Army Invades Youtube Facebook Twitter Hulu XBox…

Sell, Sell, Sell…

“More smoke, darling.  Oh lovely.  So dramatic.  And, action!”

 Your Soul to the Devil.

Touting yet another incarnation of “the truth of what it means to be a soldier” I doubt the new US Army infomercials, excuse me, “realty show” barrage, will be showing the dismembered bodies, the mutilated people in the conflict zones, the childrens’ corpses, the wheelchairs, the prosthetic limbs or the Nuremberg Statutes, etc.

I considered blowing right by this NY Times ode to the misanthropic marketing efforts of militarism, but then again, one cannot escape his nature.

“Program-length commercials are becoming more popular as part of a trend known as content marketing, sponsored content or branded entertainment. The trend is meant to counter the growing habit — particularly among younger consumers, like the target audience for the Army, ages 18 to 24 — of ignoring traditional forms of advertising.”

Young man:

You’re an idiot, a dupe, and a demographic to be sold a lifestyle of so-called “service.”  That is the job of the ad men of Madison Avenue who relish the opportunity to sell you this vision of the future.  And a number of your brethren will sign on the dotted line, not in blood, but it should be.

“The Army’s advertising agency, the McCann Worldgroup, also part of Interpublic, will undertake a promotional campaign for “Starting Strong” in realms like social media”

…We have to innovate to engage the audience,” Mr. Davis said. “That’s the bottom line.”

Well, if that’s what you’re paid to do, then I guess you “have to.”

“Joining the Army is kind of like dating somebody; you don’t marry them on the first date,” Mr. Davis said. “It’s a decision. It’s a long conversation.”

…The idea to try content marketing came after two “Starting Strong” pilot episodes “did extremely well in testing,” Mr. Davis said.

It’s a long, fucking sales pitch, and you don’t really get a guarantee on the product.  In fact, you’re the product.  They won’t tell you that.  But, you’re harvested.  Your body, mind and soul become the exclusive property of the United States Military Industrial Complex.  That’s the deal.  They offer promises of future money and education, much of the time promises not kept.  Injured soldiers find themselves kicked out on their asses with substandard medical care from the perpetually underfunded Veteran’s Administration.

And after you help out with “the mission” and go to war somewhere, for who the fuck knows what in a place you’ve never heard of, and the bodies pile up, the army doesn’t quite give a shit about your concerns.  And if you blow your brains all over the bedroom wall from the guilt of what you have done to innocents half a world away, well the Army and the Madison Avenue clowns contracted by them don’t care about that either.  Nor if you beat your family to death, become a zombie, drug addled spree shooter or whatever.  It’s really not relevant to the mission … of world domination and threat of good old American force against those arrogant little brown bastards who don’t take orders from Washington.

So have fun.  Have a nice fucking life.

“Based on testing, we’re fairly optimistic this will gain the traction we need…”

Coca Cola, Cars, Beer, Smart Phones, Exercise, Joining a Killing Machine, World Domination, Whatever.  Sell, Sell, Sell.

 

That Fraud On Terror

 

Let’s see.  Russia warned US intelligence, twice, both before and AFTER his trip to Dagestan in 2012 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a terrorist.  Saudi Arabia warned the United States at least once.  The FBI even interviewed Tamerlan, the alleged mad bomber, and his family.  Then for some cloudy, unexplained reason shrouded in mystery and deception, the FBI failed to keep track of Tamerlan when he returned from Chechnya and Dagestan, a known hotbed of Islamic radicalism where car bombs explode on a regular basis.

A casual internet search would have turned up the most radical Jihadist videos and pronouncements, and Tamerlan made himself persona non grata at his local Mosque as well.  His radical outbursts got him booted from the Mosque for being too nuts.

Oh, but FBI never heard of “the suspects” before, and needed to enlist the public’s help to identify them from photographs.

On the other hand, in the case of that terrorist fiend Julian Assange of the “terrorist website” Wikileaks, it’s a different matter altogether.

“At least a dozen American governmental agencies, including the Pentagon, the FBI, the Army’s Criminal Investigative Department, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Diplomatic Security Service, are assigned to the WikiLeaks case, while the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are assigned to track down WikiLeaks’ supposed breaches of security. The global assault—which saw Australia threaten to revoke Assange’s passport—is part of the terrifying metamorphosis of the “war on terror” into a wider war on civil liberties. It has become a hunt not for actual terrorists but a hunt for all those with the ability to expose the mounting crimes of the power elite.”

The Death of Truth

By Chris Hedges

 

Ethos (Free Film)

Woody Harrelson explores the rot at the heart of our governing system.  Documentary shows how public opinion is manipulated and people are distracted from the core agendas of the two-party behemoth.  Not sure if the uploader has the rights or not, so hurry…

http://vimeo.com/64864757

 

 

Divide and Conquer the Congress?

Published at OpedNews.

 

Joe Giambrone

Every time the word “bipartisan” makes it to print the world suffers.  When the two rival political syndicates line up in a row in favor of something, it’s because their masters feel so strongly about the issue that all other concerns are bulldozed away.  The American people are not those “masters,” not by any stretch of fantasy.

Bipartisan deals brought us the Iraq War resolution, the Patriot Act, the continuation of Guantanamo Gulag and infinite drone warfare, the naked aggression and support for terrorists in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, as well as the permission to spy on, disappear and/or execute American citizens without due process.  Bipartisan handshakes erased the right to peaceably assemble and had the Occupy protests beaten, sprayed and hauled off into oblivion.  Bipartisan backroom conversations arranged untold trillions of dollars to banksters, all with the promise of future payments by America’s grandchildren and their grandchildren too.

In 2006 the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) told us that, “Impeachment is off the table.”  This low point in the modern history of that criminal protection racket known as the US Congress sent a clear message to the world: presidential crimes are okay in this new America 2.0.  It didn’t matter if the list of criminal charges from Representative Kucinich were true or not.  The Democratic leadership, in an obvious deal to ignore violations of the Constitution in violation of their own oaths of office, gave a free pass to the Bush regime to continue its policies unmolested, no matter how illegal or immoral they happened to be.

That was bipartisanship.

It was next arranged that the top Democratic contender for the presidency would share this view of presidential power, the protection of war criminals and the cover-up and classification of state crimes.  Enter Barack Obama, a bipartisan wet dream for four years.  Barack told us how he would “look forward” rather than back at the torture, unlawful surveillance and wars of aggression launched by his predecessor.  Barack’s Justice (sic) Department wasn’t so blinkered and narrowed in scope when it came to crucial whistleblowers, however.  For those leaking the evidence of state crimes, like John Kriakou (CIA), William Binney (NSA) and of course Private Bradley Manning (US ARMY), Mr. Obama has easily made exceptions to his “forward” looking posture.  Documentarian Robert Greenwald is currently exposing Obama’s War on Whistleblowers.

Mr. Obama’s forward-looking zealotry applies only when it suits his imperial expansion agenda.  And lo and behold, that imperial project has always been the ultimate US bipartisan endeavor.  Even in the era of Harry Truman (D), we have “policy planning” at the US State Department that is clear, unequivocal and patently immoral and at odds with the lofty rhetoric of politicians at podiums.

“[The US Government] should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers’ keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and—for the Far East—unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

We should recognize that our influence in the Far Eastern area in the coming period is going to be primarily military and economic. We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on.”
–Memo PPS23, George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff. Written February 28, 1948, (emphasis added)

America is not a democratic republic, and is blatantly not a champion of democracy around the globe, as children are indoctrinated to believe.  America is a brutal, global military empire that has steadily expanded its reach and “action capabilities” since World War 2.  Many millions of casualties across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America have piled up in the post WW2 period, thanks in large part to US taxpayers.  With the creation of the “National Security State” in 1948 the US set out on a path of securing its insatiable roster of “interests” in every corner of the globe.  Using its secretive covert capabilities, such as the CIA, Special Forces, SEAL teams and contracted mercenaries, this centuries-long project was, and remains, a clearly “bipartisan” affair.

So is Congressional Gridlock the Only Hope?

Imperial control strategy, which dates back to at least the Roman Empire, posits a divide and conquer method (“Divide et impera”).  Keeping the enemies fighting amongst themselves weakens them and allows the controlling interest to strengthen.  This idea may have some relevance to the current situation with the US Congress.

As complex as modern politics can be, the two sided beast can be set on itself, with resulting self-immolation.  This may be the only chance the population has in the short term, as it seeks to oust the corrupt from high offices, presuming enough of the population is actually interested in doing so.

I’ve smiled more than once these past few days, now that Obama no longer gets a free pass in the media.  After turning his unlawful powers on the Associated Press, he instantly alienated and struck fear into the hearts of the formerly cowed, compliant stenography corps that had ignored so much criminality for so long.  If the crimes of Barack are fair game, then the world gets a reprieve.  If impeachment moves forward, the spectacle will distract these Mafiosos for at least a year.

It seems the more damage these Congress Clowns can inflict on each other, the less they can harm the common people like you and I.  They can only accomplish so much at a time.  We may be spared the Trans Pacific Partnership, more internet censorship, more “free trade” job export deals, more bankster bailouts, more armored troop carriers in the streets and more wars of criminal aggression, at least for a little while.

If the tipping point is reached and lying becomes an impeachable offense again, as with William J. Clinton, then the gloves may come off.  Each side may seek to bloody the other in an ever escalating tit for tat that leads to a flood of resignations, criminal charges and perhaps even a glimpse of that mythical Unicorn called “justice.”

No, I’m not that naïve. But it is nice to dream.

Joe Giambrone publishes Politcal Film Blog (@polfilmblog), and here’s a Hell of a Deal.

Western Hypocrites

How they wailed and moaned over the Houla massacre, one year ago in Syria.  ”Assad the Butcher” needed to be taken out.  ”Diplomats” pulled out of Syria.  Diplomacy with the mad murderer of Damascus was impossible.

How they wept for the 49 murdered children, until the moment it was revealed that the murderers were their own Salafist terrorists.  Then the news disappeared forever.

Syria : One Year After the Houla Massacre. New Report on Official vs. Real Truth

Syria: The First Casualty…

The mass murder crime remains.  The perpetrators are known, and they are being funded and armed by the US and its immoral allies.

And how we trembled at Obama, the great leader’s, “red line” concerning chemical weapons, nerve gas, the terror of “Weapons of Mass Destruction”(TM) in the hands of the evil overlord Bashar Al Assad.

When the gas was released, the line was crossed.  Only swift heroic action by valiant NATO troops and planes could save the poor “freedom fighters” from the clutches of the brute.  It was global news, an hysteria and call for more war.

Then the United Nations determined it was those same Jihadi terrorists again, who had used the nerve gas.  The so-called “freedom fighters” had killed Syrian troops at a security station with the gas.  The lie was exposed once again, and the terrorist’s PR front, all those lying “activists” trained in deceiving western publics were completely discredited again for the thousandth time over the past two years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CpYmUZTTtXM

And silence.  Silence in the US press.

The Orwellian US “free press” is nothing of the sort.  By self-censoring the truth, on behalf of US imperial interests and war propaganda, they are the enemy of the American People.  Turn off that junk noise.  Get the facts yourself.  Do not believe US media, as they are known liars.

Kirk as Obama? Keep Your Barf Bags Handy

“To make Kirk relevant again Abrams has reinvented him as what he wishes Obama could be. Kirk is an Obama trying to lead a recovery from a time of darkness and defeats.”

Abrams’ New “Star Trek” Loaded with Political Parallels: Kirk as Obama

There’s not a lot to go on, I suppose, until Friday.

I will say I’ve been seriously dreading this new “edgier” and “darker” turn in Star Trek, just like every other “franchise” out there making big money.  The old complexities and sci-fi concepts that made the original Star Trek interesting have been replaced by white male revenge fantasies.  It seems the only ideas Hollywood has left to offer the world are how to kill bad guys in new and more explosive ways.  I don’t expect much from studio projects, but I was hoping that Star Trek wouldn’t devolve into the same jingoistic imperial propaganda, masquerading as space opera.  Friday, the verdict will be in.

Of course Hollywood loves the Obama image without even understanding real geopolitics on the ground, at all.  H’weird is a land of great ignorance, like the rest of America, and it reinforces this ignorance with simplistic good v. evil formulas.  Hollywood is a symptom of a sick culture as much as it is an illness driving the race over the cliff.  A people so ignorant, so nationalistic, and so one-sided, who trade rights for false promises of “security” and trade their own morality for empty vengeance — in real life* — can’t remain a functioning democratic republic for long.  That is the natural result of the accumulation of illegitimate power and unaccountable militarism.

America had it all.  And lost it all.  In the end perhaps Americans were too fat, lazy, selfish and stupid to even keep up with the state of the world.  They shirked their responsibility to keep their own government in check and they succumbed to mass brainwashing.  They weren’t the first, and they were warned.

 

---

* “More to the point, two-thirds of those in the current poll still believed the war was justified even if we didn’t find weapons of mass destruction.” -Boston Globe, June 26, 2003

Another $37Bn Down the Rathole

 

 

U.S. Navy leaders were warned last year that a $37 billion program to build Littoral Combat Ships can’t meet its promised mission because the vessels are too lightly manned and armed, according to a confidential report.”  -Bloomberg

 

That infinite vacuum, The Pentagon, guzzles billions like cheap beer while the assholes in Congress want to cut food and medicine to senior citizens who paid into Social Security their whole lives.

Is anyone okay with this?  What is the matter with this madhouse?

 

 

 

“Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists”

You can’t write this shit.  Neocon ghoul rag Foreign Policy Magazine had the stones to literally cheer for Al Qaeda last August, as long as they’re doing the empire’s dirty work.  This nonsense isn’t even hidden, people.  This is what the establishment considers their foreign policy.

 

“So the rebels aren’t secular Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn’t much matter.

…Fortunately, while the Islamist surge will not be a picnic for the Syrian people, it has two important silver linings for U.S. interests.
-Foreign Policy, BY GARY GAMBILL | AUGUST 23, 2012″

 

Three cheers for Tony Cartalucci who keeps close watch on these psychpaths, over at Land Destroyer.  And I’m adding their link to the blogroll.

 

New Link: Anti Empire Report

We have a blogroll on the side bar.  I had neglected to add William Blum’s Anti Empire Report, but have since corrected that.  Blum’s hard hitting reality report consistently shreds the popular corporate myths most people mindlessly live under.

Only the best stuff makes the cut on the blogroll.

 

 

“Kill Anything That Moves”

We fight fascism here, and this is the front line.

“Citing a recent Gallop poll, journalist Robert Sheer reports that “a majority of Americans ages 18-29 believe sending U.S. troops to Vietnam was not a mistake… the young now approve of an irrational war in which 3.4 million Indochinese and 58,000 Americans died…” Holding steady across the age divide, “70% of those 50 or older… with contemporary knowledge…” retain their beliefs in the war’s essential wrongness. “

The real Vietnam war: Kill Anything That Moves, a new history by Nick Turse is reviewed over at Counterpunch. Using a large cache of firsthand accounts by US soldiers on the ground there, this is the wake up call generation dumbass needs to read.

That said, Michael Uhl’s review of the book is far from flattering, with a sense of the one-upsmanship and infighting of the left.  Uhl, a veteran of the war criticizes the young Turse for his limited knowledge and knee jerk myopia.  More from Vietnam era veterans found at In the Mind Field.

It’s often a thankless job fighting the neo-nazism of the current empire. These aren’t the articles, posts, videos, books and films that draw the big crowds. A video called “Beer Boobs” would probably reach millions virally on Youtube, but the descent of the nation into barbarism, mass murder and totalitarianism fails to attract much notice. They say you get the government you deserve. What does that say about the US public?

“…an old lifer Sergeant Major spoke, pointed to us and very specifically stated, ‘These whining, complaining Vietnam veterans will die off. I want to assure you, we have written the history of the Vietnam war your grandchildren will read.’”

If you want to hear what a real hero sounds like, listen to helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson’s account of how he stopped the My Lai massacre by turning his helicpter’s guns on the infantrymen massacring women and children.

US soldier/Iraq: “We are the terrorists.”

“If you go to mental health, you’re gonna get charged with malingering.” -Iraq veteran Ethan McCord

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE7xGrsWZi0

 

“One veteran suicide every 65 minutes now.”-Abby Martin

 

 

 

Et tu, TED?

Betray Friends’ Privacy to Comment?

 

I was ready to “Login with Facebook” over on TED’s website, when their privacy invading app told me they were taking my email address and other info – including my friend’s info and video information.  And I stopped.

Who gives them the right to stick these data mining marketing tricks into their message board?

Fuck you, TED. We live in an invasive, privacy destroying Brave New World of aggressive marketing yuppies with no scruples.  Rudeness is being normalized.  You can’t even have a conversation with a human for more than two minutes without them pulling out some tappy tappy device in the middle of it.  The humans are resembling cyborgs more and more, slaves to the devices.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on Maajid Nawaz’s talk about extremism allegedly running rampant across the globe far and ahead of democracy.  Some of his claims make more sense in particular Arab countries than they apply to the rest of the globe.  Some of his thinking is constrained and limited in scope, and that is the point I wish to make. The talk, and the world view behind it, are completely missing the larger picture of empire, global hegemony by the US and friends.  Behind the scenes the real exercise of power grinds on to coopt and derail popular movements, to benefit extremists when convenient, to fund and arm military dictators, which is very often convenient, to protect brutal human rights abusers when they provide strategic benefit, and etcetera.  This is not a new or novel understanding.

The Arab world in particular should know well the machinations of Uncle Sam in propping up oil dictators and overthrowing the disobedient ones.  Iran’s actual democracy was destroyed in 1953 by the CIA, and even admitted to.  This is not covered up today. Nawaz focuses a lot on Egypt, without mention of US support of Mubarek right up until his ouster by one of their torturer friends in the Egyptian military.  The Egyptian military receives more than a billion dollars in so-called military “aid” every year, $1.3Bn as of 2010.  What are they purchasing with this graft? Pakistan has also received much.  Saudi Arabia and Bahrain receive quite shockingly positive media when their people rise up demanding democracy – and are brutalized, tortured and imprisoned for their efforts.  US leaders smile and change the subject. To fail to mention any of this obvious undemocratic imperial meddling is a credibility killer, in my view.

Nawaz himself is a former “extremist,” already taken in by one set of dogmas.  One wonder if this new prevailing democracy myth he ascribes to is similarly processed in extremist fashion? As far as fighting for democracy and against Islamic militant extremism, we again must examine the facts on the ground.  In 1979 the Mujahadeen, the precursor to “Al Qaeda,” were created, armed, trained and imported into Afghanistan to overthrow the pro-Soviet government.  Decades of horror and destruction followed, which persists to this day.  That particular US supporting of extremism was launched under Jimmy Carter of all people. Today, the Al Nusra Brigades in Syria are doing the empire’s dirty work.  These absolute extremists, with a blood drenched record of terrorism that exceeds Al Qaeda’s record already, are part of the current imperial strategy to topple dominoes.  Al Nusra is supported directly and unequivocally by US client regimes Saudi Arabia and Qatar and are hosted and given free passage on NATO state Turkey’s territory to invade Syria next door.  US CIA are also on the other Syrian border in Jordan, arming and training fighters.

How does any of this fit into the picture that Nawaz paints during his talk? His is a sin of omission.  The myth prevails rather than the reality.  I’m all for democracy and promoting it, but let’s not close our eyes and play fools.

And TED, you can go to hell for daring to demand personal contacts from people commenting on your website.  Have some shame and some tact, basic etiquette.  To talk to you in the street you first demand my mother’s Facebook posts, and which videos she watches?  And my sister’s dog photos?  Can I say my comment then?