At a time when the global economic situation has hit a perilous, downward cycle, it is important to understand how much the military-industrial complex is one of the biggest factors in this situation. We were not put on this earth to struggle. Life should not be about survival of the fittest. It would take relatively little effort to save the planet. All that is preventing peace on Earth is U.S. military propaganda. It is in their selfish interests for strife and injustice to persist. Let's take a look at the numbers.
{Courtesy of War Resisters dot org}
Much more after the break.
{update after the break}
{update: The only reason I put the Bill O'Reilly video into the tip jar post was because I think it's both funny and important for folks to understand how dangerous those with such rightwing tendencies are to our prospects for world peace. I am an unashamed peacenik. I am from the only state which voted for George McGovern over Nixon. I also believe it is time for progressives and lefties to be allowed again at the political dinner table.
Here is a post I made in the comments area, just in case it is made hidden.
I do not like or work for Bill O'Reilly or any other group liberal or conservative. If I get banned, so be it. But I would hope that the people working for my ousting would have the decency to go the proper channels and not try to get my posts hidden.
I was a victim of MajorFlaw and his crew. I did nothing wrong to ever be banned from this forum.
If Bill O'Reilly has a phrase called 'Kos Hate', I apologize. The hate I wish to stop at this place is the type in which people have bullied off others for no good reason. Just because you may not agree with someone doesn't mean you have the right to troll rate them and drive them away.
It has been proven that a group of people were acting as thought police at this website. You can ban me for no good reason, but that will only be an indication that hate is allowed to flourish here.
Truly patriotic Americans will fight for other's rights to freedom of speech and association, even if they don't agree with them.}
War Resisters Dot Org Defense Spending Pie Charts
There is a strange juxtaposition in the air as the U.S. Military propaganda machine both encourages their troops to astroturf pro-military ideology, while at the same time denying such people full access to all parts of the marketplace of ideas.
USAF Blog Response
Air Force Releases 'Counter-Blog' Marching Orders
By Noah Shachtman
January 06, 2009
{excerpt}
Bloggers: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don't be surprised. They're just following the service's new "counter-blogging" flow chart. In a twelve-point plan, put together by the emerging technology division of the Air Force's public affairs arm, airmen are given guidance on how to handle "trolls," "ragers" -- and even well-informed online writers, too. It's all part of an Air Force push to "counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force," Captain David Faggard says....
Yet, on the other hand, such Air Force personnel are blocked from viewing much of the blogosphere. How is one to argue a viewpoint if not all information is available? How are such military personnel any different from astroturfing hacks who will do anything to receive a paycheck? In short, why does the U.S. Military hate America, knowledge, democracy, and freedoms of speech and association?
Some of the greatest thinkers to emerge in the twentieth century were from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. They basically took the best from the big three of Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber and brought it up a notch or a hundred. Criticism of Durkheim was that he focused too much on culture at the expense of economic variables. The flip side of that equation was Marx. Max Weber is considered the greatest social theorist of all time because he was able to utilise both approaches. An example of that synthesis can be found with his groundbreaking treatise on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber showed how the cultural values of frugality and discipline led to an accumulation of wealth in early America. Yet unfortunately, the initial spiritual values were lost resulting in an iron cage.
Most if not all of the critical theorists from the Frankfurt School were forced to leave Nazi Germany for the West. They were very excited. Many ended up in America. But when they arrived, they were soon disappointed to find a cultural wasteland dependent on vacuous mass consumerism and the war industry. One such person was Herbert Marcuse.
One Dimensional Man
If we attempt to relate the causes of the danger to the way in which society is organized and organizes its members, we are immediately confronted with the fact that advanced industrial society becomes richer, bigger and better as it perpetuates the danger. The defense structure makes life easier for a greater number of people and extends man's mastery of nature. Under these circumstances, our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appears to be the very embodiment of Reason.
One major problem we are faced with in America is the near total disdain for higher levels of thinking. The greatest American social theorist in history was C. Wright Mills. Despite his pure brilliance, he was ostracised and forced to the fringes of Columbia University. One profound theory he explained was that of the Iron Triangle. That refers to how power in America is insulated from dissent. The three points of the triangle are the military, the executive, and the corporate. Mills went on to show how the three groups oftentimes rotate. So you have a guy like Eisenhower who becomes President. You have a guy like Cheney who has corporate ties to Halliburton.
Shallow folks, on the other hand, tout Talcott Parsons with his dreadfully boring Grand Theory as the great one. Parsons simply had attempted to turn Sociology into a natural science. Mills believed in the Sociological Imagination, that Sociology is not a natural science, that we need to get a feel for history and society in order to know what the heck is truly going on. What we are confronted with, in short, is the epic battle between positivism and humanism, of the Enlightenment versus Counter-Enlightenment. One is aligned with the status quo of greed and blood, while the latter is aligned with social justice and peace for all.
For those interested, here is an hour devoted to exploring the ideas of Herbert Marcuse.
posted by uctelevision:
Andrew Feenberg discusses his new collection of essays by Herbert Marcuse. The most influential radical philosopher of the 1960s, Marcuse's writings are noteworthy for their uncompromising opposition to both capitalism and communism.
The Essential Marcuse
Even David Letterman knows that right is right, and wrong is wrong.
posted by CBS:
Dave and Bill discuss what's going on in Iraq.
Dave and Bill O'Reilly