A bomb went off in Tel Afar yesterday, but that’s not the news. From the SF Chronicle, which is reprinting a short article from the Washington Post, the lede and the first paragraph make sure we understand the real story:
2nd bombing in city Bush had touted as safe
A suicide car bomb slammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint Saturday and killed at least 14 people in Tal Afar, a northern city that President Bush has previously hailed as a symbol of security and normalcy in Iraq.
In case you didn’t get the point, three paragraphs down, the reporter, Amit Paley, spells it out:
Taken together, the attacks seemed to undercut the president’s assertion in March that residents of Tal Afar “can count on a basic level of safety and security, they can live together peacefully.”
Get it? It’s not about a bombing in Tal Afar. It’s all about Bush. Either he lied and the city was never safe. Or he was a credulous fool who stupidly thought the city was safe. Or the city was once actually safe, but through his incompetence it is no longer safe.
Now that we’ve hammered the editorial message home, we actually get some interesting information:
The U.S. military also announced that an American soldier was killed Friday by enemy action near the city of Bayji, north of Baghdad. (I’m dreadfully sorry for that soldier, but I must point out that the American fatalities are small, which in itself is significant. America is doing a good job of protecting Americans.)
In addition, Iraqi authorities on Saturday found 51 bodies, many of them bound and showing signs of torture, in western and eastern Baghdad, the New York Times reported. (Wait! You mean that the bad guys are hideously killing fellow Muslims? My gosh! Someone needs to put together a violent, hysterical rally against that kind of thing. You know, the kind of violent, hysterical rally you see everytime someone forgets his Dhimmitude and draws a cartoon; or mentions that he finds it disconcerting that, when talking to female constituents, he can’t see their faces; or mentions some of Mohammad’s less savory, but very well known practices, such as pedophilia and genocide — practices the Muslims often celebrate, and frequently emulate, amongst themselves.)
In Kirkuk, a volatile mixed city in the north, Iraqi and U.S.-led forces began a major security operation, dubbed “the key to peace,” to root out members of al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups. Authorities imposed a 6 p.m. curfew and announced the detention of 155 suspected insurgents. (Horrors, from an MSM viewpoint! We must hide deep within an article the fact that the U.S. Army is moving actively and successfully against some of the worst people preying on the peaceable citizens in Iraq. We better hide it well, because some people might even connect these “rooted out members” with the people who tortured and murdered the 51 dead in the above paragraph. Remember the first MSM rule: never put that type of stuff up front, because it might reflect favorably on George Bush and the U.S. Military, and Goddess forbid we do that!)
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad met in Baghdad with more than 100 tribal leaders from volatile Anbar province, who have formed a group, known as the Anbar Salvation Council, to fight al Qaeda and insurgent groups. The tribal leaders have asked al-Maliki to sack the provincial government and replace it with their new council, but a government spokesman said such a decision would have to be made by the people of Anbar.”If the people of Anbar do decide that they want to have this change,” said the spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, “then the government does not object.” (Again, when you realize that this interesting fact — normally disparate groups of Iraqis are joining together to fight the terrorists — should have led a story, please repeat the first MSM rule: never write anything that reflects too well on George Bush & Co.)
Filed under: Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iraq, Media matters |
Bookworm Room (ARCHIVES) 
I simply don’t read the “news” on a regular basis anymore. It’s bad for my attitude, my morale, and my blood pressure.
Actually, even with a truly evenhanded news media that just reports stories, most of what we read is bad for us. Because the reporting is mostly of tragedies a long ways away that we can do nothing about – we gradually gain a spirit of defeat that distracts us from acting locally to take care of things that we actually have some control over. This isn’t original with me – I just forget where I read it.
It makes a great deal of sense – I can’t do anything about the Indonesians who are homeless because of the tsunami, and obsessing about them can easily prevent me from reaching out to the local family whose apartment burned last night.
So….no newspapers, no newsmagazines, and no TV!
The U.S. military also announced that an American soldier was killed Friday by enemy action near the city of Bayji, north of Baghdad. (I’m dreadfully sorry for that soldier, but I must point out that the American fatalities are small, which in itself is significant. America is doing a good job of protecting Americans.)
Be sorry for the terrorists his unit killed. They would be the ones in hell.
Remembering what he fought for and who he killed or defeated, as well as his mission and purpose in life, honors a warrior.
In Kirkuk, a volatile mixed city in the north,
Dag, those mixed cajun cracker cities, can’t have those. Must portray them as “volatile”, “insane”, or preferablly “extreme”. It used to be that cosmopolitanism meant that people of various sects, philosophies, and outlooks understood and tolerated one another. Now it means, that whenever you have a “mixed” city, like a “mixed” marriage, you will have ‘volatile events’.
Conflict, Conflict, Conflict! Onwards with strife, towards the Bane of Chaos, and complete the Cycle of Violence! Well, at least the media says that. Fake banners to go with their fake indignation.
(Again, when you realize that this interesting fact — normally disparate groups of Iraqis are joining together to fight the terrorists — should have led a story, please repeat the first MSM rule: never write anything that reflects too well on George Bush & Co.)
Since Bush is a vampire or at least his companion Cheney is, don’t you know that nothing can be reflected off of them?
The media is obviously justified in attempting to see to the heart of things.
Earl, me too. I only read the local section of the paper, never watch any television news or talk shows, neither do I pay attention to the polls as they are released.
There are plenty of other clues to what’s going on. For instance, Regal Theaters aren’t going to show the movie about Bush being killed? They had no problem showing Moore’s lies or even Oliver Stone’s creative histories. There’s some other evidence that the ranting is being toned down except among those whose BDS has reached the terminal stage.
Alec Baldwin’s new show is premiering on Wednesday at 8 PM eastern. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone with the memory of his calling on national television for the killing of Henry Hyde and his entire family including the children because of his role in Clinton’s impeachment will watch his show.
Remembering what he fought for and who he killed or defeated, as well as his mission and purpose in life, honors a warrior.
Addendum, thought not complete.
P.S. The fact that the media does not honor soldiers or their battles, is sort of really interesting on both an honor scale and a propaganda perspective. Reaping many battle glories and honors, by telling the public what a warrior has done, would be a favor to that warrior and a gift. By refusing to do so, the media openly and contemptuously affects a sense of disdain at the military.
On a propaganda point, this prevents people from hearing stories of victory and it also prevents people from hearing stories of defeats. You might think that logically, this all balances out, but no, the human psyche does not work that way. When given 0 victory stories, 0 stories of defeat, and 5.248X10^5 stories of violence and chaos, the human psyche breaks down into apathy and total systemic shutdown. Akin to what Zhombre refered to, overload. The human mind cannot sustain too much stress without something to do, something to hope for, something to focus the rage, the fear, the anger onto and into.
So, the media’s argument is that they are not doing propaganda. They don’t tell the battle stories of soldiers, and it is because they just don’t want to tell the victory stories and be shills for the government. Of course, you know what’s wrong with that argument. Bill Keller keeps saying, both sides hate us, so we’re straight down the middle, Jack Jack. No, they are not.
The human psyche does not operate on principles of Boolean logic, and even if it did, there is no “both true and false” as the middle between 1 and 0 in Boolean logic. There are a lot of gray areas in the human psyche. Being stressed is not having stress or having the absence of it, being stressed is about cumulative and disparate stimuli all working together to create this mix, that causes anything from depression, to joy, to various other senses of achievements or defeats.
When a person is under a lot of stress to perform, and he succedes, then he feels euphoric. Read why Antietam is important to the Civil War and the Union’s side of the conflict, Bookworm, and you will see a perfect example of how stress can lead to euphoric joy.
The media is not, well, preventing stress from arriving at America’s doorstep. They would have to stop reporting the war all together, and they won’t do that. They will however, refuse to tell you the details, stories, honorable mentions and conduct of warriors, sailors, and airmen on the battlefield of Iraq. I don’t care why they refuse, they just do, since it is their occupation, I have little to do with why they refuse to do so.
When the media says that they won’t report victories because they aren’t reporting defeats, they are correct. But it is not so as to make things more objective, or help you see the truth, or reduce your stress in life. No, the media doesn’t report the victories or the defeats that our forces suffer, precisely because by keeping the human mind in a state of confusion, apathy, and mismatched quantum states, the media can easily manipulate such a mental state.
If a person believes he is losing, his reactions to that war news is typical and very hard to change. If a person believes he is winning, the same thing occurs, the results just end up being the polar opposite. Either way, you cannot manipulate a person’s behavior when extremely strong stimuli triggers are activated. Simply because you have to control what a person is hearing, seeing, and feeling in order to control his behavior.
If a person believes he is winning, the media cannot make him committ suicide. If a person believes he is losing, the media also cannot make him committ suicide, as they have sought to do with America’s will in iraq.
A person who is winning, will not give up because they see the rewards. A person who is losing, will not give up because they are either stubborn, too stupid to give up, or believe that they have nothing else to lose, so why not kill their enemies at the same time?
So given the media’s goal of attempting to make a person give up, on an individual and macroscopic level, they have to control the stimuli that affects you. They have to tone down your feelings of despair and your feelings of joy, to almost nothing. They do this by the propaganda technique of constant barrage and psychological torture.
The same thing, in the same time, via the same way, done all the time, every time. Nobody, not even the best defenses against mental stress, can withstand such an onslaught forever.
The psychological torture aspect, is simple. By giving you nothing to hope for, and no sense that you are killing anyone, you have no reason to continue living. You are not killing your enemies, you are not defending your allies, and you are not facing emminent defeat and annihilation so you have no instinctual reason to flee. The Fight and Flight instincts of the human body, totally and absolutely nullified. At least for a time.
The human body is not designed to be in a state of neither Fight or Flight, when lives are at risk. A person must decide either to fight or flee, he cannot just stand around doing nothing, because the stress would kill him or just break his mind.
If a parent could do nothing but worry over their child, with no hope of salvation nor news of the ghastly final fate, what do you think would happen to them after a year or five? There is no police to talk to, no volunteers providing hope, no media there to present interviews to. All that angst, all that worry, where will it focus? It will focus on itself, and it will destroy itself. Unless! Unless a savior comes and presents them with something else, some tiny, infinitisimal light. That savior is called the International Media.
Go to the light, all who are in apathy, for that is your only salvation. That is the only salvation for those who have no defense against psychological and propaganda attacks. They must submit, or die a little more every day until they are no more. A tiny sliver of self-preservation is still there to motivate someone to take the hand of the media, even if they are totally in a state of sensory deprivation.
Btw, the internet allows people, as with Zhombre, to choose a different alternative. They don’t have to shut down completely and go into total sensory deprivation, waiting to be “harvested”. Instead, the internet gives them an outlet, an escape. But when you have no escape, as with Centanni and all the other hostages the Muslims took, then you either submit or you die.
The prisoners has a psychological escape. They can threaten guards, act tough, not eat food, eat more food, have games, plan tortures, create insults, talk about the greater jihad, exchange information, exchange contact information, exchange safehouse information for when they get out, coordinate, wait for their American provided lawyers to give hope and a motivation speech, etc and etc so on and so forth.
The escape the media and the Islamic Jihad gives you, is simple. Submit to what they want, or die a little every day or maybe die all at once in a day.
Those who do not know an alternative, or cannot find an alternative, will be crushed by the every conscientious propagandist’s goal, the Catch 22 trap. The paradox loop.
Here’s an example of low spirits, turning to high.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2006/10/godspeed_canadi.html
Remember Black Hawk Down the movie at the end?
“When we went through, the first two guys didn’t hit it,” said Cpl. Blois, who was walking at the patrol’s tail end.
“The explosion went off, and my immediate thought was it was the section commander who hit it, because he was the very first guy in the patrol,” he said.
In fact, the commander was unhurt, but in the haze of dust and lingering shock of the blast it was difficult for the survivors to tell who had been injured.
“I didn’t get hit with anything,” Cpl. Blois said. “So I just started yelling people’s names, and guys started to respond.”
One of those who didn’t answer right away was Cpl. James Miller, of Hamilton, Ont., who was partly deafened by the blast.
“Miller didn’t respond but he came out of the smoke and dust, and he was really disoriented. You could tell he was pretty messed up.”
“Messed up”, euphemism for psychological shock and stimuli overload. Combat troops are trained to handle it. Civilians watching the media and enemy propaganda, are not.
“The blast threw Klukie about 50 metres off the road,” Cpl. Blois said. “He landed in the vineyard. I think he must have hit one of the walls. He was laying on his back when the American medic and I found him.
He continued: “We immediately started working, without saying anything to each other. He put a tourniquet on his right leg, which was almost completely gone. I put tourniquets on his arm and his other leg.
“You could tell he couldn’t hear anything, but he could recognize me, you know. I was looking right at him. He couldn’t say anything. I was just telling him to keep fighting, you know, keep fighting, keep fighting.”
Pte. Klukie’s friends say he was a big, well-built soldier in peak physical shape, who dreamed of joining the elite JTF2 special forces. But the blast that went off under his feet was probably enough to destroy a vehicle, never mind a man.
“He was breathing,” Cpl. Blois said. “He had a pulse. His eyes were moving. . . . He looked right at me. It was just weird. He couldn’t talk.”
This quiet, desperate scene lasted maybe three minutes, Cpl. Blois said. “I had that last tourniquet on him, I grabbed him by the shoulder, I’m like, ‘This is nothing Josh, this is nothing.’ He just looked at me, smiled, and that was it. He died right there.”
He was the 10th soldier to die in September and the 37th since Canadian troops went to Afghanistan in 2002 — most of them this year.
[…]
Cpl. Blois helped clean up the scene and transport the body bag back to Kandahar airfield. He didn’t sleep at all that first night.
He felt numb, he said, and initially he thought about quitting. But he changed his mind, and now the death of Pte. Klukie drives him to continue. Despite the gravity of what he had witnessed, the young soldier told the entire story with calmness and precision, and he showed no hint of hesitation about returning to the battlefield.
“I want to get back out there,” he said. “He deserves it. He fought hard, and so he deserves everybody else who’s here after him continuing to fight hard.”
Fight or flee, but not both at the same time. Determine your reactions, why does simple tallies of deaths produce more stress and apathy than this story, which is far more graphic and gruesome in detail? Because, the human body and mind has been designed through evolution and training to either endure being killed and hurt, or to kill and hurt others. Keeping a person’s mental state in a zone of no go, is possible, but it is not good for your system’s tolerance limits.
[…] [Read more and discuss…] […]
“They say reporters have no agenda?”
Who says that? Certainly no adults say that.
Bill Keller says they are straight down the middle. People for the BBC also say they are balanced.
And whenever I tune in to NPR, they ask for money so they can continue offering their “unbiased” (I swear that that is the word that is used) news to the community!
Possom wrote about a lot of this seeing with eyes clouded, theme, concerning Germany and Koreans.
http://www.operationdoubles.com/zoo-blog/2006/10/why-germans-accuse-other-peoples-of.html
It is of an international policy flavor. I found it interesting.
* Supports Je$$ee Jack$on in an article TUCC Trumpet Magazine.
* They quote W.E.B DuBois (Darling of the left and Communist radical agitator)
* TUCC says they are to “..become agents of change for God who is not pleased with America’s economic mal-distribution!” (Is that Socialism)?
* Have African Swahili named “Rights of Passage” for males and females. Ministries
* Politically active supporting the Jean Francois Kerry’s pullout from Iraq.and the Kennedy Minimum Wage Amendment. TUCC Bulletin – 06/25 [PDF] (IRS are you listening?)
Hey, I thought the Left was against the Right Wing Christian wackos?
[…] With North Korea gone nuclear, today is definitely the day for some lighter fare. You won’t find it here and now, since I have a work project I absolutely need to get to this morning (famous last words), but I can assure you that you’ll get it at Guns ‘n’ butter, a conservative site that spoofs the daily news. Guns ‘n’ butter may be especially good reading for those of you who have abandoned the MSM on the ground that fauxtography, faux-stories, and bias driven content really don’t count as news anymore. […]
“please repeat the first MSM rule: never write anything that reflects too well on George Bush & Co.” (Bookworm’s end)
You’re very correct. My agreement is with others on the nature of the MSM. I actually submit that the MSM is managed. That is, certain political/Left interests conspire with editorial newsrooms, and corporate tv controllers, to “fix” ‘public opinion.’ (that should really be ‘attempt to fix,’ since thankfully many of us have independent minds..)
How do they seek to ‘fix’ things? See this from USA TODAY:
‘..a series of dismal developments for the party. They include high levels of violence in Iraq; a National Intelligence Estimate that contradicted upbeat administration statements on Iraq; a new Bob Woodward book about internal White House disagreements over Iraq policy, and the Sept. 29 resignation of GOP Rep. Mark Foley..”
Note how the MSM bundles all of these together.
(1)Bookworm calls the MSM out their (always) biased approach to reporting the news from Iraq. (2) the deliberate NIE ‘leak’ (not here labelled) was twisted to appear negative, although a closer look at details reveals mostly positive (3) well– Woodward is a natural power shaker wannabe–in with the ‘plot’ (4) the Foley thing was used by one news service to proclaim that Americans felt the scandal to more significant than national security. It actually overshadowed the war on terror!!
The latter summation (4) says too much about us. If it were true, then O.BenLaden was right in 2001. He saw Americans as easy prey–weak, dissolute, and stupid.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-09-poll_x.htm
Here’s a relevant synopsis of Blackfive, concerning the reasons he does what he does.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/first-person-singular-blackfive.htm
From http://www.blackfive.net/main/ of course