knowbuddhau

knowbuddhau

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14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Is Medea Benjamin Naiv... · 0 replies · +1 points

That's "knowbuddhau," pal. Your reply is almost intelligible. How cheeky of you, to think I need a reading list "for starters." HA! How very quaint. Good luck with that.

Fat chance I'll trade Pepe Escobar, and my own research, for your crew.

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Is Medea Benjamin Naiv... · 0 replies · +1 points

Thanks for the transcript. I've enjoyed your interviews, SH, but this one stinks.

Search for "cover story," "myth," "propaganda," "PR," or "media," and you find one use of "media:"

More significant than that, though, is the lack of "oil." We're there for the oil, get a freakin' clue already.

You and MB just spent an entire interview without saying anything. You both spoke almost 100% in terms of the cover story, not the actual mission: secure the geography for an as yet unbuilt pipeline and containment/intelligence gathering directed at Russia and China.

Haven't you been reading Pepe Escobar?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE ROVING EYE
Stuck in Kabul, with Saigon blues again
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
October 7, 2009

Some things never change. It was "only" eight years ago that the George W Bush administration unleashed its mini-shock and awe over Afghanistan to, in theory, smash the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Stuck inside of Kabul with the Saigon blues again, the "overseas contingency operations" of the Barack Obama administration continue to perpetrate a myth; never shall the words "Afghanistan" and "oil" be mentioned in the same sentence.

Instead, what is played to the jaded Washington galleries is the shabby spectacle of the dance of the generals - the serpent biting its own tail of the show of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, National Security Adviser retired General Jim Jones and General Stanley McChrystal, the top man in Afghanistan. Add to it extended, "analytical" corporate media reports of the "Has Obama lost his mojo?" kind; ..."

As an exercise in obfuscation, the strategy is working wonders. Not a peep all across US corporate media about the real reasons the US, the Pentagon rather, needs to stay in Afghanistan forever; to protect the troubled Trans-Afghanistan pipeline if it ever gets built; and to encircle and spy on neighboring strategic competitors Russia and China.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KJ08Df01....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Or, as in this interview, of the "Has Code Pink lost their mind?" kind.

It's the oil, people! We're not there to make nice neighborhoods for the Afghans, we're there to occupy and assert "full-spectrum dominance." Don't tell me you haven't read about that, either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 2, 2000

"Full-spectrum dominance" is the key term in "Joint Vision 2020," the blueprint DoD will follow in the future.

Joint Vision 2020, released May 30 and signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, extends the concept laid out in Joint Vision 2010. Some things will not change. The mission of the U.S. military today and tomorrow is to fight and win the nation's wars. How DoD goes about doing this is 2020's focus.

Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations....

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And when the Pentagon says, "across the range of military operations," that means everything. How are they supposed to assert full-spectrum dominance over the globe, and leave the really important decisions to elected yokels?

It's the dominance of geography for oil, dammit! So I have to ask: are BOTH of you confused, or just naive?

Why play the charade designed by Pentagon influence operators? You have heard about them, I trust?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office has been one of the last redoubts of the Neoconservatives. Burrowed Bush era figures remain in key positions in the office, which had responsibility for implementation of some of the Rumsfeld Pentagon’s most controversial strategies in which the American public was targeted with practices previously associated with battlefield psy-ops.
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004359
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They've been firing on us, using weaponized rhetoric, this whole time, and you both jump in and act as if their cover story is the real story. I expected SH to say at some point, "You know it's all about the oil, right?" Where's your skepticism of the whole operation?

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Israeli Exceptionalism · 1 reply · +1 points

Another hard hitting article. I have a functional analysis of the power of myth you might like.

I disagree with your dismissal of "pure myth." In fact, I see that as the narrative's power source.

Rather than dismiss that aspect, rather than use "pure myth" as a synonym for 'flat out lie,' look at it this way.

How are these words and spaces right here working right now? As self-emptying vessels, into which I am pouring my heart out to you; from which your awareness is arising like steam; and out of which this narrative, that is us, flows like water.

These words are self-emptying vessels. So are metaphors, the fundamental unit of myth. A metaphor is a vessel for going from ignorance to enlightenment--or the other way around. Myth has the power to reveal, and conceal. It all depends on the intentions with which we load them: passengers into lifeboats? Or kittens into burlap sacks?

The twin myths of American and Israeli Exceptionalism don't occur in a vacuum, right?

Thus, we got jacked to war in Iraq by the power of weapons-grade domestic propaganda running on the power of myth. This is Rove's MO, I'm tellin' ya!

We don't need a crystal ball to read Rove's or Emmanual's, Bush's or Obama's, minds. We can see the intentions of our dear leaders for ourselves, they are self-evident in the decades of occupation, the perpetual bogus global holy wars, the trillions for "defense" and the pittance for the general welfare. We can see it in the DOD policy of "full-spectrum dominance."

The leaders of the US and Israel intend to recreate, on earth, their idea of heaven: a global plantation, with themselves as god's own landlords governing a race of slaves. The C Street cult, The Family, explicitly espouses this doctrine in terms of holy war.

So I was disappointed, when you got to the part where you attribute agency not to the power of myth deployed as propaganda, but only to an effective lobby. It's that, yes, the Israel Lobby is a lobby, of course. It's also quasi-religious, ie, a cult.

This is a most crucial point about human behavior: facts don't move electorates, myths do. Just look at the health care reform "debate." Look at Karl Rove's entire career! It's one jacking of electorates, great and small, after another. Look at Sen. Baucus, explicitly lying to us by saying he needs 60 votes to pass a bill.

This is where the power of narrative comes from. Dave Neiwert, Max Blumenthal, Jeff Sharlet are examples of journalists putting the events of the day in a mythological context.

Biblio.
~~~~~~~~~~~
ALAN WATTS: "And so, Western science, in its beginnings, took everything apart… so we would know what building blocks the Creator or the Fully Automatic Model used in order to put it all together, hoping that that would lead us to an understanding of how life works. Man, himself, was looked upon, in all this, as a creation; something made. Only, there were some difficulties with this because, if you believe in the world in accordance with the Fully Automatic Model, you’ve really got to admit that man, too, is fully automatic. In other words, he’s a machine rather than a person. Man is something, in other words, that says—that doffs its hat to you, and says, How do you do? I’m a person, I am alive, I’m sensible, I talk, I have feelings. But you wonder, do you really, or are you just an automaton? Am I real, or am I just an automaton? <a href="http://shop.alanwatts.org/content/myth-and-religi..." target="_blank">http://shop.alanwatts.org/content/myth-and-religi... <a href="http://www.examiner.com/x-8313-Seattle-Buddhism-E..." target="_blank">http://www.examiner.com/x-8313-Seattle-Buddhism-E...

STEPHEN JAY GOULD: "The collapse of the doctrine of one gene for one protein, and one direction of causal flow from basic codes to elaborate totality, marks the failure of reductionism for the complex system that we call biology -- and for two major reasons." <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/opinion/19GOUL...." target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/opinion/19GOUL....

"Full-spectrum dominance" is the key term in "Joint Vision 2020," the blueprint DoD will follow in the future.

Joint Vision 2020, released May 30 and signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, extends the concept laid out in Joint Vision 2010. Some things will not change. The mission of the U.S. military today and tomorrow is to fight and win the nation's wars. How DoD goes about doing this is 2020's focus.

"Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations. <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?..." target="_blank">http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?...

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Debunking the War Party · 0 replies · 0 points

knowbuddhau October 2nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm 5
http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/10/01/s...

Justin Raimondo has an article about the Greenwald-Huffington debate mentioned above.

JUSTIN RAIMONDO, ANTIWAR.COM: Witness the following extraordinary exchange between Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post web site was set up to reflect the view of the party’s liberal wing (Hollywood division), and Glenn Greenwald, the fearless civil libertarian and anti-interventionist whose enormously popular Salon.com column has earned him a reputation as the conscience of the progressive movement: . . . .

14 years ago @ Antiwar.com Original A... - Debunking the War Party · 0 replies · 0 points

[GAAAAAAAA! This software is driving me crazy. Beware the edit button, it will truncate your comment to smithereens. This is a fourth attempt.]

BRAVO! I saw the interview you mention, thanks for pointing it out.

I, too, had no luck getting comments on it posted to HuffPo. Neither the link to Greenwald's site, nor the YouTube link, could get past the moderators.

So when I saw Greenwald and Scahill on GRITtv with Laura Flanders, I took the opportunity to post this complaint there, along with three other examples of liberals pulling punches.

If anyone can add to the list, here';s the link:

Laura Flanders, GRITtv: http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/10/01/s...

Greenwald's site: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/29...
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEuxel6Fv-0&fe...

1) Jane Mayer gave Leon Panetta a pass.
Melvin Goodman reported on an occasion of it over at The Public Record:

Her article in the current issue of the New Yorker, however, indicates that Mayer has lost her critical edge and that a Democratic administration will simply not get the scrutiny and skepticism that a Republican administration received. As Bob Herbert simply stated in today’s New York Times, “Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.”
http://pubrecord.org/commentary/2043/jane-mayer-a...

2) Rachel Maddow gave Zbigniew Brzezinski a pass.
what does liberal propaganda look like?

DR. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER TO PRESIDENT CARTER: Good to be with you.

RACHEL MADDOW: You said in a speech in Geneva last week that we are running the risk of replicating the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. I was desperately hoping you would be able to come on this show tonight so that you can tell us what makes you say that.

BRZEZINSKI: Well, I shouldn‘t be smiling, actually. It‘s a sad state of affairs. You know, the Soviets went into Afghanistan and within the first year, most Afghans were against them. And they stayed for about 10 years and they lost.

What an astonishingly bold lie of omission!

As any serious student of Afghanistan knows, in 1998, ZB bragged about luring the Soviets into the “Afghan trap.” Maddow let him get away with murder, never asking “Mika’s dad” (as Maddow calls ZB, referring to his daughter, Maddow’s MSNBC colleague) to account for his role in creating the blowback we call 9/11/2001.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32877724/

3) Even Stephen Colbert is parroting the anit-Iran propaganda.
OMG, did I hear that right? That’s what I thought the other day, and sure enough, I did. Colbert, how could you spout war-mongering propaganda like this?

First you conflate weapons with uranium enrichment in a piece characterizing MA as a terrorist, when Israel already HAS an undeclared fully operational nuclear arsenal completely outside the NPT and IAEA, which, of course, we helped them build. Where’s your outrage over that?

Then you go on to say”These mad men won’t have enough money to funnel to Al-Qaeda.” OBL is Sunni, dumb ass! So was secular Saddam. Zbig Brzezinski has more to do with Al-Qaeda, by setting the Afghan trap that now traps us, than either one of your bogeymen du jour. Are you a stooge, a dupe, or a propagandist? I never thought I’d do it, but here goes my first thumbs down.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-v...