Tag: propaganda

The Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the Corruption of the American City

The act of naming is always a form of propaganda. When you name something, you are never perfectly describing what it is, but are instead influencing how it is perceived.

Marketers know this better than anyone. Prior to 1977, there was no such thing as the Chilean sea bass; the fish was called, instead, the Pata­gonian toothfish. The Chilean sea bass isn’t a type of bass at all, and most of them do not come from Chile. It was purely a marketing invention: an entrepreneur named Lee Lantz intuited that the American market might enjoy the taste of the Patagonian toothfish, but would never buy it under its given name. First, he chose to falsely call it a “bass” because Americans were comfortable with that type of fish. He then rejected the names “Pacific sea bass” and “South American sea bass,” on the grounds that they were too generic, and eventually settled on “Chilean sea bass” as a more exotic alternative.

The name of one of the most popular fish in the world therefore has nothing to do with what the fish really is. A type of cod that is primarily farmed near Antarctica became the Chilean sea bass as a Goldilocks branding compromise. The familiarity of the bass was married to the perceived exoticism of Chile so that an American entrepreneur could sell a fish nobody had ever heard of to high-end restaurants in the United States. This ploy worked so well that today nobody has ever heard of the Patagonian toothfish, while the Chilean sea bass has a secure and inalienable position on restaurant menus from sea to shining sea.

So its name is propaganda, but nobody cares. A lie that makes money will always be preferable to a truth that does not. Once you realize that every name is propaganda, it becomes readily apparent how much misconduct, greed, and corruption can be concealed behind an innocuously disingenuous name, especially a name that successfully evokes positive emotions in the general public.

Consider the word “nonprofit.” Whoever came up with the idea of calling these organizations “nonprofits” was a marketing genius on the level of Steve Jobs. When someone hears the word nonprofit, they assume that such an organization is working for the public good; that it serves the homeless, protects the weak, exists for the benefit and the betterment of society at large. Hearing that something is a “nonprofit” immediately gives a sense that the organization is trustworthy and the people running it are driven by a charitable agenda. It’s a word that shuts down the critical faculties and grants an instantaneous moral stature to any organization to which it is applied. Consequently, non­profits receive a benefit of the doubt that would not be granted to any other form of private corporation.

Yet nonprofit organizations are frequently the exact opposite of what they appear to be. As a consequence of the benefit of the doubt provided to nonprofits, there is rarely enough oversight to guarantee that they are doing what we pay them to do. In some cities, upwards of a billion dollars of public funds are paid to nonprofit organizations every year with glaringly insufficient safeguards to ensure that the money is used in a manner likely to serve the public interest.

Keep reading

Apple’s Latest iOS 17.5 Update Coerces Millions of Americans into Downloading LGBTQ Propaganda with Phone Update

Apple Inc. has once again sparked outrage with its latest iOS 17.5 update—this time by pushing LGBTQ-themed content onto its millions of users through a mandatory software update.

On Tuesday, the tech giant rolled out an update that introduced a new set of Pride Radiance wallpapers that many see as a coercive push of LGBTQ propaganda.

“This update introduces a new Pride Radiance wallpaper for the Lock Screen, Apple News enhancements, and other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your iPhone,” stated Apple’s update notes. “Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices.”

The move has been met with mixed reactions. Although using the wallpaper is not mandatory, some users feel that including LGBTQ+-themed wallpapers is an unnecessary politicization of what should be a neutral tech update.

Twitter user Sid commented, “iOS 17.5 is out! Nothing new, just a new wallpaper pack for gay people which even they’ll refuse to use because of how bad it looks.”

Keep reading

Ukrainians are God’s chosen people – Zelensky

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has proclaimed that God is an “ally” of Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. Despite his invoking of the Almighty, Zelensky has led a crackdown on the Orthodox Church for the last two years.

As Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter on Sunday, Zelensky released a video address from Kiev’s Saint Sophia Cathedral, in which he accused Russia of “breaking all the commandments.”

“The world sees it, God knows it,” he said. “And we believe God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder. So, with such an ally, life will definitely win over death.”

Zelensky’s appeal to Christians came as Ukraine’s parliament examines legislation that would close down the country’s largest Christian church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). While the law has sat in parliament for months, Zelensky’s government has moved to restrict the Church’s activity since the conflict began in 2022.

Keep reading

The Golden Age Of Disinformation Has Only Just Begun

Disinformation is all about power, and because of the harmful and far-reaching influence that disinformation exerts, it cannot achieve much without power.

As a tool for shaping public perceptions, disinformation can be used by authoritarian regimes and democracies alike. The dissemination of false information is not a new practice in human history. However, over the last few decades, it has become professionalized and has taken on exorbitant proportions at both national and international levels.

The Origins of Disinformation

Disinformation can be understood as misleading information, intentionally produced and deliberately disseminated, to mislead public opinion, harm a target group, or advance political or ideological objectives.

The term disinformation is a translation of the Russian дезинформация (dezinformatsiya). On Jan. 11, 1923, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to create a Department of Disinformation. Its mission was “to mislead real or potential adversaries about the true intentions” of the USSR. From then on, disinformation became a tactic of Soviet political warfare known as “active measures,” a crucial element of Soviet intelligence strategy involving falsification, subversion, and media manipulation.

During the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, this tactic was used by numerous intelligence agencies. The expression “disinformation of the masses” came into increasing use in the 1960s and became widespread in the 1980s. Former Soviet bloc intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, the first disinformation professional to defect to the West, observed in this regard that ”The interpretation [of the term] is slightly distorted because public opinion is only one of the potential targets. Many disinformation games are designed only to manipulate the decision-making elite, and receive no publicity.”

With its creation in July 1947, the CIA was given two main missions: to prevent surprise foreign attacks against the United States and to hinder the advance of Soviet communism in Europe and Third World countries. During the four decades of the Cold War, the CIA was also at the forefront of U.S. counter-propaganda and disinformation.

The Soviet Union’s successful test of a nuclear weapon in 1949 caught the United States off guard and led to the advent of the two nuclear powers clashing on the world stage in an international atmosphere of extreme tension, fear, and uncertainty. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower received a top-secret report from a commission chaired by retired Gen. James H. Doolittle, which concluded: “If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.” Of course, “repugnant” philosophy includes subversion through disinformation.

Although the United States had high expertise in this field, it did not react much to the disinformation that was sent its way until 1980, when a false document claimed that Washington supported apartheid in South Africa. Later on, they also took offense at Operation Denver, a Soviet disinformation campaign aimed at having the world believe that the United States had intentionally created HIV/AIDS.

Keep reading

U.S. Government Helps Pro-Ukraine Media Spread Propaganda And Silence American Critics

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield — to win hearts and minds.

A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”

But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war.

Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.

Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.

Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives.

“What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions the US/EU role in the Ukraine war or who dissents from their narratives,” Greenwald has observed.

Keep reading

OnlyFans star Farha Khalidi claims she was paid by Biden administration to spread ‘political propaganda’ to her thousands of social media followers

OnlyFans star Farha Khalidi said President Joe Biden‘s team paid her to spread ‘political propaganda’ on her platforms.

Specifically, the social media personality said that by the time she graduated college she was doing paid posts for everyone from Planned Parenthood to the Biden administration to dating apps.

‘I was doing full-on political propaganda,’ Khalidi told commentator Richard Hanania of working with a team commissioning an ad with her for Biden. 

Khalidi said that Biden’s team didn’t want her to disclose to her hundreds of thousands of followers that they were paying her for the content.

The White House wanted Khalidi to say she felt represented by then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson after Biden nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The content creator said she did not agree to that wording because she didn’t feel “reflected” as a ‘person of color.’

‘The funny thing is they’re like, “Do not disclose this is an ad”. Because, you know, they’re like, “technically it’s not a product so you don’t have to disclose it’s an ad”.

‘Because I think they just wanted some edgy girl of color to just tell people – when they nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, they’re like, “Can you say as a person of color, you know, you feel reflected?”‘ Khalidi detailed in the podcast.

Keep reading

LGBT Activists And Accomplice Media Exploit Teen Deaths For Political Points

In yet another attempt to exploit and politicize the death of an LGBT teenager, GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis recently claimed on Twitter/X that the reported murder of 17-year-old River Nevaeh Goddard was directly connected to anti-LGBT “rhetoric” and Republican legislation.

She insisted, “Too often, young people, and LGBTQ youth in particular, are failed by the adults and systems entrusted to protect them, and do not feel they have anywhere to turn in times of crisis. Our leaders and our communities must do better.”

She went on to demand, “Politicians must stop dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation that fans the flames of hate and violence.”

The thing is, Goddard wasn’t killed due to bullying or alleged anti-LGBT legislation in schools or even in a hate crime. She was allegedly murdered by her 20-year-old boyfriend who reportedly stabbed her repeatedly with a sword over accusations she was cheating on him.

Shane Curry, 20, of Stow, Massachusetts, has been charged with assault and battery on a family or household member. On April 5, 2024, police arrived at the couple’s home to do a well-being check. Curry’s mother called the police after not being able to get ahold of her son for two days. Curry attempted to block the police from entering for two hours before they finally entered and found the victim dead inside their room.

The couple reportedly had an argument in which Curry accused her of cheating on him and confronted her about her drug addiction. He told police he stabbed her several times with a sword. He told police, “The bruises aren’t working … hitting her that’s not working, so ok, I have to knife her, so I do.”

Curry has a history of domestic abuse, including assaulting his mother in 2023. Goddard’s grandfather, Michael Simmons, stated he had previously spoken with Curry and that the boyfriend promised to “take care of her.” Goddard was born in prison and raised by her grandfather but was removed due to an abusive environment. She was placed in foster care with a family until she ran away when the state requested she receive behavioral treatment. Her foster family believed she was missing for the last two years.

GLAAD reported she identified as nonbinary and pansexual and used “they/them,” pronouns. She also went by River and her birth name Nevaeh. Despite this being an obvious case of domestic abuse involving drug addiction, GLAAD urged “media reporting on Goddard’s life and death to respect Goddard’s identity and explore how the growing climate of anti-LGBTQ animus, legislation, and attacks factors into Goddard not receiving adequate support in the years leading up to their death.”

They plan to turn her death into another propaganda tool, purely for politics. As was true with the recent viral death of Dagny (Nex) Benedict, there is no evidence whatsoever that alleged anti-LGBT legislation or rhetoric or even bullying had anything to do with the case. Advocate, an LGBT site, included in the story, “Goddard’s death comes just months after the death of Indigenous transgender high school student Nex Benedict, who died by suicide after being physically assaulted by their peers in a bathroom.”

Keep reading

BBC boosts Ukraine’s falling morale by slandering Russia’s war dead

MI6’s BBC outlet is at it again. This time, in a disgusting effort to boost Ukraine’s flagging morale, they featured a story by their crack Russian unit explaining how Russian graveyards are full to the brim of soldiers who fell in Ukraine. As always with the MI6’s B team, it is the sort of misinformed guff that belongs in a badly edited student newspaper rather than in such a globally prominent propaganda outlet.

Or indeed in the website of Ukraine’s Ministry of Misinformation. If we first go to Ukraine’s site, we see that the Russkies are getting a right mauling, with some 442,880 soldiers dead up to April Fool’s Day, 2024. Although Wikipedia parrots those numbers by using the same tainted NATO sources, to put them in context, Wikipedia claim that the United States lost a relatively modest 58,281 dead during its genocide campaign in Vietnam, and the Watson Intstitute claims that the United States lost 7,057 troops in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns, with a much higher number, 30,177, committing suicide.

Other things being equal then, the Russkies should be up in arms against their government over these deaths in Ukraine. But other things are not, of course, equal. First off, as a quick Google search shows us these numbers of Russian dead are part of a vociferous NATO echo chamber, we can see no need as to why this should be a major NATO news story today unless Russia is experiencing the turbulence the United States did during its Vietnamese cull or if the BBC has brought additional information to light, thus making it a story worthy of coverage today. Or, of course, as we suspect, that the BBC has once again been leaned on to put its shoulder to the NATO wheel.

That is certainly the impression we get from this Politico article, which claims that the morale of Ukraine’s Armed Forces is crumbling as their casualties exponentially mount. The pleas of Clown Prince Zelensky and the rest of Kiev’s circus for more arms, more sanctions and more Swiss bank accounts certainly seems to help counter BBC’s flagging line that Russia is on its knees. As do all the tiktok and Twitter videos of Ukrainian grandfathers and pregnant women being frog marched off to the front.

This is not to negate the BBC argument but to say that the Ukrainian war has got less hands on media coverage than perhaps any other since the Korean war. And, though much of that lack of direct coverage has been due to the use of long range drones and artillery rather than the preponderance of close hand to hand fighting, much more of it has been due to the way both High Commands are conducting their affairs.

Keep reading

Cruelty of Language: Leaked NY Times Memo Reveals Anti-Palestinian Bias of US Media

The New York Times coverage of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, like that of other mainstream US media, is a disgrace to journalism.

This assertion should not surprise anyone. US media is driven neither by facts nor morality, but by agendas, calculating and power-hungry. The humanity of 120 thousand dead and wounded Palestinians because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza is simply not part of that agenda.

In a report – based on a leaked memo from the New York Times – the Intercept found out that the so-called US newspaper of record has been feeding its journalists with frequently updated ‘guidelines’ on what words to use, or not use, when describing the horrific Israeli mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7.

In fact, most of the words used in the paragraph above would not be fit to print in the NYT, according to its ‘guidelines’.

Shockingly, internationally recognized terms and phrases such as ‘genocide’, ‘occupied territory’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘refugee camps’, were on the newspaper’s rejection list.

It gets even more cruel. “Words like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo, leaked and verified by the Intercept and other independent media.

Though such language control is, according to the NYT, aimed at fairness for ‘all sides’, their application was almost entirely one-sided. For example, a previous Intercept report showed that the American newspaper had, between October 7 and November 14, mentioned the word ‘massacre’ 53 times when it referred to Israelis being killed by Palestinians and only once in reference to Palestinians being killed by Israel.

Keep reading

NASA warns China is conducting military programs in space under the guise of civilian exploration

NASA has warned that China could be preparing for a lunar takeover in the coming years, using its civilian space program as guise for military operations.

Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, fears the Asian nation’s ‘extraordinary strides’ in the last decade are more than just for science, but to exert dominance over the moon.

China has launched a craft to the moon and brought samples back to Earth, has its own space station circling the planet and is eyeing 2030 for when it will send humans to the natural satellite.

While NASA is set to land humans on the lunar South Pole in 2026, Nelson has raised concerns that China has the capabilities to beat them there.  

‘China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive,’ Nelson told members of the House Appropriations Committee at a 2024 budget hearing. 

‘We believe that a lot of their, so-called civilian space programs is a military program,’ Nelson continued. ‘And I think, in effect, we are in a race.’

Nelson made the statements to a committee this week as support for why NASA needs a $25.4 billion budget for 2025.

The country plans to establish a landing base on the moon’s surface within the next five years, making it all the more necessary for the US to ramp up its efforts and investments to send astronauts to space. 

Keep reading