Thursday, January 15, 2015

All is NOT forgiven here in the real world



It might sound good to many to say "All is forgiven;" however little or nothing is being done to address many of the most important issues that impact society, including the conflict with Islam and many other issues like social inequality and epidemic levels of white collar crime.

Instead there is another enormous appeal to emotion accompanied by propaganda designed to get people to mindlessly rally behind their political leaders even though they are clearly far more concerned with representing their campaign contributors and political allies than they are with representing the majority of people, whether they vote or not.

On top of that they're portraying, once again, the people involved in the most censorship as the defenders of free speech.

One of the most obvious complaints that I have heard is one on the Deutsche Welle Journal where someone made the observation that when people criticize Islam they're portrayed as defending their right to free speech, and rightfully so; but when they criticize Israel they're often portrayed as "anti-Semitic."

There is an enormous amount of outrage about the recent shootings but little or no consideration about many of the incidents that preceded it that might have been a major contributing cause for the conflict between the western world and Muslims.

A large portion of this isn't even in dispute, and it goes back decades, although it is rarely mentioned by the traditional media while the propaganda demonizing Muslims is repeated over and over again.

This includes the support of the Shah, who tortured his own people to maintain power so he could protect oil contracts made by western corporations, the supplying of weapons to both sides of the war during the Iran/Iraq war, the support of the Mujaheddin before they became Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the acceptance of help from Iran after 9/11 followed almost immediately by labeling them as part of the "Axis of Evil," and the support of the Syrian rebels before some of them became known as the Islamic State.

Even without a so-called "false flag" conspiracy theory surrounding the Paris attack or the hacking claims from North Korea the corporate press and the political leaders they support are doing an especially effective job of using this for as a rallying cry to make it seem like they have an enormous amount of support and that they're the defenders of the free world even though many of these leaders have been supporting trade agreements and environmental policies among other things that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy campaign contributors at the expense of the vast majority of the public.

I try to be skeptical of most of the so-called "false flag" conspiracy theories, which often have even more problems than the traditional explanations they often challenge, but it wouldn't be be unprecedented since the government has admitted to planing them in the past like Operation Northwoods even if they rarely if ever admit actually carrying them out. But the propaganda that is dominating the media indicates common efforts to appeal to emotions and manipulate what Irving Janis called "Groupthink" where large numbers of people go along with the program and as I have explained on several posts including Philip Zimbardo, Lucifer Effect, Stanford Prison Experiment and Corruption or Bias in the American Psychological Association the government and many psychologists have studied effect propaganda methods and they haven't done an adequate job teaching the majority of the public about it or how to recognize when they being manipulated.

Although Stanley Milgram said that he wanted to study "Obedience to Authority" so that he could understand why the Germans blindly obeyed orders and avoid it in the future his work was supported by the military which is always trying to teach their recruits to blindly obey authority and the work has almost certainly been used to develop propaganda tactics by many political campaign advisers as well, which enables them to promote an enormous nu8mber of candidates that make promises to the public but then turn around and cater to their campaign contributors once they're elected.

Not only are they not addressing the legitimate concerns of Muslims but they're not addressing the legitimate concerns of many if any other people as well.

One of the most common justifications they use not to address the concerns of Muslims is that they don't "negotiate with terrorists," which sounds good to many, or it would except for one problem. They're also extremely reluctant to negotiate with peaceful protesters as well.

On top of that at times they often try to portray peaceful protesters about legitimate issue as terrorists, possibly even going to the trouble to entrap them like they may have done with an "Eco-Terrorist" Freed 10 Years Early After Feds Withhold Evidence on Informant’s Role that indicates entrapment.

The damage done by environmental destruction, health care and economic inequality is far more damaging than the alleged attacks from Muslim extremists; and even in the cases of the Muslim extremists it is often in retaliation for the activities of our government.

The people that are being damaged by many of the other problems that are being swept under the rug aren't going to be fooled by this propaganda about solidarity lining up behind world leaders. They're going to know full well that their concerns aren't going to be met and occasionally one of them like Joe Stack, Jerad Miller or Ismaaiyl Brinsley will strike out violently and there will be more attacks.

Many of these incidents seem predictable after the fact but before they happen it is hard to tell which ones might go over the edge; however if they did a better job addressing the legitimate concerns of all then they would be much less likely.

This isn't nearly as insurmountable a task as it might seem to many people; there are plenty of alternative media outlets and books that do a much better job addressing these concerns but they get little or no attention from the traditional media. Furthermore, if some people like Joe Stack, Jerad Miller or Ismaaiyl Brinsley saw more of this coverage they might not behave so desperately if they think there is reasonable hope for real change that addresses the concerns of the majority not just campaign contributors.

To some degree there are some signs that some of the protests might be slowly bringing results but that is also absent from the traditional media, presumably because they don't want more people to get the idea that they might be able to make a difference by joining in them. If some of the people that feel disenfranchised realize this then they might be less likely to go to extremes, no thanks to the traditional media that isn't reporting it. 

Until they give all people reasonably equal protection for their freedom of speech and a chance to get their legitimate grievances addressed they will know it and all will not be forgiven for them. It would be better to address them before they turn to extremism.

On top of that for all the talk about censorship in the traditional press one incident is getting much less attention from the Israel allies of the U.S. government. Apparently an Ultra-Orthodox Israel newspaper photoshoped female leaders out of front page picture from Paris rally for Charlie Hebdo



Whether it is related or not, in a rare occasion Florida actually got something right for a change but then they claimed it was a mistake for some reason, "In Dog We Trust."






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