#In this house we don't buy military propaganda

[andromeda-lv]

PSA, Kaladin and Adolin both have HUNDREDS of times bigger kill count than Shallan.

[woodsfae]

Babylon 5 s02e15: And Now for a Word so2 Table of Contents • previous episode

September 16, 2259! Love me a good documentary!

Never not going to be funny to me that G'Kar's actor and Talia Winter's actor have the same given name (Andrea).

This is really not the time for reporters to be harassing personnel for soundbites.

:| and a very fuck you too, Ambassador Mollari.

Love having the dockworkers back!!

"Overall I've found this to be a good working environment. I've learned a lot here. […] Yes, it's a calm, pleasant environment. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get upset here." - random Earthforce personnel, lying like a liar

Stephen Franklin channeling classic, spacephobic McCoy here.

Oh my god, seventeen-year-old Stephen Franklin either accidentally killed his friend hiding in an airlock, or watched his friend accidentally kill himself messing around in an airlock. It's ambiguous, and horrifying either way.

Good trauma story sharing. But for real, how can he even live in space after that? I'm horrified and impressed.

Dang, that's pretty bad. Almost 60 deaths total, multiple bombings, and several narrowly-averted wars. In three years.

Literally idk how G'Kar can keep his composure. The Centauri are war criming like crazy.

This documentary format is actually delightful. I am loving seeing how the actors are choosing to portray their characters being interviewed. It's so fucking fascinating.

Susan Ivanova continues to be The Best.

Garibaldi wants to be bored and to make a difference. I propose that he could make the most difference by not assaulting people or threatening them with his rank.

This reporter isn't very likeable, which makes me wonder if she's going to end up doing something impactful.

"I am a friend, in peace." and then being met with such vitriol and journalistic malfeasance! This reporter sucks!

A hell of a thirty-six hours to happen to arrive to document!

Fuck, can you imagine a space battle going on outside b5's fragile little, punctured shell and being sent to start repairs while unknown, hostile aliens are still fighting outside? Hope they get hazard pay.

Yeah, I'd be tempted to get into a spacesuit.

Narn vs Centauri literally fighting outside B5 is a significant escalation of risk.

G'Kar backstory!! G'Kar's dad served the Centauri and as a punishment for an accident, was killed horribly over days and died in front of G'Kar. That'd drive anyone into resistance, I think! I respect B5 more for calling it a resistance in-universe, especially compared to in DS9 when they repeatedly and insistently called the Bajoran resistance terrorists doing terrorism. The Narns are increasingly impressive the more we learn about them. They went from low tech to occupied to equaling to if not surpassing the Centauri in a hundred years.

"The Narn have rewritten history enough, don't you think? [..] We have to take a stand. They are the ones who declared war, not us. We want only peace."

:| And then drop a Centauri war cruiser to blockade B5.

A commercial for PsiCorps. I have…so much to say about this. tbh, it's better propaganda than the US military recruitment videos I've seen. Hate that the PsiCops might just beam into your house! Did we already know they have teleportation? Or is that just creative license taken by the commercial?

Super uncool how, yet again, a critique of current events in the 90s being equally as relevant to 2023 current events.

Lotta hard stances being taken. Sheridan is so calm under pressure, but it's weirdly believable that he can out-yell the entire council and then go and calmly discuss the likelihood of mortal threats being mere bluffs. Aaaand awkwardly trying not to make eye contact with the camera that's in his line of sight, hah.

eeeee yikes another space battle! Third for the episode, I think.

I wonder how they clean up space debris. Surely they can't leave it to pose a hazard around the station.

Londo is leaning away from the camera a lot while he talks. Can't even buy his own bullshit.

The reporter was so mean and unethical to Delenn, and Delenn is talking to her again anyway. She's too good and her kindness is too calculated to be deterred by a dickish reporter. Plus, I bet the Minbari reporters are way meaner. Instead of being like "You do war crimes!" they'd be like "You should kill yourself so your memory can be less of a stain on your clan's honor than your life is being right now." Still, they made Delenn cry which isn't exactly a fun human experience to have for the first time on camera.

The inspiring peace lecture would be more believable if it wasn't being delivered by the military.

Anyhow, a very fun episode, especially considering how dark the topics were! Babylon 5 is alone in space, very puncturable, and hosting volatile political enemies bound on murder and/or war.

On to the next!

[silverfox66]

As an American can I just say how fucking shameful it is how right you are that you can't depend on the USA

Like our leaders are making us into fucking fools who no one can trust cause oh... looks like we only honor commitments when we feel like it. The speaker can single handedly hold up aid for months by just not putting it to a vote, and the house can't even get it's shit together enough to sign the discharge petition to get it on the floor

It's just a disgrace, it's horrific and vile, and if all that weren't enough it's just plain stupid. America gets... fuck it gets so much out of sending military aid to Ukraine

It gets to fight a strategic rival without risking a single troop, it gets to dump old inventory where a lot of it was probably going to have to be decommissioned, we don't even send most of the money cause what that money actually mostly goes towards is restocking our own arsenal with new equipment which pays Americans wages we get to tax... the list of selfish reasons to help is almost endless and yet these pricks still fight tooth and nail to do the wrong thing

And once again, it makes us look like undependable allies cause we're fucking being undependable, and that weakens us so much strategically. Like even if you don't care about russia, it makes our allies in the Pacific question if they can actually depend on our support

Sorry, this stuff's just on my mind a whole lot, and would you believe that it's hard to find other Americans you can actually have this conversation with? So many smart people I know who in spite of that act like they don't have a brain in their head and just don't care

Meanwhile johnson is complaining that we need aid to Israel... well if that's what you want prick, isn't it nice that you have that sitting on your desk, already passed in the senate, and all you have to do it put it to a vote? Lightning speed legislation if you ignore the months you've stalled with it (and he's gonna send them on vacation yet again to stall more)

The fact one man can hold up the whole system, and the fact like 5 far right maga members can take the whole house hostage and the gop can't even muster the guts to sign a discharge petition... it's just sick, it makes the US into a fucking laughing stock and it's deserved

Can't even imagine if trump wins, mr wants to encourage russia to attack NATO allies. The fact that... that so few other Americans seem to care he said that, the fact that any one even considers voting for him as he sets all out political alliances on fire for his own gains... the hell is wrong with people?

Again, sorry. I just... this stuff eats at me sometimes. Just how fucking bad America is doing not just at being decent, but at serving our own interests

We could have put China and Iran in their place (something maga people claim to want) if when this invasion started we'd just dumped all out old inventory straight away, made clear we were loading up the pipeline with everything Ukraine needed, and basically said you don't fuck with the US industrial base

Might have even stopped the war, a lot harder to want to continue when you know the valve on the military aid was fully opened and then smashed so the artillery shells and fighters won't stop coming

Instead we rolled over and trickled things in, made ourselves look weak

Just can't stand it, just can't fucking stand how this country is run. Again, even if you don't care about the civilians killed in drone strikes, we should at least care about our own strategic interests

But we don't, far to many selfish scumbags, and russian stooges, and people who buy russian propaganda hook line and sinker

Anyway... hope you have a good day. Like I said, just know hardly anyone I can say this stuff to. No one seems to listen... and even if they did, I can shout all day and it's not like I can force johnson to act like an actual human being instead of toxic sludge in a suit

Just pass the damn aid, every last person with half a brain is begging you to including our generals

It makes me so frustrated and it's so damn shameful, a real stain on this country

It's such a shame that America has become an unreliable ally, I so much wish it was different. And it's bizarre to me how one speaker has so much power to block the voting of a bill. It's seems highly undemocratic to me.

Aiding Ukraine is the cheapest way to defeat America's number 1 enemy: russia. But decades of pro-russian propaganda has been so effective, it has infected American politicians and made them unwilling to stand up for freedom and democracy.

And I talk about the USA now, but here in Western Europe, we have the same problem. High on cheap gas, we have funded the russian war-machine for decades. That money has been turned into weapons and is now killing Ukrainians on a daily basis. And now we are too much of a coward to switch to a war economy.

Sorry, this stuff's just on my mind a whole lot, and would you believe that it's hard to find other Americans you can actually have this conversation with? So many smart people I know who in spite of that act like they don't have a brain in their head and just don't care

Oh same here. I can talk about this dire situation in Ukraine with only a handful of other people. Other people support Ukraine overall, but passively. And we need people to support Ukraine actively, we need more people to sound the alarm bells. But it feels like we're shouting into the void right now. Simply not enough people care.

I hope you have a nice day as well and thank you for standing with Ukraine.

[canichangemyblogname]

"So-- what-- you think the Israeli military is lying about the Hamas command center under al-Shifa?"

I do not have the strategic intelligence to disprove their claim because I am a lone citizen living on the other side of the world. I have no way to verify the claim. I know they have fabricated claims and evidence before to justify the mass murder of Palestinians. I know that counterterrorism is a convenient justification and convenient "in" that global powers will blindly accept. I know that violence is preceded and succeeded by propaganda.

And I also know, from my background and education in International Relations-- with a focus on terrorism, authoritarianism, and war, that separatists, militants, and terrorists are often entwined with the civilian population. They sleep next door. They might utilize community spaces. They drive on "civilian" roads. They buy groceries down the street. They do not have a dedicated military infrastructure the same way a nation-state does. So, they simply live and exist among civilians.

On Thursday, 26 October 2023, the BBC's Rebecca Kesby covered this in her interview with Lt Col Lerner of the Israeli Occupying Forces:

Rebecca Kesby (BBC): How is it possible to conduct these kinds of airstrikes where you know civilians are living? Lt Col Lerner (IOF Spokesperson): So, this is the challenge of modern warfare, especially against a ruthless, merciless organization like Hamas. Our role is to operate within the realm of the laws of armed conflict to distinguish between civilians, to distinguish between the non-combatants and the terrorists, and weigh out the military necessity of those activities in a proportionate way. Indeed, it's a huge challenge and, unfortunately, the images coming out of Southern Gaza are heartbreaking. But we can't not do anything. The situation where a terrorist organization has utilized all of the tools of government that they have. So, that is the problem we are facing. When they put their explosive drones, for instance, on the rooftops of their houses, they have no regard for whoever's living in those houses-- Kesby: But as you-- as you say-- Lerner: --but that does become the military target-- Kesby: Sure, but, ugh-- Lerner: --and we have to identify if we can limit the civilian impact. Kesby: Sure. But it is a pretty common tactic of militants to immerse themselves in civilian areas, isn't it? Does it justify, though, attacking them in those areas in the way that you are? I mean, it's the wrong tactic, isn't it? Because it's not working. You haven't crossed Hamas yet.

This is what most people don't know about counterterrorism strategies. Civilians and civilian infrastructure aren't collateral; they're often the targets. It is impossible to conduct a counterterrorism campaign without destabilizing a country or region and without excessive civilian casualties. Tragedy is the point, even though tragedy, destabilization, and disaffection breed extremism and encourage the use of terrorist tactics.

This is what I am *trying* to illustrate to people. The question is not whether Israel is or is not telling the truth. Getting into arguments on the meaning and intention of things is ultimately a distraction. Because the question you should be asking is whether the end (destruction of Hamas) justifies the means (collective punishment of the Palestinian people). I am trying to get people to question the idea that the label of "terrorist" allows a state to use any means necessary, no matter how brutal. Does a state actually have a legitimate claim to the use of any means of force against security threats? And should labeling a group "terrorist" allow a government to legally circumvent people's rights and end their lives?

I know there are tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip. It is a fact. I know they were dug to circumvent the 16-year Israeli blockade and have been primarily used to smuggle in water, food, underwear, and goats. I know that these tunnels stretch beneath the entirety of the Strip, under homes and schools and streets and refugee camps, etc. I am sure Hamas militants have used them to travel. The question isn't if a member of Hamas has ever used one of these tunnels for any number of different operations. The question is: does any Hamas member's use of a tunnel or street or community center or grocery store or apartment justify carpet bombing the Palestinian people, with over 8,000 dead and over 20,000 wounded (numbers as of Oct. 30)?

It does not. Nothing justifies bombing a hospital. Nothing justifies these kinds of numbers. Over 20,000 wounded. We're fast approaching 10,000 dead. Nothing justifies this.

The logic doesn't even add up. They are bombing above-ground apartment buildings and schools and hospitals to target *checks note* subterranean tunnels and command centers. Their tactics don't even work.

It is well-known-- at least among those in academic circles-- that modern counterterrorism strategies are wildly ineffective. But there are money interests involved in counterterrorism. In the US, think Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, or RTX Corp/Raytheon Technologies. There are also often land interests involved and capitalistic interests involved. For example, people are already discussing leveling Gaza to build resort towns. Israel has long talked about their one-state solution that they call “Greater Israel,” and prospectors are already salivating at the vast natural gas reserves off the coast of Gaza. “Gaza, the next Dubai, but only if it’s Israeli,” because people genuinely think the impoverished conditions inside Gaza are entirely the fault of Hamas and never the fault of Israeli apartheid or the 16-year Israeli blockade. “We cut off their food, water, electricity, and commerce. Now, look at how backwards and undeveloped they are! Bet we could do better with the land.”

"Terrorism" is used as a pretext, but involvement in terror-related occupation often has objectives other than stamping out terrorism.

I truly think nothing they are saying or doing makes any sense strategically or logically. Because these aren't strategic counterterrorism measures. These tactics aren't even part of a logical military campaign (if there even is such a thing).

"The Israeli State is not thinking beyond the violence necessary to centralize settler colonial and right-wing power and finalize its ethnostate from river to sea. It is not thinking beyond the mass murder that is needed to accomplish this. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are often about wealth, land, and power. Even the newly appointed minister of Israel’s emergency cabinet said that Gaza must be smaller by the end of the war because 'losing land is the price Arabs understand.'"

"We are watching a genocide unfold under the guise of 'counterterrorism.' This isn’t about Hamas, and never was. Hamas is a convenient excuse. This is about the destruction of the Palestinian people. This is about land. This is about [the] genocidal project of settler colonialism." (source)

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

The problem with Western dystopian writers, from George Orwell to modern YA authors, is that they tend to assume the possibility of a totalitarian state that is competent. The truth is that totalitarian regimes are always a fucking mess, because this amount of control simply isn't practical, the state isn't supposed to do that. It's like trying to force an old computer to run a game which requirements far exceed its hardware specs. You may be able to do it for a while, but it will look like shit, glitch constantly and eventually burn your processor (or something, I'm not a computer person).

So, here are some things that are more or less universally present in any IRL totalitarian regime that Western authors often tend to overlook:

ridiculously complicated, redundant and inefficient beaurocracy that literally no single person fully understands and historians will make futile attempts to decipher for centuries to come

constant infighting between different branches of said beaurocracy, due to competing for funding, overlapping powers and unclear chains of command

from time to time, this infighting escalates to full-on assassinations and shit, but usually it's just being dicks to each other on purpose, making the system even slower and more inefficient

"oh shit, we apparently desperately need somebody who can do X, but it turns out we accidentally purged all the people who can do X"

shameless nepotism

needless to say, due to all of the above, trains do not run on time

The Glorious Leader sooner rather than later develops severe substance abuse problems and/or debilitating paranoia and/or starts buying into his own propaganda and/or grows old and senile, and now all the people in his Inner Circle need to somehow find a way to treat his incomprehensible rambling seriously and translate it into policy

The Secret Police Guy pretty quickly goes completely mad with power, and I don't mean mad as in mentally ill, I mean mad as in cackling, cartoonishly evil Batman villain

everybody else in the Inner Circle hates his guts which means he becomes The Glorious Leader's most terrifyingly loyal servant, because he knows he's toast when that guy's gone

propaganda becomes so detached from the reality of the clearly crumbling state that just repeating its absurdly optimistic slogans becomes a go-to anti-government joke, causing the Censorship Departament to grow increasingly erratic, as the Poe's Law cripples their ability to even tell pro-regime shit and anti-regime shit apart

the Military is either horribly overfunded (meaning they're constantly threatening a coup whenever their demands for even more funding aren't met), deliberately underfunded to avoid a coup (meaning if they go to war, they're fucked) or micromanaged personally by The Glorious Leader (meaning the same thing, really, since he's tripping balls and/or debilitatingly paranoid and/or buying into his own propaganda and/or old and senile)

the moment the Glorious Leader drops dead, everything falls apart like a house of cards: assuming the country isn't already overrun by foreign troops, the Inner Circle starts murdering each other left and right, the beaurocracy completely ceases to function, the Secret Police and the Military are shooting each other in the street, all because the Glorious Leader consistently assumed he was immortal and made no realistic succession plans whatsoever

also, as a side note, some completely absurd pseudoscience some con artist managed to sell to the Glorious Leader's dumb ass is probably involved throughout, so even if you manage to get through the beaurocracy to, say, gain access to healthcare, there's a non-zero chance they'll try to heal you with crystals

EDIT bc I forgot to include the most important thing:

BRIBES. Most of the money totalitarian regime makes from taxes and shit goes to maintaining its stupidly overgrown terror machine and all the legal ways to get stuff other than state-sponsored mass murder done are hideously inefficient, so everybody from the Inner Circle to the Secret Police troopers to the office clerks is blatantly corrupt and everybody knows that if you need to get something from the state, a proper bribe (or a couple) will be necessary, bribes are the only way anything actually useful gets done

[lemayday]

the more i read about like everyday existence in america the more i am convinced that the only countries that are gonna make it are post communist european states that didn't get russified and corrupted by putinist imperialism

where i come from having anything nice to say about a member of the police is basically taboo and the police are monitored for their actions more strictly

here it would be a continent wide scandal if a squad of anti terrorist units or any other militarized police were sent basically to harass mentally ill people or racial minorities with military equipment

if someone owns a gun they're heavily monitored

unfortunately i don't live in one of them but there are at least 2 countries in close proximity that with similar gdp or lower than my country have managed to give their population healthcare education and public housing because it pays off for the government to pay for those things to have a population that's not half homeless half educated and half alive and "self medicating"

however it's not all sunshine and socialism

before recently finland was to end homelessness with a very well planned public housing program that got cancelled because the new conservative party wanted to sell those houses to private buyers instead

eastern europe is still mostly a harsh harsh place to live in for lgbt and especially trans people

the western EU mostly still buys russian natural resources and folds under putinist pressure to not supply arms to ukraine where a falling state like the UK does it even if they can't afford it

hungary is still as corrupt as ever and i won't touch on it because it's basically an inside joke between everyone in europe how much it sucks to live there

and i won't fail to mention the Gazan genocide and the israeli government instrumenting the largest press silence smearing and propaganda campaigns in the western world period and how it affects europe the same way it effects america or oceania

poland and germany are countries with great potential hindered by far right movements gaining huge followings over the past 12 to 15 years

unfortunately the livable future that the EU could and was and still largely is providing is falling apart in some places like germany poland hungary and finland due to both putinist and american influence and what i fear the most is that we can't seal ourselves away from the new worlds think tank imperiums much longer

death to putin's imperialist campaign

death to trumps ruination of a healing america

death to a murderously militarized fake country built on genocide and religious prejudice exclusively

i wish for peace to the world a livable future for us all and freedom to Ukraine and Palestine

[mickstart]

The Cognitive Dissonance Of The American War Machine - Or: That Time Call Of Duty Accidentally Condemned The US Military

So @francoisceverts asked me to elaborate on this point ages ago and I've been sitting on it thinking about it and collecting information and I want to actually sit down and give my essay on the plot of call of duty modern warfare 2 (the original, not the new one.)

Specifically, I want to talk about how the game accidentally on-purpose calls the US military terrorists.

So. For those of you who had normal childhoods and don't know anything about the plot of the campaign of call of duty modern warfare 2 (the original), let me give you a brief rundown: A terrorist named Makarov commits a massacre at a Russian airport. At the time an American agent, Allen, is undercover working with him. You play through the terrorist attack in an infamous mission that saw a wave of bans for the game, No Russian. At the end, Makarov shoots Allen, revealing he knew all along he was a spy, and leaves his dead body for the Russians to find. The body of Allen, combined with the terrorists speaking no Russian, only english, makes it appear to be an American terrorist attack, and manipulates Russia into invading the USA for revenge. The ensuing war goes very badly for the USA, and Taskforce 141 commanded by General Shepherd, the man who placed Allen undercover with Makarov, race to reveal the truth, end the war, and take Makarov down.

But, in the third-to-last mission of the game, there's a plot twist. General Shepherd betrays the player character Roach and the popular side character Ghost. He shoots them, takes the information that will reveal the truth of Makarov's operation and calm down the USA-Russia tensions, and then tries to eliminate the rest of Task Force 141. He was manipulating all of this all along. Why? Well, we'll get to that.

First I want to talk about Call of Duty and the purpose it serves. Primarily, it's there to make money for Activision. (Side note: Fuck Activision.) Secondarily, less talked about but well known, it's a powerful recruitment tool for the US military. The US military have their own e-sports team as well as a Twitch presence, and yes they play CoD. Neither the military or Activision are entirely upfront about their relationship to each other (the credits of modern warfare 2 do acknowledge the Canadian military under 'special thanks') but video game developers have to buy licenses to depict real guns and weaponry in their work, and we're all aware of how heavily involved they are whenever Marvel movies portray the military. But Activison doesn't stop at guns. Specific gunships and tanks with their key features and the mathematics of their killing capabilities are laid out in blueprint form in Modern Warfare 2. If that still sounds normal enough to you, the Pentagon literally asked a Call of Duty writer to come and meet with them as a special advisor. When I was a kid, my dad played Full Spectrum Warrior, a game actively developed by the US military to simulate combat tactics and drive up recruitment.

So, call of duty works as recruitment propaganda for the US military. It's supposed to make them look cool. It's supposed to make them The Good Guys. On the surface, modern warfare 2 does this. One of the things the game's campaign is best known for is its unique setpieces. The player fights through white picket fences, family homes, fast food restaurants, and even the white house. You are actively, LITERALLY, defending American Suburbia, as the military and the "support our troops" narrative claims they do. You jump over chasms on snowmobiles, you save innocent oil workers, you fly into an aging gulag in an impressive display of synchronised helicopters. The US military are both the underdogs, and the most powerful, heroic, impressive people in the game.

So, what the fuck do I mean when I say the game condemns the military?

Well, for that we have to go back to Shepherd and his intentions.

The ending of Modern Warfare 2 features several impressive, grandiose speeches. The one most people seem to remember is Captain Price's "History Is Written By The Victor" speech, in which he lays out the importance that they kill Shepherd, to prevent his truth from becoming history.

I wish the speech people remembered was the one where Shepherd tells you his truth.

Shepherd monologues throughout the game. The first few could be printed out and handed around as US military propaganda. They're every excuse and praising idolation of the USA's war machine you've ever heard. Here's the highlights.

"Locations change, the rationale, the objective. Yesterday's enemies are today’s recruits. Train them to fight alongside you and pray they don’t eventually decide to hate you for it, too."

Sound familiar? Sound like anybody bemoaning the fact that the people the US military handed weapons to and encouraged to fight their enemies for them just "happened" to turn on them later? Sound like anybody calling a local militia force ungrateful, or just somehow not capable of defending themselves?

"We are the most powerful military force in the history of man. Every fight is our fight. Because what happens over here, matters over there. We don't get to sit one out. Learning to use the tools of modern warfare is the difference between the prospering of your people, and utter destruction. We can't give you freedom. But we can give you the know-how to acquire it."

I almost feel I don't need to explain this one. The excessive praise, the 'all hail the conquering hero' of it all, the ready-made excuse for why the military is interfering in another country ("what happens over here, matters over there") the talk of FREEDOM? This could almost be satire, it's THAT on the nose. It could be a line in the new Top Gun, portraying the US military as heroes burdened with freedom and glory that they need to spread to others. This one is particularly interesting when you contrast it to the actual gameplay, where the invading Russians crush the military almost effortlessly. So they're the most powerful military force in the history of man, but they're also the underdogs you have to root for.

"Despite what the world may say, we are not savages, we don't kill civilians. We use precision. There's an evil man hiding in these shadows and we're gonna bring him into the light."

This seems almost too targeted as a defence of the military. But it becomes even more interesting once you know Shepherd's full scheme.

So we get all these quotes from Shepherd that are almost transparent pieces of military propaganda. The game is set up in a way that it appears to want you to take them at face value. But they aren't Shepherd's truth. After he does his grand betrayal, after the surviving main characters have tracked him down, shot down his helicopter, and brought him to the brink of his own destruction, there's one final speech.

See, Modern Warfare 2 is - obviously - a sequel. In the previous game, a nuke went off during one mission, killing 30,000 men. (This is a whole other thing I won't get into, but the mission it happens in is heavily inspired by the Invasion of Iraq in the 00s and everything surrounding it, which makes it even grosser as its rewriting history to make the fake nuke threat seem genuine.) Shepherd, we find out here, was the general in command of those men.

"Five years ago, I lost 30,000 men in the blink of an eye. And the world just fuckin' watched. Tomorrow, there will be no shortage of volunteers, no shortage of patriots. I know you understand."

Shepherd's motivation is revenge... and recruitment. He wants to use fear and hatred to inspire fervent patriotism, and use that to recruit an enormous army, to have the entire country supporting and rallying behind that army. He wants the military, and by extension himself, to be respected and feared and serviced. He wants to create recruitment propaganda.

So suddenly, in a meta moment, all of Shepherd's speeches look very different. This final speech? This is Shepherd's truth. The transparent propaganda, the writing that reads like stuff off of a recruitment speech? Those are his lies, and they are supposed to be false and hollow. They are all the delusions of grandeur of a man obsessed with the American war machine, and all he really cares about is gaining power and bodies. I don't think they were necessarily written with the intention of Shepherd's final speech unmasking recruitment material as false and predatory but nevertheless that is what it does.

It's never stated that Shepherd leaked the truth of Allen's identity to Makarov, but it's also very, very heavily implied that this is what Shepherd is covering up when he murders the 141. He placed Allen in the terrorist cell. He allowed the attack to happen, even wanted it to happen, because he wanted to start a war between the two countries to drive the public one way. The very start of No Russian, the operation Shepherd has encouraged and placed Allen in, involves firing indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians. (Note, the player does not HAVE to do this. But the developers found that every single test player did exactly that. Because the game has trained you to do that.) "We don't kill civilians." But a man under Shepherd's orders did. "We use precision." But a man under Shepherd's orders didn't.

Shepherd ranting about the power of the US military, the freedom it can teach you to acquire, all the things you see in adverts preying on vulnerable kids, is very different when he is literally a predator who wants to expand his army and power using fear and hatred. Not for anyone already aware of these tactics of course, but within the context of the game, this changes the speeches from flat, uncontested endorsements to blatant evil acts of manipulation. If this were written intentionally - and I don't for a second believe it was - it would be one of the most incredibly meta critiques of the military in video games, pointing out its propaganda and self-deluding dogma. "No shortage of volunteers. No shortage of patriots," uttered by a man willing to kill civilians to get that, is an incredibly eerie line when you recall how the game is tied to recruitment.

But that's not even the limit of what the game does. Okay, sure, it reveals the predatory nature of US military recruitment. That doesn't mean it's comparing them to terrorists. Except, it is.

Shepherd and Makarov are dual-antagonists. Makarov is a terrorist. He uses the fear, anger, and grief of the terrorist attack to manipulate Russia into supporting a war it has no business being in. Shepherd uses the fear, anger, and grief of the Russian invasion to manipulate the USA into supporting a war it also has no business being in, to push them to counter-invade Russia. By the end of the game, US soldiers ask "when are we going to Moscow?" They both want to manipulate civilians with fear and hate, and they are both preying on patriotism. Neither the US citizens or the Russian citizens know the truth of the terrorist attack by the end of the game. Both Shepherd and Makarov are driving their people towards wars they do not have any context for, just an emotional response. The same thing the game uses to sell emotional moments - American Suburbia being taken over, the White House under threat - is exactly what Shepherd wants to use to recruit and manipulate. The emotional reactions of USAmerican gamers to these moments is exactly what Shepherd, the villain, wants.

At the end of the game, the surviving characters have a choice to pursue Makarov or Shepherd. Shepherd is the bigger threat. Shepherd is the more powerful, more dangerous man. They pursue and kill him. The US General. And where do they pursue him? Through a network of caves in a desert. The exact locale the US military was, at the time the game released, making inseparable in people's heads from the hiding spaces of terrorists, particularly Bin Laden. Think of Iron Man, the shot where Tony Stark blows up a number of caves. The game is implicitly comparing a US General who presided over an invasion of a Psuedo-Iraq to a terrorist.

So... what's the point? What does this mean? Did Infinity Ward write a subversive story, critiquing the very thing they were supposed to be selling? Was this accidental, or an act of rebellion?

Well, it was neither really. I don't give credit here that anyone involved was truly aware of the implications of what they were writing. If they'd thought that deeply about the US military, they would never be working on a game centered around them in the first place. Predatory recruitment and manipulation of its own people is the absolute least of the military's crimes. I don't think anybody truly looked at the juxtaposition of what they were saying in the missions about defending American Suburbia VS what they were saying in the core story. I don't think this was intentional, and I don't even think you can say it was an accident. Accident implies that, had they looked at it closely, they would have changed it.

I don't believe they would have seen a problem. I think what Modern Warfare 2 represents at the end of the day is not a rejection of propaganda, but the ultimate tragedy of that propaganda succeeding. At worst, I think from their perspective Shepherd's enragement by a perceived apathy is a twisted noble motive. There's a level of cognitive dissonance you need to engage in to support the American War Machine, to say and believe one thing whilst the evidence mounts for the opposite, to ignore war crimes and civilian deaths and proclamations of Freedom whilst interfering in other nations democracy and trillions of dollars pumped into new helicopters while babies starve at home, and this game displays that starkly. It's particularly worth keeping in mind that the protagonists of the game are still military themselves. Shepherd is just one man. Just a bad egg whose removal magically fixes all the problems he represents. This sort of critique of patriotism is entirely absent from the sequel to this game.

Yes, the story of the game tells you that the US Military are no better than terrorists trying to manipulate you with emotions and your own patriotism, but they aren't even aware of what they're saying. They can ignore that and focus on "the white house needs you, men!" They've been trained to all their life by a dripfeed of propaganda.

[redjaybathood]

ukraine is also oppressing its citizens, it's literally a fascist puppet state that tortures the opposition and kills ukrainian reporters. in fact it's so fucking bad people were already leaving for the west, it was becoming poorer before the crisis

When I started reading this, I was like: lol what

When I finished this and read the word "crisis" instead of war, everything became clear. Послушай, дорогой, иди-ка ты туда же, куда и русский корабль - нахуй. I don't have time for your russian propaganda bullshit. There's literally a ton of information on Internet, which you can verify and fact check. If you chose to read and believe what Russian government wants you to believe, it's nobody's fault but yours.

Even if that was true, if we were something like dictatorship of Belarus, or Kazakhstan - no shade on the respective citizens - it would never justify Russian military invasion.

Wake the fuck up, anon, and you know what? For the first time in my being on Tumblr, I am turning off anon asks

You, and everyone else, is welcome in my inbox - I don't promise a swift answer, because, for example, today, I stood in a queue for two hours, trying to buy Хлоргексидин and some other medical stuff for an elderly woman who is just about a week after a surgery, only for the pharmacy to close before the queue reached ten people before me; I am cold, very very fucking cold, and praying not to become ill because I still have responsibilities; I need to find a new pharmacy now because this one doesn't work tomorrow, and it's not a guarantee that at the end of the long wait in a queue I will manage to get the medical supplies I need;

I also don't promise that I will answer at all, because you never know, a fucking bomb can fall on your building. Like it did on the house of my friends in Irpin - they're alive thank god; like it did on the house of my mother's aunt in Kharkiv - and we still don't know whether they're alive because they're not responding.

But I will do my best to respond to any questions asked in good faith. And if you're asking in good faith, you don't need to go anon.

Tl;dr: fuck you and fuck Russia

[moondonky]

Id go to jail

People be like,, u should buy a fast car,, nah id prolly go to jail.. u should get a motercyle,, nah id prolly go to jail, u should sell sum bitcoin, nah id prolly go to jail, u should by a house, nah id prolly go to jail, u should travel to sum foreign countries, nah id prolly go to jail.. u should start a buisness,, nah id prolly go to jail... u should have fun hit up sum clubs, nah id prolly go to jail...

They laugh, think im joking,, not alot of people know me very well, for fucked up reasons, the feds and cia prolly now me best,, my name will turn up on every list,, every chance they get,, ive had dudes interrogate me in a smoking lobby at an airport, ill have chicks swipe me on tinder just to get alil close,, like im a spy or sum shit,, idk I have fun, ill fuk with them,, but prolly shouldnt,, I never did anything illegal,, I just know things that I shoulnt, and im good with words and can talk alot of shit, its weird cuz its a crime to investigate corruption and lives of powerful people,, behind closed doors,, they are not who they act like they are, in many ways they only tell you what u wanna hear,, all these things there doing now legally, like forcing on people, censorship, tracking, all the heavy news propaganda, blacklisting, marking concerned people as like an enemy of the country,, they were already doing all that years ago,, face book was literally doing psychological research and studies on users,, simply targeting ur emotions with what they put in your feeds, deliberately making people depressed n shit, just to see if they could,, and they got caught, and in the court process,, they made it legal,, why theres nothing u can do about it now,, they can legally psychologically manipulate you,, and track you, and record you, and sell ur data and do whatever the fuck they want, its not even Facebook anymore, or Twitter, or amazon,, because our country has been in a state of emergency for the last 20 years,, and people don't even understand wtf that means,, these unpresidented times that is perpetuated, it is done on purpose,, war, economic collapse, drought, civil disobedience, disease, are all reasons for martial law, to be in a state of national emergency,, everything that is happening,, only reason a president can even use executive orders, to bypass the senate and congress, everything that seems so fake, why it seems like there all lying, in every word they say,, even the money "printing", secretly they were already 23 trillion dollars in debt,, over the last 15 years.. money that dissapeared in to there pockets,, this aint a new bill, this is them openly pinning it on Americans in raised taxes,, and inflation,, ur seeing the removal of national military, and the insertion of privatized contractor mercenaries,, and trust me u do not want rich people to be able to buy there own army's, they armed and destabilized an entire continent to create a neverending privatized buisness of war,, if u remember in ukrain way back when,, we sent in blackwater mercs,, Russia sent in a bunch more of theres and kept crimea, if u remember what started all that,, was ukrain was stealing and selling gas, from russia, how biden through his son ties into it,, and Russia just shut the pipeline off, and then civil war broke out and a passenger plane got shot of the sky,, which was a missed target, and suppose to be the Russian presidents,, most people don't have a clue all that happened,, we even extracted all of ukrains gold for safekeeping.. and I say we,, but I mean was the Obama administration, which is still in control of things, technically, through Hillary or biden,, democratic party, all same the people, even trump,, a lifelong friend of the clintons.. they all fuk in the same beds...

When people say wake up,, what they are trying to say,, our country was hijacked,, and we are being manipulated,, by the people who are in control of everything, the people are being deliberately put in a psychosis of propaganda and isolation from thinking for themselves,, kept in narrow bands of dialog and comunications...

When people say new world order, sustainable development, green new deals,, sounds all peachy,, untill your whats removed,, you know like take that jab or what every they call it, that turns u into gmo intelectual property.. which im sure u also didn't know, anouther law passed so u cant sue them if anything goes wrong... like side effects, because its not a vaccine by definition, so they had to create a new law to protect themselves, just like if vaccines have side effect u cant sue them.. and that can get very concerning when u really look into shit,, like there were riots and protests by the people of wuhan, the week prior to the "outbreak".. when they welded doors shut, and incinerated the "infected", by the garbage incinerator they where protesting.. there are videos of people yelling out there windows, "its all fake",, there are videos of trucks driving around using gas to "disinfect" the entire province,, there was a loss of 8 million cellphone subscriptions in china at start of the "pandemic",, social credit scores, facial recognition, cameras everywhere,, that is sum shit they are trying to make legal in america, and are already prepared for,, that is the "infrastructure" they want to build.. even where I live in seatlle,, there are thousands of cameras everywere that are not legally turned on,, because there backed my facial recognition software that is not legal yet...

And I say no, I dont like that, thats not american

And I'd prolly go to jail if I did,, so I listen to my bible,, and it says to flee to the mountains, avoid it, when all the shit thats happening starts hapening, sounds like camping to me.. im always waiting,, still working, small crew small shop, under 100, but I refuse to take that shot, no tests, no pills, none of it,, I could have cancer or a tumor, I would never find out, I let doctors stitch up cuts, set bones, I do not like the idea of them playing god, I have my own God, it is what it is, grateful for days alloted, not in distress, not in need of saving, only God gets to judge my fate, I would never want to live forever, because I know I am eternal,, eternity is eternity, heavon or hell, figuratively u only die on earth,, u dont get to bring your money or what uve built, or acquired, when u die, what u have is what dies,, its you, as a person, if u even know yourself,, do u look up, or do u look down,, in the end u judge yourself, because u cannot lie to yourself,, u will know exactly where u belong, there was never need to hear repremandation..

Only sinners are afraid of death, rather believe its just the end... that dudes my friend lol.. in the end from the begining, it is Gods judgement, I would not advise partaking in the traditions of men, seems kinda Greek if u ask me

[reading-writing-revolution]

From 2017...still true. America has a lot of problems, but right the President is the worst of them. He stands for nothing, believes in nothing, cares for no one. Solve the problem. #vote

"I feel the need to drop a little truth on y'all. So buckle up...I'm about to be politically incorrect.

We don't need to take America back. No one stole it. It's right here...you're sitting in it. Chillax.

Mexico isn't going to pay for the wall and we're not going to deport millions of people and break up families. If you think either one is a good idea, you're not smart and probably not a person I want to hang out with.

We don't live in a democracy. Technically we are a Federal Republic. But in reality we are ruled by an oligarchy. If you don't know what that is, look it up. Reading will do you good. You probably need to do more of it.

FoxNews, CNN, and MSNBC have an agenda and are not "fair and balanced" or in any way unbiased. I'll reiterate...read more. Read newspapers (even online ones). Read lots of opinions and sources and then (stay with me here), THINK! Form your own opinion based on as many facts as your can brain can tolerate.

Speaking of facts...there actually is a difference between facts, opinions, and propaganda. You should learn the difference. (Another opportunity to show off your mad reading skills.)

Science is real. We know things because of science. Don't be afraid of it. You have an iPhone and Facebook because of science. It's your friend.

Global warming or "climate change" as the cool kids call it IS REAL. Anyone who tells you it's not real is not a smart person and probably should not be dressing themselves or caring for children.

Racism exists. And you are probably a little racist and should work on that. Seriously.

American Christians are not under attack. We are not being persecuted. We wield so much power in this country that politicians pretend to be Christian just so we will vote for them. No one is trying to take your bible away from you. The gay people are not destroying our families—we don't need any help from them, thank you. We do a fine job of that by ourselves. So stop saying we are persecuted. You sound stupid.

Poor people need help. If you're not helping them but complaining about how the government helps them with your money you are not a nice person.

Be nice to the people who teach your children. Don't send them nasty emails or yell at them. Their job is 10,000 times harder than your stupid job. You are not a professional educator so just shut your mouth and be thankful someone is willing to teach your offspring.

You don't know what Common Core is. You think you do, but you don't unless you're a teacher. So stop complaining about math problem memes on Facebook. You can't do the math anyway.

ISIS is not an existential threat to the United States. We do not need to rebuild our military. Our military is the strongest, scariest, most badass killing machine the world has ever seen. So stop being afraid and stop letting politicians and pundits scare you.

Guns do in fact kill people. That's what they are designed to do. If you feel you need a gun to protect yourself in America, you are probably living in the wrong neighborhood and should move before you go out and buy a gun. There are like a billion places to live where you won't need a gun, or even need to lock your front door.

If you do own a gun, then make sure you know how to use it really, really, really well. Seriously...get some training because you still don't know how to record stuff with your DVR. Go to the gun range and shoot the thing a lot. Learn how to clean it properly and be able to disassemble it and reassemble it with your eyes closed. It's a freaking gun and it deserves that level of care, proficiency and respect. And for God's sake, keep it locked up and away from your kids.

If you are even a little bit crazy, sad, or pissed off...you shouldn't have a gun. And the Founding Fathers would totally agree with me.

Stop being suspicious of American Muslims. I guarantee the guy sitting next to you in the cubicle at work is probably more of a threat to you than any Muslim. He has to listen to your uninformed ranting day after day and has probably already imagined very colorful and creative ways to end you.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and all the rest are ENTERTAINERS! Stop getting your opinions from them. (Here's where that reading thing can really be an advantage.)

Stop sharing Facebook memes that tell me to share or else Jesus won't bless me with a laundry basket full of cash. That's not how prayer works. And I don't want money delivered (even from God) in a laundry basket. Nobody ever washes those things out and they just keep putting nasty dirty clothes in them. Yuck!

We are the United States of America and we can afford to house every homeless veteran, feed every child, and take in every refugee and still have money left over for Starbucks and a bucket of KFC.

Unless you can trace your family line back to someone who made deerskin pants look stylish and could field dress a buffalo, you are a descendent of an immigrant. Please stop saying that immigrants are ruining our country. Such comments are like a giant verbal burrito stuffed with historical ignorance, latent racism, and xenophobia all wrapped in a fascist tortilla.

That's all for now. I feel better."

LaMonte M. Fowler