SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the when-popularity-at-home-lags,-start-a-war dept.
Iran says it's 'completely ready for war' after US official confirms it shot down American drone
In a major provocation, Iran shot down an unarmed and unmanned U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton drone while it was flying in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz Thursday, a U.S. official told ABC News.
The incident is sure to trigger serious discussions within the Trump administration about how to respond to a direct attack on a U.S. military asset that goes beyond recent attacks in the Middle East that the U.S. has blamed on Iran.
Gulf crisis: US confirms drone was shot down by Iranian missile
A US military surveillance drone has been shot down by Iranian forces while flying over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said the drone had violated Iranian airspace. But US military said it had been over international waters. IRGC commander-in-chief Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said the downing of the drone sent a "clear message to America" that Iran's borders were its "red line".
It comes at a time of escalating tension between the US and Iran. On Monday, the US defence department said it was deploying 1,000 extra troops to the region in response to "hostile behaviour" by Iranian forces. The US has also accused Iran of attacking two oil tankers with mines last Thursday just outside the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman. Iran rejects the allegation.
Previously: Two Oil Tankers Attacked, US Blames Iran
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:34PM (1 child)
The problem is that the MIC and their servants (the politicians on both sides of the aisle) learned some stuff from Vietnam, but the anti-war hippies mostly didn't. What the MIC learned:
1. Hide as much as you possibly can about what you are doing from the American public. Things you saw in Vietnam that turned public opinion that they went to great lengths to hide in subsequent wars: Images of killed or wounded US soldiers, killed or wounded Iraqi civilians, indeed any video footage where the military hasn't either provided the film or staged events for pliant reporters, total number of KIA and WIA and POW on both sides, and of course the total cost in money. If there are reporters in-country that aren't doing what you want them to be doing, kill them [wikileaks.org].
2. Don't draft people, because some of those people you draft and their parents are going to be educated and smart and rich enough to be able to organize effectively and start social movements. Instead, recruit people who are poor, non-white or white-trash rural folks, just out of high school, ambitious, and naive enough.
3. Make sure to have an ongoing propaganda campaign about how awesome the military is. Among the implementations of this policy are the NFL and the Captain America films. In short, any time you see US military equipment or personnel in popular media, you're viewing government propaganda.
4. Never let the anti-war people get on TV, or call them wimps or crazy if they somehow manage to get in front of the cameras. Congresscritters included. For instance, back in 2004, my thoroughly anti-war congressman was in a national debate and was asked not about policy but about his experiences with UFOs. This is also why the freedom of assembly basically no longer exists.
The hippies learned basically nothing from what worked and didn't work against the Vietnam War, and in particular didn't understand and still largely don't understand how to use popular media to tell the story they want to tell.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:02PM
For context, see for example https://medium.com/@barrettbrown/we-exposed-hbgary-hbgary-came-after-us-the-intercepts-sam-biddle-helped-85d8060b92c8 [medium.com]. From point 2 in the letter:
More context is the bibliography of Edward Bernays, marketing psychology, data mining and so on. The point being that immeasurable quantities of time and moneys have been spent on trying to figure out how to shape the direction that society should take, in the presence of adverse conditions (e.g. dissenting voices). From this point of view, it is almost a miracle that there still are dissenters. At the very least, the ownership class certainly seems to want the society we live in (i.e. resource grabs for feedstock), and the worker class is too inundated with work to achieve the level of organization that is necessary to effect change -- which doesn't even raise the question of whether they really want change.
Disclaimer: I am not a US or Iranian citizen. On a side note, I think globalism is an effort to pass imperialism over into legitimacy by unifying everyone, new-world-order style. Maybe people in power who think imperialism is a necessary evil -- and really a terrible thing -- find in globalism the next best thing. Unfinished thought, kind of.