What happens when an imaginative kid finds himself in a series of creatively bankrupt jobs as an adult? What will he do when he's forced to grow up? "Emblogification Capture Device" is a humorous exploration of education, career, employment, lifestyle, politics and pop culture.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Who Watches The Watchmen?
Felicitations, Loyal Reader.
Periodically I may ask of you an indulgence. This is one of those times. Confronted with serious issues I may occasionally be forced to get serious in kind. At least to the best of my limited capabilities.
Although this may seem like a bitter pill to swallow I promise that my next blog entry will be positively chock o' block with the usual puerile, sophomoric nonsense that you've come to expect.
You have been duly warned. For those of you brave enough to plunge onward, I promise that you may be changed somewhat by what's to follow, kinda like when Neo took the red pill from Morpheus in "The Matrix".
And with that grand claim, we'll continue.
It was never my intent to politicize this blog, which is a bit of an oversight on my part. I've been politically active since I had the power to vote and I've always had an inexplicable interest in things like military history. Likely because extreme human behavior is always something I've struggled to wrap my head around.
Maybe I'm feeling a bit hypersensitive to this right now because Halifax just finished up a week-long celebration for the Canadian Navy's Centennial (http://www.navy.forces.gc.ca/centennial/3/3-c_eng.asp) which, for me, culminated in witnessing the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo (http://www.nstattoo.ca/) for the first time ever. On top of this, for the past four years I've been doing loads of independent research though media outlets both traditional and alternative.
I just want to know right now, in all seriousness: When exactly did our media become "neutered"? Especially regarding the very serious state of war that we've been embroiled in for nearly ten years now?
The media wasn't always like this, but it has shown a remarkable aptitude for propaganda. During the Second World War the media was all on board with the Allies because the conflict was considered to be uniformly just. I still believe that. I also believe that the entire tragic conflagration was set off by the Nazi's corrupt ruling elite who had an an agenda to go to war. After all, the invasion of Poland was justified by the Nazis when the bodies of concentration camp prisoners were dressed up like Polish soldiers and strewn along Germany's border (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Himmler). The German High Command pointed to this as evidence of Polish aggression, and with the media already under the thrall of state and corporate interests, it didn't take long for the court of public opinion to make up it's mind.
So, in essence, when the German people went to war for the second time in as many decades, they did so with a sense of grim but righteous resolve. Their leaders, whom they were supposed to rely on for the truth, blatantly lied to them through the state-controlled press in order to get them to pursue this insanity in good conscience.
Mercifully the Allies triumphed against this naked, global aggression and the world was made safe again. But not for long. Communism soon reared it's head as the new political bugaboo to struggle against.
And, working from this mindset, it could very well be argued that the Korean War was justified as well. Burned by the sort of appeasement that allowed Hitler to annex half of Europe even before one shot was fired just decades earlier, the United Nations and President Harry S. Truman undertook the first of many "police actions" when North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950.
But around the time the Korean War kicked off, something alarming happened. Whereas America's peacetime industry had been been forced to retool itself to make weapons when the country was pulled into the Second World War by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there now existed a permanent armaments industry dedicated solely to the enterprise of making weapons or war.
In other words, private companies now held valuable contracts with the federal government to produce arms and armaments on request. The Korean War proved that armed conflict was big business for these holdings. These economic titans sent lobbyists to Washington where they would soon display a troubling influence on America's foreign policy.
This trend was so worrisome to President Dwight D. Eisenhower that he took great pains to warn the American people about it in his farewell address in January of 1961. Here's a chilling snippet of this incredibly prophetic speech:
Soon his predictions came to pass. Details have since come to light about America's induction into the Vietnam War. On August 2, 1964 the US destroyer USS Maddox was bobbing around in the Gulf of Tonkin monitoring the communications of the North Vietnamese in hopes of passing this intelligence on to their sympathetic allies in the South. During this time it was alleged that the vessel was fired upon by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats. A skirmish occurred during which the Maddox returned extensive fire and the exchange was reported back to President Lyndon Johnson and his secretary of state, Robert McNamara.
Ultimately the incident was used to justify America's involvement in a land war in Vietnam. But in this snippet from the eye-opening documentary "Fog of War" McNamara's confesses that the incident was largely exaggerated for political purposes:
While the war in Vietnam was being prosecuted journalists from a slew of independent outlets were dispatched into combat zones to document war as it really was. As such, the evening news was rife almost every night with stone-cold reality: firefights, burning building, and body bags.
It wasn't very palatable. But then again, I'm one of those weirdos that thinks that war should never be glamorized, normalized or sanitized lest we enter into it too lightly.
It gets creepier the farther down the rabbit hole you go.
In 1967 a little-known but eerie event occurred centered around the U.S.S. Liberty, an American technical research vessel (a spy ship in layman's terms) that had been diverted alone, for no apparent reason, to international waters just off the coast of Egypt. At the time the Egyptians were embroiled in their Six-Day War with the Israelis, which the Americans had attempted unsuccessfully to mediate on behalf of their Israeli allies.
During this mission the Liberty was attacked without provocation. The prolonged and brutal assault came from both sea and air and it resulted in the death of thirty-five crew members with one-hundred-and-seventy others wounded. This was odd enough, but what was stranger was the source of the attack. The clearly marked American vessel hadn't been attacked by the Egyptians but by their allies: the Israelis!
After the dust settled, both the U.S. and Israeli governments investigated the incident and jointly concluded that it was just an honest mistake of friendly fire when the Israeli military mistook the Liberty for an enemy vessel. But to this day, many survivors, intelligence officers, independent investigators, and American diplomats continue to dispute the official explanation and maintain that the attack on the USS Liberty was a deliberate but failed false flag operation orchestrated to give the United States a reason to go to war in the Middle East.
In fact, to this day, it's still the the only major event in U.S. naval history not to be investigated by Congress.
Here's a stellar, hour-long independent documentary produced by the BBC called "Dead in the Water" that tells the full tale. If your going to watch anything this week that takes up an hour of your time, promise me you'll watch this versus, say, "America's Got Talent". You really owe it to yourself:
Bravo to telling it like it is! It baffles me that the corruption in the American political system has existed as long as it has, with only a few blunders like Watergate to show for it. If the media were as good at their job as they are at blinding us, the whole lot of them would be exposed for what they are. Maybe then they could use their power and influence to help out suffering regions instead of exploiting them.
1 comment:
Bravo to telling it like it is! It baffles me that the corruption in the American political system has existed as long as it has, with only a few blunders like Watergate to show for it. If the media were as good at their job as they are at blinding us, the whole lot of them would be exposed for what they are. Maybe then they could use their power and influence to help out suffering regions instead of exploiting them.
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