Censorship, fake news, perception management

[blindpig]

Censorship and the Crisis of Bourgeois Legitimacy
MAY 15, 2024


A wall of censorship separates a man shouting into a megaphone and a man and a woman on the other side of the wall. Illustration: Midwestern Marx.

By Carlos L. Garrido – Apr 29, 2024

Speech given at the Platypus 2024 International Convention panel on The Politics of Free Speech.

In his early writings against censorship, Karl Marx proposed that it is insufficient to simply criticize censorship on the basis of how it depicts a limitation of our freedoms and rights. Far more important, he held, was the critical inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of censorship. Censorship, clearly, does not arrive out of thin air. It is produced by certain conditions which call it forth as a necessity for the dominant order.

In our age, where censorship is the order of the day, and expresses itself in diverse forms, we too must ask—what are the conditions which make this censorship necessary? While it is, indeed, essential to call out the hypocrisy of the enunciated values of the capitalist ruling class and the violation of these in reality, simply doing this is insufficient to help us understand, explain, make sense of, why it is that that censorship is so prevalent in the first place.

I think it is clear, when we observe the decaying trust in ruling institutions, in the media (which, for instance, only 11% of the population trusts), in politicians, etc., that the ruling elite have on their hands a crisis of legitimacy.

Censorship is, then, a clear product of a failure of bourgeois ideology, a deterioration of their hegemonic control over the spontaneous worldviews of the mass of people. The narratives produced by the ruling institutions of the capitalist class are no longer uncritically and spontaneously accepted by the mass of people.

Most regular Americans, especially the youth, intuitively understand that the media and other ideological apparatuses of the ruling class are not there to tell us the truth. Quite the opposite. Their whole purpose is to distort the world in such a way that it allows us to make sense of it through the narratives upheld by the ruling elite.

To employ a technical term we use in the Marxist tradition, their whole purpose is to systematically reproduce a form of false consciousness—a consciousness which turns the world on its head on the basis of superficial one-sided facts, distortions, and lies. Somehow Israel is the victim, China the imperialist, and Cuba the state sponsor of terrorism.

This is not simply a problem of epistemic hygiene, as the scholar Vannessa Wills has called it, but an objective social reality of the capitalist form of life. It is a system that, in order to reproduce itself and obtain the consent of the governed, requires that people understand the world in topsy-turvy ways. It is an order that requires a distorted refraction of itself in the realm of ideas, not an accurate, corresponsive reflection.



Working class Americans, and even some dissidents from more privileged classes, are beginning to intuitively understand this reality—even if it is not, or at least not yet, comprehended with the concreteness and systematicity a Marxist worldview can provide. Nonetheless, even these spontaneous and often incoherent forms of dissent find themselves under the boot of censorship by a ruling elite too fragile to allow any form of dissent on the principal issues of empire. They much prefer, and frankly need, a compatible form of dissenters (whether from the right or left) who might criticize politicians, capitalism, “the matrix,” etc. but who on issues of imperialism fall faithfully in line with the narratives of the ruling class.

These issues of empire, corresponding to the Neo-imperialist stage of capitalism we find ourselves in, are the Achilles heel for the contemporary elite. The vast majority of those who have been censored over the last few years have been attacked and maligned precisely because of their challenges to the imperialist narratives. No one, that I know of, has been censored on the basis of calling for the raising of the minimum wage, for Medicare for all, or for loan forgiveness—important though these issues are for the vast majority of working-class Americans.

The voices which are censored are those that have challenged the narratives of empire on key issues such as the proxy war against Russia, the New Cold War against China, the unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and others, and of course, the most pivotal issue of our day, the genocide of the Palestinians by the fascist state of Israel, the US’s colonial outpost in West Asia.

I speak today not as an outsider simply interested in issues of censorship, but as the director of an institute that has had to battle tooth and nail against censorship for the last few years.

Three years ago, when the July 11 color revolution “protests” in Cuba were occurring, we used our institute’s TikTok to dispel the imperialist myths aimed, as always, at regime change. Our following at the time was nearing 300 thousand, and the videos we were making were reaching millions of people. Within a couple videos discussing the situation our account would get temporarily suspended, a reality we faced throughout the whole summer. As is often the case, because they could not beat us at the level of ideas, their only option was censorship.

Within months the special military operations would occur, representing a new moment in the imperialist West’s battle against Russia. At the time, we used our Institute’s TikTok platform to push back against the NATO imperialist narratives painting Putin simply as a blood thirsty maniac. We contextualized the SMO in the long history of US/NATO expansion towards Russia, the war on the people of the Donbass since 2014, the expansion, backed by the West, of Nazi-Banderism and its incorporation into the Ukrainian state amongst other factors necessary to properly access the actions that occurred in February 2022—all factors which in previous years the imperialist media, and various U.S. officials, themselves accepted.

For exposing these truths, challenging to the imperialist narrative, our account (this time nearing 400 thousand followers) would be permanently banned. In the subsequent year we would create seven new accounts, a few which also surpassed the 100 thousand follower mark, only to be banned as soon as we once again were capable of reaching millions.

As the investigative work of Alan Macleod showed, the year the censorship against the Institute started the Biden administration would force ByteDance (the Chinese company with the people-centered algorithms that allowed us to grow) to hand over management of their US servers to the Texas-based company ORACLE, a company with intimate ties to the CIA. It was revealed in Macleod’s report that Oracle had hired a litany of former US State Department and Intelligence Operatives to manage the content for Tik Tok, as well as a few NATO executives for good measure. TikTok said that they deleted 320,000 “Russian accounts” which included many American socialist who have never been associated with Russia in any way, such as our Institute.



The censorship we have faced, however, has been far from limited to TikTok (an app that, although managed by the state department, has been unable to fully control the dissenting attitudes to imperialism the youth put out—the real reason why they have been moving to ban the app, and why, even though we’ve been banned more than seven times, we’ve been able to rebuild a new account with well over 200 thousand followers and with millions of views on various videos).

In the middle of February of this year, while we were covering the death of the West’s beloved far-right racist Navalny, we received news that our YouTube was demonetized. This was one of the central sources of revenue for the Institute—a place people would donate through and ask questions in our live broadcasts. This, of course, was a unique form of censorship—a targeting of the financial foundation which allows us to do the work we do.

This is merely the tip of the iceberg of censoring attacks we, and many others like us, have faced when our ideas not only challenge the dominant narrative, but do so in a way that reaches hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of people.

Social media has, as I have tried to outline in my recent writings, become one of the central ideological fields where the war of position, i.e., the war of ideas for the hearts and minds of people, has to be waged. It is an area people spend 3-4 hours a day surfing, and which is central to spontaneously developing the views people come to hold on relevant political issues. Despite its tubular character and the leakages of dissenting views that spring up here and there, it has become the most important apparatus of narrative control for the ruling class – a space where they can boost their narratives (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly through bots) and shut down the dissenting ones (again, sometimes directly through bans, sometimes indirectly through demonetization, and sometimes more insidiously, through shadowbans, as has occurred to various other directors at our Institute).

In the face of this censorship, it is the duty of Marxists to contextualize its emergence in the crisis of legitimacy and empire we have before us. It is also our duty, if we wish to win the war of positions, to use to our favor the gap between the lofty enunciated values of the ruling class (most of which are accepted in the common sense of our people) and the reality their order creates. The fact that, on one hand, the elite proclaim the right to free speech, media, etc., and that on the other, they censor all voices which challenge the dominant narrative (especially on issues of war and peace) is an objective contradiction we must explain to the American people, and exploit in our favor. We must help them achieve coherence in the dissenting attitudes they already hold—aid them in understanding why the ruling class and its institutions ought to be distrusted and challenged.

Lenin’s question—freedom (or freedom of speech) for whom and to do what?—must always be asked. Freedom, of speech or of any other kind, is an abstraction that contains an obscured class content. Freedom of speech for the elite is the freedom of their speech, their freedom to distort reality and keep us ignorant cogs in a machine they own, profit off of, and hope to continue to keep running.

Freedom of speech for us, the vast majority of people, is fundamentally rooted in the ability to speak truth to power, to challenge the narratives of those who cloak themselves under the auspices of ‘fighting misinformation’ while it is they who are the great liars, deceivers, and misinformers.

This requires that we stand against censorship of all kinds, not just of those who already hold our Marxist worldview. Anyone challenging empire, regardless of how anachronistic their views might be, ought to have their rights to free speech and media protected. As Marxists, that is, as the ultimate enemies of the ruling order, we cannot stand in favor of the state’s cracking down of dissenting voices on issues of empire, even if, outside of those issues, we find some of these dissenters’ views abhorrent.

In our era of blatant censorship, us Marxists ought to defend the right to free speech endowed to us in our bourgeois constitution—even if we are able to understand, and explain to others, the systematic reasons why the capitalist ruling class will always, in times of crisis, have to violate the democratic rights it enunciates with its emergence on the historical scene.

(Philosophy in Crisis)

https://orinocotribune.com/censorship-a ... egitimacy/

Does this mean we are to defend the speech of Nazis? No way in hell, if we banned it from public discourse Nazi-ism would dwindle away in a generation or two.

*****

NYT Editor Denies His Paper’s Role in Setting the Agenda It Reports On
JIM NAURECKAS

New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn says “good media” (by which he most certainly means the New York Times) is a “pillar of democracy.” Talking to Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the Semafor news site (5/5/24), Kahn elaborated:

One of the absolute necessities of democracy is having a free and fair and open election where people can compete for votes, and the role of the news media in that environment is not to skew your coverage towards one candidate or the other, but just to provide very good, hard-hitting, well-rounded coverage of both candidates, and informing voters.

By way of explaining “the essential role of quality media in informing people about their choice in a presidential election,” Kahn summed up how he sees the Times covering Campaign 2024:

It is true that Biden’s agenda is more in sync with traditional establishment parties and candidates. And we’re reporting on that and making it very clear.

I put it to you that presenting that as the first thing to say about the election—which candidate is more pro-establishment?—is both a peculiar view of what’s at stake in 2024 and, at the same time, a good way to skew coverage toward one of the two major-party candidates: Donald Trump.

‘Issues people have’

New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn talked to Semafor (5/5/24) about the “big push” his paper is making to “reestablish our norms and emphasize independent journalism.”

But Kahn is committed to denying that the Times—the most powerful agenda-setting news outlet in the United States—has any say over what issues are considered important:

It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one—immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them?

Should the Times stop covering the economy? No, of course not. But it should stop covering it in a way that overemphasizes inflation over other measures of economic health. In 2023, as increases in wages outpaced inflation in the United States, the paper talked about “inflation” six times as often as it talked about “wage growth” (FAIR.org, 1/5/24).

On immigration, the Times should not be treating calls from local Democratic leaders for greater resources to help settle refugees as “growing pressure” on Biden “to curb record numbers of migrants crossing into the United States” (New York Times, 1/4/24; FAIR.org, 1/9/24).

What Times critics are calling for is not censorship, as Kahn pretends, but a recognition that the paper is not merely holding up a mirror to the world, but making choices about what’s important for readers to know—and that those choices have real-world consequences, including in terms of the issues voters think are important.

Kahn defended his paper as giving “a pretty well-rounded, fair portrait of Biden”—stressing that it had covered what it saw as the positive achievements of his administration in foreign policy, which provides some insight into the core politics of the New York Times:

his real commitment to national security; his deep involvement on the Ukraine war with Russia; the building or rebuilding of NATO; and then the very, very difficult task of managing Israel and the regional stability connected with the Gaza war.

The fact that Kahn thinks that Biden’s handling of Gaza reflects well on the president suggests that Kahn’s father having been on the board of CAMERA (Intercept, 1/28/24)—a group dedicated to pushing news media to be ever more pro-Israel—may not be the irrelevant antisemitic dogwhistle that Kahn dismissed it as.

‘Some coverage of his age’

Surely the New York Times (2/9/24) running at least 26 stories on the subject in a week had something to do with Joe Biden’s age being “at the center of 2024.”

At the same time, Kahn acknowledged that his paper has had “some coverage about [Biden’s] frailty and his age”—but insisted that a regular reader is “not going to see that much” about that.

As it happens, there was a study done of how much the New York Times writes about Biden’s age. The Computational Social Science Lab (3/8/24) at the University of Pennsylvania found that in the week after special counsel Robert Hur cited how old Biden was as part of his decision not to indict him for mishandling classified documents, the Times ran at least 26 stories on the topic of Biden’s elderliness—”of which one of them explored the possibility that Trump’s age was of equal or more concern.” (The study looked only at stories that appeared among the top 20 stories on the Times‘ website home page, a measure of the importance the paper accorded to coverage.)

By way of comparison, CSS Lab noted that when, about the same time, Trump announced “that if he regained power he would pull the US out of NATO and even encourage Russian invasions of democratic allies if their financial commitments were not to his liking,” the Times ran just 10 articles on the issue that made it to the top of its home page.

About two weeks after this burst of coverage, CSS Lab noted a second wave of Times stories about how old Biden was—based on a poll that found that voters were indeed concerned about the subject:

Critically, this second burst was triggered not by some event that generated new evidence about Biden’s age affecting his performance as president, but rather the NYT’s own poll that pointedly asked respondents about the exact issue they had just spent the previous month covering relentlessly…. None of this second wave of articles acknowledges the existence of the first wave or the possibility that poll respondents might simply have been parroting the NYT’s own coverage back to them.

Turning situations into crises

Establishment media have displayed no more urgency about the prospect of Trumpists stealing the 2024 election than they had two years ago (FAIR.org, 2/16/22).

That’s the same pattern that we see with the immigration and inflation stories—and, in the runup to the 2022 midterms, with the “crime wave” issue (FAIR.org, 11/10/22). Corporate media—not the New York Times alone, of course, but the Times does play a leading role—have the ability, through their framing and emphasis, to turn situations into crises. And they have chosen to do this, again and again, in ways that make it more likely that Trump will return to the White House in 2025—with an avowed intent to do permanent damage to democracy.

The prospect does not seem to faze Joe Kahn. “Trump could win this election in a popular vote,” he told Smith. “Given that Trump’s not in office, it will probably be fair.”

It’s a stunningly ignorant comment, given that elections in the United States are not run by the federal government; the Republican Party has been working tirelessly at the state and local level since 2020 to put itself in a position to overturn the popular vote (FAIR.org, 2/16/22). To the extent that the process has federal oversight, it’s largely through a judicial branch in which the GOP-controlled Supreme Court holds supreme power.

But then, why should I expect Kahn to have a deeper understanding of how elections work than he does of how media and public opinion work?

https://fair.org/home/nyt-editor-denies ... eports-on/

[blindpig]

“Am I An Extremist? ”
Posted on May 22, 2024 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This post by Richard Murphy gives an update on how quickly the censorship project is advancing in the UK. The US analogue is trying to finesse the free speech/First Amendment impediment by depicting disfavored speech as terrorist supporting or discriminatory. So far, the dodgy bill equating criticism of Israel’s genocide as anti-semitism has not yet gotten past the House, but I would not bet against it becoming law. It is hard to see how it would survive a First Amendment challenge.

ICYMI: Congress passed a GOP bill conflating criticisms of Israel’s government with antisemitism when enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

An assault on free speech to punish political protest & pro-Palestinian voices. Criticizing governments committing genocide is good actually. https://t.co/VFxeTzJlOi

— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) May 2, 2024

In addition, the point may be the chilling effect…even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly nixed laws and private agreements that have that effect. This extract from FIRE, shows how often the Supreme Court has cleared its throat on this issue:

The “chilling effect” refers to a phenomenon where individuals or groups refrain from engaging in expression for fear of running afoul of a law or regulation. Chilling effects generally occur when a law is either too broad or too vague. Individuals steer far clear from the reaches of the law for fear of retaliation, prosecution, or punitive governmental action.

Chilling Effect in the Courts

Justice Felix Frankfurter referred to the chilling effect in his concurring opinion in Wieman v. Updegraff (1952), a case involving a loyalty oath imposed on teachers. In that opinion, Justice Frankfurter declared:

[The loyalty oath] has an unmistakable tendency to chill that free play of the spirit which all teachers ought especially to cultivate and practice; it makes for caution and timidity in their associations by potential teachers.

Vague laws produce chilling effects because individuals do not know exactly when their expressive conduct or speech crosses the line and violates such rules. The Supreme Court explained this when examining the constitutionality of two provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) that criminalized the online transmission of “patently offensive” and “indecent” communications. However, the law failed to define either term, thus creating a chilling effect.

Writing for the Court in Reno v. ACLU (1997), Justice John Paul Stevens explained:

The vagueness of the CDA is a matter of special concern for two reasons. First, the CDA is a content based regulation of speech. The vagueness of such a regulation raises special First Amendment concerns because of its obvious chilling effect on free speech.

Vague laws are not the only ones that can cause chilling effects. Overbroad laws and laws that impose a prior restraint on expression also can chill expression. Justice William Brennan referred to this in his dissenting opinion in Walker v. City of Birmingham (1967) when he wrote of “our overriding duty to insulate all individuals from the chilling effect upon exercise of First Amendment freedoms generated by vagueness, overbreadth and unbridled discretion to limit their exercise.”

Laws that chill free expression do not provide the appropriate level of breathing space for First Amendment freedoms. The Court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) created a new rule for allegedly defamatory statements about public officials—the actual malice rule—in order to combat the chilling effects that many state libel laws had on free expression.

Now to the main event.

By Richard Murphy, part-time Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School, director of the Corporate Accountability Network, member of Finance for the Future LLP, and director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Fund the Future.

I posted this YouTube video this morning. In it I argue that the government is cracking down on those they call extremists, who seem to me and, I suspect, most people, to be those holding exceedingly normal opinions. Woe beside nature lovers, democrats and those concerned about poverty, let alone anyone not a neoliberal. So, is Rishi Sunak the extremist in reality, because I certainly don’t feel that I am?



The transcript is:

Rishi Sunak is trying to redefine extremism in the UK, and that’s extremely dangerous.

It’s particularly dangerous in the context of a new report that has been produced by someone called Lord Walney, who used to be the Labour MP John Woodcock, but frankly he was one of those who pioneered the move of Labour towards the right wing, and he’s now well and truly on the right of the Conservative Party as far as I can work out.

And what it seems that Rishi Sunak plus Lord Walney are trying to do together is to redefine those who are considered enemies of the state. They are the people who, according to Lord Walney, might lose the right to protest because they’re trying to undermine democracy.

But let’s just look at the list that Rishi Sunak used of those who he thinks are extremists.

They’re leftists. In other words, anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

Environmentalists. That’s vast numbers of people in the UK, who are members of things like the National Trust.

Pacifists. I’m a Quaker, so unsurprisingly, I fall into that category.

Migrants.

Peaceful protesters. Peaceful protesters, I stress.

Democrats.

People who believe in the rule of law. That’s very threatening.

The supporters of human rights, even though, of course, we, the UK, were one of the founding signatories to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and created the European Court of Human Rights.

And, let’s be clear about this – nationalists, whether they be Scottish, Welsh, or Irish,

All are extremists.

So, look, this is pretty significant for some people. I notice that I happen to tick all those boxes to some degree or other. But am I an extremist? Well, of course I’m not. Not in any shape or form.

I believe all people are born equal.

Discrimination is abhorrent in all its forms.

We all have equal rights to partake in society and ask as a result that society should have a bias towards the poor, the disadvantaged and the oppressed. I

believe we should all have a say in the societies of which we are a part. That, after all, is what being a democrat means.

And I think that no state has the right to demand the subjugation of another to its will, which is why I support many nationalist causes.

So, am I an extremist for subscribing to all those beliefs, or am I simply someone who holding beliefs that are pretty close to the teaching of, well, the Christian church and pretty much every other faith, as well as all the major western and other wisdom traditions, let alone virtually all moral philosophy?

So, the question is, is Sunak right? Or is he peddling a corrupt form of politics designed to

favour the rich,
deny opportunity to those who are disadvantaged,
encourage inequality,
promote intolerance and discrimination,
undermine democracy, and
oppress Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, let alone any other country in the world that he cares to take offence about.
My answer is he’s promoting toxicity to deny people like me our freedom to express our opinions as we wish.

Now, that’s an action that, to me, that is quite clearly contrary to the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

And in an era of growing political tension, he must know that this could lead to abuse. And I mean, both obvious online and verbal abuse, but even physical abuse as tensions rise.

So, what is he up to? Is this fascism? Because that’s what it feels like by denying the right of everyone who opposes him to believe anything and be labelled as anything but an extremist.

\And there’s another question that follows on from that, which is why isn’t Labour roundly condemning this?

I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions, but what I do know is that they need to be asked, and I do know that human rights have to be stood up for, because they’ve been hard won. And they could be easily lost. And the cost to us all as a consequence of that will be enormous.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05 ... emist.html

[blindpig]

How Influencer Cartels Manipulate Social Media: Fraudulent Behaviour Hidden in Plain Sight
Posted on June 3, 2024 by Lambert Strether

Lambert here: Wait a minute. Cartels… “consumer welfare”… Reminds me of something, can’t quite put my finger on it….

By Marit Hinnosaar, Assistant Professor University Of Nottingham, and Toomas Hinnosaar, University of Nottingham Economic Theory Centre. Originally published at VoxEU.

Social media influencers account for a growing share of marketing budgets worldwide. This column examines a problem within this rapidly expanding advertising market – influencer cartels, in which groups of influencers collude to increase advertising revenue by inflating each other’s engagement numbers. Influencer cartels can improve consumer welfare if they expand social media engagement to the target audience, but reduce welfare if they divert engagement to less relevant audiences. Rewarding engagement quantity encourages harmful collusion. Instead, the authors suggest, influencers should be compensated based on the actual value they provide.

Imagine a university that rewards professors based on the number of citations to their research. In response, a group of colleagues might agree to cite each other’s work in every paper they write. What would be the positive and negative effects of our imaginary citation cartel? Economists are not known for excessive citations, which could be explained by positive externalities: the citing author bears all the costs, while the cited author reaps the benefits. As citing authors can’t internalise this positive externality, we end up with fewer citations than is socially optimal.

A citation cartel could solve this issue via reciprocal behaviour: by the cartel agreement, members would receive as many citations as they give. However, this can go too far. If this agreement requires citing unrelated papers, it might be good for group members but lead to meaningless literature reviews. Thus, the benefit of such agreements depends on their nature: making more effort to cite related papers could be good, while citing unrelated papers is probably bad.

Such academic citation cartels are not purely hypothetical. Academic journals have been found to form agreements to boost each other’s journals in the rankings (Van Noorden 2013). Similarly, universities have boosted their colleagues’ citation counts to advance in university rankings (Catanzaro 2024). Due to such citation patterns, Clarivate (Thomson Reuters) has excluded journals from Impact Factor listings, and most recently excluded the entire field of mathematics (Van Noorden 2013, Catanzaro 2024).

Academic citation cartels are difficult to study because there is no data on explicit cartel agreements. But in influencer marketing, cartel agreements are observable. In our new paper (Hinnosaar and Hinnosaar 2024), we study how influencers collude to inflate engagement and the conditions under which influencer cartels can be welfare-improving.

Distorted Incentives and Fraudulent Behaviour in Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has become a key part of modern advertising. In 2023, spending on influencer marketing reached $31 billion, already rivalling the entirety of print newspaper advertising. Influencer marketing allows advertisers fine targeting based on consumer interests by choosing a good product-influencer-consumer match.

Many non-celebrity influencers are not paid based on the success of their marketing campaigns. In fact, less than 20% of companies track the sales induced by their influencer marketing campaigns. Instead, influencers’ pay is based on impact measures such as the number of followers and engagement (likes and comments), furnishing an incentive for fraudulent behaviour – for inflating their influence. Inflating influence is a form of advertising fraud that causes market inefficiencies by directing ads to the wrong audience. An estimated 15% of influencer marketing spending is misused due to exaggerated influence. To address this issue, the US Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule in 2023 to ban the sale and purchase of false indicators of social media influence. Cartels provide a way of obtaining fake engagement that does not fall directly under the proposed rule – because no money changes hands – but is still in the same spirit. While there is substantial literature on fake consumer reviews (Mayzlin et al. 2014, Luca and Zervas 2016) and other forms of advertising fraud (Zinman and Zitzewitz 2016), the literature on influencer marketing has focused mostly on advertising disclosure (Ershov and Mitchell 2023, Pei and Mayzlin 2022, Mitchell 2021, Fainmesser and Galeotti 2021), leaving the fraudulent behaviour unstudied.

How Do Instagram Cartels Work?

An influencer cartel is a group of influencers who collude to boost their advertising fees by inflating engagement metrics. As in traditional industries (Steen et al. 2013), influencer cartels involve a formal agreement to manipulate the market for the members’ benefit. The cartels operate in online chatrooms. The screenshots below show how one such cartel operates in practice. The image on the left is from an online chat room, where cartel members submit links to their content for extra engagement. Before submitting a link, they must reciprocate by liking and commenting on other members’ posts. An algorithm enforces these rules. The image on the right shows these cartel-induced comments on Instagram. The cartel history and rules make it possible to observe which engagement (comments) originate from the cartel.

Figure 1 Left panel shows posts in online chatroom submitted for cartel engagement; right panel shows Instagram comments originating from the cartel


Source: Left panel is a screenshot of a Telegram group; right panel is a screenshot from Instagram. To preserve anonymity, account identifiers are blurred and the photo is replaced with an analogous photo by an AI image generator.

What Distinguishes ‘Bad’ from ‘Not-So-Bad’ Cartels?

Our theoretical model formalises the main trade-offs in this setting, in the spirit of the imaginary citation group discussed earlier. The model focuses on strategic engagement, a decision that affects social media content distribution and consumption (Aridor et al. 2024) but has been underexplored (with the exception of Filippas et al. 2023, who studied attention bartering in Twitter). Engaging with other influencers’ content has a positive externality, leading to too little engagement in equilibrium. Forming a cartel to reciprocally engage with each other’s content can internalise this externality and might be socially desirable. However, it can also result in low-value engagement, especially when advertisers pay based on quantity rather than quality.

The key dimension to differentiating ‘bad’ from ‘not-so-bad’ cartels is the quality of cartel engagement. By ‘high quality’, we mean engagement coming from influencers with similar interests. The idea is that influencers provide value to advertisers by promoting a product among the target audience: people with similar interests, such as vegan burgers to vegans. If a cartel generates engagement from influencers with other interests (meat lovers), this hurts consumers and advertisers. It hurts consumers because the platform will show them irrelevant content, and advertisers are hurt because their ads are shown to the wrong audience. Whether or not a particular cartel is welfare-reducing or welfare-improving is an empirical question.

Evaluating engagement quality using machine-learning methods

To answer this empirical question, we use novel data from influencer cartels and machine learning to analyse Instagram text and photos. The cartel data allows us to directly observe which Instagram posts are included in the cartel and which engagement originates from the cartel (via cartel rules). Our dataset includes two types of cartels, differentiated by cartel entry rules: topic cartels (which only accept influencers posting on specific topics) and general cartels (with unrestricted topics).

Our goal is to compare the quality of natural engagement to that originating from the cartel. We measure the quality by the topic match between the cartel member and the Instagram user who engages. To quantify the similarity of Instagram users, we generate numeric vectors (embeddings) from the text and photos in Instagram posts using a large language model (Language-agnostic BERT Sentence Embedding) and an analogous large neural network (Contrastive Language Image Pre-training model). Then we calculate cosine similarity between the Instagram users based on these numeric vectors.

Are the Cartels Likely to Be Welfare-Improving?

We find that engagement from general cartels is significantly lower in quality compared to natural engagement. Specifically, the quality of engagement from these cartels is nearly as low as that from a counterfactual engagement from a random Instagram user. In contrast, engagement from topic cartels is much closer to the quality of natural engagement.

The figure below illustrates these effects using raw data (see the paper for regression estimates, robustness checks, and additional analysis). It presents distributions of cosine similarity between the author and commenter, separately for general (left panel) and topic (right panel) cartels. It shows that non-cartel commenters (natural engagement) have the highest similarity with the author of the content, and random users have the lowest. Match quality from general cartels is similar to random engagement (left panel). In contrast, topic cartel engagement is much closer to natural engagement (right panel).

Figure 2 Probability density of authors’ similarity to commenters and random users in general cartels (left) and topic cartels (right)



Back-of-the-envelope calculations (based on regression analysis) show that if advertisers pay for cartel engagement as if it were natural engagement, they receive only 3–18% of the value with general cartels, and 60–85% with topic cartels. In other words, general cartels provide nearly worthless engagement for advertisers, while topic cartels cause less distortion.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

Our findings lead to three policy implications. First, since general cartels are likely to reduce welfare, stronger regulation of their activities would benefit society. Second, regulations that prohibit buying and selling fake social media indicators should also cover in-kind transfers, such as paying for engagement with reciprocal engagement. Third, the current practice of rewarding engagement quantity encourages harmful collusion. A better approach would be to compensate influencers based on the actual value they provide. Luckily, many advertisers are already moving in this direction. Until they get there, platforms could improve outcomes by reporting match-quality-weighted engagement.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06 ... sight.html

[blindpig]

Scott Ritter Removed from Plane to Russia and Had Passport Seized with No Explanation
Posted on June 4, 2024 by Yves Smith

Scott Ritter was set to travel to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a major event, and make a presentation there. I am not clear on the details, but he also mentioned regularly on his various interviews that he was planning to visit many Russian cities and meet with Russians to promote better understanding between Russia and the US, depicting himself as trying to build bridges. He would often make jibes at the failure of the State Department to operate this way.

We will hear more details from Ritter soon, but he was removed from the plane taking him on the first leg of his flight to St. Petersburg (a high-handed, embarrassment-maximizing move; he could just have easily been stopped at the boarding gate) and had his passport seized. The only explanation he got from the Customs and Border Police officials was that the move was on the orders of the Department of State.

There is a lot of speculation on Twitter, and by over-eager readers, that Judge Napolitano had his trip to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum also cancelled by US officials, and in a more extreme version of the tale, was traveling with Ritter and removed from the plane with him. Napolitano has twice denied it on his first programs on Monday. From the top of his interview with Alastair Crooke:


trip was cancelled due to events in Russia that are not national or major diplomatic events but events that involve this trip

And from the atart of his talk with Larry Johnson, who he was set to see for dinner in St. Petersburg:

….the cancellation was beyond my control and had nothing to do with me personally.

From Napolitano’s Twitter account:

STATEMENT FROM JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO:

"I was neither on the plane nor at the airport when this incident occurred. Scott’s free speech and travel rights were profoundly violated. From a constitutional perspective, I condemn the actions of the State Department."

— Judge Napolitano (@Judgenap) June 3, 2024

Napolitano also stated he found out about the change in his drill before he left for the airport and was glad for that. He sounded quite chipper in his talk with Johnson.

So if there was any official action against Napolitano to prevent his travel, he vitiated any opportunity to lodge a protest by twice depicting the impediment as having nothing to do with him personally. I have to think Napolitano is too canny to have undercut any due process rights, if he wanted to avail himself of them, before speaking to counsel.

So back to Ritter. Ritter is a controversial figure who likes to paint in bright colors and has been pilloried for some bad calls on the conflict in Ukraine, notably predicting an early Russian victory (as in fairness did some Western officials too). Nevertheless, I have found much of his commentary to be valuable, particularly details of his past experiences, UN and NATO niceties, and military operations.

It is hard to fathom any legal justification for this move, not that the Biden Administration is big on such niceties. It is remarkably hard to find, on a quick search, the statutory grounds for passport revocation or seizure; the actual texts are recursive and the references to them oracular.1

Larry Johnson quickly went to bat for Ritter, presenting what he says are the three grounds for passport revocation: being involved in criminal activity, unpaid taxes, or based on a request from law enforcement.



As we show in the footnote below, the party having his passport revoked is supposed to receive a written notice, which did not happen with Ritter.

The only way State might pretty this up is tax thuggery, as in having the IRS produce a notice of tax delinquency that Ritter did not receive. Note that the IRS took the mission to harass Matt Taibbi:

The IRS is targeting Matt Taibbi. Democrats always use the IRS to target people they feel threatened by. pic.twitter.com/iKA85Jh1Mp

— ULTRATHEY (@ultrathey) March 28, 2023

For those of you not familiar with IRS practice, the agency does not turn up at taxpayer homes. Normally when they want an in-person meeting, they schedule it and offer the taxpayer the option of meeting at the IRS office or at home. And that is usually in connection with an audit or complex/protracted dispute. Tax experts universally recommend not letting the IRS into the house. The Wall Street Journal editorial confirmed that, as well as describing the agency’s odd behavior with Taibbi’s returns:

Now Mr. [Matt] Taibbi has told Mr. [Jim] Jordan’s committee that an IRS agent showed up at his personal residence in New Jersey on March 9. That happens to be the same day Mr. Taibbi testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about what he learned about Twitter. The taxman left a note instructing Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. Mr. Taibbi was told in a call with the agent that both his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had been rejected owing to concerns over identity theft.

Mr. Taibbi has provided the committee with documentation showing his 2018 return had been electronically accepted, and he says the IRS never notified him or his accountants of a problem after he filed that 2018 return more than four-and-a-half years ago.

He says the IRS initially rejected his 2021 return, which he later refiled, and it was rejected again—even though Mr. Taibbi says his accountants refiled it with an IRS-provided pin number. Mr. Taibbi notes that in neither case was the issue “monetary,” and that the IRS owes him a “considerable” sum.

The bigger question is when did the IRS start to dispatch agents for surprise house calls? Typically when the IRS challenges some part of a tax return, it sends a dunning letter. Or it might seek more information from the taxpayer or tax preparer. If the IRS wants to audit a return, it schedules a meeting at the agent’s office. It doesn’t drop by unannounced.

Ritter had just declared war on the Clooney Foundation to Silence Russia-Friendly Reporting. From a write-up on Sputnik on the passport seizure:

The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”

“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”

“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.

This could just be a coincidence of timing….or did Ritter get a private threat?

So it isn’t hard to see this as a heavy-handed censorship move. I hope free speech advocates rally to publicize this abuse of power.

_______

1 Admittedly that may be a function of the state of search, but have a look yourself at this document: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/51.60. Despite being headed “Denial and restriction of passports” it is about denial of the issuance of a passport, and not seizure or cancellation of a valid passport.

This document, Passport Information for Law Enforcement, tells law enforcement officials how to petition State to have a passport restricted or revoked and includes:

Law enforcement agencies may ask us to deny a passport under 22 CFR 51.60. Some reasons to deny a passport include:

• A valid, unsealed federal warrant of arrest
• A federal or state criminal court order
• A condition of parole or probation forbidding departure from the United States (or the jurisdiction of the court)
• A request for extradition

But this does not tell us anything about what grounds State might gin up.

This document at govinfo, which includes an image of text of a section of statute, “Revocation or limitation of passports,” which is extremely uncommunicative. A later section describes restricting travel to countries with which the US is at war, armed hostilities are in progress, or there is risk to US travelers. None of those would warrant action against Ritter alone. The only part that is clear is:

§ 51.65 Notification of denial or revocation of passport.
(a) The Department will notify in writing any person whose application for issuance of a passport has been denied, or whose passport has been revoked. The notification will set forth the specific reasons for the denial or revocation, and, if applicable, the pro cedures for review available under 22 CFR 51.70 through 51.74

Ritter was not given the mandated written notice even by the goons who removed him from the plane.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/06 ... ation.html

[blindpig]

The Washington Post Is Pure AIDS, And Other Notes

The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Caitlin Johnstone
June 6, 2024

❖

The Washington Post’s unbelievably sleazy smear piece against independent media outlet The Grayzone can be summed up with its line “The First Amendment guarantees free speech rights even for Americans believed to be spreading foreign propaganda. But…”

The whole thing is designed to manufacture support for criminally prosecuting dissident American journalists on the grounds that they violated US sanctions by working for Iranian media years ago, and to give the reader the false impression that The Grayzone is funded by foreign states without actually advancing the claim and eating a libel suit.

And the hit piece is having its intended effect; you see professional empire apologists all over Twitter today promoting the false claim that The Grayzone is funded by Iran and Russia. The empire’s information warriors now have one more weapon they can use to weaken public trust in dissident journalism whenever it presents an inconvenient narrative.

All because some Grayzone staff were involved with foreign media outlets in the past, which only happened because there are no major western media outlets which platform dissident voices like theirs who criticize the western empire and its actions. These people are being persecuted for disagreeing with their government. It really is that simple.

The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

(more...)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/06 ... her-notes/

[blindpig]

Scott Ritter another American voice for sanity and peace gets cancelled

June 7, 2024

The prevention of Ritter travelling to speak and broadcast from Russia is a sure sign that the Western imperialist warmongers are afraid of the truth.

The sinister prevention of Scott Ritter travelling to speak and broadcast from Russia this week by United States authorities is a sure sign that the Western imperialist warmongers are afraid of the truth.

Indeed, there is a dark shadow cast on their pretensions of “democracy and freedom” – ironically in a week that supposedly commemorates the D-Day landings and the historic fight against fascism.

The former U.S. Marine and United Nations weapons inspector has gained worldwide respect as an independent political commentator and analyst. Ritter has become a powerful critic of the United States and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine. He has staunchly appealed for dialogue and diplomacy, warning that the reckless provocations by Washington and its allies towards Russia are driving the world to a nuclear conflagration.

This week, Ritter was due to fly from New York to Istanbul, on his way to attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. The annual forum is attended by thousands of delegates from all over the world. He was hauled off the flight by U.S. police officers and his passport was confiscated before being escorted from the airport. There was no official explanation for the draconian interdiction to his travel plans. The U.S. State Department refused to comment on the matter, saying it was a private matter.

However, there is no doubt, whatsoever, that the humiliating move was politically organized by powerful people, as Ritter claims. It was aimed at preventing him from going to Russia simply because of his outspoken political views. That is an incredible infringement of democratic rights and a revelation of the dark forces at work, which are now increasingly public and blatant.

The incident is a grave illustration of how legally protected free speech rights are being trampled on in the United States and other NATO countries. Numerous other instances of censorship and “cancelling” are testimony to the intensity of the information war that the Western states are waging, not just against supposed foreign adversaries but against their own citizens.

Millions of Western citizens are being denied access to important independent news and other media simply based on official designation by unaccountable Western authorities that said information is “Russian disinformation”. Russian news outlets such as RT and Sputnik are banned from being accessed through normal channels.

Scott Ritter is one of several respected American voices of sanity and genuine intelligence who are banished from so-called mainstream Western media. Other figures include Professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, former ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock, former CIA analysts Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson and former senior Pentagon experts Doug Macgregor and Earl Rasmussen.

All of these figures are articulate and informed critics of the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine. They have been eminently capable of explaining how the war was fomented through illicit intervention in Ukraine over many years and how the prospects for a diplomatic and peaceful settlement are deliberately being sabotaged by Washington and its NATO vassals. In the laudable spirit of 1930s U.S. Marine Major General Smedley D Butler, they have shown how “war is a racket”.

The war in Ukraine has been sold to the world based on a fetid pile of lies and Russophobic prejudices. A heinous fraud is taking place, putting the world’s future at imminent peril.

Scott Ritter, like the other voices cited above, is never or rarely interviewed on the corporate-controlled Western media channels precisely for the reason that the critical analysis he and they articulate debunks the war propaganda emanating from the U.S. government and its NATO allies – propaganda that is pumped and laundered non-stop to the Western public and presented as “news”.

No dissenting voices are permitted under the tyranny that is Western imperialist warmongering. Just ask Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister who was shot and seriously wounded by a gunman on May 15 because, as Fico believes, he opposes the NATO war against Russia. As the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, assassination is just an extreme form of censorship.

A demonstration of the nefarious propaganda system was seen this week during the 80th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings. U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders used the commemorative event in France to issue doom-laden warnings that “democracy is under attack” and to portray the war in Ukraine as a re-run of the standing up to Nazi Germany in World War Two with Russia projected as the reincarnation of Hitler’s Third Reich. The whole D-Day pomp and ceremony was a travesty. And yet such nauseating distortion of history was relayed to Western audiences by the likes of CNN and BBC, to mention just two channels, as if it were a noble reflection.

Democracy and freedom are under attack alright – from Biden and the rest of the Western ruling elite whose basis of oligarchic power is increasingly appearing as outright fascism – albeit with “liberal” sounding rhetoric.

Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian puppet president and now de facto dictator due to his cancellation of elections, was among the dignitaries in Normandy. So, too, was Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Only a few months ago, Zelensky and Trudeau gave a standing ovation to a Nazi veteran in the Canadian parliament.

Biden and the Western elite are the ones who are inciting a world war in Ukraine against Russia. If comparisons are to be made it is that NATO is the heir to Nazi fascism and warmongering.

On the same day that Biden, Macron, Sunak, King Charles and other non-entity Western elites were extolling the “fight for democracy and freedom”, the Israeli regime that they support with weapons and political cover killed over 40 Palestinian civilians in a refugee camp in Nuseirat, Gaza. Nearly nine months of genocide have been enabled and facilitated by the United States and duplicitous, mealymouthed Western allies.

These imperialist powers are as of last week escalating the war in Ukraine by giving public approval for NATO weapons to be used to strike Russia. Macron is now officially sending French military instructors to help the NeoNazi Kiev regime forces to use weapons to hit Russian territory. How close can this be to all-out war without actually saying it?

Biden and other degenerate Western war criminals dismiss legitimate public concerns by asserting there is only a “theoretical” risk of a nuclear World War Three.

Scott Ritter and those respected others cited above have irrefutably exposed the lies and criminal warmongering by the United States and its NATO accomplices.

Ritter has gained a wide following on his Telegram channel and via alternative media outlets.

That shows a potentially huge public openness to critical information and opposition to relentless war-making. In short, an openness to objective information and truth.

The shutting down of mainstream and internet access to alternative media voices is a classic testament to the maxim that the first casualty of war is the truth.

Global survival is in danger in large part because people are being denied the power to resist the crazy warmongers who are projected by lying media outlets as paragons of virtue and peace.

When advocates of truth-telling are locked up in solitary confinement dungeons like Julian Assange or denied freedom of movement and speech like Scott Ritter, or targeted for assassination like Slovakian premier and critic of NATO policy in Ukraine, Robert Fico, then you know we are in dark and sinister times.

If history could be flipped from past to present, we dare say that the hundreds of thousands of ordinary American, British and other allied soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy 80 years ago to fight against fascism would have stormed against the likes of Biden and his elitist ilk assembled there this week exploiting their memory and sacrifices.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... cancelled/

[blindpig]

The Media Skew Public Perception By Manipulating People’s Attention

Our perception of the world is dominated by the movements of our attention, which means that our perception of the world can be changed by manipulating those movements.

Caitlin Johnstone
June 9, 2024

“Israel Rescues 4 Hostages in Military Operation; Gazan Officials Say Scores Are Killed,” reads a New York Times headline from Saturday.

It’s a very odd-looking headline even if you don’t know anything about the propagandistic tactics being employed in it. The first half is very clear, while the second half is unintelligible and reads like some weird kind of riddle or word puzzle.

The New York Times is performing these bizarre, cryptic linguistic gymnastics to discuss the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza which as of this writing has a reported death toll of 236.

Right off the bat we can see something weird in this headline with the use of the word “scores” to describe the number of people reported killed in the massacre. The New York Times article itself says it was reported that “more than 200 people were killed in central Gaza,” so the correct quantifier for the headline would be “hundreds”, not “scores”. This would be like a headline saying “dozens” of people were killed on 9/11 instead of “thousands”; it would technically be correct since the number of people killed were mathematically speaking many many dozens, but it would give readers the wrong impression of the lethality of the incident.



Next, notice the sudden switch mid-headline from active, certain voice to passive, doubtful voice. Four Israeli hostages were definitely rescued by Israel, while Gazan officials are alleging that scores were killed.

Scores of what? Cats? Chickens? Israelis?

Killed by what? Salmonella poisoning? Traffic accidents? Congolese militias?

There’s no way to tell from the headline.

The mass media in general and The New York Times in particular are notorious for their passive language “Palestinian child ceases breathing after encountering bullet” headlines when promoting Israeli information interests, but it really drives the point home when you see it switch from normal human language to something that sounds like a clue The Riddler would leave Batman within the very same headline.

And what’s interesting is that nothing The New York Times editors did here is technically a lie. Every word they meticulously selected for their headline is technically true, but it is shaped in such a way that it draws the reader’s attention away from the fact that Israel just massacred hundreds of human beings.

They could have just as easily written “Israel Kills Hundreds of Palestinians in Central Gaza Attack; 4 Hostages Rescued” and it would have been just as true, but then public attention would have been drawn in the opposite direction. The New York Times never, ever draws public attention in that direction; the slanting only ever goes one way.


We saw something similar the other day from The New York Times when they reported that Israel has been torturing Palestinian prisoners by sodomizing them with hot metal rods — sometimes to death — but buried this information at the very bottom of the article, without mentioning a word of it in the headline or sub-headline.

Here again, nobody can technically accuse The New York Times of lying; they didn’t report anything that wasn’t true or fail to report anything that was true. They just drastically underemphasized the real story in their report to direct their readers’ attention away from Israeli criminality.

A lot of people who grow skeptical of the mass media correctly assume that these outlets are propaganda services for the US empire, but incorrectly assume that this means they must be lying all the time. In truth the imperial propaganda machine is much more sophisticated than this, and much more effective.

Rather than making up whole-cloth lies and losing all credibility in the mainstream public, the mass media will generally rely on distortions like the above which skew public perception without actually technically lying. They’ll place emphasis in areas which benefit the empire, they’ll omit inconvenient facts, they’ll use tricky phrasing, they’ll uncritically report on the claims of favored government officials while saying the claims of unfavored government officials are made without evidence, they’ll mention convenient news stories over and over again, and they’ll report inconvenient stories only once before leaving them to get lost in the daily news churn.

I actually cite the mass media quite a bit in my own work, because a lot of useful and truthful information about the criminality of the western empire comes out through outlets like The New York Times. It’s just that that information is deemphasized and quickly shuffled out of public attention by the propagandists who run those outlets, allowing them to technically tell the truth while still manipulating the overarching narrative about what’s going on in the world.



The propagandists who edit outlets like The New York Times are able to skew public perception in favor of the empire because they understand that human experience is dominated by the movements of attention, so if they can manipulate those movements of attention, they can manipulate how people perceive the world.

I once met someone who described attention as “the uncrowned king of consciousness,” and I recall those words often because of their accuracy. Attention is the uncrowned king of consciousness because its movements dictate how we will experience our world: what we will think about, notice, see, hear, or otherwise perceive, but we don’t tend to place much importance on it or recognize the extent to which our life is ruled by it.

In reality there is little that is more crucial to our experience of life than the movements of our attention. It’s something so fundamental that two people walking across the exact same meadow at the exact same time will never have the same experience of it. One might experience a meadow with a pleasant breeze, a chirping bird in a tree, a grasshopper zipping across their path, and a sky of phenomenal beauty, while the other might experience the meadow as a distant and barely-noticed backdrop to their mental concerns for their future, their grievances about the past, their imaginary arguments with a family member, and a catchy song they’ve got stuck in their head.

After someone dies people often talk about the things they did in life — their accomplishments, their legacy, how many children they raised, what they did for work — but really the kind of life someone lived has less to do with the things they did than the way their attention moved. The movements of their attention throughout their life really was their life, because it determined what their experience of their time on this world actually was. How present they were for it. How much beauty they experienced. How much mental energy they wasted on imaginary bullshit. What they noticed. What they missed.


Our perception of the world is dominated by the movements of our attention, which means that our perception of the world can be changed by manipulating those movements. Propagandists understand this, so they spend their time doing things like telling us over and over again what a bad bad baddie Vladimir Putin is while just occasionally giving a single highly mitigated mention to an individual instance of Israeli criminality, or talking about October 7 over and over again while greatly deemphasizing the massacres Israel has been perpetrating on the Palestinians in Gaza every day since.

This causes public attention to move in directions that benefit the information interests of the empire and away from directions that would harm those information interests, all without having to tell actual lies. People’s perception of the world is shaped by these skillful propagandists without their even being aware that it is happening.

That’s what makes the propaganda of the western empire so much more effective than any other propaganda that has ever existed anywhere else: the inhabitants of the western empire have no idea they’re being propagandized.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/06 ... attention/

*******

The NYT’s One True Subject Is the One Percent
RAINA LIPSITZ



From granular coverage of the career triumphs of nepo babies and the goings-on at elite universities, to deep dives about luxury real estate and ritzy goods and services most people have never heard of, it’s clear that the New York Times’ most cherished subject is the One Percent.

This is driven by prurient fascination with the lives of the rich and powerful, mixed with a priggish desire to shame them for individual consumer choices. (“Owning or operating a superyacht is probably the most harmful thing an individual can do to the climate”—4/10/23.) This reflects the class and educational background of Times staffers, many of whom are status-obsessed graduates of elite institutions whose personal wealth and privilege, or proximity to it, skews their worldview.

The New York Times (5/14/24) reports on how luxury hotels are offering “ever-more-lavish activities for guests,” including a “personalized shopping extravaganza”($2,860), an “Enlightenment Retreat” with “four days of holistic treatments ($5,745) or an “invitation to an artist’s private studio to learn about their process” ($7,500).

Here is the Times (5/4/24) on Dylan Lauren, the paradoxically svelte “candy queen of New York City” and empress of the boutique candy store chain Dylan’s Candy Bar:

Ms. Lauren, who is the daughter of the fashion designer Ralph Lauren, lives on the Upper East Side and in Bedford, N.Y., with her husband of nearly 13 years, Paul Arrouet, 53, who is a managing partner at a private equity firm, and their 9-year-old fraternal twins Cooper Blue and Kingsley Rainbow.

Yachts, butlers and “next-level” hotels are of keen and constant interest. The paper (4/10/23) declared last year:

If you’re a billionaire with a palatial boat, there’s only one thing to do in mid-May: Chart your course for Istanbul and join your fellow elites for an Oscars-style ceremony honoring the builders, designers and owners of the world’s most luxurious vessels.

This May alone, the Times ran stories on multimillion-dollar designer “eco-yachts” (“‘silent luxury’ is fast displacing opulence”—5/10/24), luxury hotel experiences (“From cooking with a Michelin-star chef to taking a chauffeured shopping spree in Singapore, hotels and resorts are offering ever-more-lavish activities for guests”—5/14/24), and a new breed of butler employed by “the One Percent of the One Percent” (“The modern butler…is no longer a grandfatherly type in morning trousers that stays in the background, if not out of sight”—5/14/24).

‘Affluent social cohort’

The founders of Betches Media have “the chance to make another $30 million if the company can reach certain revenue and profit targets by 2026” (New York Times, 5/11/24).

The paper finds much to admire in buzzy businesses founded by millennial and Gen Z entrepreneurs. Take Betches Media, a women’s humor company that satirizes the “affluent social cohort” of young women who grew up in the “well-to-do” Long Island suburb of Roslyn, and joined sororities while undergrads at Cornell University. Industry watchers “took notice” last fall when the company’s founders sold it to LBG Media for $24 million, the Times (5/11/24) reported. (The term “betch” is meant to “mock the preferences of a type of shallow, higher-income, college-educated woman,” who is also most likely white.) The sale netted the three founders around $8 million apiece. One told the Times she had treated herself to a gold Cartier watch; another said she had refreshed her wardrobe.

Several former Betches employees complained that many of the rank-and-file workers were underpaid, with some earning around $50,000 a year to churn out the content that made the business a success. Yet the focus on the more-affluent-than-ever founders suggests that the Times is more interested in winners who can afford Cartier watches than in the grumbling of those left behind.

The fact that the Betches Media founders attended Cornell is not an incidental detail. The Times’ coverage of Ivy League schools and their alumni sometimes suggests that if a phenomenon didn’t happen at an elite university, it didn’t really happen at all.

A 2021 story (6/7/21) on a Yale Law School kerfuffle dubbed “Dinner Party-gate” claimed that the episode exposed a culture that pitted “student against student” and “professor against professor,” forcing the school to confront a “venomous divide.” Far from being a tempest in a teapot, this was indicative of a broader cultural shift: Students at Yale Law now “regularly attack their professors, and one another, for their scholarship, professional choices and perceived political views.” In a place “awash in rumor and anonymous accusations,” the paper breathlessly continued, “almost no one would speak on the record.”

What exactly was “Dinner Party–gate,” and why did the Times consider it a story of compelling national interest? A group of students alleged that Amy Chua, a “popular but polarizing” professor, had been hosting drunken dinner parties with other students, and possibly federal judges, during the pandemic. Five paragraphs in, and after “more than two dozen interviews with students, professors and administrators,” the Times doggedly reported, “possibly the only sure thing in the murky saga is this: There is no hard proof that Ms. Chua is guilty of what she was originally accused of doing.” Nevertheless, the story persisted for an astonishing 36 paragraphs.

‘We’re not oligarchs’

A New York Times (11/3/17) love story: “When the night was over, they departed to their separate yachts.”

In addition to small private parties that may or may not have taken place at Yale Law School, the Times is always on hand to cover larger and more luxurious private parties. The principals of a 2017 wedding chronicled by the Times (11/3/17) met on a yachting excursion off the coast of Croatia. After the ceremony, “guests were greeted by two trumpeters in medieval attire at the Metropolitan Club on 60th Street,” and the bridal couple, who “created their own family crest” for their wedding invitations, menus, wax seals, programs, napkins and cake, departed the venue atop a white carriage drawn by two white Percherons.

In 2019, the Times (2/22/19) covered the union of law firm associate Yelena Ambartsumian and engineer and executive Miroslav Grajewski. Both are avid art collectors whose romance was fueled by “robust curiosity” and “the desire to build a legacy.” The art they’ve acquired includes pieces “priced in the tens of thousands or more.” (High-end art notwithstanding, the bride assured the Times, “We’re not oligarchs.”)

The couple married at St. Illuminator’s Armenian Apostolic Cathedral in Manhattan, and held their reception at Eleven Madison Park, a Manhattan restaurant the Michelin guide describes as a “temple of modern elegance” where “nothing is out of place and everything is custom made, from the staff’s suits to the handblown water vases.” Dinner for two, with wine, now costs $1,314.

Toward the end of the ceremony, the Times reported, the officiant “placed gilded coronets on the heads of the bride and groom, an Armenian tradition anointing the couple as the rulers of their domestic kingdom.”

It’s not just parties and weddings, but the luxury goods and services purchased for them, that catch the Times’ eye. In April, the paper (4/13/24) wrote about the cake designer Bastien Blanc-Tailleur, who creates “opulent confections” for “high-profile clients,” including European aristocrats, movie stars, fashion designers, and Saudi and Bahraini royals. Blanc-Tailleur’s wedding cakes start at 7,500 euros, or around $8,100, while simpler cakes, which start at roughly $3,700, are “relatively more affordable.”

‘Go broke or go home’

“People now look at pictures of others who might have incomes 10 to 100 times what we have,” a New York Times article (​​7/16/19) observes—referring to social media, though it could be talking about its own lifestyle coverage.

As fascinated as the Times is by the lifestyles of the rich and famous, it takes care to note that the luxe life is not for everyone. In a 2019 essay (​​7/16/19) on “Go Broke or Go Home Bachelorette Parties,” the paper tackled tough questions like, “What happens when friends are consumed by wanting their bachelorette parties to be picture perfect at any cost?” (Answer: “Credit cards are maxed out and debt rises.”)

Yet even essays warning against mindless excess tend to glamorize it at the same time. “The cost of bachelorette parties is ever growing, with weekend wedding festivities at destination locales now the norm,” the author noted, adding that millennials like her are “going broke” to attend. She then described a bachelorette outing she was invited to: “a long weekend in Spain from my home in Clifton, England, with an itinerary packed with VIP yacht trips, exclusive booths in glamorous nightclubs, a luxury villa and afternoon teas at high-end restaurants.” Suddenly racking up a little credit card debt doesn’t sound so bad!

Attraction to the sweet life is part of our culture. But readers would be better served by a newspaper that scrutinized rather than fetishized wealth and consumption.

https://fair.org/home/the-nyts-one-true ... e-percent/

[blindpig]

The Russiagate Hoax Reveals the Power the National Security Police State
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 10, 2024
Stansfield Smith



The CIA, FBI, NSA, and DNI interfered in a Presidential Election and Progressives bought the Story

First the US rulers and their national security state foisted the lie Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This bogus story was rejected by the progressive and anti-war movements. But then many progressives swallowed the hoax Trump colluded with Putin to steal the 2016 election. It remains a shocking example of manipulation of supposedly well-educated progressive people – many of whom do not hesitate to ridicule MAGA people for their bigotry and ignorance.

Russiagate, packaged as a tale of Putin and Trump collusion, was a plot against the government elected by the people. Russiagate, first leaked to the media in mid-2016 by CIA Director Brennan, sought to sabotage a presidential campaign and then delegitimize the Trump presidency. It was an essential tool for legitimizing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Yet, no evidence was ever presented that Trump colluded with Putin. No evidence was presented that the Russians hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers. No evidence was presented that any votes in 2016 were switched.

Origin of anti-Russian campaign and the Russiagate Story

In 2014 Washington instigated an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine. Then when Russia aided Syria in the US-provoked “civil war,” Russia bashing intensified. As General Wesley Clark revealed, the US had targeted Syria for overthrow at least since 2001 and was in a favorable position to accomplish this goal until Moscow began significant military aid to Damascus in 2015.

CIA’s Brennan aimed to manipulate the public to prepare for a showdown with Russia. Mike Whitney wrote, “After Putin blocked Brennan’s operations in both Ukraine and Syria, Brennan had every reason to retaliate and to use the tools at his disposal to demonize Putin and try to isolate Russia.” Meanwhile, Trump was gaining ground in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries when he called for US troops to get out Syria and the Middle East and said the “deep state” lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Whitney adds, “It provided him [Brennan] the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, to deliver a withering blow to Putin and Trump at the very same time.”

In Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate, Paul Craig Roberts elaborated:

“Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan. The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached.”

Russian expert Stephen Cohen concurred, reporting that Brennan was collecting material for the collusion story in late 2015 or early 2016 and instigated the FBI investigation into the Trump-Putin hoax. “Brennan played a central role in promoting the Russiagate narrative thereafter.” Cohen, in “Russiagate’s ‘Core Narrative’ Has Always Lacked Actual Evidence,” said the story was based on two documents: an “Intelligence Community Assessment” and the Steele dossier, compiled by a retired UK intelligence officer. The core narrative of both claimed Putin intervened in the 2016 presidential campaign to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy to help Trump. Journalist Aaron Mate further detailed CIA Director Brennan’s role as “a prime mover of Russiagate.”

Steele Dossier

“The Dossier” asserted Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton, claiming that Russia hacked the DNC computer servers. Mike Whitney and others point out the Steele Dossier was paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. While the Dossier is now discredited, the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia was launched based on “information” gathered from this paid-for report. Steele “was a former M16 agent who was paid $160,000 for composing the dubious set of reports that make up the dossier. We don’t even know if Steele’s alleged contacts or intermediaries in Russia actually exist or not.”

The “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA)

CIA boss Brennan, along with the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Clapper, finally released the ICA report in January 2017, which concluded that Putin “ordered” a campaign aimed at influencing the election. The Assessment claimed:

“Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order… We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency…We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump…Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards…. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

The Assessment contained no evidence of Russia’s role but asserted Russia’s actions included hacking into the email accounts of the DNC along with intermediaries such as WikiLeaks to release the hacked information.

Stephen Cohen adds, “Clapper subsequently admitted he had personally selected for the ICA analysts from the three agencies, but we still do not know who. No doubt these were analysts who would conform to the ‘core narrative’ of Kremlin-Trump collusion…. the ICA provided almost no facts for its ‘assessment.’”

National Security State Directors Perpetuate their Trump-Putin collusion hoax

CIA’s Brennan deceived Congress and the public by claiming sufficient evidence existed to investigate Trump’s campaign. The BBC 2017 article Ex-CIA chief Brennan says Trump-Russia inquiry ‘well-founded’ stated Brennan “told the House Intelligence Committee he was aware of intelligence showing contact between Russian officials and ‘US persons involved in the Trump campaign’.” Brennan said the Russians ‘brazenly interfered’ in the 2016 US elections and were ‘very aggressive.’”

21st Century Wire reported that Clapper, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), had “leaked information on the ‘Trump dossier’ to CNN’s Jake Tapper, lied about it to Congress, and then was hired by CNN just a few months later.” Clapper later asserted that Putin “knows how to handle an asset and that’s what he’s doing with the President”.

The third national security state boss, FBI Director Comey, proclaimed in Congressional hearings that Putin:

“hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much. They engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy. They were unusually loud in their intervention. It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew, that they wanted us to see what they were doing. Their number one mission is to undermine the credibility of our entire democracy enterprise of this nation. They’ll be back. They’ll be back, in 2020. They may be back in 2018.”

Mike Whitney remarked, “So among his other talents, Comey also knows how to read minds. He knows that Putin hates Hillary and favors Trump. He knows the Russians ‘engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy’, even though he hasn’t produced a lick of proof to verify his claims.”

Whitney adds later, “The FBI made a “concerted effort to conceal information from the court” in order to get a warrant to spy on a member of a rival political campaign. The FBI failed to mention that the dossier was paid for by the Hillary campaign and the DNC.”

The fourth national police state boss, NSA Director Michael Rogers, when asked on November 15, 2016, about the WikiLeaks release of DNC emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, declared, “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state [Russia] to attempt to achieve a specific effect.” He added, “This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance.”

Thus, the Trump-Putin collusion and Russia hacking story was propagated by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DNI, the backbone of the national security police state.

The story that Russia “hacked” DNC-Hillary Clinton computers

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity pointed out that the “NSA is able to identify both the sender and recipient when hacking is involved…The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRClinton or any other servers were routed through the network.” Given that this hacking was allegedly by a foreign power, which the US considered an enemy, it would make sense to conclude the NSA knew Russia did not do it, but stayed mum.

Instead of asking the NSA or FBI, the DNC hired CrowdStrike to investigate the “hacking” of their computers, despite the claimed significant US national security threat that a foreign power hacked presidential campaign computers to alter the election. CrowdStrike became the only actual source for “information” on the Russian hacking of DNC computers and Russia’s providing the scoop to WikiLeaks. FBI Director Comey never insisted on access to the DNC computers, nor was the FBI given an unredacted report. The only evidence of a hack comes from this company paid by the DNC.

CrowdStrike’s chief technical officer was Dmitri Alperovich, a senior fellow with the Saudi and Rockefeller Foundation funded think tank, the neocon Atlantic Council. It has several former CIA directors on its board and considered to be NATO’s “think tank.”

Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, knew from the head of CrowdStrike, Shawn Henry in December 5, 2017, that CrowdStrike had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked by Russia or anyone else. However, Schiff kept this from the public until May 7, 2020, two and a half years later.

National Police State Directors admit they made up the Trump-Putin collusion Story

After the 2016 election, the DNI, CIA, NSA, and FBI bosses admitted they made up the collusion story and that the Intelligence Community Assessment they released to the public contained no evidence. CIA boss Brennan when asked on May 23, 2017 in a Congressional hearing into Russian collusion declared, “I don’t do evidence…I don’t know whether such collusion existed.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted to the House Intelligence Committee on July 17, 2017, “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” Clapper also owned up, in July 5, 2017 testimony that “17 intelligence agencies” had confirmed Russian interference in the 2016 election has been false all along.

For his part, FBI Director Comey, in Congressional testimony on March 20, 2017, “stated there is no evidence to support collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia.” In a June 8, 2017 hearing, when asked “Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered?” Comey answered, “I’m confident.”

Brennan, Clapper, and Comey, the three chief national security state bosses behind the Russiagate story admitted they made it up, that no evidence substantiates their hoax on the public.

Too many progressives swallow the CIA invented Trump-Putin collusion story

Thus, we have the heads of the national security state police agencies concocting a story to sway a US presidential election and incite anger at Russia. Progressives recognize the NSA, CIA and FBI as enemies of human rights and liberties. Most progressives also view Trump as fascist or “neo-fascist.” But here we have the curiosity of the national police state agencies interfering in a US election to stop a “fascist” from being elected. Progressives might reflect on why they have ended up opposing the same candidate the national security state opposes, how they put themselves in the position of voting for the candidates (Hillary and Biden) that the national security state preferred.

We now have evidence to know the US national security state systematically interfered in a presidential election. They made up a story and convinced most of the US public of it. They even surveilled and wire-tapped members of the presidential campaign they opposed. This testifies to the colossal reach of the national security state over us, their ability to make us believe a falsehood is reality. And get away with it unpunished. It attests to their power over US society that no dared indict them for trying to fix our elections.

That the national police agencies undertook this vast operation against the Republican Party, considered the more reactionary enforcer of the status quo of the two corporate parties, warns us what they have in store when an actual popular revolt against their status quo arises.

Considerable information has existed for some years that the Russiagate hoax was no more true than Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, which few progressives swallowed. The opposite case here. Progressives drank the anti-Trump “Kool-Aid.” A 2018 Gallup poll showed that 90% of Democratic voters bought the Russia interference story compared to 67% of Republican voters. On whether Russia changed the election outcome, 78% of Democratic voters agreed. without evidence ever presented. Ironically, these voters include those who proclaim, “follow the science” and consider the MAGA crowd as uneducated and prejudiced.

Many progressives had just supported Bernie in 2015-16 only to see Hillary Clinton’s dirty tricks snatch the Democratic nomination from him. Yet they welcomed this Clinton/DNC/national security state propagated hoax – the very people they just repudiated; a testimony of how the ruling class can manage consent.

The police state agencies whipped up such a Russiagate hysteria that if you questioned it in a public forum, you were sure to be attacked as being a Putin stooge, disloyal, a MAGA bigot.

This Putin-Trump collusion hoax and consequent hysteria laid the foundation for the later propaganda campaign to provoke the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. And we see in the 2018 poll that Democratic voters were more welcoming of aggressive action. Likewise, a poll revealed ten months into the Ukraine war that, “33% of Republicans agreed with that prolonged support, compared to 61% of Democrats and 46% of independents.” Remarkedly, Democratic voters have become more war-friendly.

In addition, Russiagate gave impetus to the campaign of smearing independent, anti-war media as agents of Russian disinformation. Even articles in progressive media such as Counterpunch propagated this nonsense, labeling those who did not support the US attempts to overthrow the Syrian government or defend the Ukrainian coup regime as “Assadists” and “Putinists.” This shows the continuing threat to the anti-war movement, given that US national security police state disinformation operations still hold considerable sway, permitting them to repress and marginalize voices for peace more easily.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/06/ ... ice-state/

"Progressives are fucking pigs" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=231

[blindpig]

The Warsaw-Based “Ukraine Communications Group” Is The New “Disinformation Governance Board”

ANDREW KORYBKO
JUN 12, 2024



This multilateral platform, which brings together Western propagandists on a pro-Ukrainian pretext, can be wielded by the US Government to meddle in the coming presidential election much more effectively than ever before.

The US and Poland reached two agreements earlier this week to establish the Warsaw-based “Ukraine Communications Group” (UCG). Its explicitly stated goal is “to coordinate messaging, promote accurate reporting of Russia’s full-scale invasion, amplify Ukrainian voices, and expose Kremlin information manipulation.” Despite being directed against Russia, it’ll likely also be aimed against the West’s conservative-nationalist opposition and could easily grow to involve more subjects than just Ukraine.

The Department of Homeland Security’s infamous “Disinformation Governance Board”, which was briefly established for several months in 2022 with essentially the same mission, was forced to shut down under public pressure due to legitimate concerns that its mandate risked violating Americans’ civil liberties. Its masterminds learned their lesson not to set up another similar institution at home, however, and that’s why they’re finally replicating its functions through the UCG and basing it in Warsaw instead of DC.

Its foreign location and partial foreign composition allow the US Government (USG) to “plausibly deny” accusations that it poses a similar threat to Americans’ civil liberties as its predecessor did, plus any such future violations could be blamed on their foreign partners to deflect blame from the USG. After all, the last of its explicitly stated goals can effortlessly be exploited to target all Westerners on the pretext that they’re either exposed to “Kremlin information manipulation” or peddling it, whether knowingly or not.

From there, it’s just a proverbial hop, skip, and a jump away from weaponizing the UCG against members of the West’s conservative-nationalist opposition, whether to artificially manufacture the “legal” basis for spying on them or to smear these figures in the court of public opinion. This unstated mission takes on a greater urgency than ever for the West’s ruling liberal-globalist elite after some of their rivals’ gains during the latest European Parliamentary elections and ahead of the next US presidential one.

France’s National Rally, Germany’s AfD, and even Poland’s own “Law & Justice” (PiS) and Confederation parties could be targeted, among others. Regarding those last two, it’s suspected that returning Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s decision to hypocritically revive his predecessor’s “Russian influence commission” that he himself criticized last summer is aimed at smearing PiS before next May’s presidential election. His rivals also only narrowly lost the latest European Parliamentary elections by less than 1%.

As for Confederation, it captured more of the under-30 vote than the country’s two main parties to finish in third place despite being smeared by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last month as “friends of Putin” who “want to destroy Europe”. Taken together, PiS and Confederation’s showing proved that the Polish Right is still strong despite Tusk’s liberal-globalists winning the latest European Parliamentary elections, which is precisely why they’ll likely be targeted by the UCG.

Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski’s suggestion last month that anyone who supports traditional values, is against illegal immigration, and questions any aspect of the Ukrainian Conflict might be under Russian influence adds credence to this concern and could become the UCG’s informal standard going forward. As the reader likely intuited, this would guarantee that Trump’s Make America Great Again/America First movement is targeted too, thus resulting in civil liberty violations and election meddling.

Whatever “October surprise” Trump might unveil or could serendipitously occur to further scandalize Biden by then could be designed as an alleged example of “Kremlin information manipulation” to justify the UCG interfering in the elections on the USG’s behalf. No such platform was around in 2016 so that year’s meddling was more or less ad hoc while 2020’s was relatively more organized after “former” Intelligence Community came together to falsely describe Hunter’s laptop as “Russian disinformation”.

Having been formed almost five months ahead of November’s presidential election on foreign soil outside the purview of the US Constitution and partially comprised of foreign governments, the UCG can be wielded by the USG to meddle in the coming vote much more effectively than ever before. In practice, this platform can help the West’s ruling liberal-globalist elite gain an edge in every forthcoming election by coordinating their information warfare campaigns and illegal surveillance schemes.

The reason why it took the USG nearly two years to essentially recreate the “Disinformation Governance Board”, albeit in its new hybrid American-European and putatively Ukrainian-focused rebranded form, is due to the Democrats taking their hoped-for victory over Trump for granted until last fall. It became clear around then during the height of the Congressional deadlock over Ukraine aid that he truly has enough supporters to “beat the cheat” and give him a margin that’s “too big to rig”.

This dawning realization prompted them to create a multilateral platform for bringing together Western propagandists in order to maximize their efforts to defeat Trump and others like him. Although the outcome of the latest European Parliamentary elections went against this same elite’s political interests, that body is largely powerless and mostly symbolic, unlike their national counterparts. Accordingly, there wasn’t any need to publicly unveil the UCG until after the elections ended.

The timing averted the scenario of the conservative-nationalist opposition rallying voters around them in protest against this thinly disguised meddling platform, thus letting the elite obtain a comparatively purer gauge of public sentiment through this mainly symbolic vote instead of influencing it in that way. Now that the results are known, there’s no reason to hide what they’ve been doing all these months, which is why they chose the literal day after the European Parliamentary elections to unveil the UCG.

It can now more openly be wielded by them to interfere in domestic political processes all across the West via the described means, with the top goal being to manipulate American voters’ perceptions of Trump in order to dissuade them from voting for him so that the election is easier to rig. The UCG is therefore just a rebranded version of the “Disinformation Governance Board”, and just like its predecessor, this initiative’s true machinations are easily exposed so its success is also far from assured.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-wars ... unications

[blindpig]

STATE DEPARTMENT-LINKED GROUP SMEARS ANTIWAR.COM & CONTRIBUTORS IN ‘ANTI-UKRAINIAN’ LIST
JUNE 12, 2024

Well, I guess I’ve hit the big time since I actually appear on this list…along with some good company:

https://texty.org.ua/projects/112617/ro ... %20Baldwin

Antiwar.com, 6/9/24

A State Department-linked Ukrainian NGO published a study on June 6 that listed hundreds of individuals and organizations that oppose aid to Ukraine in an effort to smear them as spreading “Russian propaganda.”

The NGO Texty.org.ua listed Antiwar.com and several of its staff members, including Eric Garris, Scott Horton, Kyle Anzalone, and many Antiwar.com contributors. Organizations that Antiwar.com works closely with were also named, including the Libertarian Institute and the Ron Paul Institute.

The American Conservative, which was also included in the list, reported that Texty.org.ua was co-founded by Anatoly Bondarenko. Bondarenko has worked as an instructor for a State Department program known as TechCamp, which provides training for foreign journalists and activists.


Screenshot of a chart from the study

TechCamp’s website lists Bondarenko as a trainer for a Ukraine program that brought together “more than 60 local journalists, civil society, community leaders, and private sector partners in Eastern Europe” with the goal of helping to increase “digital and media literacy.”

The Texty.org.ua report is titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it.”

The study acknowledges that most of the people listed “do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists.” But it claims that “the arguments they use to urge authorities to distance themselves from Ukraine echo key messages of Russian propaganda aimed at depriving Ukrainians of the ability to defend themselves with Western weapons and funds.”

The report links to Antiwar.com’s Ukraine news page as an example of “anti-Ukrainian statements.”

Other listed people and organizations are from across the political spectrum, from former President Donald Trump to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Dozens of Republican members of Congress were named, including Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), J.D. Vance (R-OH), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and many others.

Media outlets frequently linked to on the front page of Antiwar.com were also listed, including Responsible Statecraft and The Grayzone. Peace groups, including CODEPINK, Veterans for Peace, World Beyond War, and others, were also smeared.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/06/sta ... nian-list/