[…] War on Drugs Ends with a Fizzle — “Ten years ago, a DEA official talking like this would be like, well, duh,” said Mike Krause, director of the Justice Policy Initiative at the Independence Institute in Colorado. “Now all of a sudden people are mocking him. I think what you are going to see is the drug war establishment really freak out.” […]

It’s impressive that you are getting thoughts from
this post as well as from our dialogue made here.

[…] Blowback in Iraq: The Petraeus Legacy Comes Home […]

[…] article on the TV series “24″ discusses how, after a four year hiatus, the program has returned in order to condone drone strikes and criticize WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden. In previous seasons, […]

Lorraine: My comment means “skipping in the future” which I intend to do and recommend to others.
“We created the monster and it has now turned on us, much like we created Al Qaeda” – this often repeated juvenile statement has an underlying premise that in foreign policy nothing changes and should be done by white gloved gentlemen… Ever heard about wwII and US allied with soviet communists to fight German fascists?

It’s blowback, plain and simple. We created the monster and it has now turned on us, much like we created Al Qaeda. (BTW, Smartreader, you need to change your monicker, cuz it doesn’s fit… and Afunz, are you a Pe-Troll? Kinda useless comment, since anybody getting down to read YOUR comment has certainly already read hers…)

“He stabilized the region enough for us to leave”

That was not the mission. If it was, that should have been made clear to the American people from the outset. The mission was to stabilize Iraq to make way for political reconciliation so that the country could progress under control of the new central government. If you believe he succeeded in that mission, I would welcome your arguments.

My point simply is this: Petraeus should not be given credit for winning a war that clearly was not “won” and furthermore, his policies of a) helping to set up a hit list of Sunnis for Maliki to later exploit, b) allowing the Shia to violently purge and torture Sunnis and c) being part of a command structure that condoned torture in our own prisons in Iraq (all documented), should be examined, not swept under the rug while certain elite voices in the media and the Washington think tank circuit shape the history of the War.

If you have a counter-argument to that, I would welcome it.

Very biased article with useless pieces of information, this author’s opinion is worth skipping

Petraus does not matter much in the current situation such would be about the same even without the vaunted surge. Sure the surge quieted things for a while but hey stick 25K+ US troops well armed & you’ll get quite just about anywhere. The current Isis crisis was set into motion day one when we engaged with Iraq.

An analogous strife is now developing in Libya although that strife is not based on Sunni vs. Shia but on tribe vs. tribe. As a youngster I used to collect stamps. I remember that there were stamps from “Cyrenaica” which is actually the Eastern portion of Libya. Capital: Benghazi.

The General fought his plan with the resources that he had available. He stabilized the region enough for us to leave. I love it when a political reporter thinks that only they have the facts. Thank god I can identify biased reporting. I am not even going to write a counter argument.

Is there something in our genetics that we pick up,nurture,and support guys like Saddam? 60 yrs is a long time but at least that the golden age of liberal democracy ,wasn’t it?
Saddam might have learnt what could be reaped by looking into the fate of some Iranian by CIA ,Dulles Brothers,Eishenhower,and BP. Shah of Iran might have learnt from the deposed Guatamalan and deposed Syrian leaders by US in 50s and 40 s . The genetically modified leaders or GML were corrupting the local seeds long before GMO started.

So I guess the take-away here is that the best that Arabs can do for themselves is a (more or less) secularist tyrant like Saddam Hussein.

Have I got that right?

Is this because there’s something wrong with their religion? Or their genetics? Or what?

Bottom line Sunnis and Shia don’t get along, one group is always the top dog and the other the doormat. Pluralism and Islam don’t mix unless it’s at the point of a of gun.

Saddam made Iraq work because he was essentially a secular tyrant who used a combination of threats and bribes to keep the people in line and continually rubbing out the clerics. We screwed up by installing a man who was not only grossly incompetent in the extreme but is partisan and needs the support of the Shia clerics to stay in power, which guaranteed violence and the eventual fracturing of Iraq.

You could see this coming years ago when the car bombings became the primary means by which to air political and religious grievances.

The divisions in Iraq were well known to the neocons, they understood Iraq was a Humpty Dumpty state that could only come apart with democracy. Sure, very serious mistakes were made by Petraeus, but many Sunnis don’t accept the Sunni of Iraq are a minority. Nothing could have reconciled them to their new position, nothing at all.

There was a Shia uprising in Iraq during term of Bush the elder. The Sunni do not accept they are a minority, and so they do not accept their position in a democracy. The people who were urging the invasion of Iraq knew very well that it was a Humpty Dumpty state that under democracy would dissolve into feuding statelets.

And now after 10 years we give then ISIS – look at what Zionism/Bush/Cheney has done to Iraq – how many dead, how many maimed, how may dispossessed – our government refuses to give us the numbers.

All the proper finger pointing and hand ringing aside – it is going to be partitioned just as Israel wanted from the start.

Yes – we are exceptional – never have so many been hoodwinked by so few!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/03/worlddispatch.iraq

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/17/is-open-ended-chaos-the-desired-us-israeli-aim-in-the-middle-east/

Fragmented Middle East ‘s new map–map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers”. (See Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East” By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Global Research, November 2006)–http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-east-the-project-for-a-new-middle-east/3882

Prophecy of Oded Yinon-http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/25/is-the-us-waging-israel-s-wars/print

itcomestopass

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-chaos-in-iraq-is-by-design-the-goal-is-the-break-up-the-country/5388651

2002 Sept . Guardian (UK)
Playing skittles with Saddam
The gameplan among Washington’s hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian Whitaker

No mention of Mr. Shock and Awe–Harlan Ullman his-self…

If I am not mistaken, the document is called – A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. It was written for the benefit of Ben Netanyahu in 1996 by neoconservatives at Project for a New American Century (PNAC), such as Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, etc,. I believe it argues for an end to negotiations with Palestinians and the breakup of some states, including Syria and Iraq.

“Cachet” please, not “cache”.

Great article; but why not tell it like it really is: the Jews pushed us into the disaster of Iraq, on behalf of Israel. And the Jewish media is continuing to give them the mike as they demand we go back in again.

KA, we might call this neocon approach the “deny, obscure, dispute, obfuscate” rule, or DO-DO for short, a multipurpose acronym that describes the neocon policy (as in, “full of —”) and the type of individuals holding to neocon mindset (ancient, extinct brainless creatures that still somehow manage to capture the imagination).

Kagan,Wolfowitz ,Bolton do not appreciate the attitude of the American people . They are not alone .Feith Abrams,Lutty,Shulksy,Kristol,Podohorertz,Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes all of them would have responded and reacted in similar fashion. Blaming other is their way of doing any job and responding to any criticism. Actually they convinced America ,following 911 that there was no need for self appraisal. Blame everybody – either you are with us or against us, was a Bush philosophy but it was built around the worldview promoted by these neocons. Now that world view is being shattered,these neocons want to escape from the shards of that falling and breaking glass . They want us to believe that they did not do it or they are not responsible for it . These neocons use following time tested method 1 Deny any association with the crimes by citing some obscure,irrelevant,forgotten comment . 2 Deny any managerial or advisorial role by informing of his or her official position or lack pf it ( even today with no official position. Kagan gets the time and exposure and makes President respond to it . He gets NYT dance to his tune. This is the sorry state of affairs in US that the neocons can hammer ,can attack,can force media to spew their views,can force government official take note of them can affect the standing of the cabinet members and of the president by repeated misrepresentation of facts and by offering stupidest suggestion and still can get away with claims that they are not responsible ) or by suggesting that they only had a junior role . 3 Their finest hour always lies in asserting that they would have done it differently and successfully if they were in charge.
One wonders what stopped them from offering that golden advice when their job was not actual fighting but offerring advice from a safe place thousands of miles away from battlefield. One wonders why they were criticizing everybody who were suggesting path and route different than what chosen at that moment.
They are at it again on Syria and Iran. They are getting heard and they are being feted and they ate being appeased but not to their 100 percent satisfaction . They want that their advice be followed to the hilt ,to the whole hog,to the tee. Their extreme position is repeatedly backfiring but they want America to believe that they have or had no role for the neocons were not listened 100 percent , it was never 100 percent . ( It is easy to hide behind this formila . Any siggestion or policy matter will always get modified at the practical application of the theory . Neocons will use this wellknown phenomenon to absolve thrmselves from any wrongdoing)
But the neocons were heard 100 percent on Iraq and Afghanistan and on Iran until now.
Lying is in their foreign DNA. Any crisis raises their destructive hope of wrecking havoc again.
But they do not change their behaviors that lie at the heart of the crisis. Is their any parallel to it? Doesn’t Israel behave exactly same way ? Doesn’t it deny any responsibility ? Has it ever accepted any responsibility? Hasn’t it told the world to listen to its advice despite repeated negative result to the rest? Hasn’t it always blamed US and the west for not following its advice despite the fact that its policy was incorporated overtly and covertly through Congress,treasury,military,and intelligence and blackmailing?
Worse aspect of the neocons that when certain policy succeed despite their opposition. ( Bush 1 in first Gulf war ) ,they would desecend in town with banners and megaphone to denounce that policy. That’s what they and Israel now doing against Obama on Iran and on Syria .

Ha!! Brilliant, Kelley. You hit the nail on the heads – too bad somebody can’t really nail these guys for what they are – WAR CRIMINALS!! And that includes, I am sad to say, Johnny-never saw a conflict he didn’t want to butt in – Rotten McCain. They all still seem to think they’ve got to destroy the village to save it. What perverse bloodlust! What unmitigated hubris, and evil.

Clearly, the reason that the old line neocons are getting TV face time is that the media ownership wants it that way – nothing has changed – same owners now as then.

What we Americans see from the media is never the whole story. It is only the partial story that the media ownership wants us to see.

p.s. NBC is just disgusting.

Mindblowing.

When globo-elites on Wall Street messed up the financial markets, what did ‘we’ do? ‘We’ gave them trillions and the key to even more power over the economy.

When globo-elites in foreign policy department messes up the Middle East, what do ‘we’ do? ‘We’ ask them for more advice on how the problems should be fixed.

Even when they’re wrong, they’re always right. Now, that is some power.

Globo-elites are like the new Stalin. Even after Stalin totally failed to foresee Hitler’s threat and exposed the USSR to all-out invasion by Germans, his henchmen and the entire nation turned to him for leadership.

What an example that the US Government and most US corporations are the same. Their common principle is: private profit public loss. If a bank makes a profit – the profit is divided up between management and stockholders, but if it makes a loss the taxpayers/society must cover it. Any new US intervention in Iraq is likely to make things even worse, but where did Collin Powell and his Pottery Barn Rule: “You brake it, you own it”, disappear? Instead, the same Neocons are smash-grabbing Ukraine and risking a nuclear war with Russia. How’s that for a folly? Killing millions in Iraq was just a play-in-the-sand compared with the big game against Russia. Big deal some got a light dressing down by the presstitutes and talking heads, the Neocons are still in control and driving US into oblivion. Criticism is water off a duck’s back.

Back To Iraq! Or maybe not. How is it the warmongering freaks that ginned up Iraq War Vol. 2 The Mission Accomplished Version, have STILL not been held to account? As in war crimes tribunals?
You’d think that Dark Cheney would be smart enough to simply dummy up and keep the low profile. Oh well, the grandiose fools will turn a profit any chance that presents itself.
I think it’s still not too late for war crimes tribunals.

This article demonstrates that the alternative media at times can be just out of touch with what the people want as the corporate mainstream media can be. I credit the internet and sites like What Really Happened and Infowars for waking me up to the truth but there is a point where one must stop listening to these sources once they no longer serve a useful function.

[…] Jack Bauer Was Retired, So Why Is He Back? […]

GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA BOY is back …. for money. Between 24 & NCIS there has never been more BUTT KISSING on TV. Any government that will torture will ENSLAVE. Taoture and slavery are the SAME …. using pain to get what you want from someone.

[…] Let’s just offer a prediction right now – that the new Jack Bauer is not going to get the same mileage as the old one, no matter how Terminator-like they make him, how tricked …read more […]

Not that television is the only venue of psyops. Here are two that come as a surprise to those terminally naive about US Capitalism & its various under the table operations, in the “homeland” and abroad:

http://chronicle.com/article/How-Iowa-Flattened-Literature/144531/

and

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

In regard to the latter, by the way, it needs to be mentioned that many CIA personnel also made goodly sums off the art they foisted upon the world.

The proto-fascists which exist in any society certainly emerged from the wormwood, giving us the sort of future a surveillance manic like Stalin could only have had wet dreams over. The America we loved and idealized has been thoroughly betrayed – we have seen the enemy and he became us.

”That is what ’24′ is; a PsyOp message, delivered through the means of a TV show….”

Ah, Herb Philbrick in “I Led Three Lives”. As a famous philologist at Cornell said during the ’60′s when he and a colleague spotted a topless maiden sun-bathing in profile and the colleague wanted to move to get a full frontal view, “Seen one, seen two.”

Actually almost all of television is psychological warfare, whether principally political, economic, social, or else in thrust, and of course that includes the news. Moreover, it has becomes more and more absurd.

Which is a good reason not to watch it at all.

Reading the comments to this insightful analysis of the latest “Psychological Operation,” albeit privatized, aimed at conditioning the American masses to accept authoritarianism by their government brings to mind Lenin’s phrase, “Useful Idiots.” Saying “24″ is just a television show is the same as saying the tools used by Army PsyOps are “just” loudspeakers, or the more sophisticated tools used by the CIA to condition Europeans back in the 1950′s were “just magazines,” or whatever delivery devices used to deliver a PsyOp message. That is what “24″ is; a PsyOp message, delivered through the means of a TV show. Reading these critical comments make it clear how easily authoritarian governments, of whatever stripe, can deceive and condition their gullible population of “useful idiots.”

Why do people get their knickers in a twist over a TV show like 24 is beyond me. It’s entertainment and good as can be expected out of Hollywood.

Here’s the thing, if the show offends you, you simply pick up the remote and change channels like any rational person would. You don’t blow a gasket and a pen a screed about whats wrong with the show. Freedom of choice 101 folks.

And realize at the end of the day as Bugs Bunny stated “Well, like the man says, don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive,”.

Jack is back, and so are the overly long and overly serious analyses of “24”.

I feel sorry for the analysts who have to take everything so seriously, even television programs such as “24”, where they find hidden meanings and motives that don’t really exist.

They miss out on all the fun.

My (and that of most others) analysis of “24”: An hour each week of entertaining, often impossible, escapist, mindless fun – and damn good fun.

A perfect TV program to watch after a hard day’s work.

Just a wild guess–the subject is a television show, right? First mistake, watching it. Second, mistake, analyzing it. Third mistake, writing a column about it.

Some remedies: (1) throw away the television (it is particularly dangerous for children); (2) read Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth; (3) Watch Emir Kusturica’s film Underground: Once Upon A Time There Was A Country.

Exercise (walking is best, continuosly for at least one hour) and repeat as required.

He’s back because 24 was among the best shows ever and we fans want it back, which means Fox will cash in on it.

Is the show and Jack cluelessly out of time, and still “evil” somehow? I don’t see how. We’ve only seen two episodes so far. Jack rescues a friend who turned whistleblower from torture. He wants to save the president from an attack on his life, a president who’s also a friend. That is one aspect critics tend to forget. Usually Jack’s motivation has been personal- rescue wife, daughter, avenge death of lover, etc.- aside from the patriotic stuff.

Another issue that critics conveniently overlook is that the show never portrays the US government as a holy office, but always corrupt, always with elements gone rogue, and no office is safe. Season 8 even portrayed the female President as going completely off the reservation only to realize a project of hers. Corruption runs across departments- Justice, CIA, FBI, even local police. This time around we have a chief of staff and a pawn of his who runs a rogue operation and keeps info from the president.

The quote about Zero Dark Thirty creating a cultural moment is laughable. Zero Dark Thirty was a dismal movie- both in entertainment value and in moral or intellectual value. It had nothing to say about anything. 24 has been pretty good at being ahead of the spirit of the times and even predicting events. The hiatus of course put a stop to that. If there is a show that took that over from 24 it’s Person of Interest. A show that Vlahos also lambasted before it even aired.

You know it’s just the same in any other field.
You would think history showes us at least anything, but that’s so rare.
Feel free to disagree but the world is changing, and we have no control over it.
E.g., imagine Obama had enough balls to put Russian bear to his place, but it seems like it’s not happening, welcome WW3.
A profound post, thanks!
Sarah http://phyto-renew350i.com/

“a dedicated international development worker who has devoted his life to helping people in more than 50 countries…”

Very droll–a bit like Obama’s mother, just “helping people”.

All around the USG appears to be adopting the “out of sight, out of mind” approach. Whatever the underlying reasons Bowe may have had for walking away, he seems to have been captured and detained against his will and should be released. I ashamed (but not surprised) that my Senator, Chambliss, could say such a thing about one of our GIs (thank God he’s retiring at the end of this term; not soon enough…) As for the Gross, his detention is apparently just “tit for tat” in regard to our ridiculous policy towards Cuba. And poor Levinson… probably dead. But at least his family should be given some information.

I feel sorry for the spies, once they get caught seems like the government doesn’t want anything to do with them because that would indicate they were working for the government. Just admit it and get them returned. Returning vets seem different in that the government doesn’t seem to know what to do with them besides education assistance. Most of the vets of my day would have been happy upon their return to have access to free alcohol.

Like returning vets wounded in body, mind and spirit, they are abandoned by our elites because they are no longer useful to them.

My response would be more like this: “Oh, the hell with it.”

It is often said that the first step to self-improvement is to recognize that you have a problem.

I’m a veteran and have had problems with the VA health care system. My observation has been that when confronted with the possibility that they may have made a mistake or that there is a problem, at the VA there is an almost instinctive reaction to go right into a defensive posture where everybody just starts trying to cover themselves and deny everything.

Further, at least in my case, the VA is actually allowed to self-evaluate it’s own performance and decide if it made mistakes. The medical providers and administrative personal responsible for your care gather privately in a room together. Nether the veteran nor any representative of the veteran are allowed to attend. Then they sit together and determine that they did everything perfectly and convince themselves that the complaint is invalid.

As an example, in my case a contractor that the VA hired made mistakes and injured myself and other veterans. However when asked to investigate the VA denied that the contractor made any errors and even said they did an excellent job. But conveniently omitted from the written report was the fact that the VA terminated it’s contract with the contractor during this period and that the contractor subsequently fired the doctor that was treating us, reportedly for “ethical reasons”.

How can the VA continuously improve itself if it won’t even admit it has problems? Answer: it can’t. And that explains a lot.

[…] The US Congress is constantly holding hearings on all kinds of problems. Virtually every government function I’ve ever seen is run by people who have completely forgotten how their agency got started. It seems not a single agency puts much emphasis on the ostensible mission that justifies its existence, and spends far more energy and resources on simply cooking up new justifications. In other words, you cannot make a bureaucracy work at anything but bureaucracy itself. […]

These people volunteered to go fight for a police state in military actions against the entire world of Islam, a campaign set in motion intentionally. In Israel they have been talking about this move for the last forty years, religious Jews have been fearing what the arrogant secular gang who run the US media and Wall Street would do as their power crests, and it would appear that they chose to “just pull it.” These uneducated herd gentiles that volunteered to go fight in these ludicrous wars, we are supposed to feel sorry for them when they get exposed to the horrors they were there to inflict? We should feel sorry for them while we are still doing the same thing to innocent, conservative, religious people who were, before we came, exporting food with a zero carbon footprint?

Welcome to the professional army, who are just another form of commoditized, dehumanized, alienated labor, and treated by their paymasters as just that.

The statistics about mortality rates of veterans from the Gulf War under the elder Bush are chilling–pretty clearly someone made a conscious and deliberate decision that it was cheaper to let them die than to face the ailments that the war caused them and their families in many cases, including the effects of firing depleted uranium munitions.

All the jingo aside–what do you expect? This is just another aspect of Capitalism in its most brutal, virulent form.

[…] Source: http://www.unz.com/article/war-on-drugs-ends-with-a-fizzle/ […]

U.S.Patent 6630507 should say it all, yet this patent is never mentioned in any laws surrounding the world’s number one natural resource, hemp. Instead we get laws based on greed, fraud, lies, and misinformation presented as facts. Now since the new farm bill has passed, Hemp farming is legal in America. Hemp can replace all products on the market which pollute, yet we have to wait and see the results of this new law. Smoking pot is less then one percent of the total uses of pot, yet it is all we talk about.

One person smokes under one pound a year 24/7 being high
One plant can grow over ten pounds a year
So current laws are trying to stop one person from growing one plant every ten or twenty years.

[…] http://www.unz.com/article/war-on-drugs-ends-with-a-fizzle/ […]

[…] an excellent and thorough UNZ Review article titled War on Drugs Ends With a Fizzle, Kelley Vlahos analyzes the desperate and reactionary statements of James L. Capra, head of Drug […]

In a dangerous and futile attempt to stamp out alcohol, tobacco, heroin, marijuana, pornography, prostitution, marital infidelity, and even masturbation, this former land of the prosperous and free has been shamelessly pillaged by groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Society, The Anti-Saloon League, The Anti-Cigarette Movement, The Social Purity Movement, The Social Hygiene Movement, and now our latter day Drug Warriors.

Prohibitionists often express the belief that the resulting suffering and mayhem that their policy engenders is in no way connected to the basic and erroneous mechanism of prohibition. They simply claim that they haven’t yet been granted sufficient governmental powers to make prohibition work. These sadistic, sociopathic, perverts actually believe that only the removal of even more of our basic individual rights and freedoms will allow them to do their “work” successfully.

Legalizing and regulating all drugs will not increase consumption—everything is already available right now. Drugs of all varieties are cheap and plentiful, and the basic economics of drug dealing remain: Take one dealer off the street, and another takes his place. Something that simply doesn’t happen for real crimes like murder, embezzlement, assault or burglary.

The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order—this is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means. And sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.

DEA is a abbreviation for DEATH, all the people who needlessly died and suffered from the absurdity of cannabis prohibition. Cannabis is an essential nutrient for modern man as demonstrated by it’s anti-aging an anti-cancer properties. drbob

This somewhat wordy article comes across as naive in it’s scope. The first erroneous assumption the author makes is that “Drug Enforcement Agency” is in existence to enforce drug laws, that is, to carry out laws to prevent the consumption and distribution of drugs deemed harmful to the American Public. Nothing could be, as they say, further from the truth. An obvious starting point to gain an excellent historical perspective to the DEA would be examination of the Opium Wars in China (between the British and the Chinese nations) in the mid-19th Century. The DEA and America’s War on Drugs is there for a single reason: to keep the price of drugs as high as possible. As one intelligent, Wall Street individual pointed out: the 3rd world countries of Central and South America are up to their eyeballs in hock to the western countries – now how do you suppose they are going to pay this debt back? by selling tamales and sombreros to the tourists? Of course, now you can another list to those mid and southern American countries, a list that includes Thailand, Cambodia, Afghanistan – to name just a few, and they don’t have any sombreros or tamales.

It’s the War on Drugs, and the DEA, that makes the high-margin market for drugs. Therefore, of course, the foreign players in that market–producers, middlemen, and transporters–don’t want to see the War end either. This is especially true for marijuana, which, if legal, could be grown at home.

It’s not a question of whether they too are exerting an influence on government policy. The connections between government and the providers of prohibited substances were forged during the period of national prohibition of alcohol.

It’s a question of how. My first guess is the banks that launder the profits from the illegal drug trade. My second guess is direct payoffs, in cash or perhaps in kind for the small fry.

Yes, yes–many all too rational observers around the world thought the insanity of demonizing substances was over with the end of Prohibition. That was the wrong conclusion–then and now. Demonization is an inherent disposition of United States “culture” (in the anthropological sense, for in regard to the United States there is no other sense of culture, nor civilization for that matter). Between Fundamentalists, No-Nothings, and those who manipulate them for political advantage–all gilt with the most golden hypocrisy in human history, and ever profitable for some–this is just another breather with, say, tobacco or animal fat or whatever next.

Just a question from a reader overseas: Watched a debate between the fiscal conservative? Bill o’Reilly and Mary Catherine Ham where he first defended the war on Marihuana, then he said: ” If adults wanna use it, I have no problem with it , and they shouldn’t be bothered” Then he went on defending spending another trillion dollars on fighting it, while at the same time he want to cut down on Big Government spending. So the question goes: Should Bill switch from Indica to Sativa so he can sound a little bit more cohesive?

Huh. And here I thought I was just watching a TV show.

Considering how unrealistic the show is in so many aspects, I doubt it’s value as effective propaganda. In the world of ‘Homeland,’ The CIA is like a super police force, performing domestic terrorism duties that normally would be handled by the FBI. CIA agents are practically Law and Order cops on this program; showing up at crime scenes and taking over police investigations…. If you are really threatened by this show as propaganda, just remember it’s on a premium channel that only a tiny fraction of the country is paying for, let alone watching this series. Don’t worry, Homeland won’t be plunging us into WWIII.

This review is complete rubbish. It completely misidentifies the basic problem with Homeland.

For the first two series, the terrorist mastermind is a character called Abu Nazir. He’s depicted as a sophisticated, cultured gentleman terrorist. Like Ernst Stavro Blofeld as portrayed by Charles Gray.

The problem is, as the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Nazir’s direct real-life equivalent was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian recovering alcoholic street thug. Think “Chopper” Reid crossed with David Koresh. Al-Zarqawi devoted far more of his energy into massacring Shiites than he did beheading Americans (though he personally beheaded two Americans on video using a Stanley knife). Needless to say, the Sunni-Shia enmity was completely ignored by the “Homeland” writers.

A low-IQ, testosterone-fuelled loser like Al-Zarqawi is unlikely to also be a solemn, dignified, art-connoisseur Bond villain with a shark pool in his volcano. But this is the truth of Islamic terrorism: it’s mostly carried out by idiots – even if “our” idiots sometimes allow “their” idiots to get lucky.

Even in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s style of hardcore Twelver Shi’a Islam has little appeal to sophisticated middle class Persians. He’s too boorishly plebeian. My Iranian friends tell me he’s basically a redneck hick. Think Archie Bunker crossed with James Charles Kopp.

The “Homeland” writers give us an Iranian spymaster, Akbari; a cross between Don Corleone and Karla (from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy). But again, he just doesn’t feel drawn from life. The kind of people who hold such jobs in Iran cut their teeth murdering Iranian communists and fighting the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. They’re now wealthy semi-corrupt bruisers. See the Iranian comedy, “Marmoulak” (“The Lizard”), about a small-time crook who impersonates a mullah, to get some feel of how things really are there.

It’s not impossible to create realistic Iranian and Iraqi characters. But I suspect our PC culture makes us wary of depicting non-white stupidity, boorishness and corruption truthfully. So writers opt for Vodemort-style gentleman villains instead.

“Four Lions” is – by a long way – the most accurate fictional depiction of Islamic terrorism, and the type of person who engages in it.

Charles Rotmil: “You are missing the whole point. Propaganda? It is like saying that all the Shakespeare plays are propaganda. Come on. This is a sort of Graham Green spy movie, so well done I would also say Shakespearean. I was glued to this show from the start. We are all smart to know the difference with fact and fiction. Unless you are paranoid.”

No, it’s not like saying Shakespeare plays are propaganda. Shakespeare plays were written four hundred years ago. Those plays–especially the histories–may have been pro-Tudor propaganda, but that is an academic point now. We can enjoy them at a remove from his toadying to royal authority which, towards the end of QEI’s reign was looking quite authoritarian indeed.

Propaganda that actually affects the political dynamics of this day and attempts to push the Israeli line on the Middle East has an utterly different impact on us. Likening “Homeland” to Leni Riefenstahl or Sergei Eisenstein would start to get closer to the mark. In any case, the use of mass culture to drive the US into more wars for Israel is a phenomenon worthy of sustained scrutiny and intense criticism. Good to see that Kelly Vlahos is on the job.

I am still hoping Brody is okay. After all the scene was faked no? The actor is still around no?
anything can be faked nowadays. Read today about more drones. this is real, not propaganda.
The Nazis had a policy formal of telling lies, making it big enough they will believe you, Goebbels said this and he was formally head of the department of Propaganda.
Homeland is not propaganda. It is about as real as you can get.

From the very beginning I was watching these series as a textbook on Israeli propaganda. We all know the Hazbara operating on liberal sites and “correcting” the “wrongdoings” of the commenting American masses ))
But Hazbara is just too obvious, so now we have Hollywood turned into Israwood, our TV serving out Israeli propaganda by our elected representatives, by our presidents, by screenwriters, and our newspapers serving the same masters…
The ending of the third season was simply awful! Hanging Brody, Carry accepting it “for the good of the country”, and overall seeming acceptance of the premise that the ends justify the means is so blatantly immoral that there is no way the fourth season can somehow develop some redeeming quality.
It is immoral, insidious and extremely dangerous trend I observe in the Israeli led corruption of conscience of the people…

I, for one, am NOT Israeli; never was; never will be. Israel is the USA’s mortal enemy; and, when I say USA, I mean the nation itself, We the People. The USG is not the USA; it’s just a government, and a bad one at that.

Israel has its dirty fingers in just about every facet of the lives of every American, and this is totally unacceptable. The silver lining in all of this is that the US population is waking up, albeit, slowly. The most astute of us see what’s going on all around us; the accusing fingers are pointing at Tel Aviv; and, already, organizations are beginning to boycott the Zionist Entity for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and atrocities against the Palestinian people – Christian and Muslim alike.

The series Homeland doesn’t portray American patriotism in a good light; Zionism regards it as ultranationalism, which it hates.

‘Homeland’ is derived from a series (Hatufim – the Abducted) that appeared on Israeli TV. That might explain the precedence of ‘hebrew’ characters Saul, and his co-commander Dar, who keep the CIA focussed on the ubiquitous ‘terror’ faced by somebody. The other CIA characters – save for the mentally-imbalanced star, are bumbling putzes when it comes to having what it takes to off the evil – or punch them in the kisser.

It also explains the on-going concern with concupiscence which is a necessary part of the job for those engaged in the ‘defence of freedumb’. If nothing else the regular porking ensures a suitable parental guidance warning and, hopefully, augmented ratings. Having watched it religiously, I think we’re all the better knowing how successfully the the resources are deployed that keep us all safe.

I hope Saul can find a way to cope with his Maisy schtupping the opposition, after all she really seems to care for him. We can only imagine how he stinks.

State propaganda filters out in all shapes and sizes.
It emits from textbooks in government schools, from the frozen pens of government-trained journalists, to Hollywood and beyond.

You are missing the whole point. Propaganda? It is like saying that all the Shakespeare plays are propaganda. Come on. This is a sort of Graham Green spy movie, so well done I would also say Shakespearean. I was glued to this show from the start. We are all smart to know the difference with fact and fiction. Unless you are paranoid.
To me it feels very real as well, the way the CIA operates is well exposed and they way we use drones also well exposed. Where is the propaganda there?
Most of all this is drama, really well acted, well developed, mostly credible.
Almost anything TV can be seen as propaganda, or selling cars and gadgets.
Try to enjoy this magnificent series, nothing like it around, including movies.
And also don’t be a spoiler. I think Vlahos is full of it and very one sided.
Jut read headlines and it sound pretty real to me. Dirty hands all around as Sartre once stated.

An interesting note about demonizing Iran, this as Ms. V points out, has not just started. Over the holidays I watched a few minutes of Die Hard With A Vengeance, a movie made almost twenty years ago. In the movie I was somewhat amazed to hear dialog painting, guess who, Iranians as terrorist co- conspirators.

As one commenter mentioned in the CSI show, as in so many others, the cops will routinely abuse and rough people up, reaking all so many eggs to make their propaganda cake, but will never apologize or make restitution for damages. This is typical since, in their twisted minds, the ends justify any means. And the US is not unique in this since I remember a certain Inspector Lynley on British TV who with his partner would do exactly the same thing, corral and abuse “suspects” who were innocent, but the self-righteous rat would never say he was wrong. This is the mentality being promoted through “entertainment” but is in itself a direct reflection of the police-state we currently live in even here in America. When nearly ten times as many innocent people get killed just by coming in contact with cops alone, as opposed to the dead “hero” cop figures pushed to propagandize how supposedly dangerous their job is, you begin to realize that there’s something seriously screwed up in this country. It’s reflected from the bottom all the way to the top. From your local yokel to foreign policy from the rabid dogs in the white house it’s flat out a sickness.

Propaganda from your own government is bad enough, but propaganda on behalf of a foreign country?

For better or worse, to be American means we are all Israelis now. If only we had never been anti-Semitic for all those decades of the early 20th century, we would not have to make up for it now by blindly following policies that are driven by Jewish paranoia and revenge – against those evildoers who no longer exist, except by imagined proxy.

Any pretense of national loyalty was thrown out the door with this series.
Don’t be loyal to the United States of America or your reward will be a red rope and a construction crane. That is the message. Strategy trumps loyalty, control is the ultimate good. Look out for yourself. Betray your superiors. We are goin’ down.
We are an ugly people with no redeeming qualities on this show. It is the Survivor show only with a Gee-ohh political twist. I can live with the lies on the consultant show House of Lies because that is what the series is about, but to see the US portrayed in such a strategy-above-all manner is not pleasant.

Isn’t just about every TV show and movie a kind of propaganda for the government? The cops are always heroic, with fine speeches about protecting and serving. That awful “Blue Bloods” comes to mind. Every arrest involves a dozen SWAT members breaking down a door, with massive firepower, even if it is just to ask questions of a suspect. We see this so often on TV that we come to view that as a normal part of life. A specialty of the old “CSI:Miami” was to abuse a suspect and when the heroic cops found out that he wasn’t their man, they would never apologize for their accusations and misbehavior. Anyone who criticizes our foreign policy or questions the right of the feds to spy on us is made to be the bad guys, and the safety of our country is secured by the ever heroic FBI, CIA, the military, or local police. They don’t need jackboots on the street when we grow up to know our place through the indoctrination we receive through “entertainment”.

As the first comment states; more deconstructionism of this type is needed, and this was an excellent example of what is needed. Ignoramuses always say, why care? So thanks for reminding us of Huxley’s insight of how television is used, with this, and 24, as a couple of the more blatant examples. It seems to me this sort of show is simply a more sophisticated form of what was once called “agitprop,” as it was called when communists used this technique. But just as we did with the Soviet’s torture techniques, propagandists such as the producers of this show have taken their crude practices to an entirely higher level of sophistication while disguising them better as “entertainment.” Thanks for peeling back the layers of deception.

More deconstruction of this type is badly needed in American media. Take for example “House Of Cards”. I got stuck just the other day on just the second episode: a nominated candidate for Secretary of State is taken down because he penned an editorial decades before that referred to the “illegal occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza. When the editorial is revealed everyone on the show freaks out. “Anti-semite!” the ADL is shown to be shouting.

No one mentions that the official position of the United States – and the whole world- actually happens to be exactly this: that the occupation is illegal. But the show represents this as a terrible, awful, politically inexcusable mistake. This is the world according to the mainstream media.

It’s a bubble, and media does matter. Thanks for the great article, Kelley.

Should throw a “spoilers ahead” in there, though! They shot Brody? Too bad. He was great in Band of Brothers.