Coke/Coke/Pepsi/Pepsi

Never let it be said that I am not susceptible to advertising. We have gone without satellite TV since last spring, but normally hook up in the fall and winter. We’ve been using DirecTV for years now, and like Coke/Pepsi Democrat/Republican, the alternative is Dish Network. The latter offered a device called the “Hopper” that allowed us to skip advertising, and I bought in. Here’s what it does: You must record all of a given network’s offerings all evening on any given night. There are only four choices, FOX, NBC, ABC and CBS, or Coke/Coke/Pepsi/Pepsi.* The scads of cable channels that are so riddled with advertising that they are unwatchable are not options for this service.

Oh well. I got suckered in. We have Dish now, and will for two years. So I watched American television news for the first time in quite a while. Here’s what I learned:

• There was a Syrian gas attack. Embedded therein is the US government’s message – “Syrian.” You might argue that it can mean either the “rebels” or “insurgents,” so called because they have US arms and support (as opposed to “terrorists and death squads,” who also often have US support but act as agents provocateur) but then they would have to say the “gas attack in Syria.” “Syrian” means what they want it to mean: It was done by the Assad government. I can say with some certainty now that it wasn’t, that in fact the weapons in use came from Saudi Arabia and were launched by the rebels from rebel-held territories. Viewers of American news will never be exposed to this information.
• Assad is a brutal dictator. Syria doesn’t have representative government, but then neither do we, or Saudi Arabia or Libya or Qatar or Kuwait or Jordan or Afghanistan or Colombia or Panama or just about any place that we call an ally. The ability of our state-controlled media to focus on one country to the exclusion of all others is remarkable, but then not, as, again, Americans do not have access to any other information. Is he “brutal”? He discussed this matter with Charlie Rose in that interview wherein Mr. Rose grew a set of balls when facing a designated state enemy. He asked Rose to distinguish between terrorists and opposition, the latter having joined the Assad government in opposition to the former. Rose could not comprehend, as the terrorists are officially designated “rebel” and “opposition forces” in our media, and Rose apparently cannot think outside that box. He’s very dense.
• What’s Obama to do? Embedded therein is the notion that “Obama”, our designation for our deep state, has any legal right to do anything. The treaty says “‘Each State Party shall cooperate with other States Parties and afford the appropriate form of legal assistance …“. It does not say that the United States, at its own discretion, shall bomb any country it deems in violation of the treaty. (It might also help if the American public knew that neither Syria nor Israel are parties to the treaty, each fearing the other, both having stockpiles.) Since the United States has been unable to reach an agreement with other states that there has even been a violation by Syria, it has no legal right to act.

What is going to happen? Unfortunately, we will be spending an additional $45 per month in three months to buy premium channels, as regular channels are crap.

Oh, you mean with Syria? I do not know. It appears as though “Obama” has been boxed in by Russia. That does not mean that the US will not attack Syria. It only means that the time frame has been interrupted.

The best way to stay on top of matters, as always, is to avoid American state-controlled news. There’s lots of news everywhere available to us now, but taking in such information requires independent judgment and the ability to weigh sources and assign credibility, and even worse, the ability to change one’s view based on new information. Good luck.
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*I take this to mean, by the way, that advertising is now so well embedded in shows that skipping them is allowed for people who watch network fare.