Tag: propaganda

Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For “Weaponized” Free Speech

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says “weaponized” the First Amendment rights of Americans.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States.

The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida.

Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service.

Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ionov’s bidding through groups including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California — part of an effort to influence American politics.

AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to ten years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia which carries another five years.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ’s press release regarding the indictments, adding, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well.

Keep reading

Apollo Zero (full movie)

“

Think about this: to date, only three countries have been able to put a man merely in Earth orbit – the United States, Russia, and China. That speaks to how difficult it is just to get into orbit. Next, consider how far away the moon is from the Earth: 240,000 miles. Since the alleged moon landings, no country even claims to have gone more than 400 miles from Earth and that was in the Space Shuttle. The International Space Station orbits at 200 miles above Earth. There is a big difference between 240,000 miles and 400 miles. Why can’t anyone make it more than 400 miles from Earth today if we could make a 480,000 mile round trip in 1969?

NASA further asserts that three men were loaded into a rocket, flew 240,000 miles to the moon and then achieved lunar orbit. They say the spacecraft separated and two astronauts flew 60 miles to the surface of the moon, in a vacuum and 1/6 Earth gravity. They then hung out on the moon for up to three days in 250 degree heat, hit golf balls, rode a moon buggy — but what powered their life support and equipment? They say BATTERIES.

They then supposedly blasted off the surface of the moon, docked with the third man going around the moon at over 4000 miles per hour, and made it 240,000 miles back to Earth. They re-entered Earth’s atmosphere going 25,000 mph, but parachutes assured a safe landing in the ocean.”

What one tweet can teach us about “Fake News”

At the time I just laughed it off. It’s an absurd little piece of propaganda, but hardly the most egregious.

But, for some reason, it stuck in my head and started bothering me. After 48 hours or so I realized what about it was bothering me, and that it is actually an interesting microcosmic case study on what the era of “fake news” really means.

Everything about this tweet is fake. Everything.

The letter itself is obviously fake. The absurd zenith of the “children being precociously political” meme that became a running joke years ago.

Even if “Charlotte” exists, those aren’t her words, just a rough regurgitation of her parents’ brainwashing. And Charlotte almost certainly doesn’t exist.

There’s no reason to even suppose any physical letter exists at all and it isn’t just a photoshopped CG image. It easily could be.

The tweet itself is also fake – or at least pretend – because there’s no way President Biden operates his own social media accounts. I honestly doubt he’s even mentally capable of doing so. Rather, as Five Times August points out in another tweet, the Whitehouse employs a few “platform managers” and “social media directors”.

Keep reading

Propaganda Fail: NordStream Cover Story Rapidly Crumbling

It should be obvious to any honest pundit by now: if you are one of the nominally same individuals who rightly suspected that the United States and its allies destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines – as promised by President Joe Biden himself, “once and for all” – then it’s time to stop being propagandized and compelled to perform mental gymnastics in order to convince yourself not to believe what you see and hear with your very own eyes and ears.

The game was as blatant as it was bombastic: to destroy key European energy infrastructure and then replace Russian gas with American LNG, making US vassal state Germany and the rest of the EU permanently dependent on over-priced and spotty US energy imports.

Now that the US government and mainstream media cover story is falling apart, it’s time to ask yourself and your cohort how long you’re prepared to entertain your own cognitive dissonance.

“Cockamamie yarns like the one involving the yacht suggest not nefarious cunning but simple incompetence.”

Keep reading

Eat Me, MSNBC

I’m going to be interviewed on MSNBC today by Mehdi Hasan, the author of a book called Win Every Argument. I’m looking forward to it as one would a root canal or rectal.

I accepted the invitation because it would have been wrong to refuse, on the off chance he was planning a good-faith discussion. If you’re reading this, things have gone another way.

I last appeared on MSNBC six years ago, on January 13, 2017, to talk with Chris Hayes and of all people Malcolm Nance, about the then-burgeoning Trump-Russia scandal.

The Trump-Russia story was white-hot and still in its infancy. That same day, news leaked from Israel that Americans warned the Mossad not to share information with the incoming administration, because Russia had “leverages of pressure” on Trump. Asked by Chris about the scandal generally, I made what I thought was a boring-but-true observation, that we in the media didn’t “have any hard evidence” of a conspiracy, just not a lot to go on. This was the TV equivalent of a shrug.

Nance jumped on this in a way I remember feeling was unexpected and oddly personal. “Matt’s a journalist. I’m an intelligence officer,” he snapped. “There is no such thing as coincidence in my world.” Chris jumped in to note reporters have different standards, and I agreed, saying, “We haven’t seen anything that allows us to say unequivocally that x and y happened last year.”

“Unequivocally” seemed to trigger Nance. With regard to the DNC hack, he said, “That evidence is unequivocal. It’s on the Internet.” As for “these links possibly with the Trump team,” he proclaimed, “You’re probably never going to see the CIA’s report.” Nance went on to answer “no” to a question from Chris about whether leaks “were coming from the intelligence community,” Chris wrapped up with a sensible suggestion that we all not rely on a parade of “leaks and counter-leaks,” and the segment was done.

To this day I get hit probably a hundred times a day with the question, “What happened to you, man?” What happened? That segment happened, but to MSNBC, not me.

That exchange between Nance and me was symbolic of a choice the network faced. They could either keep doing what reporters had done since the beginning of time, confining themselves to saying things they could prove. Or, they could adopt a new approach, in which you can say anything is true or confirmed, so long as a politician or intelligence official told you it was.

We know how that worked out. I was never invited back, nor for a long time was any other traditionally skeptical reporter, while Nance — one of the most careless spewers of provable errors ever to appear on a major American news network — became one of the Peacock’s most familiar faces.

Keep reading

Weaponizing e-girls: How the US military uses YouTube and TikTok to improve its image

US military personnel often share their everyday life on TikTok. Some joke around and play pranks on their companions, others share what they do and eat in the army, etc. 

One of today’s most popular ‘military influencers’ is Hayley Lujan, also known as lunchbaglujan. Lujan is known for her provocative, somewhat cynical sense of humor, friendship with Donald Trump’s son, and the fact that she is not a simple soldier, but a specialist in Psyops – Psychological Operations.

The career platform for US military recruits states that such “Soldiers are known for their communication expertise—using unconventional tactics to persuade and influence foreign allies and enemies in support of U.S. Army objectives.” 

Lujan’s subscribers are aware of this. They assume that her account is part of a carefully designed marketing strategy. The influencer’s goal is to help bolster the reputation of the US military, particularly in the eyes of zoomers. Or, as the authors of “Know Your Meme” say, “to get ‘simps’ and the dudes who reply to every picture of boobs with ‘OMG DM me’ to enlist”.

Keep reading

The New York Times Is A Disgusting Militarist Smut Rag

I hate The New York Times. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. With every fiber of my being, from the depths of my immortal soul.

The “paper of record” for the most murderous and tyrannical nation on earth, The New York Times has been run by the same family since the late 1800s, during which time it has supported every depraved American war and has reliably dished out propaganda to manufacture consent for the political status quo necessary for the operation of a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood and suffering. It is a plague upon our world, and it should be destroyed, buried, and peed on.

And I am being charitable.

Among the latest items of unforgivable militarist smut churned out by the Times is an article titled “An Anxious Asia Arms for a War It Hopes to Prevent,” which freakishly frames the US as just a passive, innocent witness to the US military encirclement of China.

Times author Damien Cave writes ominously that China’s president Xi Jinping “aims to achieve a ‘national rejuvenation’ that would include displacing the United States as the dominant rule-setter in the region,” as though it makes perfect sense for the US to be the “dominant rule-setter” in the continent of Asia.

(You see lines like this in The New York Times constantly; earlier this month the Times editorial board bemoaned the fact that “the United States had tried with little success to persuade or compel China to abide by American rules,” like that’s a perfectly sane and normal line to write. Other nations make demands, the US makes “rules”. These people really do begin with the premise that the US government owns the entire world, and then write from there.)

Keep reading

Psyops Are Not New, Just More Dangerous

Since the international insanity began three years ago in the Spring of 2020, several compelling theories have emerged regarding those who have used this time to suppress freedoms and control the population.

For example, Debbie Lerman has effectively argued that lockdowns in the US were not about health, but about counter-terrorism. The state response is to control the population, and not let go of those controls once they are in place.

Aaron Kheriaty has effectively argued that we have entered a new realm of the Security State, all our actions monitored, tracked, and controlled.

Most disturbing of all, Jeffrey Tucker has effectively argued that scientific consensus has overwritten individual choice, giving us a vaccine which we all would be required to take, and which naturally leads to eugenics.

In reading these kinds of well-positioned articles, and the reactions to them on social media, it’s easy to get the impression that we have entered a truly Brave New World, one which did not formerly exist, and is an entirely new phenomenon.

The simple fact is that they are not new ideas. Man desires power over man. But even the parts of the recent attacks on humanity that may seem new are not entirely new. As outlined in the articles above, one such idea is that the government and companies have been performing psyops against us, to control our emotions and dictate our actions. 

But how do you convince the population that this mode of existence is desirable? You have to change the way they think. Is that new?

In his brilliant documentary, The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis describes how companies and governments used the psychological ideas of Sigmund Freud to manipulate people’s emotions for their own purposes and ends throughout the 1900s. 

Edward Bernays, the nephew of Freud, was chiefly responsible for bringing these ideas of mass manipulation to large corporations and the US government. In one example explored in Curtis’ documentary, the taboo against women smoking in public was preventing the large tobacco companies from selling to half of their potential market. 

Bernays hired a group of debutantes to appear in the Easter Sunday parade of 1929 in New York, under the guise that they represented the women’s suffrage movement. During the parade all the women smoked cigarettes, referencing the phrase “Torches of Freedom.” Cigarette sales to women began to take off.

What’s key here is that Bernays did not just get the women in the parade, he also alerted the press that it was happening. The press happily took photos and repeated “Torches of Freedom” in articles written for papers around the country. So the press unwittingly (or complicitly) aided Bernays in his campaign to encourage more women to smoke. Sound familiar?

Even as doctors became increasingly aware that cigarettes not only did not promote freedom, but could easily kill you, the song and dance continued. Cigarette campaigns used the medical establishment to give consumers the idea that cigarettes are safe. Again, sound familiar?

Bernays’ work with the US government included what now would be called a color revolution in Guatemala. Guatemala had a dictator who worked well with the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita), procuring bananas for sale in the US. The problem was that the workers were essentially slaves, and they revolted, electing a new leader, Dr. Juan Jose Arévalo, who installed a constitution modeling the US. 

He was followed by Jacobo Arbenz, who took the lands away from the banana company. They didn’t like that and went crying to Uncle Sam. Bernays came to the rescue, and staged anti-American pro-Communist rallies, including of course, a healthy dose of violence. No matter that Arbenz did not call himself a Communist or had any ties to Moscow. It didn’t take long for the American people to be frightened of a new Communist threat to the south, and get behind the idea that this new leader was a threat and must go. 

Bernays even came up with a new phrase for how he had manipulated the minds of Americans; he called it the Engineering of Consent. And this wasn’t the first time Bernays added a phrase to the lexicon. When he started with big business in the 1920s he thought the word propaganda was so negative, so he came up with a new one: public relations.

Keep reading

Six War Mongering Think Tanks and the Military Contractors that Fund Them

From producing reports and analysis for U.S. policy-makers, to enlisting representatives to write op-eds in corporate media, to providing talking heads for corporate media to interview and give quotes, think tanks play a fundamental role in shaping both U.S. foreign policy and public perception around that foreign policy. Leaders at top think tanks like the Atlantic Council and Hudson Institute have even been called upon to set focus priorities for the House Intelligence Committee. However, one look at the funding sources of the most influential think tanks reveals whose interests they really serve: that of the U.S. military and its defense contractors.

This ecosystem of overlapping networks of government institutions, think tanks, and defense contractors is where U.S. foreign policy is derived, and a revolving door exists among these three sectors. For example, before Biden-appointed head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin took his current position, he sat on the Board of Directors at Raytheon.

Before Austin’s appointment, current defense policy advisor Michèle Flournoy was also in the running for the position. Flournoy sat on the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, another major Pentagon defense contractor. These same defense contractors also work together with think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies to organize conferences attended by national security officials. On top of all this, since the end of the Cold War, intelligence analysis by the CIA and NSA has increasingly been contracted out to these same defense companies like BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, among others — a major conflict of interest. In other words, these corporations are in the position to produce intelligence reports which raise the alarm on U.S. “enemy” nations so they can sell more military equipment!

And of course these are the same defense companies that donate hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to think tanks. Given all this, is it any wonder the U.S. government is simultaneously flooding billions of dollars of weaponry into an unwinnable proxy war in Ukraine while escalating a Cold War into a potential military confrontation with China?

The funding to these policy institutes steers the U.S. foreign policy agenda. To give you a scope of how these contributions determine national security priorities, listed below are six of some of the most influential foreign policy think tanks, along with how much in contributions they’ve received from “defense” companies in the last year.

All funding information for these policy institutes was gathered from the most recent annual report that was available online. Also note that this list is compiled from those that make this information publicly available — many think tanks, such as the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, do not release donation sources publicly.

Keep reading