over 100 pblic relation companies for the resistance

Posted by: r’giap | Dec 2 2005 23:59 utc | 4

Is W back in Washington from his Thanksgiving TX vacation yet? That’s possibly why I’m feeling so safe as I turned my head to tell Bernard Kerik the other night when we were leaving the strip club.

Posted by: christofay | Dec 3 2005 4:02 utc | 6

I’m sorry … that ol’ anti-egalitarianism again.
Movies take at least 18 months from screenplay through approvals, and into production space. Filming, post and distribution takes *at least* another 18 months. With the proper focus group, ‘Syriana’ could’ve been scripted and pre-funded by political interests as late as May 2003, and still made it to the theatres by November 2005, just 30 months later.
Paradise Now is a f-indie, self-funded and shot on the fly, but still,
since it’s about Palestinian insurgents, what are the chances it would have been distributed in a Zionist-dominated American thought-space,
unless it served to reinforce a Zionist cattle-stampede on Americans?
’24 Hours’ is pure transparent red-baiting. ‘Sleeper Cell’ is psy-ops.
Capiche?

Posted by: tante aime | Dec 3 2005 4:23 utc | 8

tante aime, you know, Fox also shows The Simpsons, so Murdoch might care more about the money to be made from the show rather than its satire.
Read the Rolling Stone review for Syriana and then please explain to me how it is promoting a Bush agenda, please.
I don’t think the dots connect in this case. Clooney, who is in Syriana, also made Good night and Good Luck which I recommend if you haven’t seen it. The movie uses old footage from McCarthy during his hearings, and others in the legislature who finally stood up to him…
Baer’s book, See No Evil has a ops pov, from the bits of it I’ve read. Here’s a Buzzflash interview with him about his second book, Sleeping with the Devil.
The writer on the film did the script for the Hweird version of Traffick (I recommend the BBC version, you can probably rent it for free at your local public library.)
I guess I don’t see how the movie Syriana is some Bush propaganda. Clooney was also in Three Kings, an excellent movie, and more honest than most things I see from Hweird about the wider world and war.
Syriana is supposed to be one of those “impressive” holiday movies that was released at this time, no doubt, to position it for Oscar nominations so that more ppl will go see it and so that it will make more money. That’s also the standard for “prestige” films.
I don’t know very much about Paradise Now, but this review seems more nuanced than what I was able to get from what you wrote above.
But again, this is the time of year for “serious movies” rather than summer blockbusters ala Star Wars. This has been the cycle of distribution for at least twenty years.

Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 3 2005 8:53 utc | 10

@fauxreal – agree
@Sans whatever It’s always amusing to see a paranoid clown’s flight
Paranoid clown using an IP anonymiser service? Sure you are paranoid enough?

Posted by: b | Dec 3 2005 9:54 utc | 12

If one were to read “A Clean Break: Securing the Realm” and “Statement of Principles” of PNAC, then see three buildings, each fall shockingly in on itself, in a relatively neat pile of rubble, how can one be too paranoid?
Add to that the bizarre lack of investigation into the inconsistencies of the incident, the paralysis of the Democratic party, the blatant lying of the media and the politicians, the normalizing of intrusion into our personal movements and communications, the militarization of the police and response to natural disasters, and now the more prevalent use of false news, distractive news, and the acceptance of proliferation of propaganda. Just to name a few changes in the last 4 years.
Of course we won’t talk of the absurdities in the build up to the war and the seemingly incompetent way the war has been conducted leading to the destuction of Iraq.
On a bad day, one could look at this and say, they are preparing us for the day we all wake up and realize what has transpired, that these documents are the blueprints, that we have been had, and there is not much we will be able to do about it.
Yes, on certain days, my paranoia borders on hysteria.

Posted by: anon | Dec 3 2005 13:09 utc | 14

children are being sacrificed
Only our warrior class makes those sacrifices.

Posted by: slothrop | Dec 3 2005 16:18 utc | 16

what stan goff makes perfectly clear even as an ex sldier & a father of a soldier – that there is no warrior class – just an old fashoned meat grinding machine

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 3 2005 19:16 utc | 18

I am coming to see belief in the lies as close to religious.
As an atheist, I nevertheless have much sympathy and understanding for religious belief. I see it as a personal construct based on pure faith – a way to find and grasp love, care (and thus morality) in the abstract, that which is outside and inside of us, the indefinable.
Fine. I can relate to that.
But Saddam’s wmd, the 9/11 catastrophe, the crazy invasion, and all the rest, concern facts on the ground. Facts, moreover, that are today readily available… rationality, pragmaticism, empiricism, should hold sway, particularly in Anglo-American culture. But no; the lies are believed, by enough people for them to constitute a ‘standard’ – The Ministry of Truth does its job well. That’s the frightening thing – not the lies themselves.
I travelled in Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria before the fall of the wall (85 – 89). I did not meet one single person who thought that their Gvmt. was telling them the truth, that their Gvmt. was righteous, was on the right track, or was handling things well.
Yes, I did meet party cadres. They were apologetic, embarassed; or bored and angry; or told me they were double agents and offered me vodka; or explained in great detail how the various crazy rules meshed into each other… Now, all these attitudes were perhaps adjusted to suit the foreign visitor. Actualised for me, they existed nonetheless; they were part of the repertoire, part of the possible, part of reality.
Some intellectuals pointed to achievements of the Communist regimes – highly articulate and educated, they tended towards historical sweeps – e.g. starting with the Romanovs, as they figured I’d at least have heard of them! One die-hard Marxist made subtle arguments, creating odd bridges betwen theory and daily life; I cannot remember the content, only the smoke filled room, the shouting waiters, the drinks… but apologia it was not. This was the lofty view of the universal plight of mankind, material for a weighty book. Stumbling into the dawn, nothing was resolved, but people could embrace and say: hope for better days.
Fin de règne was palpable in the dusty streets, sweating walls, the defeated mien of American Communists, installed in a three-room flat; the furious women, furtive smokers, stoned cab-drivers, spitting, swearing, party flunky…All had big mouths and a lot to say.
I’ll be in the US on 24 Dec. I have been asked not to ‘talk politics’ and no doubt will have to quietly leave while some part of the company says a prayer for the troops, or for Bush, or ..
College graduates! Well paid engineers! ..
There is a lot left to understand…

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 3 2005 21:31 utc | 20

Noisette-
Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. I mentioned the “Bush Abu Ghraib Angel on the Christmas Tree on the White House Lawn” photoshop to send to family…but since I want to speak to them again in this lifetime, I will probably only send an email with it to ppl who already detest Booosh.
…And people in America think it’s their right to have you “participate” in their religious activities whether you want to or not…all you have to do is stand still with your eyes open and you’ll notice others are going along to get along…tho some are true believers. They do it to save your soul, they think. It’s annoying nevertheless.
Where I live, I’ve had words on the street with various people…mostly men…because of a shirt I was wearing that they didn’t like (most likely the one with Bush’s head on the top of a pez dispenser, mouth open, with pez-shaped lies falling out—courtesy of MoPaul).
Even people who detest Bush don’t always like to hear the bad things because they know it requires an action on their part to recognize how horrible things really are.
I was thinking about that today when I was out and about taking care of this and that…at what point does denial fall away…is it only when the slide toward devastation has reached its destination?
But, put your head down, don’t say “uncomfortable” things (i.e. the truth), don’t question “the way things are” –those are the ways you have to behave in most biz sitches to keep on paying the bills…and most people don’t want to have to think beyond that issue…paying the bills…because the rest is so butt-ugly nasty. those who know this can pretend they don’t if they keep their mouths shut. Because govt seems shut off from the ppl– the american govt seems like the huge, cumbersome titanic right now….too big and too much hubris to change direction.
I don’t know what it was like just before the fall, but I remember earlier on when people would approach you on the street in Moscow to buy jeans off your back…side, and people would sit in the airport for hours because of some “official” problem with a group of totally harmless high school students…and having to tie on a seatbelt on an aeroflot plane and suck on a candy that was handed out to help with that air pressure thing…
And then, at the ballet, it was like the Kennedy Center, except lots more people in uniform…or the subways, with the chandeliers and mosaics…except there was no buffet at intermission on the subway….but it was a whole other world from those babas on the street sweeping up cig butts.
That was when I didn’t see any difference b/t capitalism and communism…except capitalism seemed more open about its class structures and inequality.
So let me know the temperature you take on the street. Is it Weimar on the Potomac?

Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 4 2005 11:43 utc | 22

Thanks for the comments and advice… I feel better! Much.
My heart is lighter.
I will visit family, friends – a grand get-together.
I am viewed as disturbing, or seriously disturbed, because I opened my mouth about 9/11 two years ago. And spoke, glass in hand (hiccup!) for close on to an hour.
Being a ‘Bush hater’ is Ok, as long as one takes into account the sensibilities of the two new wives who adore him, and provided one stays within the strict frame of partisan politics, defending Bill and Hill and pretending to be a European Socialist who is in any case genetically suspicious of “Amerika”, the French model is best, dontcha know, different societies all that. Argh.
This will be up in Maine –
The US branch of the family is divided and prefers no confrontation.

Posted by: Noisette | Dec 4 2005 16:16 utc | 24