Winter Patriot Community Blog

as usual!

Actually, if you go back a bit in history, up to and including WW2, Canadians were generally more than happy to jump into the fray in the defence of the British Empire.
A brief respite, followed by current service to the American Empire.

WP Great article.
I've been thinking about that lately. People leading their entire lives based on propaganda.
Have also been wondering whats up with Afghanistan and exactly why the US is there apart from the recent pipeline so this is helpful. Any good video links would be cold. Just youtubed afghanistan but as per usual the video I found (secrets of the CIA) missed he bit about how the US baited the USSR into that war. Am really tired of having to settle for half the truth and wish you and Chris Floyd would get into documentary production except that might be a bit too dangerous. Am relieved I won't go to the grave in complete ignorance and that there are some people (not very many) in the world who will tell the truth as best they can.

To paraphrase Rick Blaine-"Yesterday he was a drunk driver,looking to up the body count in the local graveyard, today he is among the "Honored Dead".
Great piece of writing, thanks for all your efforts.

This piece is a wonderful illumination of the incessant media spin in support of the war machine. I don't know how you keep up the energy!

It also hints at the cultural and sociobiological inputs that for the most part go publicly unexamined, except perhaps within the walls of academia. But you may be sure that they are being considered within the offices of the advertising agencies hired by the Pentagon to handle public relations.

The military maintains a stable of sociologists and anthropologists whose focus is not upon, say, the ways of Afghan tribes but upon us.

In that regard you may find interesting this story in Monday's NY Times that appeared, not on the front page, but as usual in the business section--

A few excerpts--

FOR the last two years, the Army has presented itself to potential recruits as the way to become “Army strong.” Beginning on Tuesday, Veterans Day, the Army will seek to make its pitch stronger by making the campaign more relevant to the desired audience of Americans ages 17 to 24.

One new feature on a redesigned version of the Army Web site (goarmy.com) called “Straight From Iraq” states, “Now you can find out what it’s really like to be deployed in the Middle East from the men and women stationed there.”

....
The goal is to provide those considering the Army — along with parents and others who influence their decisions — with “verifiable information about what being a soldier is really like, what combat is really like,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, commanding general of the Army Accessions Command in Fort Monroe, Va., which is overseeing recruitment.

The changes in the “Army strong” campaign place more emphasis on the Internet, event marketing and other methods that connect with young Americans on a closer, more personal level.

....
The changes include an additional theme for the campaign, “Strength like no other,” which will appear along with “Army strong”; a focus on the skills that recruits can learn in the Army, to make a stronger case about how serving can bring personal and career success later in life; and new information about becoming an officer.

....
The “Army strong” campaign is produced by nine agencies, eight of them part of the McCann Worldgroup division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The Army ad budget from 2006 through 2011 is estimated at $1.35 billion.

Here's the part that really dovetails with your post--

In addition to the new content on goarmy.com, there will be new TV commercials, meant to help drive traffic to the Web site. The first ones compare the Army to a company, a team and a school by showing young men and women in settings like an office building, a gym and a campus. The scenes shift into scenes of soldiers performing military tasks like marching and saluting the flag.

In the gym commercial, young athletes are seen working out, then stacking sandbags. “There is a team like no other team in the world,” says the narrator, the actor Gary Sinise, who took over the narration work for the campaign last year from the actor Josh Charles.

“When they raise their flag in victory, you will know what these men and women are fighting for,” Mr. Sinise says, “and you will feel fortunate to be counted among them.”

In the office commercial, young workers in business attire suddenly start climbing walls. “This company is filled with dreamers,” Mr. Sinise says, “but they also have courage, strength and honor, and when they leave this company it will be with a thousand opportunities and the respect of millions.”

At least you get a parade.

And no stone is left unturned--

The other McCann Worldgroup agencies working on the campaign are: Casanova Pendrill, for ads aimed at Hispanics; the IW Group, for ads aimed at Asian-Americans; Momentum, for event marketing and sponsorships; MRM Worldwide, for the Web site, digital marketing and direct marketing; NAS Recruitment, for medical recruiting; Universal McCann, for media planning and buying; and Weber Shandwick, for public relations.

Another agency, Carol H. Williams Advertising, is creating ads aimed at African-American recruits.

As I was reading your account of Afghanistan, I was thinking of the movie Charlie Wilson's War and how different it is from your account. In Wilson's War, the US are heroes saving Afghanistan.

I also thought of A Few Good Men where Tom Cruise asks Nicholson for the truth.

It turns out they were both written by Aaron Sorkin who also wrote The West Wing.

Comparing Wikipedia's description of Charlie Wilson's War to your description and ruminating on the "truth" speech in A Few Good Men is a bit sickening. Sorkin tells partial truths which masquerade as full truths in which liberal values are well represented and acted upon. Just more two-party diversions.

Wikipedia description of Charlie's War:

A friend and romantic interest, Joanne Herring, encourages Wilson to do more to help the Afghans, and persuades Wilson to visit the Pakistani leadership. The Pakistanis complain about the inadequate support of the U.S. to oppose the Soviets, and they insist that Wilson visit a major Pakistan-based Afghan refugee camp. Deeply moved by their misery and determination to fight, Wilson is frustrated by the regional CIA personnel's insistence on a low key approach against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Wilson returns home to lead an effort to substantially increase funding to the mujahideen.

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Interesting reaction on the BBC's "Have Your Say" page regarding public attitudes towards pulling UK troops out of Afghanistan.

See http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=5646&edition=1&ttl=2...

www.cornwall911truth.info

That's a great comment on the history of Afghanistan, going back farther than I usually go, and I appreciate your words of support, too.

From an even wider viewpoint, US opposition to social progress in Afghanistan made the Afghan revolution more pro-Soviet than it otherwise would have been. And that's been a standard feature of American foreign policy for a long time: any land-reform or pro-peasant political force of any kind, any popular government or movement anywhere in the world during the Cold War was necessarily pro-Soviet, because the Americans were targeting them, and they needed help. Where else could they turn for help?

It was a deliberate ploy by American Cold Warriors to generate enemies, in my view.

Americans would foment nationalist revolution (in a place like Cuba, for example, or Vietnam). When the revolutionaries won, they would turn to the USA for help, but the Americans would tell them to get lost. So then they would turn to the USSR for help, and as soon as they did, the Cold Warriors would say, "Look, they're cozying up to the Russians." And then we'd be invading, or subverting in half a dozen other ways with a view to subsequent regime change.

I could go on and on but I won't. Not this time.