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| From The Independent |
Dan Brown’s Inferno introduces The Consortium, a secret organization pulling strings behind the scenes. Brown says the company is based on real groups.
“There are a number of organizations like the Consortium. They essentially create alibis for people, or fictional realities. They make it easy to tell a very convincing lie.
Whether it’s the Vatican, the White House or Microsoft—they all need to manage public perception and sometimes that involves creating illusion or shaping the truth.” Dan Brown, Bloomberg, 13 May 2013
Below from Inferno.
Below: Need an Alibi? One Company's Got You Covered, NPR
Speaking of managing public perception, how about this latest Anthony Weiner For Mayor of New York City ad. And at his website, you can read his 64 Ideas to Keep New York the Capital of the Middle Class.
“There are a number of organizations like the Consortium. They essentially create alibis for people, or fictional realities. They make it easy to tell a very convincing lie.
Whether it’s the Vatican, the White House or Microsoft—they all need to manage public perception and sometimes that involves creating illusion or shaping the truth.” Dan Brown, Bloomberg, 13 May 2013
Below from Inferno.
Available online, businesses with names like the Alibi Company and Alibi Network made fortunes all over the world by providing unfaithful spouses with a way to cheat and not get caught. Promising to briefly “stop time” so their clients could slip away from husband, wife, or kids, these organizations were masters at creating illusions—fake business conventions, fake doctor’s appointments even fake weddings—all of which included phony invitations, brochures, plane tickets, hotel confirmation forms, and even special contact numbers that rang at Alibi Company switchboards, where trained professionals pretended to be whatever receptionist or contact the illusion required.
The provost, however, had never wasted his time with such petty artifice. He dealt solely with large-scale deception, plying his trade for those who could afford to pay millions of dollars in order to receive the best service.
Governments.
Major Corporations.
The occasional ultrawealthy VIP.
To achieve their goals, these clients would have at their disposal all of the Consortium’s assets, personnel, experience, and creativity. Above all, though, they were given deniability—the assurance that whatever illusions was fabricated in support of their deception could never be traced to them.
Whether trying to prop up a stock market, justify a war, win an election, or lure a terrorist out of hiding, the world’s power brokers relied on massive disinformation schemes to help shape public perception.
It had always been this way.
In the sixties, the Russians built an entire fake spy network that dead-dropped bad intel that the British intercepted for years. And more recently, the world had been led to believe that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq.
Below: Need an Alibi? One Company's Got You Covered, NPR
Speaking of managing public perception, how about this latest Anthony Weiner For Mayor of New York City ad. And at his website, you can read his 64 Ideas to Keep New York the Capital of the Middle Class.
