Brave New World

**panama hat** · 22-11-2022, 09:23 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

Why Is AP Still Protecting the Source Behind Its False Russia-Bombed-Poland Story?

Originally Posted by misskit

AP Fires Reporter Behind Retracted ‘Russian Missiles’ Story

in other words there are consequences to this kind of shit. Luckily Russians, Chinese etc.. haven't implemented this yet. Well, lucky for them

**harrybarracuda** · 28-11-2022, 11:22 AM

More news from that bastion of free speech, chinkystan:

Senior journalist and cameraman Ed Lawrence was filmed being led away and telling his colleague: "Call the consulate now."

Another video showed three officers pinning him down before lifting him up and leading him away.
British officials have reportedly spoken with Mr Lawrence, who has now been released.
A BBC spokesperson tonight told LBC: “The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai. He was held for several hours before being released.

"During his arrest, he was beaten and kicked by the police. This happened while he was working as an accredited journalist. “It is very worrying that one of our journalists was attacked in this way whilst carrying out his duties.
"We have had no official explanation or apology from the Chinese authorities, beyond a claim by the officials who later released him that they had arrested him for his own good in case he caught Covid from the crowd. We do not consider this a credible explanation.”

BBC journalist arrested in Shanghai during COVID protest - LBC

**harrybarracuda** · 28-11-2022, 10:54 PM

"Brave New World" *snigger*

Protests in China are featured heavily on English-language sites across the world – but for citizens within the country, what are they seeing?
With a history of heavily controlled state media, it is unsurprising that China's larger sites are relatively quiet on any news of the protests.
News of a planned spaceship launch features heavily instead...
Searches for "protests" brings up either old stories about foreign protests, or no news at all.

**sabang** · 21-12-2022, 04:02 AM

How do we stop the next war built on lies from being waged?

by William J. Astore Posted onDecember 20, 2022

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

(I prepared these notes also spoke.)

I served in the U.S. military for 20 years, and for the last 15 years I’ve been writing articles that are generally critical of that military and our nation’s drift into militarism and endless warfare. Here are two lessons I’ve learned:

1. I agree with I.F. Stone that all governments lie.

2. As a historian who’s read and studied military history for most of my life, I agree that the first casualty of war is truth.

Because all governments lie and because lies are especially common during war, a healthy democracy must have an outspoken and independent media that challenges and questions authority while informing the public.

But the mainstream media (MSM) in America is neither outspoken nor independent. The MSM in America serves as stenographers to the powerful. Far too often, the US military/government lies and leaks, the MSM believes and repeats.

The result is clear: disastrous wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq) from which little is ever learned, enabled by a media culture that is deeply compromised by, or openly in league with, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC).

Here’s the fundamental issue: We need a skeptical and powerful media to deter the MICC from wars, war profiteering, and folly. The MSM should, and must, serve as a check on the MICC while holding it accountable when it fails. By doing neither, it serves various “big lies,” enabling future abuses of power by the national security state. There is no accountability for failure, so failure is neither punished now nor is it curtailed in the future.

Even when the MICC fails, and since the Vietnam War it has failed frequently, it gets more money. Consider the FY2023 Pentagon budget, which sits at $858 billion, a nearly inconceivable sum and which is roughly $45 billion more than the Biden administration asked for.

The challenge, as I see it: How do we stop the next war built on lies from being waged?

Something to ponder: Could a more critical, more courageous, truly independent media have shortened or stopped the Vietnam War? Iraq? Afghanistan?

In his famous speech warning Americans about the MICC in 1961, Eisenhower (Ike) said that only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry could guard against the acquisition of power by the MICC. This may indeed be why most citizens are not kept informed or are misinformed about the US military and its wars. It’s hard to act when you’re kept ignorant. You’ll also be reluctant to act when you’re told to defer to the “experts” in the MSM, most of whom are deeply compromised, often by conflicts of interest that are kept hidden from you.

Military Mendacity

Put simply, the US military, in its upper ranks, lacks honor. What matters most is reputation and budgetary authority. Sharing negative news with the media is the absolute last thing the military wants to do. Surprisingly, most in the MSM are willing to look the other way, assuming they even know of military mendacity and malfeasance.

What this means, essentially, is that the MICC is unaccountable to the people – the very antithesis of democracy.

Three big examples of MICC mendacity: The Pentagon Papers revealed by Daniel Ellsberg during the Vietnam War; the Iraq War and lies about WMD (weapons of mass destruction); and the Afghan War Papers. Even as the US military was losing these three wars, military commanders and government officials spoke publicly and confidently of lights at the end of tunnels, of corners being turned toward victory. (Privately, however, they talked of serious problems and lack of progress.)

The MSM (with notable exceptions) largely repeated the happy-talk lies. Since 9/11, this is unsurprising, since the MSM leans heavily on senior retired military officers, CIA officials, and the like to “interpret” events in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. As journalist David Barstow showed, these “interpreters” were and are fed talking points by the Pentagon. Whatever this is, it’s not honest reporting. It’s not journalism. It’s state propaganda.

It’s not that the American people can’t handle the truth about “their” military. It’s that the MICC prefers to keep a lid on the truth, because the truth is often unfavorable to their positions, power, prestige, and profits.

There are many ways the MICC works with a complicit media (and a compliant Congress) to keep the truth from us.

1. Bad news is not reported. Or it’s classified or otherwise hushed up. Consider the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam or the “collateral murder” video from the Iraq War revealed by Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks.

2. Critical information is omitted. Coverage is edited. Consider the ban on showing flag-draped coffins by the Bush/Cheney administration, or official reports about drone strikes that omitted the true number of civilian/non-combatant casualties.

3. The military has its own PAOs (public affairs offices and officers) who feed news of “progress” and similar “good news” stories to the media. This is also true of the State Department. (See Peter Van Buren’s account, “We Meant Well,” of his Potemkin Village-like experience in Iraq.)

4. Ever-present appeals to patriotism and warnings that critical information will give aid and comfort to the enemy. Even worse, portraying critics as pro-Putin, as possible traitors, as in the NBC smear campaign against Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, abetted also by Hillary Clinton.

5. Run-of-the-mill propaganda. Consider, for example, how almost all U.S. sporting events include glowing coverage of the military and veterans. If all military members are “heroes,” how dare we question them! Instead, you’re encouraged to salute smartly and remain silent.

Media Complicity

Why is the MSM so hobbled and often so complicit with the MICC?

1. Intimidation. of US missiles.

2. Ratings/Economics. Recall that MSNBC fired Phil Donahue over concerns that his critical coverage of the Iraq War was turning off viewers, i.e. that the network wasn’t being seen as “patriotic” as rivals like CNN or Fox News, thereby losing market share and money.

3. Embedding Process. Reporters who want to cover war are often embedded with US military units. They come to identify with “their” troops, who, after all, are protecting them from harm. The embedding process forges a sense of dependency and camaraderie that interferes with disinterested and balanced reporting.

4. Reliance on deeply conflicted experts from the MICC instead of independent journalists. Whatever else they are, retired generals and CIA directors are not reporters or journalists.

5. Corporate advertising dollars. Why air a report critical of Boeing or Northrop Grumman when that company is a major advertiser on your network? Why bite the hand that feeds you?

You don’t need a top secret “Mockingbird” project by the CIA to infiltrate and influence the MSM, as we witnessed during the Cold War and Vietnam. Today, the MSM and its owners acquiesce in their own infiltration, hiring retired CIA agents and similar senior government officials to give/sell their “unbiased” opinions.

Again, military contractors pay for ads and sponsor shows on TV. The media is not about to challenge or criticize a big revenue stream. And it’s not always a weapons maker like Boeing or Raytheon. Think of ExxonMobil. Their thirstiest customer is the US military; ExxonMobil is unlikely to support media reports that criticize its biggest customer.

Meanwhile, there are precious few reporters and journalists willing to risk their careers to challenge the MICC. With so-called access journalism, if you reveal uncomfortable facts, you’ll likely lose access to the powerful, alienate your bosses, and probably lose your job.

Food for Thought: Journalists are selected and groomed for compliance to mainstream militarized agendas. They’ve learned and internalized what is acceptable and what isn’t. If they refuse to play along, they’re fired or shunted aside. (See Noam Chomsky and the manufacturing of consent.)

For the US military, full-spectrum dominance includes information and the control of the same, including most especially in America.

A final shocking truth: The US military lost in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere while avoiding responsibility. Indeed, its cultural authority and its command over the media have only grown stronger. Worse, the military promulgates, or goes along with, various stab-in-the-back myths that exculpate itself while mendaciously blaming the few good media outlets for accurate reporting about the MICC’s failings.

A crucial step in preventing future disastrous wars is a media culture that sees the MICC for what it is: a danger to democracy and liberty, as Ike warned us in 1961 in his farewell address. How we get there is a crucial issue; the failures above suggest remedies.

One remedy I wrote about in 2008: the major networks need to develop their own, independent, journalists who are experts on the military, rather than relying largely on retired military officers and other senior government officials.

We are told that America has independent media rather than state media like China or Russia. Yet, if America had official state media, would its coverage differ from today’s content? The MSM supports state and corporate agendas because that’s how it makes money even as it claims it’s “independent.”

A Couple of Anecdotes

A journalist colleague told me of his experience teaching students at one of America’s universities. His sense: most students today don’t want to be Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They aspire to be on-air personalities who make six-figure salaries while being invited to all the right parties. They don’t want to afflict the comfortable while comforting the afflicted; they want to be among the most comfortable. Crusading for truth isn’t what they’re about. They seek to be insiders.

From the Robert Redford movie, Three Days of the Condor: If a whistleblower goes to the MSM (in the movie, it’s The New York Times), will the truth ever see the light of day? More to the point, if the American people do see it, will they even care?

What we’re witnessing in America, according to Matt Taibbi, is an “elaborate, systematized method of censorship and opinion control.” Taibbi mentions agencies like Homeland Security and Justice/FBI and their focus on “collecting domestic intelligence on a grand scale … seeking to distort the public’s perception of reality through mass moderation, via programs we’ve been told little to nothing about.”

While Taibbi, in his latest investigation, focused on social media and especially Twitter, the reality is that the MSM (and social media as well) is complicit with the government/military, collaborating on what “truths” are fed to the people while suppressing facts that are deemed dangerous, embarrassing, inconvenient, and otherwise not in the interest of the MICC.

With so many Americans now getting their news from social media sites rather than the MSM, that the government serves as a powerful content-moderator for what counts as “reliable” news on social media should disturb us all.

Again, it’s hard for Americans to serve as Ike’s “alert and knowledgeable” citizenry when they are fed lies, disinformation, and propaganda by the government and MSM.

Even more fundamentally, when corporations are elevated and protected as super-capable “citizens” and when citizens themselves are reduced to passive consumers – when corporations own the MSM while profiting greatly from war and militarism – there’s little hope of fostering freedom and of ever escaping from a state of permanent warfare.

This is where we are today.

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.

https://original.antiwar.com/William_Astore/2022/12/19/the-mainstream-media-and-the-us-military/

An excellent Tour de Force summation of the way things is.

**panama hat** · 21-12-2022, 07:05 AM

Well, here's an idea . . . e can stop the next war by not invading a militarily vastly inferior country that posed no danger.

Simples

**bsnub** · 21-12-2022, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

An excellent Tour de Force summation of the way things is.

It is one big tub of shit from your usual propaganda sites.

**harrybarracuda** · 21-12-2022, 08:43 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

Again, it’s hard for Americans to serve as Ike’s “alert and knowledgeable” citizenry when they are fed lies, disinformation, and propaganda by the government and MSM.

An excellent Tour de Force summation of the way things is.

It's nice to see sabang trying to inject a little humour into the thread for Christmas.

Before he goes back to posting from TASS, Pravda and a dazzling array of Putin propaganda sources.

**misskit** · 22-12-2022, 07:14 AM

Putin’s Idealization of Death Reflects Russia’s Growing Nazification

The carnival of violence that has for years permeated Russia's state-controlled media has in recent months given way to a new tone of solemnity and calls for national acts of heroism as the country's invasion of Ukraine continues to falter.

While the ominous laughter of the authorities can still be heard on Russian television screens as state propagandists discuss the destruction of Ukrainian cities or the use of nuclear weapons, new characters have come to the fore.

Until recently, it seemed that Russia had elevated the behavior of the gopnik (street gang member) to an officially approved style of conduct, one that condoned mocking one's victims with carnivalesque swagger.

One example of such thuggish behavior was the Wagner Group publishing a video in which one of its mercenaries is brutally murdered with a sledgehammer for surrendering to Ukrainian forces. Days later the group's founder sent another sledgehammer to the European Parliament covered in fake blood.

This type of sinister performance — openly demonstrating the rejection of morality and law, and taking joy in the humiliation of the weak — appears designed to demonstrate Russia's sovereignty to its enemies and to stress that the conventions of Western civilization, with its norms of basic decency, do not apply here.

Watching all this from their sofas, Russian TV viewers were persuaded that, even if they lived in poverty, Russians were still tougher than everyone else and were not to be messed with.

However, this state of affairs started to change when the military defeats in Ukraine began piling up and mobilization was declared.

It now appears to be time for the public to be aware of the gravity of the moment — after all, the male population of the country is being sent to the slaughter. This is the subject of "Let's Stand Up," a song by Russian singer Shaman that serves up the dark glamour of death to an audience of millions.

Zombie-like artists, including many elderly pop stars from the late Soviet years, have begun exhorting the population to "stand up" to those who "look down" on them from above, and in so doing, emulate their own dead ancestors.

Singing about Russian heroes with deep melancholy, the performers now seen on state TV sport sallow complexions, dark make-up, and mourning clothing that combine to create a funereal atmosphere.

The visuals consist of images of sacrifice: soldiers go to the front with looks of stern determination on their faces, while billboards list the names of dead children from the Donbas alongside those of soldiers who fell in World War II. A woman sheds a tear while a boy wearing a military cap salutes passing soldiers. All mention of hope and victory is absent — this is a requiem for a Russia doomed to fight eternal wars.

Even the president has performed similar theatrics to remind people of the need for sacrifice. In early November, national TV showed Putin visiting an exhibition on the World War II defense of Moscow. Walking slowly across Red Square, Putin languidly rotated the propeller of a replica plane while a choir dressed as World War II soldiers sang a war-time anthem. The symbolism of such actions is no longer about the coming victory but rather concerns the sacred duty of Russia's citizens.

The concept of death giving life meaning was also raised during Putin’s recent meeting with the mothers of mobilized conscripts. Amid the president's soulless musings, his deep misunderstanding of Russian culture and tradition was most evident when he said that their sons’ lives had lacked meaning before they were sent to war, urging them to rejoice in their heroic deaths.

"He did not live his life in vain,” Putin said, contrasting the meaninglessness of a peaceful life with the meaningfulness of dying for the state.

Such an appeal is alien to Russian and even Soviet culture, both of which portray the mother of a dead soldier as an inconsolably tragic figure. The right of mothers to attempt to save their sons was recognized even during the Chechen wars, as demonstrated by the respectful attitude taken by the military authorities towards the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.

But Putin is clearly devoid of this cultural understanding. The concept of a mother rejoicing in the death of a son is taken from Nazi ideology, in which women are depicted as the producers of children required by the state.

The accelerated Nazification of Russian life has dovetailed with a growing public awareness that the authorities are indifferent to their well-being. Telling soldiers' mothers to see the death of their sons as the realization of their destiny is never going to be an easy sell.

At the same time, the sadistic carnival of state propaganda that was so prevalent until September is not only now inappropriate in light of mounting Russian defeats on the battlefield, but also, according to TV ratings, no longer in demand.

Brash spectacle can no longer obscure the reality of loss, grief, and death. What we can expect to see in the year to come is the slow but steady victory of reality over the fantasy world created by Russia's state propaganda machine.

A version of this article originally appeared in Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Putin's Idealization of Death Reflects Russia's Growing Nazification - The Moscow Times

**OhOh** · 22-12-2022, 02:01 PM

Originally Posted by bsnub

It is one big tub of shit from your usual propaganda sites.

The source shouldn't stop you posting your opinion of the post's content.

Which, by not, we can assume you are unable to.

**harrybarracuda** · 23-12-2022, 08:25 AM

Originally Posted by OhOh

The source shouldn't stop you posting your opinion of the post's content.

Which, by not, we can assume you are unable to.

He did post an opinion.

He - correctly - said it's "one big tub of shit".

Are you unable to read even basic English?

**harrybarracuda** · 27-12-2022, 09:27 AM

Sabang still doesn't get it.

VOLOGDA, Russia -- Shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his country’s military into Ukraine in late February, Vladimir Rumyantsev began posting and even broadcasting news from independent media about the invasion from his apartment, highlighting many of the atrocities Russian troops were alleged to have committed.
Rumyantsev, who lives in Vologda some 500 kilometers north of Moscow, says he is no admirer of Putin or his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. He says he began his posts and broadcasts because Russians needed independent information -- much of which contradicts the official narrative -- “to evaluate the actions of the authorities.”
The authorities didn’t agree. Like others before him, Rumyantsev has been targeted for his anti-war views. A court found him guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian Army and sentenced him to three years in a penal colony.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukrai.../32194451.html

**bsnub** · 27-12-2022, 04:21 PM

Originally Posted by sabang

Do you want to get every speakers corner thread thrown in the Doghouse recruit snubski? No skin off my nose.

Every thread that you are guilty of posting lies in should be prosecuted and locked. The time of Russian spam and lies needs to come to an end.

**sabang** · 27-12-2022, 04:23 PM

Are you gonna start insulting the Mods again, junior recruit? Do you have any plans to ever travel to Thailand?

**bsnub** · 27-12-2022, 05:12 PM

Originally Posted by sabang

Are you gonna start insulting the Mods again, junior recruit? Do you have any plans to ever travel to Thailand?

More excuses then.

**harrybarracuda** · 01-01-2023, 03:03 PM

Meanwhile, in the Cowardly New World:

Thousands of users on China's Twitter-like Weibo criticised the removal of a viral video made by local outlet Netease News that collated real-life stories from 2022 that had captivated the Chinese public.
Many of the stories included in the video, which by Saturday could not be seen or shared on domestic social media platforms, highlighted the difficulties ordinary Chinese faced as a result of the strict COVID policy.
Weibo and Netease did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
One Weibo hashtag about the video garnered almost 4 million hits before it disappeared from platforms around noon on Saturday. Social media users created new hashtags to keep the comments pouring in.
"What a perverse world, you can only sing the praises of the fake but you cannot show real life," one user wrote, attaching a screenshot of a blank page that is displayed when searching for the hashtags.
The disappearance of the videos and hashtags, seen by many as an act of censorship, suggests the Chinese government still sees the narrative surrounding its handling of the disease as a politically sensitive issue.

New Year Eve spurs hope in China, censors target online COVID content | Reuters

**harrybarracuda** · 03-01-2023, 08:55 AM

Sometimes Mr. Shithole's bullshit is quite funny.

Xi Jinping suggested it was acceptable for citizens to disagree with China’s government in his first public remarks since protests prompted a U-turn on Beijing’s zero-COVID policies.

<snip>

The remarks contrasted with Beijing’s censorship of online criticism of the government’s COVID response.
Yesterday, a popular video highlighting the difficulties facing ordinary people during lockdowns was removed from social networking site Weibo.

The public has also been blocked from sharing videos related to the wave of new infections.

Xi Jinping suggests dissent is OK, while internet videos are removed from Weibo

**HuangLao** · 03-01-2023, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by bsnub

It is one big tub of shit from your usual propaganda sites.

Which could easily be applied to every sort of news/info/commentary source.
Everyone has an agenda of one variety or another.

**helge** · 03-01-2023, 01:19 PM

Correct !

**harrybarracuda** · 03-01-2023, 11:01 PM

Originally Posted by HuangLao

Which could easily be applied to every sort of news/info/commentary source.
Everyone has an agenda of one variety or another.

You're trying to compare competing news sources with state-run propaganda from dictatorships?

Fucking hell Jeff, I thought you had an ounce or two of intelligence.

**helge** · 03-01-2023, 11:17 PM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

You're trying to compare competing news sources with state-run propaganda from dictatorships?

Competing news sources ?

Your 'competing news sources' get their information/talking points from the other side.

If they don't abide, they will have their accreditation taken away.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I thought you had an ounce or two of intelligence.

Coming from you

**OhOh** · 04-01-2023, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

You're trying to compare competing news sources with state-run propaganda from dictatorships?

Latest ‘Twitter Files’ point to CIA involvement in pressure campaign to censor speech

Feds met regularly with executives in pressure campaign

Latest 'Twitter Files' point to CIA involvement in FBI pressure campaign to curb speech - Washington Times

**misskit** · 04-01-2023, 10:06 AM

Originally Posted by helge

Competing news sources ?

Your 'competing news sources' get their information/talking points from the other side.

If they don't abide, they will have their accreditation taken away.

Is this true? Do you have a situation where this actually happened?

**bsnub** · 04-01-2023, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by misskit

Is this true?

Of course not. It is just more of his utter crap. He, however, was fine with quoting fake Russian MOD causality numbers earlier today. Just another useful idiot flinging shit on the wall.

**helge** · 04-01-2023, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by misskit

Is this true? Do you have a situation where this actually happened?

DR'''s Matilde Kimer ma ikke laengere arbejde i Ukraine: Beskyldt for at lave russisk propaganda | Udland | DR

Danish reporter from our state radio and tv.

The government is pissed off, cause this questions their narrative.

Hope you can open and translate or I might be able to help.

Headline:

DR's Matilde Kimer is no longer allowed to work in Ukraine: Accused of making Russian propaganda
Denmark's foreign minister is surprised, and the Danish Association of Journalists calls it "a setback for press freedom".

**misskit** · 04-01-2023, 12:11 PM

^ You can translate.

Thread: Brave New World

Thread Tools

Display

The Mainstream Media and the US Military

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

Posting Permissions