Sabe, eu to em busca de um novo emprego, cansei dessa vida de escritório, sempre no horário, cade a emoção? cade o Feeling? acho que vou virar massagista.

Polemische Phrasen sind derzeit in hannoverischen Briefkästen zu finden. Ein Flugblatt, welches vorgibt aufklären zu wollen. Der Islam ist der erklärte Gegner, denn er sei eine Religion, die den “heiligen Krieg” suche.

Untermauert wird die Argumentationsstruktur mit zahlreichen Suren aus dem Koran. Doch anstelle von Argumenten treten unsachliche Vorwürfe und Vorurteile.

Die Verfasser empören sich gegen die Einrichtung islamischer Anbetungsstätten.  Mit islamischer Schule ist offenbar das türkisches Gymnasium gemeint.

Islamisten werden als Netzwerker bezeichnet, die westliche Toleranz ausnützten. Der Begriff des Netzwerkes wird allerdings – und das ist das gefährliche an diesen aneinander gereihten Worthülsen – im Allgemeinen im Kontext mit dem Terroristennetzwerk al-Qaida angewandt.

Obwohl jede Religion durchaus neue Gläubige begrüsst, ist eine Gleichsetzung beider Welten nicht nur schlichtweg falsch sondern impertinent, hochgradig diskriminierend.

Abschließend wird das WordPress-Blog IslamVerstehen^{(Hyperlink ist via anonym.to anoymisiert)} als Quelle “unverfälschter” Information genannt.

Es wäre nicht das letzte deutschsprachige WordPress-Blog, dass sich mit fragwürdigen politischen Spektren sympathisiert.

Angesichts dieser deutlich spürbaren Prograganda mache ich mir allerdings meine Gedanken, wie die Bürger dieser Stadt reagieren werden.

In einer Diskussion mit einem meiner Bekannten hier in Mailand kamen wir auf das wunderbare Thema Kriegsführung in den vergangenen Jahrhunderten. Wir sprachen über die simple Art der Kriegsführung damals. Masse gegen Masse. Heute ist ein Krieg geprägt von Propaganda und Medienschlachten. Der Nahostkonflikt und nun auch der Kaukasuskonflikt in Georgien. Den Georgiern musste doch klar gewesen sein, dass Russland eingreifen würde, dementsprechend waren die Chancen auf einen Sieg eher unwahrscheinlich. Folglich ging es doch nur darum, die Meinung der Weltgemeinschaft zu beeinflussen. Bis jetzt ist noch nicht genau geklärt, ob Georgien zuerst anfing oder ob Russland mit den Aggressionen gestartet hatte.

Wir gehen meistens davon aus, dass die Kriege in der Vergangenheit (z.B. der amerikanische Unabhänigigkeitskrieg oder die Französische Revolution) so abgelaufen sind, wie es für uns “geschichtlich erwiesen” ist. Aber was wäre, wenn schon damals Genies der Medienkontrolle und der medialen Kriegsführung am Werk waren und alle Spuren für die Nachwelt so verändert haben, dass die echten Ereignisse nicht mehr nachvollziehbar sind. Was wäre wenn die Briten den Amerikanern in Wirklichkeit sehr viel Freiraum gelassen haben und immer wieder versucht hatten die Sache friedlich zu klären. Oder was wäre, wenn die Französische Revolution in Wirklichkeit von den Briten angezettelt wurde, um Frankreich zu schwächen? Ist die Wahrheit die wir als unsere Geschichte anerkannt haben wirklich die Wahrheit?

Keith Olbermann is losing his mind.  On September 8 of this year The New York Times included an article that outlined NBC’s plan to minimize Olbermann’s (and sidekick Chris Matthews’) influence in this year’s Presidential Election.  (see the  entire article)  Brian Stelter reports (with Jim Rutenberg contributing):

“MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

Published on Friday, May 16, 2008 by the McClatchy Newspapers

Propaganda and the Media

by Joseph L. Galloway

Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people.

Congress viewed this so seriously that every appropriations bill passed since 1951 has contained language that says no public money “shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States” without the lawmakers’ prior approval.

The Bush administration has been caught violating the propaganda ban before, notably in 2005 in the case of radio host Armstrong Williams, who was paid to endorse President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

Particularly abhorrent to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which oversees compliance with the ban, is an agency’s use of “covert propaganda” or “covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.”

This is why alarm bells should be ringing all over Washington about The New York Times’ disclosure that then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld encouraged a secret Pentagon program to care for and spoon-feed more than 50 retired senior military officers whom the administration deemed reliable friends who could be counted on “to carry our water” on the television and cable networks.

Feeding the military analysts “key and valuable information” in secret briefings by Pentagon and White House officials, the idea went, would make them the go-to guys for the networks and encourage the networks to “weed out the less reliably friendly analysts . . . .”

This 2005 memorandum, addressed to then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Larry DiRita, added: “This trusted core group will be more than willing to work closely with us because we are their bread and butter.”

Asked about the case of Col. Bill Cowan, who says he was fired as a military analyst for Fox News and cut off from the briefings for criticizing the war effort, DiRita told Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com: “I don’t know anything. I saw that in the story. I’ve heard other assertions to that effect. It was certainly not the intent.”

In a follow-up e-mail exchange between DiRita and Greenwald, Rumsfeld’s former mouthpiece – now Bank of America’s chief spokesman – elaborated on what he said he didn’t remember: “I simply don’t have any recollection of trying to restrict him (Cowan) or others from exposure to what was going on.”

DiRita added: “There are plenty of examples to the contrary – reaching out to people who specifically disagreed with us. One example I recall is Joe Galloway – a persistent critic and apparently popular with military readers. He came in and met Secretary Rumsfeld and we had other interactions.”

Now that’s a real knee-slapper: Me as a poster boy for how Rumsfeld and DiRita “reached out” to their harshest critics even as they stroked and promoted and schemed to embed the old reliables to wax enthusiastic about a war that was going from bad to worse.

Let the record show that Rumsfelds’ folks reached out to me on these few occasions:

* In early summer of 2003, half a dozen of us were invited to an off-the-record lunch with Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. The defense secretary seemed to have a poor grasp of the reality on the ground in Iraq and was still declaring that we’d do no nation-building there. He saw no insurgency, only a handful of “dead-enders”.

* In October 2005, DiRita called to invite me to travel with Rumsfeld to the Middle East and Australia. I declined because it conflicted with a long-booked graduation speech I was to give at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. to a class of new Air Force F-16 fighter pilots that included my nephew. DiRita was stunned that I wouldn’t drop a bunch of fighter pilots to be schmoozed by his boss.

* In November 2005, DiRita invited me to a “one-on-one” lunch with Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. This one I accepted. I arrived to find across the table Rumsfeld, the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace; Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody; Joint Staff Director Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp and DiRita. We went at it hammer and tongs for an hour and a half over their conduct of the war and the errors that were costing the lives of American soldiers. As I left, I told Rumsfeld that I’d continue to point out those mistakes every week in my column.

* In April 2006, DiRita sent me an e-mail telling me that my most recent column was “silly”. That column had discussed an expensive war game the Pentagon conducted about a U.S. attack on a thinly disguised country that obviously was Iran.

A retired Marine general, Paul Van Riper, had been the commander of the “enemy” forces, and he used unconventional tactics to destroy the U.S. Navy flotilla in the Persian Gulf, leaving thousands of sailors and Marines dead. At that point, the commanders stopped the war game, reset everything and imposed new rules forbidding Van Riper from employing those tactics.

Van Riper walked out, furious, and requested an investigation. DiRita complained in his e-mail that I was silly to blame Rumsfeld for this and for covering up the investigators’ report. After all, he wrote, Rumsfeld couldn’t be expected to know retired generals several levels below him or to bear responsibility for such matters. His complaint sparked an escalating e-mail war that most reckon DiRita lost. The entire exchange was posted on the Internet and can still be found there.

So much for the Rumsfeld/DiRita outreach to their critics. They were much too busy hand-feeding horse manure to their TV generals, who in turn were feeding the same product to the American public by the cubic yard.

There’s little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own government. But in this administration, there’s no one left to enforce that law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating.

The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to answer for it.

Joseph L. Galloway, a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, is the co-author, with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, of “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” a story of the first large-scale ground battle of the Vietnam War.

© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers

Thinking about everything going on today, smoking bans, food bans, healthism, bans on games of tag, treats in schools, war on terror, etc. We are fed daily doses of “news” on all these things. And we all know how the media influences us.

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly… it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

People associate Hitler’s Nazi Germany with the holocost only. History shows us, proves, that Hitler did NOT start with killing Jews, this was the end road and the most horrific to be sure. He started with “health” issues, smoking bans, forced diet and exercise. And he did it for the benefit of the people, for a “healthy and fit” nation, for the children, and to reduce costs. AND he used the children also, just as many advocate groups do today. He also used “hotlines” for children and neighbors to report “law-breakers” just as the smoking bans do today.

So for all who say things will never go that far, when is the last time that doing the same thing produced a different result?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gun Control anyone?

Noah Webster:

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.

~~~~~~~~~

Now, consider who owns all the media. When’s the last time you heard ALL sides of an argument in the news?

Benjamin Franklin:

In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

~~~~~~~~~~

Let me leave you with this thought:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety…..Benjamin Franklin

Imagine this, your best friend, the one you’ve known forever, walked up to you and asked, “Do you support the troops in Iraq?” Now, you have two different options, you can say, “Yes, I do.” or, you can say “No, I don’t.” Seems rather simple? So which would you reply?

Lets look again at this question, just for giggles. The phrase “Support our troops” is one that is practically part of our lives now; you can see bumper stickers on cars, or banners in the city, all sporting this simple saying, symbolic of all that we stand for. It’s chanted by nationalists, and held as a marker for your place in society, if you support our troops, you’re definitely a true American. This mantra of all things good stands for pride in one’s country, love of peace and the protection of our sacred democracy, through democracy our rights, and of course through rights, the government that supports us in our daily doings.

Ever notice how it works like that? Agreeing to “support our troops” is like an unspoken oath that puts your motives in line with those of America, and more importantly, it’s government; but what if you don’t agree with all of America’s motives? Can you go out and say, “No, I don’t support our troops”? you might imagine the responses you’d get. Nobody can go out and “disagree” with Nationalism, nobody can go out and say, no to the protection of Democracy, if you were to do that then you must be a communist, or worse yet; one of those folks from Al-Qaeda, a terrorist! There is no way you can “Not support our troops”, even the people against our war on terror aren’t willing to say they don’t support our troops. These nay-sayers, the people who oppose our current president, and the war end up making meager excuses such as this; “Well, I’m against the war, but I guess I do support the troops…” There is no way on earth to not be forced in to this logic, and it’s become about as redundant as, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “…if somebody asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes, I support them, or No, I don’t support them? It’s not even a question. It doesn’t mean anything.” (Noam Chomsky Media Control 25) So what are the motives behind this little phrase of ours? Well, heres where it started.

Operation Desert Storm, or the Gulf war was one of the first wars that the average citizen could experience. With new news networks such as CNN having charismatic news anchors
talk about things like war, and violence, there was a need for your attention to be drawn away from the negative. Many horrible things would be broadcast through your T.V. set, missiles lighting the sky as they streak screaming at their target’s, bullets eating through buildings, and sinking their teeth in to young men, young men ready to give anything for their belief in a better world, and for your protection. These were young people, facing what was now realized by the public as a very very bad thing!

It was this point that the government knew what they had to do. Smart people that they are, they jumped and started using the slogan “Support our troops” to boost morale, and let people focus on something other than the negative; if people care so much about the soldiers, they’ll be fine! Soon nobody wants to be the odd one out, and we get tonnes of folks practically willing to die for this notion of supporting our troops, a successful diversion created by our government.

Now, I don’t want to go all “loose-change” on you, and I appreciate a conspiracy as much as the next person, but really; why would we need a phrase like this? It’s a phrase that embodies a set of ideals, and those are used to keep the masses of the public, us, at home occupied in our mindset that we’re making a difference, while all the big guns on capitol hill make the “real decisions”. If we aren’t looking as to why we’ve just invaded a foreign country, but instead worrying about the people who are doing our dirty work, then the elitists have won, and the propaganda is a success! Everybody is happy, the politicians can go back to their work, and we all feel good about ourselves for worrying.

As a final note, I do support the people on our front lines fighting, it’s brave of them to drop their lives and go place themselves in danger, but what if we can get them out of danger? What if we can throw away the “necessary illusions” that have been pulled in front of our eyes? Then we can finally get to work ending this conflict, and going back to contributing in a meaningful way to society, as opposed to shouting “nationalistic mantras” and not really looking to see whats going on a little farther ahead.