Hi Brumar89; Re: "Which is where the full article is - which is what I wanted to post. Forgive me, but I think its the article that's important not the website it's on. You must realize this too which is why you want to draw attention away from it by conjuring up conspiracist fantasies about the website the article was posted on."
Hey, I simply posted my instinct, that this was a Bush administration propaganda leak, and this is based on the historical fact that the US postwar occupation of Germany was trouble free, as far as violence against US troops went. And in the actual fact, it turns out that the website was run by an oil company based in Bush's home town and undoubtedly by people well known to Bush. As far as you not caring what website it was on, this is what you say now. A few days ago you were claiming that Jessica is simply a conservative person who happens to live in Midland Texas:
Brumar89, October 18, 2003
This may come as a surprise to you, Bilow, but many people don't use their real names on the internet. Because of the ..ahem.. kooks out there. Whatever her name is, it probably isn't Natalie Drest though she may be nattily dressed. Her name may be Jessica. She seems to be a conservative who lives in Midland since she says so and since she posts opinions about things like the Midland Development Corporation etc. on her blog. #reply-19414115
Re: "The Life article revealed a certain sour defeatist mindset which is seemingly always with us."
Your point? For that matter, what do you know about the author, John Dos Passos? Here's an informative link:
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During his youth John often felt isolated and bewildered by the society around him. His earliest memory recorded in the autobiographical sections of U.S.A. highlights a sense of danger and confused identity, as he and his mother fled a hostile crowd in the Low Countries which mistook them for English during the period of the Boer War.
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His 1916 essay, "A Humble Protest," foretold his vision and ambition which would inspire his work over the next twenty years. He would challenge the mechanization of American society.
"Has not the world today somehow got itself enslaved by this immense machine, the Industrial system? Millions of men perform labor narrowing and stultifying even under the best conditions, bound in the traces of mechanical industry, without ever a chance of self-expression, except in the hectic pleasures of suffocating life in cities. They grind their lives away on the wheels, producing, producing, producing....Is this what men have been striving for through the ages? Is this ponderous suicidal machine civilization?"
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Like Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos became known as a savage critic of an American culture reeking of vulgar consumerism and social indifference. America had sold its birthright, its sense of democracy, its concern for working people, while dazzled by an array of consumer products. The small farmers who made up the foundation of Jefferson's notion of democracy were crushed by a savage post-war depression. Congress refused all pleas for aid. Meanwhile the businessmen who ruled America, frightened by the specter of communism rising out of Russia, declared war on unions and attempts to make real the promise of a better life for workers. Looking at the post-war world, Dos Passos wrote, "It was suddenly clear for a second in the thundering glare what war was about, what peace was about. In America, in Europe, the old men won. The bankers in their offices took a deep breath, the bediamonded old ladies of the leisure class went back to clipping their coupons in the refined quiet of their safedeposit vaults, the last puffs of the ozone of revolt went stale in the whisper of speakeasy arguments."
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The bullet which killed Jose Robles also killed any vestige of sympathy Dos Passos held for the Communists. He understood, with no turning back, that mass movements aimed at improving the common good were exceedingly susceptible to manipulation and control by despotic leaders. Hitler, Stalin, they were all the same. After 1937 the "enemy" which Dos Passos feared the most shifted from capitalists to the totalitarianism of fascism and communism. Both paid lip service to the "will of the people" while establishing despotic rule.
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csupomona.edu
Let me translate. Like the modern neocons, Dos Passos was a left wing radical who got converted to conservatism. As such, his early left wing beliefs is proof that he was not a deep thinker. What he had to say about the situation in postwar Germany did not have much in the way of relation with reality.
By contrast, the situation in Iraq has been declared to be a serious problem by former US military men. You're basically comparing the opinions of decorated US career soldiers with the opinions of a clueless left-wing nut case. Yes, it's a simple fact that there will always be someone running around yelling "doom", but the situation now is not only that whackos like Dos Passos see the problem.
I recognize the fact that in wartime, propaganda is a useful tool for modifying the behavior of the enemy. I have no objection to our administration lying, if those lies save the lives of our soldiers. What pisses me off about stuff like this weak propaganda on the US occupation of Germany is that the Administration's propaganda efforts are clearly ineffectual in Iraq (one need only look at the photos of Iraqi men celebrating the destruction of one of our vehicles), and instead seem intended to alter domestic US opinions. As such, their propaganda is more effective, but it ain't effective enough to keep Bush (and his oil baron cronies) in power.
Re: "I don't think Bush has lived in Midland since he was a kid. So its likely Bush and Doug Heck have no relationship whatsoever. And as far as Doug Heck and George Bush both having been in the oil industry, that happens to be a pretty large industry. An awful lot of people are in it."
While there are a lot of people in the oil industry, there are very few people who happen to own large oil exploration companies, and I know for a fact that all the people of that ilk who live in Midland Texas know each other very well. The population of the city is only 95,000. Of course the various oil barons know each other.
We're not talking about two roustabouts, though if we were, they'd probably have a connection too. What we're talking about is two fabulously wealthy guys, in the same business, living in the same small town, in a business where deal making with your rivals goes on essentially constantly. Of course Heck and Bush know each other.
Re: "I don't think Bush has lived in Midland since he was a kid."
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He came to town 25 years ago [1975] in an aging blue Cutlass, with a gold-plated family name, an abundance of restless energy and vague dreams of finding his fortune. On Wednesday, George W. Bush said goodbye to Midland as he set off on another adventure.
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Bush returned to Midland in 1975 after earning a master's in business administration at Harvard. He stayed until 1987, when he moved to Dallas to become managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
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Bush's parents moved to Midland when he was 2 and stayed until he finished the seventh grade. When the family arrived in 1948, the town had about 30,000 residents. By the time the Bushes left near the end of the 1950s, the population had more than doubled and the oil boom was in full swing.
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ljworld.com
To suggest that there is no connection between Bush and Heck is ridiculous. Douglas Heck was sufficiently tied in to the Republican party that he was appointed to two ambassador positions by Nixon or Ford. He is wealthy as hell. It's highly likely that Heck was a contributor to Bush's various campaigns, and the website is clearly intended to be support for Bush in a deniable format.
And the simple fact is that you were completely taken in by the ruse. You thought that Jessica was some conservative woman who happened to live in Midland, and didn't want to be bothered by kooks. The fact is that Jessica's well is an oil well, and Heck's original application for the domain name was filed using false information. Someone complained, or Heck realized that he was in violation of the law, and the corrected information was put up on the name register, but has not yet filtered up to the global whois.
-- Carl |
