Propaganda

Eight Things Money Can’t Buy You This Black Friday

November 24, 2017 Staff, medium.com Create! Black Friday, Capitalism, Consumerism, Propaganda

By Staff of The Rules - While the US holiday of Thanksgiving indisputably stems from a celebration of the massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, the origins of ‘Black Friday’ are much less clear. What is agreed is that retailers sought to take advantage of the Thursday holiday and draw people into shops for what, in a consumerist culture, is considered a civic duty: shopping. After weeks of advertising beforehand, on the Friday following the food, family and football, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to descend on the shops, often risking life and limb for a bargain. In a globalised world, this once uniquely American phenomenon has now been exported. Today, from Russia to Ireland and Pakistan, we’re told that the answer to any problem is to buy stuff and what better day to do so than on Black Friday? You may agree that you can’t consume your way to happiness but it’s worth acknowledging that the lure of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (created to allow online retailers to get in on the action) is hard to resist. So to help you, here is a list of things money can’t buy. Read it every time you feel the impulse to “add to basket”. A sense of wonder: From trees to a smile, and even a gush of wind, so much around us can provide us with the feeling of the numinous; that we are in deep communion with life around us.

The Thanksgiving Myth

November 22, 2017 Cliff DuRand, globaljusticecenter.org Educate! History, Propaganda, Thanksgiving

By Cliff DuRand for The Center for Global Justice - In many ways the Thanksgiving celebration is a unique festivity. As harvest festivals go it’s not particularly unusual: families gathering for a special meal to enjoy the bounty of nature and the fruit of the growing season’s labor. Most societies in the temperate zones of the earth have such harvest festivals. In the more northerly latitudes of Canada it comes in October as it does also in north China at the time of the harvest moon. At the latitudes of the United States Thanksgiving comes in late November, after the harvests are in. So what is so special about the Thanksgiving celebrated there? Unlike most of our other holidays, which are religious, Thanksgiving is secular. Neither is political like the 4th of July which marks the beginning of the political entity called the United States of America. Thanksgiving is a more private holiday, celebrated with family around the dinner table. Yet it is also a celebration of families together in community with others.

False News: 60 Minutes Treats US As Yemen Savior

November 21, 2017 Adam Johnson, fair.org Educate! Corporate Media, Propaganda, Yemen

By Adam Johnson for FAIR - In one of the most glaring, power-serving omissions in some time, CBS News’ 60 Minutes (11/19/17) took a deep dive into the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and did not once mention the direct role the United States played in creating, perpetuating and prolonging a crisis that’s left over 10,000 civilians dead, 2 million displaced, and an estimated 1 million with cholera. Correspondent Scott Pelley’s segment, “When Food Is Used as a Weapon,” employed excellent on-the-ground reporting to highlight the famine and bombing victims of Saudi Arabia’s brutal two-and-a-half year siege of Yemen. But its editors betrayed this reporting—and their viewers—by stripping the conflict of any geopolitical context, and letting one of its largest backers, the United States government, entirely off the hook. As FAIR has previously noted (10/14/16, 2/27/17), US media frequently ignore the Pentagon’s role in the conflict altogether. Pelly did not once note that the US assists Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign with logistical support, refueling and the selling of arms to the tune of $400 billion. The US also routinely protectsSaudi Arabia at the UN from condemnation—a shield that may have vastly prolonged the war, given that it signals the support of the most powerful country on Earth.

Fake News On Russia & Other Enemies: New York Times, 1917–2017

November 18, 2017 Edward S. Herman, blackagendareport.com Educate! Corporate Media, New York Times (NYT), Propaganda, Russia

By Edward S. Herman for Black Agenda Report - It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of “fake news.” These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question. This was the case with “The Lie That Wasn’t Shot Down,” the title of a January 18, 1988, Times editorial referring to a propaganda claim of five years earlier that the editors had swallowed and never looked into any further. The lie—that the Soviets knew that Korean airliner 007, which they shot down on August 31, 1983, was a civilian plane—was eventually uncovered by congressman Lee Hamilton, not by the Times. Mainstream media fake news is especially likely where a party line is quickly formed on a topic, with any deviations therefore immediately dismissed as naïve, unpatriotic, or simply wrong.

The Press’s Pathological Refusal To Report ‘The President Lied’

November 18, 2017 Reed Richardson, fair.org Educate! Media, Propaganda, Trump Administration

By Reed Richardson for FAIR - It is a truism to say that everyone lies to someone. Since public officials entrusted with power in our democracy are no exception to this human trait—as historical research documents—it should be exceedingly acceptable to point out that all politicians, from your local city council right up to the White House, lie as well. The Framers afforded the press special constitutional protection in large part to ensure that such lies would not reach the public unchallenged. Tragically, one of the most honest rhetorical tools that journalists have in the fight for truth has been struck from the lingua franca of US journalists. Within the stilted framework of mainstream news “objectivity,” the simple act of calling out “lies” or “lying” by a politician—especially a president—is now taboo. It imputes impossible-to-determine motives to those accused, the thinking goes, so the use of these words to identify a documented falsehood is now considered controversial, partisan, inflammatory, unfair. Last fall, NPR editorial director Michael Oreskes constructed his own Orwellian logic to defend his news organization’s refusal to use “liar,” asserting that the word constitutes “an angry tone” of “editorializing” that “confirms opinions” (FAIR.org, 3/1/17). In January, Maggie Haberman, one of the New York Times’ preeminent political reporters, said much the same, claiming that her job was “showing when something untrue is said. Our job is not to say ‘lied.’”

Russia Meddling ‘Expert’ Lobbying U.S. Gov To ‘Quell Information Rebellions’

November 14, 2017 Max Blumenthal, alternet.org Educate! Lobbying, Propaganda, Russia

By Max Blumenthal for AlterNet - Nearly a year after the presidential election, the scandal over accusations of Russian political interference in the 2016 election has gone beyond Donald Trump and reached into the nebulous world of online media. On November 1, Congress held hearings on “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online.” The proceedings saw executives from Facebook, Twitter and Youtube subjected to tongue-lashings from lawmakers like Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who howled about Russian online trolls “spread[ing] stories about abuse of black Americans by law enforcement.” In perhaps the most chilling moment of the hearings, and the most overlooked, Clint Watts, a former U.S. Army officer who had branded himself an expert on Russian meddling, appeared before a nearly empty Senate chamber. Watts conjured up a stark landscape of American carnage, with shadowy Russian operatives stage managing the chaos. “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” he proclaimed. “America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.” Next, Watts suggested a government-imposed campaign of media censorship: “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced: silence the guns and the barrage will end.”

Why Science Says You Should Be Reading Small Independent Media

November 13, 2017 Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, yesmagazine.org Educate! Media, Media Literacy, Propaganda

By Jo Ellen Green Kaiser for Yes! Magazine - Google, Facebook, and Twitter were hauled in front of Congress last week to explain how Russian bots were able to spread fake news on their platforms. The concern—and a very real one—is that these bots and fake news sites had a significant impact on the 2016 election. A better way to secure a media system that works for democracy is to strengthen independent news outlets. Fighting fake news, however, is not the only or best way to ensure that our content ecosystem prioritizes real news. This week, a groundbreaking article in Science proves that a better way to secure a media system that works for democracy is to strengthen independent news outlets. The five-year-long study published this week in Science, directed by Harvard professor Gary King and supported in part by Voqal, shows that even small independent news outlets can have a dramatic effect on the content of national conversation. King, along with his now former graduate students Ben Schneer and Ariel White, found that if just three outlets write about a particular major national policy topic—such as jobs, the environment, or immigration—discussion of that topic across social media rose by as much as 62.7 percent of a day’s volume, distributed over the week.

‘CNN Should Register As Agent Of Capitalism’

November 13, 2017 Staff, rt.com Educate! Freedom of Press, Media, Propaganda, Repression

By Staff of RT - In a linked article, Baraka, a noted black rights activist, wrote that a “new McCarthyism in America is being led by centrist and liberal Democrats utilizing the almost comical notion that Russia possesses the power and influence to not only impact elections but also create racial tensions.” Baraka also noted that singling out RT – there are no other media organizations on the current FARA list – not only creates an artificial divide with other media that receive state funding, such as the BBC and Deutsche Welle, but also the domestic mainstream giants. “CNN, NYTs, Wash Post should register as agents of capitalism,” wrote Baraka. CNN, NYTs, Wash Post should register as agents of capitalism. The Washington Post is owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, the New York Times by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, and CNN by the multinational giant Time Warner. On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised retaliatory measures following the DOJ decision, likely involving the operations of US media outlets in Russia, but expressed alarm at the growing trend for filtering out unfavorable views. “The media’s perspective can be challenged, but not by shutting down the media or creating conditions to make it impossible to carry out its professional activities, but by presenting your own perspective, presenting your information to the audience,” the Russian leader said during the APEC summit in Vietnam.

Freedom Rider: Putin, Trump And Manafort

November 2, 2017 Margaret Kimberley, blackagendareport.com Educate! Corporate Media, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Propaganda, Russia

By Margaret Kimberley for Black Agenda Report - The American propaganda campaign being waged against the Russian Federation and its president Vladimir Putin has reached a stage of perverse perfection. It is virtually impossible to put forth a dissenting opinion that will be accepted or considered worthy of consideration. The Democrats are leading the charge to silence and censor and they are getting buy-in from people who otherwise consider themselves to be progressive. This columnist has been interviewed on Radio Sputnik on two occasions. That fact should not be at all noteworthy but in the current atmosphere of Russophobia being pushed by the corporate media and Democratic politicians, it is a risky statement to make. Sputnik International is a Russian government entity, just as the BBC is “state run media” on behalf of the British government and the CBC for Canada. But anyone and anything connected to Russia gets the double standard treatment and is targeted for attack. Marcus Ferrell was until recently a campaign staffer for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. He resigned after the Atlanta Journal Constitution revealed that he had been a guest on the program By Any Means Necessary which is hosted by Sputnik. Ferrell didn’t discuss Russia at all.

Sorting Out The Russia Mess

November 1, 2017 Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Propaganda, Russia

By Robert Parry for Consortium News - That’s in part because his credibility has already been undermined by his guilty plea for lying to the FBI and by the fact that he now has a motive to provide something the prosecutors might want in exchange for leniency. Plus, there is the hearsay and contested quality of Papadopoulos’s supposed information, some of which already has turned out to be false. According to the court documents, Papadopoulos got to know a professor of international relations who claimed to have “substantial connections with Russian government officials,” with the professor identified in press reports as Joseph Mifsud, a little-known academic associated with the University of Stirling in Scotland. The first contact supposedly occurred in mid-March 2016 in Italy, with a second meeting in London on March 24 when the professor purportedly introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman whom the young campaign aide believed to be Putin’s niece, an assertion that Mueller’s investigators determined wasn’t true. Trump, who then was under pressure for not having a foreign policy team, included Papadopoulos as part of a list drawn up to fill that gap, and Papadopoulos participated in a campaign meeting on March 31 in Washington at which he suggested a meeting between Trump and Putin, a prospect that other senior aides reportedly slapped down.

American Psychosis

October 31, 2017 Chris Hedges, truthdig.com Educate! Propaganda, United States

By Chris Hedges for Truth DIg - Reality is under assault. Verbal confusion reigns. Truth and illusion have merged. Mental chaos makes it hard to fathom what is happening. We feel trapped in a hall of mirrors. Exposed lies are answered with other lies. The rational is countered with the irrational. Cognitive dissonance prevails. We endure a disquieting shame and even guilt. Tens of millions of Americans, especially women, undocumented workers, Muslims and African-Americans, suffer the acute anxiety of being pursued by a predator. All this is by design. Demagogues always infect the governed with their own psychosis. “The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental,” the psychiatrist Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in his book “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.”

Comments Supporting Gas Exports Rule Are Recycled Industry Copy-Pastes

October 30, 2017 Steve Horn, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Gas export, Lobbying, Propaganda

By Steve Horn for Desmog - A review of the comments submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on its proposed rule to fast-track the export of small-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) shows that roughly two dozen of of the 89 comments were directly copy-pasted from either industry itself or else pro-industry materials written by the DOE or Congress. Furthermore, all of those copy-pasted comments are anonymous, a hint that the oil and gas industry may be behind an astroturf-style comment-submitting campaign for this rule. Only one letter favoring the proposed rule, written by the American Petroleum Institute and the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, has the industry's name on it. Three other comments supporting the rule have actual names of individuals, a law school student, a college student, and an individual who DeSmog confirmed wrote the comment out of personal interest and for a public policy course at his university. The rule, which the DOE proposed on the Friday before Labor Day, would assume exports of small-scale LNG — these days mostly obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the U.S. — are automatically in the “public interest” as defined by the Natural Gas Act of 1938. Comments for the proposed rule closed on October 16 and then posted online on October 24.

Media Still Excluding Palestinian Voices In Reports On BDS

October 26, 2017 Michael F. Brown, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! BDS, Corporate Media, Palestine, Propaganda

By Michael F. Brown for The Electronic Antifada - What the AP says is important because its reports typically appear in hundreds of publications around the world. Witte described BDS as “founded in 2005 to protest Israel’s actions toward Palestinians by boycotting Israeli products and companies.” He did not provide any detail about what specific Israeli actions BDS supporters are protesting. Consequently, readers did not hear that the nonviolent movement is calling for an end to Israeli military occupation and settlement building that is against international law, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel who face systematic discrimination and implementing the internationally recognized right of return for Palestinian refugees. Instead, Hogan, a Republican, was allowed to misrepresent the movement, saying, “Boycotts based on religion, national origin, ethnicity or place of residence are discriminatory, and contracting with businesses that practice discrimination would make the state a passive participant in private sector commercial discrimination.” Witte’s report failed to mention that the BDS National Committee – the campaign’s Palestine-based steering group – is very explicit about rejecting all forms of racism and religious bigotry, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

NYT Laments ‘Forever Wars’ Its Editorials Helped Create

October 24, 2017 Adam Johnson, www.fair.org Educate! Corporate Media, Propaganda, Wars and Militarism

By Adam Johnson for FAIR - Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it’s rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial. On Monday, the New York Times (10/22/17) lamented the expansion of America’s “forever wars” overseas, without once noting that every war mentioned is one the editorial board has itself endorsed, while failing to oppose any of the “engagements” touched on in the editorial. The Times began by noting the sheer scope of US military reach: The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories…. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of deadly attacks, as well as Jordan, Thailand and elsewhere. An additional 37,813 troops serve on presumably secret assignment in places listed simply as “unknown.” The Pentagon provided no further explanation.

The North Korea Neither Trump Nor Western Media Wants The World To See

October 20, 2017 Eva Bartlett, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Corporate Media, North Korea, Propaganda

By Eva Bartlett for Mint Press News - PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA — North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) is one of the least understood and most lied about countries on Earth. In Western corporate media renditions, most news about the country is alarmist (of “the North Koreans want to kill you” type), fake (“all men have to have the same haircut,” a story originating from Washington itself), or about the North’s military. Accounts of the nation’s military prowess and threat generally ignore (as noted here) the presence of the 28,500 U.S. troops occupying South Korea, their 38 military installations, and more recently their Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea — “a U.S. radar system opposed by the Korean people, in the North and South, as well as China.” On September 19, 2017, in the forum of the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea. This is not the first time threats against the DPRK have been issued. Colin Powell in 1995 threatened to turn North Korea into “a charcoal briquette” and in 2013 reiterated that threat to “destroy” the country. Not broadcast in corporate media is the fact that America had already annihilated North Korea, destroying the capital city, Pyongyang, and cities around the country, with 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of Napalm — indeed turning the North into a ‘charcoal briquette’.

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