Comments on: Crusade of Surge and Siege: Part Two http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/ a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:07:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: D.R. Munro http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/#comment-15093 D.R. Munro Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:00:02 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/#comment-15093 An aside in regards to propaganda: I was having a conversation with someone who I hadn't seen for many years. The conversation ended up on politics (believe it or not, I HATE talking politics in real life situations with "those" people) and we were talking about some of the propaganda techniques used in WWII. Well, my friend goes "I can't believe people fell for shit like that, if there was propaganda still being used today I highly doubt it would work." I think I just kept my mouth shut at that point. An aside in regards to propaganda:

I was having a conversation with someone who I hadn’t seen for many years. The conversation ended up on politics (believe it or not, I HATE talking politics in real life situations with “those” people) and we were talking about some of the propaganda techniques used in WWII.

Well, my friend goes “I can’t believe people fell for shit like that, if there was propaganda still being used today I highly doubt it would work.”

I think I just kept my mouth shut at that point.

]]> By: Mulga Mumblebrain http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/#comment-15067 Mulga Mumblebrain Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:24:48 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/#comment-15067 The sheer viciousness of US state terrorism revealed in the barbarities inflicted in the Yankee Gulag is nothing new. Ever since the US ruling class authorities set out to conquer North America, with the clear intention of exterminating the millions of indigenous, holding aloft the Bible as their supreme justification, the USA has committed one genocide, one campaign of mass murder after another. Within their own society, the ruling, parasitic elite, has destroyed the labour movement and kept Blacks in a state of penury and oppression, latterly by mass imprisonment. Many of the techniques utilised at Abu Ghraib, where many of the perpetrators were prison guards back in the US, are used day after day throughout the US prison-industrial complex. Torture is as American as apple pie. Torture, and this is also true of the US's dark doppelganger Israel, where tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese have been tortured over decades, has no utility in gaining information. Torture is practised to intimidate and terrorise, not just the individuals tortured, but also the subject populations the victims come from, ie the Iraqis, Palestinians and Shia Lebanese. Also, torture is practised by psychopaths, a type predominant in Rightwing circles, for the psychic enjoyment to be derived therefrom. These psychopaths are everywhere in contemporary Western societies. They dominate politics, particularly the dominant Rightwing Market Fundamentalist parties. The Rightwing media is a vast cess-pool of hate and fearmongering, utterly dominated by an handful of giant corporations. There is not only an almost total prohibition on the promulgation of opinions other than the Rightwing orthodoxy, but rank mendacity and peddling of disinformation. I find the current situation, so eloquently outlined by Mr Valenzuela, to be deeply troubling, if not frightening. The Right seems intent on provoking intense hatred of the Islamic world, and total indifference to the suffering of others. While millions of Moslems have been killed and their countries devastated, to argue that it is they who are under attack from us, rather than the lying orthodoxy that it is the poor, innocent West which is besieged by Islamist hordes, intent on our destruction, invites hysterical denunciation as a 'friend of terrorism'. This is the same sort of mentality that no doubt, prevailed in Nazi Germany, but in Nazi Germany the blanking out of the truth was achieved by terror, whereas in the contemporary West it is achieved by insistent, unceasing propagandising. I fear the Right is bent on mass extermination, whatever it takes to achieve the total subjugation of the poor world, forever. It is impelled by an ideology of Hatred of the Other, no doubt centred on individual psychopathology. You either 'get it'-ie that the 'niggers' are sub-human and it is our divine, racially supremacist, destiny, to rule over them forever, or you don't, and hence will be under suspicion of being one of 'them' or a sympathiser with 'terrorism'. When you contemplate the synergy of Western brutality with ecological collapse and Peak Oil, it is probable that we are entering a period of brutality and mass murder unsurpassed in our species bloody history. The only possible way to avoid it is to remove the Right from power-a task of truly Sisyphean difficulty. The sheer viciousness of US state terrorism revealed in the barbarities inflicted in the Yankee Gulag is nothing new. Ever since the US ruling class authorities set out to conquer North America, with the clear intention of exterminating the millions of indigenous, holding aloft the Bible as their supreme justification, the USA has committed one genocide, one campaign of mass murder after another. Within their own society, the ruling, parasitic elite, has destroyed the labour movement and kept Blacks in a state of penury and oppression, latterly by mass imprisonment. Many of the techniques utilised at Abu Ghraib, where many of the perpetrators were prison guards back in the US, are used day after day throughout the US prison-industrial complex. Torture is as American as apple pie. Torture, and this is also true of the US’s dark doppelganger Israel, where tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese have been tortured over decades, has no utility in gaining information. Torture is practised to intimidate and terrorise, not just the individuals tortured, but also the subject populations the victims come from, ie the Iraqis, Palestinians and Shia Lebanese. Also, torture is practised by psychopaths, a type predominant in Rightwing circles, for the psychic enjoyment to be derived therefrom.
These psychopaths are everywhere in contemporary Western societies. They dominate politics, particularly the dominant Rightwing Market Fundamentalist parties. The Rightwing media is a vast cess-pool of hate and fearmongering, utterly dominated by an handful of giant corporations. There is not only an almost total prohibition on the promulgation of opinions other than the Rightwing orthodoxy, but rank mendacity and peddling of disinformation.
I find the current situation, so eloquently outlined by Mr Valenzuela, to be deeply troubling, if not frightening. The Right seems intent on provoking intense hatred of the Islamic world, and total indifference to the suffering of others. While millions of Moslems have been killed and their countries devastated, to argue that it is they who are under attack from us, rather than the lying orthodoxy that it is the poor, innocent West which is besieged by Islamist hordes, intent on our destruction, invites hysterical denunciation as a ‘friend of terrorism’. This is the same sort of mentality that no doubt, prevailed in Nazi Germany, but in Nazi Germany the blanking out of the truth was achieved by terror, whereas in the contemporary West it is achieved by insistent, unceasing propagandising. I fear the Right is bent on mass extermination, whatever it takes to achieve the total subjugation of the poor world, forever. It is impelled by an ideology of Hatred of the Other, no doubt centred on individual psychopathology. You either ‘get it’-ie that the ‘niggers’ are sub-human and it is our divine, racially supremacist, destiny, to rule over them forever, or you don’t, and hence will be under suspicion of being one of ‘them’ or a sympathiser with ‘terrorism’. When you contemplate the synergy of Western brutality with ecological collapse and Peak Oil, it is probable that we are entering a period of brutality and mass murder unsurpassed in our species bloody history. The only possible way to avoid it is to remove the Right from power-a task of truly Sisyphean difficulty.

]]> By: D.R. Munro http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/#comment-14947 D.R. Munro Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:47:29 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/crusade-of-surge-and-siege-part-two/#comment-14947 This is a really great series of articles, but let us not forget the right and left hand of the Empire: the UK and Israel. This is a really great series of articles, but let us not forget the right and left hand of the Empire: the UK and Israel.

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