Category Archives: Propaganda

UPDATE II: Flying in Perfect Propagandist Formation

Gender, Media, Military, Propaganda

Front men for the military-media-congressional-industrial complex swooped down in elegant formation after one of their own, “a student pilot and an instructor,” crashed “a Navy fighter jet,” Friday, “into an apartment complex in Virginia Beach, Va.”

Buildings were destroyed and a few lowly civilians hurt, but it was hard to ascertain the extent of the destruction or the identity of the injured by listening to corporate cable.

Shep Smith went weak at the knees, waxing orgasmic about the cool bravery of the careless culprits. The student pilot and his instructor told a bewildered home owner, “Sorry for destroying your house.” Shep thought that having survived the crash (never mind totaling an apartment complex), these careless sorts were the epitome of cool for apologizing.

For the better part of the day, various representatives, including Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, affirmed the community’s close ties with the assorted “military bases, including Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval base in the world.”

Adm. John Harvey, “the head of U.S. Fleet Forces Command promised to conduct a complete investigation into the cause of this mishap.” At a press conference in Virginia Beach, Navy Capt. Mark Weisgerber chimed in too.

Little was heard from “the densely populated neighborhood where the plane crashed.” But, no doubt, these good folks view this kind of occurrence as part of keeping an imperiled America safe.

Needless to say, the malfunctioning media failed to float the question as to whether student pilots should be practicing over densely populated areas. The same perfect propagandist formation was galvanized after Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the accused in the massacre of 16 civilians in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, did his deed.

UPDATE I (April 7): You forget, Myron, this important distinction, also the only one that matters. This was a fighter jet that crashed into a densely populated area, not a commercial aircraft which serves the public and is vital to the public. We all accept the dangers of commercial airplanes taking off and landing in proximity to our homes. This, however, was a military maneuver. It belongs away from civilization, where it cannot harm it. If these sacred cows want to play with their taxpayer-funded toys—let them do it where they cannot harm the good, peaceable people who fund their games.

UPDATE II: In response to TD Hunt, on Facebook. I have no doubt the military employs some of our finest men— where else can real men find employers who allow them to be men, and play with the kind of “toys” men naturally enjoy? My point in the post was to dissect the military-centered response of the special interests involved—media, military, pols, and yes, a compliant public. I heard the story as it broke. The first words out of the mouths of reporters, for hours to come, was to assure us all that the brave men of the military were safe and oh-so-cool. Not a peep about The People who might have been buried in the rubble of an entire apartment complex. The same military-centered reaction kicks in covering military atrocities abroad.

UPDATE II: @Twitter, Trayvon Was “NO_LIMIT_NIGA” (The Latest, Feral, 10-Against-One Assault)

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Race, Racism

“Trayvon’s Tweets and Black Hate Crimes” is my latest column. Here’s an excerpt:

“Hoodie on the Hill’ blared the Drudge-Report headline, as the street theatre playing out over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin crossed over to the House floor. There, concealed by the by-now iconic hood and “gangsta” glasses was one Bobby Rush, a Democratic representative. Rush blessed Trayvon Martin’s departed soul.

The name Trayvon is soon to be a trademark. It may yet spawn a franchise, as the youth’s grieving mother has had the presence of mind to file with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

If you’ve managed to miss the news, Martin was a 17-year-old black youth, shot dead last month by a Hispanic man with a Jewish surname. George Zimmerman—who, for the purposes of the “Racism Industrial Complex” is being considered white—was patrolling a Florida gated community, as part of his neighborhood-watch duties.

Other than that Martin was unarmed and that George Zimmerman has not been arrested, the facts of the case have yet to be established. Since then, the “Racism Industrial Complex (RIC)” (columnist Jack Kerwick’s coinage), has galvanized on behalf of Trayvon.

The Hollywood faction of the RIC sicced its followers on the wrong Zimmerman, after tweeting out an unverified address in the hope of getting the shooter lynched. Somewhere in the Sunshine State a retired Jew is on the lam. …”

The complete column is “Trayvon’s Tweets and Black Hate Crimes.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

UPDATE I: (March 30):

To me, what stands out in this “Media Mash” featuring the “Racism Industrial Complex (RIC)” is the sub-intelligent level of it all. Via NewsBusters:

Reacting angrily to selective editing by NBC that suggested racial animus by George Zimmerman, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell complained to Fox News’s Sean Hannity last night that NBC News was engaged in an “all-out falsehood.” The story in question was a March 27 Ron Allen report on NBC’s ‘Today’ in which 911 audio was edited to make it sound like George Zimmerman said “he looks black” immediately after saying “this guy looks like he’s up to no good.”
In the actual 911 audio, Zimmerman only described Martin’s race after the dispatcher asked, “And this guy: is he white, black, or Hispanic?” “To edit that out is so distorting,” Hannity complained. “Sean, it’s not distorting, it’s advancing a falsehood, it’s worse,” Bozell corrected the Fox News anchor. [see video below page break]
What’s more, with Al Sharpton in the NBC family on cable channel MSNBC, the network has been ginning up another Tawana Brawley-like atmosphere where passions are whipped into a frenzy before all the facts are laid out on the table.
“The radical left has already acted as judge, jury and executioner in this. This is another Tawana Brawley moment we’re looking at folks,” Bozell noted, reminding viewers that “Sharpton never apologized for that” incident.
“Every single person who hung this person [Zimmerman] without knowing the facts has got to respond to this,” Bozell complained.

To pick up on the aforementioned sub-intelligent themes in the cognoscenti’s one-sided “conversations” about race, I just heard a black commentator advance the following on MSNBC: A white girl dying at the hands of a black is sad, but devoid of the significance that attaches to the crime when visited on a black. I paraphrase the moron.

The pundit didn’t seem a malevolent man, just deeply stupid, for the non sequitur he was advancing was that black-on-white crime can never spring from endemic and epidemic racial hatred. Thus is it devoid of social and symbolic significance. “Casualty of racial hatred”: This is a construct that exists (in the abstract) for blacks alone.

MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, who is unburdened by brains, tweeted her affections for the guest (from Freedom Watch we know that these shows are more often about entertaining the host’s “good friends.”)

tamronhall .@Toure passionate and fury all wrapped into one very smart and loyal friend coming up live in 2min

UPDATE II (March 31): The Latest, Feral, 10-Against-One RACIAL Assault:

Seven black teens have been arrested on suspicion that they committed a hate crime when they attacked a 15-year-old Hispanic boy while he was walking home from school in Southern California, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office.
The March 14 beating in Palmdale was captured on video and posted on YouTube, but has since been removed from the site. The seven boys, ages 13 to 16, were arrested Wednesday for investigation of assault and committing a hate crime, Lt. Don Ford said.
The attack happened near Cactus Middle School, but Ford didn’t know if any of the teens involved were students there.
The video shows as many as 10 boys surrounding the victim and challenging him to a fight. The suspects then began hitting the teen while others watched.
During the beating, the teens made racially derogatory statements that were captured on the video, Ford said.
After the victim fell to the ground, the assailants kicked him multiple times in the head, knocked out several teeth and left shoe impressions on his skin, Ford said.

Who’s Killing Whose People Again?

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, Propaganda, War

Judging from America’s angels and demons foreign policy production, starring “the prototypical evil dictator who was killing his noble people,” one would never have predicted (NOT) this following development, in Syria, documented by Human Rights Watch:

“Armed opposition groups in Syria are committing atrocities. Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.”

Remind me who is killing whose people again?

UPDATED: The Media-Military-Industrial-Complex & The Afghan Massacre

Media, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, War

The military is a “menacing and hyper-masculine,” “feral fighting force,” and so it should remain. “Mold the military into a friendly purveyor of soft power that fits with a political, social-engineering agenda—nation building—and you are guaranteed that cynical, unethical master manipulators will continue to use and abuse it” (“Grunts, Get In Touch With Your Inner-Muslim”). Those power-hungry members of the media-military-industrial-complex were out in full force today justifying the continued deployment of American men in Afghanistan, even though these men are losing their minds.

Ryan Crocker, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, appeared on the Voice of the Empire (FoxNews) to make the rickety case—you’ve heard these simplistic, deeply stupid arguments many times before—that the intentional, methodical massacre of at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, by a United States Army sergeant, should in no way alter the magic mission underway in that region.

Residents of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province described a terrifying string of attacks in which the soldier, who had walked more than a mile from his base, tried door after door, eventually breaking in to kill within three separate houses. The man gathered 11 bodies, including those of 4 girls younger than 6, and set fire to them, villagers said. [New York Times]

Yes, this solider is individually responsible for his horrific acts. Above all, however, blame lies with the people who keep him and his fellow combatants locked in that country—these poor sods cannot desert this immoral occupation (or refuse to carry out nightly raids on private homes) for fear of being court-martialed, now can they?

Blame the King’s comitatus as well for penning these men like animals in that blighted and benighted country—blame “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals” (“Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.”).

And don’t forget “America’s neoconservative pundettes. Never underestimate the contribution neoconservative women in the scribbling and broadcasting professions have made to sexing up war. When babes with bursting décolletages quake and quiver for action, their fans do more than just look, they listen” (“To Pee Or Not To Pee is Not the Question”).

UPDATE: An RT commentator (who else?) pointed out that a war such as the one waged in Afghanistan gives rise to atrocities. This is because soldiers have no clear enemy or mission. The enemy is everywhere. The enemy is the Afghan people who’ve fought against invaders forever; who are waging a war of resistance against an occupier. This enemy strikes at our men and melts back into the landscape. Men lose their brothers, and they lose it. Since the enemy is ephemeral, soldiers, some of whom are on their fourth or fifth tour, lash out indiscriminately.

An impressive man, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John R. Allen—he commands Western troops in Afghanistan—took the liberty of speaking on behalf of the Afghan people today, on Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room. The mission is not in peril, promised a resolute Allen. The 90,000 or so US troops currently in Afghanistan are going nowhere (I’m sure they’ll be overjoyed to hear this).

Allen also assured his listeners that the massacre over the week-end was the act of a lone wolf. I’m sure that the scores of victims and their families are comforted by such statistical assurances.

This is the second time I’ve heard Allen refer to the Afghans as “The noble Afghan people.” What’s up with that? Is he trying to sound like “Lawrence of Arabia”?