I can’t verify that this alleged transcript of today’s US State Department daily press briefing is real, but it came across my desk and it sure does sound like those crazy flashback-plagued hippies down at Foggy Bottom:
Oh my. Let’s see what the harrumphing is all about! This is the new Narco News TV video, directed by Gregory Berger, “Narco-Mania!”US Department of State Daily Press Briefing – December 8, 2011
Thu, 8 Dec 2011 17:42:34 -0500
Victoria Nuland
Spokesperson
Daily Press Briefing
Washington, DC
September 30, 2011
TRANSCRIPT:
12:45 p.m. EDT
MS. NULAND: Afternoon, everybody. I have one thing at the top and then we’ll go to your questions.
This is with regard to the reported leak of covert State Department documents claimed today by Narco News TV in its release of a video offensively titled “Narco-Mania.” The US Department of State can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the so-called “Operation Oh-No” to break up the Sinaloa drug crime organization in Mexico by fixing up Chapo Guzman with Yoko Ono. However, we have two words for whichever public employee leaked this alleged document to Narconews.com: “Bradley Manning.” Got it?
Furthermore, Secretary Clinton has asked me to pass along her personal offense, as a lifelong Beatles fan, that Narco News TV chose the date of December 8 for release of this alleged video about our alleged covert plan. As everybody knows, today marks the 31st anniversary of John Lennon’s death. I am sure I speak for every American citizen over 60 when I deplore the tasteless choice of this solemn day to premier a video that parodies that classic American film, A Hard Day’s Night.
John Lennon himself, if he were here today, would surely denounce this video’s message of ridiculing the war on drugs, one that promotes the legalization of illicit substances while claiming that ending a war would “give peace a chance.” Furthermore, we emphatically deny that four agents of the US Embassy ever held a “bed-in for war” on the Mexico City Zocalo, as portrayed in this offensive video. We strongly urge all American and Mexican citizens: Do not watch this video. Do not click http://www.narconews.com/nntv. Do not turn up the volume. And, of course, do not use any illegal drugs while watching it.
Now, let’s go to your questions…
Greg began working on the idea for this video late last year, and the first scenes were filmed in Mexico City last February. And I have to say, to imagine family members of drug war victims chasing US Drug Enforcement Administration and Embassy agents out of Mexico seems a more hopeful and inspiring message than shouting and chanting slogans about 50,000 dead from their “war on drugs.”
The short film shows how the declarations of war by Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2011 sound too much like US President Richard Nixon’s discourse 40 years ago, before our filmmaker Greg (affectionately known in Mexico as “Gringoyo”) was even born! Forty years of fighting the drug war the same way – a prohibition policy enforced by police and armies that deploy weapons and prisons and other punishments - without an iota of success. We noticed that so many of today’s leading drug warriors – from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich – were once the very sixties hippies that Nixon targeted with his drug war and look at them now: They’re doing the same things to the next generations, too.
In this video, the US State Department cooks up a plan from their drug-addled brains to break up the Mexican drug “cartels” by fixing up alleged “cartel boss” Chapo Guzmán with Yoko Ono. The “expert analyst” in the film, one Jorge Martín, explains: “We have to remember that the US State Department is led by aging baby boomer Hillary Clinton and lots of other former 1960’s youth. And they all suffer from one traumatic, collective memory: The break-up of the Beatles in 1970.”
Watch as the fab four US agents try every dumbass thing they can think of to play Cupid to Chapo and Yoko (including an Easter “Bed-In for War” on the Mexico City zócalo reminiscent of Beatle John Lennon and Ono’s Christmas “Bed-In for Peace” in 1969) and it may occur to you, as it did to us, that these bizarre tactics are no less absurd than every other hapless way they are waging the so-called “war on drugs” today.
The video began shooting weeks before a Mexican citizens mass movement to end the drug war rose up in April of this year – a nonviolent movement that last week saw one of its own fledgling leaders, Nepomuceno Moreno, gunned down in Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora – and if the movement is going to keep growing and stripping away the institutional rings of support for the drug war, it is going to have to do what all successful movements have done: Learn to laugh as well as cry, to triumph as well as mourn. Ridicule and humor are among the most powerful nonviolent weapons available to those of us who understand that you can’t beat gunfire with gunfire.
This video is also an appeal to the hearts and minds of those of you elder folks who were once rebellious youth but now fill the halls of government, media, business and every other power: Would you please get your generation under control and stop it already with the hypocrisy of claiming to love the rebel music and celebrities of your era while doing the same terrible things to today’s youth that Nixon et al – look in the mirror, you’ve become him! – did to you and yours. Remember that the Nixon White House tried, in 1972, to deport the British ex-Beatle, and the “drug war” (his 1968 guilty plea to misdemeanor marijuana possession) was the pretext they used to do it. Maybe you cried when Lennon was gunned down on this week of 1980, even if you didn’t know him personally. Imagine how family members of 50,000 Mexicans killed in the past five years of the US-imposed war on drugs have cried as a result of the policies that you prop up with your silent consent (or, even in the case of too many who do advocate ending the drug war, your ineffective self-indulgent forms of “activism”).
In the United States, you have not succeeded in organizing a mass movement against this war, despite decades of trying. Your steps are as repetitive and unimaginative as those of the drug warriors you oppose. But in nine months, Mexicans have already done the job you did not want to do. This video aims, from their creative foxhole, at the heart of your stinking war on drugs and its policy of prohibition. The events in this video are so ridiculous and yet at the same time tell an awful truth. You may not know whether to laugh or to cry. But perhaps if you can laugh with us, together we can wield the weapon of ridicule to weaken the prohibition policy and gain more heart and strength to organize ourselves for the nonviolent battle required – and long overdue – to defeat it once and for all.
You can start by helping this video to “go viral” by posting it on your Facebook and other social network pages, embedding it on your blogs and email lists, and helping us to scout and recruit journalists and other talents to apply for the 2012 School of Authentic Journalism – we just announced this week that it will happen March 21 to 31 in Mexico, and completed applications are due December 28 (to receive an application write to 2012application@narconews.com) - so that we can continue to multiply the number of people trained to do the kind of effective journalism and video creation that Greg and so many others of our graduates and colleagues do… eight days a week.
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