Schism

Felicitations, Warriors Against Ignorance.

Well, I see that this piece of jingoistic clap-trap is bobbing around social media toilets again like an unflushed turd:

One Pissed off Canadian Housewife
 
"This is very good PLEASE read....

Thought you might like to read this letter to the editor. Ever notice how some people just seem to know how to write a letter?  This one surely does!
 
This was written by a Canadian woman, but oh how it also applies to the U.S.A., U.K. and Australia .

THIS ONE PACKS A FIRM PUNCH

Written by a housewife in New Brunswick , to her local newspaper. This is one ticked off lady...

'Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not, started by Islamic people who
brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001 and have continually threatened to do so since?

Were people from all over the world, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from the capitol of the USA and in a field in Pennsylvania ?
 
Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?

Do you think I care about four U. S. Marines urinating on some dead Taliban insurgents?

And I'm supposed to care that a few Taliban were claiming to be tortured by a justice system of a
nation they are fighting against in a brutal Insurgency.

I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East, start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere belief of which, is a crime punishable by beheading in Afghanistan .

I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head, while Berg
screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.
 
I'll care when the cowardly so-called insurgents in Afghanistan , come out and fight like men,
instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in Mosques and behind women and children.

I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of Nirvana, care about the
innocent children within range of their suicide Bombs.

I'll care when the Canadian media stops pretending that their freedom of Speech on stories, is more important than the lives of the soldiers on the ground or their families waiting at home, to hear about them when something happens.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a CANADIAN soldier roughing up an Insurgent
terrorist to obtain information, know this:

I don't care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he
might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank:

I don't care. Shoot him again.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed 'special' food, that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being 'mishandled,' you can absolutely believe, in your heart of hearts:

I don't care.

And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled 'Koran' and other times 'Quran.'
Well, Jimmy Crack Corn you guessed it.

I don't care!!'

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail Friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to
the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!

If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country! 

And may I add:

Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering, if during their life on earth, they made a difference in the world. But, the Soldiers don't have that problem.

I have another quote that I would like to share AND...I hope you forward All this.

One last thought for the day:

Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:

1. Jesus Christ
2. The British Soldier.
3. The Canadian Soldier.
4. The US Soldier, and
5. The Australian Soldier

One died for your soul, the other four, for you and your children's Freedom.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET!

AMEN! GOD BLESS CANADA AND AMERICA ."

Okay, here's my rebuttal:

(1)  First off, this wasn't written by a housewife in Canada.  Or a housewife in the United States.  Or a housewife in Britain.  In fact, it wasn't even written by a housewife.  

It was written by Doug Patton, an ultra-Conservative speechwriter and policy adviser who was "broken hearted" after Sarah Palin decided not to run for president in 2012.

Also, I think it's kinda convenient that the re-attribution of this already-inflammatory article always omits the final line:

"I don't give a 'sheet' either about those 'sheet-heads'!"

Nice. 

(2) Secondly, can we not all agree that we support our troops?  Honestly, I've railed about this before at great length, but apparently it needs to be said again.  Just because I don't agree with what our government does with our military doesn't mean that I don't support the men and women of our military!  I have friends and family in the armed forces and anyone out there thinks I don't "support them" is gonna get a swift kick right in the cubes.  By priority post if necessary. 

As a taxpayer, I'd like to see our troops bring order to the Congo or guard our borders from terrorists.  In fact, I support our troops so much that I don't want them dispatched to places where they're exposed to needless danger.  And that includes Afghanistan.  

(3) I dunno, are we still fighting a "War on Terror"?  What the f#@k is a "War on Terror" anyway?  How do you fight an ideology?  I tell you what, why don't we start fighting a "War on Ignorance" and see how far we get?

Is it possible, just possible, that the "War on Terror" represents a nebulous, catch-all, eternal scapegoat that can be dragged out whenever our special interest-choked government needs an excuse to secure new oil and lithium deposits?  Or whenever they look to re-work a part of the Middle East just to make it easier for them to exploit?

(4)  Is there seriously anyone left out there who actually still believes that the government hasn't been involved in some shady acts of foreign policy?   Hold on...turn around for a sec and I'll straighten your "Sucker" sign for ya...

(5) Yes, the a$$holes who funded the murder of over three-thousand people on September 11'th, 2001 should be made to pay.  But weren't the terrorist attackers mainly from Saudi Arabia?  Why the hell didn't we go after them?  Oh, right, 'cuz the Bush family has some sort of creepy, symbiotic relationship with the Saudi Royal family:

Oh, wait, I hear some of you out there saying that we went into Afghanistan expressly to look for Osama Bin Hidin'.  Pity it took over a decade to track him down and when we finally did manage to nail him (and wisely blow him away without question) he was discovered in an allied country.  Whoopsie!

So instead of going after the nation that fostered these yahoos, the United States invaded two independent nations under dubious pretenses.  It's like when Kirk says to Khan in Star Trek II, "You've managed to kill everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target!" 

P.S. The Saudi's positively love public be-headings. 

(5)  Hey, remember back in the day when we, as citizens of "civilized" western democracies, didn't cotton to the idea of illegal detainment, occupying foreign countries and indiscriminately torturing and killing people?  When exactly did that change?    Remember how justifiably sickened we all were when this disgrace broke?

Oh, and for any ass-hat who still thinks the phrase "enhanced interrogation" is a reasonable euphemism for torture, have a listen to former Navy SEAL Jesse friggin' Ventura drop some science on Fox News Neo-Con apologist Brian Kilmeade:

(6) What if my best buddy is an Atheist and doesn't care about THE HOLY BIBLE?  Is he a fanatic?  An enemy?  Is he not worth caring about anymore?  Hmmmmmm, seems like the Tolerance Setting on your "What Would Jesus Do?" machine is broken...

(7) Yes, I admit it.  I don't understand the mentality of people who are willing to blow themselves up just for the slight possibility of receiving virginal poontang in the afterlife.  But I can understand how desperate people can get when they feel like they've got absolutely nothing to lose.

Lemme put it to you this way: imagine if China invaded and subjugated North America.  Imagine if your family, friends and love ones have all been taken away from you and you have no clue if they're alive or dead.  Image that you have no home, no belongings and no weapons to fight the invaders save a crude explosive device which, your told, is only effective if you wear it.

Nope, I still don't understand it.  But, I can understand how someone else could understand it.  KnowwhutImean?

Here's video (inspired by, of all things, a speech by the only half-way sane Republican presidential nominee Ron Paul) which starkly illustrates this point: 

(8) "I'll care when the Canadian media stops pretending that their freedom of Speech on stories, is more important than the lives of the soldiers on the ground or their families waiting at home, to hear about them when something happens." 

Okay, I have no friggin' clue what Patton is talking about here.  Does he still think this is World War II and we can't openly talk about "The War on Ignorance" because it's gonna result in collateral damage?  Or, much worse, that it's all just a load of bantha fodder?    

Well, hey, guess what, I'll care when Stephen Harper stops expecting the media to act as a complicit megaphone for his decidedly south-of-the-border neo-con agenda:

(9) Finally, the person that forwards this along then declares in no uncertain terms:

"Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:

1. Jesus Christ
2. The British Soldier.
3. The Canadian Soldier.
4. The US Soldier, and
5. The Australian Soldier

One died for your soul, the other four, for you and your children's Freedom."

All I want to say to this is that I'm very jealous.  I'm over forty years old now and I'll be the first to admit that I know less then when I was twenty.

So, yes, I'm jealous.  I've always wanted to be one of those people who are completely convinced that they're right about everything one-hundred percent of the time.

I imagine life would be a lot simpler.  

EPIC:  Statistics prove that prescription drugs are 16,400% more deadly than terrorists.  Hey, who's with me for a "War on Prozac"?

FAIL: I came across this in my travels today.  I'm not saying the dude's lying but my Fib-O-Meter is really off the chart!

WikiLies

G'day, Mates!

Again, Kind Readers, I must beg your indulgence.  The regular broadcast of "You Can't Get There From Here" will be preempted this week so that we may bring to you the following special presentation...

I've railed before about the sad state of modern investigative journalism but the reaction to this recent spate of WikiLeaks by the media (or lack of reaction as the case may be) has really put a hornet in my toque.

Dontcha think it's kinda funny that all of the major media outlets are talking about how awful WikiLeaks is and how much of a demon Julian Assange is instead of actually talking about what WikiLeaks is supposedly revealing?

Honestly, how many people out there have actually seen this little bombshell...

No?  Hmmmm, what a shocker...

I remember how jarring it was the first time I witnessed this scene in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket:

Like the passenger in the helicopter, I almost threw up when I watched this.

So here we are, confronted by a real-life version and for some reason we aren't hearing about it or talking about it.  The sad thing is, if you hunt hard enough, there are other leaks that are just as despicable or galling, such as what's discussed in this report on Fox News of all things:

And here's another:



So I just want to put this question to you, Bright Readers.  If the information being released by WikiLeaks is such a subversive powder keg then why are the major media outlets more keen to talk about debating the ethics of releasing the information or examining the scruples of Julian Assange versus actually reporting the leaks themselves!

Now I'm not saying that Assange is some sort of paragon, but since we seem to have no investigative journalism or government transparency anymore I believe that what WikiLeaks is doing is critically important.  Essentially it's rubbing our collective noses in just how ignorant and resigned we've all become to what our elected officials and captains of industry are doing unmonitored behind closed doors.

Here's another recent news break that's barely getting coverage.  Remember the G20 event in Toronto back in June?  Do you remember how the mainstream media seized on that small group of anarchic yahoos and showed images incessantly every night of these clowns smashing the windows of a Starbucks ("GASP!") or burning police cars ("M'eh.")?  It was almost designed for the casual viewer to glance at this, tut-tut and declare: "Look at that pack of savages, they're a friggin' embarrassment!"      

What they didn't see was that the vast majority of the 10,000 or so peaceful protesters showed up because:

• G20 countries are responsible for more than 85 per cent of global military spending and 95 per cent of global arms production.
•  The G20 directs the efforts of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  These organizations give loans to poorer nations of the world with all sorts of interesting clauses attached, clauses that create exploitative inroads for mega-corporations, curtail funding on education and health care, soften up environmental guidelines and labor laws, export dirt cheap goods to the the richer nations of the world and subsequently undermine our own domestic industry.   Why do this?  Simply to have the globe's poorest nations subsidize the richest in a vicious circle of economic extortion. 
• There's nothing even vaguely democratic about the G20 process.  At all.  The meetings are secret, our elected officials arbitrarily decide on everything behind closed doors and then they decide what to tell us about it.   

And frankly I find this scarier then all get out.

Even though there were tons of illegal arrests happening during the protests, we only heard any real dissenting voice last week when Ontario's ombudsmen released the following report: 




I'm sorry, but doesn't this terrify anyone else?

And this recent revelation just blows me away:

I can't believe the friggin' Liberal party rolled over and died on this issue.  Actually, that's not entirely true. Anyone who thinks that there's actually some sort of distinction between the major Canadian political parties nowadays is sadly misinformed.

I think it's hilarious that this time last year Steven "Malamute Eyes" Harper was playing hardball about the departure date of our troops, and then, all of a sudden, last month it suddenly becomes imperative for us to stay until 2014.  WTF!?

Hmmmmm, I wonder if it might have something to do with this...

Or this?

Or this?

Are there really still people out there who truly believe that we're in Afghanistan solely to bring democracy to an oppressed people, capture a kidney-deprived dude in a cave and/or protect our own borders from Islamic extremists who apparently want us all dead just because we have a Cinnabon in every mall?  Is that really what we have to believe in order to turn a blind, uninformed eye and let us sleep comfortably at night?  Well, frankly, I don't want our troops to be the fall guys for shady, Machiavellian economic and political chicanery anymore.  Enough is enough.   

Look, you don't have to be a correspondent for "60 Minutes" to see that there's a pretty obvious story here.  So, why the f^%$^ aren't we getting this perspective on the news every night and reading about it in the papers every morning?

Well, mainstream media might not be willing to acknowledge the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but by golly, the independent, old-fashioned, shit-disturbing internet journalist of WikiLeaks and other sources sure do.

Which brings me to my final scary video:

Never forget, folks: "dissent is the highest form of patriotism".  Don't accept what you're told at face value.  Question, protest, investigate and stay vigilant...while we still can.

EPIC:


FAIL:   Will WikiLeaks prove to be the Reichstag fire of internet censorship?

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.

First off, the genesis for this comparatively sober entry was the following headline: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/06/26/afghanistan-soldier-dead.html .

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:



The documentary presents ample evidence that the level of deception and chicanery surrounding this virtually unknown tragedy (as well as the suspect reasons for America getting involved in Vietnam) is just a considerably more sophisticated riff on the tactics the Nazis used to ease it's unwitting populace into a state of  war. 

With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Communism was now a dead horse for the purpose of exercise for the Military Industrial Complex.  But  when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, George H.W. Bush used it as a fine opportunity to hand out some boffo military contracts.  Anybody who thinks this was done for purely humanitarian reasons needs to look at the conspicuous lack of oil in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.

And like any good comic book villain, Saddam conveniently lived to fight another day.  

At about the same time critical, by-partisan media outlets were dwindling and dying.  Burned by the black eye the U.S. government had received on the nightly news and in print courtesy of probing investigate journalism, laws preventing corporations from owning multiple media outlets were relaxed considerably.  The Telecommunications Act of 1996, for example, paved the way for mass deregulation.  It was sold to legislators with promises of improved competition, but it had the opposite effect.  A slew of critical watchdogs vanished in a slew of mergers. 

So what's the effect?  The big television networks like ABC, CBS and NBC (and the lions share of smaller cable channels) are guided and sponsored by an incestuous web of banking cartels and global corporate holdings, which are free to disseminate only the information and news they see fit to tell you.

Anyone who watches Fox News for anything longer than five minutes is bound to see what I'm talking about.  The real story behind Rupert Murdoch's pet network is even more disturbing:

http://www.sprword.com/videos/outfoxed/

So, it's not surprising that the media outlets you rely on failed to talk about this little chestnut.  In September 2000 an ultra-conservative think tank called "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC) published a treatise that you won't hear about on your evening news.  It's basically an action plan to ensure America's continuing preeminence on the world stage.  This called for the U.S. to "fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars".   In order to get the generally peaceful and apathetic American people to get behind this agenda the document called for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

Well, when 9/11 conveniently happened a year later, it gave George W. Bush's neo-con dream team carte blanche to do the following:

1. Rework the geo-political structure in the Middle East by occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. 
2. Create a sphere of influence in a region containing 40% of the world's oil reserves.
3. Give the Military Industrial Complex, in the form of the "War on Terror", a perpetual state of war focused not one one specific nation or idealism but on a tactic that could find it's home anywhere.

So, needless to say, the second Gulf War came pre-sold, like any good sequel.  Any dissenting voices who railed against the rush to war were branded traitors to America by the now-hawkish media.  Remember poor Natalie Maines from "The Dixie Chicks"?  She voiced some sincere and heartfelt criticisms at ole' Dubya at the time and was both tarred and feathered by the hawkish press and her own redneck audience who were tuning into Fox News for "fair and balanced" reporting:

http://www.sprword.com/videos/shutup/

Turns out she deserved the last laugh, but I suspect she still doesn't feel like laughing much.

If we still had critical investigative journalism I truly believe that we wouldn't be staring at this: http://antiwar.com/casualties/.
 
Here in Halifax we used to have three major sources for independent, print-based investigative journalism.  One remains independent, one eventually dissolved, and one had it's beat reporter pool gutted because sales were supposedly dwindling in this electronic age.

Frankly I think that's crap.  The papers are still doing fine in Europe, mainly because they aren't all owned by some Conrad Black-style Svengali who decided to sack half the staff when they were critical to his corporate interests and political buddies.  In fact, circulation is still very strong because these papers are staffed by professional muckrakers who are trying to keep politicians and corporations honest. And there's nothing people like more than a good, 'ole juicy scandal!  

Then one of our defunct papers was replaced by this journalistic abortion:

http://www.metronews.ca/halifax

This rag is given out for free on the streets because it's paid for entirely by corporate advertising.  The local reporting is admittedly pretty good, if a bit sketchy.  The national news, however, looks to be pulled from  some homogenized, corporate news wire source.  In the past the paper has featured shameless wraparound covers pimping "Canadian Idol" and other brain candy.  The issue I have in my hands right now has a front cover (yes, I said front cover) featuring a respectable story about downtown improvements in Halifax wedged between a photo of belly dancers and the pertinent headline "RUINED? WONDER WOMAN GETS MAKEOVER.  NEW LOOK, NEW STORY".

Anybody who thinks they're getting a critical view of the world through this bird-cage-carpet-worthy piece of crap is kidding themselves.  There are six pages of "Cliff Notes" style news bites, one business page, one editorial page and then eleven friggin' pages of sports, lifestyle, horoscopes, and other assorted crap.  The story about Sgt. James MacNeil, a soldier from Cape Breton who was killed in Afghanistan is perched just above the headline "Twilight Star to hit P.E.I. for TV taping."  There are half-page adds in the news section for luxury apartments, long distance phone plans and an app for an electronic version of this same crappy newspaper! 

What the f#$& is going on here?  Aren't we at war in Afghanistan?  Are we really supposed to blindly  trust these vapid sources of information to honestly give us all the reasons why our troops are still there after nearly a decade?

Yes, our troops are helping the local population and infrastructure recover from oppressive rule.  Yes, we're (in theory) keeping an eye out for that other Ernst Stavro Bloefeld-style villain Osama Bin Ladin.  But just a cursory bit of independent research also reveals some hypothetical and and considerably more nefarious  reasons for our presence over there.

Could it possibly have something to do with this? 

http://grantlawrence.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-are-we-really-in-afghanistan.html

Or this?



Or this?

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/14/say_what_afghanistan_has_1_trillion_in_untapped_mineral_resources

Given what I've shown you so far, isn't it all least possible that these things factored in at some point? After all, does anyone still believe the "official" reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq?

I guess this is also part of the reason why I get so pissed off when self-righteous a**holes put "Support Our Troops" ribbons on the back of their cars.  Of course everyone supports our troops!  It's not like there's a cabal of ghouls out there sitting back, wringing their hands and saying: "Boy, those Jarheads really don't belong over there!  I really hope some more of those guys get blown up by IED's this week!  That'll learn 'em!"

And if there really are mutants out there that think like that, they must know this: they will soon come to fear me.

In fact, I support our troops so much, I want them the f#@% out of unnecessary harm's way.  How about that for a stance?    I support our troops so much that I want them back guarding our own borders against terrorists or engaging in much-needed humanitarian efforts around the globe.

After all, does anyone really believe that you can export democracy by force, especially to a culture that largely considers the sheer presence of westerners on their native soil more of an affront than you can possibly imagine?   

As much as I loved the Naval Celebrations last week and the Tattoo that followed, it left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable.  It was admittedly spectacular and the effort that went into it was nothing short of massive.  But it galled me somewhat when the Tattoo included a narration of a veteran talking wistfully about how "World War II" was "their war" and Afghanistan is now "his grandson's war."  After doing a bunch of my own investigation I can tell you with all conviction that the war in Afghanistan resembles World War II about as much as Dane Cook resembles someone funny.

It also pisses me off when jingoists like Don Cherry use national forums like "Coach's Corner" to spout off about a subject they clearly have little knowledge of.  The Canadian metal/punk outfit "Propaghandi" summarized my thoughts on this nicely in a song called "Dear Coach's Corner":



And, trust me, it's not just the "Metro" that's failing to dig up the real dirt on our behalf.  The other day I made the mistake of checking out the supposed news headlines on MSN and got this:

INTERNAL AFFAIRS: Nine things you need to know before jumping into bed with a co-worker…

More on MSN
•    World's ugliest dog contest 
•    Competitive belly flopping 
•    Is the web making us shallow and distracted? 
•    How to divorce your work spouse
•    Walk your way slim 

I just love how they ask "Is the web making us shallow and distracted" amidst the other "headlines" when the web is actually one of the last pure sources for independent knowledge.  Corporate interests haven't figured out a way to completely quantify and regulate it yet, but mark my words, it's coming: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html

Just promise me: if the internet becomes the next target for political or economic censure it's time to riot in the streets!

So by subsisting on corporate mainstream media and a constant diet of reality show pablum, what will become of us?  My biggest fear is that future generations won't even care about news at all, in lieu of finding out who punched Lindsay Lohan in the mush today.  If that happens and politicians and corporations given free reign to abuse us in increasingly transparent ways will we still have the right to complain that their all "crooked"?

Please don't let it happen.  I know everyone is tired with work and kids and life in general.  It's tempting to let authority figures spoon-feed information to us.  But trust me when I tell you: there are powers out there that are relying on you to be apathetic, listless and disengaged.  I hate to do this but you leave me no choice:



Now, I don't want you to take everything I've written here at face value.  In fact, just the opposite; I'm hoping to get you so riled up that you'll want to do your own independent investigation and prove me wrong.  I think I'll sleep better for it.     

Support independent media sources.  Read more.  Unhook yourself from the I.V. drip of reality television.  Don't take news for granted if it's born from concerns over profits, investors, advertising, and stockholders. 
    
Because, as a wise man once said: "dissension is the purest form of patriotism."  Don't stop kicking and screaming, Informed Readers.

Here are a few more eye-poppin' docs to whet your appetite:

EPIC:    http://www.sprword.com/videos/controlroom/
  


http://www.sprword.com/videos/whywefight/



http://www.sprword.com/videos/fogofwar/



http://www.sprword.com/videos/manufacturingconsent/



Stellar metal/punk album "Supporting Caste" by Propagandhi:
 

FAIL:  http://current.com/items/88927559_corporate-media-is-failing-us.htm