News chops

imageI was curious about how much self-awareness Brian Williams, NBC news anchor, possessed. He did an hour-long interview with Alex Baldwin on a WNYC radio show called “Here’s the Thing.”

The answer: He’s pretty much, as I suspected, clueless. Television news only requires perceived gravitas. The radio interview was two actors who made the big time.

Williams hopped around colleges, Sarah Palin-style, finally amassing 18 credits before jumping ship to intern in the Carter Administration. His real talent is projection of sincerity as he reads a TelePrompTer. When something really important happens, a demanding part of his job is to stand near where it happened. He likes the camera, the camera likes him.

Williams regards himself as serious news guy because he decides the order of presentation of stories and writes much of his own script (often during commercial breaks!). He reads both the New York Times and Post.

People o our sort …

imageAn interesting phenomenon seen when we have a perceived transfer of power in our country is “changing partners,” where Republicans and Democrats reverse positions on issues. When Republicans were the titular heads of the executive branch, for example, Democrats were concerned about deficits, and Republicans silent on the matter. In 2008 they switched partners, and deficits became a matter of serious concern. Democrats used to oppose acts to terrorism like torture and rendition, and are now a fervent and aggressive war party.

Most people just do this blindly, but intellectuals are not so lucky. They have to offer justification. That leads to another phenomenon I call “pretzelling,” where no matter the policy, no matter that it is identical (or more extreme) than that of the other party, they will wrap their brains around it. They find ways to obfuscate, justify, and as seen below, will ridicule those who easily see the contradiction.

Below is a quote from Polish Wolf (see comments below the post in this link), who for five years now has been dissecting US military aggression, finding that under Obama it is being intelligently managed.
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The key that could unlock our cells

One of the themes that Chomsky returns to habitually is that of the power of repressive systems. The Soviet Union, during its heyday, had legions of spies and informers, but the undercurrent of humor was always present. People living there knew they were in a totalitarian system, and never really bought in. They were told what to believe, and most pretended to believe. (The intellectual classes, true believers, glommed on to power just as they do here.) The threat to the power system there was extant throughout – not that people would learn of their condition, but rather that they would organize. Consequently, the repression of the Soviet state was most effective in spying on its own people.

What brought them down? It was not Ronald Reagan, for sure. I have no special insight, but have heard others say that mere knowledge of life outside the USSR had a large role. Kids knew about music, cars and consumer products, and were restive. The Soviet Union collapsed with hardly a whimper. The people, wise to their leaders, were also unified. No government can survive long without popular support. In other places like Prague and Budapest, similar uprisings made it clear that unless they were willing to engage in massacres of historic proportions, the game was up. (Similarly, in Iraq, the US was forced to withdraw its troops and close down its bases, as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were in the streets telling them to go away.)
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Our gang

As the right wing circus celebrates the passing of the brutal dictator Hugo Chavez, life in the free states under our jurisdiction goes on:

Saudi human rights activists sentenced to 10 years in prison

Two human rights activists have been jailed in Saudi Arabia for inciting rebellion and misinforming foreign media. A Riyadh court sentenced Mohammed Fahd al-Qahtani and Abdullah Hamad to 10 years each. As members of the banned ACPRA pressure group, they had called for the introduction of elections and a constitutional monarchy in a state that forbids political parties altogether.

Stay out of my Facebook exchange

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Yes, he is that Michael Brown.

Michael Brown here. It’s FRIDAY! Another Caption This Contest. Considering that Hugo Chavez is still dead, and his funeral is being held today, here’s today’s photo. May the best – or worst – caption win. The winner gets…a pair of passes to Ski Loveland! Have fun!

Contest entries follow by the dozen, a few examples:

Michael J. Titera Book Title: “How To Fake Your Own Death”
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A challenging puzzle

Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.” (John Derbyshire)

Swede brought the above quote to me in a comment in another post. I’m a little concerned about that man, as his intellect is locked away in a steel trap, sealed off by hatred and inaccessible to him. He reads some, has exposure to a wide array of YouTube videos. That speaks of long obsessive hours online. The way the Internet is constructed now, post-Google, allows each of us to follow our own passion without exposure to the uncomfortable, even sane, reasoning of others. Google suits our fancies.

I did a quick Wiki-hit on Derbyshire, hardly fair to the man. There’s obviously been some furious back-and-forth editing going on there, and as Bryan Schweitzer reminds us, we should never judge a man when he is at his worst. Derbyshire did work for National Review, after all.
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Why are we having this discussion?

nationalsecuritystateA concept that is very useful in understanding politics is this: Individuals behave in one way, but groups of individuals in another. A group has characteristics quite apart from the individuals that make up that group. The key understanding that came out of group dynamics in the early twentieth century was that group behavior could be manipulated even as the individuals within the group were not aware of it.

That’s a large part of what advertising does – to identify groups and manipulate them. Political advertising is no different – group manipulation. When you hear a phrase like “soccer mom” or “NASCAR dad,” you are hearing the results of intense study of our society so that the advertising agencies that work for candidates know how to fine-tune their work. Advertising works, and the most discouraging part for me is that there is no connection between behavior of office holders once elected and the advertising that got them elected. Once the campaign is over, the office holders go back to work for their employers, the people who financed their campaigns. The public goes back to sleep.

Group dynamics is so advanced now that anything can be sold to us under the right conditions. 9/11 was an orchestrated event, a self-inflicted wound. It induced a mass psychosis, and thereafter any poison could be sold to us to salve our wound. Without knowing the inside wisdom, it is easy to see that never-ending war was a big part of the objective, as was passage of the USAPATRIOT ACT, which essentially repealed the Bill of Rights.
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Hugo Chavez, a job well done. Rest in peace

But it seems the good they die young. (Dick Holler, Abraham, Martin and John)

It’s the quality and not the length of a man’s life that counts. If a man is assassinated while he is fighting to save the soul of a nation, his death contributes more than anything else to its redemption. (Martin Luther King)

campaa_en_caracas_04_fb__3946I’m not going to look this up, as I understand the sentiment well enough that it stands without citation. Fidel Castro warned Hugo Chavez early in his career to be careful, that the United States would use democracy to bring him down. If you stop reading there, the message will be lost. Castro was not saying that our shadow leadership lurking behind our symbols of democracy actually believes in any of that stuff. Get real. He was saying that Chavez would have to play by the rules, while the US would not. He would have to fight fire with fire, and in so doing would be at a disadvantage. His every move would be publicized while those of the US would be kept secret.
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Testing 1 2 3

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OKC
One legitimate criticism of the work of Dr. Judy Wood is this: If such weaponry as directed energy that caused the destruction of seven WTC buildings on 9/11 existed, it would not be born as an adult. There would have to have been tests and smaller events during its development. After all, before Hiroshima, the Nevada desert was used as a testing ground.

We know hardly anything of US military activities around the world – if I were to guess, something like 1% might be visible to us, the rest hidden from view, unknown here in the land of the free and oblivious. Unknown unknowns are the rule.

But there was an anomalous event of suspicious nature at took place on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City – the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed. The deed was done, we are told, by Timothy McVeigh and accomplices. He went quietly to his grave, like Iago defiant and unwilling to talk. I remember at the time of the bombing an odd-duck right-in-my-face contradiction: TIME Magazine had an artist’s sketch of the crime scene, and in it was a large hole in the ground in front of the building that was created by the fertilizer bomb. The problem was that actual photos of the crime scene, as opposed to the drawing, showed no hole.* (See above.)
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The old “non-lethal” gambit

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High-profile people in high office in DC are just filling slots, but the policy output from those offices does not change nor is it original with them. Replacing Colin Powell with Condoleezza Rice with Hillary Clinton with John Kerry is merely shuffling of personalities to the podium to announce policy initiatives that come from inside the bowels of the Pentagon, CIA, “defense” contractors or Wall Street, or any combination thereof. The office Secretary of State does require a lot of traveling and face time with foreign personalities, and so is a good career choice for anyone unhappy in marriage or just wanting to travel the world. No doubt Bill Clinton was thrilled when Hillary took the job.

“Secretary of State” John Kerry announced that the US will deliver $60 million in “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian “rebels.” Those quotes are there to help you see through the mist.

  • Kerry, having served intelligence interests since his days as a war protester (infiltrator, “op,”), is semi-retired now.
  • “Non-lethal” aid is only the aid we are allowed to see. Real aid – bombs for terrorist attacks, chemical weapons, guns and mortars are either sent to Syria on the sly or routed through another country, like Israel, Poland, or some other complicit client state. (That’s the old ,Nicaraguan “Contra” ploy, where their weapons came from Israel, Iran, Czechoslovakia, South Africa).
  • And the “rebels” are run by western intelligence, and probably consist of fighters trained in Libya, Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, perhaps Guantanamo and other places. Often, when used for other purposes, they are called “Al Qaeda.” They are run by Americans, Brits and Israelis. Since Syria is a former French colony, it is logical to assume significant involvement by them too.

The attack on Syria is just another imperialist venture, and President Bashar al-Assad’s “crime,” the only one anyone cares about, is the refusal to allow his country to be integrated into the London-Washington financial system. That is why our terrorists decide that other people are terrorists.