Tag Archives: Time Magazine

The Hillary Clinton War Machine banner seen by everyone at 2016 DNC but you.

Posted on by
Reply


PHILADELPHIA, PA- The second day of protest of the 2016 DNC was expected to dwarf Sunday’s impressive turnout, so we hit the Monday rally determined to repeat our photo-op coup of the day before. This time our banner read “HILLARY CLINTON IS THE CANDIDATE OF THE WAR MACHINE” which we knew would ruffle more feathers. We wore costumes, me as American Cowboy Capitalist, my teammate as war victim, in a black burqa, Muslims being both targets and scapegoats of the US War on Islam. Shutters clicked wherever we went, whether our banner was unfurled or not. Professional photographers recorded our names and fellow activists gave us thumbs up and maneuvered to record us on their phones. Some posed beside us, asking companions or strangers to take their selfies. We gave interviews to Time Magazine, the New Yorker, several newspapers, and multiple foreign news outlets. We spoke about the undemocratic character of our party conventions and about Hillary being the establishment warmonger. Having drenched our clothes in Philly’s 95 degree weather, we consoled ourselves that we had absolutely nailed the message.

We’d learned the day before that getting a visual out before a march began was the most fruitful in reaching the media audience. Unless you’re storming the Bastille, protest visuals are not for drawing people to the street. Visual messaging is for the benefit of local television viewers first, who can rush to join in, and news readers second, to give substance to the coverage.

At first we found scant footage of our banner in the Sunday march, but our early morning bannering, meant be a beacon toward which people could gather, garnered a headline photo by the AP. That picture ran on AP articles across the globe, and dominatd images of “DNC protests” before the convention had even begun.

We knew that press coverage would be best before the convention got started, when protests wouldn’t compete with the choreographed performances inside. But we were confident that the first day’s march, as the biggest and most anticipated, would float our antiwar message to the top. Our war-machine slogan appealed to Bernie supporters, to the Greens, and to the antiwar groups.

We went out early and wherever we went we drew thumbs up, applause, fingers pointed our way, cellphones and cameras. Organizers of a Bernie-delegates press conference asked us to be their backdrop. So imagine our surprise when the day’s news images did not include our banner!

Instead media photo editors chose images of Bernie Sanders supporters despondent about his betrayal. In reality, most protesters on Monday were not apprised of Bernie’s formal capitulation. Protesters were upbeat and enthousiastic. The thousands of Berners who marched that day were exuberant about the prospects of their delegates prevailing in the convention. Press photogs must have known something about what their editors wanted, or the heat and exhaustion produced the compositions they needed. News stories of Monday’s start of the DNC ran with images of solitary protesters, looking isolated and resigned.

For our part, we’re certain the photos of our banner will resurface from the files when Hillary’s presidency is in the bag and the war machine is no longer an embargoed issue.

“Ex Machina” heralds creation of life, but Doctor Geekenstein’s blueprint imitates pornography

Posted on by
Reply

ex-machina-tits-ass-mouth
“WHY DID YOU GIVE HER SEXUALITY!?” asks the geek tasked with debugging the anthropomorphic robot. Except they didn’t. Unless by sexuality you mean just the “female” bits and transluscent circuits where her belly and cranium should be.

These filmmakers gave Ms. Machina just the tangibles to titillate pre-sexuals: tits, ass, and a face for, um, facials. Their ideal is basically a blowup doll, upgraded to show off CGI; the Bionic Woman pared of nonessentials for viewers fixated on orifices; imagine the Six Million Dollar Man a cyborg whose flesh parts are lips and phallus. For male heterosexual tastes, a nubile female would have a womb. Otherwise the bare midriff would not be a thing. Nor belly dancing. But no mate of any age can lack a cranium. And a soulmate needs a soul. I think we can say the soul lives in the heart, but I’m pretty sure we manifest its presence under the cranium. A sexual mate, even as a sexual object, must be “all there” in the head, or is that just me?

The film “Her” pared the romantic partner down to a disembodied voice, this film preserves the body but disembowels her.

Presumably the filmmakers screen-tested their heroine on a focus group. If the results decided which virtues a virtual sex object requires for allure and which could be dispensed to skimp on parametric objects, I’m not impressed. Is hair no longer an asset to attractiveness? Ex Machina takes our depilation fetish to its nadir.

Spoiler: I haven’t seen the rest of Ex Machina. Does she have toes? Why or why not? How could she not have toes?

And what about “chemistry”? By chemistry I mean whatever electricity or scents we exude to guide ships in the night. Okay, no doubt biomechanical robots can be modelled to emit pheromones, but I’m sorry that’s about as romantic as boutique soap.

Whatever social commentary we are to make of this “high concept” thought experiment, I’m reminded of attending a lecture given by a geek who Time Magazine listed among the world’s most influencial people. He had coined the term “virtual reality” or some such and had shaped what the internet has become. I wondered why we entrust social engineering to antisocial engineers, then look to them as philosophers endowed with clarevoyance. With arrested adolescents for our gurus, of course “the internet is for porn.”

This rock could change the world if thrown through the right window

Posted on by
Reply

Time Magazine coverBy “power the world” does Time Magazine mean HEAT IT?! To a rolling boil? –How incredibly inane. This piece of rock’s jagged asymmetry (probably to differentiate it from a lump of coal – the other fossil fuel) and its other-earthly lighting, mean to suggest shale has a meteoric value. The disingenuous cover story, “why shale can solve the energy crisis”, is a curve ball pretending the problem is supply not demand, and FRACKING is the hero not the terminator. Let’s throw this projectile back like we would ordinary crowd control ordnance deployed to disorient waking masses. I think it’s fitting that Time has given its cover to a rock. In the hands of children it’s the bane of US and Israeli occupiers, it’s what defended Tahrir Square, and it will probably be the only sidearm we’ll be left to bear as our own occupiers try to forestall global revolution. But it’s enough.

Time Mag trio wants to stop violence. Whose? Lone psychos not sociopaths

Posted on by
Reply

OMG YES. OF COURSE. STOP THE VIOLENCE. Wait. By whose pinheaded definition? “Too many children are dying” exclaims Gabrielle Giffords! But looking into the eyes of these posterchild sociopaths, you know they’re only talking about domestic gun deaths, the collateral damage of our Western culture of violence. Time Magazine isn’t taking us yahoos to task on football, rape, enslavement and WAR. These three neo law-enforcers are not talking about American systemic acts of aggression, one Sandy Hook after the next behind the curtain of this theatrical “OUR children!” frenzy, the genocidal capitalist global war on people.

Time Magazine spites its face

Posted on by
2

This week’s cover of Time has to rank at their most scurrilous, a baldfaced attempt to evoke the iconic National Geographic cover, this time figuratively defaced. It’s Mona Lisa given a Howl; The Green Revolution’s “Neda” shot in the head, instead of the evocative-deficient not-in-your-face mortal wound elsewhere. If the Taliban cut off this young woman’s nose as a warning to others not to abandon their families, Time Magazine wants to broaden the extortion. Here’s “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” But instead of counterspinning the Wikileaks’ Afghan War Logs, Time’s imagery reinforces the triumph of the leaked documents. This is the barbarity which will face the Afghans collaborators, those unmasked by the leaks, and those who might still be induced, in spite of the now certainty their confidence will be betrayed.

Time’s editors assure us that the young Afghan woman is safe from reprisal, held at an undisclosed location protected by armed guard. Do they take responsibility for her “If We Leave Afghanistan?” Time’s exploitation of this young Afghan is direct extortion.

Polk awards Neda midst propaganda

Posted on by
Reply

How do you give formal recognition to journalism merit in a media landscape adulterated with propaganda? Award the dubious distinction to the pseudonym for commercial disinformation: anonymous! This year a Polk Award went to the unknown Youtube videographer who captured the death of Iran “Green Revolution” martyr Neda Soltani, a wrenching sequence which transcended exploitation to give iconic status to Iran’s election discontents. Fitting, while another snuff film is circulated to drum up interest in the Vancouver Olympics.

The Wide World of Sports used to loop the famous ski jump wipe-out, but we were assured the skier escaped without major injury. If he’d died the footage would have been buried like that of race care crashes. But that was another age. Now a fatal luge accident gets played again and again, the pretext being to compete with Youtube, but obviously it’s to amp interest in what has traditionally remained a lackluster Olympic category.

What’s the point of awarding nobody? Time Magazine did it when they named you as Person of the Year. It’s called pandering to everyman, this time as a bald excuse to give Neda another chance to incite anti-Iranian sentiment.

Police/press foist huff n’ puff terrorism

Posted on by
Reply

Ojore Nuru LutaloTime Magazine got caught darkening OJ’s mugshot to make him look menacing, so now the Otero County Sheriff makes sure to art direct the original. Lean into the shadow Mr. Lutalo, let’s see your game face, thank you! Alas, mugshots of even the least of arrestees circulate so widely online, the public can recognize when a suspect is made to look like the Big Bad Wolf. This is 64-year-old Terrorist Ojore Lutalo, the “Amtrak Anarchist” who went one better than Xmas Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab by not even packing combustibles. Ojore is scheduled to go before the Otero District Court Friday. 2/3 UPDATE: ALL CHARGES DROPPED! With apologies I hope. Move along, nothing to see here. As simple as that?

Barack Obama Nobel Prizefighter

Posted on by
2

Barack Obama action figure James BondAt what line in the sand will we be able to say for certain that President Obama’s hope bubble is a bust? Half of you are laughing at my naivety, the others are hushing me with your fingers crossed. Will it take a nuclear attack on Iran? More bailout? Less health? For example, when will we know whether Obama will be more a Kissinger Peace Laureate than a Mandela? A decision on Afghanistan? We have it already.

The BBC is reporting that as the US thanked Britain for recommitting forces to NATO in Afghanistan, it assured its British allies that Obama would soon be substantially increasing our own military forces. The announcement is to be made next week, the surge, 45,000 more soldiers. The White House emphatically denies this story, stating that President Obama “had not yet made a decision on troop numbers” and “would make up his mind in the coming weeks.”

And there’s your answer. And we’ve had it for awhile.

I’ll bet as a supporter of Barack Obama, you had made up your mind on Iraq and Afghanistan before you elected the hope candidate. You probably based your support for Senator Obama on the intuition that a young man smart as that had already made up his mind too, certainly on the moral issues.

What does it mean now, that Obama might be still thinking on it?

If Obama had made up his mind, or has, he’s struggling now to make up his mind about how to tell you.

Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan is not ethically complicated. Financially it’s a tough move because you’ve got all those war contractor profiteers who’ve got to be weened cautiously. But there is no intermediary way. So long as the US retains authority, it’s an occupation. So long as one US company is collecting reconstruction funds, the US is serving its own interests. Rationalizations to remain as peacekeepers are just excuses to keep our hand in the till. There is no peacekeeping role for the US. We must get out, and proffer gobs of restitution.

You know who should get the Nobel Peace Prize? The Nobel committee. For their valiant hopeful effort, at the risk of looking foolish. They merit at least a nomination for Time Magazine Persons Of The Year.

The tiers of torture inside American prisons

Posted on by
4

It’s been ages since I saw an article in Time Magazine worth reading, but ‘Are Prisons Driving Prisoners Mad?‘ does ask the right question It even goes so far as to answer the question honestly, and then to conclude that driving prisoners insane is in nobody’s real interests. There is though another question which is, ‘Are the Prisons Deliberately Driving Prisoners Insane?’ I believe that the answer is YES, which in turn leads to yet another question. ‘Why?’

The short article in Time hints that YES, the prisons are deliberately doing what they are doing, and says that it is out of society’s relatively normal urge, which they call ’emotional sense’ to make life harsh for those who have committed brutal acts. They conclude though, that ’emotional sense’ does not make practical sense. That’s because some of these now insane prisoners get eventually released back out into society and there they are even more likely to do harm than before.

What was interesting about this relatively honest Time Magazine commentary, is that nowhere did it ever call what was going on TORTURE. It did say that examining how SuperMax prisons and isolation function to permanently injure people did open up the need for courts to examine these practices and to maybe stop them. That somehow a line had been crossed?

So what amount of torture crosses the line for Time/Life/ AOL and folks like them? Apparently they have some second thoughts about turning people into vegetables and raving psychotics through sensory deprivation? But that is just one tier of torture within America’s Gulags. You get to that tier because other tiers of torture also are in place. SuperMaxes and isolation chambers begin in stages to torture prisoners. Are the earlier stage of solitary confinement deemed normal and appropriate by Time Magazine?

Take for example, the routine separation of prisoners in America from their children and spouses? Is that not a form of torture and prisoner abuse, too. Is that not the first tier towards driving human beings insane by torture? After all, what is a norm in prisoner abuse in American jails is not the norm in many other countries. In other systems of detention, prisoners are not forced into homosexuality, nor separated from the calming effects of holding their babies and hugging their older children. Is it not a form of torture to not allow normal human contact of this type for prisoners that will, in their majority, some day return to society?

Also, is it not torture to physically and emotionally allow some prisoners to torture others. The prison administrators like to charge that this is something that prisoners do to themselves and that they are doing all they can to stop it. Does anybody really believe this? Actually, just like in our foreign wars, the ‘deciders’ in control use one group against another, and afterwards blame them all for being responsible for the mayhem that is presided over. Inside the prison, homosexuals are often used against the others as informants, and heterosexuals are used against the homosexuals. Blacks vs Whites vs Hispanics. Short timers vs lifers, and lifers vs short timers. The prison administrative gang lords it over the prisoner gangs, and the prisoner gangs fight back, but usually against each other. The forms of torture administered within the American prisons are varied and often quite camouflaged. but they are there and constant. The greatest torture in the prisons is arbitrariness. It is used as a constant stick by the legal system.

All this mayhem encouraged amongst the tiers of torture inside American prisons only goes to reinforce the excuse for having so many locked up. ‘See? We got to do it! It’s not that we are cruel, oh hell no! It’s just that they are animals!’ But that’s all really a lie.

The truth is, that America’s tiers of torture inside the prison system were deliberately put into effect because the economically elite ruling class hates the poor, hates the weak, hates the people they rob and abuse, and want to torture them. It’s no mistake at all, and they encourage a mob to support them in their own hatred towards those they despise. The torture is there, because the rulers want to break others down into dysfunctional, mentally and physically destroyed human beings. This is the same nastiness and viciousness of those that burned witches at the stake, lynched innocent Blacks, beat and whipped slaves and prisoners of the past. It’s still going on, though the forms have evolved.

The tiers of torture within the US prison system are twin to the secret rendition centers and Guantanamo where our military abuses POWs held without any due process. So the answer to Time Magazine’s question is…. Yes, US prisons are driving prisoners insane. Thats’ what torture is meant to do, and torture works.

Should we honor the torturers and their work in America, Time? You do in most of your commentaries and ‘news’. We need to stop torturing all prisoners, and not just those held by the military.

Time Magazine and You

Posted on by
3

I just chanced to see the cover of Time magazine at a check-out stand. I’d read about their dubious Person of the Year end-run: it was us, I mean, you. The cover was as I had read about it online, a picture of a computer monitor, over a keyboard, the screen reflecting back whoever had picked up the magazine. Person of the year: You. It stated. Because “You control the Information Age.” I would add one other caption: joke’s on You.

Why didn’t anyone tell me Time’s reflective screen was framed with web-video controls? That’s not the frame of a flat-screen monitor, that’s the frame of a YouTube video! Everyone thought Time was awarding 2006 to the you’s of the blogosphere. They’re commemorating the internet incarnation of America’s Funniest Videos! You, Buffoon! You, Stupid Pet Trick!

I’m as excited as the next about the potential of YouTube, but I think it would be too early to say that someone on a YouTube video has yet merited Person of the Year. The history of dance guy? Congressman “Macaca?” Borat and his trailers?

Time’s hat tip was interpreted as having addressed the internet’s new talking heads, the bloggers. That too I think would be decidedly premature. The tsunami of web public opinion is a phenom no doubt, and Time and its ilk could take more notice, but Person of the Year, that’s false praise for the immodest. And Time has clocked us there, bloggers are self-gloried public diarists.

Time gives it away with their big lie, telling us you control the information age, just as the telecommunications giants have succeeded in legislating a tighter rein. Bloggers and YouTubers are the torrent of information, yes. Time and Co hold the controls.

How well is the war in Iraq going?

Posted on by
1

Finally there is unity! The war in Iraq is not going well for the United States so say the press, the politicians, Rumsfield, even. Oh the suffering amongst the British and Americans. They did not forsee the unfolding problems. If only the Iraqis would act normal!

It’s so bad they say, you think that the American government would be suing for peace? Cut in run, don’t cut and run? How do we get out of this unfolding disaster for our beloved country? So now we are awash in crocodile tears we are. Boohoohoo. Our poor suffering America. Yes, and the entire elite spectacle is so sickening it makes one want to vomit.

And, yes, this spectacle even includes our churchly ‘peace movement’. One group of kind people, the nuns. were rushing around Colorado last week to send canned goods to the soldiers and their families. And now, the CS pacifists are beginning a countdown. Tick-tock-tick-tock. Look what’s been done to our soldiers! We are nearing the magical 3,000 mark! Time to light some candles and pray.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Iraqis, too! Mention them at the press release for when the clock strikes 3. Don’t let it strike 4! We beg of you. One would open one’s mouth to say something to them about this sad approach, but for the fact that lighting a candle or two is a major ‘peace action’ for them. They’re in motion now! So better to remain mum so that at least the ten or fifteen of them get their pictures in The Gazette and Indy as concerned folk.

All this wailing and despair. Both Democrats and Republicans are creasing their brows with worry and cold sweat. We’ve lost Iraq they moan. It’s all going so wrong! It’s become like one big sorry soap opera. Oh the agony, and Oh the guilt. We tried to do good, but we failed. Why, oh why, oh why? Maybe it was them? Yes that’s it. The Arabs cannot be trained!

All this would be way comical if it weren’t so absolutely pathetic. First all, the start of wartime didn’t begin yesterday with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. It didn’t begin with 9/11. It didn’t even begin with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. So where do all these stupid calculations begin? The liberal churchgoing peacenics would have it all start with the number ZERO, and would have our time of great despair calculated now at 3,000. It’s very Biblical to do it that way, but it is utter nonsense. US foreign policy effecting Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq have killed millions. ‘We’ lost less than 3,000 US soldiers in this time, and all America begins to cry like babies! Jesus H. Christ! Talk about being absolutely self-centered? YES, our society definitely takes the cake!

All this hysteria proceeds from the previous nonsense we have been spoon fed. Stuff about WOMD, protecting the sovereign country of Kuwait, helping establish democracy in the Middle East, and so on for ad nauseum. Can our elderly still remember all the nonsense about what a supposedly remarkable man was the Shah of iran? I date myself here, because I certainly can. Time Magazine, and all the usual rest of the pornographic US press, loved the guy! The Shah was the world master of running a state torture regime, like the one that America’s top criminals now copy so fanatically. Back then, it was claimed in the US that he was a man ahead of his time. Oh such a teacher that Donald and his ilk had! The Shah. Oh shit! Ask the British and they will show you how it started all way before even then.

And then, the unfortunate takedown. This modern day American hero, the Shah, fell. Tears. Where did ‘we’ go wrong? Where did this modern leader go wrong? We need to arm Osama and gang to the tune of multi-billions, and make the Soviets have their own Vietnam. Osama the freedom fighter! We need to cook up a war with Iran to show them we wouldn’t let them get away with thumping our patron saint, The Shah. So America and its buddies, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia armed Saddam Hussein. Killed a million plus.

Fast forward to now. Where did Bush go wrong, The chimp? Boohoohoo. It’s a bloodbath. And we get the ‘debate’ of the press corp buffoons. Stay the course, or cut and run? Yeah, but how ’bout we all just throw up? This is not a real debate our elites are engaging in, just a charade. A country that allowed its elites to destroy the lives of millions in this stretch of ME alone, deserves to go bankrupt. And we are! Boohoohoo. How we suffer they say! We approach 3,000 of our own dead, in the midst of this shower of blood we have constructed for others, and all the press propaganda brigade can talk about is American trauma! Nauseating. The real trauma for America will come when the bill arrives in the mail, Chumps.

Let’s face it. The war is going rather well. There have been 2 main goals for Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Lockheed, and President Cheney. Max out the profits that can be financed from the public treasury. And control the oil. These pied pipers of the Democratic and Republican politician rats are not going to ‘cut and run’. From what? They’re looking to extend the war, are they not? And for good reason. The war in Iraq is going well for them. Why not take it further? Why not make it permanent war? After all these decades of killing, the local peacenics can’t even get it together enough to get 100 people out to pray and light candles. The Iraq War is going well for the war machine. Three thousand? Oh get real, please.

The war in Iraq is going well; there is no anger in the air. Only religious pacifist good will. Feliz Navidad. When people get angry, they will not light candles and meditate. And without real anger, the bloodbath will go on.

Time Magazine banality of puff

Posted on by

Dead presidentBagNewsNotes drew my attention to the cover of a recent Time Magazine, a posterized image of Iranian President Mahmmud Ahmadinejad. The photo was manipulated reminiscent of OJ’s mug being darkened for sinister effect.
 
Readers commented on Ahmadinejad being made a cartoon, or a throwback to student movement political posters. I’d put it back further. I think the photo editors at Time are after a tin-type look, suggesting the Islamic Revolution is profoundly backward, belonging to the century before last perhaps.

The composition of the picture, particularly the woodgrainish, oddly insufficient backdrop behind Ahmadinejad’s head, reminds me of the post-mortem photographs of dead outlaws in the American West. Pictures of the outlaws brought to justice, laid out semi-vertically against their wood-box coffins, were circulated in the old west to publicize their successful apprehension. This provided proof for everyone to see with their own eyes that a feared outlaw was dead.

Add to Ahmadinejad’s resemblance the dark hair and beard and I think this Time cover emulates a photograph made iconic in Latin America at least, spread around by our government as a warning to others: the Dead Che Guevara.

How do you suppose the Time editors excuse themselves for their art direction whim? Do they think readers will accept it as fair that one personage be accorded an intimate portrait on the cover of Time, and yet another receives a editorialized visage?

The editors at Time can’t expect their readers to remain naive for much longer. I’m encouraged by the trend in children’s TV cartoons to mock the manipulation toolbag of media artists. The cliche of Bambi Eyes for example is mocked from Spongebob to Jimmy Neutron. They make obvious the deliberate use of caricatured expressions when they are being manipulative. Our children’s media literacy will be greatly enhanced and Time’s techniques will have to become more sophisticated.

Haditha
I had a chance to peruse a copy of this issue at the dentist’s. Further inside is a profile of one of the marines, The Face of Haditha, on trial for a possible war crime in Haditha. Shooting 24 Iraqi civilians, some of them at point blank range. Sargeant Frank Wuterich speaks out, the headline reads, “for the very first time.” The layout features a large picture of Wuterich on the left and a brief bio and interview on the right. Let me cut to the meat of the article, Wuterich is not permitted by his lawyer to say anything about what happened at Haditha except that he believes with incredulity that the actions of he and his comrades were within their legal rules of engagement. Wuterich also ponders innocently why he has not been asked more by the military investigators about what happened at Haditha. Thus, Time Inc has slipped us two items: the suggestion of innocence, and the suggestion that the prosecutors are not after the truth.

Take a look at the photograph. Sargeant Frank Wuterich stands with his arms crossed in frank honesty. He’s got big brown eyes and he’s addressing us squarely, looking like our paperboy come to collect our subscription. He’s young, attractive as American Pie, with big doe eyes. He’s got a partially concealed tattoo on his forearm and in the article we read he has several. One tattoo he was reluctant to show the photographer, we’re told, is of a dagger skewering severed fingers and eyeballs, his wife “doesn’t like that one so much.”

Bloggers
On the issue’s back page is a whimsical article by book reviewer Lev Grossman defending himself against blogger Edward Champion who has been picking on him. Grossman’s piece is an honest rebuttal to a difference of opinion, but he ends it with the usual dismissal columnists use to trump their blogger counterparts, “at least I’m getting paid to write this.”

Paid by whom Mr. Grossman? By a media conglomerate which is distorting the news to an audience of readers less culturally savvy than a common child? Good for you.