Ciphers

Regarding Ciphers:

In the parlance of communications intelligence, a cipher is a secret message deliberately encoded to mislead unintended recipients.

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Ciphers are often used to disguise messages encoded to mislead virtually everyone, whether they be citizens, consumers, stockholders, employees, voters, viewers, readers, Internet junkies, students, patients, or parishioners. They are a sophisticated form of lying and deceit—one of the most important instruments of mass manipulation and social control in our culture. A person, such as a political leader, who transmits misleading messages is also a cipher.

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To some ciphers are world-class bloodsuckers who exploit our vulnerability and our inability to cope with the human condition. Ciphers tell us what to believe, how to live, how to raise our kids, how to work, how to play, how to make love, and how to die. From them we also learn what to buy, how much to pay for it, and when to replace it, as well as where we will work, how much we will be paid, and what working conditions will be like. We call this “freedom.

Cipher is also a synonym for zero, indicating a value of naught, symbolizing nothingness and a hint of nihilism. It can refer to a person or a thing of no importance, a nonentity. Ciphers stand for nothing. Thus a person, a place, a thing, an idea, or a message may be a cipher. But in our culture, some of the most important ciphers are politicians, TV advertisers, the Internet, text messages and money.

True freedom is not believing zero.  How many of us are really free?