The 2016 election cycle has changed me. I now believe that I have lived my life in a propaganda state. Capitalism is not compatible with environmentalism, and possibly not even compatible with democracy, which explains what just happened from a large scale. Trump is proof that the rethuglican party has fallen apart, while the Clinton campaign just demolished the despoticrats. The fallout is still being processed and will be maybe even in a hundred years. This happened on Obama’s watch and I believe that he worked the CIA/media system so hard so that we would see more clearly. The system is suiciding itself, but it is amazing what humans will adapt into. Well, the Abrahamic religions already expose that…
Obama wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Trump or Bush before him, but he still sold out Americans on the promises he made to get elected in 2008. "Yes we can’ became a kind of sick joke as the super-wealthy got even more wealthy.
I have also come to see the state I’m living in as a totally rigged system that sells the idea of freedom of choice and opportunity, but in the end just a few people make almost all the decisions and they are almost exclusively in their interest.
I’m a dual US/Canadian citizen living in Canada now and our government sells us out daily to the private sector. Over the last 30 years almost $700 billion has been given to corporations who then turn around and hide it overseas.
OTTAWA — Doling out hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to help protect and nurture the private sector has been a costly practice — some would call it fiscal folly — for Canadian governments. Over a period of nearly 30 years, federal, provincial and local authorities together spent almost $684-billion on subsidies.https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/04/04/how-offshore-tax-havens-are-costing-canada-billions-of-dollars-a-year.html
Currently, Canadians have declared $199 billion in offshore tax haven investments around the world, according to Statistics Canada.But experts say that figure is a small fraction of the Canadian offshore wealth that goes undeclared. The precise annual cost to Canadian tax coffers is unknowable. But credible estimates peg Canada’s tax losses to offshore havens at between $6 billion and $7.8 billion each year.The US is even worse, we live with this fantasy that the private sector is looking out for us all so we let governments give huge tax breaks to the wealthy and they control policy through massive donations that decide who gets into office and what kind of laws will be passed. Just look at what happened with the subprime meltdown. The big investment banks wanted access to more profit and changed the laws to remove the walls between commercial and investment banks that had protected individuals for years. Then they began aggressively loaning money to people with poor credit and set up the whole market to fail as it did in 2008. And they still got even richer because the public in the US bailed them out with $700 billion. They can't lose because they control all aspects of life in America, from money policy to laws to what jobs will be made available there. That's something else that Chomsky talks about, in the last 40 years the wealthy have been intentionally offshoring US jobs to create job insecurity in America then reaping the benefits of keeping most Americans too scared to ask for higher wages, benefits or even organizing at all. Trump is just the endpoint of a process that is decades long, if it goes any further there will be no real freedom or future left in the US or the world. Trump is so dishonest he won't even acknowledge something as important as climate change. There will be no future for anyone if we don't deal with that and right now.
In casting about this morning came across this tidbit that seems to me to fit into this discussion.
Unwrapping the Conspiracy Theory at the Heart of the Alt-Right https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/unwrapping-the-conspiracy-theory-that-drives-the-alt-right ... The "cultural Marxist" conspiracy has a slippery genealogy through the American Right, beginning with its coinage by Lyndon Larouche in the early 1990s (although Hitler had warned of "cultural Bolshevism" during the 1920s). It passed through various esoteric journals and hard-right think tanks, and was picked up by paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan (author of The Death of the West), William S Lind and Paul Weyrich, and over the last decade has spread feverishly through the murkier, more hyper-masculinist and libidinally challenged corners of the web. ... Arguably the biggest boost for the conspiracy came from its liberal use at Tea Party rallies, where it was fastened on to by Andrew Breitbart, soon to be making cultural waves with his eponymous news aggregation website, focused initially on the ills of Big Government, Big Hollywood and Big Journalism: the dark troika of American society's takeover by cultural Marxism. In his autobiography Righteous Indignation, Breitbart describes the discovery of cultural Marxism as his "awakening" – redolent of the "red pill" that all conspiracy cranks feel when the vast, anxiety-inducing complexity of the universe becomes pacified in the paranoiac, pattern-seeking mind, reduced to the imaginary order of some joined-up plot ... ... The self-righteous zeal animating Breitbart's subsequent kulturkampf drips through almost every interview, illustrating the propensity for the internet to enable a single person's prejudices, ignorance and resentments to seize the cultural narrative – to resonate in echo chambers, free of intellectual checks and balances. ... Plenty more there to read. Enlightening and disturbing.
Watch Noam Chonsky's Requiem for the American Dream, what's happening now is the direct result of decades of what Adam Smith called the Masters of Mankind attacking democracy and the truth itself because they don't want to lose their wealth, power and status.
More from Chomsky on how completely detached from reality the entire republican movement has become in the US. It's almost entirely based on lies, there's a reason that serial liar Trump found such support from the republicans, they already live in a fantasy land.Will check it out, thanks!
In casting about this morning came across this tidbit that seems to me to fit into this discussion.Just a heads up: "Vice" is not serious at all. It's a hipster-based entertainment media company that dabbles in investigative journalism sometimes as a form of clickbait. Take anything from there with a truckload of salt.Unwrapping the Conspiracy Theory at the Heart of the Alt-Right https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/unwrapping-the-conspiracy-theory-that-drives-the-alt-right ... The "cultural Marxist" conspiracy has a slippery genealogy through the American Right, beginning with its coinage by Lyndon Larouche in the early 1990s (although Hitler had warned of "cultural Bolshevism" during the 1920s). It passed through various esoteric journals and hard-right think tanks, and was picked up by paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan (author of The Death of the West), William S Lind and Paul Weyrich, and over the last decade has spread feverishly through the murkier, more hyper-masculinist and libidinally challenged corners of the web. ... Arguably the biggest boost for the conspiracy came from its liberal use at Tea Party rallies, where it was fastened on to by Andrew Breitbart, soon to be making cultural waves with his eponymous news aggregation website, focused initially on the ills of Big Government, Big Hollywood and Big Journalism: the dark troika of American society's takeover by cultural Marxism. In his autobiography Righteous Indignation, Breitbart describes the discovery of cultural Marxism as his "awakening" – redolent of the "red pill" that all conspiracy cranks feel when the vast, anxiety-inducing complexity of the universe becomes pacified in the paranoiac, pattern-seeking mind, reduced to the imaginary order of some joined-up plot ... ... The self-righteous zeal animating Breitbart's subsequent kulturkampf drips through almost every interview, illustrating the propensity for the internet to enable a single person's prejudices, ignorance and resentments to seize the cultural narrative – to resonate in echo chambers, free of intellectual checks and balances. ... Plenty more there to read. Enlightening and disturbing.
Information has been manipulated for various purposes long before the time of anyone of us currently living.
Is it just that the scale and scope is incredibly magnified in our instant communication age?
Or, is there something fundamentally different about the current situation in the US with trumpism?
My gut tells me that it’s more than just the volume and platforms involved. It’s now not just about waffling, hedging, parsing words so that you can later deny the ideas behind them. It’s “advanced” to saying, writing, or tweeting a blatant lie that is readily proven a lie within minutes. And, rather admitting it was wrong, they defend the lie even more strongly.
Is my gut right, or misleading me?
So why are most of us being lied to in such a systematic fashion? The same reason this has been going on for millenia, to sell us garbage we don't need to live. Like religion... Like war... Like fossil fuels... Like drugs that never do what is claimed, cost far more than it takes to produce them and often kill... Like tobacco... Like electronic devices that are then turned around to enslave us... You name it, we're being lied to constantly by the 21st. Century equivalent of snake oil salesmen and billions are buying it...And now we have-so-called president who is a bigger snake oil salesman than anyone has ever seen before. And he surrounds himself with additional snake oil salesmen. Yes, certainly the biggest liar that has ever sat in the Oval Office, anything that comes out of the Trump White House is almost guaranteed to be a lie. Donald Trump tells the truth less than 5% of the time, only 1 out of 20 things he says is the unvarnished truth. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ That much?
I am amazed that this is the first general thread I find here on this topic, searching on ‘propaganda’.
I’m afraid your forum may be compromised, just like so many.
Censorship as exposed by Taibbi wrt Twitter is but a mild instance. Every mainstream intellectual source has been compromised. A search for the truth must involve seeking out independent journalists, like Aaron Mate of the grayzone. Upon exposing just a few of the details the entire system comes under one label: corrupt. It doesn’t matter what source you mention; they are all compromised. NPR? compromised. NYT? compromised. PBS? compromised. BBC? Compromised. Take Russiagate as your start point, or if you can’t stomach that one try the corruption of the OPCW. I’ve watched NPR triple down on the Steele Dossier, when independent journalists knew it was crap the day after it got leaked. Years and years later NPR props it up. One small proof. Oh, want to prove it now? Look how far back NPR’s search results take you. Very Odd.
This situation that we are in is exactly the situation that used to make Russia and the Soviet Union evil, as I recall. Truth is freedom. We must seek the truth and speak our truth as we see it. As integrity is lost in our culture the very notion of site like this as valid versus a joke is a matter of how well it confronts the present situation. Accountability is our best method. We must practice media accountability. Please help. Please do your part. Even as we are censored somewhere some bean counter is incrementing, and each time it happens is a tick in the favor of humanity ultimately.
Hi Timb
I wouldnt say compromised . They serve their purpose in pretending to be independent but really are mouth pieces for the state. Every war, every corporate tax cut, every military budget increase, every breakup of workers strikes and every privatisation of the commons is unreservedly supported. Speaking truth to power is not in thier charter.
Aaron Mate is a fantastic journalist. Done alot keeping in peoples minds the disgusting plight julian assange is in
In what way is this forum compromised?
1 Like
I’d like to know that, too. I have no proof that this forum is compromised. What I do know is that other intellectual sources are compromised. The sweeping nature of the dictates of the deep state throughout media is unlike the propaganda that we’ve seen before. For instance, during the Iraq war there was tremendous state propaganda, but there was still a sliver of counter argument present. The lie about yellow cake from Niger was exposed; enrichment tubes, too. While the U.$. starved Iraq’s people with sanctions it then foots a piece of propaganda about babies being pulled from incubators, or some such.
Plame/Wilson had a part in some of that. Wikileaks, too. But you these counterarguments did in fact make it into the mainstream; albeit marginalized. What we see now is that the curtain is completely closed. Other than the occasional ‘limited hangout’, which are entirely casted from the deep.
To me, this switch occurred in 2016. That remarkable election cycle marks the end of an era, and a troubling new era. Russia only just had a large red reset button pressed, and suddenly they became scapegoated for the peculiarities of the election cycle. No doubt they were prepared with a similar dossier on Bernie Sanders as they had on Trump. I’ll just focus on this one issue of the Steele dossier for now since it is pivotal. Likewise though it was a piece of trash from the beginning as exposed by independent journalists. Now, as I search through google for ‘Greenwald steele dossier’ what comes up first? The Washington Post… and not a single mention of Greenwald as I search for his name there at that link. This issue of the Steele dossier and who covered it and how… and how long they stone-walled for can act as a litmus test on sources… presuming that we can even access their histories.
Now, let’s apply this litmus test to NPR.org. I choose this source personally, as I used to be a daily listener, an occasional contributor, but not anymore. I’ve struggled with old friendships around these issues. Few can admit that their ‘never Trump’ attitude would blind them to this degree. We now are bridging a domain some believe has already crossed into world war; all footed on disinformation from the deep state and a complicit Clinton campaign. Yes: Russiagate has brought and made possible current relations, though through the proxy of Ukraine.
The lies are piles so high now that getting out from under them is more a matter of enforcing communal amnesia I would think. As to who gets to reign in that new era, I really don’t feel hopeful. I look elsewhere now for guidance. Nationalism is a fraud here in the U.$.A. Now when I think of the human race and compare it to the rat race I see little difference. Still, I do see that to diminish the nationalist attitude and adopt the global identity as a human is a correct step. This actually has some extensive ideation attached to it. In that nationalism; as when children pledge allegiance to their country’s flag daily, has been a primal identity it is overcome by a global identity as members of our species. This then of course lets in this cascade of identity, which ensures that the nationalist identity is but one of many, and this is encouraging in that statehood (a greatly diminished identity here) may rise a little. Township even is an identity factor. Call this a scalar principle, I suppose. As to which people want to get along with others, versus exclude others; this needn’t drive so strongly.
In Ukraine the rejection of the Russian identity was pushed by the West. Don’t be complicit. The information war that is taking place now requires a deeper search for the truth. There are no truth tellers in the mainstream media. They’ve all been fired. This is the state of the propaganda machine that we are living with now.
No such thing.
Never heard of that. Is that really news though?
Actually, they did hack our elections.
You haven’t said anything about the “Steele dossier”.
How was it a piece of trash? How do you know it even exists?
What about Greenwald? What was it you were looking for?
How so and for what?
What about it? You didn’t say much of anything about this reliable source. What do you believe is wrong with it? Fox News AKA Faux News is not reliable and they even admitted it recently.
What lies?
How so? As far as I can tell, Ukrainians have had Nationalism long before the U.S. and other countries helped them with fighting Putin’s invasion. They even have their own national song.
Please embellish on your string of words many words that say nothing. You talk much but say nothing. Reading what you said, with accusations that have no backing or even reliable links don’t tell anyone anything.
Please note I do not trust this source. However this is evidence that the truth can come out eventually. Of course to integrate the details is to expose the level of corruption throughout the entire system. The media is complicit with the deep state. The FBI purposely lies to FISA court. Through all of this fog still Trump beats HRC. These have been exceptional times, and who knew that an election could go unaccepted throughout the system. Democracy wasn’t to work quite like this, I don’t believe. All this from a non-Trumper. I knocked doors for Jill Stein and helped get her on the ballot here in New Hampshire. So many of us were so disgusted at how Bernie was treated in the democratic primary. That the 2016 democratic primary was rigged is fully proven. That Russiagate somewhat swamps that realization: is this the sort of amnesia that won’t come back to haunt those in power? This thing, when integrated properly, reads more like a pressure cooker with a plugged relief valve under a grease fire. This is the state of the status quo here. Hear the hissing? Complicity…
That is the most amazing word salad I have ever seen. A salamagundie
The most boring form of trolling is showing something, in this case, a picture with 3 guys in it, and claiming that is the worldwide trend, what we should all expect in the future, what we all would see if we weren’t blind sheeple and evidence of the consensus of all reasonable and intelligent people.
More than 50 key workers at a weapons depot in Scotland have walked out - with another strike due next week - with one source claiming could earn more money
Highlights a very twisted kind of leftism that sees no problem with the arms trade as long as workers are properly & equally compensated.
Take a look at the photos of the 1970s lucas arms dispute and how socially conscious workers were back then and the leftist solidarity demanding that they be given less destructive employment
Oh, it’s 50, sorry I didn’t count 47 more people who support your narrative. Listen boy, I stood with a couple hundred others and made a circle around a munitions plant when I was a young man. I’ve been on this side of history, probably from before you were born. What point are you even making? What about this says that leftists don’t support living wages and a reduction in arms? How that is even contradictory? It’s obviously nothing new.