By Larry Romanoff for The Saker Blog, May 10, 2021
Note to Readers:
For a period of about ten years, I operated a website of political commentary that contained thousands of articles, many of which were content from various media, but many being my own work. That website experienced occasional but persistent DDOS and other attacks by forces unknown
Some years ago, I published on that website a three-page article on the Western media similar in content to the media series I am presenting here. Of all my written work, only this one article was under constant attack. Most often, the pages wouldn’t load properly, preventing readers from seeing the full contents and preventing them from clicking through to the following pages. It was clear I had attracted the attention of someone who preferred to not have this information in the public realm.
A short while ago, I wrote an article titled, A Search for Truth and Understanding. It provides an excellent lead-in to this series and I suggest you read it. It isn’t long. (1)
When I arrived in China the news reporting format was one of the first things to draw my attention. There was something different, unusual; the reporting seemed somehow stilted, a bit dry or reserved, perhaps cautious. Reserve and caution are of course Chinese tradition, but I had difficulty assessing it. My first thought was that perhaps the government controlled not only content but method – the way news was reported.
But it slowly dawned on me that the unusual aspect was simply that I was seeing news without commentary – a simple chronology of events. I had become so inured to the rampant opinion-based journalism in North America that the absence of this in China made articles seem somehow barren and empty. But they weren’t empty of news; they were empty of the opinions, biases, propaganda, conjectures and moral judgments that in the West are always inextricably mixed with fact. Looking at most Western newspapers today, and certainly on topics related to politics, capitalism, religion or US imperialism, seemingly every article contains 3 facts, 4 conjectures, 2 false hypotheses, 6 moral judgments, 12 baseless opinions and at least 6 unfounded accusations, all following a coherent agenda. It is impossible to find honest reporting in America’s mainstream media today – and indeed in all the Western media, the reported “news” being little more than an ideology surge, journalism having openly become nothing more than perception management for imperialism or political power.
The US and Canada, and primarily all English-speaking countries, once had factual news reporting. But with competition for readers or viewers, the media began adding what they called ‘color’ to the news, additional information intended to make a news story more interesting, reporting for e.g., that someone in the news had a son who was an Olympic athlete; not related directly to the story, but adding human interest. The trouble with color is that there isn’t very much of it, and the media wasted no time replacing it with commentary, essentially editorialising news with ideological viewpoints.
Of course, the Western governments and the media were well-versed in Bernays’ clandestine propaganda theories, but by the 1980s ‘clandestine’ was no longer operative and even subtlety had been abandoned, ideology being not only ubiquitous but in the open. With the English media today, there is no longer any separation of fact and opinion. This is so true that many articles contain no news other than an oblique reference to some past event, and consist entirely of ideological editorialising, in fact heavily biased op-ed pieces providing primarily a political interpretation the elites want us to adopt, creating abuses of every description. Americans, Canadians, Brits and Aussies have now for two generations been exposed to this deceitful reporting and are no longer aware of the extensive propagandising even though it no longer remains hidden.
As someone wrote so accurately: “Traditional journalistic news room culture determines the basic nature of a story before the facts are assembled.”
“A young reporter writes an expose, but the editor says, “I don’t think we’re going to run that.” The second time the reporter goes to her editor, the editor says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She doesn’t research and write the story. The third time the reporter has an idea. But she doesn’t go to her editor. The fourth time she doesn’t get the idea.” – Nicholas Johnson, former FCC commissioner (2)
It is true that we now have a daily stream of fabricated news. Some of it is completely fabricated in the sense that there was no newsworthy event that occurred, but where a few small facts from a topic of current interest are used to provide an excuse for political editorials. Most of it is driven by a political/capitalist ideology promulgated with a startling lack of regard for truth, using badly twisted interpretations of a few facts to spin an entirely false story. Journalistic integrity has all but disappeared from the Western countries. And indeed it is much worse than this, because a great deal of our “news” is in reality totally fabricated, with the requisite faked video and audio, misleading headlines, twisted information and bald outright lies. I am referring here to actual fabricated concoctions – invented ‘news’ – things that never happened, or that didn’t occur at all in the way they are presented. And we aren’t talking about ‘color’ or ‘bias’ here; we’re speaking of actually fabricating an event and making firm statements that are knowingly false. I will provide some typical – and outrageous – examples. You can begin with this story of Jessica Lynch and another of Osama bin Laden. (3) (4)
For most of us, it seems incredible that a news story could possibly be a fiction. We are apparently unable to accept that our government and media would actually lie. But lie, they do. Several years ago, CNN was sued by one of their news anchors for being ordered to lie in the newscasts. CNN won the case. They did not deny ordering the news anchor to lie. Their defense was based simply on the position that American news media have “no obligation to tell the truth”. In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States. FOX asserted that there were no written rules against distorting news in the media, arguing that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox attorneys did not dispute a news anchor’s claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story; they simply maintained that it was their right to do so. (5) In these cases, and in others, the position of the US courts implied that First Amendment rights belong to the few individuals who own and/or control the entire media landscape, a kind of shield protecting their vast propagandising campaign.
We have come to the point where Western media are practicing a kind of psychological warfare. “We all know that our State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House have brazenly proclaimed that they have the right and the power to manage the news, to tell us not the truth but what they want us to believe.” – Myron Fagan (6)
This is a large and complex topic, but let’s begin with something simple. Since we are indeed being propagandised by our own media on a daily basis, how do we recognise what is happening to us? How do we distinguish propaganda? How do we separate truth from lies? What are the main things to look for?
1.Atrocity tales.
The first is what some people today call “atrocity porn”, in fact violent pornographic tales of events that have never occurred. For this, you can recall my comments in an earlier Propaganda article on the recommendations of Bernays and Lippman that the best way to create hate and anger towards a people is to fabricate atrocity tales. The Germans having tubs full of Jewish eyeballs, of using Jewish fat to make soap and industrial lubricants, of skewering babies and raping nuns. (7) We progressed to Saddam Hussein having WMDs ready to launch, his using wood shredders to eliminate his political opponents, of gassing millions of Kurds and burying them in mass graves, of his soldiers tossing babies out of incubators.
We had Khadaffi issuing Viagra to his soldiers, enabling them to rape more women. And we had “proof” of this, in the woman who did a survey (during a war) of abused women. 1,300 questionnaires sent out, 1,200 returned and all 1,200 women claimed to have been raped. When the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch tracked down the woman and asked to interview some of the victims, well the woman had unfortunately “lost touch” with all of them. After all, there’s a war on.
We had Bashar al-Assad in Syria gassing his people with chlorine. In the end, no evidence – no evidence – was ever discovered to substantiate any of these claims, but it was too late; the countries had already been attacked and destroyed.
Today we have the ‘genocide’ in China’s Xinjiang, the ‘concentration camps’ imprisoning millions in forced labor, and with unlimited forced sterilisations, the forced extermination of the Uigur language, the destruction of Moslem temples and graveyards and much more. In fact, the only thing happening in Xinjiang is the Chinese government’s astonishing success in de-radicalising hundreds of thousands of (Western-trained) potential terrorists, replacing religious extremism with gainful employment. We have Pompeo’s “proof” that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab. Again, no evidence has ever been presented to substantiate any of these claims; as always, idle claims are equated to evidence.
2. Hate literature
Almost without exception, anything leading you to form a negative opinion of (usually) a country or its people, is propaganda, normally to build support for outrageous political action or in preparation for the next war. You need think only of the constant stream of negative news items about Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, formerly Iraq and Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba . . . To the extent possible, atrocity tales (1) are part of this media onslaught.
3.Framing
This is one of the more insidious tools of propaganda – instructing us ‘how to think’ about a particular event. The invasion and destruction of Iraq were termed by the military and in the media as “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. People who are genuinely concerned about contamination and dangerous side-effects of vaccines are termed “Vaccination terrorists”. When Radio Free Europe started broadcasting its lies about the East in 1950, people were asked to donate “truth dollars” to fight communism, a bit like sending “freedom fighters” to Libya and Syria. As George Carlin said, “If fire fighters fight fires, what do America’s freedom fighters fight?” Hong Kong’s terrorists are defined in the media as “democracy protestors” – who, in one university lab alone, had created more than 10,000 petrol bombs which were used on government buildings and police stations (and on the police themselves), and who poured gasoline on a man and set him on fire. (8) In all these cases, the first step is to provide a useful propaganda definition which, if adopted by the public, eliminates independent thought in one swoop.
4.Flooding the Media
If you think back to recent world events, even very major items like the destruction of Japan’s Fukushima reactor and the leakage of vast amounts of radioactivity into the Pacific, grab the headlines for only a short time, then disappear. Most events are ‘news’ for only a day or two. But whenever we see an item recurring repeatedly in the media for weeks and months, and even sometimes for years, this is a 100% sign that we are being propagandised and that the media flow will not cease until polls tell our masters that a majority of the population has accepted the position being promoted or that the political pressure has achieved its desired result.
One such occurrence was the exchange value of China’s RMB. You may recall that when Japan was in a competitive position similar to China 40 years ago, the US forced the Plaza Accord onto Japan, revaluing the currency upward by nearly 300%, destroying the economy and eliminating Japan as a contender. The same was planned for China, led by Paul Krugman, the NYT’s Renminbi Rambo, screaming that China needed to revalue its currency by “at least 25% to 40%”. These stories of ‘China cheating’ on its currency and the necessary 40% revaluation occurring at least weekly in the Western media and the US Congress for perhaps ten years. But in fact, China’s currency had always traded in an appropriate range, as has been proven by subsequent events, and the Chinese government did not bow to the media and political pressure.
Today’s stories of China’s Xinjiang, yesterday’s stories of the ‘horrors’ of ZIKA, and more. One of the more noticeable of these is the new religion of “sexual preferences” which has been hyped in the media non-stop to the extent that few politicians would have the courage (or the death wish) to refuse participation in a Gay Pride parade. The power of propaganda. (9)
China’s Huawei is another such item, garnering far more media attention than an actual circumstance would require, and with good reason. Huawei has been in the US, Canada, and many other nations during G1, G2, G3 and G4, and never a hint of a suggestion of espionage or any threat to ‘national security’, so what happened suddenly with G5? You may care to read this, to understand the details. (10)
5.Changing Your Values
Anything suggesting you alter your moral values especially sexual, or on abortion, assisted death, pornography, immigration, family values, today’s Western white trash. In this category we have had an enormous volume on all of these topics. I would include here a recent NYT article freeing corporate executives from responsibility for all crimes including negligent manslaughter (11) (12), the movie Pretty Woman, and the flood referred to above on our new sexual perversions presented as “preferences”.
6.Hit Pieces
Whenever you see an author or a publication being trashed in the media, you know there is something they don’t want you to know. The best is to go there immediately and find out what that is. Almost invariably, whenever people are being demonised, you know that’s propaganda; you are being indoctrinated to avoid information they don’t want you to have.
When James Bacque (12) (13) published his historically-surprising works of the millions of Germans killed in American concentration camps in Europe in the years following the end of the war, (14) he was bitterly excoriated in the North American media, his research being derided as “worse than useless” even though he’d relied entirely on US military records and the introduction to his books was written by a senior US military officer. His work was denounced as “a deeply-flawed book” (15). Someone didn’t want Americans to know, while Bacque’s books have been translated into about 15 languages and in Europe he is widely admired as an historian of consequence.
When the President of Tanzania derided Western vaccines for COVID-19 and claimed Tanzania would refuse to participate in the global vaccine money-making machine, the UK Guardian published an astonishing article stating that “this man must be removed” from his office (16). A short while later, Magufuli mysteriously collapsed on a public stage and was pronounced dead, the Guardian writing a dozen or more articles celebrating the event. It was a surprise, to say the least, that the Guardian would have any interest in such a minor person and item. Magufuli was the same man who denounced the American virus tests, claiming a goat and a papaya tested positive. (17) (18)
The same is true of Henry Ford’s series of articles on The International Jew. (19) (20) This has for more than 100 years been denounced in vicious terms as ‘anti-Semitic rants’ but, on reading them, we are surprised to discover they are no such thing and that Ford in many instances praised the Jews for their talents. But the articles contain information that some people don’t want widespread in the public domain and, the best defense being a good offense, the attacks are intended to pre-empt examination.
7.Confusion of Information
Whenever a media propaganda topic arises and contrary opinions and conclusions are leaking into the public realm, we invariably see a multitude of articles creating floods of extraneous information that serve only to create confusion in the public mind and prevent rational thought and conclusions. Often, this flood of unwelcome information is used to direct public thought in wrong directions and avoid if possible any focus on the core of the issue. COVID-19 is one such example, with columnists, apparently medically-qualified, proving that lockdowns are either useful or a crime against humanity, that masks will either prevent infection or starve you of oxygen and leave your children brain-dead. Or that the virus originated in either bats or pangolins or bananas, or frozen salmon, or Fort Detrick or the Wuhan university, or caves in Sichuan, and that it was unleashed either deliberately, or by accident, or by lab Ph.D’s selling the diseased animals on the street for coffee money. And at least 100 “facts” to support each of these claims.
Whenever we are reading about a serious current event and find suddenly multiple opinions and conclusions by multiple persons all apparently qualified, we know we are suffering a propaganda attack. It will never occur otherwise.
8.Fake NGOs
One common strategy for propagandists when promulgating questionable theories about events or accusations against a nation, is to produce ‘off-the-shelf’ NGOs with legitimate-sounding names as the actual author of the accusation or theory in question. So we suddenly see the “Center for Democratic Transition (CDT)” promoting “honest and accountable government” somewhere, or vicious trade agreements promoted with the support of the “Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) in Washington”. And of course we have the ‘World Uigur Congress’ in Washington, created by the CIA with two people, masquerading as the only legitimate world voice of China’s millions of Xinjiang Uigurs, to say nothing of the “Tibet Government in Exile”, also created by the CIA with two people and also in Washington.
If you haven’t heard of the organisation before, it very likely did not exist before, and was created only yesterday to lend a bit of credibility to an otherwise-hapless tale.
9.Fact-Checking
You may (or may not) be surprised to learn that fact-checking is a huge worldwide industry conceived and created years ago as a powerful censorship tool, and funded with seemingly unlimited millions of dollars primarily by George Soros, the Gates Foundation, various media companies, and similar. They were never created to fact-check George Bush’s claims about Iraq WMDs, but to ‘fact-check’ you and pronounce you false when you disputed Bush’s claims.
I recently wrote a heavily-documented article on the thesis (now widely-accepted, I believe) that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was not influenza but was instead a bacterial infection (proven and accepted) the tragic result of a misguided experiment by the Rockefeller Medical Institute of a meningitis vaccine that began at Fort Riley in the US and spread around the world not by the soldiers but by Rockefeller itself. (21) Reuters immediately conducted a ‘fact-check’ of the thesis and pronounced it false. Reuter’s evidence? Non-existent, the claim sufficing as irrefutable proof. (22) Moreover, some of their claims were completely false.
You will be surprised to learn of the tricks these fact-checkers play in producing their results, and of the actual violations and crimes (civil, at least) they will commit in pursuing their ends. To my best knowledge, there are no fact-checkers that are not part of this worldwide network. Some like to rely on sites like Snopes, but these have also been co-opted and have now become part of the propaganda chain, filling in one of the last holes in the highway of lies. As one quick example of the latter, almost everyone has seen the video of Pompeo stating “We lied, we cheated, we stole.” Snopes’ fact-check experts tell us it is only “partially true” that Pompeo said this. In simple terms, whenever any major media outlet claims that something has been fact-checked, delete this information from your consciousness because it is almost certainly false.
10.Too much of the story known in advance
There are many such examples and all should raise an extreme cautionary awareness in readers. In the event of 9-11, the full story of who, how, and why was flooding the media the next morning, while in real life there wasn’t even sufficient time to fully realise what had happened. ZIKA was another such tale, (23) as were the reports of gassings in Syria, replete with all details which were later proven to have no substantiation.
11.Negative and Unpleasant Emotions
Anything creating a negative emotional response, other than perhaps the story of a tragic death or similar. Propaganda relies heavily on emotion, often primarily fear and usually of fears you might not care to discuss openly. It also relies heavily on hate and anger, arousing feelings of injustice or horrible crimes against populations. The rule is that whenever you find a news item creating a negative emotional response in yourself, you are almost certainly being deliberately stuffed with false propaganda. Think of all the tales of Iran, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China, so many nations and so many events, and yet none of those terrible things have ever been substantiated.
12.Opinion-based articles . . .
. . . with a few truths and many lies, articles that provide no detail or omit crucial details. These may be difficult for you to identify without some research of your own. I will provide some excellent examples.
13.Things that Just Don’t Make Sense
The two epidemics of UK foot and mouth disease (24) that resulted in the culling of millions of cattle and bankrupting most small farmers. “Animal Rights Activists” entered the Level-4 Military bio-weapons labs at Pirbright and Porton Down and stole thousands of liters of the deadly pathogen and spread it throughout the entire country. Alternatively, “a leaky drain” at Porton Down released a pathogen that killed cattle 500 Kms. distant – and nobody noticed. The fact that anyone attempting to penetrate a military bio-weapons lab would most likely be shot dead, was ignored, as were dozens of other facts.
“Pork Speculators” in turn obtained thousands of liters of deadly swine flu pathogen and used small drones to kill several hundred million pigs in China. No explanation as to why they would do that, nor whether they obtained the pathogen at the nearest 7-11 or at Wal-Mart, and all the rest. A Chinese scientist in the US announces he is on the verge of a great discovery (25a) as to the origin of COVID-19, but a day later this happily-married man has an argument with a gay lover who kills him and commits suicide. Discovery is lost. Two Chinese scientists working on COVID-19 fired from a government lab in Winnipeg, Canada, (25b) police involved, but no accusations, no crimes, merely a “procedural issue” which instantly disappears from the media, meaning they saw something they weren’t meant to see. Chinese medical students taking back to China samples of some “brown fluid” related to COVID-19, and arrested for ‘smuggling’ – which is usually a crime of bringing in, not of taking out.
14.Censorship
Propaganda, whether positive or negative, can be undermined if contrary views – or the truth – can be disseminated to the public at the same time, so media control is vital to eliminate other views or prevent them from gaining traction. Death is the ultimate censorship. Ask Gary Webb, the only known example of a man committing suicide by shooting himself in the head twice. It isn’t difficult to determine if event coverage is being censored, and you can be very certain of it when even the social media de-platform you, cite you for ‘fake news’, and Google suddenly cannot remember who you are.
15.Pablum for the Masses
This is one sure way to know that you are being fed propaganda. An easy example is recurrent articles in a Canadian newspaper with titles like “What is in the COVID-19 vaccines?” (25c), articles that omit all the real concerns of real people and provide no information of value, and which specifically omit mention of aluminum and the female hormones and other contamination which have been widely-reported to be contained in these.
16.Polls
Interestingly, public polls can tell us much about the agenda underlying various propaganda campaigns. As one example, the Western media have been flooded for more than one year with anti-China hate propaganda, centered on the coronavirus but including much else.(26) We can almost sense the glee in Gallup or Pew in reporting that assaults against “Asians” have increased by 793% during the past year, since that was clearly the point of the propaganda. And this is far from the first time such has occurred; the practice began in England during the war years. You may care to read this (25).
17.You don’t know what you don’t know
Propaganda does not only involve telling you what to think and how to think, or what not to think. There is also a huge industry that ensures much news never comes to your attention so that you don’t think ‘the wrong things’ about the wrong people. One example: In 2011, a Saudi judge advertised for a doctor to perform spinal surgery on a man, for the purpose of destroying his spine and leaving him crippled for life. The man had apparently caused a traffic accident that left another man with a damaged spine and the judge determined the appropriate punishment was “an eye for an eye”. Did you read about this? No. It’s not on the agenda.
18.Propaganda Success
Lastly, here are two examples of how successful a propaganda campaign can be, with the power to have all the media onside and to crush dissenting voices. The first is the story of China’s great famine in 1959, the story propagated in Western minds attributing the blame to Mao and being rubbish in entirety. (27) The second is the real story of China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, certainly one of the greatest propaganda victories of all time. (28) The article referenced is considered the definitive work on this topic, at least in English, though the Internet gatekeepers will not permit many of the necessary photos to be reproduced on any website.
I will cover all these and more in a brief series of articles on Media Propaganda.
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 30 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’.
His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
Notes
(1) http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1282/
(2) http://www.nicholasjohnson.org/writing/masmedia/
(3) Fake News and “The Naked Government”: Jessica Lynch
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/618/
(4) The Death of Osama bin Laden
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1409/
(5) https://www.projectcensored.org/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/
(6) http://usa-the-republic.com/illuminati/fagan_index.html
(7) Bernays and Propaganda – Part 2 of 5 — The Marketing of War
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1582/
(8) https://www.rt.com/news/473115-hong-kong-man-set-on-fire/
(9) Social Change: If Greed is Good, Maybe Smoking is Gooder
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1187/
(10) Huawei, Tik-Tok and WeChat
https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/08/huawei-tik-tok-and-wechat-august-8-2020.html
(13) https://www.jamesbacque.com/
(14) https://archive.org/details/CrimesAndMerciesByJamesBacque1997
(15) https://www.positionpapers.ie/2019/06/james-bacques-other-losses-a-deeply-flawed-book/
(17) https://newspunch.com/tanzanian-president-who-questioned-covid-vaccine-found-dead/
(18) https://www.africanews.com/2021/03/26/tanzania-s-magufuli-laid-to-rest-after-mysterious-death//
(19) https://archive.org/details/TheInternationalJew_655
(20) https://educate-yourself.org/cn/The-International-Jew-Vols1-4-Henry-Ford-645pages.pdf
(21) The 1918 Rockefeller-US Army Worldwide Pandemic
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1319/
(22) https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccines-caused-1918-influe-idUSKBN21J6X2
(23) ZIKA: https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/06/larry-romanoff-zika-june-12-2020.html
(24) UK Foot and Mouth Disease
https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/06/larry-romanoff-uk-foot-and-mouth.html
(25a) https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-chinese-american-researcher-studying-virus-murdered/1831236
(25b) https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/virologists-escorted-out-of-lab-in-canada-66164
(25c) https://globalnews.ca/news/7525406/covid-vaccine-ingredients-pfizer/
(26) The Anger Campaign Against China
https://www.moonofshanghai.com/2020/08/blog-post_49.html
(27) China’s 1959 Famine
http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/politics/1369/
(28) Tiananmen Square: The Failure of an American-instigated 1989 Color Revolution
The original source of this article is The Saker Blog
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, Blue Moon of Shanghai, 2021
this is how its always been as far back as there are civilizations. its what governments DO and always have. ALL governments. the difference now is the internet has made it impossible for governments to MAINTAIN their ”””monopoly””” over the control of OPINION. because of this the rot and corruption can no longer be so easily hidden as they historically have been. this is the true crisis facing governments all around the world that DO NOT have their peoples best interests. the elites are now fully exposed for who and what they are and as a consequence many governments, especially in the west are witnessing their legitimacy increasingly called into question. there is no amount of state violence and coercion which can halt that train once it leaves the station.
this below was written in 1754 by david hume …in his “on the first principles of government” . larry there really is nothing new under the sun.
“Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.”
there is no amount of state violence and coercion which can halt that train once it leaves the station.
False flag events based on the enemy du jour and wall to wall propaganda campaigns aimed at a dumbed-down and impoverished populace seem to be doing a pretty fair job so far. Apparently mass extinction using bio-terror weapons is now on the table too. Not sure the term despotic even begins to capture that.
short term fixes at best which only exacerbate the failing legitimacy. in 1945 the united states was o n top of the world, literally.
they had 80% of the world gold reserves, untouched by the devastation of world war 2, on the cusp of a gigantic economic boom which would last 20 years into the mid 1960’s and now washington finds itself not a single human lifespan longer (presuming you were born in 1945) on the edge of economic implosion, reviled by half the world or more for all the evil its done and lives its destroyed around the world.
so you tell me, in 1945 washington had the greatest fu-k –you advantage the world had ever seen since the roman empire and within less than 80 years they blew it so totally keeping the ship from sinking will be require a miracle…. all because of collassal greed and an unquenchable thirst for power on the part of its ruling elites
and you suggest the universe does not have a dry sense of humor
extend your time span
Good points, all. Bush the Lesser might respond with his classic appropriated quip, “In the long run, we’ll all be dead.” Or the classic Fight Club quotation: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
The people have been hiding their wealth from gvt taxation for a very long time, the US was the perfect place to hide wealth before the 1900’s and industrialization.
After that it was all about the cover up and keeping the same gvt(s) from obtaining said wealth and wasting it as they please, at least interest rate borrowed money can be tracked and monitored and taxed and all those good things that the gvts and elites like to do.
RE: tedrichard on May 10, 2021 · at 1:13 pm EST/EDT
“all because of collassal greed and an unquenchable thirst for power on the part of its ruling elites”.
Thank you for your addition to Mr.Romanoff’s points in respect of perception management namely :
17.You don’t know what you don’t know.
the facilitation of which Mr. Romanoff does not fully explore whilst encouraging an assumption of “propaganda” given much of the content of his initial exposition..
What you don’t know is that in any lateral interaction all have agency of varying potency.
This also in part facilitates your framing including evaluation horizons –
” in 1945 the united states was o n top of the world” –
an evangelised illusion that from 1945 until 2021 has facilitated and continues to facilitate the ongoing process of the transcendence of “The United States of America” by others including, but not limited to, The Russian Federation.
The half-life of this illusion has facilitated the complicity of “The United States of States” in its own transcendence as some opponents, but not all, understand.
The interpretation of Mr. Kissinger’s lifetime practice of realism based on changing perception when data changes being a “Road to Damascus” moment akin to a betrayal being only one example:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/10/multipolarity-has-kissinger-switched-sides-nearing-his-final-days/
facilitated by the increasing replacement of critical thought by emotion refers.
“short term fixes at best which only exacerbate the failing legitimacy.”
Your projection of outcome has merit but it is always unwise to conflate one component in a lateral process with the lateral process –
an accelerant (short term fixes) within a lateral process with a lateral process of transcendence
thereby restricting perceptions of causations, interactions and opportunities derived therefrom.
The accelerant cited (short term fixes) is a function of short term evaluation horizons, which are all functions of the social relations presently self-designated as “The United States of America” which seek to “control” time, social relations, which to use your example, in prior mutation have existed since the Roman Empire and before the Roman Empire.
“they had 80% of the world gold reserves, untouched by the devastation of world war 2, on the cusp of a gigantic economic boom which would last 20 years into the mid 1960’s and now washington finds itself not a single human lifespan longer (presuming you were born in 1945) on the edge of economic implosion,”
A comment attempting to reinforce the “validity” of the framing cite above would lie in “interpretations” of the “purposes” of the Chinese and Russian Gold Reserves and their oscillations through time.
Another accelerant restricting perceptions of causations, interactions and opportunities is choice of evaluation criteria/methods as functions of purposes which are assumed to be widely shared affording comparisons subject to interpretations, and assignment of relative significances to components and their interactions within lateral processes.
Some opponents seek to “solve” this “problem” through reliance on “n” level binary methods which also outwith a short term evaluation horizon “only exacerbate the” “problem” through replication.
Mr. Wilkerson was also bound by these restrictions, being left to ponder why “The United States of America” is imploding and offering interpretations with benefit of caveats.
The laterally interactive notions of perception management attempts and outcomes including their interpretations are complex.
Some practitioners seek to avoid such complexity by pre-masticating interpretations which the target audience may deem to constitute “plausible belief” or by other sleights of hand not outlined as yet by Mr. Romanoff.
If so minded I could suggest a case study of what the Vietnamese have always designated as “The American War” that may illuminate the points above and/or continue to resort to bridging doubt by belief instead of embracing doubt and its advantages/opportunities as a more comfortable option in the short run.
RE: Disaffected on May 10, 2021 · at 11:00 am EST/EDT
there is no amount of state violence and coercion which can halt that train once it leaves the station.
You are mistaken.
The amount of state violence and coercion required is that which facilitates the resort to violence and coercion by the states’ opponents, thereby emulating the state facilitating its replication.
The “War on Terror” is one example of many, and one of the hopes of “The United States of America’s” wishes misrepresented as “Strategy …..”
….add your extention of choice whilst trying to understanding that the “extensions” are synonyms and hence not extensions, but new clothes deemed appropriate according to dance to be attended.
RE: MagdaTam on May 11, 2021 · at 7:11 am EST/EDT
Whilst communication is not to be conflated with media.
https://journal-neo.org/2021/05/11/putin-and-biden-may-meet-in-yalta/
Exactly what I have been pointing out again and again.
We have always had wars, always had torture, always had propaganda, the Elite ALWAYS lied to us…….LOL.
Therefore we cannot do anything about it, because it always had been there!
What we should be doing, you should be doing, and I should be doing, is simply accepting reality…and facts! Accepting reality man. Thats how life is. Thats how life always were, and thats how life always will be!!
Nobody cant do a shit about it!
I can bring home my dime and you can bring home your dime, and we leave the losers behind. Thats what history tells us, and history points to the future, and we cant do a shit about it!
Antony Blinken Continues To Lecture The World on Values His Administration Aggressively Violates: Greenwald
…
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/antony-blinken-continues-to-lecture
RE: Propaganda and the Media: Part 1 – Introduction
” It was clear I had attracted the attention of someone who preferred to not have this information in the public realm.”
Perhaps a fuller illumination would be achieve if you added the following observations ?
1. I interacted with some binary believers.
2. I interacted with some who believe that datastreams are limited to “content”
3. I interacted with some who believe that “content” is interpreted in the same way in different cultures.
4. I interacted with some who believe that the target audience would be desuaded by “difficulty” based on my projections.
5.. I interacted with some who are inept in deliniating “target audience”.
6. I interacted with some who are inept in communication.
7. I interacted with some who seek to communicate without understanding context, including but not restricted to “the surveillance state”.
8. I interacted with some who afforded/afford many opportunities to render them useful fools, particularly if I don’t become immersed in notions of “propaganda” but analyse all as datastreams, since relying on the notion of “propaganda” is to emulate those with whom I interacted.
Enjoy your journey.
The MSM occasionally tell the truth; but if so, with spin. Here are Western presstitutes about to go apoplectic instead of congratulating the Chinese government on its foresight and preparedness for an outbreak of viral test-tube-babies from the U$ bioweapons labs in Fort Detrick, U$A, under Dr.Fauci after it had been closed down for for carelessness and moved to Wuhan, still under Dr.Fauci. Editorial in The Australian, May 10:
“Covid as biological war? China paper needs answers.
Revelations that Chinese military scientists discussed weaponising SARS coronaviruses five years before the emergence of COVID-19 have raised major questions about the pandemic’s origins. They warrant full, transparent investigation. As Sharri Markson reported in The Weekend Australian, People’s Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese health officials set out their ideas “in a document that predicted a third world war would be fought with biological weapons”. That document, written in 2015, was obtained by US State Department officials. It described SARS coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”.
RE: Dr. NG Maroudas on May 10, 2021 · at 9:41 am EST/EDT
“The MSM occasionally tell the truth “
Via : MagdaTam on May 10, 2021 · at 9:37 am EST/EDT
“…but analyse all as datastreams, since relying on the notion of “propaganda” is to emulate those with whom I interacted. “
To : Petri Krohn on May 10, 2021 · at 9:50 am EST/EDT
“Mainstream news on “unpredictable” topics consists of four ingredients in varying proportions: “
Let me suggest that your reliances on linear framing, including precedents whether actual or interpreted, limit your perceptions.
Words are catalysts of assumptions and connotations.
A connotation catalysed by “propaganda” is “non-truth” facilitating an assumption of “purpose” reinforcing resort to linear framing thereby minimising opportunities and perception – illustrated by restriction to four ingredients.
Usage of “datastreams” does not catalyse to the same degree connotations of “non-truth” nor “purpose”, whilst encouraging analyses and development/ implementation of communication strategies derived therefrom with more limited proportions of assumption, thereby encouraging the agency of “deliniating “target audience” to themselves, through the resort of some to bridge doubt by belief to attain “self-confirmation”.
This is one of the bases of tell the truth as far as this is practical since few will believe you – a technique used by some as a method of hiding in open sight, including by the opponents facilitated in part by the immersion of others in we the people hold these truths to be self-evident of being “non-truths” – a short circuit of communication.
Enjoy your journey.
To tell the truth, notwithstanding all we can accuse the Chinese government for, they have a much more decent reputation on factual news than anything the US State Department can come up with.
RE: Tomsen on May 10, 2021 · at 4:02 pm EST/EDT
“all we can accuse”
Not all resort to accusation, whether or not as a deflection technique, nor rely solely on interpretation, whether or not with benefit of caveat, thereby facilitating the design, implementation and evaluation of processes to achieve perception.
Thank you for your illustration that ideology is immersive akin to a swimming pool from which you emerge carrying water droplets.
This is also a replication of some aspects inherent in the use of “propaganda” including but not limited to the assignment of agency and significances.
“more decent reputation”.
For some practitioners a more a significant evaluation criteria is utility, whilst “reputation” is of lesser significance, since resort to/guidance by “reputation” by some facilitates opportunities of increasing “utility” with the complicity of those subject to such resort.
Perhaps a wise caution would be to remember that Mr. Freud’s relative, whom some suggest was the father of propaganda, was of the rubbing sticks school of thermodynamics, and hence is an unwise guide to rely upon in lateral processes.
I commented on the same issues five years ago on a post on Facebook:
HOW MEDIA PRODUCES LIES FROM HALF-TRUTHS & FACTOIDS
MSM has a code word they use when they are lying: #UNPREDICTABLE! It means that any information they give on the subject is totally useless in predicting its future behavior. “Unpredictable” topics include #Trump, #Assad, #Putin, and #NorthKorea.
Mainstream news on “unpredictable” topics consists of four ingredients in varying proportions:
1) Outright lies: In the Syrian context this often takes the form of accusing “Assad” for crimes committed by “rebels”.
2) Half truths
3) Factoids: small pieces of falsehoods and lies that have already been shown to be lies but that are repeated by the media so often that sheeple believe them to be true. “Assad, who last year gassed his own people, denied…”
4) Facts: the most useful fact are the time and place of alleged events. Sometime the article may contain useful pieces of eyewitness testimony.
The factual parts of the article however do little to help the reader form a coherent picture of events. They are chosen in the same way photo mosaic collages are made. First a narrative is created, that the writers and articles must follow. Suitable pieces of factual content are chosen, so that taken together they produce something that resembles the predetermined narrative.
***
A former editor and correspondent of the The New York Times, Michael Cieply describes how the newspaper works:
Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Searching
It was a shock on arriving at the New York Times in 2004, as the paper’s movie editor, to realize that its editorial dynamic was essentially the reverse. By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”
The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “We set the agenda for the country in that room.”
looking forward to the rest of your articles on this topic.
As there are ‘fifth columists’ in every country, why would China be different. Are we to believe all Chinese people are saints? Not one Chinese person would do anything to hurt or embarass their government? The brown fluid being shipped from Winnipeg’s Virology Lab begs major questions……and as reported by The Canadian Press, Henepah was one of the the virii being shipped outside protocol………..that’s a bat virus, studied in a lab were GOF is examined. Could Canada have inadvertenly attacked China, by mistake, cue Monty, I hear a “say no more, say no more,” coming from the reeds, or is that crickets…………..as I have stated, hidden, in plain sight. That’s how it’s done and have the MSM screem Wuhan all day long. Like an old Peeler, ‘nothin’ to see here lads, move along.”
Cheers, M
@sean
Fact is the whole set is arranged by the 5 eyes with US/UK in charge. China participate in the high level meetings but are only whippingboy/scapegoat like Saudi/Israel is.
US/UK high level plan it, someone fund it, someone like Israel/Saudi/China/Putin/Muslims/terrorists m.m. get the blame.
It looks like however China/Xi cheated them by introducing OBOR and resisted the pressure longterm in an Intelligent way.
The purpose of the mainstream media is not to inform you, but to conform you.
– Ned B.
2. Hate literature
Almost without exception, anything leading you to form a negative opinion of (usually) a country or its people, is propaganda, normally to build support for outrageous political action or in preparation for the next war. You need think only of the constant stream of negative news items about Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, formerly Iraq and Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba . . . To the extent possible, atrocity tales (1) are part of this media onslaught.
The Anglo-American (cough) “free press” specializes Two Minutes of Hate Campaigns against official enemy nations.
Half-truths, smears, insinuation, and decontextualized disinformation are what the Anglos revel in–like pigs rolling in mud.
Indeed, it has become a core value of their “journalism.”
From Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq to Syrian chemical weapons use to the Wuhan “biowarfare” lab to the biggest lies of them all, the 9-11 American Reichstag Fire and subsequent War on Terrorism.
The North Americans, the British, and the Australians are by far the world’s leaders in lies, deception, and distortion.
The true Axis of Evil on this planet is the Anglo Axis of Evil.
“It is impossible to find honest reporting in America’s mainstream media today”
No kidding! Underline, high lite, and bold it!
Very interesting article ! Thank you ! I wish I could share it with friends and family that are continuously hoodwinked, but they’d say I’m a delusional conspiracy theorist. But knowing I’m not alone « in this reality » is definitely a consolation.
Great piece by Larry Romanoff — hats off.
I found this passage especially striking:
”Today we have the ‘genocide’ in China’s Xinjiang, the ‘concentration camps’ imprisoning millions in forced labor, and with unlimited forced sterilisations, the forced extermination of the Uigur language, the destruction of Moslem temples and graveyards and much more. In fact, the only thing happening in Xinjiang is the Chinese government’s astonishing success in de-radicalising hundreds of thousands of (Western-trained) potential terrorists, replacing religious extremism with gainful employment.”
Nothing surprising or special about the unabashed lies and slanders — that’s simply what imperialist presstitutes are supposed to barf up for a living. What merits attention here is that according to this ”narrative” China is expected to be perceived as an evil-doer allegedly oppressing Muslims. It wasn’t that long ago when Islam was presented as an alien, dangerous threat to ”Western values”, calling for uncompromising promotion of ”modern, secular democracy” — actually, I think this is still the official ”Party Line” of arch-Zionist Mathias Döpfner (Axel Springer SE). The profound contempt for the consumers of the MSM isn’t hard to see.
Whenever I had computer issues, is was just about all the time the military or some lost political figure that was the culprit.
If one never points the blames in the right direction, the issues never get resolved.
Very important and sensitive article promoted bravely by Saker.
The problem is the lies and propaganda works. The sheeple eagerly lick and eat it all up, and run along the floor panel to avoid anyone trying to interrupt their horny adaption to fake narratives.
The brainwashing in West is so thick I doubt it will be possible ever to return to normal without some very drastic event(s) within the next decade or two..
Western children, already without basics in gramma and math, are now being scheduled to “computer thinking”, making the artificial world they live in, mentally even worse.
This is an outstanding essay that has systematically gathered up just about everything one can know about propaganda. I’ve seen nothing like it in terms of breath and depth of insights. A real milestone in the study. Many thanks for this.
Larry – you are so correct when describing the subterfuge, editorial writing, and blatant lies by the media.
It’s WHY in December of 2020, we cut the cord on “Cable News.”
As we have progressed with banishing the tv media, we no longer ever, ever read anything online connected to the US media.
Instead, we find plenty of solid news at The Saker, Unz Review, globalreasearch in Canada, some of RT& Sputnik News, with a healthy dose of the fabulous American economist Dr. Michael Hudson.
There’s more than enough “news” out there as long as you know how to discriminate using……your critical thinking skills.
China’s famine!!! Here’s another juicy example of how propaganda works Larry Romanoff concerning the USSR drought of 1972. This is taken as found in Willard Cantelon’s book The Day the Dollar Dies pgs. 76-78. Read and weep.
9 FILLING STATIONS CLOSE,
GAS SHORTAGE LINK DENIED
Headlines of this nature were being seen more and more frequently in many areas of the nation. In studying the various articles, I discovered that the announcement was received by many Americans with mingled consternation and confusion. One article read as follows:
The national energy “crisis,” here yesterday and gone tomorrow, seems almost elusive, and the experts disagree even on its existence. Now it seems the people directly affected by the current fuel shortages give
different opinions, as two stories by Associated Press at left, and International Press at right, reflect. Is
there an Energy Crisis? Facts are facts, but it depends on who you ask and when.
As I followed the reactions of our nation’s leaders, I turned my eyes and interest again to the Dallas Morning
News, January 16. The top half of I 1-A was devoted to an article headlined,
PRODUCERS ASK HIGHER GAS PRICES.
And on the bottom half of the same page, ran a second headline: KOSYGIN TOURS OIL GAS AREA IN USSR TO BOOST DEVELOPMENT PLANS.
The two stories on the same page did not come as a total surprise to some of us who had followed the developments of these events for several months. On November 12,1972, I was in Eugene, Oregon. I picked up the daily paper, the Register Guard, and read an article reprinted from the Washington Star, which said,
Washington Star News reports U.S. may buy as much as forty billion dollars’ worth of natural gas from Russia
during the next twenty-flve years. U.S. companies backed by federal financing would buy 36.5 trillion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas.
The head of one of the oil and gas producers’ groups said Russian gas would cost six times more than the wholesale price of U.S. gas. In response to that announcement in November, Tom Medders, Jr., head of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said,
It is disturbing that our government is willing to encourage development of the Soviet Union’s gas at such a cost when it is pursuing regulatory policies that are discouraging the needful capital expenditures to develop our own natural gas resources at home.
Serious-minded leaders, such as Senator Henry Jackson and Commerce Secretary Peter Peterson, and others, raised the question,
Would it not be unwise to make our nation dependent on an energy source that was held in the hands of a
foreign nation?
In spite of the fact the alarms were being sounded, there was every indication that Americans would be subjected to gas rationing in the near future. Men as prominent as Mr. O’Leary, member of the Atomic Energy Commission, predicted rationing in the near future.
Russian Wheat
While America was discussing the purchasing of 36 trillion cubic feet of Russian gas, the Russians were occupied with the task of importing 20 million tons of wheat, which they had purchased from the United States, at a price of over $ 1 billion. Although the Russian press sought to keep this tremendous importation of wheat a secret from their own people, the free world was told it was because of a drought in the USSR.
Some indicated the drought in Russia was the worst in a hundred years, and affected 27.5 million acres of land.Several years previously, I recalled reading an article by Sterling Slappey. His article carried the headline,
SOVIET WHEAT PURCHASES LINKED TO ALCOHOL
NEEDS.
Mr. Slappey quoted a report from the reputable German Institute of Industries. They declared the Soviets had
greater need for wheat to distill into industrial alcohol than to turn into bread. They said that it took nine tons of wheat to make two tons of alcohol, which in turn would make one ton of synthetic rubber. They also declared the Russians needed 550,000 tons of industrial alcohol for the purposes mentioned. Some who read Slappey’s article and his quotations from the Institute of German Industries, said,
We do not mind as taxpayers subsidizing cheap wheat for Russian bread, but we would resent subsidizing the
wheat purchase to the USSR if it were to be used for military production.
Was the fuel crisis in America genuine, or was it somehow linked to the possible purchase of Russian gas? If the suggested deal with Russia should develop as outlined, the 25-year contract for $40 billion worth of Russian gas would be the biggest transaction in the history of man.
Propaganda wow? If we really knew the truth Wow just wow?
Larry: in a part of your interview with Bonnie Franklin, 2020, you inaccurately portray Italy’s supposed banking system as remaining independent from the EU.
That is simply false!! I have close friends in Italy who are highly educated and in the banking/credit systems.
It is a known fact that Italy’s banking is under the strict control of the EU.
good article.
Two points that caught my eye:
(1) “..under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves..”
I wonder if the above is evidence of malice or of the inherrent contradiction within America’s progressive roots. Either way, if you give carte blanche to the media – whose proper function is to be watchdog for a nation – then you’re playing with dynamite.
(2) “..flood of unwelcome information is used to direct public thought in wrong directions and avoid if possible any focus on the core of the issue. COVID-19 is one such example, with columnists, apparently medically-qualified, proving that lockdowns are either useful or a crime against humanity, that masks will either prevent infection or starve you of oxygen and leave your children brain-dead. Or that the virus originated in either bats or pangolins or bananas, or frozen salmon, or Fort Detrick or the Wuhan university, or caves in Sichuan, and that it was unleashed either deliberately, or by accident, or by lab Ph.D’s selling the diseased animals on the street for coffee money. And at least 100 “facts” to support each of these claims.”
I’m very interested in the split between liberal and ‘conservative’ news. Despite the obvious function of this split – i.e. to divide people and cause confusion – there is also the fact that the ‘conservative’ networks do often provide elements of truth: woke social justice, climate change, the great re-set etc. ARE a joke; and ‘right-wing’ news can cover this fairly well.
I’d therefore like to read something that can explain the fairly widespread dissemination of truth bombs. Why are they necessary when dividing and confusing people could probably be done without them? Or could they?
At a more esoteric (for want of a better word) level, I’ve come to understand that satanists are compelled to tell their victims what they’re up to, so as to place the blame onto them, which is to say, that if the victim has been warned (but doesn’t protect them self), then the victim ‘only got what they deserved’. Despite the devil failing to warn the poor things who believe this nonsense that it is, indeed, utter nonsense, it could explain why a certain arm of the media has invested in telling some truths.
But is there more that could be said about this, and on a more ‘mundane’ level?
We all are aware of the remedy for propoganda and in peaceloving times in the past it was most virulent. It is of course satirical humour. To make fun of those with the most firmly held views was the sport. To find such an individual or group was for the satirist or humourist like finding a blindingly red ruby in a coal mine. Such courage today is rare yet in the US Jimmy Dore does his best. In the UK (Boris could be misunderstood as it would take very little to consider Biden or Boris commedians.)
However here I dwell on some of the greatest past successes and look forward to some of thier future operations that will benefit the country as a whole and some arms manufacturers specifially. What a great help to business and the common people.
https://youtu.be/I1S11lkZHe8
“The Underground History of American Education” <– I hope your series on propaganda covers Gatto's incredible insights therein. The horrific, ubiquitous manipulation we suffer today could not be possible without the century-plus worth of preparation Gatto outlines. Now that I think of it, what he describes is more akin to "grooming", with all its creepy overtones and implications, than it is to simple preparation.
RE: Jeffrey Krinock on May 11, 2021 · at 8:55 am EST/EDT
“Now that I think of it, what he describes is more akin to “grooming”, with all its creepy overtones and implications, than it is to simple preparation.”
That is a useful observation whilst incomplete, an incompleteness shared by both Mr. Bernays and Mr. Romanoff so far, in addition to notions of prime/sole agency, sometimes designated as subject/object, facilitated through immersion in modulated social relations within which both were/are immersed – social relations based on “grooming” in various presentations including techniques.
The practice and experience of social relations is a catalyst and an iteration of social relations and practices therein.
The relative abscence of this notion is a contribution to why Mr. Bernays was of the rubbing sticks school of thermodynamics, and hence in some part oblivious to how interactions can be used to facilitate different purposes.
Such ignorance has utility and hence is rarely publicly challenged.
Martin Armstrong would concur whole heartily with the above essay and interesting that today’s post comes on the heels of Romanoff’s. Fits the narrative perfectly. I especially like this paragraph:
I have stated many times that I had to read Galbraith’s “Great Crash” in school. He was really a Socialist and never mentioned anything about a Sovereign Debt Crisis. Only when I found a rare copy of Herbert Hoover’s “Memoirs” in a London book store did I see all the evidence he put forth. My subsequent search of contemporary newspapers confirmed that the history books were all written by Socialists who supported Stalin back then. WHEN YOU DO THE RESEARCH TO DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENED, instead of trying to support a theory, you actually discover some very interesting facts. Hoover’s words applied to the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis and the collapse of Greece in 2010. Capital acted the very same way.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/sovereign-debt-crisis/the-most-lethal-act-that-kills-governments/
It’s a shocking day when one can’t trust the history books. I guess those words from Romans 3:2 are very true!
“Let God be true, and every human being a liar.”
This sentence of his:
WHEN YOU DO THE RESEARCH TO DISCOVER WHAT HAPPENED, instead of trying to support a theory, you actually discover some very interesting facts.
also fits what I discovered about Climate Change being the work of God!
Great article and best description ever of what news is in China :
“When I arrived in China the news reporting format was one of the first things to draw my attention. There was something different, unusual; the reporting seemed somehow stilted, a bit dry or reserved, perhaps cautious. Reserve and caution are of course Chinese tradition, but I had difficulty assessing it. My first thought was that perhaps the government controlled not only content but method – the way news was reported.
But it slowly dawned on me that the unusual aspect was simply that I was seeing news without commentary – a simple chronology of events”.
Living in China for over 30 years I confirm that news here is “news without commentary” and I will add that this is the sole way to provide real news. Commentary is distorting the reality of the facts. And so the Chinese way is disturbing for the owners of Western news distribution channels…
Create hysteria out of thin air. Recent example: the uthreat’ of a Chinese rocket debris falling on earth. Make a lot of front page fuss about the danger. But when the rocket falls into the sea, as predicted by the Chinese, ban this news to some remote corner of the Propaganda News Network. Most people will only remember ‘Chinese rocket threat”.
And if someone points out this manipulative presentation of facts, propaganda’s defenders or naive believers do a internet search and post a link to the remote corner article and innocently claim “What’s your problem? We didn’t lie. No information was withheld”.
RE: Dosdots on May 12, 2021 · at 4:14 am EST/EDT
“Create hysteria”
It seems you are using the wrong verb.
Try “share” since it is a better representation.
RE: Dosdots on May 12, 2021 · at 4:14 am EST/EDT
“Most people will only remember ‘Chinese rocket threat”.
The following may appear impolite and implausable.
Some perceive most people as food sources and human shields so what most people remember is not important,
Some people do not concern themselves with what most people remember, but focus on how long most people remember to ensure the next dose of soma is administered on time to continue the status of many people as food sources and human shields
Whilst some other people encourage “experiences” for people which they can interpret or not as they choose.
It’s fascinating: To a lot of thoughts I agree, and then there come things on Henry Ford, 9/11, Soros, that make me go “mhmmm’.
Fir example you write: “The same is true of Henry Ford’s series of articles on The International Jew. This has for more than 100 years been denounced in vicious terms as ‘anti-Semitic rants’ but, on reading them, we are surprised to discover they are no such thing and that Ford in many instances praised the Jews for their talents. But the articles contain information that some people don’t want widespread in the public domain and, the best defense being a good offense, the attacks are intended to pre-empt examination.”
I looked up Henry Ford’s publication on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
…where you can also find the archived articles: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
Just start with each headline and read into the articles. Now I can’t trust you anymore. Thanks, I learned something again.
As always we have a he said / she said situation on our hands. It seems like the author plays also fast and loose with his claims of facts. ‘Seems’ is the operating word here.
Just one tiny example this reference in the Tienanmen… story:”(1) From the photos, some appear to be Xinjiang Uigurs, of which there are five distinct groups, four being eminently sociable, the last seeming genetically predisposed to almost any kind of crime.”
“seeming genetically predisposed” what is this but, at best, an unsubstantiated claim or ad hominem of the people involved? Nah men, you doing the same s* as those you criticize.
Anyway, I still share the assessment that the story of “Tienanmen..” is highly suspicious and would have become a major political crisis in China if left unchecked.
Many, many claims are ‘backed up’ by 3rd party books, articles, opinions you’d have to trust. Cold, hard facts like photographic / audio recordings are mostly the best source of facts if they weren’t tempered with and you could write a whole book on how to manipulate (with the help of) them.
There is no hiding from this truth. In most cases, all you can hope for is a counter-narrative that makes ‘sense’. The audience will have to decide which story is the most likely or simply to run with.
Our ‘modus of operandi’ shouldn’t be to copy the methods of manipulation but to present a rock solid chain of facts embedded in a logical arguments. Separate the presentation of facts from the nonfactual conclusion. State the uncertainties. If you have to present a story than tell us.