"2012"; by Eskimo & Sons
They put the women with white teeth
Inside every TV screen.
They said expect some rain
But a tidal wave ca-a-ame.
Oh oh, oh-oh.
And everything I swallowed up
In the greatest aquarium
But the seahawks drowned
And the fish turned upside down.
Oh-oh, whoa-oh.
So we'll mail wood in your windows
And we'll make sales from shirts and your
And we will put you up
You and who you lo-o-ove
This house is a home, a home is your-ours
A great song. Not only does [at least the first stanza] infer that the apocalypse will have to do with television and artificially white teeth, but it uses deZengotita's reference to "comparing a wind to a hurricane."
Genre: Angelic Post-Rock
Friday, February 15, 2008
The War Will Not Be Televised
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Friday, February 8, 2008
The Media Is Lying To You About Iraq
Unless you're living in a cave, you probably don't think the war's recently been all that successful.
'But we can't leave,' you'll say. 'I know we aren't necessarily causing dramatic good, but just think how horrendously things would escalate if we were to simply get up and go!!'
I tell you, this is the Blob speaking.
The common sentiment that "if the U.S. leaves Iraq, the violent sectarianism between the Sunni and Shia will worsen" is exactly what Republicans and Democrats want us to believe so they can "justify the continuance of the occupation of Iraq" (Dahr Jamail). This entire conception of an intense hatred between the sects has actually been manufactured and played up out of an unprofessional ignorance of culture by our leading officials, and so that the war can be more easily spoon-fed to Americans. Jamail continues, "This propaganda, like others of its ilk, gains ground, substances, and reality due largely to the ignorance of those ingesting it. The snow job by the corporate media on the issue of sectarianism in Iraq has ensured that the public buys into the line that the Sunni and Shia will dice one another up into little pieces if the occupation ends."
In reality, "prior to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq there had never been open warfare between the two groups and centainly not a civil war." When Dahr Jamail was in Iraq in 2003, he quickly learned of the grand faux-paus it was to ask someone of their sect. When asked, the most common response (after an awkward look that told you how rude the question was,) would be, "I am Muslim," or "I am Iraqi." Further demonstrating this was the amount of intermarriages between the sects, mixed neighborhoods, and even Shia and Sunni praying in the same mosques. Quite contrary to how our media would have it depicted...
However, as soon as Americans went in, they assumed that the country was strictly divided and went on to create their own Iraqi puppet government that was numerically based on the break-down of the percentages of Sunni, Shia, and Kurds (and "for good measure, a couple of Turkoman and Christian") representatives, so we could prove just how "democratic" we really were and wanted Iraq to be. (It is important to note that when the U.S. military commander showed up and asked these Iraqi tribal and religious leaders to divide themselves by sect, they were "utterly perplexed" by the oddity of his request.)
Much later, "U.S.-backed sectarian death squads have become the foremost generator of death in Iraq, even surpassing the U.S. military machine." The U.S. military has been known to let "Iraqi police" and "Iraqi army" personnel "masked in black balaclavas, through their checkpoints to carry out abductions and assassinations in the neighborhoods. But when we get the word back home, these men are referred to as "concerned local citizens," or simply "volunteers."
Consequent to what we have birthed, "almost all of Baghdad and much of Iraq is now segregated." Although we are constantly told that the violence has lessened, the truth is that that "all that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq," that because of us, "Baghdad is a divided city."
Yeah, but even so! We can't evacuate! Iraq would descend further into a sectarian nightmare! And we would be to blame! (Just to refresh- where did we get this idea? Oh, right- from what we've been reading.)
The one example that shows what would likely be expected if we did leave (that the media doesn't want you to know about) is from early September. This was when "500 British troops left one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in the heart of the city and ceased to conduct regular food patrols." And just what was the result? "According to the British military, the overall level of violence in the city has DECREASED BY 90 PERCENT since then."
No WONDER we haven't left yet... (?)
As Jamail concludes, although this obviously can't be guaranteed, "it does prove that when the primary cause of the violence, sectarian strife, instability, and chaos is removed from the equation of Iraq, things are bound to improve rapidly."
Are you still going to believe that we're what's holding Iraq together?
(All quotes come from Dahr Jamail's article, "The myth of sectarianism," out of the current issue of the ISR. Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spend eight months in Iraq and is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq")
'But we can't leave,' you'll say. 'I know we aren't necessarily causing dramatic good, but just think how horrendously things would escalate if we were to simply get up and go!!'
I tell you, this is the Blob speaking.
The common sentiment that "if the U.S. leaves Iraq, the violent sectarianism between the Sunni and Shia will worsen" is exactly what Republicans and Democrats want us to believe so they can "justify the continuance of the occupation of Iraq" (Dahr Jamail). This entire conception of an intense hatred between the sects has actually been manufactured and played up out of an unprofessional ignorance of culture by our leading officials, and so that the war can be more easily spoon-fed to Americans. Jamail continues, "This propaganda, like others of its ilk, gains ground, substances, and reality due largely to the ignorance of those ingesting it. The snow job by the corporate media on the issue of sectarianism in Iraq has ensured that the public buys into the line that the Sunni and Shia will dice one another up into little pieces if the occupation ends."
In reality, "prior to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq there had never been open warfare between the two groups and centainly not a civil war." When Dahr Jamail was in Iraq in 2003, he quickly learned of the grand faux-paus it was to ask someone of their sect. When asked, the most common response (after an awkward look that told you how rude the question was,) would be, "I am Muslim," or "I am Iraqi." Further demonstrating this was the amount of intermarriages between the sects, mixed neighborhoods, and even Shia and Sunni praying in the same mosques. Quite contrary to how our media would have it depicted...
However, as soon as Americans went in, they assumed that the country was strictly divided and went on to create their own Iraqi puppet government that was numerically based on the break-down of the percentages of Sunni, Shia, and Kurds (and "for good measure, a couple of Turkoman and Christian") representatives, so we could prove just how "democratic" we really were and wanted Iraq to be. (It is important to note that when the U.S. military commander showed up and asked these Iraqi tribal and religious leaders to divide themselves by sect, they were "utterly perplexed" by the oddity of his request.)
Much later, "U.S.-backed sectarian death squads have become the foremost generator of death in Iraq, even surpassing the U.S. military machine." The U.S. military has been known to let "Iraqi police" and "Iraqi army" personnel "masked in black balaclavas, through their checkpoints to carry out abductions and assassinations in the neighborhoods. But when we get the word back home, these men are referred to as "concerned local citizens," or simply "volunteers."
Consequent to what we have birthed, "almost all of Baghdad and much of Iraq is now segregated." Although we are constantly told that the violence has lessened, the truth is that that "all that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq," that because of us, "Baghdad is a divided city."
Yeah, but even so! We can't evacuate! Iraq would descend further into a sectarian nightmare! And we would be to blame! (Just to refresh- where did we get this idea? Oh, right- from what we've been reading.)
The one example that shows what would likely be expected if we did leave (that the media doesn't want you to know about) is from early September. This was when "500 British troops left one of Saddam Hussein's palaces in the heart of the city and ceased to conduct regular food patrols." And just what was the result? "According to the British military, the overall level of violence in the city has DECREASED BY 90 PERCENT since then."
No WONDER we haven't left yet... (?)
As Jamail concludes, although this obviously can't be guaranteed, "it does prove that when the primary cause of the violence, sectarian strife, instability, and chaos is removed from the equation of Iraq, things are bound to improve rapidly."
Are you still going to believe that we're what's holding Iraq together?
(All quotes come from Dahr Jamail's article, "The myth of sectarianism," out of the current issue of the ISR. Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who spend eight months in Iraq and is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq")
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Why You Should Take Action, And Why The Media Doesn't Want You To
If you ask most people, they'll say that protesting is dumb, that it doesn't make a difference, and even if it does make participants "feel good," it doesn't actually contribute to ending the war.
This is because this mentality has been engrained in them by the media over and over, in order to prevent anything seemingly "sharp."
For instance, as Eric Ruder wrote in his article, "Does It Matter If We Protest?", during the Vietnam war, when between 500,000 and 750,000 anti-war protesters gathered around the whitehouse for a series of rallies and speaches calling to end the war, "[t]he media reported that Richard Nixon paid the protesters no attention whatsoever, and spent the afternoon watching college football. But the true story was different. As history books later revealed, Nixon was frantic about the size of the 1969 mobilizations."
“The demonstrators had been more successful than they realized, pushing Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger away from plans to greatly escalate the war, possibly even to the point of using nuclear weapons, and back toward their ‘Vietnamization’ strategy of propping up the Saigon regime,” author Gerald Nicosia wrote in Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement.
This is just one example when the American public has been lied to through the media in order to stop them from making a difference.
Eric Ruder continues, "In 2007, public opinion against the war on Iraq may run even higher than sentiment against the Vietnam War did in 1970--certainly George Bush’s approval rating is lower than Richard Nixon’s that year. This is encouraging considering the absence of high-profile protests like those of 1970.
"But the tide of antiwar public opinion is having less direct impact on government policy today, and that’s a result of the fact that the sentiment isn’t backed up by any organized expression.
"The problem isn’t that mass protests don’t work, but that today’s antiwar movement hasn’t risen to the challenge of mobilizing antiwar sentiment into mass protests.
It's not that mass protests on their own lead to change, but that they are a starting point for a movement that can make a difference. For instance, the massive Vietnam protests inspired the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War to get back into action, and allowed the vets to join in solidarity against what they all knew was evil, but didn't think there was any point in fighting alone.
Ruder explains that "[t]he Vietnamese resistance kept the U.S. from imposing its will, but couldn’t expel the U.S. on its own. The rise of resistance among U.S. soldiers undermined the effectiveness of the U.S. military as a fighting force, but GI organizing didn’t happen in a vacuum. The antiwar movement in the U.S. shook up American society, but it didn’t have the power to stop the war machine.
However, "[t]ogether, these three forces combined to compel the U.S. ruling establishment to conclude that only further ruin of its military and turmoil within U.S. society would result from continuing the war on Vietnam. So national antiwar mobilizations are a necessary part of a movement that can end the war, even if they don’t have a direct impact on war policy themselves."
"A large national protest that attracts new as well as experienced activists helps people in the antiwar movement overcome feelings of isolation they may experience in their own cities and towns. It also strengthens local organizations that mobilize for the protest--and these groups in turn benefit from the politicization of individuals who return home invigorated to continue the struggle. And of course, the larger such mobilizations, the greater the impact they can have on shaping mass public opinion.
"This last point is one of the most important ways that a strong civilian antiwar movement can assist in the development of GI resistance--another crucial ingredient in the antiwar struggle... During the Vietnam era, the peak of the GI revolt followed years of domestic protest, the growing radicalization of the student antiwar movement and the obvious futility of the war effort itself in the face of the Vietnamese resistance."
This is because this mentality has been engrained in them by the media over and over, in order to prevent anything seemingly "sharp."
For instance, as Eric Ruder wrote in his article, "Does It Matter If We Protest?", during the Vietnam war, when between 500,000 and 750,000 anti-war protesters gathered around the whitehouse for a series of rallies and speaches calling to end the war, "[t]he media reported that Richard Nixon paid the protesters no attention whatsoever, and spent the afternoon watching college football. But the true story was different. As history books later revealed, Nixon was frantic about the size of the 1969 mobilizations."
“The demonstrators had been more successful than they realized, pushing Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger away from plans to greatly escalate the war, possibly even to the point of using nuclear weapons, and back toward their ‘Vietnamization’ strategy of propping up the Saigon regime,” author Gerald Nicosia wrote in Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement.
This is just one example when the American public has been lied to through the media in order to stop them from making a difference.
Eric Ruder continues, "In 2007, public opinion against the war on Iraq may run even higher than sentiment against the Vietnam War did in 1970--certainly George Bush’s approval rating is lower than Richard Nixon’s that year. This is encouraging considering the absence of high-profile protests like those of 1970.
"But the tide of antiwar public opinion is having less direct impact on government policy today, and that’s a result of the fact that the sentiment isn’t backed up by any organized expression.
"The problem isn’t that mass protests don’t work, but that today’s antiwar movement hasn’t risen to the challenge of mobilizing antiwar sentiment into mass protests.
It's not that mass protests on their own lead to change, but that they are a starting point for a movement that can make a difference. For instance, the massive Vietnam protests inspired the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War to get back into action, and allowed the vets to join in solidarity against what they all knew was evil, but didn't think there was any point in fighting alone.
Ruder explains that "[t]he Vietnamese resistance kept the U.S. from imposing its will, but couldn’t expel the U.S. on its own. The rise of resistance among U.S. soldiers undermined the effectiveness of the U.S. military as a fighting force, but GI organizing didn’t happen in a vacuum. The antiwar movement in the U.S. shook up American society, but it didn’t have the power to stop the war machine.
However, "[t]ogether, these three forces combined to compel the U.S. ruling establishment to conclude that only further ruin of its military and turmoil within U.S. society would result from continuing the war on Vietnam. So national antiwar mobilizations are a necessary part of a movement that can end the war, even if they don’t have a direct impact on war policy themselves."
"A large national protest that attracts new as well as experienced activists helps people in the antiwar movement overcome feelings of isolation they may experience in their own cities and towns. It also strengthens local organizations that mobilize for the protest--and these groups in turn benefit from the politicization of individuals who return home invigorated to continue the struggle. And of course, the larger such mobilizations, the greater the impact they can have on shaping mass public opinion.
"This last point is one of the most important ways that a strong civilian antiwar movement can assist in the development of GI resistance--another crucial ingredient in the antiwar struggle... During the Vietnam era, the peak of the GI revolt followed years of domestic protest, the growing radicalization of the student antiwar movement and the obvious futility of the war effort itself in the face of the Vietnamese resistance."
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Mutual Masterbation and Babies... (This will eventually relate to media, just wait)
Recently, while looking at my Health by Correspondence homework, I came to an assignment on HIV and AIDS. Seemingly legitimate, until I get the to the second part, asking me to write a "Public Service Announcement" on AIDS.
And I quote:
"Write a PSA for TV or radio aimed at teens that warns about the dangers of contracting AIDS and PROMOTES ABSTINENCE." (Mind you, this is in bold, AND underlined.)
Continuing,
"Content: The announcement should:
-->Demonstrate your overall knowledge on the facts concerning AIDS.
--> PROMOTE ABSTINENCE"
Hmm...
And here's where the media only starts to come in. When did my health book come out? The 90's. And what year was abstinence-only education first written into our welfare reform bill? 1996. And who was it that oh-so willingly wrote it in? BILL-FUCKING-CLINTON.
This law included, among other things, a stipulation that teenagers must be taught that abstinence is the only acceptable behavior outside of marriage AT ANY AGE, that premarital sex can have harmful physical and psychological consequences, and that birth control can only be mentioned in relation to its failure rates.
And so, with the fuel of millions of dollars, George Bush has continued this legacy by funding faith-based community organizations that are led by the Christian Right, to produce tons of media through advertisements as well as educational programs and curriculum materials that are aimed at "scaring and bullying teens into abstinence." (Jen Roesch, "The Abstinence-Only Lie")
Here is some of what Rep. Henry Waxman found in reviewing 13 curriculum materials used in states across the country as far was what is being taught to students under this new curriculums:
-Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
-Touching a person's genitals can result in pregnancy; mutual masturbation can cause pregnancy.
-HIV can be transmitted by tears and sweat, and 50 percent of gay teens have AIDS.
-A pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms.
-A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
-Five to 10 percent of women will never again be pregnant after having a legal abortion.
-Suicide is a consequence of pre-marital sex.
I can't figure out which of these is the most rediculous. They're all nearly laughable- until you realize that somewhere, kids are being taught, and most likely believing some of it.
Just from reading this, it seems clear that the recent rise in teen pregnancy (for the first time in 14 years) it probably due to a "manufactured ignorance about sex and brith control that is being forced on American teenagers," and to a "likely result of an unprecedented expansion of anstinence-only programs in schools," rather than becuase "U.S. society has become too accepting of teenage sexuality," as constantly argued by the Christian Right. (Roesch, Jen)
Although the latter argument seems to fit with Brave New World and sex being nothing, see current Hip Hop/music videos/song lyrics, and Postman's comment on how "serious discourse [--or INTERcourse-- hahahah] has dissolved into giggles," this is one time where the media is actually coming at this visciously from both sides.
Because "numerous studies show that abstinence-only education is ineffectice and sometimes harmful," (Roesch, Jen). Although when teen pregnancy rates were still declining, the right argued (and mind you, was PAID to argue,) that this was because of their spiffy new abstaining tactics, a Columbia University and Guttmacher Institue study found that "86 percent of the decline was atributable to increased use and effectiveness of birth control, while only 14 percent could be attributed to teens delaying sex." (Roesch, Jen). The study also found that "teens in abstinence-only programs were JUST AS LIKELY TO HAVE SEX, initiated sex at the same age, and had a similar number of sexual partners" as kids who hadn't been suckered by the Right-Wing media. (Roesch, Jen).
My favorite part of the study, and what's utterly terrifying when you think of all that's going into this education, is that "of one in six girls who took [chastity pledges], 88 percent broke their vow before marriage, many within a few eyars. And girls who had taken chastity pledges were LESS LIKELY TO USE CONDOMS, and LESS LIKELY TO SEEK TESTING AND TREATMENT FOR SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES."
Moral of story: don't trust what the media throws at you.
This whole abstinence-only approach is rooted in a denial of facing the reality of teenage sexuality. And so "state-mandated pre-abortion counseling exaggerates the physical and mental health risks of abortion-- for example, ASSERTING A LINK BETWEEN ABORTION AND BREAST CANCER, or claiming that WOMEN WHO HAVE ABORTIONS MAY HAVE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS." Jesus.
And now for more media:
This has all come hand in hand with a cultural backlash where abortion has been portrayed almost unilaterally in a negative spot-light, and almost never as a viable choice. (See several recent movies and TV shows.)
Conclusion: The media gets paid to promote its agenda to you, and it will twist whatever facts that come out to fit with the message it wants to get across, no matter the actual accuracy. So don't just accept what it tell you. Even if it's nonchalantly through a Health assignment.
And I quote:
"Write a PSA for TV or radio aimed at teens that warns about the dangers of contracting AIDS and PROMOTES ABSTINENCE." (Mind you, this is in bold, AND underlined.)
Continuing,
"Content: The announcement should:
-->Demonstrate your overall knowledge on the facts concerning AIDS.
--> PROMOTE ABSTINENCE"
Hmm...
And here's where the media only starts to come in. When did my health book come out? The 90's. And what year was abstinence-only education first written into our welfare reform bill? 1996. And who was it that oh-so willingly wrote it in? BILL-FUCKING-CLINTON.
This law included, among other things, a stipulation that teenagers must be taught that abstinence is the only acceptable behavior outside of marriage AT ANY AGE, that premarital sex can have harmful physical and psychological consequences, and that birth control can only be mentioned in relation to its failure rates.
And so, with the fuel of millions of dollars, George Bush has continued this legacy by funding faith-based community organizations that are led by the Christian Right, to produce tons of media through advertisements as well as educational programs and curriculum materials that are aimed at "scaring and bullying teens into abstinence." (Jen Roesch, "The Abstinence-Only Lie")
Here is some of what Rep. Henry Waxman found in reviewing 13 curriculum materials used in states across the country as far was what is being taught to students under this new curriculums:
-Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
-Touching a person's genitals can result in pregnancy; mutual masturbation can cause pregnancy.
-HIV can be transmitted by tears and sweat, and 50 percent of gay teens have AIDS.
-A pregnancy occurs one out of every seven times that couples use condoms.
-A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
-Five to 10 percent of women will never again be pregnant after having a legal abortion.
-Suicide is a consequence of pre-marital sex.
I can't figure out which of these is the most rediculous. They're all nearly laughable- until you realize that somewhere, kids are being taught, and most likely believing some of it.
Just from reading this, it seems clear that the recent rise in teen pregnancy (for the first time in 14 years) it probably due to a "manufactured ignorance about sex and brith control that is being forced on American teenagers," and to a "likely result of an unprecedented expansion of anstinence-only programs in schools," rather than becuase "U.S. society has become too accepting of teenage sexuality," as constantly argued by the Christian Right. (Roesch, Jen)
Although the latter argument seems to fit with Brave New World and sex being nothing, see current Hip Hop/music videos/song lyrics, and Postman's comment on how "serious discourse [--or INTERcourse-- hahahah] has dissolved into giggles," this is one time where the media is actually coming at this visciously from both sides.
Because "numerous studies show that abstinence-only education is ineffectice and sometimes harmful," (Roesch, Jen). Although when teen pregnancy rates were still declining, the right argued (and mind you, was PAID to argue,) that this was because of their spiffy new abstaining tactics, a Columbia University and Guttmacher Institue study found that "86 percent of the decline was atributable to increased use and effectiveness of birth control, while only 14 percent could be attributed to teens delaying sex." (Roesch, Jen). The study also found that "teens in abstinence-only programs were JUST AS LIKELY TO HAVE SEX, initiated sex at the same age, and had a similar number of sexual partners" as kids who hadn't been suckered by the Right-Wing media. (Roesch, Jen).
My favorite part of the study, and what's utterly terrifying when you think of all that's going into this education, is that "of one in six girls who took [chastity pledges], 88 percent broke their vow before marriage, many within a few eyars. And girls who had taken chastity pledges were LESS LIKELY TO USE CONDOMS, and LESS LIKELY TO SEEK TESTING AND TREATMENT FOR SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES."
Moral of story: don't trust what the media throws at you.
This whole abstinence-only approach is rooted in a denial of facing the reality of teenage sexuality. And so "state-mandated pre-abortion counseling exaggerates the physical and mental health risks of abortion-- for example, ASSERTING A LINK BETWEEN ABORTION AND BREAST CANCER, or claiming that WOMEN WHO HAVE ABORTIONS MAY HAVE SUICIDAL THOUGHTS." Jesus.
And now for more media:
This has all come hand in hand with a cultural backlash where abortion has been portrayed almost unilaterally in a negative spot-light, and almost never as a viable choice. (See several recent movies and TV shows.)
Conclusion: The media gets paid to promote its agenda to you, and it will twist whatever facts that come out to fit with the message it wants to get across, no matter the actual accuracy. So don't just accept what it tell you. Even if it's nonchalantly through a Health assignment.
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