Censorship, fake news, perception management
Censorship, fake news, perception management
We've lived with it our whole lives but improved technology and the cumulative effect are making the darkest 'dystopian' look like small change...
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It's Getting Real – Google Censors the Left. And Us.
Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 08/02/2017 - 19:18
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Conclusive evidence exists that Google is suppressing public access to socialist and left wing websites, almost certainly including Black Agenda Report. In fact, Black Agenda Report is by all accounts the ONLY black owned, run and oriented left web site so targeted. Not Blavity. Not theRoot, which are not left and in the case of theRoot not black owned either. Nobody else black but us. How did that happen and what does it mean? How can you dodge the block.
It’s Getting Real – Google Censors the Left. And Us.
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
It is and it was only a matter of time. Convincing evidence has emerged that Google is actively suppressing public access at least a dozen left wing sites, very likely including Black Agenda Report by algorithms which game the keyword search results it presents to users.
Back in September 2016 Reuters ran an article declaring that the First Draft Coalition, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, Agence France-Presse and CNN intended to launch an effort to combat fake news. A shadowy outfit calling itself PropOrNot surfaced in November 2016 with an anonymously compiled list of 199 sites it said “reliably echo Russian propaganda.” More than half the sites were right wing nutjobs, from the nazis at StormFront to the libertarians at the Ron Paul Institute. But about twenty or so were entirely credible sources of news and information to the left of mainstream Democrats, including DemocracyNow! the World Socialist Web Site, Alternet, Naked Capitalism, Counterpunch, TruthOut! and Black Agenda Report. It’s worth noting that Black Agenda Report is the ONLY site owned and run by black people and aimed at an African American audience to be singled out in this manner.
As part of the First Draft Coalition, the Washington Post immediately gave the report mainstream mic time. My colleague Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford pointed out almost immediately that the Washington Post, Google and most of the players at First Draft contribute far more to Hillary Clinton Democrats than to Republicans. Some like Google are even big donors to outfits flying the Black Lives Matter flag. This, Ford declared was a giant step toward facism implemented by Democrats, not Republicans.
It didn’t take long to see the “social media” players in First Draft to begin the actual suppression of public access to news, information, analysis and commentary from the left. Last week the World Socialist Web Site released the results of an investigation into Google keyword search results pointing to 13 of the left wing sites identified by PropOrNot. Their data in the table below showed that Google searches pointing to their sites declined in aggregate volume by 45%.
* wsws.org fell by 67 percent
* alternet.org fell by 63 percent
* globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
* consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
* socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
* mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
* commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
* internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
* democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
* wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
* truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
* counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent
Our audience at Black Agenda Report is somewhat smaller, our bank balance is lighter than these 13 sites and we’ve yet to take our own deep dive into the data. You actually have to hire a firm to do that stuff, which is why you really should donate to Black Agenda Report using the button elsewhere on this page. Preliminary indications are that we took roughly a 10% hit to overall traffic in April and May, a significant part of which may have been from the same cause.
Corporate social media is not neutral. It’s not especially social either, except that like so much else in capitalist society, the product is produced by ordinary people – our social interactions, our entertainment choices, our networks of friends and associations and all the rest which is captured by outfits which claim it as their private property to be sold to the highest bidding marketers. Social media is on the one hand a deceptively named marketing contraption, and on the other an actual tool of ruling class propaganda and information suppression.
The aggregate of human interaction hijacked by Google, Facebook, Amazon and their lesser cousins is in moral truth as much the commons as are nature and the environment. It’ is impossible to imagine a truly just world where the public conversation doesn’t belong to the public, where these things belong to and are run any other way than in the interest of all the people rather than that of a handful of billionaires and their stooges. That place and time is some distance away yet, but there are things we can do today.
In the weeks and months to come we hope to lead and take part in a conversation about what those alternative measures look like, and what paths the struggle to gain control over the rightful public property that corporate social media and information monopolies have stolen from us might look like.
The first and most obvious step is to free ourselves from allowing Facebook and Google and their cousins from being our ONLY sources for news and information. Both their business model and their usefulness as tools of censorship rest depend upon them occupying a spot in between YOU and your information, between YOU and US.
Back in 2014 I wrote in Black Agenda Report about something called “dark social media.” Dark social media is simply direct email. It’s “dark” because Google and the rest cannot track it or block it. When you’re on Black Agenda Report’s free and direct email subscription list – or that of TruthOut, CommonDreams and the others, Facebook and Amazon – even Google unless you’re on Gmail, do not know what you’re doing and cannot block your access.
So sign up for Black Agenda Report’s free email list. Now. Donate us a little money so we can dive into the data and see exactly how much Google and friends are blocking us. Get on the direct email lists of your trusted lefty sources of news, commentary and analysis, especially this one. And remember, Black Agenda Report is the ONLY black run, black owned, and black oriented web site they’ve seen fit to censor. Not Blavity or VerySmartBrothas or theRoot. Not InTheseTimes or the Final Call. Just us. Just Black Agenda Report. That’s our badge of distinction. Subscribe.
https://blackagendareport.com/google-ce ... -real-left
One thing for sure, my Twitter feed has been getting weird, unasked for/ not RT'd posters, lots of stuff deleted, crap repeating for no obvious reason... This will work because a lot of people who just want something to look at. Valuable content and information will be buried under pages of 'search' and most will be none the wiser, just as a probable majority thinks that the government has and does function as advertised.
****************
It's Getting Real – Google Censors the Left. And Us.
Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on Wed, 08/02/2017 - 19:18
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Conclusive evidence exists that Google is suppressing public access to socialist and left wing websites, almost certainly including Black Agenda Report. In fact, Black Agenda Report is by all accounts the ONLY black owned, run and oriented left web site so targeted. Not Blavity. Not theRoot, which are not left and in the case of theRoot not black owned either. Nobody else black but us. How did that happen and what does it mean? How can you dodge the block.
It’s Getting Real – Google Censors the Left. And Us.
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
It is and it was only a matter of time. Convincing evidence has emerged that Google is actively suppressing public access at least a dozen left wing sites, very likely including Black Agenda Report by algorithms which game the keyword search results it presents to users.
Back in September 2016 Reuters ran an article declaring that the First Draft Coalition, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, Agence France-Presse and CNN intended to launch an effort to combat fake news. A shadowy outfit calling itself PropOrNot surfaced in November 2016 with an anonymously compiled list of 199 sites it said “reliably echo Russian propaganda.” More than half the sites were right wing nutjobs, from the nazis at StormFront to the libertarians at the Ron Paul Institute. But about twenty or so were entirely credible sources of news and information to the left of mainstream Democrats, including DemocracyNow! the World Socialist Web Site, Alternet, Naked Capitalism, Counterpunch, TruthOut! and Black Agenda Report. It’s worth noting that Black Agenda Report is the ONLY site owned and run by black people and aimed at an African American audience to be singled out in this manner.
As part of the First Draft Coalition, the Washington Post immediately gave the report mainstream mic time. My colleague Black Agenda Report’s Glen Ford pointed out almost immediately that the Washington Post, Google and most of the players at First Draft contribute far more to Hillary Clinton Democrats than to Republicans. Some like Google are even big donors to outfits flying the Black Lives Matter flag. This, Ford declared was a giant step toward facism implemented by Democrats, not Republicans.
It didn’t take long to see the “social media” players in First Draft to begin the actual suppression of public access to news, information, analysis and commentary from the left. Last week the World Socialist Web Site released the results of an investigation into Google keyword search results pointing to 13 of the left wing sites identified by PropOrNot. Their data in the table below showed that Google searches pointing to their sites declined in aggregate volume by 45%.
* wsws.org fell by 67 percent
* alternet.org fell by 63 percent
* globalresearch.ca fell by 62 percent
* consortiumnews.com fell by 47 percent
* socialistworker.org fell by 47 percent
* mediamatters.org fell by 42 percent
* commondreams.org fell by 37 percent
* internationalviewpoint.org fell by 36 percent
* democracynow.org fell by 36 percent
* wikileaks.org fell by 30 percent
* truth-out.org fell by 25 percent
* counterpunch.org fell by 21 percent
* theintercept.com fell by 19 percent
Our audience at Black Agenda Report is somewhat smaller, our bank balance is lighter than these 13 sites and we’ve yet to take our own deep dive into the data. You actually have to hire a firm to do that stuff, which is why you really should donate to Black Agenda Report using the button elsewhere on this page. Preliminary indications are that we took roughly a 10% hit to overall traffic in April and May, a significant part of which may have been from the same cause.
Corporate social media is not neutral. It’s not especially social either, except that like so much else in capitalist society, the product is produced by ordinary people – our social interactions, our entertainment choices, our networks of friends and associations and all the rest which is captured by outfits which claim it as their private property to be sold to the highest bidding marketers. Social media is on the one hand a deceptively named marketing contraption, and on the other an actual tool of ruling class propaganda and information suppression.
The aggregate of human interaction hijacked by Google, Facebook, Amazon and their lesser cousins is in moral truth as much the commons as are nature and the environment. It’ is impossible to imagine a truly just world where the public conversation doesn’t belong to the public, where these things belong to and are run any other way than in the interest of all the people rather than that of a handful of billionaires and their stooges. That place and time is some distance away yet, but there are things we can do today.
In the weeks and months to come we hope to lead and take part in a conversation about what those alternative measures look like, and what paths the struggle to gain control over the rightful public property that corporate social media and information monopolies have stolen from us might look like.
The first and most obvious step is to free ourselves from allowing Facebook and Google and their cousins from being our ONLY sources for news and information. Both their business model and their usefulness as tools of censorship rest depend upon them occupying a spot in between YOU and your information, between YOU and US.
Back in 2014 I wrote in Black Agenda Report about something called “dark social media.” Dark social media is simply direct email. It’s “dark” because Google and the rest cannot track it or block it. When you’re on Black Agenda Report’s free and direct email subscription list – or that of TruthOut, CommonDreams and the others, Facebook and Amazon – even Google unless you’re on Gmail, do not know what you’re doing and cannot block your access.
So sign up for Black Agenda Report’s free email list. Now. Donate us a little money so we can dive into the data and see exactly how much Google and friends are blocking us. Get on the direct email lists of your trusted lefty sources of news, commentary and analysis, especially this one. And remember, Black Agenda Report is the ONLY black run, black owned, and black oriented web site they’ve seen fit to censor. Not Blavity or VerySmartBrothas or theRoot. Not InTheseTimes or the Final Call. Just us. Just Black Agenda Report. That’s our badge of distinction. Subscribe.
https://blackagendareport.com/google-ce ... -real-left
One thing for sure, my Twitter feed has been getting weird, unasked for/ not RT'd posters, lots of stuff deleted, crap repeating for no obvious reason... This will work because a lot of people who just want something to look at. Valuable content and information will be buried under pages of 'search' and most will be none the wiser, just as a probable majority thinks that the government has and does function as advertised.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
Fake News? CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS...
What am I missing?
What am I missing?
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
vice, jacobin, chapo craphouse, daily beast, the intercept, 20th century wire..........
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
(here's some food for thought...)
Reviving the Spirit of Existential Rebellion in a World of Propaganda, Lies and Self Deception
by EDWARD CURTIN
Photo by Mónica Leitão Mota | CC BY 2.0
Search for nothing anymore, nothing
except truth.
Be very still and try to get at the truth.
And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I?
– D. H. Lawrence, “Search For Truth”
Like existential freedom, honesty and truth-seeking demand a perpetually renewed commitment. No one ever fully arrives, and all of us are blown off course on the journey. Even when we think we have reached our destination, we are often startled by the enigma of arrival, and must set sail again. We are all in the same boat. The search for truth is a process, an experiment, an essay – a trying without end.
Yet surely it is not an exaggeration to say that most people are liars and self-deceivers. Honesty, while touted as a virtue, is practiced far less than it is praised. There is almost nothing that people are less honest about than their attitudes toward honesty. Few think of themselves as dishonest, and even to hint that someone is so is received as a great insult that usually elicits an angry response. So most people follow the advice of the character Jean-Baptiste Clamence from Albert Camus’ The Fall: “promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can.” In that way you satisfy your own and others’ secret desires for deception and play-acting, and other people will love you for it.
However, it is widely accepted that political leaders and the mass media lie and dissemble regularly, which, of course, they do. That is their job in an oligarchy. Today we are subjected to almost total, unrelenting media and government propaganda. Depending on their political leanings, people direct their anger toward politicians of parties they oppose and media they believe slant their coverage to favor the opposition. Trump is a liar. No, Obama is a liar. And Hillary Clinton. No, Fox News. Ridiculous! – it’s CNN or NBC. And so on and so forth in this theatre of the absurd that plays out within a megaplex of mainstream media (MSM) propaganda, where there are many shows but one producer, whose overall aim is to engineer the consent of all who enter while setting the different audiences against each other. It is a very successful charade that evokes name-calling from all quarters.
In other words, for many people their opponents lie, as do other people, but not them. This is as true in personal as well as public life. Here the personal and the political converge, despite protestations to the contrary.
Sartre and Bad Faith
Lying and dissembling are ubiquitous. Being lied to by the MSM is mirrored in people’s personal lives. People lie and want to be deceived. They choose to play dumb, to avoid a confrontation with truth. They want to be nice (Latin, nescire, not to know, to be ignorant) and to be liked. They want to tuck themselves into a safe social and cultural framework where they imagine they will be safe. They choose to live in what Jean Paul Sartre called bad faith (mauvaise foi): He put it as follows:
In bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. But with this “lie” to myself, the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.
Such bad faith allows people to fabricate a second act of bad faith: that they are not responsible for their ignorance of the truths behind the government’s and corporate media’s lies and propaganda, even as the shades of the prison house ominously close around us and the world edges toward global death that could arrive in an instant with nuclear war or limp along for years of increasing suffering.
Those of us who write about the U.S.-led demented wars and provocations around the world and the complementary death of democracy at home are constantly flabbergasted and discouraged by the willed ignorance of so many Americans. For while the mainstream media does the bidding of the power elite, there is ample alternative news and analyses available on the internet from fine journalists and writers committed to truth, not propaganda. There is actually far too much truth available, which poses another problem. But it doesn’t take a genius to learn how to research important issues and to learn how to distinguish between bogus and genuine information. It takes a bit of effort, and, more importantly, the desire to compare multiple, opposing viewpoints and untangle the webs the Web weaves. We are awash in information (and disinformation) and both good and bad reporting, but it is still available to the caring inquirer.
The problem is the will to know. But why, why the refusal to investigate and question; why the indifference? Stupidity? Okay, there is that. Ignorance? That too. Willful ignorance, ditto. Laziness, indeed. Careerism and ideology? For certain. Upton Sinclair put it mildly when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it.” Difficult? No, it’s almost impossible.
But then there are many very intelligent people who have nothing to lose and yet adamantly refuse to entertain alternative possibilities to the reigning orthodoxies that have them in their grip.
As do many others, I know many such people who will yes me to death and then never fully research issues. They will remain in limbo or else wink to themselves that what may be true couldn’t be true. They close down. This is a great dilemma and frustration faced by those who seek to convince people to take an active part in understanding what is really going on in the world today, especially as the United States wages war across the globe, threatens Russia and China, among others, as it expands and modernizes its nuclear weapons capabilities.
Jacques Ellul on Propaganda
The French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, has argued convincingly that modern propaganda in a technological mass society is more complicated than the state and media lying and deceiving the population. He argues that propaganda meets certain needs of modern people and therefore the process of deceit is reciprocal. The modern person feels lost, powerless, and empty. Ellul says, “He realizes that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives him to despair.” But he can’t live in despair; desires that life be meaningful; and wants to feel he lives in a world that makes sense. He wants to participate and have opinions that suggest he grasps the flow of events. He doesn’t so much want information, but value judgments and preconceived positions that provide him with a framework for living. Ellul wrote the following in 1965 in his classic book Propaganda:
The majority prefers expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion: this gives them the feeling of participation. For they need simple thoughts, elementary explanations, a ‘key’ that will permit them to take a position, and even readymade opinions….The man who keeps himself informed needs a framework….the more complicated the problems are, the more simple the explanations must be; the more fragmented the canvas, the simpler the pattern; the more difficult the question, the more all-embracing the solution; the more menacing the reduction of his own worth, the greater the need for boosting his ego. All this propaganda – and only propaganda – can give him.
Another way of saying this is that people want to be provided with myths to direct them to the “truth.” But such so-called truth has been preconceived within the overarching myth provided by propaganda, and while it satisfies people’s emotional need for coherence, it also allows them to think of themselves as free individuals arriving at their own conclusions, which is a basic function of good propaganda. In today’s mass technological society, it is essential that people be convinced that they are free-thinking individuals acting in good faith. Then they can feel good about themselves as they lie and act in bad faith.
The Spirit of Existential Rebellion
In the wake of World War II and the complete shattering of any illusion about the human capacity for evil, there arose in Western Europe, particularly in France and Germany a “philosophy” called existentialism. More an attitude towards life rather than a formal philosophy, and with its roots going back at least as far as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the 19th century, existentialism emphasized individual freedom, authenticity, personal responsibility, and the need to confront the unimaginable horrors of World War II and the absurd situation in which human beings had created nuclear weapons that could obliterate the planet in a flash, as the United States had used to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How to respond to the birth of global state nuclear terrorism became a task for the existential imagination.
The traditional belief that an all-powerful God could bring the world to an end had now been replaced by the idolatry of nuclear madmen who had hubristically violated the limits that the Greeks had long ago warned us not to exceed by making themselves into gods. Having unleashed the Furies, these false gods have created a world in which the droning sound of nuclear intercontinental missiles haunts the secret nightmares of the world. We have been living with this unspeakable and unspoken truth for more than seventy years.
Opposition to the nuclear standoff and its accompanying proxy wars has waxed and waned over the years. Dissident minorities and sometimes many millions across the globe have mobilized to oppose not only nuclear weapons but the war makers who have waged continuous wars of aggression throughout the world and have created the national-security warfare state, seemingly intent on world destruction.
However, today the sound of silence fills the empty streets, as passivity has overtaken those who oppose the growing nuclear threat and the ongoing U.S.- led wars throughout the world. The spirit of resistance has gone to sleep. The German writer Karl Kraus understood this in the days of Hitler’s rise during the 1930s when he said, “The real end of the world is the destruction of the spirit; the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such destruction the world can go on.”
We need to somehow resurrect the spirit of resistance that will bring together millions of people across the world who oppose the death dealers. I think it is time to recall the power and possibility implicit in the spirit of existential thought.
The existential emphasis on individual responsibility and authentic truth telling in the works of various writers, including Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel, and Albert Camus (who didn’t consider himself an existentialist but whose work emphasized many of the same themes), inspired large numbers of people in the late 50s into the mid-to-late 60s, including the international anti-nuclear movement and young American anti-war activists. Contrary to popular understanding, existentialism is not about navel gazing and hopelessness, but is about responding freely and authentically to the situations people find themselves in, which today, is the end- time that is a time when the fate of the world lies in the hands of nuclear madmen.
But by the end of the 1960s this existential spirit of rebellion started to dissipate. Academic gibberish replaced this rebellious spirit with the introduction of ideas, such as post structuralism, leading eventually to postmodernist nonsense that not only refuted the need for personal responsibility, but eliminated the person altogether. By 1999 a leading exponent of postmodern rhetoric, Jean Baudrillard, was dismissing everything the existentialists emphasized. He said, “No one needs this kind of ‘existential garb’ any more. Who cares about freedom, bad faith, and authenticity today?”
If such words were just the ranting of an intellectual lost in a fantasy world of abstractions, that would be one thing. But they are a form of propaganda echoed throughout western societies, particularly the United States, through the repeated emphases over the decades that people are not free but are the products of biological brain processes, etc. Deterministic memes have become dominant in cultural mind control. Such postmodern abstractions have denied everything that makes possible the fight against nuclear annihilation and the warfare states’ domination of western Europe and NATO, led by the United States.
The self is an illusion. Freedom is an illusion. Responsibility is an illusion. Guilt is an illusion. Everything is an illusion. A kaleidoscopic mad world in which no on exists and nothing really matters. This deterministic and nihilistic message has become the main current in western cultural propaganda since the late 1960s and has reached a crescendo in the present day. It is responsible for the growth of passivity and denial that dominates contemporary public consciousness. It underlies the refusal of so many otherwise intelligent people to engage themselves in the search for truth that would lead to their joining forces with others to create a mass anti-war movement.
While many people think of existentialism as only an atheistic approach to existence, this is incorrect. There are atheist and agnostic existentialists, yes, , but existentialism’s core emphases have deep roots in the various religious traditions, such as Judaism and Christianity, etc. That is because freedom, authenticity, truth telling, and social responsibility, while often buried within the institutional structures of these faiths, lie at their core. So if we are going to resurrect the spirit of rebellion necessary to transform today’s world, we need to renew the virtues that the existentialists emphasize.
The first step in this process is to ask with D.H.Lawrence the question, “How great a liar am I?”
Anti-war activist and author of the indispensable book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, James Douglass, made an intriguing suggestion in another book, Lightning East To West, when he said:
The exact opposite of the H bomb’s destructive purpose, but psychic equivalent of its energy, is the Kingdom of Reality which would be the final victory of Truth in history –a force of truth and love powerful enough to fuse billions of individual psyches into a global realization of essential oneness. There is no reason why the same psyche which, when turned outward, was able to create the condition for a self-acting force of over 100 million degrees of heat, thus realizing an inconceivable thermonuclear fusion, cannot someday turn sufficiently inward to create the condition for an equally inconceivable (but nature balancing) fusion in its own psychic or spiritual reality. An end-time can also be a beginning. Gandhi said: ‘When the practice of the law becomes universal, God will reign on the earth as God does in heaven. Earth and heaven are in us. We know the earth, and we are strangers to the heaven within us.’
While Gandhi’s words are couched in religious language, their meaning can resonate with secular-minded people as well. These words speak to the power implicit in the human spirit as a whole. That power begins and builds when people of all persuasions are convinced that they must freely pursue the truth at all costs. As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
In these very dark times – these end- times created by nuclear weapons – seeing the truth is dependent on the will to truth, and the will to truth only arises when people believe they are free to alter the circumstances in which they find themselves. This belief in freedom is at the core of all existential thought and is why we need to resurrect it today.
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/
I am not at all keen on the value Existentialism, quite the contrary, but the portion concerning self deception and propaganda deserve consideration.
Reviving the Spirit of Existential Rebellion in a World of Propaganda, Lies and Self Deception
by EDWARD CURTIN
Photo by Mónica Leitão Mota | CC BY 2.0
Search for nothing anymore, nothing
except truth.
Be very still and try to get at the truth.
And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I?
– D. H. Lawrence, “Search For Truth”
Like existential freedom, honesty and truth-seeking demand a perpetually renewed commitment. No one ever fully arrives, and all of us are blown off course on the journey. Even when we think we have reached our destination, we are often startled by the enigma of arrival, and must set sail again. We are all in the same boat. The search for truth is a process, an experiment, an essay – a trying without end.
Yet surely it is not an exaggeration to say that most people are liars and self-deceivers. Honesty, while touted as a virtue, is practiced far less than it is praised. There is almost nothing that people are less honest about than their attitudes toward honesty. Few think of themselves as dishonest, and even to hint that someone is so is received as a great insult that usually elicits an angry response. So most people follow the advice of the character Jean-Baptiste Clamence from Albert Camus’ The Fall: “promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can.” In that way you satisfy your own and others’ secret desires for deception and play-acting, and other people will love you for it.
However, it is widely accepted that political leaders and the mass media lie and dissemble regularly, which, of course, they do. That is their job in an oligarchy. Today we are subjected to almost total, unrelenting media and government propaganda. Depending on their political leanings, people direct their anger toward politicians of parties they oppose and media they believe slant their coverage to favor the opposition. Trump is a liar. No, Obama is a liar. And Hillary Clinton. No, Fox News. Ridiculous! – it’s CNN or NBC. And so on and so forth in this theatre of the absurd that plays out within a megaplex of mainstream media (MSM) propaganda, where there are many shows but one producer, whose overall aim is to engineer the consent of all who enter while setting the different audiences against each other. It is a very successful charade that evokes name-calling from all quarters.
In other words, for many people their opponents lie, as do other people, but not them. This is as true in personal as well as public life. Here the personal and the political converge, despite protestations to the contrary.
Sartre and Bad Faith
Lying and dissembling are ubiquitous. Being lied to by the MSM is mirrored in people’s personal lives. People lie and want to be deceived. They choose to play dumb, to avoid a confrontation with truth. They want to be nice (Latin, nescire, not to know, to be ignorant) and to be liked. They want to tuck themselves into a safe social and cultural framework where they imagine they will be safe. They choose to live in what Jean Paul Sartre called bad faith (mauvaise foi): He put it as follows:
In bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. But with this “lie” to myself, the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.
Such bad faith allows people to fabricate a second act of bad faith: that they are not responsible for their ignorance of the truths behind the government’s and corporate media’s lies and propaganda, even as the shades of the prison house ominously close around us and the world edges toward global death that could arrive in an instant with nuclear war or limp along for years of increasing suffering.
Those of us who write about the U.S.-led demented wars and provocations around the world and the complementary death of democracy at home are constantly flabbergasted and discouraged by the willed ignorance of so many Americans. For while the mainstream media does the bidding of the power elite, there is ample alternative news and analyses available on the internet from fine journalists and writers committed to truth, not propaganda. There is actually far too much truth available, which poses another problem. But it doesn’t take a genius to learn how to research important issues and to learn how to distinguish between bogus and genuine information. It takes a bit of effort, and, more importantly, the desire to compare multiple, opposing viewpoints and untangle the webs the Web weaves. We are awash in information (and disinformation) and both good and bad reporting, but it is still available to the caring inquirer.
The problem is the will to know. But why, why the refusal to investigate and question; why the indifference? Stupidity? Okay, there is that. Ignorance? That too. Willful ignorance, ditto. Laziness, indeed. Careerism and ideology? For certain. Upton Sinclair put it mildly when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it.” Difficult? No, it’s almost impossible.
But then there are many very intelligent people who have nothing to lose and yet adamantly refuse to entertain alternative possibilities to the reigning orthodoxies that have them in their grip.
As do many others, I know many such people who will yes me to death and then never fully research issues. They will remain in limbo or else wink to themselves that what may be true couldn’t be true. They close down. This is a great dilemma and frustration faced by those who seek to convince people to take an active part in understanding what is really going on in the world today, especially as the United States wages war across the globe, threatens Russia and China, among others, as it expands and modernizes its nuclear weapons capabilities.
Jacques Ellul on Propaganda
The French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, has argued convincingly that modern propaganda in a technological mass society is more complicated than the state and media lying and deceiving the population. He argues that propaganda meets certain needs of modern people and therefore the process of deceit is reciprocal. The modern person feels lost, powerless, and empty. Ellul says, “He realizes that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives him to despair.” But he can’t live in despair; desires that life be meaningful; and wants to feel he lives in a world that makes sense. He wants to participate and have opinions that suggest he grasps the flow of events. He doesn’t so much want information, but value judgments and preconceived positions that provide him with a framework for living. Ellul wrote the following in 1965 in his classic book Propaganda:
The majority prefers expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion: this gives them the feeling of participation. For they need simple thoughts, elementary explanations, a ‘key’ that will permit them to take a position, and even readymade opinions….The man who keeps himself informed needs a framework….the more complicated the problems are, the more simple the explanations must be; the more fragmented the canvas, the simpler the pattern; the more difficult the question, the more all-embracing the solution; the more menacing the reduction of his own worth, the greater the need for boosting his ego. All this propaganda – and only propaganda – can give him.
Another way of saying this is that people want to be provided with myths to direct them to the “truth.” But such so-called truth has been preconceived within the overarching myth provided by propaganda, and while it satisfies people’s emotional need for coherence, it also allows them to think of themselves as free individuals arriving at their own conclusions, which is a basic function of good propaganda. In today’s mass technological society, it is essential that people be convinced that they are free-thinking individuals acting in good faith. Then they can feel good about themselves as they lie and act in bad faith.
The Spirit of Existential Rebellion
In the wake of World War II and the complete shattering of any illusion about the human capacity for evil, there arose in Western Europe, particularly in France and Germany a “philosophy” called existentialism. More an attitude towards life rather than a formal philosophy, and with its roots going back at least as far as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the 19th century, existentialism emphasized individual freedom, authenticity, personal responsibility, and the need to confront the unimaginable horrors of World War II and the absurd situation in which human beings had created nuclear weapons that could obliterate the planet in a flash, as the United States had used to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How to respond to the birth of global state nuclear terrorism became a task for the existential imagination.
The traditional belief that an all-powerful God could bring the world to an end had now been replaced by the idolatry of nuclear madmen who had hubristically violated the limits that the Greeks had long ago warned us not to exceed by making themselves into gods. Having unleashed the Furies, these false gods have created a world in which the droning sound of nuclear intercontinental missiles haunts the secret nightmares of the world. We have been living with this unspeakable and unspoken truth for more than seventy years.
Opposition to the nuclear standoff and its accompanying proxy wars has waxed and waned over the years. Dissident minorities and sometimes many millions across the globe have mobilized to oppose not only nuclear weapons but the war makers who have waged continuous wars of aggression throughout the world and have created the national-security warfare state, seemingly intent on world destruction.
However, today the sound of silence fills the empty streets, as passivity has overtaken those who oppose the growing nuclear threat and the ongoing U.S.- led wars throughout the world. The spirit of resistance has gone to sleep. The German writer Karl Kraus understood this in the days of Hitler’s rise during the 1930s when he said, “The real end of the world is the destruction of the spirit; the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such destruction the world can go on.”
We need to somehow resurrect the spirit of resistance that will bring together millions of people across the world who oppose the death dealers. I think it is time to recall the power and possibility implicit in the spirit of existential thought.
The existential emphasis on individual responsibility and authentic truth telling in the works of various writers, including Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel, and Albert Camus (who didn’t consider himself an existentialist but whose work emphasized many of the same themes), inspired large numbers of people in the late 50s into the mid-to-late 60s, including the international anti-nuclear movement and young American anti-war activists. Contrary to popular understanding, existentialism is not about navel gazing and hopelessness, but is about responding freely and authentically to the situations people find themselves in, which today, is the end- time that is a time when the fate of the world lies in the hands of nuclear madmen.
But by the end of the 1960s this existential spirit of rebellion started to dissipate. Academic gibberish replaced this rebellious spirit with the introduction of ideas, such as post structuralism, leading eventually to postmodernist nonsense that not only refuted the need for personal responsibility, but eliminated the person altogether. By 1999 a leading exponent of postmodern rhetoric, Jean Baudrillard, was dismissing everything the existentialists emphasized. He said, “No one needs this kind of ‘existential garb’ any more. Who cares about freedom, bad faith, and authenticity today?”
If such words were just the ranting of an intellectual lost in a fantasy world of abstractions, that would be one thing. But they are a form of propaganda echoed throughout western societies, particularly the United States, through the repeated emphases over the decades that people are not free but are the products of biological brain processes, etc. Deterministic memes have become dominant in cultural mind control. Such postmodern abstractions have denied everything that makes possible the fight against nuclear annihilation and the warfare states’ domination of western Europe and NATO, led by the United States.
The self is an illusion. Freedom is an illusion. Responsibility is an illusion. Guilt is an illusion. Everything is an illusion. A kaleidoscopic mad world in which no on exists and nothing really matters. This deterministic and nihilistic message has become the main current in western cultural propaganda since the late 1960s and has reached a crescendo in the present day. It is responsible for the growth of passivity and denial that dominates contemporary public consciousness. It underlies the refusal of so many otherwise intelligent people to engage themselves in the search for truth that would lead to their joining forces with others to create a mass anti-war movement.
While many people think of existentialism as only an atheistic approach to existence, this is incorrect. There are atheist and agnostic existentialists, yes, , but existentialism’s core emphases have deep roots in the various religious traditions, such as Judaism and Christianity, etc. That is because freedom, authenticity, truth telling, and social responsibility, while often buried within the institutional structures of these faiths, lie at their core. So if we are going to resurrect the spirit of rebellion necessary to transform today’s world, we need to renew the virtues that the existentialists emphasize.
The first step in this process is to ask with D.H.Lawrence the question, “How great a liar am I?”
Anti-war activist and author of the indispensable book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, James Douglass, made an intriguing suggestion in another book, Lightning East To West, when he said:
The exact opposite of the H bomb’s destructive purpose, but psychic equivalent of its energy, is the Kingdom of Reality which would be the final victory of Truth in history –a force of truth and love powerful enough to fuse billions of individual psyches into a global realization of essential oneness. There is no reason why the same psyche which, when turned outward, was able to create the condition for a self-acting force of over 100 million degrees of heat, thus realizing an inconceivable thermonuclear fusion, cannot someday turn sufficiently inward to create the condition for an equally inconceivable (but nature balancing) fusion in its own psychic or spiritual reality. An end-time can also be a beginning. Gandhi said: ‘When the practice of the law becomes universal, God will reign on the earth as God does in heaven. Earth and heaven are in us. We know the earth, and we are strangers to the heaven within us.’
While Gandhi’s words are couched in religious language, their meaning can resonate with secular-minded people as well. These words speak to the power implicit in the human spirit as a whole. That power begins and builds when people of all persuasions are convinced that they must freely pursue the truth at all costs. As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
In these very dark times – these end- times created by nuclear weapons – seeing the truth is dependent on the will to truth, and the will to truth only arises when people believe they are free to alter the circumstances in which they find themselves. This belief in freedom is at the core of all existential thought and is why we need to resurrect it today.
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/
I am not at all keen on the value Existentialism, quite the contrary, but the portion concerning self deception and propaganda deserve consideration.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
So Anderson Cooper makes $100M/yr. The least of the top 20 newscasters worldwide makes $8M. And one can easily surmise that anybody you see on a national newscast is making at least mid-6 figures.....
http://moneyinc.com/20-richest-news-anchors-world/21/
Which begs the question, "Whose side are they on?"
Who needs conspiracy when ya got class?
http://moneyinc.com/20-richest-news-anchors-world/21/
Which begs the question, "Whose side are they on?"
Who needs conspiracy when ya got class?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
So Naomi Klein posted Bernie Sanders ranting against billionaires....he's a millionaire and Naomi is worth $16M.blindpig wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:15 pmSo Anderson Cooper makes $100M/yr. The least of the top 20 newscasters worldwide makes $8M. And one can easily surmise that anybody you see on a national newscast is making at least mid-6 figures.....
http://moneyinc.com/20-richest-news-anchors-world/21/
Which begs the question, "Whose side are they on?"
Who needs conspiracy when ya got class?
just sayin'....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
BOLIBYA? JUAN CARLOS ZAMBRANA SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON THE DESTABILIZATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST MORALES LED BY U.S. FUNDED NGOS
By Cory Morningstar
“Al-Jazeera, which started out as a credible news agency, has become the whore of international journalism and is as credible as the scrawlings of a demented simpleton on the walls of a football stadium. What is really happening in Syria, we shall be reporting in the forthcoming days. Meanwhile let us tell the story of Libya, which you will not see on Al-Jazeera, nor indeed on the British Bullshit Corporation, its friend and bedmate.” —Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravda.Ru, from the article The West, Syria and Libya.
It is no secret that Al Jazeera has become an instrumental tool of propaganda (Wadah Khanfar, Al-Jazeera and the triumph of televised propaganda by Thierry Meyssan), serving the Imperialist powers in the expanding destabilization campaigns taking place at unprecedented speed across the globe. What is perhaps less known is the destabilization campaign staged against the Bolivian President Evo Morales, which Morales successfully circumvented and over-came in late 2011. (Media reported several deaths including a baby – all which proved to be complete fabrication.)
Today, the campaign to remove Morales appears to be heating up again. The “news coverage” by Al Jazeera, below (in the midst of Al Jazeera “news” on the Syrian “uprising”), lends evidence that this destabilization effort (being led by U.S.-funded CIDOB) is being re-ignited as does recent correspondence on an international “climate justice” listserv with U.S.-funded NGOs whereby activists are again urging support for anti-Morales protesters. The destabilization campaign has strategically zoned in on an issue commonly referred to simply as “TIPNIS” (El Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure), an ecologically sensitive area where the majority of inhabitants wished for a road that would have provided access to health care, schools, and the expansion of slow yet steady liberation and autonomy.
Liberation and autonomy for the people of one of the poorest countries in Latin America – all while struggling through the process of change. Under pressure from a minority group under the CIDOB banner (funded by U.S. interests), Morales gave in to their every demand, which upon announcement, resulted in one protester stating in disbelief, “We’re screwed.” Today, groups representing the majority are demanding the legislation be reversed.
Destabilizations Under the Guise of Humanitarian Intervention
Appearing live on Al Jazeera, author Juan Carlos Zambrana sets the record straight. Zambrana spells out in no uncertain terms the destabilization campaign against Evo Morales being led by U.S.-funded NGOs (including Democracy Center, Amazon Watch and Avaaz). Funders of the NGOs leading this destabilization effort include USAID, NED, Open Society Institute (George Soros), and Rockefellers just to name a few. Further, these funders are heavily invested in REDD (a false solution to the climate crisis that breeds climate racism – a mechanism that Morales and ALBA countries continue to vehemently oppose), promoted by Avaaz and a slew of other corporate greens.
Morales’s leadership, based upon a vision that serves the Bolivian people by breaking free from the claws of Imperialism, is a model that threatens the entire global industrialized capitalist system and the oligarchy it serves. The corporate-funded NGOs are devised and funded (at times merely co-opted) as an integral instrument to protect the system … similar to the role of corporate media. Imperialist powers use this same strategy over and over – Libya is a prime and most recent example. The NGOs were absolutely instrumental in the destabilization/invasion of Libya – a country with no debt and the highest standard of living in Africa. Few are aware that Gaddafi was invited, as an esteemed guest, by Columbia University in 2006, to speak about and share knowledge of Libya’s vision of “direct democracy” (based on The Green Book), a lecture that was streamed live.
“Capital is more than happy to enlist the mainstream [environmental] movement as a partner in the management of nature. Big environmental groups offer capital a threefold convenience: as legitimation, reminding the world that the system works; as control over popular dissent, a kind of sponge that sucks up and constrains the ecological anxiety in the general population; and as rationalization, a useful governor to introduce some control and protect the system from its own worst tendencies, while ensuring the orderly flow of profits.” —Joel Kovel, 2002
Below are links for further reading on this destabilization campaign, including a link to correspondence with Jim Shultz from the “Democracy” Center, a U.S. funded “think tank” situated in Bolivia and funded by Rockefellers and other foundations (who serve as corporate front groups), most all heavily invested in promoting neo-liberal policies.
1) Dialogue with Jim Shultz from the U.S.-funded Democracy Center (based in Bolivia): http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2011/11/23/ ... ivia-redd/. (Shultz’s comments follow the article at the link provided.)
2) Recent articles by Juan Carlos Zambrana. You can subscribe to updates on his website: http://juancarloszambrana.com/spanish/ (Spanish) or http://juancarloszambrana.com/ (English).
3) Excellent coverage on Bolivia is found on “Bolivia Rising” where you can also subscribe to updates: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/
4) NEWLY DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS REVEAL MORE THAN $97 MILLION IN FUNDING FROM USAID TO SEPARATIST PROJECTS IN BOLIVIA: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2009/ ... eveal.html
5) Background: The Environmental “Movement” Versus the Bolivian Morales Government: Published September 30, 2011 on Bolivia Rising, Political Context and The Wrong Kind of Green: http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2011/09/30/ ... hemselves/
6) Libya: Humanitarian war in Libya? There was no evidence! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9IzXsALwo&list
7) The War on Democracy | An award winning documentary by John Pilger: http://vimeo.com/16724719
8 ) George Orwell’s Guide to the News | The Seven Step Mainstream Media Country Destruction Guide: http://rt.com/news/media-lies-global-elite-447/.
Imperialists’ strategy: Employ corporate media and NGOs to create the legitimacy necessary for entry to undertake a strategic destabilization. Where existing dissent exists, infiltrate using corporate-funded NGOs to further the divide. Divide and conquer utilizing foreign-funded mercenaries, CIA and terrorist groups funded by Imperialist states to create conflict where/when necessary. Further employ corporate media and NGOs to ensure that the public views the destabilization campaign through the lens of/under the guise of a humanitarian intervention to bring “democracy” to the people. Where the opportunity presents itself, utilize the illusion of a spontaneous uprising. (This has become a favoured strategy thanks to U.S.-funded groups like Otpor! and others who exploit well intentioned vulnerable youth.)
Yes, the Imperialists are going to bring the white man’s illusion of “democracy” to a resource-rich country near you, all while simultaneously bombing them to smithereens, if that’s what it takes to seize control of resources or, just as critical if not more so, if that’s what it takes to simply crush a strengthening union of resistance to Imperialist/Colonial rule and that of the global industrialized capitalist system – a union such as what Libya, under Gaddafi’s leadership, was successfully leading for the unity and liberation of Africa nations. ALBA countries, with Bolivia and Venezuela leading the charge with the recent formation of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), while moving away from the U.S. dollar as their trading currency, represent the same such threat to the Imperialist powers. Gaddafi was working toward the introduction of the gold dinar, a single African currency, made by gold, which was to be a “true sharing of the wealth” for the African people before he was brutally murdered and a beautiful country devastated. Under the false pretext of a “humanitarian intervention,” as many as 100,000 Libyan men, women and children were killed, while foreign interests continue to steal and plunder every last drop of wealth from Libya – both monetary and cultural, as well as ecological.
Bolivia is and will remain a country of people who desperately struggle to resist Imperialism and fight for their autonomy – against all odds. The question is whether we, as citizens, will choose to serve the Imperialists by supporting their agenda, or respect the Bolivian people by trusting they can best work through the difficult process of change without foreign interference.
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/bol ... iveOldPost
fuck Joel Kovel anyway
By Cory Morningstar
“Al-Jazeera, which started out as a credible news agency, has become the whore of international journalism and is as credible as the scrawlings of a demented simpleton on the walls of a football stadium. What is really happening in Syria, we shall be reporting in the forthcoming days. Meanwhile let us tell the story of Libya, which you will not see on Al-Jazeera, nor indeed on the British Bullshit Corporation, its friend and bedmate.” —Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravda.Ru, from the article The West, Syria and Libya.
It is no secret that Al Jazeera has become an instrumental tool of propaganda (Wadah Khanfar, Al-Jazeera and the triumph of televised propaganda by Thierry Meyssan), serving the Imperialist powers in the expanding destabilization campaigns taking place at unprecedented speed across the globe. What is perhaps less known is the destabilization campaign staged against the Bolivian President Evo Morales, which Morales successfully circumvented and over-came in late 2011. (Media reported several deaths including a baby – all which proved to be complete fabrication.)
Today, the campaign to remove Morales appears to be heating up again. The “news coverage” by Al Jazeera, below (in the midst of Al Jazeera “news” on the Syrian “uprising”), lends evidence that this destabilization effort (being led by U.S.-funded CIDOB) is being re-ignited as does recent correspondence on an international “climate justice” listserv with U.S.-funded NGOs whereby activists are again urging support for anti-Morales protesters. The destabilization campaign has strategically zoned in on an issue commonly referred to simply as “TIPNIS” (El Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure), an ecologically sensitive area where the majority of inhabitants wished for a road that would have provided access to health care, schools, and the expansion of slow yet steady liberation and autonomy.
Liberation and autonomy for the people of one of the poorest countries in Latin America – all while struggling through the process of change. Under pressure from a minority group under the CIDOB banner (funded by U.S. interests), Morales gave in to their every demand, which upon announcement, resulted in one protester stating in disbelief, “We’re screwed.” Today, groups representing the majority are demanding the legislation be reversed.
Destabilizations Under the Guise of Humanitarian Intervention
Appearing live on Al Jazeera, author Juan Carlos Zambrana sets the record straight. Zambrana spells out in no uncertain terms the destabilization campaign against Evo Morales being led by U.S.-funded NGOs (including Democracy Center, Amazon Watch and Avaaz). Funders of the NGOs leading this destabilization effort include USAID, NED, Open Society Institute (George Soros), and Rockefellers just to name a few. Further, these funders are heavily invested in REDD (a false solution to the climate crisis that breeds climate racism – a mechanism that Morales and ALBA countries continue to vehemently oppose), promoted by Avaaz and a slew of other corporate greens.
Morales’s leadership, based upon a vision that serves the Bolivian people by breaking free from the claws of Imperialism, is a model that threatens the entire global industrialized capitalist system and the oligarchy it serves. The corporate-funded NGOs are devised and funded (at times merely co-opted) as an integral instrument to protect the system … similar to the role of corporate media. Imperialist powers use this same strategy over and over – Libya is a prime and most recent example. The NGOs were absolutely instrumental in the destabilization/invasion of Libya – a country with no debt and the highest standard of living in Africa. Few are aware that Gaddafi was invited, as an esteemed guest, by Columbia University in 2006, to speak about and share knowledge of Libya’s vision of “direct democracy” (based on The Green Book), a lecture that was streamed live.
“Capital is more than happy to enlist the mainstream [environmental] movement as a partner in the management of nature. Big environmental groups offer capital a threefold convenience: as legitimation, reminding the world that the system works; as control over popular dissent, a kind of sponge that sucks up and constrains the ecological anxiety in the general population; and as rationalization, a useful governor to introduce some control and protect the system from its own worst tendencies, while ensuring the orderly flow of profits.” —Joel Kovel, 2002
Below are links for further reading on this destabilization campaign, including a link to correspondence with Jim Shultz from the “Democracy” Center, a U.S. funded “think tank” situated in Bolivia and funded by Rockefellers and other foundations (who serve as corporate front groups), most all heavily invested in promoting neo-liberal policies.
1) Dialogue with Jim Shultz from the U.S.-funded Democracy Center (based in Bolivia): http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2011/11/23/ ... ivia-redd/. (Shultz’s comments follow the article at the link provided.)
2) Recent articles by Juan Carlos Zambrana. You can subscribe to updates on his website: http://juancarloszambrana.com/spanish/ (Spanish) or http://juancarloszambrana.com/ (English).
3) Excellent coverage on Bolivia is found on “Bolivia Rising” where you can also subscribe to updates: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/
4) NEWLY DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS REVEAL MORE THAN $97 MILLION IN FUNDING FROM USAID TO SEPARATIST PROJECTS IN BOLIVIA: http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2009/ ... eveal.html
5) Background: The Environmental “Movement” Versus the Bolivian Morales Government: Published September 30, 2011 on Bolivia Rising, Political Context and The Wrong Kind of Green: http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2011/09/30/ ... hemselves/
6) Libya: Humanitarian war in Libya? There was no evidence! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9IzXsALwo&list
7) The War on Democracy | An award winning documentary by John Pilger: http://vimeo.com/16724719
8 ) George Orwell’s Guide to the News | The Seven Step Mainstream Media Country Destruction Guide: http://rt.com/news/media-lies-global-elite-447/.
Imperialists’ strategy: Employ corporate media and NGOs to create the legitimacy necessary for entry to undertake a strategic destabilization. Where existing dissent exists, infiltrate using corporate-funded NGOs to further the divide. Divide and conquer utilizing foreign-funded mercenaries, CIA and terrorist groups funded by Imperialist states to create conflict where/when necessary. Further employ corporate media and NGOs to ensure that the public views the destabilization campaign through the lens of/under the guise of a humanitarian intervention to bring “democracy” to the people. Where the opportunity presents itself, utilize the illusion of a spontaneous uprising. (This has become a favoured strategy thanks to U.S.-funded groups like Otpor! and others who exploit well intentioned vulnerable youth.)
Yes, the Imperialists are going to bring the white man’s illusion of “democracy” to a resource-rich country near you, all while simultaneously bombing them to smithereens, if that’s what it takes to seize control of resources or, just as critical if not more so, if that’s what it takes to simply crush a strengthening union of resistance to Imperialist/Colonial rule and that of the global industrialized capitalist system – a union such as what Libya, under Gaddafi’s leadership, was successfully leading for the unity and liberation of Africa nations. ALBA countries, with Bolivia and Venezuela leading the charge with the recent formation of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), while moving away from the U.S. dollar as their trading currency, represent the same such threat to the Imperialist powers. Gaddafi was working toward the introduction of the gold dinar, a single African currency, made by gold, which was to be a “true sharing of the wealth” for the African people before he was brutally murdered and a beautiful country devastated. Under the false pretext of a “humanitarian intervention,” as many as 100,000 Libyan men, women and children were killed, while foreign interests continue to steal and plunder every last drop of wealth from Libya – both monetary and cultural, as well as ecological.
Bolivia is and will remain a country of people who desperately struggle to resist Imperialism and fight for their autonomy – against all odds. The question is whether we, as citizens, will choose to serve the Imperialists by supporting their agenda, or respect the Bolivian people by trusting they can best work through the difficult process of change without foreign interference.
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/bol ... iveOldPost
fuck Joel Kovel anyway
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
Freelancer Despairs: "My Lies About Hizbullah Can't Compete With Trump" - (Updated)
[Updated throughout - Feb 3, 2:30pm EST]
---
There is a special class of young, enterprising journalists and 'experts' who claim to have access to the inner thinking of the Lebanese resistance organization Hizbullah. Journalists with decades of on the ground experience in Lebanon like to mock them:
Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai - 6:49 AM - 3 Feb 2018
"Hezbollah experts": "I was walking in "Hezbollah stronghold" & bumped into a man who turned out to be a "High commander". As a sign of courtesy of our 1st encounter, revealed to me Hezbollah will attack 7 countries. He delivers all plans to me & went off". U have to believe me.
The story below touches on that phenomenon. But there is more to it. Such journalists and experts are tools for planting Israel's propaganda into the minds of their readers. That is the real plot behind this curious story.
A few days ago the Columbia Journalism Review published a whiny piece about dwindling foreign reporting in U.S. media:
Freelancing abroad in a world obsessed with Trump
The story is build around one U.S. freelance reporter in Lebanon, Sulome Anderson, who laments that her work is no longer requested or published. Like all other miserable issue in this world Anderson's lack of income is caused by one Donald Trump:
Sulome blames a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump. Newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs simply have less space for freelance international stories than before—unless, of course, they directly involve Trump.
It that really the problem Anderson has?
Before the 2016 election cycle, Sulome would pitch a story once, maybe twice, before finding a home for it. Now she pitches anywhere from three to 10 editors before a story gets the green light, if it gets picked up at all.
Maybe it is not Trump but the crude propaganda, and abysmal sourcing Anderson tries to sell:
In October 2017, Sulome thought she had landed the story of her career. The US had just announced a $7 million reward for a Hezbollah operative believed to be scouting locations for terror attacks on American soil—something it had never done before. Having interviewed Hezbollah fighters for the last six years, Sulome had unique access to the upper echelons of its militants, including that specific operative’s family members. Over the course of her reporting, Hezbollah members told her they had contingency plans to strike government and military targets on US soil and that they had surface-to-air missiles, which had not been reported before.
Why didn't she offer that story to The Onion - they would have had fun with it. Consider:
Hizbullah is known for its extremely tight media control. There is no such media access, zero, none, to the "upper echelons" of Hizbullah - certainly not for some U.S. freelancer with a dubious background (see below).
Hizbullah does not talk about its weapons to this or that journalist. If it wants to make a specific capability known, it will make a public announcements about it. That is what Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah did when he said that Hizbullah could attack Haifa’s ammonia storage tanks. It was the announcement that Hizbullah had acquired a new, precise, mid-range missile.
Will Hizbullah operatives talk to their family members about their secret business? Would those family members relate those secrets to some American freelancer? No and no.
Hizbullah's surface-to-air missiles have never been reported on? What about the 2006(!) IHS Janes report? MoA, this very site, wrote about them in 2008! Hizbullah leader Nasrallah publicly talked about them and Israel's intelligence service confirmed the capability. Hizbollah is known to have MANPADS (see pic), SA-22 Pantsyr-1 systems and at least access to S-200 surface to air missiles including the necessary radar systems.
The CJR piece continues:
Convinced she had struck gold, she was elated when the piece was commissioned by a dream publication she’d never written for before. But days later, that publication rescinded its decision, saying that Sulome had done too much of the reporting before she was commissioned. Sulome was in shock. She went on to pitch the story to eight other publications, and no one was interested.
Obsessive Trump coverage let the editors turn that story down?
Or could it be that no one was interested in Sulome Anderson's story because it was obvious propaganda crap? Could it be that no one was interested because Anderson's claimed access to Hizbullah has for years been laughed about? Could it be that that no one was interested because her July 2017 story for Newsweek (scroll to its end) needed five(!) factual corrections and had additional serious problems? Because the video she made for Newsweek of alleged Hizbullah fighters she interviewed showed fighters with the insignia of Fatah al-Intifada, a Syrian-Palestinian group? Could it be because the fighting scenes in that video seemed staged? (In her rebuttal of those accusations Anderson admits some errors, obfuscates others, but also claims to have interviewed "a Hezbollah division leader". Hizbullah is not organized like a conventional army. Its armed resistance does do not have "divisions" - nor does it have "division leaders".)
No editor likes to publish pieces which will get flogged by experts and the public. Editors hate to publish corrections. It is the disaster of Anderson's Newsweek story, not Donald Trump coverage, that prevents other editors from commissioning her with a similar piece.
Sulome Anderson has been duped for years by some enterprising Lebanese stringers who sell her "access to Hizbullah officials" by introducing her to their barber or some local thugs. An alternative explanation is that she is knowingly selling fairy-tales and propaganda. She certainly isn't the only journalist with such a problem. In 2012 Vice published a widely shared - and ridiculed - story about Paintballing with Hezbollah in which four western journalist competed with four local dudes who falsely claimed to be "Hizbullah fighters".
The CJR story about Sulome Anderson's sales problem was written by Yardena Schwartz, a freelancer in Tel Aviv. Schwartz discloses that "Sulome was a classmate of mine at Columbia Journalism School from 2010 to 2011." Having friends in Tel Aviv increases the chance that "upper echelons" of Hizbullah will trust you with knowledge about their plans and air-defense capabilities? Bragging about ones orthodox Jewish and Zionist boyfriend, as Anderson does, helps to pass through Hizbullah's strict media controls?
Thinking this over one comes to see the propaganda plan behind this whole affair.
Consider: The U.S. puts some high reward on someone's head for allegedly being Hizbullah and planning something nefarious within the United States. Next comes Sulome Anderson, who just by chance has access to the family of the dude. She also learns from "upper echelon" Hizbullah commanders that, yes, what the U.S. alleges is exactly what Hizbullah wants to do. Moreover - Hizbullah confesses to Anderson that it has all these scary MANPADS. Might it want to smuggle those into the States? Does it want to down Air Force One or a commuter flight out of New York?
That surely would have been a perfect scare story, an 'independent' confirmation of the U.S. allegations and another reason to put more sanctions on Hizbullah.
But no one in the U.S. was willing to publish that crap. After the Newsweek disaster Anderson's claims of Hizbullah access had been seriously burned. The story would not stand.
Is there another way to plant the meme into American minds? How about a whiny story in the CJR, written by her friend in Tel Aviv, that simply repeats these claims? Not as good as 'original' reporting published in the New York Times but surely enough to put those claims on the record.
It is disappointing that CJR published this sorry excuse for the unreliable reporting of Sulome Anderson. Excessive Trump coverage in U.S. media may be a reason for less foreign reporting. Costs are certainly another one.
This case though is about factual errors, unreliable sourcing, planting pro-Israel propaganda or, at best, about getting duped by some local jokers.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/fr ... -news.html
[Updated throughout - Feb 3, 2:30pm EST]
---
There is a special class of young, enterprising journalists and 'experts' who claim to have access to the inner thinking of the Lebanese resistance organization Hizbullah. Journalists with decades of on the ground experience in Lebanon like to mock them:
Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai - 6:49 AM - 3 Feb 2018
"Hezbollah experts": "I was walking in "Hezbollah stronghold" & bumped into a man who turned out to be a "High commander". As a sign of courtesy of our 1st encounter, revealed to me Hezbollah will attack 7 countries. He delivers all plans to me & went off". U have to believe me.
The story below touches on that phenomenon. But there is more to it. Such journalists and experts are tools for planting Israel's propaganda into the minds of their readers. That is the real plot behind this curious story.
A few days ago the Columbia Journalism Review published a whiny piece about dwindling foreign reporting in U.S. media:
Freelancing abroad in a world obsessed with Trump
The story is build around one U.S. freelance reporter in Lebanon, Sulome Anderson, who laments that her work is no longer requested or published. Like all other miserable issue in this world Anderson's lack of income is caused by one Donald Trump:
Sulome blames a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump. Newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs simply have less space for freelance international stories than before—unless, of course, they directly involve Trump.
It that really the problem Anderson has?
Before the 2016 election cycle, Sulome would pitch a story once, maybe twice, before finding a home for it. Now she pitches anywhere from three to 10 editors before a story gets the green light, if it gets picked up at all.
Maybe it is not Trump but the crude propaganda, and abysmal sourcing Anderson tries to sell:
In October 2017, Sulome thought she had landed the story of her career. The US had just announced a $7 million reward for a Hezbollah operative believed to be scouting locations for terror attacks on American soil—something it had never done before. Having interviewed Hezbollah fighters for the last six years, Sulome had unique access to the upper echelons of its militants, including that specific operative’s family members. Over the course of her reporting, Hezbollah members told her they had contingency plans to strike government and military targets on US soil and that they had surface-to-air missiles, which had not been reported before.
Why didn't she offer that story to The Onion - they would have had fun with it. Consider:
Hizbullah is known for its extremely tight media control. There is no such media access, zero, none, to the "upper echelons" of Hizbullah - certainly not for some U.S. freelancer with a dubious background (see below).
Hizbullah does not talk about its weapons to this or that journalist. If it wants to make a specific capability known, it will make a public announcements about it. That is what Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah did when he said that Hizbullah could attack Haifa’s ammonia storage tanks. It was the announcement that Hizbullah had acquired a new, precise, mid-range missile.
Will Hizbullah operatives talk to their family members about their secret business? Would those family members relate those secrets to some American freelancer? No and no.
Hizbullah's surface-to-air missiles have never been reported on? What about the 2006(!) IHS Janes report? MoA, this very site, wrote about them in 2008! Hizbullah leader Nasrallah publicly talked about them and Israel's intelligence service confirmed the capability. Hizbollah is known to have MANPADS (see pic), SA-22 Pantsyr-1 systems and at least access to S-200 surface to air missiles including the necessary radar systems.
The CJR piece continues:
Convinced she had struck gold, she was elated when the piece was commissioned by a dream publication she’d never written for before. But days later, that publication rescinded its decision, saying that Sulome had done too much of the reporting before she was commissioned. Sulome was in shock. She went on to pitch the story to eight other publications, and no one was interested.
Obsessive Trump coverage let the editors turn that story down?
Or could it be that no one was interested in Sulome Anderson's story because it was obvious propaganda crap? Could it be that no one was interested because Anderson's claimed access to Hizbullah has for years been laughed about? Could it be that that no one was interested because her July 2017 story for Newsweek (scroll to its end) needed five(!) factual corrections and had additional serious problems? Because the video she made for Newsweek of alleged Hizbullah fighters she interviewed showed fighters with the insignia of Fatah al-Intifada, a Syrian-Palestinian group? Could it be because the fighting scenes in that video seemed staged? (In her rebuttal of those accusations Anderson admits some errors, obfuscates others, but also claims to have interviewed "a Hezbollah division leader". Hizbullah is not organized like a conventional army. Its armed resistance does do not have "divisions" - nor does it have "division leaders".)
No editor likes to publish pieces which will get flogged by experts and the public. Editors hate to publish corrections. It is the disaster of Anderson's Newsweek story, not Donald Trump coverage, that prevents other editors from commissioning her with a similar piece.
Sulome Anderson has been duped for years by some enterprising Lebanese stringers who sell her "access to Hizbullah officials" by introducing her to their barber or some local thugs. An alternative explanation is that she is knowingly selling fairy-tales and propaganda. She certainly isn't the only journalist with such a problem. In 2012 Vice published a widely shared - and ridiculed - story about Paintballing with Hezbollah in which four western journalist competed with four local dudes who falsely claimed to be "Hizbullah fighters".
The CJR story about Sulome Anderson's sales problem was written by Yardena Schwartz, a freelancer in Tel Aviv. Schwartz discloses that "Sulome was a classmate of mine at Columbia Journalism School from 2010 to 2011." Having friends in Tel Aviv increases the chance that "upper echelons" of Hizbullah will trust you with knowledge about their plans and air-defense capabilities? Bragging about ones orthodox Jewish and Zionist boyfriend, as Anderson does, helps to pass through Hizbullah's strict media controls?
Thinking this over one comes to see the propaganda plan behind this whole affair.
Consider: The U.S. puts some high reward on someone's head for allegedly being Hizbullah and planning something nefarious within the United States. Next comes Sulome Anderson, who just by chance has access to the family of the dude. She also learns from "upper echelon" Hizbullah commanders that, yes, what the U.S. alleges is exactly what Hizbullah wants to do. Moreover - Hizbullah confesses to Anderson that it has all these scary MANPADS. Might it want to smuggle those into the States? Does it want to down Air Force One or a commuter flight out of New York?
That surely would have been a perfect scare story, an 'independent' confirmation of the U.S. allegations and another reason to put more sanctions on Hizbullah.
But no one in the U.S. was willing to publish that crap. After the Newsweek disaster Anderson's claims of Hizbullah access had been seriously burned. The story would not stand.
Is there another way to plant the meme into American minds? How about a whiny story in the CJR, written by her friend in Tel Aviv, that simply repeats these claims? Not as good as 'original' reporting published in the New York Times but surely enough to put those claims on the record.
It is disappointing that CJR published this sorry excuse for the unreliable reporting of Sulome Anderson. Excessive Trump coverage in U.S. media may be a reason for less foreign reporting. Costs are certainly another one.
This case though is about factual errors, unreliable sourcing, planting pro-Israel propaganda or, at best, about getting duped by some local jokers.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/fr ... -news.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
The War on Dissent
The ruling class is sending us a message,“You’re either with us or against us.”
Just when you thought the corporatocracy couldn’t possibly get more creepily Orwellian, the Twitter Corporation starts sending out emails advising that they “have reason to believe” we have “followed, retweeted,” or “liked the content of” an account “connected to a propaganda effort by a Russia government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.” While it’s not as dramatic as the Thought Police watching you on your telescreen, or posters reminding you “Big Brother Is Watching,” the effect is more or less the same.
And if that’s not creepily Orwellian enough for you, Facebook has established a Ministry of Counterspeech , manned by “a dedicated counterterrorism team” of “former intelligence and law-enforcement officials,” to “disrupt ideologies underlying extremism” (see Chris Hedges’ recent essay for details ). The Google Corporation is systematically disappearing , deranking , and maliciously misrepresenting non-corporate news and opinion sources, and the “thought criminals” who contribute to them. Meanwhile, the corporate media continues to pump out Russia paranoia propaganda like this Maddow segment on MSNBC about “the remarkable number of Russian financiers who’ll be rubbing elbows with the Trump team in Davos.”
“Facebook has established a Ministry of Counterspeech, manned by ‘a dedicated counterterrorism team’ of ‘former intelligence and law-enforcement officials,’ to ‘disrupt ideologies underlying extremism.’”
These are just the latest salvos in the corporate establishment’s War on Dissent, an expanded version of the War on Terror, which they’ve been relentlessly waging for over a year now. As you may have noticed, the ruling classes have been using virtually every propaganda organ at their disposal to whip up mass hysteria over a host of extremely dubious threats to “the future of democracy” and “democratic values,” Russia being foremost among them, followed closely by white supremacy, then a laundry list of other “threats,” from Julian Assange to Bernie Bros to other, lesser “sowers of division.”
This propaganda campaign is part and parcel of the roll-out of a new “official narrative.” If it wasn’t so completely depressing, I would say it is awe-inspiring to watch. This full-spectrum type of mass indoctrination, or “reality adjustment,” doesn’t happen that often. It used to only happen on the national level, typically during times of war, when the ruling classes of nation states needed to temporarily unite their populaces and demonize their enemy. It is happening now on a global level, for the second time in the 21st Century.
The first time it happened on a global level was 2001-2002, when the War on Terror narrative was launched to supplant the defunct Cold War narrative that had functioned since the end of World War II. The End of History/New World Order narrative, which had served as a kind of ideological stop-gap from 1990 to 2001, never really sold that well. It was far too vague, and there was no clear enemy. The global capitalist ruling classes (which now reigned unopposed over the entire planet) needed a new official narrative to unite, not just a nation, or region, but everyone within the new global market. This narrative needed a convincing enemy that would function on a global level. “Terrorism” is that enemy.
“The ruling classes have been using virtually every propaganda organ at their disposal to whip up mass hysteria over a host of extremely dubious threats to ‘the future of democracy’ and ‘democratic values.””
In the official War on Terror narrative, the term “terrorism” does not refer to any type of actual terrorism (although of course such terrorism does place) as much as to “terrorism” as a general concept, an essentially meaningless pejorative concept, one which can be expanded to include almost anything and anyone the ruling classes need it to … which is what is taking place at the moment. It is being expanded, rather dramatically, to include virtually any type of dissent from global capitalist ideology. In order to understand what’s happening, we need to understand how terms like “terrorism” and “extremism” function ideologically, not just as terms to dehumanize “bad guys” but to designate a type of ur-antagonist, one that conforms to the official narrative. So let’s take a few minutes and try to do that.
The key to understanding both the original War on Terror official narrative and the expanded variation we are being sold currently is the fact that terrorism is an insurgent tactic employed by weaker militant forces against a ruling government or occupation force. This makes it the perfect bogeyman (in essence, the only bogeyman) for our brave new global capitalist world, where global capitalism takes the place of that “ruling government or occupation force.”
I’ve written number of essays about this , so I won’t reiterate all that here. The short version is, we we no longer live in a world where nation-against-nation conflict is driving the course of political events. We live in a world where global capitalism is driving the course of political events. The economies of virtually every nation on the planet are hopelessly interdependent. Capitalist ideology pervades all cultures, despite their superficial differences. It is a globally hegemonic system, so it has no external enemies. None. The only threats it faces are internal. Its “enemies” are, by definition, insurgent … in other words, “extremist” or “terrorist.”
“The war the corporatocracy is waging is a counter-insurgency, an ideological counter-insurgency.”
This even holds true for the Russia paranoia the ruling classes are pumping out currently … it’s all just part of the “reality adjustment,” and the launch of a new official narrative, not a prelude to war with Russia. The USA is not going to war with Russia. The notion is beyond ridiculous. Have you noticed, despite all their warlike verbiage, that no one has put forth a single scenario in which war between Russia and the West makes sense? That’s because it doesn’t make sense. Not for Russia, the USA, or anyone else. This is why “the Russian threat” is being marketed as an “attack on democratic values” and “an attempt to sow division,” and so on. Because the war the corporatocracy is waging is not a war against Russia, the nation. The war they are fighting is a counter-insurgency, an ideological counter-insurgency. “Russia” has just been added to the list of “terrorists” and “extremists” who “hate us for our freedom.”
Thus, our new official narrative is actually just a minor variation on the original War on Terror narrative we’ve been indoctrinated with since 2001. A minor yet essential variation. From 2001 to 2016, the constant “terrorist threat” we were facing was strictly limited to Islamic terrorism, which made sense as long as the corporatocracy was focused on restructuring the Middle East. White supremacist terrorism was not part of the narrative, nor was any other form of terrorism, as that would have just confused the audience.
That changed, dramatically, in 2016.
“Trump was never the significant threat.”
The Brexit referendum and the election of Trump alerted the global capitalist ruling classes to the existence of another dangerous insurgency that had nothing to do with the Greater Middle East. While they were off merrily destabilizing, restructuring, privatizing, and debt-enslaving, resentment of global capitalism had grown into a widespread neo-nationalist backlash against globalization, the loss of sovereignty, fiscal austerity, and the soulless, smiley-face, corporate culture being implemented throughout the West and beyond. That this backlash is reactionary in nature does not change the fact that it is an insurgency … just as Islamic fundamentalism is. Both insurgencies are doomed attempts to revert to despotic social systems (nationalist in one case, religious in the other) and so reverse the forward march of global capitalism. The global capitalist ruling classes are not about to let that happen.
The corporatocracy wasted no time in dealing with this new insurgency. They demonized and hamstrung Trump, as they’ll continue to do until he’s well out of office. But Trump was never the significant threat. The significant threat is the people who elected him, and who voted for Brexit, and the AfD, and Sanders, and Mélenchon, and Corbyn, and who just stayed home on election day and refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. The threat is the attitude of these people. The insubordinate attitude of these people. The childish attitude of these people (who naively thought they could challenge the most powerful empire in the annals of human history … one that controls, not just the most fearsome military force that has ever existed, but the means to control “reality” itself).
“The message is, ‘we will tolerate no dissent, except for officially sanctioned dissent.’”
The corporatocracy is going to change that attitude, or it is going to make it disappear. It is in the process of doing this now, using every ideological weapon in its arsenal. The news media. Publishing. Hollywood. The Internet. Intelligence agencies. Congressional inquiries. Protests. Marches. Twitter’s “advisory emails.” Google’s manipulation of its search results. Facebook’s “counterspeech” initiative. Russiagate. Shitholegate. Pornstargate. The ruling class is sending us a message. The message is, “you’re either with us or against us.” The message is, “we will tolerate no dissent, except for officially sanctioned dissent.” The message is, “try to fuck with us, and we will marginalize you, and demonize you, and demonetize you, and disappear you.”
The message is, “we control reality, so reality is whatever the fuck we say it is, regardless of whether it is based in fact or just some totally made-up story we got The Washington Post to publish and then had the corporate media repeat, over and over, for fourteen months. ” If that doesn’t qualify as full-blown Orwellian, I’m not sure what, exactly, would.
I wish I had some rallying cry to end this depressing assessment with, but I have no interest in being one of these Twitter-based guerrilla leaders who tell you we can beat the corporatocracy by tweeting and donating to them on Patreon, and then going about our lives as “normal.” It’s probably going to take a little more than that, and the obvious truth is, the odds are against us. That said, I plan to make as much noise about The War on Dissent as humanly possible, until they marginalize me out of existence … or the corporate-mediated simulation that so many of us take for existence these days. What do you say, want to join me?
https://blackagendareport.com/war-dissent
Well, fuck Orwell & all but sorta hard to avoid, like Biblical quotes.
Dunno about fighting them for the net, they do own it after all. Only the maintenance of the illusion, which they greatly value, prevents the hammer from coming down in a messy way. Which will not prevent them from employing every other trick in the book to herd us sheep.
The ruling class is sending us a message,“You’re either with us or against us.”
Just when you thought the corporatocracy couldn’t possibly get more creepily Orwellian, the Twitter Corporation starts sending out emails advising that they “have reason to believe” we have “followed, retweeted,” or “liked the content of” an account “connected to a propaganda effort by a Russia government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.” While it’s not as dramatic as the Thought Police watching you on your telescreen, or posters reminding you “Big Brother Is Watching,” the effect is more or less the same.
And if that’s not creepily Orwellian enough for you, Facebook has established a Ministry of Counterspeech , manned by “a dedicated counterterrorism team” of “former intelligence and law-enforcement officials,” to “disrupt ideologies underlying extremism” (see Chris Hedges’ recent essay for details ). The Google Corporation is systematically disappearing , deranking , and maliciously misrepresenting non-corporate news and opinion sources, and the “thought criminals” who contribute to them. Meanwhile, the corporate media continues to pump out Russia paranoia propaganda like this Maddow segment on MSNBC about “the remarkable number of Russian financiers who’ll be rubbing elbows with the Trump team in Davos.”
“Facebook has established a Ministry of Counterspeech, manned by ‘a dedicated counterterrorism team’ of ‘former intelligence and law-enforcement officials,’ to ‘disrupt ideologies underlying extremism.’”
These are just the latest salvos in the corporate establishment’s War on Dissent, an expanded version of the War on Terror, which they’ve been relentlessly waging for over a year now. As you may have noticed, the ruling classes have been using virtually every propaganda organ at their disposal to whip up mass hysteria over a host of extremely dubious threats to “the future of democracy” and “democratic values,” Russia being foremost among them, followed closely by white supremacy, then a laundry list of other “threats,” from Julian Assange to Bernie Bros to other, lesser “sowers of division.”
This propaganda campaign is part and parcel of the roll-out of a new “official narrative.” If it wasn’t so completely depressing, I would say it is awe-inspiring to watch. This full-spectrum type of mass indoctrination, or “reality adjustment,” doesn’t happen that often. It used to only happen on the national level, typically during times of war, when the ruling classes of nation states needed to temporarily unite their populaces and demonize their enemy. It is happening now on a global level, for the second time in the 21st Century.
The first time it happened on a global level was 2001-2002, when the War on Terror narrative was launched to supplant the defunct Cold War narrative that had functioned since the end of World War II. The End of History/New World Order narrative, which had served as a kind of ideological stop-gap from 1990 to 2001, never really sold that well. It was far too vague, and there was no clear enemy. The global capitalist ruling classes (which now reigned unopposed over the entire planet) needed a new official narrative to unite, not just a nation, or region, but everyone within the new global market. This narrative needed a convincing enemy that would function on a global level. “Terrorism” is that enemy.
“The ruling classes have been using virtually every propaganda organ at their disposal to whip up mass hysteria over a host of extremely dubious threats to ‘the future of democracy’ and ‘democratic values.””
In the official War on Terror narrative, the term “terrorism” does not refer to any type of actual terrorism (although of course such terrorism does place) as much as to “terrorism” as a general concept, an essentially meaningless pejorative concept, one which can be expanded to include almost anything and anyone the ruling classes need it to … which is what is taking place at the moment. It is being expanded, rather dramatically, to include virtually any type of dissent from global capitalist ideology. In order to understand what’s happening, we need to understand how terms like “terrorism” and “extremism” function ideologically, not just as terms to dehumanize “bad guys” but to designate a type of ur-antagonist, one that conforms to the official narrative. So let’s take a few minutes and try to do that.
The key to understanding both the original War on Terror official narrative and the expanded variation we are being sold currently is the fact that terrorism is an insurgent tactic employed by weaker militant forces against a ruling government or occupation force. This makes it the perfect bogeyman (in essence, the only bogeyman) for our brave new global capitalist world, where global capitalism takes the place of that “ruling government or occupation force.”
I’ve written number of essays about this , so I won’t reiterate all that here. The short version is, we we no longer live in a world where nation-against-nation conflict is driving the course of political events. We live in a world where global capitalism is driving the course of political events. The economies of virtually every nation on the planet are hopelessly interdependent. Capitalist ideology pervades all cultures, despite their superficial differences. It is a globally hegemonic system, so it has no external enemies. None. The only threats it faces are internal. Its “enemies” are, by definition, insurgent … in other words, “extremist” or “terrorist.”
“The war the corporatocracy is waging is a counter-insurgency, an ideological counter-insurgency.”
This even holds true for the Russia paranoia the ruling classes are pumping out currently … it’s all just part of the “reality adjustment,” and the launch of a new official narrative, not a prelude to war with Russia. The USA is not going to war with Russia. The notion is beyond ridiculous. Have you noticed, despite all their warlike verbiage, that no one has put forth a single scenario in which war between Russia and the West makes sense? That’s because it doesn’t make sense. Not for Russia, the USA, or anyone else. This is why “the Russian threat” is being marketed as an “attack on democratic values” and “an attempt to sow division,” and so on. Because the war the corporatocracy is waging is not a war against Russia, the nation. The war they are fighting is a counter-insurgency, an ideological counter-insurgency. “Russia” has just been added to the list of “terrorists” and “extremists” who “hate us for our freedom.”
Thus, our new official narrative is actually just a minor variation on the original War on Terror narrative we’ve been indoctrinated with since 2001. A minor yet essential variation. From 2001 to 2016, the constant “terrorist threat” we were facing was strictly limited to Islamic terrorism, which made sense as long as the corporatocracy was focused on restructuring the Middle East. White supremacist terrorism was not part of the narrative, nor was any other form of terrorism, as that would have just confused the audience.
That changed, dramatically, in 2016.
“Trump was never the significant threat.”
The Brexit referendum and the election of Trump alerted the global capitalist ruling classes to the existence of another dangerous insurgency that had nothing to do with the Greater Middle East. While they were off merrily destabilizing, restructuring, privatizing, and debt-enslaving, resentment of global capitalism had grown into a widespread neo-nationalist backlash against globalization, the loss of sovereignty, fiscal austerity, and the soulless, smiley-face, corporate culture being implemented throughout the West and beyond. That this backlash is reactionary in nature does not change the fact that it is an insurgency … just as Islamic fundamentalism is. Both insurgencies are doomed attempts to revert to despotic social systems (nationalist in one case, religious in the other) and so reverse the forward march of global capitalism. The global capitalist ruling classes are not about to let that happen.
The corporatocracy wasted no time in dealing with this new insurgency. They demonized and hamstrung Trump, as they’ll continue to do until he’s well out of office. But Trump was never the significant threat. The significant threat is the people who elected him, and who voted for Brexit, and the AfD, and Sanders, and Mélenchon, and Corbyn, and who just stayed home on election day and refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. The threat is the attitude of these people. The insubordinate attitude of these people. The childish attitude of these people (who naively thought they could challenge the most powerful empire in the annals of human history … one that controls, not just the most fearsome military force that has ever existed, but the means to control “reality” itself).
“The message is, ‘we will tolerate no dissent, except for officially sanctioned dissent.’”
The corporatocracy is going to change that attitude, or it is going to make it disappear. It is in the process of doing this now, using every ideological weapon in its arsenal. The news media. Publishing. Hollywood. The Internet. Intelligence agencies. Congressional inquiries. Protests. Marches. Twitter’s “advisory emails.” Google’s manipulation of its search results. Facebook’s “counterspeech” initiative. Russiagate. Shitholegate. Pornstargate. The ruling class is sending us a message. The message is, “you’re either with us or against us.” The message is, “we will tolerate no dissent, except for officially sanctioned dissent.” The message is, “try to fuck with us, and we will marginalize you, and demonize you, and demonetize you, and disappear you.”
The message is, “we control reality, so reality is whatever the fuck we say it is, regardless of whether it is based in fact or just some totally made-up story we got The Washington Post to publish and then had the corporate media repeat, over and over, for fourteen months. ” If that doesn’t qualify as full-blown Orwellian, I’m not sure what, exactly, would.
I wish I had some rallying cry to end this depressing assessment with, but I have no interest in being one of these Twitter-based guerrilla leaders who tell you we can beat the corporatocracy by tweeting and donating to them on Patreon, and then going about our lives as “normal.” It’s probably going to take a little more than that, and the obvious truth is, the odds are against us. That said, I plan to make as much noise about The War on Dissent as humanly possible, until they marginalize me out of existence … or the corporate-mediated simulation that so many of us take for existence these days. What do you say, want to join me?
https://blackagendareport.com/war-dissent
Well, fuck Orwell & all but sorta hard to avoid, like Biblical quotes.
Dunno about fighting them for the net, they do own it after all. Only the maintenance of the illusion, which they greatly value, prevents the hammer from coming down in a messy way. Which will not prevent them from employing every other trick in the book to herd us sheep.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Censorship, fake news, perception management
"Russian bots" - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News
The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the uncritical acceptance of the outcome of an algorithm they do not understand and which is know to produce fake results.
See for example these three stories:
CNN - Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting
Wired - Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting
New York Times - After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced
Russian bot with ancient regalia
From the last link:
SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive issues.
Those claims are based on this propaganda project:
Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.
The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is run by military lobbyists, CIA minions and neocons. Its claimed task is:
... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.
There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin made or makes such efforts.
The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items" and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It claims that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3. accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and 2 tweet about.
Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one "openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.
On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who, according to NYT, want to sow divisiveness, wished everyone a Merry Christmas.
The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all the accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious:
Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag, ...
The Daily Beast reported earlier that the emphasized claim is definitely false:
Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.
The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.
The Dutch IT specialist and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch keywords and hashtags showed up in on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found (Dutch, English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:
In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to be from a Russian troll.
In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the Netherlands. In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero. Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.
Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.
The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council. It sniffs through open source stuff to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat were recently a victim of the "Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended to rank 2 of the dashboard.
Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault of hordes of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.
The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found that only six people on Twitter, none of them an automated account, had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of the six may have opinions that may be "pro Russian", but as Higgins himself says:
n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents
The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro NATO propaganda shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.
Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?
But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.
This is nuts.
Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted:
The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.
It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.
The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. medias. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times - are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.
How long will it take until people die from it?
Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 03:15 PM | Permalink
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/ru ... -news.html
The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the uncritical acceptance of the outcome of an algorithm they do not understand and which is know to produce fake results.
See for example these three stories:
CNN - Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting
Wired - Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting
New York Times - After Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced
Russian bot with ancient regalia
From the last link:
SAN FRANCISCO — One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive issues.
Those claims are based on this propaganda project:
Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.
The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is run by military lobbyists, CIA minions and neocons. Its claimed task is:
... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin’s ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.
There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin made or makes such efforts.
The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items" and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It claims that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3. accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and 2 tweet about.
Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one "openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.
On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who, according to NYT, want to sow divisiveness, wished everyone a Merry Christmas.
The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all the accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious:
Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag, ...
The Daily Beast reported earlier that the emphasized claim is definitely false:
Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.
The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.
The Dutch IT specialist and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch keywords and hashtags showed up in on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found (Dutch, English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:
In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to be from a Russian troll.
In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the Netherlands. In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero. Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.
Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.
The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council. It sniffs through open source stuff to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat were recently a victim of the "Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended to rank 2 of the dashboard.
Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault of hordes of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.
The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found that only six people on Twitter, none of them an automated account, had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of the six may have opinions that may be "pro Russian", but as Higgins himself says:
n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents
The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro NATO propaganda shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.
Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?
But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.
This is nuts.
Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted:
The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.
It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.
The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. medias. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times - are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.
How long will it take until people die from it?
Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 03:15 PM | Permalink
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/ru ... -news.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."