This Is Your Brain On Propaganda - 2

Lets start the new year properly by discussing the origin of our thinking (which is not our brains BTW).

In the first episode of this series This Is Your Brain On Propaganda, we equated indoctrination with the effects of drug addiction.

That was done in part by doing a take-off from a famous campaign some years back that depicted one's "brain on drugs" by using the metaphor a frying egg in a frying pan.

The message was "drugs will fry your brain", so the Dredd Blog take-off depicted in the first episode of this series was "propaganda will fry your brain", which incidentally also indicates that propaganda is a "drug".

Also included in the first episode was a video from The Media Education Foundation which featured, among other things, excerpts from an interview with Noam Chomsky and others discussing one American myth: "the liberal media".

Regular readers of Dredd Blog know that we use the acronym / metaphor MOMCOM to identify the DNA of the empress's power that actually runs the U.S.A. empire.

I found a scholarly, journalistic work that I should share with you, which supports the Dredd Blog theory:

“Our military policy and our energy policy have become intertwined. They have become one and the same ... And if we continue to rely on military force to solve our resource needs, we’re in for a very bloody and dangerous and painful century indeed.”

(Michael Klare, Blood and Oil, PDF). There are various Dredd Blog series that explain the Siamese triplet bond between big military, big oil, and big media, including but not limited to: The Peak of the Oil Wars, Warriors Press For Propaganda, and Jabber The Whut? for examples.

We have also contrasted what the world thinks of MOMCOM, versus what we at home think of MOMCOM, in the post Why MOMCOM Is Not Seen As The Beast.

The triad of big military, big oil, and big media form a "complex" in more ways than one, and it damages the nation and damages the world in more ways than one.

The Dredd Blog combines ideas from the discipline of psychology, where a complex is in essence the subconscious realm of a meme complex, concluding that for the most part MOMCOM is the national institutionalization of the animation of the amygdala.

Hey Dredd Blog gang, in the coming year we will continue to give new meaning to "egg head" now won't we?

We need to bring down "the bright curtain" one brick in the wall at a time:

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

(Pink Floyd Lyrics). I can dig it, you can dig it, and Noam Chomsky, a true educator, can dig it:

I'm by no means the first person to talk about this. George Orwell wrote about it, for example. He was discussing how in England, a free society, unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force, just voluntarily, and he gave a few reasons. The most important one was a good education. He said, if you have a good education, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things it wouldn't do to say -- or even to think, for that matter. This essay of his is not very well known because it wasn't published, maybe proving his thesis.

(Noam Chomsky, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East). Now go out there and don't don't say anything to expose the breasts of MOMCOM which flow with oily toxins of deceit.

Good morning Vietnam MOMCOM.

---

---

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Open Thread

Happy
New
Year
Open
Thread

---

Big Brother turns into Big Bother.

State Judge says use of a satellite & GPS device surreptitiously placed on a citizen's vehicle without a warrant is a violation of law.

Link To Court Opinion musing about Orwellian dangers ... and holding that the use of a GPS to track without a warrant violates the Delaware Constitution.

A Federal Court Muses About Orwell Too, but says Orwell is cool under the Federal Constitution's 4th & 5th Amendments.

---

Expect the Supreme Five to cast their votes on this GPS issue in the coming months or years ...

---

Open Thread

Dredd is busy at the moment, open thread ...

---

Why MOMCOM Is Not Seen As The Beast

Our gifted guest blogger disaffected recently did a guest post entitled "The Beast".

In the comments section to that post disaffected pointed out that the metaphor "The Beast" was used because it is a powerful metaphor, used even by those who penned the Bible.

Regular readers of Dredd Blog know that I use the metaphor MOMCOM, along with the image of "a beautiful, intelligent, witty, and entirely competent creature" (see Jabber The Whut?) which is entirely at odds visually, it would seem at first blush, with the metaphor disaffected used in "The Beast" post.

I will now explain why MOMCOM is the metaphor of official Dredd Blog posts, instead of The Beast.

For those familiar with the apocalyptic imagery of the Bible, and especially the metaphor of "The Beast", the metaphor does not end with "The Beast".

No, the full picture is a woman riding a beast:

There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.

(Book of Revelation, King James Bible). This type of writing comes from the viewpoint of those outside "The Beast", from its "enemies" as it were.

To the contrary reality, MOMCOM is us; our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and our neighbors; in our own good nation.

MOMCOM is not our enemy, she is our misguided amygdala, as has been pointed out ad nauseum on Dredd Blog System posts.

To understand, think of the Pogo principle: "we have met the enemy and it is us".

The reality is that MOMCOM is not a strange beast from another part of the world, no, MOMCOM is those we love and fight for here at home and abroad.

That is why our system cannot defeat our problem, that is why our system's eyes cannot even see our problem for the most part.

We of MOMCOM are our own worst enemies because we love and fight for the wrongs that are destroying us (remember "America, love it or leave it"?).

The ultimate conclusion is that "The Beast" is what the world sees in us.

If MOMCOM was "The Beast", in our own eyes, we could demonize it with massive applications of propaganda, then attack it and destroy it.

Since MOMCOM is not "The Beast", but is instead us, we cannot defeat it with our usual imperialistic, political machinations.

That is why MOMCOM is far more dangerous to us than "The Beast" is - we do not want to "hurt" ourselves by "hurting" MOMCOM now do we?

Notice how suicidal this hypnotic mantra really is, and why it is likely to stay that way until the end:

America is on a collision course with itself ... what will become a pitched battle for the soul of American politics ...

As in many countries, conflicts over public morality and national strategy come down to questions of money. In the United States, this is truer than ever. The US is running an annual budget deficit of around $1 trillion ...

The problem is America's corrupted politics and loss of civic morality ...

The result is a dangerous paradox ... after three decades of elite fiscal rule in the US that has favored the rich and powerful. Since Ronald Reagan became president ... the richest 1 percent of American households now has a higher net worth than the bottom 90 percent. The annual income of the richest 12,000 households is greater than that of the poorest 24 million households ...

(Jeff Sachs, Huffington Post, emphasis added). As President Obama reads up on Reagan, MOMCOM gets the mine & the citizenry gets the shaft.

Meanwhile back at The Circle W Ranch, no one dares to question the vast economic and moral waste of imperialism via a vast U.S. Military welfare system grown bigger than the rest of the nations' military budgets combined.

Is The Empress Taking Off Her Clothes? - 3

We have asked this question before, because there are enough preposterous little local realities in this day and age to fill a book or so.

The Keystone Komplex of MOMCOM is but one of many complexes found in the encyclopedia of preposterosity authored by homeworld "security" propagandists ("I can see security from my house").

Their attention to gore, blood & guts, hate, mass murder, and deceit 24/7 keeps us busy, since it makes it hard work for anyone to keep focused on that preposterous realm.

That is especially true of the MSM, the preposterous propaganda-pabulum realm that really isn't trying to do journalism anyway.

Our MOMCOM series shows how the war college industry partners with the MSM industry (the propaganda arm of MOMCOM), to whoop it up for the home team:

The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service — and that’s preposterous.

(The Big Taboo, NY Times). Can you imagine, more high school type marching bands (notice they have even attached "marching", a military concept, to high school bands) than those who work for good "foreign relations" in the U.S. State Department.

The betrayalized general intellectual warmongers voice a philosophy constantly these daze, an ideology that is a la neoReaganism (a.k.a. paingyrics, a.k.a. panegyrics), which fundamentally wants to make "government" small enough "to drown in a bath tub".

Note, in bold words, that "government" in their mind does not include the military, it only includes the judicial, legislative, and administrative branches of "the gummit".

BTW, I read somewhere that Obama is reading up on Reagan (The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz perhaps?) over the xMass holiday vacation.

I am reading an xMass gift, a book, also written by Sean Wilentz, a noted American historian, entitled "Bob Dylan In America".

Obama shows us, by doubling down on the W compass, a.k.a. "doin' thuh Reagan", that he runs a front - yes, a coverup of his "real politik".

Take for example his inviting Bob Dylan to perform at the White House.

Then afterward he studies up on Reaganomics and waronomics, like he is reading a script from that old useless relic the Schizophrenic Dance of the Doomed, instead of the American Tradition which Bob Dylan has now mastered.

I only wish Dylan had performed Masters of War instead of The Times Are A Changin when he sang at the White House, because the fundamental 800 lb. gorilla in the room issue for this era is:

We face wrenching budget cutting in the years ahead, but there’s one huge area of government spending that Democrats and Republicans alike have so far treated as sacrosanct.

It’s the military/security world, and it’s time to bust that taboo.

(The Big Taboo, NY Times). The author of that NYT post, Nicholas D. Kristof, says we spend "almost" as much on warmongering as all the other nations put together.

Regular readers of Dredd Blog know that we believe that we spend more than all of the rest put together, not just "almost as much", because the gigantic spy industry is part of that "it".

As we pointed out recently, nobody knows where the edges of that spy realm are (are there any?), nor does anyone know where all the bank accounts of that realm are or where they "end".

In closing, remember that this nation could have avoided "gore, blood & guts, hate, mass murder, and deceit 24/7", together with endless doom-bringing deficits, by listening to Dylan instead of taking off the nation's constitutional clothing:

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

(Masters of War, Bob Dylan). In his post, Mr. Kristof called American Imperialism "sacrosanct", which is just another way of saying "jihad", which means "holy war".

Who was it that said "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword"?

Peace.

---

The lyrics to this song are here.


Queen Jane Approximately - Take 2 (Aug 02, 1965) Complete from Skinny Moo on Vimeo.

---

eMail From Michael Moore To Dredd Blog - 2

The Keystone Komplex is at it always ... our pal M. Moore read one of the WiggyLeeks "State Department" cables from bushie paranoia land ... the land duh under:

---

Friends,

Twice within four days, my name has popped up in the Bush-era secret cables uncovered by WikiLeaks. Lucky me. Though nowhere near as earth-shattering as the uncovering of American misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan, these classified cables provide a stunning and bizarre peek into the paranoid minds of the Bush White House when it came to the subject of one Michael Francis Moore.

And considering how WikiLeaks has released only 1,826 cables of its planned drop of 251,287 -- and I've already played a starring role twice -- I can only say I await with bemused anticipation how the moi-storyline will play itself out.

The most recent secret cable revelation is in today's Guardian newspaper of London. It's entitled, "US Intervened in Michael Moore NZ Screening." Oh yeah, baby! New Zealand! That's where we'll stop Moore and his band of evildoers!

The date was July 30, 2004. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was already a huge hit in the United States. Just to give you an idea how huge, it had hit #1 at the box office, the only documentary to have ever accomplished this feat, and had made more on its opening weekend than 'Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.'

But it was no easy path to get there. Disney (which owned Miramax) was apoplectic when they saw the final cut. So they pulled the film from its theatrical schedule. Then they put a permanent block on its release, insuring no one would see it. But then the New York Times, in a front page story, reported that the real reason Disney hated 'Fahrenheit' was they were worried about the tax breaks it got in Jeb Bush's Florida for Disney World. This caused some embarrassment, so Disney then sold 'Fahrenheit' to the Weinstein Bros., who said they'd spend their own money to distribute it.

The release of the film caused concern at the White House, as this was the re-election year. They hired a pollster who told them the film might tip the election. That was enough for them to swing into action. Much of July was a nonstop barrage of attacks on me and the movie. But that just resulted in more tickets being sold.

Which brings us to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. There are few nations on earth further away from us. A local chapter of the ruling Labor Party apparently had decided to do a fundraising screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' It was to be hosted by the Prime Minister's Cabinet Secretary for the Environment.

Well, when the U.S. Embassy in Wellington got word of this, it was like all heck broke loose. America was offended! Phone calls were made to the Prime Minister! Then to the Cabinet Secretary! We ... are ... not ... happy!

Apparently, the Kiwis backed down and the Cabinet Secretary withdrew as the host. A sigh of relief whiffed its way through the American embassy. Moore stopped! The cable back to Washington showed the embassy had no problem taking credit for putting the kabosh on yours truly:

"... it is probable that this potential fiasco may only have been averted because of our phone calls -- it is apparent to us that neither the Minister nor anyone else in the Labour government seems to have thought there was anything wrong with a senior Minister hosting such an event."

So here's my question:

Really?

I mean, seriously -- really? This is how the Bush State Department was spending its time -- on a single screening of 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in freakin' New Zealand? Or maybe ... was this kind of interference happening just to New Zealand? Call me crazy, but I gotta feelin' it doesn't stop there. Just as a health insurance executive has now come forward as a whistleblower to reveal the millions spent to smear 'Sicko,' I can't help wait for that day when the whistleblower from the Bush White House comes forward to tell the fascinating tale of how the Bush team believed they had to do something -- anything -- to stop 'Fahrenheit.' Or worse (like the "Plan B" the health insurance companies discussed -- to "push Michael Moore off a cliff."). I didn't want to think about what the Bush Plan B would be. Just wasn't worth the crazy-making. So I ignored the things I'd hear, kept my head down and motored on.

But, it does make you wonder. And I ask you, is it fair to pose the question: If they were this focused on some insignificant screening in New Zealand, what else were they up to? And I don't mean in regards to me. I mean anyone who was on their enemies list ...

I can't wait to read more classified cables.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. Of course, given the false claims the State Department made in the other "secret" cable about my movie 'Sicko,' I guess anything was possible.

P.P.S. Don't miss the REAL revelations from just the first batch of WikiLeaks cables. For instance, the Obama administration worked together with Republicans to kill an investigation by Spain into Bush's torture. Pfizer hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on the Attorney General of Nigeria. Bush's ambassador to France planned to "retaliate" against the country for standing up to Monsanto. And we're less than 1% of the way through ...

---

See also eMail From Michael Moore To Dredd Blog

A Letter From Michael Moore

And don't forget dub and dubber: The Circle W Cowboys - 3