#bernays manipulative tactics

[antoine-roquentin]

i’ve noticed that my shorthand critique of the “south park caused anti-semitism” theory of media has been getting some attention, and it’s funny cause it dovetails with another round of “the youtube algorithm is responsible for turning everybody into nazis” rhetoric as well, sparked by a recent new york times article. this sort of navelgazing is pretty popular because it works nicely with beliefs that both elites and liberals in general have, namely, that public opinion needs to be managed by an enlightened few, that some people are too stupid to participate in civic life and that’s why right wing populists get elected, and that if people are educated correctly, they will simply accept that liberalism is the best model for society. in short, it’s behaviorism, namely, the hypodermic needle model of media.

the liberal elite in interwar america believed themselves to be creating a better society through management of public opinion. figures like walter lippman were committed to benevolent elite rule through the manipulation of opinion, the “manufacturing of consent”. many of them came out of the milieu of manipulating popular opinion through propaganda work in the first world war, successfully convincing americans to join and support the british side in that war. edward bernays, for instance, worked for the committee on public information, the “largest propaganda machine the world had ever seen“, before becoming the intellectual forebear of the public relations industry in america. he and other similar figures, like lippman, carl byoir, and charles merriam (who combined behaviouralism with political science), were the leading lights of the “Progressive” movement of the time. they relied on the notion that media was passively consumed by people, who simply accepted the claims made without hesitation and then acted accordingly. the psychological theories behind this found form as a body of work known as behavioralism. human beings had a set of limited or “latent” responses to stimuli. by providing the correct stimuli, human beings could be made to behave accordingly. one day, society would be governed by the truly intelligent who would suss out the correct stimuli through trial and error and then apply them to the masses, a society of pavlov’s dogs. this top-down model not coincidentally empowered liberal elites to do what they will without any input from the masses.

this was termed the “hypodermic needle” or “magic bullet” model of media. both of these are medical terms, the latter referring to a drug that treats only the disease without any side effects, and that’s quite telling. american progressives have traditionally exalted medicine as a neutral, rational way to develop a better society. many were advocates of eugenics as a form of medicine, “cleaning” the human race of its “unfit” members. recently, there’s been a strong resurgence of interest in eugenics, behavioralism, and the use of medical terminology to describe media (viral video, using the metaphor of contagion).

proponents of the model in the 1930s referred to the success of the nazis in their use of mass media (ironically, using the same propaganda techniques they’d developed. joseph goebbels was known to be a reader of bernays’ books) as well as the payne fund studies, a series of works done on the responses of children to movies with poor methodology and funded by oil magnates hoping to drive moral panics (the hays code was strongly influenced by them), and the panicked reaction to the 1938 orson welles radio production of war of the worlds in support. of course, all three of these shared very specific material conditions of the people involved that drove them to react in the manner they did apart from the media involved in persuasion. for the decade after the first world war, while germany muddled along without growth but also without significant collapse, the nazis failed to attract more than a few percentage points of electoral support, despite consistently using similar tactics. it was only after the economic collapse of germany, when the economy had shrunk by about a quarter, that the nazis gained traction. even then, this was by using the failures of a liberal constitution to turn their electoral base, only one third of voters who were largely based in rural areas and included almost nobody in the major cities, into a workable governing coalition, particularly by playing on the fact that german liberals feared communism much more than nazism. likewise, the panic over war of the worlds was largely a myth created by newspapers which feared they were losing their audience to a new, more dynamic form of media and wanted to stoke a moral panic (see a parallel with the nyt story?). those who were convinced that an invasion was occurring, according to a study done afterwards (in part by theodor adorno), for the most part had only heard a bit and were concerned about a german invasion, given the heightened geopolitical tensions at the time, or were from the town of concrete, washington, which suffered a blackout midway through the performance.

you can see the same sort of threads in the nyt story, while the important parts go ignored by twitterati eager to engage on the most superficial level. “young men discover far-right videos by accident“ thanks to “YouTube and its recommendation algorithm“, “the most frequent cause of members’ “red-pilling”“ according to a study done by the NED(ie western intelligence)-funded bellingcat, after which they fall “ down the alt-right rabbit hole” as passive subjects reacting to stimuli. clearly, these videos spread like a contagion, and it’s our job to ban them in favour of much more legitimate content that supports major western foreign policy objectives. oh wait, hold up, mr cain was a “college dropout struggling to find his place in the world“, at a time of wage stagnation and a tough job market for newer entries that’s especially pronounced as you go further down the education ladder? he “grew up in postindustrial Appalachia”, an area destroyed by rapacious neoliberalism that has increasingly seen its industries move offshore in search of lower wages, its most dynamic members leave for major cities due to a lack of jobs, and those that remain become increasingly socially isolated, prompting them to either resort to social media or kill themselves through drugs and guns in what famed economist angus deaton calls “deaths of despair” (not to mention the limiting of public spaces to those who can pay, another aspect of neoliberalism, which particularly drives teens like mr cain into "online games with his friends”)? in a world where capitalism justifies itself by telling those it fails over and over that it’s their own fault, that they need to improve themselves and that there is no such thing as structural problems because, in the words of margaret thatcher, “there is no such thing [as society]! only individual men and women”, mr cain was drawn to propaganda masquerading as a self-help grift with an emphasis on supposedly knowing more than the brainwashed masses (”To Mr. Cain, all of this felt like forbidden knowledge“)?

most of all though is the fact that most of the people cain watched are either funded directly or take most of their talking points from a network of right wing intellectuals cultivated by major dark money backers for decades. david rubin takes money from dennis prager, who in turn is funded by fracking billionaires and evangelical christians the wilks brothers, and the bradley foundation, who have funded literally every major right wing cause of note. lauren southern is only famous because she worked for rebel media, funded by much of the oil industry including the kochs as well as the bradley foundation. paul joseph watson is associated with ukip and its funder arron banks. gad saad is funded by molson coors, whose corporate heads not only once praised hitler but founded the most famous republican think tank in the country, the heritage foundation. two of the major members of the “intellectual dark web”, charles murray and christina hoff sommers, work directly for the heritage foundation. and other youtube luminaries of note, like alex jones, thunderf00t, and stefan molyneux, make their money solely by doing interviews with these people and by citing material produced from these think tanks. in a world where inequality is increasingly dividing the rich and the working class, the former spend more and more on maintaining the division, while the latter are driven into a state of fear in which absurd theories about the collapse of western civilization and their replacement with latin american and muslim people seems much more reasonable. There’s also the social isolation that makes youtube celebs and discord chat buddies seem less like distant weirdos and more like the only friends one has. 

the solution, of course, is to modify youtube’s algorithm. just a bit of top-down tweaking to educate the masses on their correct course. surely, nobody would be stupid enough to think that the material conditions created by the neoliberal elite in the past few decades has driven a complete collapse in trust in american society, to the point where only a third of americans "trust their government “to do what is right”“, compared to over 80% of chinese people. surely this breakdown in trust is due to youtube and not the complete economic decimation of the country by its elites, to the point where many rural counties have not even recovered the jobs they lost a decade ago. a redistribution of wealth should not even be on the table, because material conditions play no part in how people react to media. just accept your daily helping of bullshit from the bourgeoisie and never question them when they say certain people need to be censored, because the powers you let them have will never be abused or turned against you in any way. and hey, don’t listen to any critiques of behaviorism, because it’s not like anarchists blew that shit out of the water in the 1950s.

#this is like the fifth time i've seen a mass media article about an alt-right converso who cites contrapoints as key to his damascus moment #i think the only time i saw one of her videos i was annoyed with how she failed to critique some of the deeper issues with what she discusse #something about that golden boy swedish guy i think #other than that all i know about her is the heavy critiques that a lot of trans people have levelled against her #it feels like she's being promoted by the media as an acceptable left winger in the gatekeeper model #but i really don't know enough about her to say whether that's true or not #if anybody's got any thoughts or whatever #cause there's no way i'm sitting through a bunch of fucking youtube video essays #i should stop writing these while drunk in the middle of the night over the course of 2 hours #i can't even tell whether i brought all the themes together in the ending paragraph because i don't remember what i was thinking in the intr

[cultml]

Edward Bernays, whose 1928 book “Propaganda” directed modern tactics for advertising and politics, wrote that the intentional manipulation of societies, and of the habits and opinions of people, “is an important element in democratic society.”

          “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society,” he wrote, “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

The manipulation of symbols is one of the tactics at the foundation of many other tactics. And to understand how these broader tactics work, we first need to understand how propagandists break down how a person views the world, and how they can trigger people’s emotions. This ties to one’s “mythos” and “cycle of meaning.”

The “mythos” is used to describe a person’s system of values and perceptions of the world. It can be your interpretation of right and wrong, your beliefs shaped by religion, and your worldview shaped by stories and experiences.

Propagandists look to alter a person’s “mythos” by subverting what’s described as your “cycle of meaning.” This is the cycle that makes people interpret things as symbols.

[thinkveganworld]

This is long, but I thought I’d post on the outside chance anybody might find it worth reading.  It’s part two of a three-part series of articles I wrote years ago, and it includes information on modern day U. S politicians’ use of political propaganda.   

Goebbels and mass mind control: Part Two How PR opinion-shapers undermine environmental protection

In part one, we examined the fact that Hitler's propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, admired Edward Bernays, a self-proclaimed founder of the public relations industry. Goebbels used Bernays' book "Crystallizing Public Opinion" in his campaign against Germany's Jewish population.  Now we'll look at specific propaganda techniques shared by Goebbels and today's corporate PR teams, and at how those techniques undermine today's environmental movement.

Public relations can be used for good or ill. When PR spin is used to convince people that harmful things are good for them, or to turn people against their own best interests, it is used for ill. Goebbels practiced propaganda as a black art.

He helped organize Hitler's "brown shirts," and incited them to violence. He instigated the events leading to "Kristallknacht," the infamous nights of widespread brutal attacks against the Jews, November 8-9, 1938. He helped create the "fuhrer cult," spinning Hitler as Germany's great redeemer and convincing millions that the Nazi state was vital to their well-being.

Goebbels believed in using stealth tactics, or "institutional lying," and in using "fronts" to promote anti-Semitism and Nazi policies. For example, Goebbels set up a film office in July 1933, made it part of a branch of the Reich Cultural Chamber, and then used films to influence mass audiences. Klaus P. Fischer writes in "Nazi Germany: A New History" that most of the entertainment films "presented a sanitized image of carefree life under the protective umbrella of the Nazi regime."

When pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic propaganda came from the mouth of a popular German movie star on the screen, instead of directly from Goebbels, the public perceived it differently. In the same way, today's PR firms use front groups (fake grassroots, or "astroturf " groups) or specific so-called "third parties" to speak for corporations.

In "Global Spin," (Chelsea Green Publishing, 1997) science lecturer Sharon Beder writes that Merrill Rose, executive vice-president of the PR firm Porter/Novelli, said: "Put your words in someone else's mouth . . . There will be times when the position you advocate, no matter how well framed and supported, will not be accepted by the public simply because you are who you are. Any institution with a vested commercial interest in the outcome of an issue has a natural credibility barrier to overcome with the public, and often with the media."

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton point out in "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You," that on behalf of tobacco company Philip Morris, the PR company, Burson-Marsteller, "created the [front group] 'National Smokers Alliance' to mobilize smokers into a grassroots lobby for smoker's rights . . . To defeat environmentalists, PR firms have created green-sounding front groups such as "The Global Climate Coalition" and the "British Columbia Forest Alliance."

Both Goebbels and today's PR firms have used euphemisms and Orwellian newspeak and doublespeak to influence the public mind. For example, corporate PR spinners have told the public that polluting-corporations are friends of nature; that weapons-manufacturer General Electric does no harm but merely "brings good things to life;" that spreading sludge on farm fields is "beneficial use;" that human beings killed in war-for-profit are "collateral damage."

American corporations have at times managed to circumvent the U.S. Constitution and ignore laws designed to protect our own workers and the environment by moving their companies offshore, in the name of "freedom." In Hitler's Germany, the euphemistically named "Law for Terminating the Suffering of People and Nation" (or, the "Enabling Law") gave governments such "freedoms" as the right to deviate from the constitution, ultimately helping Hitler undermine democracy and gain political power.

Goebbels presided over a communications monopoly in Germany by denouncing intellectualism and urging book burning. Today, U. S. corporations have a Goebbels-like communications monopoly, because virtually all television networks and the vast majority of other media outlets in the country are owned by a handful of corporations.

Klaus Fischer writes, "On May 10, 1933, an appalling event in the history of German culture took place-the burning of the books . . . This particular 'cleansing action' (Sauberung) was carried out by the German Student Union."

Of the book burning, Goebbels said, "The age of extreme Jewish intellectualism has now ended, and the success of the German revolution has again given the German spirit the right of way." (J. M. Ritchie, "German Literature Under National Socialism," 1983.) Today corporations discourage Americans from educating themselves about corporate wrongdoing by, as Stauber and Rampton say, "burning books before they're printed."

For example, science writer David Steinman obtained obscure government research from the Freedom of Information Act and used the information in his book, "Diet For A Poisoned Planet." Steinman wrote that many U.S. foods contained contaminants and gave readers a chance to make safer food choices by comparing the amounts of toxins contained in various foods.

Right away, corporate PR firms, including a "pesticide industry front group with deep Republican connections" went to work attacking the book. The Ketchum PR agency (representative of Dole Foods, the Beef Industry Council, Miller Brewing and many other corporate food clients) markets itself as a specialist in "crisis management," according to Stauber and Rampton. A Ketchum memo to the CALRAB food safety team read: "The [Ketchum] agency is currently attempting to get a tour schedule so that we can 'shadow' Steinman's [book promotional] appearances; best scenario, we will have our spokesman in town prior to or in conjunction with Steinman's appearances."

Stauber and Rampton's source inside Ketchum said the PR firm called every talk show where Steinman was booked, saying the shows shouldn't allow Steinman to appear without also presenting "the other side of the issue." The firm also tried to portray Steinman as an "extremist" without credibility.

According to Sharon Beder ("Global Spin") corporate front groups are a fairly recent phenomenon in America . . . a response to the rise of genuine citizen public interest organizations. One front group, the American Council on Science and Health, receives funds from Burger King, Coca-Cola, NutraSweet, Monsanto, Dow, Exxon and other corporations.

Dr. Beder, author of numerous books, and a professional engineer and senior lecturer in Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia, writes that "the American Council on Science and Health is one of many corporate front groups which allow industry-funded experts to pose as independent scientists to promote corporate causes. Chemical and nuclear industry front groups with scientific sounding names publish pamphlets that are 'peer reviewed' by industry scientists rather than papers in established academic journals."

On the subject of corporate front groups, Beder quotes Mark Megalli and Andy Friedman ("Masks of Deception: Corporate Front Groups in America,"1991): "Contrary to their names, these groups often disregard compelling scientific evidence to further their viewpoints, arguing that pesticides are not harmful, saccharin is not carcinogenic, or that global warming is a myth. By sounding scientific, they seek to manipulate the public's trust."

The goal of pseudo-scientific corporate front groups, says Beder, is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of authentic environmental problems. For example, the Global Climate Coalition is a front group for various gas, oil, coal, automobile and chemical corporations; and it has battled restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

Global Climate Coalition has sent journalists videos claiming increased carbon dioxide levels will help feed the world's hungry by increasing crop production. The coalition has lobbied against mandatory emissions controls and asked the Clinton administration to avoid agreements that would reduce greenhouse emissions, claiming they "would damage the U. S. economy."

Corporations have worked to shape the next generation's environmental perceptions "through the development and distribution of 'educational' material to schools," writes Beder. Of course, the "educational" materials promote a corporate slant on environmental problems.

Conservative think-tanks have also opposed environmental legislation, working to cast doubt on greenhouse warming, industrial pollution and ozone depletion. These think-tanks mingle with lobbyists, consultants, interest groups and others and, as Beder says, "seek to provide advice directly to the government officials in policy networks and to government agencies and committees."

The think-tank employees ultimately "become policy makers themselves," and act more as pressure groups or interest groups than as academic institutions. Even so, says Beder, think-tank employees are treated by the media as "independent experts" and sources of expert opinion. Most conservative think-tanks promote free-market ideas, including corporate deregulation and lower taxes for the wealthy.

Corporate and think-tank PR spin doctors typically show little respect for the targets of their propaganda, and little regard for democracy. In another book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, ("Trust Us, We're Experts!" - Tarcher/Putnam, 2001) the authors write, "If you ask the managers of these ever-more-expensive propaganda campaigns why they have vulgarized the democratic process [with, for example, fake grassroots campaigns], they will frequently tell you that the problem is not with them but with the voters who are too "irrational," "ignorant," or "apathetic" to respond to any other kind of appeal."

Stauber and Rampton quote Bill Greider's "Who Will Tell The People:" "On issue after issue, the public is belittled as self-indulgent or misinformed, incapable of grasping the larger complexities known to the policymakers and the circles of experts surrounding them. The public's side of the argument is said to be 'emotional' whereas those who govern are said to be making 'rational' or 'responsible' choices . . . The reality, of course, is that the ability to define what is or isn't 'rational' is itself loaded with political self-interest."

Hitler's spin doctor, Joseph Goebbels, also expressed contempt for the people and democracy. Klaus Fischer quotes the propagandist: "We go into the Reichstag in order to acquire the weapons of democracy from its arsenal. We become Reichstag deputies in order to paralyze the Weimar mentality with its own assistance. If democracy is stupid enough to give us free travel privileges and per diem allowances for this service, that is its affair. We do not worry our heads about this."

Fischer also points out that the Nazis were beneficiaries of popular anti-democratic theories of their time, and of a "totalitarian mood," which included "a wish to dismantle the egalitarian welfare state." Again, Goebbels' techniques and attitudes and the fruits of his propaganda were different in degree from those of today's corporate propagandists, but they were clearly of the same basic nature.

Goebbels and today's corporate PR firms often practice public relations as a black art, however some citizens inform people in helpful ways that produce the fruits of increased public health, safety and well-being.

For example, registered nurse and environmental activist Terri Swearingen worked to prevent the building of one of the world's largest toxic waste incinerators.  When accepting the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, Swearingen said, "There are experts who are working in the corporate interest, who often serve to obscure the obvious and challenge common sense; and there are experts and non-experts who are working in the public interest."

Swearingen added, "Citizens who are working in this arena-people who are battling to stop new dump sites or incinerator proposals, people who are risking their lives to prevent the destruction of rain forests or working to ban the industrial uses of chlorine and PVC plastics-are often labeled obstructionists and anti-progress. But we actually represent progress-not technological progress but social progress. We have become the real experts, not because of our title or the university we attended, but because we have been threatened and we have a different way of seeing the world."

In part three, we'll take a closer look at propaganda and politics.

[badbookreviewclub]

Complete Review - Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala

This review is one of my pre-written ones and is different from other reviews. If you’ve read the Waiting for Snow in Havana review, this will be incredibly similar. If I had the option, I would have written a review for Empress Theresa today, though I wasn’t able to work through the rest of the book as of yet. I would say that this review contains spoilers, but it’s literally just a historical book, so I’m not going to.  The next Bad Book Review that will be coming out is going to be on The Rose Council: The Kaiser Mage. I’m nearly done with the book, so I hope to get it up by Sunday. Though for now, please enjoy this review on an actually good book. 

Bitter Fruit showcases a story that is rarely, if ever actually heard in the United States, twisting the emotions of readers as it showcases the reality of the extent that the Eisenhower Administration was willing to go to wipe out ‘Communists’ or those who were accused of being ‘Communists’. Co-authors Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer set out to write the story of the coup incited in Guatemala by the United States, as well as to help push for a reappraisal of American policies within the western hemisphere. The two authors took an extensive amount of time and consulted many different people, libraries, and archives while gathering their information, both in the United States and in Guatemala. Schlesinger is the Director of the World Policy Institute and in 1977 with the Freedom of Information request made by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) urged for the CIA to release all their documents on American involvement during the coup in Guatemala. Kinzer spent 13 years writing about Latin America, and while working as a bureau chief for Times in Nicaragua, he was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot award by Columbia University. 

The book begins by introducing you during the middle-end portion of the rebellion against Jacobo Arbenz. When the supporters of Arbenz have already been painted as Communists and it seemed that Guatemala and the world as a whole were opposed to the leader. It captures your attention and draws you into the book, painting your opinion in one way before almost completely changing it in the later chapters. After first it paints Arbenz as a communist, something that the American media tried heavily to do as well during the time. And during the reading at first, it is very easy to believe that he is. However, as you read more, you discover that Arbenz was not a communist. Rather, Arbenz was a victim of a monopolized corporation in Guatemala who were deeply displeased and unhappy with the agricultural reforms that Arbenz was making.

Arbenz took the presidency in 1951, after his predecessor and the first democratically elected president in Guatemala, Juan José Arévalo. Arbenz continued with the reformation and the liberal policies that Arévalo had started with. The most drastic of his changes and the one that Bitter Fruit placed the most emphasis on, was his changes in agriculture. Arbenz took the land and distributed it to the peasant populations so they could begin creating their own farms and build up some kind of wealth for himself. The land that was taken from corporations was reimbursed with bond options, valued at the estimated value that the corporations filed on their taxes. The United Fruit Company (UFCO) was extremely displeased, enough so that the company, American owned at the time, went to the United States Congress in an attempt to garner sympathy from the government and portray Arbenz as a communist, putting freedom and the ‘free world’ at risk. The UFCO was able to do this successfully, and the Eisenhower Administration approved for a covert operation to take place to stage a coup in Guatemala to rid the country of Communists and its ‘communist’ leader. 

Throughout the book you are introduced to many different people who took place in the forming of the coup, the most notable being John Peurifoy, the ambassador to Guatemala at the time, Arbenz himself, Edward Bernays who worked as a promoter for UFCO To boost its image and bolster support for the company, Castillo Armas who posed as the leader of the rebel forces and later as the president of Guatemala after Arbenz and Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz who had taken over very briefly after Arbenz, Allen Dulles who oversaw the entire operation for the coup, and Colonel Albert Haney who was in charge of training those in the rebel forces and almost every aspect of the psychological warfare that was waged on Guatemala. 

The number of people who played into the overthrow of Arbenz was absurd, and arguably only increased once the United States decided that it would rather play rough than let ‘communism in Guatemala’ continue to prevail. Arbenz himself never actually claimed to have a political party, and those who were Communists in his department were few in number. “Communists numbered about 26 in the 350-member staff of the National Agrarian Department, the government agency in which they had the strongest influence.” None ever held high ranking positions where they could exert as much influence as the United States and UFCO was making them out to be doing. “No more than seven or eight Communists ever held significant sub-cabinet posts, and neither Arévalo nor Arbenz ever appointed a single Communist to his cabinet.” That did nothing to deter the United States from posting propaganda around Central America and the neighboring countries around Guatemala, in the United States, and in Guatemala against Arbenz, labeling him and his followers as Communists, demanding that they be ousted and that Armas replaced Arbenz, declaring Armas as the better leader with the people's best interests at heart. Eventually, this intensive campaign and the tactics of psychological warfare waged on the citizens of Guatemala worked and Arbenz resigned from the presidency, his appointed commander following shortly after as Armas took the reigns.  

After reading the description I just laid out for you, as well as the book itself, it is possible to believe that it is all historical fiction. Even while reading it, it sounds like something you might hear in a dramatic thriller or in a television series, but it was real. This book is a historical recounting of the events of America’s involvement in Guatemala to try and purge the country of its communists. Perhaps the first intentions were just to the UFCO and to get its footing back into the Guatemalan government, but it ended with full intentions and full belief that if the United States did not put someone they could easily manipulate into the government that it would be taken over by Communists that would ‘infect’ the surrounding countries. 

Despite the book seemingly being laid out as a dramatic thriller, it keeps you interested and invested in the retelling of the story. The face-paced style makes Bitter Fruit feel real and intense. The style makes it easier to twist your emotions and opinions, showing you different perspectives from both the Guatemalans and the Americans, though overall it holds a much more sympathetic tone with Guatemala than it does with America. It paints a picture that is hard to ignore, a picture you wish to share with other people rather than hideaway on your bookshelf with the rest of your books you will only read once and then never think about again. Bitter Fruit shows the untold story in Guatemala, the one that was kept secret from the American public for so long because it never resulted in a happy ending. It resulted in a government that struggled to pull itself back together and is still struggling to do so to this day. The United States government hardly received any reprimand for their actions in Guatemala besides protests from Latin American students, though they were largely forgotten, unfortunately. Because of the style that Schlesinger and Kinzer use, and the things that they point out throughout the book, they do a more than the effective job of laying out the story and timeline of the coup as well as truly proving that it is time to go back and have a reappraisal of American policies within the western hemisphere.  

As more information comes out this book will likely be updated and changed to fill in gaps in the timeline better, but Schlesinger and Kinzer did an amazing job with what was available to them. More people deserve to know the truth about the coup in Guatemala that was incited by the United States, and the more that people read Bitter Fruit the more likely it is we can bring attention to the issue and it will become more likely that we will finally get all of the information.  My Take: Overall, I did like the book. It was a struggle to get through in the beginning, but it was a good recounting of history. It’s written in an easy to understand manner most of the time and keeps a good pace. I will admit that I read this for one of my courses, but it is definitely one of the better assigned books that I have read before.  I give it a 7/10 stars for the actual writing and structure of the book. HOWEVER, I think that everyone should read this story if they get the chance. It is worth the read and will no-doubt be perfect for anyone who enjoys learning about the history of the United States or of Latin America.  If you would like to get Bitter Fruit, it’s available for purchase here. 

#bitter fruit #the story of the american coup in guatemala #book review #good book #bad book reviews #entire book #i will get an actually bad review out soon i promise #thank you for the follow #I appreciate all of you so fucking much

[photographydesignstudio2019]

How Advertising + Social Media are used to make us hate ourselves

Recently, I’ve become very interested in the way in which advertising continuously manipulates us, whether we know its happening or not. It’s designed to make us want to purchase something, this we know. But, especially in beauty and fashion advertisements, we are shown something desirable, a lifestyle, a look, a person we want to be. We are constantly being shown people and things that are new, beautiful and something we falsely believe we can achieve if we just buy said product. This is where advertising is extremely dangerous. 

As previously stated, the world of consumerism (largely started due to the work of Edward Bernays) in our modern age has shifted to a mindset of selling a idealistic vision of a persons want rather than their needs. Whether this desire for something we want is in a physical aspect of ourselves, an object or a life style, its hard to resist. However, often we don’t see these ads in this light, way too often advertisers market their products as an essential thing for a person to be better in all aspects rather than it being solely a want. In reality, buying the newest Iphone isn’t going to make you a better person. Sure, you’ll be able to take better photos and have access to all the faster technological advances made in this tiny device, but in the grand scheme of things does it really change anything. As long as a phone does fundamental tasks needed for every day life, like work or school, then shouldn’t that be enough. Somehow, due to an overwhelming amount of advertising, almost always visual, we feel a need to continue to work towards better and newer items to prove our own self worth. 

One industry that really has captured this idea of making us feel unworthy with what already have or who we are, is the beauty industry. 

https://www.marketing-interactive.com/features/mass-medias-toxic-influence-on-beauty-standard/

In ads promoting products related to hair, makeup, skin care, fashion and health, we see models who are often defined as stereotypically beautiful, perfect in some cases. Although a large portion of this factor be a result of photographic manipulation to make them appear as flawless beings, the model behind the image has a singular job of looking beautiful. But not everyone is a model. So seeing skinny white models in the case of advertisements often related to more stereotypically feminine products and fit, tall, handsome models relating to more stereotypically masculine products, gives an everyday person a sense of self doubt. Even we don’t really register it, seeing beautiful people in the multitude of ads we see every day, leaves us with the thought that if we want to be like this inhumanly perfect person, we need to buy this certain product. Not only does this lead to a person buying a product they don’t necessarily need, it also leads to a growth of insecurities and doubt of ones own self worth. 

- “It gives huge pressure on women, achieving something which is completely unattainable.

- “Audiences are subconsciously being fed with the idea that a skinny figure is king, with a string of identical ad campaigns featuring skinny celebrities in magazines or on television. But quality audiences who have the ability to judge and to filter what they are fed, remains a minority.”

although alot of this discussion is going to be focusing on female representation within advertising and how it manipulates them, I am fully aware it happens for  given gender or non-binary person. 

The reason I think, although It has always been a huge problem, that in our current period of time this type of representation is incredibly toxic is to do with the use of social media. Almost everyone in my life uses some form of social media. Because of this we are often influenced by tons of visual images and messages and as always advertising has found away to consume the online world. It biggest target being the platform Instagram. Not only are brands able to pay for sponsored posts that pop up hundreds and thousands of peoples feeds without their consent, but they are also able to pay people who own accounts with a large following to advertise their products. 

Often these people are beautiful athletes, models or celebrities that have achieved their level of beauty through countless hours of hard work, lots of money or cosmetic surgery. Either way, the way they look is extremely unobtainable for an everyday person, not to mention the use of digital manipulation to make matters worse.

In this study, Kristen Forbes of Elon University discusses how advertisers use ads and “influencers to create large income and traction on products like never before 

 https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/communications/journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/153/2017/06/08_Kristen_Forbes.pdf

 “With the rise of social media, the use of social influencers has become a popular tactic in brand marketing.”

“These influencers, dubbed online as “Beauty Gurus” online, use their skills in makeup to partner with cosmetic brands, earning big bucks while building brand awareness around products. Influencers have gained popularity due to the rise of social media and their ability to connect with their consumer peers.”

These social media influencers and celebrities, although seem to be trying to authentically sell a product off of real opinion, are being brought out to sell products that can often be harmful. 

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/a26893375/jameela-jamil-response-khloe-kardashian-flat-tummy-instagram/

For example Khloe Kardashian, a famous celebrity, part of a reality TV show and empire of makeup and beauty related products, posted a sponsored instagram image advertising the company “flattummyco (https://flattummyco.com/)” which are marked as products that stop your cravings. These “Meal replacing shakes.” are part of a phase within the online advertising world of “Pretending something is healthy when in reality it doesn’t produce results or produces minimum results in an unhealthy manner.” 

[callumskeltoneco]

Summary of Section 6 Week 4

I agree with Packard’s Idea here as I have a vague-understanding about way in which manipulation of the masses, especially in advertising, was created to make people think to want rather than need.  I wrote this summary of the topic in another class. 

“Edward Bernays started a the movement we know today as consumerism. In the 1920′s people brought items and were sold products that were labeled as necessities. But Bernays understood the people worked. He harnessed the masses emotions by creating a hidden message that need is not enough, want means power, wealth and success. Starting with the manipulation of the values and tabooed feeling around females smoking, which greatly increased the sales of cigarettes as they were seen only for male consumption at the time, Bernays began to carefully yet dangerously manipulate the masses. He began to show that producers and companies needed to “Mass produce goods to people targeted at their unconscious desires.” Using famous actors in advertisements and glorified idealistic worlds, he made people envy what they saw in the media. He instated the idea that “You will be better if you have this item.” where that be a vehicle, clothing, shoes or any other products companies were selling at the time. “We must shift America to become a culture of desire, to want newer even though the old hasn’t yet been consumed.” But this mind set and idealistic world of consumerism still exists almost 100 years later. We are still living in a time where it is highly normalised to want the new. From iphones to beauty products, all relatively similar yet every time we continue purchase the newest and the “best” we can. If you don’t have the newest Iphone or technology thats popular at the time, you look less wealthy, less educated, less desirable. This idea that what you want is something you need in your life to make you better, is a toxic way of thinking that sees powerful men still controlling the masses through the same tactics. I perhaps now want to show the ways of consumerism and add a sense of Irony too it. Show how ridiculous our ideas of consumption, mass production, mass manipulation and how it is affecting our lives, our planet, ourselves.”

But at the core of it all, he is abusing the arts and more specifically design, to sway the unconscious emotions of people. It has to a point where design in advertising is only there to manipulate its audience into buying and believing a certain product. 

[damonvickers-blog1]

Puppet Masters of Media – Here What You Must Know

In this age of enormous amount of news and media that barrage and contend for public attention fewer and fewer are capable to distinguish fact from fiction. Shocking headlines, once reticent for delight at grocery store line checkout, are currently used by the mainstream press to entice the popper to get the customer to gnaw, read, watch and more says, Damon Vickers.

Reporters and correspondents, if you can nowadays call them such, are mournfully compromised in the favoritism they take in propagandizing concerns that eventually harsh the schedule of the media huge and concealed elite for whom they work and silhouette the perceptional lens of the stacks.

Is there a planned schema behind all this? And if so, whose masterminding it and for what reason? One well-known instigator of media propaganda and strategic interruption was Dr. Edward L. Bernays. He is the founding Father of Public Relations. Dr. Bernays has picked his brain on the subject of PR tactics to encourage humanitarian concerts we visualize could promote world peace.

According to Damon Vickers, the mindful and intellectual manipulation of the prearranged behavior and belief of the loads is an essential element in democratic culture. Those people who manipulate this unnoticed mechanism of civilization constitute an imperceptible government which is the factual ruling power of the nation.

We all people are contrasting around the world by a massive and merciless conspiracy that relies on exchange means for growing its sphere of influence. Actually, it’s a system that has conscripted huge human and textile resources into the construction of a firmly knit, extremely competent machine that unites military, diplomatic, economic, political, and scientific operations.

Its arrangements are covered, not published. Furthermore, its blunders are obscured, not headlined. Also, their dissenters are calm, not praised. No spending is queried, nor buzz printed, no furtive exposed. It conducts a war. Hence, Athenian legislator Solon declared it an offense for any resident to shrink from debate.  Also, this is the reason why the press is sheltered by the first Amendment emphasis, Damon Vickers. And it is the only industry in America particularly protected by the establishment, not mainly to Amuze and Entertain, but to notify, to imitate and to state the risks and opportunities.

Originally Posted: https://www.allperfectstories.com/puppet-masters-media/

#News #Masters #Media

[neonplasticlotus]

When Barry Sotero (Barack Obama) was President, he sent every university in the United States a “Dear Comrade” letter. These letters stated they would lose federal funding if they didn’t, for lack of better terms, figure out how to get males off college campuses. It was done under the guise of sexual harassment or sexual assault, however, as can be proved by the Amherst University case: “ In April 2014, however, the expelled student presented the college with new evidence — a series of text messages the woman sent to two other male students immediately after the alleged rape, according to a lawsuit. To one, a dorm counselor, she described the sexual encounter in language that suggested it was consensual and she wrote, “It’s pretty obvi [obvious] I wasn’t an innocent bystander.’’ To the other student, she sent text messages inviting him over later that same night to “entertain” her — an invitation that resulted in a second sexual encounter, according to text messages and an affidavit by the male student. The accuser testified during the disciplinary hearing that she had texted a friend to come over after the alleged attack.” https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/05/29/amherst/4t6JtKmaz7vlYSrQk5NDyJ/story.html The majority, of not all, of these expulsions were done under false pretenses. And why would they do this? Simple: Edward Bernays proved way back in the 40s that females were the most simple to manipulate, due to being social creatures (a fact Uzi Grindler and Annika Backstrom exploited, in manipulating Ania Ziolkowska, though that still doesn’t make Ania blameless in her actions), by getting females to smoke, via having other females smoke, in a parade. These tactics are still used to this day, in advertising. Obama weaponized it, by pushing most non-cuck males off campuses, thus allowing the Marxist “professors” he’d had installed, to commence the brainwashing of the females now left on campus. This video is the result of what Sotero (Obama) had put into practice. https://mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile-Cases/27-CR-20-12953-JAK/NoticeofMotion08272020.pdf https://neonplasticlotus.com/2020/07/29/that-never-happened-becaus https://www.instagram.com/p/CFH6PTDFC9k/?igshid=fkpn8xdwxda2

[victorjasin]

Dr. Rashid Buttar is the osteopathic physician and author best known for his views on Coronavirus and its management.

And if Tumblr TAKES THIS DOWN, then it will become OBVIOUS TUMBLR is complicit in covering up the truth. A dissenting opinion is the only way to keep CDC, Fauci, W.H.O. honest and if PROFESSIONALS can't debate such things who are as qualified as anyone and yet DISAGREE with the current agenda, policies and question the true motives. If that (TRUTH) is no longer tolerated on TUMBLR then REMOVE MY PROFILE as I will no longer participate in a platform that is NOT interested in truth and calls truth fake news when the very people that are being protected are those whose information is FAKE/FALSE/PROPAGANDA. Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty of is a classic tactic out of the Goebbels and Bernays handbook of propaganda and manipulating public opinion. Vic Jasin (SENVI)

#medicine

[samwiseiam-blog]

Notes

4000 words

Research summary/Essay Plan - Deadline 26th October

Final essay - Deadline 14th December

with Steve Odgen (Home Acres)

Thurs 27th Sep

2:00

2011

Assignment 1:

Rationale for proposed essay

500 words

Full Bibliography

Digital copy (BB/Turnitin)

Research Evidence

Presented in a digital format as a blog

Deadline : 26th October

Project Rationale

Devise a research project

Use appropriate research methods

Research a variety of source material

Refine original question

Base for essay

Working title

Abstract (scope/aims)

Research methods

Order and Structure

Limitations/perameters of research area

Clear statements of intent

Essay Plan

Essay plan

summary for each section/chapter

Key Points

Woodrow Wilson Administration

Creel Commission

Red Scare

The Diamond Engagement Ring Campaign

Edward Bernays Campaign

Hitler

Liberal Democratic

Leninist views

Vietnam War

Harrold Lasswell

Wagner Act

Tobacco Packages

Pavlov

Public Information Film

Key Words

Agenda

Strategy

Advertise

Inform/Disinform

Infamous

Ideology

Influence

Bias

Indoctrination

Brain-wash

Persuasion

Control

Conduct

Education

Will

Elude

Manipulate

Ethical

Freedom

Political thought

Reluctant

Democracy

Ad campaign

Sociopath/Psychopath

Fabrication

Fear tactics

Fanaticism

Revolution

Totalitarianism

Consent

Illusion

Naive

Succumb

Subordination

Segregated

Exploit

Association

Stimuli

Captivating

Seductive

Persausive

Key Phrases

Leading media figures

Herding sheep

Bewildered herd

Guided by emotion and impulse

Public relation industries

Organised crime

Exploiting human nature

Hypnotic suggestion

Message-dense environment

Basic human emotion

Repetition and intensity

Unconditioned Stimulus

Overwhelming defences

Quotes

...we should not succumb to “democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.” Because they’re not. We’re the best judges of the public interests.

Ideas

Graphic design and propaganda emerged/born out of the industrial revolution, mass production, and consumer culture. There was all of a sudden a serge of the need for mass communication and use of persuasion to compete with rivals across all industries.

The power of persuasion used in graphic design

Based in the UK, the history of where it came from and how it got to today (Modern Design & Propaganda)

Why it effects people? The psychological and societal side of why we are persuaded by words and images ie. design

Colour Manipulation

Signs and symbols

Semiotics

Why do these things trigger emotions, thoughts and actions (the history of it)

Why are people still influenced by these things when it is common knowledge.

Programmed into our brains to respond how we do. (free will)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-color-red-influences-our-behavior/

Evolution overtime become more subtle because of people being aware and the laws surrounding it

Also became more of a want than a need

“In what is nowadays a totalitarian state, or a military state, its easy. You just hold a bludgeon over their heads, and if they get out of line you smash them over their heads. But as society has become more of a free and democratic state, you lose that capacity. Therefore you have to turn to the techniques of propaganda.”

Research

Research Steps

Try specify 4 focus points

Play with potential ideas

Try locate key texts

Find books and academic texts

Get sticky notes

Set parameters and zone in on question

Refine question

Be critical with sources (authors background, failings, or bias)

Don’t get sidetracked, stick to relevant writings

Keep reviewing and refining

Propaganda vs. Graphic Design

Examine the communicative technologies of propaganda and assess the impact of the developments of these tools on the exercise of power in the last 100 years.

Do the general public have free will or is every decision manipulated or determined by the media and design?

How propaganda has influenced graphic design.

Roughly last 100 years?

Focusing on specific country?

Art

Psychological

Contact Local Politician?

Create Questionare

Find scholar/academic/research/social book

Avoid fact driven quotes

Avoid overuse of internet

Sources

One Search

Books

Journals

Blogs

Websites

Topics

Tools used/Forms it takes

As the tools or forms evolve how has propaganda changed the impact and effect of it

Relate all that to power (War, Government, Society, Manipulation)

Technology in particular social media- taking power from big institutions and giving to the individual

How in the last 100 years has propaganda effected individuals and societies behaviour and beliefs

Interests

How it began and where it originated

How it manipulates the individual and the public

Design as propaganda

Is all graphic design propaganda and is it moral

What is the difference?

Street art

Secondary Research:

Links

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-technology-democracy-nicco-mele-20180223-htmlstory.html

https://carleton.ca/history/undergraduate/courses/summer-courses/hist-3907av-illusion-power-technology-propaganda-history/

https://www.newamerica.org/public-interest-technology/policy-papers/digitaldeceit/

https://www.designer-daily.com/the-power-of-propaganda-25766

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DF4mj_macM_w&ved=2ahUKEwik0uLu9orbAhUqCMAKHcRjBLI4ChC3AjAAegQIChAD&usg=AOvVaw0VfMEkdbJtIQ21zmVSdNsR

https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/media/hpropaganda.html

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wx2NBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT265&lpg=PT265&dq=technology+propaganda&source=bl&ots=3bDgCp8H-f&sig=mzrhLF4pJK_PGmmrG1znIqTOFbI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQhPDY-IrbAhXrB8AKHd1RA-I4FBDoATAAegQICBAB#v=onepage&q=technology%20propaganda&f=false

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/307395/thanks-to-technology-propaganda-is-now-exponentia.html

http://blogs.bl.uk/socialscience/2013/08/the-internet-social-media-and-propaganda-the-final-frontier.html

https://www.bbntimes.com/en/technology/the-power-of-propaganda-with-analytics

https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/fake-news-cyber-propaganda-the-abuse-of-social-media

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510409/

https://www.theglobalist.com/propaganda-meets-social-media/

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/02/09/584514805/computational-propaganda-yeah-that-s-a-thing-now

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/big.2017.29024.cpr

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-technology-democracy-nicco-mele-20180223-htmlstory.html

https://carleton.ca/history/undergraduate/courses/summer-courses/hist-3907av-illusion-power-technology-propaganda-history/

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wsj-different-trump-headlines/

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-2-what-is-propaganda-(1944)/the-story-of-propaganda

http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2018/04/09/a-theory-of-propaganda-for-the-social-media-age/

http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

Sources

OBEY

Mad Men

Books

Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Anthony Pratkanis

How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley

Banksy The Man Behind the Wall

Quotes

Graphic design is a powerful tool capable of publicizing, informing, and propagandizing environmental, social, and political messages (McCoy, 2003).

Primary Research:

Contact marketing department and graphic studios

[email protected]

[email protected]

Ideas

[mellissaconstanceriddle-blog]

A World of Pseudo-Events - by Mellissa Riddle

"We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real."

In The Image, by Daniel J. Boorstin, he explains how society has moved from authentic events to “synthetic happenings.” Much of it he attributes to our desire for the “Gee whiz!” events, something that was authentically novel, which shifted the media industry, like any other industry striving for more viewership and success, toward fabricating mind-numbing novelties. The eagerness for this new fulfillment opened a door for propaganda that over the decades has displaced quality and literal content.

 However, many of us were stunned by the 2016 presidential campaigns lack of valuable content. Trump, Bernie, and Hilary supporters alike were asking why nothing valuable is making the debates and news. Perhaps this synthetic news and consolidated tactics are finally losing their novelty.

 For quite some time, I have questioned the integrity of the father of public relations (PR), Edward Bernays. As an employee of the U.S. government, Bernays ran PR campaigns to overthrow governments. In an article written by Noam Chomsky, he quotes Bernay’s, who in his publication in 1928 entitled Propaganda (at that time, not such a negative word), describes the solution to the problem of an America that is becoming too democratic. That answer is his propaganda, or the wielding of information to result in the emotions and actions of the orchestrator. This poignant effort to manipulate and regiment the minds of the less intelligent “slobs” so they “stay on the right course," may not have seemed at the time to be an attack on our freedom, but today we must consider this notion.

 Bernays invented PR and the pseudo-events as a direct result of the lessons learned from the first world war (Chomsky, 1997). These techniques established with a liberal intention for crowd control were used to engineer the public relations effort behind the U.S. backed coup which overthrew the democratic government of Guatemala (Chomsky, 1997). This is one of many examples. Is this psychological warfare not still warfare, and therefore in direct violation of American citizens constitutional rights?

 In The Image, Boorstin discusses that our democratic society specifically allows for such pseudo-events through the “freedom of speech and of the press” which is the equivalent of the “freedom to create pseudo-events.” Perhpas this is exceptable, although a gray area. But, consider for a moment that psychological manipulation is being used against you and your chidlren for a specific purpose that you are not aware of, and for the desired effect, to which you are also unaware.

We can recall historical accounts of such manipulation from Hitler, Stalin, or more recently the stereo-typing of Muslims; which has documented examples of orchestrated manipulation to garner support for militants and for proxy wars, as well as pseudo-events produced by medias war-journalism framing.

 This is not to say that the stereotyping, propaganda, pseudo-events, and this newer concept of “leaking” is only a scheme to undermine ourselves. “The efficient mass production of pseudo-events…is the work of the whole machinery of our society” (Boorstin). We may trace back its origins which is valuable, but placing blame is no solution. What is important is to acknowledge and understand its consequences.

Today we find ourselves in a society where we are overstimulated, with short attention spans, and being fed more “gee whiz!” worthy news than the last few minutes; the product of which has now affected how our candidates debate on pointless character flaws and stereotypes. Instead of purposeful exchanges of information, we judge our candidates based on two-minute performances void of valuable content. These pseudo-events “thus lead to an emphasis on pseudo-qualifications”(Boorstin).

The summation of this blog post brings images of Disney's Walle to my mind: the plump humans in their little hover carts, slurping neon colored concoctions while their comatose brains stay fixed to their hover cart screens. No human interaction. No decision making. Just consuming. My point in this albeit cynical rant, is to imagine where this goes. At times it feels like an uphill battle, but there is no alternative; Upon understanding our ambiguous reality, seeking truth and literacy become ever more obligatory.

#Mellissa Riddle #Mellissa Constance Riddle

[politicalfilth-blog]

Declassified Documents Prove CIA Worked Closely With Many Of The Largest Media Outlets

We Are Change

Article via Zero Hedge

Newly-declassified documents show that a senior CIA agent and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence worked closely with the owners and journalists of many of the largest media outlets.

The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities found in 1975 that the CIA submitted stories to the American press:

Wikipedia adds details:

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services.

The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan [i.e. the rebuilding of Europe by the U.S. after WWII]. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.

In 2008, the New York Times wrote:

During the early years of the cold war, [prominent writers and artists, from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jackson Pollock] were supported, sometimes lavishly, always secretly, by the C.I.A. as part of its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. It was perhaps the most successful use of “soft power” in American history.

A CIA operative told Washington Post owner Philip Graham … in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories:

You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.

Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977:

More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

***

In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

***

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were [the heads of CBS, Time, the New York Times, the Louisville Courier?Journal, and Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include [ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters], Hearst Newspapers, Scripps?Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald.

***

There is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements.

***

The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management.

***

Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.

***

Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.

***

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine’s foreign correspondents attended CIA “briefing” dinners similar to those the CIA held for CBS.

***

When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,” said a former deputy director of the Agency. “Frank Wisner dealt with him.” Wisner, deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965, was the Agency’s premier orchestrator of “black” operations, including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast of his “mighty Wurlitzer,” a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.)

***

In November 1973, after [the CIA claimed to have ended the program], Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star that the Agency had “some three dozen” American newsmen “on the CIA payroll,” including five who worked for “general?circulation news organizations.” Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding its hearings in 1976, according to high?level CIA sources, the CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy?five to ninety journalists of every description—executives, reporters, stringers, photographers, columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews. More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency. According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of 1976.

***

Those officials most knowledgeable about the subject say that a figure of 400 American journalists is on the low side ….

“There were a lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest names in journalism would get smeared” ….

An expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA now employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations. Whether or not his estimate is accurate, it is clear that many prominent reporters still report to the CIA.

A 4-part BBC documentary called the “Century of the Self” shows that an American – Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays – created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques.

John Pilger is a highly-regarded journalist (the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson remarked, “A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed”). Pilger said in 2007:

We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake.

***

One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?”

Nick Davies wrote in the Independent in 2008:

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I’ve spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The “Zarqawi letter” which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of “strategic communications” which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

***

The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two “black propaganda specialists” from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through “editors and writers who work with us from time to time.”

The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.

One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first. For example, the head of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division – Alvin A. Snyder – wrote in his book Warriors of Disinformation: How Lies, Videotape, and the USIA Won the Cold War:

All governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.

***

Another casualty, always war’s first, was the truth. The story of [the accidental Russian shoot-down of a Korean airliner] will be remembered pretty much the way we told it in 1983, not the way it really happened.

In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there’s even less to constrain propaganda than before.

One of the most common uses of propaganda is to sell unnecessary and counter-productive wars. Given that the American media is always pro-war, mainstream publishers, producers, editors, and reporters are willing participants.

It’s not just lying about Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction … the corporate media is still selling lies to promote war.

Former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter Robert Parry notes that Ronald Reagan and the CIA unleashed a propaganda campaign in the 1980’s to sell the American public on supporting the Contra rebels, utilizing private players such as Rupert Murdoch to spread disinformation. Parry notes that many of the same people that led Reagan’s domestic propaganda effort in the 1980’s are in power today:

While the older generation that pioneered these domestic propaganda techniques has passed from the scene, many of their protégés are still around along with some of the same organizations. The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond’s NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year.

Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Shadow Foreign Policy.”]

Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan’s article for The New Republic, entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan’s criticism of Obama’s hesitancy to use military force.

***

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is bigger than ever …

Another key to American propaganda is the constant repetition of propaganda. As Business Insider reported in 2013:

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a highly-respected officer who released a critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan ….

From Lt. Col. Davis:

In context, Colonel Leap is implying we ought to change the law to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to “protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will.”

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 appears to serve this purpose by allowing for the American public to be a target audience of U.S. government-funded information campaigns.

Davis also quotes Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker — the Pentagon officer responsible for the Department of Defense’s Joint Force Development — who defines Information Operations (IO) as activities undertaken to “shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience.”

Brig. Gen. Baker goes on to equate descriptions of combat operations with the standard marketing strategy of repeating something until it is accepted:

For years, commercial advertisers have based their advertisement strategies on the premise that there is a positive correlation between the number of times a consumer is exposed to product advertisement and that consumer’s inclination to sample the new product. The very same principle applies to how we influence our target audiences when we conduct COIN.

And those “thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs” appear to serve Baker’s strategy, which states: “Repetition is a key tenet of IO execution, and the failure to constantly drive home a consistent message dilutes the impact on the target audiences.”

Government Massively Manipulates the Web, Social Media and Other Forms of Communication

Of course, the Web and social media have become a huge media platform, and the Pentagon and other government agencies are massively manipulating both.

Documents released by Snowden show that spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don’t like and amplify messages they do.

The CIA and other government agencies also put enormous energy into pushing propaganda through movies, television and video games.

Cross-Border Propaganda

Propaganda isn’t limited to our own borders …

Sometimes, the government plants disinformation in American media in order to mislead foreigners. For example, an official government summary of America’s overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950?s states, “In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq” (page x).

The CIA has also bribed leading foreign journalists.

And CNN accepted money from the brutal Bahrani dictatorship to run pro-monarchy propaganda.

Everyone Who Challenges the Status Quo Is Labeled As a Purveyor of “Fake News” … Or Worse

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of the press from censorship by government.

Indeed, the entire reason that it’s unlawful for the government to stop stories from being printed is because that would punish those who criticize those in power.

Why? Because the Founding Father knew that governments (like the British monarchy) will always crack down on those who point out that the emperor has no clothes.

But the freedom of the press is under massive attack in America today …

For example, the powers-that-be argue that only highly-paid corporate media shills who will act as stenographers for the fatcats should have the constitutional protections guaranteeing freedom of the press.

A Harvard law school professor argues that the First Amendment is outdated and should be abandoned.

When financially-savvy bloggers challenged the Federal Reserve’s policy, a Fed official called all bloggers stupid and unqualified to comment.

And the government is treating the real investigative reporters like criminals … or even terrorists:

Obama has gone after top reporters. His Department of Justice labeled chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen a “criminal co-conspirator” in a leak case, and for many years threatened to prosecute Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist James Risen

The Obama administration also spied on Risen, Rosen, the Associated Press, CBS reporter Cheryl Atkinson and other media

In fact, top NSA whistleblowers tell Washington’s Blog that the NSA has spied on reporters for well over a decade … to make sure they don’t reveal illegal government programs

The Pentagon smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

Reporters covering the Occupy protests were targeted for arrest

The government admits that journalists could be targeted with counter-terrorism laws (and here). For example, after Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge

In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

The NSA and its British counterpart treated Wikileaks like a terrorist organization, going so far as to target its employees politically, and to spy on visitors to its website

Postscript: See this and this.

This article first appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was authored by George Washington.

The post Declassified Documents Prove CIA Worked Closely With Many Of The Largest Media Outlets appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/declassified-documents-prove-cia-worked-closely-many-largest-media-outlets/

#We are Change #We Are Change

[uniteordie-usa]

Newly-Declassified Documents Show that CIA Worked Closely with Owners and Journalists with Many of the Largest Media Outlets | Zero Hedge

http://uniteordiemedia.com/newly-declassified-documents-show-that-cia-worked-closely-with-owners-and-journalists-with-many-of-the-largest-media-outlets-zero-hedge/ http://uniteordiemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/I-Suck-For-The-CIA-600x464.jpg Newly-Declassified Documents Show that CIA Worked Closely with Owners and Journalists with Many of the Largest Media Outlets | Zero Hedge Newly-declassified documents show that a senior CIA agent and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence worked closely with the owners and journalists of many of the largest media outlets: The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to...

Newly-declassified documents show that a senior CIA agent and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Intelligence worked closely with the owners and journalists of many of the largest media outlets:

The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities found in 1975 that the CIA submitted stories to the American press:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ED63A_hcd0

Wikipedia adds details:

After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services.

  The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning off funds intended for the Marshall Plan [i.e. the rebuilding of Europe by the U.S. after WWII]. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers.

In 2008, the New York Times wrote:

During the early years of the cold war, [prominent writers and artists, from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Jackson Pollock] were supported, sometimes lavishly, always secretly, by the C.I.A. as part of its propaganda war against the Soviet Union. It was perhaps the most successful use of “soft power” in American history.

  A CIA operative told Washington Post owner Philip Graham … in a conversation about the willingness of journalists to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories:

You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.

Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977:

More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

  ***

  In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

  ***

  Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were [the heads of CBS, Time, the New York Times, the Louisville Courier?Journal, and Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include [ABC, NBC, AP, UPI, Reuters], Hearst Newspapers, Scripps, Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald Tribune.

  ***

  There is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. “Let’s not pick on some poor reporters, for God’s sake,” William Colby exclaimed at one point to the Church committee’s investigators. “Let’s go to the managements.

  ***

  The CIA even ran a formal training program in the 1950s to teach its agents to be journalists. Intelligence officers were “taught to make noises like reporters,” explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management.

  ***

  Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings.

  ***

  Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.

  ***

  In the 1950s and early 1960s, Time magazine’s foreign correspondents attended CIA “briefing” dinners similar to those the CIA held for CBS.

  ***

  When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. “It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,” said a former deputy director of the Agency. “Frank Wisner dealt with him.” Wisner, deputy director of the CIA from 1950 until shortly before his suicide in 1965, was the Agency’s premier orchestrator of “black” operations, including many in which journalists were involved. Wisner liked to boast of his “mighty Wurlitzer,” a wondrous propaganda instrument he built, and played, with help from the press.)

  ***

  In November 1973, after [the CIA claimed to have ended the program], Colby told reporters and editors from the New York Times and the Washington Star that the Agency had “some three dozen” American newsmen “on the CIA payroll,” including five who worked for “general?circulation news organizations.” Yet even while the Senate Intelligence Committee was holding its hearings in 1976, according to high?level CIA sources, the CIA continued to maintain ties with seventy?five to ninety journalists of every description—executives, reporters, stringers, photographers, columnists, bureau clerks and members of broadcast technical crews. More than half of these had been moved off CIA contracts and payrolls but they were still bound by other secret agreements with the Agency. According to an unpublished report by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, at least fifteen news organizations were still providing cover for CIA operatives as of 1976.

  ***

  Those officials most knowledgeable about the subject say that a figure of 400 American journalists is on the low side ….

  “There were a lot of representations that if this stuff got out some of the biggest names in journalism would get smeared” ….

An expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA now employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations. Whether or not his estimate is accurate, it is clear that many prominent reporters still report to the CIA.

A 4-part BBC documentary called the “Century of the Self” shows that an American – Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays – created the modern field of manipulation of public perceptions, and the U.S. government has extensively used his techniques.

John Pilger is a highly-regarded journalist (the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson remarked, “A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed”). Pilger said in 2007:

We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake.

  ***

  One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said the spokesman, “that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?”

Nick Davies wrote in the Independent in 2008:

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I’ve spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

  The “Zarqawi letter” which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

  This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of “strategic communications” which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

  ***

  The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own “psyop” element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department’s campaign of “public diplomacy” which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

  In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two “black propaganda specialists” from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through “editors and writers who work with us from time to time”.

The government is still paying off reporters to spread disinformation. And the corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services” for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting on what those officials are doing.

One of the ways that the U.S. government spreads propaganda is by making sure that it gets its version out first. For example, the head of the U.S. Information Agency’s television and film division – Alvin A. Snyder – wrote in his book Warriors of Disinformation: How Lies, Videotape, and the USIA Won the Cold War:

All governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.

  ***

  Another casualty, always war’s first, was the truth. The story of [the accidental Russian shootdown of a Korean airliner] will be remembered pretty much the way we told it in 1983, not the way it really happened.

In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there’s even less to constrain propaganda than before.

One of the most common uses of propaganda is to sell unnecessary and counter-productive wars. Given that the American media is always pro-war, mainstream publishers, producers, editors, and reporters are willing participants.

It’s not just lying about Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction … the corporate media is still selling lies to promote war.

Former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter Robert Parry notes that Ronald Reagan and the CIA unleashed a propaganda campaign in the 1980’s to sell the American public on supporting the Contra rebels, utilizing private players such as Rupert Murdoch to spread disinformation. Parry notes that many of the same people that led Reagan’s domestic propaganda effort in the 1980’s are in power today:

While the older generation that pioneered these domestic propaganda techniques has passed from the scene, many of their protégés are still around along with some of the same organizations. The National Endowment for Democracy, which was formed in 1983 at the urging of CIA Director Casey and under the supervision of Walter Raymond’s NSC operation, is still run by the same neocon, Carl Gershman, and has an even bigger budget, now exceeding $100 million a year.

Gershman and his NED played important behind-the-scenes roles in instigating the Ukraine crisis by financing activists, journalists and other operatives who supported the coup against elected President Yanukovych. The NED-backed Freedom House also beat the propaganda drums. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Shadow Foreign Policy.”]

Two other Reagan-era veterans, Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan, have both provided important intellectual support for continuing U.S. interventionism around the world. Earlier this year, Kagan’s article for The New Republic, entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” touched such a raw nerve with President Obama that he hosted Kagan at a White House lunch and crafted the presidential commencement speech at West Point to deflect some of Kagan’s criticism of Obama’s hesitancy to use military force.

***

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is bigger than ever ….

Another key to American propaganda is the constant repetition of propaganda. As Business Insider reported in 2013:

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a highly-respected officer who released a critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan ….

From Lt. Col. Davis:

  In context, Colonel Leap is implying we ought to change the law to enable Public Affairs officers to influence American public opinion when they deem it necessary to “protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will.”

  The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 appears to serve this purpose by allowing for the American public to be a target audience of U.S. government-funded information campaigns.

  Davis also quotes Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker — the Pentagon officer responsible for the Department of Defense’s Joint Force Development — who defines Information Operations (IO) as activities undertaken to “shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience.”

  Brig. Gen. Baker goes on to equate descriptions of combat operations with the standard marketing strategy of repeating something until it is accepted:

  For years, commercial advertisers have based their advertisement strategies on the premise that there is a positive correlation between the number of times a consumer is exposed to product advertisement and that consumer’s inclination to sample the new product. The very same principle applies to how we influence our target audiences when we conduct COIN.

And those “thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs” appear to serve Baker’s strategy, which states: “Repetition is a key tenet of IO execution, and the failure to constantly drive home a consistent message dilutes the impact on the target audiences.”

Government Massively Manipulates the Web, Social Media and Other Forms of Communication

Of course, the Web and social media have become a huge media platform, and the Pentagon and other government agencies are massively manipulating both.

Documents released by Snowden show that spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don’t like and amplify messages they do.

The CIA and other government agencies also put enormous energy into pushing propaganda through movies, television and video games.

Cross-Border Propaganda

Propaganda isn’t limited to our own borders …

Sometimes, the government plants disinformation in American media in order to mislead foreigners. For example, an official government summary of America’s overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950′s states, “In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq” (page x).

The CIA has also bribed leading foreign journalists.

And CNN accepted money from the brutal Bahrani dictatorship to run pro-monarchy propaganda.

Everyone Who Challenges the Status Quo Is Labeled As a Purveyor of “Fake News” … Or Worse

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of the press from censorship by government.

Indeed, the entire reason that it’s unlawful for the government to stop stories from being printed is because that would punish those who criticize those in power.

Why? Because the Founding Father knew that governments (like the British monarchy) will always crack down on those who point out that the emperor has no clothes.

But the freedom of the press is under massive attack in America today …

For example, the powers-that-be argue that only highly-paid corporate media shills who will act as stenographers for the fatcats should have the constitutional protections guaranteeing freedom of the press.

A Harvard law school professor argues that the First Amendment is outdated and should be abandoned.

When financially-savvy bloggers challenged the Federal Reserve’s policy, a Fed official called all bloggers stupid and unqualified to comment.

And the government is treating the real investigative reporters like criminals … or even terrorists:

Obama has gone after top reporters. His Department of Justice labeled chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen a “criminal co-conspirator” in a leak case, and for many years threatened to prosecute Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist James Risen

The Obama administration also spied on Risen, Rosen, the Associated Press, CBS reporter Cheryl Atkinson and other media

In fact, top NSA whistleblowers tell Washington’s Blog that the NSA has spied on reporters for well over a decade … to make sure they don’t reveal illegal government programs

The Pentagon smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

Reporters covering the Occupy protests were targeted for arrest

The government admits that journalists could be targeted with counter-terrorism laws (and here). For example, after Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, journalist Naomi Wolf, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and others sued the government to enjoin the NDAA’s allowance of the indefinite detention of Americans – the judge asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge

In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of the bank’s wrongdoing, the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

The NSA and its British counterpart treated Wikileaks like a terrorist organization, going so far as to target its employees politically, and to spy on visitors to its website

Postscript: See this and this.

Read More: www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-28/newly-declassified-documents-show-senior-cia-agent-and-deputy-director-directorate-i

#ABC #Allen W. Dulles #AP #Associated Press #BBC #Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker #Carl Bernstein #CBS #Cold War #Copley News Service #Edward Bernays #Frank Wisner #Hearst Newspapers #Howard #Intelligence Activities #MI-6 #NBC #Newsweek #Newsweek magazine #Office of Policy Coordination #Operation Mass Appeal #Philip L. Graham #propaganda war #Reuters #Scripps #Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations #soft power #the Louisville Courier #the Mutual Broadcasting System #the New York Times

[photographydesignstudio2019]

Century of the Self by Adam Curtis

After watching and analysing this documentary series on the way in which our societies consumeristic values came about, I know how a greater understanding on how people of power, corporations and the government use the media. But more specifically the horrifying tricks of advertising. 

https://www.google.com/search?q=edward+bernays&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz3Pqnr57hAhXFpo8KHaXhAw0Q_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=821&dpr=2#imgrc=kRSZKNUlveth8M:

Edward Bernays started a the movement we know today as consumerism. In the 1920′s people brought items and were sold products that were labeled as necessities. But Bernays understood the people worked. He harnessed the masses emotions by creating a hidden message that need is not enough, want means power, wealth and success. Starting with the manipulation of the values and tabooed feeling around females smoking, which greatly increased the sales of cigarettes as they were seen only for male consumption at the time, Bernays began to carefully yet dangerously manipulate the masses. He began to show that producers and companies needed to “Mass produce goods to people targeted at their unconscious desires.” Using famous actors in advertisements and glorified idealistic worlds, he made people envy what they saw in the media. He instated the idea that “You will be better if you have this item.” where that be a vehicle, clothing, shoes or any other products companies were selling at the time. “We must shift America to become a culture of desire, to want newer even though the old hasn’t yet been consumed.”

But this mind set and idealistic world of consumerism still exists almost 100 years later. We are still living in a time where it is highly normalised to want the new. From iphones to beauty products, all relatively similar yet every time we continue purchase the newest and the “best” we can. If you don’t have the newest Iphone or technology thats popular at the time, you look less wealthy, less educated, less desirable. This idea that what you want is something you need in your life to make you better, is a toxic way of thinking that sees powerful men still controlling the masses through the same tactics. 

I perhaps now want to show the ways of consumerism and add a sense of Irony too it. Show how ridiculous our ideas of consumption, mass production, mass manipulation and how it is affecting our lives, our planet, ourselves. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

[porkchopgrinds]

Propaganda + Dynamic Obsolescence

By Mae Mou + Darya Hariri 

Propaganda can be deceitful, manipulative, persuasive or informative. It has been used as a technique to change the way the world thinks and behaves by manipulation of symbolic communication through visuals. Edward Bernays, along with his uncle Sigmund Freud’s ideas, discovered that people can be manipulated by appealing to their unconscious desires. In the past, propaganda have been used to drive harmful or discriminatory messages which carried negative connotations. But propaganda is also effective in relaying positive messages such as health recommendations and encouraging people to vote. In this propaganda’s case, the American government wants new recruits for their submarine forces. The propagandist, which is the United States government, is using the underlying desire of love to persuade young men to join the service. The slogan, “he volunteered for the marine service” is accompanied with a young, attractive woman embracing a young man, who has a big smile on his face.

By using Bernays’ method of appealing to young men’s desire of love from a pretty woman, young men would be more interested in joining the submarine services because they think that they will be able to get a girl, just like the man in the poster. I chose this particular propaganda as an example because the government was successful in using this visual symbolism to appeal to people’s most intimate desire, love. This method of tactics have been used countless times, not only by the government and military, but by pretty much anyone who is attempting to persuade society to do something. It promoted the idea that serving for the marines was fun and full of rewards, and chose not to show any negativity or harsh imagery to ‘scare’ people into joining. (Post by Mae Mou)

https://www.pinterest.com/emmykay13/recruitment-posters/

Dynamic Obsolescence (Darya Hariri)

In this past chapter, we learned about different types and forms of Visual Persuasion and how it correlates with advertising, public relations, TV and movies, propaganda, and documentaries. I chose to focus on Dynamic Obsolescence and how its strategy works on society. According to the text, “Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the obsolescence of a product is planned and built into it from its conception.” Obsolescence is the process of becoming obsolete, relating to unfashionable or a product of no longer use. In other words, it is a redesign of anything that is basically considered outdated. People often do not wait for things to go bad or out of style. They just get sick of the stuff that they already have so they will go out and buy something new that is not out of date or old fashioned. Earnest Elmo Calkins wrote, “We no longer wait for things to wear out. We displace them with others that are not more effective but more attractive.”

In the first photo with the cars, the buyer of the product will be more turned on by the newer vehicle because it is the latest release and considered the “hottest trend” in society. Other people who are into vintage will be more attracted to the older bug but it is not that common. (Post by Darya Hariri)

http://www.ascb.org/compass/compass-points/a-lament-of-the-times/

In this other photo comparing iPhones, the buyer of the product is going to be focused on the latest release of the iPhone and want to buy it right when it comes out. Studies have shown that newer iPhones usually have a lot of problems when they are first released and used by the buyer. The photos purpose is to make the buyer of the product sick of their old iPhone and upgrade it to a newer better looking one, just because the second the new iPhone is released, their old iPhone will be looked at as out dated. (Post by Darya Hariri)

http://ios9news.net/iphone-2015-comparison-chart/