Probably not bots…
Tag: propaganda
Ukrainian Government Publishes List of American Individuals Who are Allegedly “Russian Propagandists”
The government of Ukraine recently published a list of individuals who it believes are “promoting Russian propaganda.” As Finn McRedmond of UnHerd noted, this list includes “a number of prominent Western intellectuals.”
On July 14, 2022, the “Center for Countering Disinformation”, published a list on its website of academics, activists, and politicians who are “promoting Russian propaganda.” These included notable intellectuals and politicians such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, geopolitical analyst Edward Luttwak, international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, and independent leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald.
The list does not provide any specific consequences for the people who are mentioned on it.
This institution was set up in 2021 under the watch of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and was headed by former lawyer Polina Lysenko. The CCD is under the purview of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
The CCD’s goal is to find and combat “propaganda” and “destructive disinformation” and to stop the “manipulation of public opinion.”
McRedmond observed that the “exact criteria for inclusion are also unclear, although next to each name the report lists the ‘pro Russian’ opinions the individual promotes.” In the case of Edward Luttwak, he earned the Ukrainian state’s ire by suggesting that “referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”, referring to the breakaway republics that declared their independence following the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Mearsheimer is an outspoken critic of American involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. His remarks that “NATO has been in Ukraine since 2014” and that “NATO provoked Putin” were what prompted the Ukrainian government to label him as a “pro-Russian propagandist.”
The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time
The president and first lady of Ukraine have posed for a romantic photoshoot with Vogue magazine, wherein President Volodymyr Zelensky waxes poetical about his love for his darling wife.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: how is Zelensky making time for a Vogue photoshoot amidst his busy schedule of PR appearances for other major western institutions?
I mean this is after all the same Volodymyr Zelensky who has been so busy making video appearances for the Grammy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, the World Economic Forum and probably the Bilderberg group as well, and having meetings with celebrities like Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Bono and the Edge from U2. It’s as busy a PR tour as he could possibly have without having a discussion about the strategic importance of long-range artillery with Elmo on Sesame Street.
Oh yeah, and also isn’t there like a war or something happening in Ukraine? You’d think he’d probably be somewhat busy with that too.
Call me crazy, but I’m beginning to suspect that there might be a concerted effort to manipulate the way we think about the war in Ukraine. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s the most aggressively perception-managed war we’ve ever experienced.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February we have not only been smashed with mass media propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen while Russian media are purged from the airwaves, we’re also seeing the new media element of unprecedented amounts of online censorship, algorithm-boosted propaganda, and social media trolling.
So we’ve literally never seen this much overall effort put into manipulating the way the public thinks about a war. Which makes sense, given that it’s a profoundly dangerous proxy war which stands to benefit ordinary people in no way, shape or form.
I mean, can you imagine if people were allowed to just think their own thoughts about their government’s economic warfare against Russia which is hurting them financially and pushing millions toward starvation with the full awareness and approval of the US government? Or if Americans were allowed to wonder if the billions they are pouring into this proxy conflict could be better spent at home? Or if people started objecting to a needless conflict for geostrategic domination threatening their lives and the lives of everyone they know with the risk of nuclear annihilation?
Can’t have that.
POLICE DEPARTMENTS ARE SPENDING MILLIONS ON ‘COPAGANDA’
In May of this year, I testified at a hearing in San Francisco where city leaders questioned the police department’s funding and use of public relations professionals. That funding was heavier than you might expect.
According to police department documents provided to the County Board of Supervisors, budget items included a nine-person full-time team managed by a director of strategic communications who alone costs the city $289,423; an undisclosed number of cops paid part-time to do PR work on social media; a Community Engagement Unit tracking public opinion; officers who intervene with the families of victims of police violence and who are dispatched to the scenes of police violence to control initial media reaction; and a full-time videographer making PR videos about cops.
San Francisco is not unique. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has 42 employees doing PR work in what it calls, in Orwellian fashion, its “Information Bureau.” The Los Angeles Police Department has another 25 employees devoted to formal PR work.
Why do police invest so much in manipulating our perceptions of what they do? I call this phenomenon “copaganda”: creating a gap between what police actually do and what people think they do.
Sure they are…
Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine
Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue. Here they are:
“I’ve spent my career working in the mainstream, and I’ve covered probably seven, eight, nine shooting wars; I’ve never seen coverage so utterly consumed by a tsunami of jingoism, and of manipulative jingoism as this one.”
~ John Pilger
This comment comes from a recent interview with the legendary Australian journalist by the South China Morning Post, and it says so much about the information ecosystem we now find ourselves floundering around trying to understand things in.
From the earliest days of the invasion it was clear that the western world was being smashed with a deluge of propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. In the first full month of the conflict, American network TV stations gave more coverage to the war in Ukraine than any other war that the US has been directly involved in, including Iraq and Vietnam. Literal Iraq war architects were some of the first pundits sought out for analysis of the conflict by the mainstream press, and calls for insane escalations against Russia succeeded in pushing the Overton window of acceptable debate in the direction of warmongering extremism and away from support for diplomatic solutions.
And this was all easily piped into mainstream consciousness because the way had been lubricated by years of Russia hysterica resulting from the mass scale psychological operation known as Russiagate. America’s most dangerous confrontation in generations just so happens to have been preceded by years of media-generated panic about that very same country, despite the Ukraine invasion having ostensibly nothing whatsoever to do with the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government. Heckin’ heck of a coincidence right there, buddy boy.
“It’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits. Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”
~ Noam Chomsky
This quote, from an interview last month with Ramzy Baroud, is self-evidently true and should be pointed out more often.
People don’t go adding the same gratuitous adjectives and modifiers to something over and over again unless they’re trying to manipulate how it’s perceived. If your neighbor always referred to his wife as “my wife who I definitely never beat,” you’d immediately become suspicious because that’s not how normal people talk about normal things. We don’t say “round Earth” or “the Holocaust that totally happened,” we just say the words, because their basic nature is not seriously in dispute and we’ve got nothing invested in manipulating or obfuscating people’s understanding about them.
But but but Top Gun!
Scientists in China claim to have developed ‘mind-reading’ artificial intelligence
Researchers in China reportedly claimed this month that they had developed artificial intelligence capable of reading the human mind, though full information about the alleged breakthrough remains elusive shortly after it was announced.
Multiple media outlets reported this week that a since-deleted video posted online from the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Centre claimed to have produced software that can monitor both brain waves and facial recognition in order to determine if subjects are being sufficiently attentive to state propaganda.
The tool will reportedly be used to further solidify … confidence and determination to be grateful to the party, listen to the party and follow the party.”
Canadian Government Creates Pamphlet to Teach School Children that “Trump’s Wall” is Racist and “Free Speech” is Common Defense of “Hate Propaganda”
The free world is losing Canada.
Under the Trudeau regime Canadians continue to lose their rights to assemble, practice their religion, and speak freely. Now the government is teaching children that ‘free speech’ is a common defense of hate propaganda and a border wall between countries is racist.
A new government-funded booklet made for Canadian school children describes President Trump’s border wall with Mexico and free speech as two examples of hate.
The tool for children is titled: “Confronting and preventing hate in Canadian Schools.”
From page 31 of the pamphlet — President Trump’s border wall is described as a good example of hate.
The government-funded group also describes the conservative party as a group whose members include bigots, groypers, and white nationalists.
$150-million movie halted over Ukrainian ‘bad-guys’
The release of Guy Ritchie’s £125-million ($150-million) spy comedy Operation Fortune has been delayed a second time in order to remove the villains’ Ukrainian nationalities, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. Initially set to be released last January, the film is now scheduled for release later this year.
The offending characters are a group of Ukrainian gangsters who have purchased a deadly weapon, which the film’s heroes have to retrieve to foil their evil scheme. Sources told the Mail the gangsters’ characters have been edited so that they are no longer Ukrainian.
While there are “many bad guys in the film” and “the antagonists come from all over the world,” a source close to the production told the Mail that “out of sensitivity to the ongoing war in Ukraine it was decided some of these should no longer be identified as Ukrainian.”
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.