"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed-and no republic can survive.
That is why the Athenian law-maker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. "
President John F. Kennedy,
"The President and The Press"
Well, this is fairly depressing....
I have to admit, my expectations were not all that high....
But I can't honestly say this isn't rather disappointing...
"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed-and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law-maker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.
And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment--the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution--not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants"...
--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means greater coverage and analysis of international news--for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission.
And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security--and we intend to do it.
It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press.
Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world's efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.
And so it is to the printing press--to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news--that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be:
free and independent.
153 - Address "The President and the Press" Before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, New York City.
April 27, 1961
“I was a researcher on Friday and Saturday nights, ... but I spent a lot more time there.
We were having a heat wave and the office was air-conditioned.
They mistook me for a hard worker.”
Michael Hastings.
They say that those who live, spend the rest of their lives trying to forget that narrow band of hours, minutes, seconds. That energetic burst of violent emotional and physical, and psychological bandwidth, super compressed, desiccated and freeze dried for endless, gore-splattered future consumption via neurological re-runs in full HD sensuround;
Failing to forget, they try, still, instead rather not to remember.
Predictably, this ultimately comes to nothing as rule, but its the trying that makes...
Those who live remember. They do little else.
They will do little else. Open-ended engagement, with no support act.
Those who live remember.
The dead do not remember.
The dead are not there to remember.
Frankly, they have far better things to be getting on with.
Mostly they watch the living.
They gaze upon the living and they do not remember.
Do not remember how they got there.
Or how it was, that the living came to be where they are now.
What must they think....?
The last thing on his mind would be some damn white picket fence...
Last thing on her mind would be her blasted in-laws...
Last thing on their minds would be Beef.
They need never even have heard of Helter-Skelter.
There is absolutely zero reason for any form of any kind of attack on Syria other than the American, British and French media have established the conditions whereby it appears as though there is no other option.
This is how Petreaus, McCrystal and the Generals got their massive surge in Afghanistan - this is exactly what Michael Hastings died for telling the world about;
In 2009, they boxed him in, and he didn't know enough to over-rule them and just get out.
US Officials now conduct direct negotiations with the Taliban AND Mohammad Karzai, just as was the case in 1998; there is a Taliban embassy in Doha.
They conduct direct, clandestine negotiations with Iran, behind the back of Israel and the Pentagon to secure a historic peace into the next century.
Obama is attacked daily for supporting al-Qaeda, for supporting terrorists. Whatever that means.
I admire him for it.
It's the most courageous act of statesmanship seen in generations; Isreal infected the US with the credo "We do not negotiate with terrorists".
First, you stop referring to them as terrorists.
Peace, lasting peace is achieved only ever and always only by talking to one's enemies - or total annihilation.
I prefer not to take the Nagasaki route.
That is something the public, and the people of the West (Christendom) today, in this society, devoid of all depth, context and nuance, will NEVER understand any more, and which the Corporate, alternative, mainstream media is no longer capable of telling them, even were it so inclined to do so.
You say I carry water for Obama - I judge him through the lens of history not yet written and not fully unfurled.
Jack, Bobby, Martin, Lincoln.... Zachary Taylor.... They never had the chance to duck that bullet, they never saw it coming.
This man is smart and hungry and Teflon as any I have ever seen - he sails past obstacles, he walks in between raindrops....
He read, and studied, and learned from EVERY mistake, attack, weakness or pecidillo that took down all those who came before him.
What you DO, in the moment in that job does not matter; that gone in an instant.
What you DO that echoes down the ages of enternity is the Bell Curve.
Carter, Kerry, both Clintons.... Jack, Bobby and Malcolm. And more.
I just hope he remembered to read as far as Jack, Bobby, Douglas MaxAruthur and the Summer of '62 chewing over the Guns of August....
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