MOMCOM 2.0 - 2

MOMCOM: "that certain spiritual essence"

Today is MOMCOM's birthday or anniversary of sorts, or as close to it as anyone can guess at the moment.

MOMCOM has changed to MOMCOM 2.0 in its evolution, so today we take a look at why.

Regular readers know the first two Dredd Blog series which started this ongoing expose are (MOMCOM, MOMCOM 2.0).

The first MOMCOM of those two was nick-named "Thelma", the other "Louise", but since they are united in policy, we can nickname them "Thelma & Louise" a la The Movie.

For the spiritual, the religious, and the just plain curious, since Dredd Blog believes in The Separation of Church and State, "that certain spiritual essence" of MOMCOM under the hood has been placed into a separate series over the years at Dredd Blog (The Virgin MOMCOM).

MOMCOM: The Thelma & Louise Policy

Today, we are going to synchronize that history in a attempt to convince you of the veracity of The Dredd Blog Theory of MOMCOM.

Anyway, "on with the show."

When the earliest vestige of MOMCOM began to go through mitosis, to morph away from England to become a separate and distinct America, some of the "genetic material", some of the cultural essences of those feudal times, naturally came along too.

For one example, there was the common law which included jury trials, because after all, our own ancestry in general tended to follow a path back through England's ancestry.

Thus, after the cannons of The Revolutionary War cooled down, then were placed into museums, the warmth of our common ancestry persisted, so we eventually became allies with the England from whence we emerged.

Thus, as a consequence, we shared in and mutually partook of the next revolution together, which was of course The Industrial Revolution.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has commented on and linked to books and other sources which show that England, the lead ally at the time, made decisions based on "that certain spiritual essence" which added the essential 'O' in MOMCOM, and which dictated the colonial history (a.k.a. imperialism) from about 1912 until now (Viva Egypt - 2).

The genetic material we shared guided America to become protoMOMCOM, which was misnamed by President Eisenhower as the Military Industrial Complex (MICOM or MIC).

To make a long story short, this misnaming helped to perpetuate a façade, which is still with us today.

That façade is still with us because of: 1) our addiction to oil, the 'O' in MOMCOM, the lifeblood of American power; and 2) our cultural denial of that reality through the Bernays subtleties and propaganda of the 'M' in MOMCOM, the mainstream media (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4).

We have, just this week, detailed the fusing of two these essences of MOMCOM (Blind Willie McTell News - 3), which makes the outer façade much more transparent (American Feudalism - 6).

So, here we are (Hot Alaska, Cold Georgia, The Damage Has Been Done - 3).

A nation with a Thelma & Louise national environmental policy regarding oil, a government directed by the military to war for more oil, and a populace that has been. or is being rendered senseless to it all by media (The Deceit Business).

The previous post in this series is here.

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Blind Willie McTell News - 3

Pressing Matters on the Old Press

In the first post of this series we looked at the "DNA" of the history of the main stream media, and found that they still, to this day, have the genetic markers of MOMCOM, and are still performing their song and dance routine (Blind Willie McTell News).

Add to that their inherent aversion to the history of the America of way back then, the America of now, as well as the ominous, approaching America of tomorrow  (Blind Willie McTell News - 2).

Some will say that they had to do it in a shark infested capitalist eat capitalist media society.

A society increasingly driven by predatory evolutionary dynamics, demands of advertisers, demands of stockholders for profit, and technological changes that put pressure on the old styles and models of for-profit international news corporations (Survival Of The Fittest Willie McTell).

In yesterday's post we took a look at some behind-the-scenes and unexpected sources which also bring distorting pressure and burden to the main stream media:

The graphic to the upper-left points out today's topic, which is that the U.S. is in one decline after another, including a decline concerning a fundamental principle in traditional American values: a free press.

Concerning that fundamental value, we have declined to almost last place in the top 50 ...
...
Countries that pride themselves on being democracies and respecting the rule of law have not set an example, far from it. Freedom of information is too often sacrificed to an overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs, marking a disturbing retreat from democratic practices. Investigative journalism often suffers as a result.

This has been the case in the United States (46th), which fell 13 places, one of the most significant declines, amid increased efforts to track down whistleblowers and the sources of leaks.
...
The political power of the military has developed and matured since Huntington published The Soldier and the State in 1957. ... The military has become a political constituency that must be addressed in the Washington power equation ...“The professional military, with its allies and communities, has developed into a potent political force in American government. Knowledgeable people, particularly those who, in each administration, are charged with the direction of national security affairs, recognize this, even if they cannot, for political reasons, admit it openly .”

(A Tale of Coup Cities - 9, emphasis in original). That Dredd Blog post cites to sources which point out that the military has an impact on the media because it is the most powerful single political entity in the nation.

That post also cites to authorities who point out that military political power grows with the growth of public trust in the military (ibid).

Dredd Blog has, with concern, pointed out that trust in the military is at remarkable highs in the U.S. (Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids? - 2).

So, how does the military bring political power to bear on the mainstream media so as to promote the military establishment's warmongering ideology, together with their lust for more and more taxpayer dollars?

The answer, in general, is "through the propaganda engines of McTell News" (The Ways of Bernays).

But today, let's focus on the military NSA as one of the military weapons used against journalists:

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based body that promotes press freedom around the world, has devoted the first two chapters of its annual report on global threats to an assessment of the impact of the NSA’s data sweep. Its internet advocacy co-ordinator, Geoffrey King, warns that the NSA’s dragnet threatens to put journalists under a cloud of suspicion and to expose them to routine spying by government agencies.

By storing mass data for long periods, the NSA could develop the capability to recreate a reporter’s research, retrace a source’s movements and listen in on past communications, King warns. “It could soon be possible to uncover sources with such ease as to render meaningless any promise of confidentiality a journalist may attempt to provide – and if an interaction escapes scrutiny in the first instance, it could be reconstructed later.”

CPJ’s annual report, “Attacks on the Press”, which was released at the United Nations building in New York on Wednesday, chronicles a troubled year for journalism with 211 journalists imprisoned and 70 killed – a near-record number. On top of an all-too familiar account of censorship, kidnappings, detention and killings, the committee’s warnings on the dangers of mass surveillance sound a new alarm for the digital age.

(Guardian, "NSA actions pose 'direct threat to journalism'"). The military is infected with the "destroy it in order to save it" and "dominate it in order to make it free" toxic memes.

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

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A Tale of Coup Cities - 9

A decline after a decline = the decline

The decline of the U.S. Constitution is synonymous with the decline of the nation.

The First Amendment includes the supreme law concerning a free press.

A free press that is in a decline after a decline.

The graphic to the upper-left points out today's topic, which is that the U.S. is in one decline after another, including a decline concerning a fundamental principle in traditional American values: a free press.

Concerning that fundamental value, we have declined to almost last place in the top 50:

1-Finland
2-Netherlands
3-Norway
4-Luxembourg
5-Andorra
6-Liechtenstein
7-Denmark
8-Iceland
9-New Zealand
10-Sweden
11-Estonia
12-Austria
13-Czech Republic
14-Germany
15-Switzerland
16-Ireland
17-Jamaica
18-Canada
19-Poland
20-Slovakia
21-Costa Rica
22-Namibia
23-Belgium
24-Cape Verde
25-Cyprus
26-Uruguay
27-Ghana
28-Australia
29-Belize
30-Portugal
31-Suriname
32-Lithuania
33-United Kingdom
34-Slovenia
35-Spain
36-Antigua and Barbuda
37-Latvia
38-El Salvador
39-France
40-Samoa
41-Botswana
42-South Africa
43-Trinidad and Tobago
44-Papua New Guinea
45-Romania

46-United States

47-Haiti
48-Niger
49-Italy
50-Taiwan

(Reporters Without Borders, emphasis added). The militarization of federal agencies, and the usurpation of civilian authority by the military is a reason the U.S. fell 13 points to a new low:

Countries that pride themselves on being democracies and respecting the rule of law have not set an example, far from it. Freedom of information is too often sacrificed to an overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs, marking a disturbing retreat from democratic practices. Investigative journalism often suffers as a result.

This has been the case in the United States (46th), which fell 13 places, one of the most significant declines, amid increased efforts to track down whistleblowers and the sources of leaks.

(ibid, Reporters Without Borders, emphasis added). In the previous post of this series, I indicated that there would be some discussion in today's post about how the civilian relationship with the military has an impact on a free press.

Here is an excerpt from a review of "The Soldier and the State," which is still a relevant book on this subject:

The political power of the military has developed and matured since Huntington published The Soldier and the State in 1957. During the post–World War II and Korean War periods, interservice rivalry was so intense that military leaders often exhausted their political energy in turf and budget battles with each other, resulting in enhanced civilian control. Huntington sounded a cautionary note as he regarded this contentious environment, suggesting that should the

services unite their efforts, “inter-service peace would probably have certain costs in decreased civil-military harmony. ”In fact, an unintended consequence of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which strengthened the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and forced jointness on an unwilling military, has been a strengthening of the military’s political power. The military has become a political constituency that must be addressed in the Washington power equation. Richard Kohn, a well-known commentator on contemporary civil-military relations, observes, “The professional military, with its allies and communities, has developed into a potent political force in American government. Knowledgeable people, particularly those who, in each administration, are charged with the direction of national security affairs, recognize this, even if they cannot, for political reasons, admit it openly .”

(American Civil-Military Relations, PDF, emphasis added). The free press corruption problem has spread to nations that are as a consequence way down in the quality of freedom of the press list.

Those military influenced nations are called The Five Eyes, for reasons that have nothing to do with the eyes of journalism:

We’re not talking only of the NSA as far as this is concerned, there is a multilateral agreement for co-operation among the services and this alliance of intelligence operations is known as the Five Eyes. What agencies and countries belong to this alliance and what is its purpose?

The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War II era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded together to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence gathering infrastructure.

So we have the UK’s GCHQ, we have the US NSA, we have Canada’s C-Sec, we have the Australian Signals Intelligence Directorate and we have New Zealand’s DSD. What the result of this was over decades and decades what sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn’t answer to the laws of its own countries.

(Snowden Interview, emphasis added, the question is in bold italics). Notice that the leader of The Five Eyes Alliance is the U.S. military NSA, yet, the entity is an epigovernment apparatus ("doesn’t answer to the laws of its own [country]").

So, the more military influence there is, the lower on the Freedom of the Press scale any nation tends to be rated.

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

Today We Fight Back

[On 2/11/14] a  pop-up at the bottom of the page on most browsers will provide a way for you to make a call, or to send an email to relevant members of congress.

This in effect supports several ongoing legislative efforts to curtail the rogue activities of the military NSA.

Click on the strip or the "^" character, at the bottom right on the strip, for an enlargement of the pop-up and with fill-in boxes for your relevant information.

Dredd Blog saves none of the information, and a privacy statement is included in the pop-up for your perusal.

The process is being handled by: The Day We Fight Back, so go there to find answers to any questions you may have, or if you want to place this on your website or blog.

Most Americans want the military NSA to be reined in and put back in their proper place in American society.

Your participation will help move us in that direction.

Yesterday's post which has more links and information is here.

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UPDATE:  As of 2/16/14 @ 4:00 AM Central Time, the count was 90,273 CALLS PLACED 187,620 EMAILS SENT (a total of 277,893 messages sent to congress) ... Guardian Report .... its Not too late to participate

Tomorrow We Fight Back

"[Tomorrow], the Internet will erupt in a protest to rival the uprising against SOPA: in Aaron Swartz's memory, websites everywhere will add code from TheDayWeFightBack to their templates, helping to flood Congress -- and the world's legislative bodies -- with calls for an end to mass surveillance." - (Boing Boing).

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Dredd Blog Series about the military NSA spying on Americans:

• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 7
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 5
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 4
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 3
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 2
• ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller

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• The Queens of Stalingrad
• The Queens of Stalingrad - 2
• The Queens of Stalingrad - 3
• The Queens of Stalingrad - 4

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• Whistleblowers According To The Early Americans
• Whistleblowers According To The Early Americans - 2

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See also: The//Intercept and Empty Wheel

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