Pretty amazing rant in The Atlantic Magazine, November 1945. It’s so quotable, and so little has changed over the decades, that it’s a great read on the economic relationships and their impact on creativity and talent.
“The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.”
President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.
The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation.
He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed…
(CNN, Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes, Jan. 29 2002)
Firefighter Erik Lawyer demands a new investigation. Firefighters for 9-11 Truth strongly supports AE911 Truth in their struggle to secure a new independent investigation.
“The reality is that it was a criminal investigation to cover-up the crime.”
George Orwell’s 1984 has been rendered obsolete by the realities of the modern security state. Big Brother, perhaps the most important metaphor of the twentieth century, has now ascended through the proliferation of the Internet, its essential place in modern life.
Winston Smith was, if you remember, a newspaper editor. His job at the Ministry of Truth was to erase all news from all archives that conflicted with the current “reality.” By precisely excising offending passages and throwing them down the “Memory Hole,” to an incinerator, the newspapers maintained the “truth” that the all-powerful state fabricated on a day by day basis.
Those were the old days.
Look what the BBC just deleted from its own website:
The short of it is that the “Free Syrian Army” (sic) use prisoners as unwitting suicide bombers, a war crime. These rebels have committed numerous other war crimes against civilians, but this one is striking in its actual broadcast and then scrubbing from history. It got the Winston Smith treatment (MORE).
Lest you assume this is a purely British matter, The New York Times was also caught erasing passages from its reporting concerning CIA support to the Al-Qaeda connected “Free Syrian Army” (sic).
So far NINE versions of the NYT article, “France Says It Would Recognize Provisional Syrian Government” have appeared on the Times’ website.
VERSION 3:
While the United States, Britain and other Western countries have called on Mr. Assad to resign and have supported the opposition with nonlethal aid — and American intelligence agents have helped funnel arms to rebel groups — they have not explicitly stated they would recognize a provisional government formed by Mr. Assad’s array of political enemies.
VERSION 4:
While the United States, Britain and other Western countries have called on Mr. Assad to resign and have supported the opposition with nonlethal aid — and American intelligence agents have helped to identify the rebel groups that receive arms — they have not explicitly stated they would recognize a provisional government formed by Mr. Assad’s array of political enemies.
A fictitious “reality” is maintained. The CIA doesn’t actually “funnel” arms to the heavily-armed, western-supported Syrian mercenaries and Jihadists. Does anyone actually believe that? Numerous reports show heavy US involvement, and of course the involvement of close US allies and client states like Saudi Arabia. In what universe is the US not responsible for arming these rebels that it supports in every conceivable way, including UN resolutions introduced to bomb Syria on their behalf as was done in Libya in 2011.
The complicity of major corporate media outlets like the New York Times and the BBC in this cover-up and publishing of an endless stream of war propaganda, is arguably a war crime in and of itself. The war propaganda enables the warmakers to initiate and follow through with hostilities against foreign targets, actions that are Crimes Against the Peace under international law, a clear breach of the UN Charter.
A tense, emotional historical drama that I recommend. Der Tunnel tells the story of the very first tunnel from West Berlin into East Berlin, expressly for the purpose of smuggling out loved ones from East Germany. The characters are driven, to the point of obsession, into accomplishing an almost impossible task without any industrial or government sponsorship.
What is most resonant about this film is the political question at the heart of the matter. People are risking their lives and even dying in order to get out of the Soviet-controlled East Germany. The East Germans constructed a militarized wall in order to keep their own people in, as opposed to keeping invaders out. This reality is at the core of the issue and is the backdrop to everything that springs from it on screen.
The infant police state, the STASI, is also portrayed, and a sophisticated cat and mouse game plays out, supposedly true to the real history. The Tunnel is a well done true to life film where the ending is very tense, exciting with a twist that leaves you on the edge of your seat.
A few other good, very cinematic, historical re-enactments include The Lives of Others, Valkyrie, Sophie Scholl, The Bunker, Carlos and Ip Man.
Endless war, endless war crime, the US bipartisan death machine has no intention of ending this fiasco for the foreseeable future. Romney and Obama will both continue sacrificing the lives of US troops and Afghan civilians in pursuit of dominance in Asia. David Swanson sums up the war so far.
As immoral as it is useless and ineffectual, a full 70-75% of the American people want the Afghan debacle to end immediately. It will not end, however, because this is not a true democracy and the will of the people is incidental. The ruling class decides which monsters will be permitted to succeed in power, not the people.
P.S.
Many Americans are very, very ignorant and misinformed about terrorism. They use the T word as a blanket excuse for all crimes waged by the US on the world stage. See this article for a minor epiphany:
Josh Fox of “Gasland” follows up his investigation of natural gas fracking with an expose on the lies, the public relations, the secret documents and the corruption surrounding this issue.
FREE
Also ARTISTS AGAINST FRACKING has formed to save New York’s water supply from the proven contamination these types of wells produce.
From the you-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me files, I find 2016: Obama’s America playing in not one, but two local theaters today. Well, that’s a quandary wrapped in a dilemma. What is this obvious election-season propaganda, and who’s behind it?
In trailer 1, we learn that what concerns the filmmakers doesn’t appear to be 2016, but 1982 and black people in Africa. The blackness, front and center, and the plight of Africans gets a highlight. Here the filmmakers attempt to make a point that Barack Obama has something against “colonialism” and his real agenda (not actually in evidence in the real world, but hey, it’s right wing masturbatory fantasy time), the current president’s real agenda is to “downsize America.”
This is an interesting claim to make, seeing how Obama has been more competent at shoring up the empire than his inept predecessor could hope to be. The claim also seems to imply that colonialism is a good thing, and that America should be expanding its empire because of that uniquely American word “liberty.” You see, if you say the word “liberty” then you can simply colonize others for their own good, and baby Jesus smiles.
Apparently the creation of AFRICOM has no bearing on Obama’s claimed drive to end colonialism – which we’re supposed to be against? We’re supposed to be against a fantasy that’s not occurring, because Obama is for it, deeply related to his blackness and African heritage. Oh yeah, then cue the Middle Eastern music in the soundtrack. Crank it up loud as Obama proclaims, “Change has come to America.”
George Orwell might have opted to just shoot himself in the head at this point.
Some black children then fight one another irrationally over a game of Monopoly. I’m gonna need a psychologist’s interpretation of that one. Dissonance rules this piece, and it is apparently not intended to make any sense.
The poorly-mixed audio then continues over shots of “Wall Street.” Yes, Wall Street repeatedly appears, as a symbol of – what exactly? Is the implication that Obama has opposed Wall Street, its rape and exploitation of the American sheeple as well as its ongoing depredations around the globe? Seriously? Fantasy two: Obama is destroying Wall Street?
A piece of propaganda so incompetent, so detached from reality has little chance of fooling a literate, thinking people. As for our co-citizens, however, all bets are off. He is black, yes. His father was African. Case closed.
“America must grow so liberty grows.”
Really? What is the real-world meaning of this line? Where are we “growing?” With U.S. military bases in the majority of the world’s countries, which direction are we to “grow” next? Fascist empires have proclaimed their naked desire to rule the world before. This film seems to champion this idea unabashedly. Code word after code word obscures the real meaning these people mean to impart. The saddest thing is that Obama himself is on board with their concerns and is in no way opposed to these aims. This is kabuki theater aimed at uneducated, irrational viewers. There doesn’t appear to be any truth in sight, whatsoever, the ideologues behind this piece so deluded by their own bullshit that they couldn’t make a valid point if their lives depended on it.
That leads us to trailer 2 of “2016: Obama’s America.” Here we are informed, much as in the first propaganda, that Obama’s roots trace right back to Kenya. Hide the children. Then Obama’s first sin, the federal budget had been stalled for a claimed “1,000 days.” Really? That’s Obama’s plan to destroy America. He rejected the right-wing extremists in Congress for some time and forced them to negotiate. Eventually they rammed their cuts aimed largely at the lower classes and the needy down the nation’s throat while protecting their billionaire paymasters from any sort of new taxation whatsoever.
But it is Obama, we are told, who is “pitting one class of Americans against another.” One would have to be from Mars to be swayed by such gibberish. The utter incompetence of this hit piece is its most striking feature. It really is the product of a billionaire’s PR machine, written by sycophants to please their demonic overlords. The film should tour with neurosurgeons offering free lobotomies at kiosks in the theater lobbies. Or at least offer free alcohol if you’re going to subject people to such an assault on reality.
Trailer 2 closes with golden boy author Dinesh D’Souza, warning us, “Nothing can rob the future as much as the debts of the past.” That over Obama in Kenya again presumably at the grave of his father. It’s really his father’s plot to keep the billionaires from further cutting their taxes. If only the billionaires could pay zero, or negative taxes, “liberty” would swallow the universe. And blackness would be put in its rightful place.
Oh yes, there’s a trailer 3. Did you think you were off the hook yet?
We’re back in Kenya, back in 1982, because that has so, so much to do with America in the year 2016. Kenya, the seat of global domination and hegemony for our solar system is the cornerstone to understanding the great mysteries of planet earth today. This trailer version seems to be almost identical to the first one, with the voice over quality improved somewhat so that the words are better deciphered.
“Which dream will we carry into 2016?”
The black African one or the white one?
As false dichotomies go, this garbage should frustrate the hell out of people with multiple working brain cells. They carefully avoid making plain factual statements, placing their propaganda in the realm of questions, grand visions, vagueries.
Perhaps they’ll fleece the ignorant poor white-wing who consistently vote against their own interests. Such customers are numerous. The Tea Party will make much of this nonsense, but no one will touch on any of the realities of the day. That’s guaranteed.
Writer/director Dinesh D’Souza is a slick operator. His book was called, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.” Rage? Black must equal rage in some lexicon. The claim is as false as everything else in this moronic mind wash. Dinesh hails from the American Enterprise Institute, the minor leagues for wannabe plutocrats. He knows from which direction his cash flows.
I pity the anti-fascists who will sit through this assault on intelligence for educational purposes. The central theme of the piece can be summed up in this one sentence from D’Souza’s Rage book:
“This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
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