Bush’s Sickening Super Bowl Propaganda (AlterNet)
U2 first rose to fame off a breakthrough album in the early ’80s called “War” – the band, born of a country plagued by war and terrorism, was against it, and later songs like “Bullet the Blue Sky” specifically ripped U.S. military adventurism and its impact on poor countries.
Yesterday, Bono finished the band’s short halftime show with the inevitable tribute to 9-11 victims, literally wrapping himself in the American flag, as though honoring 9-11’s dead – many of whom weren’t Americans – somehow required solidarity with the U.S. flag and with the waging of yet another war, or three, or five. Permanent war, reduced to emotional spectacle and a brandable moment. (…)
It’s not drugs that fuel political violence throughout the world – it’s their prohibition, and the forcing of drug transactions into the black market. There, as the CIA well knows, lies the world’s most efficient system for funneling large amounts of untraceable money.
The effort to eradicate certain popular drugs – including the War on Drugs touted by yesterday’s TV ads and the Drug Czar office that paid for them – has literally created, and perpetuated, the very black market now accused of being a source of cash for al Qaeda’s jihad. Ending drug prohibitions would do far more to thwart terrorism than the War on Drugs ever could.
