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"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
February 04, 2010
Poor Black People: Why Do They Incriminate Themselves on Videotape So Often?
This is from the Scott Harshbarger investigation of the ACORN video "scandal":
The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.
And this is about the efforts of Jean-Bertrande Aristide in 1993 to win U.S. liberal support to return to the Haitian presidency after he'd been overthrown in a U.S.-supported coup several years before:
A serious, if dubious, charge was made in an effort to turn the liberals in Congress against Aristide. A video was surfaced ostensibly showing Aristide urging his supporters to “necklace” opponents, i.e., to put a burning tire around their necks. But what did Aristide really say?Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, entered the following translation into the record, but added the caveat that the only tape he had seen had been obviously edited, so he was not certain this was fully representative of what Aristide had said. The State Department’s translation of the incendiary section read as follows:
“You are watching all macoute activities throughout the country. We are watching and praying. We are watching and praying. If we catch one, do not fail to give him what he deserves. What a nice tool! What a nice instrument! [loud cheers from crowd] What a nice device! [crowd cheers] It is a pretty one. It is elegant, attractive, splendorous, graceful, and dazzling. It smells good. Wherever you go, you feel like smelling it. [crowd cheers] It is provided for by the Constitution, which bans macoutes from the political scene.”Combined with the spliced in shots of burning tires, this passage clearly sounded like Aristide was urging people to punish the macoutes in a violent way. But that was out of character with other parts of the speech, where he said:
“Your tool is in your hands. Your instrument is in your hands. Your Constitution is in your hand. Do not fail to give him what he deserves. [loud cheers from crowd]. That device is in your hands. Your trowel is in your hands. The bugle is in your hands. The Constitution is in your hands. Do not fail to give him what he deserves.”In that section, clearly the law was the weapon Aristide was urging his supporters to employ.
Later, an Internet poster who claimed to be present during this speech vigorously denied Aristide had approved of necklacing:
“I was present at that famous speech when Aristide returned from the USA. The speech was taped and cut and spliced to make it appear that Aristide condoned...even encouraged necklacing; such *was not* the case. Aristide said that he understood peoples' desire to necklace, but he emphasized that it was positively immoral.“He said words to this effect: I understand your desire to smell their burning flesh; but that is not the way of Jesus. We will win without violence; we will overcome. The anti-Aristide people spliced the tape to make it come out this way: I desire to smell their burning flesh. We will win with violence; we will overcome!”
Here's what I think about this:
1. The right-wing elements in the CIA, etc. are nothing more than grown up versions of James O'Keefe—just as moronic, just as hateful, and just as outraged that non-rich people are trying to ruin everything by voting. O'Keefe has a bright future in front of him.
2. Even if these tapes hadn't been doctored, becoming angry about what they showed would be ridiculous. After all, Goldman Sachs steals more money in one day than ACORN could ever manage in a thousand years. And god knows Aristide would have needed a thousand years to match the death toll rung up in Haiti by France, the U.S. and the Morally-Repugnant Haitian Elite (MREs).
But of course there is never, ever a sense of proportionality where powerless people are concerned. Their crimes are always front page news. That's why skilled propagandists (ie, better ones than O'Keefe) know that it's actually never necessary to doctor anything. The best propaganda is 100% true.
AND: It's not just poor black people who have a tendency to incriminate themselves on tape.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at February 4, 2010 08:34 AMC.I.A. contractor incriminates themself:
Yes, my Dear, here is a summary about worldwide C.I.A. university espionage!
"University Spy - A True Story"
The C.I.A.’s covert action arm has ended up as America‘s extra-curricular Education Ministry and universities around the world have little recourse!
Behavioral science teaches that small changes in a heterosexual man’s sex-life can have large and unsavory effects on keeping horrific secrets!
These all-out investigative interviews will plunge you, the reader, into the murk of the abnormal psychology and mind boggling career of W. B. Paterson from hell-bent taxi driver to hysterical C.I.A. Chief-of-university-spies!
Malicious Chief W. B. Paterson is the inheritor of American multi-billion dollar conglomerate Paterson Inc., a globally operating university supplier which doubles as a C.I.A. espionage contractor. Never, ever trust an American!
This emotional zeitgeist-book is scripted on man-to-man pillow interviews with the coarse Chief Walt Blair Paterson, a source of untreated and disease-laden sewer language and behavior, stranger than fiction. The fat-cat attacks academics with racial and religious hate-speech as if suffering from multiple mental illnesses!
Not even my diplomatic skills were able to put an end to his temper tantrums. Let‘s go for an audio-visit to one of the Chief’s great moments - and I promise he never used more lofty cross-references: “University people are late-term abortions who crawl out of classrooms“, he screamed with all the subtleties of a rhino!
As is becoming for an objective reporter, I use the method of dramatizing and narrating each authentic quotation from the Chief, reflecting the ugly history of Paterson Inc. and America - the Can't Do Nation!
The disgusting behind-the-scenes tales are based on ‘embedded’ rent-boy reporting at its best, serving up from the bedside the whole truth about the C.I.A.’s university espionage brigades. It’s scary, very scary!
The unvarnished truth was spilled while the Chief wobbled back and forward like a drunken tip-over doll - his insufferable lips loosened by gallons of whisky!
The juicy revelations of the Chief going anal are off the record; Walt Blair Paterson’s real name, gonzo company, position and location were changed and rendered anonymous - to protect my ’deep-throat’ for legal reasons!
Paranoid and violent U.S. university espionage is closely related to institutional brutality. Haunting American abuse of power has reached a critical mass and is the central theme of this book. Will it come to the point that battered students call for ’social unrest’ at beleaguered universities in opposition to the academic waterboarding by Paterson Inc.?
Every Paterson Inc. product sold at universities bears the chill of a torture whip on the back of a kidnapped victim in a secret C.I.A. jail anywhere around the world. Saddam‘s torture chambers were multiplied, put are under new U.S. management and staffed with perverted, sex-starved male and female Americans!
C.I.A. espionage contractors such as Paterson Inc. are NOT SUBJECT to the Freedom of Information Act!
An obscure law allows the C.I.A. to block all congressional and public inquiries into the secret files, the budget, the number of agents and the entire power structure of the Pater$on Shadow Company, the recipient of vast amounts of U.S. government money!
Who are the Chief’s unpredictable Washington masters? Their names read probably like a Who is Who of instable American corporate and political power. The world’s biggest borrower is busy scrounging around the world for more billions of dollars and cannot get above water!
Who are the shameless American ’scholars’ and at which benighted U.S. universities do they work, these dim-wits who helped dreadful C.I.A. & Paterson to conceptualize the hellish ‘intellectual’ framework for global university espionage?
If the burly men from beastly Paterson Inc. tilted the global academic playing field in favor of U.S. scientists, and if this helps explain America’s unparalleled share of Nobel prices during that curiously energetic U.S. ’research’ period of the past five decades, synchronized with the C.I.A.’s university espionage history, then so be it!
All this I took in like a spy, interrupted only by the emasculated Chief’s demonstrations of affection and while his hands fondled among my pants!
This compelling study shows Paterson Inc. is unfit as a university supplier! America’s university espionage is on trial. The undeclared U.S. doctrine of large-scale targeted research theft has to be stopped with a cool ’nyet’!
As a spot of shit the ugly bedside interviews with the talkative Chief are positioned to hit the proverbial fan to spread his vulgar whispers fast and far!
Yours, Truly
Dr. H.R. Goetting
huh?
Posted by: N E at February 4, 2010 02:40 PMBravo. Home run.
Posted by: Batocchio at February 4, 2010 03:47 PMTo be clear, my 'huh?' was to the first comment. I agree with the 'bravo' for the post.
Posted by: N E at February 4, 2010 03:52 PMthere's this too: http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/why-haiti-is-poor-iv-the-aristide-failure.html
but it is anecdotal and rather a rare low point for mondoweiss.
Posted by: Jenny at February 4, 2010 09:04 PMJenny, I actually don't have any quarrel with that MondoWeiss post. I don't know enough to say whether it's accurate or not, but I can believe that it is. But the larger point, as I said, is that any violence, corruption, etc. on Aristide's part is barely visible when looked at in context. That doesn't mean anyone shouldn't be angry about it, but honest people will direct their anger in proportion to the size of the crimes. Dishonest people will seize upon the mote in the eye of the less powerful.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at February 4, 2010 10:18 PMJon, the way I try to respond to that sort of position is that sure, I'm angry because one person was (allegedly) necklaced in Haiti by fans of Aristide; but then I'm a thousand, ten thousand times angrier about the thousands of people who were tortured and killed by Haitian forces trained, armed, and paid by the United States. Or yes, I'm angry because Gazans killed a dozen Israelis with missiles -- but a hundred times angrier that Israeli forces, supported by the US, killed 1200 Gazans. Or yes, I mourn the 55,000 American invaders killed by the Vietnamese, but how much more do I mourn the 2 to three million Vietnamese killed by the American invaders.
When you look at it this way, the question becomes why those angry at the barbarism of Aristide / Gazans / Vietnamese aren't angry about the far greater numbers of victims of the US and its cronies / clients. Because not only are they not angrier about the vastly greater scale of US axis violence, they're quite calm about it. They shrug it off, deny it, defend it. Which then brings up the King / Chomsky dictum that Americans should pay attention first to the crimes of their own government, not to those of our official enemies, because we're in a position to do something about our government. (This dictum is, of course, merely a smear by CIA elements who hate JFK.)
Posted by: Duncan at February 5, 2010 10:17 AMThis is digressing a bit but here is an excellent report.....
"Relief, Occupations and the Haiti Crisis"
February, 05 2010 By Justin Podur
Justin Podur visited Haiti in 2005 to study the UN occupation and the government after the 2004 coup. This is a recording of a public event that took place in Toronto on February 2, 2010 at the Centre for Social Justice.
here
http://www.zmag.org/zvideo/3344
and continued below.....
Posted by: Rupa Shah at February 5, 2010 11:54 AMconitnued from above.......
An excellent article by Johann Hari describing how a vigilant International Community fought off IMF plans.
"There's real hope from Haiti and it's not what you expect"
Friday, 5 February 2010
here
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-theres-real-hope-from-haiti-and-its-not-what-you-expect-1889958.html
Hari: that's nice Rupah now if only facebook groups could actually cancel the debt of the many other african countries. To wit:
http://www.counterpunch.org/bond06172005.html
As for rights of Haiti, there were some abuses during Aristide's two terms:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/haiti?page=11
But they don't necessairly blame him for it
Posted by: Jenny at February 5, 2010 05:02 PMThere's also this which highlights some violence of the lavalas groups but explains Aristide didn't have that much power: http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/04/deluge.html
Posted by: Jenny at February 5, 2010 05:11 PMFocusing on the minor misdeeds of someone else while ignoring one's own bigger misdeeds is bad morality and hypocrisy. When self-interest is the cause of the hypocrisy, the protest against the minor sins of "the other" is a fraud that likely conceals corruption. That's what is wrong with the attacks on Aristide, which I have now said almost as well as JS using five times as many words. That's what we get so consistently from our corporate and quasi-corporate(NPR) media--bad morality, hypocrisy, fraud, and the concealment of corruption.
Duncan is exactly right that MLK knew that the Bible teaches that each of us should not focus on the speck in our neighbor's eye while ignoring the log in our own eye. This also sounds like the Schwarzian position, and maybe it's Chomsky's too, though I didn't know he had made it his own dictum. There is probably a source for this "dictum" predating Jesus, but it goes back at least that far. It is Christianity 101, as I recall, though it has been a long time since I helped my beloved Mother teach Sunday school out there on the frozen plains where everyone is above average. It was at that time definitely part of the Methodist curriculum, along with Jesus Loves You and the Golden Rule. I think we should all live by this dictum, whether we're Christians or Chomskyians or Somethingelsians, which is my current creed. It's very basic morality.
This doesn't have much to do with the CIA, as far as I know, but don't underestimate the CIA. The evils around us that incite so much justifiable anger owe a great debt to Langley and its many intel cousins, even if people don't realize it because the specialty of intelligence agencies is concealment and deception, and, in some instances, because people seem hostile to knowing. That's probably the work of the intel agencies too, because they are pretty good at convincing people that it's better not to know. Instead of trying to know and understand things, people just try to be witty, like Jon Stewart. God Bless Jon Stewart, because I love him, but he's a comedian. Humor won't save us, even if it does make our suffering bearable.
As for whose interests the intel agencies are protecting, don't be fooled by terrorism talk. They serve Wall Street and always have, and their devotion is more complete than ever. They try less and less to mask where their true loyalties lie, because they no longer need to mask as much as they once did. Ask yourself why. Or ask Duncan.
http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/CIA_Agents_Get_to_Moonlight_in_the_Corporate_World_Working_on_Deception_Detection_100203
Posted by: N E at February 5, 2010 06:23 PMDuncan, since you mention Martin Luther King, if you want to know how he came to oppose the Vietnam War, here is a speech by his good friend William Pepper, who contributed to causing Dr. King to speak out against the Vietnam War by showing him photographs of Vietnamese children injured and killed by napalm and white phosporous. (That is mentioned in the speech.) Mr. Pepper has subsequently represented the King family, and also James Earl Ray. That may seem strange to you, if you don't know what has been learned in recent decades about the assassination of Dr. King, thanks to Mr. Pepper. (If anyone doesn't know that the King family, represented by Mr. Pepper, believes James Earl Ray to be innocent, and that Pepper has actually proved it in a civil suit in which he represented the King family, you may thank your corporate media.)
This is an unusually good speech and will tell you what intelligence agencies actually exist to do, and what they can do. Listen and learn. The speech was made in 2006, alas, as a keynote speech to those whacky "Truthers," but Pepper speaks mostly about his own experiences with Dr. King and on behalf of the King family, as well as about American history generally. He doesn't profess to know much about 9/11, though he does spend a few minutes on his own thoughts.
What every person knows is up to him or her. Not knowing is a choice, conscious or not.
http://vodpod.com/watch/235733-dr-william-f-pepper-911-revealing-the-truth-reclaiming-our-future
Posted by: N E at February 6, 2010 02:30 PMN E:
which I have now said almost as well as JS using five times as many words.
You're so ungodly modest, N E.
maybe it's Chomsky's too, though I didn't know he had made it his own dictum.
I thought you had read like oodles of Chomsky's books? If you had, you could hardly be surprised by this; he says it repeatedly.
Duncan (and all MLK fans)
I haven't tried to memorize Chomsky, but I didn't say that his view surprised me; I said it is a common-sense view. But you certainly might do better on a Chomsky quiz than I would. I haven't read him much lately.
But anybody who thinks highly of Martin Luther King, including you, should care what William Pepper has to say. He was King's friend, is the King family's lawyer, and knows a great deal of important things about King, his views, and his assassination. In fact, he knows more than ANYONE about those things. People who talk about King without considering what William Pepper has to say haven't done any work, and it's no tribute to King to pretend to honor his views while ignoring his good friend and confidant and acting contrary to what King would certainly have wanted.
Posted by: N E at February 6, 2010 08:24 PM