Billmon:
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June 28, 2006
WB: Good Treason and Bad
Comments
Billmon gives an incorrect link for his second quote (re Mowbray and the “Visa Express” incident) – he means
http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document071502.asp
Posted by: mistah charley | Jun 28 2006 18:32 utc | 1
President Bush, who said on Monday morning that the exposure “does great harm to the United States of America,”…
Uh huh…
However, this doesn’t?
*wretches violently*
p.s.
I have seen the footnotes referring to the kids’ deaths and have seen credible evidence of sexual abuse described in Army investigations. I have not seen photos. I do not need to see them, but I have seen investigators’ reports.
One link above talks about how the studies into mind control have been implemented on our own troops and the general population. Examples abound, what with the Pentagon performing psyops directed at the American public to improving the “kill ratio” of our troops. Enough there for its own post.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 28 2006 18:58 utc | 2
Hey $cam,
Slightly OT.
At first I had some difficulty with your linking back to yourself but lately I consider it a really good way for me to pick up on the pithy and above all pertinent comments that tend to fade into a blur in the overall plethora of information flooding my memory banks. It helps to reinforce what I need to remember. Periodic reinforcement is crucial to long term memory eh? Thanks.
I totally agree that mind control and the billion $ PR industry (my addition to your suggestion) are elements in our struggle that are essential to discuss and understand better. I might even have a little more to offer on that topic than I usually do. Hope that in itself doesn’t jinx the possibility of such a thread. 🙂
Posted by: Juannie | Jun 28 2006 21:35 utc | 3
I don’t know, Mr. Billmon, if your recent burst of blog energy is going to continue. Let me just say – on the off-chance that you’re pondering to and fro about whether to put up some little tidbit plus an essay every day – that my reading life would be immensely better if you did.
Posted by: Meteor Blades | Jun 28 2006 22:25 utc | 4
I am reminded of an old joke dating from the Soviet Union in which a fellow announces that comrade Chernyavsky just got sentenced to eleven years of hard labor in Siberia for calling Premier Brezhnev an idiot.
“Why such a stiff sentence?” asks a fellow Russian.
“He got one year for insulting Soviet authority and ten years for divulging state secrets!”
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 29 2006 15:10 utc | 5
I’m guessing the NY Times published that ‘exposé’ only after discussion and negotiation. That can’t be otherwise, imho, though the boiled mutton public is supposed to believe in an independent press and opponents can cry SCANDAL about ordinary Americans being spied on and Bush supporters are encouraged to back anything he or the admin does, with the catching terrorist argument.
In a way, all the guff about libraries and who read which book was more pointed, as it related to issues that were directly related to people’s daily lives, made inroads on ‘privacy’ that were comprehensible to many. (The point was to make citizens feel guilty or shady when they checked out a book from the library. You know, Mao’s little red book or some fancy stuff about sex positions or the history of slaves…)
I read somewhere that surveillance of book borrowing is to be abandonded, I can’t find a link. It is even possible Laura Bush had something to do with that. (?) The link posted has some info.
So this latest SWIFT thingie is more in the same vein: as hard news it is not thrilling but it is supposed to once again make Americans feel that their privacy (international law of course is of no concern) must be considered in a balance with ‘terrorism’. However this issue, for the general US public, is incomprehensible. Only a small percentage of people, those who deal with international finance or international ‘wire’ transfers will even begin to grasp what it is about, so they will ignore it, or rather, just jump on their partisan bandwagon, which is what, I guess, the NY Times and The Gvmt. figured out together, so the article was published.
Overall, it represents a downscaling (defeat) for the Gvmt. There are international ramifications, but that is another story.
The Nation
Oh and btw, librarians all over the world – mostly in the EU as far as I can judge, but I have heard India mentioned several times, have given their US colleagues tremendous support. It has cost us ‘money’ – conference time, discussion time, meetings, and all kinds of expensive procedures to protect readers, as well as spurring initiatives to encourage unlimited, unchecked, private, and much broader etc. book borrowing. Positive, overall.
Every cloud…. 😉
Posted by: Noisette | Jun 30 2006 18:09 utc | 6