Propaganda

Polarizing And Isolating Americans Is Good Business For Media Monopolies

January 7, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Censorship, Media, Media Literacy, Propaganda

The consolidation of American media by a handful of monopolies has had wide-reaching effects on our politics and culture. A real decline in media literacy and political debate has occurred as separate audiences become increasingly polarized and isolated to the benefit of media corporations both old and new. How did things get so bad, and what can possibly be done to salvage our political culture? Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff join The Chris Hedges Report to discuss their new book, Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy. Nolan Higdon is a lecturer in media studies and history at California State University, East Bay.

Call Of Duty Is A Government Psyop: These Documents Prove It

November 20, 2022 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Activision, Media, Propaganda, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has been available for less than three weeks, but it is already making waves. Breaking records, within ten days, the first-person military shooter video game earned more than $1 billion in revenue. Yet it has also been shrouded in controversy, not least because missions include assassinating an Iranian general clearly based on Qassem Soleimani, a statesman and military leader slain by the Trump administration in 2020, and a level where players must shoot “drug traffickers” attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border. The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry, behind titles games as the Guitar Hero, Warcraft, Starcraft, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Crash Bandicoot and Candy Crush Saga series.

US Media Searched For Crisis At China Party Congress

November 13, 2022 Eric Horowitz, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Educate! China, Media, New Cold War, Propaganda

For the Western press, the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party offered a number of signals which—if read in good faith—could have been perceived as reassuring. Instead, establishment outlets reverted to familiar narratives regarding China’s Covid mitigation strategy and tied these into renewed predictions of a long-prophesied economic disaster—one that would inevitably befall China as a result of its government’s decision to forsake the orthodoxy of open markets. More than anything else, corporate media fixated on Hu Jintao’s departure from the congress hall, engaging in tabloid-variety speculation around the fate of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s 79-year-old predecessor.

Researchers Find Massive Anti-Russian ‘Bot Army’

November 8, 2022 Peter Cronau, Consortium News. Educate! Cyber Warfare, Media, Propaganda, Russia, Social Media, Twitter

A team of researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that as many as 80 percent of tweets about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine invasion in its early weeks were part of a covert propaganda campaign originating from automated fake “bot” accounts. An anti-Russia propaganda campaign originating from a “bot army” of phony automated Twitter accounts flooded the internet at the start of the war. The research shows that of the more than 5 million tweets studied, 90.2 percent (both bot and non-bot) came from accounts that were pro-Ukraine, with fewer than 7 percent of the accounts being classed as pro-Russian. The university researchers also found these automated tweets had been purposely used to drive up fear amongst people targeted by them, boosting a high level of statistically measurable “angst” in the online discourse.

The Left Should Resist The Propaganda War Against Beijing

November 5, 2022 Friends of Socialist China. Educate! China, Media, New Cold War, Propaganda

Rising prices, falling living standards, a government in turmoil although united around its anti-union, anti-democratic and anti-environment agenda — but at least we don’t live in China. That’s been the message of an amplifying propaganda discourse against Beijing in the run-up to its 20th Communist Party congress, which opened today. Read Martin Wolf or Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, and China’s economic policies are disastrous, even if they have delivered (as Rachman notes) “thousands of miles of new motorways and high-speed rail over the past 20 years” and made “Western executives sigh in envy at China’s ability to plan for the long term.” British workers, who have endured more than a decade of falling pay, might envy China’s record (average wages have risen at over 10 per cent a year since 2010, leading the median wage to rise from 37,147 yuan in 2010 to 97,379 in 2020, a 162 per cent increase).

Media Continue To Push ‘US Officials Said’ Claims About Ukraine

October 27, 2022 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Media, Propaganda, Russia, Ukraine

Back in April it was widely reported that the U.S. government is intentionally lying about the war in Ukraine: In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid - April 6, 2020 - NBC News It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions. It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.

Hashtag Activism And US Imperialism

October 19, 2022 Erica Caines, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Activism, Media, Propaganda, US Imperialism

The abundance of “hashtag activism” has created a false sense of importance for the everyday individual being driven by weaponized empathy to speak out about a cause or injustice happening internationally. This false sense of importance, brought on by the use of hashtags as awareness, is ignited by already held biases about the colonized world, which inevitably leads to both overt and covert calls for western intervention to “save” whoever has been deemed needing of saving. The use of hashtag activism has certainly all but replaced in-person community organizing. It has allowed an array of people across the country and across the world to be united in solidarity for a cause that can be summarized in as small a character limit as possible. This “connection”, of course, is oftentimes heralded as one of the more positive things about social media.

Wall Street Lobbyists Admit Big Banks Don’t Plan To Honor Climate Pledges

October 14, 2022 Sam Knight, Truthout. Educate! Big Banks, climate crisis, Divestment, Propaganda

A trade association that lobbies on behalf of the largest banks in the United States told regulators that their members’ pledges to reduce investments in carbon-emitting industries are “aspirational,” implying that they shouldn’t be taken seriously by authorities. The Bank Policy Institute made the remarks in public comments on guidelines proposed earlier this year by federal bank regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), on climate-related risk management. Specifically, the lobbying group rejected the notion floated by the agencies that regulations should ensure banks’ greenhouse gas commitments to the public “are consistent with their internal strategies and risk appetite statements.”

Beware The Copaganda Machine

October 11, 2022 In These Times. Educate! Copaganda, Media, Police, Propaganda

Why Are You Trying To Ruin My Favorite True-crime podcasts? We’re not, we swear! Copaganda is so pervasive it’s almost impossible to avoid. We won’t begrudge anyone the enjoyment of solving puzzles while watching Mare of Easttown or listening to the hosts of My Favorite Murder— whatever floats your boat. But it’s important to consider the sum effect this genre has on our collective view of reality — namely, that it warps it almost unrecognizably, framing everyday people as potential threats and police as the only real remedy.

US Military Massive Public Relations Machine Unable To Dig Out Of Red Hill Contamination Hole

October 3, 2022 Colonel Ann Wright (Ret), Popular Resistance. Educate! Media, Propaganda, Red Hill, Water Pollution

The U.S. military’s massive public relations machine produces news releases, articles, films and spends millions of dollars on civilian media contractors to create content for recruiting and selling national security priorities to the American public. Yet, with all the media assets available to the Department of Defense and each of the military services, the actions of senior civilian and military leadership make it impossible for one of the world’s biggest media conglomerates to dig itself out of the hellhole of the Navy’s Red Hill jet fuel contamination of the drinking water of 93,000 in Hawai’i and lack of medical resources for those poisoned by jet fuel. For example, on September 29, 2022, the Secretary of Defense, retired 4-star Army general, Lloyd Austin, arrived on the island of O’ahu to take a tour of the 80-year-old underground jet fuel tanks that in late November 2021 spewed for 35 hours 19,000 gallons of jet fuel down a tunnel hallway, under a raised door and directly into the Red Hill drinking water well and into a part of the aquifer of Honolulu.

Ukraine – Dissecting Some War Propaganda News Items

September 16, 2022 Moon of Alabama. Educate! Media, Propaganda, Russia, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

Last night a Reuters headline claimed: Mass grave of more than 440 bodies found in Izium, Ukraine -police. The Reuters headline was 100% false. That may have been because the editor misinterpreted what the Ukrainian police investigator said. Or it intentionally exaggerated the case to increase the propaganda value of that news item. I suspect the latter to be the case. There is otherwise nothing unusual with that graveyard. During a war people on both sides die. Civilians suffer as much as soldiers while fighting around them is going on. The city had been heavily defended by the Ukrainians and it took the Russian military the whole of March to take it. A lot of the buried casualties were likely killed by artillery fire. There is no way to tell from which side that fire had came.

Silencing The Lambs – How Propaganda Works

September 13, 2022 John Pilger, Mintpress News. Educate! Media, NATO, Propaganda, Russia

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer. She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public. Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said. I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies. Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected.

The Sickness Of The American Left And The Path To Recovery

September 5, 2022 Danny Haiphong, Chronicles Of Haiphong. Strategize! Media, Propaganda, Socialism, The Left

The U.S. has entered a dark period. Economic crisis wracks its capitalist system. Military instability and chaos reign supreme over its imperialist ventures. Political illegitimacy worsens by the year, at times by the month. These conditions sound favorable to the growth of revolutionary possibilities within the citadel of imperialism. But such is not the case at the moment. Discipline and organization are at perhaps their weakest point in generations. Young people are moving toward socialist politics. However, a similar number of people have embraced the politics of a U.S.-led New Cold War against Russia and China which seek to destroy any alternative to imperialism.

Chris Hedges Report: Ukraine And The Crisis Of Media Censorship

September 4, 2022 Chris Hedges, The Real News. Resistance Report Censorship, Media, Propaganda, Ukraine

The Ukraine conflict has plunged the world into a geopolitical crisis, and its effects on Western media institutions are increasingly concerning to advocates of a free press. The press in the US and most of Europe parrot the opinions of a ruling elite and oversees a public discourse that is often unhinged from the real world. It openly discredits or censors anything that counters the dominant narrative about Ukraine, however factual. It has become nearly impossible to question the virtues of Ukraine’s government and military. How did this happen? Why is a position on the war in Ukraine the litmus test for who gets to have a voice and who does not?

Predictions On Chile’s Constitutional Referendum

September 3, 2022 Gustavo A. Maranges, Struggle La Lucha. Educate! Chile, Constitution, Media, Propaganda

Sept. 1 was the last day to campaign for the Constitutional referendum to be held on Sept. 4 in Chile. In this vote, Chileans will decide whether to approve the country’s new Constitution, closing over a decade of social struggles, whose final stage began with 2019 people’s massive protests in the subways and streets. The first step of this constitutional process was the entry (first) referendum, in which 78.28% of voters decided it was necessary to overrule the Pinochet Constitution from 1980. In only 72 hours, this process will end, but tension and uncertainty grow as time goes by. Many opinion polls point out that the Constitution won’t be passed. It has been something repeated to exhaustion. This prediction never withstood any analysis of the Chilean political context.

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