From Abiye : your world view
Hi Myles,
I always wondered about your worldview.
Admittedly your football view often runs contrary to popular opinion.
While you often go off with your views, you are very original with your thoughts. Not the regular spiel from other blogs or sportswriters who like to refer to themselves as journalists.
We live in a world where people don’t think for themselves anymore, it hurts the head too much.
Every opinion is shaped by the media houses. Originality is dead!
Even worse, journalism is dead! How about the media-industrial complex?
Which keeps a whole populace distracted and docile. It’s pervasiveness is the most damaging. We are in an age were the news is not reported, but created and manupulated wilfully by the big media house.
It was staggering to find out that reality was doctored at the last Euros ( the match between Germany and Italy comes to mind).
Where was the uproar? If it can be done with live sporting events, what’s safe? War? Politics? Art ? Religion? The economy?
Nothing!!
Myles says:
Not that orginal, Abiye.
Don’t give me credit I don’t deserve.
I just read different books and websites.
Which I is how I knew about Extraordinary Rendition long before I read about it in The Guardian.
Look for books by people who have seen it from the inside. People who used to work for the State Department or the US Treasury.
Check out Rogue State : A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum in 2003.
Blum explains that cruel staff are always needed by the US government.
Rogue State should be a school textbook:
Introduction, Page 7
No, it is not simply that power corrupts and dehumanizes.
Neither is it that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It is that our leaders are cruel because only those willing and able to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full measure of compassion and empathy towards faraway powerless strangers – let alone American soldiers- do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to.
There is a sort of Peter Principle at work here. Laurence Peter wrote that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence. Perhaps that we can postulate that in a foreign policy establishment committed to imperialist domination by any means necessary, employees tend to rise to the level of cruelty they can live with.
From Ryan Coulson : correction
Greetings once again, Mr. Palmer.
Upon reading your latest post, I noticed you mentioned that “100 million brainwashed Americans” want the NSA spying on us and our government circumnavigating our Constitutional and God given rights.
Please believe me when I tell you that this is not accurate.
There are many millions of brainwashed Americans who love Obama and want the government to protect them and supply them with everything they need. But it is not 100 million. It’s not even half that.
But the majority is being silenced and the news media is a corrupt Pravda-style organization that is Obama’s voice. And that is a useful power to have.
But let’s be forthright – it’s not only Americans who have a brainwashed population. All governments have their citizenry duped. And it’s not just one man who is running this operation. In America, those elected officials that make up our Congress are just as guilty as Obama and his appointed Cabinet members.
Not to twist the knife too unfairly, but I recall you did support Obama yourself.
Perhaps he was the lesser of two evils in your mind (which he was not), but nevertheless, you liked his flavor and bought his charisma and charm. You thought he was genuine in the promises he made. And you were brainwashed by him like many Americans.
Perhaps you have woken up and are now seeing clearly again.
But please know that not all Americans are supportive of this treasonous government.
And it is unfair to lump us all together just because of our nationality.
All the best from an American Patriot.
From Barry Leary: your last post this morning
Splendid end piece this morning, Myles, with the Eisenhower link .
All true and an ongoing existential nightmare for all of us.
I have nothing to add to the pieces you have written these many years about Arsenal
It is sad but also , in a rather perverted way, comicaly disgusting wouldn’t you say ?
And a rather nice cautionary tale about capitalism, celebrity and the management of reputation in a global television soap. The Gods looked down and laughed, did they not ?
I’m enjoying the annual argument I have with myself over the renewal of my Arsenal Membership though I’ve never owned a season ticket .
I’ve enjoyed the miracle years, the wonder years and the comedy years from the vantage point of a seat in the stands at Barnet on wet Monday and Wuesday nights watching the reserve team , youth teams, Under-21 teams and Next Gen teams hoof their way into paradise and silly contracts .
I do of course also hold my breath that car crime, violence and rape don’t sink the good name of the club with their young ‘starlets’ , though maybe I’m being too mean ?
I could go on .But most of it has been said much better by you and others over what must be quite a few years now .
One of my few triumphs is that I am accustomed to watching football on TV with no sound.
Friends ask me ‘Don’t you miss the atmosphere ?’
From Kubla Khan : Brendan’s rant
Brendan talks of an Iranian invasion?
The undermining of capitalism? bIn which world is this chap living?
Who is the threat to world peace? Western countries or Iran?
Capitalism is the scourge, really.
People like Wenger and clubs like Arsenal are examples of commodity fetishism.
People have no integrity to speak about the truth.
The truth is factual but facts create norms.
What about ecstatic truth, as in the kind Herzog shows in his movies?
Brendan is a product of this capitalism, living a shielded life in a capitalist state, away from the daily gore and mayhem of less useful and important lives.
Brendan, go support Arsenal in your Kroenke dome.