Unspinning2012

Unspinning Official Stories 2012

With eyes shut tight, as always, embedded US flacks in Cuba
fantasize changes they yearn for or think they should yearn for

6 April 2012: Way back before George the First invented and decreed embedded journalism, good reporters were not only at least reputed to be smarter than their editors but were also supposedly bent on getting the true story, whether their editors liked it or not. Maybe then. Not now.
   Today's reporters, especially on foreign affairs, eagerly act as stenographers for generals and as press agents for the official line of the CIA and the State Department, unfailingly (and proudly I guess) trotting out all the correct "talking points" for all their hit pieces and rah-rah-for-our-side yells.
   You'd think, being reporters and all, they'd be the ones rebelling when they're told they can't go to Cuba on their own any time they damn well please (the way crazy people like me do) but only when their patriotic editors check with State and send them on a respectable mission - like following the pope around - checking in with the US Interests Officer when they get there, of course, and NOT fraternizing - except with their Miami approved interpreters - and staying together to keep reminding each other about those talking points - like about "Castro's failed policies" and the "poor Cubans yearning for freedomanddemocracy" and all that shit.
   They salute the flag.
   So, having gotten into a groove recently cheering their heads off as the rogue US state and NATO behaved abysmally toward other officially demonized countries, the robo-reporters have it well and dutifully memorized that places without US approved democracy rituals and with leaders who've been in office "too long" are due for face-book "revolutions."
   So when their reverse-minder tour guides show them a Cuban independently running what looks like a mini-capitalist beautician's booth, not knowing (because they don't know anything) that they're looking at a 15-year-old tourist attraction dreamed up by Fidel in the late 90's that's explained in Chapter 3 and 4 of "Cuban Notebooks" on this site (based on my 2000 AD notes), as well as in the 1997 first edition of Lonely Planet's Cuba tour guide, they don their familiar China/Cuba hit-piece sneers and, reciting in unison, chucklingly remind their always ready-for-it readers about how those poor commies sure want to be like us, don't they (ha ha).
   Since 2000, I've rented rooms in private homes all over the island, eaten in many private kitchen cafes, bought home-made sandwiches and ice cream bars from housewives with fast food stands on their porches, ridden in lots of private bicycle cabs, browsed through rows of private art galleries in Havana, watched a guy who owned a few tools running a small sawmill in his garage in Cienfuegos and an independent barber west of Pinar del Rio cutting hair in his backyard, and etc. etc.
   What the hell do you think the pope knows about Cuba? About as much as those born-yesterday reporters. Of course, Americans had to surf the foreign press to read about the pope, humbled in THE presence, being teased by Fidel about old men like them being so clearly over the hill. And US media only reported it as a buried aside with a superior glower of disapproval when the pope, who actually wanted Catholicism taught in Cuban schools, was firmly advised by Raul that, while he was just as welcome in town as any other tourist, he could forget about ordering an end to the Cuban Revolution.
   You have to hand it to one startled reporter who actually admitted he was startled when, with his eyes shut tight to the obviously middle class normality of the Cuban world around him, he foolishly asked just one unapproved Cuban when the rebellion was coming and was emphatically told, "Never!" But he did NOT rebel himself, stray from the group, or talk to 100 random Cubans, as I did alone, on my own and without anyone's approval way back in 2002 (see Cubans Choose Socialism), right after a grass-roots petition signed by 96% of eligible voters locked the following paragraph into Article 3 of the Cuban Constitution:

   Socialism, as well as the revolutionary political and social system established by this Constitution, has been forged during years of heroic resistance against aggression of every kind and economic war waged by the government of the most powerful imperialist state that has ever existed; it has demonstrated its ability to transform the nation and create an entirely new and just society, and is irrevocable: Cuba will never revert to capitalism.

-Glen Roberts

New spin that US may "let" Iran enrich uranium
assumes we already believe the media's established spin

28 April 2012: With 100% media help, Washington is now pretending it will be even more reasonable than it has been by "letting" Iran enrich "some" uranium in pursuit of nuclear power under UN control. In fact, the US has never been reasonable toward Iran, it is US control it wants to impose, and Iran, having witnessed the unmotivated US invasions of other demonized countries, would undoubtedly like to have the bombs that ensure a decent respect being accorded Pakistan (for one) by the world's most obviously rogue state.
Also, though, there IS NO EVIDENCE Iran is building A-bombs or, what's more important, has any US-like intentions of attacking anyone, and, in fact, the US has no god-given authority to "let" Iran do what it's going to do anyway, regardless of what well and constantly brainwashed Americans may think they believe. And, while Iranian President Ahmadinejad may personally have no better motives than most presidents, and I certainly won't defend any religious government, it would be far more intelligent (or at least diplomatic, which is not the same thing), in consideration of everyone's right to dignity and self respect, to refrain from policy and rhetoric designed to force Iran into a prone position at Washington's feet.
     The threat of US fascism has gotten so much worse since the incredibly arrogant NATO (read US) attack on Libya and a NATO general's promise that the Libyan strategy will be the way of the future, that other demi-powers have apparently hitched up their pants and told Obama privately to back off his Syrian invasion plans. But it's easily readable between the lines that the US was recently egging Israel on to attack Iran so "WE" (not you and me, folks, but the rich insiders who think they own us) could then come to Israel's aid. And it's equally obvious that Obama is drawing a new line in the sand, HOPING Iran will cross it and justify "military action" there. Yes, I think that's the way Obama thinks, reminded, of course, by cunning advisors that wartime presidents are usually reelected.
     But the demi-powers are disgusted (at least by such an obvious scheme) and the co-powers, Russia and China don't intend to let it happen, so it's a stupid plan. And there's little reason to believe any NATO battle plan isn't equally stupid (just in case you're a barbershop philosopher who thinks about shit like war strategy).
     If, as forever willingly deluded Obama supporters believe, Obama isn't in the act of demonstrating his low cunning, if he really isn't just one more Bush brother, then his headlined "shift" in "stance" not only doesn't demonstrate any such difference - it's not going to work. It's just the White House dog pissing on another fireplug to signal its presence again.
     Here's a better idea. Shut up and back off. And tell Hillary to skip some photo ops and shut up, too. This will accomplish the same end (i.e. nothing) with a lot more dignity - a foreign policy coin America has been been dealing without ever since Thomas Jefferson retired. Due to the long and customary absence of realistic philosophy in Washington, maybe Obama doesn't think civilized interaction with the world is needed, but, after all, he did run for office on a platform of promised "change."
     I didn't fall for that, by the way (see 21 January 2009 below), and, by now everybody should know better.

-Glen Roberts

On-line AE party fizzles due to incoherent agenda

15 May 2012: The Regressive Times story about the "faltering" today of a budding nerd-driven (technically whizzy but philosophically blank) third party nominating convention, which the Times has never interrupted their own election to report before today, informs us that there was plenty of money but that the party was unable to nominate a candidate.
    The Times says they lacked a "skilled candidate" like Ross Perot (I didn't make that up) but, through 40 inches of useless copy, never once points out the real problem - the absence of any agenda to unite or even justify the mob. In fact that's why the Times likes the silly AE party enough to write it up just once. Parties with nothing to say are no threat to the insiders who own the Times.
    You see, the Silly Americans Party (SAP's), which, for some reason, incoherently calls itself Americans Elect (AE), consists of an unknown number of mismatched constituencies ranging from anarchists to vegetarians to feminists to metaphysicians, to rap singers, to sweat lodge gurus, to born agains, to Buddhists, to rich currently outside insiders who think (probably correctly) that they can take it over and use it. There's even a few lost communists involved in it who do have something to say to each other and to print on two or three banners. But the only agreed upon ideal seems to be that everyone should talk at once. It's a massive lumpen blog-board with legs. They boast of "a wave of grassroots energy" but a group insider is quoted as explaining, without a blush, that "the only political philosophy we have is that people should be greater than parties." Sheesh!
    What the Times doesn't know it's talking about is the same amorphous masses who never really grew up in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, who were driven by political cowardice into their defective public role as the pro-democracy movement in the late 80's, who became the pseudo progressives of the 90's and double aughts, and who have recently evolved into the face-book generation, an empty headed crowd irresponsible for both the chaotically pointless "Occupy" movement and the regressively religious and easily CIA manipulable "Arab Spring."
    So why is anything so typically human "faltering?" For the same reason its strings are so easily pulled by anti-communist liberal billionaires, the CIA, and NATO. It's run by energetically gee-whiz nerds who think it's neat-o to run the world with computers but, having no philosophy of their own, instead of figuring out what the world really needs, find it digitally handiest to download two or three simple slogans like freedomanddemocracy, thepeople, and toomanyyearsinoffice, that everybody already knows. When it comes to philosophy, they're into simple, but, since they don't speak English, their websites are written in incoherent nerdese, and the procedure they provide for joining the party or attending their convention is impenetrable for anybody but a few hundred nerds, and the only candidates they attract are blog-board vets whose platforms are things like, "I mean, like, you know, WOW! Y'know?"
    So, is that awful? No. It's wonderful, except there's no delete button that will erase the whole movement all the way back to when it first took root and became a drag on true progress. While the eco-system continues to collapse and the poor keep getting poorer and the rich keep getting richer and the war business grows exponentially, and religion creeps back into government, news readers are continuously distracted from reality by one SAPPY non-issue after another and maturing youth who might have joined ZPG or RCP or gone to Venezuela to help a real revolution (some unsung young people HAVE done that) or flipped off the State Department and gone to Cuba to see how a truly civilized country works have been sucked into sap-hood instead for the last 22 years.

-Glen Roberts

9-11 - the attack on Americans that wasn't an attack on Americans

  11 Sep. 2012:Eleven years ago, a lot of ink and air time were expended on George Bush's near idiot lie that generic terrorists had attacked some tall American buildings - just tall American buildings because they were tall and American - motivated only by blind hatred based on jealousy of American goodness; while more "news" space was focused on the circumstantial drama of a few poor suckers with conveniently weird religious motives who'd been conned into carrying out the supposedly religious mission, and on a single demon leader who eagerly (maybe falsely) embraced his chance to claim credit. And out of this blurred official story came a Homeland Defense Department to spy on Americans, and the start of a profitable series of wars.
    Yet then and since then for 11 years, for ELEVEN years , the embedded media have kept it a secret, an impossible secret since it's so obvious, that it was NOT the"goodness" of tall American buildings (or even the people in them - irrelevant to the bombers) but the WTC and the Pentagon that were targeted - obviously the world headquarters of a western business empire that, to keep its profits flowing, tricks and cheats everyone else of their resources, carelessly perpetuating poverty everywhere and destroying the eco-system in the process, and the headquarters of their bloated military deployed everywhere to protect their empire from its victims and rivals.
   Everything I saw in today's (9/11) Regressive Times stuck religiously to their official comic book level story and their apparently official silence about what it was really about. And the only thing more contemptible than that deliberate strategy of lying by omission is the public brain vacuum into which such fraud and secrecy dropped so easily under sight.

   Since this is a perfect example of stories so obviously false that the public, to accept them, has to be willing - maybe even eager - to be fooled, I decided, for the sake of easy reference in the future and to prove by repetition that that such anomalies (i.e. scams put over with the cooperation of the scammed), do exist and are easy to see through, to put together a list of a dozen such stories all in one place under the heading "10 (or more) absurd official stories the public supposedly believe."
-Glen Roberts

An old official lie that resurfaced today
hides true story of how Cuba was saved from US attack

  21 Oct 2012: The 50th anniversary of the always misinterpreted so-called "Cuban missile crisis" compels me today to interrupt my listing of 10 transparent official lies covering up true stories that would be too obvious to be covered up if the public were not so willingly fooled and revisit the immediately important story that didn't tell you Kennedy blinked.
    The really great thing Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev did in October 1962 was actually mentioned (though very subtly) in the movie "13 Days" (2000). But Americans with a Flash Gordon view of the world weren't encouraged to take much notice and generally didn't notice that he pushed America's back to the wall, imposing the same kind of missile threat on the US that they arrogantly inflicted on their perceived enemies and then, besides forcing them to remove US missiles threatening Russia from Turkey, he much more importantly forced John F. Kennedy to sign a promise THAT THE US WOULD NEVER INVADE CUBA.
    The movie version (the version the Times mainly remembers 50 years after the actual event) was filled with ridiculously macho dialogue calculated to convince Americans that their side talked like John Wayne clear through the crisis and that Kennedy "didn't blink." In fact, Kennedy blinked.
    It was Krushchev who was the real hero of the untold (in America) tale of how mindless (fascist) US hawks were kept from committing what would have been the worst crime in Washington's long enough history of criminal foreign adventures, and why most of the ugly mischief against Cuba ever since has been done (illegally) by failure-prone Cuban "exiles" in Florida, not by the official idiots in Washington.
    The movie and today's paper also keep you ignorant of, i.e. don't tell you about one of the world's most important current news stories: that, thanks to Cuba's survival, in imitation of the mostly successful Cuban revolution, as reported here on 20 February 2009, a new quarter-globe rise of socialist revolution IS NOW HAPPENING throughout Latin America.

-Glen Roberts

UNSPINNING THE NEWS 2011
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