West Coast Connection Forum

Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 01:25:36 PM

Title: This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 01:25:36 PM
"Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany.  That is understood.  But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.  Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.  That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in any country."
Hermann Goering


"1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.

2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
a. It must issue all the propaganda directives
b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale
c. It must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences

3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.

4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence
b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions
c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity
 

5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign

6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.

8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.

9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.

10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.

11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.

12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.

13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness
 

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof
 

15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.

16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves
 

17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective
 

18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both."
Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 01:32:15 PM
"The first casualty of war is truth"
Winston Churchill
Rudyard Kipling
Aeschylus

 
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 01:37:37 PM
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
Caesar
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 02:01:09 PM
"The successor to politics will be propaganda. Propaganda, not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times."
Marshall McLuhan
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 02:11:38 PM
"Misinformation about Iraq"
by Edward Said

The flurry of reports, leaks, and misinformation about the looming US war against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq continues unabated. It is impossible to know, however, how much of this is a brilliantly managed campaign of psychological war against Iraq, how much the public floundering of a government uncertain about its next step. In any event, I find it as possible to believe that there will be a war as that there will not. Certainly the sheer belligerency of the verbal assaults on the average citizen are unprecedented in their ferocity, with the result that very little is totally certain about what is actually taking place. No one can independently confirm the various troop and navy movements reported on a daily basis, and given the lurching opacity of his thinking, George W Bush's real intentions are difficult to read. But that the whole world is concerned -- indeed, deeply anxious -- about the catastrophic chaos that will ensue after another Afghanistan-like air campaign against the people of Iraq, of that there is little doubt.

And yet, one aspect of the deluge of opinion, and a fact that is most disturbing quite on its own and without reference to its actual intention, is the spate of articles concerning post-Saddam Iraq. One that I'd like to discuss in particular is obviously part of a continuing effort by an Iraqi expatriate, Kanan Makiya, to promote himself as the father of what he calls a "non-Arab" and decentralised post-Ba'ath country. Now it is quite clear to anyone with the slightest concern about the travails of this rich and once-flourishing country that the years of Ba'athist rule have been disastrous, despite the regime's early programme of development and building. So there can be little quarrel with trying to imagine what Iraq might look like if Saddam is toppled either by American intervention or by internal coup. Makiya's contribution to this effort has been a steady one, both on the airwaves and in quality journals where he is given a platform to air his views, about which I shall speak in a moment. What has been made less clear, however, is who he is and from what background he emerges. I think it is important to know these things, if only to judge the value of his contribution and to understand more precisely the special quality of his thoughts and ideas.

Usually identified as having a research connection with Harvard and as a professor at Brandeis University (both in Boston), Makiya when I knew him first in the early 1970s was closely affiliated with the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. As I recall, he was then an architecture student at MIT, but he hardly said anything during the occasions I saw him. Then he disappeared from view, or rather from my view. He surfaced in 1990 as Samir Khalil, the author of a vaunted book called The Republic of Fear that described Saddam Hussein's rule with considerable dread and drama. One of the media-rousing works of the first Gulf War, The Republic of Fear seemed to have been written -- according to a fawning interview with Makiya that appeared in the New Yorker magazine -- while Makiya took time off from working as an associate of his father's architectural firm in Iraq itself. He admitted in the interview that, in a sense, Saddam had financed the writing of his book indirectly, although no one accused Makiya of collaborating with a regime he obviously detested.

In his next book, Cruelty and Silence, Makiya attacked Arab intellectuals whom he accused of opportunism and immorality because they either praised various Arab regimes or remained silent about the various governments' abuses against their own people. Of course Makiya said nothing about his own history of silence and complicity as a beneficiary of the Iraqi regime's munificence, even though, of course, he was entitled to work for whomever he pleased. But he said the vilest things about people like Mahmoud Darwish and myself for being nationalists, allegedly supporting extremism and, in Darwish's case, for having written an ode to Saddam. Most of what Makiya wrote in the book was, in my opinion, revolting, based as it was on cowardly innuendo and false interpretation, but the book, of course, enjoyed a popular moment or two since it confirmed the view in the West that Arabs were villainous and shabby conformists. It seemed not to matter that Makiya himself had worked for Saddam or that he had never written anything about the Arab regimes until his Republic of Fear, until, that is, he was out of Iraq and done with his employment there. He was hailed here and there in America for being a brave man of conscience and for having defied the self-censoring practice of Arab intellectuals, but this praise was usually heaped on Makiya by people who had no knowledge of the fact that Makiya himself never wrote in an Arab country or that whatever meagre writing he produced had been written behind a pseudonym and a prosperous, risk-free life in the West.

Except for his two books and an article urging the US administration to occupy Baghdad during the first Gulf War, Makiya wasn't much heard from after that. Then last year he produced an unreadable novel proving somehow that the Dome of the Rock was really built by a Jew; it was sent to me by the publisher, so I happened to have skimmed it before it appeared officially, but was nevertheless aghast at how badly written it was, and how, unable to resist showing off how many books its author had read, it was peppered with footnotes, surely an unusual thing for what purported to be a work of fiction. It died a merciful death, however, and Makiya lapsed back into silence.

Until the government-inspired campaign against Iraq broke out a few months ago Makiya had said little about the war against terror, the events of 9/11, and the war in Afghanistan. It is true that he did a kind of commentary for a popular American biweekly of Mohamed Atta's supposed Islamic terrorist handbook, but even by his standards it was a negligible performance. I vividly recall, however, that late last summer I happened by chance to hear a radio interview with him in which he was identified for the first time as heading a US State Department group planning for a post-war, post-Saddam Iraq. His name had not appeared among those mentioned as being part of the US-funded Iraqi opposition groups, nor had he contributed anything that could be read by a member of the general public about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or any other Middle Eastern issues, although I had heard that he had visited Israel a number of times.

The most complete version of his plans for Iraq after an American invasion that derive from his current employment as a resident employee of the US Department of State, appears in the November 2002 issue of Prospect, a good liberal British monthly to which I subscribe. Makiya begins his "proposal" by enumerating the extraordinary assumptions behind his arguments, two of which almost by definition are unimaginable. The first is that "the unseating" of Saddam should not occur after a bombing campaign. Makiya must have been living on Mars to imagine that, in the event of a war, a massive bombing attack would not occur even though every single plan circulated for regime change in Iraq has stated explicitly that Iraq would be bombed mercilessly. The second assumption is equally imaginative, since Makiya seems to believe against all evidence that the US is committed to democracy and nation- building in Iraq. Why he thinks that Iraq is like Germany and Japan after World War II (both of which were rebuilt because of the Cold War) is beyond me; besides, he doesn't once mention the fact that the US is determined to bring down the Iraqi regime because of the country's oil reserves and because Iraq is an enemy of Israel. So, he starts out by making preposterous assumptions that simply fly in the face of all the evidence.

Undeterred by such unimportant considerations, he presses on. Iraqis are committed to federalism, he says, rather than to a centralised government. The proof that he offers is pretty negligible. Like all his other attempts to convince his reader that he makes telling points, his logic is so weak because it is based equally on fictional supposition and his own, highly dubious personal affirmations. He is committed to federalism, and so he says are the Kurds. Where federalism as a system is supposed to come from (other than from his desk in the State Department), he doesn't bother to say. Clearly, he plans to have it imposed from the outside, although he makes the largely unsubstantiated claim that "everyone" is agreed that federalism in Iraq should be the outcome. This "means devolving power away from Baghdad to the provinces", presumably by a stroke of General Tommy Franks' pen. One would have thought that post-Tito Yugoslavia never existed and that that tragic country's federalism was a total success. But Makiya is so committed to his views as a kinglike theoretician of government that he simply ignores consequences, history, people, communities, and reality altogether so that he can make his ludicrously improbable case. This, of course, is exactly what the US government likes, that is, to have miscellaneous Arab intellectuals responsible to no constituency who urge the US military on to war while pretending to be bringing "democracy" to the place in full contradiction of America's real aims and its actual historical practices. Makiya seems not to have heard about ruinous US interventions in Indochina, Afghanistan, Central America, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, and the Philippines, or that the US is currently involved militarily with about 80 countries.

The grand climax of Makiya's justification for the invasion of Iraq by the United States is his proposal that the new Iraq should be non-Arab. (Along the way, he speaks contemptuously of Arab opinion which, he says, will never amount to anything. This obviously clears the board for his airy speculations about both the future and the past.) How this magical de-Arabising solution is to come about, Makiya doesn't say, any more than he shows us how Iraq is to be relieved of its Islamic identity and its military capabilities. He refers to a mysterious alchemical quality he calls "territoriality" and proceeds to build another sandcastle on that as the basis for a future state of Iraq. In the end, however, he volunteers that all this is going to be guaranteed "from the outside", by the United States. Where this has ever taken place before is not an issue that troubles Makiya, any more than he seems concerned about US unilateralism and needless destructiveness.

One scarcely knows whether to laugh or cry at Makiya's posturings. Clearly this is a man with no recorded experience of government, or even of citizenship. Between countries and cultures and with no visible commitment to anyone (except to his upwardly mobile career), he has now found a haven deep inside the US government which he uses to fuel his amazingly speculative flights of fancy. For someone who has lectured his peers about intellectual responsibility and independent judgement, he provides examples of neither one nor the other. Exactly the opposite. Perched on a pulpit that has freed him from any accountability he seems now to be serving a master who has paid him well for his services -- as Saddam employed him in the past -- and his versatile conscience. I find it incredible that Makiya allows himself such sanctimony and vanity, but then why shouldn't he? He has never engaged in a public debate with any of his fellow Iraqis, never written for an Arab audience, never put himself forward for an office or for any political role requiring personal courage and commitment. He has either written pseudonymously or attacked people who have had no chance to respond to his defamations.

It is sad that Makiya implicitly suggests that his is the voice and the example of the future Iraq. And to think that thousands of lives have already been lost to his patron's cruel sanctions or that many more lives and livelihoods are about to be destroyed by electronic warfare wreaked on his country by George Bush's government. But this man is untroubled by any of this. Devoid of either compassion or real understanding, he prattles on for Anglo- American audiences who seem satisfied that here at last is an Arab who exhibits the proper respect for their power and civilisation, regardless of what role Britain played in the imperialist partition of the Arab world or what mischief the US dealt the Arabs through its support for Israel and the collective Arab dictatorships.

In and of himself, Makiya is a passing phenomenon. He is, however, a symptom of several things at once. He represents the intellectual who serves power unquestioningly; the greater the power, the fewer doubts he has. He is a man of vanity who has no compassion, no demonstrable awareness of human suffering. With no stable principles or values, he is typical of the cynical anti-Arab hawks (like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld) who dot the Bush administration like flies on a cake. British imperialism, Israel's brutal occupation policies, or American arrogance do not detain him for a moment. Worst of all, he is a man of pretension and superficiality, flattering himself on his reasonableness even as he condemns his own people to more travail and more dislocation. Woe to Iraq!"

Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 02, 2003, 03:50:10 PM
Ironically, nobody will read all the post in this thread. Knowledge reigns supreme but ignorance is a bless.
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: TheSheriff on April 03, 2003, 08:53:48 AM
Ironically, this was one of those rare Agua posts that wasn't ridiculous and retarded.
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 03, 2003, 03:59:17 PM
Ironically, this was one of those rare Agua posts that wasn't ridiculous and retarded.

ironically, your reply was unnecessary and simply dumb.
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: TheSheriff on April 03, 2003, 04:02:00 PM
ironically, your reply was unnecessary and simply dumb.

Ironically, that isn't even ironic.

Please, Agua, stop being angry I've proved you wrong multitudinous times. If I pretend I've been wrong every time we've debated, will you be happy again? Will you stop crying?
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 03, 2003, 04:08:49 PM


Ironically, that isn't even ironic.

ironically, i didn't even take it as an ironic post


Please, Agua, stop being angry I've proved you wrong multitudinous times. If I pretend I've been wrong every time we've debated, will you be happy again? Will you stop crying?

don't get off the topic of this thread. if you wanna play the "who-got-the-biggest-cock-in-here" game you may do so, but i won't participate.



Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: TheSheriff on April 03, 2003, 04:33:55 PM
don't get off the topic of this thread. if you wanna play the "who-got-the-biggest-cock-in-here" game you may do so, but i won't participate.

I complimented this thread; you then insulted me. Who went off topic first?
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: Agua on April 03, 2003, 04:37:20 PM
don't get off the topic of this thread. if you wanna play the "who-got-the-biggest-cock-in-here" game you may do so, but i won't participate.

I complimented this thread; you then insulted me. Who went off topic first?

again.... is there anything you can add to this thread? If you can, do so. If you can't, leave it.
Title: Re:Another insulting post
Post by: TheSheriff on April 03, 2003, 04:42:47 PM
again.... is there anything you can add to this thread? If you can, do so. If you can't, leave it.

Stop being bitter that everyone thinks you're a queer Nazi. I voiced my support for this thread; you insulted me, then claimed *I* went off topic first...That is patently untrue. You have disgraced yourself.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 03, 2003, 04:51:21 PM
"There are no facts."
Michel Foucault

Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: TheSheriff on April 03, 2003, 04:55:11 PM
"There are no facts."
Michel Foucault

"The highest form is truth"-Socrates, the greatest philosopher of them all, the spiritual grandfather of "he that knows all", Aristotle
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 03, 2003, 04:56:17 PM
noam chomsky on why bush's feeble propaganda fails in europe:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/637155.asp?cp1=1#BODY
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Quakaveli on April 04, 2003, 09:47:52 AM
Wow you have a lot of time on ur hands huh?
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 04, 2003, 12:24:50 PM
Wow you have a lot of time on ur hands huh?

I'm doin three papers at the same time... so... yes, i do.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 06, 2003, 12:42:16 PM
being pro-war means being brainwashed
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Now_Im_Not_Banned on April 06, 2003, 12:50:37 PM
having flowers in your avatar means being gay
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Twentytwofifty on April 06, 2003, 01:26:39 PM
being pro-war means being brainwashed

I hope you are joking.

Because if you're not then you have officially made all your posts meaningless and insignificant.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 11, 2003, 09:35:42 AM
being pro-war means being brainwashed

I hope you are joking.

Because if you're not then you have officially made all your posts meaningless and insignificant.

ooops... my fault

being pro-war either means being brainwashed or being a murderer.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Quakaveli on April 11, 2003, 09:37:45 AM
being pro-war means being brainwashed

I hope you are joking.

Because if you're not then you have officially made all your posts meaningless and insignificant.

ooops... my fault

being pro-war either means being brainwashed or being a murderer.

 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Entreri117 on April 11, 2003, 12:58:40 PM
being pro-war means being brainwashed
Being anti-war means being ignorant and naive
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: KING VerbalAssaulta on April 11, 2003, 03:33:43 PM
being pro-war means being brainwashed

I hope you are joking.

Because if you're not then you have officially made all your posts meaningless and insignificant.

ooops... my fault

being pro-war either means being brainwashed or being a murderer.
Agua/Fishgirl/flowergirl...way to go...look what your stupidity did again (http://forum.bodybuilding.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=1244652)
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 11, 2003, 04:10:17 PM
being pro-war means being brainwashed
Being anti-war means being ignorant and naive

i bet you didn't even read the quotes i posted... now who's ignorant?! go to bed, little rugrat.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Agua on April 11, 2003, 04:14:20 PM
being pro-war means being brainwashed

I hope you are joking.

Because if you're not then you have officially made all your posts meaningless and insignificant.

ooops... my fault

being pro-war either means being brainwashed or being a murderer.
Agua/Fishgirl/flowergirl...way to go...look what your stupidity did again (http://forum.bodybuilding.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=1244652)

kingpuss, why don't you make an appointment with a psychologist? your problems are so damn obvious. for your boyfriend's sake, you better find a way to deal with your repressed homosexuality and inferiority complex.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: KING VerbalAssaulta on April 12, 2003, 03:03:37 PM
flower boy..maybe you'll understand this better (http://forum.bodybuilding.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=1211519)
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Twentytwofifty on April 12, 2003, 04:05:19 PM
Gore got more votes, Bush is an illegal president. End of story.

being pro-war either means being brainwashed or being a murderer.

That makes two classic idiotic quotes today.

It's official now, you're opinions are completly meaningless and insignificant.
Title: Re:This post is dedicated to Xearo, who thinks that he knows the truth
Post by: Now_Im_Not_Banned on April 12, 2003, 04:40:51 PM
LMAO...Kaidy is dumber than I thought...