A Cruise For A Cause: Win A Dream Vacation While Supporting Holocaust Education Jewish Connection News May 2, 2025 Imagine Sailing Across The Sparkling Mediterranean Or Exploring The Majestic Landscapes Of Northern Europe, All While Supporting A Cause That Preserves One Of The Most Important Legacies Of Our Time. That’s Exactly What The Holocaust Documentation & Education Center (HDEC) Is Offering With Their 2025 Annual Online Raffle. By Purchasing A Raffle Ticket, You Not Only Get A Chance To Win A Seven-Night Royal Caribbean Cruise For Two, But You Also Help Fund HDEC's Mission To Educate And Combat The Dangers Of Bigotry, Hatred, And Intolerance. Founded 45 years ago, HDEC is a nonsectarian, NonProfit Organization dedicated to documenting the authentic memory of the Holocaust and educating future generations about its atrocities. Their mission is clear: to preserve the history of the Holocaust so that its lessons are never forgotten. Through their work, they ensure that the stories of survivors are heard, and the lessons of tolerance and respect continue to resonate worldwide. To fund their vital work, HDEC is holding an online raffle, offering a seven-night Royal Caribbean International cruise for two to either Northern Europe or the Mediterranean as the grand prize. This cruise is the perfect getaway for anyone who enjoys history, culture, or simply the joy of cruising in style, and it comes with a value that far exceeds the price of the ticket. But that’s not all! There are 22 other amazing prizes up for grabs, all generously donated by individuals and organizations committed to supporting HDEC’s cause. Each raffle ticket you purchase directly contributes to the center’s educational and documentary efforts, which are designed to fight hatred and intolerance wherever they are found. How It Works Entering the raffle is simple, and the impact of your participation is enormous. A single raffle ticket costs just $100, and if you purchase five tickets, you’ll receive an extra ticket for free—an additional chance to win the grand prize or one of the other remarkable prizes. The raffle is already off to a strong start, having raised $10,126 of the annual fundraising goal. With your help, HDEC aims to reach a target of $50,000 by Tuesday, June 10th, 2025, the date of the official drawing. Every ticket purchased gets the center one step closer to that goal, helping to fund their ongoing efforts in education and documentation. Why It Matters For the past four and a half decades, HDEC has been a steadfast guardian of Holocaust memory. With programs that include survivor testimony preservation, educational outreach, and special exhibits, the center has worked tirelessly to ensure that the atrocities of the Holocaust are never repeated. Through workshops, survivor interviews, and school programs, HDEC plays a pivotal role in instilling important values of empathy, understanding, and tolerance among young people. As the number of living Holocaust survivors continues to decrease, the center’s work becomes even more vital. Their educational programs help foster awareness, preventing future generations from becoming complacent in the face of hatred and discrimination. The raffle funds directly support these initiatives, making it possible for HDEC to reach more students, schools, and communities with the message that “Never Again” is more than just a phrase—it is a call to action. Participating in the raffle is easy, and the more tickets you buy, the greater your chances of winning. Simply visit the HDEC Raffle Page at: https://hdec.rallyup.com/hdecraffle2025 to purchase your tickets online. If you prefer, you can also reach out to the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center by calling: (954) 929-5690. Extension#: 302. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler dreaming of a European adventure or someone who simply wants to support an important cause, the 2025 HDEC Annual Online Raffle gives you the chance to do both. Not only will you be helping preserve Holocaust memory, but you’ll also be entering for a chance to win one of the most incredible travel experiences of a lifetime. The drawing will take place at the HDEC’s Board Meeting on Tuesday, June 10th, 2025, and winners will be notified shortly thereafter. Keep the momentum going by purchasing your raffle tickets today and encouraging your friends and family to do the same. A Legacy Worth Supporting The Holocaust was one of the darkest chapters in human history, but through education, we can ensure it is never forgotten. By participating in this raffle, you’re not just buying a ticket—you’re helping ensure that future generations learn the dangers of intolerance, discrimination, and hatred. This year’s fundraising goal of $50,000 will help continue the invaluable work of HDEC, ensuring that the voices of survivors and the lessons of the Holocaust are preserved for generations to come. Don’t miss out on your chance to win a cruise for two to some of the most beautiful and historic regions in the world. Buy a ticket today and help HDEC make a lasting impact on the future! For more information or questions, you can visit: www.hdec.org - Or email: info@hdec.org . Let's make this year's raffle a record-breaking success—and remember, every ticket purchased is one step closer to winning your dream cruise while supporting an important cause. Hope you win—and remember: every ticket makes a difference. Previous Next

Need A New Love This Valentine's Day? February 10, 2022 Share Does Valentine's Day get you down? Are you looking for someone to give you kisses every day? If you said “yes” to both of these questions then here are some possible new loves in your life. Nelda (ID 650484) is an adorable gal waiting to meet you at the Humane Society of Broward County. She is four years old, and the volunteers say she is super sweet, walks well on a leash, loves everyone, and has a happy personality. Nelda is curious, will follow you around and appears potty-trained. She would love to be your forever Valentine. Stop by to meet her and we know you too will fall in love. Adorable Shadow (ID 651461) and his camera-shy brother Panther are looking for a home where they can stay together. Sadly, they were given up because someone was allergic to them. The pair are good with kids and birds; but might be shy around dogs. Both enjoy watching TV with you and they like to play with each other. Panther is a bit more reserved until he gets to know you, while Shadow is more out-going. You can adopt the duo and pay one adoption fee, that way this family can stay together. Adorable Bud (ID 651377) wants to be your pal! At 7 years old, this handsome fellow might have some Labrador retriever in him. Don’t let his age deter you, he is quite spry for his age and likes to chase after toys, though he doesn’t always bring them back. Bud is not a fan of felines or small dogs, but he may do ok with a larger dog. He appears to be potty-trained and would love a family to spoil him. Can you make his wish come true? Quinn (ID 651669) is a beautiful bunny who wants to hop into your heart and home. She has a very soft coat and a sweet personality. She, like all rabbits, require lots of hay to help aid in digestion and lots of leafy greens. Quinn is just one of several rabbits waiting for a loving home. Animal shelters are your best source when looking for a pet. Not only do they have a great selection of adult animals for adoption, but they also have kittens and puppies, even purebred animals. In fact, on average, purebreds account for about 25% to 30% of a shelter’s dog population. Choosing a Dog? If you are thinking of adding a loving and loyal canine companion to your family, you will want to consider many factors in selecting the type of animal which best suits your lifestyle and fits your needs. Choosing a Cat? Cats make wonderful pets. Because they’re less demanding, they can easily adjust to a variety of lifestyles and living spaces. Every cat is a true individual though, so it’s important to take the time to choose a four-footed friend who’s right for you. When you adopt from the Humane Society of Broward County all pets are spayed or neutered before going home. In addition, they receive preliminary vaccinations, a microchip, heart-worm test for dogs over seven months, feline leukemia test for cats, a limited 14-day health care plan courtesy of VCA Animal Hospitals, and a bag of Purina ONE pet food while supplies last. For more details call the Humane Society of Broward County at 954-989-3977 ext. 6. If you would like to meet a pet, please fill out a pre-adoption application on the website www.humanebroward.com then stop by, the shelter is located at 2070 Griffin Road, a block west of I95 and opens daily at 11 AM. If you can’t adopt, but want to help the animals, join us for the 2022 VCA Walk for the Animals on March 5. Learn more at www.walk4theanimals.com < Previous News Next News >

Electric Vehicle Uncertainty: The Government's Push For Electric Cars Will Cost You $$$$ Thu Apr 27 2023 16:10:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Stage 954: One Of The Hottest Concert Venues In Broward County For Live Music Thu Dec 01 2022 17:09:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

A WIC First: New York To Cover Cholov Yisroel Baby Formula After Met Council Campaign Jewish Connection News Aug 27, 2026 For The First Time Ever, Frum Families In New York Will Be Able To Use WIC To Purchase Cholov Yisroel Infant Formula. The New York State Department of Health has confirmed that it will add the first Cholov Yisroel formula to the state’s WIC formulary later this month. The historic change is the culmination of a three-year campaign led by Met Council and a decision made under the leadership of Governor Kathy Hochul and State Health Commissioner Dr. James V. McDonald. The change will benefit tens of thousands of frum families across New York, including families in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Flatbush, Crown Heights and Far Rockaway, as well as growing kehillos such as Monsey and Kiryas Joel. In the years ahead, as more children are born and new families enroll in WIC, this one fix will help generations of New Yorkers. “This is a tremendous victory for frum families, and it happened because Governor Hochul’s administration listened and acted,” said David G. Greenfield, CEO of Met Council. “I especially want to thank State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald for taking this issue seriously and working with us to get it fixed. For years, mothers were told that WIC would help them buy formula for their babies, but not a single approved product was Cholov Yisroel. Met Council identified the problem, found the solution and kept pushing until New York fixed it.” WIC, the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children, is administered by each state, with every state determining which infant formulas its program will cover. As of early 2026, New York’s formulary included more than 40 formulas. Many carried Kosher Certification. Not one was Cholov Yisroel. The result was that a mother in Boro Park could qualify for WIC, walk into a grocery store with her benefits and still walk out empty-handed because not one formula on the list was permitted in her home. The barrier came down to one-tenth of a milligram of iron. Cholov Yisroel formulas already existed, but the products previously considered fell 0.1 milligrams short of the USDA’s minimum iron requirement. That tiny gap kept every Cholov Yisroel option off New York’s WIC list and left frum families without a single approved choice. “No mother should have to choose between keeping Cholov Yisroel and feeding her baby,” Greenfield said. “This may look like one more item on a government list. For the families affected, it is life-changing. It means a benefit they were always entitled to will finally work for them.” The issue first surfaced at the annual convening of Met Council’s Kosher and Halal Food Network in early 2023, when a member agency reported that WIC-eligible mothers were leaving stores without formula because nothing on the approved list met their religious requirements. Met Council’s Food Programs and Policy teams spent the next three years working with the Department of Health, WIC advocates and formula manufacturers to find a solution. In 2025, Hannah Lupien, Met Council’s Managing Director of Food Programs, identified a Cholov Yisroel formula that met the USDA’s iron standard. Met Council brought it directly to the state with a simple message: this product meets the federal requirements, so put it on the list. Met Council was uniquely positioned to lead this fight. It operates the largest Kosher Food Pantry network in America, feeding more than 350,000 people every year, and runs the largest public policy and advocacy operation in the Jewish community dedicated to fighting poverty. That combination, feeding the community every day while fighting for it in Albany and Washington, is what turned one agency’s complaint into a statewide solution. “This is what effective government looks like,” Greenfield said. “Governor Hochul and Commissioner McDonald heard that families were being left behind, reviewed the solution we brought them and took action. We are grateful to them and to the Department of Health team for making sure WIC finally works for every New York family.” This victory builds on Met Council’s successful advocacy to create the USDA’s Kosher Foods in TEFAP webpage and increase the number of Kosher products available through the Federal Emergency Food Program to 13. Met Council will continue pressing local, state and federal agencies to remove barriers that keep families from fully using WIC, SNAP, school meals, emergency food assistance and other benefits for which they qualify. “There are still too many government programs that work on paper but fail families in practice,” Greenfield said. “Our job is to find those gaps and keep pushing until they are fixed, so that every family receives every benefit they qualify for.” Previous Next

Infrastructure Update: Where Does The Money Come From & How Is It Used? By Hallandale Beach Mayor, Joy Cooper January 12, 2023 Share In my last article, I reviewed the process we are going through in our City to address our Infrastructure. City Infrastructure includes everything in our public right of way and everything that is underground up to the property lines. They also include: our buildings, park systems and transportation systems. Obviously, these assets are very expensive to maintain and replace. In Hallandale Beach’s case, we are looking for hundreds of millions of dollars. I received a question after the article was published on what funding we are receiving through other government agencies particularly the Federal Government. As a medium-sized City with a population of 40,000 people as of the Census, we are not a direct recipient of Federal Funding. Cities with populations of 50,000 or more are. Those Cities and Counties are called entitlement communities. Being located in Broward County, we are very fortunate to have a willing partnership to have dollars allocated from the Federal Government as part of formula grants. These funds include: Annual Community Development Block Grants, Area Council on Aging and Early Learning Coalition. We use these pass through dollars for our Hepburn Center, After School Program, Food Relief and some of our Public Works Infrastructure. On average these funds run between $200,000 to $300,000 depending on what is approved by the Federal Government. Recently under President Biden, the Federal Government issued the Cares Relief and American Recovery Act Funding. These funds were also distributed by the State and County on a formula basis. The COVID-19 Relief Dollars were spent addressing the costs associated with COVID-19. Some direct funding was received by the Hepburn Center but the other funding for rental assistance was handled by the County. This was approximately $100,000. Our CRA actually did a program for assistance during that time to help renters. The ARRP Dollars were the largest amount that was passed through the State. This was $19 Million Dollars. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, Nation League of Cities and Nation Association of Counties lobbied for months to ensure that every government agency was at the table and received relief. Our City spread the allocation over three years to address operational costs as well as staffing costs. This budget year will be the last allocation of relief. People may ask, “Well doesn’t the City still get property taxes? Why would they use this for Infrastructure? During COVID-19 all revenues were down. Property taxes are just a portion of our revenues. They pay for our Police, Fire and General Employees. During COVID-19, our City was still operating. City Hall was only closed at one point for 2 months. Even then we had remote work. The City had to harden all our facilities and set up remote working systems. In addition, the building was never shut down during the Pandemic, so we still had development services fully operational. We were also tasked with additional Code Inspections and the enforcement of COVID-19 Restrictions. Without ARRP many cities would have gone bankrupt, including ours. So, every penny of this relief fund was used to address what it was intended for. The next question is, what about all the new Build America Programs? We have applied for and received dollars from the Federal Government. When elected officials use the platform against these types of programs they are doing a great injustice to their constituents. These dollars are our tax dollars. They should be distributed to address needs throughout our country and community. The transposition Program alone will transform our country. As an elected official, I have been fighting alongside my colleagues for years for a transportation bill. To date, we have received over $1.5 Million in funding for our EV Charging Station for our Fleet. We have submitted and are anticipating $5 Million for the overall project through various agencies as a pass through. Next week, I will go further into what we have applied for and are working hard to receive to offset the cost to our taxpayers. It needs to be noted that many of the Federal Programs had taken some time for rules promulgating these programs. Energy Development Block Grants are one such program. They have released a program for residential improvements that include tax credits. Cites too will be able to retrofit older Infrastructure. I will continue in my next article with our Grants and pipes, pumps and roadways. I look forward to continuing to serve and keeping our residents informed. As always, I am available for your questions, concerns and ideas to help make our City a better place. Please feel free to reach out to my office at: (954) 457-1318. On my cell/text at: (954) 632-5700. Or email me at: jcooper@cohb.org . < Previous News Next News >

Collaboration Thu Sep 21 2023 16:08:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Hello Gorgeous: Funny Girl Is Coming October 5, 2023 Share FUNNY GIRL, the sensational Musical Comedy revival, is coming to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts Tuesday, November 14th, 2023 through Sunday, November 26th, 2023. Welcome to Musical Comedy heaven! Featuring Grammy-Award Winner Melissa Manchester as Mrs. Brice, the “vivacious and delightfully glitzy” (Vogue) Broadway revival features iconic songs, including “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” and “People.” Breaking box office records week after week and receiving unanimous raves on Broadway, this bittersweet Comedy is the story of the indomitable Fanny Brice played by South Florida’s own rising star Katerina McCrimmon. As a girl from the Lower East Side who dreamed of a life on the stage, everyone told her she’d never be a star, but then something funny happened—she became one of the most beloved performers in history, shining brighter than the brightest lights of Broadway. The Observer describes the revival as “sparkling and explosively entertaining!” FUNNY GIRL is directed by Tony® Award Winner Michael Mayer (Thoroughly Modern Millie) and features the classic score by Tony, Grammy®, and Academy® Award Winner Jule Styne and lyrics by Tony Award Nominee and Grammy Award Winner Bob Merrill, (comprising additional songs from Styne & Merrill). The original book by Isobel Lennart, from an original story by Miss Lennart, is revised by Tony Award Winner Harvey Fierstein (Kinky Boots, Newsies). Hailing from Miami, Katerina McCrimmon will make her national tour debut on the heels of becoming a YoungArts Winner in Theater and a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. “Fans have adored Melissa throughout her 50-year musical career, and Katerina is a star in the making who embodies the rising stardom of Fanny," says Production Director Michael Mayer. "We could not be more thrilled to have this dynamic and talented duo lead the Funny Girl tour." FUNNY GIRL features choreography by Ellenore Scott (Falsettos); Tap Choreography by Ayodele Casel; Scenic Design by Tony Award Winner David Zinn (SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical); Costume Design by Tony Award Winner Susan Hilferty (Wicked); Lighting Design by Tony Award Winner Kevin Adams (Hedwig and the Angry Inch); Sound Design by Tony Award Winner Brian Ronan (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) and Cody Spencer; Hair and Wig Design by Campbell Young Associates; Music Supervision by Emmy Award Winner Michael Rafter; Casting by Jim Carnahan, CSA, and Jason Thinger, CSA; Orchestrations by Chris Walker; Dance, Vocal, and Incidental Music Arrangements by Alan Williams, and Additional Arrangements by David Dabbon and Carmel Dean. The Associate Director is Johanna McKeon; the Associate Choreographer is Jeffrey Gugliotti; the Assistant Director is Torya Beard; the Assistant Tap Choreographer is Dre Torres. The FUNNY GIRL Tour Stage Management Team is led by Production Stage Manager Jovon E. Shuck and is supported by Stage Manager Stacy N. Taylor and Assistant Stage Manager Mariah Young. The Company Management Team is led by Company Manager Justin A. Sweeney with Assistant Company Manager Ryan Mayfield. The Tour Music Director/Conductor is Elaine Davidson. The FUNNY GIRL Tour is produced by NETworks Presentations in special arrangement with Sonia Friedman Productions, Scott Landis and David Babani. The Broadway production of FUNNY GIRL began performances at the August Wilson Theatre in March of 2022, with the official opening on April 24th, 2022, where it continued its record-breaking run through September 3rd, 2023. Sonia Friedman, Scott Landis, and David Babani together with Gemini Theatrical, Accidental Jacket, and Sony Masterworks Broadway released FUNNY GIRL – New Broadway Cast Recording, which is now available wherever you stream music. Produced by David Caddick and David Lai and featuring the classic score by Jule Styne (music) and Bob Merrill (lyrics), the album is co-produced by Sonia Friedman, Scott Landis, David Babani, Michael Mayer, Brian Gillet, Huck Walton, Sean Keller, and Marc Levine. The album is executively produced by Evan McGill and the Associate Producers are Joanna Drowos, Abby Green, and PickleStar Theatricals. Tickets start at $45.00, they are available at: www.BrowardCenter.org and www.Ticketmaster.com - By phone at: (954) 468-0222. Or at the Broward Center’s AutoNation Box Office located at 201 Southwest Fifth Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33312. Orders for groups of ten (10) or more can be purchased by calling: (954) 660-6307. The Broward Center for the Performing Arts is one of America’s premier performing arts venues, presenting more than 700 performances each year to more than 700,000 patrons, showcasing a wide range of exciting cultural programming and events. Guest experiences at the Broward Center include the all-inclusive Spirit Club Level, the UHealth University of Miami Health System Intermezzo Lounge, special events in the Huizenga Pavilion, waterfront dining at Marti’s New River Bistro and innovative classes and workshops for all ages at the Rose Miniaci Arts Education Center. With one of the largest arts-in-education programs in the United States, the Broward Center serves more than 130,000 students annually. The Broward Performing Arts Foundation, Inc. receives and maintains Funds to sustain, develop and secure the future of the Broward Center. The Broward Center for the Performing Arts is located at 201 Southwest Fifth Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33312. For more information, visit: www.funnygirlonbroadway.com - Or www.BrowardCenter.org < Previous News Next News >

Lucky Mint Brownie Perfection Thu Feb 23 2023 17:05:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Combat the Epidemic of Loneliness by Eating Together Fri Oct 18 2024 16:30:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Retirees and Seniors Find Joy in a Conversational Yiddish Course Fri Jul 19 2024 16:12:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Divide And Conquer: The Government’s Propaganda Of Fear And Fake News By John & Nisha Whitehead May 9, 2024 Share “It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”― J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit “Nothing is real,” observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics. Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population. Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided. This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today. Everything becomes entertainment fodder. As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form. Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce. “We the people” are watching a lot of TV. On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we’re watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio. This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day. Yet look behind the spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama that is politics today, and you will find there is a method to the madness. We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry. This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm through elaborate propaganda campaigns. Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest propagandists today is the U.S. Government. Add the government’s inclination to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace. This “policing of the mind” is exactly the danger Author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of what will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.” You may not hear much about the government’s role in producing, planting and peddling propaganda-driven fake news—often with the help of the corporate news media—because the powers-that-be don’t want us skeptical of the government’s message or its corporate accomplices in the mainstream media. However, when you have Social Media giants colluding with the government in order to censor so-called disinformation, all the while the mainstream news media, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against government propaganda, has instead become the mouthpiece of the world’s largest corporation (the U.S. Government), the Deep State has grown dangerously out-of-control. This has been in the works for a long time. Veteran Journalist Carl Bernstein, in his expansive 1977 Rolling Stone piece “The CIA and the Media,” reported on Operation Mockingbird, a CIA campaign started in the 1950’s to plant intelligence reports among reporters at more than 25 major newspapers and wire agencies, who would then regurgitate them for a public oblivious to the fact that they were being fed government propaganda. In some instances, as Bernstein showed, members of the media also served as extensions of the surveillance state, with reporters actually carrying out assignments for the CIA. Executives with CBS, the New York Times and Time Magazine also worked closely with the CIA to vet the news. If it was happening then, you can bet it’s still happening today, only this collusion has been reclassified, renamed and hidden behind layers of government secrecy, obfuscation and spin. In its article, “How the American government is trying to control what you think,” the Washington Post points out “Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing.” This is mind-control in its most sinister form. The end goal of these mind-control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in re-shaping the country in the image of a totalitarian police state. The government’s fear-mongering is a key element in its mind-control programming. It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking. A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled whether through propaganda, brainwashing, mind control, or just plain fear-mongering. Fear not only increases the power of government, but it also divides the people into factions, persuades them to see each other as the enemy and keeps them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being brainwashed—manipulated—into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward. This unseen mechanism of society that manipulates us through fear into compliance is what American Theorist Edward L. Bernays referred to as “an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” It was almost 100 years ago when Bernays wrote his seminal work Propaganda: “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” To this invisible government of rulers who operate behind the scenes—the architects of the Deep State—we are mere puppets on a string, to be brainwashed, manipulated and controlled. All of the distracting, disheartening, disorienting news you are bombarded with daily is being driven by propaganda churned out by one corporate machine (the corporate-controlled government) and fed to the American people by way of yet another corporate machine (the corporate-controlled media). “For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it,” writes Investigative Journalist Nick Davies. So where does that leave us? Americans should beware of letting others—whether they be television news hosts, political commentators or media corporations—do their thinking for them. A populace that cannot think for themselves is a populace with its backs to the walls: mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s time to change the channel, tune out the reality TV show, and push back against the real menace of the police state. If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute. Editor’s Note: John Whitehead is an Attorney and Author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of Constitutional Law, Human Rights and Popular Culture. John Whitehead's Commentary are his views and he is open for discussion, he can be contacted at: johnw@rutherford.org . Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at: www.rutherford.org . Carl Bernstein's 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977 can be found online at: https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977 < Previous News Next News >