Summertime, and the chicanery is easy. The Obama administration’s latest rendering of our invisible but eternal “terrorist threat,” I mean.
After a week of ghost stories about an imminent but vaporous plot on the part of an al–Qaeda “affiliate”—this is the big new word—it is hard to decide which is more disheartening: 1. The White House’s blithe if clumsy deployment of factoids, 2. The supine complicity of the media (and this, frankly, is my choice), or 3. The willingness of honorable liberals and capital-D Democrats to go along with the show simply because Obama is maestro and one stays with Obama no matter what he does.
Nothing can be said for certain as to what prompted the State Department to close more than 20 embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa last Sunday, and this is by design. But it is no excuse not to raise the possibility that Americans are eating a summer salad of nonsense served to justify objectionable surveillance practices now coming in for scrutiny.
[…]
The latest chapter in the story came just the other day, when Yemen announced it had apprehended a terrorist plot right after Washington ordered its embassy closed. A stunt, the State Department scoffed. The proper perspective on this is simply that it takes one to know one. Our terrorist threat is better than Yemen’s terrorist threat, so do not upstage our terrorist threat.
Nobody is buying the bullshit anymore. Yet, everyone who never did to start with are doing the common boiling frog thing.
Clyde Lewis nailed this one:
“” See, that is the thing that I’m saying; If this is such an effective, ah, ‘tool’ these hawks have been pushing…specific information. This is specifics now. If they specifically know where the terror attack is going to take place… then the outcome will be the thwarting of a terrorist attack… ‘we’re going to be there to save the day’… That is how stupid this sounds.
“” I’m awaiting the thwarting of this specific terrorist threat, I’m ready for our men to go in and kick some ass. If we don’t hear about that and this just goes away into the memory hole then we’ll all be right and then, we hope, that if there is a terror attack that happens it doesn’t harm anybody. And if it does go down, then we know that NSA PRISM buisness is B.S. and we’ll turn that NSA Utah place into a Walmart. — Clyde Lewis, Terror: Running Up and Down the False Flag Pole, August 5,2013
http://groundzeromedia.org/terror-running-up-and-down-the-false-flag-pole/
Link is worth the read, thanks.
My favorite line: “Graham alone convinced me that this whole terror threat was a psy-op to give an opportunity for the surveillance hawks to sell you on their unconstitutional spying plans.” /// …..because this is true whether or not the terror threat is real or not. It has that “universality” about it that the truth so often does have.
“” See, that is the thing that I’m saying; If this is such an effective, ah, ‘tool’ these hawks have been pushing…specific information. This is specifics now. If they specifically know where the terror attack is going to take place… then the outcome will be the thwarting of a terrorist attack… ‘we’re going to be there to save the day’… That is how stupid this sounds. ///// I don’t agree at all. Intelligence gathering creates a continuum of certainty. Having “actionable targets” would be nice…. but rare. Its the host country that is supposed to provide security==not a firing range for local USA for profit Security Mercenaries.
“And if it does go down, then we know that NSA PRISM buisness is B.S…” /// And thats wrong too.
Hmmmm….now why did I enjoy reading that link? ………………………………… …………………………….. recalling….
Oh, yeah, I did stop fairly early.
The World is a Vampire.
The media is only looking ratings. Does anyone remember the days when they were REAL journalists?
The eagle’s knew the future
I make my living off the Evening News
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry
We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
It’s interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry
That was the “present” in the early 1970’s. To predict the future they would have had to say TV will eat itself as journalism moves to crowd sourcing on Twitter.
http://presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/09/317888/netherlands-keeps-embassy-in-yemen-shut/
“You Know”–this is an excellent item of current events to recognize you/me/we DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!!!!
Its as stupid to believe this threat stand down is a wag the dog move as it is to think its real. WE, the people, DON’T KNOW ANYTHING.
Closing our embassies around the Middle East is CONSISTENT with these two opposite hypotheses. Even if/when our/other embassies are/or are not attacked==like AGW, still no proof of what in the end is a judgment and political stance. Almost no right or wrong about closing the embassies. Just a position taken and the slow hand of History moves on.
Link above reveals that several European countries are also closing their embassies, but evidently limited to the one in Yemen. Course now the USA is the Great Satan.
Hmmmmmmmm, ………Bengazhi, and the last 13-20 years of Middle East history shows that operating/being stationed at certain Embassies is inherently dangerous. When to evacuate as a “caution?” I’d say there is a strong case that the threat concerns be known by the staff involved and they show up for work or not as the local Chief determines but that USA Embassies ARE NEVER CLOSED. There might not be anyone there, but its not closed.
Wag the Dog, Shoot the Dog, Drone anything that moves.
Diplomacy: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Aphorisms are good to read now and then, select your own favorites to keep in mind.
http://goodreads.com/quotes/tag/diplomacy
Bobbo
You are so spot on!
Gee, you don’t sound crazy to me.
Crazy has that universality about it.
If you know your crazy, the your not crazy. For all the people who say they are NOT CRAZY, there as nuts as a fruit fly. IE. Congress….
Being truly pedantic, I looked for the quote on the syllogism of crazy. I think you are not crazy if you consider the possibility. Rather a tautology to say if you conclude you are crazy then you aren’t?
The subject is of interest to me as I am currently living with a crazy person I’m trying to evict from my house. Yada, yada… it ain’t happening.
…… and this quote seems so true and fitting to my own experience: ““The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“…like AGW, still no proof of what in the end is a judgment and political stance. …”
[± logically observed that] Either bobbo has 10s (100s?) of posts that he just nailed down as lies here on dvorak.org (and other sites?), or he is now in the process of changing his mind about AGW.
P/M==I think you’ve missed a few posts, right from the start, and all the way thru.
Its good to have a life isn’t it?
Let me add one to Uncle Dave’s list:
4. We The People don’t care enough to find out what’s really going on or to hold our government accountable.
Specifically, what would you do to find out what is really going on? Do you have access to the “chatter reports” generated within the NSA, CIA, Diplomat Services, Google crowd sourcing….. what? Your degree of comfort as to the accuracy of whatever you conclude??
WE DON’T KNOW/CAN’T KNOW ANYTHING.
Some think they do.
The embassies all close. Congress goes on a five week break, after doing little. I think these bureaucrats all just wanted an excuse to go home for the summer. So hey, let’s pretend there’s a terrorist threat. In school, kids use to pull the Fire Alarm. Same thing, only your tax dollars not a work, but a play.
Ya know, another way to look at what you said is since Congress is out of town, Obama is going to Martha’s Vineyard, regular government people are on vacation, etc, closing the embassies means if terrorists WERE going to do something, nobody in the government has to come back early and deal with it.
The high pay-grades go on vacation. Many, such as DoD civilian employes, get that no pay furlough day that to sequestration.
Just a reaction to Benghazi and/or Snowden i.e., CYA time.
The Taliban was named as the Best Place to Work for 2013.
We’ve got the Boston Globe and the Washing Post becoming rich men’ toys, TV stations all being owned by conglomerates desperate for dollars, and blogs full of shit like this one.
I must say, we’re fucked…
What was your first clue?
Some douchebag doing the AMA thing on Reddit instead of working at his job in the government? Or Bobbo?!
As odd as it may seem these people have standards. There are things they won’t do for money. Even though they all know that being BO/HC ultra partisan cheerleaders, that edit the news and avoid anything that might harm that political agenda, is why they have lost out to Fox News they aren’t about to change their behavior.
If they wanted to make money they’d be out their trying to find scandals and nail the politicians hides to the wall all in order to drive ratings but they won’t do it unless the person being flayed is a Republican, Independent, or Liberal in which case they are happy to edit recordings and make things up.
What this country needs is some rapacious media giants that print all the news that’s fit to print and some that’s not and let the the public and politicians worry about sacred cows.
Yemen is home to Al Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate, blamed for several notable terrorist plots on the United States. They include the foiled Christmas Day 2009 effort to bomb an airliner over Detroit and the explosives-laden parcels intercepted the following year aboard cargo flights.