Out on the OP - LP: Comfortably Numb

 

--Moderne Terrorisme 

THE ANSWER: HUMAN BEINGS RAISED TO SPEAK
AN INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGE SUCH AS ENGLISH
HAVE THE FOLLOWING IN
--cryptic ending to, "MS. Found in a Chinese Fortune Cookie,
C. M. Kornbluth 

There's more to life than a little money, you know.
Don'tcha know that?
And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day.
Well. I just don't understand it 
--Fargo (1996) 

Property. The whole fucking thing's about property 
--The Thin Red Line (1998)
_______________________

Being an American today is an overwhelming and frightful reality.

However, tune into the 6 o'clock news and you will see a fusillade of "news" to the contrary: one heavy lead story of the "world out there" will be followed by a bevy of distractions showing you how your fellow Americans are bucking up when their food trucks explode or a tornado snatches the family dog, followed by the final "feel good" conclusion.

Then you are free to follow your usual evening of diversionary programming, numbing you off into sleep. 

We think we are a democracy, but the events of our daily and national lives are beyond our control. When was the last time you, as a citizen, influenced the actions of government through your vote? Here we are in a war on terror, living in a security state of the first order, yet this contradiction escapes us. Life is a text, Tweet or Facebook entry and we think all is good to go.

We are entertained by the story of returning Prisoner of War Bowe Berghdahl, and what kind of a nutcase is he, yet never ask why Qatar was instrumental in facilitating this prisoner swap.

We watch the "civil war" unfold in Iraq, yet never ask the hard questions:

1) What is the Saudi role in Iraq? Ditto Qatar. Since both support the rebels in Syria, does it not follow that they support the Sunni fighters in Iraq?

2) Is Saudi Arabia really a U.S. ally? Do U.S. and Saudi interests intersect? Did they ever?

3) Has Saudi Arabia (S.A.) split off from U.S. policy by supporting an invasion army in Iraq? If so, how does this differ from previous U.S. actions which sought to create buffer zones a la the Monroe Doctrine? U.S. foreign policy has followed its principles since 1945, making the whole world our buffer zone.

The new Sunni caliphate zone being established in Iraq by Sunni fighters of unknown provenance sure looks like the Saudis establishing a buffer zone from the Shia Iraqi state -- understandable, if not justifiable.

Further, the current incursion into Iraq is being peddled as a "civil war", yet for the previous decade the U.S. has denied that descriptor. So -- is this a civil war, or an invasion? Without reliable facts, how do we know the make-up of the anti-government fighters?

If they are foreign fighters, then it is incorrect to call them insurgents, as they are not Iraqis. So who are they?

And more questions:

4) To those who favor bombing Syrian government forces: by adding U.S. air power to the battlefield, we enable the Sunni groups to pull more fighters out of that front and transform to the Iraqi theatre -- how does this benefit Iraq or the U.S.?

5) Is the fight in Iraq really a Sunni - Shia event of a religious nature, or is it an oil - money event?

6) Are the Russians really the bad guys in the Ukraine, and in the Syrian scenario? Ditto Iran.

7) If S.A. can establish a buffer zone in Iraq, why can't Russia establish one in Ukraine? Why does S.A. get carte blanche, while Russia does not?

8) Doesn't the Russian - Syrian - Iranian nexus stand in direct opposition to Saudi and Qatar oil interests regarding pipeline projections to Europe?

9) Why does the U.S. need allies like S.A., Pakistan and all the rest of the jokers we call "NATO allies"?

Sleep well.

[cross-posted @ milpub.]

The Eagle Has Landed

 It also means you could fuck around with anybody
just as long as they aren't also a member.
It's like a license to steal. It's a license to do anything 
--Goodfellas (1990) 

Gonna be some sweet sounds
coming down on the night shift
I bet you're singing proud,
I bet you'll pull a crowd 
--Nightshift, The Commodores
______________ 

Subtitle: National Triage

Sometimes it is easy to doubt that rationality exists in this world.

For example, the United States is now sending troops into Poland. Imagine: In September 1939, world War II in Europe began because the Nazis and the Soviets crunched Poland in their pincers. The war started over Poland and when it ended, Poland was a shell of country dominated by the Soviets.

The war did not accomplish squat for the Polish, and now U.S. troops are moving in -- aren't we 70 years too late?

What rationale can justify pushing U.S. troops East towards Russia? Forget Putin, as we have no control over his actions. What we need to do is to question the rationale for our presence in the region. Are we secretly paying the Poles for providing the U.S. black site prisons in the Phony War on Terror?

Surely Poland has proved itself as thuggish as any of the thugs, and this is said only to acknowledge the fact that there are no Good Guys, the U.S. included.

Why is the U.S. so belligerent and expansive in the Ukraine scenario? How has this become our problem? After all, we tucked our tails and ran from Iraq and Afghanistan, and this was done without the opposition forces even having a military force structure, yet now we want to lock horns with the Russians? [Some interesting commentary can be had at "Ukraine, Unleashing the Dogs of War", and "Ukraine, Through the U.S. Looking Glass".]

Are we insane?

Allow me to tie this into a modern tale of American reality:

I could not sleep yesterday morning, so I took a ride through my town of Quincy to the 24-hour McDonald's for a coffee.

At 0430 there were two young children running wildly and hyperactively through the restaurant, and they weren't customers. They were the kids of an unmarried single mom working the night shift. These kids were there because of numerous reasons, but my point is, why don't we square up our own backyards before casting about to enter problems elsewhere?

Let the Europeans handle their problems and let us focus on things like unmarried moms, inadequate to non-existen Childcare for the working poor, and all the other myriad things associated with our national decline. Does the Butterfly Effect mean, when an eagle flaps its wings in Poland, a single mother in Quincy, Florida, feels the effect?

It's sure not "Wind Beneath My Wings" or "sweet sounds, coming down" on her "Night Shift".

Forget Eastern Europe, let's staunch the bleeding in the Homeland.

Truth is a Pathless Land

The devil and a friend of his
were walking down the street,
when they saw ahead of them
a man stoop down and pick up
something from the ground, look at it,
and put it away in his pocket.

The friend said to the devil,
“What did that man pick up?”
“He picked up a piece of Truth,”
said the devil.
“That is a very bad business for you, then,”
said his friend.
“Oh, not at all,”the devil replied,
“I am going to let him organize it."   
--Truth is a Pathless Land, 
Jiddhu Krishnamurti 

A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war:
wide-awake, with fear, with respect,
and with absolute assurance.
Going to knowledge or going to war in any
other manner is a mistake,
and whoever makes it might never live to regret it
--A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 
Carlos Castenada 

__________________

There has been a sea change in the content and distribution of news since 2006, when we started RangerAgainstWar.

This week, the executioner's hood came down on disinterested reportage on National Public Radio in the form of a program covering Facebook's recent $19 Billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service.

Technology columnist Farhad Manjoo late of The New York Times stated disingenuously that young people don't like that their documentation of every facet of their lives (=doxxing) is being data mined. Did you get that? This suggests that the reason one opens a Facebook account is to protect one's privacy, which is absurd.

The unspoken presumption and agenda was that everyone must participate on Facebook, which is unequivocally false. (Interestingly, Manjoo wrote a book called True Enough, in which he recognized our current slide into what comedian- posing as -journo Steven Colbert called, "Truthiness" -- a way of "feeling the news".) So while Manjoo wrote a book about truthiness, virtually the entire hour-long NPR roundtable on the What'sApp story was an homage to such idiocy, meaning a lack of rigor and a puffy sycophantic awe at the latest toy.

Here's a portion of Manjoo's own truthiness (keep in mind Manjoo was formerly tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal and Slate):

"You know, (What'sApp developers) were adamant from the start that they did not want this app to feel lumbered -- you know, lumbering, sort of weighed down by advertising.

"It has no ads. They sort of have written several blog posts about how they hate advertising. And it also doesn't collect much user data because they don't have advertising. So they don't really need to kind of target you by, you know, your demographics or your location or, you know, any other information about you. So you sign on with very little information. And this is very unusual kind of in the internet industry and unusual -- very unusual for a company that's now going to be owned by Facebook"

I don't know what it means to "sort of have written several blog posts," but what are Manjoo's implications? --

• Idealism is beautiful and making no money from advertising is idealistically beautiful.
• What happened to FB's founder Mark Zuckerberg that he has become this profit-making titan of industry who sells ads on his sites?
• All hail the "advertising-hating" developers of What'sApp who have just pocketed a cool $19 Billion from the sale of their app to an advertising revenue-creating giant (so much for idealism.)

Manjoo called the adamantly anti-advertising stance of the What'sApp developers an "interesting shift", but this is a mouthful of mush for there is no shift whatsoever in media's revenue-making model: advertising is king. The developers just sold their product for $19 Billion to Mr. Zuckerberg, who will gladly get his hands dirty with advertising if the developers won't.

But did anyone else listening to or moderating the program catch these glaring inconsistencies which essentially rendered the program clap-trap? It does not seem so.

This is but one example of agenda posing as information, and it happens every time you read a paper or listen to any media transmission. Today, misinformation and agenda is the norm. Some more recent lies that pop into mind:

The Week Magazine recently wrote that the rise of the Fascist far-right Jobbik party in Hungary must be due to the fact that its members are unfamiliar with its uncomfortable Nazi link. Sadly, no -- more likely the neo-Nazi members are delighted with the linkage, and hence their affiliation. Appealing as it may be to a gentle conscience, we cannot whitewash hatred by explaining it as a function of the ignorance of the practitioners.Hatred is a deliberate choice every bit as valid as choosing for tolerance.

Reporting on the Ukrainian violence, the ABC Evening News added to the case against Ukraine's Prseident Viktor Yanukovich by stating he had been ushered into office on the results of a undemocratic election. This is false, as the election was closely monitored by an international group of elections officials. Whatever claims exist against Yanukovich, they cannot be substantiated by piling on the false one of an undemocratic election.

And there is so much more, on every newscast, in every paper.

Back in 2006, some interesting and informed people landed at the new blog, RAW. One, a Norwegian anarchist, pled, "Tell us what to think, Ranger." We were somewhat amused but also flummoxed: who were we to tell anyone what to think? Our goal then, as now, was to observe and place our observations out there for consideration and dialog.

Today, the reporter's agenda is not merely obscured -- however faintly -- but it is actively championed. Writers like Ezra Klein and Glenn Greenwald are hopping on the bandwagon of providing "opinionated news", and oxymoron if ever there were. At best, it is "benevolent propaganda" ready to tell you how they think, and how you probably should, too.

More on benevolent propaganda soon.