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‘New World Order’ Wine Pompoured into a Pro-‘Sovereignty’ Rhetorical Bottle

December 16, 2018

‘New World Order’ Wine Pompoured into a Pro-‘Sovereignty’ Rhetorical Bottle

‘New World Order’ Wine Pompoured into a Pro-‘Sovereignty’ Rhetorical Bottle

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began his December 4 speech in Brussels at the German Marshall Fund with “a well-deserved tribute to America’s 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush,” whom he praised as “an unyielding champion of freedom around the world.” It was fitting that he did so. The heart and soul of Pompeo’s remarks extolling the return of “the United States to its traditional, central leadership role in the world” were little more than a rehash of Bush the Elder’s aggressive internationalism.

Pompeo (or his speechwriter) should be given credit for a masterpiece of misdirection. While the substance of his speech was a blast of stale air from the 1990s, the rhetoric was all Trumpism and national sovereignty – but only for countries obedient to Washington: “Our mission is to reassert our sovereignty, reform the liberal international order, and we want our friends to help us and to exert their sovereignty as well.”

What about the sovereignty of countries the US doesn’t count as “friends”? Well, that’s a different story: “Every nation – every nation – must honestly acknowledge its responsibilities to its citizens and ask if the current international order serves the good of its people as well as it could. And if not, we must ask how we can right it.” [emphasis added]

So according to Pompeo, the United States and our vassals (“we”) have an obligation (“must”) to fix international actors that in our infinite wisdom are not serving “the good of their people.” For example, “Russia hasn’t embraced Western values of freedom and international cooperation.” (Why should Russia care what “we” think of its values – and why should its values be “western,” anyway? Never mind! We “must” do something about it!)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

West v Russia

April 18, 2018

West v Russia

When government attempt to persuade the people to their side, the rhetoric becomes so blatant it is stunning that so many people just believe what they are told. The typical tactic is always to paint your enemy as some “monster” as Trump just called Assad. You must always demean an opponent and the simple fact that they engage in that tactic exposes the sad fact that this is a deliberate manipulation. When it comes to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the West portrays him as a dictator, strongman, bad person, and some sort of crazed Russian patriot who wants to dominate the world somehow. All this rhetoric is what we call phase ONE, laying the seeds to justify engaging in war.
Here is a Japanese War poster demonizing Roosevelt. You will find that every side issues the same propaganda. This is indeed Phase ONE. You must get the people on your side to support the war effort. To do so, you must absolutely demonize your opponent.
Ther point is not to defend Putin and try to show what is exaggerated propaganda. This is simply a standard method of raising support among your people.  neither going to dispute nor support that characterization. Despite the West’s portrayal that Putin is some sort of “strongman”  seeking to dominate the world, Putin’s popularity at home has only been increased. The sanctions the West imposed on Russia are his badge of honor just as the excessive reparation payments from people into the open arms of Hitler.
The trade sanctions against China are doing the same thing. They create the reverse image that America is the evil power.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Rhetorical Education

March 8, 2018

A Rhetorical Education

Quite a bit of the discussion on this blog and its predecessors has focused on controversial issues, the kind of thing that causes rhetoric to fly fast and thick.  Given the themes I like to discuss in these essays, that could hardly have been avoided.  Ours is an age riven by disputes, in which debate has taken over much of the space occupied by physical violence in less restrained eras. (How many people died in the struggle that put Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton in the White House?  During most of human history, that wouldn’t have been an ironic question.)

Yet this contentious age has an odd feature, and it’s one I’ve referenced more than once in recent posts on this blog:  the fact that the vast majority of the rhetoric deployed in the disputes of our day is so stunningly incompetent.

Consider the way that any widely discussed issue these days is debated: say, the squabble over legislation now before Congress that would make web hosting firms and content providers liable for illegal content posted by third parties. The supporters of the bills in question insist that it’s all about stopping online sex trafficking, and anyone who opposes the bills as written must be in favor of sex crimes. The opponents of the bills, for their part, insist that they’re just an excuse for censorship, and anyone who supports them must be trying to destroy the internet.

Set aside for the moment the substantive issues involved—they’re real and important, but not relevant to the theme of this week’s post—and look at the rhetoric. Both sides have chosen the strategy of flinging over-the-top accusations at those who disagree with them. That strategy’s familiar enough these days that nobody seems to have thought to ask the obvious question: does it work?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If Political Candidates Advocated Liberty

November 2, 2017

IF POLITICAL CANDIDATES ADVOCATED LIBERTY

In modern democracies, political cycles never end. As soon as one election is over, those in government office or aspiring to such an office are already running for the next election. Having recently attended a public forum of state-level candidates looking to the 2018 election, I wondered what a real friend of freedom might say if he was offering himself for such a political office.

At a luncheon event several candidates running in the forthcoming Republican Party primary in South Carolina made their pitch as to why they should be their party’s nominees for state legislative offices in the next general election. They answered questions submitted by attendees at the lunch and made opening and closing statements about who they were and what they stood for.

Liberty Rhetoric, But Interventionist Policies

Not too surprisingly they all, in their respective ways, said they were “pro-business,” advocated lower taxes, a freer enterprise market environment, and greater transparent accountability by those in power in the state capital.

Why did each say they were running for elected office? They all had been in business but now wanted to “give back” and “serve” their communities.

What were major themes in many of the questions directed at them? South Carolina is a growing state with international corporations opening more manufacturing facilities, and matching this is an increasing population as more people move to the Palmetto State.

Those who submitted questions wanted to know what the candidates would do, if elected, about improving and widening road infrastructure to reduce increasing congestion, and how they would “manage” growth in the state? And what they might do in terms of taxes? There were other topics and issues, but these especially stood out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US anti-Russia rhetoric goes nuclear with threats of covert cyber-attacks

October 16, 2016

US anti-Russia rhetoric goes nuclear with threats of covert cyber-attacks

© Kevin Lamarque
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
The world seems to be sleepwalking its way into a geopolitical maelstrom as the US, increasingly paranoid over Russia, said it is considering a cyber-attack against the Kremlin in retaliation for purported Russian meddling in the US election process.

NBC News, citing those conveniently omnipresent “anonymous sources,” reported that the CIA is preparing to “deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging ‘clandestine’ cyber operation designed to harass and ‘embarrass’ the Kremlin leadership,” as if dragging the Kremlin through the mud of the 2016 presidential campaign wasn’t embarrassing enough.

The report went on to say that the covert action plan, which is certainly no longer covert, “is designed to protect the US election system and insure that Russian hackers can’t interfere with the November vote (…) Another goal is to send a message to Russia that it has crossed a line.”

Before continuing, it is important to note that America’s electronic voting machines have long been vulnerable to hackers and vote riggers. And with all due respect to Russian ingenuity and resourcefulness, it was not the Russians who revealed that information to the Americans. In 2006, a group of computer programmers from Princeton University said they successfully created“vote-stealing software” that could be easily installed on a Diebold AccuVote-TS (the programmers, incidentally, admitted they acquired the voting machine “at a party”).

NBC then interviewed former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell about Washington’s alleged plans to conduct a cyber-attack against Russia. Morell was against the covert cyber plan, but for all the wrong reasons.

“Physical attacks on networks is not something the US wants to do because we don’t want to set a precedent for other countries to do it as well, including against us,” he said. “My own view is that our response shouldn’t be covert – it should overt, for everybody to see.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Renewables: The Next Fracking?

February 11, 2016

Renewables: The Next Fracking? 

I’d meant this week’s Archdruid Report post to return to Retrotopia, my quirky narrative exploration of ways in which going backward might actually be a step forward, and next week’s post to turn a critical eye on a common but dysfunctional habit of thinking that explains an astonishing number of the avoidable disasters of contemporary life, from anthropogenic climate change all the way to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Still, those entertaining topics will have to wait, because something else requires a bit of immediate attention. In my new year’s predictions a little over a month ago, as my regular readers will recall, I suggested that photovoltaic solar energy would be the focus of the next big energy bubble. The first signs of that process have now begun to surface in a big way, and the sign I have in mind—the same marker that provided the first warning of previous energy bubbles—is a shift in the rhetoric surrounding renewable energy sources.

Broadly speaking, there are two groups of people who talk about renewable energy these days. The first group consists of those people who believe that of course sun and wind can replace fossil fuels and enable modern industrial society to keep on going into the far future. The second group consists of people who actually live with renewable energy on a daily basis. It’s been my repeated experience for years now that people belong to one of these groups or the other, but not to both.

As a general rule, in fact, the less direct experience a given person has living with solar and wind power, the more likely that person is to buy into the sort of green cornucopianism that insists that sun, wind, and other renewable resources can provide everyone on the planet with a middle class American lifestyle.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

10 Signs You’ve Bought ‘Spin’

February 2, 2016

10 Signs You’ve Bought ‘Spin’

10 Signs You’ve Bought ‘Spin’

We live in a world with an incredible imbalance of power. Whether you believe in ‘conspiracies’ or not, there is no doubt that a tiny fraction of the world population has the means to manipulate and sway public opinion in order to maintain a paradigm that promotes and maintains their ability to control and profit off the masses. Common sense would dictate that any group who had the wherewithal to successfully claw their way into a top position would naturally invest heavily in ensuring their interests were protected. As increasing corruption is exposed in so many areas of society, we would be naive to think collusion wasn’t happening at the highest levels as well.

For instance… Recently a German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte, came forward to expose how he and, according to his claims, many other journalists were coerced into not only slanting their stories in order to sway public opinion, but to sign their own names to articles that were written by CIA staff as a means to garner support for war. (see video.)

A retired U.S. Army Colonel, Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked as national security advisor to the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations, recently shared about what he perceives as the corruption inside the establishment and how corporate interests are driving foreign policy. (see video.)

Another respected journalist Sharyl Attkisson, came forward recently in a TED Talk to demonstrate how ‘astroturfing’, or fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and warp media messages. (see video.)

The more we look into it, the clearer it becomes that mainstream wisdom is not as benign, logical, sound or reasonable as it initially appears. Propaganda today is so highly sophisticated, outrageously pervasive, and incredibly subtle and cunning, that it can be difficult not to fall prey to its influences.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange and Democracy’s Future

August 19, 2015

Assange and Democracy’s Future

Democracy rests on citizens getting real facts and applying rational analysis. The ability of governments, including the U.S. government, to suppress facts and thus manage perceptions represents the opposite, a power over the people that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange threatened, says Norman Solomon.

Three years after Ecuador’s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small ground-floor London embassy, the founder of WikiLeaks is still there — beyond the reach of the government whose vice president, Joe Biden, has labeled him “a digital terrorist.”

The Obama administration wants Assange in a U.S. prison, so that the only mouse he might ever see would be scurrying across the floor of a solitary-confinement cell.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Above and beyond Assange’s personal freedom, what’s at stake includes the impunity of the United States and its allies to relegate transparency to a mythical concept, with democracy more rhetoric than reality. From the Vietnam War era to today — from aerial bombing and torture to ecological disasters and financial scams moving billions of dollars into private pockets — the high-up secrecy hiding key realities from the public has done vast damage. No wonder economic and political elites despise WikiLeaks for its disclosures.

During the last five years, since the release of the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, the world has changed in major ways for democratic possibilities, with WikiLeaks as a catalyst. It’s sadly appropriate that Assange is so deplored and reviled by so many in the upper reaches of governments, huge corporations and mass media. For such powerful entities, truly informative leaks to the public are plagues that should be eradicated as much as possible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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