Propaganda

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’.

Why Do Media Keep Saying Iran Has Nuclear Weapons Program?

October 18, 2017 Adam Johnson, www.fair.org Educate! Corporate Media, Iran, Nuclear Weapons, Propaganda

By Adam Johnson for FAIR - The problem with all of these excerpts: Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. It has a civilian nuclear energy program, but not one designed to build weapons. Over 30 countries have civilian nuclear programs; only a handful—including, of course, the US and Israel—have nuclear weapons programs. One is used to power cities, one is used to level them. If you are skeptical, just refer to a 2007 assessment by all 16 US intelligences agencies (yes, those 16 US intelligence agencies), which found Iran had “halted” its nuclear weapons program. Or look at the same National Intelligence Estimate in 2012, which concluded again that there “is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.” Or we can listen to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, which concurred with the US intelligence assessment (Haaretz, 3/18/12). The “Iran Deal,” formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is built on curbing Iran’s civilian nuclear program, out of fear—fair or not—that it could one day morph into a nuclear weapons program. But at present, there is no evidence, much less a consensus, that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. JCPOA cannot be used as per se evidence such a program exists today; indeed, it is specifically designed to prevent such a program from developing down the road.

The Re-Emergence Of Common Wealth

October 11, 2017 Rivera Sun, www.kosmosjournal.org Create! Propaganda, Wealth

By Rivera Sun for Kosmos Online - Historically, the rise of massive individual wealth has been accompanied by the destruction of many forms of common wealth through conquest, colonization, cultural destruction, enclosures of the commons and subsequent impoverishment and displacement, wars, invasions, genocides, slavery, indentured servitude, wage-slavery and overworking, oppression, and massive waves of emigrations due to economic upheavals. This has happened not just throughout Europe and European colonization cycles, but also in the Middle East and throughout Africa and Asia. It is a trend that continues to this day, as we witness the rise of unprecedented oligarchs in control of transnational corporations at a time when poverty is growing and the ecological wealth of our planet has been so assaulted and diminished that we hang on the edge of collapse. There is no substitute for common wealth. True wealth, we are finding, lies not in vast personal fortunes, nor even solely in the personal inner wealth of inner peace, connection, love, community, spiritual awareness, etc., but rather it lies in balance with vibrant systems of common wealth that support the needs of all people and the planet. At this critical juncture of human history, it is necessary for those of us with personal monetary or material wealth, or personal spiritual and inner wealth, to put our resources in service of restoring our common wealth.

World Premiere: In The Shadow Of The Revolution

October 11, 2017 Staff, www.caracaschronicles.com Educate! Bolivia, Film, Propaganda, Revolution

By Staff of The Caracas Chronicles - Caracas Chronicles is proud to be the venue chosen by long-time friend and much-appreciated copy-editor Clifton Ross, and his colleague J.Arturo Albarrán, to premiere their latest film project, In the Shadow of the Revolution. The authors hope this timely work will challenge the Bolivarian government’s narrative about itself and the opposition through interviews with Left social movement activists, journalists, academics and intellectuals. Through this latest collaboration, Albarrán and Ross hope to reach an international public that has been subject to a bombardment of propaganda from the Bolivarian government. You’d be surprised how many people still buy into chavismo propaganda, and the narrative in which a popular, Left-wing government that brought great benefits to a nation is under attack by imperialists and a right-wing “fascist” opposition. The film disputes that line and offers a much-needed alternative view from the perspective of social movements and a democratic left. That this narrative comes in the voice of the very supporters that chavismo claimed to champion, now disillusioned and oppressed, is what really lends this film its powerful authenticity.

Catalan Referendum: Attacks On Journalists, Biased Coverage

October 5, 2017 Staff, www.rsf.org Educate! Catalonia, Corporate Media, Journalism, Propaganda

By Staff of RSF - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled that media personnel were among the victims of police charges against civilians during the illegal independence referendum organized by the regional government in Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, on 1 October. According to figures provided by the Catalan government, around 850 people were injured as a result of the disproportionate use of force by police who had been deployed by the Spanish government. Those injured included press photographers and reporters who were covering the voting. The most serious incidents occurred in and around the Ramón Lull School in downtown Barcelona, which served as a polling station. Several photographers were hit or injured in crushes, as the photo-journalist Juan Carlos Mohr reported on Twitter. Xabi Barrena, a reporter for the Catalan daily El Periódico de Catalunya, was among the journalists attacked by Spanish riot police. He was struck by a police baton while using his mobile phone to film police charges inside the school. When he was on the ground, the police also kicked him. Sofia Cabanes, a reporter for the digital daily NacióDigital in Terres de l’Ebre who also freelances for the Spanish news agency EFE, was filming a police charge in Sant Carles de la Ràpita, near Tarragona when a member of the Spanish Civil Guard (a gendarmerie-style force) struck her arm with his baton, knocking her mobile phone to the ground. When she tried to pick it up, one of the policemen deliberately stamped on her hand.

Not A Liberal: Can A Black Mayor Bring Change To Mississippi?

October 2, 2017 Jamiles Lartey, www.theguardian.com Create! Electoral Politics, Identity Politics, Liberals, Mississippi, Propaganda

By Jamiles Lartey for The Guardian - 34-year-old attorney Chokwe Lumumba sees his election win as proof that even in a red state in the age of Trump, many people are ready to be progressive. The day Chokwe Lumumba’s father died in 2014, he asked for a moment to be alone in the room with the man he’d long considered his best friend. He told his dad, Chokwe Sr, then the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, all the last things he had to tell him. He prayed and asked god to put his father’s spirit into him. Then, he said, his next move became immediately apparent. “I decided at that moment, though I shared it with nobody, that I was going to run for mayor,” Lumumba said. “There were a lot of people who were hopeful under his administration, and there was a lot of fear surrounding his loss, so I wanted to restore hope for people.” The 34-year-old attorney who had “never run for junior class president, let alone mayor” now holds the keys to the state’s most populous city. He brings with him a progressive agenda and much of the leftover to-do list of his father’s administration. He sees his victory – collecting 93% of the vote in Jackson’s 6 June election – as proof that even in a deep red Republican state, and even in the age of Trump, the city’s residents are ready to move in a new progressive direction. “The citizens of Jackson have demonstrated overwhelmingly a readiness to be a progressive city and not only to correct the ills as we see them, but to be a model for the nation of what progressive leadership and collective genius can accomplish.”

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