For non-partisan discussion ONLY. This policy will be strictly moderated and enforced. For those with eyes wide open, visionaries, lunatics, humorists (definitely!)
De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins of the US Army Information Service as having confirmed the presence of these Army psy-ops experts at CNN, saying, “Psy-ops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta through our program, ‘Training with Industry’. They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news.”- source
Although this instance revolves around Ron Paul, the complete picture is much bigger. The Military industrial complex can't let it be known that even the soldiers themselves are sick of war, so the psy-op begins.
As it stands, we have no top tier candidates from either party pledging to end the wars.
Along with this kind of insidious & evil thought engineering, we'll now see the real circus begin - caucuses, 'super-delegates', 'polls', and the rest of the mind-screw which passes for 'democracy' in America.
Seeing how people really get into the show is the saddest part.
Last edited by SquidInk on 01-04-2012 06:23 PM, edited 1 time in total.
The thing I loathe most about election season is reflected in the central fallacy that drives progressive discussion the minute “Ron Paul” is mentioned. As soon as his candidacy is discussed, progressives will reflexively point to a slew of positions he holds that are anathema to liberalism and odious in their own right and then say: how can you support someone who holds this awful, destructive position? The premise here — the game that’s being played — is that if you can identify some heinous views that a certain candidate holds, then it means they are beyond the pale, that no Decent Person should even consider praising any part of their candidacy.
The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.- source
The military-grade pepper-spray that’s been all the rage with law enforcement agencies is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an advanced arsenal of weaponry made available to police departments across the country.
It has become clear now that local PDs are stockpiling some seriously dangerous doodads free of cost as part of a little-known program from the Pentagon. You can thank Uncle Sam, the Department of Defense and your own American tax dollars for the 1033 Program, an initiative that is giving hundreds of millions of bucks’ worth of military hardware from the DoD and putting it in the hands of your favorite neighborhood cop.
In 2011 alone, the Department of Defense forked over roughly 0 million worth of military machinery to law enforcement agencies coast-to-coast that would have been left otherwise unused. In many instances, however, the goods are grabbed by sheriffs in smaller jurisdictions that don’t have much need for the weaponry, other than to install fear within the community. The Daily reports that, according to documents made available by the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency, among those items offered up to officers at no cost at all last year were grenade launchers, helicopters, military robots, M-16 assault rifles and armored vehicles. - source
Last edited by SquidInk on 01-04-2012 12:47 PM, edited 1 time in total.
SquidInk wrote:
Wrap your brain around this one:
This is actually where we are, as a society. These are the people in charge.
Very shocking and scarry article. Imagine 40 hours training for the Drone. I guess they figure since you are safely in bed operating your joy stick it's less threatening?
Unfortunately this tells us nothing - nothing at all. In fact, the truth is not available to us. If anything, we have to assume every single candidate for president has exactly the same motive.
Last edited by SquidInk on 01-04-2012 02:48 PM, edited 1 time in total.
Unfortunately this tells us nothing - nothing at all. In fact, the truth is not available to us. If anything, we have to assume every single candidate for president has exactly the same motive.
Yeah, as much as I like what Ron says, he is certainly bought and paid for just like anyone who has a remote chance of becoming president. Maybe he is more of a "loose cannon" but I don't even think that much. He is the plant to make us think that someone is shaking things up, representing the real people out there.
These are the people in charge.
