Katy Perry and the Military-Pop-Cultural Complex

Reader Supported News
Naomi Wolf

Asking whether the US military's PR offensive is subsidising the entertainment industry with taxpayer dollars is not unpatriotic.

ho knew that an opinion about pop music video could get Fox News so worked up? Recently, I wrote that I was appalled by Katy Perry's new video for the No 1 hit song, "Part of Me". In it, the narrative has the singer discover a boyfriend's infidelity; she responds to this by cutting her hair and - heading for basic training to become a Marine.

The creepy parts of the video, in my mind, are many: girl power is represented as what Perry accomplishes in the rigors of basic training. Feminine impulses toward romantic revenge are depicted as rightly channeled into getting armed and being shipped to some mystery Afghanistan-like set overseas, locked and loaded. Trade in your bad boyfriend for a hot AK-47!

The whole videography of the scenes at Camp Pendleton - in which Perry crawls through an imaginary minefield, trains underwater, learns she can do the impossible, etc - is straight out of Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units.

There is something else about the video: it feels … like an ad; specifically, a focus-grouped, consumer-tested ad to attract more women to join the Marines. Real artistic productions, whether bad or good, are messier, quirkier, more subjective. I am familiar with the way political ads get researched and filmed (it was part of what I advised on in my time as a political consultant), and this looks like a political ad put together by DC PR insiders - like, say, the Pentagon communications team - after expensive market research has been done. In political advertising, every single image and message is focus group tested. I would bet that someone did some research on the hypothetical of a marriage or relationship breakup as a catalyst for women's military enlistment, given an economy in which the military offers low-income women some of the few options for advancement in a context in which a breadwinner may have decamped.

So I wrote that I felt that this was a piece of "war propaganda" and that, if Perry had received money or message guidance directly from the military to make the video, she should disclose that information. It might be inferred from the fact that she filmed at the USMC's California base, Camp Pendleton, that this would have contributed at least several tens of thousand of dollars in support - in the form of free sets, use of equipment, personnel time and, possibly, food and housing; it takes a lot of people a fair amount of time to make such a video. Now, to be fair, while journalists are expected to disclose any such conflicts, I have absolutely no evidence of any such transaction, and artists are subject to no such expectation. (Albeit, this would be a subsidy that you, the taxpayer, have underwritten.)

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

This is Martin Luthar King Jr.'s speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," made one year before his murder. 



Part 2

Hot Mic Reveals Why the Warmongering Media Fears a Ron Paul Presidency

Air Force Buys Light Attack Planes For Afghans -- Not U.S.

AOL Defense
Sydney J. Freeberg Jr.

Just before the New Year, the U.S. Air Force finally selected a new Light Air Support plane for ground attack in counterinsurgency, picking the Brazilian Super Tucano over the American AT-6– whose manufacturer, Wichita, Kan.-based Hawker Beechcraft, is filing suit over the decision. But just as important as what the Pentagon is buying is how many and for whom: just 20 aircraft, with an option for another 15, which will go not to equip regular U.S. Air Force units but to train the embryonic air force of Afghanistan.

The Air Force Light Air Support program and a smaller Navy effort called "Combat Dragon" have been closely watched as a leading indicator of whether the U.S. military was willing to invest in the kind of low-cost, low-altitude, low-tech airplanes best suited for close air support in counterinsurgency. The answer is, not much.

At $355 million for 20 aircraft – just under $18 million apiece – the Super Tucano buy is peanuts by Pentagon standards. Combat Dragon is even smaller, a $20 million proof-of-concept with leased planes (though Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, has still denounced it as pork). By contrast, despite tightening budgets, the military has fought off attempts to cut Lockheed Martin's $382 billion Joint Strike Fighter program to develop and build stealthy fighter-bombers for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps – a planned 2,457 aircraft at a cost per plane that has risen above $150 million. Four Joint Strike Fighters cost as much as the entire Light Air Support contract.

A Call for Peace: Say NO to America's Military Adventure

With the pace of war against Iran now thundering in all its fury, it is time to mobilize once again to demand peace

Global Research

Michael Carmichael's Talk to the Elders for Peace, Chapel Hill, N.C. on December 19th, 2011. 

Good afternoon. 

I am delighted to be here amongst all of you lovely people working together for peace. In fact, since we are the Elders for Peace, we are all veterans of the perpetual war against peace. Our side never wins, but we still keep working just the same. Never winning, because peace versus war is not a game. We are working for the survival of not only the human race, or even our tiny planet. In our time, when technology has finally led mankind to weapons of mass destruction of literally infinite power – the power to destroy in virtual simultaneity every form of life on earth, we are among the relatively few humans who have embarked on the mission in search of the key to survival of life as we know it. 

Today, we find ourselves inside the vortex of a gigantic conundrum – the United States of America. Our nation is the strongest military force in the history of the known universe. For the past century, we have been waging wars all over our tiny planet. 

The Great War, WWI was followed by WWII, a war that many believe was even greater. Both world wars catapulted our nation into the leading role of all the nations on earth. We are the richest, the most respected, the most reviled, the most envied, the most powerful nation among nations.

We are the most warlike nation. We must, therefore, be the most warlike people ever to have populated this planet. 

Over the past decade, our nation has prosecuted wars in the Middle East. A war of vengeance against Afghanistan. A war of cupidity against Iraq. Both wars have gone badly for America. While the final combat forces departed Iraq last week, more than 100,000 of our troops are still waging a twilight war in Afghanistan. 

But it is really worse than that, for our press, television and mainstream media do not reveal the truth to our people. We are already engaged in a third major land war in the Middle East, a war against Iran.

Before we examine the onrushing Iran War, let us review a few of the latest developments. 

Good news 

1 – The United States is Pulling out of Iraq. The last combat forces departed from Iraq last week. 

2 – The United States is winding down our military operations in Afghanistan. 

3 – The United States is preparing to cut the military budget, and for the time being both principal parties appear to be engaged with this important idea. 

4 – Former President George W. Bush has been constrained to the confines of the USA by legal maneuvers that would swiftly lead to his indictment for violations of the Geneva Convention on Torture if he were to travel abroad. In recent months, Former President Bush was troubled by attempts to place him under arrest when he visited Canada very briefly, and he was forced to cancel his trip to Switzerland for fear of arrest for war crimes and torture. 

5 -- Certain Key Elements of our government, the White House, the Obama Administration and the Department of State, are resisting increasingly shrill demands for war against Iran, and at the same time they are fighting for the right to conduct diplomatic contacts with Iran against an ominous array of forces recently unleashed in Congress and beyond. 

Bad News 

1 - The War on Drugs is a multinational disaster with over 35,000 civilians killed in Mexico over the past five years. The War on Drugs is our most costly war and the most counterproductive. Little is being done to control it. Virtually nothing is being done to bring it to an end. 

2 - The Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) is moving inexorably toward war with Iran. 

3 - Technology is totally autonomous – it cannot be controlled. It cannot be managed. It cannot be suppressed. Technology in the hands of the MIC is advancing rapidly toward the robotification of war via drones for surveillance and targeted assassinations. This ominous trend in the technology of death will continue to gain momentum, and this dreadful development of technology is now unstoppable. Soon, we will be witnessing battlefields with many forms of robotic and cybernetic warriors – cyborgs – organisms with biological and cybernetic components. Cyborg assassins. Robotic assassins. The world of Terminator is racing rapidly toward us right now, and nothing whatsoever is being done to restrain it. 

4 - Mind Control, Mental Programming, Brainwashing and Perception Management have reached or exceeded Orwellian levels, and we are now moving confidently toward Huxleyian levels of totalitarian enslavement as vividly portrayed in Brave New World – a far more advanced dystopia than George Orwell’s Oceania, where torture was still applied to recalcitrant subjects. Brave New World programmed masses via propaganda, brainwashing and sensuality. Here are direct quotations from Aldous Huxley about the evolution of totalitarianism: 

It is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past, and it can be done even more effectively now because you can distract them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda. . .

The nightmare of 1984 is destined to modulate into the nightmare of Brave New World – the change will be brought about as a result of a self-need for increased efficiency . . . 

CBS To Ron Paul: Explain In 258 Words Why You Want To Be President

12160
Steve Watson

Santorum, polling at less than 1.8%, asked five times as many questions, speaks almost four times as many words during “debate”

Congressman Ron Paul’s campaign chairman has hit back hard at CBS news following the blatant exclusion of Paul from Saturday’s GOP debate in South Carolina.

The televised portion of the debate, which was solely focused on foreign policy, was an hour long. During that time, Ron Paul was afforded a total of just one and a half minutes of speaking time.
Ron Paul 2012 National Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton released the following statement concerning the debate:

Ron Paul consistently polls among the top three in the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He is polling in double digits in most respected polls.

Congressman Paul is ranked among the top three in fundraising results.

Congressman Paul serves on the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Congressman Paul is a veteran.

And, Congressman Paul has contrasting views on foreign policy that many Americans find worthy of inquiry and discussion.

CBS’s treatment of Congressman Paul is disgraceful, especially given that tonight’s debate centered on foreign policy and national security.

Congressman Paul was only allocated 90 seconds of speaking in one televised hour. If we are to have an authentic national conversation on issues such as security and defense, we can and must do better to ensure that all voices are heard.

It was quickly revealed, via a leaked internal CBS email released by Michelle Bachmann, that CBS had a deliberate policy to give less questions and air time to candidates that in their view were not as viable as others.

Jesse Benton responded:

“CBS News, in their arrogance, may think they can choose the next president. Fortunately, the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and across America get to vote and not the media elites.”

Benton’s statement came on the heels of an email from Campaign Manager John Tate, entitled “What a Joke,” in which he stated, “It literally made me sick watching the mainstream media once again silence the one sane voice in this election. The one dissenter to a decade of unchecked war. The one candidate who stands for true defense and actual constitutional government. Ron Paul was silenced, in perhaps the most important debate of the cycle.”
Paul’s official campaign blogger, Jack Hunter, also notes on the Ron Paul 2012 website, that given the debate concerned foreign policy, it would have been prudent on the part of CBS to afford more time to the one candidate who has raised more campaign contributions from active duty military personnel than the rest of the GOP field COMBINED.

Ron Paul was afforded just 1 question and 1 follow up. If CBS’ logic was that the lesser candidates, according to the polls, should be given less questions, then why was Paul asked the least questions when he has polled in the top three or four consistently?

Indeed, as analysis at Mediaite highlights, Rick Santorum, who has consistently polled less than 2% and placed next to bottom in virtually every poll there is, was asked FIVE questions and afforded as many follow ups, meaning only three other candidates spoke more words than he did during the debate.

The analysis reveals that Ron Paul managed to edge in just 258 words during the televised debate, “by comparison, just 223 more words than Scott Pelley’s admonishment of the crowd for their booing.” the article states.

“The correlation between polling numbers and words spoken ended up being a paltry 38%, proving that the moderators failed in giving the top candidates the most airtime.” it concludes.

The graphic below highlights the amount of words that were spoken by each candidate:




The establishment agenda to completely ignore Ron Paul is now reaching ridiculous levels. CBS made their snub of Paul so blatant that it couldn’t fail to go unnoticed by political pundits.

Describing the coverage as “appalling”, Brent Budowsky at The Hill slams CBS for “shamefully shafting” Paul.

Budowsky notes, “It is not the place of those who cover presidential candidates as journalists to censor those candidates they do not respect or like. It is their job to present voters and viewers with a full choice and diversity of opinion rather than tell viewers whom they are allowed to watch, and whom they are allowed to vote for.”

A scientific study undertaken by the University of Minnesota last month confirmed that Ron Paul had been given the least speaking time out of all the Republican candidates during the debates, even less than the likes of Huntsman and Santorum, who have routinely been beaten by Paul in national polls.

——————————————————————
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

 

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How the War on Terror Militarized the Police

RSN

Over the past 10 years, law enforcement officials have begun to look and act more and more like soldiers. Here's why we should be alarmed."

t around 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2011, officers with the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team surrounded the home of 26-year-old José Guerena, a former US Marine and veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, to serve a search warrant for narcotics. As the officers approached, Guerena lay sleeping in his bedroom after working the graveyard shift at a local mine. When his wife Vanessa woke him up, screaming that she had seen a man outside the window pointing a gun at her, Guerena grabbed his AR-15 rifle, instructed Vanessa to hide in the closet with their four-year-old son, and left the bedroom to investigate.

Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot - or even switching his rifle off of "safety" - he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. A subsequent investigation revealed that the initial shot that prompted the SWAT team barrage came from a SWAT team gun, not Guerena's. Guerena, reports later revealed, had no criminal record, and no narcotics were found at his home.

Sadly, the Guerenas are not alone; in recent years we have witnessed a proliferation in incidents of excessive, military-style force by police SWAT teams, which often make national headlines due to their sheer brutality. Why has it become routine for police departments to deploy black-garbed, body-armored SWAT teams for routine domestic police work? The answer to this question requires a closer examination of post-9/11 US foreign policy and the War on Terror.

Ever since September 14, 2001, when President Bush declared war on terrorism, there has been a crucial, yet often unrecognized, shift in United States policy. Before 9/11, law enforcement possessed the primary responsibility for combating terrorism in the United States. Today, the military is at the tip of the anti-terrorism spear. This shift appears to be permanent: in 2006, the White House's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism confidently announced that the United States had "broken old orthodoxies that once confined our counterterrorism efforts primarily to the criminal justice domain."

In an effort to remedy their relative inadequacy in dealing with terrorism on US soil, police forces throughout the country have purchased military equipment, adopted military training, and sought to inculcate a "soldier's mentality" among their ranks. Though the reasons for this increasing militarization of American police forces seem obvious, the dangerous side effects are somewhat less apparent.

Cost of Wars: Four Trillion and Ticking...

The Military as a Jobs Program: There are More Efficient Ways to Stimulate the Economy

Ellen Brown

Dwight David Eisenhower

Global Research, June 22, 2011
Web of Debt

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

–Dwight David Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953

In a Wall Street Journal editorial on June 8 bemoaning the failure of the Obama stimulus package, Martin Feldstein wrote:

"Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future.?But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department."

You can’t make this stuff up. The most obvious way to stimulate the economy is to replace military equipment? And the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department? When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, the military now devours half the U.S. budget. If military spending is such a cost-effective stimulus, why have the trillions poured into it in the last decade left the economy reeling?

The military is the nation’s largest and most firmly entrenched entitlement program, one that takes half of every tax dollar. Even if "national security" is considered our number one priority (a dubious choice when the real unemployment rate is over 16%), estimates are that the military budget could be cut in half or more and we would still have the most powerful military machine in the world. Our enemies (if any) are now "terrorists," not countries; and what is needed to contain them (if anything) is local policing, not global warfare. Much of our military hardware is just good for "shock and awe," not needed for any "real and present danger."

Military spending is the very essence of "built-in obsolescence": it turns out products that are designed to blow up. The military is not subject to ordinary market principles but works on a "cost-plus" basis, with producers reimbursed for whatever they have spent plus a guaranteed profit. Gone are the usual competitive restraints that keep capitalist corporations "lean and mean." Private contractors hired by the government on no-bid contracts can be as wasteful and inefficient as they like and still make a tidy profit. Yet legislators looking to slash wasteful "entitlements" persist in overlooking this obvious elephant in the room.

The reason massive military spending is considered the most "obvious" way to produce a fiscal stimulus is simply that it is the only form of direct government spending that gets a pass from the deficit hawks. The economy is desperate to get money flowing through it, and today only the government is in a position to turn on the spigots; but there is a tourniquet on government spending. That is true for everything but the military, the only program on which the government is allowed to spend seemingly without limit, often even without oversight.