Government Shutdown!!!!

[Carol Newquist]

Take a look at Alice's posts in the Egypt thread - it should become clearer that perhaps for the first time in modern history, this is absolutely not the case.

I have read pretty much every post in that thread and have researched and read about it elsewhere, and still, I hold the view that it is the case, and Egypt will ultimately devolve into a civil war when the U.S. feels it's time for the Egyptian military to be dethroned. Egypt has been a Military Oligarchy since its independence and still is....but its position is very tenuous right now.

[conniption]

The Politics Blog

Oct 4, 2013

The Triumph Of The Ratfuckers

By Charles P. Pierce at 12:05PM


Donald Segretti, the original ratfker, in the 1970s. AFP via Getty Images

As the Reign Of The Morons enters its third day, let us pause for a moment to pay tribute to a political visionary whose entire career presaged the current moment, anticipating the essential dynamic in play in Washington right now in all of its petulant, kindergartenish glory. Let us raise a morning glass to Donald Segretti, the ratfucker.

(As any student of Watergate knows, "ratfucking" was the word used by Segretti and a number of other officials in the Nixon White House for the dirty tricks they ran in student elections when they all were at the University of Southern California. Segretti -- as well as his pal, Dwight Chapin -- simply transferred these techniques to our national elections.)

There are two basic philosophical foundation stones to ratfucking. The first is that political sabotage for its own sake is a worthy enough goal. There doesn't necessarily have to be an obvious purpose or obvious logic behind it. Everything is simply tactics. Those tactics either work or they don't. To believe this, of course, one must first believe that all politics is a essentially a zero-sum game of power; you win and the other guy loses. Who rules? Period. One cannot for a moment contemplate the notion that politics -- and therefore, government -- has anything to do with the public good. I trust I don't have to spell out the parallels between this elemental basis of ratfucking and what the Republicans are about in their current campaign of vandalism. This has now entered a time in which we are seeing sabotage for sabotage's own sake. Remember, the conservative rump faction has brought this shutdown upon the country because its members refuse to agree to a federal budget that contains lower discretionary spending than even Paul Ryan contemplated. That's because now -- as Congressman Marlin Stutzman pointed out clearly yesterday -- this isn't about the budget, or even about economics, it's about who wins and who loses. It's about whether or not John Boehner, the castrato Speaker Of The House, can keep his job. The public, as was said during our previous Gilded Age, be damned.

The second basic philosophical tenet of ratfucking is that it is essentially bullying. It is essentially about ridicule and deceit as ends in themselves. Segretti's activities were meant to bring embarrassment and public scorn upon his targets. They were not aimed at proving to voters that the opposition was wrong. They were aimed at making it look ridiculous. Hubert Humphrey's bastard child. Edmund Muskie's rallies cancelled. Sooner or later, of course, the viciousness and the schoolyard taunting can't be contained. Segretti's activities, while relatively harmless, opened the ballgame for the late Lee Atwater's vicious race-baiting and for the entire public career of Karl Rove, in which the latter has not drawn a single breath in which he did not dedicate himself to the degradation of the political process and the poisoning of the political debate.

We are seeing this aspect of ratfucking playing out now. We saw it when Representative Randy Neugebauer bullied a Park Ranger. We saw it when Rep Todd Rokita told CNN anchor Carol Costello, essentially, to sit there and look pretty while he unspooled whatever the line of the day was. We saw it when Rep. Darrell Issa flipped out at a reporter a few days before that. And we are seeing it in the cynicism of the the now-daily Republican gimmick of finding a government service that polls well and then pretending to care about funding it, as though the whole party hasn't been running against "government" since before Don Segretti was cheating the student body at USC. We will open the National Parks, and all the other good stuff, and we can do it without really paying for it. The last victory of pure Reaganomics is on display.

We are coming into the first weekend -- and therefore, the first Green Room festival -- since the Reign Of The Morons began, so I suspect we will see a lot of ratfucking gussied up as high rhetoric come Sunday. But, for the rest of us, we are living through a living history of sabotage, through a single extended dirty trick. We are all of us, milling around the public square, wondering who cancelled the rally today and somewhere, in a Days Inn near the airport, a clever young man snaps his suitcase shut and moves on to the next town. There is always another rat to fuck, after all.

[brainpanhandler]

If the government shuts down then brainpanhandler may be out of luck because national parks are not considered essential services. For some reason I don't think the shutdown will happen but I am often wrong on these things.

Yeah. Had to move down the road apiece to lake superior state park. The federal visitors' centers were all shut down and road blocks were erected at the entrances to the national parks. Under different circumstances we might have just ignored the road blocks.

Cell phone service was spotty at best and internet connectivity nonexistent. On tuesday night there were northern lights. They stretched from horizon to horizon. I couldn't help but fantasize that a gigantic solar storm had knocked out the electrical grid and satellite communications exactly when the federal government would be less able to respond and that the world as I knew it was in chaos while I lay on the beach mezmerized by the beauty of it all.

People would not stop camping if the national park service just disappeared. It's true.

I just came from outside and the sky still hasn't fallen....and the planes are still flying overhead on schedule. Kids are still at school and people are still going to work. The bars are still open and serving all manner of drink and Breaking Bad is available on Netflix. So much for their bluff. They shut down and we're still breathing....hell, we're more than breathing, we're thriving despite their siphoning.

There are no hard feelings. But did you really think the negative effects of a federal government shutdown would be felt in a day?

I guess I'll just repeat this unanswered question:

Who benefits when the citizenry are made to think that government can do no good?

Despite feeling like I align myself too closely with the Ron/Rand Paul brand of libertardianism when I state that I believe we should have more decentralized government, nonetheless, I'll say that's what I think we should have.

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. —Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Have we allowed ourselves to be made deliberately unprepared for it?

This:

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

is overdue for a rereading by me. I think the last time I read it was in high school for god's sake. Slavery just morphed into wage/debt slavery and wars of empire are more brazen, vicious and deadly than ever.

[Iamwhomiam]

Shutdown is part of longtime strategy
Coalition effort called for cutting government funds

New York Times
Published 8:06 pm, Saturday, October 5, 2013

Washington

Shortly after President Barack Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Obama's health law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed "blueprint to defunding Obamacare," signed by Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off funding for the entire federal government.

"We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse," said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.

With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe the public is behind them. Although the law's opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the tea party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

A defunding "tool kit" created in early September included talking points that addressed the question, "What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?"

The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: "We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare."

The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, mounted by groups across the conservative spectrum.

Some, like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, are tea party inspired. But some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million in 2012 to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to a new group geared to young adults that ran an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman's legs during a gynecological exam.

The groups have also sought to pressure vulnerable Republican members of Congress with scorecards keeping track of their health care votes, burned faux "Obamacare cards" on college campuses and distributed scripts for phone calls to congressional offices, sample letters to editors and pre-written Twitter offerings for followers to present as their own.

On Capitol Hill, the advocates found willing partners in tea party conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to shut down the government if they do not get their way on spending issues. This time they said they were so alarmed by the health law that they were willing to risk a shutdown over it. ("This is exactly what the public wants," Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said on the eve of the shutdown.)

Despite Bachmann's comments, not all of the groups have been on board with the defunding campaign. Some, like the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity are more focused on sowing public doubts about the law. But all have a common goal, which is to cripple a measure that Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and leader of the defunding effort, has likened to a horror movie.

"We view this as a long-term effort," said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity.

His group's goal is not to defund the law.

"We want to see this law repealed," Phillips said.

[NeonLX]

[seemslikeadream]

Think the government shutdown doesn't impact you? Think again
Unless you're a very healthy rich person who lives in a cave, the government shutdown affects you and should make you mad
Follow Ana Marie Cox by emailBETA
Ana Marie Cox
theguardian.com, Friday 4 October 2013 10.17 EDT

A portion of the National Mall with the US Capitol in the background is closed due the government shutdown. Photograph: Rex/Kris Tripplaar
Human puff-adder Bill Kristol drolly noted on Morning Joe this week that the shutdown is not "the end of the world". The Huffington Post's Sam Stein snapped back, "For these people affected by these cuts, it is sort of comparable to the end of the world."

I have one quibble with Stein's otherwise satisfying smackdown: "For the people affected by these cuts" implies that there are people who are not affected by these cuts. Stein was talking specifically about the families and children across the country most likely to suffer when the government stops paying for Head Start programs and nutritional aid, but they are only the most sympathetic victims of the shutdown.

And there are a lot of them: Almost 9m mothers and children rely on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (Wic). Most states will be able to operate for about a week on the money they have, but in the words of one administrator in Cook County, "We have no cushion. If our funding stream stops we will temporarily suspend service."

The US Department of Agriculture is attempting to prop up the program in the states hardest hit – they announced this week a $2.5m grant to Utah. But the $125m they have on reserve is laughably small for a program that costs $7b a year – it's less than 2% of the total budget. If $125m was all the money the program had, it would operate for six days.

But that's just women and children. The poorest of the poor, right? We're a civilized country; we won't let them starve. As Kristol told Stein, "Localities can help out. Churches can help out." Because obviously, up until now, localities and churches were just standing around twiddling their thumbs as lounged on divans and wondered if it was time to pick out new wallpaper or maybe treat themselves to a day at the spa.

If you actually attend a church or do service work, I hope you've picked up the laptop from when you hurled it across the room just now. Already a huge patch in the patchwork of federal social services across the country, churches and private food banks have stretched themselves thin to cover the drop in federal aid that accompanied the sequester cuts last spring (Remember that? The last time we had a budget showdown?).

The ripple effects of a Wic crash spread outward quickly. Food stamp and Wic programs pump about $23m a year into retail grocery stores – indeed, a quarter of all meals for recipients of nutritional aid come from a supermarket. The Wic buys 60% of all the baby formula produced in the country. For every dollar spent on Wic, states save about $3.5 in Medicaid spending – but that's just a quantitative way of saying that Wic produces healthier babies.

But maybe you're still thinking of this as a sad story, not that has anything to do with you or anyone you know. You don't go to national parks, or live near one. (Communities that depend on national park tourism stand to lose $30m a day.) You're not a veteran. (At the VA, money allocated for disability payments and students studying under the GI bill will run out in a few weeks.)

You don't take commercial airplane flights. (About 34% of the Federal Aviation Administraion workforce is now on leave, including almost 3,000 safety inspectors.) You eat only meat and vegetables grown by your own hand and don't take any medications. (The Food and Drug Administration will cease all food and drug safety inspections, except for meat. They usually monitor about 80% of the nation's food supply; in the interm, state agencies will try to pick up the slack.) You're not in college and no one you know is one of the approximately 14 million students working their way through college or paying for it with a subsidized loan. (There will be no payments made via the Federal Work-Study or Perkins Loan Programs, or Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants.)

Basically, you are a very rich, very healthy person that lives in a cave. If you are not, then the shutdown affects you.

And this produces the one aspect of the shutdown I'm almost cynical enough to enjoy myself: far from producing proof dispositive that government is a burdensome hindrance to personal freedom, they've simply proven how little personal freedom we can enjoy if government breaks down. If this sounds familiar, it's because that reasoning has been the cornerstone of modern civilization. Or you watched "Lost".

It's not that Americans don't want government in their lives, it's that they'd like it to be an unobtrusive part of their lives. The National Security Agency might be just a little too unobtrusive, it's true. If capitalism is governed by an invisible hand, then a well-functioning government is an invisible safety net – not just for those getting obviously slapped around by capitalism, but also for anyone whose well-being depends on the free market not taking too many whiplash turns. We want the government to help the least of us, we also want it to keep planes from falling out of the sky and our food from making us sick.

This goes on long enough, and a lot that we take for granted will go away – and the thing about an invisible safety net is that you only notice it's gone once you fall.

[Carol Newquist]

A portion of the National Mall with the US Capitol in the background is closed due the government shutdown.

This is a good thing considering last week's murder of an innocent bystander.

[Laodicean]

The Lincoln Memorial Mower.

[Carol Newquist]

^ I'm all for members of Congress and the Executive cutting the lawns, edging and trimming the hedges. It can be a bipartisan effort. And I'm all for nominating the guy in the picture to take their place in the Chamber....even though we'd have to drag him kicking and screaming.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/ ... ate_t.html

How Does The Shutdown Relate To Me?

Everyone knows ads are propaganda, but what happens when you have an ad for propaganda? While you sip your first Guinness and try to figure out why China's government can only ever shut down once, you can ponder this ad:



The only reason you haven't spit nitrogen bubbles on your screen is I haven't shown you the other half of this outstandingly accurate abomination. You should get yourself a towel and another drink.

I.

Intelligent people like to tell each other that they aren't liberal or conservative but independent; that Fox and MSNBC are biased and can't be trusted, that partisanship, "special interests" and "lobbyists" have destroyed America; in essence, that they are not ideologues but practical, reasonable people who just want the system to do what's right. Then you ask them what exactly "right" is, and the yelling starts.

Intelligent people, like racists, are fluent in describing themselves in opposition to what they are not, but ask them to define themselves by what they are, tell you what they do believe in, and they're lost. They have opinions on issues, sure, but ask for an overarching ideology and their face botoxes. Overarching ideology? Only people with manifestos have ideologies, not having an ideology is the whole point of being independent, the only thing they deal in is "facts" or "reality", and gun to head if they believe in anything it's "science." Not physics or chemistry, but evolution. You know, whatever ideologues hate.

I phrase it this way not to insult a group, but to show you how very easy it is to brand identify a group, because when a group becomes a demo it loses most of its freedom of action and becomes baa baa black sheep. Do you want to see the consequence? Turn on CNN.

II.

"The government shut down just shows that our government doesn't function correctly!" That's one interpretation, the other is that when a car starts to smoke, you pull over and fix it, you don't keep going till it explodes, though I recognize the explosion makes for better TV. What you're seeing is the ordinary back room realigning of interests and powers, but this time trying desperately to hide from a voyeuristic media that caters to a demographic, i.e. you, that believes that never more than three at a time colorful but poorly understood #issues will eventually get us to Mars. "We shouldn't go to Mars." You got your wish. Off topic, speaking of Mars, here's an interesting thought: if things proceed as per y=mx+b, then the entire human race of the future interstellar diaspora will all be Chinese. Huh. What do you know, Star Trek was way off.

Americans, by which I mean a populace propagandized to the Left or Right or Middle, cynically believe that "wanting to get re-elected" or arrogance or ideology is what's to blame, as if 500+ career Machiavellians are too stupid to know what an underemployed theater grad knows. "They should just do the right thing!" Who will let them? You?

The shut down was the inevitable consequence of a government not permitted to compromise, smothered by the oppressive gaze of a kamikaze media that will kill itself and your country just to get a headline today. I'm starting to wonder if the reason it is always pretty white girls who get kidnapped is that the media is the one kidnapping them. And you blamed Bear Stearns for being too focused on short term profits? CNN's time horizon is your next micturition. The media demands partisanship, conflict, opposing sides, but despite having 24 hours to fill will never, ever explain the interplay between complex issues, preferring to feature them in segments while hyping them to a crisis. Imagine trying to have sex always on camera, and always with a goat, and always with some know-it-all screaming at you, "get hard now! NOW! 8 seconds left! NOW! What's wrong with you?!" Jesus, can I take a minute and do this privately? "Transparency!"

If Senator X "makes a concession" the relevant media will proclaim him a loser and a coward, they don't want representatives, they want cage fighters. There's no reward for compromise and there's no safe place to attempt it, either. This is 100% your fault, "I can't believe how stupid these people are!" It's great how you can't find employment but have time to micromanage the U.S. Senate. #outrage

If you want to know what political career disaster looks like, have an infinitely leggy ex-sorority girl in flesh toned Manolos sitting behind a glass table in perfect lighting announce to 50% of America that you were beat by an old woman from California or an old man from Ohio. "Ha ha, what a cuckold! Back to you, Kent." You blame Congress? They are the ones who "don't get it"? When a representative democracy gets crippled by what amounts to a 3x3 magic square, it's not that they can't figure out the solution, the solution is easy, the answer is 15 and the five is a gimme, we just need someone to dare allow himself to be filmed putting the 1 on the left or the right or the center so we can finish the other 13 numbers and go bomb Syria. "Wait, what? I don't understand." Yes, that's my point exactly.


III.

I'm not saying the shutdown isn't a real problem, only that if the news came out only in weekly format, this particular shutdown wouldn't have happened. Or, said differently, if there was a government shut down at a time when the news came out only weekly, it would mean we were getting a new flag.

All of what is now being subverted by the media has been detailed in The Process Of Government, you should read it. But you won't, it has too many characters, and this is accurate no matter how you define characters. Come on, at least read Chapter XX, it's online. Jesus, here. "Umm, It's pretty boring." I know, I know, you want to know how the news relates to you, and boy oh boy do I have the news network for you.

"But that book was written in 1908. Based on what I've seen on Downton Abbey, things were a lot different then."

Well, yes, obviously, there had just been a massive leap forward in technology and industrialization, a booming economy fueling a wealth gap, temporarily course corrected by a financial panic "precipitated" by the failure of two overspeculating brokerage houses. There were also, simultaneously, great advances in progressive causes like worker's rights and food quality, all on the background of decreasing importance of religion among educated whites in favor of science. Not physics or chemistry, but evolution. Tabloids were incomprehensibly popular, partisan media the norm. A loosening of conventional morality manifested as bored promiscuity, female bisexuality, and a flood of new porn the likes of which never existed before.

"That does sound different. And awesome. What did their Millennial kids inherit, what did they experience over their adult lives, say 1929-1945?"

I totally don't know, Boardwalk Empire only goes up to 1924 and Mad Men starts 1960.


IV.

The problem with blaming the shutdown on Congressional partisans is that the partisans on either side know exactly what they want. When there are specific things you want, compromise is usually possible.

The public in the middle, however, don't understand politics, only emotions given to them by TV, and so their beliefs are cobbled together in real time, improvised, as they get "more information." One trending topic at a time, each vacuum sealed to prevent cross contamination. They don't look at things historically, culturally, humanistically, or even selfishly, there exists no system for interpreting "the facts." Compromise becomes impossible, as a simple example, when a "moderate" "thinks" there should be more restrictions on guns, they want gun owners to give up something they want very much-- in exchange for nothing. "But it's the right thing to do!" And the yelling starts, in HD.

Worse, they proudly announce their lack of ideology by branding themselves as Independents-- capital I, a thing, a demo. He willingly lessens his independence to become part of a group.

The "independent" demo actually has all the textbook characteristics of a group most susceptible to propaganda, more correctly "pre-propaganda", and by textbook I mean literally Propaganda.

They consider themselves leaderless. They can have representatives, they can have "evangelists" but they have to believe that their conclusions are all their own, through individual reflection and objective consideration. Interestingly, and on purpose, they believe their brains can handle such an analysis, any analysis. This isn't arrogance. They are told, by universities and the media, that their mind is prepared to do this heavy lifting as long as they are given just the right facts, filtered from the "noise." "Where can we get the right facts, in a world of liars?" Good question, maybe the news?

Commonly, independents have a single personal issue, say gun rights or abortion, but no personal experience with other issues, and lacking any subjective starting point, they therefore believe that ONLY objectivity will give them the truth. The less life experience they have the better; the less they've seen of the world, the fewer people they've argued with (in person, where it is real and has real consequences like punches), the less frequently their water balloon worldview is tested by people with pins, the more they will cling to the premise that "facts" are what's important. In this way the one personal issue serves as a reference point which the propaganda exploits: "hey, gun advocates, did you know you like low corporate taxes?" I do? "Yes, because the people you hate are for raising them." Consequently, raising corporate taxes is felt like an attack on the Second Amendment. "Liberals! Taking away our rights!"

But sometimes the complexity of issues is just overwhelming, once in a while reality creeps in, and issues are discovered to be massively complicated, and anyway he has no power to do anything.

No doubt this sounds depressing, he's going to start drinking heavily, or become a cynic, or go the Hemingway. So the media=propaganda fosters his regression towards a much desired solution: total alienation. The media explains how things relate to him, and as long as he understands what's going on, he feels empowered. He is given an ideology without even knowing it. Now he doesn't actually have to do anything, indeed, it's way the hell better if he does nothing. All that's required is support, and through his support not only will "the right things" happen but he'll share in the credit.

You'll counter that there are right leaning and left leaning independents, isn't there a difference? but this misses the point: propaganda doesn't try to get you to believe something, but to do something, and in this case it is to do nothing-- it doesn't matter what you choose to believe, as long as your outrage is done from inside your house.

This is the whole gimmick of media, not polar but triangular, right, left, middle, mobilizing an army of assonauts to feel strongly enough about something that they don't do anything.

I already knew that "independent" was a group looking for representation, what I was surprised by is how fast "independent" became a mainstream brand demo. Here is page 2, and 3, of Time Magazine:



The first and most immediate observation is that Al Jazeera assumes its American target demo is stupid, very stupid, because here we have what is most certainly a college graduate who considers herself in need of unbiased, objective, independent news-- yet she is still reading Time Magazine, as her main source of in depth news. Rana Foroohar balanced by Fareed Zakaria, two wrongs can make a right, and "it's somewhere in the middle." She has decided that the problem with her understanding of the world is that she just needs better intel. Yes, she will say intel, it sounds more objective.

In order for the Time reader to have formed the quoted thought two other thoughts had to have occurred already, which in itself is astonishing, here they are: 1. She's figured out that all American news is biased, she's sick of the partisanship, after all, it doesn't brand identify her. 2. She thinks that more objectivity is to be found at Al-Jazeera America.

Why would she think this? Because she's stupid? Actually, yes: the culture you know least about has all the answers, which is also why the Guinness ad hypermale in pre-season Special Olympics has chosen to tattoo gigantic Chinese characters on his arm to explain his ennui to himself. "It's a chinese proverb, 'That what doesn't kill me make me stronger.'" I hope to God a bus tries to make you stronger. Off topic, as a sociological metric, you can track a chinese person's first level of alienation from his culture by his branding himself with English-word tattoos; but you will know that all the chinese has been media powerwashed out of him when the he starts getting Chinese character tattoos. "It's because I'm Chinese," he'd explain, to which you would not dare reply, "yeah, I kinda figured." To which he will then not reply, "I mean, I know I'm genetically Chinese, but I don't really feel Chinese, but this signals that I'm part of a symbolic China more authentic than the actual China of my parents which I feel no real connection to, yet I know I'm supposed to feel the connection, it's not like I can go around pretending I grew up on Waltzing Matilda." To which you will not add, "It's not entirely your fault, you didn't live through a war like your parents and grandparents did, and anyway modern China resembles the U.S. far more than it does symbolic China. Technically, you're alienated from your parents alienation, but neither are you connected to Americana either, the white girls/boys seem out of reach, there's a frivolity you can't really empathize with, jobs other than Law, Medicine, Science are unreal, and you feel like you're always looking at everything from an outside that itself has no firm location." And he'll blink, confused, "truth be told, my only real association to chinese culture is my parents screaming at me that I'm not as good as 'real' Chinese. What can be done?" I don't have an answer for you, the good news is that when you finally find the answer that works for you, your kids will be too old to care.

Al-Jazeera America is trying to call itself "objective", but right in the ad is the brand reveal: she doesn't want objectivity, she wants subjectivity explained to her, she wants to know how the news relates to her. She wants to know: how can I, an organ donor in Sector 3, be part of the global community now that my husband is boring and my kids prefer their individual LCD screens? The media wants her to have an answer, after all, do you know how many Nielsen ratings that family generates, how individualized is the data? It's not the quality of the news at AJA she likes, but how watching it makes her feel smart, unique. She's not going to watch Fox, MSNBC and AJA, right? Only one of those, but AJA brands her as out of the mainstream, unique, open to other opinions. "I like to get my information from different sources." I assume that includes twitter, 140 characters and an appeal to authority and you're good to go at the Starbucks.


V.

To be clear, I'm not at all worried Al Jazeera is going to secretly convert this woman into a jihadist or spread misinformation and disinformation. I have no doubt Al Jazeera will be as objective as CNN, after all they took Soledad O'Brien from them to signal that very point.

So when I say AJA is (pre-)propaganda, I don't mean it won't be accurate, I mean that it's purpose is to prepare its demo for a certain way of life. Of course everything I've said applies to any American media-- except that Al Jazeera offers something else the American networks don't or can't. If you want to know what Al Jazeera is really offering, take a look at its aspirational target demo:





Not pictured is a white guy in a suit, because he already has media that's for him, and it's probably Fox, and the above four people hate it. That's powerful branding in America: in opposition to what you hate.

Women and minorities may not seem like an aspirational demo, but it is-- not for actual women and minorities necessarily, but for people suffering from tremendous ennui who want to be part of a struggle, something bigger than themselves.

They feel, without fully comprehending this to be true, that the only reason the American media is so partisan and loud and angry and urgent is because nothing really important is happening. Yes, there's a countdown clock on CNN for Debt Ceiling Armageddon and I guess Kanye West is headed for the asylum but it's all boy who cried wolf blitzer at this point. She heard, like you heard, that the NSA is monitoring us, and you know what? Meh. Though it was interesting when it was on The Good Wife. This isn't to say things are going well, it is to say they are degrading boringly. Like the above woman's marriage.

This is what Al Jazeera promises her, not objectivity, but a connection to history. Our big crisis is... whether or we aren't going to pay our short term debts. You think either of the four people above can get hyped about that? But over in the middle east history is happening, racial equality, women's lib, the right to get an education, riots, ideological clashes-- all that stuff is happening over there. Women are being stoned to death for seeing a penis, gay men, too, if you assume that at some point in some future these things will no longer be true, then you are saying that historical changes are afoot as the old ways are replaced, and by ways I mean men. The #OWS demo wants to see powerful men humbled before the t-shirted, tweeting masses, it allows them the fantasy that it could some day happen here, which it won't because the propaganda worked.

Propaganda doesn't succeed because it is manipulative, it works because people WANT it, NEED it, it gives their life a direction and meaning and guards against change.

Fans of AJA will probably attack me for being biased, but this accusation is silly. The whole point here is that the target demo for AJA is not smart, and I know this because no one smart would watch TV news. If you are watching TV news, then you're not smart, this isn't me saying this, this is TV news predicting this: no one smart would ever ask another person, let alone the news, to explain to them how the news relates to them. TV news thinks you're as stupid as Time Magazine.

If anything, Al-Jazeera isn't the "Islamification" of the west, it is the westernization of the middle east. Al Jazeera reports in English, they have western values, and, most importantly, accept ads-- western style ads, i.e aspirational, not representational. The neocons couldn't have planned this better, someone should check to see if they didn't. Two months of Al Jazeera and this woman will turn to her then deceased husband in a moment of big picture clarity and say, "you know, they're not so different from us, they want the same things we want." Yes. Why do you think that is? Evolution?

The news for Americans, especially Independents, lacks meaning, direction, ideology-- and they miss it, just like economically, they've been left behind. Now the news is artificial drama, just local crime stories blown up nationally, a natural disaster, the occasional Youtube video-- where's the Change, where are the upheavals, where are the riot police? We don't have political riots here, we have high end sit ins near the Broadway Starbucks, and occasionally 20 motorcycles will attack a minivan. "Is 'motorcycle' code?" That's where we are right now, this is what the media has trained you for, detecting racism or hypocrisy or some other character flaw in the speaker as a proxy for the complexities of the issues so you don't have to think. It is under these conditions that you expect John Boehner to "compromise" on something you don't at all understand, and scream for his beheading if he doesn't, all to the thrill of the media. "See! TLP is a right wing zealot!" See, you're stupid. And boy oh boy do I have the news network for you.

[IanEye]

.

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/ ... ate_t.html

How Does The Shutdown Relate To Me?

Everyone knows ads are propaganda, but what happens when you have an ad for propaganda? While you sip your first Guinness and try to figure out why China's government can only ever shut down once, you can ponder this ad:



The only reason you haven't spit nitrogen bubbles on your screen is I haven't shown you the other half of this outstandingly accurate abomination. You should get yourself a towel and another drink.

I think the recent revelation that Jesus Christ was a psy-op kind of stepped on the last psychiatrist's dick.

Kind of hard to get worked up over the idea that Al Jazeera is propaganda after news like that.

I look forward to their hard hitting exposé of Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim as an agent of COINTELPRO.



Sure to cause an avalanche of controversy.

.

[Joao]

In the absence of an independent press (lol), competing propaganda sources are at least better than monoculture propaganda. There's often truth in the worst things that each side says about the other (with obvious exceptions like blood matzahs and the like, of course). The piece above is quite correct, however, to question whether Al Jazeera is any different from MIC/USA/capitalist propaganda.

Savvy journalists can even use it to their advantage. Hat tip to 82_28 for the image below (dated Dec. 6, 1963), which is pulled from his site. (I couldn't find his original post here with the same article.)

[82_28]

Joao that freaked me out. I was going "where did I see that article before?!?!"

Then I see you mentioned my site I have been lazy with unfortunately -- busy with another site at the moment. Just chiming in that I was like "who the fuck found that too?"

*edited to add the word "fuck".

[Joao]

You were VALIS to me when originally posting, and now I've had the chance to be VALIS to you. Or something like that. Great find, anyway--that much is sure.

[KeenInsight]

Congress sure has people fooled, Democrats and Republicans battling it out - while over 60% of Americans have loss faith in both failed political groups. Its all a damn ruse to divide people even more.

U.S. Congress is now less popular than North Korea and Dog Shit - no joke.

If the dems/repubs and the mass media would get over shoving down bullshit down citizen's throats, maybe they could have shutdown over real things, you know - like the out of control defense and national security budgets which are destroying the economy. IS THAT INCLUDED IN THEIR "DEAL" - DEFUNDING THE DEFENSE BUDGET? NOPE, DIDN'T THINK SO. Or how about shutting down the government, or better yet shutting down Obama's Presidency when he drone strikes innocent people without due process.

And then there are people on the streets literally with signs, "raise the debt ceiling" - lol. Yes, enslave ourselves to the Fed and their Fake IOU Money, and Private banks even more, let our government run the country into crumbling ruin which it has been since the 60s. War after Illegal War, Decades of Lying, Coverups, Scandals.

And here is a bit from Sibel Edmonds, telling it like it is, bless this woman:

And former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds wrote yesterday:

To give you an idea I am going to provide a few examples:

Afghanistan gets around $7 Billion= $7,000,000,000. Now, don’t mistake this for our money spent on our war in Afghanistan. That’s in the trillions of dollars. That’s a separate deal. No, this money goes to Afghanistan’s government – known for being crooks, criminals, heroin dealers, and terrorist breeders. ***

Of course Israel gets quite a lion’s share. That goes without saying. They get nearly $3 billion=$3,000,000,000, in military aid and another large sum as financial aid for …well, let’s put aside all the diplomacy and political correctness and call a duck a duck: They get all the military and foreign aid so that they can turn around and spend those dollars through their powerful network and lobby here, to make sure we are all screwed up in developing and implementing our foreign policy…. They get all those billions of dollars in foreign and military aid, come over here, get us into wars so that we go spend trillions of additional dollars in wars ….

Egypt gets its $1 billion of our tax money for … for what? Thank God it’s been in the news lately so even the mass ignoramus population in our nation is able to have an idea: guns and bullets to kill political dissenters, tanks and tear gas to be used against civilians, helicopters to fire at civilians below … bring about a coup de tat, and then bring about another one …Okay, so that one we get. We know what they use our money and military equipment for. No brainer. ***

Pakistan gets more or less $1 Billion. They get military aid to make sure they create desirable conditions so that our military can send its drones out there and bomb the hell out of them every day.

***

So, yes. Our government, somehow, amazingly, has plenty of money, thanks to its limitless money printing authority with zero oversight or accountability. They have trillions to spend on target practice, killing, butchering, torturing, kidnapping. They have billions and billions to spend on spying on you and just messing around with you and me for the heck of it-too much printed money gives them that luxury, you know. And of course, as we see, they’ve got billions of dollars to give crooks, criminals, tyrants, despots, heroin dealers and producers, terrorists, terrorist supporters …

The next time around when our government tells you we are miserably broke, believe them. It’s a no brainer: we are a broke nation. However, don’t let them give you bullsh.. about where they’re going to cut and snip to make ends meet. Do not let them tell you we must go on this way, and just keep printing the green in order to survive. Give them the amount in trillions spent on wars and target practice-shooting around the world.

Point to the billions of dollars yearly given to despots, torturers, criminals, and human target practice fields. Show them the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted by unaccountable agencies every single month. Just question, demand, and insist. Show that you matter and count. For once!

When does it stop?