Summer tends to be the media silly season dominated by sharks and missing white women. But because there is Trump and Republican dominance of government at every level, among other things, the usual summer media obsessions have to take a backseat. In fact, I haven't heard a single missing white woman story this summer, have you?
Something's different. Something's changed.
Without cable news in our house, our media landscape is somewhat different than that of many Americans, but the fact that we watch television news at all means that we're still subject to the propaganda, lies and strict gatekeeping that are big parts of the media landscape. Our preferred television news outlets are Democracy Now! and PBS NewsHour. On Sundays, we tend to watch one or another of the Sabbath Gasbag Shows, though sometimes we skip it. Why bother, right?
It's a rare thing if we watch one of the network news shows or one of the morning shows. (We watch endless repeats of "Laramie" on GRIT instead.)
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! tends to restrict her coverage to those issues and stories she is personally interested in or invested in. She corrals her topics so strictly sometimes that "news" -- as in what's going on now -- is absent while a sort of academic consideration of potentialities and so forth dominates her hour. When you're familiar enough with her ways, this isn't too bothersome, but it can be frustrating.
NewsHour is a more general and standard-model television news program -- with a twist. They have literary pretensions, and they often feature artists and writers who have something to say. Because Ms. Ché is in a creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, she's more than a little interested in that part of the NewsHour.
Both news programs must be conscious of their funders and do what they can, and sometimes what they must, not to cross them.
Amy's funding tends to be somewhat opaque, but it appears to come from Pacifica and a select group of well-off patrons and foundations which seek to ensure that a leftish perspective on the news is at least available to the public if not dominant therein.
NewsHour's funding is much more mainstream. Thus their news is, too, but with that literary/artistic twist that you generally won't find in the typical network or cable news program.
With all that said, it appears that the entire news media industry has collectively decided to normalize the spectacle of Trump-de-do this summer in place of the usual diet of sharks and missing white women.
In other words, whatever he tweets, whatever he does, wherever he goes, and whomever he chitters with will dominate all news cycles of every outlet almost as if he were a shark or missing white woman. We're supposed to be amazed and appalled, I guess.
It's the spectacle that matters most. And making believe it's like any other summer spectacle. Keep the Rabble entertained and unable to focus on what's really going on.
So long as Trump can do that, so long will he be secure in office.
He seems to be doing that with a kind of sharp-elbowed relish that we haven't seen in presidents for a long time -- most of us alive today have never seen it which is why it's so shocking on the one hand, and so entertaining on the other. Mr. Trump has no sense of noblesse politesse.
He's a gangster, and a lot of Americans like that.
He's an upper crust twit. Some Americans seem to like that, too.
He's a buffoon. Addled. Clearly out of his depth, but he doesn't care, nor do enough Americans to worry about.
He obviously doesn't have enough handlers to keep him in line, but so what? The presidency has been so jokified during his reign to date, all the handlers in the world wouldn't be able to restore the "dignity" to the office. That's gone. Precedent has been set. Oh well!
From now on, presidencies will have to include a lummox squiring around a surgically remodeled Stepford Wife, A boy that "ain't right." A craven group of toadies. An ultra-craven group of ideologically driven "disruptors." Incompetence and incoherence will be the standard of rule from the Oval Office. There will be no going back.
I always dread the summer silly season because it tends to shroud the important issues that can easily lead to catastrophe after Labor Day. We've been down this road before. But this is different, I think, because more of those issues are out in the open. The precipitated crisis in the Persian Gulf, for example, over Qatar's "support for terrorism" could very easily lead-- stupidly and inadvertently -- to a Guns of August scenario that could touch off the War of the Ages . Who knew that the Balkan Thing and the assassination of an Archduke nobody liked would lead to WWI for example. The Saudi royals simply aren't very bright, but none of these anachronisms in the Gulf seem to have very much on the ball smarts-wise.
Inject something like the Trump Spectacle into the midst of it, and... whoopsy!
So it goes.
But then, taking advantage of crisis is what it's all about, isn't it? Even if you have to engineer crisis. Somebody comes out on top, no? So let it be...who?
This is all becoming normalized.
I'm such a stick in the mud, I don't like it. Doesn't get my juices flowing.
It's garbage day out here in the wilderness. Have to get m'sef in gear and get the can out to the road. At least we have garbage pick up. A lot of folks around here -- even the fancy ones -- have to shlepp their trash to the transfer station themselves. The way of the world...
Showing posts with label Sharks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharks. Show all posts
Friday, July 7, 2017
Thursday, August 28, 2014
If There Is An Answer To The Epidemic of Police Misconduct
Some have pointed out that the spate of news about militarized police and the repeated shooting/tasing/beating of unarmed, usually black suspects, and the endless lies the police tell the public has to do with the Summer Shark and Missing White Woman news hole needing to be filled.
Summertime is a strange time for the News Business, as shark stories traditionally proliferate, and finding the missing white woman becomes the primary "news" until Labor Day or even after. It's been this way for decades. There is real news mixed, but often the real news is either buried or over-hyped right along with the stories of shark attacks and white women gone missing.
So the focus on Ferguson -- which has now abated -- this summer fits the pattern of the way "news" is covered during the summer. It became a circus, especially as celebrities like Anderson Cooper took up positions along West Florissant Avenue and declaimed their observations of the goings on among the Negroes. I bet until now few outside the St Louis metroplex knew there was a West Florissant Avenue, but now the whole wide world knows. The world knows about the McDonalds where journalists trying to do their jobs were harassed and arrested. They know about the Ferguson Market where Michael Brown is alleged to have stolen some cigars. They know about the QuickTrip that was the first to be looted and burned and which then became the Public Square for the community. They know about the Canfield Drive location where Michael Brown was shot dead by Darren Wilson and left in the street for hours while police with dogs and assault rifles kept the increasingly agitated crowd back.
All this is known all over the world because the incident of Michael Brown's killing became summertime news fodder and was promoted by news producers everywhere, and for a time, it even bumped the shark and missing white woman stories from the headlines.
But... Black men are killed every day in this country, a large percentage of them by police, and very, very few of those killings get the kind of coverage that Michael Brown did. During the height of the protests in Ferguson, for example, Kajieme Powell was shot -- executed -- on a street in St. Louis only a few miles away from Ferguson, shot dead while witnesses watched in horror and a young man in the neighborhood recorded the whole encounter on his video-phone. There was no such immediate and appalling evidence in the case of Michael Brown, despite the numerous individuals who witnessed what happened to him. The camera evidence all shows the aftermath, not the shooting itself.
In Powell's case, there's no question about what took place: police drove up, got out of their car with guns drawn, Powell did not immediately comply with commands and was shot twelve times, six after he had fallen to the ground, and then his corpse was handcuffed to protect the officers from his black evil.
It's all on video.
And though there have been protests in St. Louis over the shooting of Kajieme Powell, they haven't been met with overwhelming force and telegenic police violence like the protests in Ferguson, so they haven't received nearly the coverage of the events in Ferguson.
There were, after all, "riots" in Ferguson, just like the riots back in the '60s. In fact, one of the news stations in St. Louis was hyping the forty-ninth anniversary of the start of the Watts Riots just as things heated up in Ferguson, trying to insinuate that these events were somehow equivalent.
They aren't of course, but what is similar is the nature of the police oppression that led members of these communities to rise in righteous wrath.
Observers might say, "Why would they rise? It's such a nice suburban area!" Yes, well. So it may be -- whether Watts or Ferguson or wherever. The point isn't that it's a nice area compared to the inner city, the point is that the police behavior toward the residents is abominable and in the case of Michael Brown, is contemptuous, disrespectful and deadly.
Any community facing such continual indignities is a potential tinderbox.
If anything, conditions were worse in Ferguson than they were in Watts -- or in many of the other communities that have risen in wrath against police misconduct, contempt and too often deadly disrespect.
If there is an answer, it involves policing that does not destroy lives and communities but which fosters dignity, justice, community and peace.
In the case of Ferguson and many other police forces around the country, that kind of policing is impossible with the present force. That means the police forces of many, many cities must be disbanded altogether.
It happened in neighboring Jennings and it can happen in Ferguson.
I was surprised, however, to learn how many police forces have been disbanded recently.
Among them:
Camden, NJ
Kemp, TX
San Carlos, CA
Millbrae, CA
Half Moon Bay, CA
Maywood, CA
Cornelius, OR
Hoschton, GA
Pewaukee, WI
Mora City, MN
Roanoke, IL
Kilbuck, PA
Highwood, IL(?)
Stillwater, NJ
Paintboro, PA
And apparently many more. Most -- with the startling exception of Camden -- are small towns or villages which had costly, and in many cases highly corrupt, police forces which did not serve and protect their communities but which exploited them for their own profit and gain. Communities simply ran out of money to support police forces of that kind and the councils voted them out of existence, usually contracting with the local sheriff's constabulary to patrol the town or village precincts.
Disbanding police forces is far more common than I would have thought.
And the reasons for doing so are all too familiar: police forces become corrupt, brutal, murderous gangs exploiting and disrupting their communities, and the sane choice is to get rid of them.
So they do.
The way forward is clear...
Summertime is a strange time for the News Business, as shark stories traditionally proliferate, and finding the missing white woman becomes the primary "news" until Labor Day or even after. It's been this way for decades. There is real news mixed, but often the real news is either buried or over-hyped right along with the stories of shark attacks and white women gone missing.
So the focus on Ferguson -- which has now abated -- this summer fits the pattern of the way "news" is covered during the summer. It became a circus, especially as celebrities like Anderson Cooper took up positions along West Florissant Avenue and declaimed their observations of the goings on among the Negroes. I bet until now few outside the St Louis metroplex knew there was a West Florissant Avenue, but now the whole wide world knows. The world knows about the McDonalds where journalists trying to do their jobs were harassed and arrested. They know about the Ferguson Market where Michael Brown is alleged to have stolen some cigars. They know about the QuickTrip that was the first to be looted and burned and which then became the Public Square for the community. They know about the Canfield Drive location where Michael Brown was shot dead by Darren Wilson and left in the street for hours while police with dogs and assault rifles kept the increasingly agitated crowd back.
All this is known all over the world because the incident of Michael Brown's killing became summertime news fodder and was promoted by news producers everywhere, and for a time, it even bumped the shark and missing white woman stories from the headlines.
But... Black men are killed every day in this country, a large percentage of them by police, and very, very few of those killings get the kind of coverage that Michael Brown did. During the height of the protests in Ferguson, for example, Kajieme Powell was shot -- executed -- on a street in St. Louis only a few miles away from Ferguson, shot dead while witnesses watched in horror and a young man in the neighborhood recorded the whole encounter on his video-phone. There was no such immediate and appalling evidence in the case of Michael Brown, despite the numerous individuals who witnessed what happened to him. The camera evidence all shows the aftermath, not the shooting itself.
In Powell's case, there's no question about what took place: police drove up, got out of their car with guns drawn, Powell did not immediately comply with commands and was shot twelve times, six after he had fallen to the ground, and then his corpse was handcuffed to protect the officers from his black evil.
It's all on video.
And though there have been protests in St. Louis over the shooting of Kajieme Powell, they haven't been met with overwhelming force and telegenic police violence like the protests in Ferguson, so they haven't received nearly the coverage of the events in Ferguson.
There were, after all, "riots" in Ferguson, just like the riots back in the '60s. In fact, one of the news stations in St. Louis was hyping the forty-ninth anniversary of the start of the Watts Riots just as things heated up in Ferguson, trying to insinuate that these events were somehow equivalent.
They aren't of course, but what is similar is the nature of the police oppression that led members of these communities to rise in righteous wrath.
Observers might say, "Why would they rise? It's such a nice suburban area!" Yes, well. So it may be -- whether Watts or Ferguson or wherever. The point isn't that it's a nice area compared to the inner city, the point is that the police behavior toward the residents is abominable and in the case of Michael Brown, is contemptuous, disrespectful and deadly.
Any community facing such continual indignities is a potential tinderbox.
If anything, conditions were worse in Ferguson than they were in Watts -- or in many of the other communities that have risen in wrath against police misconduct, contempt and too often deadly disrespect.
If there is an answer, it involves policing that does not destroy lives and communities but which fosters dignity, justice, community and peace.
In the case of Ferguson and many other police forces around the country, that kind of policing is impossible with the present force. That means the police forces of many, many cities must be disbanded altogether.
It happened in neighboring Jennings and it can happen in Ferguson.
I was surprised, however, to learn how many police forces have been disbanded recently.
Among them:
- Gaston, SC
And apparently many more. Most -- with the startling exception of Camden -- are small towns or villages which had costly, and in many cases highly corrupt, police forces which did not serve and protect their communities but which exploited them for their own profit and gain. Communities simply ran out of money to support police forces of that kind and the councils voted them out of existence, usually contracting with the local sheriff's constabulary to patrol the town or village precincts.
Disbanding police forces is far more common than I would have thought.
And the reasons for doing so are all too familiar: police forces become corrupt, brutal, murderous gangs exploiting and disrupting their communities, and the sane choice is to get rid of them.
So they do.
The way forward is clear...
Monday, July 14, 2014
Summer Slaughter Season
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| Map of Europe, c. 1940. The Summer Slaughter Season was under way and wouldn't end for years to come... |
[Note: I found the map above in my collection of maps and atlases a couple of weeks ago. The map is in a Rand-McNally Atlas that was published in 1936, but the interesting thing to me was that the owner of the Atlas had taken a pink colored pencil to it and shaded in the then-current conquests of Nazi Germany. They include Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway. Albania had been invaded and occupied by Italy in 1939, and it is included in the conquests. Also indicated as partially absorbed into the Fatherland are Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland... We know that the Axis wasn't by any means satisfied... Don't forget Spain and Portugal...]
The sharks are in the water. Have you noticed?
The Summer Slaughter Season is upon us, and the various conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere are in full swing. Bloodlust is catching.
Of course the slaughter in Gaza rivets the attention of many among us -- partly because it is so telegenic, what with the constant exploding shells, the running, screaming Arabs, holding the broken bodies that once were their children, and of course the breathless "terror" of the Israelis dashing to their shelters if by chance one of the Gazan "missiles" gets through the protective Iron Dome. (Actually, according to statistics I've seen, most get through. It's just that they land and explode -- or not -- where they have no effect.)
It's telegenic, too, because of the massive propaganda campaign Israelis undertake when they go to slaughter Arabs, a campaign that has only been matched recently by the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev (h/t Saker) as they go to slaughter in the Donbass and along the Black Sea coast, committing atrocity after atrocity, but none as telegenic recently as the slaughter of Arabs in Gaza.
What became of this Ukrainian slaughter? It's still going on, with sieges under way, villages destroyed, hundreds then thousands of dead, millions made refugees. But the news is practically nil. The businesses that bring us the "news" are almost entirely focused on the slaughter in Gaza, for that's where the real action is.
Word has it that the ethnic cleansing an extermination campaign in Ukraine is perhaps going better than planned -- assuming it was planned, and I'm not sure it was -- partly because "Putin blinked" and refused in the end to send more than token assistance (if that) to his Russian/Russian speaking comrades in the Donbass and southeast. The rebels are on their own.
And so, recognizing that they cannot hold out indefinitely, and there's probably no profit in trying to do so, many residents, targets of the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev, are leaving. By the tens of thousands.
Slaviansk fell to the Kiev coup-regime last week, and reports from there have practically ceased. We don't know how many executions there have been, in other words, but given previous indications, we can rest assured that the wet work is proceeding with all due diligence and speed. The armed rebel faction may have abandoned the city, but their collaborators are everywhere within it, no? And how does a bogus government like the Kiev coup-regime establish its authority over resistant areas and peoples? By killing rebels and their collaborators on a massive scale.
See the coup-regime in Cairo for a not-too-long past example.
The killing goes on in Syria unabated, and now the Syrian slaughter -- they say -- has spread to Iraq with the conquests of the ISIS Caliphate which has abolished the border between Syria and Iraq, and is -- they say -- intent on reestablishing the historic rule of the Caliph from Baghdad where once he held forth.
It's an interesting idea. No, really.
There was a time of relative peace and prosperity throughout Araby. It was much more recent than the Caliphate. It was during Ottoman times. Barely a century ago, within the historical memories of most of those in Arab lands today. Anglo-Euro-Americans have no memories of it, because in their histories, they created the Arab nations out of nothing at all; the Ottoman period barely registers.
The arrangements the Ottomans made among the various Arab peoples (and with the Jews too) seemed to work out fairly well all in all, limiting tribal conflict, resolving disputes, providing a reliable sense of security and safety throughout the region for peoples to do pretty much as they wished.
If that or something like it is what the ISIS Caliphate party is trying to re-establish, who am I to say "no?" Except, from reports, it's not. The Ottomans were progressives compared to the Caliphate. Or so we're told. The Caliphate would be going backwards a thousand years, and it would be terrible for the well-being of the people and the region. No, really.
So we, or rather they, can't have that. Must be crushed. And so the anti-ISIS campaign is supposedly under way to re-take the various cities in Iraq that have fallen...
Deja-vu all over again.
We've done this before, haven't we? Wait, wait. We've been on this road so many times.
Fascism/Nazi-ism back in the day was a means of coordinating/uniting fractious Europe's elites and common herd to oppose the Dreaded Communists of the Soviet Union. A rightist form of populism, if you will, intended to do physical battle with the Soviet Bear, which it did with not a lot to show for it.
The Soviet Union dissolved on its own decades after the disaster of the Fascist/Nazi expansion period (with a nudge or two, to be sure).
But now we're in a political/ideological situation where it seems Our Betters believe that the Fascists and Nazis were too advanced, too progressive. Too organized.
Disruption and chaos are now the operative principles of global elites. Disruption in the Middle East and South Asia has been going on for many years, the idea apparently being to prevent any sort of comprehensive -- or even localized -- organization among the Arabs and to disrupt/dismantle any organization among the non-Arabs (such as Persians, Afghanis, and so forth).
Chaos and disruption serve the interests of the High and Mighty, but they cannot do so permanently. At least not historically. At some point, a new status quo has to settle in, but for some reason that is not allowed to happen in the Middle East and adjacent lands.
The current slaughter in Gaza is part of Israel's ongoing attempts to maintain chaos and disruption in its almost-conquered dependencies of Gaza and the West Bank. To what object is the question. How are Israeli interests served by such tactics?
But we can ask the same questions about Iraq or Syria or Libya or Ukraine or pretty much anywhere chaos and disruption -- and slaughter -- are the current ruling principles. How is anyone's interest served more than temporarily, indeed more than momentarily?
There have been more than a few suggestions that the ISIS advance in Iraq is a false flag engineered by the United States in order to disrupt/overthrow the corrupt regime of al-Maliki who was previously installed by the US. That would be par for the course given the way the Great Game has been played from the bunkers of the West for some time now, but there's no telling whether it's true -- or even relevant if it were true -- at this point.
The indications are that the Ukraine Thing was engineered by the US and EU over a long period, indeed over decades, and came to fruition by "accident" when Yanukovych said "no" to EU/IMF demands that would have caused domestic chaos and disruption in order meet them. Chaos and disruption ensued anyway.
Much the same can be said for Syria, Libya, and anywhere else the neo-imperial project is being implemented.
There is no escape apparently; there is no way to avoid the impositions and social/political/economic destruction that ensues.
Much the same was the case in Europe and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in prelude to the American entry into WWII.
While Americans were content to sit back and watch things spiral out of control in 1940 and '41-- at least until the attack on Pearl Harbor -- today, it appears the US Government, or a faction of it, is leading a global campaign of disruption and chaos.
We have become the enemy we once fought against...
Monday, July 7, 2014
While John Cook Vacations...
Once again, things are getting weird at the "Intercept" where, from its launch in February, the hype is not matched by the content and the comments generally provide more actual news -- even if only aggregates from other outlets -- than the rare published items.
John Cook, who claims to be "editor-in-chief", whatever that means, has been on vacation according to reports and cannot be bothered. He's had nothing to say for months about his editorial obligations, assuming there are any.
One doesn't know.
Greenwald made an apparently ill-advised announcement that the long-awaited story he was (he said) "working on" would be published at midnight one day. It wasn't. Instead, there was a breathless announcement that the story would be held until a new government objection was investigated.
OK. So the WaPo publishes an extensive story that doesn't name names but does reveal the kinds of "inadvertent" collections of information the NSA deals with all the time, pretty much stealing Greenwald's thunder in any case. If he ever does publish his grand finale fireworks show -- looking less and less likely by the day -- will anyone care?
Greenwald continues to defend himself and hurl insults and invective via Twitter -- so at least we know he's alive. And according to reports, he's still on book tour and doing teevee appearances, so there is that.
As for the other staff at the "Intercept," with the exception of Ryan Gallagher, they have been mighty quiet since they nestled under the Omidyar wing. They have been remarkably quiet given their prolific output prior to becoming "Intercept" staff. It's almost as if shutting them up was part of the deal. The only one who hasn't been shut up is Marcy Wheeler, who just keeps cranking stories out like sausages, though she's been mighty quiet about why she left the cozy confines of OmidyarLand back in May.
Turns out Omidyar's people have been busy bees at the White House, however.
No surprise there, I suppose, given the Omidyar penchant for global power plays.
It's been my pet theory that someone at the WH called Pierre, just as the missing Jeremy Scahill teasingly suggested might happen, and asked politely that Greenwald's story -- naming names -- be held for the time being. Pierre, being the power player he is, said "Sure, why not?" and had one of his lieutenants convey the message that there might be a "problem" with one or more of the names so... would Glenn kindly look into it? 'Kthnxbai.
Greenwald's defense has largely been one of "protecting the innocent." So he can't name names without revealing the names of innocents, and that would be wrong. Unless they want their names to be named. And then it would be right. So in order to name the names all 10,000 or 100,000 names he has have to be contacted one by one, and that's ever-so-hard, and it takes a long time, and many of them may be indisposed or otherwise unable or unwilling to respond, so what are you going to do? It's such a terrific responsibility, after all. So maybe the best thing is not to name the names, just remark on the categories of those swept up in NSA collections, but we're already pretty certain of what those categories are, so is there even a story here? One that could qualify as fireworks? Maybe so, maybe not. Well, the WaPo thought there was a story, and they managed to get one out, but Greenwald's story is so much better....
-------------------------------------------------
It is Summer Shark and Missing White Woman season once again, and the Missing Greenwald Story fits right in with the season. The Absent Story is a Summer Story its own self, with dozens of mentions over the last week or so. Google it. And then there's Cryptome's cryptic non-announcement that the whole Snowden trove will be revealed by the end of the month. Or not.
It's Summertime...
John Cook, who claims to be "editor-in-chief", whatever that means, has been on vacation according to reports and cannot be bothered. He's had nothing to say for months about his editorial obligations, assuming there are any.
One doesn't know.
Greenwald made an apparently ill-advised announcement that the long-awaited story he was (he said) "working on" would be published at midnight one day. It wasn't. Instead, there was a breathless announcement that the story would be held until a new government objection was investigated.
OK. So the WaPo publishes an extensive story that doesn't name names but does reveal the kinds of "inadvertent" collections of information the NSA deals with all the time, pretty much stealing Greenwald's thunder in any case. If he ever does publish his grand finale fireworks show -- looking less and less likely by the day -- will anyone care?
Greenwald continues to defend himself and hurl insults and invective via Twitter -- so at least we know he's alive. And according to reports, he's still on book tour and doing teevee appearances, so there is that.
As for the other staff at the "Intercept," with the exception of Ryan Gallagher, they have been mighty quiet since they nestled under the Omidyar wing. They have been remarkably quiet given their prolific output prior to becoming "Intercept" staff. It's almost as if shutting them up was part of the deal. The only one who hasn't been shut up is Marcy Wheeler, who just keeps cranking stories out like sausages, though she's been mighty quiet about why she left the cozy confines of OmidyarLand back in May.
Turns out Omidyar's people have been busy bees at the White House, however.
No surprise there, I suppose, given the Omidyar penchant for global power plays.
It's been my pet theory that someone at the WH called Pierre, just as the missing Jeremy Scahill teasingly suggested might happen, and asked politely that Greenwald's story -- naming names -- be held for the time being. Pierre, being the power player he is, said "Sure, why not?" and had one of his lieutenants convey the message that there might be a "problem" with one or more of the names so... would Glenn kindly look into it? 'Kthnxbai.
Greenwald's defense has largely been one of "protecting the innocent." So he can't name names without revealing the names of innocents, and that would be wrong. Unless they want their names to be named. And then it would be right. So in order to name the names all 10,000 or 100,000 names he has have to be contacted one by one, and that's ever-so-hard, and it takes a long time, and many of them may be indisposed or otherwise unable or unwilling to respond, so what are you going to do? It's such a terrific responsibility, after all. So maybe the best thing is not to name the names, just remark on the categories of those swept up in NSA collections, but we're already pretty certain of what those categories are, so is there even a story here? One that could qualify as fireworks? Maybe so, maybe not. Well, the WaPo thought there was a story, and they managed to get one out, but Greenwald's story is so much better....
-------------------------------------------------
It is Summer Shark and Missing White Woman season once again, and the Missing Greenwald Story fits right in with the season. The Absent Story is a Summer Story its own self, with dozens of mentions over the last week or so. Google it. And then there's Cryptome's cryptic non-announcement that the whole Snowden trove will be revealed by the end of the month. Or not.
It's Summertime...
Monday, August 26, 2013
When the CIA Admits to Doing Something Bad, It's Best to Denounce the Secrecy of the NSA
The United States of God Damn has had an abundance of Spookeries for many a long year, sixteen of which -- the last I heard -- are supposed to report to the "DNI," one General James Clapper, Head Spook and Liar.
These reporting Spookeries are said to include the CIA and the NSA, both of which are tasked with surveillance and clandestine operations abroad. Neither, whatever else they do, are supposed to target Americans or conduct operations on the Sacred Soil of the Homeland (I'm sure it sounded better in the original German), but according to the occasional revelation from various whistleblowers and others, sometimes they do.
Bad Agencies!
Well, lately -- very lately -- the CIA (the Spookery that's been mighty silent and on the sidelines during the whole Summer Sharkfest featuring the NSA) has been *coming clean* about operations it engaged in when time was. Such as the Mossedegh overthrow in Iran in 1953 which became the precipitating -- if not the proximate -- cause of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which led to the, shall we say, tense relations between Iran and the USofGD ever since. Oh. The CIA now, 60 years later, admits what's been known for decades. What about Guatamala while we're at it? Indonesia? Vietnam? Korea? The undermining and dissolution of the Soviet Union? Laos -- don't even get me started -- and so on? Hm?
These reporting Spookeries are said to include the CIA and the NSA, both of which are tasked with surveillance and clandestine operations abroad. Neither, whatever else they do, are supposed to target Americans or conduct operations on the Sacred Soil of the Homeland (I'm sure it sounded better in the original German), but according to the occasional revelation from various whistleblowers and others, sometimes they do.
Bad Agencies!
Well, lately -- very lately -- the CIA (the Spookery that's been mighty silent and on the sidelines during the whole Summer Sharkfest featuring the NSA) has been *coming clean* about operations it engaged in when time was. Such as the Mossedegh overthrow in Iran in 1953 which became the precipitating -- if not the proximate -- cause of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which led to the, shall we say, tense relations between Iran and the USofGD ever since. Oh. The CIA now, 60 years later, admits what's been known for decades. What about Guatamala while we're at it? Indonesia? Vietnam? Korea? The undermining and dissolution of the Soviet Union? Laos -- don't even get me started -- and so on? Hm?
Thursday, August 22, 2013
End of Summer Data Dumps and Exemptions From the Police/Surveillance State
As summer gets closer and closer to its conclusion, the NSA is furiously pumping out declassified documents to show... something. Exactly what it is we're seeing will take months or years of combing through and evaluation to clarify. It is in the nature of the beast.
The main issue -- that our lives are being surveilled and we're being spied upon by Our Rulers -- has been known and understood and talked about and so forth for years. We may not have known exactly what sorts of surveillance programs were in place or their names, but we knew they were there, and we knew that our personal lives were subject to all kinds of scrutiny by all kinds of entities, both public and private. We may not like it, but there is little we can do about it if we want to live in the material and modern world. Fact. Of. Life.
This summer's shark and missing white boy story over domestic and international surveillance has caused plenty of uproar and bombast, but there has been almost no effort to curb or restrict or abolish the Spy State under which we (all) live.
What there has been is a continuing effort to carve out exemptions from surveillance and the police state consequences of same. In other words, the continuing "civil liberties" campaign throughout the summer -- beginning with the AP Thing in May -- has been one to provide certain segments of the domestic and global population with assurances that they are not being (routinely) targeted and surveilled and that they will not be held to answer for matters that routine surveillance might disclose.
Starting with the Press and Media.
The main issue -- that our lives are being surveilled and we're being spied upon by Our Rulers -- has been known and understood and talked about and so forth for years. We may not have known exactly what sorts of surveillance programs were in place or their names, but we knew they were there, and we knew that our personal lives were subject to all kinds of scrutiny by all kinds of entities, both public and private. We may not like it, but there is little we can do about it if we want to live in the material and modern world. Fact. Of. Life.
This summer's shark and missing white boy story over domestic and international surveillance has caused plenty of uproar and bombast, but there has been almost no effort to curb or restrict or abolish the Spy State under which we (all) live.
What there has been is a continuing effort to carve out exemptions from surveillance and the police state consequences of same. In other words, the continuing "civil liberties" campaign throughout the summer -- beginning with the AP Thing in May -- has been one to provide certain segments of the domestic and global population with assurances that they are not being (routinely) targeted and surveilled and that they will not be held to answer for matters that routine surveillance might disclose.
Starting with the Press and Media.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Propaganda, Divide and Rule, Deliberate Dissonance and Managed Dissent
We, the Rabble, are highly vulnerable to tactics of Propaganda, Divide and Rule, Deliberate Dissonance and Managed Dissent. We certainly have seen them all employed in the current frenetic Summer Story of the NSA Spying On Everyone In The Whole Wide World!!!!™ But these tactics are widely employed throughout the sometimes strained relations between the People and Media, the People and Corporations, and the People and Government.
Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, played a major role in developing the science of popular opinion shaping and control during the 20th Century, as was incisively described by Adam Curtis in his award winning BBC documentary, The Century of the Self. It is long and detailed, but well worth four hours of one's time to sit through it all. It lays the historical and psychological foundation for understanding why and how We, the Rabble, are so thoroughly propagandized and our beliefs -- and often our actions -- are so completely manipulated by those in power and those who would wish to be in power.
It is very difficult to break free.
There is a certain level of marketing science involved in the control and manipulation of the masses; for example, the principle that fear sells is at the root of many, many product and political campaigns. But there is more to it than that. It's no longer simply or mostly a matter of marketing. The control and manipulation is more for straightforward political objectives -- naked power -- these days, more so than at any time since WWII, when the War Effort overwhelmed every other popular interest at all. But WWII, like practically every other war in history, wasn't a war the People chose; it was one the Power Elites had to have in order to sort out world dominance, Once And For All. Again.
Well, at least for the next several generations. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of "Red" China into the global state capitalist industrial and commercial center, the sorting out has reached a kind of climax.
Who will rule, and how will that rule be exercised over the entire globe?
For that's what's underlying so much of the struggle we see today, between governments and corporations, and between them both and the People.
In this context, the notion of "preserving" the 4th (or any other) amendment is quaint to say the least.
We, the Rabble, are heavily propagandized, we are hopelessly divided, and we face constant onslaughts of cognitive dissonance and managed dissent all in a (so far) successful effort to keep us tame while Our Betters pursue their Glorious Path to Total Global, Final Domination, Forever and Ever, Amen.
The question is who will dominate, that's all.
Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, played a major role in developing the science of popular opinion shaping and control during the 20th Century, as was incisively described by Adam Curtis in his award winning BBC documentary, The Century of the Self. It is long and detailed, but well worth four hours of one's time to sit through it all. It lays the historical and psychological foundation for understanding why and how We, the Rabble, are so thoroughly propagandized and our beliefs -- and often our actions -- are so completely manipulated by those in power and those who would wish to be in power.
It is very difficult to break free.
There is a certain level of marketing science involved in the control and manipulation of the masses; for example, the principle that fear sells is at the root of many, many product and political campaigns. But there is more to it than that. It's no longer simply or mostly a matter of marketing. The control and manipulation is more for straightforward political objectives -- naked power -- these days, more so than at any time since WWII, when the War Effort overwhelmed every other popular interest at all. But WWII, like practically every other war in history, wasn't a war the People chose; it was one the Power Elites had to have in order to sort out world dominance, Once And For All. Again.
Well, at least for the next several generations. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of "Red" China into the global state capitalist industrial and commercial center, the sorting out has reached a kind of climax.
Who will rule, and how will that rule be exercised over the entire globe?
For that's what's underlying so much of the struggle we see today, between governments and corporations, and between them both and the People.
In this context, the notion of "preserving" the 4th (or any other) amendment is quaint to say the least.
We, the Rabble, are heavily propagandized, we are hopelessly divided, and we face constant onslaughts of cognitive dissonance and managed dissent all in a (so far) successful effort to keep us tame while Our Betters pursue their Glorious Path to Total Global, Final Domination, Forever and Ever, Amen.
The question is who will dominate, that's all.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
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