connecting*the*dots

In five days, it’ll be the four-year anniversary of “Mission accomplished.”

Unbelievable.

btw, Steven Connell is amazing.

From Media Matters:

Melanie Morgan, Lee Rodgers, Rush Limbaugh, and John Gibson all forwarded the accusation made by a website controlled by Rev. Sun Myung Moon that Sen. Hillary Clinton was responsible for spreading information linking Sen. Barack Obama to a madrassa, or Muslim school. None of the four cited any evidence, other than the article, that Clinton was responsible for promoting the madrassa story, and the article cited no one by name.

Below is a clip from The Big Story with John “War on Christmas” Gibson, where Gibson reports on Hillary Clinton “playing the Muslim-phobia card” and holds a conversation with the “level-headed” Republican strategist, Terry Holt.

These guys couldn’t hide a fart in a Trojan Horse.

Here’s my play-by-play breakdown of the clip:

• Charge Hillary Clinton with dirty tactics (from a non-sourced article, published on a right-wing nut job’s website)
• “Expose” Obama being a “Muslim” and being educated at a “madrasa” (after he talked about going to a Muslim school as a child and being a Christian in his book, The Audacity of Hope, which was released earlier this year)
• “Innocently” provide context that a madrasa wasn’t radical 40 years ago (while the rest of Fox News runs with the story as if it were exposing something relevant for American voters to chew on)
• Completely forget to include the fact that Obama was barely out of diapers at the time of his schooling
• Repeat that Clinton is playing political hardball because the American public “knows what a madrasa means” (again, while the rest of Fox hard-sells the ties to terrorists)
• Refuse to explain that The Washington Times is not the same as the “left-leaning” Washington Post (classifications in this culture war that most Americans might confuse rather easily)
• Cry innocent by stating that exposing a cigarette smoker is nothing like this form of political dirty work (while the rest of the network piles on the significance of this insignificant fact)

What’s the result?

An uniformed American public swallowing this story hook, line and sinker, creating doubt with Barak Obama and more venom directed at Hillary Clinton, adding to her baggage — perceived or otherwise.

Until sources are named outside of Insight.com’s word, I’ll file this under Republican Noise Machine.

Fox News isn’t biased; they’re a major part of the spin cycle.

UPDATE: CNN completely debunks the charges — both that Hillary Clinton outed Obama and that Barak Obama attended a “radical madrasa.” They even sent a reporter to Jakarta to show the normalcy of the school on tape. The best line out of Wolf Blitzer’s mouth following the ridiculous clips from Fox News?:

CNN did what any serious news organization is supposed to do in this kind of a situation. We actually conducted an exclusive, first-hand investigation, inside Indonesia, to check out the kind of school Barack Obama attended as a little six year-old boy.

Guess what happened next? Fox News swallowed their story. Lying bastards.

Noam Chomsky once explained the driving force behind the war machine as one that won’t begin to slow down until corporate America realizes that the majority of its customers are against a particular conflict. For when advertisers adjust to the collective vibe of the people (in order to sell product), the message is brought home to politicians in ways they must take seriously in a state-capitalism system.

I can’t remember where I read that — probably in Understanding Power — but it reminded me of his synopsis of the Vietnam Syndrome:

[…]

The bewildered herd never gets properly tamed, so this is a constant battle. In the 1930s they arose again and were put down. In the 1960s there was another wave of dissidence. There was a name for that. It was called by the specialized class “the crisis of democracy.” Democracy was regarded as entering into a crisis in the 1960s. The crisis was that large segments of the population were becoming organized and active and trying to participate in the political arena.

Here we come back to these two conceptions of democracy. By the dictionary definition, that’s an advance in democracy. By the prevailing conception that’s a problem, a crisis that has to be overcome. The population has to be driven back to the apathy, obedience and passivity that is their proper state. We therefore have to do something to overcome the crisis. Efforts were made to achieve that. It hasn’t worked. The crisis of democracy is still alive and well, fortunately, but not very effective in changing policy. But it is effective in changing opinion, contrary to what a lot of people believe.

Great efforts were made after the 1960s to try to reverse and overcome this malady. It was called the “Vietnam Syndrome.” The Vietnam Syndrome, a term that began to come up around 1970, has actually been defined on occasion. The Reaganite intellectual Norman Podhoretz defined it as “the sickly inhibitions against the use of military force.” There were these sickly inhibitions against violence on the part of a large part of the public. People just didn’t understand why we should go around torturing people and killing people and carpet bombing them. It’s very dangerous for a population to be overcome by these sickly inhibitions, as Goebbels understood, because then there’s a limit on foreign adventures.

It’s necessary, as the Washington Post put it the other day, rather proudly, to “instill in people respect for the martial virtues.” That’s important. If you want to have a violent society that uses force around the world to achieve the ends of its own domestic elite, it’s necessary to have a proper appreciation of the martial virtues and none of these sickly inhibitions about using violence. So that’s the Vietnam Syndrome. It’s necessary to overcome that one.

[…]

Enter into the conversation: The Dixie Chicks.

These three woman made plain what they felt was true in the run up to war in Iraq and now — three and a half years into this unjust war — their message is shared by a majority of Americans (65% want out of Iraq and more than 60% disapprove President Bush’s job).

So if you buy into the analysis that it’s necessary for a state-capitalism system to overcome such “sickly inhibitions about using violence” in order to flex all foreign policy options, then the actions of one of the last defenses in the current corporate line — the über-conglomerate NBC Universal — shouldn’t surprise you.

Even though CBS moved forward with an ad buy, NBC has steeled up and decided to not run ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary entitled, Shut Up and Sing. Here’s part of their rationale (with my emphasis):

[…]

While the Weinstein Co. had shown NBC its ads, it had not inquired about buying commercial time, he said. Generally, when an ad is rejected, prospective advertisers return and work with the network on ways to make it acceptable — as was done with the Michael Moore film “Fahrenheit 9/11,� he said.

But NBC heard nothing more from makers of “Shut Up & Sing� until portions of what NBC executives thought were confidential business correspondence showed up in a news release, he said.

“There was no attempt to come back and have a conversation,� Wurtzel said. “There are times when some advertisers get more publicity for having their ad rejected.�

[…]

NBC’s positioning for making the trailer more acceptable is akin to the central theme of a documentary called Shut Up & Sing. Are they really surprised that they walked away and went to the press?

10 years ago, such a tactical play by NBC could’ve crippled an independent film’s message due to lack of exposure, but not now, not in the information age. NBC can stick to their “standards” and play all the games they want, because as Chomsky so eloquently analyzed, the people are on it.

Decide for yourself if the trailer is unacceptable.

UPDATE: Lawrence Lessig talks about a previous media denial encounter with NBC that fell into the same “not very flattering to the president� category.

(via Baron over at TwangNation)

Donald Rumsfeld spoke at The American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah the other day (full transcript), attempting to solidify the position of this administration’s war on terror; that we are fighting an enemy similar to Adolf Hitler — an Islamofascist.

Analogies to the attitudes years prior to WWII ebbed and flowed with the greatest of ease from Rumsfeld, all pointing to the absolute righteousness of this administration in their self-assigned task to rid the world of the threat of terrorism.

As a resident of New York City on 9/11, I’d be extremely satisfied with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda lying in ruins before treading any deeper in potentially self-polluting waters, but apparently this administration doesn’t care what me and my former neighbors think about the matter at hand:

[…]

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then recent memory of WWI, could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis — the rise of fascism and Nazism — they were ridiculed, or ignored.

Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated.

[…]

I recount that history because, once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism.

Today, another enemy, a different kind of enemy, has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington D.C., Bali, London, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons.

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

With the growing lethality, and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, someway, vicious extremists can be appeased?

[…]

I have many thoughts on this line of reasoning, but first, take a listen to Keith Olberman’s perspective on the matter:

[…]

That about what Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:

This is a democracy, still. Sometimes, just barely. And as such, all voices count. Not just his. Had he or his president, perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama bin Laden’s plans 5 years ago; about Saddam Hussein’s weapon’s 4 years ago; about Hurricane Katrina’s impact 1 year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina to flu vaccine shortages to the entire fog of fear that continues to envelop our nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their cronies have, inadvertently or intentionally, profited or benefited, either personally or politically,

And yet he can stand up in public and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

[…]

Rumsfeld, in his eagerness to equate this administration’s strategy in Iraq with Winston Churchill’s call to watch Hitler and a Germany on the rise to destructive power once again, misses the mark entirely. But let’s not waste energy with generalizations; instead, let’s speak to historical fact regarding the nation of Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

The facts are that the United States of America financially backed Iraq in the early 1980’s. President Reagan sent this very same Donald Rumsfeld to speak with Saddam Hussein in December of 1983, during the peak of the Iraq-Iran war, to ensure that all was well in the struggle against that decade’s flavor of tyranny.

Only one month prior to the visit, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against both Iranian soldiers and his own people. Even though our intelligence confirmed such actions, nothing was said by Rumsfeld at the time.

Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t have a leg to stand on in a comparison with Winston Churchill. If anything, he is complicit in the build-up of aggression that “islamofascists” have against our nation.

Similarly, America, circa 1980 to 2006, is in no way analogous to a European continent that fell into conflict with a powerful, internal rogue state and their techniques of propaganda, fear mongering, terrorism, territorial occupation and mass executions.

If anything, this speech by Rumsfeld — one that holds both loaded arguments and misconstrued analogies of the highest order — is closer itself to propaganda than “the beacon of light in times of darkness” message that both he and this administration so very wishes to convince us of believing.

Olbermann, who might not speak for political analysts, but does for millions of Americans with quelled voices in this nation, put it best when he directly challenged this administration’s self-righteous claim to ownership of truth, by saying:

“And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a new type of fascism. As he was correct to remind us as how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that, though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism, indeed.”

The only problem is that if you’re a student of history, it really isn’t that new.

With the massacre of Haditha already drawing comparisons to the My Lai massacre — where up to 500 unarmed Vietnamese men, women and children were killed in cold blood by American forces — proponents of this war are holding fast against this incident becoming the tipping point of complete anti-war sentiment.

Local blogger, Joe Guarino:

[…] We cannot take these unfortunate events, and then somehow generalize and amplify the Big Message they convey to suggest that the overall war effort is unworthy. We cannot make general assessments of the war in Iraq (or in Vietnam, for that matter) on the basis of tragic events that do not reflect the overall pattern.

The media would be wrong to muster a drumbeat on these stories, but if they do in stereotypical fashion, the public should ignore it.

Unfortunately for Joe and his agenda, the American public will discuss the role this atrocity plays in the overall war effort.

Whether Haditha represents an accurate assessment of the US military’s tactical MO or not, it has marked a clear shift in our collective perception of modern warfare. No longer do we live in a fantasy world of surgically precise operations; we’ve all awoken to the reality that combat-stressed groups of men and women in a war zone are capable of murdering civilians on their own accord.

That 21st century, smart-bomb warfare meme is kaput; we’re now all aware that the US is knee-deep in a grudge match.

But in the end, it truly doesn’t matter if this one incident is indicative of the pattern to the entire war effort or not, because to the Iraqi people — the people on the other end of the gun barrel in any circumstance — it signifies a terrifying escalation of chaos, murder and occupation that cannot be erased with clarifying words.

Not that our words would do any good anyways.

The Overall Pattern In Iraq

From pg. 39 of the September 2004 Strategic Communication report, by the Defense Science Board — a federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense:

2.3 What is the Problem? Who Are We Dealing With?

The information campaign — or as some still would have it, “the war of ideas,� or the struggle for “hearts and minds� — is important to every war effort. In this war it is an essential objective, because the larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.

• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,â€? but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle Eastâ€? is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terroristâ€? groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.
• Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans — really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.

Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim World is not one of “dissemination of information,� or even one of crafting and delivering the “right� message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none — the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam. Inevitably therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the “loud and clear� channel: the enemy.

That last sentence (with my emphasis) represents the overall pattern that I see in the Iraq war.

We’re a 100,000 strong force of monolinguistic, armed men and women on a foreign soil.

Our soldiers have little to no training in the local customs of the Iraqi people, and practically no one can verbally communicate with either civilians or the enemy.

Essential building blocks of communication with Iraqi’s — humane, personal connections via idle chat during a convoy exercise, supportive conversation in local establishments, calming direction provided during a house raid — all become lost opportunities to gain a semblance of trust or credibility.

This simple inability to communicate waters the fields of insurgent seeds.

So when an atrocity such as Haditha occurs, the Iraqi people’s understanding of the act can’t be contextualized or messaged into obscurity by our military.

Worse even, the sheer brutality of such an incident doesn’t need to be framed or spun by operatives of al Qaeda or the leaders of local insurgents to build a greater resistance to American forces.

The atrocity speaks for itself, with a clarity of message delivered via a deafening tone of dead relatives, neighbors and friends, all never to be seen again.

Iraqi citizens have lived with the fear of a potential Haditha massacre for years now. Their daily lives are filled with various degrees of similar experiences with American forces as we consistently sweep through house after house in the middle of the night, searching for insurgents. A Haditha massacre does only one thing: it confirms their worst fears, leading to more fear and more aggression towards our troops.

No matter what we want to tell ourselves, perception is reality.

The DoD knows we’ll never be able to control the perception of Iraqi’s, so this cry of the right to look at the big picture of the war is a nothing more than panicked attempt to control the perception and reactions of Americans that might question this war effort.

To suggest that the American public should “ignore” the “media mustering a drumbeat on these stories” — these atrocities — in order to protect the overall pattern of the war in Iraq is a failed intellectual position. This incident might only be one data point in the overall pattern of war, but it’s a glaring one — one that exposes more elements going wrong over there than going right.

The Role Of The Media

Iraqi war planners aren’t overly concerned with critical journalism, such as the March 2006 Time magazine exclusive on Haditha, affecting the average American’s take on the state of the war.

Sure, it’s a concern, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

If not managed, the mainstream media can become a major threat to war efforts because it is exists via the same capitalistic infrastructure as the government it supposes to watchdog.

In other words, when media institutions begin climbing onto editorial limbs, foregoing their inherent responsibility to the interests of corporate advertising, it clearly signals a shift in times to American corporations who become placed in a position to make certain decisions they’d rather not have to make:

• They can remove themselves from media buys that are beginning to serve the reflected will of the consumer (poor PR) or
• They can keep their advertising in place as a public relations strategy, while implicitly distancing themselves from our government’s effort to wage war

See, the real concern isn’t with the common people in as much as it is with the flow of money, for once the majority of corporations are off the bandwagon of a war effort, its future becomes rather short-lived.

An Example Of The Power Of Media

Lieutenant William Calley — the American officer in charge at the My Lai massacre — faced the scrutiny of the much more centralized, mainstream media of 1970. Advertising legend George Lois provides context to the media exposure of the atrocity at the time by describing the decision and experience of placing Calley on the November, 1970 cover of Esquire magazine :

“Lieutenant, this picture will show that you’re not afraid as far as your guilt is concerned. The picture will say: ‘Here I am with these kids you’re accusing me of killing. Whether you believe I’m guilty or innocent, at least read about my background and motivations.’” Calley grinned on cue, and we completed the session.

When I sent the finished cover to (Esquire editor, Harold) Hayes he called to let me know that his office staff and Esquire’s masthead bureaucrats were plenty shook up.

“Some detest it and some love it,” he said. “You going to chicken out?” I asked. “Nope,” he said. “We’ll lose advertisers and we’ll lose subscribers. But I have no choice. I’ll never sleep again if I don’t muster the courage to run it.”

The notion that some editors might feel a sense of duty to a global community — and not just to a sovereign position or a bottom line — marks the potential for transforming the media into the greatest, political equalizer on the face of the earth.

In 1970, the attack on the “liberal” media — outlets that didn’t explicitly recognize corporate interests over human interests at every turn — was eerily similar to the conservative banter of today. From Into The Dark: The My Lai Massacre:

[…]

On April 1, 1971, just two days after the verdict, Nixon ordered Calley to be placed under house arrest while his appeal worked its way through the courts. “The whole tragic episode was used by the media and the antiwar forces to chip away at our efforts to build public support for our Vietnam objectives,� he wrote.

Across the nation, there were many demonstrations of support for Lt. Calley. The American Legion announced plans that it would try to raise $100,000 for his appeal. Draft board personnel in several cities resigned in groups. Several politicians spoke out in public criticizing the government’s prosecution of the soldiers at My Lai. “I’ve had veterans tell me that if they were in Vietnam now, they would lay down their arms and come home,� Congressman John Rarick told the New York Times.

But prosecutor Aubrey Daniel also did not remain silent. He wrote a highly publicized letter to President Nixon criticizing him for releasing Calley to house arrest: “How shocking it is if so many people across this nation have failed to see the moral issue… that it is unlawful for an American soldier to summarily execute unarmed and unresisting men, women and babies.�

[…]

In the end, we have to recognize that an atrocity such as Haditha is a symptom of the behavioral patterns of all warfare.

To brush it aside as a random act of violence would be to remove the complicit nature of war planners from the equation and lay it squarely on the shoulder of the brave souls that serve our country, no matter the call to duty.

Scott Rosenburg’s post, In defense of Al Gore’s history lesson, reminded me of an online project I came across the other day called, State of the Union.

The project is the brainchild of Brad Borevitz, who created it to analyze the State of the Union addresses given by US Presidents from 1790 to 2006. I grabbed two screenshots that I found interesting:

and

What did I find interesting?

• Lincoln was probably having an honest discussion about “insurgents” and “insurrection” in 1861
• Lincoln’s address spoke to a 16.2 grade level, Bush to a 9.6 grade level (although I assume the “applause” text must bias the results)
• The State of the Union has a consistent downward SMA regarding the grade level of the text, peaking with James Madison’s address on December 5, 1815 (25.7) and bottoming out with George W. Bush’s address on February 27th, 2001 (7.6)
• Bill Clinton scored just as low of a score as (9.1) as George W. Bush

Scott sees anti-intellectualism at work in today’s political and media circles.

Boris finds it at play within the patterns of speech our leaders use to communicate with the populace…

Even zefrank receives anti-intellectualism comments on his vlog nowadays.

So is our nation getting dumber? Or are the powerful simply lowering the bar of intelligent discussion to dishonestly promote a “no citizen left behind” policy while engaging in a twisted form of propaganda?

Duh, I dunno.

+

=

(inspired by C&L)

Imperial Grand Strategy - Elite Concerns (pg. 39)

Within establishment circles, there has been considerable concerns that “America’s imperial ambition” is a serious threat even to its own population. Their alarm reached new heights as the Bush administration declared itself to be a “revisionist state” that intends to rule the world permanently, becoming, some felt, “a menace to itself and to mankind” under the leadership of “radical nationalists” aiming for “unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority.” Many others within the mainstream spectrum have been appalled by the adventurism and arrogance of the radical nationalists who have regained the power they wielded through the 1980s, but now operate with fewer external constraints.

The concerns are not entirely new. During the Clinton years, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington observed that for much of the world the US is “becoming the rogue superpower, [considered] the single greatest external threat to their societies.” Robert Jervis, then president of the American Political Science Association, warned that “in the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.” Like others, they anticipated that coalitions might arise to counterbalance the rogue superpower, with threatening implications.

Several leading figures of the foreign policy elite have pointed out that the potential targets of America’s imperial ambition are not likely to simply await destruction. They “know that the United States can be held at bay only by deterrence,” Kenneth Waltz has written, and that “weapons of mass destruction are the only means to deter the United States.” Washington’s policies are therefore leading to the proliferation of WMD, Waltz concludes, tendencies accelerated by its commitment to dismantle international mechanisms to control the resort to violence. These warnings were reiterated as Bush prepared to attack Iraq: one consequence, according to Steven Miller, is that others “are likely to draw the conclusion that weapons of mass destruction are necessary to deter American intervention.” Another well-known specialist warned that the “general strategy of preventive war” is likely to provide others with “overwhelming incentives to wield weapons of terror and mass destruction” as a deterrent to “the unbrideled use of American power.” Many have noted the likely impetus to Iranian nuclear weapons programs. And “there is no question that the lesson that the North Koreans have learned from Iraq is that it needs a nuclear deterrent,” Selig Harrison commented.

As the year 2002 drew to a close, Washington was teaching an ugly lesson to the world: if you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat, in this case, conventional: artillary aimed at Seoul and at US troops near DMZ. We will enthusiastically march on to attack Iraq, because we know that it is devistated and defenseless; but North Korea, though an even worse tyranny and vastly more dangerous, is not an appropriate target as long as it can cause plenty of harm. The lesson could hardly be more vivid.

Still another concern is the “second superpower,” public opinion. Not only was the “revisionism” of the political leadership without precident; so too was the opposition to it. Comparisons are often drawn to Vietnam. The common query “What happened to the tradition of protest and dissent?” makes clear how effectively the historical record has been cleansed and how little sense there is, in many circles, of the changes in public consciousness over the past four decades. An accurate comparison is revealing: In 1962, public protest was nonexistent, despite the announcement that year that the Kennedy administration was sending the US Air Force to bomb South Vietnam, as well as initiating plans to drive millions of people into what ammounted to concentration camps and launching chemical warfare programs to destroy food crops and ground cover. Protest did not reach any meaningful level until years later, after hundreds of thousands of US troops had been dispatched, densely populated areas had been demolished by saturation bombing, and the aggression had spread to the rest of Indochina. By the time protest became significant, the bitterly anticommunist military historian and Indochina specialist Bernard Fall had warned that “Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity… is threatened with extinction” as “the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size.”

In 2002, fourty years later, in striking contrast, there was largescale, committed, and principled popular protest before the war had been officially launched. Absent the fear and illusion about Iraq that were unique to the US, prewar opposition would probably have reached much the same levels as elsewhere. That reflects a steady increase over these years in unwillingness to tolerate aggression and atrocities, one of many such changes.

The leadership is well aware of these developments. By 1968, fear of the public was so serious that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to consider whether “sufficient forces would be available for civil disorder control” if more troops were sent to Vietnam. The Department of Defense feared that further troop deployments ran the risk of “provoking a domestic crisis of unprecedented proportions.” The Reagan administration at first tried to follow Kennedy’s South Vietnam model in Central America but backed down in the face of an unanticipated public reaction that threatened to undermine more important components of the policy agenda, turning instead to clandestine terror — clandestine in the sense that it could be more or less concealed from the general public. When Bush I took office in 1989, public reaction was again very much on the agenda. Incoming administrations typically commission a review of the world situation from the intelligence agencies. These reviews are secret, but in 1989 a passage was leaked concerning “cases where the US confronts much weaker enemies.” The analysts advised that the US must “defeat them decisively and rapidly.” Any other outcome would be “embarrassing” and might “undercut political support,” understood to be thin.

We are no longer in the 1960s, when the population would tolerate a murderous and destructive war for years without visible protest. The activist movements of the past forty years have had a significant civilizing effect in many domains. By now, the only way to attack a much weaker enemy is to construct a propaganda offensive depicting it as an imminent threat or perhaps engaged in genocide, with confidence that the military campaign will scarcely resemble an actual war.

Take a look around. People see the world as they experience it.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a shock to anyone by now — it’s practically common knowledge — but I’m sure there are still some folks still hiding in their bunkers. From Common Dreams:

WASHINGTON - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was “unlikely” because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

…the State Department’s review, which looked at the political, economic and logistical factors in such a purchase, seems to have produced wider-ranging doubts than other reviews about the likelihood that Niger would try to sell uranium to Baghdad.

Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department’s intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send “25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers” filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

The analysts’ doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous “16 words” in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy.

Why I started my Chomsky indulgence with Understanding Power and not this digestible gem I’ll never know.

Uncle Sam is a brilliant pocket reference of Noam Chomsky’s world view, specifically his unflinching criticism of US foreign policy. His genius with linguistics provides him the means to absolutely tear apart the propaganda surrounding isms, bringing the conversation and arguments back to the table of reality. By comparing declassified government files, public policy and geopolitical events occurring between the early 1940’s to 1992, Chomsky cuts directly through the posturing of the US to frame cause and effect in the struggle for global power.

The man is fearless. He critically deconstructs policy from within the sovereign US to expose the post-WWII new world order policies of US planners — clearly describing how the Third World has been shaped to remain the peasant working class via neo-Nazi techniques of torture and intimidation, satisfying the needs of the US investor class.

His arguments are completely lucid and relevant in today’s world, even though it was published in the early nineties. Want an example? Keep an eye on the US propaganda regarding the “left-wing rhetoric” of Hugo Chavez. The BBC is already picking up the US talking points of Venezuela elections being rigged. Chomsky describes these US tactics in detail.

Chomsky’s take on US indoctrination of its citizens to contributing productively to pure capitalism is classic, as he tackles complicit participants from the mainstream media to academia. Just as stinging is his perspective on the marginalization of 80% of our population, which reminded me a bit of the 5% Nation, but without the optimism.

Here’s a section about the US in a Rent-A-Thug role (remember, this was written during the original Gulf War conflict with George H.W. Bush in charge):

[…]

“In any confrontation, each participant tries to shift the battle to a domain in which it’s most likely to succeed. You want to lead with your strength, play your strong card. The strong card of the United States is force—so if we can establish the principle that force rules the world, that’s a victory for us. If, on the other hand, a conflict is settled through peaceful means, that benefits us less, because our rivals are just as good or better in that domain.

Diplomacy is a particularly unwelcome option, unless it’s pursued under the gun. The US has very little popular support for its goals in the Third World. This isn’t surprising, since it’s trying to impose structures of domination and exploitation. A diplomatic settlement is bound to respond, at least to some degree, to the interests of the other participants in the negotiation, and that’s a problem when your positions aren’t very popular.

As a result, negotiations are something the US commonly tries to avoid. Contrary to much propaganda, that has been true in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Central America for many years.

Against this background, it’s natural that the Bush administration should regard military force as a major policy instrument, preferring it to sanctions and diplomacy (as in the Gulf crisis). But since the US now lacks the economic base to impose “order and stability� in the Third World, it must rely on others to pay for the exercise—a necessary one, it’s widely assumed, since someone must ensure a proper respect for the masters. The flow of profits from Gulf oil production helps, but Japan and German-led continental Europe must also pay their share as the US adopts the “mercenary role,� following the advice of the international business press.

The financial editor of the conservative Chicago Tribune has been stressing these themes with particular clarity (William Neikirk, “We are the World’s Guardian Angelsâ€? 9/9/90) We must be “willing mercenaries,â€? paid for our ample services by our rivals, using our “monopoly powerâ€? in the “security marketâ€? to maintain “our control over the world economic system.â€? We should run a global protection racket, he advises, selling “protectionâ€? to other wealthy powers who will pay us a “war premium.”

This is Chicago, where the words are understood: if someone bothers you, you call on the Mafia to break their bones. And if you fall behind in your premium, your health may suffer too.

To be sure, the use of force to control the Third World is only a last resort. The IMF is a more cost-effective instrument than the Marines and the CIA if it can do the job. But the “iron fist� must be poised in the background, available when needed.

Our rent-a-thug role also causes suffering at home. All of the successful industrial powers have relied on the state to protect and enhance powerful domestic economic interests, to direct public resources to the needs of investors, and so on—one reason why they are successful. Since 1950, the US has pursued these ends largely through the Pentagon System (including NASA and the Department of Energy, which produces nuclear weapons). By now we are locked into these devices for maintaining electronics, computers and high-tech industry generally.

Reaganite military Keynesian excesses added further problems. The transfer of resources to wealthy minorities and other government policies led to a vast wave of financial manipulations and a consumption binge. But there was little in the way of productive investment, and the country was saddled with huge debts: government, corporate, household and the calculable debt of unmet social needs as the society drifts towards a Third World pattern, with islands of great wealth and privilege in a sea of misery and suffering.

When a state is committed to such policies, it must somehow find a way to divert the population, to keep them from seeing what’s happening around them. There are not many ways to do this. The standard ones are to inspire fear of terrible enemies about to overwhelm us, and awe for our grand leaders who rescue us from disaster in the nick of time.

That has been the pattern right through the 1980’s, requiring no little ingenuity as the standard device, the Soviet threat, became harder to take seriously. So the threat to our existence has been Qaddafi and his hordes of international terrorists, Grenada and its ominous air base, Sandinistas marching on Texas, Hispanic narcotraffickers led by the arch-maniac Noriega, and crazed Arabs generally. Most recently it’s Saddam Hussein, after he committed his sole crime—the crime of disobedience—in August 1990. It has become more necessary to recognize what has always been true: that the prime enemy is the Third World, which threatens to get “out of control.�

These are not laws of nature. The processes, and the institutions that engender them, could be changed. But that will require cultural, social and institutional changes of no little movement, including democratic structures that go far beyond periodic selection of representatives of the business world to manage domestic and international affairs.”

[…]

Exactly.

Okay, I’m off to read Cluetrain again. I call this “gray matter iteration.” ;-)

Al Gore is not fucking around.

Gore’s latest venture has him stepping up to the plate with an innovative approach to changing the stagnant nature of civil discourse in America… and he’s doing it by swinging for the fences and at the establishment. Here are a few quotes from his keynote address at The Media Center’s We Media Conference:

"I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America’s fabled ‘marketplace of ideas’ now functions."
…

"The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the World Wide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy’s future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom."

Did Al "My Wife Wants To Censor Hip-Hop" Gore just come within a few words of quoting Malcolm X, not to mention one of the most revered hip-hop albums of all-time? Take a few moments and dig through his speech. It’s completely laced with philosophical principles espoused by Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent, the propaganda model, etc.). Good old Noam can’t get even get on public access in America. With his political power behind him, Al Gore is coming correct.

What’s going on? Well, Current TV (Gore’s new venture) is going to try to change the way people watch TV; they’re going to make them get off the couch. Take this quote from the Newsweek article, "Do-It-Yourself News" as a glimpse at their approach:

"The network’s broadcasting approach takes heavy cues from the emerging world of Internet news, eschewing traditional half-hour broadcasts in favor of two- to seven-minute "pods"—short-subject features submitted, in many cases, by Current’s own viewers through a screening process on the network’s Web site. Programmers maintain that the jarring subject jumps—from street violence in California one moment to street performers in Colombia the next—allow the network to cover the broad scope of world news. Interspersed amid these features are brief headline roundups from Google News."

Web 2.0 begins to describe the concept, but you have to throw in some Convergence 2.0 for good measure. This goes way beyond my call for Google and Yahoo! News to index blogs alongside traditional news publishers (even though I still think that is an imperative next version).

While the majority of Americans will probably surf this channel like any other, a concentrated group of early adopters will dive into this interaction model and extend the concept even further. Of course, only 20M people have access to the channel and I’m not one of them.

Did I say something about looking at a skyline from afar?

(Gore speech via Hip Hop Blogs)

Whomever coined the phrase, “We learn from history’s mistakes” was only partially right — over the past 50 years, America seems to perfect them when given a second chance.

This isn’t new, but it’s worthy of being represented to the blogosphere. DJ Danger Mouse went after the Bush Boys six months ago, framing “The New World Order” in its proper context; money, power and US sponsored terrorism in the Middle East (Iraq vs. Iran). The temerity of an American leader to utter those four words to Congress is beyond frightening, as it sounds like propaganda straight out of Nazi Germany.

You’ll need the On2 Codec to view the QT Movie

(via Guerrilla News Network)

(originally uploaded by Antifluff Superstar)

While I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment from the left blogosphere, nothing that the Bush administration has done (or not done) surprises me.

Why?

Because a large percentage of the American public will continue to allow themselves to fall into the trappings of the Bush administration’s lies, no matter the dark alley we are led to.

It’s called fear.

And even though Bush’s overall approval ratings are unbelievably low, his hardcore support continues to be there in force for one simple, but powerful, reason:

The wealthy and powerful stick with the wealthy and powerful to keep and create more wealth and power.

Only when it is not in their best interests will they act otherwise.

These strategic relationships — private industry to public service and back — provide vast resources and networks in keeping the masses in consume and desire mode, while providing each other the cover of a shared vocabulary to continuously spin themselves clear of criticism.

And when I say consume, I don’t necessarily mean eating drug-laced poultry or purchasing unnecessary material products.

This administration has perfected the consumption of propaganda regarding what it means to be an American — or more precisely — they’ve generated clear symptoms of an anti-American as any person who dissents from the party line.

Back To The Future State

Towards the end of the Athenian Empire, Socrates was sentenced to death because he had the bad habit of questioning his surroundings. He was viewed as dangerous, particularly because of his ability to influence the youth of his time.

So he was offed with a swig of hemlock.

Thankfully, we’ve evolved as a society to where outspoken voices such as Noam Chomsky can debate the origin and potential results of foreign policy, while question the motives of all parties involved without the possibility of being put to death by the rulers of our times.

Dissent forms priceless threads of discourse that are necessary to continuously evolve a moral Republic.

But there are other ways to silence a person in this modern age.

Chomsky is a rock star overseas for his political essays and speeches, but he can barely get an interview from the mainstream American media. So without sentencing good ol’ Noam to death, the collective will of the US media — with editors focused on advertising dollars and corporate sponsorship — has created a passive method of forcing hemlock upon our independent minds.

So, how does this tie back to our government?

The very freedoms and rights that our soldiers are fighting to protect have already begun deteriorating through conglomerate ownership of conglomerate media empires.

Unless voices with challenging perspectives are able to creep into the media conversation and the periphery of the average American, middle-America will continue to be ripe for rallying support by the serial spinners of big business and government.

Unless this administration is held accountable to the illegal war and domestic messes they’ve birthed, I can’t envision where this degradation of our moral fiber will end.

It’s almost as if each move the Bush administration makes that concludes without legal or mass public recourse, they consciously create an even greater climate of fear and mistrust within our own society to further propagate their unimpeded actions.

Moving Forward

So, how can we each work towards breaking this unnatural ecosystem of immorality as a nation — breaking through the spin climate of Karl Rove and President Bush’s managementof “global extremism?”

• Either turn off your TV or remain an active participant with critical, deconstruction of the media
• Use the web to find and connect with real people that share your perspectives
• Meet and share ideas off-line, in the real (leave the web for connections and community discourse)
• Influence non-political citizens to become involved in making a difference
• Most importantly: Walk your talk in the daily choices you make in your own life

/soapbox

So President Bush has met with more than 700 family members of 270 soldiers killed in Iraq. I’m sorry, but this fluff piece from Newsweek ("I’m So Sorry") just doesn’t cut it for me.

How is it that myself, half of this nation and a majority of the world, didn’t buy the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq, yet this smug bastard was still able to Shock and Awe us into the next Vietnam? Why isn’t Newsweek writing an “I’m So Sorry” piece about that move?

That was a rhetorical question by the way.

Bush should meet with every family that has lost a son, daughter, sister, brother, mother and father due to this war. This Newsweek piece smells like one huge wristband to me. Just do the right thing and stop the media spin barrage, please. And oh yeah, one more thing: Break convention and meet with Cindy Sheehan for a second time. This is all starting to sound like a bunch of ankle biter’s complaints that the birthday girl is receiving a second slice of cake.

A few months back, I finally stepped out of my dead bolted existence within Ameritrade and began to digest the current state of this Web 2.0 explosion, and as soon as I did, the Semantic Web seemed so much closer to fruition than it did just a few years prior.

Much of the renewed push and entrepreneurial spirit that has driven this industry-wide rebirth seems to have been driven simply by our economic recovery from the dot-com crash. On the surface, that answer is sufficient, but something deeper is at at play. So, with my newly created free-time, I headed down a 2.0 rabbit hole to take me on a journey for clarity.

What I’ve come to realize isn’t anything particularly shocking (unless you’ve been a corporate slave for the past three years).

We’re living in tumultuous times. The air we breathe is being compromised more and more every day. Poverty around the world is increasing exponentially. Our country is knee deep in another Vietnam, another occupation, another struggle for gaining natural resources at any cost. People are becoming polarized by important and moral, personal and social issues, seemingly on a daily basis. All of this is occurring during the reign of an administration that has even the staunchest of conservatives questioning whether we, the people, are living within the midst of a dictatorial democracy, rather than a thriving Republic, built on the principles of political discourse, government checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, the separation of church and state and the power of the individual voter.

So where does this leave us as a people?

Personally speaking, I’ve decided to refocus my effort to publish my views, opinions, perspectives, experiences, etc., in an effort to make even the slightest dent in the discourse surrounding our roles as American citizens.

What motivates me? Pick your poison: the War on Terror; the Rove/Plame/Wilson scandal; the Bolton push-through appointment; the Cindy Sheehan vigil. It seems that every day a new flow of bullshit only fuels the righteous indignation I’ve come to hold regarding this administration.

Is it even possible to imagine a more visceral description of an Aristocracy at play?

For me, the complete disregard of the intelligence and voice of the American citizen begins to explain the groundswell of blogging that has occurred over the past four years, specifically the political blogs and mainstream media watchdog sites.

Sure, the potential for capital gains plays a large role in the motivation to advance technology or any other industry. The web, though, is a bit different due to it’s low cost of entry, so I believe that moral conviction plays a role in both driving the evolution of technology and the passion to leverage it to it’s fullest degree.

So what’s the connection between geo-political events, blogging and the tactical fervor of Web 2.0? (social bookmarking, tagging, open source, open content, etc.)

In a nutshell: everything.

Without a true social democracy in the real, we’ve evolved to create one on-line — where boundaries can be broken down, hierarchies can be dissolved, control can be minimized, etc.

I blog in order to get my voice out into the ether of this new social construct; I tag my blog posts to provide context and semantic relationships on numerous levels, yet with a similar purpose:

1. On the base object level to provide a succinct description of how I perceive this content from a conceptual perspective, perhaps creating a) a greater connection with the reader on a discernible level and b) connections on associative & relational levels with other objects (within my domain and elsewhere)
2. On the categorization level to establish context within a particularly defined category or across a faceted classification scheme. If I were an actual brand, this would be how I’d ensure my position was reflected within my editorial construct and navigation scheme.
3. On the retrievable object level to allow for more avenues of findability (four, well-thought descriptive tags exponentially increase the odds of object retrieval rather than none or even one, either in straight queries or in contextual presentation on the base object level)

These are tactical strategies in the information revolution.

The same principles apply to tagging even more granular object such as photographs, video and sound files, as well as the macro-level social bookmarking of URLs. The effort, I believe, is based on the desire of individual voices to be heard amidst the shelling of the mainstream media. While technically speaking, Web 2.0 is about the creation of richly defined object models and attributes — the more good data we entrench within our objects (be it content, files or URLs themselves), the better the chance for a semantic web experience — the movement behind it is much more compelling, much more philosophical in nature.

After leaving Ameritrade in April, I spent a month digesting Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power, which introduced me to the specifics of his propaganda model thesis, which I fully digested by watching the documentary Manufacturing Consent. Recently, Dave Sifry (CEO, Technorati) posted a graph on the Technorati Blog displaying the impact that blogs are making within the once dominated realm of entrenched, funded, mainstream media.

I’m only guessing that if Chomsky has studied the progression of the web, he’s smiling up in Cambridge right about now.

The legitimization of the individual (creative and political) perspective is being sustained in the 21st century by the conviction of the blogosphere, passionate focus on the possibilities of 2.0 revenue models and domains, such as Technorati, taking a leadership position. The concept of social dialog, networking and organization and the elemental foundation of capitalism are beginning to shift in exciting ways.

Imagine a near future where:

• Individual perspectives can be made more readily sustainable through a common revenue model, reversing the big money/power structure of publication and media saturation? How would that impact the politics of our nation? Our wage labor practices?
• Algorithms and interfaces allow for rich, precise retrievals of topical queries, with just as precisely retrieved contextual objects presented within a usable format, based on better clustering techniques and taking richer and more valuable attributes into account? How would this impact the way we learn and connect to one another?
• Information domains allow topically defined objects to be rolled up into navigable concepts by users (through customization) instead of predefined categories by information architects? How could this seamlessly raise the bar for common folk in their efforts to research online? To manage information across numerous domains?
• Mainstream media articles and blog posts are presented on the same level (query or article), ensuring checks and balances of mis/disinformation, without a partisan bias? How important is it for check and balances to be rooted within the last bastion of traditional governmental checks and balances — the media?

And the great thing is that we’re not too far away from this revolutionary existence.

Blogs are beginning to bridge the social and communication gaps between nations. My peers are thinking differently when developing this medium, even in traditional business development circumstances. The tactical approach to producing, managing, sharing, finding and using information objects — defined from the bottom up — is finally getting it’s due.

Yes, these are tumultuous times, but they’re exciting as well.

Alright, I admit it. I didn’t get out (or online) much while I worked for Ameritrade. 60 hour work weeks for two straight years while building a design practice and a forward-thinking trading platform will do that to your peripheral vision. Well, I’m making up for lost time, slowing down to explore the web… big time.

• Flickr is sooo good
• My teeth are stuck in del.icio.us
• I’m blown away by the approach and possibilities of Technorati

The IA in me is smiling. No, not for the sheer joy of seeing community indexing, the IA in me is smiling because it’s becoming clear to me where the web is heading, and it’s not following a topical, structured, media-filtered path.

Take Technorati. The approach is like a Bizarro perspective of the mainstream media.

Now, Technorati isn’t dumb, ugly or inhumane as in the illustration below, but it is backwards when looking at it through the typical political/news media lens of corporate America.

I mean, the mainstream media reports news by using explicit filters to ensure that what is published or broadcasted supports the primary objectives of capitalism. In the past, I’ve ranted about the much needed expansion of the Google and Yahoo! news model to place blogs into the mix when drawing from indexed sources. Well, Technorati flipped the model entirely with an approach to sharing information that spits in the eye of mainstream media constructs, creating a communal approach to digesting information. There are no "vanilla" labels of a topical navigation, splitting the world into simplified categories and driving a pre-conceived notion of "valuable" content into the skulls of society.

Technorati leverages tagging to present contextual concepts of information back to the user based on our desires.

Run a tag search on "free speech" and you get a descriptive page of the latest blog entries, Flickr images and a contextual list of social bookmarks which include mainstream media articles (based on del.icio.us and Furl tagging). It took me a few returns to stumble upon the revolutionary aspect of this approach. I mean, three months ago, I would’ve been happy if Google News simply added a column of contextual links of blog post that corresponded to a search query. Technorati has flipped the script and placed the hierarchy crown on the head of bloggers, reducing the "real" media to a column of "see also’s."

I love it.

So where can this go? Can this approach sustain a movement towards fundamentally altering how American society is exposed to, finds and digests information? Man, "it depends" is such an understatement.

• If Technorati can reach a tipping point, similar to Google a few years back, where, say, Tony Soprano is shown "Technorating" waste management on his computer, the impact on society could be huge. People will start to look for information from other people (sans an editorial slant)
• If Technorati partners with a Google or a Yahoo! to provide user-generated content within their results pages, society will begin to experience contextual alternatives to mainstream reporting, entertainment, et al without being forced to have to go search for it through RSS and other technical means.
• If Technorati is bought by a Google or a Yahoo!, all bets are off. Only time would tell if Chomsky’s "propaganda model" proves itself to be a truism or if new media and it’s superstars are exceptions to the rule.

No matter what, it’s obvious that the web’s semantic synapses are continuing to form. This is only the beginning.

the world has changed.
no shit, glad you’ve woken up.
we don’t all drink from the same fountain
or even from the same cup
but if the music’s right
and the air is clear
why confuse the good times
with political matters
we fear
nothing.
at all…
because "no fear" is a fucking brand
manufactured for morons
living in a testosterone dreamland
yeah, we’re all now awake
we now have an enemy to curse and blame
but do we really understand why
"they" burn our flag and name?
no.
but who cares?
we’ll bomb ‘em till they quit.
yeah that’s a solid tactic
a top five rotation hit
now all the brands are buzzing
pulling at our patriotic strings
the marketing is subtle
yet sick and deafening
"united" is just that
ready to serve you across the land
and since they’re so "united"
they want us to go lend a helping hand
because, you see, they’re "with us"
and not just a part of our verbal psyche
but what if their name was continental?
or fuddruckers?
or nike?
brand opportunity
awareness at an all time high
higher than they used to go
when consumers weren’t afraid to fly
so come on out and support ‘em
get the business back on track
while you’re at it buy a rolex
shit, get a new cadillac
because money is all that matters
to a society built on exploitation
i wonder what "those people" would say
if we opened up actual lines of communication?
yeah right…
too late…
it’s all about annihilation.