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The BFP Roundtable takes on the public apathy surrounding the illegal wars of aggression, extrajudicial drone assassinations, illegal warrantless wiretapping, and other outrages of our era. Why is the public so passive in the face of such abuses? Does it reflect learned helplessness, and if so what can be done about it? Find out more in this must-see BFP Roundtable discussion.
SHOW NOTES
The American Majority & Its Deadly Chronic Disease Called Apathy
Corbett Report Radio 070 – Overcoming Learned Helplessness
How to Start a Movement? Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy
Sibel has the answer in front of her face: puppy memes to get people to consider the *real* facts of 9/11. I also agree with her that we need to be seeing more pictures until the karmic overpressure condition blows a gasket and a sea change of some kind emerges.
I do however disagree with her on Snowden/Greenwald. GW’s been arguing about state surveillance for years and Snowden is on the lam and having to live outside his country while half the country spits on his name and the other half thinks he’s a hero. Perhaps he’s an incredible narcissist on par with Kanye West, and equally willing to make a spectale of himself while his name is forever besmirched.
My question then is : how much is that worth to a person, and is any amount worth that? And do they think we’d not find out? What would it be worth to someone to be found out to be such a liar. I just don’t believe it. Same with Alex Jones. These are just people doing what inspires them until I see credible evidence to the contrary. And same with Assange. Would it be worth millions of dollars to be holed up in an ecuadorian embassy for years like a rat in a cage, accused of raping a girl you didn’t while much of the world cuses your name? I dont’ think someone of integrity–which these people seem to be the kind of people to be–would tolerate these conditions.
Look who they are protecting versus look at what they are saying. The only way that these people could be counteragents and wholly adversarial to the values they espouse is if they are truly luciferian–amoral psychopaths of the sort that would choke someone’s grandma in her sleep. And I don’t buy it. Partly because I just don’t want to, but mostly because there’s no evidence.
It only looks like theater to Sibel because it is. Keep in mind Wikileaks is a website, so is guardian. USgov cannot block these sites lest they look to americans as nazi censors. These are not the MSM. If a story trends on alternative media like TYT or BFP, and there’s enough interest, the MSM cannot ignore it unless they want to look like they are out-of-the-loop. She’s seeing emergent behaviors of the society of the spectacle, that has one foot in the waters of distrust of the government, the future and what’s happening, and another foot in vacuous consumer materialism and me culture.
The point of wikileaks, snowden, greenwald being a part of a massive psyop is well taken, though, given the fact that they specifically time their leaks, which one could argue is part of the psyop to undermine and nullfify any impact it would have had were it leaked earlier. I think again this is an effect of their legitimate intention not to cause harm and their excercising what power they have over the material in this situation.
And regarding Greenwald’s relationship with Omidyar: there’s no fundamental rulebook that says that an ultrarich guy–especially a saavy tech startupnerd outlier who probably had no plans of world domination initially–must have an influence on the guardian or greenwald and greenwald has says that ‘the moment he tries to influence our stories, we close shop’. I have no reason to doubt this. Just because corruption / bribery / lobbying what have you exist in the political world, doesn’t mean that there aren’t uncorruptible people with integrity (Bernie Sanders is a great example). If you think about it, Omidyar is an american success story–an iranian import who wins big with a website (I personally hate and failed to destroy long ago, sadly) and really wants america to succeed. It’s possible there are liberals and libertines among the ruling class. And being a tech nerd myself I know some rich nerds and they are still considered outliers even with their money, so… I don’t buy it.
Finally, it’s important to admit that whether they are limited hangouts or not, Jones, Snowden, Greenwald, other whistleblowers like Drake, forget their associations and look at their effects. Are they good or bad? I think on the whole good. At least in terms of ‘raising awareness’ and ‘defeating the apathy’.