Fuck the Corporate Media –Gallup

• Four in 10 Americans trust the mass media
• Ties 2014 and 2012 for the lowest trust level in Gallup’s trend
• Younger Americans less likely than older to trust the media

Americans’ Trust in Media Remains at Historical Low

Gov’t Impersonating Friends and Acquaintances!

Here’s How Law Enforcement Agencies Impersonate Your Friends

I understand that these law enforcement officers will changes [sic] the password(s) to this account so that I will no longer have access to these accounts. My Internet online identity may be used by these law enforcement officers for any official purpose relating to an official investigation, including sending and receiving e-mail, making direct communications on systems such as ICQ or AOL instant messaging, and any other electronic communications. I have been advised of my right to refuse to allow the assumption of my identity. I give this consent freely and voluntarily.

No Confidence

Two different stories:

US: 13% Confidence in Government

Just 13% of Americans say the government can be trusted to do what is right always or most of the time, with just over three-quarters saying only some of the time and one in 10 saying they never trust the government, according to the poll.

Russia: 64% Confidence in Government

 “Russians’ Confidence in Many Institutions Reaches All-Time High.” Especially sharp has been the rise in “Confidence in national government,” which was only 39% in 2013 prior to the overthrow by Obama in February 2014 of Ukraine’s government which had been friendly to Russia, but which confidence-level stands now at 64% — a gain of 64/39 or 1.64 times higher than it was a year ago. Confidence in the military has risen from 65% in 2013 to 78% now.”

 

Propaganda War: Ukraine

 

Good article on propaganda from Eric Zuesse today.

Media Lies and The Propaganda War about Ukraine

The public in the West are being played for fools, and it’s now becoming so blatant, even worse than the lies that produced the scandalously vile invasion of Iraq (which our aristocratically controlled media also fooled the masses into supporting), so that the result will be either masses in “democratic” countries who really are fools, and who don’t at all hold the press to account for having raped their minds, or else it will be mass boycotts of the major “news” media, to protest it, and to change it — so as to restore democracy to America.

If boycotts of the press don’t soon start, democracy has already ended here, because, ever since we invaded Iraq in 2003, we’re already way past the time when there should be a mass boycott by Americans of their major “news” media — media that lie to them so brazenly, and so repeatedly, for so long.

 

Keep Repeating: Land of the Free

 

 

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
-Propaganda, Edward Bernays, 1928

 

War on Reality

NYTIMES, Peter Ludlow  piece, which was recommended by Dr. Peter Dale Scott (Facebook):

Bank of America approached the Department of Justice over concerns about information that WikiLeaks had about it. The Department of Justice in turn referred Bank of America to the lobbying firm Hunton and Willliams, which in turn connected the bank with a group of information security firms collectively known as Team Themis.

Team Themis (a group that included HBGary and the private intelligence and security firms Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and Endgame Systems) was effectively brought in to find a way to undermine the credibility of WikiLeaks and the journalist Glenn Greenwald (who recently broke the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of the N.S.A.’s Prism program), because of Greenwald’s support for WikiLeaks. Specifically, the plan called for actions to “sabotage or discredit the opposing organization” including a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error. As for Greenwald, it was argued that he would cave “if pushed” because he would “choose professional preservation over cause.” That evidently wasn’t the case.

Team Themis also developed a proposal for the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the credibility of one of its critics, a group called Chamber Watch. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” giving it to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then subsequently exposing the document as a fake to “prove that U.S. Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.”

(A photocopy of the proposal can be found here.)

In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to infiltrate Chamber Watch. They would “create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second.”
Psyops need not be conducted by nation states; they can be undertaken by anyone with the capabilities and the incentive to conduct them.

The hack also revealed evidence that Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support.

The Yes Men also get a mention in private intelligence contractor STRATFOR’s hacked emails.

The Yes Men impersonate DOW CHEMICAL spokesmen
and apologize for Bhopal mass killing on the BBC

Stratfor also had a broad-ranging public relations campaign. The e-mails revealed numerous media companies on its payroll. While one motivation for the partnerships was presumably to have sources of intelligence, Stratfor worked hard to have soap boxes from which to project its interests.

Et tu, TED?

Betray Friends’ Privacy to Comment?

 

I was ready to “Login with Facebook” over on TED’s website, when their privacy invading app told me they were taking my email address and other info – including my friend’s info and video information.  And I stopped.

Who gives them the right to stick these data mining marketing tricks into their message board?

Fuck you, TED. We live in an invasive, privacy destroying Brave New World of aggressive marketing yuppies with no scruples.  Rudeness is being normalized.  You can’t even have a conversation with a human for more than two minutes without them pulling out some tappy tappy device in the middle of it.  The humans are resembling cyborgs more and more, slaves to the devices.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on Maajid Nawaz’s talk about extremism allegedly running rampant across the globe far and ahead of democracy.  Some of his claims make more sense in particular Arab countries than they apply to the rest of the globe.  Some of his thinking is constrained and limited in scope, and that is the point I wish to make. The talk, and the world view behind it, are completely missing the larger picture of empire, global hegemony by the US and friends.  Behind the scenes the real exercise of power grinds on to coopt and derail popular movements, to benefit extremists when convenient, to fund and arm military dictators, which is very often convenient, to protect brutal human rights abusers when they provide strategic benefit, and etcetera.  This is not a new or novel understanding.

The Arab world in particular should know well the machinations of Uncle Sam in propping up oil dictators and overthrowing the disobedient ones.  Iran’s actual democracy was destroyed in 1953 by the CIA, and even admitted to.  This is not covered up today. Nawaz focuses a lot on Egypt, without mention of US support of Mubarek right up until his ouster by one of their torturer friends in the Egyptian military.  The Egyptian military receives more than a billion dollars in so-called military “aid” every year, $1.3Bn as of 2010.  What are they purchasing with this graft? Pakistan has also received much.  Saudi Arabia and Bahrain receive quite shockingly positive media when their people rise up demanding democracy – and are brutalized, tortured and imprisoned for their efforts.  US leaders smile and change the subject. To fail to mention any of this obvious undemocratic imperial meddling is a credibility killer, in my view.

Nawaz himself is a former “extremist,” already taken in by one set of dogmas.  One wonder if this new prevailing democracy myth he ascribes to is similarly processed in extremist fashion? As far as fighting for democracy and against Islamic militant extremism, we again must examine the facts on the ground.  In 1979 the Mujahadeen, the precursor to “Al Qaeda,” were created, armed, trained and imported into Afghanistan to overthrow the pro-Soviet government.  Decades of horror and destruction followed, which persists to this day.  That particular US supporting of extremism was launched under Jimmy Carter of all people. Today, the Al Nusra Brigades in Syria are doing the empire’s dirty work.  These absolute extremists, with a blood drenched record of terrorism that exceeds Al Qaeda’s record already, are part of the current imperial strategy to topple dominoes.  Al Nusra is supported directly and unequivocally by US client regimes Saudi Arabia and Qatar and are hosted and given free passage on NATO state Turkey’s territory to invade Syria next door.  US CIA are also on the other Syrian border in Jordan, arming and training fighters.

How does any of this fit into the picture that Nawaz paints during his talk? His is a sin of omission.  The myth prevails rather than the reality.  I’m all for democracy and promoting it, but let’s not close our eyes and play fools.

And TED, you can go to hell for daring to demand personal contacts from people commenting on your website.  Have some shame and some tact, basic etiquette.  To talk to you in the street you first demand my mother’s Facebook posts, and which videos she watches?  And my sister’s dog photos?  Can I say my comment then?