Did someone say our Russian Obligate CEO of the newly minted Corporation of Amerika? :ahhh:
Hat tip to https://lucidpolitics.com and commenter RLM with his important observation:
For me and I imagine many of us, keeping track of the gaslighting and the headlines (often one and the same) is overwhelming.
It is also important as we struggle not to allow ourselves to normalize or be normalized.
These tactics have been called “The Russian Firehose Technique" of propaganda — high-volume, multi-channel messaging designed to confuse,
to compromise and ultimately possess, the truth. A perfect strategy in our social media age. Russia has been utilizing these tactics in Ukraine for more than two years.
This article might interest you. http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
This will not cease. But we need to pay attention. A simple daily tally helps immensely. I appreciate it and will share it with my colleagues.
{how much sharing and agitating are YOU doing?}
The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model
Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It
by Christopher Paul, Miriam Matthews
http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a remarkable evolution in Russia's approach to propaganda. The country has effectively employed new dissemination channels and messages in support of its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, its ongoing involvement in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, and its antagonism of NATO allies.
The Russian propaganda model is high-volume and multichannel, and it disseminates messages without regard for the truth. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency. Although these techniques would seem to run counter to the received wisdom for successful information campaigns, research in psychology supports many
of the most successful aspects of the model. Furthermore, the very factors that make the firehose of falsehood effective also make it difficult to counter. Traditional counterpropaganda approaches will likely be inadequate in this context. More effective solutions can be found in the same psychology literature that explains the surprising success of the Russian propaganda model and its messages.
Recommendations
Forewarn audiences of misinformation, or merely reach them first with the truth, rather than retracting or refuting false "facts."
Prioritize efforts to counter the effects of Russian propaganda, and focus on guiding the propaganda's target audience in more productive directions.
Compete with Russian propaganda. Both the United States and NATO have the potential to prevent Russia from dominating the information environment.
Increase the flow of information that diminishes the effectiveness of propaganda, and, in the context of active hostilities, attack the means of dissemination.
For those not familiar with the term Gaslighting, here’s some background.
From Theater to Therapy to Twitter, the Eerie History of Gaslighting
By Katy Waldman]http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/04/18/the_history_of_gaslighting_from_films_to_psychoanalysis_to_politics.html
... A match struck; a metaphor flickered to life. Gas Light reminded viewers how uniquely terrifying it can be to mistrust the evidence of your senses. Flame made an evocative figure for Paula’s consciousness—her sense of self guttering when Gregory insisted she hadn’t seen what she saw.
Today to gaslight means to overwrite someone’s reality, to manipulate her into believing she’s imagining things. Remember the traveling salesman who bade the common folk marvel at the glamorous weeds of their naked emperor? (If they couldn’t see the clothes, it had to be their fault—they were bad at their jobs.) Prototypical gaslighter. The term can attach to anything surreal enough to make you question your sanity, like the political news cycle, but gaslight arose from psychoanalytic literature, where it described a specific “transfer" of psychic conflicts from the perpetrator to the victim. In a 1981 article called “Some Clinical Consequences of Introjection: Gaslighting," psychologist Edward Weinshel sketched out the dysfunctional dance: One person “externalizes and projects," while the other “incorporates and assimilates."* Introjection was Weinshel’s Freudian update to the kindergarten song “I’m rubber, you’re glue," a name for the process by which a single player absorbs all the fault, irrationality, and madness in a relationship.
Gaslighting, a hallmark of domestic abuse, has thrown its noxious glow across the field of couples counseling and self-help. Books and relationship blogs and mental hygiene sites will educate you on how to shut down a gaslighting spouse (“You’re trying to tell me what my experience is, and I’m not okay with that") or find a “counterstory" that more accurately reflects your reality. (This strategy, “narrative repair," hinges on the victim’s “ability to trust her own judgments" and “reclaim moral agency," according to researcher Hilde Lindemann.) Recently, though, gaslight’s unnerving radiance has crept into social justice contexts. As Shea Emma Fett wrote on Everyday Feminism, “I believe that gaslighting is happening culturally and interpersonally on an unprecedented scale, and that this is the result of a societal framework where we pretend everyone is equal while trying simultaneously to preserve inequality." Members of minority groups that face stereotypes about poor mental competence are seen as especially vulnerable.
Gaslighting identifies a real phenomenon: the way critics of a line of thought sometimes try to discount the perceptions of the person producing that thought. Gaslighting equals misdirection, distraction, and the deliberate denial of reality ...
UPDATE (3/8): The White House acknowledges that Trump met the Russian ambassador last April, despite previous statements that he had “zero" involvement with Russian officials. White House officials told Bloomberg that the encounter was “brief and non-substantive."
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-08/trump-met-russian-ambassador-during-campaign-at-speech-receptionTrump Met Russian Ambassador During Campaign at Speech Reception
by Justin Sink
March 7, 2017, 6:18 PM MST
Meeting at odds with spokeswoman’s denial of any contacts
Event resurfaces amid attention to aides’ Russia encounters
President Donald Trump met last April with the Russian ambassador at the center of a pair of controversies over engagement between Trump allies and the Kremlin, despite claims by his spokeswoman that he had "zero" involvement with Russian officials during the campaign.
Attention to Trump’s encounter with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak resurfaced after revelations last week that at least five members of Trump’s campaign team - including Attorney General Jeff Sessions - had contact with Kislyak before Trump took office.
The federal government has launched multiple investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential contacts between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
QuickTake
Trump-Russia Saga
Trump met Kislyak during a VIP reception April 27 at the Mayflower Hotel shortly before a foreign policy address, according to a report at the time in the Wall Street Journal. In the speech, Trump said an "easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia" is possible.
The Wall Street Journal article, published May 13, reported Trump "warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception." ...
Trump's representative minimize this latest offense, but then what else is new. They also create terrorist attacks out of thin air.
Of course the Republicans couldn't care less, all they are obsessed with is their getting their Overlords Agenda - they think once that's in place they can dump trump.
That's what the bankers and industrialists in Germany thought about Hitler during the late 30s. We saw how well that plan worked.
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” - Abraham Lincoln
Trump is literally fighting for his life, he committed treason to get into office to work for a foreign power that has nuclear weapons aimed at the US. Of course he’s going to lie to try and save himself.
This may work to a degree in the short term but the evidence is on the side of that part of the US that still works. It will take time to work through the utter BS created by the Trump people in association with America’s greatest enemy. There are three branches of government in the US not one, the Executive has clearly been taken over by a presence hostile to the US Constitution and instead of protecting it Trump is attacking it daily.
America is in a war for existence, if Trump and the Russians win then there will no longer be a United States of America, I think enough people will understand that by the time of the 2018 mid-terms that the republicans will lose their slim majority in Congress. At which point the legislative branch of government will do what it’s supposed to and protect the US Constitution from a domestic enemy…Donald Trump.
The entire GOP has been taken over by Putin or Congress would have already begun actions to remove a president who betrayed his oath of office before he even took office.
“I will to the best of his ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Trump is doing the opposite and working with a hostile foreign power to attack the US, any psychological warfare he carries out while in the White House is further betrayal and increases the degree of his already massive crime. Anyone who helps him including the entire republican party is an accomplice to this treason.
Also what works in Russia isn’t going to work in the US. Russia has never had democracy and a free press, if Trump starts killing off journalists who report the truth like Putin does he’s going to be removed from power no matter how much BS he and the GOP put out.
Trying to turn the US into a Russian style tyranny is exactly what a Russian backed traitor to the US would do. All this is is further evidence of the massive betrayal of Trump to the US Constitution…as if we needed any more.
The more damage he does, the more justification there is to execute him when he is finally convicted. How about America’s first televised federal execution, it would send one hell of a message to other psychopaths like Trump to not fuck with the US.
White House reporter for the Associated Press Jonathan Lemire, former FBI special agent Clint Watts, and former top prosecutor in the Mueller investigation Andrew Weissmann discuss how sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on Russia close the loop between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence by way of Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik. Aired on 04/15/2021.
April 15, 2021, 4:55 AM MDT / Updated April 15, 2021, 3:33 PM MDT
By Alexander Smith, Kristen Welker, Andrea Mitchell and Abigail Williams
President Joe Biden called for a de-escalation in tensions with Russia on Thursday after hitting the country with fresh sanctions and proposed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer.
“The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship,” Biden said. “If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy. I’m prepared to take further actions to respond. It is my responsibility as president of the United States to do so.”
Biden said he had a “candid” and “respectful” conversation with Putin earlier this week when he told his counterpart that he would be retaliating for interference in the 2020 presidential election and a sweeping cyberattack against American government. During the conversation, Biden said he proposed a summit in Europe between him and Putin and that aides from the two countries were discussing plans.
“Now is the time to de-escalate. The way forward is through thoughtful dialogue and diplomatic process,” Biden said. “The U.S. is prepared to continue constructively to move through that process. My bottom line is this: where there’s an interest in the United States to work with Russia, we should.” …
Sounds like a grown up political way of dealing with things. I’m sure I don’t buy into all of it, but whatcha gonna do? At least we have an adult as president, isn’t that refreshing?
Collusion: Sanctions Announcement Completes Circle Between Trump Camp And Russian Intel
Rachel Maddow highlights a passage from the Treasury Department announcement of new sanctions against Russia that says Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik delivered polling and campaign strategy information to Russian intelligence. Previously it was known that Manafort gave such materials to Kilimnik, but not what Kilimnik had done with them. Also previously known was that Russian intelligence interfered in the 2016 election to boost the Trump campaign. Aired on 04/16/2021.
John, you bet I want to see some escalation, as in indictments and trials and convictions and jail time, and for the alt-right lying criminal traitors to suffer the consequences of their treason.
the fact that you read CC’s mind correctly doesn’t really matter. I still don’t know what you think about the situation, only what you think about CC’s personality. I’d rather this was a forum where we discussed our reasons for conclusions, our reactions to the news of the day, not each other’s feelings.
The USG is in complete disarray. They don’t know what to do anymore. See this newest blunder:
Hypocritical US puts pressure on China over the environment… but it’s happy for Japan to dump radioactive waste
Kerry thinks the USA has the moral high ground on climate change. But it is him who’s traveling to Shanghai.
Soft power only works when you have real power to back it up. Words are worth nothing if the USA isn’t capable of imposing its will on the rest of the world.
Biden’s government is degenerating at an alarming speed. Even I - the eternal optimist - didn’t foresee that.
Let’s hope for the next financial crash to come as soon as possible, so humanity can finally put this old dog of an empire to sleep.
Then trump came along, demanding ME FIRST, then he tossed fuel on the fire.
<blockquote>TRUMP’S ‘UNCREATIVE DESTRUCTION’ OF THE U.S.-CHINA RELATIONSHIP
Trump's economic war on China comes in the shadow of an even deadlier military escalation. And it may not stop after November, no matter who wins the election.
By John Feffer | May 20, 2020
https: //fpif. org/trumps-uncreative-destruction-of-the-u-s-china-relationship/</blockquote>
<blockquote>Trump promised to win the trade war with China. He failed
Analysis by Jill Disis, CNN Business
Updated 5:10 AM ET, Sun October 25, 2020
www .cnn. com/2020/10/24/economy/us-china-trade-war-intl-hnk/index. html
Hong Kong (CNN Business)US President Donald Trump started a trade war with China to fix what he's repeatedly blasted as an unfair relationship between the world's two largest economies.
But as the president makes his case for a second term ahead of November's election, he doesn't have much to show for a bruising trade battle that has been a cornerstone of his foreign policy.
Trump vowed to cut the US trade deficit, but instead it's reached historic highs. He wanted China to buy more American products, but that hasn't happened as much as Washington would like. And he's made almost no progress on big structural issues that American companies care most about. ...</blockquote>
Oh here's one from your favorite, BBC.
<blockquote>Why US-China relations are at their lowest point in decades
By Barbara Plett Usher
BBC State Department correspondent, 24 July 2020
https:// www. bbc. com/news/world-us-canada-53517439
How significant is this escalation?
It is not unprecedented for the US to close a foreign mission but it is a rare and dramatic step, one that is difficult to unwind. This is a consulate not an embassy, so it's not responsible for policy. But it plays an important role in facilitating trade and outreach.
And the move triggered retaliation from Beijing: it ordered the US to close its consulate in the western Chinese city of Chengdu, dealing a further blow to the diplomatic infrastructure that channels communication between the two countries.
It's probably the most significant development yet in the deterioration of relations over the past months, which have included visa restrictions, new rules on diplomatic travel, and the expulsion of foreign correspondents. Both sides have imposed tit-for-tat measures, but it is the United States that has largely been driving this latest cycle of confrontation. ...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53517439</blockquote>
Oh, but we were discussing trump's Russian thing, weren't we.
Robert Daly is director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former US Foreign Service officer and actor. Wikipedia
