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How Wars Are Made
What could America's top diplomat hope to accomplish with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric? It seems unlikely that the goal was to support human rights in Iran. Because of the United States' history in Iran and in the region, it tends to give legitimacy to repression. The more that any opposition can be linked to the United States' actions, words, or support, the harder time they will have.
Second, it is tough for anyone – especially in the region – to believe that the US is really concerned about human rights abuses. In addition to supporting Israel's collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza, Washington has been remarkably quiet as the most important opposition leaders in Egypt were arrested as part of the government's preparations for October elections. Amnesty International stated that the arrestees were "prisoners of conscience, detained solely for their peaceful political activities".
So what is the purpose of a speech like this? The most obvious conclusion is that it is to promote conflict, and to convince Americans that Iran is an actual threat to their security. Americans generally have to be prepared and persuaded for years if they are to accept that they must go to war. The groundwork for the Iraq war was laid during the Clinton presidency. President Clinton imposed sanctions on the country that devastated the civilian population, carried out bombings, and publicly declared that Washington's intention was to overthrow the government. Although, as we now know, Iraq never posed any significant security threat to the US, President Clinton spent years trying to convince Americans that it did.
President Bush picked up where President Clinton left off; and President Clinton publicly supported his campaign for the war. So did Hillary, and she defended her decision in 2008 even as it looked like it might cost her the presidency.
President Obama is unlikely to start a war with Iran – which would likely begin as an air war, not a ground war – not least because he already has two wars to deal with. But, as in the case of the Iraq war, his secretary of state is preparing the ground for the next president that may have a stronger desire or better opportunity to do so. There is a strong faction of our foreign policy establishment that believes it has the right and obligation to bomb Iran in order to curtail its nuclear programme, and they have a long-term strategy.
The public relations campaign is working. A new Gallup poll finds that 61% of Americans see Iran as "as a critical threat to US vital interests," with an additional 29% believing that it is "an important threat". It is not clear why anyone would believe this; even if Iran did obtain a nuclear weapon, which is still a way off, they would not have the capacity to deliver it as far as the US. Nor is it likely that they would want to commit national suicide, any more than a number of other countries that currently have nuclear weapons.
The Obama team's messaging is not nearly so successful with regard to the issues that the vast majority of the electorate will base their votes on in this year's elections: the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 53% disapprove of his handling of the economy.
For the immediate future, foreign policy concerns will likely rank low, far behind the economy, for the electorate. But the Obama team's foreign policy will hurt Democrats in the future. If I believed what Hillary Clinton and the Democratic leadership are telling me, I would have to consider voting Republican. If it's really true that all these people just want to kill us for no reason; that it has nothing to do with our foreign policy or wars; that we can effectively reduce terrorism by bombing and occupying Muslim countries; and that terrorism is the country's most urgent security threat – then why not vote for the party that looks tougher? This will inevitably come back to haunt the Democratic party, as it did in the 2002 and 2004 elections.
Meanwhile, US military spending – by the Congressional Budget Office's relatively narrow definition of the department of defence budget – reached 5.6% of GDP in 2009. Just before September 11, 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected this spending for 2009 at 2.4% of GDP.
The difference, over 10 years, is more than four times the ten-year cost of proposed healthcare reform.
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Show AllBut dare to suggest to anyone that the treat from Iran is nearly nonexistent -- that it having a nuclear bomb is really worth no more than "So?" -- and people think you mad. The Great Propaganda Machine has done its job yet again. Americans are shaking in their boots about a Persian Threat. Which really doesn't exist. Yet another 1984 fulfillment.
Gary
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
-- Carl Sagan
"Persian Threat. Hee hee hee. This moron thinks a stupid cat can threaten America. What an idiot." - Average American, circa 2010.
Weisbrot makes a pretty compelling case for his thesis that H. Clinton's bellicose statement is "preparing the way" for war with Iran, but I have some trouble with his suggestion that this war will not come on Obama's watch, but on that of a future President with more desire or opportunity.
This provides too much security, in my view, that the prepared-for war will not occur in the immediate future. With the cited 61% of Americans already subscribing to the fallacy of an Iranian "threat" to the U.S., there seems to be rather a tinder-box of acceptance of the idea of war that needs only to be triggered by a single incident: say another 9-11 style attack that could be blamed with as much facility on Iran as 9-11 was blamed on Al Qaeda and "harboring" Afghanistan.
The great danger here is that people and agencies with much "desire" for that war will manage to engineer that precipitating incident as they have both the motive and the opportunity to do so. As I see it(a rather unusual view I believe) our "second war" (in Afghanistan) is fairly close to being settled in the same way Iraq is settled in the new "Operation Dawn" of a troop pulldown with a permanent U.S.military presence and a bribed-out insurgency, so that the U.S. could well be looking for the next "opportunity" to deploy all that firepower that we would otherwise have all dressed up with no place to go.
Yes, the war with Iran is not necessarily left for another president. All it takes is an "incident" to cash in the propaganda.
Pitch Fork: In case you thought I was being overly coy about "persons or agencies" with both motive and opportunity to stage an "incident," see this other headline posted on CD today: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/19-4
Imagine how that story would have played in the media if the hit squad had been Arab, the place had been New York and the political target had been the head of the GOP. A little differently than the bit of six o-clock news I saw that fairly gave a nod, a wink and a big thumbs up to this violation of sovereignty and assassination. No, I didn't think you were being coy.
I don't doubt that the US would like to escalate their military attacks on Iran, what they are doing now consists mostly of small border raids, assassinations economic pressure and propaganda,...But Iran is not Iraq in 2003. Iran is WAY stronger and the US is WAY weaker, their tanks are worn out, their soldiers are burnt out and their credit is maxed out. Even the most misinformed Americans must have at least an instinctual feel that the war machine is overreaching. If Obama does roll the dice, perhaps it means the state of the union is more desperate than we know?
Sioux Rose
PHOENIX: You lay out a plausible scenario. When Bush and his team were doing the great bomb-Iran bombast, many people prayed it would not come about. I thought once Obama got in, he'd keep that target OFF the radar. The levels of violence both parties are willing to consent to (through sold-out "leaders") has already crossed the threshold dividing sanity from insanity. I will PRAY along with others against this sickening possibility. Iran, once known as Persia, is another land rich in culture. The irony is that the more Hillary toot-toots about the dictatorship(s) over there, the more our own land morphs into a fitting demonstration of that very thing.
"irony is that the more Hillary toot-toots about the dictatorship(s) over there, the more our own land morphs into a fitting demonstration of that very thing"
wow! you said a mouthful!
Sioux Rose: Glad you see the "plausibility" of my "scenario" as I respect the wisdom and eloquence you have displayed throughout these comments boards. This situation is going to require "eternal vigilance" lest the powder keg of an impending invasion of Iraq be set off by some untoward "incident." While you're praying, please pray that there will be enough skepticism about the provenance of any such incident to withhold "retaliatory" action until that can be investigated. But beyond the prayer, God helps those....
Sioux Rose
Phoenix: Thanks for the kudos. Last night I watched a newish film with my guy and it featured Tom Cruise playing the role of the general who tried to take out Hitler. I remember back in junior high school reading William Shirer's depiction of the event, the brief case bomb that didn't do THE job. According to the film (and I don't have the grasp of historical events that some in this forum do) there were a number of high placed persons, civilian and military, that understood what Hitler was doing to their nation and risked their lives quite bravely to change things. In other words there was a well-planned insurrection from within.
The film shot a hole through the argument that everyone residing in that nation under miitary control was just a "good German." And I relate the message of the film to our forum because in many ways we are becoming a similar military society and the intellectuals realize what's going on, but have to be very careful. This in NO way means I advocate for taking out the president as I see him mostly as a puppet. Eisenhower let us know who was increasingly pulling the strings, and as we witness the senseless march to war after war and the unapologetic slaughter of more than a million MOSTLY DECENT CIVILIANS in lands falsely portrayed as our enemies, it is this sickness of the military (Mars rules) mindset that is the great ill of our times. THAT is what's in need of a cure. Sadly, Hollywood, the rhetoric rallied over at religious fundamentalist congregations, sports events, and grade school patriotic-style programming all convince the masses that this show of might is what is right. It is anything but... lest the goal indisputably be: M.A.D.
RDRURY: Good posts.
"The levels of violence both parties are willing to consent to (through sold-out "leaders") has already crossed the threshold dividing sanity from insanity."
//begin embarrassing rant
Literally. Seriously. It is maddenly enraging to know that literally lunatics are in charge. NO ONE of the 6.7 billion of us wants war. At least sociopathic if not totally psycho warmongers number in the few thousands worldwide. But they are in positions of political and economic control. Their political and economic power allows them to, so far, control armies whose soldiers mostly come from the ranks of the desperately unemployed. They also control major international corporations. Control of governments is almost nothing more than a sideline to them but just remember they do control and in many cases outright own national governments. Looked at with harsh objectivity. It is warlordism wrought large and worldwide. What was Bush and what is Obama as well nothing more than a warlord. He is increasing war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and threatens "sanctions" against Iran.
"Historians" tell us that "countries evolved inside of geographical and later political and economic boundaries". In reality, aside from the usual semantic spin, some small groups of individuals possessing lots of political and economic power, always enforced and influenced by threats of violence from the beginning, drew some lines on some maps and claimed control of the areas within those lines. It didn't happen overnight. But, today, we have the lines. And, we have groups of people living inside those artificial and arbitrary lines. "Governments" of the areas inside those lines urge and demand that their citizens invade other areas contained within other lines and kill people living there. The reasons given vary, but most causes are said to be against some sort of "ism" or another.
We think we are so sophisticated but we are so primitive that the mind boggles at our arrogance and our ignorance. What a great combination of traits in a sentient (sic) being.
//end e_rant
"Iran, once known as Persia, is another land rich in culture. The irony is that the more Hillary toot-toots about the dictatorship(s) over there, the more our own land morphs into a fitting demonstration of that very thing."
Oh, yes, the latest pitch is that a military government is taking over or has taken over Iran. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Here's a link to a video depicting contemporary day to day lives of some ordinary and some surprisingly unusual people inside of Iran:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24275.htm
Sioux Rose
KENT: Those of us who ARE outraged are healthy because we are still alive to the horrors AND paying attention, even if we can't stop the MIC beast in its tracks.
The post by TOM LARSEN above is very hopeful. I wonder if our enlisted soldiers would turn the guns on the masters who sent them into harm's way without probable or Constitutionally viable cause, instead of on fellow citizens? Now that would be THE revolution worth having, and Goddess knows something like it is inevitable. Lest nature rock and roll to make our continents shake and bake. A fate I don't entirely rule out.
"The difference ,over 10 years,is more than four times the ten-year cost of proposed health care reform."If Mr. Weisbrot is correct in his figures and I think he is being conservative it shows how perverse the priorities of U.S. governance are.The ruling class have abandoned the general welfare of the people, for a permanent war economy against an abstract enemy concept,terror.
In order to con the masses into acquiescing to the attendant suffering of a depression and the loss of the middle class "dream",the war machine must create more enemies, more fear.So our chief "diplomat" must be the chief saber rattler.
How many more tent cities,millions of unemployed homeless undernourished and ill U.S. citizens will it take before this house of cards collapses?
Starve the beast to wage peace!
deleted by author as too far off topic
Weisbrot: The public relations campaign is working. A new Gallup poll finds that 61% of Americans see Iran as "as a critical threat to US vital interests," with an additional 29% believing that it is "an important threat". It is not clear why anyone would believe this...
---
I don't think we can call this "public relations." It is propaganda carried out against us by the military-media complex that believes we exist to serve it instead of the other way around.
I watched CNN install the belief in an Iranian threat. It was shameless. We are in a race to reach that 61%, to get them to question how they know what they think they know. The playbook used for war in Iraq is being reused because no one was held accountable.
This makes me angry. Think of the people of Iran, the brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children - PEOPLE. Think of how recklessly we are manipulated into playing God with their lives. How seamlessly the media can move from Iraq to Iran, from Afghanistan to Pakistan... the hum of the media machine blinding us to the real consequences to people on the other end of our poll, the global police state run amok since the excuse of 9-11.
Actually, "public relations" is Edward Bernays own term for "propaganda" when it became obvious that the Nazi's had rendered the original term unacceptable to the American public.
Watch "The Century of the Self" (available for free viewing at archive.org, or probably YouTube --- do a search for "Adam Curtis" and you will find this doc along with several other highly recommended viewing materials).
I doubly recommend viewing Century of Self. I watched only 2 or 3 parts on youtube. It'll sicken you, but enlighten you too. And you'll have a new appreciation of the phrase "the banality of evil". Bernays is a poster child for it.
Sioux Rose
PITCH FORK: Right on post. I think about the people in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo (although much of their carnage is of their own doing, with the original sparks having been lit by foreign resource-seeking firms) and Palestine... and counting. This is why I try to expose the MIC beast for what it is at every turn. There are so many opportunities waiting for human resources and seed money (as financial backing) that could turn our nation around! It would put people to work, train unemployed youth in ghettos and depressed rural zones, green the nation's infrastructure, and begin the tiring, inevitable task, of reversing the nation's sickening accumulation of dark karma. Before the wounds of the last "enemy" civilian population heal, the military brass is ready to pounce on the next impoverished nation.
There was a line in the old film "Sounder," wherein the family's beloved dog goes off to die... or heal, that says something along the lines of "Filthy beasts fall upon the dead and dying." The implication was that courage meets an equivalent foe; whereas cowardice takes advantage of those who are already down, living AS IF bombed back to the Stone Age. Our nation's record goes beyond what the meaning of shameful can relate.
You have expressed my feelings and my fears. According to this poll, the MIC is within striking distance of manufacturing consent for a war based on lies with Iran. I have powerlessly watched this happen, as I watched it happen with Iraq.
The image of a hydrogen bomb moments after detonation defines the growing intention of power in this world.
Life is collateral,greed is the goal,fear is the facilitator,fiction is fact, war is wonderful and Karma is keeping score.Humanity,morality,lawfully are points for Karma and the US is lost,not losing but lost.Earthly time?Dont know but Karma's presence can be felt.Tony
Isn't the goal to outdo all others in terms of the number of people They will have put to death before they die? Someone is keeping count.
In the NWO, a person is worth how many souls lives they have taken. So what incentive do they have to stop the mass genocide? Of course they need to keep count.
A good analysis, as far as it goes, but the answers to his questions are not that difficult to find.
The powerful controllers of the United States of Global Domination and its allies do not really care what the majority of people want or need. The main obstacle, for them, is corraling a big enough herd of fools to do their viciously indifferent dirty work.
Wall Street and its siblings around the globe will determine when the time is right for further engorging. The inducing of China to further participate in the orgy is the holdup at this point.
The devout followers of so-called "Free Markets" have repeatedly shown their love of deceit and bald-faced depravity in the pursuit of their monetary-greed-lust. The more they take, the more they want.
The most pathetic aspect of all of this is that most people in the U.S., and a seemingly growing number worldwide, still believe that guzzling oil and spewing toxins equals "freedom" and the great fear is the loss of these "rights".
Hopefully, Obama will not go to war against Iran but I'm concerned about the don't change horses in the middle of the stream syndrome that goes back to the Lincoln v. McClellan presidential race in the middle of the Civil War. The military/media powers-that-be love a war economy where they get richer and the poor become cannon fodder. I'm 73 years old and have lived in 4 Southern states. I've often heard in recessionary times that "we need a good war going to make the economy better". The laid off folks can go into the military or get a job in a defense plant.
The danger is that Obama and his slick, sold out advisers like Emanuel, Summers, Geithner et al might revert to the don't change horses in the middle of the stream re-election tactic and get the war with Iran War going to insure his re-election.
That earthquake in Haiti was a really neat stroke of good luck for our empire: we can go there and invade, occupy, and control it without all that bothersome lying propaganda, build up to war, and bombing. It's just SO much more convenient to take over a place that our good friend God has alreay reduced to rubble (he blesses and likes America best, after all). Of course the reconstruction companies and garment factories make out better than the military, but at least we get to put security forces there to beat down the starving masses when they protest. And then there is the rumor of oil...
Clinton's statement that Iran is moving towards military dictator ship was purely for American consumption. Most of the rest of the world knows that there are only two types of Dictatorships in M E, in fact the world over and both types owe their very own existence to US foreign policy.
The first type are the ones that derive their legitimacy from the US not from their own constituency. Their over riding agenda is regime survival and they are willing to subordinate crucial national interests of their respective nations to the whims of the US elite; These are the Mubaraks, the Abdullahs, Oils Sheiks in the Gulf etc.
The other species of Dictators Derive their power and legitimacy from opposing and actively resisting US/Israeli designs....namely the Al-Asads and the Khomeneis.
It is not clear why anyone would believe this? Simple answer is that Americans, brain-washed from infancy by fearmongering religions and fear-based commercials, are the easiest people to scare. Americans are essentially cowards--we drop bombs from drones, we support corporations who stomp on peasants and workers just so we can buy our goods cheaply, we hide behind a massive, immoral military machine, and we support bullying, warmongering political leaders. Americans are afraid of their own shadows. Americans have no moral depth; they are humanoids programmed in superficial religious self-righteousness. Americans have no knowledge of history, so they really don't know why their country starts wars; they have no knowledge of how other people think or live, so they stay silent when their country bombs and destroys other peoples; and they themselves can only think in sound bites, so they continue to elect the politicians with the least to say. Don't expect any critical analysis from Americans. Our school kids are more concerned with social messaging technology than learning, careers or truth. Welcome to the culture of decadent capitalism.
Donna, you need to meet some different people. You are free to write whatever you please because most Americans are not at all like the ones you describe.
Most folks have way too much to do just getting by to weigh in on every issue. Most folks are well aware of how the People have been sold out buy those who under the guise of being American have usurped the Constitution and not honored their sworn oath.
Those are the Americans, sorry parasites though they may be, you should look at more closely.
I basically agree with just about everything Donna says. She strikes at the very core of American exceptionalism. It may sound a bit cynical, but we are brain-washed from birth by fear-mongering religions and fear-based commercials. We are taught to live in fear by those who control us. We do have a superficial religious self righteousness, so we can bomb and slaughter those Islamic infidels, and control their oil to fuel our SUVs and to further enrich Exxon/Mobil and the military/media/industrial complex. Would we be killing innocent folks in Iraq and Afghanistan every day if they did not have all that oil? We are also taught to fear death by our religious institutions but we can be "saved" if we support them and are controlled by them to their enrichment. Just read Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry, or listen to Pat Robertson?
I also agree with just about everything Donna says. I don't know what percentage of Americans fit Donna's description, but there are certainly enough of them that we have a big, big problem.
I would figure about thirty percent fully fit Donna's personification of the "typical" American. That's still 100 million people. Brrr.
But a good percentage of the remainder are largely apathetic and ignorant of the issues we discuss here with such fervor. Their own existences fill their lives so much they are lucky to have the time for a cool one and the network or headline news. So they are unaware of what's really going on. And the people they pal around and work with are largely the same way, and those that try to steer conversations toward important issues are regarded as drags and even nuts. (Though with the Great Recession and Wall Street hi-jinks, more and more people are beginning to pay attention, if in their realization they strike out blindly who can blame them much?)
Then you have two much smaller groups. The elite who know full well what is going on -- as they are causing it to happen. And we representative few who gallantly seek to inform each other and others as well what the real score is and who's losing and winning.
Gary
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
-~ Douglas Adams
Donna is correct, but so is Spike in a way. I invite one to consider the possibility that overworking Americans has made them (us) so fatigued that there is no energy or time left for political involvement.
I forget where I read it (and should have filed it), but an essay several years ago argued that when an empire spreads out and storms other nations, the populace it is most necessary to control, information-wise, is its own. Conquered people have no choice, but only if citizens within an imperial country are misinformed would they tolerate their own nation's tyranny over others. I've thought about it, and it makes sense --- and makes the godawful mainstream "news" more intelligible.
Something else: David Ray Griffin has hit on a key reason that people have trouble accepting malfeasance by their own government. He calls it "nationalist faith". I see it everywhere -- people unable to accept that the U.S. could be anything but "good".
I'm with you Donna. I've live in Europe surrounded by well-informed people who involve themselves in politics. In the US I feel as if I'm in a vast Kindergarten, intellectually speaking. European countries have multi-party systems, so there's a lot going on. The two-party system, so easy to control, is very much at the heart of our problem. Nader is correct that there is a single corporate party with two similar branches.
Donna's message is this: It's time to stop pretending that Merka is great, and start measuring it against a true scale. It's much too easy to "look at the bright side" and forget about the dark side. Donna is saying enough's enough. Stop placing your abused/tortured hope/optimism/pride in the elitevil opiate-dispensing Sugar Daddy: DAS KAPITAL!!!!
Spike's idea that Donna should direct ire at the elites instead has some truth but it's not particularly useful in this context. Average USan and the elites all share responsibility, and most certainly those under sworn oath in high office and those wielding the greatest power have the greatest EFFECT but this does NOT mean they have greater responsibility. If we want a COLLECTIVE movement to achieve a result, then average USans have JUST AS MUCH responsibility as elites.
When the people are too busy fondling their 2012 Lexus SUV brochures to bother tending to their civic responsibilities, this is when we point out the people's responsibility. When the people are frantically bowing down in worship/reverence to almighty elitevil, this is when we point out the elites' chronic/catastrophic failures and destruction.
Sioux Rose
DONNA: You definitely hit a chord. And your portrait is accurate for probably 50% of the nation.
The U.S. bullying propaganda reminds me of the abusive-spouse who always excuses his brutality by stating "she" made me do it. Lots of men buy into this rationale. The U.S. like that abuser, under the direction of the military-industrial complex and those bankers/weapons contractors that make a fiscal killing from war, must rationalize (or seek to) its own acquired taste for barbarity by making the target seem worse than its perpetrator. That's why the media drumbeat is always seeking to demonize Iran, or the next enemy du jour. Without enemies, the MIC would be out of the very bloody profitable war business.
Sometimes I think the basis of this projection of blame goes back to the Judeo-Christian nonsensical myth that it is EVE'S FAULT that Adam ELECTED to bite the apple. And while the allegory is a metaphor (fundamentalist types take it for accurate), the bottom line is that unto the female is projected the responsibility for that act that in theory left this world in sin. I don't believe any of religious propaganda, but since so many do, we avoid examining its influence at our peril. The U.S. professional managers of consent are adept at projecting the shadow for our own nation's increasingly dark deeds. Iran therefore becomes pre-emptively responsible for what the aggressor wishes to do. Perhaps transcending the beliefs in evil, sin, and "other," would go a long way towards defusing the military fuses.
Our elected representatives and officials are feckless incompetents.
And have been for a good long while now.
Period.
Give Clinton a break. She spoke the truth for once. She knows that Iran is "moving toward a military dictatorship" in that the time is approaching that Iran will have a military dictatorship. That is because she and Obombster are planning on installing it, right after they Shock and Awe a few hundred thousand children and other defenseless people in Iran.
"The public relations campaign is working. A new Gallup poll finds that 61% of Americans see Iran as "as a critical threat to US vital interests," with an additional 29% believing that it is "an important threat".
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
Joseph Goebbels
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels
“In politics stupidity is not a handicap.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”
Plato
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
Adolph Hitler
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
John Stewart Mill
CNN's newest poll reveals that 71% of Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapon.
After being fooled into believing Saddam had WMD you'd think the population might be more skeptical.
If this doesn't illustrate how powerful and effective an all-out media disinformation effort is nothing else will.
With 700 radio and 200 television stations in their pocket our corporate controlled government can manipulate the public in virtually any direction they choose.
-------------------
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/19/cnn-poll-american-believe-iran-has-nuclear-weapons/?fbid=pRfUlYPde_E
--------------------
Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period.
Sioux Rose
CYGNUS: Thank you for never tiring of relating this central point. It's key to so much that ails the republic.
How's this for a bumper sticker, "Free speech costs liberty to you and me."
My observation from posting on many boards for many years is that the right-wing defends its dominance of the media with more ferocity than any other subject.
Control of the discussion, and thus the public mind is the greatest weapon of the fascist.
Do a google news search of the Fairness Doctrine and witness a 100-1 advantage of articles against.
The right-wing knows if they lost control of the narrative not only would they all end up in prison but the country would gravitate back to its natural leftward position.
The left will continue to lose on every issue until we realize we must first win the fight to frame the story in our own terms
We must be able to go on the offensive instead of always backpeddling.
We must regain control of the media megaphone.
But the right-wing elite has the power and the money to control large media companies. And even with a "Democrat" at the helm the bureaucratic mindset minimizes NEWS reporting and we get pablum and opiates (as with Sumner Redstone and CBS). Gaining control of the "megaphone" would be impossible in the case of large broadcasters and cable news companies, without really serious jack. Which puts one into the elite club and membership there seems addicting and consuming of the soul. One becomes the dragon instead of slaying it.
We need a decentralized guerrilla-like operation where a magical delivery system allows access directly into the home in a manner to compete with the hypnotic eye of the TV. Something remarkably like the Internet. And we have now already hundreds of news sources not even including newspapers' and magazines' online versions. Even the broadcasters feel a need for online presence but their sites are NOT the first choice anymore for many users.
We may already be choking on the news sources, who can follow more than a few of these in a few hours of surfing (or less, if we figure people might devote the same amount of time on Internet news as with the Fawning Corporate Media, then that's just half-an,hour; maybe a little more, allowing for radio news items, and newspaper time)?
One good thing about the CD discussion areas is the posters cover a large spectrum of sources and share key items. For the sniplets and URLs I thank you all very kindly.
Gary
"If there is NO god, then WHO pops up the next kleenex."
-- Art Hoppe
"CNN's newest poll reveals that 71% of Americans believe Iran has a nuclear weapon. After being fooled into believing Saddam had WMD you'd think the population might be more skeptical."
OMG you would think so, and it breaks my heart to find that the US population has not learned a thing.
If this translates into an approval rating, then it would seem that they have made the US public ready to accept another war based on lies. 71% is enough - easilly. The moment that troops are committed, the "support the troops factor" will turn a 71% approval rating into a 89% approval rating.
This is what I have been worried about for years, and it looks like it is coming.
"It seems unlikely that the goal was to support human rights in Iran."
Does anyone really believe that ANY of these WARS are about human rights?
Please.
Look at Palestine, GAZA to be more exact. If the United States believes in Human Rights, we would not have allowed/Allow Israel to make this happen.
These people in GAZA are absolutely beautiful people being put through some of the most inhumane treatments of a group of people, since ... the Holocaust, and in a sick and twisted turn of irony, by the very race of people who suffered in said Holocaust.
The United States cares not of Human Rights, no where in the world, including our own United States. Because of so called (newly renamed to New Dawn) Iraqi Freedom - suppressed the very freedoms of Americans via the Patriot Act, FISA, TSA, all in the name of freedom and Homeland Security, National Security, whatever.
The Only rights and freedoms the United States government concerns itself with, are the rights and freedoms of the Too BIG To Fail Corporations, the Military Industrial Complex, the federal reserve, these seem to be the only "people" or institutions in this nation that get any rights any more.
These are WARS of Aggression and Occupation, the spreading and building of an Empire, a Military Empire - Not Freedom, Not Human Rights, none of that.
We are going to go to WAR with Iran, be it by the start of the United States or By Israel, but it will happen and it will most likely be the beginning of WW3.
And why? Nuclear energy, Sanctions. Hypocrisy. While we are condemning Iran for the want of Nuclear Energy, or perhaprs nuclear weapons to protect themselves against two nuclear powers, United States and Israel -
We are putting sanctions on them, using threatening rhetoric against them, while simultaneously Obomber is going to give $9Billion U.S. Taxpayers dollars to building 2 Nuclear power plants (they sure would make great targets to attack) and upgrade our nuclear warheads, the very same nuclear WAR technology we tell we want the world to be disarmed of, I guess that goes for everyone except the United States, and Israel, huh?!
Laughable to the point of madness.
Duh ! It is all about the global oil and natural gas markets and future profits for American Big Oil !
Hillary recently visited oil-rich Nigeria which is essentially a military dictatorship catering to American oil corporations.
A number of respected dissidents had just been rounded up and publicly
executed in a very brutal manner, and Hillary failed to address this human rights atrocity.
So now Horrible Hillary has harsh war-mongering rhetoric for Iran !
The reason for this deadly hypocrisy is:
Iran is a thorn in the side of American Big Oil. Not only do they have huge reserves of their own under state control and not aligned with Big Oil, but they are in a perfect position to run pipelines in many directions to meet many potential markets. Above them is Turkmenistan with the largest proven natural gas reserves on earth with a direct pipeline route to the sea through Iran. And there is a proposed pipeline route from Iran to Pakistan and India which would foil the Big Oil plans to run pipelines across Afghanistan for various Asian markets.
I am re-posting the following. Any journalist who does not put these issues into perspective is irresponsible if not a tool of the MSM and MIC and the corporate fascists.
In reference to the Battle For Marjah article:
Article:http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/18-9
gonzonews February 19th, 2010 3:50 pm
Lindorf said:
"What are American forces fighting for in Afghanistan? Hard to say. I suspect many, if asked, would say they have no idea."
Duh...is Lindorf simply an incompetent journalist or unwilling to say there is an energy elephant in the Afghan bathtub that no one in the American media has the integrity to write about?
And 57 comments posted without anyone questioning this omission ?
Try Googling: Pepe Escobar Pipelineistan
Or for the older plans Google: Afghanistan Turkmenistan pipelines UNOCAL
And it is not too hard to find proposed trans-Afghan pipeline maps online.
There are plans for a trans-Afghan pipeline system to exploit Caspian sea oil, Turkmenistan natural gas and oil, and oil from Central Asian countries above Afghanistan. That energy will be marketed, if plans work out, by American Big Oil throughout Asia for corporate profit. And of course this will all be paid for by the American taxpayer with the current bill for the Bush/Obomber Afghanistan war crimes now at about $1 Trillion.
Afghanistan also has proven natural gas reserves, once exported by the Russians, and proven mineral reserves and highly probable oil reserves. Etcetera
A nice historic overview is at:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175071
"And then, of course, there are those competing pipelines that, if ever built, either would or wouldn't exclude Iran and Russia from the action to their south. In April 2008, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India actually signed an agreement to build a long-dreamt-about $7.6 billion (and counting) pipeline, whose acronym TAPI combines the first letters of their names and would also someday deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India"
"What are American forces fighting for in Afghanistan?"
I thunk its to fight Commonism, and the Solvet Union.
Thanks gonzonews for the reminders. Perhaps this picture is in the forefront of our mind but we take for granted that everyone sees it.
The sanctions against Iraq "imposed" by Bill Clinton were just a carry-over from pappy bush's time.
but at least Bill never promised any change.
I just listened to an NPR report about the difficulty our brave troops are having in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Seems those cheating Taliban have been planting IED's all over the area for months and it's just too hard finding them all. They aren't playing by our rules, which dictate that we win every time and no one we attack has any right to self-defense. This is just going to make it all the more difficult to "stabilize" the area, and probably lead to unnecessary collateral damage, lots of civilians killed because our expectations are being unfairly thwarted. Of course not a word about WHY the hell we're there in the first place. Oh right, to rout the Taliban and deliver Freedom to the people. Even when everyone on earth knows the Taliban will just return as soon as we leave and the situation will remain the same, except for a few hundred dead Afghans. Obama the Dunce is obviously too dense to learn anything elementary from history. Somebody get him a good history of the Vietnam debacle, which he's determined to repeat. But I guess they'd have to read it aloud to him and explain what it actually MEANS.