Agitprop: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Propaganda

Thursday Song

This one goes out to all the Democrats.

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Bombs of hope are audaciously dropping in our occupied territories. Military tribunals have made a quick return. Obama and his proggels are turning out to be quite astute at managing the empire. As the Dark Wraith puts it - it's authoritarianism without the incompetence.

Today Der Krauthammer describes how the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by the new Democratic government. The Progs be illin' while you be chillin'.

Which reminds me of something Arthur Silber let loose a few days ago:

The ongoing, sickening disregard exhibited by many lib-progs for the criminal murder of large numbers of innocent people has thus been a constant feature of our repellent political discourse for some time. And I will note that, despite the Shirley Temple metaphysics that undergirds my analysis, a few of us have regularly pointed out the gaping, bloody hole where their souls ought to be for several years.

And what IOZ wrote back in December 2007:

To cast a vote for any Democrat at the national level is to cast a vote directly for the torture of other human beings. It is not acquiescence or acceptance; it's endorsement. If you call yourself a Democrat, you're a torturer.

Now some of the faithful are on their knees praying that they won't get fooled again. Via Steve Bates - who has removed the word "Democrat" from his blog name - comes Rachel Maddow with a nice take-down of Obama's Thursday doublespeak.

Can we have both the rule of law and preventative detention? Yes We Can!

Like BDR said a couple days ago, I too am not surprised one bit how the Obama presidency is unfolding. But had you asked me a year ago about 2009, I would have told you McCain would be president. I guess I don't deserve a pint after all.

Onward Christian Soldiers!

By now you've probably seen Donald Rumsfeld's top secret motivational Power Point presentations on how to wage Christian Jihad in Iraq.

None of this should shock you, since we've known about the intersections between evangelical Christianity and the U.S. military in the Bush administration's War on Terror for several years now. Plus, this is no surprise, because Christianity has been providing ideological cover to U.S. imperial machinations since manifest destiny. What is news is our old pal Rummy's role in organizing this ideological passion play from the top. 

Remember Lt. General William Boykin and his Power Point presentations? As Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, he toured the nation's churches in full uniform providing updates on our war against Islam:

I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol . . . Our spiritual enemy . . . will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.

Rummy and Boykin must have shared slides.

According to Boykin, you can blame God for selecting George W. Bush in 2000.

Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him . . . I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there.

Another holy warrior, Lt Col. Gareth Brandl, rallied his troops before entering Fallujah in November 2004 saying:

The enemy has got a face, he's called Satan. He lives in Fallujah and we're going to destroy him!

Well then, I guess Satan has been dead for almost five years. I don't think anything survived the siege of Fallujah.

In 2003, Rumsfeld said he could not control rogue generals from making these sorts of comments because we are a "free people" who are allowed to say what we want. Wait - I thought freedom of speech didn't exist in the military. You only say what the chain of command wants you to say. Whatever.

Well, now we know that Rumseld not only gave the green light to the Christo-Fascist takeover of the Department of Defense, but also participated in the ideological justifications of the war.

I find it a little odd that a publication like GQ is presenting this re-examination of Rummy as opposed to a Sulzberger operated joint. On the GQ main page just below this story you'll find a link to video of a bikini-clad Megan Fox sucking on ice cubes. You won't get that at the New York Times!

Perhaps this is the future of investigative journalism marketing.

Lure readers in with sex, then tell them who and how fucked up their overlords are. It worked for Matt Taibbi's great article The Big Takeover, which was featured in Rolling Stone issue 1075 - the one with the gossip girls sharing a dripping ice cream cone on the cover.

As newspapers continue to fail, one can only hope to see investigate journalism fill the pages of Maxim and Complex. I'd love to read an article about the latest clusterfuck in Afghanistan sandwiched between an Adriana Lima photo shoot. 

Change We Can Believe In

I promised myself I was going to give up being a well informed citizen as I now believe reading the newz is not good for my health and my health is of paramount concern currently. However...(isn't there always a however???) this story in The NY Times about a recent U.S. airstrike and the accompanying photograph caused me to blow a gasket...the photograph says it all, but I'll decode it anyway: "Here, take this enormous sum of American dollars, good for spending anywhere in the world...everyone love American 100 dollar bill...big stack of many hundred dollars...you forget about husband and two children and house and village...have big stack of American money...and no talkie to press, 'kay. We were never here."

And that in a nutshell is your country people. We just unleashed 21st Century aviation hell upon a people barely out of the 18th century...why? In the name of peace, freedom and democracy (the core American Values). Let's examine our success. This woman's family knows peace; half of them are now dead, the ultimate peace. Freedom: they're free from the obligations of the living. Democracy: why soon as we build a really big mall in downtown Kabul, she'll be able to exercise freedom of choice with her new American money and all the wonderful consumer items available thanks to America's intervention in her country's affairs.

The bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies. Several villagers said that they could not distinguish all of the dead and that they never found some of their relatives.

Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration, but have yet to issue their own count.

Nicely done. USA! USA! USA! Hell yeah! That'll teach 'em. Don't fuck with us. We will crush you and then give you lots of American dollars to make you feel all better...you all better now that you have American dollar...hell yeah...big stack of American money....Number One USA!

Stories like this make me glad shitty things are happening to this country. Seriously. I'm glad "average americans" are getting fucked right now. We're all responsible for this shit so the current level of payback warms the cockles of my meager heart. Gosh, so sorry about your job, Mr. American, what you going to do now? So sorry about that foreclosure you greedy fuck...your kids can't read...not my freaking problem.

You paid for this shit, America, now own it.

Yeah, really bad idea for me to continue reading the newz.