Dec 262014
 
 December 26, 2014  Posted by at 9:23 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,


Dorothea Lange Drought hit OK farm family on way to CA Aug 1936

From just about as early in my life as I can remember, growing up as a child in Holland, there were stories about World War II, and not just about Anne Frank and the huge amounts of people who, like her, had been dragged off to camps in eastern Europe never to come back, but also about the thousands who had risked their lives to hide Jewish and other refugees, and the scores who had been executed for doing so, often betrayed by their own neighbors.

And then there were those who had risked their lives in equally courageous ways to get news out to people, putting out newspapers and radio broadcasts just so there would be a version of events out there that was real, and not just what the Germans wanted one to believe. This happened in all Nazi – and Nazi friendly – occupied European nations. The courage of these people is hard to gauge for us today, and I’m convinced there’s no way to say whom amongst us would show that kind of bravery if we were put to the test; I certainly wouldn’t be sure about myself.

Still, without wanting to put myself anywhere near the level of those very very real heroes, please don’t get me wrong about that, that’s not what I mean, I was thinking about them with regards to what is happening in our media today. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think Joseph Goebbels had anything on US and European media today.

That propaganda as a strategic and political instrument has been refined to a huge extent over the past 70-odd years since Goebbels first picked up on Freud’s lessons on how to influence the unconscious mind, and the ‘mass-mind’, as a way to ‘steer’ an entire people, not just as a means to make them buy detergent. These days, the media can make people believe just about anything, and they have the added benefit that they can pose as friends of the people, not the enemy.

But there is a reason why such a large ‘industry’ has developed on the web with people writing articles that don’t say what the mass media say. That reason for is, obviously, first and foremost that not everybody believes whatever they are told. The problem is equally obvious: not nearly enough people are being reached to make a true difference, and to question the official narratives.

Me, I have no claim to fame outside of the appreciation I get from first, my readers and second, from my colleagues and peers. I get a lot of both, and I thank you for that, but this certainly is not about me. If anything, it’s about trying to live up to the desire for truth in the face of odds squarely stacked against it, and against the people I try to reach out to. Trying to do just 0.1% of what the WWII underground press was about.

A few days ago, I wrote in About That Interview :

The FBI claims they are certain the hackers are North Korean, but they have provided no proof of that claim. We have to trust them on their beautiful blue eyes. I think if anything defines 2014 for me, it’s the advent of incessant claims for which no proof – apparently – needs to be provided. Everything related to Ukraine over the past year carries that trait. The year of ‘beautiful blue eyes’, in other words. Never no proof, you just have to believe what your government says.

And that truly defines 2014 for me. A level of propaganda I don’t recognize, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. 2014 has for me been the year of utter nonsense. To wit, it just finished in fine form with a 5% US GDP growth number, just to name one example. Really, guys? 5%? Really? With all the numbers presented lately, the negative Thanksgiving sales data – minus 11% from what I remember -, the so-so at best Christmas store numbers to date, shrinking durable goods in November and all? Plus 5%?

It really doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You have enough people believing ridiculous numbers like that to make it worth your while. After all, that’s all that counts. It’s a democracy, isn’t it? If a majority believes something, it becomes true. If you can get more than 50% of people to believe whatever you say, that’s case closed.

With well over 90 million working age Americans counted as being out of the labor force, and with 43 million on food stamps, you can still present a 5% GDP growth number, if only you can get a sufficiently large number of people to ‘believe’. And you do, I’ll give you that. As far as the media goes, we have achieved the change we can believe in. We may not have that change, but we sure do believe we have, don’t we? And isn’t that what counts? Are congratulations in order?

Well, not where I’m at, they’re not. I should do a shout out to the likes of Zero Hedge, Yves Smith, David Stockman, Wolf Richter, Mish, Steve Keen, Jim Kunstler, and so many others, we’re a solid crowd by now even if we’re neglected, and please don’t feel left out if you’re not in that list, I know who you are. The problem is, we’re all completely neglected by the mass media, even though there are a ton of very sharp minds in this ‘finance blogosphere’. And perhaps we should make it a point to break through that ridiculous black-out in 2015.

2014, in my eyes, has been the year of propaganda outdoing even its own very purpose, and succeeding too. We are supposed to be living in a time of the best educated people in the history of mankind, and everyone thinks (s)he’s mighty smart, but precious few have even an inkling of a clue of what transpires in the world they live in. Talk about a lost generation. Or two.

We really need to question the value of higher education, if all we get for it is a generation of people so easily duped by utter blubber. What do they teach people at our universities these days? Certainly not to think for themselves, that much is clear. And then what is the use? Why spend all that time raising an entire generation of highly educated pawns, sheep and robots? I can think of some people liking that, but for society as a whole, it’s devastating if that’s all higher education is.

And if you would like to raise doubts here, the very existence of finance blogosphere I mentioned before is proof that we indeed have raised a generation of sheep. If we had functioning media, there’d be no need for that blogosphere. We are the people who keep on pointing out where the mass media fail, let alone the politicians, simply by being there and being supported to the extent we are by the few people who escape the sheep mentality.

But that’s not nearly enough. Journalists, reporters, whatever they call themselves, working for Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC etc. should at the very least quote Zero Hedge on a daily basis, and Mish, and Steve, and Yves, and perhaps even me – though it’s fine if they continue to ignore me, as long as they give the rest their rightful place.

There are many people in the blogosphere who are many times smarter than the people who write for the mass media, and that’s a very simple and hardly disputable fact that needs to be recognized. When you read something in your paper or at your online news provider, it should be second nature to ask yourself: but what would Tyler Durden say, or the Automatic Earth, or Naked Capitalism, or David Stockman?

But we’re nowhere near that, are we? We’ve been fooled with economic stats for years, not just in the US, not even just in the west, but all over, they all grabbed on to the potential of providing people with numbers that have little to do with reality, but that simply feel good. Or even just look good.

Still, boy, have we been, and are we being, fooled. Then again, most of you wouldn’t know, would you? We people tend to discount the future, to see today as more important than tomorrow, and in the same manner we find our children’s future much less important than our own. Because that feels good too. If we are comfy right now, screw them. Not that we’d ever put it into those terms.

But you know, that’s really all old hack by now. 2014 brought us a whole other class of nonsense. And we swallowed it all hook line and entire sinker.

2014 gave us Ukraine. And you just try and find anyone today who doesn’t think Vladimir Putin is and was the evil genius mind behind the whole thing, including the 4500+ people who died there over the past 10 months. Why is it so hard to anyone who doubts that narrative? Because our media told us Putin is the bogeyman. And ‘we’ never asked for any proof. That is, except for those of us in that same blogosphere.

Meanwhile, round after round of sanctions against Russia have been set up and activated by EU and US, causing hardship for both Russian people and European businesses. But why, what exactly is Putin allegedly guilty of?

The US/EU installed a government in Kiev in February (yeah, yap about it), which is still in place, with a bunch of US citizens recently added for good measure – and for profit-. The chocolate prince president was indeed elected months later, but the prime minister – Yats – was handpicked by America, and is still -amazingly – in place. That’s the same government that had it own army murder thousands of its own citizens, and not a thing has been resolved so far.

The whole thing came to a head when MH17 was shot down over the summer. That too was blamed on Putin. Or was it? Well, not directly, nobody said Putin ordered that plane to be shot. Nor did anyone say Russia shot it. There is the accusation that Russian speaking Ukrainian ‘rebels’ did it, but proof for that was never provided in the 6 months since the incident. And there must be a best before date in there somewhere.

Is it possible the ‘rebels’ did it? We can’t exclude it, but that’s for the same reason we can’t exclude the option that little green Martians did it: we don’t know. But even then, even if they did, there’s the question whether that would have been on purpose. Which seems really stretching it: nothing they want would be served by shooting down a plane full of European, Malaysian and Australian holiday goers.

But here we are: no proof and layer upon layer of sanctions. And nary a voice is raised in the west. If one is, it’s to denounce the Russians as bloodthirsty barbarians. Even though there is no proof they did anything other than protecting what they see as their own people. Something we all would do too, no questions asked.

Ukraine defines 2014 as the year western propaganda came into its own. Not just fictional stories about an economic recovery anymore, no, we had our politico-media establishment ram an entire new cold war down our throats. And we swallowed it whole. We may have had a million more years of higher education than our parents and grandparents, but we sure don’t seem to have gotten any smarter than them.

There is a lot of information out there, written by people inspired by things other than monetary incentives or job security or anything like that, people who simply want to get information out that your trusted media won’t give you anymore than Goebbels’ media did in occupied Europe in the 1940s. And you don’t even have to risk your lives to access that information. All you have to do is to get off your couch.

The Automatic Earth is but a small part of a very valuable and fast growing resource that warrants a lot more attention than it’s been receiving to date. A reported 5% US GDP growth print is one reason why, the entire Ukraine fantasy story is another. The blogosphere is full of functioning neurons, which is more than you can say for your papers and online MSM.

As far as media is concerned, 2014 has been downright scary in its distortion of reality. Let’s try and move 2015 a little bit closer towards what’s actually happening.

Home Forums 2014: The Year Propaganda Came Of Age

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  • #17842

    Dorothea Lange Drought hit OK farm family on way to CA Aug 1936 From just about as early in my life as I can remember, growing up as a child in Hollan
    [See the full post at: 2014: The Year Propaganda Came Of Age]

    #17843
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    Ilargi – simply brilliant

    #17844
    Ken Barrows
    Participant

    Mainstream media is dependent on advertising, government, or both. So it’s incompetence or laziness (or both) should not be a surprise.

    #17845
    Chris M
    Participant

    Here’s a post which parallels what Ilargi said.

    Obama Creates the “Truth” of His Agenda

    #17846
    Ken Barrows
    Participant

    Grammar is important: I should have written its.

    #17847

    thanks T

    the closer to the heart, the harder to judge one’s own words

    #17848
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Thanks Ilargi; I second T-Bear.
    North America and the EU are collapsed civilizations.
    We’re done…

    #17849
    lathechuck
    Participant

    With every issue, there are at least two sides, and everyone can play the propaganda game. And the commercial news organizations have, if nothing else, a bias toward sensationalism. So how are we to tell the truth, or even find a useful approximation to it? I hope to find a thread of plausibility by considering a variety of viewpoints, and the more emotion that comes with the news, the less credibility it has with me.

    As for MH17, it’s entirely plausible that a crew of “Ukrainian separatists” thought they had another chance to bring down a Ukrainian troop jet. After all, what sane commercial airline would route flights over a conflict zone? Accidents happen. A simple apology would go a long way to diffuse the tensions.

    Ken Denninger at The Market Ticker does a great job of picking apart financial statistics (along with righteous rants about other topics).

    #17850
    slatzman
    Participant

    Ilargi, great post, but the comments on MH17 seem completely off base. There seemed to be an awful lot of circumstantial evidence for the prevailing story of a russian backed rebel group shooting down what they thought was a ukrainian troop jet. Enough evidence that it is a probable storyline.

    Trying to play that as part of a bigger conspiracy theory downplays yours message and is unneeeded.

    #17852
    Wildsilver
    Participant

    Hi Raul,
    From the above it seems likely you are unaware of the fascinating 4 part BBC doco called ‘The century of self’.
    It portrays the earliest pioneers of propaganda and among them is an American citizen, Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew), who published his book ‘Propaganda’ in 1928.
    Apparently it was a great resource for Goebbels.
    Unsurprisingly it would seem that America was way early in the game and taught the Nazi’s a thing or two after all.
    I really appreciate your work and your efforts on our behalf.
    Cheers

    #17853
    John Day
    Participant

    Hi Statzman.
    You might look through Zero Hedge to catch the latest MH-17 news.
    I think you’ve been missing out since it happened, an alternate reality.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-24/russia-says-it-has-evidence-ukraine-military-defector-kiev-was-responsible-mh-17-cra

    #17854
    jal
    Participant

    (Normal, … = tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.)
    Today, we have the benefit of lower gas pump prices and the disadvantage of a $C that has no business being lower in value than the devalued printed $US. With the rate of printing that has been done, by the US, I should be able to buy, with my $C, 2X the amount of fresh food from Cal. than what I did 5 years ago.
    haha!
    See … I can tell the future just as well as all the other financial experts with a lot of letters after their names.

    #17855
    Wildsilver
    Participant

    Hey Slatzman.
    Why let the facts ruin a good story, check this out mate,
    https://www.anderweltonline.com/wissenschaft-und-technik/luftfahrt-2014/shocking-analysis-of-the-shooting-down-of-malaysian-mh17/
    Seems an awful lot of circumstantial evidence is required to make this (pig fly) ‘story’ stick.
    Betcha if there was any actual evidence at all it’d be plastered all over our idiot boxes.
    Gotta wake up mate, your country is less yours than you think.
    All the best.

    #17856
    Tomcat
    Participant

    Wildsilver wrote:

    “Betcha if there was any actual evidence at all it’d be plastered all over our idiot boxes.”

    You better believe it. Interesting how the shootdown of MH17 immediately was pinned right away on the breakaway Russian sympathizers by the media, White House and State Dept. like it was an established fact beyond dispute, then all of a sudden the media coverage dropped and the stream of “lets all blame the Russkies for this” propaganda generated from the incident seemed to suddenly grind to a halt overnight. Like you said if the US had any solid evidence to backup their original claims the CMM (Controlled Mainstream Media) would be trumpeting it over the airwaves and from the rooftops 24/7.

    However, the initial blame game circus by the US and the CMM did provide the necessary excuse for the US and it’s European/NATO puppet partners to tighten sanctions against Russia without them needing to produce any solid evidence or at least await the outcome of an impartial investigation by crash investigators. I guess once it had served its purpose, the blame game circus felt its job was done and it was time to fold its tent and move on.

    I am reminded when I see these types of events used as propaganda to manipulate public opinion of a quote from the US newspaper columnist Sydney Schanberg. While musing on the way the Johnson Administration had seized on the supposed “Gulf of Tonkin incident” (i.e. a non-existent attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyer USS Maddox patroling in the Gulf of Tonkin) as a means to generate public and political support for the US to ramp up to a full scale military involvement in the Vietnamese war, Schanberg wrote: “We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”

    30-Year Anniversary: Tonkin Gulf Lie Launched Vietnam War

    #17857

    Wildsilver, no idea what in the above makes you think I don’t know Century of the Self. I know it quite well, and have talked about Bernays many times. I can’t make it much clearer without mentioning him by name then this:

    That propaganda as a strategic and political instrument has been refined to a huge extent over the past 70-odd years since Goebbels first picked up on Freud’s lessons on how to influence the unconscious mind, and the ‘mass-mind’, as a way to ‘steer’ an entire people, not just as a means to make them buy detergent.

    Thanks for your kind words.

    #17858

    slatzman,

    The commentariat has already expressed it: there is no proof whatsoever that any of us are aware of which confirms any story about MH17. Entire nations have formed opinions on endlessly repeated empty propaganda, and I find that saddening. We should be better people than that.

    #17865
    rapier
    Participant

    In the US and really the West the gold standard in creating the official narrative which ends up defining the boundaries of what can be said about a major story is the NY Times. Most of the Times journalism is as good as it gets in our world on all sorts of issues from scientific to cultural and social but then in some specific instances it goes right off the rails into the purest of propaganda. The most significant of recent times, the Whitewater ‘scandal’, the selling of the Iraq occupation, and now Ukraine.

    On the Ukraine the Times has outdone itself with almost daily stories about the evil Putin. It’s all really almost on a cartoon level. Putin their and thus our Emmanuel Goldstein, their stories amounting to the daily two minutes of hate with not so subtle reminders we have always been at war with East Asia, or in this case North Asia.

    I’m agnostic on MH17. Google ‘MH17 NY Times’ yields no direct stories since late July. An incredible absence. If someone has paid access to the Times I wonder what site search would yield.

    #17866
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    @ rapier
    Google ‘MH17 NY Times’ yields no direct stories since late July. An incredible absence.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~
    I find your choices of information, incredible. Why ever limit yourself to American MSM???
    Who bloody cares what the NY Times has to say about anything?
    Certainly no one who actually wants to be informed/current.
    Try this;
    https://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-testimony-about-shooting-down-of.html

    If you only trust U.S. sources then you are doomed to ignorance.
    Cheers

    #17867
    Tomcat
    Participant

    For anyone who is not familiar with the BBC documentary “Century of the Self”. It is available for viewing online:

    The Century of the Self

    This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings profoundly.

    His influence on the 20th century is widely regarded as massive. The documentary describes the impact of Freud’s theories on the perception of the human mind, and the ways public relations agencies and politicians have used this during the last 100 years for their engineering of consent. Among the main characters are Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in advertising. He is often seen as the father of the public relations industry.

    https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/

    #17868
    gezelle
    Participant

    V. Arnold, I think you might have misunderstood Rapier’s point and perhaps the point of Raul’s piece.
    We may know that other sources exist , and Raul has pointed out but a few of them, but mainstream media has become criminally biased, corrupted and at the behest of big businesses who own all the main media feeds in this country[ and the gov’t they own by proxy] are complicit in continuing the cosmic ignorance and subservience of their readership…. to serve their own miserable ends.
    For most people, MSM basic readers, it is comforting and stabilizing to believe that there is only one truth…. the one media chooses to endlessly display, or ignore as MH17 coverage shows us.
    To these people, all alternative info, if it is even noticed at all, is viewed as the real propaganda. Such is the coup for Bernays and his spawn.
    The more outrageous and obvious the media’s party policy becomes, the more readily it is gobbled up and believed, to the detriment of us all. I stand equal parts vexed, amazed and outraged. Were do we go from here?

    #17870
    galacticsurfer
    Participant

    Without internet we would know nothing of the real story. This is a real historical turning point like 1989. The restart of coldwar due to the failed western economic model to acheive growth, high incomes, debt free economy. The standard answer to internal failure is to find an external enemy. Somehow they wanted a big war in the middle east to exorcise the ghost of vietnam war failure first. The ghost was not the loss of the war but the intrrnal dissension of the 1960s. This did not recur due to afghan/iraq wars (volunteer army) as zeitgeist was different. TPTB have slowly gained confidence from this successful effort plus their “successful” management of the 2008 crisis that they can do almost anything, i.e. any lie will be accepted, the populace is passive. Why? Panem et circense, generational cynicism, burnout, poverty of population, etc.

    The boiling frog metaphor remains trite but apt and one can look at the buildup to ww2 as the perfect example. Nobody was willing to stop him but he was weak and always dared a
    lot at each stage and uk, etc. always backed down till he got strong enough to wage a general war with minimal armor which noone expected or was ready to believe would come.

    usa is following a similar buildup of brinksmanship. Middle east wars, economic mismanagement , color revolutions in 2004 , ukraine now, constant drone attacks, patriot act, nsa spying at home and abroad, torture, buying up local and foreign press and elites, WTO, TTIP, NAFTA, EURO. Nobody notices erosion of personal rights, national sovereignty, expansion of extreme criminal behaviour by Fed, military, congress, cops, state and local authorities, banksters, realtors, stock markets.

    Obviously if percentage of people on part time jobs, support, SNAP program, disability is ever higher people won’t protest as an FBI/CIA file could be used under sedition act in time of emergency (which could be made permanent)to eliminate state support or blacklist you fom jobmarket if not jail you, at least immediately. So you have poor dependent population
    quivering in fear of opening their mouths. This is how USSR was run. People made jokes in their kitchen about Brhezhnev. TPTB .1% call the shots. They constitute the politburo, the party apparatus, the ancien regime with everything to lose. The economic situation could get bad so thy fake the market, job and growth stats, lie in press, start wars to distract and in worst case suppress some dissenters or pay trolls to come into the few truth to
    power blogs. They do not welcome an economic crisis but can either fake the stats, start external wars or silence dissenters or critics or coopt ones they cannot discredit or jail or silence. Lots of low level bankers dying lately. Whatver happens they are one step ahead of the game. Only russia/china together can change rules of game enough to force a freeing of internal western proletariat. Communist surge forced recognition of labour movement. USD reserve currency, US debt default threat(bonds owned by china), alternative trading and military blocs and alternative info sources, ideologies not controlled by a central ministry of truth forces degree of civil rights, economic rights in West which would otherwise disappear completely under plutocratic regime. Global hegemony encourages genocide, torture, foreign coups. It had nothing to do with communist atheism at all. It was alway power poliics. Balance of power is best for citizens within a country(management labour ) as well as internationally so as to avoid exploitation.

    This year shocked me like PO, like 2008 crisis, but worse is coming and due to same basic structural problems. Too many people wanting too much with stuff running out, pollution destroying worldand with and a generational time fuse ready to blow(noone knows what areal war is-like bush sr. is 90 and last of a breed).

    War is inevitable as a cowed western populace is driven to the brink by their masters. Only abrutal and determined putin and china with powerful economic and military weapons can hinder appeasement of US led war movement.

    Pray a lot for peace and don’t let them shut you up. Their intentions after kiev, odessa,mh17 mass murders became ever clearer. They play for all the marbles and in the end will divide the globe up under a few bankers who handpick all elected officials, etc. before elections.

    Conspiracies? No, a matrix type totalitarian system.

    #17871
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    The propagandists have been with us as long as I have have been alive, and have controlled the MSM for longer than any of us would acre to admit. The change I have noticed this year is the aggressive spread into alternative media, particularly a source that Raul links to occasionally: businessinsider.com The propaganda on that site is so brazen that it makes anyone half grounded in reality laugh (or cry) out loud. Mixed in with the Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Marissa Mayer, Steve jobs hagiographies, there is a steady stream of anti-Snowden, anti-Russia, pro-Sony, pro-Wall Street, “the world is wonderful and the economy is doing great” drivel straight out of Orwell.

    #17872
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    @ gezelle

    No, I understood Ilargi perfectly and agree with his assessment 100%.
    As to rapier: He seemed to bemoan the lack of information regarding MH-17, citing the NYT.
    There is a lot of information “out there” if one but looks. The is more than a little evidence implicating Ukraine.
    IMO, all MSM is worthless, but not benign. Rather it’s malignant.
    Cheers

    #17879
    skintnick
    Participant

    @galacticsurfer you say “They do not welcome an economic crisis” and yet – if my understanding of this film https://www.positivemoney.org/2014/12/princes-yen-documentary/ is correct – the 1980s bubble and subsequent depression in Japan was engineered by central banks, IMF etc. to deliberately foist “structural adjustment” on the burgeoning Japanese economy because it didn’t conform to the neoliberal agenda.

    #17884
    Realitychecker
    Participant

    An excellent post Ilargi, spot on as usual, and reminds me of your December 2013 post, “Everything Is Fine In A Parallel Universe”.

    https://www.theautomaticearth.com/everything-is-fine-in-a-parallel-universe/

    The reality is, no amount of propaganda can alter the fact that as the widely held Enlightenment myth of perpetual economic growth collides with the second law of thermodynamics, this mythic belief will crumble to dust along with much of our current industrial global civilisation. How nations respond to this situation and what type of civilisation replaces it, is, or should be, one of the most important questions we need to ask ourselves. Unfortunately, as you point out, these are not the sort of questions the mainstream media asks, because like the financial elites that own them, they all fail to recognise the true nature of the developing reality that’s driving the deflationary black hole nations are heading into, albeit at differing rates. I always like to remind myself of Sir Arthur Eddington’s prescient quote as an antidote to this mainstream media view (oops, propaganda) that we can continue to eat ever bigger slices of nature’s finite cake without major consequences:

    “If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation”.

    #17885
    jawslog
    Participant

    I think I would probably nominate this piece as a Global Top Ten blogpost of 2014. Information is dead, truth is relative, spin is universal, and evidence is either doctored or missing. In Arabia there is a now a ‘news cinema’ genre that works 24/7 faking atrocities. A similar form exists in Ukraine, Russia, and Spain. Here in France I cannot write the truth about banks (as Mish already discovered to his chagrin), in Greece I cannot publish details of demonstrations, in the UK we are about to criminalise non-criminality with the new ‘non-violent extremism’ law – pure Orwellian drivel – and across the border in Spain, one cannot blog to contradict official economic figures.
    Yet alongside this blatantly fascist censorship, the aim of most ‘news’ output is to misinform…and if that fails, to obfuscate. The two outstanding examples for me this year were the MH17 (where in truth, zero responsibility attaches to Putin) and the oil price manipulation – a tableau in which everyone tried to shoot every competitor in the head, and wound up shooting themselves in the foot.
    My apologies for taking so long to find this site: it is outstanding…and the photography chosen suggests a great eye. Good luck.
    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2014/12/27/crash2-the-death-of-the-dollar-the-demise-of-the-euro-and-other-more-important-outcomes/

    #17886
    AndyW
    Participant

    Mr. Meijer:
    This article especially hit home for me. After the Foley beheading we were told not to view it as it was too graphic. I did everything I could to find it. I viewed it and didn’t find it graphic at all compared to other Hollywood films. I then found that Foley before and after the beheading were quite dissimilar and yet our intelligence services found that it was in fact genuine. Anyone I share this with are rather unbelieving. Very peculiar.

    Andy

    #17913
    Marbux
    Participant

    A couple of areas of disagreement:

    1. I spent 27 months in Viet Nam working as an Army psychological operations tactical teamleader. Sigmund Freud gets way too much credit for modern propaganda methods. Modern propaganda techniques did not take hold before B.F. Skinner’s pioneering work in behavioral psychology. Propaganda today is an applied science with its feet firmly planted in behavioral psychology’s principles of positive reinforcement and repeated, scientifically valid target audience opinion testing, from baseline through successful attainment of the shift in opinion that is targeted. “The key to centralized planning and decentralized execution of PSYOP is clarity in the statement of broad themes and *measurable* PSYOP objectives. Broad themes that originate at policy-maker level set the parameters that PSYOP must operate within. *Measurable* PSYOP objectives ensure that PSYOP series are *behavior-focused* and reflect national and theater policy and strategy.” U.S. Army Field Manual3-05.302 Tactical Psychological Operations (October 2005), pg. 1-4, https://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-302.pdf (emphasis added). Freud is old-hat. Skinner rules.

    2. I don’t view 2014 as a particularly noteworthy year on the government propaganda front. In 1969, I had an epiphany: “When you find yourself part of an invading force in a foreign land fighting patriots, it’s time for a reality check on your world view.” I did my reality check that day and every day since. Reality instructed that I could not morally return to my prewar job at a daily newspaper because it dispensed only propaganda. Then as now, the most important mainstream media propaganda is spoonfed to it by government officials.

    3. There is nothing new about government creating enemies as a means of social control:

    “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretense of defending, have enslaved the people.” James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, June 29, 1787.

    “Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” Gen. Douglas MacArthur, source: Whan, ed. “A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,” (1965); Nation, August 17, 1957.

    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H. L. Mencken.

    “Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

    “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” Hermann Goering, quote verified, https://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp

    Paul E. “Marbux” Merrell, J.D.

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