As we learn that the administration is considering mobilizing against ISIS, and bombing Iraq yet again, just a few questions:

• What is ISIS?: We don’t know but you’re going to look pretty stupid if you’ve never heard of it.
• Why is ISIS attacking Iraq? You’re kidding, right? First, we don’t even know ISIS exists, and you’re wondering about its objectives?
• What’s to be done? Bomb Iraq. Like always.

Wag the dog, shall we?

”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.” (US Secretary of State John Kerry, concerning Russia)

We always have to ask ourselves, when public officials make such odd-sounding statements as Kerry’s above, “Who is the intended audience?” In this case, Kerry was on Face the Nation, a US news talk show, and so knew his audience would not be surprised by the remark. It was intended for effect, and had no substantial content. That’s all those shows exist for – effect.

This from Moon of Alabama:

Obama mentor and Russophob Zbigniew Brzezinski seems to push for escalation of the situation as he envisions U.S. weaponized “urban resistance” in Ukraine against an (unlikely) Russian invasion. His rant includes this most hypocritical beauty:

“Above all the president must clarify why we cannot tolerate an international system in which countries are invaded by thugs and destabilized from abroad.”

Ahem.

This quote is from Politico, and again intended for an elite American audience. The Sunday news shows and Politico are organs of propaganda for our more politically astute subculture of college graduates, political scientists, and people who like to stay abreast of the news. These people naturally do not believe in propaganda, or at least know that it has no effect on them. The American state propagandists are aware that in order to reach someone, that person must first be convinced that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. Convinced of their own superiority, the audience members for these two outlets are absolutely the easiest target for the lies being told. Hence, Kerry and Zbig know what they are saying, who they are saying it to, and what they are after.

The effect, as far as I can guess, is to instill a sense of moral superiority in the audience as the US goes about its usual criminal bullying abroad. Support from the intellectual classes is an important pillar of American imperialism – it is absolutely essential that these people buy in. Hence they are special targets of Sunday TV and outlets like Politico.

The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. (Alex Carey)

I stumbled upon the above words years ago, and only now have followed up on Carey’s (1922-1987) work. He was a misplaced sheep rancher in Australia who had strong academic leanings. (Raising “sheep” would later seem apropos.) He studied propaganda, but most of his work was unpublished due to an early death. He noticed that around 1970 American propaganda was creeping into Australian society. In academic fashion, he did research into the origins.

So I spent my down time in Yellowstone reading “Taking the Risk out of Democracy,” a collection of his essays. Most of our current attitudes are a manifestation of earlier work by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). That robust group ran education campaigns from the early twentieth century forward. The only two serious threats to corporate power in our society are government and unions. NAM demonized both, convincing even those who benefited from unions that they were a force for evil. Those attitudes are omnipresent now in our culture.
Continue reading “The origins of Americanism” →

It bears repeating that any time we see a movie that uses U.S. military hardware, the script has been approved by the Pentagon and they had a representative on-site to make sure that nothing un-American slips through. The Hollywood-Langley-Pentagon connection is as deep now as even during World War II. Very little escapes the censors.

Anyway, I am pleased to announce that the following letter was printed in CounterPunch Magazine, the print edition, June 2013, Vol. 20, No. 6:

Ed Rampell’s excellent piece on CIA and Hollywood collaboration was highly informative. He does not mention it, but I wonder about the voting process when a mediocre film like Argo secures a best picture award over an artistic achievement like Lincoln. If the agency is working the producers up front, are they also working the AMPAS voters behind the scenes?

I can think of no other reason for the award. Argo was poorly acted, Affleck was a stiff. Green screens were so obvious that it felt like a Hollywood set. I laughed out loud at the contrived airport scene.

I was shocked at rave reviews, and no less so when it got the best picture nod. I remember feeling that same shocked surprise when Bush won in 2000.

On a deeper note: American embassies house CIA stations, an open secret. CIA was deeply entangled in the Shāh’s pre-1979 Iran. The people extracted seemed to know to meet and find shelter away from the embassy during a crisis. The Canadian embassy was probably a prearranged destination. The agency had to have been extracting its own people for security reasons. I cannot imagine any other reason for such drastic measures. Rescuing innocent civilians is not CIA’s charter.

I do not know the magazine’s circulation or reach, but assume it is much less than the Atlantic Monthly, where I had a severely redacted letter printed one time many years ago. Rampell’s piece was called “The Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Entertainment Complex: Hollywood’s Year of Living Clandestinely. Unfortunately, it is behind the subscription wall.

This video is an hour and one-half long, so obviously I do not expect anyone to watch it. I listened to it as I was doing other things today, and enjoyed it.

It’s an “Asian” (read DPKR) view of American propaganda. As with all good propaganda, it is factual for the most part. I think some of the numbers cited are probably wrong, but why quibble about details when the piece is, like all advertising and politics, done only for effect. It spins a nasty view of the US and our consumer culture and zombie-like TV-dazed and ignorant population. (11% of our youth don’t know where the Pacific Ocean is? I hope they don’t live in California.) The voice-over woman, who sounds like Tokyo Rose, knows all of our names and faces, games and attitudes, leaders and charmers. She even know Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Bradgelina, Madonna (somewhat dated on that one), computer games, advertising and other names and faces I’ve never heard of and dammit I’m an American. Who the hell is “Jordan?”

Of course, references to Great Leader are odd – is that part of their culture? Here we say “The One.”

It made my day. If by chance you do view it, you have an advantage in that you know going in that it is propaganda, something you lack when you watch American news and entertainment.

It is apparent from listening to this that Koreans know a whole lot about us, while we know nothing about them (or anyone else, for that matter).

It appears that the long-awaited attack on Iran is near. Massive “war games” are underway in the Gulf, and the Israeli Defense Forces are on cue assembling on the Lebanese border and in Golan Heights – the ongoing attack on Syria has spread to Lebanon. (Syria, Lebanon and Iran are the three remaining countries on the list of seven that the Bush Administration set out to topple. Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Iraq have already fallen.)

The film “Innocence of Muslims” is psychological warfare, and was interjected into Arab culture to spur uprisings that justify a massive western response. The (likely) false-flag attack on the American embassy in Libya has stirred up the fear machine here in the home of the brave. The psy-op people have been working nights.
Continue reading “The game is afoot?” →

I wish to point out something painfully apparent, something swirling all about us but to which all seem oblivious. It is this: Campaign rhetoric does not translate into public policy. During election cycles politicians hire public relations and advertising firms, and these are the ones who craft the talking points. They poll, research attitudes, use focus groups and psychology. But none of this is done with any notion that the result might be a new law or citizen initiative. As soon as the election is over, it all vaporizes.

Advertising, to be cost-effective, cannot dwell on individual traits. Rather, it must focus on groups. Let’s go back to Edward Bernays and his book on advertising, “Propaganda” (about advertising, and not what we now call propaganda, an offshoot. The word “propaganda in his time was not tainted as it is now.):

The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible manipulation of motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter* and Le Bon**, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas***, Walter Lippmann****, and others who continued with searching study of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understood the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?[Footnotes are mine.]

It’s the group, baby. Just the group. That’s all that matters – move groups into voting blocs.
Continue reading “There is no “I” in “Group Psychology”” →

We were in Europe on August 6 when it was reported that a helicopter had been shot down in Afghanistan and that on it were members of Navy Seal Team 6, the unit that supposedly killed Osama bin Laden. I did not see the story, and only heard about it maybe two weeks ago. This week, while driving up to Montana, it seemed a good time to find out what happened there. The August story was widely reported with most saying that 38 men had died, maybe 22 from Team 6.

Right away my eyebrows rose to new heights. This is not only startling news, but highly coincidental. It was the largest single-day death toll for Americans in the ten years of that invasion/occupation. And it just happened to be Team 6.
Continue reading “The Death of Team 6” →

While remarkably successful at home in producing a dumbed-down population with a servile intellectual class, US propaganda has never been effective abroad. Consequently, it resorts to military attacks, the objective of which is to remove the virus of anti-American ideology from places by destroying the vessels that carry it. If US-style “capitalism,” which is nothing of the sort, could stand up to “socialism,” which is real, Vietnam, South and Central America, Iraq and Iran might have escaped the violence that was rained on them in past decades.

Translate Hillaryspeak. She’s saying that our message doesn’t play well. Her answer – throw more money at it.