The sacred cow and The propaganda machine

The sacred cow
by Rainer Sonnberg
[This article posted on 3/8/2023 is translated from the German on the Internet, Die heilige Kuh.]

The most adorable sacred cow at the moment, beyond any doubt, is the USA. There they invest millions of dollars every year in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and at the same time billions in the production of weapons for the killing of the only known intelligent species: the humans of Earth. A guest contribution by Rainer Sonnberg

There are moments when I feel again the scratchy dark green fabric of the starting uniform on my skin and hear again the shouting of the sergeant from duty in the company corridor the morning after, with which he roused us from sleep. If we were unlucky, we were still so blue that he could drag us out of the double bunk beds and slam us to the floor. It was sobering up the hard way, the result of a pressure fuelling the night before. Four hours in the exit are not so much, if of it still another half hour must be planned to foot to the next pub and one and a half on all fours back in a Kaff, in which fox and hare say themselves good night. We were young, but unlike the coma drinking that came into fashion later, we knew when enough was enough. The headaches disappeared at the latest after the three-thousand-meter run for early morning exercise. The stomach contents, too.

"Democracy levy"

Today, forty-five years later, times have changed, but the pressure refueling still exists, although no longer for the stomach, but for the head. Every evening in front of the television, the skullcap is raised and the brain is pressure-fueled with democracy. The democracy levy must be good for something. Against the hangover the next morning, however, no run around the world would help. Running is out of fashion for most people anyway, unless a XXXL burger is waiting at McDonalds, the money office at the social welfare office or the next tattoo studio. But then quickly back in front of the TV ... Where was I? Oh yes, at the sacred cow called democracy. It is worshipped everywhere, not only by the public broadcasters, but also by the so-called alternative media. Without democracy, nothing works in our country, not even the election of the gender-specific thunderbolt. India has more experience in worshipping sacred cows than Germany, but at least we are on the right track. We have no lack of role models for sacred cows, and the mooing of these cows is not worthy of any criticism. Just like the cow itself, its vocalizations are absolutely adorable, if nothing else. Democracy means rule of the people and who of us Volksge ... Sorry, I just blinked right and turned left. I probably watched too many election programs on the ÖRR. In any case, we are all members of the German people, Mr. Habeck, Mrs. Baerbock and Mrs. Merkel once excluded, who can do nothing with it, so with the German people or their voters.

So everyone can imagine to rule, after all he belongs to the people and imagination is still better than no education at all in times where the same is becoming more and more a discontinued model. Why, however, Mr. Habeck and Mrs. Baerbock rule, although they do not want to belong to the people, or Mrs. Merkel ruled, although she fired the German flag into the corner, we discuss in another article.

So let's open the cow democracy's mouth for once and look down its throat. Don't be surprised if it stinks a bit, that's just the stomach contents. It shouldn't bother us any further, after all, it will be digested at some point and then come out the back as dark green shit. When the sacred cow has diarrhea, it's pretty quick, it comes out a lot, and it's not even useful as fertilizer. It may well be that the cow is not necessarily the best example of a democracy, but a better one is hard to find. Democracy is, after all, a truly unprecedented business model.

USA: Sacred cow beyond all doubt

Let's take a look across the pond at the biggest, most adorable, and beyond reproach sacred cow: the USA. There they invest millions of dollars every year in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and at the same time billions in the production of weapons for the killing of the only known intelligent species: the humans of Earth. May their search for intelligence be crowned with success and expand their horizons! Einstein meant, the same is a circle with the radius zero and one calls then point of view. If he had lived today, he probably would have used the word "attitude". Every four years, the American people spend several billion dollars (I think Donald Trump's election campaign cost about two billion) to elect their president. Of course, he is American through and through, like Joe Biden or Donald Trump, a regular person like you and me, like Bill Gates, Larry Fink or George Soros. The top shepherd of the sacred cow in the U.S., elected in this way, may then determine for four years to which countries of the world it is still driven and how it is to be worshiped there.

In Germany, the procedure is much more complicated, but not quite as expensive. Actually, it costs the people nothing at all, so in any case no one has to pay anything extra. The parties have their election campaigns financed by tax money and the more of their members sit at the feeding trough of the sacred cow, the more they get out of it. The tax money is actually meant for roads and schools, but who will complain if the money is spent on protecting the sacred cow and training the one hundred thousand members of the institutions feeding and guarding the sacred cow? That would be delegitimizing the state and no one from the electorate does that. Excuse me, of the electorate, of course.

In general, parties - several of them, of course - are the core of democracy. If we had only one, we'd have a dictatorship, and nobody wants that, do they? There are so many people who want to do good, and so that they can do that, they organize themselves into parties. For whom they want to do good, they then write shortly before the election on huge, of course ecologically compatible election posters, which they then have put up millions of times throughout the country. The party that puts up the most and largest election posters with the best promises then has the most voters voting for it. After the election, the election posters are then disposed of again in an ecologically sound manner, together with the election promises on them, it becomes a bit more complicated, as many parties have made such similar promises that they then have to enter into so-called coalition negotiations.

They do not lie, but stop telling the truth

There they then roll the dice - sorry, wrong turn again - there they then discuss who is most qualified for which post and should govern in the name of the people in their ministry. This usually takes so long that the election posters have long since been taken down, which is why hardly anyone can remember what was written on them during these negotiations. In fact, it's a nasty slander that politicians lie to get into power. They just stop telling the truth at some point. After all, they have so much on their plate that forgetting sets in pretty quickly for them, unlike those who elected them. It takes them almost four years to forget what they were promised and whether it was kept. That's why there's always a lot of pressure-fueling from television before the next election, because fewer and fewer people can read and the parties have to somehow get their promises across to the people's rulers.

Between elections, when there aren't state elections, a UN meeting, a G20 summit or a World Economic Forum, there's also politics, which is about two months a year. That's when real knowledge, professional experience, logical thinking and expertise tend to be a hindrance to the free development of the personality. Peter's Law applies: In every hierarchy, employees are promoted until they reach a position where they have reached the maximum level of their incompetence.

The decisive factor is not what you want, but what you don't want: under no circumstances should you supply weapons to war zones, never let another war start on German soil, a judicial system dependent on politics, an insecure supply system, never cooperate with the AfD or the left ... and so on. However, it can happen that even these iron-hard principles have to be softened in extreme exceptional cases and one's head turned three hundred and sixty degrees in order to do justice to the voters' mandate. After all, it was the will of the voter that his party should rule for his benefit for the next four years and, even if it is difficult, one must then sometimes sacrifice iron-hard principles and backbone for the wish of the voter. Sacrifice is a good keyword anyway, since it serves a good purpose: the sacred cow of democracy. That contented hens lay bigger eggs is nothing more than a rumor. Who needs contented chickens? Only the chickens themselves, but who cares about them?

Never to be slaughtered

Let's summarize: Democracy is when people get together to form parties, spend the people's money, rule over the same people and steal the chickens' eggs. After four years (there are five years in the discussion, for eco-logical reasons, because of the election posters, can also be ten) one of them is re-elected, which then, so that all others also have something of it, allies itself with most other parties, in order to be able to put up four (or ten) years later again new election posters with new promises with still more money.

That's how it works inside the sacred cow, even in countries hundreds of thousands of miles away where leprechauns rule. It must never be slaughtered, no matter what it has in its stomach, how it stinks and what shit comes out the back.

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The propaganda machine runs around the clock. Anyone who contradicts is no longer allowed to appear
No rooms for criticism
by Björn Blach
[This article posted on 3/9/2023 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.unsere-zeit.de/keine-raeume-fuer-kritik-4777711/.]

Ban on appearances - No rooms for criticism - Government propaganda - Politics

Roger Waters faces performance bans in several cities.

At first, it hit Russian artists in particular: anyone who did not publicly declare their support for the NATO narrative was excluded from the Western cultural scene. In the meantime, it affects all those who contradict the theses that "Putin" is solely to blame for the war and that more and more arms deliveries would bring the solution. Some are being taken to court, others are being publicly pilloried. The accusations made are thin, but are spread with all the more fervor in the media and social networks. In particular, artists and intellectuals who had previously been critical of measures against the Corona pandemic are currently in the spotlight.

One of them is the political scientist Ulrike Guérot. Her curriculum vitae includes a number of think tanks of the Western world. For a long time, her main topic was the further development of the EU. She was also a popular talk show guest. This changed during the pandemic. After her references to the antecedents of the Ukraine war and NATO's at least shared responsibility, she was cleared for firing. First, she was thrown off the jury of the NDR non-fiction prize. In the meantime, the University of Bonn has issued a notice of dismissal against Guérot. The reason given is accusations of plagiarism. She is said to have insufficiently marked quotations in non-scientific books. She would be the first to lose her job because of this.

Action has been taken against the Swiss historian Daniele Ganser for some time. He has published on NATO secret armies in Europe and their links to terrorism. He doubts the official version of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in the U.S. and has sharply criticized the U.S. wars waged under this pretext. In the same way, he refers to the antecedents of the Ukraine war and sees the U.S. as responsible. In addition to conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, he is now accused of "Putin propaganda." With this justification, several landlords canceled previously concluded contracts for lecture events, such as the Westfalenhallen in Dortmund.

Ganser's business model is self-promotion. He writes books, which he sells himself, and gives lectures in German-speaking countries - admission costs range from 30 to 40 euros. He usually gives talks to sold-out audiences. His argumentation is bourgeois, sometimes it slides into the esoteric. His action orientation often remains thin. The arguments of his opponents, however, are easy to see through. "The Network to Combat Anti-Semitism" from Dortmund explains about Ganser's appearance that he "never appeared with openly anti-Semitic statements," but spreads theories "that show a proximity to anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives and fall on fertile ground with people who are receptive to this."

Similar accusations have long been leveled at Roger Waters, the British musician and co-founder of the band Pink Floyd. Since his support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel's occupation policy in the Palestinian territories became known, he has also been accused of anti-Semitism. No anti-Semitic statements are attributed to Waters in the process either. Criticism of the actions of the state of Israel, which should not be voiced because of the Holocaust, is enough. The same applies to the USA: it acts as a protecting power of Israel - this justifies its actions. Ultimately, this type of argumentation also extends to anti-capitalism. This is also anti-Semitic, since there are also Jewish capitalists.

In early February, Waters addressed the UN Security Council at Russia's invitation. He advocated peace negotiations and blamed the West for the war. With that, the witch hunt against him reached its climax. The venue for the concert of his European tour in Frankfurt has already been cancelled. There are discussions in Berlin, Cologne and Munich. In addition to the obligatory accusations of anti-Semitism and Putin propaganda, Waters is being discredited as a nutcase and "traumatized."

These campaigns by politics and the media, which prescribe an extremely narrow framework of what can be said, narrow freedom of expression to the Western narrative. Other opinions are not just open to being shot down. Those who dare to express them are grabbed by their livelihoods. The deprivation of opportunities to perform is the extension of the occupational ban in a new form. Those who most zealously demand the defense of democracy are destroying fundamental rights with a sledgehammer.

Björn Blach, born in 1976, has been a freelance contributor to the Theory and History section since 2019. In 1997, he was among the graduates of the DKP's first, two-week basic training course after the counterrevolution. In the federal leadership of the SDAJ, he led the educational work. In 2015, he was elected district chairman of the DKP in Baden-Württemberg.

His main job is as a social pedagogue in inpatient youth welfare.