There’s an interesting article from the New York Times that exposes a part of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine that is easily overlooked by the viewing public. Former high-ranking military personnel that contract to the major networks as military analysts.
This approach to propaganda plays on at two major rhetorical fallacies:
Appeal to Authority - These analysts are former military personnel. Of course they know what they are talking about.
Appeal to Belief - Because all former/retired/ex military types are no longer associated with the military, and are allowed to speak on issues that are sensitive in nature without retribution.
These fallacies overlook some important facts. Like the supposed authority that these people are providing is coming from a system that brainwashes its members into believing that the system is right and just. Additionally, the members of said system are legally owned by the system for the duration of their term and are not allowed to question the system for fear of retribution. These men are life-long members of the military, even in retirement they are hard pressed not to adhere to the requests from the military.
And for the marginals who might have a moral-complex with the whole situation, money can fix everything. The military has the ability to pay out in sums far greater than the wealth of all the networks combined.
Additionally, we assume that that the military has no hold over these people in other forms because they are now “civilians”. Pick-up a military handbook from any branch of the government. These are life long contracts of non-disclosure that prevents the “civilian” from truly representing their experiences in the military, especially when they’ve reached ranks of a classified nature.
In short we’re hard pressed to find former military personnel that can speak publicly and not have a bias toward the military-industrial agenda.
NOTE: Check out The Nizkor Project for information about rhetorical fallacies and their applications.
In another attempt to suppress our civil liberties, the FBI subpoenaed the Internet Archive to release private information about one of its users. They fought back. They won.
Interesting point of discussion about the issue. The FBI itself warned that the NSLs (National Security Letters) were to be used sparingly. Meanwhile, they cite that they can only estimate the number of times they have been used since 2001, but that they had “issued tens of thousands of NSLs since 2001.”
Why aren’t they limited by law? Why are our liberties at their discretion? Isn’t this supposed to be the land of the free?
When the dinosaurs passed, and sunk into the earth, and became a wonder to archaeologists, historians and catholics: it was a natural cycle of the earth. It was a respectful burial, designed to allow their age to pass, and a new age of man to rise from the ashes and inherit the earth.
For thousands of years, man has enacted the same right of passage on its own people at the time of their death. Returning the body to the earth and allowing it to be at peace in its final state of rest. The spiritual aside, there was another important reason why the dead should be buried below the earth. So that the natural process of reclamation, which is an ugly process, and disease ridden, would not affect the rest of the lives that were still living on the surface of the earth. It was a basic measure for maintaining the public health.
So when we decided to remove dead dinosaurs from the ground, burn them into the atmosphere and make food containers out of them, shouldn’t it have occurred to us that perhaps resurrecting the dead for our own ends might be a bad idea?
Does anyone remember watching TV on Sunday mornings seeing ads for plastics and how they are going to save man kind?
Well, apparently plastic is a new enemy. Environment California’s web site has an informative posting about the effects of #7 plastics on not only a child’s developmental process, but the increased risks of cancer in adults who use #7 plastics.
So it makes me wonder… How long have we been using plastics? Think about it, plastic was the wonder material that would allow the world to be free from the confines of aluminum and steal. Remember your Star Wars action figures and your Barbie Dolls. It is a primary mechanism of the modern economy and its marketing.
It only makes sense that the incidents of ADD and the incidents of cancer in the populations are rising at alarming rates that correlate the uses of plastics in our everyday lives.
But hey, it’s new, its wonderful, its assumed to be great for us… right? Think about what its made of? petroleum by-products. Doesn’t this start to make you shiver when you see the kind of ill effects the petroleum industry has had on us, and how entrenched they are in our everyday lives.
CU’s annual 4:20 celebration went off without a hitch, and proved that democracy truly does rule in the public sphere:
There’s no way our 12 to 15 officers are going to be able to deal with a crowd of 10,000. We just can’t do strong enforcement when we’re outnumbered 700 or 800 to one.
Well, not really. CO/CO2 emissions are bad in large volume, and cars definitely create them, but Wired online has an interesting article about industrial CO/CO2 emissions:
The etymology of the word “Politician” refers back to the word “Politic”, which means “of citizens or the state, civil, civic”. Interpreting this statement, we can see that the TRUE nature of an American politician is to defend the constitutional philosophy that states “OF the people, FOR the people, and BY the people”.
In this day an age, the word “politician” has been smeared by the greedy, power-hungry and immoral people of this country who seek not to represent, but to feed off of the people like lifeless zombies. You wouldn’t let you kids go near someone you knew that was like this, yet when a “politician” comes around you press your cheeks out in the hopes of getting some recognition. These “politicians” don’t deserve the moniker, they should be called what they are, SCUM.
We need to take back the word politician. We need to make this word stand for something … we need to throw down anyone who seeks to claim it without upholding it, we need to make this word stand for us, the people … this is our word.
And this is what I’m talking about, a TRUE politician, who looks, acts, walks and talks like us, because they are one of us:
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Thoughts, manipulation, media, politics | Tagged: analyst, consultants, military, new york times, pentagon, propoganda | 
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Posted by Jocko
