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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
All in the name of perpetual terror for the rabble and cash for the creeps that print such lies
From Glenn's post: Allowing that revisionism also ensures that the critical lessons that ought to be learned will instead be easily and quickly forgotten when similar episodes occur here in the future.
We Americans, being a comparatively young culture, do so love our mythical conflicts: "Cowboys versus Indians", "the Minutemen versus the Redcoats", "US versus the commies", and so on. The reality is of course a little more complex and the sides a little more contextual than that, yet these myths endure and have been used to define the 'American' character: we, the good and right, forever fighting 'them', the wrong and corrupt. Anyone who questions this is a 'pinko' or a 'traitor'.
The media has helpfully reinforces this illusion, both within the political arena since the founding of our nation and through the advent of mass entertainment. The complex and difficult work of counterterrorism can be finished in just a day on "24", law enforcement is as easy as "Law & Order", marital life is just simple comedy of "The King of Queens", while the exhausting business of governance is just 40 minutes of "The West Wing".
Add to this the charming euphemisms that have replaced the word "torture" the media and public have so happily embraced, and a general decline in our education system to where our children know less and question less, its little wonder our country behaves like a rogue elephant armed with a rocket launcher.
Can this change? Of course it can; it merely takes a considerable amount of time and consistent effort. Among other things, getting the American public to actually face up to what's happening in its collective name would be a big step all on its own. Sadly, with continued prevalence and pre-emanance of the insular Washingtonian Establishment and its self-loving punditry, even that small awakening is going to prove difficult. How many first hand reports have we received from Iraq in the last year?
Perhaps this generation will prove a little saner and less attack-prone than the one before it. I fear that's the most one can hope for.
As pointed out in today's Wall Street Journal, India has the dubious distinction of being behind only Iraq in number of people who have fallen victim to terrorists.
India's reaction has typically been very muted. That is going to change. Why I think so, one data point, is on my blog:
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2008/11/exceeding-limits.html
or click on my signature.
Listening to McNeil Newshour last night, and was outraged by a comment atributed to an Indian official: "This is our 9-11".
So, thught I'd google adn find a link to post here. Apparently, it's a phrase that's been "used" before (this one in Jordan): Do people yearn for bloody revenge?
This Is Our 9-11'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5010212
Clearly that is the best and only workable strategy. Purge New Delhi or Bangalore or Hyderabad of all Hindus and make it an Islamic city. Terrorism will all end immediately as a result.
Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Marathi brahmin (Nathuram Godse). After that assassination, there were riots targeting Marathi brahmins. Unfair, unwarranted, but a fact. That did not turn that community into terrorists.
Or to take an example from this country, African-Americans did not turn to terrorism. Even after centuries of being lynched, being disproportionately targets of law enforcement, being jailed in vast numbers.
Whether you want to admit it or not, one hand cannot clap. This root cause stuff is worthy in that obviously injustices have to cease. This root cause stuff is nonsense because it does not explain why these things happen. The so-called "root cause" is a contributory effect, but is not explanatory, in that the same "root cause" does not produce the same effects among different peoples.
We want to be just because that is who we want to be as a people, not because it will end terrorist attacks. And our faults are no excuse for the terrorist attacks in India.
The Times also claims that Chavez' regime has materially failed, without giving any evidence. It always has been and still is an absolutely knee-jerk reaction of the media to insist that any anti-US foreign leader cannot succeed and is bad for his country - not to mention that he is undemocratic regardless of how many elections he has won.
There are two words that explain the actions of the Media, and their revisionist accounting of historical fact: Operation Mockingbird. It is commonly known that the MSM, and most of the western media for that matter, is infiltrated by the security and intelligence apparatus. This is how the message to the public is manipulated.
And Operation Gladio should be thought of, when we think about Mumbai, an attack that specifically targeted Westerners (Brits and Americans). False-flag attacks and tactics have been used with regularity to drive the people towards seeking more freedom from the state.
One need look no further than the comments by former Italian President, Francesco Cossiga, as quoted here, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/24/comment
"Maroni should do what I did when I was secretary of the interior. He should withdraw the police from the streets and the universities, infiltrate the movement with secret (provacateurs) agents, ready to do anything, and, for about 10 days, let the demonstrators devastate shops, set fire to cars and lay waste the cities. After which, strengthened by popular consent, the sound of ambulance sirens should be louder than the police cars. The security forces should massacre the demonstrators without pity, and send them all to hospital. They shouldn't arrest them, because the magistrates would release them immediately, but they should beat them up. And they should also beat up those teachers who stir them up. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly lecturers, of course, but the young women teachers."
Serious. I'll have to go or I'll babble on and on. as a idiot.
The other comment thoughts are delicious. Ramoncreger Etc.,
A New Yorker Magazine Illustration:`I beg you not to read UT's post!
huh. tease. Scrumptious. Good deserts. Latin"`desertus'... left waste.
The pro-war, pro-supporters of lies, and illogic are too cruel-mean.
A wasted weasel weary many more common-sensical humanity members.
Gads:`Join a human race. Tails (lie), Tales. O, false-scribes are nauseating.
apologies. Antonin Dvorak's 9th symphony:` From the New World' was # one.
The music was played in Baltimore. I've friends who love the Czech composer.
A elder geezer farmer got old. Neil and Ann sold me the lowland farm, I Thank 'um.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
