June 07, 2007
Bush's Love of Torture: Ethical Equivalents
In the movies we see the German Commandant line up the town villagers. He asks for specific intelligence regarding the commission of a crime. When he does not receive the intel he requires, he then lines up a dozen citizens and shoots them.
Torturing people to the point of psychological collapse is almost an ethical equivalent to the brutality handed out by the Commandant.
If the interrogators, when causing permanent systemic damage to their subjects through sensory deprivation, are fully aware that some or most of these subjects have no actionable intelligence then they are deliberately destroying innocent lives as an official process.
It is at this point that the ethics of the Commandant's decision and Bush's mind set, to employ torture, become one and the same.
A question also arises as to upon who does America employ life destroying torture. Apparently, sub rosa, torturing Arabs and followers of Islam is today acceptable. Perhaps torturing foreign born prison gang leaders might be the next acceptable venue for torture. And next?
--craig johnson--Labels: benumbed citizenry, Bush Admin, CIA, faith based initiatives, intelligence, sensory deprivation, thugs, torture
May 09, 2007
Cheney's Leer & the Glint on the Cross
Among all of Dick Cheney's distasteful contorted facial expressions the one that was most chilling and evil, which I wish that I had not seen, was the leer he transmitted to a GOP faithful audience when he disclosed that AQ in Iraq now numbers fifteen thousand.
His leer fully transmitted that he used the propaganda lies, that AQ was connected to Iraq, to get our guns and oil companies into Iraq. It also transmitted the, to him, deliciously evil twist that the lie has now morphed into the truth.
That AQ is now several thousand strong in Iraq is a grotesque result of the pathetically naive Neocon misadventure. It's also a plank in their arguments that we need to stay.
"The dolts, (meaning the American public and the MSM), don't have a clue as to what evil we will employ to accomplish our goals," is what the leer beams to the mightiest of the Bush base.
...as the sunlight flickered on the cross in his lapel...
---Craig Johnson---
(photo source: The Future of Television)
Labels: benumbed citizenry, Cheney, criminal incompetence, depraved indifference, faith based initiatives, impeachment, Iraq, mercenaries, neocon cabal
May 08, 2007
Do You Want a Good T.V. Guide
The purpose of television is to present advertising to consumers.
It is not to entertain or educate, not remotely. It is to get advertising into your home, 24/7, and, and, you pay for it.
Actors, anchors, studio execs, athletes and corporate interests become mega wealthy from the multi trillion dollar advertising tidal wave.
Docile and benumbed to the corporate theft inherent in that glowing tube of advertisements in their living rooms, the American citizenry coughs up $500 to a $1,000 a year per family to be thus solicited.
We pay to be subjected to 24/7 advertisements in our homes. Go figure.
If a section of the viewing public, of the demographic size and wealth of L.A., for example, simply said 'we all refuse to pay a penny for cable service', then presto capitalistic miracle, service would reappear funded by the advertisers who want your eyeballs on those screens.
Think about it. You or we might even say "And while we've got your ear, give us a decent flippin program guide!!"
Labels: advertising, benumbed citizenry, cable television cost, TV Guide
