The
biggest beer brewery in the US, Anheuser-Busch,
has an ad on TV in the States, but it isn't selling
beer. Instead, it's selling George Bush's war.
The
commercial starts off innocuous enough showing male
and female American soldiers in their desert kaki
uniforms walking through an airport terminal when
as their passage is noticed onlookers start a steady
build up of hand clapping applause. The soldiers
smile back in appreciation. No words are spoken.
End of commercial.
There
is no mention of Bush or Blair's lies about weapons
of mass destruction or their false allegations of
an Osama-Sadam connection. No porn pictures from
Abu Ghraib Prison. No news footage of "collateral
damage". No mention of White House memos authorizing
torture, and no "Burn mother fucker burn"
music in the back round. And of course no word ever
about what this Anglo-American invasion and occupation
of Iraq is really all about…oil.
Just
a corporately sponsored stage crafted display of
accolades that we're all supposed to mindlessly
mimic. It's as if soldiers and wars were unrelated.
And pay no attention to that beer man behind the
curtain drooling over what was until now anyway
an alcohol free Muslim marketplace. No ulterior
motives here people so just move it along.
And
forget about the prescience of Huey Long when he
said: "If fascism comes to the United States,
it will come wrapped in an American flag."
Just don't you be the first person to stop clapping.
If
these private sector moving pictures aren't enough
to keep us all in line, then there is always the
tried and tested method of the usual liars for hire:
i.e. barking Journalists and Academics on the surreptitious
take from big business or government (on behalf
of big business).
But
none of this should be a surprise really since as
Michael Parenti pointed out: the corporate class
controls both government and the media. This puts
us in a place way beyond Orwell's totalitarian nightmares.
No
big brother per se, just a paid for confederacy
of little brothers and sisters always too anxious
to please spinning conventional wisdom for the population
at home to support piracy abroad. Fact of the matter
is Armstrong Williams and the rest of the usual
media suspects are more likely the rule not the
exception both here and else where. It is the outing
of their kind that's the exception.
Although
like any man or woman up front you can usually spot
them by their continuous service to power and genuflections
to the political status quo almost always in the
form of hostile attack on their masters' challengers
no matter the quality of the latter's evidence.
In fact, the better the evidence of their masters'
crimes, the louder and more indignant these media
messengers become. House negroes all and all neo-cons
(or insufficiently anti-neo-con).
Even
so called Progressives are suspect especially when
they damn small country national liberation movements
and insist with hackneyed arrogance on just "moving
on." All are just a tad too quick to spot the
speck in a revolutionary's eye all the while ignoring
the beam in their imperial master's eye. Call it
a manifestation of subjugation.
Kind
of like the Irish assisting the British in their
Northern Ireland pacification project. All in the
name of peace and freedom of course, but it's the
same old same old really. Ireland is still by a
series of forced choices a small divided country
with a long history of interference in its internal
affairs from outside sources primarily England and
Rome and now to a growing extent from the US and
the EU.
Had
these outside sources been Syria or Turkey, the
end result (national liberation and unification)
would look more promising, but these days international
double standards and off-shore banking greases the
neo-colonial wheels in Ireland more ways then Liam
Lawlor.
As
a result Ireland is no more an independent sovereign
nation than Iraq at present. In fact, there are
remarkable similarities in how the UK and the US
are going to try and continue to control Iraq like
the UK continues to control Ireland. And its second
verse same as the first: all in the name of peace
and freedom of course.
That
is they'll establish a puppet regime (or two) of
the co-opted and the corrupted allowing for periodic
elections which will assure their puppets' victories
thus cloaking them with an air of legitimacy and
a look of independence that the US and the UK will
defend much like Lloyd George did giving artillery
pieces to Michael Collins to bombard the Irish insurgents
with at the Four Courts in Dublin (among other places).
But
the good news according
to Noam Chomsky is that unlike the Irish:
Any
more than England would allow an independent, sovereign
Ireland.
Whether
in Ireland or Iraq cooption and counter-revolution
are imperialism's biggest arrows. That's why they
call it divide and rule. The same old colonial imperialists
just get some of the neo-colonial locals to do the
dirty work for them.
In
the 1960's the US Government called it Vietnamization
which of course shouldn't be confused with any thing
like genuine national independence. Reference the
Diem Brothers and well Fine Gael.
The
British and Americans will stay in Iraq as long
as there is oil there. And as Howard Zinn observed:
Bush and Blair are no more interested in spreading
democracy in the oil fields of the Middle East than
Columbus or Cortez were interested in spreading
Christianity in the gold fields of the Americas.
And
the British will stay in Ireland as long as they
perceive value there strategic or otherwise. Moreover,
some of their biggest defenders will be Irish people,
some of whom would rather not be Irish and not speak
Irish.
As
such their corporately sponsored conventional analysis
will always focus on the symptoms of the neo-colony's
diseased body politic (IRA or Iraqi insurgents)
and not the cause (American and British imperialism).
In short, they won't stop clapping.
How
such sycophantic minions get elevated in neo-colonial
society and politics is more a function of client
state engineering for investment purposes rather
than genuine home grown national democracy.
If
you don't think so then just look into the Iraqi
mirror and learn.
