Propaganda bots out in force…
Tag: propaganda
Media Applaud the New Cold Wars—but Could US Be More Aggressive, Please?
US media are fixin’ for a fight with China, Russia—or both. Commentary on the recent G7 and NATO summits, as well as President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was replete with examples of news outlets alternately praising the Biden administration for ramping up new cold wars with China and Russia, and criticizing it for not being even more aggressive. As it propagandized about the US supposedly fighting for democracy, this coverage betrayed a total indifference to the potential costs of these hostilities.
Facebook bans propaganda expert Professor Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
You may now be able to discuss coronavirus origins on Facebook – because the current US administration happened to say so – but it appears people are still most decidedly banned from discussing their own scientific work – if it happens to be related to how exactly Facebook goes about censoring and canceling people.
That circle is now complete for renowned UK academic Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, an information and propaganda control researcher, who has been presented with an abrupt, but “lifetime” ban on the platform – for posting about his own research that has in the meanwhile been cited by the academic community.
On June 26, reports say, this professor emeritus at two London University colleges and a Cambridge Quondam fellow was informed that his account got banned. Facebook at least was “egalitarian” here in that it provided the noted academic with no more explanation about what he had supposedly done wrong than it does any of its “ordinary” censorship victims – beyond accusing them of violating unspecified “community standards.”
But the note did have a tone of sinister finality to it, reading, “unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate it (the account) for any reason. This will be our last message regarding your account.”
And because even after failing in his attempts to pry the reason for his banning from Facebook’s cold censorship hands, the professor, like the rest of us, is now left guessing why this happened.
As variant rises, vaccine plan targets ‘movable middle’
Thrown off-stride to reach its COVID-19 vaccination goal, the Biden administration is sending A-list officials across the country, devising ads for niche markets and enlisting community organizers to persuade unvaccinated people to get a shot.
The strategy has the trappings of a political campaign, complete with data crunching to identify groups that can be won over.
But the message is about public health, not ideology. The focus is a group health officials term the “movable middle” — some 55 million unvaccinated adults seen as persuadable, many of them under 30.
“We’re not just going to do the mass vaccination sites,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. “It’s door to door. It’s mobile clinics. We’re doing vaccinations at church, the PTA meeting, the barber shop, the grocery store.”
Officials have seized on a compelling new talking point, courtesy of the coronavirus. The potent delta variant that has ravaged India is spreading here. Now accounting for about 1 in 5 virus samples genetically decoded in the U.S., the more transmissible mutation has gained a foothold in Mountain West and heartland states. Many of those infected are young and unvaccinated.
The White House has lent its top names to the vaccine push.
President Joe Biden visited a mobile vaccination site in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday. Earlier in the day, first lady Jill Biden held the hand of a woman at a drive-thru vaccination site in Kissimmee, Florida.
Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, has racked up thousands of frequent flyer miles, visiting at least 18 or 19 states by his count.
The administration also has recruited celebrities and athletes, including country music star Brad Paisley and the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team. It has teamed up with Twitch and Riot Games to reach online gamers and with Panera and Chipotle to offer free food to those getting a shot.
The message, as Surgeon General Vivek Murthy put it: “If you are vaccinated, you are protected. If you are not, the threat of variants is real and growing.”
It’s unclear how well the levers of persuasion are functioning. Vaccination rates have dropped below 1 million a day, and there’s no sign yet of a turnaround. The administration has acknowledged that it will fall short of its goal of having 70% of adults vaccinated by July Fourth.
Listen up!
They really can’t…
The Enduring False Narrative About the PULSE Massacre Shows the Power of Media Propaganda
On the fifth anniversary of the PULSE nightclub massacre in Orlando, numerous senators, politicians and activist groups commemorated that tragic event by propagating an absolute falsehood: namely, that the shooter, Omar Mateen, was motivated by anti-LGBT animus. The evidence is definitive and conclusive that this is false — Mateen, like so many others who committed similar acts of violence, was motivated by rage over President Obama’s bombing campaigns in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and chose PULSE at random without even knowing it was a gay club — yet this media-consecrated lie continues to fester.
On Saturday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) falsely described the massacre as an “unspeakable act of hate toward the LGBTQ+ community.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) went even further, claiming “the LGBTQ+ community was targeted and killed—all because they dared to live their lives.” Her fellow Illinois Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, claimed forty-nine lives were lost due to “anti-LGBTQ hate” (he forgot the +). These false claims were compiled by the gay socialist activist Matt Thomas, who correctly objected: “the shooter literally picked PULSE at random from Google after security was too tight at the mall he went to first,” adding that while LGBT groups “are hopeless of course,” too much money and power is at stake for them to give up this self-serving fiction. But he asked, “Shouldn’t the bar be a little higher for senators?”
Facebook partners with WHO and more in a bid to end “vaccine hesitancy”
Facebook announced it’s partnering with leading health organizations, including the WHO, and experts in other industries, to help solve “vaccine hesitancy.”
The coalition, called the Alliance for Advancing Health Online, was announced via a blog post on Facebook’s Newsroom. The purpose of the alliance is “to advance public understanding of how social media and behavioral sciences can be leveraged to improve the health of communities around the world.”
Facebook’s partners in the initiative include, the WHO, the CDC Foundation, the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Merck, Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the World Bank.
CIA (Dis)Information Operations Come Home To The US
Reporters joke the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman. You need only listen carefully to questions and say “No comment’ before heading to Happy Hour. The joke, however, is on us. The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information about itself. They meanwhile choose to profit from the other side of the equation, active information operations designed to influence events in America. It is 2021 and the CIA is running an op against the American people.
Leon Panetta, the Director CIA from 2009 to 2011 explained bluntly his CIA did influence foreign media outlets ahead of elections in order to “change attitudes within the country.” The method, Panetta said, was to “acquire media within a country or within a region that could very well be used for being able to deliver a specific message or work to influence those that may own elements of the media to be able to cooperate, work with you in delivering that message.”
The CIA has been running such information ops to influence foreign elections since the end of WWII. Richard Bissell, who ran the agency’s operations during the Cold War, wrote of “exercising control over a newspaper or broadcasting station, or of securing the desired outcome in an election.” A report on the CIA in Chile boasts the Agency portrayed its favored candidate in one election as a “wise, sincere and high-minded statesman” while painting his leftist opponent as a “calculating schemer.” At one point in the 1980s foreign media insertions ran 80 a day.
The goal is to control information as a tool of influence. Sometimes the control is very direct, simply paying a reporter to run a story, or, as was done in Iraq, simply operating the media outlet yourself (known as the Orwellian Indigenous Media Project.) The problem is such direct action is easily exposed, destroying credibility.
Barack and Michelle Obama Creating Netflix Animated Series to ‘Reframe’ Children’s Understanding of Government
Barack and Michelle Obama are creating a Netflix animated series designed to “reframe” how children think about government and civic engagement, with musical performances by artists including Adam Lambert, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Janelle Monáe.
Netflix announced the ten-episode We the People is set to debut July 4. The Obamas, who have an ongoing production deal with Netflix, are serving as executive producers on the series, along with Doc McStuffins creator Chris Nee and ABC’s Black-ish creator Kenya Barris.
In a press release sent to multiple news outlets, the streamer called the show “an exuberant call to action for everyone to rethink civics as a living, breathing thing and to reframe their understanding of what government and citizenship mean in a modern world.”
Hellbound and Down 
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