The Truth According To Wikipedia

A documentary on how the web 2.0 “revolution” is kaput. Old news, but essential watching for those interested in the issue. Will blog on this later.

meet the new boss, same as the old boss

The New York Times has come out with a really good article with supporting video that looks at how the Pentagon manipulates news and information to their advantage, and did so during the revolt of several generals. This is a continuation of a a pretty important issue that I’ve written about in the past:

“The BBC has a report on the “Information Operations Roadmap” which…

…calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military’s ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

Here’s a PDF of it. Read it for yourself. This is part of the Rumsfeld plan to control information, as David Miller put it:

The concept of ‘information dominance’ is the key to understanding US and UK propaganda strategy and a central component of the US aim of ‘total spectrum dominance’. It redefines our notions of spin and propaganda and the role of the media in capitalist society. To say that it is about total propaganda control is to force the English language into contortions that the term propaganda simply cannot handle. Information dominance is not about the success of propaganda in the conventional sense with which we are all familiar. It is not about all those phrases ‘winning hearts and minds’, about truth being ‘the first casualty’ about ‘media manipulation’ about ‘opinion control’ or about ‘information war’. Or, to be more exact – it is about these things but none of them can quite stretch to accommodate the integrated conception of media and communication encapsulated in the phrase information dominance. [...]

Traditional conceptions of propaganda involve crafting the message and distributing it via government media or independent news media. Current conceptions of information war go much further and incorporate the gathering, processing and deployment of information including via computers, intelligence and military information (command and control) systems. The key preoccupation for the military is ‘interoperability’ where information systems talk to and work with each other. Interoperability is a result of the computer revolution which has led to the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’. Now propaganda and psychological operations are simply part of a larger information armoury.

Such is the state of affairs in a country run by the war business. Truth is the first casualty.

war made easy… but you pay the price

Ralph Bernardo of Disinformation posted this trailer clip for “War Made Easy” and thought it worth sharing:

bush speak versus reality

At this juncture, pretty much everything that comes out of BushCo. is a lie. They just don’t have anything else it would appear.

Film director Milos Forman, who lived through the occupation of the Nazi’s and the Soviet Communists in Czechoslovakia said of propaganda that the obvious stuff never worked. It was the sub textual stuff that worked. This is the obvious stuff. Excerpts from Bush’s speech today with responses:

Because we acted, Saddam Hussein no longer fills fields with the remains of innocent men, women and children.

Saddam is believed to be responsible for the death of an estimated 200,000 Iraqi’s during his three decades long regime. (Not including pinning all the deaths from the Iran / Iraq war on him, since he received tacit support for this war from a number of countries, including the US.) The US led war in Iraq has been responsible for the death of nearly 90,000 Iraqi’s in a short five years, so far documented. Does genocide beget genocide?

Because we acted, Saddam’s torture chambers and rape rooms and children’s prisons have been closed for good.

Saddam’s torture chambers may be gone, but in spirit replaced by Abu Ghraib, and rendition in Syria and Egypt. Orphanages in Iraq proliferate, estimates by Iraqi authorities of millions of orphans abound, and barbaric treatment of children during the US occupation has been in the news.

Because we acted, Saddam’s regime is no longer invading its neighbors or attacking them with chemical weapons and ballistic missiles.

Which doesn’t preclude the USA threatening to invade or attack Iraq’s neighbors.

Because we acted, Saddam’s regime is no longer paying the families of suicide bombers in the Holy Land.

Meanwhile, it’s okay for the US to bribe jihadist groups not to fight, groups which had previously killed Iraqi civilians and US troops. And, it’s still under investigation whether some portions of the Iraqi insurgency and possibly AQI was actually funded by billions of US dollars gone missing.

Because we acted, Saddam’s regime is no longer shooting at American and British aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones and defying the will of the United Nations.

IED’s and suicide bombers both continue to kill both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians nearly every day.

Because we acted, the world is better and United States of America is safer.

The US border is unsecured, so who knows who is coming and going and for what reasons, the Iraqi border is unsecured, the dollar is falling, the economy is in trouble, banks are failing, oil is up and down, the Chinese invest a trillion dollars yearly in US Treasury bills while the US economy continues to accumulate debt while not producing enough to balance it out, a major US city is devastated and the country lacks the resources to fix the problem, nuclear proliferation is still rampant around the world, anti-American sentiment is at a high world wide, an innocent man can be killed by mistake on a plane and people say it is okay, but we are safer because a thug turned despot with delusions of grandeur, who we were told was close to building a nuke but was not, is now gone.

And, if you are a member of the club, you are making billions.


Don’t ya feel dirty?

ciao tucker and other stuff for a monday

  • Why it took MSNBC so long to cancel Tucker Carlson is a mystery. His ratings have been bottom barrel consistently since launch and Carlson managed by sheer force of arrogance, personality and intellectual flatulence to produce one of the most routinely mundane, prosaic and mendacious shows on the air. Not to mention that he openly supprted terror and proffered a general perspective towards the free press that can be best described as totalitarian. Jon Stewart was right.
  • Bill Maher notes that it would be impossible for George W. Bush to be in any way behind the 9/11 plot for the simple fact that Bush is a moron. But, of course, all good plots need a fool. Just sayin’.
  • Glenn Greenwald links to fellow former Jakeneck grad Julian Sanchez’s excellent analysis and “dissection” of the GOP talking points regarding the FISA issue. Really essential reading…
  • Cheney and the Iraq Energy Task Force…

    …the weed that won’t die. Jon Taplin gets down to brass tacks. (via Boing Boing)

    There is obviously something to this… Not like it’s a state secret that the US needs and wants Iraqi oil. It really says a great deal about conservatives and others who have never really been able to readily admit that the entire reason the US is even involved in the Middle East or Iraq or Afghanistan is oil.

    Personally, I’d have a lot more respect for all the keyboard commando’s and the chicken hawks if they simply admitted this fact outright. But, they do not, as if doing so will cross some line in the sand where only real and evil fascists go, a line they’ve already crossed anyway.

    This is why they spend so much time trying to convince the world that it’s the other side that are the fascists. Sad.

    And, lest we forget, Cheney’s planning to invade Iraq prior to 9/11 is one of the numerous points listed in Bruce Fein’s well thought out article on impeachment of the Administration for violations on a number of levels.

    FISA, Telecom Immunity and the Fearful Fascists

    Keith Obermann comes out with it and calls Bush a fascist. And, a liar.

    Fear is the Fascist’s favorite tool.

    fog of war redux

    Be sure to click on the featured video on the upper right. It’s a clip from Errol Morris‘ film “The Fog of War” featuring Robert McNamara going over the finer points of waging war on a foreign people, and interestingly, points which were pretty much ignored/forgotten/unknown /not applied to the run up to the current war in Iraq.

    And, people doubt that we evolved from monkeys. Here’s your proof.

    words of wisdom from douglas rushkoff

    A gem over at Douglas’ blog, in the comments. For the “wish I’d said this” collection:

    Our resistance movement, such as it is, is buried in the minutia and manufactured paranoia, and missing the big picture. And this makes it even easier for the fascists to do their business

    .

    If people really understood how serious and backwards it all is, they’d also immediately realize, (as one does in times of great danger) that there is no time for folly such as paranoia. Our instinct for survival kicks in. But, I fear that all too many are diffusing their instincts with mind games.

    brother martin on war

    Speech by Martin Luther King Jr. on the war in Vietnam, but applicable to all war. Timely and timeless.
    Note his comments on those who would equate dissent with disloyalty… “a dark day…”.

    make that monkey tail twitch

    Paranoia is meant to be managed, and knowledge helps maintain a healthy perspective on paranoia inducing information…. some links to kick start your heart this cold day.

  • Facebook’s onwers aren’t necessarily who you think. My feeling on this is simple: I don’t care who knows what I think. It’s out there. But, personal information should be personal, so be careful what information you make available. Common sense.
  • The corporation that can monitor peoples biological and emotional responses for it’s own use is the stuff of science fiction, or is it?
  • Not that any thinking person needs to have further evidence that Jonah Goldberg is a twit, (old news) but Dave Niewert does a fine job of making that point whilst also educating about Leo Frank. A must read.

  • media consolidation primer

    Watch the featured video in the right hand corner. A nice primer on what has been going on with media consolidation since 1996.

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