Every Word Bush Speaks Rings Like a Cracked Bell

'Oh no, it's not about the oil,' we were told; for a rapist, it's not about the jism, either.

From Seumas Milne in today's Guardian America:

Bush is trying to impose a classic colonial status on Iraq

US efforts to force Iraqis to swallow permanent vassal status and give up control of their oil echoes British imperial history

Big Oil is back with a vengeance.

It's a similar story when it comes to the future of the US occupation itself. The last thing on anyone's mind, we were told when the tanks rolled in, was permanent US control, let alone the recolonisation of Iraq. This was about the Iraqis finally getting a chance to run their own affairs in freedom. But five years on, George Bush and Dick Cheney are putting the screws on their Green Zone government to sign a secret deal for indefinite military occupation, which would effectively reduce Iraq to a long-term vassal state.

In April, I was leaked a draft copy of this "strategic framework agreement", intended to replace the existing UN mandate at the end of the year. Details of the document, which came from a source at the heart of the Iraqi government, were published in the Guardian - including indefinite authorisation for the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security". Since then, much more has emerged about the accompanying "status of forces agreement" the US administration wants to impose: including more than 50 US military bases, full control of Iraqi airspace, legal immunity for US military and private security firms, and the right to conduct armed operations throughout the country without consulting the Iraqi government.

This goes far beyond other such agreements the US has around the world and would shackle Iraq with a permanent puppet status. Not surprisingly, it has led to uproar in the country and opposition in the US, where congress will be denied a vote on the arrangement because the administration has chosen not to call it a treaty.

But it also evokes powerful memories in Iraq, which has been down this road before. After Britain invaded and occupied Iraq during the first world war, it imposed a strikingly similar treaty on its puppet government in 1930 in preparation for the country's nominal independence. Just as in George Bush's version, Britain awarded itself military bases, the right to conduct military operations, and legal immunity for its forces - though the proposed new US powers and restrictions on Iraqi sovereignty go even further than in the pre-war colonial treaty.

To add to this sense of imperial revival, the four oil companies now preparing to return in triumph to Iraq were the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company, which Britain gave a free hand in the 1920s to dine off Iraq's wealth in a famously exploitative deal. The Anglo-Iraqi treaty and those bitterly unjust oil concessions dominated Iraqi politics for decades, feeding riots, uprisings and coups until the monarchy was overthrown, the tables turned on the oil companies and the British were finally sent packing by the radical nationalist General Qasim in 1958.

[full article...]

Using Fear as a Tool

Scott Horton has an analysis of the wiretapping "compromise:"

Will the National Surveillance State Prevail Again?

By Scott Horton

Late last week, the House Democratic leadership (which is to say, Congressman Steny Hoyer) announced a “breakthrough” in discussions with the White House and the Republicans which would produce a “compromise” in the long fight over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I have taken several days to look over the legislation and have some comments.

First, the debate over FISA is of vital significance to our country. The issues are simple. They go to protection of our democracy, now under unrelenting attack by the Bush Administration. Repeatedly, official spokesmen for the administration have mischaracterized the FISA statute, misstated the import of their own proposals, and have used fear as a tool to try to ram through ill-considered legislation that would undermine one of the fundamental principles of the American republic: the notion that the Government’s intrusion into the private dealings of its citizens can occur only after a check through the judicial branch. [more...]

Most relevant to this blog:

In a sense, the entire experience with the FISA legislation works to demonstrate the darkest fears that James Madison articulated about war and fear-mongering and their ability to undermine the essential checks-and-balances of the United States Constitution. In 1798, at the height of the Quasi-War with France, which was shamelessly manipulated by the Federalists for partisan purposes, Madison wrote to Jefferson:

The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse, of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts & at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging & are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their affairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad.

In a like manner, the Bush Administration’s “war on terror” has provided a pretext to transform the American republic into a new form of state. In place of the Founders’ carefully counterposed checks and balances, the Bush Administration offered a new, unfettered executive capable of unilateral action even when encroaching upon the hitherto guarded rights of the citizens. The Bush Administration’s concept was of a National Surveillance State, in which a supposedly benevolent and protecting executive would move towards omniscience through the marvels of new and intrusive technologies.

Are We Ego-, Geo-, or Heliocentric?

HA! Trick question. We are a self-evident sphere of Being Aware of Becoming, whose "center is in each of us but whose circumference is NoWhere." Is that Scottus Eriganus, Professor?

From Scott Horton's blog No Comment

Beneath this there is nothing save the mortal and perishable, except the souls bestowed upon the human race, the gift of the gods. Above the moon all things are eternal. The earth, which is the central and ninth sphere, has no motion, and is the lowest of all, and all heavy bodies gravitate spontaneously toward it.”

When I had recovered from my amazement at these things I asked, “What is this sound so strong and so sweet that fills my ears?” “This,” he replied, “is the melody which, at intervals unequal, yet differing in exact proportions, is made by the impulse and motion of the spheres themselves, which, softening shriller by deeper tones, produce a diversity of regular harmonies. Nor can such vast movements be urged on in silence; and by the order of nature the shriller notes sound from one extreme of the universe, the deeper from the other. Thus there in the supreme celestial sphere with its clustered stars, as it revolves more rapidly, moves with a shrill and quick strain; this lower sphere of the moon sends forth deeper notes; while the earth, the ninth sphere, remaining motionless, always stands fixed in the lowest place, occupying the centre of the universe. But these eight revolutions, of which two, those of Mercury and Venus, are in unison, make seven distinct tones, with measured intervals between, and almost all things are arranged in sevens. Skilled men, copying this harmony with strings and voice, have opened for themselves a way back to this place, as have others who with excelling genius have cultivated divine sciences in human life. But the ears of men are deafened by being filled with this melody; nor is there in you mortals a sense less atuned than that of hearing.”

–Marcus Tullius Cicero, De re publica lib vi (44 CE) in the Loeb edition of the works of Cicero, vol. xvi, pp. 268-73 (S.H. transl. following A.P. Peabody and C.W. Keyes).

I have said elsewhere that ours is an egocentric Ptolemaic cosmos. Above, Prof. Horton, on his No Comment blog, provides a remarkable description of the more familiar geocentric arrangement. Below is our new self-portrait, which image I found on The European Homepage for the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

"The Heliosphere is Tilted and the Bow Shock Really Exists"

This is the largest self-portrait we humans have made (to date). This is all of us. And all of us, all the planets, all the gravel and dust in the Oort Cloud, and all the space in between, we're all moving through the larger universe. So, like a sailboat, we have a center of thrust and a bow shock.

What do we Lunatics and Poets make of this? I don't know, but it sure makes me wonder.

Tchaikovski

Cosmonaut Tchaikovski lost in open Space,
Rocking in his rocket counting down the days.
Son of Mother Russia, Hero of Ukraine,
Dreaming of his girlfriend, calling out her name.

Masha, Masha you driving me insane,
Masha, Masha I'm calling out your name.

Cosmonaut Tchaikovski lost and never found,
Going kind of crazy, jumping like a clown,
Lunatic and poet, prince of yellow stars,
Making love to Venus, talking shit to Mars.

Masha, Masha you driving me insane,
Masha, Masha I'm calling out your name.

Cosmonaut Tchaikovski, out of his mind,
Circling his orbit twenty million times,
Memories of snowflakes, vodka, borsht and babes,
Balalaika music, eggs by Faberge

Masha, Masha you driving me insane,
Masha, Masha I'm calling out your name.

All songs written by Igor Yuzov
©2004 Shooba-Doobah Music, BMI

http://www.redelvises.com/lyrics/librettolunatics.htm

By Arianna Huffington's Shivering Spine!

UPDATE Thursday 26 June 2008: Arianna Huffington has begun FearWatch '08 on her Web site, Huffington Post


From Huffington Post

This week, the dueling parties fell into odious and all-too-familiar patterns. As expected, the GOP, unable to run on its disastrous record, played the fear card. Leaping on Obama's defense of the rule of law (dear god, not that!), the Republicans pulled out their 2004 playbook and opened it to "Scare Tactics." Newt Gingrich said supporting habeas corpus could lead to the obliteration of a U.S. city. Rudy Giuliani (surprise) evoked 9/11 a bunch of times. John Bolton predicted an Obama presidency would lead to more terrorist attacks. And John McCain lapped it up. Buying into the 2004 mindset, House Democrats promptly removed their gonads and capitulated on telecom immunity and Iraq war funding. That, more than the fear-mongering of the right, is what sent a shiver down my spine.

"The reader hardly need be reminded that the images not only of poetry and love but also

of religion and patriotism,
when effec�tive,

are apprehended with actual physical responses: tears, sighs, interior aches, spontaneous groans, cries, bursts of laughter, wrath, and

impulsive deeds. "

[Joseph Campbell. (1968). Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, pp.40-42. New York: Penguin.]

knowBuddhaU See Profile I'm a Fan of knowBuddhaU

Torture by isolation is at the basis of our conception of Being. machine, or growing from within? Is our essence that of a castle, or a growing, living, Being aware of its own Becoming?

When a professor of social psychology dogmatically asserted to me in a type-written letter back in 1980something that "the self/other divide must be maintained," upon what evidence did this assertion rest? None.

No, that"s an outdated and discredited reduction that presumes an absolute dualism that does not obtain.

Can you put your finger on it?. Of what is it made? how does it function? is it permeable, or semi-permeable? since there"s stuff in continuous transport across the divide, isn"t it"s delineation an arbitrary imposition by the observer?

No. This pointilistic conception of Being only imprisons us in CELLVES of our own making, from within which we then wage war on all else. Sounds like feudalism, to me.

From Joseph Campbell's _Primitive Mythology_ :

"Tthe first axiom of all creative art--whether it be in poetry, music, dance, architecture, painting, or sculpture--which is, namely, that art is not, like science, a logic of references but a re�lease from reference and rendition of immediate experience:

a presentation of forms, images, or ideas in such a way that they will communicate, not primarily a thought or even a feeling, but an

IMPACT."

We're using an up-to-date Goering Treatment to "manufacture consent," to myth-jack to hell whole nations at a time.

It's the mythology, silly!

Your Comments On...

Follow the Leader

Congress is apparently still willing to cave to the president.
-

By Dan Froomkin

Comments

imnoman wrote:

>>>>>>>>>
So how did Bush get his way with Congress -- again?
<<<<<<<<<<
It's the mythology, silly! How come it's appropriate to note the sectarian affiliations of Them Over There, but never Us Over Here? Isn't it the least bit relevant that ALL THE PARTIES INVOLVED SHARE THE SAME MYTHOS: Life as Holy War. The Fear of Not Appearing to Fear, and thus Hate, the Evil-Doers more than your opponent is the Order of Our Day.

http://zelikowednomore.blogspot.com/
Myth-Jack THIS

6/20/2008 8:30:10 PM

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Torture by Isolation is What We Do

[Originally submitted 6:54 local time; now posted as Comment #3 at Psyche, Science, and Society]

2. knowbuddhau | June 20th, 2008 at 9:54 am

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Thanks for all your work on this. I just watched Dr. Reisner on Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/as_senate_confirms_psychologists_helped_devise

Back on 27 November 2007, I made this comment
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2007/11/17/leaked-guantanamo-document-confirms-routine-use-of-isolation-as-psychological-torture/#comments

We get fooled, again and again, by being mind-f*cked (the impolite phrase for Naomi Klein’s brilliant ’shock doctrine’) into thinking we are only part things that must relate to the Whole via bachelor fathers with terrible tempers and unspoken habits. Our science, psychology, has midwifed this monstrous abuse of being human.

Today, 20 June 2008, I’ve again just watched Democracy Now! I’m retrieving from the trash a recent APA invitation to renew my membership.

Thank you, Dr. Reisner, for restoring my faith.

Regarding torture, our fundamental debate is between two conceptions of Being: are we a Newtonian machine constructed by an external agent of point particles in an absolute vacuum; or are we growing from within? Is life really a Holy War amongst these cellf-imprisoned points of pure pain? Is our essence that of a castle, or a growing, living, Being aware of its own Becoming?

“Coercion doesn’t work,” the UK decided after 15 years of terror, Phillippe Sands tells us. And that’s what I was taught at UW back in the 80s: punishment is passé. So how come we’ve resorted to such primitive methods, namely cruelty and torture?

Because torture by isolation is at the very basis of our conception of Being.

Are we ego-driven machines? quantum singularities of pure pain? When C. Daniel Batson, University of Kansas professor of social psychology, dogmatically asserted to me in a type-written letter back in 1980something that “the self/other divide must be maintained,” upon what evidence did this assertion rest? None.

No, that’s an outdated and discredited reduction that presumes an absolute dualism that does not obtain. Prof. Batson crossed the line, from psychology into mythology, by denying that empathy involves a transpersonal realization of this self-evident Being Aware of Becoming “whose center is in each of us, but whose circumference is NoWhere.”

If you’re so convinced of the facticity of the self/other divide, dear colleagues, then put your finger on it. Of what is it made? how does it function? is it permeable, or semi-permeable? if there’s stuff in continuous transport across the divide, then isn’t it’s delineation an arbitrary imposition by the observer?

No. This pointilistic conception of Being only imprisons us in CELLVES of our own making, from within which we then wage war on all else. Sounds like feudalism, to me.

Releasing Our Selves from Our Hellful Cellves

[Originally posted as a comment on Psyche, Science, and Society 11/27/2007]

knowbuddhau | November 27th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

Dear Friends,
Meet the new Boss
Same as the Old Boss
—The Who

This is a process I poetically call the myth-jacking and gang-raping of Gaia.

We get fooled, again and again, by being mind-f*cked (the impolite phrase for Naomi Klein’s brilliant ’shock doctrine’) into thinking we are only part things that must relate to the Whole via bachelor fathers with terrible tempers and unspoken habits. Our science, psychology, has midwifed this monstrous abuse of being human.

Physicists deliberately chose the absolutely isolated point particle as their fundamental unit. Psychologists, despite Oppenheimer’s 1955 warning to the APA convention, adopted this as our model of the ego.

This implodes our psyches into quantum singularities of pain. We, my friends, are cosmic pinheads. We are imprisoned in cellves of our own making. Torture by isolation isn’t aberrant for us, it’s what we do. Defining our selves as essentially imprisoned is at the root of human suffering.

By reducing us to Newtonian billiard balls, we psychologists sneak our belief system into our science under our priestly white lab coats. For the APA to uphold torture is perfectly in character.

Why was the state of Israel imposed on Palestine as if in a vacuum? Same reason the US was imposed on the Tribes, flaunting treaty after treaty: We exist, They don’t. Extra ecclesiam nulla sallus! Outside the group, there is only Darkness and Evil.

And absent the mythological, our erudition is empty of lived human meaning.

“Moving the goalposts” is how we refer to the fact that we never stop drawing the Line. Define the Other as Out, as Corrupt; shatter Them, digest Them, sh*t Them out; make war; rape pillage and plunder your neighbors, or not just die now, but also suffer eternal torment; make the enslaved pay for their enslavement. Masculine Reason and Intellect are good, feminine Passion and Emotion are evil; yada yada yada.

Rule 0: We are Good, they are Evil; we have souls, they do not. But you won’t hear that from the sensible, respectable, establishmentarians. HRC won’t come right out and say it in public, but We are Good, They are Evil is the subtext of everything she says, just like GWB.

We believe in life as Holy War, not as economics. When BushCo said, we make the reality that others then study and report, this is what they meant. They have usurped control of our most fundamental definitions. The Democrats want to replicate the lucrative methods of the Republicans. Welcome to Plantation America, Inc., v.2.007.

The power of myth is that it shapes the cosmos in which we enact the theater of Life. There is intelligibility to Being, yes; mathematics are true. Our tragic mistake is to allow war gods to remain installed permanently at the controls of the mathematical cosmos.

It is true that the universe is entropine: increases in order involve increases in chaos. Our standard of living is a standard of dying, too. Suffering and bliss are a pair of opposites, we can’t escape that, but the shape of that suffering is up to us. We can choose to address this suffering or that.

The Left clings vainly to its mechanical Momma, Science, as the antidote to Religion. The damnable Democrats put Sanchez up as an alternative voice?! Their approach is to regulate abominations into acceptability. Science has become to the Left what Religion is to the Right: a way of myth-jacking and gang-raping Gaia.

Baconian-Cartesian-Newtonian Science practiced as religion (the “Faith” was kept while princely States warred with the imperial Church) has spawned the little monsters, petro-powered engines, that have given our Mother a fever. Is it the fever before the flow? Is Gaia getting ready to miscarry us? She may be doing so already. Shall we now turn to that same science for a cure?

Even a Goddess has Her periods. Scientists have called them “mass extinctions.”

As a poet, I reject this horrible inheritance. We are not “just particles.” We are not slaves on the plantation of someone else’s gods. We are not the creatures of the absolute tyrant-Creator of the universe.

We are KIN. We are divine vessels of a divine flow. We are cellf-imprisoned at the behest of priests of war gods who have usurped Truth to themselves alone. We are in a Waste Land that may already be flushing us out of our Mother.

If we are going to release our selves from our hellish cellves, we can only do it from within.

We must rapidly revise our own habits of belief, thought, and speech. We must midwife ourselves in bringing to fruition an organic expression of Being as we side-step our blind war gods and their machines, which have been installed in place of our minds and souls.
#

4. Psyche, Science, and Soci… | January 12th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

[...] form of torture. Isolation was also routine for all new detainees at Guantanamo, as the leaked 2003 and 2004 Standard Operating Procedures [...]

McClellan's Apotheosis: "the beginning of The Disillusionment."

AMY GOODMAN: So did Scooter Libby and Karl Rove lie to you?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: That’s the only conclusion I can draw. They knowingly misled me. There’s no other explanation for it, because I asked them point blank if they were involved.
[....] I was in a tough spot. And it was a problem that I could not defend my previous comments from two years ago or correct the record about those comments. And it led to my last ten months as being press secretary. It led to a very disillusioning period for me. That was the beginning of the disillusionment.

Adapted from Wikipedia:

According to Joseph Campbell, apotheosis is the expansion of consciousness that we all experiences after defeating our essential foe.

We Must Impeach Both Bush AND Cheney, How Hard Is That?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes. Well, Ohio Congress member and former Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich is vowing to continue his impeachment efforts against President Bush despite attempts to bury it in committee. On Wednesday, Congress voted 251-166 to send Kucinich’s bill to the House Judiciary Committee, where it’s unlikely to be considered before Bush leaves office. A similar resolution against Vice President Dick Cheney that was introduced last year was also sent to the House Judiciary Committee, where it still remains. Kucinich spent four hours on the House floor Monday reading out thirty-five articles of impeachment against the President.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now from Washington, D.C. by the Ohio Congress member, Dennis Kucinich. Welcome to Democracy Now!

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Why have you chosen to do this now?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: We have 4,000 of our brave men and women who have died in Iraq. Over a million innocent Iraqis have been killed. We’ve had torture policies, rendition, illegal detention, wiretapping, spying, subversion of global climate change science. I mean, I went on and on and on with these articles the other night, but what it adds up to is that there has to be accountability. And for the leadership of the Democratic Party to say that impeachment is off the table is to essentially put on hold the United States code, international law and the Constitution of the United States. There is no rational, logical reason why the Judiciary Committee should not hear—have hearings on these articles.

Do We Will Our Selves, or Force? WE WILL!

Our fundamental debate is between two conceptions of Being: are we a Newtonian machine constructed by an external agent of point particles in an absolute vacuum; or are we growing from within? Is life really a Holy War amongst these cellf-imprisoned points of pure pain? Is our essence that of a castle, or a growing, living, Being aware of its own Becoming?

"Coercion doesn't work," the UK decided after 15 years of terror, Phillippe Sands tells us. And that's what I was taught at UW back in the 80s: punishment is passé. So how come we've resorted to such primitive methods, namely cruelty and torture?

Because torture by isolation is at the very basis of our conception of Being.

Are we ego-driven machines? quantum singularities of pure pain? When C. Daniel Batson, University of Kansas professor of social psychology, dogmatically asserted to me in a type-written letter back in 1980something that "the self/other divide must be maintained," upon what evidence did this assertion rest? None.

No, that's an outdated and discredited reduction that presumes an absolute dualism that does not obtain. Prof. Batson crossed the line, from psychology into mythology, by denying that empathy involves a transpersonal realization of this self-evident Being Aware of Becoming "whose center is in each of us, but whose circumference is NoWhere."

If you're so convinced of the facticity of the self/other divide, dear professor, then put your finger on it. Of what is it made? how does it function? is it permeable, or semi-permeable? if there's stuff in continuous transport across the divide, then isn't it's delineation an arbitrary imposition by the observer?

No. This pointilistic conception of Being only imprisons us in CELLVES of our own making, from within which we then wage war on all else. Sounds like feudalism, to me.

Cruelty is Such a Weapon

The Navy's former top lawyer cites 4 examples of the futility of cruelty he witnessed during his tenure:

ABU GHRAIB AND GITMO ARE KILLING US
Some flag-ranked officers maintain that the top two killers of US troops are the very symbols that were supposed to Shock and Awe Iraqis, and the world, into cowering submission for all eternity. The Torture Memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel gave permission to let loose all Hell on "enemy combatants," figments of our cellf-imprisoned, self-terrorized imaginations, many of whom are completely innocent of malicious intent against us. Whose idea is it, that all we have to do is retaliate with overwhelming force, and the world will fall at our feet and then stay there for all eternity?

In other words, Mr. Bush: the very sword by which you intended to Shock and Awe the Iraqis, and the world, into cowering submission, cuts both ways. In my layman's opinion, you should be tried for negligent homicide on the principle of command responsibility.

ALLIES WON'T PLAY--OR EVEN TRAIN--WITH US NO MORE
Some allies have refused to play war with us, or even train to play, if there's the possibility that detainees will fall into our torturing hands. This includes senior NATO officials walking out on Americans rather than risk complicity in our torturing ways.

CRUELTY IS SUCH A WEAPON, IT DESTROYS ALL WHO WOULD WIELD IT
I completely agree with him on this point. The only way to dance with the Devil, without getting screwed in the end, is very simple: don't do it.

But notice the frame in which Mr. Mora places his crucial warning: "In this war on terror, the United States is fighting for its values, and cruelty is such a weapon [emphasis original]." Keep the war, change the method, is that what I'm hearing? Isn't the sword of war itself also such a weapon?

Iglesias's Apotheosis: "working for the Sith Lords, y'know."

M 16 JUNE 2008 THE DAILY SHOW



No audio? Click "Links to this post," scroll up. Only Comedy Central videos seem to be missing the audio track--for now. Don't have a clue why.

@5:45 JON STEWART: Is the greatest disappointment for you that you were a guy who believed in what they were doing and probably still believe in the political end of it, to be... do you feel betrayed in that sense?

DAVID IGLESIAS: Yeah, and to use a Star Wars kind've image, I thought I was working with the Jedi Knights and I was working for the Sith Lords, y'know.

JON STEWART: I wanna tell ya something--

AUDIENCE: WOO-HOO!

JON STEWART: I wanna tell ya somthing, for the audience for this show, you could not have used a better example....

Adapted from Wikipedia:

According to Joseph Campbell, apotheosis is the expansion of consciousness that we all experiences after defeating our essential foe.

How to Handle a Myth-Jacking

OK, so I stop poesing about the place, pacing in place, and look to the Guardian to see what's up in the world. Holy EHMs, Batman! This is the proper response to a myth-jacking.

An indigenous Panamanian tribe has driven its king into exile over his approval of a £25m hydro-electric project in its jungle realm.

The Naso tribe, whose millennia-old royal inheritance system is recognised by the state, banished King Tito Santana for opening the kingdom to developers.

"Many of us are opposed to a king who, for us, is selling our society without any thought for tomorrow," Eduardo Santana, a nephew of Tito, told Reuters. The project risked cultural and environmental harm, he said. "We are part of nature and if we do not look after it, who will?"

What More Freakin' Evidence Do I Need To Convince You?

Your Comments On...
Fleischer Defends the Media
The former White House spokesman says the media were tough on him in the run-up to the Iraq war.
-
By Dan Froomkin [in his Washington Post blog, White House Watch]


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/06/09/BL2008060901108_Comments.html


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Like no administration before it, the Bush administration has mastered what the media critic Walter Lippmann called 'the manufacture of consent' -- the use of 'psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication,' to muster mass support for elite agendas. Staging photo-ops whose choreographed drama and camera-ready visuals ('Mission Accomplished') are intended to play to the emotions and overrule objections; reducing complicated geopolitical issues to black-or-white dualisms (Team America: World Police versus the Axis of Evil!); stonewalling the media, cherry-picking intelligence and parroting Karl Rove-approved talking points -- the Bush administration represents the apotheosis of government by spin control."

Dery writes that "the burgeoning genre of Bush administration tell-alls, of which McClellan's is only the latest, paints a portrait of a White House utterly unconcerned with facts yet fervently attentive to public opinion polls. It is a White House whose solution to every unhappy turn of events -- the Iraqi insurgency, Hurricane Katrina, a moribund economy -- is to treat it not as a real-world problem requiring a real-world solution but as a glitch in the Matrix, 'a perception problem' to be handled with the Message of the Day and the Theme of the Week."
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>



What more freakin' proof is needed that we're being given the Goering Treatment?

As a poet and student of research psychology, the Message Force Multipliers are spekaing my language. I hear them loud and clear.


http://zelikowednomore.blogspot.com/
Myth-Jack THIS
6/9/2008 3:33:32 PM
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Dan Froomkin on Ari Fleischer's Astonishing Hypocrisy

Your Comments On...

Fleischer Defends the Media

The former White House spokesman says the media were tough on him in the run-up to the Iraq war.

-

By Dan Froomkin [in his Washington Post Blog, White House Watch]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/06/09/BL2008060901108_Comments.html

Comments

imnoman wrote:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"The former White House press secretary -- whose Secret Service code name, I kid you not, was 'Matrix' -- recounts how he and the rest of Team Dubya got caught up in a 'permanent campaign,' a nonstop propaganda war whose weapons were 'the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth and spin,' and whose goal was to stage-manage the media narrative and thus public opinion.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

HELLO! Is this thing on? That's what I'M saying! This is the Goering Treatment, people, a national hijacking of mythic proportions, aka a MYTH-JACKING of our shared narrative.

And it continues right now...

http://zelikowednomore.blogspot.com/

Myth-Jack THIS

6/9/2008 3:23:27 PM

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This Is How We Do It: Economic Hitmen Are Hard At Work Even Now

AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s go back. You explain economic hit men and who you were working for.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, really, we economic hit men have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire, I think. And we worked primarily to get US corporations big jobs in other countries. We identified third world countries that have resources our corporations covet, like oil, or in this case—in Ecuador it was oil, in Panama it was the canal. And then we arranged huge loans for that country from the World Bank or one of its sisters.

But the money doesn’t go to the country. Instead, it goes to our own corporations to build projects in that country, like power plants and industrial parks and highways, that benefit a few rich people, in addition to our corporations, but don’t help the majority of the people who are too poor to buy electricity or don’t have the skills to get jobs in industrial parks.

But the country is left holding a huge debt that it can’t possibly repay. So, at some point, we go back and say, “Listen, you know, you can’t pay our debt, so go along with us. Sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies. Let us stay with the canal. Let us build a military base in Ecuador,” as we’ve done in Manta, Ecuador. And in that way, we’ve really managed to bring these countries around to our side to create this empire.

When we fail, which doesn’t happen too often—but that’s what happened in Ecuador with Roldos and in Panama with Torrijos—then the jackals step in and either overthrow the governments or assassinate the leaders. If the jackals also fail—that’s what happened with Saddam Hussein in Iraq—then and only then does the military go in.

UPDATE MONDAY 16 JUNE 08
From Guardian America

An indigenous Panamanian tribe has driven its king into exile over his approval of a £25m hydro-electric project in its jungle realm.

The Naso tribe, whose millennia-old royal inheritance system is recognised by the state, banished King Tito Santana for opening the kingdom to developers.

"Many of us are opposed to a king who, for us, is selling our society without any thought for tomorrow," Eduardo Santana, a nephew of Tito, told Reuters. The project risked cultural and environmental harm, he said. "We are part of nature and if we do not look after it, who will?"

Allan Nairn Reconceives Our Global Purpose

Working with figures from Forbes magazine, the IMF, and the UNDP, it's possible to estimate that there are between three hundred and a thousand individuals whose accumulated wealth is so vast that any one of them alone could pay each person in the Irrawaddy Delta for a year, and in the case of the richest, like Warren Buffett, could do it for six decades running and still have billions left. [http://www.allannairn.com/]

[[[(Absolute Supremacy)///NO1'S LAND///(Absolute Subjugation)))]]]

Challenge all these mythologies

"I actually challenge all these mythologies and ask why are they being created and what is the function of it." --Every1 of Us (as embodied by Tariq Ali on Democracy Now 29 May 2008 @51:40)

@50:40 JUAN GONZALEZ: And yet, as you say, religion played no part in that movement, and yet now religion plays such a huge part in the daily life and the political life of Pakistan today. What was the transformation that has occurred?

TARIQ ALI: You know, I challenge that, actually. I think what—the last general elections in Pakistan, the religious parties were virtually wiped out electorally. It is true that there is much more religiosity on Pakistan, but there is in virtually all parts of the world, including this country. But in terms of the religious parties actually dominating Pakistan, this is not true, or the notion that Pakistan is on the eve of a Jihadi takeover and the Jihadi finger on the nuclear trigger.

I’ve just written a long a book on Pakistan, which will be published in September, in which I actually challenge all these mythologies and ask why are they being created and what is the function of it. The bulk of the country isn’t attracted to either Jihadi or religious politics. These are a tiny, tiny minority in Pakistan. The real problems of people in that country are food, clothing, shelter, education. And no political party or the military are interested in solving them. The surprise is, for me, that more people don’t move towards religion. But they don’t.

52:10

"I'm not alone in this movement." --Every1 of Us (as embodied by Bill Moyers dn2008-0609 19:25-20:55)

This leaves you with a heavy burden. It is up to you to fight for the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible. In fact, I want to ask you to do something right now. I want you to stand up just a moment. Please, stand up. Now, turn to a neighbor to your left or neighbor to your right. Look that person in the eye. Shake hands. Shake hands, come on. Now turn to the person on the other side. Look that person in the eye. Shake hands.

Now, see? Keep standing. You’re surrounded by kindred spirits. Remember —remember this when you go home and continue the fight.

Hold your neighbors’ presence and this moment in your heart, and keep reminding yourself, “I’m not alone in this movement.”

How to Myth-Jack the Nation: by the numbers

Democracy Now! May 6, 2008

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Kevin Phillips. His latest book is Bad Money. And you have a piece in the latest issue of Harper’s magazine: “Numbers Racket: Why the Economy Is Worse Than We Know.” Who’s covering up, Kevin?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, the political system has basically found it comfortable to let the data shade in the make-believe. And I wouldn’t single out either party, and that’s actually part of the difficulty. The pot can’t talk about the kettle, and the kettle can’t talk about the pot. There are some signs, perhaps, that Barack Obama is freer to talk about it. His chief economic adviser is somebody who has talked about the government cooking the books back earlier in this decade.

I think the government has cooked the books, and as a result, we get this unrealistic view of where the economy is. For example, they pretend that inflation is in the two- to three-percent range. Barron’s magazine did a survey of money managers, and their average estimate of what the CPI would be later this year was 2.7, and for 2009, at the end of the year, 2.8. Now, that’s ridiculous. We’re starting to see global commodity inflation. Foreign investors believe that the inflation rate, including food and energy, is six to nine percent, not this nonsense about 2.6 or 2.7 or 2.8 or 2.9.

Now, the real meaning here is that when you look at the growth statistics for the economy, the GDP figures, you have to take—to get the real figures, you have to take nominal gross domestic product growth, and then you subtract for inflation. So if you’ve got nominal growth of four percent and you subtract for inflation, you still would get a positive number if you use the number of, you know, 2.6 or three percent inflation. But if you’ve got nominal growth at four percent and inflation is really six to nine percent, then you’ve got big-time negative growth, and the economy is contracting.

The government talks, you know, like they used to say in the Western movies, with a forked tongue, but so does the financial sector. All the questions about whether the ratings were really AAA or they were really something lower than BB on the securities that were imploding, no honesty in economic data or ratings or descriptions of what really goes into a financial instrument, and this has the American people at some degree of peril, because foreigners don’t really believe what we say anymore.

Sounds to me like the MO of EHMs. Meanwhile, we subsidize companies making record-breaking profits, and spend more on our military than the entire rest of the world spends on defense. Isn't this how the economic hitmen work?

It's also the practice of myth-jacking. We're lured aboard a supposedly safe ship of state by a deceitful narrative, only to find ourselves in the hold of modern-day slavers and about to be sold down the river. This is how myth-jacking works: Conflate yourself with the Great Cosmic Machine, fake the numbers in your favor, and then jack the nation to hell, making sure to stick the suckers whom you supposedly serve--aka We, the People--with the bill.

Was Sami al-Haj Held on the Canetti Principle?

For example, let's pick an Iraqi-Canadian to single out for public torture. On Canetti's principle, that should induce a lot of shock for the buck.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002756

It is the first death which infects everyone with the feeling of being threatened. It is impossible to over assess the role played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. It need not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone unknown. Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership in the group to which one belongs oneself.

–Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht vol. 1, p. 152 (1960)(S.H. transl.)

(Emphasis added.)

The only statement from the United States came from the embassy in Khartoum confirming the “detainee transfer.” A senior Defense official in Washington, D.C. told Reuters on the condition of anonymity that al-Haj was “not being released” but “being transferred to the Sudanese government.” But the Sudanese Justice Minister told Al Jazeera al-Haj would not face arrest or any charges.

Al-Haj, who’s been on a hunger strike since January of 2007, was taken to a hospital immediately after landing in Khartoum. After a tearful reunion with his family, he spoke out against the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo in an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera.

SAMI AL-HAJ: [translated] I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantanamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than fifty countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges, and they will not give them the rights that they give to animals.

For more than seven years, I did not get a chance to be brought before a civil court. To defend their just case and to get the freedom that we’re deprived of, they ignored every kind of law, every kind of religion. But thank God. I was lucky, because God allowed that I be released. Although I’m happy, there is part of me that is not, because my brothers remain behind, and they are in the hands of people that claim to be champions of peace and protectors of rights and freedoms.

But the true just peace does not come through military force or threats to use smart or stupid bombs or to threaten with economic sanctions. Justice comes from lifting oppression and guaranteeing rights and freedoms and respecting the will of the people and not to interfere with a country’s internal politics.


AMY GOODMAN: That was Sami al-Haj, speaking from his hospital bed in Khartoum. He was held in military custody as a prisoner for more than six-and-a-half years. He has never been charged, a cameraman for Al Jazeera.

"We have to simply bash the Republicans to end the war."

Democracy Now! June 3, 2008

AMY GOODMAN: David Sirota, you talk about conflicts of interest within the antiwar movement: the antiwar movement, which enjoys widespread support, and the politicians who ally themselves with pro-war consultants.

DAVID SIROTA: Right. What happened, in the chapter that I reported on the antiwar movement, is back in 2007, what we found is that you just had an election where the Democrats were elected promising to end the war, and what ended up happening was that the same Democratic Congress refused to really do what it takes to actually end the war. And part of that was, I think, a strategic decision on behalf of the antiwar organizations in Washington about how they said we could end the war. You had consultants who were simultaneously being paid by the Democratic Party and Democratic Party politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Like?

DAVID SIROTA: You had Hildebrand Tewes. You had consulting firms. They were the lead consulting firm. And I don’t mean to pick on them. It’s just that they were the consulting firm that was heading up the major coalition in Washington of antiwar groups. And so, the strategy that came out of those antiwar groups was we have to simply bash the Republicans to end the war, when in fact, of course, Congress was controlled entirely by Democrats. Last I checked, Democrats have forty-one senators in the US Senate, if they wanted to filibuster a bill to continue funding the war. They haven’t done that. Yet the strategy kept saying, well, we have to only focus the ads, the media buys and the pressure on Republicans. It was sort of a dishonest strategy, and I think it had something to do with the fact that you have organizations in Washington that put partisan affinity over movement goals.

Karl Rove, Don Siegelman, and the Political Science of the Big Lie

Who's the master propagandist of our time? Karl Rove, I'm lookin' at you, baby!

From Scott Horton's blog No Comment in Harper's

[R]ecently, in an appearance on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Rove was asked whether he had contacted the Justice Department about the Siegelman case. He responded, “I found out about Don Siegelman’s investigation and indictment by reading about it in the newspaper.” It was a typically Rovian contrived non-response, designed to convey the impression that he was answering in the negative without actually doing so. But this time, Stephanopoulos called him on it, challenging him to answer the question directly. Revealingly, Rove bumbled for several minutes, but steadfastly refused to give a straight answer. Watch the clip here [more of the article here].

What of Rove's offer to Congress? Democracy Now! June 4, 2008

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a scandal that’s rocked the Bush administration. Former White House deputy, Karl Rove, is vowing to fight a congressional subpoena to testify on the politicization of the Justice Department. Last month, the House Judiciary Committee gave Rove a July 10th deadline to answer questions on the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and the firing of nine US attorneys. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has rejected an offer from Rove’s attorneys that would have had Rove appear on condition his testimony not be under oath and not be transcribed. Rove now says he’ll let the courts decide.

Later in the same broadcast, former US Attorney David Iglesias discusses Rove's offer.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the prosecution, the jailing of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman is related to what happened to you, David Iglesias?

DAVID IGLESIAS: I think there is a very strong circumstantial case there. I’ve not followed that issue as carefully as our own firings. But based on what I’ve read—and also, it’s really important to point out, federal courts of appeal almost never release somebody who has already been convicted and is serving time. I called my office after the Siegelman story broke. I asked one of my lawyers that does nothing but appeals. I said, “Has this happened in this district, that the circuit has released somebody we’ve convicted?” He goes, “It’s never happened.” So the listener really needs to understand how rare it was for the Fifth Circuit there to release Governor Siegelman. I think it has lots of indicia of political interference, which would explain why Rove doesn’t want to talk about it, because he has criminal liability, and he knows that.

AMY GOODMAN: And Karl Rove vowing to fight a congressional subpoena to testify on the politicization of the Justice Department, now demanding that he not have to testify under oath or that there be any transcript of his testimony?

DAVID IGLESIAS: Which is a completely unacceptable offer. I mean, any prosecutor worth his or her salt is going to say that that testimony is worthless. If it’s not under oath, not subject to the penalties of perjury, if it’s not transcribed and if it’s not public, it’s a worthless statement. I mean, I know Congress will never accept that. I believe Rove will not show up. This will—he’ll be added to the current litigation between the House of Representatives and Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, who similarly thumb their nose at the rule of law, didn’t even show up to claim privilege.

I mean, anybody out there who’s been in the courts realizes when you get a subpoena, you can’t just ignore it. You have to show up. You have to state why you’re privileged, what information you can’t talk about for whatever reason, documents—you have to create a privilege log and specify what they are and what privilege you’re claiming. One thing you can’t do is ignore a subpoena, which is exactly what they’re doing.

Scott Horton has "More on Maher Arar"

From Scott Horton's blog, No Comment, in Harper's:

He was apprehended by American authorities, who had been tipped by Canadian intelligence (falsely, as it turns out) that Arar was connected to an Al Qaeda cell. Arar was rushed through a series of extraordinary quick proceedings, put on a plane to Jordan and turned over to Syria, where he was tortured. A year later he came back to Canada. The Canadian government did an exhaustive study of the case, concluded they were in the wrong and gave Arar a $10 million payment in compensation. But what did the Bush Administration do?
[more...]

Can the US Gov't be so comprehensively inept? How many "mistakes" does it take to make them a policy? Does the rendition program operate on the Canetti Principle?

For example, let's pick an Iraqi-Canadian to single out for public torture. On Canetti's principle, that should induce a lot of shock for the buck.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002756

It is the first death which infects everyone with the feeling of being threatened. It is impossible to over assess the role played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. It need not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone unknown. Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership in the group to which one belongs oneself.

–Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht vol. 1, p. 152 (1960)(S.H. transl.)

(Emphasis added.)

Another Prime Example of the Distortion

From David Weigel's blog, Reason: An excellent example of a domestic application of the Goering Treatment, featuring Larry Johson as Goebbels, the same role as played by Daniel Pipes in his attempt to change a high-school principal into a female jihadist (A Prime Example of the Distortion)


Last week, with a completely bogus claim, Larry Johnson and his colleagues attempted to transmogrify Michelle Obama into Louis Farrakhan. It went like this:

1. Say something outrageous, but plausible, against an opponent
   
2. Claim some truthy details, like a place or a date
   
3. Have a co-conspirator claim an echo as "new credence"
   
4. Blatantly blow your own cover by contradicting claims made in Step 2.
   
5. When called out as a liar, tell the caller to "fuck off."
   

E.g., for Step 3: "Gleefully, a NoQuarter blogger completes the Mobius strip and claims Stone has given Johnson 'new credence.'"

(h/t to Ken Silverstein's Washington Babylon)

UPDATE: Step 3 has a Name: "Circular Reporting"

"The questions is: is information from Ledeen and Ghorbanifar still going to the vice president's office, and is it affecting them?" a former senior CIA offiicial said. "It's a logical assumption. That is what is known in the intelligence business as circular reporting: the same information, coming through the same source, peddled through different channels, slightly altered to make it look like it's coming from multiple sources. And it's one of the biggest dangers in the intelligence business. That is what Iraq Niger was all about."

From The Cocktail Napkin Plan for Regime Change in Iran, by Dave Wagner and Laura Rozen in Mother Jones

Pat Robertson, Political Economist, Weighs the Costs of Assassinating Hugo Chavez

Beginning @3:20 Stewart, Mocking Bush, Reveals Real MO of USA

Stewart mocks Bush, skewering the world's greatest terr'ist on having made Iraq into al-Qaida country, saying"...and if there aren't terr'ists there, we'll make 'em terr'ists and then and then we'll attack 'em, heh heh heh they can't win..."

OPEC Uber Alles

Pres. Chavez Made This Offer 2 Years Ago

[David Cole, head of the Centre for Automotive Research in Detroit], with the support of leading US auto industry executives, is expected to call on Congress to set a lower limit for the price of oil. 'If we set a floor of $50 a barrel the investment the big auto manufacturers are making in alternative technologies will be protected,' he said. 'If not they will fail.'

(The Observer, Sunday 8 June 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/08/commodities.oil)

Palast Reported Chavez's Offer Early In 2006
Watch the video from Palast Archives on Google.


Amy Goodman and Greg Palast Discuss Why We Must Control Iraq's Oil: It's the Saudis, Stupid!

Democracy Now! May 15, 2006

GREG PALAST:Yeah, that’s why I wrote a book, because it does link the whole thing together. I mean, I just got back from meeting with Chavez, as you know, and you showed our interview a few weeks ago. He’s offered the U.S. $50-a-barrel oil. That’s a third off of what we’re paying right now. Now, you would think our president would be down in Caracas kissing Hugo Chavez’s behind and saying, “Thank you, thank you for dropping the price of oil by a third, and let’s make a deal,” because Chavez wants a deal.

But he’s not doing that, our president, even though the high prices are costing about a million jobs right now. And the reason he’s not is that what Chavez will not do is that Chavez will not return the money. It’s not about petroleum, it’s about petrodollars, as I explain in the book. In other words, when George Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch, he’s not trying to get Abdullah’s oil. Abdullah can’t drink the stuff. He’s got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the — when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars, and that is what is funding George Bush’s mad spending spree.

We have a president who has racked up $2 trillion in extra debt, you know, stone sober, apparently. And someone’s got to pay for that. And basically we’re paying for it by effectively an oil tax, which is returned to us, because the Gulf states and our other trading partners are now buying up $2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and debt. So, in other words, they’re recycling the money back and paying for George Bush’s spending spree on ending inheritance taxes, you know, several wars, etc.

Now, Hugo Chavez says, “I’ll give you cheap oil, not only to the poor, but to everyone. But I’m not giving you back the money. That money is going to stay in Latin America to build our nations.” And he just withdrew $20 billion out of the U.S. Federal Reserve. You have to understand, this is a punch in the face of the U.S. administration, far more than withholding oil, withholding and withdrawing petrodollars, as I explain in the book, and that’s why you have that little nice floater from — balloon thrown out by Reverend Robertson, Pat Robertson, saying “Hugo Chavez thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, and I think we ought to just go and do it,” because they have got to get that — it’s not that they need that oil, they need that oil money. And if they can’t get it, they have to eliminate Hugo Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the war in Iraq a war for oil?

GREG PALAST: Is the war in Iraq for oil? Yes, it’s about the oil, but not for the oil. In my investigations for Armed Madhouse, I ended up with a story far more fascinating and difficult than I imagined. We didn’t go in to grab the oil. Just the opposite. We went in to control the oil and make sure we didn’t get it. It goes back to 1920, when the oil companies sat in a room in Brussels in a hotel room, drew a red line around Iraq and said, “There’ll be no oil coming out of that nation.” They have to suppress oil coming out of Iraq. Otherwise, the price of oil will collapse, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia will collapse.

And so, what I found, what I discovered that they’re very unhappy about is a 323-page plan, which was written by big oil, which is the secret but official plan of the United States for Iraq’s oil, written by the big oil companies out of the James Baker Institute in coordination with a secret committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. I know it sounds very conspiratorial, but this is exactly how they do it. It’s quite wild. And it’s all about a plan to control Iraq’s oil and make sure that Iraq has a system, which, quote, “enhances its relationship with OPEC.” In other words, the whole idea is to maintain the power of OPEC, which means maintain the power of Saudi Arabia.

Congratulations, Senator Barack Obama, here's what I call for

Congratulations, Sen. Obama, on your historic victory. As a Zen Poet, I look forward to repeating your melodious name for the next 8 years or so.

I regret that I cannot offer you my whole-hearted support: I support Rep. Dennis Kucinich. I call on you to reform our electoral process. In light of the Pentagon Propaganda Program, in light of the obvious participation in his exclusion by the Democratic Party itself, campaign finance reform doesn't begin to cure what ails our body politic.

Jacking the nation by perverting our shared narrative is a long-standing tradition. You show a genius for expressing the spirit of our times. I call on you to honor this spirit above all else. I call on you to resist the temptation to myth-jack our nation.