Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

by **Gouda** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 10:43 am

I'm inviting a little brainstorming discussion here which harkens back to our "left gatekeeper" debates, and also touches on levels of acceptable, or acknowledged "conspiracy." Even here in the realm of really deep and weird politics, some accuse others of gatekeeping. Peter Dale Scott sees the study of parapolitics and deep politics not as a replacement for traditional left structural analysis, but as an extension of it - incorporating irrational, indeterminate aspects into the picture - which are generally repressed and unacknowledged. The question arises: "repressed" or "acknowledged" by whom? For instance, Znet, Counterpunch and Chomsky would repress much of what we acknowledge here at RI. 911/JFK inquiry. MC/RA. Yet what Znet, Counterpunch and Chomsky acknowledge, the NYT would likely repress. Plan Colombia for example. Gladio. What the NYT might acknowledge, Fox news would repress. And so on. At what level of acknowledgement does something cease to be repressed?  From the Preface of Peter Dale Scott's Deep Politics and the Death of JFK: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>"The key to understanding deep politics is the distinction I propose between traditional conspiracy theory, looking at conscious secret collaborations toward shared ends, and deep political analysis, defined...as the study of 'all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.' The essence of the first is a single objective and/or control point; the second in contrast is an open system with divergent power centers and goals. The line between the two is not always easy to draw...I distinguish between the deep politics of New York City in the Tammany era, a working system for dividing the spoils of corruption in an ethnically divided city, and the conscious, or parapolitical stratagem by which the US occupying forces in Italy, using Tammany politicians, imported US mafia figures to oppose left-wing Italian and Sicilian movements. But of course by the 1980's this post-war stratagem had help spawn a deep political system of corruption exceeding Tammany's and (as we know from the Andreotti trial of 1995) beyond anyone's ability to call it off. (...) A deep political system or process is one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society. In popular terms, collusive secrecy and law-breaking are how the deep political system works. What makes these supplementary procedures 'deep' is the fact that they are covert or suppressed, outside general awareness as well as outside acknowledged political processes.  (...) Speaking metaphorically, and a little over my head, I would suggest that deep political analysis enlarges traditional structuralist analysis to include indeterminacies analogous to those which are studied in chaos theory. A deep political system in one where the processes openly acknowledged are not always securely in control, precisely because of their accommodation to unsanctioned sources of violence, through arrangements not openly acknowledged or reviewed. These indeterminacies multiply when we look at the deep political economy of multinational corporations in this century...some corporations, such as our banana companies, have relied for decades on working accommodations with gangs and mafia families. The pattern is widespread though not generally acknowledged.<hr></blockquote>

by **MASONIC PLOT** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:16 am

Their main method of repression is to take something that they cannot hide anymore and turn into mass entertainment then make a mockery of people who take their entertainment too seriously. If you really examine this you will see it. I have seen this done with just about every conspiracy theory. CIA and media control. Mind Control and Manchurian candidates. Child sex trafficking. 9-11 Extreme Weather and Weather Control. Secret Societies and their influence in politics, media etc. They take these ideas, which are very real, turn them into some blockbuster movie, TV show, or fictional novel and anyone thereafter who believes it is true is made to be a fool for believing everything they see on TV, in the movies or read in books. The Divinci Code is a good recent example. Dan Brown is a disinfo agent extraordinaire. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=masonicplot>MASONIC PLOT</A> at: 10/13/06 9:17 am

by **sunny** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 11:25 am

Interesting topic. I think about this often, as in, why can't they (meaning pundits, reporters, writers and so on) just tell the truth, put it out there? The simple answer is another question-What do they have to lose? The closer they are to power, the more they have to lose, the more they repress. Hence, the NYT represses practically everything but power sanctioned conventional wisdom. Chomsky, et al occupy a different sphere, practically self-contained in the scheme of things, but still influenced by mainstream opinion, and therefore subject to career destroying criticism. Anything uncomfortable they have to say outside conspiracy theorizing can simply be ignored. In short:At what level of acknowledgement does something cease to be repressed? At the level where you have nothing to lose. People on that level are "nobody's" like us, who are easily dismissed. Of course, there are unique examples, such as Peter Dale Scott, who speak truth even though they move in what might be termed establishment circles.

by **Gouda** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:35 am

Sunny, I think that is probably part of it. But what accounts for the differences in repression and acknowledgement between establishment players roughly at the same level of power - say the differences between Fox News and the NYT? Or between The Nation and The National Review? Back to the priestcraft issue. Fiefdoms of truth and respectability. How do consensus paradigms get codified in textbooks and archives? Surely, things must pass muster with the NYT before making it to the history books, which must again pass muster in the NYT Review of Books. At the deeper levels of politics that PDS is discussing, many issues must pass muster with the kooky, paranoid, anti-american left of Chomsky, Counterpunch et al. before making it to the pages of The Nation, which is at least a foot in the door to the NYT, or The New Yorker or CSPAN. Here is where the liberal establishment has had dominance over the conservative establishment in terms of codifying history, but I think that is changing (as everything is shifting to the right.) In general, "Conspiracy theory" finds itself today as an interesting new lobbyist for historical consensus - and I would say it still finds more affinity on the "right," whereas a more serious approach of deep politics and/or parapolitics study is better identified as a left-style approach - if only the establishment left could see this. As for the left side of acknowledgment/repression, a friend of mine weighs in: "Our modern left has a sort of Gnostic gauntlet through which such notions must go--I can't say at which power or principality things become established, though I suspect it's somewhere near THE NATION. There is a level at which one must use Chomsky's name as a talisman (Z, Third World traveler) and another level or set of levels (Dissent, Nation, Moore) where one must anathematize Chomsky. Clearly, here is an analogous process for 'conspiracy theorizing.' Which is sufficient reason for rethinking the tradition of prior restraint on discussion of such matters."

by **Dreams End** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:56 am

Really interesting topic. I've always said that conspiracy theory, when done properly, is structural analysis that NAMES NAMES. I think it's important to understand JFK as an internecine conflict within the ruling class...but I'd also like very much to know who gave the actual order, thank you very much. (Doubtful it was an actual order...likely a "who will rid me of this troublesome President" kinda scenario.) I liked "Gnostic gauntlet". Is there a core group of "priests" who are apportioning out the roles? "You, chomsky...you talk about this...but not about that..." Does it sort of settle out more organically as various left publications stake out ideological territory? I just had an off list conversation with someone about the role of foundations...and some of that stuff is explicit. I've seen a quote, for example, from some official with one of the big foundations...Ford, I think, who replied to criticism that they funded "radicals" that they specifically did so in order to reign them in. I think that's a big part of the way the landscape is shaped. I'm also going to start researching Soros...I was reading an article about how he is funding all these left groups but his own business ties are right to extreme right..as in Carlyle Group, Harken Energy (who bailed out Bush) etc. The theory in the article was that he funds the left groups because Bush is going too far. This is not the right answer, I think. Instead, I think that it is about creating more of the "controlled left", the anti-socialist left. Since he in some sense helped "create" Bush, then it stands to reason that this is all a big "good cop/bad cop" scenario. Soros just happens to be active in all the countries the CIA is active in...so I assume this isn't just a "Jewish banker (well, speculator") story, but is actually one of those public/private intelligence partnerships that are common and less traceable to the CIA directly. I even heard that Soros funded "Refuse and Resist" one of the RCP fronts, though if they did, it's no longer on their list of funded organizations by the Open Society Institute. Hopefully I can have an intro to Soros up soon on my blog. I think he is an excellent example of how this stuff works. Fund the perspectives you want to thrive and also do some funding of perspectives you'd like to "moderate" and create a nice, safe network of opposition that stays within acceptable parameters. It doesn't even mean that all he funds is bad...not at all. So I don't go making blanket condemnation of all who receive his funding. In fact, I note with irony that an organization I used to work with (not particularly a political one) received funding from OSI.

by **sunny** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 11:05 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>But what accounts for the differences in repression and acknowledgement between establishment players roughly at the same level of power - say the differences between Fox News and the NYT? Or between The Nation and The National Review?<hr></blockquote> The differences are simply a matter of degree. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>The theory in the article was that he funds the left groups because Bush is going too far. This is not the right answer, I think. Instead, I think that it is about creating more of the "controlled left", the anti-socialist left. Since he in some sense helped "create" Bush, then it stands to reason that this is all a big "good cop/bad cop" scenario.<hr></blockquote> It has long been my theory that the establishment left exists primarily as a check on the thoughtful rank-and-file left, who would naturally gravitate toward democratic socialsim, and that ain't good for business.

by **greencrow0** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:05 pm

<a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/kell-o16.shtml">www.wsws.org/articles/200...-o16.shtml</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Why is the New York Times silent on massive Iraq death toll? A question for Bill Keller World Socialist Web Site October 16, 2006 The corporate-controlled American media is deliberately suppressing the results of a survey that demonstrates that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has caused more than 600,000 deaths in the past three years—a figure that in and of itself refutes all the claims by the Bush administration that it carried out the invasion of Iraq in order to foster democracy in the Middle East. What kind of "freedom" and "human rights" can be the consequence of such a slaughter? The major American media organizations—including the New York Times—published only brief reports on the study October 11. Taking their cue from President Bush, who declared the survey’s methodology faulty without offering any proof, the Times and other leading media outlets have dropped the subject. There have been no editorials in the Times, the Washington Post, or other major newspapers, nor any demands for a more serious response from the Bush administration. There is no legitimate, scientific basis for rejecting the findings of this survey carried out under the auspices of Johns Hopkins, one of the leading US universities. Under the direction of epidemiologists at the college’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, Iraqi interviewers visited thousands of Iraqi families throughout the war-torn country. The sample size was huge: 12,801 individuals in 1,849 households, in a country of 26 million people. By comparison, the CBS-New York Times poll, whose findings receive regular front-page coverage in the Times, uses a sample of 800 to 2,000 people in a country of 300 million. If President Bush were to declare at his next press conference that the opinion polls showing 60 percent or more of the population opposed to the war in Iraq are bogus, and based on a "flawed methodology," the Times would presumably denounce such an accusation and demand the White House provide proof of the alleged poll-rigging. Why is a similar standard not applied to the Johns Hopkins inquiry into the excess deaths in Iraq? Is it, perhaps, because these figures would implicate all those responsible for the US military intervention—including its media apologists—in killing on a scale that deserves to be called genocide? During the week since the Johns Hopkins survey was published, the Times has found ample space to report on the affairs of the multimillionaire Astor family, the charges against a local high school teacher of having sex with a student, and countless other news items of even lesser weight. Yet it has had no room to follow up the findings of a study, carried out with a standard scientific method—a "cluster survey"—and published in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet. As a number of public health professionals have explained in letters and blogs to leading newspapers like the Times itself and the Guardian in Great Britain, the most important data provided by the Hopkins survey is the enormous difference between the death rate reported by the surveyed families before and after the US invasion. In the 18 months before the invasion, the more than 12,000 individuals reported 82 deaths, two of them by violence. In the 39 months since the invasion, this group saw 547 deaths, 300 of them by violence. The death rate in this surveyed group jumped from 0.7 percent to 2.5 percent, a rise of nearly 300 percent. Such an increase is utterly incompatible with the official Bush administration estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths—as of December 2005—or the estimates of 50,000 to 60,000 deaths from groups like Iraq Body Count, which have no on-the-ground reporting capability and rely on media accounts. There is every reason to believe that the Times and other US media outlets are refusing to further report and investigate the Johns Hopkins study because its findings demonstrate that both the Bush administration and the American media itself have been carrying out a cover-up of the bloodbath in Iraq. One has only to contrast the silence on the Hopkins study with two equivalent cases: the Kosovo War of 1999 and the Darfur conflict of the past three years. In Kosovo, the media readily echoed the Clinton administration claims that tens, even hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians had been massacred by the Serbian military and paramilitary forces. In fact, the death toll, horrendous as it was, came to several thousands, with crimes committed on both sides of the conflict between the Serb forces and the CIA-backed Kosovo Liberation Army. But the US media blared out numbers that suggested death on a Holocaust-like scale in order to swing public opinion behind the NATO war against Serbia. More recently, the Times has been one of the publications most adamant about the necessity for UN or NATO intervention in Darfur, in the western Sudan. Using statistical methods no different from those employed by the Johns Hopkins study in Iraq, humanitarian aid organizations have produced credible estimates that some 200,000 people may have died of starvation and ethnic killings by militias backed by the central government in Sudan. The US government and the American media generally have labeled the killings in Darfur as genocide. According to the Hopkins study, the Iraq war has taken three times as many lives as the bloodbath in Sudan, a country whose population is roughly equal to Iraq’s. The Bush administration is thus implicated in a crime which approaches those of the Nazis. Indeed, if Americans were dying at the rate that Iraqis have died over the past three years, the death toll would be 7.5 million. There are many other reasons to examine with a critical eye the pretensions of the New York Times to represent a genuine "Fourth Estate." This newspaper is deeply implicated in the drive to condition the American people to accept the war in Iraq. It played the leading role, through the activities of reporters like Judith Miller, in peddling and validating Bush administration lies about weapons of mass destruction, Al Qaeda ties to Iraq, and the supposed Iraqi threat to the United States. Only two months ago, the Times public editor Byron Calame revealed that the newspaper deliberately withheld its report on the Bush administration’s program of illegal domestic spying until after the 2004 election. This decision was taken by executive editor Bill Keller, and its effect was to help insure Bush’s reelection. Mr. Keller will appear in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Monday, October 16, to give the Sixteenth Annual University of Michigan Senate Lecture On Academic And Intellectual Freedom. He has chosen as his topic, "Editors in Chains: Secrets, Security and the Press." After the Times editor gives his account of his moral sweatings over whether or not to make public a criminal conspiracy by the Bush administration against the democratic rights of the American people, he should be asked why his newspaper is choosing to cover up a serious and meticulously documented report on the worst human rights violation of the twenty-first century: the US war in Iraq. US-SEP lecture series The economic and political roots of the crisis of American democracy A lecture by David North, chairman of the World Socialist Web Site University of Michigan Monday, October 30, 7:00 p.m. University of Michigan Michigan Union, Kuenzel Room 530 S. State St. Ann Arbor Also speaking: Jerome White, SEP candidate for Congress in Michigan’s 12th District<hr></blockquote> ====================== Why does the NYT control the news on behalf of the military industrial complex [for want of a better term]? I guess it's been going on since the emergence of societies...it's just become infinitely more difficult in the information age with the Internet...it's become transparent...hence it has lost its power and mystique and become simply annoying. I believe the chaffing caused by this dichotemy will eventually bring about a revolution that will either succeed and be bloodless or be put down and we will enter an era with huge prison camps that have, apparently already been built for the purpose. This is one of the biggest issues of our times...the 'truth explosion'. People will be forced to choose between access to the truth or 'freedom'. hmmmmmmmmmmm. gc <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/indifferent.gif ALT=":|">

by **DireStrike** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:21 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>This is one of the biggest issues of our times...the 'truth explosion'. People will be forced to choose between access to the truth or 'freedom'.<hr></blockquote> If that is the case, how convenient that we already have our very own pop-culture, smash hit template for how to act in this situation! We all saw how the Matrix ended for those that chose the truth... most of them... while cypher eats his steak. If he had just pulled all the plugs right away like a good boy, the system would have given him his reward. Ignorance is bliss.

by **greencrow0** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:44 pm

Sorry Dire Strike...didn't watch The Matrix so you'll have to clarify that for me. Personally, I'm getting very impatient with the current Cat and Mouse game going on between the lefties and the MSM over the truth. I would like to see the war over the truth come to a head...mano a mano...but it seems ever more unlikely this will be the case. The MSM covets its main weapon in the battle...silence. It will not directly confront the enemy...those of us who demand the truth...but will ignore and silence us...all the while planting disinformation and using it's other major weapon, ridicule. We need a new schtick to change the pattern. gc

by **sunny** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:49 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>We need a new schtick to change the pattern.<hr></blockquote> Yeah- massive, ultra creative, aggressive/non-violent resisitence. Good luck to us.

by **greencrow0** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 12:54 pm

I think it came to a head for me this weekend...seeing that Angus Reid poll come out about 9/11 that was commissioned by the NYT and CBS news and how it confirmed that only 16% of Americans still believed the Official Version. Yet the NYT and CBS silently dismissed the poll without publishing the results or reinterpreting them, ignoring the primary implications, as in the case of the NYT.... almost as a taunt to us...saying...in effect, we know you know but we don't care...we have the power to do something like this and get away with it. nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

by **greencrow0** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 1:30 pm

<a href="http://villagevoice.com/news/0642,torturetaxi,74732,2.html">villagevoice.com/news/064...732,2.html</a> Footsoldiers in the War for Truth. gc

by **AlicetheCurious** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 2:22 pm

I would say, VERY good read. But, the question imposes itself: how come these planespotters are left alone and not eliminated?

by **DireStrike** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 3:00 pm

Not to go to far off topic, but if anyone hasn't seen the Matrix, you should. I certainly won't be the only one referencing it. It can be taken many ways, but a relevant topic here is that of control systems. And how to escape them, according to hollywood. (Matrix 1: rely on a god-figure savior. Matrix 3: Give up.)

by **greencrow0** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:06 pm

Alice: For the same reason I'm left alone and not eliminated after religiously posting day in and day out on various forums about 9/11 for about three years now. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif ALT=";)"> I suppose your tack is that they're not posting real information because they're still alive.... gc

Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Re: Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Re: Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Re: Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Re: Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Re: Political practices repressed rather than acknowledged

Why is the New York Times silent on massive Iraq death toll?

How convenient

Re: How convenient

Re: How convenient

Re: How convenient

Planespotters - Good Read from The Village Voice

Re: Planespotters - Good Read from The Village Voice

the Matrix

Re: the Matrix

Who is online