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Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 09:57 AM.:

The Goal of Modern Propaganda: Mythocracy - By Cindy Sheehan

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 1,280 words

         “The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.” Jacques Ellul 

 


Originally published on February 14, 2010 " href="
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/"
>Information Clearing House" -- On Super Bowl Sunday, the reason that I wrote my new book: http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2010/01/order-info-for-myth-america-ii.html"
>Myth America: 20 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution, literally hit home.




Since it was the Holy Day of Obligation for our national religion of Football, I headed for my health club because I have always
been a heretic. I arrived there a little before kick off, so the club was still occupied, but after kick-off it was deserted.


 


After my water workout and swim in
the pool that I had all to myself, I headed to the hot tub which was occupied by another spa patron—an older gentleman named Bill whom seems to come
to the club just to sit in the hot tub and chat. I get the feeling he is very lonely, and this following exchange may be why:


 


Bill: I think what you do disgraces
your son, his memory and what he died for.


 


Cindy: Oh really? Since he was killed
in an illegal and immoral war, I think this nation disgraced him.


 


Bill: But they attacked us...

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 07:03 AM.:

Government Propagandists in Corporate Media - - By Carl Herman

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 3,952 words

originally published on February 04, 2010 "http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2010m2d3-When-independent-journalists-challenge-US-wars-government-propagandists-attack-in-the-comments?cid=examiner-email"
>LA County Nonpartisan Examiner" Feb. 03, 2010 -- The US Senate
Church Committee disclosed in 1975 that more than http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php"
>over 400 government propagandists had infiltrated American corporate media to manipulate public opinion on key policies, including war. CIA Director
William Colby testified that Operation Mockingbird had been operational since the late 1940s to control what was reported through American television,
newspapers, and magazines. President Ford fired Colby after his testimony and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Bush Sr. ended the CIA’s testimony,
stating that there were no other programs of concern to disclose and promised that the CIA would no longer influence the media (for Bush Sr.’s lies
to initiate the first war with Iraq, http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m8d13-Iraq-WMD-evidence-lies-dictatorship-and-evil-Part-2"
>click here). 

We know in the present that http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m11d23-Prostitution-journalism-Yup-mainstream-media-is-intentional-propaganda-Accept-the-evidence"
>government propagandists appeared over 4,500 times as “experts” in the PR run-up to the current war in Iraq, corporate media refuses to
clearly communicate the essential news that http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m9d9-Are-US-wars-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan-mistakes-of-good-intentions-What-we-now-know-from-the-evidence"
>ALL the claims for war were known to be false at the time they were told and http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2010m2d2-An-analogy-for-everyone-to-understand-how-US-wars-in-Iraq-and-Iran-are-unlawful"
>US wars are “emperor has no clothes” obviously unlawful. The American public is recognizing the propaganda in corporate media by deserting
them to embrace alternative sources.


 


Therefore, since we know that government-sponsored Operation...

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Tuesday, February 02, 2010, 09:31 AM.:

The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News - By Chris Hedges

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 2,163 words

Originally published on February 01, 2010
"Truthdig"
- Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.

And the creed of objectivity becomes a convenient and profitable vehicle to avoid confronting unpleasant truths or angering a power structure on which news organizations depend for access and profits. This creed transforms reporters into neutral observers or voyeurs. It banishes empathy, passion and a quest for justice. Reporters are permitted to watch but not to feel or to speak in their own voices. They function as “professionals” and see themselves as dispassionate and disinterested social scientists. This vaunted lack of bias, enforced by bloodless hierarchies of bureaucrats, is the disease of American journalism.

“The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press,” the late columnist Molly Ivins once...

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 05:14 PM.:

HOW ALTERNATIVE MEDIA PROVIDE THE CRUCIAL CRITIQUE OF THE MAINSTREAM - by RICHARD KEEBLE

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 3,460 words

GUEST MEDIA ALERT: HOW ALTERNATIVE MEDIA PROVIDE THE CRUCIAL CRITIQUE OF THE MAINSTREAM - RICHARD KEEBLE RESPONDS TO TIM LUCKHURST


Introduction

On January 4, Tim Luckhurst, former BBC journalist and current Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent, wrote an article in the Independent with the dramatic title, ‘Demise of news barons is just a Marxist fantasy.’ Luckhurst argued that leftist critics are gleefully predicting the end of corporate journalism:

“There will be no further need for newspapers or broadcasters to host debates and represent public opinion. The internet will let every citizen speak for themselves. The masses will seize the means of media production. We will witness an era of revolutionary change.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/tim-luckhurst-demise-of-news-barons-is-just-a-marxist-fantasy-1856668.html)

But according to Luckhurst “there is an elementary delusion behind the idea that amateurs can report accurately”. How so?:

“... the public right to know [cannot] depend on the dictates of an individual's conflicted conscience. Such decisions should be guided by professional priorities and ethics. The fallacy rests on the delusion that private ownership by capitalists has damaged journalism. The facts suggest the opposite. Since the first American newspaper baron, James Gordon Bennett I, created the New York Herald, and his British disciple Alfred Harmsworth followed with Britain's Daily Mail,...

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Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 06:36 AM.:

The Fundamental Unreliability of America's Media - By Glenn Greenwald

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 1,014 words

Originally published on January 12, 2010
"http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/12/media/index.html"
>Salon" -- Consider the record of the American media over the last
two weeks alone.  Justin Elliott of TPM http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/the_flight_253_one-way_ticket_meme_a_media-propaga.php"
>documents how an absolute falsehood about the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing -- that Abdulmuttab purchased a "one-way ticket" to
the U.S., when it was http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/pageoneplus/corrections.html"
>actually a round-trip ticket -- has been repeated far and wide by U.S. media outlets as fact.  Two weeks ago, Elliott http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/abc_issues_correction_on_widely_cited_abdulmutalla.php"
>similarly documented how an equally false claim from ABC News -- that two of the Al Qaeda leaders behind that airliner attack had been
released from Guantanamo -- became entrenched as fact in media reports (at most, it is one of them, not two).  This week, Dan Froomkin href="
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/09/fool-me-over-and-over-and_n_417311.html"
>chronicles how completely discredited claims about Guantanamo recidivism rates continue to be uncritically "reported" by The
New York Times and then inserted into our debates as fact.  

As I href="
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/26/airstrikes/index.html"
>documented two weeks ago, government claims about which "top Al Qeada fighters" were killed by our airstrikes turn out to be untrue far more
often then true, yet are always mindlessly featured by our media, ensuring little questioning of those actions; at least two of the three Top Terrorists
claimed to have been killed by our airstrikes in Yemen -- and possibly all three...

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Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 06:29 AM.:

Losing the Internet as We Know It - By Megan Tady

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 771 words

Originally published on January 12, 2010 "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-tady/losing-the-internet-as-we_b_420322.html"
>Huffington Post" -- How much have you already used the Internet
today?

We don't think twice about how much we rely on the Internet. Imagine not being able to map directions on Google
or check the weather online. A business that doesn't have a Web site? Forgettable. Or rather, unsearchable. Remember when we didn't have e-mail? Would
you want to go back to those Dark Ages? Me neither.


The Internet is in the very fabric of how we communicate, learn, shop, conduct business, organize,
innovate and engage. If we lost it, we'd be lost.


But did you know that we're at risk of losing the Internet as we know it? Millions of Americans don't
know that a battle over the future of the Internet is being played out right now in Washington. How it ends will have deep repercussions for decades to
come.


On one side are http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/10/21/overwhelming-support-net-neutrality-eve-fcc-meeting"
>public interest and consumer groups,http://www.savetheinternet.com/story/2205"
> small businesses, http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/10/19/top-tech-ceos-and-pioneers-net-neutrality-essential-innovation"
>Internet entrepreneurs, http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/08/10/american-library-association-wants-network-neutrality"
>librarians, civil libertarians and http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/09/10/21/net-neutrality-amplifies-vital-voices-african-americans"
>civil rights groups who want to preserve the Internet as it is - the last remaining open communications platform where anyone with access and a computer
can create and consume online content.


Right now a film student in Idaho can upload a video...

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Friday, December 11, 2009, 07:56 AM.:

How Low Will Israel Stoop in Its Propaganda War? - By Stuart Littlewood

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 5,039 words

PalestineChronicle" -- - 'The Israel Project', a US media advocacy group, has produced a revised training manual to help the worldwide Zionist movement win the propaganda war, keep their ill-gotten territorial gains and persuade international audiences to accept that their crimes are necessary and conform to 'shared values' between Israel and the civilized West.
It’s a Clever Document

The manual teaches how to justify the slaughter, the ethnic cleansing, the land-grabbing, the cruelty and the blatant disregard for international law and UN resolutions, and make it all smell sweeter with a liberal squirt of the aerosol of persuasive language. It is designed to hoodwink us ignorant and gullible Americans and Europeans into believing that we actually share values with the racist regime in Israel and that its abominable behaviour is therefore deserving of our support.

Israel is hoping for a PR massacre. The other side - the Palestinian Authority and the PLO - don’t take communications seriously and have neglected to correct Israeli distortion. They are happy, it seems, for Israel’s one-sided definitions to prevail, which of course makes the task for Israel so much easier. This latest propaganda offensive is potentially the 'coup de grace' to finish off the tormented...

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Sunday, October 18, 2009, 12:13 PM.:

Censored From the Independent's Website -

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 167 words

Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city,


17 Sep 2009

October 13, 2009 - Summary

 

The PDF presents a copy of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored
from the Independent's website. The copy has been taken from Google cache.

The file is of special interest in light of a rel="nofollow" href="
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament"
>gag order obtained by Trafigura via their lawyers Carter-Ruck against the Guardian, and subsequent http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Trafigura_threats_to_Norwegian_press_over_Minton_report_exposing_toxic_dumping,_Sep_2009"
>legal threats by Trafigura against a Norwegian newspaper for reporting on the issue.


Subject of the dispute is reportage on the so-called Minton Report, exposing Trafigura's shameful
role in what the BBC called the biggest toxic waste scandal of the 21st century, resulting in death and illness in a city of the Ivory Coast, and thousands
of injured Africans suing the multinational corporation Trafigura.


For more information also see http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23715.htm"
>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23715.htm  rel="nofollow" href="
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8048626.stm"
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8048626.stm


DOWNLOAD/VIEW FULL FILE FROM

rel="nofollow" href="
http://88.80.16.63/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>fastest (Sweden), http://wikileaks.org/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>current site, http://88.80.13.160.nyud.net/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>slow (US), http://wikileaks.fi/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>Finland, http://wikileaks.nl/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>Netherlands, http://wikileaks.pl/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>Poland, http://wikileaks.to/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>Tonga, http://wikileaks.eu/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>Europe, https://secure.wikileaks.org/leak/trafigura-toxic-waste-independent.pdf"
>SSL,



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Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 07:43 AM.:

The Israel Lobby’s Global Propaganda Manual - By Paul J. Balles

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 1,564 words

More than 50 years ago, Vance Packard shook the commercial world with the publication of his book The Hidden Persuaders. It was, as the book jacket claims, "A revealing, often shocking explanation of new techniques of research and methods of persuasion.”

Packard revealed, "If people couldn't discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating unreasonably, in some easy, warm, emotional way."

Much merchandizing success, according to Packard, "...hinged, to a large extent, upon successfully manipulating or coping with our guilt feelings, fears, anxieties, hostilities, loneliness feelings, inner tensions”.

Packard raised serious questions of morality related to the "people-manipulating activities of persuaders … and their ability to contact millions of us simultaneously", giving them "the power to do good or evil on a scale never before possible in a very short time".

Among the most evil of the hidden persuaders are the political propagandists. Their "evil" stems from the fact that they have a political agenda, which discriminates unreasonably and is designed to manipulate emotions.

The manipulative approach to politics is, of course, not a discovery of the 1950s, or even the 20th century. Napoleon Bonaparte set up a press bureau that he called his Bureau of Public Opinion. Its function was “to manufacture...

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Sunday, September 20, 2009, 07:20 AM.:

Why Propaganda Trumps Truth - By Paul Craig Roberts

Category:Media | Posted by: babagrr | Add comment 2,263 words

" -- -An article in the journal, Sociological Inquiry, casts light on the effectiveness of propaganda. Researchers examined why big lies succeed where little lies fail. Governments can get away with mass deceptions, but politicians cannot get away with sexual affairs.

The researchers explain why so many Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it has become obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with the event. Americans developed elaborate rationalizations based on Bush administration propaganda that alleged Iraqi involvement and became deeply attached to their beliefs. Their emotional involvement became wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality. They looked for information that supported their beliefs and avoided information that challenged them, regardless of the facts of the matter.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the believability of the Big Lie as compared to the small lie: “In the simplicity of their minds, people more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and...

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