Pentagon Reveals News Correction Unit

Jonas Wisser writes "BBC is reporting that a newly created Pentagon unit has a mandate to fight 'inaccurate' news stories. From the article: 'The Pentagon has set up a new unit to focus on promoting its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet. [...] A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record". A spokesman said the unit would monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.'"

Comments

Hello

[I kan Spl]

1984 called... It wants it's news story back.

Re:Hello

[gigne]

China called, and it wants it's PR dept back. (I'm prime too)

Re:Hello

[h15n]

Ministry of Truth.
But, take care!
Someone's sniffing the glue that keeps internet together!

Re:Hello

[antek9]

It's called, and it wants both your and the GP's it's back.

Re:Hello

[Instine]

This is the UK, as your constitution isn't worth toilet paper now, we're revocing your independance:

To the Citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy). Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium," and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix will be replaced by the suffix "ise." You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra'; you may elect to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you find you simply can't cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up "vocabulary"). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will be a called "Come-Uppance Day."

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline")-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.

9. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." American brands will be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine," so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

11. Hollywood will be re

Re:Hello

[theparag0n]

Darn, meant to mod you funny, but missed :/

This should wipe it out i hope.

Re:Hello

[Meneth]

Your UID isn't prime. 16654877 is divisible by 73.

Re:Hello

[Kijori]

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

The -ize suffix is actually perfectly acceptable in British English - it derives from the Greek suffix -izo. The growth of the -ise suffix is mostly a backlash against American simplification of the language. It is, however, incorrect to convert other suffixes to contain -ize instead of -ise; for example, 'televize' instead of televise, where the suffix is -vise and cannot be changed.

Amusing post though!

Re:Hello

[Instine]

OW! That was supposed to be funny. You know haha! Now I'm -1 and counting :(

Are they 'correcting' humour too?

Re:Hello

[WilliamSChips]

I think you'd have to revoke the Rush-Bagot agreement as well. And besides, the Declaration of Independence isn't actually a law. And the Constitution will be worth something again once we get our checks and balances back.

Besides, that's John Cleese.

Re:Hello

[caluml]

Just thought I'd point out that your's shouldn't have an apostrophe. It's not something belonging to "your", is it?
Also, "it's" can only ever mean "it is". It's never the possessive for "it", which is always "its".

Re:Hello

[creepynut]

You'll have to forgive the GP, the username is I kan Spl.

Re:Hello

[foobsr]

Hmm, I always suspected there are undercover moderators here.
CC.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tune to Fox News for your 90 seconds of hate. Thank you.

Re:Hello

[aquabat]

My understanding is that the apostrophe is always used to contract two words, and never to denote possession. He still shouldn't have it in there, but he did mean to use it to denote something belonging to "your" (self), namely a user ID.

Re:Hello

[stunt_penguin]

Doubleplusungood :|

Re:Hello

[Das Modell]

Doesn't concern me. Everyone else is already spinning the news to suit their own purposes, so the Pentagon may as well join the fray too.

Re:Hello

[aquabat]

Ah, too early in the morning here. Of course you can use the apostrophe as a possessive marker. I wonder if that makes him correct in his usage? It looks wrong to me.

Re:Hello

[Shads]

> Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections.

Isn't he too busy giving oral ... service to Bush?

Re:Hello

[Anivair]

That, like most other things that people think is John Cleese, is NOT john Cleese.

It was Alan Baxter of Rochester, U.K. It was penned after the 2000 presidential election and grew from there by the wonders of teh intarwebs.

Re:Hello

[Goose In Orbit]

Besides, that's John Cleese.

Err... Not!

Re:Hello

[TapeCutter]

Thank god the mods came to their senses, very funny stuff mate, keep it up.

Re:Hello

[Johnny5000]

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.

Are you sure you're still talking about America? We don't use mayonnaise on fries- we use ketchup.

Re:Hello

[ben there...]

Yeah that's those Canadian freaks that put mayonnaise on their fries. Eww.

Re:Hello

[Dave Walker]

> My UID is prime, is your's?
Actually, it is. And a much lower prime than yours.
--
I saw it on the internet. It MUST be true.

Re:Hello

[19061969]

No it's okay. Instead of oral, our Tony prefers getting the reach-around from GW while getting XXXX up his XXX.

Re:Hello

[Grech]

The second person genitive pronoun is your (your mom, your fault, your problem), and it is dependent. The determinative (independent noun phrase) form is yours, with no apostrophe.

Re:Hello

[userlame]

You think mayo is bad wait till you see a poutine.

But by god, they are tasty.

Re:Hello

[falcon5768]

More importantly the French created French Fries so maybe we should be calling them pommes frites instead... AND WE created Potato Chips and thats the god damn name we gave it! Its you dumb bastards who insist on calling them weird fucking British slang things instead of their true names who should get a clue.

Re:Hello

[falcon5768]

It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

Heh South America and Japan would take some offense to the not played beyond our borders idea. In japan they might actually kill you for that comment.

Re:Hello

[ben there...]

Yeah I remembered seeing gravy on fries at a Wendy's in Montreal. I couldn't remember the rest of it though. Cheese curds, eh? I took a pass then, and I don't think I could do it now. I'll just take your word for it that it is tasty. ;-)

Re:Hello

[Alchemar]

Your post on the internet contained some "inacurrate" material. Even thou the original prediction was released under the name 1984 we have found that we were unable to keep the original timescale and have renamed the book 2004. Please refer to all future references to George Orwell's work as 2004. Your furture post will be monitored for compliance. Rest assured that the penalties for non-compliance are severe, but we are unable to disclose the exact penalties at this time. If you continue to not comply you will be informed of all your rights and the penalties for non-compliance when you reach your country of destination.

Dept. of News Accuracy
501 Pentagon Rd. Guatanamo Bay
Province of the U.S.A

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed he sais "America" thus the whole continent, not just this small area called the US.
That leaves Japan thought... and I will certainly trust you on this, they won't be pleased.

Re:Hello

[orielbean]

We would give you the story back, but the author is now an unperson and the blog dropped down the memory hole. :-(

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

patates frites

Re:Hello

[jacexpo069]

Let me know what Japanse team / South American team was in the world series, you will realise you were wrong.. The only non-USA team that ever was in the world series, AND WON IT TWICE, was the Canadian Toronto Blue Jays. And since Canada is in America, it works.

Re:Hello

[CowboyBob500]

More importantly the French created French Fries so maybe we should be calling them pommes frites instead... AND WE created Potato Chips and thats the god damn name we gave it! Its you dumb bastards who insist on calling them weird fucking British slang things instead of their true names who should get a clue.

Actually it was the Belgians that invented French Fries. It's you dumb bastards who can't tell the difference between two European countries that should get a clue ;-)

Bob

Re:Hello

[BVis]

I think you'll find that what we USians call "French Fries" are in fact Belgian in origin. Just another example of how we insist on sticking to false concepts simply because on average, we're dumber than a pile of doorknobs.

For others, see "it's/its" and "your/you're"; also, Wal*Mart (the fact that it even exists), Windows, AOL, how fat our kids are, how fat WE are, the idea that everything has to be someone's fault and there's no such thing as an "accident", the popularity of reality shows, the fact that we elected a retard to the Oval Office not once, but twice, our assumption that all Muslims are bomb-throwers, D.A.R.E. (and while we're on the subject, finding it acceptable that you need to pee in a cup to work at a video game retailer), and finally, the fact that W still has a 30% approval rating.

I could provide others, but my coffee hasn't completely kicked in yet.

Re:Hello

[kalidasa]

This was pretty funny - about 3 years ago when it was first circulating via email. Of course, it's pretty silly for a country that has no written constitution would be making this kind of a joke (the Magna Carta delineates the rights of the propertied class and the limits of the powers of the King - it doesn't delineate the limits of the powers of the Parliamentary government; and what a Brit means by "constitution" is what e.g. Plato meant by "politea" or Cicero by "res publica" - the way in which the state is constituted, in effect via common law and various written laws, not an overarching written framework in a single, relatively easy-to-understand document - though with very complex subtleties - with legal force).

Re:Hello

[MadEE]

IIRC it's the Dutch who are big on the Mayo thing.

Re:Hello

[Ninjaesque One]

Frenching refers to the method of preparation; it's an archaic term for slicing into a million lengthy pieces. The thing is, though, you still have to pee in a cup to work in a video game retailer in England. Also, the only thing they really have, written down, is habeas corpus, no excessive fines and no cruel or unusual punishment. Yes, you have more than two parties, which is a frigging excellent idea. No, you do not have constitutional guarantees of individual rights. This is why we can elect idiots and just scoff it off, as opposed to you guys, who can't elect idiots for the fear of destruction of your rights. Of course, idiots are the only contenders for election.

Re: Hello

[gers0667]

At least give props the man who wrote that... John Cleese

http://www.stephaniemiller.com/declarationofrevoca tion.htm

Re:Hello

[archen]

1) Most American's can't spell. Good luck adding more letters to words!

3) As long as I don't have to learn it in French like the Canadians do. No one can sing the "land of the FreeEEEE!" part in our anthem anyway.

6) Talk about throwing stones from glass houses. I mean coming from the land notoriously butt ugly unreliable vehicles, I'd say I'm not sure this means much. Most "German" cars here are assembled in Mexico, and aren't holding up to the quality standard they were once known for.

Re:Hello

[j0eshm0e]

To our fellow humans on the other side of the pond and regarding #5, specifically speaking of lawyers:

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

"Since idle lawyers tend to become politicians, there is a certain social value in keeping them busy" (Operating System Concepts, 6th Ed. by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne. ISBN: 0-471-41743-2). We also have something akin to the natural nitrogen cycle over here whereby schools excrete lawyers, idle lawyers break down into politicians, and then they either shoot themselves politically (see Jack Abramoff et al), shoot themselves literally(see Dick Cheney), or have some crazed lune do it for them (see #13 --btw, we have known all this while but we are not telling). Some person then takes up the 'cause' to become a lawyer, and the cycle is complete. Interrupting the precious balance would be disastrous. Too many lawyers would become politicians with not enough crazed lunes, expensive gifts, or hunting expeditions to control their population. God only know what would happen if we took the guns away too...

Tongue firmly planted in cheek and foot firmly planted in mouth.

Re:Hello

[emptycorp]

Also noteworthy, "French Toast" was invented in New York.

Re:Hello

[Courageous]

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states,...

LOL! Problem is, while we may indeed be a former colony of England, England is a current one of ours. You know, George bush, and his boy, Tony Blair? England is well and truly leashed. Thank you for the all the bowing and scraping, and all that.

Re: Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.a sp

Re:Hello

[genooma]

Hi, I'm from South America, and no one here has ever seen baseball outside tacky american movies, let alone play it.

Re:Hello

[CowboyBob500]

Frenching refers to the method of preparation; it's an archaic term for slicing into a million lengthy pieces.

Er no. That's down to your inability to deal with foreign languages. That method of preparation is called Julienne, it's just been Americanised to "Frenching"

Also note - Cafetiere is a French Press in the US (Wikipedia even redirects you helpfully)

I'm sure that there are many other examples. It seems that if the word is from the French, then in US English the object becomes a "French [something]" or similar derivative.

Bob

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

1984 never called, citizen, and the story has always been printed accurately.

Re:Hello

[Atzanteol]

That's down to your inability to deal with foreign languages.

Yeah, I'll see you down at the cafe where I'll be getting an espresso. Mebbe even a cappuccino.

Re:Hello

[X-treme-LLama]

Yes but while lower UID's are apparently godly on Slashdot, aren't higher primes actually more rare :)

I know i know:

--(joke)--

--head-- :)

Re:Hello

[dave420]

If the US's constitution was worded less ambiguously and was indeed reviewed every generation as was intended, your point might be valid. Both countries, the US and the UK have a rather peculiar take on constitutions. That fact alone does not determine which is "better" than the other.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Oui. I am a Belgie, not a Frenchie. It is important to know the difference so you can observe the correct protocols when entering a pissoire. A Belgie unzips first.

Re:Hello

[element-o.p.]

You guys tried that once before...in 1812. It didn't work then, either :)

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently to soi-disant Belgies, pissoirs are feminine nouns.

Re:Hello

[CAPSLOCK2000]

Both the Dutch and the Belgiums understand that fries should be dipped in mayonaise, nothing else. Ofcourse you need real mayonaise, instead of the slimey grease that is sold as mayonaise in some less enlightened parts of the world.
For the record, proper mayonaise is slightly sour.

Re:Hello

[NMerriam]

Actually it was the Belgians that invented French Fries. It's you dumb bastards who can't tell the difference between two European countries that should get a clue ;-)

Considering it was the court of Marie Antoinette who made the fry (and potato in general) internationally popular and socially acceptable, it's hardly ignorant or irrational to call it a French Fry. As to whether the French or Belgians invented the preparation -- I'm sure there was a Native American or Spanish cook who fried them before the potato ever spread to Belgium or France. There certainly is no reason to state with certainty that the Belgians are responsible, and plenty of reason to credit the French with making it trendy.

Re:Hello

[hal2814]

I also hear they don't have a Quarter Pounder over there.

Re:Hello

[bidule]

Poutine? Yeah, that's how we kill tourists and select our immigrants. If they survive a meal of Pepsi, Mae West and this, they're good to go.

I've seen that some regions of the USA use the same trick, but with oily pizza as the main dish.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 90 seconds? Back in my day, we Hated for a full Two Minutes, and that was in a raging thunderstorm going uphill both ways!

Re:Hello

[Bloke down the pub]

But now you don't have France on your side. Mind you, neither do we.

Re:Hello

[SilverJets]

1984 called... It wants it's news story back

"Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."

Re:Hello

[NMerriam]

I think you'll find that what we USians call "French Fries" are in fact Belgian in origin. Just another example of how we insist on sticking to false concepts simply because on average, we're dumber than a pile of doorknobs.

I think you'll find that what USians call French Fries came from France, via Benjamin Franklin. Whether the Belgians "invented" them first is a matter of considerable historical disagreement, though there certainly is no question that the court of Marie Antoinette was responsible for their international popularization.

Re:Hello

[DavidTC]

They aren't France Fries, they're French Fries, and from what I understand a goodly portion of Belgium speaks French.

Re:Hello

[Instine]

Actually it was Jon Clease! Still, yes its funny. Old too. Was rumbling around ages ago. On a slightly more serious note tho this whole thing stinks. I mean realy! I know the propoganda machine whir day and night in all countries of note, but seriously. This whole idea of adressing EVERYTHIONG that challenges you as a nation with war (drugs, terrorism, obesity, Free press...). WTF. Relax, grow up and think a little. The America I knew and loved is vanishing before my very screen.

Go on strike or something. Show those in power they aint anything without you, the good folk of the USA.

Re:Hello

[rotor]

I think you'll both find that there's no such thing as a "USian." I realize you're trying to point out that America doesn't stop at United States borders, but ask a Canadian what he considers himself and he'll say "Canadian." Ask him what he considers someone from the US, and after saying something to the effect of "An asshole," he'll most likely say "American." It's just correct term.

Re:Hello

[telso]

It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

Since you don't seem aware that Canada is outside the US's borders, your error is understandable.

Re:Hello

[Rei]

The post isn't particularly funny. It perpetuates the whole "America is ruining the English language!" myth. The reality is that both American and British English have been evolving since they diverged. One is not "ruining" the other unless you believe in some sort of innate superiority in whatever the British do. Do you Brits speak like Shakespeare? What? You don't? Imagine that, languages changing over time! Dear me!

Here is a history on the subject. American English used to be seen as a more "pure" form of English. In many ways, American English is closer to the 16th century English that both languages diverged from than British English is.

Re:Hello

[CoderJoe]

Not to mention people that believe that disagreeing with the president means that you are a communist. Why the hell does the average U.S. citizen have to be a fucking retard?

Re:Hello

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

Baseball is played all over the world. And since the best players in the world already play for the MLB it is a safe call to have it be a world championship. I would love to see the MLB champ play the winner of the Japan series though.

Re:Hello

[msuarezalvarez]

Well, the fact that a big part of the US population believes strongly in something does not seem to be a great indicator of that something's veracity, as recent history amply shows. Hopefully by now the number of people that think Hussein has something to do with the World Trace Center event has dropped to below 50%; who nows whether we should wait some more time until they finally understand that "American" is a rather bad choice?

Re:Hello

[nocwage]

DISMATLE THE CONSTITUTION! HAIL DEMOCRACY IN ACTION!

CNN, the following words and phrases have been declared in need of Correction:

'Amendment' is no longer a valid word, please substitute it's usage with 'suggestion'.

'Women and Children' are now known as 'insurgents'.

Re:Hello

[dthree]

What I thought was funny about it is not that American's are "ruining" English, its that the British are always complaining about it.

Re:Hello

[CoderJoe]

That's John Cleese, you insensitive clod!

Re:Hello

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

All in the .sig.

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

I hope someone wipes out that joke. It's older than dirt and yet some asshat has to post it to slashdot every week or so. The brits can be forgiven for cooking up such a pathetic piece of humor though; they're still reeling from the ass-kicking :D (Oh and, the inventor of Aluminum wants it spelled (and pronounced) Aluminum, that's why we do that. But we're not defensive, oh no.)

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

Speaking of cheese curds, anyone interested in trying them should note that A&W does not have cheese curds. They have little cheese stick balls. You have been warned.

Re:Hello

[UncleGizmo]

Er no [part II]. That's your inability to understand cooking. Frenching is cutting things so that they are in a lengthy pieces, but in a rough cut fashion, as parent correctly noted. Julienne is cutting them much thinner than Frenching.

The parent is also correct that it is an archaic term. I had to look in something ancient like a dictionary to prove it to you:

http://m-w.com/dictionary/frenching

PS, If you've ever had frites in Belgium you will understand why folks are so pedantic about getting this right. You'll never go back to a McD's fry after tasting the real thing. And the Belgians also put mayo on their frites. Personal preference, but I like 'em plain.

Now let's return back to the humo[u]r.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not reasonable to host an event called the "World Series" for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.

Since you don't seem aware that Canada is outside the US's borders, your error is understandable.

Since the only baseball team left in Canada is the Blue Jays and that its harldy a real team, his error is understandable... :)

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

We have a slightly sour mayonaise here, we call it dressing and the most popular commercial brand is miracle whip. I've had both kinds and the sour kind makes me want to hurl, but I do like the creamy kind on fries. I usually buy an all-natural type from Trader Joe's - eggs, oil, water, lemon juice, and I think salt.

Re:Hello

[UncleGizmo]

Perhaps this is a myth, but IIRC, it's called the World Series because it was first sponsored by a newspaper in Olde New York called [wait for it...] "The World".

Brought to you by the irrelevant fact o'the day(R) club.

Re:Hello

[BVis]

It's just correct term.

This is precisely what I'm talking about. "American" does NOT specifically refer to someone that resides in the United States of America, but enough people have that misconception that now it's considered "correct term." I know several Canadians that wouldn't use the term "American" to describe someone from the USA, and in fact would be offended if you did so.

More examples:

Calling Nintendo cartridges "tapes". Just lazy.
"Taping" something on the Tivo. Unless you're talking about taping a note to the front of it, there aren't any tapes involved.
Calling the computer the "hard drive", and the monitor the computer (or the "tv thingy", etc.)

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

Most American's can't spell. Good luck adding more letters to words!

Psst: "Americans". No apostrophe.

Quite right about the German cars. The only BMW that's still holding its value at all is the 5-series and mercedes are failing within the warranty period very regularly these days. Germany is pretty much over (in terms of reliability) for the forseeable future, unless you trust volkswagen/audi (I don't.) Right now it kind of looks like the Koreans are the ones to buy cars from.

Re:Hello

[BVis]

Because you no longer have to be smart to function in our society. Quite the opposite actually; our society is so dumbed down and geared towards the lowest common denominator that the smart people are the ones marginalized.

If you've ever wondered why the smart kids get picked on, there's your answer. "Smart" isn't rewarded, popularity is.

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

I hope it never comes to this, but America could bomb Britain and France into smoking holes in the ground in the same day and still have time to get home and catch a rerun of SNL.

Re:Hello

[stevedcc]

Oh and, the inventor of Aluminum wants it spelled (and pronounced) Aluminum, that's why we do that. But we're not defensive, oh no.

Aluminium was invented now? I've heard of people inventing elements before, like the first discovery of 118. However, when accepted by the scientific community, the process is normally referred to as "discovered", since the element generally exists (or has existed at some point) long before the discoverer comes across it.

Re:Hello

[BVis]

That was such a stretch it made my cat jealous.

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

In light of your obvious mental state (that of being british), we excuse your inept attempt at humor.

1. We use Merriam-Webster's dictionary. It defines "revocation" roughly the same way as your Oxford version. It, however, lists "aluminium" as a foreign (and therefore, secondary) spelling and pronunciation. In addition, that word sounds too much like "condominium", which, aside from the old electrical wiring, has nothing to do with alumin[i]um. The letter "u" is not pronounced in words like "humor" and "color", and therefore is unnecessary, proving your redundance. The same holds true for "-ize". If we used "-ise", we would have to make too many hissing noises. And as for vocabulary, well, at least we have an understandable one. I rarely see bloody items, I'm not your "chap" ("chaps" here are protective pants for cowboys), and you certainly shouldn't be lecturing about "inefficient" forms of communication.

2. We don't care what you tell Microsoft. You can bomb them for all we care. And we don't speak "US English". We speak American English. Or did you think Canada had their own dialect? Canada? Something original? Yeah, right.

3. We already have that song here. We call it "God Bless America", and it's quite outdated. For that matter, so is "The Star-Spangled Banner", and it's hard to sing as well. I think we should just change it to "We Will Rock You".

4. Better yet, how about we celebrate nothing? July 4 is a bunch of useless pomp and circumstance anyway, all over a fight with some pansy-ass brits 230 years ago. That's not really worth celebrating, as anyone can kick a pansy-ass brit's ass.

5. How about we just shoot all the pansy-ass brits?

6. Don't lecture us about German cars. You've seen what has happened to Daimler-Benz since they merged with Chrysler. None of the fancy German engineering and quality has shown up in Chrysler products, but the suckage was quickly transferred the other way. We'll buy Japanese, thankyouverymuch. And metric sucks as bad as imperial units, so don't give me any of that crap, either. Invent a well-defined standard and we'll talk. And if you don't know what I mean by "well-defined", ponder this: What is a gram? What is a liter? What is a meter? What are any of them based on? Now how is that different from pounds, gallons, or feet?

7. Screw that crap. You can keep your expensive "petrol". We'll keep our cheap gasoline, thanks.

8. Chips are precisely that. Chips hacked off of a potato or other starchy vegetable. They can be baked or deep-fried. Perhaps what you call "chips" would be better suited to the name "slices of starch fried and drenched in nasty sour stuff". Also, everyone knows you should eat fries with ketchup, not mayo. The closest thing to what you describe is a Canadian specialty called "poutine", but that uses white gravy rather than mayo.

9. Waiters and waitresses can be trained however the restaurant owner wants to train them, but it won't guarantee that people will put up with poor service.

10. Beer is any beverage brewed with yeast and hops. I don't see how weak beer is "not beer". I also don't see how nasty, chewable beer is the "one true way", either.

11. James Bond is always the good guy. And don't tell me it's not "Hollywood", since it's released in the US first, and by MGM. That makes it fully "Hollywood". And in case you lost your Oxford English Dictionary, an "actor" is someone who pretends to be someone they're not for the purpose of storytelling and/or role-play. Hugh Laurie plays a doctor on TV and does a fine job of disguising his british accent. If anything is to be done, just don't watch movies with bad fake-british accents in them. It's that whole "capitalism" idea. Or would you rather revert to a feudal society where serfs are told what to do by the manor lord?

12. The only change needed for "american football" is that it needs a real (and distinct) name. "Soccer" is descriptive enough that nobody needs to ask "is that type-a soccer or type-b soccer?" It's just "soccer". It's

Re:Hello

[SETIGuy]

learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters

Where did you learn the Queen's english? "Doughnut" is how the lower classes spell "doughnought".

Re:Hello

[fithmo]

That's all fine, but do we have to make our women look like yours? *cringe*

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new snaggle-toothed overlords!

Re:Hello

[ncc74656]

More importantly the [f]rench created [f]rench Fries so maybe we should be calling them pommes frites instead

Actually, it was the Belgians (in the french-speaking part of the country) who invented them.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

This "revocation" comes out of a country where they are filming each square inch of the London and keep you in jail until you surrender your rar password?

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

Most US-dwellers would tell you they're "from [insert city or state here]". We don't use the -ian suffix much. We're all "from" somewhere.

Remember, each state in the USA is (on average) only slightly smaller than a nation in Europe, and is run as a separate sub-government with full self-authority (except secession from the union). That makes it entirely correct to refer to yourself as a resident of a state rather than the nation as a whole. It also gives more important information about the speaker, since the USA is a big place with a lot of smaller cultural segments that can be distinguished (usually) by regions, states, and even cities (even as far down as suburbs, but you'd have to be a local to know).

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

It's more of a Central American thing, really. Three well-liked local players are from that region. Perhaps you've heard of them. Albert Pujols and Juan Encarnacion are from the Dominican Republic. Yadier Molina is from Puerto Rico.

Yeah, I'm a Cardinals fan.

Re:Hello

[multipartmixed]

Miracle Whip is most certainly not a mayonnaise; in fact, it is specifically manufacturered and marketed as a low-fat mayonnaise alternative.

Hellmann's, on the other hand, IS mayonnaise.

Re:Hello

[multipartmixed]

Actually, we burned your Whitehouse to the ground in 1812, but other than that, basically left you alone.

Do you even know what the War of 1812 was about? Hint - it sure as hell was a war of independence!

I think I have finally figured out why GWB is the president of the USA. He stands among intellectual equals.

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

I'd love to see MLB absorb the Japanese league, as well as start up teams in other nations. One rule, though, should be that a team must represent a city or state/province/county not a nation.

BTW, who won the Japanese series this year? I'm a Cardinals fan, and I would love to see them play an international game. It's good to dream, I guess.

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

Don't you know? God speaks to Americans, not to those unholy brits.

Re:Hello

[multipartmixed]

1. The M-W dictionary doesn't count. Daniel Webster published his own dictionary, and randomly changed a bunch of stuff, just be different. And then you idiots adopted it, because none of you knew the right way to spell anyhow.

2. Canada most certainly *does* have unique English dialects. However, they are vanishing... as with any perfume lain next to a steaming pile of dog shit, Canada is also beginning to smell.

6. I find it interesting how even Americans know that everything they touch turns to crap. You are all like the inverse of King Midas. Yet, for some reason, you don't care. Why not? Oh yes, you touch yourselves.

Incidentally, a litre of water weighs one kilogram, and a cubic meter is one thousand litres. At least the units mean *something*.

10. Stout is an Irish invention. Ireland is not part of the UK, and never was. Except for a little piece, roughly analogous to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Oh, except that the Brits don't consider it to be a "Human-Rights-Free" zone.

12. I don't like baseball, but at least I'm smart enough to point out that the World Series is named for a newspaper, not the location of the teams. It's hard to blame a citizen of the US for not knowing this, however, as I understand nobody over there actually knows how to read anymore.

14. It is our plan to decriminalise murder until you solve your gun problem.

15. Camilla will become your next queen by royal appointment. She will be the Queen of the Fat Cows, and represent Ms. Average American.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

1. see "it's/its" and "your/you're" -- I blame public schools
2. Wal*Mart (the fact that it even exists) -- I blame the Mexicans...who else would work for what Wal*Mart pays
3. Windows -- Clearly Apple's fault
4. AOL -- Clearly Compuserve's fault
5. how fat our kids are -- ADM's fault for politicizing corn production and making cost-effective the use of corn as a sweetener
6. how fat WE are -- See above
7. the idea that everything has to be someone's fault and there's no such thing as an "accident" -- Not true
8. the popularity of reality shows -- Damn dutch (if they hadn't thought up Survivor, networks would have never figured out that reality TV gives them higher ratings for a fraction of the cost of sitcoms
9. the fact that we elected a retard to the Oval Office not once, but twice -- Clearly the fault of Florida and Ohio
10. our assumption that all Muslims are bomb-throwers -- probably has something to do with the 4-5 muslims that have thrown bombs at some point. Side note: I blame Tim McVeigh for the realization that all really-white-red-blooded-americans-with-military-s tyle-crewcuts are also bomb-throwing maniacs (though the rest of the world can't blame him for reaching the same conclusion)
11. D.A.R.E. -- This only failed because all them foreigners kept coming up with "studies" that "proved" that our banned substances can be used responsibly. Don't they realize that they're undermining our minority-control mechanism???
12. finding it acceptable that you need to pee in a cup to work at a video game retailer -- Think about it, would you really want a co-worker that is unable to pee in a cup??? You share a bathroom with your co-workers, and if they can't hit a cup, what are the chances they'll be able to hit a toilet???
13. the fact that W still has a 30% approval rating -- Sure it's not as cool as Q or X, but W is still a pretty cool letter. I know that the combination of U and E can be used to simulate the sound of W, but I don't see any problem with 30% of Americans belief that the simpler, 1-letter approach is preferable.

Re:Hello

[Deluge]

I think you'll find that any Canadian who's actually BEEN to the US (like me) would never consider Americans in general assholes. We are, as is the rest of the world, justifiably shocked by the rampant idiocy that's been a hallmark of your current gov't administration, but have no problems with the people themselves.

And from a personal perspective: I've done a bit of traveling the last few years, across Canada, the US, and Europe, and not only did I enjoy myself the most in the US I found the people to be, on average, the friendliest and most approachable there (I should explain that I stayed clear of the really big cities).

Re:Hello

[ISO Water]

Then get back to your burro Jose and get to work in the field harvesting the coffee beans so we can have our lattes here in the USA. In fact, if you do a good job, I'll give you a full day's pay as bonus...let's see...that's about 5 cents US, right?

Re:Hello

[misterpib]

Dumbass! They're called *Freedom* Fries... Also, we use ketchup, or perhaps ranch dressing...I don't know anyone who uses mayo on their fries.

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

I always went with Best Foods/Hellman's (it was strange to move to TX - which I have since left - and hear the jingle I've been hearing on the TV to sell best foods used to sell hellman's) until I discovered the trader joe's brand. It tastes pretty much the same and has less crap in it.

Re:Hello

[Deluge]

And as for vocabulary, well, at least we have an understandable one. I rarely see bloody items, I'm not your "chap" ("chaps" here are protective pants for cowboys), and you certainly shouldn't be lecturing about "inefficient" forms of communication.

You could just keep going with this one... How does 'fag' come to mean a cigarette in place of the usual 'smoke,' 'cig,' or even 'butt.' Why's a car's trunk called a boot? How did they arrive at calling the cargo compartment of a motor vehicle after a shoe? Isn't a 'bonnet' a type of hat, as opposed to an engine cover? And why, for the love of god, does a country which uses the metric system still insist on miles and gallons when talking about speed limits and fuel? And if that's not enough, your gallon isn't even the same as the US's (and the US has a bigger population, so they win).

Don't even get me started on the contrived lunacy of rhyming slang.

That said, I love hearing people speak with UK accents (all of'em) and I like all the strange words for things, just because the UK English sounds so much more colorful than the American version.

Re:Hello

[Punto]

Heh South America and Japan would take some offense

Being from one of the countries in south america, I have to say that I've never seen a baseball bat in person. I know we have a baseball staduim (I know this because there's a sign that says "baseball stadium" about 20km outside the city, on the way to the airport), but it's mostly used for football (see original post for the definition of that word).

I think most people here would take offence to your implication that they play such a sport, but of course I can't speak for the rest of the sub-continent.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but while lower UID's are apparently godly on Slashdot

You young whippersnappers!

I didn't need to log in to read Slashdot before they had user accounts, and I see no point in it nowadays, either. The *real* old school users are the ones who still post anonymously, just like everyone used to, back before these newfangled custom per-user accounts were invented.

Low "user ids": bah! Just because you were quick to jump on a bandwagon fad doesn't make you elite, it makes you lame. You'll see: in fifty years, the accounts will all go AC again! Then who will be right!

Me, that's who! Ha!

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's simply maths.

A, A' -> A, Aprime

Study their UIDs carefully. I think you'll agree they're entitled to the prime marks.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Whew! For a minute there I was worried. However, I then realised I live in Kansas. Thanks for that exception!

Re:Hello

[element-o.p.]

Whoa, there big fella...this uppity Yank didn't mean to ruffle any English feathers.

Like the post *I* responded to, my post was intended to be taken in jest, not literally, and certainly not to get anyone excited. My apologies if it was taken to be an American flexing of the muscles.

You are correct, the War of 1812 was *not* about independence as much as it was about trade embargoes and boundary skirmishes along the border with Canada.

However, it can be argued that there were some tensions between the two countries because England still tended to view us Yanks as Colonials rather than a sovereign nation, and therefore, the U.S. was asserting its independence to some degree in the War of 1812. And I'd hardly call boarding American ships, impressing sailors into service in the Royal Navy and confiscating cargo from our merchant ships--some of the grievances that led to the war--"basically leaving [us] alone."

Re:Hello

[tietokone-olmi]

I think you'll find that the correct expression is that North Korea called, they want to point nukes at us. They're also EVIL. EVIL like Venezuela.

Re:Hello

[zippthorne]

Yes, the war of 1812 was about a number of things. One very prominent problem however was british impressment of american sailors. If kidnapping, piracy, and forced labor aren't enough to justify a war, I don't know what is.

Re:Hello

[Paracelcus]

The Ministry of Truth says that inflation is low, when you filter out all the inflationary stuff like housing and energy! And that (we) created 380,000 new jobs, but forgot to mention that we lost over 200,000 during the same period and when we factor in the natural increase in population and all the jobs created by the Iraq war we see that we are hemmoraging jobs almost as fast as the 1930's.

The rediculous housing bubble has kept the economy artifically alive for years now, and you know that that bubble is showing signs of failure.

The Gummermint says (trust me, now please stand up against that wall and put on this blindfold).

Re:Hello

[Mercedes308]

I do believe something just went over your head.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

politeia! You idiot. Dear god, don't you know Ancient Greek? What kind of idiot are you? Jeez.

Re:Hello

[BlueStraggler]

And we don't speak "US English". We speak American English. Or did you think Canada had their own dialect? Canada? Something original? Yeah, right.

Take off you stupid gorby. If I hadn't gotten hosed on a flat and a two-six of rye last night, I'd put on my runners, toque, and mac, and roll you.

Re: Hello

[kchrist]

Unless it wasn't.

Re:Hello

[kchrist]

You might have a point if these two words were ever pronounced correctly in the US. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say "expresso" or "two cappuccinos".

Re:Hello

[ruffnsc]

1984 called....It wants it's joke back.

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

I hate raisins, and you couldn't "roll" me even if you weren't hung over, you boozy canuck.

See? I'm from Missouri and I can understand you just fine. Brits, on the other hand, are a different story.

Re:Hello

[AeroIllini]

...the fact that we elected a retard to the Oval Office not once, but twice...

This doesn't disturb me half as much as the fact that when it came time to select the retard to elect to office, we had such a wealth of retards to choose from.

Face it people, if the Democrats had been in power for the last six years, we still would have the TSA rooting around in our shorts looking for god knows what, and we'd still be sending troops to die in some godforsaken wilderness (although likely in Ethiopia or Syria or some other "humanitarian effort"). The press would still be unaccountable to the people and licking the balls of anyone in power just to get a few minutes of interview time. The Pentagon would still be forming a comittee to make sure that the "correct" set of "facts" are reported by the corporate-run, ball-licking ratings jockeys.

The Democrats and Republicans are locked in an epic battle for control of irrelevance, the third parties are all nutjobs and wackos, and the Fourth Estate is crumbling to the will of stockholders.

I'm sick of the whole charade. I want my country back.

Re:Hello

[Mattintosh]

Isn't a 'bonnet' a type of hat, as opposed to an engine cover?

To be fair, so is a "hood". And if you think about it, if the "bonnet" (a head covering) is on one end of the car, wouldn't the "boot" (a foot covering) be at the other end? Sure, it sounds odd to an American, but it does have a slight logic to it.

And to you brits that are going to come back and say "yeah! And where did 'trunk' come from? It's not logical!", well, in the early days, the ass-end of a car carried a wooden travel trunk. So plug it.

Re:Hello

[falcon5768]

Except it was actually the French who invented them... Maybe someone needs to brush up on who owned who at that point in history.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm I didn't know aluminium was invented...I always thought it was discovered.

If you want to call that stuff aluminum, then please also say: Plutonum, Einsteinum, Helum, Uranum, Iridum, Germanum...

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

1984 called... It wants it's news story back.

With any luck, these guys will be as feckless as Comical Ali, the Iraqi Minister of Information, who stayed busy informing the world of Iraqi successes as American were seen rolling by in the background.

Re:Hello

[geekoid]

"In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately."
yes, because the government is doing swimingly well.

Guess what. in 2 years ours will be gone, and you will still have no option for change.

Sucks to be you.

Yes, I know it was a joke, but coming for the UK and there current situation regarding the right of it citzen, over zealous law enforcment, and general global mamby pamby, it is ironic in the extreme for this to be coming from the UK.

Point in fact, if your government had the cojonies to stand up against are administration on the global front, Bush would be in an even tougher situation now, and it may have actually prevented certian events from happening.

BTW American cars are sonme of the best in the world.
Funny, in Europe 'German cars' are not considered the hieght of quality, espcially in countries that have poor roads.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

How about USians saying "I could care less" when they mean "I couldn't care less". That's just retarded.

Re:Hello

[Pentavirate]

It's you dumb bastards who can't tell the difference between two European countries that should get a clue ;-)

There's a difference between one European nation and another? ;-)

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the UK, as your constitution isn't worth toilet paper now, we're revocing your independance:

You pussies get to revoke shit when you buy the balls to shake off your own government's ubiquitous video surveillance. You sheep are Stalin's wettest dream.

You may be able to pull this kind of shit in Northern Ireland where you have a sufficient armed presence, but it won't work here. Nor eventually in Ireland.

Tiocfadh ar la!

15. Start pronouncing "Queen Camilla." She will be your next queen!

If we ever put a horse face on out dollar bill, it will be a Morgan horse, not the face of your future leader's whore.

Re:Hello

[Pentavirate]

When I lived in Venezuela for a couple of years, it actually stuck in people's craw that we called ourselves Americans because they claimed to be Americans too (Suda Americanos). They liked to call us North Americans (Norte Americanos) not seeming to worry about the difference between Canadians and people from the US. They'd get so confused when I told them that Mexico was part of North America too....

Re:Hello

[Pentavirate]

Straw Man. It was never claimed that Sadam had anything to do with 9/11. Only that he supported terrorism, which he clearly did (payoffs to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers), and ties to Al Qaeda which he did though not as strong as was put forth.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

We realised the error in "french fries" quite a while back. Get with Freedom Fries. They're whatever we make them to be.

Re:Hello

[Pentavirate]

Yeah, they call it the 0.113398093 kilogrammer.

Re:Hello

[Pentavirate]

You're obviously not from Venezula.

Re:Hello

[MajorCatastrophe]

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

I can't decide if this is just funny or scathingly close to the truth.

Re:Hello

[nasch]

Right now it kind of looks like the Koreans are the ones to buy cars from.

Did something happen to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru while I wasn't looking?

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

Did something happen to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru while I wasn't looking?

No. Toyota has always sucked - their engines are reliable but everything else is junk and they don't handle worth a crap. Ditto for Honda, except Toyotas are more reliable than they are. I like Subaru a lot, and in fact I drive one now, but they are quite spendy and while everyone should have AWD in my book, that AWD adds weight and friction, and decreases mileage. Nissan used to be my favorite but they went downhill when they got involved with Renault.

So no, nothing happened while you weren't looking unless you failed to note that Nissan and Renault are now bed-buddies.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

The letter 'U' will be reinstated in will learn to spell ....

Silly, fucking, pasty-faced, little limey piece of pompous shit can't even write a parseable sentence in his own language. I guess it's time we "liberated" the feckless, needledick bugfuckers again. Too bad they didn't learn anything from when we whipped their faggot-red, little asses in the 1700s, then pulled it out of the boiling oil in the 1940s.

One last chance, you mindless pussies.

Re:Hello

[faolan_devyn_aodfin]

I have to say that is a nice sig (yeah, I know it's an Orwell quote) and may unfortunately be typical of the future world we are all going to live in. The good news is that even though we may become a fascist nation, they are usually short lived despite the damage they do. Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Spain, and Portugal lasted less than fifteen years. Hopefully if our sails our set that way, then for us too it shall only be a short term trend.

Re:Hello

[Gridpoet]

Dammit, does this mean we're going to have to kick your ass all over again?

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Most American's can't spell.

The irony, it burns!

Re:Hello

[Atzanteol]

They aren't even pronounced the same in Florence and Sicily, and you're going to bitch about English speakers pronunciation? That happens. It's dialect.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Straw Man. It was never claimed that Sadam had anything to do with 9/11.
 
  Keep telling yourself that. Keep telling yourself.

Re:Hello

[marko123]

Tell me this. Are US TV series' "season finales" now called "season finals" because of the anti-french bullshit drummed up by the US govt? (Aussie govt is doing it with muslims now, it's the age-old political practise of scape-goating to take attention off the govt's mistakes.)

Re:Hello

[jamstar7]

Um, you mean the Dutch. One of my old roomies lived in the Netherlands for several years and swore by it. As for myself, I swore AT him. Good riddance.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

6. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good.

Lessee, crapologist. Test your brit car knowledge.

Who owns Rolls Royce?

Correct answer: VW owns the copmpany; BMW owns the name (since 1998).

Who owns Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover?

Correct answer: Ford.

You bloody fucks really know how to do cars.

Re:Hello

[defile]

3. You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

I *love* the Sex Pistols. Maybe this annexation by England thing isn't so bad after all...

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with mayonnaise but with vinegar.

Piss off, you arrogant little fucklet. When was the last time you heard the words "English" and "cuisine" used in the same sentence by anyone with taste buds?

While we're at it -- toast is to be served hot on a plate, not cold on a fucking tin rack.

Show a little respect for those who assured that you don't have to have potato pancakes and sauerkraut for breakfast.

Now run down to your gentlemen's club and rub your stubby willies with your little friends.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Typo. Yes, I do know ancient greek. Kalidasa.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering it was the court of Marie Antoinette who made the fry (and potato in general) internationally popular and socially acceptable, it's hardly ignorant or irrational to call it a French Fry.

Of course it isn't irrational to call them French Fries. But not because of some 'Marie Antoinette made French Fries internationally popular' fairy tale. I don't want to know where you pulled that piece of wisdom from...

Re:Hello

[NMerriam]

But not because of some 'Marie Antoinette made French Fries internationally popular' fairy tale. I don't want to know where you pulled that piece of wisdom from...

Um...pretty much any book that covers culinary history including the introduction of potatoes to Europe? The potato was feared poisonous, considered suitable only for the poor and desperate. Marie Antoinette made it fashionable.

Re:Hello

[archen]

I fail to see how this is ironic. I said that most Americans can't spell. I also cannot spell (although the reason for the typo was because I deleted some sentences and reordered words). It would have been ironic if I had said "I can spell, but most Amrican's can't" or something to that effect.

Or is irony finally taking its revenge on all you Alanis fans?

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

        learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters

Where did you learn the Queen's english? "Doughnut" is how the lower classes spell "doughnought".

Note that the idiot brits skip at least half the syllables, as in "kstrwad-nry" (two syllables) for "extraordinary" -- six syllables. Or "Chumly" for "Cholomdely". Fucking weirdos -- they're just as bad as the Frogs, who think it's useful to fail to pronounce the last letter of any word.

Re:Hello

[Gingernads]

Didn't Debbie Harry do some French kissing in the USA once?

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, you touch yourselves.

Better than you limey shits touching each other and little boys.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

(although likely in Ethiopia or Syria or some other "humanitarian effort").

Better to be fighting to stop genocide in Darfur than fighting in Iraq to enrich Halliburton, KBR and other Bush cronies. Fuck those bastards to the lowest pit of hell.

Re:Hello

[nasch]

Honda makes junk that doesn't handle worth a crap? I don't think I will take your post very seriously, having driven a couple of new Hondas (one of which I own).

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

Honda has two worthwhile vehicles, the S2000 and the NSX. The NSX is ~$85,000 and can have its ass handed to it by a $5000 used sports car with $5000 of upgrades. My 240SX already outhandles a stock NSX (I paid too much for the car initially and have less than $8000 into it total) and for about $3000 I could have more power, too. Unfortunately, while you can add power to the NSX, there is little you can do to tune the suspension without totally fucking up the handling. The S2000 is even more pointless; a turbo miata is better in every way except possibly appearance and that is a personal decision. Still, these are two credible vehicles created by Honda. Unfortunately, they are the only ones.

If you have one of the above cars, then yes, you have a Honda that handles. I don't know how reliable the S2000 is but the NSX seems to be one of the least reliable Hondas.

Honda also charges the most absurd prices for parts I've ever seen. There is no excuse for a remanufactured 100 amp alternator to cost $350. I shudder to think of what they cost new. My Mercedes alternator was cheaper, and buying one from the dealer would still have been cheaper than buying the reman one I bought for an Accord - again, for $350.

Also, again this does not apply to the above vehicles, but front wheel drive is for people who don't know how to drive. Period. Why Honda hasn't seen fit to sell AWD cars in the US, I have no idea; I've long said that I would buy an AWD Accord, although I changed my mind when I found the Subaru Impreza. I know there's been a small handful of AWD cars, including an accord wagon, but it's by far been the exception. I can't imagine that Honda would get it even half as right as Subaru anyway, and it would likely cost just as much as a Suby if not more, so there's no point anyway.

Nissan, for all its post-Renault faults, is still superior to Honda in every way. They handle better, they make more power per liter, they have more leg room, they have better styling. They even have higher-tech gadgets, like the CVT that emulates an eight speed sequential manual that's installed in the Skyline V35 350GT-8, and you can't beat Nissan's 3.5 liter V6 right now (at 300 horsepower stock without a turbo.) Their 2 liter NA has only 3 or 4hp more than Honda's, but it's still more :) and besides, Nissan typically sells cars with turbos. Looks like they're between them right now though, because apparently the 350Z is selling well enough without one. I am, however, looking forward to the moment when Nissan decides to destroy sales of the Corvette again (like they did with the 240Z in 1971, and with the 300ZX Turbo in 1984) with a turbo 350Z/Skyline V35.

But most importantly, Hondas are just poorly designed not just from a single standpoint, but from pretty much all standpoints. Aside from my Subaru which has everything shoehorned in on top of everything else to the point where I'd have to change my water pump to run the turbo piping from the WRX because it was redesigned for clearance, Honda is pretty much the most difficult import to work on, with the least amount of access space. I've worked on Toyotas, Mazdas, Hondas, Nissans, and of course all the domestics, and Honda is by far the worst. In fact there's about twice as much clearance room under the hood of a Geo Metro (subcompact) as there is in a Honda Accord (compact) and I'm not even talking V6 models here.

Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinion, and I doubt anything I say will change it, but the only advantages hondas have is that they are small and light, and reducing weight helps you go fast. These days everyone and their mother has variable valve timing, and usually on both intake and exhaust except in the case of V8s which generally only have it on the intake, so the days when Honda had superior technology are long gone. Even their hybrid technology has been surpassed by Toyota's.

Toyota is a sad joke for reasons similar to Honda, except the cars are built even more cheaply tha

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, ...

Read some history, you standard limey pouf -- you didn't give it to us. We took it by force and left you pumping your dicks about ruling the waves and other fairy tales. Then we made the mistake of fishing your asses out in the 40s. We should have left you to your own devices so you could today be bitching about German orthography.

Go pimp your infantile manifesto in Canada or some other place where it might sell.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

7. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling "gasoline")-roughly $6/US gallon.

Sure, just as soon as we get womb to tomb medical care like you have for our taxes, not pissing it away into some black hole general fund.

Otherwise, shove that load of "paraffin" up your ass and torch it off.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between one European nation and another? ;-)

Yep -- they have big fucked-up nations and little fucked-up nations. Size does matter after all.

Re:Hello

[nasch]

Also, again this does not apply to the above vehicles, but front wheel drive is for people who don't know how to drive. Period.

For a very strange definition of "drive", yes. Clearly your criteria are centered primarily around performance, which is generally not important to American drivers as long as the car accelerates fast enough. I love performance too, but I can also recognize that my minivan has appropriate levels of performance (including handling) for its mission. Physics prevents it from competing with Miatas and RX-8s (forgot to mention Mazda before!) and that's OK.

As far as working on them, I don't care and most other people don't either because we don't work on our cars. Honda is not stupid; they know this and so don't bother trying to make the cars easy for their owners to work on - neither does much of anybody else I'm guessing.

Now for quality. I would be interested if you have sources indicating that Toyota and Honda vehicles have many more problems per vehicle, per mile, or per vehicle mile over a long time period such as ten years, compared to other makes. You seem to indicate that this is the case though I'm not sure who you're holding up as the quality standard. Kia?

Design! You mentioned the word and said Honda's stupid in all respects, but then all you talked about was room under the hood. What about all the other aspects of design? Honda's styling is intentionally bland, which I can understand turning you off, but otherwise I've found them very good at design. Everything inside the vehicle is pleasant to look at, highly intuitive and very easy to use. What's so bad about that?

Nissan. I like Nissan too, and I've been thinking about the Altima ever since the 2002 redesign (which of course you would shun because it's FWD :-) ). The timing and vehicle needs have so far not been right for that car, though. The Infiniti G35 also looks like a great car for a fire sale price compared to the German competition. At this point rather than getting anything like a GT-R or Corvette I would rather have a motorcycle, with a better power-to-weight ratio for 15% of the money (or something like that).

If I left something out that I should have talked about let me know.

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

For a very strange definition of "drive", yes. Clearly your criteria are centered primarily around performance, which is generally not important to American drivers as long as the car accelerates fast enough. I love performance too, but I can also recognize that my minivan has appropriate levels of performance (including handling) for its mission. Physics prevents it from competing with Miatas and RX-8s (forgot to mention Mazda before!) and that's OK.

Performance is what differentiates cars, whether it's in handling or acceleration. Minivans have relative performance which should be considered. At the end of the day the performance always matters, because the better it is, the less stressful driving will be.

As far as working on them, I don't care and most other people don't either because we don't work on our cars. Honda is not stupid; they know this and so don't bother trying to make the cars easy for their owners to work on - neither does much of anybody else I'm guessing.

The harder it is to work on, the more it costs to have it worked on, because things take longer. It's like a three or four hour job tops to do a heater core on my Nissan 240SX. It takes about 12 to 16 hours to do the same job on your average 3/4 ton van, because of the design of the vehicle and where they put the thing. At $80/hr that's a pretty major difference, so you should care.

Design! You mentioned the word and said Honda's stupid in all respects, but then all you talked about was room under the hood. What about all the other aspects of design? Honda's styling is intentionally bland, which I can understand turning you off, but otherwise I've found them very good at design. Everything inside the vehicle is pleasant to look at, highly intuitive and very easy to use. What's so bad about that?

What's bad is that most of their cars are stunningly non-ergonomic, and actually their controls are not that hot. Look at Nissan or even Subaru for superior examples of being able to reach everything without stretching. Honda and Toyota both lack headroom AND legroom; Nissan usually has legroom although I admit that has gone downhill; Subaru has headroom. Also many of their parts are actually heavier than they need to be (look at the suspension) and in general they do not use the best techniques for handling. Probably the only FWD car that Honda makes that handles is the RSX, it's the only one without a horrendous understeer problem.

The Infiniti G35 also looks like a great car for a fire sale price compared to the German competition.

AKA the Nissan Skyline V35 over in Japan. Over there you can get it in AWD with a 2.5 liter only; here we got an AWD model with the 3.5 liter and a huge price tag. Over there they get the new CVT that emulates an 8 speed sequential manual as an option for the V35 350GT (the 350GT-8 model.)

At this point rather than getting anything like a GT-R or Corvette I would rather have a motorcycle, with a better power-to-weight ratio for 15% of the money (or something like that).

I've been going back and forth on that but it's too easy to get killed on a motorcycle even when you're driving paranoid; cars are a hell of a lot safer. Besides, I've passed sportbikes aplenty on the twisties in my lowered 240SX (we have this road over Mt. St. Helena that actually has passing lanes while the road is turning) and I've been stuck behind a ton of superbikes in it too - sad thing is, my car weighs several times as much as a bike (~2700lb vs. ~400lb) and has only 155bhp, which is not much more than a superbike, and in some cases, actually less. The difference? I can drift. :)

Re:Hello

[nasch]

Performance is what differentiates cars, whether it's in handling or acceleration. Minivans have relative performance which should be considered. At the end of the day the performance always matters, because the better it is, the less stressful driving will be.

I think you're revealing your bias. Nothing wrong with a bias of course, as long as your recognize it as such. Performance is definitely not the only thing that differentiates cars, and if it were that would be the only thing you would see in car commercials. At the end of the day all that matters is whether the performance is good enough for the customer. For some people that's a Ford Fusion. For others it's a 911 Turbo. And driving a high-performance car will not be any less stressful for someone who never makes use of that performance anyway.

The harder it is to work on, the more it costs to have it worked on, because things take longer. It's like a three or four hour job tops to do a heater core on my Nissan 240SX. It takes about 12 to 16 hours to do the same job on your average 3/4 ton van, because of the design of the vehicle and where they put the thing. At $80/hr that's a pretty major difference, so you should care.

That may be true, but they don't charge you based on how long it takes, but rather how long a book says it takes. Do the books have different rates for different models? I don't know.

What's bad is that most of their cars are stunningly non-ergonomic, and actually their controls are not that hot. Look at Nissan or even Subaru for superior examples of being able to reach everything without stretching.

I own a Subaru and a Honda, and I prefer the secondary controls and layout in the Honda.

I've been going back and forth on that but it's too easy to get killed on a motorcycle even when you're driving paranoid; cars are a hell of a lot safer.

Yeah, it's true. I drove a scooter for a couple of weeks, and never had any kind of incident where I even wanted to honk the horn at someone. Was I just lucky? I don't know, maybe. But it convinced me that if I'm in a situation where I can drive on the right kind of roads it would be worth it.

Besides, I've passed sportbikes aplenty on the twisties in my lowered 240SX (we have this road over Mt. St. Helena that actually has passing lanes while the road is turning) and I've been stuck behind a ton of superbikes in it too - sad thing is, my car weighs several times as much as a bike (~2700lb vs. ~400lb) and has only 155bhp, which is not much more than a superbike, and in some cases, actually less. The difference? I can drift. :)

Well you can drift on a motorcycle too, but you're more likely to have to change your pants afterward. :-) This may be what you're getting at, but on a mountain road the motorcyclist:

• must be willing and able to lean the bike way over to go fast in the twisties
• there could be sand and other crap on the road
• could die if they mess up badly and could go to the hospital for even a small mistake

None of that is a problem for a car, or not as much of a problem. Even if the bike is capable of cornering harder than your car, the driver may not be.

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

At the end of the day all that matters is whether the performance is good enough for the customer. For some people that's a Ford Fusion. For others it's a 911 Turbo. And driving a high-performance car will not be any less stressful for someone who never makes use of that performance anyway.

I'm not saying it has to go faster. That's not what performance means. What it means it that it does well the things it's supposed to do.

That may be true, but they don't charge you based on how long it takes, but rather how long a book says it takes. Do the books have different rates for different models? I don't know.

They most certainly do. Such guides (I believe that Chek-Chart sells a labor guide; Mitchell sells a labor guide; it's also in both Mitchell and Alldata online systems) are pretty good indicators of relative difficulty - you can look up a repair on a car you've done it on, then look it up on the one you're doing on, and decide if you even want to get involved :) I don't have one though; what I did get was a year-old Chek-Chart Car Care Guide. This tells you a TON of useful tidbits on pretty much every car made up to the point where it comes out, including all the capacities, a ton of torque specs, which engines came in the cars, an engine recognition guide (based on to-scale silhouettes, which is useful for performance types looking for potential engine swaps) and a bunch of other goodies.

Well you can drift on a motorcycle too, but you're more likely to have to change your pants afterward. :-) This may be what you're getting at

You're more likely to have to change your ass afterward, you mean. It only takes one rock and not a particularly large one in the wrong place to get you dead. It doesn't even take that - I know a guy who almost got killed by a friend of his (!) crossing into his lane and hitting him head-on. Around where I live, I pretty much have to drive with my arm out the window if I'm going to flip off everyone who's a foot into my lane... Of course that kind of stuff happens whether you're going fast or not, which is an excellent reason not to ride a motorcycle on the street. I would very much like to get a dirt bike, though.

Re:Hello

[nasch]

I'm not saying it has to go faster. That's not what performance means. What it means it that it does well the things it's supposed to do.

I don't think that's a standard definition. For example, an F350 does what it's supposed to do very well, but I don't think many people would claim it has excellent performance.

You're more likely to have to change your ass afterward, you mean. It only takes one rock and not a particularly large one in the wrong place to get you dead.

I've seen motorcycle road races where a driver accidentally hangs the back of the back out and then brings it back in without falling off. It can be done, it just takes more skill than most riders have. As for getting dead, it mostly depends on traffic, ie luck. If you high-side, you're likely to get hurt but not dead unless you get hit by a car, or go over a cliff or other really bad luck. If you low-side you'll probably be fine unless you get hit by the aforementioned car. This all assumes you have full protective gear of course, otherwise all bets are off.

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

I don't think that's a standard definition. For example, an F350 does what it's supposed to do very well, but I don't think many people would claim it has excellent performance.

On the contrary. Ford themselves will tell you it has excellent towing performance or something like that. It's not always about power, or even handling.

This all assumes you have full protective gear of course, otherwise all bets are off.

Oh, absolutely - but you can still break your neck while you're wearing full leathers with armor and a full-face helmet. Not that you can't break your neck in a car, but the concept of "full protective gear" in a car actually goes quite a bit further, and the example I want to give first is the helmet strap - which can help save the aforementioned neck. Not that we don't all know already that motorcycles are more dangerous to ride than cars to drive.

Re:Hello

[nasch]

On the contrary. Ford themselves will tell you it has excellent towing performance or something like that. It's not always about power, or even handling.

Of course you can modify the word for more specificity - the Scion xB has good audio performance. The Wrangler has good off-road performance. The Odyssey has good passenger-carrying performance. But all on its own with no modifiers, "performance" means something in particular, and it's something pickups do badly and sports cars do well. As for motorcycles, BMW makes (made?) a scooter type thing that was shaped like a hoop - it had a roof panel deal that went all the way around the top. I'm not sure how well it protected the driver, but it at least looked really stupid. :-)

Re:Hello

[drinkypoo]

But all on its own with no modifiers, "performance" means something in particular, and it's something pickups do badly and sports cars do well.

I continue to disagree with you. Performance does not mean something in particular. I think we can all agree that my 240SX with race suspension is a performance automobile; especially after I get done passing people on the right in the twisties because they won't let me use the left lane. I've passed cars with literally three times my horsepower that couldn't keep up with my because they didn't have the handling and couldn't stay on the road at my speeds.

Meanwhile you can take a 1960s pickup with a 454, tweak the suspension a little bit, and beat most modern sports cars off the line, to 60mph, to 100mph, to the quarter mile...

Performance always must be qualified.

Re:Hello

[nasch]

Performance always must be qualified.

Are you still saying that "performance" could mean towing capacity, or off-road ability, or absolutely anything that a vehicle could be good at? Or just that there are different facets to performance, and one vehicle could excel at one aspect of it but not at another? Because I think the former is obviously false, and the latter obviously true.

Re:Hello

[cas2000]

the correct term is "seppo" or "septic" (from "septic tank", rhyming slang for "Yank").

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't even get me started on the contrived lunacy of rhyming slang.

It's their equivalent of our idiotic "boontling".

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Belgians also put mayo on their frites.

Just like the silly asses who use mayo instead of melted butter on their artichokes, then scrape them off with their top teeth insted of their bottom teeth. Sheesh.

Those from Chicago should look up what an artichoke is. It was fun explaining them to the last Chicagoan I met.

Well, obviously...

[Kell Bengal]

Well, obviously this is a blatant attempt to . Anyone can see that!

Re:Well, obviously...

[Kell Bengal]

Ahem... That was supposed to read: "Well, obviously this is a blatant attempt to -edit- bring the truth to the people about the fair and democratic actions of the legally elected administration of the United States of America -edit-, anyone can see that!" Erf... obviously my previous message was censored! How bizarre!! Looks like they ARE ensuring the truth is told! Note to self: preview posts...

Re:Well, obviously...

[Lord Bitman]

TYHAN YUO FIR EXPALNTING JOEK@@!

Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:Well, obviously...

[Kell Bengal]

Actually, it was not an attempt to explain the joke, per se. My original joke was supposed to have a patriotic substituted message, but I foolishly deliniated the edited text by angle-brackets. The second post is how the joke ought to have looked, but as has been mentioned, the accidental text reads just as well as the original. Mental note: review posts.

In related news

[Dex1337]

In related news, CmdTaco has been taken prisoner today

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what it'll take for people to wake up?

It's getting pretty insanely ridiculous. Our government runs military detention camps in other totalitarian regimes, simply to skirt the law requiring trials in America. Congress has allowed our spy agencies to watch American citizens without probable cause. The Executive branch has condoned and practiced torture of untried suspects -- torture to any person with senses intact, which the perpetrators would never submit to themselves -- and half of the American public has gladly cheered them on.

Now we've suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and given the President the power to deploy troops domestically. Is it really any surprise there are agencies paid with our tax money to spread pro-government propaganda?

The only thing surprising is that so many Americans are still looking up with worshipful puppy eyes -- at the leaders who pretend to protect them while stealing their wealth, liberty, and lives.

Re:In related news

[Yvanhoe]

For me the red line has been crossed in 2003 when I read two report of the same news, one from France, saying "Kofi Anna has qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal" and the second, from MSNBC, saying "Kofi Anna has (wrongly) qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal"

Re:In related news

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The only thing surprising is that so many Americans are still looking up with worshipful puppy eyes -- at the leaders who pretend to protect them while stealing their wealth, liberty, and lives.

Here's something everyone seems to forget when authoritarianism comes up in discussion.

Most people did quite well out of facism.

OK, if you were jewish, communist, an academic, homesexual or some otehr minority, you probably got a raw deal out of a facist state. But for most people, life in a facist state was actually quite pleasant. All those parades and rallies were certainly entertaining, and the money being made from quasi-to-full slave labour kept most people in relative luxury. 1930's germany was way ahead of most other countries economically. They had TV on par with 1950s america!

The sad fact is, most people can put a price on their freedom; $0.00. As such , they are more than happy to trade it off for material or secuity benefits. Facism doesn't happen by accident. It happens because people vote for it to happen.

Re:In related news

[Gablar]

The only thing surprising is that so many Americans are still looking up with worshipful puppy eyes -- at the leaders who pretend to protect them while stealing their wealth, liberty, and lives

see, this is where your wrong. Most americans have not lost wealth, the loss of liberty is not obvious, and the lost of lives are not american. The regime in power wont use any of these powers unless there is a threat. What real threat does the "bush" regime faces?

none

they have efectivly silenced most dangerous oposition in the United States, and they know that if they use their powers too often, all its going to happen is creating new enemies. They want power, but they also want stability. The only way they get stability is if the economy is good and the citizens are relatively happy.

while it's true that there is a segment of the population that knows of the potential for abuse and openly speak against it, its not a real threat for the regime. We herre writing angrily about the government are too confortable in our jobs to do anything real about it. Even if we wanted to do something about it, because they have had monitoring systems in place for so long, they probably will know exactly how to take you down.

To those not in the know, it doesnt matter who wins the next elections, they are still in power.

Re:In related news

[slowdive1979]

oh please, quit being so melodramatic. i encourage any organization to try to ensure the media (whether MSNBC, fox news, or a blogger) is putting out correct information and to state their viewpoint if they disagree. when google wants to run queries in real time to attest to the truth of a politician's statements, everyone is in favor of stopping the liars. when it is the government who wants to correct false claims in the media, suddenly they are evil. simply because the government disagrees with a story, it does not mean you must believe what they say. this just gives them a chance to find these stories before false information results in riots and killing. considering how easy it is for anyone (government or otherwise) to lie, it makes sense that they are trying to see who may be making things up so that they can publish their point of view.

another thing to consider is that the stories the mainstream media gives you are not the real stories from iraq. how often do you hear about military units building schools or local governments restoring infrastructure? it happens, but you don't hear about it. how often do you hear about the latest bombing in baghdad? every time - and the terrorists know that a lot of the media like to stay in their hotels and report from there. that's why bombs typically go off just in time to make the morning news on the east coast. i guess it's okay for terrorists to take advantage of the media, but not okay for the pentagon to try and correct false stories.

flame on, ACs.

Re:In related news

[artecco]

....the wake up call went online on Oktober 31th...the US people begin to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am Eastern time, November 12th. In a panic, the government try to pull the plug.....

Re:In related news

[Himring]

[Yes, I've brought this up before]

Pardon me for being incensed, but where were you people when the Reeves family was slaughtered on Ruby Ridge? Sure, a guy who was a white, racist bigot, living in the mountains -- away from everyone where a bigot should be -- who was having charges brought against him, unproven charges. The response of -- not the local or state law enforcement agencies, but of the federal government -- was to go in to his domain, para-military style. The apex of the event was when his wife, carrying their infant, had her head blown off. What about that family's rights? It took a very long time for any justice to remotely happen, and no one from the government served any time for those murders.

Yes, I'm conservative, but I'm independent in my politics, and the left simply was quiet, or jumped on the band-wagon, in the whole Ruby Ridge affair. There were either crickets from the left as the agencies under their control slaughtered this family and/or there was a basic, "well, he had it coming. He was a bigot after all."

Had it not been a white family, the left would have risen up in arms.

I appreciate the defense to freedom and human rights you offer, but I am appalled at the existence of an overt double-standard....

Freedom is freedom and human rights are human rights. When you valiantly defend the rights of your enemy as well as you would defend your own, then you have arrived.... (queue Voltaire).

Re:In related news

[bri2000]

1930's germany was way ahead of most other countries economically.

A lot of people think that and it really isn't true. I've just finished the excellent "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze which, amongst other things, tackles this myth. Certainly a few well connected industrialists (especially those in steel, coal and synthetic chemistry) did all right (although not as well as some people believe - there were swingeing taxes on "excess" corporate profits made from government contracts) but the ordinary Germans did not see much benefit. They were certainly better off than they were in the twenties, but that's not saying much, and, the book argues, as the European economy picked up the Nazis ensured that all the growth in the German economy was concentrated on increased military production rather than consumer goods. This was exacerbated by Germany's balance of payments problems which led to the banning of all non-essential (i.e. non-military) goods. There was, therefore, very little for Germans to buy, even if they were (for example) working in the armaments industry and notionally had more money (to avoid another Inflation saving was strongly encouraged or mandated, these saving were used to buy German government bonds and that, ultimately, is how the Nazi state financed a huge increase in state spending without raising taxes).

Also I'd be interested to know where you got the information about Nazi TV as I've never heard that before. Obviously I'm familiar with Goebbels "Peoples Radio" project which was designed to provide Germans with cheap, mass produced radios in order to better enable them to listen to Nazi propaganda and, even then, the cost of these radios was still more than the average family's monthly disposable income. Given the average German family's inability to afford even a radio in the 30s I'd always assumed there were, essentially, no TVs.

Re:In related news

[odourpreventer]

Most americans have not lost wealth

I call BS on this one. Many have lost wealth, or to be more precise, have even less to go around. And they are losing more for each day.

the economy is good

But it is not. The US economy is in very, very bad shape. Even republicans admit this.

Re:In related news

[Foggerty]

You're quite right - taken of itself this isn't a huge deal outside of a third world dictatorship.

But coming in after the Patriot Acts One and Two, after suspension of right to trial, waltzing in after allowing for the extradition of people (including American citizens) to 'detention camps' in countries that happen to have lax laws when its comes to torture, coming in after Bush and his whole fucking government lied through their teeth about the reasons for the illegal invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, bouncing along after stolen elections, skipping along to the the tune of "warrentless wiretapping" and getting down to the beat of "corporate kickbacks for Bush's buddies" - ya just gotta sit back and wonder if maybe its symptomatic of a government gone horribly wrong.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

I've brought up the Ruby Ridge killings numerous times, along with Waco, Kent State, and Jackson State. Never once have I found people who identify themselves as "liberals" to be anything but appalled at what happened in each of those cases.

But, of course, go ahead and blame the "left" for not caring about anyone but white people, but be sure you put some disingenuous crap in there about how you're actually "an independent" so your opinion isn't driven by ideology. Oh! Liberals! Bogeyman! BOO!

It's not as if every characterization of Ruby Ridge has focused on him being a quasi-militant racist who shot back at the feds, or that every characterization of Waco has focused on them being a "cult" armed to the teeth, led by a Jim-Jones-style personality. Noooo, it's all a matter of dirty liberals who just don't care about the white people. Couldn't possibly be that information on the subject commonly highlights all the bad traits of the people involved so as to obscure the fact that in both recent massacres the tactics used were nothing more than unjustifiably heavy-handed brutality.

Freedom is freedom and human rights are human rights. When you valiantly defend the rights of your enemy as well as you would defend your own, then you have arrived.... (queue Voltaire).

Speaking of right v left and their respect for people's human rights in the face of violence and oppression, I'll now direct you to FreeRepublic.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com, WorldNetDaily, and Drudge Report, all hardcore right-wing sites that all support, as a function of their userbase:

+ The indiscrimanant dehumanization and slander of muslims
+ Torture for anyone not an American citizen
+ The continued bombing and sweeper campaigns in Iraq that have killed tens of thousands of innocent people directly, and hundreds of thousands indirectly.

Not to mention that it's not entirely uncommon to see them soiling themselves over the thought of running through the streets randomly shooting "lefties" in all-out civil war.

But, yea, okay. Damn left-wingers. What the hell's wrong with those nuts anyway?

Oh, and of course, instead of posting all this I could have even just merely pointed out that if nobody responded to the attacks with outrage, where the hell were the right-wingers at the time? Or do people suddenly go "left" just in time to do (or don't do) something that upsets you?

If your post had been inspired by anything but ideological brain trash you would have just pointed out that there was no significant outcry at all, from anybody, and that the most likely cause had to do with apathy of the public in general.

But don't mind me. You're an independent thinker. You said so, so it must be true.

Re:In related news

[Stooshie]

they have efectivly silenced most dangerous oposition in the United States

Hmm, silencing the opposition. Why does that ring teriffying bells.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people think that and it really isn't true. I've just finished the excellent "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze which, amongst other things, tackles this myth. Certainly a few well connected industrialists (especially those in steel, coal and synthetic chemistry) did all right (although not as well as some people believe - there were swingeing taxes on "excess" corporate profits made from government contracts) but the ordinary Germans did not see much benefit.

Yup, pretty much the case today in the good ol' US of A.

This was exacerbated by Germany's balance of payments problems which led to the banning of all non-essential (i.e. non-military) goods. There was, therefore, very little for Germans to buy, even if they were (for example) working in the armaments industry and notionally had more money (to avoid another Inflation saving was strongly encouraged or mandated, these saving were used to buy German government bonds and that, ultimately, is how the Nazi state financed a huge increase in state spending without raising taxes).

Aha!
[This is where I block all attempts at equating the USA today with Nazi Germany]

The difference between the USA today and Germany then is that we've outsourced manufacturing of low-cost goods to China and are employing workers at below living wages to sell those goods to us. If the Mr Wall had been around in 1930's Germany, things might have gone differently. Also, we have to again thank the Chinese for buying enough of our bonds to prop up our deficit so that our balance of payment problem is defered for another 4 years or so.

Re:In related news

[megaditto]

You know who's paying for Iraq war? China, that's who.

Of course, some day we might need to pay them back.

Re:In related news

[Himring]

It's not as if every characterization of Ruby Ridge has focused on him being a quasi-militant racist who shot back at the feds, or that every characterization of Waco has focused on them being a "cult" armed to the teeth, led by a Jim-Jones-style personality.

Thank you for proving my point. The left always points out how errored the parties were under attack in their ideology. You see, you cannot look at Ruby Ridge objectively. You simply, must, see it, first, as someone you disagree with. Oh, sure, you then go into a "I think that was wrong to ... but...." That "but" is where you are failing. With freedom, there is no "but."

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

Also I'd be interested to know where you got the information about Nazi TV as I've never heard that before. Obviously I'm familiar with Goebbels "Peoples Radio" project which was designed to provide Germans with cheap, mass produced radios in order to better enable them to listen to Nazi propaganda and, even then, the cost of these radios was still more than the average family's monthly disposable income. Given the average German family's inability to afford even a radio in the 30s I'd always assumed there were, essentially, no TVs.

He's probably refering to the first regular TV channel in the world, that started broadcasting in 1934 in Berlin, and, among other things, broadcasted the 1936 Olympics. Whether it was technologically comparable to what some years later appeared in other countries I don't know. And it was definitely not widely available. From what I've read, there were TV salons (or however you want to call that), and surely hardly anyone had a private TV. There were probably a few thousand TVs altogether.

Very short English info is here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernsehsender_Paul_Ni pkow
The German articel has more information, if that is of any help: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernsehsender_Paul_Ni pkow

Re:In related news

[NormalVisual]

That was Randy Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, not someone named Reeves.

As far as I'm concerned, there's been almost nothing remotely resembling justice that's come out of all that. This whole thing started because a damn judge let stand an arrest warrant for Weaver's failure to appear in court on a bogus weapons charge after being informed the summons sent to Weaver had the wrong date on it.

The only positive thing to come out of that was that US Marshal William Degan paid with his life for his part in the murder of Sam Weaver, so at least that's one jack-booted thug that is no longer a danger to the American people.

Re:In related news

[tbannist]

The only way they get stability is if the economy is good and the citizens are relatively happy.

It's not and they aren't. Hence the reason for relaxing the prohibitions on martial law.

1) The U.S. economy has been lousy since Bush took over, the only growth sector over the last 6 years has been health care. And according to the Canadian economic forcasts, the health care sector may no longer be capable of keeping the rest of the U.S. economy afloat, we're expecting the a recession in the U.S. over the coming year. It's important to us, because when you guys do poorly, we have to find someone else to trade with.

2) The citizens are not relatively happy, in fact, it'd be more accurate to say the citizens are relatively unhappy, they just don't like the opposition much more than the current government. The election could have a huge impact on the States depending on what happens. But make no mistake support for the government is on a slow slide and there's little hope of reversing the trend without major policy changes.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

>> the only growth sector over the last 6 years

Did you just miss the post 9/11 low interest rates housing boom, the greatest bubble in history?

Re:In related news

[Himring]

I stand corrected on Weaver. Thanks.

Re:In related news

[tbannist]

Sorry, you are correct, I misspoke. I didn't mean to write that the only growth sector was health care, I meant the write that economy was entirely stagnant without the healthcare sector. Or in other words, the net growth of the economy over the last 6 years is directly attributable to the health care sector.

It should be obvious then, that with the end of the housing bubble, comes the likely hood of a major recession.

Re:In related news

[Himring]

From what I remember, another guy had been arrested for something unrelated to Weaver. In an attempt to deflect his own criminal problems, he claimed -- I believe it was never proven or even a lie -- that Weaver sold him an illegal sawed-off shotgun. The warrant was issued for Weaver's arrest as you stated, with a wrong date. Weaver had apparently made statements -- alleged -- not to mess with him. Fact is, just about everything they had on Weaver was alleged, charged, etc. Think about that. What's the difference in that and the people being held by the U.S. military now?

The feds show up at his place armed to the teeth. The murder his son and his wife -- carrying their infant and simply standing, looking out the back door of the house. The federal agent who pulled the trigger on the high-powered rifle, with scope, had to clearly see he was murdering a mother with infant.

The government vehemently defended their actions before congress. I saw some of the hearings. It took a fancy/shmancy trial attorney wearing suade leather to make the courts understand what had happened.

And, yes, I watched tv, the news, round-table discussions and, yes, the left was up-in-arms about how Weaver had it coming. No mention of civil rights, constitution, human rights, name it. Only the right seemed to be aware of those issues then.

Yes, it's wrong now and yes, it was wrong then and, guess what, whoever it may be tomorrow or next year or next decade -- no matter what belief or color or creed ... it'll be wrong then too....

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll await your apology. I imagine I'll be waiting a long time.

No part of my post supports anything you just implied about my position on Waco and Ruby Ridge, and every portion of my post clearly and completely contradicts your implications. The portion you quoted is an attack on the dishonest way in which the media portrayed the people who were attacked, included in order to provide an alternative explanation for why people at the time chose not to stand up and register outrage over the incident. Even if you failed to understand that through an honest misinterpretation, nothing in any part of what you quoted supports any assertion that those characterizations of the victims are mine, or that I believe and support them.

Thank you for proving MY point that nothing in your meandering rant served any point by to bolster "anti-liberal sentiment" contrary to your obviously dishonest attempt to portray yourself as a neutral harbinger of some hidden truth.

If you're going to be a partisan hack, be honest about it please.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

There were either crickets from the left as the agencies under their control slaughtered this family and/or there was a basic, "well, he had it coming. He was a bigot after all."

Oy, oy. Quite frankly, you don't have a clue about what you're talking about. Ruby Ridge is repeated frequently on the left as an example of why to fear increased police powers. You just have to (much like on the right) step out of the comfortably ignorant mainstream. It wasn't the left that ignored Ruby Ridge -- it was the whole of America.

Personally, I've always used Ruby Ridge as a good example of why the 2nd Amendment is obsolete. Private firearm ownership is no real check and balance on government. Ruby Ridge and Waco solidified that in my mind. All private firearm ownership buys us is more gun violence while the people trundle mutely behind our leadership, leaving those who take a stand to stand and die alone.

Re:In related news

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>when it is the government who wants to correct false claims in the media,

Why, exactly, do you think that's what they want to do?

We already have factcheck.org for that.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

The really funny thing is that you guys still think you're going to have elections soon. How cute.

Re:In related news

[Himring]

You leave out the possibility of all gun owners assembling, organizing and revolting, together....

Re:In related news

[jafac]

The German citizens of Berlin did quite well under the fascist state.

That is - until their power-hungry dictator overextended their military in a foolish "take over the world" scheme, and got his ass kicked by the Soviets, who rolled into downtown Berlin with tanks and reduced the city to rubble.

My grandmother-in-law was a wealthy business owner in Berlin at that time, had several homes, servants, two Mercedes, the works. She fled Berlin, and lost everything (including her husband and brothers) her family had built up over many generations of hard work. My father-in-law is Sicilian (poor farmers though), and his family also fled to America after the fascists got their village burned to the ground.

Any economic benefits to fascism are pretty much temporary. Because fascism comes from hubris. And hubris leads to ruin, eventually. (That's why Franklin called it "Temporary Security").

Fascism is fine and dandy - but if you want sustainable prosperity, most of Europe is already working in that direction. They learned this lesson the hard way after two world wars.

Too bad we Americans can't be smarter about this. Especially since so many of us left Europe to get away from this crap.

Re:In related news

[DavidTC]

And it's possibly relevant to note that the healthcare sector expanded makework. It didn't actually provide more medical care to anyone. Instead, it worked at filling out more paperwork and providing less care while costs and industry employment continued to rise.

Hardly something to be happy about, and certainly not something to base an economy on.

Re:In related news

[jafac]

Obviously I'm familiar with Goebbels "Peoples Radio" project which was designed to provide Germans with cheap, mass produced radios in order to better enable them to listen to Nazi propaganda and, even then, the cost of these radios was still more than the average family's monthly disposable income.

Heh, sounds similar to Dr. Porsche's "Peoples Car" (ie. Volkswagen beetle). A German worker could dedicate a certain percentage of his wages to "coupons" and save up to buy one of these cars, which was actually pretty reasonably priced (given it's extremely well-engineered economical design). Unfortunately, the plant to build these cars was devoted to building the German version of the Jeep instead (later sold under the name "Thing"). I forget the name of those, but the amphibious version was the "Schwimwagen". So for all the workers who financed building these combat vehicles, none of them ever got their Volkswagen beetle.

The thing is - Porsche didn't support Hitler, politically. He just saw this as a technical challenge, and a way to use engineering and mass production to benefit people. The design was perverted into a weapon of war, and after the war, the French offered him a job designing cars, and when we went to interview, they arrested him and jailed him as a war criminal - and he spent several years in prison designing farm tractors (yes, there are Porsche farm tractors out there).

Fascism is a con-job, designed to concentrate wealth into few hands, at the expense of everyone else.

Re:In related news

[jafac]

Many Americans may have lost wealth - but they have not lost THE ILLUSION of wealth (a.k.a. easy credit).

Nobody was really suffering until the interest rates started to go up (in response to Energy-cost-driven inflation).
Most of us are still blissfully unaware of the massive debt, both private, and public, we've accumulated through our gluttony.

Re:In related news

[SoulRider]

Its sad, but Americans arent going to realize the gift of freedom they have until it is gone. What really suprises me is that the rest of the world is just laughing at us, who do you think is next?

Re:In related news

[budgenator]

(to avoid another Inflation saving was strongly encouraged or mandated, these saving were used to buy German government bonds and that, ultimately, is how the Nazi state financed a huge increase in state spending without raising taxes).
Actually that's a very effective way to deal with a depression cause by monetary deflation.

Re:In related news

[DavidTC]

Ah, yes, the Great Liberal Evil: Some guy that said something at some time, and thus represents all the liberals.

We must fight liberals at all costs, who knows what that guy will say next! He'll probably cozy up to Hugo Chavez or something.

Please continue all your random assertions that liberals didn't care at all about the Weavers and that the murder was somehow the fault of liberals, instead of just being an example of the FBI being out of control.

You're not a fucking independent, you asswipe. You're someone who's tracked down a fucking stupid and evil thing the Clinton administration allowed to happen, and was mostly ignored by America, not 'the left', and pretending that somehow invalidates concerns that the government now is acting that way, or worse, in a systematic manner.

There is a rather fundamental difference between the police getting out of control once, or even twice, and killing innocent people, and the government enacting a policy that they can do whatever they want to anyone without any courts. The first, sadly, happens, and there's not a lot we can do about it except oversight and punishment. The second doesn't happen in America, at least not an America I'm a citizen of.

Re:In related news

[cold fjord]

For me the red line has been crossed in 2003 when I read two report of the same news, one from France, saying "Kofi Anna has qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal" and the second, from MSNBC, saying "Kofi Anna has (wrongly) qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal"

BBC story, MSNBC story.

A little background...

U.N. officials in New York sought to play down the significance of Annan's remarks, noting that he had previously said the U.S.-led war was not "in conformity with the U.N. charter." They noted that he was prodded three times by the BBC reporter before acknowledging his position. "The secretary general was quite reluctant to use that word," said Annan's chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard. U.S., Allies Dispute Annan on Iraq War

Some commentary....

Annan's statement that the war was "illegal" is both false and spurious. By Annan's logic, the 1999 U.S./British-led intervention in Kosovo, which was conducted without benefit of a Security Council resolution, also would be "illegal" despite the fact that it was widely supported by the international community. It is true that Washington failed to convince Paris and Moscow to vote for a final Security Council resolution that explicitly endorsed the use of force if Iraq's dictatorship continued to renege on its legal commitments to disarm. But the Security Council did unanimously pass Resolution 1441 in November 2002, which threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to do so. Iraq also defied sixteen other Security Council resolutions on disarmament, human rights, and support for terrorism.

Moreover, Iraq put itself in a state of war with the United States by violating the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi forces shot at American and British warplanes assigned to enforce the U.N.-imposed "no-fly zones" over Iraq on a daily basis long before the 2003 war. While the Clinton Administration chose to ignore these and most other cease-fire violations, the Bush Administration correctly decided to take action in view of Iraq's manifest failure to prove that it had dismantled its prohibited weapons programs. The U.N. Charter explicitly recognizes the right of every state to act in self-defense, a fact that Annan curiously neglects.

An Ill-Timed Intervention

Kofi Annan's ill-timed comments should be seen as a poorly conceived attempt to undercut the U.S. President's impending address to the U.N. General Assembly and to indirectly influence the electoral debate in the United States. The notion of U.S. isolation, a prominent theme advanced by Senator John Kerry, is a myth that Annan is keen to promote on the world stage. He ignores the fact that the U.S. is backed by over 30 allies with troops on the ground in Iraq, including 12 of the 25 members of the European Union and 16 out of 26 NATO members states.[3] Kofi Annan's Iraq Blunder

Re:In related news

[blahplusplus]

"The only thing surprising is that so many Americans are still looking up with worshipful puppy eyes -- at the leaders who pretend to protect them while stealing their wealth, liberty, and lives."

The truth is the world of nations are simply puppets of powerful and wealthy people to manage as best the can groups of working human populations they deem mostly as expendable where they can get away with it.

Most of the world is basically a theatre for the workers. Think about it, you need serious technology and wealth to truly accurate verify anything someone tells you that is removed from your direct experience of it. (i.e. sattelite photo's, videos by other people, etc, etc).

Lying about of a lot of things is fuck shit easy the bigger your populations become, lastly so many events go on in so many places the modern person intellectual resources are overwhelmed by data, it would literally take the computation of many supercomputers today and the ones to be developed in the future to sort out the bullshit from what can actually happen when pitted against the laws of nature and biology perception and human behaviour.

Just look at religious belief, it THRIVES in the modern internet age, and yet it was proven as falsehood many 1000's of years ago. Too many people simply do not have the thinking capacity or a deep interest in truth when they are too busy living their lives.

All humans have real limitations on what they can really "know" as true, the internet makes much information easier to debunk, but it also makes it harder to verify more lengthy reports of news and facts for their veracity, subtle bias, or what wasn't said.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

Annan's statement that the war was "illegal" is both false and spurious. By Annan's logic, the 1999 U.S./British-led intervention in Kosovo, which was conducted without benefit of a Security Council resolution, also would be "illegal" despite the fact that it was widely supported by the international community.

This is a non-sequitor. Popularity and legality are not the same thing; the US/UK intervention without a security council resolution in Kosovo was illegal under the UN charter, and neither widespread international support for it nor putting "illegal" in quote marks can make it legal now.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

It is so reassuring to see the Pentagon news correction unit so diligently at work here on /.

Re:In related news

[nasch]

the German version of the Jeep instead (later sold under the name "Thing"). I forget the name of those, but the amphibious version was the "Schwimwagen".

It was the Kuebelwagen (where if I'm spelling it right the ue is supposed to be a u with an umlaut. I'm far too lazy to figure out how to get one of those to show up). It means bucket car.

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume I'm from the "left"? Because I criticize the current government, which happens to be Republican-dominated?

This is a fundamental problem. You are making up straw men, accusing me of positions I do not hold. You deceive yourself and say that I don't support freedom except when the Republicans are taking it away. You couldn't be more wrong.

You need to wake up. The Democratic party attacks many of our freedoms, yes, and so does the Republican party. Right now, the Republican party is perpetrating the most overt acts of totalitarianism our country has seen in generations. Don't support them just because you have a grudge against the "left." You are doing exactly what you falsely accused me of doing.

Wake up. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Yet you assume I am a Democrat, solely because I oppose torture, because I demand fair trials, because I believe we should not be arbitrarily spied upon without justification. Why is this? Do you oppose fair trials? Do you support torture of prisoners? Do you believe anyone accused of a crime should be immediately locked up forever in a third-world military brig? These are things I oppose no matter who perpetrates them.

If you look around, the Republican party is currently perpetrating them most vigorously. Therefore, yes, I oppose the current Republican party's actions. From this, you somehow have reached the ludicrous conclusion that I don't oppose them when the Democratic party perpetrates them.

Re:In related news

[PlusFiveTroll]

Of course, some day we might need to pay them back.

Agreed, transfer thermonuclear weapons research via ICBM launcher!

Oh dear, I'm afraid I've leaked top secret information, at least the Pentagon will be there to clean up the PR disaster.

Re:In related news

[Himring]

I simply have this problem called memory. I clearly remember what the left had to say about Ruby Ridge. To hear the left, now, making the same defenses conservatives did about the Weaver family, but instead about clear enemies of the U.S., is hypocrisy. For you to make those same statements makes me think you are, indeed, left (i.e., wrong). This really isn't that difficult a logical path to follow.

Who are you? I do not know. You hide behind "anonymous coward" when a de-identifiable /. handle would more than suffice. Which, I say, adds even more to what I think about you....

Re:In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to understand. You have these "memories" of other people. You are calling me a "hypocrite" for words you made up yourself. It makes no sense.

You seem hypnotized, just like most of America, by a Republican-Democrat dichotomy. You cannot reason about anything without automatically assuming anything not spoken by your chosen worship-group is the opinion from the opposition worship-group.

Who am I? It speaks most that you are completely unable to consider ideas, yet must first be granted a stereotype which decides for you what you'll think.

Do you truly support torture of untried suspects, just because the people you worship told you they were guilty? Do you understand that the purpose of trials is to determine someone's guilt or innocence?

It may be hard for you to accept it, but, unlike you, I oppose injustice no matter whom it is perpetrated against.

Re:In related news

[Himring]

I'm near 40. I just want to stay healthy....

1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it was nice while it lasted. 12 years later and we now finally have rewriting of the news. Like controlling the news (fox etc) wasn't enough....

Of course if this is a genuine attempt to get the truth (highly fucking unlikely) to be broadcast, then this is a good thing. IF!

But then how much more truth can you have than explosions, body bags and civil war?

Re:1984

[GodLogiK]

so what's to be done? We always knew this would happen. What can we do about it?

Re:1984

[Anonymous Coward]

22. It's 22. 2006 - 1984 is 22 years.

Are you not even old enough to think you're older than 12 but were born after 1984?

Re:1984

[Inverted Intellect]

Seems to me like you're assuming that this is a bad thing. I've yet to see anything to indicate that this unit will have the function of censoring news items. Since that is (arguably) already being done, I see little reason to worry.

Maybe its actually just for correcting factual errors.

Or is that unjustified good faith on my part?

Re:1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear God! If EVER hear another constitution worshipping zealot tell me that they live in the land of the free, with the freedom of speech, religious freedom, and freedom to shoot each other, etc... while your country degenerates into the kind mess the Soviet Union faced some decades passed, I think I'll cry. What can be done? STRIKE! And strike for a LONG time. Go sit outside the whitehouse in your millions now! And do fuck all. Don't fight, don't shout, just sit. If you have food and/or money, feed the guy next to you who doesn't. You have a mortgage? Well nows the time to think whether your house, or your freedom/countries freedom is more important. Not that easy a choice to make, but when it realy comes down to it I think a lot of you would see the importance of freedom (to go buy buy a new house for example).

If this story is true (and hasn't been "corrected" by the BBC) then any of you guys I've heard on here telling me that the US is a great place because of your great constitution, needs to show what they think of this crap. Or your words mean shit to me from now on. Who are they to decide what is true and what is not. Is it "true" that Jesus rose on the third day? Or the Big bang created the universe? Or that.... The world is a subjective place. You can not "impose" truth. It simply doesn't exist. Soon the cold war will seem like a utopian past if you guys let this happen.

Re:1984

[BoberFett]

Slow down there, skippy. The article does not say they will censor and rewrite the news. They will "fight" news by releasing their own version of it. The press is still free to report anything they want (within current legal limits).

Besides, with as much propaganda as already exists from the both the left and right, I fail to see how much difference this will make in the grand scheme of things. As it has always has been, if you want to find the truth you'll have to take in all of the available info and find the middle ground somewhere in between.

Re:1984

[MightyYar]

The freaks all come out for stories like this, don't they? I fail to see any encroachment of free speech from this. This is a propaganda arm of our military... nothing new, people. There's nothing wrong with propaganda in an environment of free speech. This is no different than the ridiculous "White House Press Conferences" or "Radio Address" that happens periodically. Just rancid crap that no one in their right mind will pay any attention to.

Astonishing

[locokamil]

Clearly, the US military now officially has its spending priorities correct. Who gives a damn about winning the bloody war, or setting Iraq's forces straight so that they don't get knocked up like cheap hookers every time they set foot outside their barracks?

No-- this is more important by far. The Pentagon really does need to be fighting a press war with hairy-assed, unemployed bloggers operating out of their mothers' basements. They also need more lobbyists and politicians on their payroll, because if they don't win the war for the US, nothing else can.

Astonishing. Just astonishing.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know what you have against hairy-arsed people. Are they not contributing members of society? Do employed, non-bloggers not have hairy-arses? And if not, do you think that hairy-arsed unemplyed bloggers spread government propaganda better than their smooth arsed counterparts?

Waiting earnestly,
AC

Re:Astonishing

[Vintermann]

And to think they criticised Hugo Chavez for using government funds to promote his own social policies. Talk about not seeing the beam in their own eyes.

Re:Astonishing

[famebait]

Who gives a damn about winning the bloody war

They have never given a damn about the actual war, only about its effects on their own power. If they can get those without actually fighting the bloody expensive thing, and without risking bad news being reported back, why not just make people believe they are fighting it, and winning? All you need is a "great firewall of the US". It will not be visible from the moon. Not on the pictures americans will see, anyway.

Re:Astonishing

[lixee]

Clearly, the US military now officially has its spending priorities correct. Who gives a damn about winning the bloody war

IMHO, "winning the war" can only be achieved thru total annihilation of the Iraqi population. And even if they do, jihadists will continue to pour into the country to resist the occupation.

Let me recollect; Iraqis were already suffering under the reign of Saddam before the first Gulf war. They made sure any real opposition is suppressed by strangling the countrie's economy for 12 years. Then, they rescue the dictator while bombing and killing his victims. Now, if you were an Iraqi, wouldn't you devellop a formidable hatred toward the US?

Re:Astonishing

[KDR_11k]

Seen Wag The Dog lately, eh?

Re:Astonishing

[bvdbos]

Even Hans Blix says likewise...
Blix also claims the situation would have been better if the war had not taken place, saying, "Saddam would still have been sitting in office. Okay, that is negative and it would not have been joyful for the Iraqi people. But what we have gotten is undoubtedly worse."

Re:Astonishing

[db32]

I would just like to point out another quote related to "the beam in their own eyes" that makes the Religious Right such a freaking joke.

Your quote "How can you tell your brother he has a mote of dust in his eye when you have a plank in your own?"
Another good one "Those who draw the sword will die by the sword"
Yet, while in GROSS violation of everything Jesus ever said, these asshats on the right chant his name in some sick mantra of hypocrasy. I'm not terribly religious myself, but I opted to go read the New Testament to see what the hell was really going on with all of these stupid out of context bible quotes. Jesus himself was one angry guy, frequently attacking the religious/political leaders of the time for making up all these stupid rules about religion when there were only 10 SIMPLE rules that mattered. Oh well... The right is becomming well known for hypocrasy.

"Think of the children!" -- Mark Foley
"Women are too stupid to vote, and women scientists aren't really scientists" -- Ann Coulter (I agree here only because by her own argument she is too stupid to know what she is talking about)

Re:Astonishing

[famebait]

Ah, that was just a conscious government maneuver to make everyone see it as an laughable and frivolous idea :-P

Re:Astonishing

[geoffrobinson]

Opposition was stopped by sanctions but my Saddam's brutality. Sanctions were largely ineffective and allowed Saddam to create the Oil for Food corruption. He bribed politicians all over the world.

People complained about ineffective sanctions. Then they complained about removing him by force. In other words, no real solutions were offered to the group of people who actually wanted to do something.

Re:Astonishing

[Itsacon]

Actually, the Ten commandments are Old testament. Jesus just summarized them into 'Love god and love everyone' (free interpretation, don't have a bible with me atm).

Funny part is, the Old testament is also one of the holy books of the Islam. Cause, surprise surprise, Islam and Christianity worship the same God, only different prophets (Muhammed & JC, respectively). You want the `real' heretics, look to Hinduism: Thousands of gods! (Ok, enough sarcasm for today).

Killing in the name of God breaks two of the 10 commandments btw: Using the Lord's name in vain, and, well, thou shalt not kill maybe? Talk about hypocrites

Of course, all this is completely off topic, so let's get back to the issue at hand: What will happen first? My post edited by the USA govenment, or my house blown up by a terrorist? For both parties, my ICBM address is 51o59'17.70" N 4o20'38.6" E. Knock yourself out.

Fighting for peace is like [censored verb]ing for virginity..

Re:Astonishing

[CmdrGravy]

You talk about no real solutions being offered but solutions to what ?

Saddam had no WMD, he was not a threat to the US or the UK. Saddam hadn't got anything to do Al Quaeda or 9/11, the only people who may have benefitted from him not being in power are the Iraqi people who weren't prospering under his regime. These people are now far worse off than they were under Saddam, dying in far greater numbers and on the brink of a civil war so the invasion certainly hasn't proved to be a solution for them.

Re:Astonishing

[geoffrobinson]

He had no connection to 9/11 but he had connections to terrorists and to al Qaeda.

Here is an older article that covers some of this: http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200 406170840.asp

Re:Astonishing

[_xeno_]

It's not just the Pentagon's fault. Congress and the President have ultimate control over the budget that the Pentagon receives, and can earmark money for certain projects and refuse to fund others.

While someone at the Pentagon probably came up with the suggestion, Congress and the President can't be left off the hook either. They control the purse strings and have a fair amount of influence over how the Pentagon spends its money.

And, because I can't resist a jab at Cheney:

"It's my belief that they're very sensitive of the fact that we've got an election scheduled and they can get on the websites like anybody else," Mr Cheney told Fox News.

"There isn't anything that's on the internet that's not accessible to them. They're on it all the time. They're very sophisticated users of it."

Right. Because posting comments to websites and writing a blog is so incredibly difficult and sophisticated.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

"Saddam had no WMD"

That's really just not true:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html

Re:Astonishing

[dpilot]

Look at it another way...

The religious, Catholics and Evangelicals alike, have sold their souls for sex. It's really just that simple. The 2 major stands are abortion and gay marriage, essentially sex. For that matter, we can throw in birth control, again sex.

In the interest of sex, which Jesus Christ didn't really say much about, (He said things like, "Avoid immoral conduct," and "Go, and sin no more," and I'm not even sure about the former.) they turn a blind eye to the rest of the "conservative agenda." That includes the death penalty, rush to war, and a general concentration of wealth in the upper classes, to the detriment of the poor. We can include children and widows in that class. Now there's something Jesus Christ DID talk about - at great length. He also talked at great length about wealthy upper class who put on airs of piousness.

IMHO the Church has betrayed their trust, over sex.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thou shalt not kill" isn't a commandment.

Re:Astonishing

[rjstanford]

The only people who may have benefitted from [Saddam] not being in power are the Iraqi people who weren't prospering under his regime.

More than true, if you include bin Laden (who hated Saddam and the fact that Iraq was a functioning secular society). Although I'd like to think that making bin Laden happy wasn't one of the primary goals of the invasion.

Re:Astonishing

[Itsacon]

Yes, it is. The 6th to be precise. Some translate it to 'Thou shalt not murder', but since they were originally in Hebrew iirc, and my hebrew isn't entrirely up to par, the interpretation is just semantics. The core is clear.

Re:Astonishing

[Dragonslicer]

If I remember correctly, the Catholic Church has publicly condemned both the war in Iraq and the death penalty in the United States.

As usual, Stephen Colbert said it best: "Using Jesus' name in a speech is small government. Doing what Jesus asked, that's big government."

Re:Astonishing

[lixee]

In other words, no real solutions were offered to the group of people who actually wanted to do something.

Do something? Ah, you mean strategically control the world's most valuable region in the interest of the US elite.

Even in Israel (a declared and sworn enemy of the Baathist regime), intelligence reports emphasized the harmlessness of Saddam.

Re:Astonishing

[SamSim]

Well, it's good business sense, if you think about it. It works out a hell of a lot cheaper to persuade everybody in America that you went to war and won than to actually win it. As long as you spend less than say $500 per US citizen, it's all good.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the core is quite clear, and you're expanding it to say something different.

Re:Astonishing

[dpilot]

Won't argue with the official position statements, I can easily believe you, and would actually have a hard time believing otherwise.

But...

In this context, 2 things stick out every Sunday in the Prayer of the Faithful:
1 - Pro-life
2 - Safety of our troops and peace to come soon.
I've only ever once heard a call for an end to the death penalty, or for government policies favorable to the non-wealthy, and those were both on the Sunday following the 2004 elections.

Prior to the 2004 elections, they were all but commanding us to vote for Bush, up to within an RCH of saying exactly that. So close in fact, that I find it odd that a California church is having its tax-exempt status threatened for merely being anti-war. I guess I'd have to hear what they actually said, but IMHO the difference between what the Catholic church did and just plain telling us from the pulpit to vote for Bush was negligible.

Re:Astonishing

[blahplusplus]

I think they're more concerned with the spread of truth about the USA and its activities coming from communists, socialists and other activists from different ism's and ist's.

The fact that many fragmented individual people and nations can now post truths about the U.S. Military and government that usually wouldn't get out of their locality due to time, resource constraints, and general cultural and media controls and barriers... i.e. "he's crazy", "conspiracy theorist", etc and other "trigger words" that automagically make someone ones or some nations opinions or thoughts "invalid" by triggering the emotionally laden trigger words in the unthinking mass because of public education (i.e. biasing thought through brainwashing) and capitalist culture.

Re:Astonishing

[nickos]

Islam and Christianity worship the same God

Do you understand the difference between making a copy of a reference and copying an entire object? I ask this because if you did you would realise that these are modified copies of an original god - not the same god...

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you being sarcastic, or are you honestly still trying to pass that long-discredited lie off as fact? I can't really tell anymore. The discourse from Bush's supporters has become so absurd and utterly disconnected from reality that I can't tell satire directed at them from their actual opinions anymore.

Re:Astonishing

[KDR_11k]

I remember our history teacher showing us that movie and stating afterwards "I fully believe that's how the Americans do it" so it can't be very effective.

Re:Astonishing

[DavidTC]

Jesus also explicitly said not to pray in public, yet those asshats keep pushing for public prayer in schools and, in fact, all sorts of places.

Jesus did say something really important abut sex, or at least about marriage. He said 'Don't get divorced, ever.'. He said it quite clearly.

Of course, in my universe, women are now their own property, thus rendering a lot of the rules about marriage and sex completely irrelevant, and we have child support and DNS testing, rendering even more of the rules irrelevant.

But, yes, the right sure has fun ignore the few explicit rules about behavior he actually said: Don't get divorced, care for widows and children, don't pray in public, etc. Not a word about sex outside of marriage, not a word about homosexuality, not a word about quite a lot of things.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trying to pass anything off. I've provided a source where two different congressmen and a de-classified House commitee report claim that there are or were WMDs in Iraq. If you have evidence that does indeed discredit this information, I apologize but I haven't seen it yet. I'm interested in finding the truth, not in just supporting my party, so I'll happily look at any evidence to the contrary you have.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, (and I'm replying to myself here) I'll be fair. I did some further investigation and there does seem to be some controversy (to put it mildly) over this report, so I'll stand corrected. My fault for using a source without looking it up elsewhere. But still, no need to be so damn mean about it. Some people aren't necessarily unmovable in their beliefs, after all.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

The chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.

George W. Bush speaking in October 2004. The White House never reneged on such statements and has not backed Santorum and Hoekstra's claims.

Pentagon officials also rebuked the Senators' claims and no official has ever stepped forward from the DoD to back Santorum and Hoekstra:

Officials: We haven't found WMDs

In fact, it was Fox News that investigated and skewered these claims first, amusingly enough:

Defense Department Disavows Santorum's WMD Claims

Santorum and Hoekstra are two Senators with no particular standing to say what the status of WMDs in Iraq is. Kay and Deulfer, specifically comissioned for the purpose of determining that status, have, in fact, clearly and unequivovally stated that the WMDs and/or WMD programs suggested to exist by the Bush administration do not and did not at the time of invasion. Both have come to the conclusion in their respective reports that the WMD programs and the WMD stockpiles were dismantled after the first Gulf War in accordance with U.N. regulations and that the extent of non-compliance was limited to the manufacture of some conventional rockets.

I find it hard to believe any of this is new information to you, and if it is, I might suggest that if you're going to attempt to participate in the political arena, you pay a little more attention to it from now on.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

As I stated above (yes, that was me), I was not in fact aware of this. I don't, actually, participate in these types of debate often, and someone had shown me that not long ago, so I had no particular reason to refute it. But as I said above, I stand corrected. My fault for not checking it before I got involved.

Re:Astonishing

[CmdrGravy]

That article is just pure speculation and appears to be written by people who are desperately searching for some evidence of a link but unable to find anything convincing.

Re:Astonishing

[sgt_doom]

While I agree with the gist of what you post, I must correct: Who gives a damn about winning the bloody war.., as there is no war - simply an invasion and bloody occupation - costing over 600,000 Iraqi lives, lives which might have discovered a cure for cancer, developed new technology, written great literature, or simply made a fellow human being's day that much better and more livable.

And an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 women and children are being abducted every month, and thought to end up at various other places in the Middle East and Asia in the sex slave and plain slave trade. The USA, the Bush family and all the rest of that sordid gang have perpetrated the worst crimes imaginable on humanity and also the American citizenry!

Now the Bushies have chosen to not only finance the insurgents (i.e., unlawfully occupied citizenry of a foreign country) - with all those missing billions, but have also armed them with an assortment of weaponry, including RPGs, etc., which they handed out to the thorougly compromised Iraqi police and military - without every inventorying nor tracking said weaponry - un-frigging-believable! What the hell is this volunteer military good for but blindly and zombie-like following Rumsfeldstiltskin's orders!

Re:Astonishing

[jejones]

Why is it astonishing? Information is another front on which to fight; see the staged and Photoshopped photos that have come from the Middle East for examples. As in Vietnam, any victory by the Iraqi insurgents will come from demoralizing the American public...and also again, the US mainstream media are leading the effort.

The enemy doesn't need Axis Sally this time around; they have Katie Couric.

Re:Astonishing

[Anonymous Coward]

"lives which might have discovered a cure for cancer, developed new technology, written great literature, or simply made a fellow human being's day that much better and more livable." ...because, as we all know, such great technological advancements and great literary works come out of the Middle East.

Where would we be without them?

Re:Astonishing

[db32]

SHHHHHH!!!! You are going to destroy their thing! They keep using that "don't divorce ever" part as their anti gay flag. Because "Jesus said marriage is between a man and a woman!" See god DOES hate gays! They totally ignore the context of that paragraph was the pharisees telling Jesus that he was wrong because even moses allowed them to divorce their wives. No mention of gay anything.

I don't believe ANYONE in office has a damned clue about what Jesus actually taught...and to be honest I don't think most of the church going populace has a freaking clue either. As a child that always bothered me, going to church and only having tiny little excerpts read to me, nothing in order, nothing related, and then a long sermon about what that little paragraph means totally out of context of what was happening in that part of the bible.

Re:Astonishing

[Bimo_Dude]

...and appears to be written by people who are desperately searching for some evidence of a link...

How can you accuse this reputable outlet of being partisan? Let's have a look at some of today's headlines:

ELECTION 2006
Congress

• THE EDITORS: The last time Democrats captured the House, they held it for 40 years. "The Choice" 10/31 5:19 AM
• KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Is Harold Ford Jr. just wearing a pro-life costume? "Ford Claims to Be a Model He's Not" 10/31 1:18 PM
• MARK R. LEVIN: The Washington Post works for Jim Webb.
• STEPHEN SPRUIELL: The media are playing a Garden State trick on you. "Culture of Corruption" 10/31 4:44 AM
• AN NRO SYMPOSIUM: John Boehner, Mark Levin, Grover Norquist, Captain Ed & more on the scariest aspects of Democrats in control. "Control" 10/31 5:37 AM
• ELIZABETH DOLE: Look the donkey -- and its agenda -- in the mouth. "Beware of Democrats Bearing Gifts" 10/31 4:36 AM

Clearly, these people are not biased in any way. ;)

Re:Astonishing

[sgt_doom]

...any victory by the Iraqi insurgents will come from demoralizing the American public..

What silly drivel! The insurgents don't have to consider demoralizing the American public as they are demoralizing their fellow Iraqis much more completely, every second of every day. And, with the censorship of forbidding the publication of photos of the American military dead in coffins once stateside, this traitorous and criminal administration is not allowing any true freedom of the press with regard to the mass media.

I don't know if you ever served in any war, but I can surely state that the media did not lose any war in Vietnam, it was the insane, war profiteering policies of Kissinger and company which did......wrong policies, wrong results.

Re:Astonishing

[mrbobjoe]

Ooh, we have a government with eye beams now?

Re:Astonishing

[h4rm0ny]

Brilliant. The C Programmer's Guide to Religion. :D

Re:Astonishing

[DavidTC]

If marriage is solely between a man and woman, by divine defination, then what the hell are they worried about with gay people getting married? That seems akin to worrying about people leviating under their own power or walking through walls.

If it is, in fact, impossible, than why are they worrying when people claim to be able to do it?

Why am I getting flashbacks to Dogma all the sudden? If God is wrong about what marriage is, we get a general protection fault and the universe ends?

Surely, instead, it would be the government that was wrong. The government has admittedly been wrong about quite a few marriages, like the second and every additional marriage of bigamists.

Seems to me the correct solution would be to just let the government and gay people do whatever the hell they want, and laugh at them because they believe something which is clearly impossible, that people of the same gender can get married, just like I'd start laughing if the government let people get unicorn hunting licenses.

More to the point, aren't marriages performed by other faiths and civil marriages equally invalid in the eyes of God? Or at least marriages by non-Christians? If two Hindus can get married, surely God doesn't care what gender they are...they're both heathens.

Re:Astonishing

[db32]

I don't really know what the hell you are talkin bout you hippie. But I'ms gunna get me one of dem unicorn huntin licenses you be talking bout and I'm gunna bag me the biggest horn you have ever seen. I will polish that horn every day in an entirely heterosexual fashion.

Ministry of Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ministry of Truth, perhaps?

Next target will be all those inaccurate history books in the libraries.

Re:Ministry of Truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The next step will be creating the enforcement arm of the Ministry of Truth, otherwise known as "Nightwatch"...

Re:Ministry of Truth

[Itsacon]

As long as they let Commander Vimes lead it, not so bad IMHO...

Either way, you're screwed

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Either you're someone who already believes what's on the news or you're someone who already distrusts the media.

So if you're the first type, this is no big change. Your disinformation now comes directly from the source.

If you're the second type, you won't be able to believe anything on the DailyKos and other "contra-news" sources since you will believe that they have been infiltrated as well.

Any attempts to route around damage will lead you to either the BBC (but how long can you trust Bush's lapdogs?) or totally foreign sources like Al Jazeera (CIA counter-intelligence operation).

Naturally, this is not really that big of news. This has been going on since Eisenhower and bringing it into the open is just another way to manipulate the populace.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[RAMMS EIN]

``Any attempts to route around damage will lead you to either the BBC (but how long can you trust Bush's lapdogs?)''

Bush has lapdogs inside the BBC?

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, there is a 3rd type: the type that gathers news from different sources and can use better judgement to figure out what is true and isn't. If you can't, you are a parrot whether or not you believe "the media", which you seem to think is some sort of monolith.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I didn't say it was a monolith. The media aren't in a conspiracy with each other. They are in a conspiracy with the government. How do you think the American public was sold the Iraq War?

As for gathering news from various sources, you're still in the same boat. You get a majority of news agreeing with each other and a couple whackjob wingnuts with a totally different interpretation of the same event. So do you trust the majority (government controlled) or the whackjob wingnuts (thus putting you firmly in with them)?

There is no third type.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[wrcromagnum]

At least those who fall into the first category can choose whether to get their partisan bs from Fox or CNN. I don't like the current situation of dumb@ss Americans being shepherded by Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner but I am absolutely petrified when I think of them being directly fed information by the military-industrial complex that so many of our own American heroes have warned us against. On the other hand the top armed forces brass doesn't seem to happy with the current administrations policies in Iraq so who knows what the pentagon will put out right now? How ironic would it be if this program was actually an attempt to notify the public of just how bad the Iraq war is and how global warming is a serious threat to our national security.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[ajs318]

No British government has ever liked the BBC. Thatcher and co always called them the Bolshevik Broadcasting Collective. Labour think they suck up to the Tories.

IMHO that's the way it should be. Once a news service begins pandering to the government, you are already too far down the road to 1984.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[RAMMS EIN]

Exactly, that's what I thought. We know that Blair and Bush are allies and have covered each other's backs, but the BBC seems to set its own course, no matter what anyone else says.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Either you're someone who already believes what's on the news or you're someone who already distrusts the media.
So if you're the first type, this is no big change. Your disinformation now comes directly from the source.
If you're the second type, you won't be able to believe anything on the DailyKos and other "contra-news" sources since you will believe that they have been infiltrated as well.
Any attempts to route around damage will lead you to either the BBC (but how long can you trust Bush's lapdogs?) or totally foreign sources like Al Jazeera (CIA counter-intelligence operation).

The disinformation procedures are not that naive like launching one's own views in media, they are very complex and elaborate science.

i.e. here on Slashdot, whenever a commentary is posted which could put a different insight on a "hot" topic, one that was not predicted and "they" have no prepared counter-argument, it is drowned in instant surge of amassed unrelated (preferably incendiary, to draw as much replies as possible) "slack" comments up the posts tree, it is simply amazing, especially because there was a slow posting rate previously!

Second, there is continual push and hate dissemination from some slashdotters against AC posting. That certainly stimulates self-censorship.

For sure, here is one of the world's major info battlefields where certain mob parties have hundreds or thousands of professionals (con)trolling it on the daily basis.

I observed once some guy being modded down for some totally benign and neutral post he made. I followed his track back in time and found that on one occasion he relativized the Taiwanese right on independence, carelessly, I may add. They got him in crosshairs and followed him around, modding him down to -1 on anything! All that time around, none ever declared him a Foe!

So, I intend to continue ALWAYS posting as AC on anything important.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[packeteer]

The BBC is a good source but there is better. Le Monde Diplomatique is a french paper that have an english version. Check it out at dota www.mondediplo.com

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[mcc]

Naturally, this is not really that big of news. This has been going on since Eisenhower and bringing it into the open is just another way to manipulate the populace.

Really, in two or three weeks they'll probably be trying to deny this program even exists.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[ben there...]

Well, it's been going on in this administration at least since 2002. The Office of Strategic Influence was its former name, which was officially shut down because of backlash from the press, but its activities continued. That office was intended to influence foreign media, but the question is, how much of the disinformation makes its way back into (or is spread directly into) our media in the form of blowback. Contracts for this type of work run into the hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq. You better believe they are using the same strategies at home (no reg.).

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[Bill Grates]

or totally foreign sources like Al Jazeera (CIA counter-intelligence operation).

Do you have any references for this? - not to dispute your point since it certainly has a logic
to it and would be a brilliant coup from the cia if this was the case. Cant formulate
a good google query without getting too many unrelated hits.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[PlasticArmyMan]

Now, I like the BBC but they dropped severely in my estimation the moment they apologised to the government unreservedly for the report that stated the amount of time it would take for Saddam to launch weapons against the UK. The whole government report was bollocks, the BBC knew it and when they put the story out all hell broke loose in the media. The BBC eventually got down on their knees and gave head to the government. Bunch of fucking cowards if you ask me. I still respect them but damn, that didn't help.

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Sounds like they've gotten to Google too!

Re:Either way, you're screwed

[dave420]

The BBC hates Blair :) It's not run by the government, and clearly does not support the PM "just because he's the PM". Blair can not tell the BBC what to do, thank fuck :)

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Nazi Germany embraced Nitsche. The Bush administration seems to have embraced George Orwell's 1984 as source to model a government from.

Bring on the war!

[rufusdufus]

President Bush has said recently that terror groups were trying to influence public opinion in the US, describing their efforts as the "war of ideas"

What, are we afraid of ideas? Is a war of guns and bombs better? If the people of the world are trying to influence our thinking, should we ignore them or should we listen? Who knows better about the problems of their part of the world than them? Do the Generals in the Pentagon know whats better for people across the world than their own leaders?

Re:Bring on the war!

[Opportunist]

Get ready for the war on ideas. After all, the feather is mightier than the sword, and the logic consequence is that ideas are more dangerous than guns.

Re:Bring on the war!

[tibike77]

Ah, so nice to see that even if Soviet Russia (apparently) failed miserably, its ideas live on strong and spread to its former enemies. Heck, I thought Romania was so-so ok under Communism as long as you kept your mouth shut (hey, I was 12 years old at the time, so what did I know), apparently now USA is heading the same way. Slowly, but surely.
And they have the guts to "condemn" China for the "great internet firewall" ? Talk about hypocrisy.

Just goes to show, in all human forms of gov't, whoever HAS the power is the one least worthy to HAVE it in the first place.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

The above post is a complete troll, guns and bombs never killed anyone, its people that killed people! And of course people are motivated by ideas, so the only thing you really can declare war on is an idea, such as terrorism. I think the Generals in the Pentagon have our best interests at heart, regardless of what unsavoury methods might be used to achieve those goals. The question to ask is, whether you would prefer a war of words, or a war of guns and bombs?

This message was brought to you by Dick Cheney's lapdogs, in the name of president pubes.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so nice to see that even if Soviet Russia (apparently) failed miserably, its ideas live on strong and spread to its former enemies.

Bullshit! The Soviet Union was incredibly successful in controlling ideas. They just sucked at running their economy. The Soviet Union didn't fall because freedom of speech wasn't completely suppressed. They failed because they were trying to fight an arms race with a country that always had at least a GDP 2.5 times theirs.

If you doubt that you can lock down ideas for any period of time the Soviet Union is a great example (~70 years). But if that doesn't convince you then you can look to North Korea, Cuba, or Burma.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Opportunist]

A war of words is fine, as long as both sides may be armed. This, though, reeks like one side is supposed to be disarmed, which is the analogy for a war of words if you can't say what you want. And then it's not war.

It's massacre.

Re:Bring on the war!

[BoberFett]

Can the US military not disseminate it's own ideas? Or should that privilege belong solely to people with whom you agree? Who's afraid ideas again?

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pharmboy]

And they have the guts to "condemn" China for the "great internet firewall" ?

It seems to me that the government isn't trying to control ideas, it is trying to compete in the market place of ideas. Just because the Pentagon will issue some press releases, this doesn't stop you, me or anyone else from putting our ideas out there as well. It seems to me that it is the government's DUTY to release information if they think the news is reporting false information. We can still choose to research it, compare it to other sources, and accept or reject it.

I didn't see anywhere in the article that every US citizen was being forced to watch these new media channels, or being forced to accept the information as the truth. Funny, while I am as skeptical as they come when it comes to any government, I am not afraid of letting them release their response to news reports. Kinda fits in with the whole idea of free speech.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course guns and bombs are better. They have to be MADE by arms companies and PURCHASED by governments, and they run out REALLY fast.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Tom]

What, are we afraid of ideas?

No, even though Bush actually meant it to be the "War on Ideas", his press corp did not catch his latest mis-pronounciation, so it's the "War of Ideas" now.

Re:Bring on the war!

[malsdavis]

Perhaps you should read up on history a bit before you make such stupid comments. The Soviet Union didn't fall because of an arms race, it "fell" due to the 1980's modernisation of their governing system into a form which wasn't compatible with the "Soviet Block" system they had in place. To be anymore specific than that introduces debatable opinion points (the influence of Globalisation, inefficiency of centralization, Regional disputes and all the rest), but it definitely was not a simple "ran out of money to buy guns so the country collapsed", the Soviet Union was always (and Russia still is) amongst the worlds largest exporter of armshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trade#Top_Ar ms_Exporters.

Also, maintaining social control intrinsically necessitates "locking down ideas", it is (and always has been) done in every society - including modern Western Countries (how often do you hear people in the USA discussing the pro's of Communism or Islamic extremism?). The difference though in maintaining social control in a centralized federal super-power consisting of 15 different countries spanning half the globe, and a small island/peninsula are so fundamentally different to be pretty much incomparable.

Re:Bring on the war!

[theMAGE]

It seems to me that the government isn't trying to control ideas, it is trying to compete in the market place of ideas.

The government is going to "compete" in the same way the Chinese manufacturing is "competing" with the US: flooding the market with bad quality at cheap prices. Read "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky on how this happened forever in this country - but apparently the self-censure of the for-profit media conglomerates is no longer as successful (or cheap).

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. The majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if the goes beyond them. - Alexis the Toqueville, "Democracy in America"

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pharmboy]

(how often do you hear people in the USA discussing the pro's of Communism or Islamic extremism?).

Every single day in the USA. Ever heard of the Communist Party or the Socialist Party? Ever notice how many different mosques there are in the USA, of which several DO condone violence?

Maybe YOU need to do a little historic research before you hit the Submit button.

Re:Bring on the war!

[malsdavis]

Uhh, how exactly is that historic research?

My point isn't that absolutely no-one ever mentions things that are completely contrary to the mainstream viewpoint, but that no-one is seriously allowed to discuss them, although all three of your examples face regular "ban them" cries from their opposer's. More to the point though, if someone with an actual political voice, say a politician, was to stand up and declare "a commission should be created to look at the potential advantages of Communism" or that "murder should be made not a crime", they would almost certainly be immediately laughed out of office for wanting to discuss a controversial idea.

I'm not saying that this necessarily a bad thing at all, but the immediate rejection by country leaders (or the electorate which appoints them) of ideologies contrary to their own is still a form of social control. Although to exist society needs social controls (in the most visual form their called "laws"), but it is a testament to naivety that most people don't realise that ideological social controls exist in every society - including their own. Normally people are quick to notice the forms of ideological control in other societies but very slow to even notice their existance in their own.

Re:Bring on the war!

[daigu]

The difference is that the public is paying for it, and it isn't information. It's advertising and public relations; two businesses the government shouldn't be in.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Mac Degger]

There's a difference between propaganda and genuine information.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pharmboy]

So you would ban the government from making any information public before anyone can decide which it is?

Re:Bring on the war!

[elrous0]

the only thing you really can declare war on is an idea, such as terrorism.

Terrorism isn't an idea, it's a methodology. And it's difficult to fight a war on a methodology, particularly a long-standing one. And it's not a war you can ever really "win," because the potential of someone using the methodology again is ALWAYS there.

For example, take chemical weapons. After WWI, most countries essentially outlawed this methodology in warfare. And, in the sense, they "won." But, even so, it still pops up from time to time (in the Iran/Iraq war and in Saddam's attacks against the Kurds, for example). Can we truly say we've "won" the war against chemical weapons, or eliminated them as a threat forevermore?

-Eric

Re:Bring on the war!

[slapout]

Believe it or not, some ideas _are_ bad ideas. Killing someone because they don't convert to Islam _is_ a bad idea. This is the war of ideas we are engaged in.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Brandybuck]

The enlightenment was the result of winning a "war of ideas". The "idea" of western civilization is worth defending. If you don't like it, YOU are free to stopper up your own ears.

Re:Bring on the war!

[glesga_kiss]

Just because the Pentagon will issue some press releases, this doesn't stop you, me or anyone else from putting our ideas out there as well.

How does that work in far-off war zones, where the only journalists there are already Pentagon-approved? This really means no real change; all the news networks currently just reissue their press releases verbatim anyway. It's more of an officialisation of the current system, cutting out the middle-man. All hail our new information overlords!

Re:Bring on the war!

[Mac Degger]

Considering what this US administartion has done to even undeniable scientific evidence, how they retroactively redact their statements which even have been made part of the public record (we never said Iraq had WMD's/we never said 'stay the course'), how they lie about funding and success of their own programs (no child left behind, katrina victims), etc etc etc, my answer would be 'yes'; most of what comes out of this government's PR orifice is already packaged as propaganda. They don't need yet another propaganda filter; they spend enough public money on spin already.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Viper Daimao]

270+ comments and yours is maybe 1 of 5 that isn't some reactionary polemic or a tired joke about 1984. Thank you.

Re:Bring on the war!

[lawpoop]

"It seems to me that the government isn't trying to control ideas, it is trying to compete in the market place of ideas. ... It seems to me that it is the government's DUTY to release information if they think the news is reporting false information."

If they want to compete fairly in the marketplace of ideas, that's fine. But I don't think they are going to have their own internal watchdogs who are voraciously going after the facts and are going to ask tough questions. Certainly, they'll want to counter false information, but it would make their lives so much easier to spread propaganda. So it's one thing to go after 'the truth', but I have a feeling they will just be a stronger media spin department. That's not a problem if you believe that everything is spin, and everybody has their own opinions and perspectives, and nobody's is better than the others'. I disagree -- I believe that some ideas and opinions are more accurate.

We can probably never get to the whole, complete truth. But I think we can get stories that are more accurate and complete than others. It's not just a game of who can tell a better story. There is an objective reality.

And a major problem is that the government an 'official' source and has 'experts'. When people hear those words, they turn off their critical thinking skills, and accept whatever the official expert tells them. After all, I'm not smarter or as smart as an expert, am I? So, if the military, or any other government organization, sets up a news arm, they get a free pass as the official source.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Lumpy]

I didn't see anywhere in the article that every US citizen was being forced to watch these new media channels, or being forced to accept the information as the truth.

Of course not silly! those bills are only currently being drafted for passage in a secret senate and house vote to be set at a secret time and date.

Don't you know how the process in government works? You have to put this stuff in place in stages.

1 - create ministry of truth.
2 - pass laws that ministry of truth must approve all new items.
3 - require newspapers to get news from ministry of truth.
4 - eliminate middlemen and publish and broadcast directly.
5 - embed subliminal happythoughts(tm) into news broadcasts.
6 - play news feeds loudly from all public places, install jumbotrons.

  steps 4,5 and 6 will cost money! so we need to get a senate appropriations committee to approve them after much deliberation at gunpoint.... but that's at least 5 years down the road.

nothing to worry about citizen! we have it all under control.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Luke Psywalker]

Score:4, Insightful

Its started already...

Re:Bring on the war!

[eclectic4]

"We can still choose to research it, compare it to other sources, and accept or reject it. I didn't see anywhere in the article that every US citizen was being forced to watch these new media channels..."

Oh my. You just described what we "should" be doing. However, the vast majority of citizens do not "research" or "compare". That's critical thought, and most have no idea what that even means. Most eat the few bits they catch on their way out the door to work or before feeding the kids before bed. So, while your suggestions are correct, they are far from reality. If you are from another country, I apologize, but if you are from the US, you need to understand that most simply believe what they are told in the few minutes they have. Why do you think politicians hire the best in the business as far as marketing and PR? They know that a few choice comments, some scary words (mushroom cloud in my backyard?! holy shit!) and a nice tie is all they need to sway thought in this country. It's sad, and it's why things like this seem dangerous to people like me. I know for a fact that most do not do what you suggest, and therefore this new "program" can be considered dangerous. I know I know, you're from the "personal responsibility" party, but you have to understand, most don't even know that they are being lied to on all fronts. Just look around to see the proof...

In fact, I believe that the best thing we could do in public education would be to have logic/critical thought instilled into the curriculum. But... yeah...

Re:Bring on the war!

[sgt scrub]

President Bush has said recently that terror groups were trying to influence public opinion in the US, describing their efforts as the "war of ideas"

Does this mean Prezdent Bushwaker admits to being a member of a terrorist group?

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pharmboy]

However, the vast majority of citizens do not "research" or "compare". That's critical thought, and most have no idea what that even means. Most eat the few bits they catch on their way out the door to work or before feeding the kids before bed.

Wow. You have a much lower opinion of the average person than I do. You are saying that people are too dumb to hear reports from different sources and make up their own minds, so you would disallow certain groups (the govt) from having free speech, in order to protect the masses.

This sounds remarkably like Soviet Communism. Just substituting your guidance instead of the government's.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Dutchmaan]

Hey the government can "correct" all it wants, so long as we're clear that we're talking about the support of "state run media"

Now, if I recall, whenver we hear the term "state run media" it's usually used as a term of discredit.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Scrameustache]

It seems to me that it is the government's DUTY to release information if they think the news is reporting false information. We can still choose to research it, compare it to other sources, and accept or reject it.
I didn't see anywhere in the article that every US citizen was being forced to watch these new media channels, or being forced to accept the information as the truth.

Well, what you're saying makes sense. It works, if you see the world a certain way.

But the way I see it, the info that they want to correct isn't false, it's info that makes them look bad.
Do you remember what was the immediate reaction to the Abu Grahib scandal? It was to ban all cameras from troops in iraqi prisons. The reaction wasn't to ban mistreatment of prisoners, it was to ban the documentation of these abuses.

And no, no one is forced to watch the news, but when all news source are in bed with the government (that would happen if all major news outlets were controlled by a handfull of corporations and the government was close to these private interests), the info becomes monolithic, the masses are manipulated as effectively if they watched the news or they heard of the news through those that did, and the small ripples that an independant news source can make go unnoticed in the sea of disinformation that the well-funded news source disseminate. Especially if those ripples are competing with a concerted effort to drown them out in contradictory ripples made to look like they come from an independant source.

As far as being forced to accept the info, no one is forced to either. But remember: You're either with us, or against us. You must support the troops, you must show a united front to the enemy, you must!
No one is forced, but people are coerced. America, love it or leave it, etc.

Re:Bring on the war!

[twifosp]

You make a compelling point, but you are missing the big picture. A democratic government shouldn't have to tell the people what they are up to. Instead they should be open enough that people, namely the press, can report on what they are up to with complete accuracy. In other words, in an ideal situation numerous press organizations should all report the same facts about the same story on the same day. They could contain editorial differences, but that's about it.

This type of program, "certified truth", is dangerous. It seems harmless and all about free speech now, but look further down the road. It sets up a probable scenario where any information coming out of the pentagon is regarded as fact. Therefore any information that disagrees with a Pentagon statement is false and therefore being used as a weapon in the war on terror. More over, in the immediate future, no major news outlet will dare disagree with the "facts" coming out of the Pentagon. Why would they? Why should they? A better question is, why won't they?

People, we are in a major information war here. Act accordingly.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pharmboy]

To be clear, I am against ANYONE being stopped from reporting information, even if it is the government. I am not for the govt. reporting info and stopping others from doing the same. These are two different issues.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Okay thats it, I am tacking the "sarcasm" tag on the end of any parody posts I make from now on. The above was meant to be a taste of whats to come from the shilling-effect cheney shills. Sigh. Actually I'm pretty good at it. Thought provoking yet disturbingly close to reality, while being utter tripe. Maybe I should apply there for a job? ;-D

/SARCASM

/weeps

Re:Bring on the war!

[Shadowlore]

What, are we afraid of ideas?

Nothing wrong with a War of Ideas, funny you should object to the pointing of it out.

Do the Generals in the Pentagon know whats better for people across the world than their own leaders?

Do the self-centered politicians in Washington DC know what is better for people across the continent than the people themselves?

If the people of the world are trying to influence our thinking, should we ignore them or should we listen?

That depends. If they are trying to tell us that some gvoernmental body will know better what we should be allowed to read/write ont eh Internet, I say we ignore them. If they are trying to tell us that specifically targeting civilians for death in an attempt to sway political opinion is not only a valid method but a preferred one, I say we don't listen. If they are trying to tell us that we need to cut down economic opportunities to satisfy their notion of how the world should work and that these policies have failed in their own countries, I say we don't listen. If they are telling us that we need to do their beidding because "it is better", I say they need to prove it first and then we might listen but make no promise to emulate or acquiesce.

There is nothing inherently right about listening to others. There is nothing inherently right or better about being different or from a different culture. Different is simply different.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Scrameustache]

To be clear, I am against ANYONE being stopped from reporting information, even if it is the government.

Yay information, but I'm against pretending the information comes from someone else than the government.
It's that lil' bit of astroturfing that I abhor.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pharmboy]

Did you even bother to read the article or at least the summary at all?

New media channels

A spokesman said the unit would monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.'"

I don't recall saying it was fine for the government to lie about the source.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Pseudonym]

Actually, this is one of the more insightful things that W has said, though possibly not for the intended reason.

Al Qaeda was never an international organisation with fortresses in the mountains, sleeper cells and fingers in every conspiratorial pie. And they certainly had no friends in the previous Iraqi government. It was always an idea. What you saw a little over five years ago could have been the last desperate act of group on the way out. Instead, by making the monster seem larger than it really was, they've made the idea seem bigger than it was. And as a result, it's an idea that desperate people around the world think they can latch onto.

That's why we've only seen smaller attacks since (London, Bali etc), perpetrated by small groups of home-grown nutters instead of members of a large non-existent shadowy organisation of evil. They've caught onto the idea.

This is a war of ideas. It's one that the US is losing, and you have friendly fire to thank.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Deskpoet]

In fact, I believe that the best thing we could do in public education would be to have logic/critical thought instilled into the curriculum. But... yeah...

Truly a seditious idea, and one that, if you were continue to advocate it, would have you in a re-education center somewhere in Kansas before you could verbalize "police state".

Re:Bring on the war!

[eclectic4]

"Wow. You have a much lower opinion of the average person than I do."

I'm not sure what you mean. My opinion of the average person is that they are intelligent beings, capable of serious critical thought. I just don't think that people in this country have the tools to even know why they should use these tools with everything. The evidence to suggest this is overwhelming. My goodness, whenever I see a negative political add, watch network news, listen to a stump speech, the prez's weekly address, watch an infomercial, or stumble past a TV evangelist, I am reminded of this reality. And please also remember, without formal indoctrination into the use of critical thought (just like all else we perform), we don't realize we should be using it. Whenever I explain critical thought to someone new, I see the "dear in the headlights" effect faaaaaar to often.

"...so you would disallow certain groups (the govt) from having free speech, in order to protect the masses."

I would never suggest such a thing, it just looks bad and I don't like their reasoning, period. I don't like my government acting in this manner and wish it to stop. I think it's horrible.

Remember, the "government" in the USs case is simply supposed to be the body of humans we grant power to speak for us. They have this power by our grace alone. Since when are "they" a separate entity needing to "correct" the people's view? When a company wants to change its image to correct a wrong *cough*Exxon*cough* , or to instill a more powerful branding image, they hire a PR group. This helps the bottom line, stock holders get more money, the people that made these decisions keep their jobs and also take home a healthy paycheck. Now tell me, why would the government need to do this to correct the news with it's freedom of the press, and free speech protecting that very news. Some might suggest that many in power (greatest concentration of power this world has ever known) may have a reason, an extreme tendency to want to sway public thought through a process such as this. In other words, they would have great motive to skew ("correct) this "news" (in fact, the explicity state that this is it's sole purpose), especially if the news is bad.

"This sounds remarkably like Soviet Communism. Just substituting your guidance instead of the government's."

And the opposite sounds remarkably like facism. You see, the government shouldn't be "guiding" anything in this area. That's my point. This smacks of "they" when "they" are simply supposed to be our elected voice, not news "correctors". Freedome of speech is for we, the people. Critical thought is for us to use to keep our grants of leadership in check. They govern in our name, nothing more.

Re:Bring on the war!

[tehcyder]

It seems to me that the government isn't trying to control ideas, it is trying to compete in the market place of ideas.

Doubleplusgood libertarian bollocks.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Scroatzilla]

I believe that freedom of the "press" is referring to freedom of THE PRESS, not the government. So it does not fit in with the right to free speech mentioned in the Bill of Rights (you know, the thing in that document that outlines and in some cases limits the powers of government??).

Furthermore, under what kind explanation can one argue that this is not, plain and simple, propaganda? I believe that they are actually even using that word, which means PR, which means spin. What interest could they possibly have in spinning anything in a way that puts them in a negative light (think power retention/re-election)? And, by extension, once they can spin everything positively no matter what happens, what interest could they possibly have in doing a good job?

Come on, think a little.

Re:Bring on the war!

[Rakarra]

I believe that freedom of the "press" is referring to freedom of THE PRESS, not the government.

"THE PRESS" is not limited to people with little cards reading Reporter or The Press. It refers to the notion that anyone, everyone, regardless of who they are or who they work for, have the freedom to report.

The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[Cordath]

I, for one, have been plagued by crimethink. Historically I have been unable to bellyfeel the blackwhite of this administration. No longer! May this glorious new program free us *all* from the perils of oldthink!

Re:The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[Jeconais]

I forget, are we at war with Oceania or Eurasia?

Re:The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[Scarletdown]

I forget, are we at war with Oceania or Eurasia?

It's Eastasia we're at war with. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

Re:The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[JonathanR]

You unshould have to use *emphasis* with newspeak.

Re:The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

For some weird reason, the parent post reminds me of the title of this movie. Somehow, I doubt these cultural learnings will make benefit any glorious nations (including the US).

Re:The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[mikesmind]

Does a man named Winston Smith work there?

Re:The rise of Minitrue - Doubleplusgood!!!

[utlemming]

Well I guess I better brush up on my Doublethink.

Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength

What was that other one....
oh yeah,
War is peace

Well I guess we are all strong, free and at peace, now that we have our Ministry of Truth

Yep.

[vadim_t]

America seems to be steadily drifting towards Fascism, or a dictatorship at the very least.

"Land of the free", my ass.

Re:Yep.

[Anonymous Coward]

The barely regulated gun ownership and violent, individualist, media offerings and tendencies are looking like pretty good ideas in this current context aren't they?

How the last President fare on 24? And the CAPTCHA is scorched :)

Re:Yep.

[KDR_11k]

Oh, don't worry, as long as you keep the people from getting ideas you don't have to worry about their guns.

Re:Yep.

[Skizmo]

Since when is telling the truth a flamebait ?? Is slashdot run by the government of the AS of U ??

Re:Yep.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

America seems to be steadily drifting towards Fascism, or a dictatorship at the very least.

Name one country that has irreparably changed into a dictatorship with a history of solid democracy/relative liberalism, such as the US. That has a constitution with such a high regard by its citizens that has failed enough for the country to be radically changed politically.

Germany is the closest I can think of, but it still doesn't exactly count. The humiliation brought on by the treaty of Versailles played a huge part in the rise of Hitler, and there is no equivalent in the US.

Re:Yep.

[ScentCone]

America seems to be steadily drifting towards Fascism, or a dictatorship at the very least.

I see. So, let's try a parallel example. Let's say that the Environmental Protection Agency has a body of regulations to factories from pumping CFCs into the atmosphere (ah! what a coincidence, they do). Now, let's say that some particularly rabid ring of bloggers, as echoed by lazy reporters who Google for informed-sounding sources, starts amplifying some meme that's directly contrary to reality. To the point where an upcoming election or pending policy decision seems strangely likely to hinge on the public's misperception of the facts because of idealogical spin and fiction from such third parties. Would you blame the EPA for engaging in some press activity to point out the actual facts of the matter?

When some more-than-usually-visible blogger starts ranting about the US military killing 600,000 Iraqis, it's worth the trouble to point out - through several avenues - that not only is that information poisonously incorrect, but that the person deliberately lying is grinding a political axe.

Re:Yep.

[glesga_kiss]

The humiliation brought on by the treaty of Versailles played a huge part in the rise of Hitler, and there is no equivalent in the US.

9/11?

(jesus, I'm sounding like a Republican here)

That has a constitution with such a high regard by its citizens that has failed enough for the country to be radically changed politically.

While the US holds the intent of the constitution dearly, the constitution itself is a shadow of it's former self. It is this erosion of the constitution that has led to this debate in the first place.

Re:Yep.

[spun]

The President already has a press secretary that does a very good job of getting the administration's point across. In fact, they are a little too good. Watch and listen, the same exact phrases get repeated on all the news outlets, over and over and over. In fact, no one else has nearly the kind of control that the executive already has over the news.

You make it seem as though the poor government just can't currently compete with all the big, mean, lying bloggers. Are you actually saying the propaganda of the Fed, and specifically the executive branch, can't compete with a bunch of bloggers? Now, the thing about bloggers is, they come from all sides. Why should the Fed counter the untruths? That's what we have a free press for.

Now, the larger question is, who will counter the untruths of this new department? If you think this department won't spread untruths, think of the horror you will feel when President Hillary (or someone equally as heinous to you) has control of this propaganda machine. Will you still be so blase, or do you really feel it's not an issue, as only 'the good guys' will be in power here from now on?

Re:Yep.

[ScentCone]

Now, the larger question is, who will counter the untruths of this new department? If you think this department won't spread untruths, think of the horror you will feel when President Hillary (or someone equally as heinous to you) has control of this propaganda machine. Will you still be so blase, or do you really feel it's not an issue, as only 'the good guys' will be in power here from now on?

The press should be the ones countering untruths in the press. But they don't. If President Hillary/Obama/Pick-One actually knowingly, demonstrably spreads factual errors, that's no better than anyone else doing it. But if any deptartment in the government takes an action which produces reportable stats or fallout (traffic regulation? armed conflict? taxes? communication regulation? weather info?) and the media/blogosphere grossly distorts it - it's appropriate for the government to straighten it out. The president's spokesperson can't and shouldn't be the person to deal with everything that the DoD, or EPA, or Treasury, or FCC, or any of a hundred other agencies has to say to the public. That's totally unworkable. And to the extent that the DoD is involved in the stuff that's the most distorted by the people they're fighting, and those distortions are echoed or amplified by a partisan press - you have to be able to talk about it - and that has nothing to do with which party holds which office.

Re:Yep.

[spun]

You are creating a straw man. No one is claiming it would be bad for the government to correct factual errors. In fact, they already do this and have all the manpower they need to correct factual errors. What I am concerned about is how the government will use this in ways that go far, far beyond correcting factual errors. Are you saying that you really trust our current and all possible future governments not to use this to spread lies? You don't think President Hillary might use it to correct "factual innacuracies" about her presidency or her party? You are fine with Democrats using our tax dollars to spread lies about the Republicans? Or do you really, honestly not think that could happen? Because that is what I am scared of. You could present every single legitimate reason in the world for having such a program, but as long as there are compelling reasons not to have such a program, and you haven't addressed those reasons, you have done nothing to effectively argue your case.

Re:Yep.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

9/11 was undoubtedly a humiliation, but not on the same level as the treaty of Versailles. The treaty symbolised the hatred of Germany by the entire world. Germans felt downtrodden and humiliated in a much greater sense than the US with terrorism. Sure the US is angry right now, but it'll work out. I don't actually think that the administration has what it takes to change the US into a police state. The guts or the time (don't forget the term limits).

Yeah right!

[demon_2k]

You mean that they keep track of what people know and seal the leaks?

Re:Yeah right!

[Anonymous Coward]

They try, and they fail endlessly.

Nice idea, but ...

[RAMMS EIN]

Well, it would be very good to have inaccuracies and falsehoods reported in the media corrected. In the end, we all benefit from good information.

However, the conflict of interest (the agency is run by the state, and will have to correct messages about the state) leads me to doubt that this will lead to actually correct news.

Re:Nice idea, but ...

[Narcogen]

The problem is not a conflict of interest per se. Plenty of institutions have dedicated information agencies that present messages about themselves. This is what public relations is.

The problem is calling this "reportage" or "fact correction". It's only "correction" if you trust the Pentagon's version of events and distrust the account they are correcting. If you disagree with the Pentagon's version, then the proper word is "propaganda".

The unit will also

[Timesprout]

Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq did not have WMD
Correct the misunderstanding that the Iraq war did not actually end when GB said it did
Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq is not a nice place to be now
Correct the misunderstanding that several US interrogation techniques are actually torture
Corrent the misunderstanding that there are not hordes of rabid terrorists queueing up to kill each and every last one of us

And we used to laugh at the attempts of TAS to 'enlighten us'

Re:The unit will also

[LQ]

Correct the misunderstanding ...
that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

"Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq did not have WMD"

Is this ironic? Iraq did have WMD.

Re:The unit will also

[tibike77]

I suppose sand, oil and people count as WMDs then ?

Re:The unit will also

[jimicus]

Corrent the misunderstanding that there are not hordes of rabid terrorists queueing up to kill each and every last one of us

The rate they're going, there will be hordes of rabid terrorists.

The sad thing is watching Blair jump on this bandwagon, when it was Blair's party which has brought the closest thing to peace Northern Ireland has had for years. Prior to that, the Tories were the best recruiting officers the IRA had ever had.

Re:The unit will also

[clickclickdrone]

>that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.
But every fule knows that it was Saddam that orchestrated 9/11, trained the terrorists, paid for everything etc. Oh hang on, sorry, I was on the wrong channel.

Re:The unit will also

[knipknap]

Corrent the misunderstanding that there are not hordes of rabid terrorists queueing up to kill each and every last one of us

Well, there may be soon, the administration is working on it. Terrorists are too helpful to ignore, they have worked beautifully in their favor before.

I am a German, and we still get to see a LOT of information on the history of the second world war in school, including videos of the propaganda machine of that time, political strategies, and their mindless followers.
Now what is happening in America is beginning to remind me more and more of the propaganda machine that I saw in those videos from before the second world war. It is a trend that has gained intensity over the last couple of years. Whenever you tuned into US national news during the Iraq war, it's been a display of the technological advancement of the war machinery and one-sided government-friendly reporting. 50% airtime for one side, 50% for the other? It simply does not happen in popular media.

My point is: The goverment has now started to broaden the definition of terrorism, so these things will give them even more power. If you control public opinion, democracy is not much different from a monarchy. When more power is given to anybody, the greed for more power will grow. In my opinion, it is not a question of whether the power will be abused. It is a vicious circle and only a matter of time.

Re:The unit will also

[suv4x4]

Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq did not have WMD
Correct the misunderstanding that the Iraq war did not actually end when GB said it did
Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq is not a nice place to be now
Correct the misunderstanding that several US interrogation techniques are actually torture
Correct the misunderstanding that there are not hordes of rabid terrorists queueing up to kill each and every last one of us

I... I had to save this this as a TXT file and compress it... to see what compression ratio I'll get....

What?

WHAT!?!?

Re:The unit will also

[Nyph2]

The question is if they would correct misunderstandings like those over WMDs, the lack of a 9/11 to iraq link, US interrogation techniques, a real comparative threat anaylsis on how much danger we actually face from terrorist attacks within the US etc, or if they will simply give us the message of the administration.

If they honestly correct mistakes in the media, that would actually be nice.
If they're just another tool to get propaganda to us, this is yet another sickening political move.

Sadly I think the 2nd is more likely.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

TAS?

- I guess Star Trek as always enlightened us ;)

Re:The unit will also

[joss]

BS.. negotiations started in secret under Thatcher, then Major made major moves too

Re:The unit will also

[Virgil Tibbs]

-I suppose sand, oil and people count as WMDs then ? well oil and people are killing the planet therefor sand must dangerous too

Re:The unit will also

[Opportunist]

Of course they do!

Sand and deserts have claimed thousands of life over the centuries!

More blood has been spilled for oil than the other way 'round!

And don't start me on how many people have killed other people since the beginning of time.

Re:The unit will also

[toetagger1]

I'm German, and have been living in the US for 9 years. The day I came here, I noticed what you said, and I am reminded of it everywhere I go in the US. And yes, 9 years ago Clinton was in power, and I was afraid of the groupthink mentality then too.

However, the one thing that makes the US more of a monarchy than a democracy, is that you have the son of a former president as the commander in chief. And the wife of another former president is looking to run for president at the next election.

The US is not a democracy in the terms of people CHOOSE their leaders, its a democracy in the terms of people THINK they choose their leaders.

And if you get to know the political system in the US a bit closer, it becomes clear that the choices people think they have, are actually very carefully screened and selected by the most powerful parties in the country. This opens the door wide for a puppet government, where the president is a prominent public figure, and the policy is done by players in the background. Look for Cheyney to run for President in 2 years!

Re:The unit will also

[hublan]

Is this ironic? Iraq did have WMD.

Of course they did and Rumsfeld knows it since he probably still has the receipt.

Re:The unit will also

[Qzukk]

If they honestly correct mistakes in the media, that would actually be nice.
If they're just another tool to get propaganda to us, this is yet another sickening political move.

I'd make a gentlemanly wager that it won't bother trying to fix Fox News's repeated assertions that Foley is a democrat.

Re:The unit will also

[shenanigans]

... that Al Qaeda had anything to do with 9/11. Or that Al Qaeda even exists.

Re:The unit will also

[jimicus]

They did a damn good jobof keeping negotiations secret. Note how 90% of the bombings were under Tory rule. Sure, there have been some explosions since Blair came to power, but significantly fewer - and none since 2001.

Re:The unit will also

[PhyrricVictory]

I agree. Please, pretty please, get your governments to stop collaborating with us. Do not buy our debt. Move the UN to Geneva and give it the testicular fortitude to condemn US terrorism. Do not trade with us. Do not allow our citizens into your country. Break off diplomatic relations. Like WWII this will most likely have to be stopped from external influences as the sheeple are too far gone here.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Thatcher had the guts to upset the status quo. Many hate Thatcher, but she defied Reagan on the Falklands. Blair would never have done that.

Re:The unit will also

[argStyopa]

blah blah blah...the US government is starting to look like Nazis...blah blah blah

What's so ironic is that at the same time you point the finger at the US government propaganda efforts, I'm certain that you believe YOUR media is objective.

I've never seen people so willing to swallow unquestioning propaganda by the Left - I'm not sure if it's not some psychological knee jerk against the pervasive guilt of your older generations, or some deep Teutonic need to be told what to think (possbly both). Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, we now know from Soviet and East German archives that the younger generations of Germans were flat-out MANIPULATED by rather simplistic disinformation techniques, cheerfully marching into the streets to (sometimes violently) oppose "Reagan's Kernwaffen" and American militarism while the Soviets chuckled all through the 80s.

Frankly, you don't know crap about the US aside from the nonsense that comes out of Hollywood or from OUR media sources who themselves are deeply opposed to the war and don't mind letting that bias inform their view (example: New York Times) or other news services who are also made up nearly 100% of people who oppose the war (example: BBC). But I'm sure you're CERTAIN that, despite their political leanings, these people are the soul of objective reporting. HINT: you're being manipulated again.

One would think that one would be a little more questioning about one's own motivations and information sources, particularly when pointing the finger at someone else. What's the word for 'hypocrite' in German again?

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

Start with this, that has not been reported, or under-reported:
http://www.glennbeck.com/realstory/iraq-video.shtm l

Keep in mind they are trying to not to have another tet offensive. Not the battle, (that we won) but the news coverage that we lost.

Re:The unit will also

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You should check out arab textbooks.

http://www.pmw.org.il/schoolbooks.html

And then decide who is worse.

Re:The unit will also

[ReidMaynard]

Look for Cheyney to run for President in 2 years!

And look for Barack Obama too!

Re:The unit will also

[knipknap]

What's so ironic is that at the same time you point the finger at the US government propaganda efforts, I'm certain that you believe YOUR media is objective.

I am sorry that I do not fit into your black/white, left/right scheme, because I am neither anywhere near what you probably believe is a "rightist camp" nor near a "leftist camp". In fact, I do not even watch German TV, nor do I listen to German radio. I do, however, get information through the internet, from from both sides and from different countries. I can only advice you to try a 50%-50% information gathering scheme, it might be a healing experience.

Re:The unit will also

[knipknap]

I don't get your point. Are you saying that because somebody else has an even lower standard, any propaganda is justified?

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

or that you are not insane...

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

It just amazes me how everyone is so enamored with the "successes" and "honor" of WWII, yet when the same tactics are used in "modern" warfare, it's considered a travesty. Nice double-standard.

Re:The unit will also

[bkr1_2k]

"When more power is given to anybody, the greed for more power will grow. In my opinion, it is not a question of whether the power will be abused. It is a vicious circle and only a matter of time."

Which is exactly why more and more Americans are counting down the days until the next Presidential election. Get rid of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld and you'll see an awful lot of things change in short order.

Re:The unit will also

[GooberToo]

No, I think he's saying the best means of combating propaganda is with your own propaganda machine. This was proven even during WWII. Misinformation and propaganda have ALWAYS played key themes modern warfare.

And frankly, as often as US news completely distort, twist, purposely misreport, refuse to report, spin, and generally f-up the news, I'm looking forward to an official propaganda machine to help balance out what the mainstream media can't get right; despite it being their job. And no, that does not mean I am looking forward to drinking from the government's teet. It means it should help pressure the media to do their f-n job correctly...the first time.

Re:The unit will also

[stefanb]

At least we can be sure he never said he want's to stay the course.

Re:The unit will also

[GooberToo]

Exactly! People around the world seem to forget that part of our checks and balances includes limited terms and the clock is ticking down for our current goon-squad. Hell, Bush wouldn't even be in office except for the fact that the Democrats are so inept. So long as the Democrats can provide anything of an alternative (unlike last election), the Democrats will walk with the title. That will likely mean a huge shift in US politics.

Re:The unit will also

[Mac Degger]

Cheney isn't enough of a fool (in the medieval sense); unlike Bush, he won't adequately distract 'the people' from who is wielding the real power.

It's kind of frightening how people think 1984 was a how-to manual, and cribb ideas from Douglas Adams.

Re:The unit will also

[humungusfungus]

Mission Accomplished!

Re:The unit will also

[lawpoop]

Cheney is way too ill to run for president. He's had four heart attacks. However, Jeb Bush, the brother of the president and the governor of Florida, is a serious contender!

Re:The unit will also

[Lord Ender]

You haven't looked closely enough. The two most powerful parties both hold ELECTIONS to pick their candidates for the larger election. Your puppetry fears would only make sense if some specific person had the ability to decide a party's candidate.

Re:The unit will also

[vertinox]

Frankly, you don't know crap about the US aside from the nonsense that comes out of Hollywood or from OUR media sources who themselves are deeply opposed to the war and don't mind letting that bias inform their view (example: New York Times) or other news services who are also made up nearly 100% of people who oppose the war (example: BBC). But I'm sure you're CERTAIN that, despite their political leanings, these people are the soul of objective reporting. HINT: you're being manipulated again.

I hate to say this, but you sir are a tool.

I've lived in the states all my life and would have to say as an observation from a foreigner he is spot on.

The thing is that media and Hollywood pretty much are what drives America. They form the popular opinion.

The average American does not read NY Times much less read anything... It is said that the average American has not read a book since high school or college.

I'd say they aren't being manipulated as much as they just don't care and or being blind.

Many right and left wingers thing there is some sort of hidden agenda against them and they blindly follow their party which they latched on to either because it was their parents party or they revolted against their parents and sided with the opposite party.

You sir are simply being manipulated by your favorite party because you cannot see them for what they really have in mind for you. And it is not in your best interest... Personally I only favor the democrats in power right now because it would cause a stalemate in congress and prevent it from passing new laws which continually errode my freedoms.

Had we a democrat in the whitehouse I would simply support the republicans in the same hopes that government would cease to function, but it is kind of silly to think your vote counts for anything.

And the Grandparent is right about the relations to WWII and today. One of my favorite studies has been Germany during World War II and I've collected a good deal of propaganda films for their sake as art.

The blind overoptimism, stay the course, our great technology, and fearless infallible leaders and the subhuman enemy is always present in those films.

Re:The unit will also

[elrous0]

Correct the misunderstanding ... that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

I'm sure that will be their first priority.

-Eric

Re:The unit will also

[glesga_kiss]

The sad thing is watching Blair jump on this bandwagon, when it was Blair's party which has brought the closest thing to peace Northern Ireland has had for years.

No, it was Al Qaida that stopped the IRA. After 9/11, New Yorkers realized that putting money in the green bins for the Irish terrorists might not be all that good an idea. After that, the IRAs funding completely dried up; they resort now to robbing banks to try to hold onto that last little bit of relevance.

9/11 put white terrorism out of fashion.

Re:The unit will also

[rHBa]

When is Bush going to realise that even a sysadmin doesn't log in as root all the time

Re:The unit will also

[OriginalArlen]

Here's an amusing song that was recently broadcast on a popular satirical BBC radio programme. It's a shame you can't enjoy Mitch Benn's accurate rendition of crappy MOR rawk. Enjoy.

Crap your pants for America

We live in troubled times
Our enemies surround us
We must be vigilant
To the dangers all around us
There's evil little furr'ners
And perverts here as well
It's your patriotic duty
To be as scared as hell

So crap your pants for America
Foul yourself for freedom
Soil your shorts for the USA
Crap your pants for America
Only Dubya can save us
And we'll hide beneath our beds, and quake and pray

It could happen any minute
It could happen any place
So gaze with deep suspicion In every stranger's face
Your government is struggling
They've run out of ideas
They've run out of excuses
All they've got left is fear

So crap your pants for America
Foul yourself for freedom
Soil your shorts for the USA
Crap your pants for America
The land of the paranoid
The panic-stricken, jittery, and free

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct the misunderstanding introduced by *bribing* Iraqi newspapers, to the tune of *millions* of dollars, to plant positive stories written by Pentagon-paid contracting agencies (e.g., the Lincoln Group).

What a great job -- plant story, then correct it.

It would be joke, if this wasn't so pathetic.

Re:The unit will also

[toetagger1]

Yes, there are the primaries and the caucasus, where each party votes for a candidate to be nominated to run for the party as the presidential candidate.
However, if the party doesn't endorse the candidate, they have no chance. So its a few people influenced by a few groups that get to say who runs in the primaries and caucasus.

So while those few people can't dictate who'll be the next president, they can make sure that the pool of 2 to 3 serious and up to 5 outsider candidates at a minimum meet their requirements.

From there, the public then gets to SELECT their parties candidate, and then at the presidential level, they get to SELECT their president.

I agree that popular support is a necessity to become president in the US, but it is the groupthink, powerful interest groups, and the media that makes it very possible to gain that popular support if you have the means (power) to do so.

For example, the former CEO of General Electric is looking to buy some major newspapers in Boston. Wouldn't surprise me if he's going to run for office in 6 to 8 years.

Your comment makes sense, because the roots of the US "democracy" are still visible today, and if you look closely, you will always see a "democracy." But its the big picture that will show you that we are closer to a monarchy than a democracy.

Re:The unit will also

[geobeck]

The two most powerful parties both hold ELECTIONS to pick their candidates for the larger election.

That larger ELECTION has worked really well the last couple of times, hasn't it? If the entrenched oligarchy can do such a good job of fixing a popular election, do you really think party elections are any more democratic?

Re:The unit will also

[mikesmind]

It's kind of frightening how people think 1984 was a how-to manual

The frightening thing is that in the book, 1984, so much of the work was paper-based. Granted, they did have the Speakwrite. However, once the corrections were made, the published works were destroyed and republished. How much easier could it be with spiders and bots being able to index all this news. What if the government gained enough control to "hack" a site and electronically re-write the news?

Re:The unit will also

[Rayin]

Whenever you tuned into US national news during the Iraq war, it's been a display of the technological advancement of the war machinery and one-sided government-friendly reporting This is a joke, right? I think the last government-friendly news report I've seen on the national news were in the days leading UP to the war.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

"Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq did not have WMD" - Granted and admitted
"Correct the misunderstanding that the Iraq war did not actually end when GB said it did" - He never said it ended - the mission to take bagdad was the mission -, YOU stand corrected
"Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq is not a nice place to be now" - Never was, no correction needed - sadaam was a nutbag dictator who murdered his own people.
"Correct the misunderstanding that several US interrogation techniques are actually torture" - Oh yea? Prove it. Boo hoo, some America-hating terrorist gets his head dunked in water... do you actually know that we're interrogating the ENEMY? Well, our enemy at least, i can't speak on your behalf.
"Corrent[sic] the misunderstanding that there are not hordes of rabid terrorists queueing up to kill each and every last one of us" - What? Are you stupid?

Also, I'm aware of the misspellings of names.

Re:The unit will also

[Dread_ed]

In complete agreement with your comment I will posit that the unspoken word you need to concisely discribe this is Aristocracy.

That is what the US government is devolving into. Not only in that the select few will govern, but that they will comprise a class of people above the law of the commoners. You have no farther to look than the laws Bush is passing to make himself immune to prosecution after his term(other presidents are thinking "why didn't I think of that?!"), or the inter-party back scratching that results in Sandy Berger walking free after defrauding the American people of vital information from the National Archives.

The trappings of party division and political strife are the handwaving of a magician to distract the public while they systematically orchestrate the removal of our constitutional rights. Anyone else find it interesting that the two parties can be so divided on issues, yet when it comes time to yank the rug out from under the population they find a way to come together? See the votes on the DMCA, or the Patriot Act to get a whif of what I'm smelling.

If things have gotten this bad this fast, just imagine what will happen in the next 10 years. Especially if there is another event like 9/11. Emperor of the US anyone?

Re:The unit will also

[Overzeetop]

That is what the US government is devolving into

Actually, that's what it has always been. Do you think Thomas Jefferson was a common man? Hardly. The US has always had an aristocracy, and always will. It is based on money, not name or title, and therefore can change. Get the cash and you too can join the ruling class. That is what used to separate it from England.

The constant erosion of liberty is a direct result of the way representative governments clash with human needs. Those in power wish to stay in power. Not out of some need to be an evil dictator, but to shape the country into their vision of what should be. To do so, they must maintain their power. All politicians (and CEOs, for that matter) know that they will garner credit and face blame for waht happens during their tenure whether or not they had any influence. That's why every administration want's to tighten their grip and expand their power - to prevent the catastrophe that would get them fired. They've all managed to lose sight of the fact that they are stripping from most of us the very things that make us a free people.

It should be noted that the people who make these laws are generally (a) not subject to them (practically speaking) or (b) have already lost those freedoms as a part of the job they do. If you make $200k or more a year, with full benefits, it would seem silly to argue over $20 for a CD vs downloading it - and the people who take that $20 will make sure the facts lean their way. If you're a congressman, your financial dealings are pretty much on the table, and your private life is scrutinized by the medis (and your opponent) as a matter of course. You're not losing the right to privacy, because you have to act as if it doesn't exist on a daily basis. To the rest of us, $20 is a lot for 1 good song and 7 fillers, and we still expect our phone conversations to be private.

I don't see any real changes in the next 10, or 100, years. I'm sure my children, and their grandchildren, will be arguing the same thing when they are my age. Not that this doens't mean that I'm taking this lying down - I vote in every election, and I vote for whomever I think will cause the least damage. In this type of democracy, that's really what it's about. You can't make it better than the basics we started with, you just have to ensure that the people in power don't screw it up.

Re:The unit will also

[killerdark]

You are dangerously close to understanding the world... Now consider that the influencing of ideas is not limited to direct political party ideas but to every aspect of our society of major brands influencing our how profile ourself by wearing certain clothes, drive a specific car. Oil lobbies that finance environmental groups to protest against nuclear energy, employers that influence the loyalty of their employees. It makes me doubt the free will of mankind.

Re:The unit will also

[jafac]

No, I think he's saying the best means of combating propaganda is with your own propaganda machine

WRONG. The best means of combating propaganda is open, honest, transparent, reasoned debate.
Since we can't have that in this country, we adopt the next best thing - our own propaganda machine.
Surely we can outspend them, right? Because China will keep lending us the money.
I just worry what will happen when we need to outspend China on their propaganda machine. . .
(ie. learn to speak Mandarin, now)

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

I am south african. Unlike most people in the US, I have spent time under something closely approaching martial law (yes, I know they called it a state of national emergency; when they can, and do, declare curfews, censor the media with impunity, and censor the fact that they censor, detain people without trial and so on, it's basically martial law), and I have spent time experiencing the tender mercies of what was basically a fascist regime. Even for the `privileged' people it was no bed of roses.

I moved to the US and at the time I told my (american) wife that I was deeply concerned about the direction the government was moving in. This was in the Clinton era. She didn't really take me very seriously.

Now she does.

Re:The unit will also

[Sloppy]

I think most Americans know what you're talking about, but we just don't know what to do about it. Most Americans think that the voting booth is where all of civics happens, rather than being where merely an important part of it happens.

Re:The unit will also

[toetagger1]

I wish you were right...
Just last week, my co worker and roommate that grew up in in a family that is heavily leaning towards the democratic party, and is a democrat himself, argued that they found weapons of mass distractions, and labeled me an extremist for only following the news I like.

While I was in college, 99% of my friends argued for hours against me, claiming that there is absolutely no doubt that Saddam has WMDs, is actively developing more WMDs, and is planning on using them at the first chance. Those were people that I thought were the bright sight, the glimmer of hope for reasonging and understanding...

I speak like this mostly in regards to my peers, in their early twenties. I hope that they will learn as they grow older, or some of the mistakes Europe has experienced 50 years ago, will repeat themselves in 50 years from now.

On the one side, people's learnings are shielded and limmited by the media. The exposure to critical news is very carefully screened, as the article above points out. On the other hand, I belief in the power of the Internet, and its influence of the free flow of information. As long as the Internet remains free, there is hope.

Re:The unit will also

[shenanigans]

Well that was original. Insane is as insane does.

Re:The unit will also

[Stoutlimb]

Winrar gave me 44%. Not bad!

Re:The unit will also

[Stoutlimb]

I think by the time Cheney takes office, he won't have to.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a tiny research project for your consideration if you really are anti-fascist, which so few on the left are these days.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct the misunderstanding that the Iraq war did not actually end when GB said it did

or the misunderstanding the GB said it did.

Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq is not a nice place to be now
Or that it was under Saddam - for those not on Saddam's buddy list.

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this motherfucker get modded up? Someone mod him flamebait please.

Re:The unit will also

[Thuktun]

Frankly, you don't know crap about the US aside from the nonsense that comes out of Hollywood or from OUR media sources who themselves are deeply opposed to the war and don't mind letting that bias inform their view (example: New York Times) or other news services who are also made up nearly 100% of people who oppose the war (example: BBC). But I'm sure you're CERTAIN that, despite their political leanings, these people are the soul of objective reporting. HINT: you're being manipulated again.

Just as a data point, I've lived in the USA all my life and I find myself nodding my head in agreement with the GP's post and shaking my head in disbelief at yours. YMMV.

Re:The unit will also

[cloakable]

No.. look for Cheyney to be the VP to the next Republican candidate.

Re:The unit will also

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Oh really ?

http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/corruptio n-of-media.html

Please explain how these 2 things never made it into the debate ...

Re:The unit will also

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no farther to look than the laws Bush is passing to make himself immune to prosecution after his term ....

The Ceaucescus in Romania found that other means of prosecution worked well.

In becoming our enemies in order to fight them...

[Filik]

...we are effectively loosing.

This rapid walk away from democracy in the name of democracy is frightning .

You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[citanon]

Has there been any instance in our nation's military history where we've won a war without a successful propaganda effort? From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.

People who think that the military doing propaganda is wrong/evil/unprecedented have never taken an honest look at history.

Get over it people, this is not 1984, this is trying to do a much scaled back version of what we have always done in the past.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Opportunist]

The question is, though, whether this "war" is supposed to be won or if it's supposed to be running. The war on (insert idea) cannot be won. You can't wage a successful, finite war on an idea. A "war" on terror or drugs is a "war" that you cannot win with firepower.

That's what is being suggested, though. People are sent to the place where whatever idea is fought, they die there and nothing is gained. You can't gain ground in this battle. There is no big leader, no key figure, no enemy headquarter to be conquered to end the battle.

Ralleying your population behind a war against a common enemy is a necessity. But this time the war has become an end in itself, it's not the means to the end. The war on (idea) is not fought to end (idea), because it cannot end it. The goal is simply to strengthen the economy, to reduce unemployment (as hard as it sounds, but killing people (or having them killed) reduces your workforce...) and to distract the population from other problems.

And a war with these goals cannot be won. It never was in history.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[RAMMS EIN]

``From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.

People who think that the military doing propaganda is wrong/evil/unprecedented have never taken an honest look at history.''

Well, it depends. Maybe some wars _shouldn't_ be won?

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[MathFox]

From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.

Are you applying for a job at the "Pentagon counterinformation service" or did they allready hire you?

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[MadUndergrad]

That would be all fine and dandy (actually, it wouldn't, since wartime propoganda still propagates racism and jingoism), except that we aren't at war. We haven't been since 1945, and no, Congress authorizing use of force is not a declaration of war. If the justification for war (or "war" in this case) isn't good enough for the people to support it then that indicates that the people making the decisions have motives contrary to the wellbeing of the people. The secrecy and "correction of falsehoods" just serve to obscure the big picture.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Milton Waddams]

True, propaganda has such a negative connotation. Propaganda is defined as "the organized circulation by a political group, etc of doctrine, information, misinformation, rumour or opinion, intended to influence public feeling, raise public awareness, bring about reform, etc.". So, given that definition, anything communicated publicly by the Government is propaganda.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[clickclickdrone]

Sort of agree but another angle is that in the past, your average Joe had very little access to media/news sources other than the daily papers so feeding them propaganda was easier and less obvious.
Now anyone can google up a whole bunch of views on an event and see the spin a government or company put on something. The result is we're all far more savvy about this things, resent being manipulated so obviously and less trusting of the Powers That Be overall.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[marcello_dl]

"you can't win without propaganda" is... propaganda. Because you give the impression, without saying it, that propaganda is a somewhat important factor, the truth being: everyone does at least a little propaganda to keep morale high against the bad effects of a war, and one of the factions usually wins.

History? fascist italy and communist bloc, FULL of full time propaganda, were fast to convert to being friends of USA and capitalism. So, your theory is wrong. Not that it's a theory, it's just saying "the end justifies the means".

And, once you do what you criticize in the enemy, what makes you the good guys?

Pentagon modded you insightful ;D

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[quigonn]

A "war" on [...] drugs is a "war" that you cannot win with firepower.

You can. You just need to take the right ones. Speed has been quite successful in the past, and Modafinil seems to be the latest fad.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Fred_A]

Has there been any instance in our nation's military history where we've won a war without a successful propaganda effort? From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.

Helloooo ! You are not at war.

Just in case you didn't know.

Using your troops as an occupation/"police" force doesn't qualify as a war. There is no opposing nation. And nobody ever declared war, on one side or the other.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Threni]

> Vietnam

The US temporarily managed to justify that, until the number of deaths became too great and enough people said "what the hell are we doing in Asia, killing civilians". So yes, propaganda is important if you want to try and fight people's natural urge to respect the right of civilians not to be bombed, poisoned, shot and raped, but it's only so effective - eventually the sheer number of reports is too great and reality breaks through.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[BoberFett]

More brilliant discourse from the left. When you can't argue, discredit. You're as bad as Bush.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Has there been any instance in our nation's military history where we've won a war without a successful propaganda effort? From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[smchris]

Has there been any instance in our nation's military history where we've won a war without a successful propaganda effort?

Only problem is that the "war on terror" is like the "war on cancer". Personally, I'd rather the government directed its propaganda efforts to the war on cancer. It kills more people.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Archtech]

"...we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not".

And here I was thinking that the USA won wars whenever its enormous advantages in wealth, military technology, and (often) numbers were not outweighed by other factors.

As a matter of interest, did you have in mind any lost wars other than Vietnam? (Which wasn't technically a war, according to the US administration itself, but never mind). The recent war in Iraq was comprehensively won by the USA, which routed and destroyed the formal armed forces of the Iraqi state. Having won the war, the US forces are now being unpleasantly harrassed by angry Iraqi citizens who resent being subjugated by foreign armies. And the US administration is, apparently, embarrassed at the public revelation of its incompetence and the frightful mess it has made out of what was once a relatively successful (if badly governed) state.

As for your belief that any amount of propaganda is permissible in wartime, it is reduced to absurdity by the mere observation that a government can simply choose to declare continuous war - as this one has, for instance. Then it has got rid, at a stroke, of the tedious apparatus of freedom of speech.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

People who think that the military doing propaganda is wrong/evil/unprecedented have never taken an honest look at history.

Propaganda is fine. It's been part of every political or military process since two families agreed to share the same cave. What's disturbing about this is the intention to "correct" those stories deemed "inaccurate" by military spin doctors. Does this mean they'll demand previews of Iraq related stories? If two goons with assault rifles show up at the NY Times news desk and "suggest" that casualty reports from Iraqi hospitals are "fabrications," are we supposed to believe there can be any fact-checking?

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Jeff DeMaagd]

No amount of propaganda can reverse the fact that we are losing the war in Iraq, and in the long term, the "War on Terror". I don't know how it can be used to cover the fact that the US government is bankrupting itself fighting it in the worst way to fight it, it's not something that the military can fight.

Taking away rights and freedoms in the name of a war on an idea means that it probably would take five decades to correct, given how long the Cold War lasted, the "War on Communism". Assuming that we ever get those rights back. Thankfully McCarthyism was ejected, so the early scares in the Cold War didn't last long.

If you want a War on Terror the way it is happening now, take a look at the War on Drugs and tell me we aren't losing. The militants are feeding on the resentments in the Muslim community over what happened in the last five, fifty and five hundred years.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Overzeetop]

Just a minor correction; though your statement to reduce unemployment (as hard as it sounds, but killing people (or having them killed) reduces your workforce...) is technically correct, it's the making of munitions and necessities and the logistic support of large deployments which reduces unemployment (and strengthens the economy, though on borrowed dollars).

I agree with your point, though.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

The US won in Vietnam?

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done, you just earned a cookie.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[SamSim]

You can't wage a successful, finite war on an idea. [...] You can't gain ground in this battle. There is no big leader, no key figure, no enemy headquarter to be conquered to end the battle.

America has always been at war with terrorism.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[mqj]

You can't wage a successful, finite war on an idea.

Of course not. Because ideas are bulletproof.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

The US could win this war, it would just be very costly and involve substnatial collateral dammage.

We have enough nukes to take out every muslim nation on the planet and France.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[SoulRider]

You are completely right, somewhere along the line someone figured out that "cold wars" are a great to syphon money out of the tax barrel and into their pocket. That is why we fight these kinds of wars.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Professional Heckler]

Well Said!
This whole thing is pretty disturbing for me seeing as I just watched V for Vendetta again last night.

Prof

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Dread_ed]

"You can't gain ground in this battle. There is no big leader, no key figure, no enemy headquarter to be conquered to end the battle."

You are correct in that statement to a point, however the enemy we face is a socioeconomic structure that when coupled with vast religion-governemnt integration and opressive tactics results in an entire region of the world being militarized around intolerant religious principles. The idea is to remove the base of support by rearanging the political structure around well established secular principles. This in turn will lead (hopefully) to alleviation of the pressure on the population in the form of religious oppression and (what some see as) undue pressure. Essentially the prospect is modernization (political, social, and economic) and Westernization of the middle East.

In spite of all that, even if that objective is achieved, the idea that is being fought will still exist. So in truth the war can still be waged into perpetuity.

"to reduce unemployment (as hard as it sounds, but killing people (or having them killed) reduces your workforce"

If this is part of the goal for Iraq we need to get busy killing more Americans. This has been a total wash out in terms of losing American lives. One of the least bloody (for Americans) offensives in our history. The fact that so many people are appaled at the relatively low number of lives lost is curious to me. I fear that if we ever had a truly formidable enemy, even in a conflict without as much controversey and dissent, that many in the US would quail before the prospect of troop losses proportional to historical wars.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Right on the money. Do not fall into the Slash think!

It's NOT wrong for a organization(governmental or not) to CORRECT the media! The media coverage especially from CNN, MSNBC AND Fox News has all been biased in different directions (Liberal for CNN and MSNBC, Conservative for Fox News). Noone has covered all the good that has been done in Iraq thus far. There has been deaths....The Bush admin doesn't deny it. War is hell. The total truth of the Iraq war won't come out until well after it's done. There may be classified information that will reveal proof of WMD or other justification for the war, but what most liberals do not get is we can't divulge things that may be damaging to the safety of our servicemen. Yes their safety IS threatened already. That is just a fact of life in Iraq....you have insurgents gunning for you. Bush is right.....we cannot leave Iraq without a stable government. Also, I have yet to hear anything out of the military that states they think they should be leaving. Liberals will say that this is becaus ethey have to say what Rummy says but that's not true. Our military leaders have every right we do and can have their own opinion. They may have to DO what Rumsfeld and company say, but they can have and do have their own opinions and have shared them as well.

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[blankinthefill]

Yes, but I would argue that much of the propaganda to this this point in time was directed in two different directions.

1.) Propaganda aimed towards the enemy. The purpose of this type of propaganda was to convince the enemy, especially the civilian population, that they were either oppressed or that the actions taken by the side opposing them were either not evil (or a necessary evil for the populations own betterment.)

2.) Propaganda aimed towards increasing war support. Propaganda in this area comes in the form of "Rosie the Riveter" and "Uncle Sam Wants You" type messages. These messages are not aimed at justifying the war, or even garnering popular support, but in taking popular support that already exists and whipping it up into a national patriotic fervor.

However, the propaganda of today, and that of Vietnam (to a lesser extent), seems to take a slightly different track.

The propaganda centered around the war in Iraq differs from that in previous wars in, again, two ways.

1.) The majority of the propaganda that we see, on the so called "home front" is not aimed at increasing an already present popular support, but at justifying and creating popular support. We are being told just about the same things that the civilian population of Iraq is: That we had to go in, that we are making Iraq a better place, that this is a war to bring good to the rest of the world. The administrations in charge of the war effort realize that they have less than half of their total populations supporting the war at all, and so the propaganda that they use on us is directed in the same way that propaganda towards the enemy used to be.

2.) The use of fear and popular prejudice to increase short term political power, while undermining the very document that gives us the freedoms we are so proud of in the first place. Things like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its creation of the colored threat meter have no purpose but to increase national fear and play off the popular prejudice around Islamic peoples. This increase in national fear makes it very easy to justify things like monitoring domestic wiretapping in the name of national safety. This national fear, when added to other actions such as prosecuting journalists that reveal information that is damaging to the images of the current ruling party, serves only to increase the sort term political power of the ruling party. (Of course, that raises the question of what happens when that party falls out of power. Does the new party abandon its new found control of society, or does it seek to increase its power even more?)

Right now, the system is broken. The checks and balances put into the system to halt such abuses of power have been trumped by two things. The first, and actually more minor item, is the use of "patriotism" and hyperbole to classify actions by opposing parties as "undemocratic" and "terrorist" in purpose. This is a two edged sword, since either party can, and will, end up using it. Its benefit to the party in power is extremely short term, and its use shows a lack of long term planning, intelligence, or strategy. The second item is far more pressing, but possibly far more fleeting as well. There are three branches of the government. I assume most of you know this. Now, in order for the checks and balances to work properly, there must be opposition to the ruling in at least one of these three branches, and preferably not the executive branch, since it should, under the circumstances it was designed, have the least real power. However, the system breaks when there is no opposition in any of the three branches of the government to the ruling party. As of this moment, the ruling party controls all three branches. Not only do they control the three, but there are no dissenters from the party itself in any position of power. This lack of checks and balances is what is making the whole series of events, from the tapping of phones, to the invasion of privacy in the library and bookstore,

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[Opportunist]

the enemy we face is a socioeconomic structure that when coupled with vast religion-governemnt integration and opressive tactics results in an entire region of the world being militarized around intolerant religious principles

Are you talking about the US or the middle east now? Opressive government tactics and religious principles apply to both.

And, quite seriously, to eliminate the base of power for terrorism, you'd first of all have to do something to be "liked". The US have hardly done anything to be "liked" by other countries, quite the opposite, a lot of its "allies" would immediately switch sides if they didn't fear the firepower of the US. There's hardly a country with has less "true" supporters than the US, most of its allies suck up to it for the same reason some guys suck up to the school bully. Not because they like him, but because it means you don't get beaten up and you get to have some fun beating others up too.

If this is part of the goal for Iraq we need to get busy killing more Americans. This has been a total wash out in terms of losing American lives. One of the least bloody (for Americans) offensives in our history.

Well, they're not dead yet, but you have a sizable number of people in uniform. That's almost as good as dead, since they're not available for the work pool, thus reducing unemployment.

And yes, the war is necessary to justify the amount of people in the army. I mean, what do you need a huge army for if you don't go to war with it? People would start crying 'bout the insane amount of money blown into the military budget. But if there's a war to be fought, who could complain?

Re:You can't win a modern war without propaganda

[mofomojo]

Well then, don't fight wars.

ALL inaccurate stories?

[Opportunist]

Does that mean editors for Fox News should put their lawyers on speeddial?

Re:ALL inaccurate stories?

[quigonn]

Actually, Fox News is the only news station that gets "The Truth, The Absolute Truth and nothing but The Truth Seal of Quality" certification by the Pentagon News Correction Unit.

Re:ALL inaccurate stories?

[pryonic]

Maybe they'll finally punish Fox News for making mistakes like reporting that Mark Foley is a democrat during their reporting of the scandal...

But seen as Fox support the current administration I doubt it...

Dayorder

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN 10.31.06 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons
rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

True Picture About Iraq

[RAMMS EIN]

FTFA:

``The Bush administration does not believe the true picture of events in Iraq has been made public, the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says.''

Well, I don't believe so, either. If the true picture had been made public right from the beginning, popular support for the war would probably have been so low that the government wouldn't have dared to go to war in the first place.

Re:True Picture About Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

BBC Radio 4 newscaster and reporter John Humphrys has been in Basra, Iraq very recently. Read his essay and his diary.

For all it's faults, at least we have some press freedom left in the UK.

I hope someone somewhere is archiving this stuff on dead tree.

Re:True Picture About Iraq

[_Sprocket_]

Well, I don't believe so, either. If the true picture had been made public right from the beginning, popular support for the war would probably have been so low that the government wouldn't have dared to go to war in the first place.

The problem is that the majority of the public seem to think that the war that started in 1990 had ended.

Scary

[AlphaLop]

All I can say is this is Really, Really, Scary.... Even for Halloween.

Its news not law

[el_womble]

I'm all for this. As long as they don't demand that newspapers publish their stories and only their stories (or more likely that the major netwoprks get lazy and just go to them to get their stories) or make it illegal to believe anything else, this is democracy and freedom in action.

Knowing what the military want you to think is fascinating, providied its balanced by the free press. Having the news delivered by different agendas is what makes watching modern history unfold so exciting and makes it easier to get down to the facts and through the bullshit.

Re:Its news not law

[BoberFett]

Quite right. The knee-jerkers have already decided that everything from here on out is going to be filtered through the Pentagon. Instead, this sounds like it will just be one more source of information to be added to the pile, from amongst which everyone has to discover the truth for themselves.

Re:Its news not law

[_xeno_]

This isn't just about "old media" like newspapers and TV, though. It's about "new media:"

The newly-established unit would use "new media" channels to push its message and "set the record straight", Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said.

...

The unit would reportedly monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.

That sounds dangerously close to astroturfing. It's unclear from the article what, exactly, this new group hopes to accomplish, but I hope they're not planning on astroturfing. Having a press office is fine - but I'm fairly sure the Pentagon already has one. (After all, there's a Pentagon press secretary quoted above, which would seem to suggest a press office.) This sounds like something different, and dangerously close to astroturfing.

The idea of the Pentagon employing "surrogates" sounds - well, creepy. And maybe just a tad Orwellian.

I'm all for the Pentagon publishing their views and opinions. They should. However, it should always be clear where the information is coming from, and the article makes it sound like it won't be. Employing "surrogates" is fine - as long as it's always made clear where their message comes from.

Of course, the article is incredibly vague about what, exactly, this new group will be doing. So there may be nothing to worry about, but it's worth being concerned until it becomes clear how, exactly, they intend to "correct the record."

Re:Its news not law

[MikeBabcock]

You're assuming they'll stamp their names on everything they release and not be the least be subversive or pass off their version of the news as someone else's by working under cover as 'leaks' and such.

I'd love to watch the Military CNN too but that isn't going to be what happens -- we're going to get guerrilla tactic media disinformation instead.

Re:Its news not law

[crabpeople]

"Knowing what the military want you to think is fascinating, providied its balanced by the free press"

How can you tell which media is free and which is controlled? You could go by obvious slant (fox news is right wing, guardian is left) but what's to stop them hiring covert AP reporters? Planting seeds in the blogosphere? I mean most people here can barely tell when an article is a slashvertisement, and you want them to constructively form an opinion on foreign policy with even less of a frame of reference? So whenever you are debating a point with someone in this future world, you would be debating the points of a propaganda campagin that invents the truth. Lack of intelligence is better than bad intelligence.

The last thing anyone needs is more propaganda.

Re:Its news not law

[fermion]

But I really think it would be cheaper and more honest to set up a site called pravda.gov so that the proletariat can get the real facts directly from the central governing authority.

Re:Its news not law

[el_womble]

I might be a skeptic, but I think its only healthy to approach all news as propaganda. Modern journalists are acutely aware of the power that they have over their readers and they are professional wordsmiths who make a living not by selling the truth, but by selling advertising and copy.

Why should I trust a journalist who is paid by the military (who's end game is national security) any less than a journalist who is paid by News Corp. (who's end game is making Rupert Murdock even more money)?

Just take a look at slashdot. One of the most valuable things about this site is the opinions. Not because there is any one shining light of common sense, not because they are based on any fact, but because seeing how different people react to the same datum can have a profound affect on your own initially cursory glance at TFA.

Learning to read between the lines and spot the agendas of the authors is one of the most important skills somebody can have in a media-centric society - and unfortunately its damn hard. Just as you can't un-invent nuclear technology you can't suddenly get rid of all printing presses and the internet and in many ways they are as wonderful and as dangerous as each other.

Protection from terrorists

[seasunset]

We will only be completely protected from terrorists when the corrections are mandatory to be published with at least as much impact as the original terrorist version.

Better yet: Publishing news should only be allowed after screening from an anti-terrorist correction unit.

We have to protect our society from dangerous terrorists, who are attacking our way of life everyday and in every front.

Freedom of press is an hurdle that we can live without, it either that or the terrorists might succeed in attacking us! Fear the terrorists, Fear, Fear, Fear...

Re:Protection from terrorists

[Opportunist]

Fear the terrorists, Fear, Fear, Fear...

Are you a terrorist? Because that is the goal of terror, to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies.

Thinking about it, isn't that what certain news outlets tell us? Are they in with the terrorists?

God, I'd be a great McCarthy.

Re:Protection from terrorists

[hacker]

Are you a terrorist? Because that is the goal of terror, to strike fear in the hearts of your enemies.

Hence my sig below...

"They" WANT this.

[Dr_Barnowl]

Do you think that those in power in democratic nations want to keep democracy? Possibly the only part of democracy they want to keep is the appearance that the populace have any influence in government.

These units, as pointed out elsewhere, have always existed. The revealance of this unit is probably intended as a sop to the sheeple - if we public admit that we have a propaganda corps, then we can't have anything to hide on that front, right? They're on "our side", right?

Re:"They" WANT this.

[tibike77]

"Possibly the only part of democracy they want to keep is the appearance that the populace have any influence in government."

Excuse me, but since WHEN did "the people" have ANYTHING to say in any government of a "large" country, ever ?
Even today, the most self-acclaimed democracy (USA) is NOT a "democracy" at all, but a democratic REPUBLIC.
The difference, ever so subtle, is that "the people" can only "elect" those they want to SPEAK FOR THEM, instead of speaking for themselves.

So the more you keep the façade of "democracy", the better it seems to be for the people.
In reality, democracy is a critically flawed concept, even more flawed as communism (and we all know how that ended).

The only true freedom is anarchy, and nobody really wants that.
There is no freedom, there is only the ILLUSION of freedom.
And as long as that holds, nobody really complains.

Re:"They" WANT this.

[Halo1]

Excuse me, but since WHEN did "the people" have ANYTHING to say in any government of a "large" country, ever ?

Well, the EU is not a country, but we as an NGO composed of "the people" surely had quite an influence on the software patents debate in Europe. And yes, there was a lot of undemocratic crap happening. But it's too fatalistic to think you can't have influence or even win. It does cost a lot of effort (I and several others basically spent two or even more years of our life on almost only this), you lose several battles, you'll get called anything from communist to terrorist, but that does not mean you can't have influence or that you can't even win.

Few people want to spend so much of their life on battles where they think the odds of winning are very low though, so in general you either need a very perseverant and inspiring figurehead person, or a situation which is so dire that the masses finally snap. We had the former.

The difference, ever so subtle, is that "the people" can only "elect" those they want to SPEAK FOR THEM, instead of speaking for themselves.

Direct democracy does not work in practice (either, if you like) if it's done for everything. That said, the problem is that most of "the people" think they've done their duty after they've cast their vote. Companies and lobbyists understand that's only the beginning. "The people" should understand that as well. But yes, it requires a lot of effort and most people don't feel like doing that, because "the politicians are paid so much to do their job, so why should I invest my free time in making sure they do it right?".

With that attitude you don't get anywhere, except in a place where you can complain even more about how the world and politics suck.

Re:"They" WANT this.

[quigonn]

How is democracy "even more flawed that communism"?

I think you don't have even the slightest understanding of parliamentary democracy, which you only characterize as a "facade" as opposed to direct democracy. It works like this (at least here in Europe): people elect people and/or parties. Those people and/or parties with the most approval then form some kind of parliament, being the legislative power in the country. These people/parties are elected by the people (usually) because of what agenda, politics, opinions, or programmes they represent. This means that the people in the parliament represent the people who elected them, in the right proportion. And they're also the ones who vote for/against laws/bills that were made by the executive power (i.e. the government). This system has only one big weakness: it does not allow differentiation, i.e. with your vote you can only elect a general political direction but not e.g. opinion A of representative X regarding topic I and opinion B of representative Y regarding topic J. I don't really say what's undemocratic about it.

Re:"They" WANT this.

[Opportunist]

Anarchy would be nice, but I doubt the general population is able to live in an anarchy. The absence of external government is usually immediately filled by some person or organisation who takes over this role. And rarely with the best interest for those that don't govern.

The vast majority is simply unfit to govern themselves. Hell, they can't even stand up and oppose a government that clearly acts against their interest, how should they stand up and take the burden of governing themselves?

Re:"They" WANT this.

[KDR_11k]

Democracy does not require voting on issues directly, electing representatives to do that for you still falls into the scope of democracy.

Speaking of Doubleplusgood...

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

In other news, the Pentagon's News Correction Unit's first telegram is reported to contain the cryptic sentence "times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling."

1984?

[nstlgc]

We have never been at war with Eurasia^H^H^H^H^H^H^HIraq.

"Movie at 11"

[ettlz]

Governments involved in military operations organise to produce media in support of said operations?! Holy shit, say it's not so! We should name this most recent phenomenon after a mid 1980s German electropop outfit!

That said, the Pentagon has more-or-less admitted "Yes, we are actively making... stuff named after a mid 1980s German electropop outfit" which in the eyes of many destroys all credibility of anything they produce (true or not). They may well have shot themselves in the foot.

In the meantime, I'll stick to Cryptome.

The Most Important Speech in US History by JFK

[avasol]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlEqtaWpKEU&eurl=

He said it all. Ladies and Gentlemen. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Re:The Most Important Speech in US History by JFK

[Anonymous Coward]

You say it, you die. That's western plutocracy for you.

A few things come to mind here.

[a_karbon_devel_005]

Firstly, the fact that terrorists and insurgents can make stuff up faster than we (and here I mean "we" as in the US or just, in general, non-terrorists and non-insurgents, for sake of argument) can counter with fact is probably a true statement. It's MUCH tougher to actually back things up with facts than just wild accusations and propoganda. That's for sure.

However, the idea that insurgents (note the lack of the word "terrorist" in D. Cheney's rhetoric, they've finally lost that argument) are using the internet to disrupt US this upcoming election is rather ballsy.

So what, Mr. Cheney, people voting for Democrats this time around are in league with insurgents and terrorists? These "new media" channels that influence insurgents so much are actually the mainstream media as well that are giving US citizens information?

I think it's a bit simpler in nature. I think that insurgents hate the US and they hate the US military and they HATE westerners in general because their economy is a quagmire of shit and it's easier to hate wealthy nations than it is to reform a poor government run by corrupt theologues. I think that the Bush Administration has simply put US citizens in the line of fire, for right or wrong, and US citizens don't like that.

Trying to correct fiction with fact is all good and well, but the "voting for Democrats is supporting terrorism" rhetoric is childish.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[Opportunist]

I'd rather be a terrorist than support their war against freedom.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[misanthrope101]

Firstly, the fact that terrorists and insurgents can make stuff up faster than we

Well, you don't need to make up "the Marines bombed your house and killed your sister, father, and daughter. Join us in fighting them!" People aren't swarming to fight the US so much because of made-up stuff, but because there are about 150,000 armed-to-the-teeth foreign military, and a few tens of thousands of foreign paramilitary, killing their fellow Iraqis every day, with complete immunity from Iraqi law. It's true that if all Iraqis laid down their arms and did exactly what the foreign occupiers told them to, without hesitation or complaint, with averted eyes and a cowed demeanor, no one would be shot, but there's that pesky "pride" thing that, though a virtue in Americans, is a character flaw in everyone else on the planet.

it's easier to hate wealthy nations than it is to reform a poor government run by corrupt theologues.

Well, to be fair, the West has financed and armed many of the corrupt dictators that kept their economies in a state of, well, shit. It's not as if they were free nations that decided to hate us because we were free. Saddam was put in charge by Britain. Other examples abound. No, I'm not saying "the west is evil," only that part of their list of grievances against us is that we have supported dictators in their countries, and actually impeded democracy. See Iran as an example. We overthrew their democracy and installed a dictator--somehow, though they hate us, I don't think it's because of our freedom. No, I don't think their nations would blossom into post-Enlightenment bliss if we pulled our money and influence out, but we have been a very prominent part of the problem for about a century. Even if the problem would have existed without us (as it probably would have), that doesn't negate the fact that we have dirt up to the elbow.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Oh God No !
I just thought they set the ministry of truth up
spread rumours that terrorist sorry insurgents were going to disrupt the elections
rigged election in 3 2 1.

And don't say it wont happen, at least this time they're making a semi plausible story for stealing the election.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[glesga_kiss]

they HATE westerners in general because their economy is a quagmire of shit and it's easier to hate wealthy nations than it is to reform a poor government run by corrupt theologues

If you want to know why we are hated by them, pick up a history book and start reading. Their hatred is 100% justified and it has nothing to do with freedom or economics.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[foobsr]

Don't get trapped into their terminology. What you think of is partisan.

CC.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[Orne]

Well, you don't need to make up "the Marines bombed your house and killed your sister, father, and daughter. Join us in fighting them!"

Yet, that's exactly what happened in the last few days with the latest strike in Pakistan. The story comes out in the Associated Press that 80 people are killed in an attack on a madrassa (Islamic school). A Quote from the article: "Local leaders however insisted that most of the dead were teenage students". Suddenly, a follow up story comes out, "intelligence sources now tell ABC News that the missiles were fired from a U.S. Predator drone plane." Within hours, people are holding protest marches against the US in Pakistan, complete with banners in english protesting "US Terror Attack on Bajaur", with world-wide image coverage courtesy of Reuters. A couple hours after that, a US military rep had a press release stating that the US military was not involved in this strike.

Of course, we know now that the strike killed 5 senior leaders of al-Qaeda's branch in Pakistan, including one who was known to have harbored al-Zawahiri, the current 2nd in command of al-Qaeda. We also know the initial death reports were incorrect, the follow-up reports assigning blame were incorrect, and since no outside officials have been able to inspect the dead, it is possible that even the death count is incorrect (see the shennanigans in the recent Lebanon-Israeli conflict as evidence where bodies were being removed from morgues then used in staged pictures for foreign media).

What the US government is facing is an advanced war of propaganda, where the "enemy" is quite skilled, and has many willing accomplices in the US media; their hatred of the administration knowns no bounds. My feeling on this issue is not "should the government release their versions of events"... given how much false information is being dished out by our press, my reaction is "why has it taken until now"?

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[chefmonkey]

...it's easier to hate wealthy nations than it is to reform a poor government run by corrupt theologues

You misplaced a clause there. I think you meant to say: "it's easier to hate wealthy nations run by corrupt theologues than it is to reform a poor government."

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[Opportunist]

Know the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter?

The latter won his fight. Or what do you think George Washington would be labeled if he lost?

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[a_karbon_devel_005]

Despite our involvement in Iran and Iraq, the middle east is a nightmare and it's NOT all our fault. Mistakes have been made, but blaming the US for everything that's happened there is not rational.

Re:A few things come to mind here.

[glesga_kiss]

Well, if you want to go back to the root of the problem, it's our fault (the UK). We divided up territories carved out over thousands of years with no sensibilities to their differences. All in the drive for resources. The US only started messing about in the 50s, after we'd pulled back a bit. But, collectively we are responsible for most of the problems. I'm not saying that it would be all milk and honey otherwise, but most of the problems (as perceived by us, who cares about Iranian income tax?) are our fault.

great

[illuminatedwax]

This has been a great eight years! I always wanted to know what it was like to live in China, and now we keep getting closer every day! :)

Re:great

[tibike77]

In other news, European Union representatives claim they will no longer automatically accept political refugees from the former US of A, on the grounds that "the French hate them too much already".
A triage process that will include the stereotype pannel of one Frenchman, one Brit and one German asking the typical "oh no, yet another American" questions will separate those that can file for refugee status from the ones forwarded to India instead.
[/sarcasm]

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush needs to start printing little red books.

Just need those outsourced jobs, trade surplus and healthier fast food from China and we are good to go.

Re:great

[illuminatedwax]

To be fair, let's not forget tanks rolling out to quash protests and the government actively censoring free speech!

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[RAMMS EIN]

But who says you're becoming your enemies in order to fight them? Couldn't it just be a power grab for the sake of doing a power grab, with the whole "War on Terror" thing just being the excuse used to get away with it? If that's the case, there's a very good reason to make sure the "War on Terror" is never won, because that would take away the excuse for grabbing power.

Exactly!

[RAMMS EIN]

Your comment is spot on! I'd mod you up, but I already posted in this thread.

Well what the hell did you expect?

[smitingpurpleemu]

The Americans are occupying Iraq. They are clearly not welcome there. What does every occupying power need to try to do to keep themselves there? They need to make people happy with them, and one way to do it is by propaganda.

Sure it's promulgating misleading and/or false information, but the intent is to counter the effects of videos that Al-Qaeda and groups like the Mujahideen Shura Council release (remember the one that got on CNN with the snipers?) If you think Pentagon stuff is going to be biased... well I guess you haven't seen the stuff that the Pentagon is trying to shout down. Even Al-Jazeera is pretty biased, and they have to try to put up some level of objectivity.

In short, the fact that the Pentagon wants a propaganda machine is not news. It's standard operating procedure when invading and occupying a country. What is news is the fact that right now they're sort of being shouted down by the terrorists.

Re:Well what the hell did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have completely missed the point of the article. Of course the military use propaganda in their warfare against "enemy" nations, but the article is referring to the fact that
they are setting up a new unit to bombard the US's own citizens with propaganda.

That would be all of them

[giafly]

BBC is reporting that a newly created Pentagon unit has a mandate to fight 'inaccurate' news stories

I've never known a news story where I was personally involved to be reported accurately. I don't mean political bias, but basic things like names, dates, and the order of events.

Journalists are especially bad at reporting quotes accurately and "harden them up" by missing out important reservations. Journo: "Will this disaster happen?" Interviewee, "Well, yes, if nobody does anothing to fix things." As reported in the paper: 'Interviewee said, "Disaster will happen!"'.

Re:That would be all of them

[cpghost]

I concur! It happens all the time, also on occasions where I had prime facie evidence that the facts were reported... let's say, inaccurately, to put it mildly.

Amazingly, it very seldom happens out of malice or bad intentions. Nearly every time news reporters distort the facts out of sheer incompetence and pure carelessness. Sometimes time constraints (time to publish or time to broadcast) also contribute: rushing out a story becomes much more important that double checking (or single cheking!) one's sources and news.

Re:That would be all of them

[StoatBringer]

Quite. Back when the "martian meteorite" was in the news, the scientists released a cautious statement along the lines of "Well, we think that maybe the structures in the meteorite appear to bear a certain resemblence to those formed by bacteria on Earth, which, if this is the case suggests that maybe there might have been life on Mars in the past. Of course, we need to investigate a lot more."

The next day, the front page on The Sun shouted "LIFE ON MARS! IT'S OFFICIAL!!!"

Re:That would be all of them

[Rinkhals]

Well, to be fair, that was "The Sun".

When I first went to the UK, it amazed me that people actually paid the cover price for that rag, but having lived in the country for over 20 years and seen the British people at close quarters during that time, it makes sense now.

The BBC, on the other hand, I do regard as an august and impartial institution and I use news.bbc.co.uk as my first port of call on the net.

No wonder successive UK Governments have tried to dismantle it.

Re:That would be all of them

[kalleguld]

Disaster will happen!

Oh shit! When?!?

Ministry Of Truth

[CmdrGravy]

A number of corrections needed in this thread but can we put this on a fairly low priority for amendment ( readership is generally apathetic
and without influence ). Particular attention to claims this is a new department ( change to show its nothing new and has always been here ) also a number of incorrect statements about the glorious leadership require revision.

Thanks, update the log once the work is completed and flag for on-going sporadic monitoring and retroactive corrections.

Mr Smith.
Dept Of Truth

Office of Strategic Influence?

[unwesen]

Sounds suspiciously like a rehash of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_I nfluence

Re:Office of Strategic Influence?

[jahudabudy]

Yeah, that was my first thought, too. At least this time, they didn't flat out admit they would be feeding false propaganda to the press. Not that this is that much more subtle; I think its cute they expect people to believe they will be "correcting misinformation".

Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys are already on the job.

I've always trusted them to interpret the news for me, and I have no complaints.

Uh... it's spelled 'Truthiness'

[thecampbeln]

The Ministry of Truthiness... but we'll let it slide this time =)

Re:Uh... it's spelled 'Truthiness'

[valindar]

I'm afriad not. Sorry.
The link you gave has absolutely nothing to do with the reference the grandparent gave.

Blame Newsweek

[MMaestro]

Who says the news has no effect on winning the war? Newsweek published a false report in its May 1, 2006 about the Koran being flushed down the toilet.

Result?

Rioting in a number of countries, at least 15 people killed, countless wounded, insurgent attacks increased and the American public goes haywire (again) not knowing who to believe (the news media which has lost most/all of its legitimacy or the government whom everyone considers to be in a 1984 state at the moment?).

Re:Blame Newsweek

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying the news media are always lying and therefore the accusations that the government is a 1984 state are untrue?

Re:Blame Newsweek

[edumacator]

The gp post makes reference to one story and implies that there were others. I don't see how you equate that to "news media are always lying."

I'd suggest that is one of the major issues in politics today, everyone wants to play all or nothing games. Do media outlets report inaccurate information? Yes. Will the military try to put a positive slant on things it does, whether they are good or bad? Yes.

I'd love to see a political argument about the war in Iraq where intelligent people discuss issues rationally and with decency, rather than jumping to conclusions and name calling.

Re:Blame Newsweek

[somersault]

No I think he implied that the American media is always lying, and that since this article is a BBC one, it is true :p America really is becoming a joke..

Re:Blame Newsweek

[ScentCone]

I'd love to see a political argument about the war in Iraq where intelligent people discuss issues rationally and with decency, rather than jumping to conclusions and name calling.

So, if you're pretty high up the food chain at DoD, and some rabid circle of bloggers has managed to get a lot of eyeballs on a completely BS piece (about flushing Korans, or Marines eating local babies, whatever), what would you do to make sure that toxic fiction like that is countered in the same arenas in which it's hatched and propogated? Do you have actual serving officers step away from their military duties and be talking heads all day, or do you let people who specialized in that sort of stuff straighten out the story in a more effective way? It can't simply be left un-countered, and some other blogger saying "oh no it isn't!" doesn't always cut it.

Re:Blame Newsweek

[edumacator]

I'd reread my post. I'm agreeing with you. The comment you quote refers to the approach the gp poster took.

The other war

[XanC]

The propaganda war is probably just as important as the "hot" war itself, so yes, the Pentagon probably really is getting its priorities right.

The terrorists' objective is to hold out as long as possible, and make things messy enough that the Americans lose their will to stick it out. It's happened before: Vietnam, Beiruit, Iraq the first time around, Somalia, etc.

They're doing everything they can to convince Americans to leave, and their willing accomplices in the media are glad to oblige, because they don't like George Bush.

Well we can't leave again. There's no choice but to make them blink first.

Re:The other war

[h4rm0ny]

So basically it's important to protect the US public by making sure they get a version of events that doesn't make them want to withdraw or negotiate, etc. Because if the american public have accurate information it can lead them to make an informed choice. And that would be bad. Of course.

Re:The other war

[edumacator]

I think the gp post's point is that we need accurate information. You are over generalizing to make his argument seem worse than it is. His statement says that the media is helping the terrorists, by not giving accurate information.

So when you categorize his argument in such a way that makes it look like he wants to trick the American public, you are either letting your emotions get ahead of your logic, or you are purposefully obfuscating the discussion to make people who disagree with you seem sinister. Either way, you do democratic discourse no favor.

Re:The other war

[h4rm0ny]

I don't believe that the purpose of this new agency is to provide accurate information. I base this on the fact that it will often not be in the interests of this agency to provide accurate information. You only have to look at the way casualty figures and coverage of the wounded has been understated and downplayed. The GP is absolutely right in saying that the propaganda war is very important. Where I disagree strongly with him is what parties it is important for. It is important to the Pentagon and the government. Obviously if information can be distorted to reflect better on these parties, then that is in their interests to do so.

Now if the GP's point was that the media is providing innacurate information that is slanted against these parties as you say, then I agree it is just as bad as innacurate information on behalf of these parties. But I don't believe that is what was meant. I don't believe because he describes it as a propoganda war about who blinks first. He also suffers from the confused thinking that's been put about by the US government in talking blandly about terrorists as one mass, as if Saudi members of Al-Quaeda are one and the same as Hezbollah or palestinian bombers or the Iranian government. How people fighting against an invading army (US in Iraq) are reasonably described as terrorists is beyond me.

The purpose of this agency is not to provide accurate information and I don't believe that was the OP's belief either.

Re:The other war

[Anonymous Coward]

We aren't the ones getting slaughtered. American losses are minimal - only 2,822 in three and a half years. Now those candy ass Iraqis are getting their asses kicked; first by us, now by each other. The Turks kicked their ass, then the British, and we've kicked their asses hard twice.

The insurgency is just Arab Beavis and Butthead with AKs and RPGs. This is how we end this - give every male over 14 the chance to swear a loyalty oath to the new Iragi govt and their American friends. If they don't, shoot them on the spot. If they violate the oath, shoot them and their sons on the spot.

Go Roman on their pathetic asses - in two generations, they'll love us. Look what two nukes did to change Japan's attitude to us.

Re:The other war

[ScentCone]

I don't believe because he describes it as a propoganda war about who blinks first

There are three parties being discussed, here. The group that needs to "blink first" (and to which that poster was referring) are the wackadoo jihaddis that are absolutely waging a propoganda war. They are slaughtering innocent fellow Muslims by the thousands (and US military when they can) specifically because of how it will play in the news. Not because they achieve any particular tactical advantage by having one less Shiite vegetable stand operator (or his kids) alive - but because they're trying to create an atmosphere that they hope will cause people in that part of the world to associate mayhem and death with democracy. For totally separate (read, political) reasons, much of the western news media is spinning the story in a way to make the administration or the larger effort look directly sinister. This separate agenda has the effect of helping out the jihaddis with their own agenda. Accurate information and some rational perspective can counter both sources of poisonous noise.

Re:The other war

[Lonewolf666]

Quote from you GP's post:

They're doing everything they can to convince Americans to leave, and their willing accomplices in the media are glad to oblige, because they don't like George Bush.

Well we can't leave again. There's no choice but to make them blink first.

To me, this reads like he wants to stick it out at any price, and generalizes those media that publish information in favour of withdrawing as "willing accomplices". Read, as criminals who help the terrorists.

I do understand this as an attempt to trick the American public with rhetoric.

Re:The other war

[h4rm0ny]

Okay, so now instead of talking about "terrorists" we're talking specifically about Iraq. That's fine, so long as it's recognised we're moving on. One of the worst things the US government's spin department has done has been to try and represent everyone from Al Quaeda to the government of Iran to Hezbollah to the people of Iraq as a great homogenous mess of "terrorists."

As to Iraq, you have a grossly distorted world view if you think people are being killed by their thousands to make the US government look bad or have an ulterior motive of making democracy look bad. It's a mess of blood feuds, of you killed my brother, I kill two of yours, a power struggle between different ethnic factions, a struggle over strategic resources and a break down in social order. I think the rest of the World has a much clearer idea of the relationship between the US government and the US people than the US people do on the whole and few Iraqi people expect the US people to suddenly reign their government in after they let their government invade in revenge for attacks perpetrated by citizens of another (intensely disliked) country. There's a lot of rage against the US invaders and attacks against them are certainly motivated by an attempt to make them withdraw, but not shiite-sunni or anti-kurd violence.

I'm curious for some examples of this anti US government bias, by the way. Iraq has been a humanitarian disaster and the US has lost what control it thought it had over there. The sole beneficiaries of it have been a handful of Iraqi ex-pats who convinced the US government that they could be re-introduced as part of the new governing order, the 48,000 mercenaries euphemisitcally called private security that are employed mainly by the UK and US governments at the cost of hundreds of millions of $US, and of course US corporations such as Haliburton. Quite frankly, any coverage of what's going on in the Middle East right now is going to reflect badly on the US government. That can't really be helped. The only way that this can be countered in the media is to give less information on it to the US public. Which brings us back to this new agency and why I believe that its purpose is to paint a less clear picture of events to the US public. Every additional bit of accurate information on a situation as bad as this, is really only going to damn them more.

Re:The other war

[netsharc]

F'ing hell, of course we (you, the US, whoever (I'm fucking glad I don't live there so that no one's gonna draft me when that time comes)) can't leave, but you (that would be you, Mr. Bush) can't stay the course either... because staying the course means more and more Iraqis and more and more US soldiers getting murdered senselessly. The only viable option is to get more troops in there, but boohoo, not before the elections, and the fucking politicians would rather save their own cushy jobs than to save the lives of Iraqis and the soldiers!!! And the US is running out of soldiers, but Bush would rather save his face than admit to the international community that he fucked it up big time and he needs help, and because of that 650,000 Iraqis plus what is it now 2800 US soldiers are dead...

As a member of the newly formed unit

[Inverted Intellect]

I would like to point out that the above story contains the following factual errors:

fnord

Re:As a member of the newly formed unit

[zenkonami]

What factual errors? I don't see any factual errors! What are you talking about? Surely your post is incomplete!


I'm sorry I ate your chocolate squirrel.

Re:As a member of the newly formed unit

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid moderators. The parent is funny. You just don't get the joke. Stupid moderators.

If Hollywood made a film

[clickclickdrone]

And this was a plot line, we'd all think 'What a bunch of crap, that would never happen here.'
Inch by inch, week by week, something very scary is happening and more worryingly, nowhere near enough people are noticing or even care.

Re:If Hollywood made a film

[WilliamSChips]

You know, a slow drive towards authoritarianism would be an interesting plotline for a TV show.

They already have a department for that.

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have a department. Its called PSYOPS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operati ons_(United_States)
http://www.iwar.org.uk/psyops/

Some of thier articles are quite interesting.

The point is that the US military already spout/counter proproganda. The only reason I can think of that they are claiming they are creating a new office is to distract from the fact that PSYOPS are doing the same thing they claim to be fighting.

Re:They already have a department for that.

[forgotten_my_nick]

I think the difference is that PSYOPS is not allowed do work within domestic areas.

Although I vaguely recall Rumsfeld reversing that or saying that there was no way they could 100% stop Americans from drinking the PSYOP koolaid.

Re:They already have a department for that.

[jafac]

The only reason that PSYOPS is not allowed to work within domestic areas is Posse Comitatus.

And they were working on shorting that out during the whole "Illegal Immigrant" debate (to justify use of troops to protect our borders).

But frankly, given the Unitary Exeuctive theory, and Bush's signing statements, I don't see how they couldn't make a strong argument for using PSYOPS domestically.

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[Fred_A]

"We've always been at war with terror !"
- minitruth

Is Foley a Democrat???

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Sadam order Uranium from Nigeria?
Will Iran have Nuclear weapons in 3 months from March 2006 (i.e. June 2006)?

Re:Is Foley a Democrat???

[MicrosoftRepresentit]

No, Saddam ordered his uranium from Firebox.com.

shades of "1984"

[proudhawk]

that is starting to look like one of the many ministries
(as written about in the classic George Orwell book "1984").

the ministry in question: the Ministry of Truth (which actually
dealt with misinformation or propaganda). interesting, no?

BBC source?

[SeaFox]

Are there any American media stories about this or have they already been corrected?

No they did, well traces, erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

They had WMD, Cheney says so, and Cheney never lies.

lets start with the carpet bombing of fallujah

[Anonymous Coward]

and the subsequent ringfencing of the city to make sure no-one gets in to see what happened.

It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time. The MSM has it's agenda, and it certainly isn't reporting the truth.

Awaiting the hordes of slashdotters/sheep who will explain to me that CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, and Newsweek report 'the truth'. :/

in other words

[Anonymous Coward]

a local branch office of foxnews. :)

They are not afraid to tell it like it is. That everything is alright.

Sneak Peek

[Joebert]

Here's a sneak peek of the one of the new websites.

Very clever

[ThinWhiteDuke]

Seems like a convenient way to circumvent campaign funding laws. Now the GOP can tap the whole Defense budget to finance their ads. Great move Karl.

Re:Very clever

[PaulMorel]

Good point. I totally missed that.

It doesnt matter whats happening

[bxbaser]

All that matters is what everyone thinks (or is repeatedly told) is happening.

There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[MCTFB]

In fact, there would be a problem if the Defense Department (or any other government bureaucracy that disseminates news to the public) did not do something like this.

In the old days, respectable news outlets could be counted on to check their sources and accurately report the news coming out of the defense department. The number of organizations deliving news to the populace was few, so if inaccurate information was given to the public, all it took was a phone call from the defense department press liason to a news outlet to straighten out the facts so that the news outlet had the opportunity to report the defense department's official version of events.

Now with the internet and bloggers on all sides of the political spectrum from Matt Drudge to Arianna Huffington, the loudest and most obnoxious rumors based strictly on hearsay from "unnamed sources" often become "facts" in the minds of the populace at large, due to the fact that a lie told often enough, often becomes truth in the minds of the public.

And with respect to governments and other international organizations that are hostile to the interests of the United States, including terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, they have no moral or ethical qualms about feeding their politicized version of events to unprofessional amateur journalists that are desperate for attention and website hits, also known as "Bloggers".

Now, does that mean that the defense department does not actively put out propaganda of its own which is of dubious nature when it comes to its "truthiness"? Of course not, and how much "truth" you believe comes out of the defense department mostly comes down to how much you trust the defense department in the first place. If you are a hardcore liberal, then you probably are more likely to believe Osama Bin Laden's propaganda than anything Donald Rumseld says, and if you are of the neo-con flavor, then anything Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush or any of the generals say is gospel to you.

Nevertheless, it is ridiculous to get all worked up about whether or not the defense department is working to counter the propaganda of political interests both domestically and abroad who are willing to lie incessantly about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan because they feel that the worse America does in Iraq, the more political brownie points their favored party gets in the long run.

The sad thing is that the people on both ends of the political spectrum will pass second hand "facts" from dubious sources around so much between each other that eventually they begin to believe their own bullshit and then when the real facts and truth come to the surface, they are unwilling to accept them (sort of like how the 9/11 World Trade Center conspiracy theories have been debunked so many times, yet many people continue to believe they were controlled demolitions by the Israeli Mossad).

Get your news from multiple and diverse news outlets and any reasonably intelligent person can sort out the bullshit from the facts and get a general idea of what the real truth happens to be. Of course, that requires more effort than listening to just one news outlet or another that tends to report the news in a way that just reaffirms your existing world view, but at least you will be more likely to spot propaganda when you see it.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Androclese]

Well stated. I could not have said it better. If I had Mod points, I'd mark this +1 Insightful.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[BoberFett]

I'm sorry I don't have any points to mod you up.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[hyfe]

The sad thing is that the people on both ends of the political spectrum will pass second hand "facts" from dubious sources around so much between each other that eventually they begin to believe their own bullshit and then when the real facts and truth come to the surface, they are unwilling to accept them (sort of like how the 9/11 World Trade Center conspiracy theories have been debunked so many times, yet many people continue to believe they were controlled demolitions by the Israeli Mossad).

Which raises an interesting question; what really is a trusted source?

Remember when Bush was gearing up for war? Remember the massive amount of half-truths and occasionally outright lies they spewed? Remember Colin Powell showing the UN unrefutable pictural evidence of WMD's in Iraq? Remember the whole 'Iraq could have nuclear capability in X years" report written by a grad-student which got passed around as thruth? Remember the whole "they got Uranium!"-bullshit?

I really do have a lot of sympathy for people who buy into conspiracy theories nowadays, because there really aren't many sources left to trust as far as reporting goes.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention that you are a paid representative of the Pentagon.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Mjlner]

"If you are a hardcore liberal, then you probably are more likely to believe Osama Bin Laden's propaganda than anything Donald Rumseld says, and if you are of the neo-con flavor, then anything Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush or any of the generals say is gospel to you."

Say what? Why on earth would a "hardcore liberal" believe anythíng Bin Laden says, other than facts that might be corraborated by anouther source? Bin Ladens ideals are pretty fucking far from the ideals of a "hardcore liberal".

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

well consider this.

You go an publish your opinion on what is happening in Iraq, on Bush administration, whatever, the point is, you go an say something the government does not like.
One of these newly appointed "truth ministers" will come, contact you and let you know that what you are saying is not the truth (and how do they know?), so you better remove that, or you will be flagged an "enemy combatant".
And you know what that means? they can kidnap you and torture you until you confess you are helping the evil enemies of the state.
That's and scenario that's legal with todays laws.
So most people, will choose to remove whatever they said. and many more will choose simply not say anything against the government, because the options is torture.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Undefined Tag]

The problem is this quote from the article: " The unit would reportedly monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows. " Yes, the Pentagon should have a PR department. No, it shouldn't be paying politicians to promote their point of view. All that does is undermine their reliability. If this starts happening, anyone who speaks (or posts) in favor of the administration's policy or viewpoint will immediately come under suspicion of being on their payroll. US interests are always better served by honesty and transparency in government. To put it into a sound bite: the moment dishonesty becomes policy, all policy becomes suspected of dishonesty.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[daigu]

Get your news from multiple and diverse news outlets and any reasonably intelligent person can sort out the bullshit from the facts...

The implicit and erroroneous assumption in your argument is that the truth or the facts of the matter are available. Can you tell me where the secret prisons are that the U.S. government is using? Can you tell me about the black operations programs that have been set-up? Can you tell me about the secret deals that happened in back offices that gave contracts to companies working in Iraq and provided kickbacks to U.S. politicians?

I would be naive to believe that these things weren't occuring. However, I don't know any of the details, because the U.S. government has a decided interest in not keeping me informed on these topics - and others that I am not aware enough to name here. In fact, they have an interest in decieving me and the rest of the world - like when President Bush claims the U.S. doesn't do torture (defined as anything that might cause severe organ failure or some other perversion of the language).

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Mac Degger]

"Get your news from multiple and diverse news outlets and any reasonably intelligent person can sort out the bullshit from the facts and get a general idea of what the real truth happens to be."

The problem with that is that mutliple and diverse newssources are getting scarce. Nearly all of the news in the US in the form of radio, print and television is in the hands of about five people. Five!

And the news out of Iraq? There are now only 9 (NINE!!!!!) accredited reporters in Iraq. There used to be around 250 (embedded and not). And those nine are pretty much confined to the green zone.

Without relying on on-the-ground bloggers, the only thing coming out of Iraq is already pretty much US propaganda if you rely on US print, radio and tv.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[kinglink]

The sad thing is you make those who sound like they are feeding misinformation to the press as evil bastards who live in another country calling for terrorism. You couldn't be more wrong.

America is in a battle to embarrass Bush, and the easiest way is to embarrass the military which Bush has helped and promoted. There's a variety of news outlets that delight in talking about how bad the war is, there's a variety of politicians who love to bring it up because there's no one to defend Bush in the publications they choose. I'm surprised that they haven't done this years ago. It's good their eye is focused on correcting news, rather then making it. I'd much rather find out when reports are erroneous then hearing more propaganda.

But of course what does it matter, this is slash dot, let's continue to poke fun at the government because we are nerds who like sci-fi more than finding out what really is going on. To us 1984 is a book, and we'll quote it every time because it's funnier and easier than thinking about what actually is going on.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[thatguywhoiam]

If you are a hardcore liberal, then you probably are more likely to believe Osama Bin Laden's propaganda than anything Donald Rumseld says, and if you are of the neo-con flavor, then anything Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush or any of the generals say is gospel to you.

I find it very interesting that you put Rumsfeld and Bush on one side of the equation (for conservatives) and Osama bin Laden on the other, with the liberals. Do you have any idea how fucked up that sounds?

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it very interesting that you put Rumsfeld and Bush on one side of the equation (for conservatives) and Osama bin Laden on the other, with the liberals. Do you have any idea how fucked up that sounds?

Kinda like comparing Bush to Hitler?

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

the loudest and most obnoxious rumors based strictly on hearsay from "unnamed sources" often become "facts" in the minds of the populace at large, due to the fact that a lie told often enough, often becomes truth in the minds of the public.

Like the WMDs the Bush administration kept telling us about? And Bin Laden hiding in Afganistan?

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, there is just a huge fucking signal-to-noise problem with political information, and the assumption that a "reasonably intelligent person" willing to put in a little elbow grease can discover underlying political realities is hopelessly naive. It's also an endemic problem for American culture; we (Americans, as I am American) have built up a machismo about knowing things:

- 2002 -
MR. GUY: I don't know whether we should be agitating for war in Iraq.
MR. FELLOW: Of course we should. Step aside and let the real men worry about the country.

And of course, it can go the same way with liberals.

Maybe it happens because of our system of government. Democracy relies on the assumption that the masses can become educated enough to make an informed decision at the voting booth. If that assumption is shown to be incorrect, the whole system collapses. Maybe our refusal to acknowledge the signal-to-noise problem - a by-product of our age of big media - is motivated by a secret terror that democracy - and indeed, freedom itself - are pipe dreams, things which mortals may capture once, but never keep for long.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[sgt_doom]

The weak link in your post is that the government of the US has untold number of so-called "professional journalists" on their payroll. Be sure to read David Corn, Isikoff, Olliphant, et al., very closely. There are many more masters of misdirection where those came from.....

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

"the loudest and most obnoxious rumors based strictly on hearsay from "unnamed sources" often become "facts" in the minds of the populace at large, due to the fact that a lie told often enough,"

as with the following statement of yours:

"terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah"

The statement makes "the boys in the wood" fighting the nazi's a bunch of terrorist if it where not for the coinsident of no civillian losses. Only resources makes the difference of the israeli army an Hezbollah.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

sort of like how the 9/11 World Trade Center conspiracy theories have been debunked so many times, yet many people continue to believe they were controlled demolitions

Really? Someone has PROVEN that the buildings (especially including WTC7) could NOT have come down by controlled demolition? I must've missed that. (BTW, if you claim "you can't prove a negative" I will ask how you can claim this is debunked then?) It is also a fact that there have been no successful (published) models demonstrating the plausibility of the "official" collapse theory. (Oh wait, NIST claims to have computer models. For some reason we can't see them). The "pancake collapse" theory is a total joke, even the latest NIST report is backpedalling and admits that the pancake theory is unsupportable ("NIST's findings do not support the "pancake theory" of collapse", Source). So what are we to make of all the "experts" supporting the pancake collapse for the last five years?

But you know what? The whole "controlled demo" angle is a trap (Mike Ruppert, former NARC, has been saying this since 2001). The physical evidence was deliberately (and illegally) destroyed, making a conclusive forensic study impossible, so these arguments are doomed to go in circles endlessly.

But there's a lot of other stuff we can look at...

• Fact: Multiple top-secret wargames were being run on 9/11 which eerily mirrored (read: to an extent impossible to ascribe to chance) the hijackings of the day (same thing happened for London's 7/7, lookup "Ludicrous Diversion" video), which prevented an adequate military response due to confusion and diverted fighter resources. The existence of these wargames has been confirmed by Richard Clarke, Gen Richard Myers, and more recently by Sgt Lauro Chavez who was an eyewitness at CENTCOM that day.
• Fact: The finance trail for 9/11 leads to the Pakistani ISI, which is practically a branch of the CIA. Guess who trained and financed Osama and his mujahadeen against the Soviets in the 80's?
• Fact: There was extensive insider trading preceding 9/11, which has been shown to have ties to the CIA.
• Fact: The Secret Service allowed the President to remain in a public, indefensible location for 26 minutes after the 2nd plane had crashed and it was obvious the country was under co-ordinated attack. This indicates either mind-blowing incompetance at their primary job function, or inside knowledge that Bush wasn't really in danger.
• Fact: Bush and Co. actively tried to prevent a 9/11 investigation, then tried to get HENRY FUCKING KISSINGER to lead it, then made Philip "I Wrote a Book With Condi Rice" Zelikow the Executive Director (the guy most responsible for the final shape of the report), then completely underfunded the commission.
• Fact: John O'Neil, former deputy director of FBI, said "The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it"

It doesn't take a genius, and you don't even have to look at any of the (admittedly, highly speculative and often flawed) "controlled demo" or "no plane" theories.

It amazes me the number of people who recognize that the US is sliding towards fascism, but refuse to believe that the govt pulled off its own Reichstag. History is filled with false flag ops, look at the Gulf of Tonkin incident as one example. And spare me the tired "1000's would've had to know about this, why has nobody spoken up?". Military black-ops are compartmentalized for a reason, only key people at the top see the real picture. Actual whistleblowers (eg, Sibel Edmonds) are systematically marginalized; the MSM is no longer a free press (now ranked 53rd in the world!).

The govt. either knew this was coming and let it, or was actively involved in executing it, and they have d

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[sgt_doom]

America is in a battle to embarrass Bush, and the easiest way is to embarrass the military which Bush has helped and promoted.

How dare you declare such absolute nonsense and lies, you draft-dodging, obviously never served in the US military, sack of neocon swine. This outlaw administration has cut back as many veterans' benefits (and I'm speaking of those that most affect the returning wounded combat vets) as possible, with widdle Denny Hastert, the pig boy, and Santorum, leading the list. They have place the American solider in the most duplicitous of positions, in harm's way for absolutely no viable reason with nothing to fight for and to easily die for nothing.

In no way has that AWOLee/cheerleader/coward Bush ever done anything to help nor promote the military - he couldn't even earn an honest honorable discharge from the national guard!

And how in bloody hell does anyone with a functioning human brain embarrass a monkey masquerading as a pathetic human? That drunkard and dopehead couldn't string an entire coherent sentence together extemporaneously. As for embarrassing the military, those pitiful general officers have done a fine and slimey job of that!

I suggest you do a little research on all the laws Bushie has signed into existence over the past six years. Of course, that would entail cognitive work on your part. And neocons hate any concept of work, duty and service to country.

Re:There Is Absolutely Nothing Wrong With This

[Anonymous Coward]

Nevertheless, it is ridiculous to get all worked up about whether or not the defense department is working to counter the propaganda of political interests both domestically and abroad who are willing to lie incessantly about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan because they feel that the worse America does in Iraq, the more political brownie points their favored party gets in the long run.

You are a shameless liar. There is no major political party in the US that lies about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to make the US do worse or seem to do worse. The lies are from the neocons who can't fess up to the utter disaster that their bungling incompetence has caused.

Oh so you want a counter example?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newt Gingrich said that by going forward with the war in Kosovo Clinton was leading America into another Vietnam. There's even a thinly vieled allegory of a movie about how Clinton mislead the nation into that war to deflect criticism called Wag The Dog.

Let's compare and contrast that with what you said and Iraq.

You know what wins wars? Clearly defined military objectives and appropriate planning for those objectives at the outset. This has been true for so long the definitive essay discussing the subject is written in chinese. Fucking Bush and his crew of flunkies thought Jesus was going to come riding in on his cloud of glory and fix everything. I guess he has better things to do with his time than effectively delegate responsability and surround himself with the best advisors. There are bus drivers to get fired after all. That pretzel that tried to kill him was a patriot.

Re:Oh so you want a counter example?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, Wag the Dog was made before the sex scandal broke (I'm not sure if it was released before or not, though). I find the focus on the man's sexual indiscretions to be ridiculous as well, but I can't fault the creators of Wag the Dog.

Re:Oh so you want a counter example?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were a lot of "sex scandals" with Clinton. The allegations of rape of a child, which made it into Primary Colors, another movie, Gennifer Flowers, and Paula Jones.

Let it go, XanC

[PopeRatzo]

This isn't a playground and it's not about who's got the biggest dick, XanC. This is a country that is not at war with the United States. Think about it. What was the last time you heard anybody mention Al Quaeda in Iraq? No, it's about Iraqis fighting over their own country.

We don't belong there and you will find that America will not tolerate losing many more young people just to prop up the ego of a President with a Daddy-Complex or dopes like you who think they're playing War.

"Make them blink first" indeed.

Re:Let it go, XanC

[ScentCone]

What was the last time you heard anybody mention Al Quaeda in Iraq?

How about: every day. Al Qaeda is the single highest-profile player in the jihaddi insurgency in that country. Why not read the BBC's summary, dated today, as a refresher? Do you think that the average Iraqi is behind the large-scale slaughter of the average other Iraqi? Check in with Iran. It's not about Sunni vs. Shia, though that's how it's being portrayed. It's about destabilizing democracy and preventing a rational, world-friendly society from hatching out right next door to corrupt or outright crazy places like Iran and Syria. Iran hates the idea, and they're behind the vast majority of this. Al Qaeda's local Iraqi franchise operator (the guy that replaced the delightfully deceased - though much praised by Osama Bin Laden - Al Zarqawi, if you've been paying attention) is busy stoking the local fires, and already talking in terms of Taliban-izing the country once they kick out the infidels and kill off the traitorous election-having locals, blah blah blah. Wake up.

Re:Let it go, XanC

[Foggerty]

You do know that before the US invasion Al-Quaeda barely had a look in in Iraq, right? Its sad the amount of people that will join a radical cause just because someone invades their country and totally destabilize it :-(

Classics of propaganda...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of agree but another angle is that in the past, your average Joe had very little access to media/news sources other than the daily papers so feeding them propaganda was easier and less obvious.
Now anyone can google up a whole bunch of views on an event and see the spin a government or company put on something. The result is we're all far more savvy about this things, resent being manipulated so obviously and less trusting of the Powers That Be overall.

That may be true but old classics of propaganda still get successfully recycled. To examine one classic case let's take the commonly circulated and at the time widely believed stories from WWI (no, not WWII... WWI) of German soldiers killing Belgian babies and marching through towns and villages with the corpses skewered on their bayonets. When the Allies went off after WWI trying to prosecute the German troops who had supposedly performed these atrocities they didn't find a shred of evidence for even one of these reported baby killings. German troops of WWI committed numerous atrocities as did their allied counterparts but neither bayonetted babies by the hundreds or blinded POW as the German WWI gutter press claimed. The stories were nevertheless enthusiastically used during WWI as a justification for the slaughter in the trenches to continue. Now... and this is the interesting part... does anybody remember the Kuwait incubator story of the 1990 Gulf war where Iraqi troops were supposed to have thrown the babies on the hospital floor so they could steal the incubators? It seems to me we that despite our increased access to the media and our inherent distrust of our governments we are still suckers for sensational propaganda and once the public does buy into propaganda it savages anybody who doesn't swallow it hook line and sinker.

Re:Classics of propaganda...

[clickclickdrone]

Re the incubators, in the UK that was pretty much shot down in flames within a day or so of the initial report. Sure, we can still get suckered but it's much harder these days.

BTN - and V!

[shashark]

vVoilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for...

In short, I for one welcome our V named BTN beating guy-fawkes-mask-wearing overlords...

err wait...

A "cowards" story....

[artecco]

FTFA: Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier this year the US was losing the propaganda war to its enemies

It still remains to see how wide the definition of "propaganda" and "enemies" will be. After visiting an Oil rig, with mostly americans onboard, a few years ago (during the IRAK war), I suddenly realised that the US definition of enemies was already pretty wide reaching. Story ends with me being threatened and almost thrown overboard, because my company had a French sounding name^^, and me failing to respond "correctly" to the simple question of: are you for or against. Truth is I left the Rig two days later and have not returned to the US since.

So by my experience (really hope it doesn't represent the way the US ppl treat foreigners) I would guess most news sources, not 100% in favour the current government, will be subject to "news corrections" Hope this isn't the case, but to be on the safe side ill do all my interaction with your country from the other side of the Atlantic (until my connection is also subject to "washing"). Cheers.

Never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

intelligent discourse and reasoned argument is not entertainment.

For examples, look at daytime TV for what is entertaining: "Jerry Springer: My husband slept with all my family, hear me slag him off".

You are a misguided romantic, I fear...

[fantomas]

"In the old days, respectable news outlets could be counted on to check their sources and accurately report the news coming out of the defense department."

Alas I think you're a misguided romantic. Can I ask what experience you have of 'news outlets' in 'the old days'?

I am afraid I am deeply suspicious of anybody who tries to tell me they have solid facts after they start with "in the old days".

In the UK this is a bit close to Tory MPs telling us about warm beer and cricket on sunny Sunday afternoons while coppers cycled past and clipped kids round the ear for scrumping apples from Farmer Giles' orchard. I guess in the USA these 'old days' were when kids ate blueberry pie and fished in the hollow and were called Huckleberry Finn or something.

Define "in the old days" please. 1980? 1950? 1785? (last being first publication date of the Times)

Re:You are a misguided romantic, I fear...

[Slithe]

I guess in the USA these 'old days' were when kids ate blueberry pie

It was apple pie, dernit! Get of my lawn!

Re:You are a misguided romantic, I fear...

[Phil-14]

Just to give one example of an instance of something like this from the past, since someone asked... during WW2, the administration (Roosevelt, not Bush) threatened to pull the broadcast license of anyone who reported that the Soviet Union instead of Nazi Germany was responsible for the Katyn Forest massacre.

Today we know that the Soviets did it. (Although it's kind-of a moot point, as they were allies of Nazi Germany at the time, partitioning Poland between them.

Do a Google search on the keywords "Office of Wartime Information" and "Katyn Forest" for more information.

Re:You are a misguided romantic, I fear...

[Derling Whirvish]

Define "in the old days" please. 1980? 1950? 1785? (last being first publication date of the Times)

"The old days" is the Clinton presidency 1993-2001.

Panem et circenses

[Opportunist]

You have food. Enough food. Cheap food. From burgers and fries to "TV-Dinners", from Pizza Hut to Taco Bell.

You have entertainment. From TV to movies, malls and Sunday Night Football.

It worked 2000 years ago. Why do you think anything changed? That's what most people are simply content with. They want to be fed and they want to be entertained. They don't want to deal with complicated problems. The leaders don't want to deal with the problems at hand but distract the population by war and spectacles.

The similarities between the US of today and the Rome at the change from republic to empire are stunning.

Re:Panem et circenses

[LuisAnaya]

Governor General Miguel de La Torre established in Puerto Rico back in the 1820's a policy that stated that "a country that is having fun, does not conspire against the government" ("Pueblo que se divierte, no conspira."). For what you state, it seems to be a common government tactic when they want to do whatever they want with not a lot of scrutiny. For what it's worth. I do not eat a lot of junk food, I barely watch TV and hate American Football. I guess that that could make me a possible target for a federal inquiry. :-/.

Re:Panem et circenses

[Opportunist]

Clearly, you must be a terrorist. Every true blooded free worlder loves hamburgers and American football.

the moles of slashdot

[doom]

I think you folks are missing what's being said by not reading past the spin: it's not just about "inaccurate news stories" and "enemy terrorists"; from their point of view anyone who disagrees with them is an enemy, and they're talking about "new media", not just "news stories":

The newly-established unit would use "new media" channels to push its message and "set the record straight", Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said.
[...]
"We're looking at being quicker to respond to breaking news," he said.

"Being quicker to respond, frankly, to inaccurate statements.

What we essentially have here is the government admitting in public that they're out to subvert "new media" sites with government hired trolls.

Now let's see, what "new media" sites might they have in mind? How about slashdot?

A case in point: if you followed the discussion that went up the other day about the Sequoia/Venezeula story, you will note that there was a spate of commentators hammering away at the party line: "Hugo Chavez" = "South American dictator" (despite the fact that the guy is a popular, elected figure. Hm, this couldn't have something to do with Chavez insulting Bush at the UN could it? Or maybe with his scheme to raise taxes on foreign oil companies?)

This is not to say that there aren't real human beings hanging around slashdot who happen to be conservative: usually, though not always, I think you can tell the difference if you pay attention.

So some points:

• Going crazy trying to root out the sock puppets is probably not a great idea: dragging a group down into in-fighting is a good second-best for any infiltrator.
• It is however, a good idea to keep in mind that you're not necessarily talking to someone sincerely presenting a line of argument.
• Their goal here is move fast and shape people's attitudes: if this bothers you, you need to move fast to counter the bullshit quickly.
• We -- meaning citizen's sincerely interested in discussing important issues -- have some advantages here: the hired trolls tend to be very rigid; the fluid nature of "new media" makes it hard for them to hide from counter-arguments.

Re:the moles of slashdot

[dlsmith]

So lets just say for the sake of argument that you're right. Slashdot has been infiltrated by government "goons" who spread lying propaganda via comment posts.

What difference does that make? A goon might say "I think President Bush is doing a great job," or "I've been to Iraq recently, and the news is grossly exaggerated." So what? Comments on Slashdot are (ideally) modded up based on the strength of their ideas. If a goon expresses a good idea, that idea is worth reading. Why does it matter where it came from? And if his idea is no good, it will be ignored.

The current government is not without its supporters -- even at his worst, over 30% of the country gives Bush a positive approval rating. I'll bet that a paid government propaganda-maker is more likely to sincerely believe what he's writing than a free Slashdot poster, who might find trolling to be good sport.

Then again, maybe I am a goon. In that case, just ignore this.

Re:the moles of slashdot

[Valdrax]

[T]here was a spate of commentators hammering away at the party line: "Hugo Chavez" = "South American dictator" (despite the fact that the guy is a popular, elected figure...)

Bush was elected and popular for most of his term. Does that mean he's immune to any criticism that his administration has taken a dictatorial path? Popularly elected doesn't mean jack to many of us if you don't treat all of the people fairly. Many of the world's worst dictators enjoyed support at home.

Chavez has a fanatical politcal base for doing honest good work for the poor people of Venezuela, but it's also undeniable that many of the steps he has taken in his administration have been of a very authoritarian bent and that he keeps company with some of the worst regimes in the world including states like Belarus. (Forget Castro, his praise for Lukashenko is more disturbing to me.)

Take a look at his history. Chavez rose to prominence after attemping a violent coup and spending a few years in jail before winning the popular vote years later on an anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform. However, in 1999 he had the constitution rewritten, declared states of emergency that let him kick out judges he didn't like, and barred the legislature from meeting -- effectively assuming dicatorial power. This rule by fiat only stopped in 2002 when the country fell into riots and the military refused to take action against the rioters.

Following the "coup", Chavez was reinstituted into power when his successor didn't get enough backing. After two petition drives to have him removed, he was reelected in an election that was reported to have several irregularities and expanded the legislature to pack it with supporters in an election that the opposition parties largely boycotted and that had only 25% turnout.

He's also clamped down on the free press by getting legislation passed that allows jail time for people that "insult" the government, engaged in court packing and removed judges that ruled against him, and he has an almost cult-like following of supporters that he rallies largely by focusing hate against the US and his opponents.

If that isn't a dictator, then what is?

Re:the moles of slashdot

[doom]

So lets just say for the sake of argument that you're right. Slashdot has been infiltrated by government "goons" who spread lying propaganda via comment posts.

What difference does that make?

There's a difference in the way you approach the argument: if you can't figure out why your opponent keeps coming back to a point that's been shot down, there may not be any need to beat your brain against the problem of getting through to the guy.

Re:the moles of slashdot

[doom]

Oh, and maybe it isn't clear the other reason why I brought this point up: the way the government is spinning this is as yet-another "anti-terrorist" measure against those damn ayrabs. By using the example of an al Jazeera story, they can give most Americans the impression that there's nothing here that has anything to do with them.

But here we are, it's election season in the US: do you feel good about government agencies spending money on astroturfing campaigns?

And there's a further point: the prominent examples of "new media" in my mind are wikipedia and slashdot, and while both have spent a lot of energy dealing with the "thirteen year old vandal" problem, neither have even begun to contemplate what to do about concerted attempts at subversion by well-funded organizations.

Now that the United States is coming out of the closet on this, maybe it's time to start thinking about it.

Re:the moles of slashdot

[doom]

Bush was elected and popular for most of his term. Does that mean he's immune to any criticism that his administration has taken a dictatorial path?

There's a difference in just calling him a dictator and pointing out that he's an elected official that may be involved in a power grab. Most people in the US have no knowledge at all of what's going on in Venezuela, so a phrase like "Latin American dictator" plays into their prejudices, it's a serious smear that doesn't look like a smear. What do you think about people who go off ranting about how Bush is a Fasicist?

(It is, by the way, not at all clear to me that Bush was every really elected, but it is true that post 9/11 he was popular.)

Re:the moles of slashdot

[doom]

Sorry, back again: I missed what you were saying here.

The current government is not without its supporters -- even at his worst, over 30% of the country gives Bush a positive approval rating. I'll bet that a paid government propaganda-maker is more likely to sincerely believe what he's writing than a free Slashdot poster, who might find trolling to be good sport.

There's a few problems with this. The paid propagandist has time and resources at hand to dedicate to the problem of shaping the discussion, the troll is only a passing nuisance, and lacks the motivation to pass as Serious.

My claim is that a sincere thinker who happens to be conservative has much more latitude to follow a line of discussion into different corners: the propagandist has a list of talking points that must be followed, and is likely to duck out when things start getting heavy.

Re:the moles of slashdot

[Valdrax]

Most people in the US have no knowledge at all of what's going on in Venezuela, so a phrase like "Latin American dictator" plays into their prejudices, it's a serious smear that doesn't look like a smear.

Yeah, but from 1999-2002 Chavez WAS a dictator. Now he's a wannabe dictator who got backed down by his people once and is now boiling the frog a little slower.

What do you think about people who go off ranting about how Bush is a Fasicist?

I think they're technically accurate. Bush's governing style is not Nazism. It's not Italian Fascism. It's not Spanish Facism. It's a new style of Fascism -- a uniquely American type. I'd call Bush "Facist Lite." The most glaring differences are a lack of racism and of internal purges and a doublethink embracing of reduction and strengthening of government power instead of the classic, straightforward statist worship.

However, a trust of strong authority and disregard for checks on executive power, an obsession with national security, a romanticism of traditional values and evocation of "shared values," nationalism, militarism, a desire to project power internationally and a disregard of diplomatic compromise, demonizing of pacifists, collusion with large business and disregard of labor, cronyism, appointment of people to positions based on ideological purity over qualifications, etc. all fit the Fascist ethos.

I think that Bush has philosophical kinship to Fascism, but he's not the same as the German, Italian, Spanish, etc. Fascists that have come before, and he certainly doesn't proudly declare himself to be one like they did. He hasn't rounded up enemies or instituted purges of Muslims, he hasn't declared martial law, and he will certainly step down in 2008 when his term is up. "Fascist" may have too many other connotations with genocide, abolishment of democracy, and cults of personality, and Bush doesn't really have those last three -- certainly not in quantities comparable to the leaders of the early half of the 20th century. However, "Fascist" is the closest term we have.

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[Anonymous Coward]

They make a desert and call it peace.
                                -- Tacitus

Twelve years?

[cammoblammo]

1996 called and wants its rewriting of the news back.

The difference between propaganda and propaganda..

[nephridium]

All propaganda is based on deception and lies but also on truth. E.g. stating that Hitler was an insane person bent on subjugating all "minor races" is rather close to the truth and thus fighting him is a good thing, whereas stating that Saddam was sitting there with his Al Quaeda buddies just plotting an imminent attack using anthrax, sarin, mustard gas, a dirty bomb and/or a real nucilar bomb to kill US citizens is a bad form of propaganda especially when it leaves its perpetrators open for attack once it is discovered that the amount of truth was quite.. eh.. tiny.

In war the truth dies first (e.g. the bombing of AlJazeera HQ in Baghdad, described as a bastion of independent journalism in the Middle East before the war, then all of a sudden vilified as 'propaganda news network #1' - how ironic), so propaganda is one of the strongest weapons to strengthen the will of your own troops and to demoralize those of the enemy. However, the approach this administration took might have worked if the war had only taken a few weeks and they had been "greeted as liberators (tm)", but they had absolutely no idea what they were really up against. Unfortunately that was foreseeable, though not for this circle of people who had been drinking the Koolaid for too long and never learned to see things from other people's perspectives (or at least listen to their advice).

comments on Greek Government and blogging

[InDi0]

In the previous story about the greek police arresting bloggers, I read very nice truly American comments like (http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=203406&ci d=16635658). It just seemed impossible to even reply to people like that. Sometimes it is just to hard to find out where to start telling a person on how many levels they are wrong. At least I hope this is an answer for this guy. If this happened in Greece, I tell you the government would face some SERIOUS sh*t, and it would a major reason for earlier elections. Let's see how the US media and *people* take this. Or maybe its too late to realize that getting your news spoonfed to you is not that good of an idea. Of course I am "from that other part of the world". Oh man...

And in later news the thought police have banned..

[RationalRoot]

Get a copy now before it's banned....

http://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell/dp/045152 4934/sr=8-1/qid=1162295165/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-445943 2-6695308?ie=UTF8&s=books

D

Rectify parent: -1 (undoublethink)

[Mjlner]

Parent post refs uncountry. Poster unbellyfeels war crimethinkwise. Doubleplusungood. Rectify.

Re:Rectify parent: -1 (undoublethink)

[Anonymous Coward]

was the message that was shouted through the halls of the Ministry of Truth.

Jessica Lynch

[pubjames]

Is this the same Pentagon that brought us the "Jessica Lynch" story..?

I guess the noble idea that the government shouldn't use taxpayers money to try to influence public opinion has been thrown out along with the Geneva convention. Go Bush!

truth is just dead... long live "truth"

[misanthrope101]

There really isn't any truth anymore, only "truth". The Left fell first, as we know from the Sokal hoax. Foucault and other intellectuals undermined the idea of an objective, verifiable reality on which to base belief. The Right has now fallen as well. Religious faith, that hallmark of the modern American Right, dovetails very well with Foucaultish solipsism, because of their overt rejection of the objective world in favor of an ostensibly "Godly" one populated by "gut thinkers" like Bush. Cementing these two ostensible opposites together is our optimimistic, populist belief that all ideas are valid, a democractic principle that allows everyone to bring something to the table. We listen to and respect just about everyone, the side effect being the schmuck in the street who has never read one book, or even one page, on a subject gets as much time and space as the guy with the dual doctoral degree in the field.

Much of that is just arrogance--we like to think that our gut-feeling assessment of climate change, international relations, biological evolution, or whatever, is spot-on, even if a flat-out expert contravenes our superficial assessment. Not knowing what the hell you're talking about, even if you consciously know that you don't know, just isn't seen as an impediment to not only having an opinion, but to having an opinion that we feel warrants respect--equal respect, no less, with that of the expert.

It's inevitable, starting from there, that we reach a point where there is just no such thing as truth. Even fact is optional, because which facts you point out is itself a process of selection. I'm not shocked so much by the fact that the Pentagon wants to control its message, because that's how they bolster support for military budgets, etc. But I am perpetually shocked and disgusted by people's lack of skepticism at what comes out of the Pentagon. Pat Tillman, anyone? Jessica Lynch? Manufactured story after manufactured story? Is anyone out there? I support the right of used car salesmen to say just about anything they want, but sometimes, yes, Virginia, you're an idiot for believing them. But I don't think it's because of stupidity, so much as an innate cultural bias that, facts aside, what they say is just as valid as what the other person says. How can you have a conversation when facts just don't matter? It makes for a rather surreal day-to-day existence.

Re:truth is just dead... long live "truth"

[BoberFett]

Where do you suggest people get their facts? Unless every person has the time and resources to independently verify every piece of information that they read, at some point it becomes a matter of trust.

So who do you trust? Do you want to believe biased article A, B or C? The reason everyone's opinion is important is because everyone has an agenda, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Re:truth is just dead... long live "truth"

[misanthrope101]

The reason everyone's opinion is important is because everyone has an agenda, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

If I say that pink unicorns orbit venus and send me messages, and you point out the seemingly obvious fact that there is no evidence to support my assertion, the truth isn't "somewhere in the middle." You can't average an accurate, true-to-facts depiction with someone's gut feeling and come out with the truth. Either a link was found between Saddam and 9-11 or it hasn't--which is it? The 9/11 Commission said no, even President Bush admitted no, but VP Cheney says yes--is the truth in the middle? I don't think so. Cheney is saying something that has no factual support, though his gut feeling may be speaking very loudly, and I have little doubt that he's sincere.

There is such a thing as critical reading and listening. Even though we can be deceived with selective evidence, there can still be an effort. Though I recognize the limits of the human situation, I refuse to retreat into the "we can't know anything" solipsism. If you and I disagree on the speed of light, or how a particular congressman voted on a particular bill, we can look that up--there are facts to be assessed. It's true that much of what you seen on TV actually undermines critical thought, but the answer is--stop watching TV. O'Reilley et al (and I mean all political TV, not all conservative political TV) undermines the capacity for critical thought because they rely so heavily on glittering generalities and ad hominem attacks, not to mention stacking the evidence. I can hardly blame them, since there is so little time to present a reasoned, developed argument, and the audience is so fickle that they'll change the channel before you can explain a reasoned, balanced position.

But much of the problem I see around me stems not from our inability to check things for ourselves. People just don't care to. For example, the evolution debate fascinates me, consequently I read about it. I read books, articles, talk.origins, etc. I'm no expert, but I make an effort to learn something about the terms of the debate. But I find myself arguing with people who make the most childish, ignorant arguments, arguments that have been refuted (or even abandoned) decades ago, but they just haven't read anything on the subject, so they wouldn't know. They're not only poorly-read on evolution, but even in ID or creationism, which they're ostensibly convinced of. And this is a subject they're passionate about, one they think matters in the world. People just don't think facts, research, or well-reasoned arguments are important--they just believe what they believe, and that's it.

Re:truth is just dead... long live "truth"

[BoberFett]

If you want to argue about the speed of light or the status of a bill, yes those facts can be looked up.

But we're not talking about facts that have a long history of scientific review and simple yes/no questions. Where is the Iraq civilian death count conveniently laid out on an easy to navigate website, or in an encyclopedia that was printed decades ago? The civilian death count in Iraq has been highly accurately estimated by various sources to be somewhere between 50,000 and 650,000. Now tell me, which source is accurate? Get out your Encyclopedia Britannica, tell me what it says about that subject. How are the physicists coming with answer?

The issue the Pentagon will likely focus on is the late breaking news. Things which aren't widely known and which are difficult to verify. In those situations, the more information the better.

Re:truth is just dead... long live "truth"

[gvozd]

Thank you for that. It's a pleasure to find a fellow critical thinker. The academic world is slowly moving away from Derrida's mysticism, but I am continually discouraged by the lack of critical thought among faculty members. For example, the reaction to bigoted speech on campus is to engage in anti free speech measures. Public computers are locked down, students are encouraged to report on one another, and dissent is not tolerated. Rational thought is the first thing to go. I remain hopeful, though, that we are on the verge of a return to reason in the academy.

The real question is:

[MichailS]

what are you going to do about it?

Raving and ranting about 1984 is all good, but what are you going to DO about it?

Well?

PS: Don't blame me, I'm european.

Re:The real question is:

[db32]

When your country is finally annexed you will be blamed, tortured, and locked away for life for being a dirty foreigner. I'm sorry you didn't want to help us before the runaway train got that far.

history repeats itself

[Tom]

I finally understand what it must have felt like to watch Germany from the outside during the 1930s. The point has long passed where I thought "this is the US, they're stupid idiots on a course to destruction, but what does that matter to me?".

It matters all, just like the growth of national socialism in Germany mattered to everyone in the end, or the growth of communism in Russia affected us all in the end. The growth of tyranny in the US today will certainly affect me in a few years, if it doesn't already (my government practically falls over itself implementing some of the worst US "inventions").

UID and CID confusion

[DrYak]

You're confusing the UserID, displayed on the TOP LEFT corner of a message box, just after the username,
and the comment ID, diplayed on the top right corner, after the date, which uniquely identifies a comment.

war of ideas

[sorak]

from TFA

President Bush has said recently that terror groups were trying to influence public opinion in the US, describing their efforts as the "war of ideas".

The guy in a cowboy outfit is in a war of ideas. Oh, crap. We are so screwed.

But seriously, this is not like our president. Remember when we had privatized propaganda? Now that the government is producing it, it will be lower quality and more expensive. I suggest a propaganda voucher system. We should give every American a bullshit card. Then, that person can redeem it at their local store, church, or city hall.

Re:war of ideas

[rtb61]

However, consider that when the Pentagon publishers it's propaganda and you publish a message that opposes that viewpoint, you are by definition attacking the US military and are an enemy combatant, subject to immdediate arrest, indefinate imprisonment, torture, humiliation and degradition, all with out recourse to the courts. The embedded and controlled and blind, deaf and dumb, journalists were bad enough but now they wont even bother with that. I believe you can count all the humanitarian military porpagandists on ---- no hands.

We have a WINNER!

[thecampbeln]

Um... By using the term as part of his satirical routine, Colbert sought to critique the tendency to rely upon "truthiness" and its use as an appeal to emotion and tool of rhetoric in contemporary socio-political discourse. (emphasis mine).

Check my sig... I know it was a 1984 reference. To (probably) quote the President, I was merely 'contemporary-ifying' it, wrapping one joke within another (please, oh please say it is a joke and not prophetic...). W, so very obviously, has now clue what the 'truth' is so what good would a Ministry of Truth do him? Besides, reality has a well known liberal bias! And we all know the liberals are terreerists!

So, in summary: you are an idiot. BUT, least you could be President one day!

PS: That comment relating you to the current President was low, I sincerely apologize.

and the option is ....

[3seas]

..if you try to resist... a letter with anthrax in it...

And so what happens to the so called free market?

Is this going to put microsoft out of business?

When did something like this from the government ever accomplish good?

First admendment???????

Re:and the option is ....

[The_Mr_Flibble]

Yeah, let us know how that works out.

1 more nail to the coffin of "Free" United States

[rammer]

Ever since Soviet Union fell apart United States has been relatively free to assert its imperial agenda over the world and this is simply yet another example of US failing to exert control over the world. So they try harder and harder measures to ensure control. At the same time losing what little influence they have left with their allies.

United States is really going the way of the Roman Empire if it keeps this up.

Food and entertainment only go so far...
If the entertainment is seen as a tool of oppression then it will loose its effectiveness as it did in Rome.
One of the factors of Roman demise was the rise of Christianity. Christians in the circus served only to alienate the growing population of the converted.
American entertainment industry is being used more and more for propaganda purposes. Just look at some of the recent Fox series.
"24" for example has been used as a tool to help Americans and others to accept torture.

I am just appalled at the lack of backlash from the international community to United States measures.

I am afraid that the delayed backlash will be stronger than and thus more disruptive than if it had been delivered in a timely fashion.
That disruption will also disrupt other nations. Exacerbating other problems like global warming, peak oil and the retirement of baby boomers.

Scary

[pubjames]

Yes, it's frightening to think that when an anti-war comment gets modded down on Slashdot, it may well be a taxpayer funded goon that's doing it.

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[Compholio]

...we are effectively loosing.
This rapid walk away from democracy in the name of democracy is frightning .

Maybe because we weren't supposed to have a democracy in the first place, but a democratic republic. Ben Franklin was right to be concerned that we could keep our republic, especially since many people these days don't even realize that our government was supposed to be a republic and not a democracy. Our founding fathers were fully aware of the problems associated with pure democracy and tried to build in protections to the system, protections that have been slowly stripped away over time and have led us to our current state where the entire populace can be ruled through fear.

Its not manditory...

[jonwil]

Right now at least.
But what happens if the media outlets publish too many stories that the men in power don't like? Will we see this unit given the power to force the media not to run stories the military doesnt like? Will we see the head of this unit turn into the american answer to Joseph Goebbels?

Re:1 more nail to the coffin of "Free" United Stat

[artecco]

"I am just appalled at the lack of backlash from the international community to United States measures"

I agree to your statement, but then again, no one I know would volunteer to withhold bananas from a crazy gorilla dual-wielding +5 axes of destruction.

And here's my recomendation

[Anonymous Coward]

My dear fellow Americans. After seriously considering our situation I have only one advice to give you:
stat hoarding that precious lubricant.

orwell really did see the future

[v1]

I think this new one we call the Ministry of Truth?

The other two appear to have already come to pass in the last couple years so I suppose this just rounds out the set.

Cool, Darpa listens to me

[CrazyJim1]

I emailed them and said a television propoganda network is needed. If all the propoganda is truth and not lies, it will be an invaluable tool. The key is, will tempting lies be said. It all has to be truth or it won't work.

Ah, yes. We can't dare have another view of this.

[WidescreenFreak]

Oh, I see. So, if news comes from CNN, MSNBC, or other mass media outlet, it's the absolute truth and we have to believe every bit of it as being all-inclusive of what is going on with respect to the U.S. military with absolutely no bias. But if the military believes that they're being shafted by the media and decides to put out its own stream of information, here come all of the "Big Brother" and propaganda accusations with the tin foil hat brigade in full force.

I've heard the stories from a lot of soldiers (yes, "from", not "of") directly from their mouths and without a doubt the most common theme is their disgust for what they deem as ridiculously biased news accounts of what is going on in their particular part of the world. I've heard parents with both sorrow and pride in their voices that thier son or daughter went back to the Middle East voluntarily to continue their work attempting to rebuild that area. I've heard marines who have finished their tours of duty state that they want to go back because they want to help the people and continue to rebuild their schools, roads, and infrastructures, as well as stand next to their comrades-in-arms, not that you hear anything about construction going on through the major news outlets.

Personally, I'll take the word of one of our soldiers who actually was there in the thick of battle, putting their life on the line every day as opposed to some egotistical talking head on a newscast who gets to make judgement calls in their cushy office far away from the various bits of hell that are going on in the world today, regardless of why those bits of hell are there. If this gives the soldiers the ability to have their stories told instead of being highly filtered through the the mass media or being isolated to local radio stations who support the troops, then so be it. Whether or not this new stream of information gains my trust, however, is yet to be seen, but at least I'm open minded enough to give them a fair chance.

But, hey, this is Slashdot. Don't show support for the evil "war machine" or give any branch of the government any kind of benefit of the doubt, or else you're just a Fox News-loving, right-wing extremist and war monger, right?

Yeah, yeah, I actually support our men and women in uniform but I have no stomach for the mass media (Fox News included). So that means it's automatically flamebait or troll moderation territory for me. So be it. That doesn't make what I've said less true just because most of Slashdot won't agree with it.

What about the Department of Corrections then?

[gd23ka]

I thought the various Departments of Corrections were supposed to do that, "correct" and "rectify" False News and Dirty Lies Terrorism, now its the Pentagon and the military thats doing it. This is just another example of how this country is
being turned into military dictatorship. If we want to keep our police state and not end up in a military dictatorship we just
have to do something about this! I mean it! I wonder if George Bush even knows what theyre up to... This is evil. Donald Rumsfeld
just _has_ to do something about this!!

Re:What about the Department of Corrections then?

[budgenator]

Departments of Corrections runs prisons, correctional facilities, the military guys your trying to think of is Public Information, or G5/S5. This is old stuff really, the only thing new here is the emphasis on web news and timeliness. No need for the chicken-little routine, the Military existed before Rumsfeld and will exist after Rumsfeld and the military knows.

MOD UP

[shenanigans]

Bravo, whish I had points to give.

DOUBLE PLUS UNGOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

when will it end.

I voted, did you??

Propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like realizing the truth. The Revolutionary War, Civil War and WWII were won because people realized that the cause we were fighting for in those wars was important. Its just the opposite in Vietnam and Iraq, in which the government created fictious reasons for war. You can throw as much propanda at people, they will eventually figure out the truth and thats what determines if you win or lose.

They wouldn't have nearly so many inaccuracies

[mmalove]

They wouldn't have nearly so many "inaccuracies" if they simply answered the questions Americans asked of the government supposedly serving our interests. So much today depends on marketing "messages" instead of what the product really does - it's not surprising the Pentagon is more worried about the message the media is putting out rather than giving them facts to work with. Now I know some media sources (cough cough FOX) love to twist anything into a dramatic gossip fest, but others (like CNN) do a pretty good job of telling the facts without inserting their own opinion/bias.

Oh and in the meantime, I'm curious how creating another "let's control what people think" department solves for eliminating the national deficit.

New day!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good citizens of America,

            Our fearless leader, in his perpetual wisdom, has decided to abolish the untruths spreading
in our own once shiny country. WE CAN NOT BE KEPT THROUGH! A new day will dawn, so expect enemies
to crumble at our feet.

            Bush^WNews division C

Good day for the Republic of the Congo

[smchris]

If this development drops our Reporters Without Borders press freedom ranking another 20 points we might be equal to Republic of the Congo in next year's listing!

The Next Step

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a quote by "Anonymous Coward" from Slashdot that sums up the situation perfectly:
"The only thing surprising is that so many Americans are still looking up with worshipful puppy eyes -- at the leaders who pretend to protect them while stealing their wealth, liberty, and lives."

They said that they will "counter" information and News that they (the big brother THEY) consider to be "inaccurate." How will they do this?
-- by issuing contrary news reports stating the opposite "truth" according to their fascist value system? No. This is a way, now that they have their judges in place, of placing the burden of proof on those who issue news and opinions contrary to the "official line" of propaganda. By "burden of proof" I mean actual legal burden of proof supported by documents and sources of journalists and editorialists. This will make it obligatory to reveal sources or face cease and desist orders emitted by their judges and will most likely lead to law suits, arrests and confiscation of paper, data and computers.

Well you know what?

[roman_mir]

I'll tell you the truth. As I sit here, at the , where I can see the flying over and huge pounding the across with force, which is equal to I can honestly say one thing and one thing only: There is no but if there was then to stop it here is what you'd do: lasers no sharks either . Now that is dangerous and all the nuclear wouldn't you rather see it to the and the ? It is most obvious that this administration has again and again, and it won't stop until the is over. And that is all that I have to say.

and the sad thing is...

[bigtrike]

Nobody cared about any of this until gas prices shot up.

Suggestion for new Information Minister

[PetiePooo]

But whoever are they going to get to be the Information Minister?

Re:Suggestion for new Information Minister

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well Herman Goering! Cloned from his DNA /

Is it worth the cost?

[bigtrike]

Would you personally die for the whatever our cause du jour is in Iraq? Would you sacrifice your life for our cause, whatever it was, in Vietnam?

And still

[matt328]

England prevails.

Some other perspectives

[daveschroeder]

Now we've suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and given the President the power to deploy troops domestically. Is it really any surprise there are agencies paid with our tax money to spread pro-government propaganda?

Actually, the changes to the Insurrection Act are fairly straightforward, and it's no power the President hasn't had since the act was penned in 1807. In order for troops to be deployed domestically, the following conditions must be met:

(1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to--

(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that--

(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and

(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or

(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that--

(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.
The original wording of the Act required the conditions as worded in Paragraph (2) to be met as the result of "insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy."

The new wording of the Act, as amended, still requires the same conditions as worded in Paragraph (2) above, but those conditions can now be a result of "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition," and only if "domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order."

Congress was granted the right to be informed immediately and every 14 days thereafter during the exercise of federal authority under these conditions, which was not required under the original statute.

The old and new text are shown here, side by side.

So, given the above, why is this a big deal?

With regard to the Military Commisions Act,

The problem, fundamentally, is that there will be situations in which there won't be enough evidence in the context of the conventional criminal justice system to make an arrest and/or prosecute for a crime BEFORE a plot has been executed. For some, this is seen as just a part of the "cost of doing business" as a free nation, and perhaps a certain level of, e.g., possible terror attacks should be accepted. Some people, myself included, believe that we should do everything possible to stop these kinds of attacks BEFORE they happen, and not deal with them afterward, or in the criminal courts system. I do understand that making the determination of whether someone falls into this category depends on the judgment of some or many people. However, I consider the common sensical threshold for determining someone is actually legitimately planning to execute a terror plot against the United States to be fairly high, and I trust the skills of politicians and government appointees, for the most

Re:Some other perspectives

[myth24601]

You must be new here. Anything the US government does is bad and if it involved Bush then it's setting the stage for a total government takeover of our lives.

Moonbattery is the norm here when it comes to anything related to the USA fighting (literally or even figurativly) anything.

Re:Some other perspectives

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been wondering this for awhile now....

The fairytale term "moonbat". Do people like you toss it around just to be inflammatory, or are you honestly completely oblivious to the fact that by using it you immediately appear juvenile and ignorant to just about any rational person?

I guess if you need a schism for comparison in order to understand my question, since most people who resort to this sort of silliness usually do, is it like the term "rightard" and you're just trying to be an ass, or is it more like "neocon" and you honestly don't understand that by slinging it around, you only hurt your own case in the eyes of normal people?

Re:Some other perspectives

[Lonewolf666]

The problem, fundamentally, is that there will be situations in which there won't be enough evidence in the context of the conventional criminal justice system to make an arrest and/or prosecute for a crime BEFORE a plot has been executed. For some, this is seen as just a part of the "cost of doing business" as a free nation, and perhaps a certain level of, e.g., possible terror attacks should be accepted.

I agree with that observation, and I consider myself one of those people who see it as "cost of doing business". Because I don't trust most politicians to stay honest when they can abuse their power to silence political opponents. More about that below...

Some people, myself included, believe that we should do everything possible to stop these kinds of -attacks BEFORE they happen, and not deal with them afterward, or in the criminal courts system. I do understand that making the determination of whether someone falls into this category depends on the judgment of some or many people. However, I consider the common sensical threshold for determining someone is actually legitimately planning to execute a terror plot against the United States to be fairly high, and I trust the skills of politicians and government appointees, for the most part, to fulfill their civic duties regardless of political stripe, and that includes discerning whether someone/something constitutes a national security threat to the United States.

Here we disagree. I distrust the skills, but even more the good intentions of government.
Germany was considered a civilized nation too, before the Nazis came into power. On the way from democracy to dictatorship, an important step was the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act that allowed the Nazi government to enact laws on its own, even against the letter of the constitution. Note that the Enabling Act was also claimed "to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Empire".

While the law discussed here is not as far-reaching, the similarities are obvious:
-The government is provided with powers that seriously diminish civil rights
-It is claimed to be necessary to defend the country against some evil
-The checks and balances that would usually prevent abuse are reduced or eliminated. In this case, the court system where the state attorney has to bring proof is circumvented.

For the sake of your fellow countrymen and the rest of the world, I hope that I'm wrong and you'll never have to eat you words. But if I read the intentions of the republicans correctly, you may be in for a rude awakening.

Re:Some other perspectives

[zacronos]

The problem, fundamentally, is that there will be situations in which there won't be enough evidence in the context of the conventional criminal justice system to make an arrest and/or prosecute for a crime BEFORE a plot has been executed.

Of course we want to arrest people materially involved in a criminal plot before it is carried out -- that's why the very act of planning a criminal act (or at least one like a terrorist act, I don't pretend to know exactly what constitutes conspiracy) is also a prosecutable offense. On the other hand, if you don't even really have much evidence that someone was planning a terrorist attack, should you be able to imprison them and "interrogate" them? How long should you be able to imprison them without charging them with a specific crime (regardless of whether you are charging them in the criminal courts system or some other system)? Considering that the type of "interrogation" we're talking about is a worse punishment than mere imprisonment, should there be no more restriction of the interrogation tactics used on someone for whom we have scant evidence than those used on someone for whom we have overwhelming evidence, or someone who has already been tried and convicted?

To make my point more explicit -- yes there is more at stake when trying to prevent a terrorist attack than when trying to prevent auto theft, but there is also a lot more at stake for the person accused. Being convicted and sentenced to jail for life or even being sentenced to death is a possibility in the regular criminal court system, but here (in the worst case) we're talking about imprisonment and hard-core "interrogation" for the rest of their foreseeable life, without necessarily being convicted or even charged by anyone of anything. I would be OK with a loosening of the restrictions on law enforcement regarding suspected terrorists when it is believed immediate action is necessary to prevent a plot from taking place, but the Military Commissions Act allows far more than that. I just don't have enough faith in any government for that to be OK.

I agree with you that not everything need be a "slippery slope"; however, just because an inch is OK doesn't mean a mile is. In general, the smaller the steps we take, the safer we are from accidentally stepping too far without realizing it.

Re:Some other perspectives

[tutwabee]

It appears as if there is actually a somewhat tame political discussion in effect on a Slashdot thread. What has the world come to? Rights and lefts can now discuss things in a civilized manor? When did this happen?

Re:Some other perspectives

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>If we trust it with that power, I also trust it with that same level of power in this context.

Trust but verify, as Ronald Reagan said.

Ten years ago, if the executive branch abused discretionary power, you could hire a lawyer and ask a judge to double-check the government's work.

We're supposed to watch government like a hawk. George Washington said it's a dangerous servant and a terrible master. When it starts asking for more and more power, more than it can intelligently use, it's time to remember Barry Goldwater in his 1964 acceptance speech: "Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.".

Re:Some other perspectives

[Lonewolf666]

Well, I believe in argumentation rather than swear words. And the fanatics must have missed this little side-thread, because we don't have anyone acting insulted over the Nazi comparison yet ;-)
Usually my post would be at either +5, Insightful or at -1, Troll, depending on which faction of zealots is stronger at the moment.

Mythbusters quote is appropriate

[Danathar]

This applies to just about everybody responding to this thread

"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

Whoa!

[Anonymous Coward]

a newly created Pentagon unit has a mandate to fight 'inaccurate' news stories

I guess Jon Stewart had better start wearing a new wardrobe when he does his show!

Re:Ah, yes. We can't dare have another view of thi

[orangepeel]

So ... if everything is really so peachy in Iraq right now ... why are we still over there now, in 2006, in full force? And why are US servicemen and women still dying at a steady rate?

Are you telling me it's because of the mass media?

Huh?

Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Feel free to take a second pass at explaining ... well, whatever it is that you think you're explaining.

Obligatory quote

[Martin S.]

"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth even gets its boots on..." Mark Twain

Re:Ah, yes. We can't dare have another view of thi

[Cederic]

Given that 100 US soldiers have died in Iraq this month, and have manifestly failed miserably to save the lives of hundreds of civilians, maybe the news media are entirely correct to question what they're trying to achieve there.

And maybe the current US administration are scared of losing an election so they're trying to spin the media.

"... bombs bursting in air..."

[Archtech]

Does this mean that domestic newspapers, TV and radio stations, bloggers, etc. can expect to receive the full Al-Jazeera treatment from the US armed forces? It might be quite exciting, with cruise missiles, Hellfire rockets, and plain old iron bombs criss-crossing the urban landscapes of New York, LA, SF, etc. I suppose we in old Blighty will get the lion's share though, as we have a surplus of impudent journalists and virtually no air defence (and what little we did have has probably been sent off to Afghanistan).

Has anyone considered that the terrorists might exploit this bold move by sending squads of suicide journalists to scribble their poison from the heart of US civilisation?

Re:"... bombs bursting in air..."

[spun]

The military pounded the Al-Jazeera offices with depleted uranium rounds. So much more long lasting suffering than silly old cruise missiles. Depleted uranium, it's the gift that keeps on giving!

This is HORRIBLE!!

[goldspider]

How DARE the military try to present their side of the story! Just because they feel misrepresented, what right do they have to state their case if it conflicts with what bloggers and corporate media are saying? Doesn't the DoD know that these people are beyond reproach?

Get my point yet? I'm sure if YOU felt somebody was publicly saying things about you that you felt weren't true, you'd want to tell your side of the story. That's the American way; it's freedom of speech. You people are going on about this as if the Pentagon were shutting down news outlets and blogs that don't conform with the administration's agenda. There's a BIG difference, and all the Big-Brother hyperbole in the world doesn't change that.

Besides, if you are so certain about the "truthiness" of your favorite news outlet, why are you so afraid of a challenge to it?

Re:This is HORRIBLE!!

[spun]

Free and independent news outlets exist to challenge other news outlets. What exists to challenge this new department of propaganda? You make it seem as though untruths spread by a free press are dangerous, whereas the inevitable untruths spread by a government propaganda outlet won't be. You may like it now, because it's controlled by an administration you like, but it won't just go away when this administration does. How would you feel about this if it were the Democrats who were in control of it? Because they will be, someday. Still feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Re:This is HORRIBLE!!

[Erebus]

Because the challenge is coming from the people with the guns?

Links to other Bush jokes:

[Futurepower(R)]

Very funny. For more humor about Bush, see the section on Bush comedy in this article I put together about the U.S.-Iraq war: The funniest Bush comedy videos. Blair says about Bush: "The lights are on, but no one is in the trailer home." A song about Bush, "American Idiot" was at the top of the charts in Canada and number 3 in Britain. The funniest comedian is American, however. He says, "When our president gets something right, he is the happiest man in the world".

(I'm not associated with any political group or party, just someone who loves the U.S. and wants things to go well.)

Re:Links to other Bush jokes:

[TheLink]

Sometimes it seems your president is trying to be the happiest man in the world by making the rest of the world less happy.

evidence

[Dmack_901]

I welcome this, so long as they cite sources/evidence for me to double check.

It really comes down to whether or not

[MCTFB]

you believe the current administration actively lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (more specifically nuclear weapons of mass destruction), or whether they made an honest mistake by trusting Iraqi defectors with an axe to grind for the vast majority of their intelligence.

Either way, in my mind whether it be malice or incompetence on the current administrations's part with regards to establishing the pretext for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein, it doesn't really matter because if there was ever any good precedent for "pre-emptive war", well the current administration pretty much ruined it in the eyes of the rest of the world. The unfortunate political reality now is that if a real Hitleresque world leader were to arise sometime in the near future and only the United States could stand up to his regime before it is too late, the United States has unfortunately lost so much credibility with Iraq that it would be extremely difficult to ever engage in a pre-emptive war anytime in the foreseeable future.

The credibility of our government both domestically and internationally has been damaged so bad that George Bush or any of his other subordinates could tell the whole world that the earth revolves around the sun, and few people would actually believe him. After all, you can only cry wolf so many times before people stop listening.

Subject

[Legion303]

"Mr Rumsfeld said earlier this year that he was concerned by the success of US enemies in 'manipulating the media'.
'That's the thing that keeps me up at night,' Mr Rumsfeld said."

So like...not the deaths of 3,000 American soldiers, the deaths of over half a million Iraqis, the lack of any WMD, increasing tension in the middle east, or the exponential rise in terrorist recruitment as a direct result of our involvement in Iraq? Really? The thing that keeps you up at night, you worthless piece of shit, is the thought that al Jazeera might not tell the truth about the Pentagon?

Fuck you.

Re:Subject

[PaulMorel]

applause

Nicely put. I feel the same way. I feel terrible that more and more American youths are being wasted in Iraq (not to mention the horrendous number of civillian casualties on the Iraqi side), and yet our leaders seem more obsessed with how they look on TV. What a load of bullshit.

Our voting system is mostly broken, but the one thing it does allow for is the overthrowing of a government that has not represented the people, so I hope that everyone here will be out there voting next week.

Analysis of foreign media reaction

[illuvata]

While this has nothing to do with the actual story, it reminded me of this:

Whenever some international news happened, you used to be able to see a summary of foreign news coverage at http://usinfo.state.gov/products/medreac.htm, under the name of "US Dept of State, International Information Programs : foreign commentary".
Unfortunately, you now get a 404 error page, mentioning that the page may have been moved. Does anybody know if it is still available somewhere else?

idiocy continued

[arganis]

considering most of the inacurate news is coming out of the whitehouse, it would be funny as he** if they actually did the job right and corrected the presidential BS, of course that will never happen, for that you would need some sort of, whats that word? oh yes democracy, with an uncrapped on constitution, unlike the dictatorship/I mean wonderful governmental leadership we have now

Not in the next news:

[Lost Penguin]

Water-boarding for journalists who do not "Stay the Course"

Pentagon News Unit!

[Zaloc]

Sounds like the federal version of the Fox propraganda network.

The American Flag

[anserdex]

The American flag just turned a shade of red.


Arise,
Ye who refuse to be slaves!
With our very flesh and blood,
Let us build our new Great Wall!
The peoples of China are in the most critical time,
Everybody must roar his defiance.
Arise!
Arise!
Arise!
Millions of hearts with one mind,
Brave the enemy's gunfire, March on!
Brave the enemy's gunfire, March on!
March on!
March on!
on!

Not always for contractions.

[Kadin2048]

My understanding is that the apostrophe is always used to contract two words, and never to denote possession.

The apostrophe certainly can be used to indicate possession, when it follows a proper noun such as a name:
e.g. "I stole Dave's guitar."

In this case it is not being used to contract two words ('I stole Dave is guitar' is not correct); the apostrophe serves purely to indicate possession. This is separate from the use of the apostrophe as part of a contraction (for example "can not" to "can't" and "it is" to "it's").

What trips people up is that the possessive form of "it" is not a contraction, it is simply a possessive pronoun, like "his" or "hers", neither of which use apostrophes. So the usage of "it" in the possessive form ('its' -- no apostrophe) is consistent with other possessive pronouns, and the usage when part of a contraction ('it's' -- with an apostrophe) is consistent with the other contractions.

Wikipedia's reference section has a good discussion of its/it's and other conflicts, in modern U.S. English usage.

Re:Not always for contractions.

[Miseph]

This is because, in times past, the wonky phrasing of "I stole Dave his guitar" would have been used. The possessive apostrophe is, in fact, a contractive one, as it contracts " hi" out of "[noun] his/her/its". I say wonky only because, to our Modern English tastes; there are many other languages in which such grammar is both proper and considered to be elegant.

It should also be noted that the "'s" can be used with more than just proper nouns; "the dog's bone smells bad" is an equally correct use of the "'s".

Re:Not always for contractions.

[Anonymous Coward]

I stole Stephanie her guitar. -> I stole Stephanie'r guitar. ???

I have shipmates who disagree

[Lost Penguin]

Lost limbs, no support from the reserves, their credit cards are maxed out paying for medical travel and injury related issues.
We take up donations at the reserve center to assist them to travel to Maryland for treatment.
Reserves still do not have funding for small arms training states side; no one gets to "fling lead" unless you are already in Iraq.
From Iraq; no body armor, no armored vehicles (they use pickup trucks to "blend in")

PS: A Navy Reservist is listed as "not reserve" due to being "mobilized" to full time Navy; this was Rumsfield's idea to reduce the number of reservists in Iraq.

Fighting the fifth column

[Fysiks Wurks]

If the (big generalization here) media wasn't doing its best to report the bad things the US has done, or been accused of, or simply reporting hearsay with zero fact checking. There would be no need for the Pentagon to act this way. I won't say the media is on the side of the terrorists, but they defiantly are not allied with U.S. interest.

The media reminds me of one of my childhood neighbors. Lets call him Dick. Dick loved to start fights between my brother and me, he was very good at it. But if we ever turned against him he would squeal like a scared pig and claim impartial, neutral, innocence in the matter.

By the way...the U.S armed forces have their own media services (at least it worked well in WWII). War is dirty, ugly, nasty business...pick a side or get out of the fray Dick.

Buy my bridge!

[tentimestwenty]

You're missing the whole point. The government isn't supposed to own the ideas, nor be able to sell them to us! That's why news is independent. In a democracy, the government is supposed to be a reflection of what we want it to be, not the other way around.

Ignorance is Strength

[Doc Ruby]

Government propaganda is illegal in the US. Yet another reason to impeach Bush, or at least impeach Rumsfeld. A Congress acting in oversight of the Executive Branch compliance with laws would already have forced Bush to fire Rumsfeld, even if just because of his Iraqmire. But this Republican criminal gang is all in it together.

Fox news pt 2!!

[chroot_james]

And 49% of America one will pay no attention to it, just like Fox News.

MOD PARENT UP

[Nimey]

It's not just at the federal level that we have political dynasties. Here in Missouri we have at least the Carnahan family and doubtless others, Chicago has the Daleys, and Louisiana politics is infamous beyond the state's borders. Cheney's pet chimp is grooming his daughters for a life in politics, and his opponent in 2000 was also from a political family.

Just because of this, I would at least like to try stochastic voting somewhere in the States. Essentially there is no voting for offices, rather people are chosen via lottery from the eligible pool and must serve[1] (like jury duty) and so holding office is a burden rather than a career. Yeah, you'd get some complete drooling fuckwit in an important role at some point [insert cheap shot here], but it seems worth it to me.

[1] But only one term and thereafter never eligible for at least that office.

Oceania

[Mutiny32]

Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

It's related, all right.

[Kadin2048]

that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

Actually Iraq had a lot to do with 9/11, in that it was what caused the U.S. government, driven by its citizenry, to go on an Arab-hunting expedition. Let's cut the crap and stop deceiving ourselves: that was the main reason for going to Iraq -- after Taliban Afghanistan collapsed like a rotten piece of fruit, without a chance to really get any good video clips of our expensive military hardware blowing stuff up, we needed somewhere else to go. Iraq was a target of convenience and opportunity; the Hussein government was unsympathetic, almost cartoonishly so, and we had pretty good maps and ideas of their capabilities from the last time we visited there. Very few people who knew anything about what was going on actually believed the Iraq/terrorism connection; it was pretty clear from the beginning that it was just a justification for a war that had been decided on for other reasons. And why not -- it had 95% approval early on; people wanted a war, they wanted some sort of violent retribution against somebody, somewhere, for 9/11. The administration delivered.

It's only since the ground war has dragged on, and the images on CNN aren't as impressive and fun to watch anymore, that public support has flagged. When it was 24-hour 'watch us bomb the sand n***ers back into the Stone Age,' the politicians couldn't crawl over themselves fast enough to support it.

The Bush administration deserves blame for creating a partially misleading premise for war, but it's dishonest to say that it wasn't a war that a very large segment of America didn't want in the first place. As a country, we willingly stood by and let the wool be put over our eyes, because we wanted to vent our spleen on someone, and (Bin Laden being indisposed at the moment) Iraq was as good a place as any.

Re:It's related, all right.

[statusbar]

Oh come on... The 'Taliban Afghanistan collapsed like a rotten piece of fruit' ?

When did that happen? Do you think this happened after the majority of American troops were told to give up and move to Iraq?

How about all the Canadian Troops dying there now?

If the people really wanted a war, they would have the government support the dismantling of the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan instead of dismantling oil-rich countries.

--jeffk++

In other news...

[dlsmith]

In other news, Slashdot continues to post "stories" about the U.S. government "violating" its citizens first-amendment rights by "forcing" them to support the government's take on current events; users point out the obvious similarities to "totalitarian" regimes.

Gotta love the quotation marks.

Step 1, Conquest , Step 2, Profit?

[Anonymous Coward]

The insurgency is just Arab Beavis and Butthead with AKs and RPGs. This is how we end this - give every male over 14 the chance to swear a loyalty oath to the new Iragi govt and their American friends. If they don't, shoot them on the spot. If they violate the oath, shoot them and their sons on the spot.

In other words, establish a slave colony loyal only to US interests. If they show disloyalty by refusing to trade with their new masters, kill them. Ditto if they charge too much for their oil.

At least you're honest about your demands for total conquest.

Not Necessarily Bad News

[gcottay]

If this were not the Bush administration, I would tend to accept this PR/News Spin unit as business as usual. In our political system voter opinion still does matter and all branches and levels of government labor hard to make the news come out their way. That may, of course, change when the right wing Republicans get better at stealing votes.

Since this is, alas, still the Bush administration, we can only consider this another bunch of liars who will lie without caring how many of our men and women die in Iraq and how heavy the debt will be for all.

The Problem with Modern Media

[KiWiKiD]

First of all, modern media is bound by time constraints. Just as with newspapers in major metropolitan areas you need to be the first to run a story and beat the competition. The issue at hand now is that many don't verfiy the trustworthiness of their sources. If it's sensational, it's running. If it bleeds it leeds as the mantra states. Factor all of this in, and realize the last important facet is ownership of the news organizations themselves and you have a better idea of hidden agenda. Personally I love to read all the responses of those speaking og 1984, but then again... who's telling the news?

Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch...

Are they telling the truth, or are they providing you their slant? Look at who they dontate campaign contributions to. The fact of the matter is that today, there really is no unbiased news organization.

Being a former servicemember at Camp Fallujah, I will leave these parting words. As we invaded the City of Fallujah, Fox News was the only one to get the story even remotely correct. I'm not going to dime out the other news organizations who published blatantly wrong reports, but I'm sure it's not too hard to figure it out. What really gets me, is not what the News agencies decide to report, but rather what they don't report. Some within my unit had seen the torture chambers, the mass burial sites and the transportable chem labs possibly used for WMDs, but I never did see any news about their discoveries. Perhaps the Pentagon really does need to trump up some of their accomplishments as the regular news agencies remain speechless. After all, most need to see both sides of the story to make an informed decision for themselves.

So instead of sticking with just one news organization, read them all and try to find the truth that lies somewhere between them all.

Patent Violations

[Hoi Polloi]

Unfortunately for the Pentagon, the patents taken out by Joseph Goebbels and Stalin on propaganda and press manipulation have not expired.

There were laws against this for a reason

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Radio Free Europe and its siblings were forbidden to broadcast in the US. Back then, even people in government knew that government attempts to influence opinion were too dangerous to be aimed at US citizens.

Let see what Bin laden sez

[Anonymous Coward]

or what I have heard people say he say cuz I dont speak Arabic
Then I will look at how things are right now and what USA is doing.

USA is fighting to take over the Middle East. True or false? True. Bin Laden IS right.
USA wants to control the Middle East for its own goals. True or false? True. Bin Laden IS right.
USA supports Israel at the expence of Arab countries. True or false? True. Bin Laden IS right.
USA should get out of Saudi Arabia. USA already did that
USA supports Saudi Arabian king. True or false? True. Bin Laden IS right.
USA is an evil empire. True or false? True. Bin Laden IS right. 655,000 Iraq citizens are directly or indirectly dead because of USA. The USA history proves USA IS an evil empire.

Gee, I guess I must be a terr'irst then since I "believe" what BIn laden sez!

I am postring this as Anonymous Coward cuz the /. editors are isreal loving jews who have modded me as a troll and wont let me post more than twice.

People have poor long-term memories

[Slithe]

The U.S. has engaged in this kind of war before (Vietnam), and look at the results. Back then, the U.S. faced harsh criticism from other countries. Read up on the history of The Americans for more information on this. We regained our 'good' image then; we can (maybe we will, maybe we won't) regain that image again. For the foreseeable future, yes, preemptive war will have a bad image. At least, with hope, our veterans will not face the same abuse that Vietnam veterans faced.

doubleplusungood

[JiveDog]

[eom]

Twenty or thirty years back

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

My sources for this are all secondhand.

"Legwork" used to be the core of what journalists were taught in school and on the job. B5 creator JMS used to work news at a real newspaper, and couldn't believe that press releases are now being broadcast as news. Al Franken quotes older journalists saying that stories making the top of the "news" today would have been met with "Got a source for that? No? Thank you for coming in, sir. Next!" early in their careers.

Go back earlier, start of the 20th century, and you had clearly identified Republican and Democratic newspapers, and you had Hearst. That wasn't any better than today.

Free Speech isn't for hire

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that the government isn't trying to control ideas, it is trying to compete in the market place of ideas.

You're right. They should set up a big meeting hall, where people's representatives could speak on their behalf, and debate ideas. They could record what everyone said in those speeches, and make them available to everyone. We could have elections to decide who gets to speak on people's behalf. We could calls these establishments "Congress" and "The Senate". Wouldn't that be a great idea!!!

Just because the Pentagon will issue some press releases, this doesn't stop you, me or anyone else from putting our ideas out there as well.

Why should we fund any government body, let alone the military, just to tell the free press what "the truth" is? The point of democracy is that the people can make up their own minds; not be sued for slander if their speech doesn't match some "officially sanctioned" definition of the truth, or taken away under military arrest for betraying "national security interests" by not accepting the "official truth" that is what the military claims they "should" print.

seems to me that it is the government's DUTY to release information if they think the news is reporting false information.

Why? The people are allowed to figure out the truth for themselves. The government shouldn't have to fund an official "party line". It most certainly shouldn't be developed and enforced by the military!

I didn't see anywhere in the article that every US citizen was being forced to watch these new media channels, or being forced to accept the information as the truth.

The state can already sue for slander anything which it claims is a lie. It can already suppress information under "national security" concerns. Now it has a clear standard by which newspaper reporters can report the officially sanctioned "truth" and not risk lawsuits or imprisonment; or they can publish something else, and risk going to court, or to jail. Not to mention the intimidation factor of having angry, armed military personelle show up on your doorstep when you publish something contrary to the "correct" version of events.

Kinda fits in with the whole idea of free speech.

How does paying a military organization with taxpayers money just to intimidate the free press in any way support free speech?

Comparison of Empires, not Republics?

[fantomas]

"Panem et circenses" was coined by Juvenal in Satire X. He was writing about the Roman Empire, not the Roman Republic. He was writing approximately 100 years after the change from republic to empire. I'll leave it to you to decide if USA is undergoing a subtle change to empire, in the same way it is difficult to define when exactly Rome became an empire and was no longer a republic...

Re:Comparison of Empires, not Republics?

[gobbo]

I'll leave it to you to decide if USA is undergoing a subtle change to empire

Hmmm. You think that over 700 military bases in nearly half the countries in the world, plus an enormous complex of business-via-strongarm and CIA-supported deal preparation (think 'economic hit-men'), plus undue power at the UN and major trade organisations, you think that that might indicate the only remaining modern-day empire?

Because the only way to have an empire these days is to hide it... unless you can actually take over the world. China hides it under the notion of 'traditional' borders, it's a Han delusion. Russia is still crumbling. The Commonwealth is a wan nod and wink. But the US, well, they can still get away with invading small geopolitically strategic places around the globe under the thin guise of 'defense,' suggesting that their borders are everywhere.

What is the modern, newly relevant definition of empire?

Considering the current "news"

[TheConfusedOne]

Being sent out by our independent news outlets, they certainly could use some checking. The DoD objects to a news report that says that Guantanamo finally has terrorists with the transfer of the 14 high-ranking al Qaeda members and it's pointed out that there were already a number of confessed al Qaeda members in Guantanamo since it started, the newspapers lame response is that they were merely using the language "lightheartedly" instead of actually describing a fact.

The Times declined to issue a correction, noting that "the phrase in question was meant to be somewhat lighthearted in tone and not literal."

source

You can also look at how they took a Rumsfield quote completely out of context to have him yelling at war critics.

Heaven forbid a company or a government should be concerned with accurate portrayals in the news.

Proof of the absense of ideas in Bush WH

[bensch128]

From TFA:
President Bush has said recently that terror groups were trying to influence public opinion in the US, describing their efforts as the "war of ideas".

Obviously, if Bush and Rummie need to create a counter-idea department in the DOD, then they are losing the "war of ideas".

Here's an idea: Be a better army and work with one side or another in the Iraqi civil war instead of letting both sides slaughter your troops!

Ben

And most importantly...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct the misunderstanding that government does overall more harm than good

Fundamentally wrong.

[Irvu]

This is fundamentally wrong on so many levels:

1. Firstly the Pentagon shouldn't have a "message". The very idea that they have an outlook that is different from that of the American People and that said outlook must be promoted to the American people is wrong. Individual subgroups of the American People are free to have divergent opinions but the very purpose of the pentagon is to serve all Americans and to answer to us not convince us to answer to them.
2. Secondly the monitoring of blogs smacks of censorship. If I write on my Blog that Donald Rumsfeld is a dumbass who shouldn't be where he is (I just did) then will that be noted somewhere? Will the buy irvusucks.com so they can blog against me? Will the Pentagon maintain a "news file" on me for their own uses? Will the contents of said file be used against me at some point, say if I run for public office, or seek a job that the pentagon can influence?
   
   During the heyday of the 50's much of America was really run by the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover employed "special agents" that spied on everyone who had "political involvement" this included people like the president. He used those files as part of blackmail campaigns or to track the ones who were "disloyal" I can't help but feel that this is one more step on the way to that again.
   
   I wonder if Rumsfeld is also a transvestite?
3. Lastly the use of "surrogates" (read mouthpieces or stand-ins) makes this fundamentally unacceptable. Not only will they have a message that they wish to convince us of, they will be disguising the source of that message by having it said by others. Thus giving the appearence that the message does not come from them. That isn't just propaganda, that's lying, decieving, deluding people.
   
   The Pentagon already has spokespeople, and well-paid ones at that. They already have "aligned" groups such as the VFW who can always be counted on to preach 'their' message. This is a step over the line from serving and protecting the American people, to ordering them around.
4. They alredy tried this with Talon News and it failed then. Then again, perhaps that was the warmup.

This is, bar none, the most childish and sensitive administration that we've ever had, and it bodes ill for us. From the start I opposed this war. From the start I also noticed that the Administration was desperate, desperate to get "their" side out. This wasn't just in the run-up to war this was afterwords.

Towards the end of the Vietnam war, Cheney and Rumsfeld were in the Nixon administration then, the Pentagon took to engaging in the "5'Oclock Follies" a daily press-conference during which they announced hills taken, napalm dropped, anything, anything that was a 'victory' no matter how small. They did this because the public was already agains the war, a war which the pentagon wasn't winning, and they were desperate to change that. This administration started the war that way. From day 1 they focused on announcing the toppling of statues and the reopening of hospitals (even though said hospitals were swimming in raw sewage) and of doggedly insisting that "things were getting better" even before Iraq was looted burned and pillaged.

It's not clear whether they intended this to prepare for the future losses by sterting the follies early or that they believed Americans had grown so short-sighted that we wouldn't pay attention for any longer than one news cycle. Without our daily sweetner of victory we would lose faith fast. They may be right.

From the start they also spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on negative press. Any criticism from anyone no matter how small was reacted too negatively, vigorously so. Not even Nixon at his darkest days seemed so sensitive to any criticism. During World War II FDR subscribed to Newspapers that did nothing but criticise him, and Eisenhower complained bitterly both about press reports claiming that they were losing, and

War Is Peace

[TheSpoom]

Chapter III

War is Peace

The splitting up of the world into three great super-states was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth century. With the absorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three super-states are in some places arbitrary, and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general they follow geographical lines. Eurasia comprises the whole of the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania comprises the Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa. Eastasia, smaller than the others and with a less definite western frontier, comprises China and the countries to the south of it, the Japanese islands and a large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet.

In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. In the centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed its character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were already present to some small extent in the great wars of the early twentieth century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon.

To understand the nature of the present war -- for in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war -- one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive. None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other two in combination. They are too evenly matched, and their natural defences are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces. Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants. Secondly, there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about. With the establishment of self-contained economies, in which production and consumption are geared to one another, the scramble for markets which was a main cause of previous wars has come to an end, while the competition for raw materials is no longer a matter of life and death. In any case each of the three super-states is so vast that it can obtain almost all the materials that it needs within its own boundaries. In so far as the war has a direct economic purpose, it is a war for labour power. Between the frontiers of the su

Re:War Is Peace

[Opportunist]

The key fallacy of Orwell was to assume that every person follows the Maslow pyramid of needs. In fact, most are already content and satisfied when the base needs (food, shelter, social contact) are met. They don't need self fulfilment or power. They just want bread and games.

Sad but true.

Go out and offer someone to give him enough food, housing and entertainment. In return, all he has to do is stay quiet, no matter what the state does. He has no say in politics.

I bet you get approval ratings that border the 100%. The times when people cared about their country are over. Today, everyone just leans back and shrugs, 'cause "hey, what can I do?"

People don't want to be free. People don't want to have a say in politics. They want to have an easy life and fun. That's today's truth. That's all that is left. Or do you think the US government would get away with what it does if it was different?

CNN promoting the GOP through articles

[Quizo69]

Sadly no one realises that this system has been in place for a long time, and works in subtle ways.

Just yesterday CNN.com headlined an article about how "terrorists" were hoping for the Democratic Party to win the mid-terms so that they could weaken Bush.

Of course, this article is actually a nice little plant by someone IN the GOP to get all red blooded Americans fired up to defy such statements, and prove it by voting GOP "to show those muthaf$%^ers that the US don't vote for the party that the enemy wants in power".

See how it works?

So not just your average Thought Police

[goldcd]

Federal Thought Police.

The Difference

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

The Belgians make far, far better beer than the French. Everybody knows this; even the French, who try to cope by pointing out that many Belgians speak French.

So who here thinks that the media tells the truth?

[Perl-Pusher]

A comprehensive overview of the four types of photo fraud committed by Reuters, August, 2006
Journalism Scandals

So is the US military reacting to media bias that hurts morale while simultaneously building the enemies will to fight? You don't think MoveOn.org or Worldnetdaily.com aren't exaggerating their diametrically opposed points of view until the truth becomes indistinguishable from outright lies? What is sad is the the US military feels the need to do this. And probably do need to since the truth as long since been discarded.

Correcting the record?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or dismantling the truth?

I thought they already had that...

[bergeron76]

With Fox News. That seems to be the biggest propaganda machine coming out of Washington.

It's not even "real" news, but they make it sound like it's a real news network.

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[Jane Q. Public]

If you are "loosing", please check your pants. Personally I did not think it was quite that bad yet, but I could smell you when you stood upwind.

On a more serious note, I have long warned the current "generation" of Americans about the danger of becoming what they are trying to fight. And of course that is just about the first thing they did. Unfortunately, they did so with the willing assistance of their "elders", who did not give a damn as long as they stayed in control. Very sad.

Commie Rumsfeld

[Doc Ruby]

Rumsfeld is a Commie. Any freemarketer would scream at Rumsfeld's government propaganda competing with private media corporations.

Give a guy a $TRILLION annual budget, and he thinks he's Rupert Murdoch. Without ever having to sell a widget, except that "slam dunk" pitch to America that "Saddam Hussein has WMD in Baghdad and Tikrit, and North, South, West and East of there".

The beginning of all things to end

[C4st13v4n14]

In my mind, this along with the recent "martial law" bill is one very big warning sign. Glad I don't live in Yank-land.

Be afraid. Very afraid.

[Stoutlimb]

If it comes down to a war of ideas, the American people are largely unarmed. ...

Scare Quotes in Wrong Place

[Anonymous Coward]

The scare quotes were in the wrong place. It should have read: inaccurate 'news stories'.

another step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember in the 80's, how we used to laugh at the lack of freedoms enjoyed by Russians? Their KGB, their strict border rules and ID requirements? etc, etc... Think about that as this administration inches us closer and closer to this...

Uhhhh.....you forgot something....

[tacokill]

Ruby Ridge? Waco? Why yes, there was a response from a concerned citizen to those events. I can't say whether he was left or right but he most definitely responded.

Here is the wiki about that response. Scroll down to the part about motivations....


(sidenote: I hate to even have to disclaim this but I am not promoting this as an APPROPRIATE response, rather, I am just telling you that these events were responded to)

In Soviet Russia

[kfg]

the papers print the government"s lies.

In the USA the government cannot get the press to quote its lies accurately.

KFG

Will they correct inaccurately positive news...

[jjn1056]

...as well as the 'inaccurately' negative news?

Let's see if they start correcting Fox News, Bush's favorite news channel.

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[blahplusplus]

"This rapid walk away from democracy in the name of democracy is frightning."

The truth is, there has not been a democracy for a long time, it is actually a play powerful actors entitle "democratic theatre", the goal of which is to get people to believe they actually make the real important decisions and that they are "free".

I was getting worried....

[Hap76]

I wondering where luvmypres would get a job when the Netscape gig flames out. Now I know.

truth isn't dead

[doom]

misanthrope101 wrote:

There really isn't any truth anymore, only "truth". The Left fell first, as we know from the Sokal hoax.

Sokal himself is a liberal who wanted to bring the left back from the sciene wars to the class wars: to a large extent he (and others) succeeded. Postmodernism is largely discredited anywhere that you look.

You really want to avoid flying off the handle and getting carried away by your ideas. "Truth is dead" has a nice ring to it, but it just isn't supportable.

Religious faith, that hallmark of the modern American Right, dovetails very well with Foucaultish solipsism, because of their overt rejection of the objective world in favor of an ostensibly "Godly" one populated by "gut thinkers" like Bush.

This is another fine example of getting carried away with an idea: I'm not a religious person myself, the style of thinking of religious people certainly seems peculiar to me, but it simply is not true that every Good Christian is a fundamentalist zombie right-wing foot solider.

Possibly you've got problems with your own relgious obsessions, eh?

Cementing these two ostensible opposites together is our optimimistic, populist belief that all ideas are valid, a democractic principle that allows everyone to bring something to the table. We listen to and respect just about everyone,

Yeah, and I'm arguing with Some Guy On Slashdot.

Much of that is just arrogance--we like to think that our gut-feeling assessment of climate change, international relations, biological evolution, or whatever, is spot-on, even if a flat-out expert contravenes our superficial assessment.

Myself, I think it's because we have no good system of evaluation of experts. This is an opportunity for the on-line collaborative systems of the future, in my opinion: consider the possibilities for a web-of-trust of expert proxies.

It's inevitable, starting from there, that we reach a point where there is just no such thing as truth.

Oh my god, you're right. I give up. Bang!.

Re:truth isn't dead

[misanthrope101]

it simply is not true that every Good Christian is a fundamentalist zombie right-wing foot solider.

I didn't say "every" and I wasn't painting with that broad a brush. Obviously some Christians are scientists, many reject Biblical literalism, etc etc. You are taking all of my arguments to an absurd degree, rather than listening to the points I am trying to make. Enthusiasm can lead to hyperbole, which I may be a bit guilty of, but I think it's obvious that I'm not saying "every one of these, everwhere, without exception, all the time, is exactly like this." If someone connects liberals with support of affirmative action, you don't leap out and say "Aha! Not ALL of them do! so there! You're stereotyping!" That's just dumb.

Please point to something that indicates a "religious obsession." Have you dealt at all with the creationist movement? What I said really does apply to a wide swath of Americans. Follow the attacks against evolutionary theory, and you find many people arguing about the "limitations of materialistic thinking." They are trying to redefine science. I routinely read essays and blog posts bemoaning the blinkered worldview foisted upon us by methodological materialism--i.e. they want "evidence of things not seen" (i.e. faith) to qualify as science. This is true (or false, as the case may be), and you can attack me on the accuracy or even honesty of what I'm saying, but it's silly to throw out an accusation that I have a religious obsession, that I'm tryin to paint ALL Christians as, as you say, "zombies." Me objecting to fundamentalists being hostile to rationalism isn't the same thing as me being a religious bigot.

Myself, I think it's because we have no good system of evaluation of experts.

But we do have a system. Scientific articles are peer-reviewed, plus you can look at the consensus of the scientific community. This doesn't preclude error (nothing does, I fear) but if we can agree that, a) science generally works, and b) science's best answer right now on a given subject is such-and-such, I think we can trust the best science has at a give time to be the best WE have at a given time. Science of course addresses the physical world, and doesn't tell you why you should be a good person or whether or not you'll meet your loved ones in the afterlife, but when it comes to things like, say, the causes and impacts of climate change, the causes of genetic diversity (as in evolution), etc, I think we can trust that, at least better than we can trust anything else offered to us.

On other issues, like whether or not Iraq had WMD or Saddam supported Al Quaida, well, we do employ experts. The state department, CIA, DoD, etc all studied the questions--what did they say? If the National Intelligence Estimate, the sum total end analysis of all the expertise owned by the entire US intelligence apparatuss, came to a conclusion about the effects of the Iraq occupation, and then a few campaiging politicians came out and say "no, I don't believe that, we're doing great, and we're helping the situation," then I still think it's clear that the experts are who wrote the NIE, not the professional politician. Critical thinking is not fool-proof, and the human condition always entails the possibility of error, but we do have ways of assessing credibility. You can't institutionalize that and prevent people from trusting whoever they damned well please, but I'm not saying we should make people do anything. I was just dismayed (and I still am) that people believe things so readily, not just when they're absurd, but when known, verifiable facts exist that disprove the very thing they believe.

I have seen cases presented, with facts, logic, everything in line, and the other person just says, "no, I disagree," and that's it. It's not that they should be made to agree (even if that were possible) just that they don't consider counter-arguments, alternative

Re:truth isn't dead

[doom]

Myself, I think it's because we have no good system of evaluation of experts.

But we do have a system. Scientific articles are peer-reviewed, plus you can look at the consensus of the scientific community. This doesn't preclude error (nothing does, I fear) but if we can agree that, a) science generally works, and b) science's best answer right now on a given subject is such-and-such, I think we can trust the best science has at a give time to be the best WE have at a given time. Science of course addresses the physical world, and doesn't tell you why you should be a good person or whether or not you'll meet your loved ones in the afterlife, but when it comes to things like, say, the causes and impacts of climate change, the causes of genetic diversity (as in evolution), etc, I think we can trust that, at least better than we can trust anything else offered to us.

If you're asking my opinion on this, I would say yes, before you go against the scientific consensus on a given point, you'd better think that through three times or more.

But then, scientific consensus (a) changes over time (b) is corruptible by the non-scientific concerns of the scientists (and as you point out, not all questions have or even can have a scientific consensus).

Points (a) and (b) are large enough problems (or are percieved as large enough problems by many), that "scientific consensus" is not a popular standard among the general populace.

For one thing, how do you find out what the consensus is? The scientists don't have any sort of official election process where they judge the issues and make statements -- in fact, many, perhaps most seem to feel that it is not their job to make such statements (and perhaps they regard it as politically dangerous to do so).

Let me expand on what I mean by point (b) with an example; let's reach back to the "nuclear winter" controversy -- what you had going on there (in my opinion) is a group of scientists bending the truth just slightly in hopes of convincing people that nuclear wars would literally be unwinnable, and an even crazier notion than was popularly supposed. The "nuclear winter" hypothesis was certainly interesting, and certainly worth talking about, but they made a concerted effort to convince the public that it was the truth (or at least, a stronger theory than it was). They were doing this for the best of reasons, and many of them may have deluded themselves (i.e. not consciously exaggerating the case), but even so it was not a shining example of science in action. It was in fact the sort of thing that casts doubt on the notion that you can just Trust The Scientists.

Now, let's step forward and consider the case of global warming: I'm not interested in arguing that anthropogenic global warming isn't happening (my best guess -- though perhaps not a terribly well-informed guess -- is that the case for it is looking reasonably solid these days), but it is not at all unimagineable that climatologists in general might have allowed their very laudable concerns about the future of the environment to infect their scientific judgement, just as happened with the "nuclear winter" theory. Suggesting that the climatologists may have a "religious" obession on the brain is unthinkable in some circles (though quite the contrary is the case among conservative policy wonks, obviously), but the very fact that it's so unthinkable helps create a sense of doubt about their conclusions, there's the sense that they haven't had to face serious debate amongst themselves, because they all know how important it is to come to the right answer.

This perception may be completely wrong, but it is not by any means an irrational thing to be afraid of. Scientists are just folks. They're prone to group-think, they lack mental flexibility once committed to a position ("science progresses funeral by funeral").

And so far we've only talked about the likelihood that the "anthropogenic" t

Re:1 more nail to the coffin of "Free" United Stat

[Dunbal]

I am just appalled at the lack of backlash from the international community to United States measures.

      Are you sure? Public opinion regarding the US could hardly be any lower nowadays in almost every country in the world. No one is about to give the US an excuse to attack or invade their country however. Let's see what 2008 brings, shall we?

Re:Damn fine job!

[gx5000]

I could wish that we could enlighten the world in one fell swoop..
Ain't going to happen...psychotic apes act like psychotic apes do...

The problem here is that it doesn't matter...it's been going on for years...
The State uses propaganda to disseminate its will unto its people...so what?
It plays both sides of the fence, they see you coming and get you going...
There are moles and traitors in every group...polarize an issue and you'll
never get a resolution that the constitution supposes protects...
Maybe we should try and get a count of how many trolls on /. are
On some payroll to help lessen the influence a blog like this can have
On public opinion and voters in general (think I'm kidding?)

Putting an official face on the Thought Police will only make it worse...
And contradicting them will bring, will bring..huh, who's going to trust
the Pentagon's redactions ??!! Hold on...is it April 1st and no one told moi ?

Interesting how you define victory...

[Maow]

Has there been any instance in our nation's military history where we've won a war without a successful propaganda effort? From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.

The USA won in Vietnam?

Interesting how you define victory...

D.A.R.E.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with DARE? The program at my school was forthcoming, effective, fair, educational and entertaining. What about yours? What about the whole concept?

Re:D.A.R.E.

[BVis]

Multiple studies have shown that students who complete their local D.A.R.E. program are no less likely to have problems with drug abuse than those who do not. Some of those studies have found that once students have found out about the lies and half-truths in the D.A.R.E. curriculum (which stresses rote parroting of anti-drug propaganda over critical thinking skills) they're less likely to listen to authority figures when they discuss drug abuse in the future.

D.A.R.E. is also treated as a sacred cow by local government; any elected official who is critical of the program is instantly metaphorically tarred and feathered and run out of office, despite any logical or fact-based arguments on its cost-effectiveness or usefulness. Police departments receive non-trivial funding from the program, which they use for a variety of purposes, not all of which are related to drug abuse prevention.

D.A.R.E. is broken. It's a substitute for parents having an honest, open dialog regarding the dangers of drug abuse with their children. Rather than "Son/Daughter, drug abuse causes a lot of problems in people's lives. It can be a monstrously destructive force, leading to things like addiction, unplanned pregnancy, accidental death, and imprisonment. You will have friends who will experiment with drugs; of that we're certian. This doesn't make them bad people, but the fact is that they're taking risks which we don't think you should take. If you find yourself in a situation where you feel pressure to try drugs, know that you can call us anytime and we will help you, no questions asked", they get "Drugs are bad, mmkay?", which is as insulting to their intelligence as it sounds.

I can think of a lot worse things my kid could do than puff a joint. I'd rather they be safe and responsible, and come home at the end of the day, regardless of anything else.

No, because that's boring.

[Kadin2048]

The "fun part" of the war -- the bombing-the-crap-out-of-them part -- was over when the Taliban government collapsed.

The U.S. population doesn't have a whole lot of patience for long search-and-destroy campaigns or counter-guerilla warfare. When they wanted a war, they wanted an actual war. Like, with armies and stuff. And tanks. You know, like in the movies. One with an identifiable enemy and progress that can be marked on maps and analyzed on CNN.

When the Afghanistan campaign ceased being a "war" in the Saving Private Ryan sense, and turned into some sort of long-term occupation against an invisible enemy, the U.S. pretty much packed up and headed for Iraq. As soon as the Taliban government fell, there was talk in the U.S. of pulling out and passing responsibility over to an international force.

The people really wanted a war, but "dismantling ... the Taliban resurgence" wasn't going to cut it. Iraq did; they had an actual army that could be defeated in something resembling a conventional pitched battle, infrastructure that could be bombed, and (it was thought) people who would gratefully acknowledge their liberators.

The slow dismantling of the remaining Taliban wasn't -- just as the continuing counter-insurgency warfare in Iraq isn't -- cinematographic enough to capture the interest and support of the U.S. citizenry. If you want to maintain public support in this country for a war, you need to have images of things getting blown up and your troops marching forward on TV every day. The public won't tolerate any lack of perceived forward momentum.

Had Iraq not been invaded, the public would have tired of Afghanistan long ago, just as it now tires of Iraq. The political reasons for keeping the 'war footing' going longer are obvious, but it's silly to place blame on Bush and the Administration as if they were some sort of evil-genius cabal. The public was entirely complicit -- in fact, hugely supportive -- of the war, before they grew bored with it.

The correction unit replies

[gedeco]

This is the US correction unit. lower you're firewall and drop you're posts. Slashdot will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

If this warning reminds you of the Borg in star trek, this is pure coïncidence. Darwin has not been corrected yet. Planned assimilation time: stardate 2011

Wars on ideas

[Shadowlore]

A "war" on terror or drugs is a "war" that you cannot win with firepower. True. And a "war" on poverty fares no better, indeed it fares worse.

You can't win a "war" on poverty by taxing the means to improve people's outlook. You can not "win" by depressing economic opportunities, by limiting access to economic activities, and by raising the barrier of entry to the world of gainful employment and entrepreneurship. In other words, you can't win the War on Poverty with firepower.We are still fighting that War as well.

Re:Wars on ideas

[Opportunist]

Generally fighting a "war" against an idea is doomed to fail. You cannot force someone to agree with you. You can oppress him, you can press a lip service from him, but as soon as you release him from gunpoint, he'll double his efforts to fight you.

Or, in case he didn't even know he's fighting, or didn't want to fight, you just managed to make him pick up the rifle.

Simple Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple Answer: What we need is a revolution and for the government to be overthrown.

Do it man!

FYI

[geekoid]

The best news reporting done in this country was when the government gave money to the major Stations to do the news.

There had been talk of a government braodcast, but the FCC desided it was better to give money to competing broadcaster which would remove the taint og 'government broadcast'

The moment they took that money away, is the moment the news became about advertising money, and knee jerk sensationalism.

They've already started...

[WerewolfOfVulcan]

Do you really think that the timing of the removal of all Daily Show and Colbert Report clips from YouTube isn't part of this effort? When some elected dork says "I never said that" on national television, Jon and Steven have a habit of showing the clip of them saying "I never said that" followed by the clip(s) of them saying it? We can't have misinformation like that running around on the Internet. Voters could see it and get the right idea.

Like Fox News, THIS is the "equal time"

[John Jorsett]

Looks like the people who are always bleating about "equal time" only mean it when that translates into more time for them. Fox News comes along and goes against the prevailing spin and you'd think it was a rip in the fabric of space/time. The Pentagon decides to put up a web page that contradicts mainstream media coverage and it's the establishment of a Ministry of Propaganda. Just what is it about counter-argument that makes people lose their minds like this? Afraid that maybe their ideas can't be defended?

Re:In becoming our enemies in order to fight them.

[damista]

This reply is a generic one to all posts in this subthread, not to the starter of it.

Considering that pretty much everybody who posted seems to agree that it is all about power and control, don't you think it is time to pull your fingers out and stand up for your rights? By "you" I mean the American people. Why the American people? Because the whole world looks at America and what's done there, will be done everwhere else...well almost everywhere. America calls for the "War on Terror", the whole world is fighting their "War on Terror". America introduces total surveillance, the rest of the world introduces total surveillance. America eliminates civil rights, the rest of the world eliminates civil rights. Why the hell shouldn't it work the other way round? If America stands up against their so called representatives, I'm pretty sure the rest of the world will do the same.

Show your politicians, that enoug is enough. Stand up and go to the streets. Sitting behind a computer screen whinging doesn't help. Get out there and show them that they are supposed to represent the people and not the big corporations. Show them that they are your servants and not the other way round. Show them that you are sick and tired of how the rest of the world thinks about America. Show them that the reason for the terror against America is not the terrorists but the foreign politics of America. The terrorists are just a consequence. Show them that in a democracy, it can not be that the candidate that accumulates the majority of votes loses (sorry guys but your electoral system is a bit...let's say odd). Show them that you are no longer willing to play their game. Show them that you are sick of being watched where ever you go, have your emails read, have your mail opened, have your phone calls screened and have every single detail of ALL your communication archived. It is none of their business who you are talking to and what you are saying. It is none of their business where you go to and what websites you are visiting. You are supposed to live in the land of the free! As long as you just sit there and do nothing, things will only get worse. If you kick the arses of your politicians, our pollies will realise that if they don't watch it, they will get their arses kicked as well.

Metric

[Anonymous Coward]

If you came up with a system that didn't need at least a few arbitrary base units (like grams, metres, degrees), then I think you'd be in the running for a Nobel prize.

I think I see a problem.

[surfcow]

... "and aim to "correct the record". "

The *record* being whatever their superiors tell them.

I think I see a problem.

In truth, variations on this sort of stuff has been going on for years.

You can not trust any information source absolutely,
but you can definietly *distrust* the military.

People who follow orders without question,
largely without personal responsibility
and permitted to act in absolute secrecy
are not good guardians of the truth.

The official 'Mighty Wurlitzer'..

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who do not know their own history are doomed to think everything is new.

The Pentagon, and all the various TLA's, have always had a inroad into the media for psyops, be they 'corrections', clarifications, or manipulations. This is just making it official, it used to be back-channel contacts or planted mouth-pieces (officially sanctioned 'leakers' to spread the information).

Do a Google search for the phrase 'Mighty Wurlitzer', or 'Su peradon'. Anyone here remember the demonization drive in the national media prior to Desert Storm I?

America, land of the 30 second attention span.

Finally, a ministry of truth

[ScourgeOfGod]

I have waited so long to be told what to believe.

'News correction' = propaganda

[macraig]

Enuf said.

I was Contacted for Participation in the Program

[abh]

Today I received an e-mail from US Centcom in what can only be interpreted as them wanting to include me on a mailing list for thier "corrected" news. More details on my blog: http://www.anotherblogger.com/2006/10/31/us-centco m-contacted-me-for-thier-propaganda-program/

Re:1 more nail to the coffin of "Free" United Stat

[rammer]

Public opinion and real consequences are two very different things.
Public opinion can and will be ignored until it causes things that really hurt.
Like US products not being sold. Trade embargos. US credit rating being lowered.
Forcing US to deal with its enormous budget deficit. That is unlikely to happen since all of the major
credit rating agencies are based in the US. :(

I am hoping that in 2008 democracy will sort itself out in the US. I am not holding my breath however.
US could have one good presidency and then again some special interest puppet. As long as US elections are determined by the amount of money a candidates organisation has there will be no real democracy is the US.

So, let's see Internet Regulation w/gov't control,

[enmane]

Allow companies that control our bandwidth like AT&T to,
a) regulate bandwidth however they see fit
b) become monolithic (after we split them up year ago)
c) create a news organization to disseminate "accurate" news
d) have companies in (b) in the back pocket of the gov't

and you have a recipe for controlling what news is printed and who reads it. Just throttle the bandwidth to the "less accurate" sites and show them how fast news is from the "approved" sites and people will come in droves. Way to go!

perfect match

[cas2000]

hey, they could hire the ex-Minister of Information from Saddam's Iraq, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf.

he's an expert at the kind of "correction" they want....and they know he's capable of insisting that they're winning even in the face of undeniable facts to the contrary.