What we have to do is wean enough people off the teat of Institutional Media "News", and we can do that by providing the criticism that Glenn and so many others do, and by pointing out where to find alternative, as Glenn does in the Update II.

I had a long talk with my brother's wife yesterday.. Talking to her makes me want to tear what little hair I have left out, in many ways she is a good person and not at all unintelligent, she is a highly skilled and qualified RN.. But she has no use for logic whatsoever and is terrified of learning anything new.

A committed Christian, she sincerely believes in her religion and believes that God and Satan are as real as you and I. Everything that is good she credits to God and everything bad she blames on Satan. When I point out that Satan would not be in business unless an omniscient and omnipotent God wanted Satan to exist, she simply does not get it at all. It's the rectification of names you refer to, I'm speaking one dialect and her dialect is so different that we really can't communicate on much beyond a very superficial level. I was raised amongst these people and yet feel like a stranger in a strange land when I try to talk to them.

There are too many Americans like my SIL, terrified that they are going hurt their brains by learning something, as incapable of using or following logic as a spider monkey is of learning quantum mechanics and sure that the "end times" are just around the corner. When I point out to SIL that the Christ specifically said "no man knoweth the day of my return" she knows the scripture but then goes right back to telling me the end times are nigh..

Before it will be possible to turn this country around, my SIL and her fellow travelers will have to be reached.. I can't do it and I seriously doubt you can either.

Whether or not the Syrian target was a reactor is known to those with access to the imagery from those satellites.

The Keyhole satellites are basically Hubble Space Telescopes pointing at the ground instead of into space..

There isn't much that can be hidden from them in a place like Syria. Or Iraq either for that matter.

Then there are synthetic aperture radar satellites and a wide variety of other remote sensing means, Global Hawk UAV and a bunch of stuff that is black budgeted.

I'm just a DFH with an internet connection and an interest in technology and I know this stuff. I haven't even bothered to follow anything in a decade or more and I'm absolutely positive that there is a major boatload of technology about which I have not a clue.

Anyone that says the powers that be don't know what is or was going on in Syria is wafting universal obscurant out of their nether orifice.

The consequences of such attacks have been widely discussed. ...Massive damage, massive death, massive geopolitical destabilization.

In other words, a win-win for the military industrial complex.

Consider it a done deal.

In a democracy (yeah, I know), government works for the citizens. It does what the citizens can't do, or it does it better, or more efficiently, or more cheaply.

Do I really have to whip out the Goebbels quote about how the people can always be dragged along with the wishes of the masters?

In theory, theory and practice are identical, in practice they are not.

Theoretically, democracy is government by the consent of the governed, the practice is far, far different.

Our government has been making war on the American people for over seventy years now, how is that working out for us?

Then there is a huge amount of alternative and citizen/netizen media and journalism that can deconstruct any item of propaganda in five minutes or less.

All the sources you cited require that you *read*.

People who read for information are a distinct minority in America these days, when most of us speak of the mainstream media we are speaking of television and to a lesser extent radio. AM radio, where the majority of "news" type programs exist on the radio, has been an exclusive neo-con franchise for at least a decade now and really more like two decades. Sean Hannity came up on AM radio in my radio market and he has basically not changed his tune a semitone in the transition to the glass teat.

Harpers and the New Yorker are not mainstream in the sense that they reach a significant fraction of Americans.

To Americans in general, if they didn't see in on the TV, it didn't happen.

If you spend time commuting you might be interested in Jott.. Dictate what you wish to write to your cell phone and Jott then emails you the text.

http://jott.com/Default.aspx

You still evade my points..

The reason I say things like "I predict you will not answer this question" is that it is the only way to get people to answer certain questions.. And it still doesn't work every time.

I look at what people do and pay far less attention to what they say. Actions speak louder than words and the actions of almost all of our "leaders" show that they are anything other than nice people who are out for the genuine good of as many of their constituents as possible.

And as far as assigning motivations to people's actions, you do it constantly to bucky and I.