Media: the new god
influencing minds remotely from afar

As a young college grad I learned it was easier train people with a TV than it is to train dogs with treats, that's when I quit watching television, in the early 1970's. I quit reading newspapers in the summer of 2010 because I could no longer separate facts from false propaganda posing as news. Boycott false and misleading corporate news propaganda, real info eventually makes it to the web.

It would seem that the government's slogan should be: shoot first and ask questions later. Unfortunately it would appear that our less than courageous corporate media choose to avoid asking any unpleasant questions about the killings that are committed overseas by the United States as they apparently believe, for some unknown reason, that the information that they are receiving from the Obama administration and the military is going to be the truth.

But as former U.S. senator Hiram Johnson once accurately noted, The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.

Another relevant quote would be this:

"Almost all propaganda is designed to create fear. Heads of governments and their officials know that a frightened people is easier to govern, will forfeit rights it will otherwise defend, is less likely to demand a better life, and will agree to millions and millions being spent on 'Defense'."-John Boynton Priestly [1894-1984], English writer

One facet of this story missed by Mr Sirota is...how much money did that missile cost? Who made it...who profited from its sale?

Robert Fisk, in his excellent book The Great War for Cvilization, tells of tracking the source of a deadly missile that killed a number of Arabs in Lebanon to a firm in Virginia. He then went there and confronted some suits in a well-appointed boardroom and watched/listened as they squirmed and hemmed and hawed denying any responsibility for the carnage their work had produced.

That is another aspect of detachment. Hey...we're not responsible for what other people do with the stuff we make. But what else is a missile for but to kill and main? To terrorize?

"War is only good for those who make and sell the guns..."
---John Gorka

Suspected insurgents? Does that mean people suspected of thinking about resisting illegal invasions and occupations? War ON terror? More like a war OF terror. Sick and obscene.

At least NPR is trying to correct itself.

It's easy to do when you know they are all Muslims.

Drones are nothing but terrorism on a bigger budget.

Excellent quote by Hoh. Our corporate media are now lap-dogs to Wall St. and the MIC the way Tony Blair was George Duhhbya's little pet.

The questions this article raises that should be (but never will be) publicly posed to our hack politicians by our so-called "free press" should include some additional ones:

1) Is the U.S. any longer capable of running a peace time domestic economy that does not annually break previous U.S. GINI coefficient records of outrageous income disparities, wealth over-concentration and pressure-cooking racial and class bigotry?

2) How many more times will Charlie Rose even allow Zbigniew Brzezinski or any other foreign policy wonk onto his show who dares say things like, 'The Russians, and for that matter, the Chinese are delighted to see us expend ourselves on these un-winnable wars.' Rose looked like he was going to crap a brick when Zbig made that remark and, typical to form, Mr. PBS fascist-lite immediately changed the subject.

3) When the Republicans either intimidate President Oquisling into an illegal war with Iran, or take the White House in '13 and trump up their own war with Iran, and it fails to create enough jobs inside the U.S., what will be the neo-liberal bipartisan excuse for long-term unemployment at that point and will Amurkans STILL be stupid enough to buy it?

Hearts and minds, mixed with the blood stained rubble of homes and villages. We are all guilty. See you in hell.

from the article:

~ This is news-as-spectacle, the ultimate effect of which is to reinforce the reader's powerlessness. ~

I would go further...this is meant to create, in one's own mind, the frightening image of drones attacking one's own neighborhood...to instill domestic terror, not impotence...

innocent families elsewhere are being murdered, amputated and bloodied for no apparent reason...why not yours?

does no one else immediately wonder when these things will be over their home? do you know the guy piloting the thing personally? I don't...

btw, Obama's joke to the JoBros (two words: predator drone) was doing exactly the same thing...he was actually threatening everybody listening...everyone in the country...

I hope after 3 months of personal study, Las Vegas Judge William Jansen, who will be ruling on the Creech 14 trial on January 27th, will have the balls to rule in favor of the 14 defendants. It would have immense ramifications for the Pentagon. I will be there in solidarity with the defendants.

Arendt best described this with the phrase "The Banality of Evil".

one aspect of "drone" is that of mindless worker bee - one who faithfully performs the function of serving the queen.

it is not too great a stretch to see not only the whole notion of warfare, but in particular this remote, detatched killing, and the reading of it with no discernable effect, as the selfsame phenomena - a lazy, spoiled, stupified and heartless nation. one too prone to rationalized violence, with much too much propensity to spectate.

there will be no great movement thwarting this reality. those of us who can barely see through the "fog of peace", and all the warfare that promotes that fiction, are consigned to the corner for some "alone time." the moment we have even the slightest effect, the drones will will do their job.

we're all collateral "damnage."

resist!

love like there's no tomarrow, because you never know.

Written pre-drone, but apt.
----------------------
Impersonal or Personal
by
Steve Osborn

In days of old, when knights were bold
War was a personal thing.
Hacker and hackee stood face to face,
And skill wore the blood of the loser.

We are modern, now, and war to us
Is a distant thing of interest.
We watch the box, the press debriefed,
And kills tallied up on the screen.

Bomber pilots from eight miles up
Remark upon the air,
How the bombs they drop, like flowers bloom,
In a garden far below.

We seldom hear from the target zone;
Those peasant lands below,
Where death rains down without a sound
Then shakes the ground with wrath.

Nowhere to run and no place to hide,
Collateral damage, they died.
Firestorms rage and suck the air
From the child who can’t even scream..

And later the village rubble is strewn
With calcined bones in the sun.
And no one knows which belonged to whom;
The wind scatters the ash to the hills.

The Pentagon proudly reports to us all
That still more terrorists are dead.
And we all must believe what we’re told, you see,
For we hear no protest from the ground.

Then a distant echo from Vietnam days
Breathes quietly into my ear.
“It’s sad, but we had to destroy that town,
To save it from the evils of Communism.”

1 September 2003
----------------------
And it just keeps getting worse...

These drone strikes are pacification through terrorism. The US
government is the by far the biggest and most soul less and vicious
terrorist organization the world has ever seen. Hitler, and Stalin
have nothing on Obama. They don't care who they kill, in fact it's
better if they kill innocents it increases the effects of the terror.
Pacification through terrorism is what the US military does, it's
all they do. Dating back to the Philippines an 1902 it's what they
do to advance the mission of protecting the interests of American
corporations and banks. Step one, offer them money, that doesn't
work then try and destabilize their government (recent colour
revolution in Iran) by murder and economic sanctions and finally
invade them and terrorize the civilian population into submission
so American companies can rape and pillage their environment and
economy. It's what we do, it's who we are...

Nice. You're in good company, like George Orwell's:

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."