Racial Maddow vs. the Islamic Republic of Iran - Shirin Sadeghi.
Love Shirin for writing this. I’m relieved to know not everyone’s foolishly in love with Rachel Maddow.
(via mehreenkasana)
I just watched the video, ugh. Orientalist, imperialist propaganda from Maddow. Another excuse to portray Bush’s axis of evil in convenient ‘us and them’ terms, painting all Iranians as extremist zealots, and yet more footage of North Korean people all doing the same thing in a large crowd, as if that’s the only footage of them in existence. i.e. both countries are clearly nothing more than brainwashed collective masses who don’t know what’s good for them and so of course need the enlightened west, where everyone’s a free individual (and definitely not Muslim or anything like that) to come spread democracy and rationality.
The whole patronising ‘dictatorship’ spiel - ffs it was your CIA who overthrew the democratic government of Iran and replaced it with a US-friendly monarchical dictatorship in the 50s. And hmm I wonder if America had anything to do with Korea in the past… let’s not mention that though.
Ugh and the way she sneers at ‘dictatorships’ for celebrating their leaders birthdays, less than a minute after having shown the US list with Lincoln’s birthday right there ffs. Funnily enough no comment on how the land of the free celebrates mass colonial genocide on Columbus day either…
The highest military spending in the world, a bloody global empire, the highest prison population in the world, institutional racism, entirely unscientific drug laws, 90% of media controlled by 6 companies with interlocking share ownerships, 3 times fewer women in ministerial government positions than Iran.
But yeah keep pointing that finger.
‘Progressive’
(via kyaryarchy)
so important
the US military-industrial-media complex relies on dehumanising and othering the civilian populations of its target nations
the people in these pictures are not an unindividuated mass/horde of brainwashed commie robot zombie drones who spend their days at axis of evil hq plotting to blow up the white house
they are actual human individuals, 100% real people, with varied lives and loves and interests, they cook meals and fuck and listen to music, and experience the full spectrum of human emotions, and don’t deserve to be murdered by flying death robots or whatever the fuck
all of which is so basic it should never need to be said, but every time I hear about the latest ‘surgical strike’ to ‘neutralise’ ‘insurgent’ ‘forces’ w/ ‘collateral damage’ I’m reminded that apparently it does
(Source: canadian-communist, via babustation)
British Intelligence Said to Have Had Role in Lumumba Assassination
The British intelligence services may have just had one of their best-kept secrets blown: their role in the abduction and assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister whose Pan-African nationalism and pro-Moscow leanings alarmed the West.
For more than 50 years, rumours have swirled over allegations of British involvement in Lumumba’s brutal murder in 1961, but nothing has ever been proved — leaving the CIA and its Belgian peers alone to take the rap for what a Belgian writer has described as “the most important assassination of the 20th century.” Now, in a dramatic revelation, a senior British politician has claimed that he got it from the horse’s mouth that it was MI6 that “did” it.
In a little noticed letter to the editor in the latest issue of the London Review of Books (LRB), Lord David Edward Lea responded to the claim in a new book on British intelligence, Empire of Secrets: British intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire by Calder Walton, that the jury is still out on Britain’s role in Lumumba’s death.
“The question remains whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba … ever amounted to anything. At present, we do not know,” writes Walton.
Lord Lea retorted: “Actually, in this particular case, I can report that we do.
“It so happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park … She had been consul and first secretary in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there.
“I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it.’”
Same old story, US/UK (and in this case Belgian as well) backed coup to depose popular anti-imperialist leader and install corrupt, capitalist-friendly, kleptocratic military dictatorship (i.e. Mobuto). And the country is robbed blind.
MI6 for you.
In reality, James Bond is the villain.
What is modern propaganda? For many, it is the lies of a totalitarian state.
In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl and asked her about her epic films that glorified the Nazis. Using revolutionary camera and lighting techniques, she produced a documentary form that mesmerised Germans; her Triumph of the Will cast Hitler’s spell.
She told me that the “messages” of her films were dependent not on “orders from above”, but on the “submissive void” of the German public.
Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? “Everyone,” she said.
Today, we prefer to believe that there is no submissive void. “Choice” is ubiquitous. Phones are “platforms” that launch every half-thought. There is Google from outer space if you need it.
Caressed like rosary beads, the precious devices are borne heads-down, relentlessly monitored and prioritised. Their dominant theme is the self. Me. My needs. Riefenstahl’s submissive void is today’s digital slavery.
Edward Said described this wired state in Culture and Imperialism as taking imperialism where navies could never reach. It is the ultimate means of social control because it is voluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom.
Today’s “message” of grotesque inequality, social injustice and war is the propaganda of liberal democracies. By any measure of human behavior, this is extremism.
Article goes into the CIA’s propagandising via Hollywood, which really shouldn’t be a taboo subject when:
- Argo is misleading anti-Iranian propaganda
- Zero Dark Thirty tries to justify torture and uncritically follows the US military’s version of events regarding bin Laden’s death
- Olympus Has Fallen comes out at just the right time with its ‘omg North Korea is going to attack America’ bullshit, and
- Homeland is winning awards on TV for promulgating the view that America needs to be even more vigilant against all these ‘Al Qaeda terrorists’
- etc etc
As Pilger mentions the CIA has an ‘entertainment industry liaison office’ and it’s a matter of public record that they’ve been engaged in manipulating the media for decades (going back to Operation Mockingbird in the 50s).
Is it any wonder that all the media listed above feature sympathetic portrayals of CIA operatives? Or that they serve to reinforce US imperialism?
Just look at the timing of the anti-Iran and anti-DPRK movies, I mean really now, come on.
so openly fascist Paolo di Canio has got a high profile football management position
not sure which is more ridiculous, that or the fact that David Miliband is resigning from his club directorship in protest
Dave you were foreign secretary for three years, where was your principled resignation then?
Linguistic imperialism
(Source: satanic2chainz, via theraceproblem-deactivated20130)
all the cool kids know about the Sykes-Picot agreement
…do YOU?
Here’s some imperialist fuck from pro-Israel lobby group/think tank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy talking about the need for ‘crisis initiation’, i.e. how America can start a war with Iran.
‘We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier.’
United States President Barack Obama said there is a real chance for peace in the framework of the two-state solution. “I do not say peace guaranteed, but possible,” he said
put your money where your mouth is
Little to no difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to mindless slaughter in the name of foreign policy.
yes true, all very sensible but
a) we can’t monopolise the sun. our friends in the oil cartel, Exxonmobil, Chevron and ConocoPhilips (1st, 3rd and 4th biggest companies in US) not happy about this
b) solar panels don’t come with permanent military bases. military-industrial complex clearly not happy about this that’s kinda their thing
c) less debt and less interest on debt. banks and financial cartel entirely not happy about this.
d) the proles would be less dependent on us. everyone not happy about this (apart from the proles obv but fuck them lol)
always with the bright ideas, pah.
next: a motion to bomb Iran, all those in favour say aye
(Source: questionall)
The “Jews Say No” movement held a protest in Upper Manhattan expressing their opposition to the recent air attacks by Israel on the Gaza strip. They stood silently, holding posters and placards which voiced their concerns. New York, USA, 22nd August, 2011. (Demotix Images)
if anyone thinks that criticising the racist, genocidal atrocities of the Israeli government and military (aided and abetted by the imperialist Anglo-American establishment) = anti-semitism, then please feel free to unfollow
(via americanfascism)
[…]
However, this crime is not Rios Montt’s, alone. The genocide would have been impossible without the United States, which had run the show in Guatemala since 1954 and had armed the general to the teeth. The U.S. corporate media like to call President Ronald Reagan the “Great Communicator” but, in Guatemala, he was the Great Exterminator, encouraging and financing General Rios Montt’s orgy of mass murder. Reagan described the racist butcher as “a man of great personal integrity and commitment” who was “getting a bum rap.” All told, a quarter million or more Guatemalans died in the 40 years since the CIA robbed them of their democracy and independence."
