Category Archives: Propaganda

UPADTED: Ciao, Chavez (Wealthy Commie Croaks)

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Politics, Propaganda, Socialism

The “loss” of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has hit hard at MSNBC. (Rachel Maddow is sure to turn on the waterworks during her show.) How do you omit the pejorative “socialist,” in a piece about the death of one? Look to one Tracy Connor, staff writer at NBC News, who finesses an economy partly nationalized or under threat of expropriation with upbeat words: Chavez was a “self-styled populist,” who initiated “government reforms that championed the downtrodden,” and who “took greater control of the state-run oil company.”

More control than complete state control? More control than the nationalization of industry?

“A kind of very personalized socialism” is Eugene Robinson’s spin. Robinson is a writer at the Washington Post and an MSNBC pundit. Chavez, like the Cuban brothers, followed a “pure ideology model,” Robinson noodled.

Robinson proceeded to underscore the broad popular support Chavez enjoyed among his people, and then … contradicted himself (Robinson did; Chavez was consistent), saying that Chavez’s popularity ran counter to his many anti-democratic policies.

Robinson is no different to almost every single American voter, politician and chattering-class member. He equates crude majoritarianism with justice. If the masses want something—the masses must be right. Where mobocracy appears manifestly unjust, reason people like Robinson, this must be because it veered from the express wishes of the upright majority that unleashed the People’s Power.

News flash: Chavez was on his way to securing leader-for-life status because he had the support of the masses. Democracy—rule by absolute and unfettered majorities—is dictatorship by any other name.

More eulogizing for “Hue” courtesy of Eugene Robinson: Chavez was “quick witted,” “loose,” “idiosyncratic.”

UPDATE: Via Nick Gillespie come some facts about the “affable” commie who croaked, including that Chavez had amassed a fortune of $1 billion.

UPDATED: That Dog Obama Ate The Media’s Homework

Barack Obama, Bush, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

When it comes to Barack Hussein Obama, media abdicated all responsibility to do journalistic due diligence. It wasn’t only that all stories about the 44th POTUS were spun favorably; but entire issues were submerged entirely. Now two such invertebrates blame their intellectual and ethical deficiencies, spanning years, on the power of the president to mesmerize and misinform.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico are contemptible. They attest that, “Many reporters find Obama himself strangely fearful of talking with them and often aloof and cocky when he does. They find his staff needlessly stingy with information and thin-skinned about any tough coverage. [Where? Tell me where?] He gets more-favorable-than-not coverage because many staffers are fearful of talking to reporters, even anonymously, and some reporters inevitably worry access or the chance of a presidential interview will decrease if they get in the face of this White House.”

VandeHei and Allen spill pages of pixels in claiming that the Obama administration bamboozled them, with the use of digital technology, aided by some really, really “authentically new techniques”; and with “government creation of content,” blah, blah, blah. (Their prose is diarrheic.) Next they’ll claim to have been subjected to subliminal messages during White House briefings.

The media are a Cult. Cults always blame The Leader for inducing a cult following.

When I saw what Bush was all about, nothing could stop me from exposing his machinations (and likening W’s “Bring ’em on grin” to the grimace “on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis”). Nothing stopped libertarians outside the Beltway from exposing Bush’s illegal and immoral war on Iraq. For doing so throughout the Bush years, I became persona non grata in Republican circles on September 19, 2002.

VandeHei and Allen are whinging castrates. They should make you sick.

UPDATED: “These guys are acting like they’re just innocent dupes,” rages Rush Limbaugh.

UPDATE II: Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword (Ron Paul Agrees)

Media, Military, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

He sculpted a career out of killing for Uncle Sam. A former Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling: He “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

Nobody is prepared to say that it is NO astounding accomplishment to have killed so many individuals, in the service of the US state. So consider it said.

Now Kyle is dead, “shot point-blank” by “another soldier who is recovering from post traumatic stress syndrome.” The therapy “sometime involved taking these veterans to the shooting range.”

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.

UPDATE I: From the Facebook thread:

Kyle (and his kill-for-Uncle Sam supporters) reminds me of a real-life Jack Bauer “Federal Zombie”: “the unstoppable, undead agent who has actually been killed and brought back to life, in service—and in thrall—to the state…”

To be a man is to defend your family and community. Not the empire and its “goals.” Men like Joe Horn are American heroes.

UPDATE II (Feb. 4): Ron Paul agrees, down to the adage, tweeting out, on Monday, 9:05 AM, 4 Feb 13, the following:

Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense.

America’s chosen heroes are either killing someone in far away lands, or crying on TV, here at home. Crying—and coming out about private, personal matters—this imbues someone with goodness, even conferring him with the status of a hero.

And always: Be they your grief, your struggles, or your Iraqi culling expeditions—the key to everlasting honor is to be public about it.

I hope you realize that these deformed values are exactly inverted.

Posse Comitatus And Police State USA

Constitution, Homeland Security, Law, Liberty, Military, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Americans live under a militarized police force. SWAT teams are forever poised to descend on their homes at the drop of a hat. Is it possible that the military will soon be stepping in to do some policing of its own?

The Posse Comitatus Act was supposed to restrict America’s military from acting as a domestic police force, but then none of the limits on power put in place by the Constitution and other legislation have ever stuck, now have they?

Via Drudge comes this ABC report of an especially energetic military drill in a HOUSTON neighborhood. If you hear helicopters or hear gunfire near your homes, don’t worry, assures the reporter.

Another comatose journo, writing for CBS (via Karen De Coster ), is blasé about yet more militarized operations, this time in Miami. The excuse given:

“The training is designed to ensure that military personnel are able to operate in urban areas and to focus on preparations for overseas deployment. It also serves as a mandatory training certification requirement.”

Dig a little and you’ll find a Republican or two behind earlier efforts to undermine Posse Comitatus.

On Sept. 26, President Bush urged Congress to consider revising federal laws so that the U.S. military could seize control immediately in the aftermath of a natural disaster, noting that “it may require change of law. The law the president seems to be referring to is the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the government’s ability to use the U.S. military as a police force. Sen. John Warner, R.-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also has signaled his desire to change the law.”

As CATO’s Gene Healy has written , “The Posse Comitatus Act is no barrier to federal troops providing logistical support during natural disasters. Nor does it prohibit the president from using the Army to restore order in extraordinary circumstances — even over the objection of a state governor.”

What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America’s traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified.