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Author Topic: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda  (Read 20442 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #105 on: January 09, 2019, 06:28:31 pm »
Longtime Reporter Leaves NBC Calling Media a “Trump Circus

BY Amy Goodman & Juan González, Democracy Now!

PUBLISHED January 9, 2019

“Prisoners of Donald Trump.” That’s how longtime NBC reporter and analyst William Arkin described the mainstream media in a scathing letter last week announcing he would be leaving the network, accusing the media of warmongering while ignoring the “creeping fascism of homeland security.” He issued the blistering critique after a 30-year relationship with NBC, calling for “Trump-free” media days and a reckoning about how the network encourages a state of perpetual warfare. We speak with Arkin, whose award-winning reporting has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post. He is the author of many books, including Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State

Transcript

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: “Prisoners of Donald Trump.” That’s how longtime NBC reporter and analyst William Arkin described the mainstream media in a scathing letter last week announcing he would be leaving the network, accusing the media of warmongering while ignoring the, quote, “creeping fascism of homeland security.” Arkin issued the blistering critique after a 30-year relationship with NBC, calling for Trump-free media days and a reckoning about how the network encourages a state of perpetual warfare.

In the memo, he writes, quote, “I find it disheartening that we do not report the failures of the generals and national security leaders. I find it shocking that we essentially condone continued American bumbling in the Middle East and now Africa through our ho-hum reporting.”

He continues, quote, “Of course [Trump] is an ignorant and incompetent impostor. And yet I’m alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically argue the contrary, to be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war.”

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by William Arkin, longtime NBCreporter and analyst. His award-winning reporting has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post. He’s the author of many books, including Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

WILLIAM ARKIN: Thanks, Amy, for having me on.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you left NBC with this explosive memo, that not only indicts NBC, your network, says basically NBC, they might not like this, but doesn’t stand out among the crowd of corporate networks in dealing with this issue of perpetual war.

WILLIAM ARKIN: Everything I said in this letter, which was a goodbye letter to my colleagues at NBC, applies to all of the mainstream networks, applies to CNN and Fox, as well. So, I’m not really singling out NBC. I was just most familiar with it.

And my decision not to renew my contract was really one of thinking to myself that I wanted to stand back and think more about what we needed to do in order to change our national security policy. We’ve been at war now for 18 years. I don’t think anybody could argue that there’s a country in the Middle East that’s safer today than it was in 2001. The generals and the national security leadership that runs the country, and now also is the commentators and the analysts who populate the news media, really are not people who we can look to as saying, “Wow! They won a war. They avoided a war. They achieved some magnificent objective.” In fact, they are the custodians and the architects of perpetual warfare. And it seemed to me like there needed to be both a different voice and a solution. And I want to step back myself and think about how we can end this era of perpetual war and how we can build some real security, both in the United States and abroad.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering, in terms of your concerns about the coverage of President Trump and of the Trump era and your concern about the fixation—and it really is an obsession, almost—of all of the networks with covering him on not just a daily, but an hourly, minute-by-minute basis.

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, let me just say, I’m here at Democracy Now!, and I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me, but you started your broadcast today making fun of the president and his remarks last night about the border. It’s almost impossible to avoid.

Donald Trump runs a circus. Every day, he gets up, he unzips his pants, and we go, “Oh, my god! What is he doing?” And then the next day he repeats, and we repeat.

So, I think that, to some degree, he sucks the oxygen out of the debate. He changes the discourse. And we haven’t figured out yet in the news media, every part of the news media, how to get beyond that. So, I’m not arguing only about the mainstream. I think everyone is stuck in the Donald Trump circus.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, I have to take issue with you saying “making fun,” because “fun” is the one word I wouldn’t use. But, yes, we did focus on what he had to say. The more the networks broadcast directly what he has to say, this is the information that gets out to the American people, and it is so critical to take on each point. In that case, for example, that immigrants commit more crimes than natural-born Americans, which isn’t true. And it’s absolutely critical, each time those comments are made, to counter them.

But let’s get to the issue of who populates the network TV shows, which is validating an issue you have criticized for so long and investigated for so long: the national security state.

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, you know, I’ve been associated with television for 30 years. I’ve been a journalist for about the same period of time, but it’s not my background. My background was in Army intelligence, and then, thereafter, I wrote books about the military. And I was called upon to be a journalist because there was a desire on the part of the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and NBC to have experts helping people to understand an incredibly complex issue—national security.

In those days, when I started, we used to have civilian experts on the air, people who weren’t former government officials, people who weren’t retired generals, people who might be university professors or activists who worked in nongovernmental organizations or experts who were associated with think tanks. Something happened post-9/11, something happened in this intervening years, in which those people virtually disappeared from the airwaves, and we don’t see as many anymore.

And, in fact, we increasingly see journalists who are the commentators on what’s going on. Now, that’s a tricky position, because journalists are supposed to be unbiased, but also, at the same time, they’re supposed to be explaining to the public what’s going on with inside information.

But the end result of it is that we become shallower and shallower in our coverage, particularly in an area like national security. We’ve just become so shallow that we’re not really able even to see the truth, which is that we’re at war right now in nine countries around the world where we’re bombing, and we hardly report any of it on a day-to-day basis.

So, to me, the crisis is that we condone perpetual war by virtue of our lack of reporting and investigation, and then, second, we fill the airwaves or we fill the newspapers with stories about the immediate and don’t give an adequate amount of space to deeper investigations or what I would say would be net assessment investigations of what really is going on.


I mean, whether we should or shouldn’t withdraw troops from Syria, whether we should or shouldn’t withdraw troops from Afghanistan, whether we should or we shouldn’t improve our relations with Russia, whether we should or we shouldn’t pursue denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula—all of these questions deserve a high degree of investigation and reporting, beyond the question of whether or not Donald Trump is a buffoon. And we just don’t do it. We’re just not doing it.

And so, to me, I’m not necessarily interested in prescribing the why. I’m interested in changing the culture so that we can, in fact, better inform ourselves about national security, so that the citizenry can play a more powerful role in influencing our national security policy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to expand on that. Back in the ’70s, the old socialist economists Baran and Sweezy used to talk about the huge percentage of the American population that owed its livelihood directly to the defense industry. Right? And one of the things in your Top Secret America exposés is that the Cold War ended, and the threats, supposedly, in terms of state threats, receded to the United States, but yet, obviously, the military maintains its huge spread across the world. And more importantly, through homeland security, the militarization internally of the country, as you point out, has gotten to the point where people don’t even know how extensive the homeland security apparatus is of this country and the number of people that have top-secret clearance.

WILLIAM ARKIN: Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, it seems to me that the number of people working for this apparatus has actually grown, despite the fact that the threats, the existential threats, to the United States have receded.

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, there’s no question that the national security establishment has grown and has become far more powerful than it ever was. But here’s the change. We’ve shifted from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. And consequently, we’ve also shifted from the dominance of the military-industrial complex, if you will, to a much more insidious and much more difficult-to-diagnose information complex. So, the advent of contractors, the advent of a professional military, which means that the military itself touches fewer and fewer lives in America, all of those work together to make the national security state more and more embedded within our society, but yet, at the same time, more difficult to get to, more difficult to understand.

So, most people would be surprised to learn, for instance, that Amazon is one of the largest defense contractors, that they’re building the cloud and they’re building the data centers which support the intelligence community and support the military. And there are other civilian companies, that we associate with being civilians, who are also terrific beneficiaries of the military’s largesse.

So, to me, to diagnose properly where we stand today, the point of the Top Secret America investigation was to show the wild growth of all areas of national security and this new invention of homeland security, if you will, but at the same time to point out that it wasn’t something that was necessarily segregated from our society, it was more and more embedded within our society, and that that made it more and more difficult to analyze properly and to do something about.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you talked about the people who populate the networks as pundits, and you’ve been a fierce critic of the national security state, or at least understanding who it is who is explaining things to us. Reading from Politico, “Former CIA Director John Brennan … the latest superspook,” they said, “to be reborn as a TV newsie. He just cashed in at NBC News as a ‘senior national security and intelligence analyst’ and served his first expert views … on Meet the Press. The Brennan acquisition seeks to elevate NBC to spook parity with CNN, which employs former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden in a similar capacity. Other, lesser-known national security veterans thrive under TV’s grow lights. Almost too numerous to list, they include Chuck Rosenberg, former acting DEA administrator, chief of staff for FBI Director James Comey, and counselor to former FBI Director Robert Mueller; Frank Figliuzzi, former chief of FBI counterintelligence; Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser under Bush, at NBC; and Fran Townsend, homeland security adviser under Bush.” And it goes on and on and on.

These are now the pundits. And so, when you have a situation like President Trump announcing he will immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and halve the troops that are in Afghanistan, you have this massive attack on him that’s actually led by the permanent national security state under the guise of pundits on television.

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, I think that you’ve—I mean, what you said stands for itself, Amy. But I would add to it that I think the real crisis is that when we have a panel discussion on television, in the mainstream press, and even in the mainstream newspapers, we don’t populate that panel with people who are in opposition. We have a single war party in the United States, and it’s the only one that is given voice. And so, really, the crisis is not so much that there are experienced government officials speaking out; the problem is that there aren’t critics who are sitting next to them saying that “You’re full of it.” And so, to me, we need to balance that.

And I think that probably because of the phenomenon of Donald Trump—let’s just be honest about it—really what we see on TV now is former Obama administration officials masquerading as analysts who are nonpartisan, when in fact they are partisan. And indeed we see fewer retired generals and fewer retired admirals, who sometimes are useful in terms of explaining the profession of arms and the conduct of military operations, in favor of these political figures who have a partisan view.

I just don’t think the American public gets well served by the fact that there isn’t a broad range of opinions on those panels. I want to see peaceniks. I want to see academics. I want to see historians. I want them to as much have a voice, in terms of understanding what’s going on, as I do see a former Obama administration official.

AMY GOODMAN: We have break, but we’re going to come back to this conversation and talk, among other issues, about one of your statements—”don’t even get me started with the FBI: What? We now lionize this historically destructive institution?’’—and much more. We’re speaking to William Arkin, a longtime NBC reporter and analyst who just left the network, penning a letter critiquing the network for supporting perpetual warfare, his criticism, talking about the creeping fascism of homeland security. Stay with us.

Yes, I’ll Chip In

Video of interview at link below:

https://truthout.org/video/longtime-reporter-leaves-nbc-media-is-trump-circus-encourages-perpetual-war/

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #106 on: February 21, 2019, 09:11:15 pm »

Quote
TrollBuster9090 (4,793 posts)

Februray 21, 2019


📢 Keep This Story Alive. (F)Tucker Carlson Is Running Scared Over Bergman Exposing Fox News Bias

We all know that Fux Noise is a propaganda channel, and they often decide not to air segments when guests with opposing viewpoints make fools out of the hosts. What DOESN'T usually happen is when the guest records the interview they refused to air, and then posts it on his own.

Such was the case when Tucker Carlson thought he could make a fool out of (slightly flakey) economist Rutger Bergman. Bergman ended up making a fool of Carlson instead. Carlson lost his cool, unloaded profanity on Bergman, and then didn't air the segment.

..But BERGMAN did  ;D, and the rest is history.

Here is the interview Bergman recorded from his end, which he posted on youtube. Carlson is obviously rattled by Bergman's exposure of the fact that Carlson is 'a millionaire who's employed by billionaires,' and that being the reason Carlson couldn't air the segment. In the second video below, Carlson makes a pathetic attempt to say he didn't air the segment BECAUSE of the profanity. Nice try, you snotty little trust fund brat.

Fox is in DAMAGE CONTROL MODE, keep after them!



https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017532859

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #107 on: February 22, 2019, 05:47:04 pm »

These days, anybody who says anything significant that contradicts accepted social memes is attacked and you can find all manner of hit pieces on Jordan Peterson, and they're all pretty stupid, just what you'd expect. You can't argue with people like me (or Ashvin) with this kind of cut-and-paste. The best you can do is try to post so much silly crap it pushes our comments down the page out of sight.

Neither you, nor the authors of this trash really have taken the time to really listen to JP, who has a decent rationale for everything he says, and is probably one of the smartest, most sincere searchers for truth in this generation. I don't agree with him on everything, but the idea that he is somehow serving the elites or the status quo is absurd.

You have an agenda and you know how to cut and paste. What else have you got? If you want to argue with smart people, bring some original thoughts.

Translation: I believe what i believe, and I'm not nothing to read anything that disagrees with what I believe, because fu ck you.

Anything that is a critique of JP is necessarily a hit piece, and dismissed out of hand. Because all such articles are stupid.

Joe McCarthy also had "a decent rationale" for everything he said.

And what is "absurd" is that he is NOT "somehow serving the elites or the status quo."


No, you've just decided to channel Smokey, and I won't play that sh it. Get educated or leave me the fu ck alone.

I study what I write about. I'm not just an aggregator. Just because you find some cheezie hit piece on JP, it doesn't mean you have some valid point to make.

Your attack dog comments on Ashvin are largely ad hom, and you know that. I don't always agree with Ashvin either. But you and RE are using him for sport, in my opinion.

And your knowledge base on JP  (neither one of you) is adequate to make an original cogent comment.

Have fun turning the Diner into a lying mouthpiece like the Greaneville Post. I'm interested primarily in collapse, not this silly political red-wash bullshit.

Having created over 100 original blog posts for this blog, I feel the accusation of "cut-n-paste" is unwarranted. Like other posters, I place other articles here every day. So what? Where is the harm in that.

"Just an aggregator?" Yes, I aggregate every day to put the Doomstead Diner daily  together. And I paste some of the articles here. I didn't know this activity upset you so. Oh, my.

You note that my "attack dog comments" on Fucko are largely ad hom. But you remain mute as the tomb about the ones that are not. Also silent as the Sphinx about the fact that ASHVIN STARTED IT. He went ad hom first (old white man, etc.). So the best he gets is the back of my hand. So spare me the crocodile tears for "poor Ashvin." If he is sport, it's because he's made a game of it.

You cannot imagine that any of this is pleasant. As I told someone else today, these pissing matches leave the forum reeking of stale urine, like an alleyway where drunks pi ss. They annoy the regulars and scare the noobs and lurkers. But I am not going to permit free market fundamentalism go unchallenged while I am sucking a breath. And if you think that is "turning the Diner into a lying mouthpiece like the Greaneville Post," you are a lot less thoughtful than I gave you credit for being. Or choose to turn a blind eye.


Well elucidated, Surly.

FWIW, I wish to point out the irony of Eddie complaining about "attack dog and largely ad hom comments" when Eddie has never hesitated to unload "Trailer Park Jesus" and "Loser" ad hominem attacks on me , with obvious relish, whenevah he feels like it.




http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php/topic,11473.msg170327.html#msg170327
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #108 on: February 22, 2019, 06:50:36 pm »
Are you so imprisoned by your ideology that you can't recognize these blessings?

Of course there is no guarantee these blessings will last, and we need to work hard to keep them in place. If either the radical right or your radical leftist buddies get what they are after, a bunch of them go out the window and we are left with brutal tyranny and mass death. To pretend like that's what we already have takes a huge sh it on the people who are truly suffering under tyrannies around the world.

IOW,  Capitalism, i.e.  , is "superior" to "Socialism" because it provides more material "blessings" than "Socialism".

Ashvin, if you are right about that, then most people now subject to unending misery and privation due to ruthless exploitation under the more ideologically pure versions of Capitalism, unlike the hybrid version in Denmark where millions of small businesses operate quite successfully under high taxation and socialst based subsidized college and medicine and successful prisoner rehabilitation, are doomed to greater misery, not more "blessings". Over 2 billion people, right now on this overwhelmingly CAPITALIST planet Earth, are zinc deficient. That is a DIRECT result of the present economic system you so celebrate.

Quote
Zinc deficiency is characterized by growth retardation, loss of appetite, and impaired immune function. In more severe cases, zinc deficiency causes hair loss, diarrhea, delayed sexual maturation, impotence, hypogonadism in males, and eye and skin lesions [2,8,27,28]

That is just one of MANY downsides of Capitalism that you claim would be "worse" under Socialism.

Two Billion people is NOT a number you can stuff into the "human pecking order stuff happens" (see lobsters and Jordan Peterson) ideology that is intrinsic to the defense of the predictable high percentage of "losers" in the Capitalist system.

I will not argue this any further with you. If you are right, and Capitalism and Christianity are compatible and complementary, then I am not a Christian.

If you are wrong, then may God have mercy on your wicked soul.

Quote
Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts. -- Psalm 28:3
« Last Edit: February 23, 2019, 12:49:14 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #109 on: February 23, 2019, 12:42:54 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: Surly  continues to successfully expose Ashvin's 😈 disingenuous sophistry.

Are you so imprisoned by your ideology that you can't recognize these blessings?

Of course there is no guarantee these blessings will last, and we need to work hard to keep them in place. If either the radical right or your radical leftist buddies get what they are after, a bunch of them go out the window and we are left with brutal tyranny and mass death. To pretend like that's what we already have takes a huge sh it on the people who are truly suffering under tyrannies around the world.

IOW,  Capitalism, i.e.  , is "superior" to "Socialism" because it provides more material "blessings" than "Socialism".

Ashvin, if you are right about that, then most people now subject to unending misery and privation due to ruthless exploitation under the more ideologically pure versions of Capitalism, unlike the hybrid version in Denmark where millions of small businesses operate quite successfully under high taxation and socialst based subsidized college and medicine and successful prisoner rehabilitation, are doomed to greater misery, not more "blessings". Over 2 billion people, right now on this overwhelmingly CAPITALIST planet Earth, are zinc deficient. That is a DIRECT result of the present economic system you so celebrate.

I didn't mention capitalism at all in that post, and you KNOW that. Surly responded to my emphasis on constitutional republics, something he believes doesn't exist in the U.S., and I stayed on that same point. I specifically said "NOT capitalism" in my post. You conveniently left those parts out of your quotation of me. The principles of a constitutional republic are not absent in Denmark as far as I know.

NOW you wish to cite the sins of others for leaving out parts of a citation, when it is your MO and stock in trade? Moar projection, and soar greatest hits from the Prince of Lies. The fact is that you have extolled the blessings of capitalism with breathless enthusiasm in other posts, so it's hardly as if AG has taken you out of context. Liar.

You get one thing right: I do not believe we have a functional "constitutional republic," so much as a functional oligarchy. We observe the forms of the constitution, but not so much the function, as bequeathed by the "miracle working founders." Hamilton, et al wrote strong and specific Article One powers, which craven editions of the Congress, with a love of not voting on the record and an endless capacity for can-kicking, have ceded to the Executive Branch: the war powers, a functional immigration policy, all toward deferring to the power of the unitary executive. Certain executives, such as Cheney, have enthusiastically taken advantage of the the ability to thus wield power. Even Obama, who started out as conciliator, and as up governing by executive order far more that he might have liked in the face of an obstructionist Republican Congress whose stated purpose (from the night of his inauguration, and in so many words) was to destroy his presidency.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin left the hall in Philadelphia, he was asked, “What kind of government have you given us, Dr. Franklin?” He replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The Constitution is a remarkable document, one of the greatest fruits of The Enlightenment, and If you read the book Hamilton, you understand that its ratification by the 13 original states was by no means a sure thing.  As remarkable a document as it may be, it was George W. Bush who was reported in 2005 to have said, “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

Whether the anecdote is true of not, it speaks to the mindset inside the Beltway and of unitary executives.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #110 on: February 25, 2019, 06:47:11 pm »
FEB 22, 2019

SNIPPET:

Quote
The most effective way to tackle Trump’s propaganda effort to deploy “socialism” as a dirty word is to counter with how capitalism has failed.


Full article:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #111 on: March 04, 2019, 08:00:54 pm »



Constructing Rebellion, The Overthrow of Corporate Tyrrany - Chris Hedges
11,884 views

Aer O'Head

Published on Feb 25, 2019

Chris Hedges

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #113 on: March 11, 2019, 12:29:39 am »
Why is Amazon already selling the Robert Mueller report?

Bill Palmer | 7:52 pm EDT March 9, 2019

Palmer Report » Fact Check

This month two different books called “The Mueller Report” have become available for preorder on the Amazon.com website. One is being offered by the Washington Post, and the other claims to be from Robert Mueller while boasting of an introduction from Alan Dershowitz. Both books claim a release date of March 26th, 2019. Meanwhile, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has made no indication of when or how his report will be released. So what’s really going on here?

Here are the facts. No one, outside of Robert Mueller and his team, has any specific knowledge about when his report will be issued. These two “books” are merely empty templates that have been put up for preorder, with best guesses for release dates. They each plan to take the publicly available version of Mueller’s report that you’ll be able to get anywhere else for free, stuff it into a book, add some custom material, and charge you money.

The version being offered by the Washington Post says it’ll include “related materials” from the newspaper. Fair enough; you’re paying to get the Post’s analysis of the Mueller report, once the report surfaces. Considering the solid investigative research that the Post has done into Donald Trump’s various criminal scandals over the past few years, this analysis could prove to be seful.


The other version misleadingly lists “Robert S. Mueller III” as the author but is actually being offered by Skyhorse publishing, which has previously published pro-Trump books from Alan Dershowitz, including “The Case Against Impeaching Trump.” For this new book, the “introduction” from Dershowitz will likely be something more akin to a rebuttal of the Mueller report. Unless you’re a Trump supporter and you want to read Dershowitz defending his ally Trump while attacking Mueller, ordering this version would be a complete waste of money.

In any case, neither of these books has any actual connection to Robert Mueller. He’s not releasing or participating in these two book releases. He’s simply going to issue his report, which will then go to the Attorney General, who will release some or all of it publicly, ostensibly followed by a battle with House Democrats about how much more of it to publicly release. These two book publishers will then take the publicly available version of Mueller’s report, which will be published for free by every major news outlet out there, and “sell” it to you along with added content. One book claims to be 720 pages and the other claims to be 960 pages, but these are both clearly made-up numbers.

If Robert Mueller’s report doesn’t become public by the March 26th “release date” that’s arbitrarily been assigned to these two books, you’ll see that release date moved further back, as the publishers take revised guesses about when the report might surface. While these books will technically include the Mueller report, these books are not how Robert Mueller is releasing his report; you’re simply paying to get third party analysis of Mueller’s report once it’s released to the public for free. 

https://www.palmerreport.com/factcheck/fact-check-amazon-mueller-report/16590/

Agelbert NOTE: IOW, DON'T be fooled into paying for a propaganda massaged version of the Mueller report. 8)


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #114 on: April 01, 2019, 01:12:07 pm »
Quote
NOTICE: This piece is our April Fool's article. While written in jest, some of the details herein are in fact true, or disturbingly close to it, and the article could be suggestive of what we might face in the near future, should we fail to take corrective action to protect and preserve vaccine exemptions, informed consent and medical freedom of choice.

April 1, 2019

Written by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Federal Government Mandates Vaccine Reeducation Camps — The Dystopian Future Has Arrived 😨

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

1. To eliminate false vaccine information and protect public health, the U.S. federal government is mandating vaccine reeducation for vaccine deniers and refusers

2. According to the new law 🦍👹, which will take effect one year from now on April 1, 2020, each vaccine reeducation camp will provide federally sanctioned reeducation on vaccines depending on level of vaccine resistance

3. Level 1 will include infractions such as reading or sharing social media posts containing anti-vaccination sentiments. Level 2 will include level 1 infractions plus public voicing of anti-vaccination sentiments such as “I know someone who was injured by a vaccine”

4. Claiming to have a vaccine-injured child will be considered a level 3 infraction, requiring the longest and most intense reeducation, regardless of whether the individual has engaged in any level 1 or level 2 infractions

5. Following successful reeducation, parents will be given a certificate good for re-entry into society. At that point, they will be able to provide pre-established and appropriate answers to safety questions about vaccines, and both they and their children will be up to date with all vaccinations

Full article:

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/04/01/vaccine-reeducation-dystopian-future.aspx

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #115 on: April 02, 2019, 07:29:10 pm »
Watch Your Language: How 😈 Frank Luntz Used Words as Weapons
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Thom Hartmann Program

Published on Mar 29, 2019

Frank Luntz manipulated language to win battles against democrats, liberals, and progressives. Jefferson Smith brings him up to ask us to watch our language. Are the words we are using today actually hurting the progressive cause by falling into right wing Frank Luntz style traps?

Jefferson Smith suggests that the prominence of the word Neoliberal is one of those traps and that it is aimed at confusing liberals with market fundamentalists.

Do you think the word neoliberal is being misused to attack progressives?

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Category News & Politics
Quote
the bad freedoms 😈👹💵🎩🏴‍☠️🚩 to exploit those around us and extract huge profits without regard to the common good, including what is done to the ecosystem and democratic institutions. These bad freedoms see corporations monopolize technologies and scientific advances to make huge profits, even when, as with the pharmaceutical industry, a monopoly means lives of those who cannot pay exorbitant prices are put in jeopardy.

The good freedoms—freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s job—are eventually snuffed out by the primacy of the bad freedoms.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Resisting Brainwashing Propaganda
« Reply #116 on: April 06, 2019, 04:21:24 pm »
Columbia: Goddess of America
The Statue of Freedom—also known as Armed Freedom or simply Freedom—is a bronze statue designed by Thomas Crawford that, since has crowned the dome of the U. S. Capitol in Washington, DC (District of COLUMBIA).


Not only Was America Not Christian, but the Founders Invented Goddess Columbia


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Thom Hartmann Program

Published on Apr 4, 2019

Despite popular misconceptions from right wing media, America, the United States was not founded as a Christian nation.

America has roots in the deism of the founding fathers, atheism of the enlightenment. The Founding fathers even went so far as to create an American God (Far before Neil Gaiman)

The Goddess Columbia was the creation of the founding fathers who thought the nation should have their own goddess to protect the young nation. This doesn't sound very christian does it?
 

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Category News & Politics
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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“HERE HE IS USING THIS TERM ‘TREASON’”: WHY A.G. SULZBERGER TOOK ON TRUMP IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Murdoch’s paper is a fierce competitor to Sulzberger’s Times. But Trump raised the stakes—and Sulzberger wanted to reach the business leaders and conservatives who read the Journal.

A.G. Sulzberger
A.G. Sulzberger
By Stephanie Keith/Getty Images.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week was notable not just for its message—”Accusing the New York Times of ‘Treason,’ Trump Crosses a Line”—but for the platform where that message was broadcast. For one thing, it is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the publisher of a major American newspaper to publish a high-profile opinion piece in the pages of another American newspaper. It is even more remarkable when it’s the man ultimately responsible for the Times’s liberal editorial page publishing something in the Journal’s famously red-blooded opinion section. Never mind that the Times and the Journal have become stronger rivals over the past 10 years, as Rupert Murdoch has moved the Journalcloser to a general-interest newspaper, with broad appeal outside of business and finance. Times media reporter Edmund Leecaptured the moment perfectly on Twitter: “That the publisher of the New York Times wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal underlines the gravity of it all.”

I called Sulzberger to ask him about his decision to write this op-ed and place it in the Journal, and he walked me through his thinking. The Times publisher had already twice met with Donald Trump in person to discuss his concerns regarding the president’s anti-media rhetoric. This time Sulzberger was in the car with his family in upstate New York when Trump hit send on Saturday’s provocative tweet: “Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country.....”

“After his tweet, and his attack on the New York Times, and the accusation of treason, I just sat with that word for a while,” Sulzberger told me. “Beyond the significance of this big word, ‘treason,’ which is being recklessly wielded against one of the country’s leading independent news organizations by someone who has the authority to prosecute treason, and beyond the fact that it was inaccurately wielded, after the Times went through all the right steps that a responsible news organization goes through when reporting on a national security issue, having reached out to three different arms of the national security apparatus to see if they had any concerns, and all three told us they did not—beyond all of that, I just started to wonder, What could be next?”

Trump’s attacks on the Times have evolved, from the relatively playful “Failing New York Times” to the darker and more troubling “Fake News New York Times” or “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” which is “a phrase,” Sulzberger noted, “with a long and disturbing history, a phrase that was embraced by both Hitler and Stalin to justify the persecution and execution of enemies.” Now, Sulzberger continued, “here he is using this term ‘treason,’ which has a clear legal meaning—it’s a crime that’s punishable by death. It just felt like he had reached the logical limit of his rhetorical attacks. But also my concern began to be, this is someone who has shown every inclination of not just continuing, but escalating his attacks on journalism and journalists, and if he’s still inclined to do so, all that’s left is to start putting his threats into action. I felt like the longer I thought about it, the more I felt like that was something that had to be said out loud, that it was a concern that should be shared with the public.”

Sulzberger said he felt that this message would be more powerful if it ran in a publication other than his own, because attacks on the press are not something that affect just one institution. And he felt it would be especially powerful if it ran in the Journal.

“I thought there was value to reaching a different audience with this message. Folks who are maybe more conservative, folks who are influential in the business community,” Sulzberger said. “One of the concerns I have right now is, if you look at who’s responding to the attacks on journalists, it tends to be journalists. Folks like Marty Baron, folks like me. And I worry that it’s easy for the public to regard that as institutions looking after their own self-interest. I don’t view it that way. I really hope that other leaders will raise their voices as well. It shouldn’t just be journalists defending journalism. I think any successful business leader will tell you how valuable the free and trustworthy flow of information is for their ability to be successful.”

Sulzberger reached out directly to the Journal’s editorial-page editor, Paul Gigot. He sent him the piece with a short note. Gigot said he’d take a look and get back to him, which he did shortly thereafter, telling Sulzberger they were going to run the op-ed. “The Wall Street Journal is an excellent news organization, and part of being an excellent news organization is turning down pieces, so there’s always the thought that a piece might be turned down,” said Sulzberger. “He was incredibly gracious.”

Since the op-ed was published on Wednesday, he’s heard from a handful of the types of influential and powerful people he was hoping to reach. He read me part of an email he received from someone he described as one of the nation’s most prominent business leaders: “The attacks on the freedom of the press and freedom of expression are deeply troubling. It’s important that you’re making this case.”

As for working with Gigot and his team, Sulzberger said, “It was a good process, and I give them a lot of credit for running it.”


AGelbert

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Progressive Churches Challenge the Hard-Line 😈 Conservative Evangelical Narrative on Immigration
July 21, 2019

In contrast to the unwavering support that 😈 conservative and 😈 evangelical religious groups give 🦀 President Trump, progressive churches and synagogues are fighting on the front lines against the administration’s anti-immigrant policies


https://therealnews.com/stories/progressive-churches-challenge-the-hard-line-conservative-evangelical-narrative-on-immigration


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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ov 7, 2019, 8:23 AM



The Seven Deadly Sins of 😈 Propaganda Are Still Alive And Well 👀

While we generally strive to stay current in addressing the day-to-day denial, today we’re looking a little further back–all the way to November, 1937 🧐 (h/t Dr. Jennifer Mercieca).

That’s when the Institute for Propaganda Analysis published an explainer on “how to detect propaganda,” describing “seven common propaganda devices.” In the 80+ years since, precious little has changed.

The first tool of propaganda in the 1937 explainer is Name Calling, where “the propagandist appeals to our hate and fear” by “giving ‘bad names’ to those individuals, groups, nations, races, policies, practices, beliefs and ideals which he would have us condemn and reject.” Pretty straightforward: attaching a negative label to a person or group of people is a great way to pit your fans against your enemies.

The second is Glittering Generalities, where the propagandist “appeals to our emotions of love, generosity, and brotherhood.” It’s the flip side of name calling in that it seeks to “make us accept and approve, without examining the evidence.” This approach works best when combined with name calling, in that “words make us create devils to fight or gods to adore.”

Third, we have Transfer, “a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept. For example, most of us respect and revere our church and our nation. If the propagandist succeeds in getting church or nation to approve a campaign in behalf of some program, he thereby transfers its authority, sanction, and prestige to that program. Thus we may accept something which otherwise we might reject.” 

Then there’s the pretty self-explanatory Testimonial, “a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy” by quoting some ostensibly qualified and unbiased other person’s opinion.

Next is the inverse of the expert testimonial, the “Plain Folks” appeal. This is an attempt “to win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves-- ‘just plain folks among the neighbors.’”
When we see someone who reflects our values, speech, or worldview, they appear “just as common as the rest of us… and, therefore, wise and good.”

The sixth feature of propaganda is Card Stacking, when someone “stacks the cards against the truth” by using “under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evad facts… resorts to lies, censorship, and distortion,” and  “creates a smoke-screen of clamor by raising a new issue when he wants an embarrassing matter forgotten.” Basically, the propagandist says all sorts of things that may or may not be true as a distraction from the one big thing he doesn’t want you paying attention to, overwhelming your ability to check facts by flooding the discourse with lies.

Finally, there’s the Band Wagon, “a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist’s program en masse” to give the impression that “everybody’s doing it.” To do so, the “techniques range from those of medicine show to dramatic spectacle. He hires a hall, fills a great stadium, marches a million men in parade. He employs symbols, colors, music, movement, all the dramatic arts.


The aim of each of these is to use emotions to short-circuit rational thought, clouding decision-making with appeals to base instincts and prejudices, creating a bond between propagandist and follower that no factual intervention could possibly impeach.

[Editor’s note: in Monday’s discussion about nuclear winter, we described the climate science community’s rejection of Carl Sagan’s “nuclear winter” hypothesis. But as a reader pointed out, more modern climate models actually ended up affirming Sagan’s more catastrophic view, further illustrating the still-ongoing nature of the debate Kessler claimed never happened!]

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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