawn FOR...
yah, ok it's a bit of a troll post, but humor me, will ya?
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
Why does this comes up every year at Halloween? I thought years ago we proved that this whole War of the Worlds panic was just a big hoax, and no one was really scared. There was a video clip released that showed several people from that night not scared at all, and just sort of looking around for some candy. The video is a bit grainy, but you can clearly tell that it is hunger and not panic on their faces.
I'm starting to think there might be a cover-up going on.
There was once a young Shepherd Boy who tended his sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was rather lonely for him all day, so he thought upon a plan by which he could get a little company and some excitement. He rushed down towards the village calling out "Wolf, Wolf," and the villagers came out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time. This pleased the boy so much that a few days afterwards he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help. But shortly after this a Wolf actually did come out from the forest, and began to worry the sheep, and the boy of course cried out "Wolf, Wolf," still louder than before. But this time the villagers, who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again deceiving them, and nobody stirred to come to his help. So the Wolf made a good meal off the boy's flock, and when the boy complained, the wise man of the village said: "A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth."
If people are fooled like this enough times, they will become skeptic... What will happen in case of a real emergency (aka. newly discovered asteroid, big enough to create a 20 km crater, will impact NYC in 20 hours)?
'Nuff said.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
How far has the original radio broadcast signal gotten out in space I wonder...?
-Valiss
Well, he is if you think about it. I wonder if at the end of the radio script was the line "By the way, listening audience, 'YHBT. HTH. HAND.'"
The original "Wells", H.G.Wells published his account of the martian invasion in 1898. I think the later Welles was a little late with the news.
Is this the promised end? Or image of that horror? KING LEAR
Anymore newsworthy than the 66th, 64th, 63rd anniversaries?
I can see 50, 75.. Nice round numbers. Or the centennial anniversary, 100.. I'll even go so far as the 69th anniversary.
But what's so special about the 65th anniversary?
This isn't news, this is a lame segment for "this week in history".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Why is 65 significant? I don't remember celebrating last year at 64? Is it just because it's a multiple of 5? I mean, can we celebrate insignificant events like this on multiples of 10 at least, if not 25?
65 sounds like one of the years used for sales at a furniture store.
Never underestimate the power of fiber.
The fact that we regard this radio broadcast as fiction shows the how effectively the conquering Martians have infiltrated all organs of the state.
never what you seem.
A fews years ago, a few friends and I decided to mark this occasion in what we thought was a pretty interesting manner. We, being native Jerseyites, took a trip out to the location where the "meteor" (sparking the invasion and spooking the local population) originally impacted - Browns Mills, NJ - and making some of our own "crop circles". We were drunk and not very skilled at this endeavor, but the end result turned out pretty nicely we thought. We kept at it while too and make them farily large and noticable. We did this in the dead of night, and whether or not the farmer in question caught the meaning of what we did, I'm fairly certain we gave him something to scratch his head over and ponder the next morning.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Interesting... in the report, it claims "not much" happened as a result from the outcry from the broadcast to make sure it didn't happen again.
As a former radio broadcaster, I can call BS on that -- one of the FCC's No No's includes things that would incite a panic falsely.
If you want more info on it, the FCC giveth.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
In the original War of the Worlds, I could have swore it was the earth that was attacked...
You mean I can finally come out of my bomb shelter? After 65 years, the fallout from the atomic wars has surely dissapated.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
WELLES SCARES NATION
but, but, we have great computers filling our hallowed halls!
(we haven't heard of laptops yet)
- the priests
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Oh pregnant bitch, i so dig you
i wanna cover ur face with creamy goo
watch yer cankered lips wallow on my dick
ride ya up n down on my man-meat stick
CmdrTaco's baby? well I can't see
how he knocked you up from down on his knees
Maybe CowboyNeal spit his goo in yer snatch
after sucking it out from goatse's patch
Oh pregnant tubgirl you shit so high
folded up n squirtin' up to the sky
yer asshole's pretty so puckered n round
but what's it look like when it comes back down
Oh pregnant girl what's a man to do?
you swirl yer shit around for the whole damn crew
whip us out that veiny tit
then scoot back n forth in your puddle of shit
Oh pregnant girl....!
You could just order the CD online at Amazon. The CD is great.
[Please type your sig here.]
Mars Attacked 65 Years Ago Today parses a lot easier than
Mars Attacked, 65 Years Ago Today.
-- TT
TT
CLOSE ON MONITOR: a list of IDENTICAL DATES AND PLACES NEXT TO A RAFT
OF NAMES.
BILLY
All these people applied for drivers' licenses in the same town in New
Jersey on the exact same date.
NEW JERSEY
New Jersey?
BILLY
Forty-six Yoyodyne employees. Grover's Mill, New Jersey, 11/1/38.
RAWHIDE
Grover's Mills, Grovers' Mills...1938. Why's that so darn familiar?
RENO
Looks like none of these guys ever lived anywhere else. No places of
birth. And all of them with the same first name: John.
New Jersey studying the screen...
NEW JERSEY
November 1, thirty days have September, April, June, and
November...when short February's done, all the rest have thirty-one.
October 31st! Halloween! Don't you get it?
(obviously not)
Orson Welles!
BILLY
You mean the guy from the old wine commercials?
NEW JERSEY
Halloween. 1938..."War of the Worlds"...that fake radio news broadcast
that got everybody scared, thinking that real live Martians were
landing in Grover's Mill, New Jersey! But then it all just turned out
to be a hoax.
BILLY
Then that's it!
RENO
What's it?
NEW JERSEY
Right! Hoax my eye!
RENO
You mean--? No!
BILLY
Yes! Martians! Right across the river in Grover's Mills!
Well, Slashdot wasn't around 15 years ago; and given the general progression of the Web, will probably be a porn squatter's site 10 years from now. So they're getting their kicks in while they can.
They ran a continuous ticker at the bottom of the screen to ensure you knew it was fictional.
The source I heard about this from claims it was played in canada, but I can't confirm this.
So unless someone else can back me up, just ignore my ramblings like you always do ;)
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
"Fool me once...(3 second pause)... Shame on...(4 second pause)...Shame on you....(6 second pause)...Fool me...Can't get fooled again."
I can't believe the author dared to compare Orson Well's War of the Worlds to Milli Vanilli. Them's fightin' words!
Is anyone old enough to recall the 1983 TV movie Special Bulletin? It was presented as real-time coverage of a nuclear terrorist/hostage situation. Everyone at the network remembered the WotW broadcast, so the show carried lots of disclaimers. In spite of that, there were a lot of phone calls made to the police, especially in the area where the story was supposed to be taking place.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
...conclusively proved that "War of the Worlds" was indeed real. :P
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
What? No "all your planet are belong.." jokes? No "Attention all planets (..) and soviet russia.." jokes? I'm disappointed.
In either case, please remove the comma, as it doesn't belong here.
I don't understand, what you mean, because where I come from, commas are revered and considered, an integral part, of society. If I had a nickel, for every time one of my countrymen, used a comma in a sentence, I'd be a very rich man, indeed.
We don't get much done where I'm from, but nobody ever accused us of talking too fast.
Seriously -- thanks for cracking down on my lax puncutation. Even if I was forced to insert the ole foot a few inches into the mouth, on account of practicing sloppy English in a comment that was supposed to berate sloppy English.
Go rent Buckaroo Banzia. Highly recommended, but watch it with a group of people.
... there you are.
And remember. Wherever you go
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
However, in headline English, the past tense is almost never used. A form like that in the headline is reserved for the passive voice, and the active voice would be written like "Mars Attack Anniversary, 65 years ago" or even "Mars Attacks 65 Years Ago." The use is therefore incorrect, and his misunderstanding is not due to any ambiguity in English, but rather editor error. Passive voice and past tense are easily distinguished in normal (not headline) English by the use of the be verb.
Put identity in the browser.
...great movie, Jeff Goldblum in a freakin' cowboy outfit?! Crazy, man. I'm off to another dimension, B. Banzai
Face it the public would love stuff like this today. Im surprised that producers havnt started milking this form of reality tv and have instead chose an interesting, yet slightly shit path of "*-stars", "something island" and "i dont give a fuck why is this the 3rd sequel big brother", not to mention "im going to sit in a plastic box and the 24hr live cam is on pay per view because its so fucking in your face cutting edge of your seat tv david blaine" (who btw has disappeared from media attention and is still waiting in a hostpital corridor). People love police chase videos and any other sort action reality compilations, people also love the news when something exciting is happening, and if series 2 of 24 was anything to go by people love nukes and planes. So tv producers:
Combine nukes, planes, aliens (maybe) and police, in a real-time news coverage style (like that cheap 80's "special bulletin" but with better effects and acting) and you'll have a winner! Then you can cash in by constantly quoting phone lines that people can call to get "more information" and alternatives to 911 (all these numbers are priemium rate and loop advertising)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
yes she did.like yours as if yours did!
Followed with "k thx bye!"
ONE FINE DAY
MARS ATTACKS
THE ENGLISH PATIENT
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
A somewhat related cautionary tale about how easy it is to fool people that was mentioned recently in a comment on Slashdot..
Viewpoint: A Dangerous Experiment
They didn't issue a "warning" because it didn't occur to anyone that it might be taken seriously. "War of the Worlds" wasn't intended to be a hoax, and anyone willing to intellectually engage even slightly with the show would have been able to tell that it wasn't true.
... anyone actually in New York could simply look out at the sky and see if it was glowing. According to the broadcast within the broadcast, 3 million people had left the City, thousands were jumping into the Hudson River, and the location of the advancing fires were very specifically described.
The originating news service is fake, the prestigious hotel in New York from which the show was supposedly broadcast didn't exist, the famous band leader at said hotel was also fictitious. There are many references to non-existent broadcasting services and locations, and as the show continues, and they're describing the swathe of destruction left by the aliens as they advance on New York City (with 20 minutes left in the show)
So for a one hour show, the first 40 minutes are concerned with the initial "attack" and the fake documentary; even if that confused some people, there is absolutely NO WAY that anyone could mistake the last 20 minutes for anything other than radio drama. Orson Welles describing the actions of his character travelling through a wasteland of destruction and death, meeting a National Guardsman in hiding and engaging him in conversation and great inspirational speechifying.
"War of the Worlds" was the 17th broadcast episode of the Mercury Theatre. It aired weekly on CBS, in the same time slot, and with the same cast. The thing that REALLY makes you wonder about the American populace, is that Orson Welles was a constant fixture on the radio -- he was the original voice of The Shadow -- on multiple networks, and he appears prominently in the show. It's not like you'd mistake that voice for someone else.
Welles was on the radio as The Shadow from September 1937 until September '38. The Mercury Theatre on the Air began in July 1938. Considering the length of the broadcast day, and the lack of dense programming, that means that everyone knew who Orson Welles was.
Oh well. As H.L. Mencken is often misquoted as saying, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
... along the lines of project Gutenberg, isn't it ?
...
> When I was young, I was lucky enough to have the original radio broadcast on reel to reel
> I just wish that those reels had survived. I played them into the ground. Oh the classic days of radio... gone the way of dime novels, I guess.
> If people are fooled like this enough times, they will become skeptic...
...
> What will happen in case of a real emergency
> (aka. newly discovered asteroid, big enough to
> create a 20 km crater, will impact NYC in
> 20 hours)?
What good would such a warning do ?
Think of all the traffic jams !
After all, there is not enough time for people all over the US to drive their old cars to New York in order to cash in on the insurance
will declare that Martians landed 65 years ago yesterday
If you think we are fooled easly how about the martian's in Spaced Invaders?
They beleved instead of Arturis or some far distant planet the Imperial Space Navy was attacking they though the re-broadcast was real and the main attacked was realy Earth!
Yep the famious line of: "Die Earth schum! Die Earth schum! I write that on your tombstone!"
This is real. We are all going to die!
My thoughts exactly! I wonder how he would react to, say, Adequacy if he were alive today....
More than mere navel gazing.
If you remove the comma, it parses correctly.
furlongs.
(That's about 2.421 * 10^19 inches.)
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Did anyone else read the headline of this story to mean that Mars had been attacked? I don't know where my mind was going with that... Maybe The Onion knows.
This is the legal version of it, and plus, it sounds good
http://sounds.unknown.nu/mercury/381030.mp3
(WMA format as well)
(*taunts the Buckaroo fans*)
50 well that's 0.5c (obivously where C is century)
100 that's c.
65 is just not a pleasant fraction of the whole bigger unit. We might as well celebrate its 66, 67, 68, ok you can guess this sequence...
I'm surprised nobody has linked to official website, where you can listen to the entire broadcast.
They're offering a transcript, MP3 files and a Real Audio stream as well as in-depth background information.
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
Trying to fake a major event using mocked up tape is the wrong way to do this. You'd need to fake so much corroborated and consistent material that the whole charade would fall apart in hours.
If you really wanted to perform a convincing hoax, for example a UFO crash, all you'd need to do is fake the incident itself and have a bunch of people playing the parts of those involved. Then simply sit back and watch the media eat itself. You don't have to take on the media head on by playing it at it's own game, it's far more powerful to subvert the power and influence of the media against itself.
A small group of actors could easily stick to a improvised script for long enough and remain relatively consistent if all the major details were agreed beforehand. (After all, you don't want it to be too neat) If you can then stage the incident convincingly enough, the power of the media will guarantee that it becomes truth before you can say Orson Welles. After all, how hard can it be to fake a convincing UFO crash? It's all smoke and mirrors.
The stupidity of mainstream media and its target audience is almost limitless. It can't be that difficult to fool them. I don't want to score political points, but as some people have mentioned, the media coverage of the recent war in Iraq was hardly a bastion of truth and that was a real conflict in which real people died real deaths. If they can be fooled on something that important, then I don't expect them to pay much attention to anything.
So any master hoaxers out there want to comment?
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
"It was? By who?"
-FL
This was a well funded and thought out Psy-op, not your average prank.
http://100777.com/node/view/157"...The broadcast was a psychological warfare experiment conducted by The Princeton Radio Project. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the project in the fall of 1937. An Office of Radio Research was set up with Paul F. Lazarsfeld as director, and Frank Stanton and Hadley Cantril as associate directors. Cantril used a special grant from the General Education Board to study the effects of the broadcast. Cantril published the study as a book titled "THE INVASION FROM MARS - A STUDY IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PANIC." It contains a complete script of the broadcast. The book is one of a series of studies sponsored by the Federal Radio Education Committee.1
WAR OF THE WORLDS, was broadcast by Mercury Theater on the Air, from a microphone in a New York studio of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Council on Foreign Relations member Frank Stanton was a CBS executive. Stanton would direct Radio Free Europe. Regarding the programs realism Cantril writes..."
Of course it's possible.
Social patterns information was collected and studied after Well's radio play fallout. I've seen papers written by university and advertising think-tanks citing such data on the subject of how to effectively fool a population into specific behavior patterns.
People are actually more susceptible today than they were 65 years ago. People have far less capacity today for critical thought, and moreover, they have been convinced that the opposite is true.
One can indeed point to 9-11 which included cool explosions, (special effects), to work its nasty magic. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, most people still completely believe that 9-11 was not a deliberate fabrication, and they believe this based on nothing more than the network news casts they watch.
Another way of looking at it is to observe how advertising works; it is demonstrated on a daily basis that one can create powerful behavioral responses based on entirely manufactured stimuli.
-FL
People believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, didn't they?
Ha-ha! That's hilarious! I think the people of Halabja were fooled, too. They died by the thousands. Stupid worthless Iraqi lives. You are so witty to point out that Hussein and his cronies would NEVER defy UN resolutions, torture and murder his own people, and aid and abet terrorists. Thank you!
I seem to recall that those weapons were found and destroyed after the first Gulf War, and that inspectors were unable to find any new WMDs before the dawn of the second.
But I suppose some people just love their fictional radio broadcasts too much to bother looking at the 'complicated' truth.
-FL
I would wager that people are even MORE suceptible today than they were 65 years ago. Education standards have dropped. With convenience food making people slow, fat and stupid, with television, videogames, anti-depressants. . , the list goes on and on; many people are dumb as dirt today.
You are correct in your mention of terrorist threats.
When we consider 9-11, we see that there is a mountain of credible evidence, a mountain of very legitimate yet unanswered questions, and a government with an obvious track record of lying, all of which points to 9-11 being, at best, something other than what was advertised, and at worst, a deliberate fabrication designed to create specific social responses. And yet most people still believe without any question that 9-11 was what Bush tells them it was, and they believe this through exactly the same systems War of the Worlds used. --The only difference being that with 9-11 there were no disclaimers, and they actually blew some stuff up for effect.
Heck, certain think-tanks spent a lot of time studying the data collected from the War of the Worlds radio play fall-out specifically to study how better to advertise products and sell government spin to the public.
-FL
And they say Don Quixote was crazy for attacking a few much more fearsome looking windmills...
Ask Buckaroo Banzai about the truth about 65 years ago today.. he'll tell u..
Earth has sent four probes to Mars. The European Space Agency probe orbits on Christmas. The USA "Spirit" and "Opportunity" land Jan 4 and 25. The long-meadering Japanese probe (launched into wrong trajectory in 1998) may arrive in January too. These four probes join the two active USA camera-orbitors. Martians watch out! We are coming!
"That's funny. Did you know that Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin are all still alive, eating shoes to survive in my basement? It's just as real as your living hijackers. Fucking trolls..."
Actually, it's seems that it's not that far-fetched... After reading his post, I did a search, and found some VERY interesting links.
Ofcourse, one should take everything one reads on the internet with a pinch of salt. But when the evidence of a hoax is evident even on the official photos, posted on the official government sites, and clearly shows that it simply couldn't have happened the way the gov't say it does, what should you belive?
Check out this for a starter.
If that makes you interested, and maybe even doubt the official story, check out these then:
Physical and Mathematical Analysis of the Pentagon Crash.
The World Trade Center Demolition and the So-Called War on Terrorism.
9/11 - ARE AMERICANS THE VICTIMS OF A HOAX?