----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Henwood To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 10:17 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The hope for an independent free Iraq
philion at stolaf.edu wrote:
>Wounded Kentucky Soldier Flees To Canada
But you don't understand democracy - Iraqis voted! The act of voting is all that matters; the government that ensues or the society that evolves is just one of those tedious details that carpers and intellectuals worry about. The purple fingertip held high is the symbol of our exhilarating time!
Doug ========
Doug,
I'll let this rant to [Newsroom-l] speak my piece for me.
----- Original Message ----- From: Leigh Meyers To: newsroom-l Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:48 AM Subject: Re: [NEWSROOM-L] Why aren't Iraqis voting?
----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Kopp To: NEWSROOM-L at LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 8:24 AM Subject: Re: [NEWSROOM-L] Why aren't Iraqis voting?
At 7:13 -0800 31/1/05, Leigh Meyers wrote:
>~
>
>Why?
>
>One picture is worth one thousand speculations:
>
>(The picture has been pulled from the story, but I saved the picture link.)
>http://network.news.com.au/image/0,10114,414156,00.jpg
>
>
>The caption was "kneeling out of respect" (for automatic weapons // lcm).
>
>That's his ballot in his mouth. abu ghraib... election style.
>Crawling the gauntlet to the ballot box.
>
>Now... roll over, play dead! (good bwoy!)
>
>If the picture is gone from the site, I'll be glad to send a copy
>to any interested party, it *was* there just before I posted this email.
>
>The story: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12097394-2,00.html
>Ya gotta love the new story picture... a smiling guardsman.
>>[snip the rest of the incoherent rant -- I'm only interested in the pictures]
~ ROTFLM M/F AO What kinda pictures? This one? http://network.news.com.au/image/0,10114,414156,00.jpg
Personally my taste in pictures doesn't tend towards "on the knees".
>>You'll have to do better here.
I'm pedalling as fast as I can.
>>What was the *full* caption on the original picture?
I believe the full caption read "Kneeling out of respect for the elections", Caption and "mouse-over" read the same.
>>What was the story behind it?
Use the link, the story is still there... complete with smiling face picture. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12097394-2,00.html
>>You're implying that people were forced by threat of violence by the
>>"interim government" not only to vote but to vote in a particular way.
YES
>>What evidence have you for the implication? I've seen no credible
>>reporting that alleges this about the election.
The interim government is an American operation and the threat of violence by the interim government is quite simply:
Vote for one of these people that we've pre-screened, or Iraq will devolve into a civil war. Furthermore, the full force of the american people will be applied through the US government and military and we WILL make that civil war happen unless you, the indigenous Iraqi people do what we (the puppets) say and vote for someone from a pool of people we've selected.
It's like "bloodless" ethnic cleansing... but it ain't bloodless. Too bad about that.
I think "indigenous" is an important distinction that needs to be drawn. Most of the Iraqis and Iranians in the US are more American than some homeboy from sadr city.
I could present a hypothesis that would imply that the US is attempting to re-settle Iraq (and Iran) with US bred folks that just happen to be ethnically related to the area...
But I'm more concerned with that trend in the US, and we aren't even related to the area, we're mostly from Europe... ethnically cleansing the North American continent as a loooong term project.
Curtis Phillips, are you reading this? (* [lbo-talk] note: Curtis Phillips, First American])
(Help me out here, Curtis.)
Think long term effect.
100 year from now
The Iraqi election is a sham.
Just because it's not reported that way doesn't make it any less true.
>>Pictures can be deceptive without any help from you, Leigh.
I try to be helpful, but don't ask me to enable you. The link is posted above, find it yourself.
>>How about a little context, instead of a rant?
Quite simply... NO!
>>TIA,
TTUL
========================
Now... I *was* working on this nasty little screed.
It's vaguely on topic, considering that the Iraqi election wasn't a real election... but it certainly was propaganda.
~ Title: Prop-agenda - Operation: "Tug At The Heartstrings"
Lesson 1: Not all prop-agenda is "black" (outright lies).
Sometimes they are just softening us up.
It's bad. A soldier returned from Iraq, contracts a "mysterious liver ailment", and is in critical condition.
Marine Survived Iraq, Now Fights for Life January 30, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050130/ap_on_he_me/ailing_marine_1
By BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer Associated Press Writer Doug Simpson in New Orleans contributed to this report.
LOMA LINDA, Calif. - Sitting in a hospital lobby, Melany LeBleu finds comfort in photos of her wedding last fall, shortly after her young Marine groom returned from Iraq. But upstairs her young Marine, Lance Cpl. Chris LeBleu, is in a coma, on life support, afflicted with a mysterious liver ailment that doctors say will kill him within days if he doesn't get a transplant. Strangers have offered donate parts of their liver, but LeBleu's condition is so critical he needs an entire organ. <...>
The cause of the infection is unknown. Most likely, said Dr. Donald J. Hillebrand, a liver specialist, he caught a virus or was exposed to a toxin or chemical in Iraq or after his return. <...>
In mid-December, just months after he returned from Iraq, the 22-year-old LeBleu told his new wife he felt tired, a little under the weather.
Still, he was strong enough to drive them home to Louisiana for the holidays from his Marine Base in Southern California, going for 36 hours straight. On Jan. 2, he found the strength to go wild boar hunting with relatives.
"We kept telling him to go to a doctor, but he said it was just a sinus infection," Melany LeBleu said. "Of course, we didn't think it was anything major."
Days later, he felt much worse during the drive back to the Marine base at Twentynine Palms. In Texas, LeBleu felt so nauseous he had to pull over.
They made it back to their home on the base, but he didn't get better.
On Jan. 10, she took him to a base emergency room, which sent him to Loma Linda University Medical Center, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
"He couldn't keep anything down, not even water," she said.
As recently as Thursday, he was jaundiced and swelling but could still answer questions, Hillebrand said. <...>
"He won't be in this condition a week from now," Hillebrand said. "Either he's going to be recovering from a liver transplant or there are going to be a lot of people full of sorrow." <...> ~~~
The original story, two days PRIOR.
<Quiz: Did you diagnose his condition correctly?>
KPLC 7 LC Marine Needs Liver Transplant
http://www.kplctv.com/global/story.asp?s=2872987&ClientType=Printable January 28, 2005 Reported by Pam Dixon
A Lake Charles Marine who fought for eight months in iraq is now fighting for his life. Christopher LeBleu, who is 22 years old, was hospitalized two days ago with acute liver failure. Doctors say he's likely to die without a liver transplant.
LeBleu went to St. Louis High School. After hearing about his condition Friday, Jeanne Delahoussaye told her students. "As part of our ongoing prayer for our soldiers in Iraq, let's particularly remember Chris and his family today. He needs a liver transplant."
Delahoussaye started all her religion classes at St. Louis High School with a prayer for her former student. "For someone to have gone and served his country the beautiful way that he did and to be such an extraordinary young man and a newlywed, we pray that he has a full recovery."
Jason Oertling coached LeBleu in soccer. "He always had a smile on his face. He was always willing to do whatever it took to do what was best for the team and to help us be successful."
LeBleu was diagnosed with hepatitis and is suffering acute liver failure. <...> ~
That is quite different than the AP re-telling TWO DAYS later.
As a matter of fact, Hepatitis isn't even mentioned in the AP story at all, just an allusion to it, "...caught a virus or was exposed...", even though Hepatitis is the stated diagnosis.
You might think... "bad copy writing".
I think... editorial decision... on purpose... intentional...
We get a human interest story that is entirely disingenous about one of the basic facts needed to make an informed decision about how we should feel about this soldier...
Lets get something straight: Hepatitis is an incredibly *common* infectious disease.
Fort Dix, New Jersey had a big "die off" due to Hep a bunch of years ago.
Prisons? Natch! Communal living? It's a possibility. That where I contracted my case in 1969.
Even as a 16 year old living on the streets of new york I knew something was wrong and went to a clinic immediately for treatment.
This soldier was too stupid, or macho to do that.
I feel bad for him, his liver is failing, but national coverage with a disingenous spin?
For a case of Hep probably contracted from a KBR kitchen?
Your emotions are being played with, and you don't get enough information to figure out if your emotions are correct.
That's Prop-agenda... No worrys. Go shopping. Those feelings will pass.
How about disease outbreak in Iraq itself... Cholera, Hepatitis ...Rabies! < http://tinyurl.com/3kugw > (BBC Monitoring).
AP isn't churning out too many column inches on *that* story.
How do you feel about Cholera in Iraq? Do you care?
Would you (American citizens) care if US soldiers were contracting Cholera... Right!
The thing that makes all this so pernicious is that the goal of all this "prop-agenda" isn't *about* the *story* that's being "framed".
That's much too simplistic.
The goal of prop-agenda is to modify our ethical beliefs to match the needs of certain elements of industrial society that require us to act in ways that are antithetical to human nature. For example, the bogus concept of cooperation foisted off on us by corporate business practice.
Example: I'll cooperate, what's in it for me? ... and by extension, for us, or "I'll cooperate, what's in it for us?"... and by extension, for me.
How is it in *your* workplace, folks?
The end social and industrial product created by these two divergent ways of thinking are quite different and, as Adbusters is fond of saying,
"The product is YOU"
You are also the victim. Interview an alcohol or pill addicted "successful" businessman if you need proof of that statement.
There are unexpected and undesired social results from having people think in specific ways about specific things for specific reasons, and I suspect the people who utilize these mind/behavior modification techniques are as much in the dark about the end results of their psychological experimentation on the mass cultural consciousness as a Marijuana grower who hybrids the plants for maximum THC production, but accidentally breeds *out* the genetic trait that creates a stalk strong enough to hold the plant up.
Oops! S*it happens....
"Experts" in botany have been known to do similar things.
Ditto "experts" in social and cultural issues.
That's why Americans really believe there are elections happening in Iraq, even though the Iraqis have to crawl a gauntlet to get there.
Oh, and it isn't even fledgling democracy, Democracy will happen when they've killed many thousands more US soldiers, bankrupted the US economy and chased us out of their country.
That will be an accomplishment worthy of a new nation.
It will happen because something is being accidentally bred *out* of the American way of thinking.
Common sense.
L
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