From Editor Robert Parry: We founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 as the first investigative news magazine on the Internet. The site was meant to be a home for important, well-reported stories and a challenge to the inept but dominant mainstream news media of the day.
As one of the reporters who helped expose the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press in the mid-1980s, I was distressed by the silliness and propaganda that had come to pervade American journalism. I feared, too, that the decline of the U.S. press corps foreshadowed disasters that would come when journalists failed to alert the public about impending dangers.
Also by 1995, documents were emerging that put the history of the 1980s in a new and more troubling light. Yet, there were fewer and fewer media outlets interested in that history.
The memories of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were enveloped in warm-and-fuzzy myths that represented another kind of danger: false history that could lead to mistaken political judgments in the future.
Some of our early articles reexamined important chapters of the 1980s (such as the “October Surprise” controversy from Election 1980 and evidence of Nicaraguan contra-cocaine trafficking). Other stories explored more topical crises (such as NATO’s war over Kosovo and the impeachment assault on President Bill Clinton).
Author Norman Solomon and I produced a groundbreaking series on the real story behind Colin Powell’s legend. Another of my investigations examined the remarkable story of how Rev. Sun Myung Moon became an influential player in Washington.
Working with talented freelance reporters around the world, we also undertook important historical investigations, such as how the Nazis after World War II — crossing “rat lines” from Europe to South America — contributed to the region’s bloody repression.
Interruption
By 1999 and early 2000, we were looking at the reemergence of the Bush family dynasty. However, as Campaign 2000 was heating up, we ran out of money.
I was forced to make Consortiumnews.com a part-time enterprise and took an editing job at Bloomberg News. One of our last stories before that break described how the news media was exaggerating Vice President Al Gore’s alleged exaggerations.
Though operating on a part-time basis, we managed to churn out a number of stories in the months before Election 2000 and kept tabs on the recount battle with stories including how Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor telegraphed her political agenda at an Election Night party and how George W. Bush dispatched thugs to Miami to intimidate vote counters.
In November 2001, we were the first to note that the big news outlets which had conducted an unofficial recount of Florida’s ballots had buried their own lead, the fact that Gore would have won Florida if all legal votes were counted.
In 2002, during the buildup to war in Iraq, we also picked up the pace, questioning the Bush administration’s case about weapons of mass destruction and criticizing the flag-waving coverage from the mainstream news media.
As Bush’s Iraq invasion was underway in March 2003, I consulted with some of my old military sources who warned of the disaster ahead. The article was entitled “Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down.”
Also in 2003, author Kevin Phillips cited the investigative work of Consortiumnews.com in his seminal book on the Bush family, American Dynasty. Phillips took note of our investigative series that examined the elder George Bush’s role in Republican dirty tricks during the 1980 campaign.
Resumption
To flesh out more about the Bush family’s rise to power, I left Bloomberg News in April 2004 and began work on my fourth book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It was published in late September 2004.
In fall 2004, we also resumed more frequent publication of stories at Consortiumnews.com. One of those articles described John Kerry’s pioneering investigation of contra-drug trafficking in the late 1980s.
In recent years, we have added the insightful writings of former CIA analysts, such as Ray McGovern, Peter Dickson and Melvin Goodman, who saw a corruption of information inside the CIA’s analytical division that paralleled the perversion of journalism that was underway in the American press corps.
We have written extensively about the U.S. media imbalance, tilted by a well-funded right-wing media machine. Indeed, a founding idea of our Web site was that a major investment was needed in journalistic endeavors committed to honestly informing the American people about important events, reporting that truly operated without fear or favor.
Regrettably, the distortion of information remains a grave problem with millions of Americans brainwashed by the waves of disinformation coming from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the hordes of other right-wing media outlets distortions often reinforced by the careerist mainstream press.
Because of this media dynamic, many average Americans have bought into a propaganda frame that seeks fewer regulations on powerful corporations, lower taxes on the wealthy, tighter restrictions on unions, and fewer programs to help working Americans with problems ranging from educating their children to caring for the elderly.
Meanwhile, Official Washington is basing international decisions on a false narrative that excludes the real history of the past several decades. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush are hailed as honorable leaders, rather than viewed as politicians who countenanced gross abuses of power.
Even in the Age of Obama, government decisions are being made with only limited knowledge of what was really done by Republican presidents who have dominated the modern era. This ignorance represents not only a threat to a meaningful democratic republic but a danger to the world, as the “last remaining superpower” lurches about, half-blinded by its own propaganda.
While we are proud of the journalistic contribution that this Web site has made over the past 15-plus years and while we are deeply grateful to our readers whose contributions have kept us afloat we also must admit that we have not made the case well enough that our mission is a vital one.
Despite all that’s happened, including the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, many people still don’t understand that the fight for honest information about the past and the present is a battle for the future.
We could do much more with additional resources. If you can and wish to help, we would appreciate your donations, big or small.
You can contribute either by credit card at the Web site or by check to:
Consortium for Independent Journalism (CIJ)
Suite 102-231
2200 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington VA 22201
Or you can use PayPal (our account is named after our e-mail address “consortnew@aol.com“).
Or, If you know someone with the means to make a large donation or someone who is involved with a public-interest foundation, contact them and urge them to consider a grant to Consortiumnews.com. Since 1999, we have operated as a 501-c-3 non-profit, meaning that donations can be tax-deductible. [For more information, such as our recent IRS filings and the IRS approval letter, go to “What Can Be Done.”]
We appreciate whatever help you can provide. Thanks.
Robert Parry, Editor
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 as the Internet’s first investigative magazine. He saw it as a way to combine modern technology and old-fashioned journalism to counter the increasing triviality of the mainstream U.S. news media.
Thank you for your work. I have just completed reading in Consortiumnews the damning criticism of the man and movie “J. Edgar,” and have forwarded it to a younger civil servant now relatively new to federal service as a caution regarding the powers available even to administrators at relatively low levels. The temptation to bend the offices one holds to one’s personal direction is often great, and Hoover’s career appears to be a case to study.
I will follow your group’s work now and in the future with very great interest.
It is a very interested article and I could not agree with you more regarding the importance to study Hoover’s career. I could find several parallels to the classical book The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli which I recently read online again. The methods were written some 500 years ago but are stil to this day very important and relevant seeing that politicians and civil servants use these methods. If this is done on purpose or not is another topic that I will not get into here.
@ consortiumnews Thank you for a great site and I look forward to read and follow your site
Hello – I believe it would be more accurate to refer to Gary Webb’s death, rather than to his suicide. [ On this seventh anniversary of journalist Gary Webb’s suicide, we are re-posting one of the stories that Webb’s brave work forced out, albeit without a satisfying ending.]
Other than that, I have to say that you do impeccable work and I will be making my contribution any minute now.
The very best,
EXCELLENT work; And Thank You. It is heart warming during a very chilling time to see you’ve hit upon many key academic items that since the election of R. Nixon have systematically built and empowered the Fourth Reich that eventually on 9-11 pulled-off the biggest and filthiest coup upon our government in the history of our dear country. Reporting Truth in the face of the Fourth Reich’s terribly lying brainwashing propaganda machine is indeed truely difficult and often soul taxing; But it is such REAL Patriots that history will records as the TRUE beacons that heard and answered the many warnings and calls by our greatest Patriot Forefathers such as Thomas Jefferson, to be vigilantly on guard for the very worst threat to our Democracy: Domestic enemies from within and the careless self-important Ignorance among our citizens those enemies foster and depend upon.
The essence of our government is supposed to be free honest and fair debate and representation by people who act in the interest of those who elected them–not inflammatory name calling or arguing about who the “real” patriots are (aren’t we ALL patriots?) I find any reference to Naziism distasteful. If you want to call the right’s power crusade plutocracy then now I’m OK with that. Because that is a true label for what is happening and it is going to ruin our country.
I think you might wish to revisit so cavalier an attitude in light of another story that’s remained largely undercover to this day: Project Paperclip.
To those whose entire lives centered around militarism and the sports’ team mentality fixed on “winning wars,” importing Nazi scientists seemed like a tremendous strategic advantage.
But what happens when a new crop is planted next to an existing crop? The answer would be some form of cross-pollination and based on the insidious methods now routinely deployed by the world’s largest military, the cross-pollination with Nazi “culture” is evident.
First Bush and his circle of maniacal fools found cause to revivify torture–albeit hidden under a new name. Then Obama gave all that a pass. Now behaviors that civilized people KNOW to be uncivilized are “on the books” for someone as spiritually defective as Trump to utilize.
Societal change happens through cohesive movements and trust is the glue that binds committed souls together. But what happens to trust when the habit of FBI infiltration is established and today’s Secret Surveillance State makes the East German Stasis look like amateurs?
Torture, spying… what else were the Nazis known for?
Aggressive war. (check)
Using a scapegoat population as target to massive anger over lousy jobs and low wages (check)
Investing more in militarism than agencies of care-giving (check)
I’ve seen the term “Fourth Reich” used in media forums and by the day, it’s becoming more apt. Only the naive fall for its camouflage behind the Cross and the Flag.
I appreciated this FIghttheReich comment and wanted to know if there is site or hashtag along those lines. Is there a way we can legally fightthereich?
Dear Editor Robert Parry
We are very gratefull for your article about Reagan and Rios Mont.
We have no resources, is it possible to ask for permission to republish this article.
Sincerely
Wow, just what we need. Another hard-left opinion rag masquerading as if it were an actual “news outlet”. LOL! Too funny…
-Sundy
You have to read the entire piece. It says “to become a challenge to the mainstream news media”. Nothing disingenuous about that.
Funny how you bash Republicans for what you qualify as crimes but defend the Democrats for what others call crimes. You may be Democrat but your words ring Liberal.
… but you have no problem with Fox “News,” right?
Ridi pagliaccio!
I’ve been coming to consortiumnews.com for sometime now. Honestly it’s one of the better sites on the web and I know it will be here for years to come. It’s a great place to get story ideas for my site The International Human Press. Keep up the awesome work guys!
Thanks!
Dear Robert Parry,
I am about to send copies of the below letter to mostly people who write for The Progressive populist and I would like to get your permission to suggest that they contact you for the history of how the Republicans took control of the media.
Thanks,
Deek Crowley
Wayne,Maine
To anyone with ability and a sense of fairness:
A small percentage of voters read alternate publications like The Nation, The Progressive, The Progressive Populist, etc. Some may even know how the mainstream media was taken over by the Republicans. These voters mostly won’t be fooled by slick ads and know a vote for a third candidate without instant-runoff-voting could help elect a Republican, the candidate of the rich.
But most of the 99% don’t know this and believe the lies and lies of omission of the media. Their vision of reality is shaped by a media controlled by the 1%, yet half of them vote for the party of the 1%, the party that hurts them the most. Unless an effort is made to warn these misguided people, too many of them will be suckered by all the expensive dishonest ads the 1% with all their money will throw at them and once again vote for the party of the 1%.
Why not warn the 99% about what’s really going on and how not to be fooled. One way is to write concise, simple emails about each thing the public needs to know in a way that entices the recipients to forward them and those recipients to forward them, etc. Most people are likely to read an email from someone they know. The emails could be sent to all the people on liberal email lists – MoveOn, Sierra Club, Unions, etc. They could be put in alternative publications, both online and in print, to be forwarded. If the emails are written well enough, maybe enough people will want to forward them and a majority of voters will get to read them.
Below are three examples of what people need to know:
“HAVE YOU BEEN MISINFORMED BY THE MEDIA?
Did you ever wonder why the media never calls the Republicans on their lies? It’s because the Republicans control the media. (add a brief history of when and how the Republicans did it. For details, contact Robert Parry at consortiumnews.com. )
“DON’T BE SUCKERED BY SLICK TV ADS
The 1% will spend tons of money on TV ads promoting their candidates and attacking the candidates of the 99%. A good way to counter all that money is to count the ads to see which candidate is promoted and which is attacked by the ads. The candidate with the most ads for and the least ads against has to be the candidate of the 1% and your worst enemy if you’re not rich.
“DON’T WASTE YOUR VOTE
Some day we may have instant-runoff-voting so we can list a third candidate 1st and the Democrat 2nd and not waste our vote. Now a vote for a third candidate is, with very few exceptions, a vote for a candidate with no chance and a wasted Democrat vote which could help elect a Republican, the candidate of the 1%. We desperately need instant- runoff-voting.â€
You get the idea. Please do your best to see that this is done. If nobody does it the 1% with their Republican stooges, their media, their money and their slick ads will once again sucker the voters. I would do it myself, but I’m an old man with a bad memory for details and am unable to do it.
Deek Crowley
Wayne, Maine
207-685-4284
deekcr@roadrunner.com
Dear Mr. Parry:
Thank you for what you do. I have followed you for too many years not to understand what having good information means to a populace.
I fear my country is lost. However, there is that pendulum that always swings back. The revolution may or may not televised…but it will happen. Those who have paid attention will fare better than those who follow fools. Life for a while is about to become very messy.
Yours in Peace,
Dogface.
“JFK’s Embrace of Third World Nationalists”
Excellent and interesting article. Thank you.
Mr. Parry, yours stories on Ukraine and the neocons are important; unfortunately they are twice or more too long. Your AP editors would have pared your staff way back, not for lack of space but to make it more effective. You are the editor now and I guess no one dares trim you down. It’s a shame.
Excellent work on Ukraine! And – despite what Bruce Benson might think – not too long!
Dear Robert Parry,
You have said that Barack Obama is outflanked by holdover neocons in his administration, and has had to resort to back-channel diplomacy, much the same as John Kennedy. However, it took Kennedy less than two years to figure things out and get the back channels going.
If you are correct in your assessment, I would have thought that by 5 years into his two terms, Obama would have been more forceful.
I wonder why, given the Ukraine situation, he has not simply fired Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine. I wonder why, given the Ukraine situation, Obama has allowed the US to cyber-attack the Crimea vote. I wonder why he selected John Kerry as Secretary of State after warmonger and neocon buddy, Hillary Clinton, left the post. After all, a review of Kerry’s Vietnam War record strongly suggests that he is as sociopath. And his performance at State suggests that he speaks far to loosely and easily about war.
I also wonder why Obama, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, has not yet cleansed the officer corps of all of the theocratic, neo-fascists in its ranks.
Thank you for considering my remarks. And I look forward to hearing from you.
I’d like to add my 2-cents to your comment.
Kennedy probably had more courage than the modern stable of so-called electable candidates. But several other dynamics have changed.
If you’re familiar with Nancy Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” you’d see that the establishment of right wing think tanks and their winding their way into major media and academia was a carefully planned form of stealth (by the 1%).
Also, Bill Clinton’s deregulation of the media enabled the public’s airwaves to be swallowed up by 5 major broadcast corporations. And election time is better than Christmas when it comes to all those virtual cash registers ringing up over the cost of air-time to any would be serious political contender.
Obama’s campaign cost him one billion big ones. And who funded him? The answer is FIRE–Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. One billion means a good deal in terms of quid pro quo.
Big Money vets the candidates and funds them so that once they are in powerful positions, these figures will be able to pay back their donors.
So long as the system runs on money, those with the most of it will determine policy.
Many people look for weaknesses in individual candidates. Given human imperfection, that approach will always prove partially fruitful. Many others view politics as another team sport… and their chief concern is proving which party is better or worse.
Real power lies with the puppeteers and they largely determine who will head the various departments. What Trump is doing now is heading EVERY government agency with someone who hates government and just wants to free big business from all fetters so that it can go about raping the commons (and stealing the resources of the many to serve the few) under the guise (and mantra) of Free Enterprise or another adulteration of the meaning and virtue of the term “free.”
Obama, like Holder, like the various stooges (Samantha Powers, Susan Rice, Kerry) who have shown fealty to the Deep State oligarchs serve their masters… not U.S. This Cancer has infected both major parties. Yet they’d rather write the nation’s death sentence than allow in the type of exposure that would enable a Sanders or Stein to win and thereby improve The Lot of The People.
I just read Jeff Davis Road article. Hear, Hear! I am African-American, and my mother was born in Prentiss, Mississippi, the county seat of Jefferson Davis County! Did he own any property in that county? Maybe there needs to be a change there, also?
Now that I’ve had a hug from Ray McGovern, I can die happy.
I’m sure it would be more expensive, but, if you could have a video format, it would be great. It’s so handy to listen and dust etc. at the same time. I’m trying to do my part. I’m making a small monthly contribution (which I will try to increase.) and I’ve just sent $34.00 for “the trilogy.”
All the best,
JoAnn Witt
My web site is informationtruth.info, but, it is not an interactive site.
https://www.facebook.com/antimaydan.english
Please read this, it pertains to genocide in Ukraine. Please let us do something to counterweight this utter madness.
Dear Irina,
Mr. Putin is certainly not a Democrate but neither is he a bloodthirsty monster who in cold blood shot down MH17 and thanks to Robert Parry and others, the question of who did it, and how, is still open.
Hagena and Partners, a team of retired Luftwaffe general staff officers, has written a 53-page study (in German). With very few exceptions we had to rely on open sources and the laws of probability, and also on examening the question “cui bono”.
If you are interested in our findings, we send a digital copy in German. The Russian translation which we ordered and which will be checked by us for accuracy
of technical terms (aviation and missile terminology)) unfortunately has not yet been completed.
Sincerely
Dr. Hermann Hagena, BrigGen (Luftwaffe retired), Bonn, germany
yet
Robert Parry is WRONG when the lumps “neocons” with “liberals.” Liberals would have advocated that UN peacekeeping forces be put in place to solve such problems. They follow the love-your-neighbor-as-yourself principle.
Our nation’s “neocons” (war profiteer puppets for our nation’s military industrial complex) are the ones who have been advocating unilateral US military actions to deal with such problems (more often than not with disastrous consequences for nearly everyone “on the ground” in such areas).
10.6.14 TONIGHT Show With JIMMY Fallon—JEREMY RENNER Interviewed about Kill The Messenger and GARY WEBB
http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/filters/guests/11841
https://www.facebook.com/FallonTonight
Mr. Parry,
I am a sixty six year old layman history buff exhausted with the bubble gum news we recieve on the major network news.
I recently started a website, LookLifeAndTimes.Com to attempt to make available to my friends and acquaintances a glimpse to more truthful views of history.
I came across your website through a series of articles written by Mr. Polk regarding the history of Palestine and the Mideast.
By discovering your website I realize that you invented the original mouse trap and I can only admire what you have done, what you do and only attempt to emulate your prodigous work and service.
Upon arrival at your site for the very first time, I ordered the $34 donation which includes a gift of three books which I am anxiously waiting for.
I was jump started by reading several books: “JFK and the Unspoken” by James Douglas; “Last Word, My Indictment Of The CIA In The Murder of JFK†by Mark Lane; and “JFK – The CIA, Vietnam And The Plot To Assassinate John F. Kennedy,†by L. Fletcher Prouty.
Thank you for being here.
The world is not so lonely now.
Rafe Garica
Robert, Once again you were right!
In Cold War, U.S. Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
October 26, 2014
WASHINGTON — In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html?_r=2&referrer=
and here is your 2010 article alleging protection and relocation for Nazi’s
consortiumnews.com/2013/06/06/hitlers-shadow-reaches-toward-today/
Your web site may never have been needed more . The propaganda by the MSM is ubiquitous, unceasing and insidious. It would appear as if a significant portion of Americans are incapable of even thinking about MSM as largely propaganda — while at the same time being quick to declare everything from, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba et al as nothing but propaganda.
Thank you for your most impressive, long standing commitment to first sorting out the discernable facts. I marvel at how you can keep this up.
Hi,
I am an German engineer, which may explain my limited English while writing this letter. So because I am an Engineer I look at the world from a ‘technical point of view’, if you understand what I mean.
I am a litte bit shocked because the German mass media still wants to make me believe that the flight MH-17 has been brought down by a ‘BUK missile fired from pro-russian separatist’ (or maybe from the ukrainian air force), because the whole BUK missile story does not make much sense. Let me try to explain technically why it doesn’t make sense for me.
First, the BUK is a huge supersonic missile – if you launch a BUK, it can be heard and seen miles around. Instead of giving long technical explanations, let me show you a video „BUK M1 Lohtaja 09“ which has been taken by Finnish Soldiers while training launching BUK missiles in a military training area near Lohtaja in Finland in 2009. Just take three minutes time to look at the video which shows six BUK missiles being launched.
Video BUK M1 Lohtaja 2009
As you can see in the video, a BUK missile is really huge, makes a lot of noise because it accelarates from zero to supersonic in an instant and leaves a smoke trail which can not be overlooked. If you start the missile inside a village, the windows of the buildings around may be shattered. People can hear the sound, see the missile and will be able to take pictures at least from the smoke trail.
As far as I have heard in German media which I follow there has never been any report of witnesses which told that they have heard the sound or seen the smoke trail of a launching BUK missile! And this contradicts the story that a BUK missile has taken down MH-17. Someone must have heard or seen the BUK, because the Donbass area is a highly populated area. And a BUK cannot be launched silently with no one noticing it! That’s absolutely impossible!
Second, the BUK missile has a heavy warhead (70 kg or 154 Lbs weight) which has a devastating impact on the target hit by the missile. According to retired German soldiers which served in the east German ‘peoples army’ and were using the BUK system until the German reunion in 1989, the impact on training targets is so heavy that the targets immediately started burning when they were hit und fell burning to the ground. This also contradicts the “BUK theory”, because pictures taken from the wreckage of MH-17 show only little damage to the surface of the airplane. Which is the second reason why MH-17 cannot be brought down by a BUK missile.
So if no one has seen or heared a BUK missile being launched and no one has seen oder heared a BUK missile fly and because the impact on the wreckage of MH-17 is too little damage to be caused by the BUK warhead I can only conclude that MH-17 apparently has not been shot down by a BUK. (Unless you assume that the BUK warhead somehow managed to reach the plane without using the missile ;-))
Of course the ukrainian air force had BUK missiles in this area and the pro-russian separatist apparently posessed a ‘BUK TELAR’ which is a single rocket launcher. But pictures and videos only prove that this BUK TELAR has been driving around in the area. Maybe it was broken, maybe the separatists did not know how to use it. However, they apparently never managed to launch a missile because someone must have seen or heard it!
Some russian engineers wrote a report “Malaysian Flight MH17 crash analysis, by The Russian Union of Engineers” which has been translated in English and German versions and can be easily found on the internet. Now you may not want to read this “russian propaganda”, but as an engineer I must admit it looks quite reasonable to me.
We recently discussed this in a German blog called “Propagandaschau” which you can find here: http://propagandaschau.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/mh-17-was-fur-den-abschuss-durch-ein-kampfflugzeug-spricht/ Maybe you can find a German speaker to explain to you or ask Google for a translation.
Recently I read an article on Dr. Ron Pauls Institute for Peace and Prosperity website about the “H. Res. 758” which “states with certainty that the Malaysia Airlines flight 17 that crashed in Ukraine was brought down by a missile “fired by Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.—. For me this is not only “simply incorrect” from a legal point of view as Dr. Paul states in his article “Reckless Congress ‘Declares War’ on Russia”, this is also “incorrect” from a technical point of view if you understood what I wanted to explain.
References:
Malaysian Flight MH17 crash analysis, by The Russian Union of Engineers
RT Documentary “MH-17: The Untold Story”. A russian documentary giving a different view of the tragedy.
Regards, Horst
OK, so you tell us that a BUK is a big rocket, and that separatists only had one. What does that prove, in terms of Ukraine’s, or pro-Russian separatists’ responsibility? Would you at consider Russia’s responsibility? After all, Russian unmarked regulars are in the Donbass, supplying that proxies with heavy weaponry, and training them in Rostov-on Don.
Anyway, neither your nor my analysis is worth that of
I felt like this poem of mine best deserves your media,
With regards,
Nassy
Oh mirror on the wall
That day too
Like today, was very special
One had died; my sister
As crew in plane I flew with anger
We headed for Yemen
We carried food, soldiers
Airport was their neighbor’s
(Called Midway)
We, friends and Yemen
Complied USA’s
“Moscow’s filled with Godless.
Christians and Muslims
We are one, united
We love God and our God
Lord, Allah, is the same.â€
We took guns, logistic
Even songs, music
We took men on their feet
Brought them in ‘Taboot’
(Stretchers)
Many died; Yemenis and our men
Finally Moscow fell.
Packed and left; USA.
No support, food or life
Yemenis left in dark
Lies; hidden; came to light
Rational; the friends became foes.
Now NY and Paris;
The Yemen of those days
Deaths; blood and murder
By friends of those days
‘Oh mirror on the wall…’
why do you call Nazis right wing, they are Left wing, study this simple history
As a poly sci major I must say I have always been taught that the Facists were right of center, and if you examine their contorted thoughts they tend to lean towards the right in my experience. To whom or what do you refer that would call facists left wing? Because they called themselves national socialists doesn’t mean a whole lot. Communist referred to themselves as democratic republics but there was little democracy at work anywhere that saw Stalin’s shadow. He defined communism until he died because as he so coyly said about the pope, “how many divisions does he have?” Are we talking about some arcane social science definition or the world as it operated around the time these names meant something, WWII. Roosevelt was a leftist by most standards and he fought Hitler, who he did not consider a fellow traveller. I confess to a little confusion over terms here.
Dear Mr. Parry,
I just read your interview with RT (31 March 2015)
concerning the MH17 investigation
and thought that you would be interested
in my letter to the Dutch Safety Board
which is published on my website at:
http://www.show-the-house.com/id119.html
With kind regards,
Stephen M. St. John
Just a quick note to say thanks for taking the time to operate this site and i appreciate what you’re doing. it’s fascinating for me to read the views shared on here.
Also – i donated a wee bit of cash, so have a beer on me!
Cheers,
Robert
Thanks for all your heroic work throughout the years.
The recent declaration by pope francis re palestinian statehood is quite historic. Any comments?
A totally disabled vet with grandkids of cuban, nicaraguan, jamaican, and recently, palestinian descent. Oh, also puerto rican.
When will you recognize that the frack attack, from Ukraine to Syria is the reason for destabilization and terror? Israel could green Gaza, but the petro dollar war destabilizes the world and brings extinction. The true great evil is the dollar. And if Israel were to release its green innovation it would result in American imperial destabilization. We saw this when the Israel supreme court kicked out halliburton from fracking the Golan. Soon after, Obama came down on Israel with condemnation for settlement construction. Regardless of whether its right or wrong. We all have to walk in goose step with American imperialism. The race to gain access to the Mediterranean or Ukrainian frack fields and transfer that energy into dollars is the main reason the world is in a frenzy. Release the innovation in conversion systems like Algae bio diesel and watch prosperity come with efficiency designs and free time for communities who gain royalties from their own energy production. Biomass into Bio Gas! Why isnt this valued? Why do you contribute to the cycle of violence with your reports of condemnation of injustices that have nothing to do with the causes but are just effects from the crisis of the petro dollar wars? I’m waiting for you to catch up Robert Parry!
Now that Dick Cheney and his daughters have “gone public” in a effort to “rewrite history”, we need an article from someone like you who can expose the leading roll which Dick Cheney performed in providing Saddam Hussein with chemical “weapons of mass destruction” which Saddam used to kill massive numbers of Iranians (and Iraqi Kurds) during Iraq’s Reagan-supported military invasion of Iran. The massive casualties inflicting on Iran by Reagan/Cheney/Saddam team will not be soon forgotten. And I believe that Dick Cheney’s role in this probably constitutes a WAR CRIME! This is the primarily reason the leaders of Iran “hate America” and “distrust America” so much, and it is NOT without good reason.
Please do article explaining to American readers in greater detail that this why it is that the leaders of Iran “hate America” so much.
Nobody seems to be talking about the speech given at the UN by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Not trying to spam you but I’ve written about it here. Any thoughts on this short article?
https://atokenmanblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/while-you-werent-listening/
Robert- A new documentary about Klaus Barbie and the drug trade
The second life of a Nazi war criminal: German documentary reveals how ‘butcher of Lyon’ Klaus Barbie became a fixer for drug lords when he went on the run in South America
Barbie became known as Klaus Altmann when he went on the run in 1945
He worked as a druglord fixer in Latin America and met with Pablo Escobar
General Luis GarcÃa Meza was helped into power in Bolivia by drug money
Barbie tortured top French resistance operatives and is estimated to have been directly involved in the deaths of 14,000 people
By Allan Hall In Berlin For The Daily Mail
Published: 09:59 EST, 28 July 2015 | Updated: 02:41 EST, 29 July 2015
A notorious Nazi war criminal, dubbed the ‘Butcher of Lyon’ during World War II, worked as a druglord fixer while on the run in Latin America and helped bring a right-wing dictator into power.
Klaus Barbie, one of the Gestapo’s most brutal criminals, reinvented himself with the help of western intelligence agencies after the fall of the Third Reich.
Using the money generated from the cocaine trade, Barbie helped put General Luis GarcÃa Meza into power in Bolivia, a new documentary has revealed.
He died aged 77 in a French jail after he was finally deported from Bolivia in the 1980s.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3177385/The-second-life-Nazi-war-criminal-German-documentary-reveals-butcher-Lyon-Klaus-Barbie-fixer-drug-lords-went-run-South-America.html
Robert- You will love this
Michael Jon Hand of the mysterious Nugan Hand bank was found living in Idaho 35 years after he disappeared.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/nugan-hand-bank-mystery-michael-hand-found-living-in-the-united-states-20151107-gkthas.html
http://www.newsweek.com/michael-hand-cia-heroin-nugan-hand-australia-393576
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jon_Hand
Freeway Ricky back in the news- Arrested with 100,000 Cash
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-freeway-ricky-ross-arrested-20151023-story.html
Just found your internet site and article relating to Iran-Contra drug smuggling. Who carried the drugs and were they shipped to Mena, AR?
TS
Regarding Blind Eyes, Deaf Ears and Dumb Tongues…
In October 2014 I filed a criminal complaint with the International Criminal Court at The Hague charging Obama, Erdogan and twenty-seven other international operators from eleven countries with war crimes. Like the Count of Monte Cristo famously suggested, I am waiting and hoping. But I been growing deaf from the silence emanating from The Hague.
The Complaint entitled Criminal Carnage in Syria by the Criminal Cabal for Perpetual War claims that illegal weapons transfers in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973, the EU Treaty (2008) regarding exports of military equipment and the Rome Statute, Articles 7 and 8, Crimes against Humanity and the Crime of Aggression were instrumental in committing the crime of aggression against the sovereign nation of Syria. The entire 63-page complaint can be read and/or downloaded at:
http://www.brighteningglance.org/slaughter-in-syria-war-crimes-charges-against-turkey-and-america.html
http://www.brighteningglance.org/criminal-complaint-international-criminal-court-6-october-2014.html
My friend, that also applies to our media on this North American continent. If Mr. Parry shut you out, join the club. Apparently (if he did so), he followed their lead.
Recently I had an opportunity to ask a direct question to John Pilger – award-winning Australian-British investigate journalist.
Ali Slimas asks:
Going back to a question on Mainstream Media, what are the best/ most reliable news outlets that you would recommend?
JohnPilger:
Start with Realnews, Truthout, Information Clearing House, Consortium News. There are hundreds. All you need do is look and navigate through them.
Your website has been recommended as one of the best/ most reliable and I feel the comment has great value coming from such a well respected journalist as John. Please feel free to use it at your disposal, as promotion of what you do.
I am having to override all kinds of dire security warnings to come to the site now. If you want, you can send me an email address to which to send screen shots of the warnings – they are very disconcerting. I don’t know if these relate to the hacking you’ve just been through, or what, so I’d like to know how to deal with it! I certainly don’t want to have to stop coming here!!!
consortiumnews.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown. (Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)
Michael Levine (DEA retired) and Celerino Castillo (DEA retired)
Speak at Governor Jerry Brown’s We The People Forum
2 Hour Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adkZipfMRWM
Hi..Great work, keep it up, I recommend your site to as many people as possible. Anyway there’s a critically important and revolutionary development in video editing technology that has occurred that everyone should be aware of. Especially considering its potential for nefarious uses. YOU HAVE TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT. Please warn your readers if possible to help arm them against disinfo and propaganda. See link below covering technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKkuWX406q4&index=51&list=WL
Dear Robert, Your work is so appreciated here that our form of support comes mostly in re-publishing your articles with a link to your site. (which will continue to be our principal form of support until our meager resources improve).
There are 2 questions.. #1, May we continue to do so? I can’t find a contact link or email address, so we have yet to ask your ‘permission to post’.
and #2, Can you recommend a secure server? Our own blog is messed with constantly. We see photos and articles and videos disappear, and phony posts submitted by the dozens.. Our reply email is below. Thank you in advance for any answers.
Yours Truly,
VIctoria Bingham
Dear Sir,
Sending you an article for Consortium News:
Terrorist attacks in Brussels in a wider context of US imperial wars
Nasir Khan, March 23, 2016
On 22 March 2016, some suicide bombers carried out their indiscriminate attacks on the innocent people in Brussels. Their acts of vicious violence are shocking and despicable. ISIS has claimed responsibility for these attacks.
ISIS has shown once again that it can strike anywhere it chooses and by such violent actions, it gains maximum publicity for its ideological stance and objectives. The murders of 22 March are part of the pattern that ISIS had established and since last year has extended its operations to Europe. As the organisation has many sympathisers in different countries and many of its indoctrinated fanatics are willing to be suicide bombers, it shows its reckless attitude towards all it regards enemies or opponents.
Despite the utterly abominable crime we witnessed, we should also try to see the terrorist attacks in European countries like France and Belgium in a wider context. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and to some extent Pakistan have been in the throes of imperial wars as well as internal conflicts for many decades. What has happened in Paris last year and now in Brussels was an extension of the violence from Iraq and Syria to Europe.
We rightly condemn what happens at the hands of fanatic terrorists in Europe but when it comes to US wars and EU interventions in the Islamic countries, we, who live in the western hemisphere, show little concern over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people there. Apparently, the people of the world are not in total darkness about the recent history of Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Syria. Under the slogan ‘War on Terror’, the US rulers with the help of their allies have pursued their geopolitical objectives by wars and terror, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Unfortunately, political leaders and the media show great reluctance to give the same attention to the vast numbers of innocent victims of genocidal wars. However, when it comes to any terrorist attack anywhere in the west they give a forceful response to any acts of violence and terror. Such attitudes are unhealthy and discriminatory. In fact, religious fanatics take advantage of such debunked standards and successfully show the enmity of the western nations towards Muslims. The aim of propaganda is not to inform and enlighten but to terrify and mislead. In this, US rulers have been the role model for Muslim extremists.
Now let us briefly mention the role of recent US wars. It was no other power than the United States that unleashed the first Gulf War in 1991. The real objective of the United States was not only to evict the Iraqis out of Kuwait but also to diminish the power or potential of Iraq as a regional power.
In fact, President Saddam Hussein had accepted the UN terms for military withdrawal from Kuwait to end his occupation, but US rulers did not allow him to do so. There was a simple reason for this: A peaceful withdrawal of Iraqi army from Kuwait would have left Saddam’s military power and military hardware intact. That was not acceptable to Washington and the Pentagon hawks. Therefore, they attacked and destroyed brutally the retreating and helpless Iraqi army. General Colin Powell boasted of having killed so many encircled soldiers and burying many thousands of them alive in the desert. By such bravery, he must have added another medal to his uniform. Saddam had no options left. The United States initiated and imposed sanctions on Iraq with the formal approval the United Nations. Incidentally, such a formal U.N. approval has the magic to make any major war crime by the US rulers legitimate! The United States has exploited this façade of the U.N. approval routinely.
In 2003, America took the second major step to invade and occupy Iraq. This practically meant finishing off Iraq as a possible regional power if it ever raised its head at some future date. That was in consonance with the neocon strategy to have only one regional big power in the Middle East that was both strategically and politically indispensable part of U.S. hegemonic power and dominance. That regional power was and is Israel.
Without an iota of credible ground or reason, President George W. Bush declared war on Iraq and invaded a vast secular Arab country, which did not let any religion or sect to interfere with the affairs of the state. After a massive destruction by the invaders of life, property and infrastructure in Iraq, President Bush became the eventual conqueror and master of Iraq and of its rich oil resources.
As a matter of imperial policy to divide and rule, the Americans started the sectarian favouritism that fuelled sectarian violence and killings. Even after the ‘nominal’ ending of the occupation, the fire of sectarian violence America had ignited to further its objectives is still raging on. Thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqis have died. The forces of terror, revenge, religious sectarianism and fanaticism that American rulers unleashed in Iraq are out of control; no one is able to control them. Only the ordinary people of Iraq have become the victims of the genocidal war in Iraq. The mayhem and anarchy America created in Iraq has extended beyond the frontiers of Iraq.
Out of the ensuing chaos and instability in Iraq arose ISIS and its Islamist fanatics. ISIL is a direct result of US wars on Iraq. President Bush has said that God asked him to invade Iraq. If the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis can be justified because of listening to the command of God then ISIL can also invoke the support of the same God for whatever they do or have plans to do! In fact, the US Constitution allowed for a democratic form of government, not a theocracy; ISIL, on the other hand, claims to be a theocracy and its administrative structure is that of a caliphate. According to its way of interpreting, ISIS has ‘God on its side’.
Another major US imperial adventure was in Afghanistan. It is common knowledge that the United States was instrumental in creating and arming the Mujahidin to fight the Soviet army that had come to help the Afghan revolutionary government. After the Soviet leaders pulled their military from Afghanistan, the American-sponsored Mujahidin of 1980s became the Taliban, the new rulers of Afghanistan.
There is no doubt that the Soviet army suffered heavily in Afghanistan. The US imperialists, with the help of reactionary Saudi and Pakistani rulers and their well-equipped mercenary fighters crushed the Afghan revolution. In this way, they turned the clock of history back by empowering the primitive Mujahidin/Taliban. But that friendship did not last long.
In 2001, America attacked Afghanistan and ended the Taliban rule. The occupiers started a brutal suppression of the Afghans who had no quarrel with America at all. During their long Afghan war, Americans were not able to break the resistance of the Afghan patriots and the Taliban. They finally forced the occupiers to end their occupation. The puppet regime of the former president Karzai and now the present president Ghani have faced the consequences of the imperial invasion. The country suffered enormously and its people reduced to abject poverty and deprivation. At present, the Taliban are still there and fighting the Kabul government.
In short, countless millions of people have suffered in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Whether we call it a civil war or war by proxy by regional powers, the war in Syria has reduced many cities to rubble. Hundreds of thousands have died. Millions of Syrians have become homeless. They are trying to escape to any place where they can exist as normal human beings. Other victims of wars from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and numerous other countries also join them in this quest for a safe haven in Europe. These people are in dire difficulties who need all the possible help. However, it is also important to underline the fact that Europe has no solution to the problems of millions of refugees and asylum seekers. Their number will keep on multiplying, not decreasing. Those who think otherwise live in a world of fantasy.
By attacking innocent civilians in France, Belgium and Turkey, ISIS is able to create a sense of insecurity and fear throughout Europe. No state or public authority can provide complete safeguards against any random attacks. There is no shortage of weapons in Europe or anywhere else. Those who want to commit any terrorist attack will be able to acquire any bombs or weapons they need. It is a false hope that any intelligence agencies in an open society can stop all indoctrinated and ideologically motivated suicide bombers from their criminal behaviour.
Most of the western societies including Australia have become multi-cultural and multi-religious that have ethnic communities of Afro-Asian origin. Among the immigrant communities, strong social bonds exist through their tribal and religious identities. While the western societies have developed a more relaxed attitude towards their religions and deities, most of the immigrants have gone the other way. There is a strong tendency to adhere to the formal religious traditions where their clerics play a vital social role. Any terrorist attack has negative consequences for these people, especially the Muslims. They become suspect merely because some Muslim terrorist has done something seriously wrong, somewhere. This strengthens cultural and social stereotypes.
–
Dr Nasir Khan is a historian and political activist, holding a Doctor Philos degree from the University of Oslo. His first book Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings was published in 1995 and his second book Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms: A Historical Survey was published in 2006. Over the last four decades, he has written numerous articles on international affairs and the issues of human rights.
He opposes war and violence and is a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In his academic work, he has tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. He also believes that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
Why is Robert Parry so fixated on the “Islamic state” insurgency group, while the US is supporting all other Islamic groups like the ones operating in Lybia, and those who fight the Syrian army?
As an “investigative” journalist he should have known better. The demonization of th IS Sunni group by the US dates back to 2014 only, while this group has been operated in Syria since 2011. 2014 is the year when the IS threatened US interests in Iraq by routing the Shia- dominated army of the puppet Bagdad regime from all Sunni areas in Iraq.The US began to bomb IS targets in Iraq/Syria to stop further advances of this Sunni group in Iraq, which threatened the Kurdish stronghold, Arbil, and Bagdad itself!
The clueless Parry should know that if IS has been so successful in recruting fighters and holding large territories in Iraq/Syria, it’s because of the continuation of the US anti-Sunni terror policy in Iraq by Kurdish bands and the Shia-dominated Bagdad regime.
The conflict in Iraq is set on sectarian terms, initiated by US terror invasion of Iraq in 2003. IS is one of its byproducts.
Why not call his sight Parry’s propaganda?
Stereotyping and creating straw man arguments about some right-wing boogeyman is hardly “analysis”.
Read and learn. Aristotle warned millennia ago of the tyrant over democracy, the right wing bully boy who creates foreign enemies to demand domestic power by posing falsely as protector and accusing his opponents of disloyalty, the opportunist who takes foreign and domestic bribes and distributes public resources to his supporters. The right wing is the chief problem of civilization, the terminal disease of democracy. But those who benefit find them highly illusory.
Are you affiliated with the ICIJ that broke the Panama Papers blockbuster, and are you connected to George Soros?
I’m also interested to know if you have any connection with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that uncovered the Panama Papers.
Looking forward for your reply.
Good article by Jonathan Marshall. The peoples of the states in the EU are in the firing line
for the next US war. 2.5 million US troops have landed in Shannon Airport in Ireland on their way to and from
its perpetual wars. There needs to be a new tranatlantic peace movement to try and stop World War 111
It’s funny how you all claim to be “independent journalists finding the truth” when you just seem like left-wing puppets. Call me what you want, but this site is liberal propaganda. If you were truly independent, you would be investigating the left also. You call yourselves independent, but you are either very biased or taking something from the left to make them seem like they are perfect and never do anything wrong, when there has been much more controversy surrounding the left recently.
consortiumnews.com could demonstrate a lack of any political bias by having an interest in Australia’s fake archives of its newspapers [sold by public libraries & also exported to foreign countries] that conceal crimes and corruption known to and involving both sides of politics under the leadership of Keith Rupert Murdoch who [just like the politicians] betrays the people he exploits. https://rjrbtsrupertsfirstnewspaper.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/australian-government-law-enforcement-and-news-media-corruption-in-brief-ref-sbsa-bankruptcy-6/
Set up global group to prevent global catastrophe by new means.
Optimal Development by sage globalization in addition to life of countries.
The main productive force is science. Hence, the global problems are caused by exhaustion, ageing of its basis, general ideas. The way out is the general ideas on Optimal Development (OD), as a compromise between the private and public interests for the OD Center as a union of the OD general ideas and The Giving Pledge, the green Climatic Fund etc. The Law on preservation of energy shows, that the current work gives incomes only for the current needs. Hence, capitals have been obtained by exhaustion of science, its general ideas and must be invested into the new general ideas.
Support triune form of global part of optimal philanthropy.
The conventional philanthropy deals with particular or local problems. To get rid of the global negative phenomena there’s a need to deal with the general or global problems. That’s why there has appeared in the USA “The Giving Pledge”, which is in fact the material and global part of the optimal philanthropy. Accordingly between Europe and Asia there have appeared the general ideas on Optimal Development (OD), as a compromise between the particular and general interests. The OD general ideas are in fact the spiritual and global part of the optimal philanthropy. A union of “The Giving Pledge” and the OD general ideas will be the global part of the optimal philanthropy in a form local-compromise-global.
This and the whole OD theory is in agreement with the triune image of God, meaning life must be based on the triune or optimal form private-compromise-public etc. According to the OD “The Giving Pledge” has to invest into the OD min 0.001+ of its capitals a year, with taking it back if necessary. There’s a need of a US bank account “Optimal Development Center headed by A.G. Teregulov”, for optimization of thinking, transport, energetics, with branches in big cities. The OD Center will be between the East and West. The OD general ideas will give cheap mass goods and services worth min $35.5 trillion (you’ll get the details). optimaltransport21.blogspot.com Optimizatsiyamishleniyaitransporta.blogspot.com
Optimal land, water, air, Space transport.
The planes’ wings cause strong air resisance. The way out is the optimal wings (like the bird’s wings in gliding), to ensure a compromise between the wing and the air. This’ll ensure the take off and landing speed about 25 km/h min air resistance, to keep it by increment of speed according to decrement of air density, speed of sound at the altitude of 30 km, boundless increment of speed above it, spending of energy like of a bus when going up, restoration of its main part by the optimal propellers when going down. The positive effect will be like that of the E-mail in comparison with the post.
The optimal planes (optimaltransport21.blogspot.com) will allow most safe, cheap, fast flights to any place, including Space, and back. The results are based on the author’s specialty and the universal Method of Optimal Development. There’re the positive references of a prominent specialist and of Rospatent. The optimal air, water, land craft will reduce fuel expense, exhaust, warming, car accidents, jams, stop price rise, give new incomes. (The EU grants about $5 billion for the mycopter.eu since movement in the air is the most effective one, but they’ve no new general ideas.)
Teregulov (Turek Ul or Turk Son). Univ. ed., Sci. degree & Sci. title on General Mechanics with applications to aircraft etc. Member of Kazan academy of scientific creativity. Son got this specialty too. He is strong in design & business. slavturk@yandex.ru +7 843 236 5517 Optimizatsiyamishleniyaitransporta.blogspot.com
P.S. “I like to support causes where a lot of good comes from a little bit of good, using the latest advancements, on a global scale” (www.skollfoundation.org/). That’s why the market’s ups are caused by the new general ideas’ use and the downs by their exhaustion, and the global crisis will be stopped by the new general ideas, since “Ideas rule the World”.
“Rupert Murdoch, probably the world’s most powerful publisher” https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/19/how-roy-cohn-helped-rupert-murdoch-2/ who with his first newspaper the ‘News’ began his media empire in Adelaide [city] South Australia [state] where he has since maintained a newspaper publishing state monopoly. Murdoch betrays Australians with his newspapers having fake archives of newspapers published to assist to conceal crimes and corruption. News articles published have been erased or altered for the fake archives. https://rjrbtsrupertsfirstnewspaper.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/australian-government-law-enforcement-and-news-media-corruption-in-brief-ref-sbsa-bankruptcy-6/ Details of billions of dollars of public debt remain concealed. Australia is incapable of dealing with US citizen Rupert Murdoch without the assistance of foreign countries. No comment from Rupert Murdoch.
To: Editor, Robert Parry
RE: How to starve the Monster in the room – Don’t Feed It.
Dear Mr. Parry,
As we look for ways to end violence at home and abroad; to dismantle Cold War mentalities, policies and weapons of mass destruction, I would suggest that we have to address the root of this monstrous construct of US against ‘them’ – the other/the enemy, in all its forms; to understand the origin of fear, hatred and violence.
Survival of our species is rooted in cooperation, not survival of the fittest. But, long ago constructs of competitiveness for power and control shaped the way human children in our culture developed and many earlier societies that were forced into conflict or to retreat to very harsh circumstances.
Fast forward to today, where there is a resurgence of nationalism and isolationism with military provocation on a scale not seen since the Cold War. There is a monster of violent industry that is sustained by an embedded human psychological condition and we need to address this with ethical and moral consistency that teaches and acts to reject all forms of violence. Only in this way, will we starve the insatiable beast of war-making and unsustainable industrial practices.
I ask you to please consider the information below, and perhaps write about the source or roots of our acceptance of violence and our ‘otherizing’ conditioning, and the moral injury it is causing.
Thank you.
For your thoughtful consideration:
Feeding a Monster: The Unholy Alliance Between the Military-Industrial-Complex and Animal Agribusiness
Stop the War$ on Mother Earth!
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” – Henry David Thoreau
Animal agribusiness is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases such as methane. Not only is animal agribusiness causing deforestation, water pollution (helping to kill coral reefs), ocean depletion of biodiversity (fish caught to be ground up and fed to livestock) but it is water/land use intensive.
Big animal fishing/agribusiness and the military-industrial-violence-complex are inseparable…
(with an understanding that massive violent extractive energy industries fuel the demands of both https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQL-TAT5Oj8 )
These two toxic unsustainable industries of death and violence are killing off biodiversity and polluting the entire planet.
We must starve this monster hybrid of profit and domination.
To understand the destruction, I suggest these short videos on animal fishing/agribusiness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1z1taw6yNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLgkrQSRy9E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynWHUmRzNBA
Links to facts, here:
http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts
It’s very important that we understand and inform others of the intersectionality or linkage between the animal fishing/agribusiness and military-industrial-complex connections, as well as, their combined consequences on animals and the planet; the agenda or goal being to raise awareness, reduce suffering and build coalitions between different peace and justice movements. Together, we will have more leverage and power against this level of unsustainable malevolence.
An important aspect in understanding this ‘unholy alliance’ or connection is to see that it is rooted in the culture of accepted violence, immoral human behavior and otherizing.
Both the military and animal agribusiness have conditioned and indoctrinated people into accepting subjugation, harm and the killing of other sentient beings not for subsistence, but for control, domination and profit.
It stems from human entitlement or essentialism, also called speciesism.
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/human-and-nonhuman-rights-as-inextricably-intertwined-in-a-nutshell/#.V2_hUihD9FI
This then is the beginning of selective compassion and immoral cognitive dissonance, resulting in a young human mind experiencing their first moral injury. Speciesism within human culture informs developing minds that it is acceptable to subjugate, torture, harm and kill certain animals but not others. Thus begins the otherizing of nonhuman animals and their use as a resource to be bred, raised, killed, controlled or kept as property. This later manifests as racism, sexism and all forms of negative discrimination between humans, leading to hatred, violence and war.
The military-industrial-violence-complex uses this speciesist – otherizing empathy/compassion conscience compartmentalization as part of their desensitization boot camp programs (soldierizing – sailorization) of recruits in preparing them to kill the ‘enemy.’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hmBKzYl8C0
And with that, the cycle of direct or indirect/complicity in harm and violence is continued causing internal moral conflict resulting in terrible psychic wounds for people, as well as, military veterans suffering with PTSD and moral injury. (Approx. 22 US military veteran suicides each day).
Since ancient herding cultures began this destructive harmful otherizing has lead humanity to continue to propagate this culture-of-death for profit and dominance that is the military-industrial-violence-complex and animal fishing/agribusiness; Together, they are killing individual humans, nonhuman animals and the living systems of our planet.
As we face the current climate crisis, it’s imperative for the survival of life on Earth to undo the damage of our crisis of conscience and begin to promote values that align with ethical peace-making and justice for all.
Moral consistency and ethical coherence in all that we do and support will begin to change the patterns of speciesism, patriarchal colonialzation and human violent destructive behavior.
It will help to heal the psychic wounds of veterans, our collective human conscience and the planet.
Let us learn to be peaceful, to teach peace and reject all forms of violence so that the Monster of the Military-Industrial-Violence-Complex and animal agribusiness dies of starvation and neglect. Let’s grow instead, a new culture that supports and sustains life and fairness for all. – Jeff
Informative resources provided, below:
Videos on moral injury:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ltThTYvms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNROYryPo0A
Jonathan Shay established the term, Moral Injury:
Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD psychiatrist retired from a career in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Outpatient Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts, and author of the acclaimed Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (Shay, 1994) New York, NY: Scribner.
Shay, J. (2014). Moral injury. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 31, 182–191. doi:10.1037/a0036090 Sherman
Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Foot(boot)print… And, not factored are GHGs from Carbon to Methane released from the whole of the infrastructure of animal agribusiness to get animal flesh/secretion ‘food’ to the warfighters:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/23/72279/
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-11-19/the-elephant-in-paris-the-military-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/12/removing-war-from-global-warming.html
USDA partnership with DOD to mitigate climate change (cough!):
http://blogs.usda.gov/2016/05/18/usda-partners-with-the-department-of-defense-to-fight-climate-change/
—snip http://blogs.usda.gov/2016/06/21/u-s-soybeans-help-feed-the-world/
“In the most recent marketing year (2014 – 2015), about 59 percent of total U.S. soybean production was exported to international markets – that’s a total of more than 2.3 billion bushels with an astounding value of more than $24 billion. The products included whole soybeans, soybean meal (primarily used for livestock and poultry feed), and edible soybean oil.” – http://blogs.usda.gov/2016/06/21/u-s-soybeans-help-feed-the-world/
—snip http://blogs.star-telegram.com/investigations/2012/08/more-government-pork-obama-directs-military-usda-to-buy-meat-in-lean-times.html
The Department of Defense annually purchases about:
194 million pounds of beef (estimated cost $212.2 million)
164 million pounds of pork ($98.5 million)
1500,000 pounds of lamb ($4.3 million)
Monsanto Connections – Military/Ag History:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTi0_ZQtPTY
U.S. Government’s War on Animals and the planet:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/U.S._Government%27s_War_on_Animals
Senator: Meatless Mondays have no place in military:
http://www.wattagnet.com/blogs/27-animal-agribusiness-angle/post/27290-senator-meatless-mondays-have-no-place-in-military
http://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/news_home/Regulatory/2016/06/Military_Meatless_Mondays_deba.aspx?ID=%7B783E19D6-8D00-4D1C-AD57-2061DDCF4702%7D&cck=1
Department of Defense – DOD meat / meal procurement acquisitions and relationships with agribusiness:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/
http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/606852
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/321601p.pdf
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22190.pdf
How the US army shapes the way we eat:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/31/427854425/cheetos-canned-foods-deli-meat-how-the-u-s-army-shapes-our-diet
MREs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_ration
USDA program for veterans – Agribusiness Development Teams:
http://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/publications/10-10.pdf
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2015/09/0252.xml
Military Animal Research and Testing:
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/321601p.pdf
http://www.mrmcmed.org/mar.html
http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/military-war-animals/
Definitions:
Speciesism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciesism
http://www.britannica.com/topic/speciesism
Anthropocentrism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism
Essentialism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
Social Conditioning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conditioning
Moral Injury:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury
http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/co-occurring/moral_injury_at_war.asp
“Like psychological trauma, moral injury is a construct that describes extreme and unprecedented life experience including the harmful aftermath of exposure to such events. Events are considered morally injurious if they “transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” (1). Thus, the key precondition for moral injury is an act of transgression, which shatters moral and ethical expectations that are rooted in religious or spiritual beliefs, or culture-based, organizational, and group-based rules about fairness, the value of life, and so forth.”
http://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/about-moral-injury/
“Moral injury is the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress their own moral and ethical values or codes of conduct.”
Here are links to learn how to have an immediate impact and take direct action against the violent ‘Monster’ of the Military-Industrial-Complex-AnimalAgribusiness:
http://www.howdoigovegan.com
http://www.vegankit.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/eatingtheearth/
Why don’t you have a page to follow on Facebook?
@Allison
Note: An online search immediately reveals:
https://www.facebook.com/Consortiumnewscom-150931404928776/
as well as:
https://twitter.com/Consortiumnews
HI, Robert.
I am a big fan of consortiumnews.com. Especially in these times when our deplorable corporate media are kissing Trump’s tuchus because, I assume, he’s making money for them. Softball interviews and no fact checking. Nobody holds his feet to the fire.
Fortunately we have your source for news and informed opinion. I have been reading your articles and those of your contributors for 10 years now, and I’ve bought most of your books.
I would like to make a donation to your enterprise, but I have run into hard times since the 2008 meltdown. I’m 76 years old, trying to make a living as a freelance editor and writer in a society that has never respected older people, but even less so now. 15 years ago I was making over $100 K managing publications departments for Apple and other computer companies. Now I’m on a limited income, consisting mostly of my monthly social security check.
So I regret that I can’t make a contribution at this time.
But please continue with your courageous, insightful, and truthful journalism.
Best,
Phil Johnson
Where were you when the Clinton administration was in way over its head in the Balkans – supporting Islamist Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Daniel Pearl wrote a definitive post-war article (WSJ, December 1999), on America’s unjustified, brainless war against Serbia – built on KLA lies and the now to-be-expected, legendary CIA incompetence.
And where was your reportage regarding America’s push to expand NATO in the 1990s also under Clinton – basically designed to spur the defense industry which with no Cold War to deal with had to find another cold war. Clinton obliged – bombing Serbia aroused Russia into the realization that NATO – especially an expanding NATO may be an existential threat to the Russian people.
Giving Islam an additional foothold in Europe and bringing on Cold War II, I lay on the Clinton’s doorstep – did you cover any of that?
Russia, Europe and America should be natural allies against militant Islam and China. What have we gotinstead? Cover any of that?
Bob, In response to your “Parry Laments Loss of Journalistic Skepticism” e-mail of 30, Sep 2016, let me say, as a long-standing and proud monthly contributor, were you (and your crew) not the skeptic(s) you are, I would not be the contributor I am. Thank you.
That said, the ‘contact’ link at the bottom of the e-mail leads to a code 404.
I noticed that people who had been harm in the US by the Clintons and / or US government have never gotten a dime unless they move out the US like myself.
A Plan for the people to attain POLITICAL CLOUT to avoid the “unthinkable.”
October 8, 2016
Dear Mr. Parry
Namaste, Salam, Shalom, Peace, Paz, Pace, Heiwa,
If the Nuclear dangers are potentially catastrophic (end life as we know it), the people must find a way to reduce the threat! Here is a plan for the largest movement of nonviolence the world has ever seen.
I humbly, but BOLDLY, would like to submit that I have a plan to UNITE the people in every country – a PEOPLE MOVEMENT to ultimately defuse the conflicts!
The people in the US and Russia need to unite to tell their own governments to scale down the rhetoric, antagonism, and ultimately work together. The methods being used right now are not working because of the obstacles you so adroitly described in your article about the “Unthinkable.”
It is a Gandhi / King-like, Global Movement of Nonviolence, For the Children (GMofNV) and it is one step away from being implemented. This is a FORMAL REQUEST to ask you to write about the plan to give it some visibility. The world is becoming more and more divided and violent. We must do the opposite and UNITE!
A major segment of the plan is for the leaders of a GMofNV to issue demands and the nuclear issues are at the top of the list. Another major segment is to capture and “keep” the attention of the media – as Gandhi would do. A GMofNV is designed to unite all the movements, religions, Mayors and Community Leaders (local application),.
Please contact me as soon as you are able. Thank you very much.
Peace and Love,
Andre Sheldon
Director, Global Strategy of Nonviolence
Facilitator, CALL to WOMEN, a World-Wide Unity Campaign
Home number: +1-617- 964-5267
Email: Andre (at) GlobalStrategyofNonviolence.org
Website: http://www.GlobalStrategyofNonviolence.org
Facebook: Global Movement of Nonviolence
Howard Zinn, author/ historian, in an interview by Yuri Loudon in The Internationalist, posted October 18, 2006 said, “I now believe only in the movements of the people that can change history.” HOWARD was my confidante. He wrote to me, “Your ‘Call to Women’ is excellent. Well written, clear, strong. No doubt women represent non-violence best.”
Robert Koehler – Columnist at Huffington Post wrote to me, “I couldn’t agree more, regarding women as peace leaders.”
Gila Svirsky – Co-founder of Coalition for Women for Peace
“I completely agree with your vision and overall approach – to mobilize women to lead the way to peace. This has been core to our peace activism in Israel for almost 20 years.”
Noam Chomsky – Author, Activist – “I hope your effort achieves the resonance it should.”
Michael Lerner – Founder of Network of Spiritual Progressives – “I agree that the patriarchal world needs to change.”
Good Day Robert
What are the significances of the 2016 election – with respect to our ultimate human purpose?
My new book: Uncommon Sense: A Theory of Human Purpose performs exploratory surgery on these and many other topics of interest.
I would greatly appreciate any thoughtful reviews.
What happened with the Darrell Whitman & OSHA case? Will more OSHA employees retire, get transferred, quit now that Donald Trump is the President Elect and has said “drain the swamp”.
How do companies get on the OSHA Whistleblower Protection Advisory Committee (WPAC) for Management? Did any of those companies have any serious violations that went unresolved forcing employees to contact their local OSHA office and how many serious violations did each company have while their member was on the OSHA WPAC for Management.
Are any of those companies contacted with any global “hot line” that employees are encourage to call to report violations in their workplace and are any of those “hot lines” actually reporting back to the employer as a “favor” vs a complaint making the employees targets for termination and or pass over for promotion or other jobs. Is there an Ethic Issues with employees contacting their “hot line” or giving their name with reporting to OSHA?
Good time of day.
Please – make a version of Your website in Russian language.
Thank you for your attention.
From Russia with Respect.
Just wanted to tell you that I admire your work and support you, and see it as an honor for you to be on the “blacklist” – a shameful stinking reminder of the joseph mccarthy days… Lynn Feinerman Producer WOMEN RISING RADIO
Robert Parry,
I’m afraid your site may already be targeted, as you said might become a possibility on a recent radio interview. After having just heard you on Flashpoints (Dec. 2 2016 – I think this was a re-run of an interview that aired earlier this week), I went to your site to get more information on the “fake news” controversy. I was repeatedly informed by my browser that it “could not access this site.” I could, however, access any other site I went to at this time. With repeated attempts, I was able to access the site, but the same message kept popping up when I went back to the site–even to a page that I had left open on my desktop!
I hope this was just a fluke, but I’m letting you know. i really appreciate all your work.
CGs, Chris Kinder
Would consortium join force with UK journalist, Robert Stuart to investigate the alleged “Syrian napalm attack” faked by the BBC?
This link below takes you to Robert’s presentation of his compelling evidence…
https://youtu.be/lu6TlmHnd4c
I just finished Mr. Parry’s long, detailed article on Gary Webb’s work and the ways that the mainstream media went to work deliberately discrediting him for daring to expose those unwelcome truths. This is but one of many cases that prove that the MSM is in no position to lecture writers, reporters, journalists, and open-minded citizens on the meaning of truth.
With that being said, other more egregious examples of mass media complicity in dangerous lies told often include the story that led to the demolishing of Iraq with deadly blow-back still reverberating throughout the Middle East. I’m talking both about the Inside Job of 911 and the horrors being purposely linked–falsely–to Saddam Hussein to serve as rationale for initiating already planned wars against a number of (6) Middle East Nations. (Project For a New American Century’s playbook.)
In today’s version of Democracy where corporations write the scripts that become mass media’s talking points when not “magically” translated into public policy, any researcher/reporter/scientist/doctor who dares to expose the genuine dangers attributable to too many vaccines poured into infants’ bodies quickly is granted pariah status. The film “Vaxxed’ intended to air at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival was banned and along with it, both The Story and the truth.
Monsanto manages the same outcome as per its genetic monstrosities and how these products are publicly perceived.
The media’s sound-byte milieu has too many assuming that once a story “passes out of The News Cycle” it ceases to hold importance. And so, little is said about the true state of the Pacific Ocean post-Fukushima; and little is said about the state of the Gulf of Mexico–post Maconda Drilling debacle; and major attempts at blacking out what just has taken place at Standing Rock (with Veterans for Peace standing in solidarity with Indigenous Tribal Peoples) remain underway.
Between the taunt of “conspiracy theorist,” the Pentagon’s very own propaganda arms calling independent journalists’ material “fake news,” and too many reporters, environmental activists, and inconvenient truth tellers being gunned down (like hospitals in war zones), the drive to control the public’s perception of ALL NEWS all the time is operational. It’s no doubt one of the unpublished protocols of “Total Information Awareness.”
When not spying on the public, inciting false flags, or generally worsening relations between people… the Deep State’s operators are now gunning for a TOTAL control of all “respected” narratives. And if they succeed in undermining the Internet’s open access channels, millions of people will consume the faux food for thought diet that is to truth what bio-tech “food” is to nutrition.
These are times that test men’s and women’s souls… thus blessed are the truth tellers and peace makers.
Thank you for your work.
SERIOUS SHAME: ACLU PLAYS PARTISAN ON FAKE NEWS TO JOIN IN ON THE FAKE NEWS HOAX
The Executive Director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, emailed me December 22nd (I’m one of many millions of members) as “another” PLEASE DONATE email.
I should add the ACLU spends “enormous” amount of time, energy and money soliciting funds (and renewals). Savvy people know a good percentage of funding that many non-profit-do-good organizations requests actually go to for-profit organizations that often do much of their solicitation work. Equally plenty the total goes to the often over-paid salaries of executives of these organizations, etc.; whereas some goes to pay for the solicitation of more donations.
But more importantly ACLU pretends to be non-partisan. It lists its “activist issues” and they center squarely on Free Speech. The first claim on their website when you click on “About” says:
For almost 100 years, the ACLU has worked to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
And naturally their big issue for decades has been Free Speech (not so much the Second Amendment?). But why then does it seem that the ACLU is going to great lengths to push a very corrupt Hilary Clinton? This supposedly intelligent organization has seemingly taken everything the mainstream media has said about Trump (and all the many distortions and disinformation) and treated like godsend.
Every ACLU email I received over the last several months suggests (actually blatantly states) Donald Trump would be far worse to human rights than Hilary Clinton.
There is nothing about Wikileaks and the Project Veritas revelations, nothing about DCLeaks regarding George Soros, nothing about how the Clinton campaign stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, etc., and more importantly nothing about how the mainstream media has ignored so many serious issues as a way of censorship and fake news.
NOW ACLU HAS INADEQUATELY RESPONDED TO THE “FAKE NEWS PROPAGANDA STORY” AS A BLIND MAN WITH KID GLOVES. It is total B.S.
In Anthony Romero’s December 22nd Please Donate email he lists a few talking points—first listed:
“Read our Senior Policy Analyst’s take on “fake news” and free speech, as well as an update on what Facebook is doing about it.” If you click on the link it goes to:
Fixing Fake News By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project December 12, 2016 at:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/fixing-fake-news?emsrc=Nat_Appeal_AutologinEnabled&emissue=year_end&emtype=cultivation&ms=eml_161222_YE_cultivation_union_mem
To say the least Jay Stanley’s response is Egregious. HOW THE ACLU THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT DEFENDING THE UNDERDOG HAS SO PATHETICALLY BECOME SO PARTISAN AND SO NAÏVE ABOUT SUCH AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT and in such an important time on this critical issue!!
So MANY supposedly progressive organizations have ignored or down-played this issue—and seemingly especially those gaining funding through George Soros? This would be an excellent test to see if in fact Soros is corrupting the politics of the United States in another matter. We need to examine “all” the many organizations Soros funds that relate to politics and civil rights, see: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1237
What is Robert Reich discussing? What does Amy Goodman and Democracy Now?
Thank goodness there is a voice out there in the wilderness that has been deeply and trenchantly critical of the Clinton Campaign. See The Sane Progressive, Debbie Lusignan, and study “all” her past videos, check out now (she alone could wake up the left if people acknowledged her existence 5 Stars for the Sane Progressive as there are too few of them *****):
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=AwrSbmcm62lYvrkAXQ9XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTE0MjZoaTl1BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjI3ODJfMQRzZWMDcGl2cw–?p=sane+progressive+No%2C+Russia+Did+Not+Hack+Grid.+Republican%2FDemocrats+Reveal+the+GAME+with+Latest+Lie&fr=tightropetb&fr2=piv-web#id=1&vid=1a0a32a80e3ed986eefe7b6d86dd25fd&action=view
And
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A2KIo9XH62lYZXcAM437w8QF?fr=tightropetb&p=The+Sane+Progressive&vage=week#id=3&vid=026dc4bb033ee402eb055ca693667bea&action=view
I have decided to print the Stanley statement on Fixing Fake News to show the great level of ignorance, hypocrisy and collusion (and you need to read deep into the memo to really get the real gist (as many would not bother) before you get the gist of the distortion and lies being supported by the ACLU).
I am sorry this response by Stanley is somewhat boring, overly-long, haphazard and pedantic (I think it is on purpose). It is a bit of a chore to read (but hopefully my commentary spices it up a bit by dealing with real issues). I cannot make his statement and my response to what he attends the most exciting in the world—but the fact that this is what the head of the ACLU is pointing to as their current position on FAKE NEWS IN RELATION TO THE REAL ISSUE OF FREE SPEECH AND IT SPEAKS MOUNTAINS. Try to understand what it means for an organization of many HUNDREDS OF lawyers to be put to sleep with this blather and bullshit. This should b alarming. Time to wake up the world of lawyering:
MY RESPONSE IS IN CAPITAL LETTERS INTERJECTED BETWEEN THE NORMAL PRINT OF PROSE (because many contact us websites do not take colors variations and so I have no other way to distinguish one voice from another).
Feel free to read and share as you will find it scary in its implications (because the American Civil Liberties Union is ESPECIALLY supposed to be about free speech). It is interesting to witness how this sophistic argument devolves into a low ball style of partisan dishonesty equal to much of the left. Here then is presented the ACLU joke response to fake news:
Fixing Fake News By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
[NOTE: THAT CAPITALIZATION IS RESPONSE TO STANLEY ARTICLE.]
There has been a lot of {DISTORTION} discussion lately about “fake news,” which appears to have circulated with fierce velocity on social media throughout this past election season {BUT MOSTLY AFTER THE 33RD DNC DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE ATTEMPT TO ILLEGALLY STEAL THE ELECTION BY DECLARING RUSSIAN DID IT}. This has prompted calls for the likes of Facebook and Google to fix the problem.
{FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA MSM AND OTHER PLAYERS OF THE GLOBALIST POWER STRUCTURE (OF WHICH SEVERAL PLAYERS IN THE CIA ARE INCLUDED.}
What are we to think of this from a free speech and civil liberties perspective?
{FIRST YOU MIGHT UNDERSTAND A MORE SOPHISTICATED ANALYSIS OF HOW MUCH DECEIT HAS BEEN GENERATED BY THE MSM AND THE POLWER ELITE BEFORE YOU ASK SUCH A NAIVELY WORDED QUESTION WITH ALMOST NO EXPLANATION OF THE REAL AND DEEP PROBLEM OF ALTERNATIVE WEBSITES EXPOSING THE CORRUPTION OF THE ELITIST ENTERPRISE.}
With Facebook, which has been a particular subject of calls for reform, there are actually two issues that should be thought about separately. The first involves Facebook’s “Trending News” section, which was the subject of a flap earlier this year when it emerged that it was actually edited by humans, rather than being generated by a dumb algorithm that simply counted up clicks. A former employee alleged that the human curators were biased against conservative material. In the wake of that controversy, Facebook took the humans out of the loop, making the “Trending News” more of a simple mirror held up to the Facebook user base showing them what is popular.
{WHAT GOBBLEDYGOOD HORSE MANICURE IS THIS SUPPOSED TO SIGNIFY? THIS AUTHOR THROWS AROUND ABSTRACT WORDS AND PHRASES LIKE “HUMAN CURATORS” AND ‘DUMB ALGORITHMS” AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO AVER TO HE-SAID-SHE-SAID BALONEY?}
{GET SOMETHING STRAIGHT—THIS CENSORSHIP IS ABOUT CENSORING MEANING OF CERTAIN IDEAS AND POINTS OF VIEW—NOT ABOUT CLICKS AND MATHEMATICAL HOCUS POCUS. THE IDEA THERE IS SOME OBJECTIVE, ELECTRONIC, AND ROBOTIC CENSORING HAPPENING IS BAT-DROPPINGS. BESIDES COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IS ULTIMATELY CREATED BY HUMANS BE THEY CURATORS OR NOT. CURATORS TAKE CARE OF MUSEUSMS AND ARCHIVISTS ARCHIVE (AND EQUALLY DO NOT SET OUT TO CENSOR). GET YOUR SO-CALLED LITERAY SEMANTIC STRAIGHT!}
As I said in a blog post at the time, I’m ambivalent about this part of the fake news controversy.
{NO IT IS WORSE: YOU ARE UNCONSCIOUS TO THE REAL AND DEEP ISSUES. YOU ARE NAÏVE.}
On the one hand, it can be valuable and interesting to see what pieces are gaining circulation on Facebook, independent of their merit. On the other hand, Facebook certainly has the right, acting like any publisher, to view the term “trending” loosely and publish a curated list of interesting material from among those that are proving popular at a given time.
{ONE HUGE PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANALYSIS IS THAT YOU FAIL TO MENTION THAT THIS FAKE NEWS PROPAGANDA BLITZ EVOLVED WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PRTY TRYING TO USE RUSSIA AS A RED HERRING AND THEN CERTAIN SHADY “LISTS” OF SPECIFIC WEBSITES BEING “LISTED” AS PURVERORS OF FAKE NEWS (ACTUALLY REAL NEWS) FROM NO LESS THAN THE WASHINGTON POST. YOU OBVIOUSLY ARE (OR PRETEND TO BE) UNFAMILIAR WITH THE SO-CALLED FAKE NEWS SOURCES? FACEBOOK CAM INTO THIS ISSUE OF LATE AS AFTERMATH.}
{YOU DO NOT EVEN HAVE THE PULSE OF THE STORY!!! SEE VIDEO SEQUENCE (STARTING AT: 2:14:00) FROM INFOWARS WITH JOHN RAPPOPORT FROM NOMOREFAKENEWS.COM AS HE GIVES ONE OF THE MANY REAL NEWS EXPLANATIONS ABOUT THIS POLITICAL SITUATION (THAT ANY COMPTENT PERSON COULD FIND ON THE INTERNET): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ab2pfPVlXM
One advantage of their doing so is that crazy stuff won’t get amplified further through the validation of being declared “News” by Facebook.
{THE ISSUE IS NOT ABOUT ‘CRAZY STUFF’ RATHER IT IS ABOUT THEDELIBERATE DECEIT (DISINFORMATION) COMING FROM THE MSM. CRAZY IS A LAYPERSON TERM OF SUBJECTIVITY. THE WORD ‘SANITY’ COMES TO US FROM LATIN ‘SANUS’ MEANING ‘SOUND’; AND MUCH OF WHAT IS WRITTEN AND SPOKEN ON MANY OF THE “LISTED” FAKE NEWS SIGHTS IS COMPRISED OF SOUND ARGUMENTS.}
A result of the decision to take human editors out of the loop is that a number of demonstrably false news items have subsequently appeared in the “Trending News” list. {FAKE BECAUSE THIS IS A LOW-LEVEL SIDE ISSUE.}
But Facebook plays a separate, far more significant function than their role as publisher of Trending News: it serves as the medium for a peer-to-peer communications network. I can roam anywhere on the Internet, get excited by some piece of material, brilliant or bogus, and post it on Facebook for my Friends to see. If some of them like it, they can in turn post it for their Friends to see.
The question is, do we want Facebook in its role as administrator of this peer-to-peer communications network to police the veracity of the material that users send each other? If I don’t post something stupid on Facebook, I can telephone my friends to tell them about it, or text them the link, or tell them about it in a bar. Nobody is going to do anything to stop the spread of fake news through those channels.
{THIS IS NOT ABOUT WHAT ONE CAN ‘TECHNICALLY’ DEFINE FASCIST-BOOK (ONE OF THE REAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM IS THAT IT SEEKS TO CENSOR IDEAS) BE IT PEER-TO-PEER OR SMEAR-TO-SMEAR.}
{THIS IS ABOUT MAGNITUDE OF AUDIENCE AND THE SURVIVAL OFSMALL MEDIA VERSUS AHEGELY CORRUPT MAINSTREAM MEDIA MADE OF MOSTLY SIX CORPORATIONS. INFORMAL NORMS HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED TO SHUN, ARGUE, VENT, TO COMPLAIN, ETC. THESE NORMS WILL CONTINUE TO INFLUENCE PEOPLE.}
{ACLU PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK NORMAL PEOPLE ARE TOO NAÏVE TOTHINK FOR THEMSELVES AND MUST HAVE DESIGNATED “AUTHORITY” FIGURES BE THEIR MASTERS—KIND OF STRANGE GIVEN ALL THECORRUPTION FROM THE AUTHORITY PEOPLE?}
Facebook doesn’t want to get into that business,
{HOW DOES JAY STANLEYKNOW WHAT FAKEBOOK (OR ANY SLIVER OF THAT HUGE OUTFIT) WANTS—SIMPLY BECAUSE HE CHOOSES TO BELIEVE SOMETHIG?}
… and I don’t think we want them to, either. Imagine the morass it would create.
{THEN WHY DID THEY JUMP INTO THE FRAY? WHY IS ZUCKERBERG MEETING WITH THE CHINESE AND SO OFTEN (IF NOT ABOUT CENSORSHIP)?}
There will be easy, clear cases, such as a piece telling someone to drink Drano to lose weight, which is not only obviously false but also dangerous. But there would also be a thicket of hard-to-call cases. Is acupuncture effective? Are low-carb diets “fake”? Is barefoot running good for you? These are examples of questions where an established medical consensus may have once been confidently dismissive, but which now are, at a minimum, clouded with controversy.
{THERE IS SCIENCE THAT CAN OFTEN BE ARGUED ON FACTS AND CAN SEEM MORE OR LESS BLACK AND WHITE AND THEN THERE IS POLITICS THAT IS OFTEN BASED ON 150 SHADES OF GREY AND MANY FORMS OF DECEIT INHERENT. POLITICS AND NEWS IS ESPECIALLY FRAUGHT WITH SHADY OPINION AND LIES. AND THIS IS WHAT THIS DEBATE ABOUT FAKE NEWS IS REALLY ABOUT. IT IS NOT ABOUT DRINKING DRANO AND NOT RUNNING BAREFOOT. JAY STANLEY IS NOT EVEN PUTTING HIS TOES IN THE POOL HERE. HE IS COMPLETELY ACTING LIKE A NAÏVE FOOL WHO HAS NO AWARENESS THAT FAKE NEWS HAS BEEN A DOMINANT FORCE IN AMERICAN NEWS REPORTING BEFORE THE INTERNET EVEN EXISTED. AMATEUR WOULD BE A KIND WAY TO SAY IT.}
How is Facebook to evaluate materials making various claims in such areas, inevitably made with highly varying degrees of nuance and care—let alone politically loaded claims about various officeholders? Like all mass censorship, it would inevitably lead the company into a morass of inconsistent and often silly decisions and troubling exercises of power.
{MIRRIAM-WEBSTER SHOWS SYNONYMS OF THE WORD CHOICE OF ‘SILLY’ TO BE: BIRDBRAINED, DITZY (OR DITSY), DIZZY, FEATHERBRAINED, FLIGHTY, FRIVOLOUS, FROTHY, FUTILE, GOOFY, HAREBRAINED, LIGHT-HEADED, LIGHT-MINDED, PUERILE, SCATTERBRAINED, GIDDY, YEASTY.
THE REAL DISCUSSION HERE IS ABOUT THE WORD “DECEIT” AND SYNONYMS LIKE: ARTIFICE, CHEATING, COZENAGE, CRAFT, CRAFTINESS, CROOKEDNESS, CROOKERY, CUNNING, CUNNINGNESS, DECEITFULNESS, DECEPTION, DECEPTIVENESS, DISHONESTY, DISSEMBLING, DISSIMULATION, DOUBLE-DEALING, DUPERY, DUPLICITY, FAKERY, FOXINESS, FRAUD, GUILE, GUILEFULNESS.
THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT BALLPARK DISCUSSIONS THAT GO WAY BEYOND CONNOTATION, NUANCE OR VARIATION IN OPINION.}
It might sound easy to get rid of “fake news,” but each case will be a specific, individual judgment call, and often, a difficult one.
{EVERY SINGLE SOURCE OF FACT OR OPINION HAS BOTH GRADATIONS OF TRUTH AND GRADATION OF FALSEHOOD. OFTEN FALSEHOODS OR DELIBERATE LIES BATTLE FALSEHOODS OR DELIBERATE LIES. ONE CAN GET A REASONABLY LEARNED PERSPECTIVE BY STUDYING A WIDE RANGE OF CONFLICTING VIEWS—WHICH MEANS MORE VARIETY OF INPUT AND OPINION (ESPECIALLY THE LESS KNOWN AND MORE EMOTIONALLY DISTURBING OPINION AS ALLOWED AS A COMMON GOOD). THINGS POLITICAL OR SELDOM BLACK OR WHITE SAVE THE MOST DOGMATIC SAYING SO.}
The algorithm
It is true that in some ways Facebook already interposes itself between users and their Friends—that unlike, say, the telephone system, it does not serve as a neutral medium for ideas and communications. If Facebook got out of the way and let every single posting and comment from every one of your Friends flow through your newsfeed, you would quickly be overwhelmed.
{FACEBOOK IS ALREADY GETTING OUT OF THE WAY BY INVITING COMPETITION FOR ITS NICHE.}
So they use “The Algorithm” to try to assess what they think you’ll be most interested in, and place that in your feed. The company says this algorithm tries to assess content for whether it’s substantive, whether you’ll find it relevant to you personally based on your interests, and also how interested you are in the Friend who posted it, based on how often you click on their stuff (Facebook actually assigns you numbers for each of your Friends, a “stalking score” that indicates how interested you seem to be in each of them).
{SOUNDS LIKE FAKEBOOK IS PLAYING GOD? WHICH GOD WILL DECIDE WHAT IS SUBSTANTIVE (A BOOK ON PHILOSOPHY BY ITSELF)? THIS IS NOT ABOUT FACEBOOK. THIS IS ABOUT ALL MAJOR INTERNET COMPANIES AND THE UNITED NATIONS CONTROLLING THE INTERNET. THIS IS ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE OLD MAINSTREAM MEDIA CREATING A POLITICAL BOMBSHELL IN ORDER TO PUT PRESSURE ON TECH COMPANIES TO CONTROL AND SUPPRESS THE FLOW OF IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS, AND IT IS ABOUT POLITICIANS CREATING LAWS TO FURTHER CREATE A MINISTRY OF TRUTH. HOW CAN AN ORGANIZATION CALLED THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION BE SO SEEMINGLY LAME OR STUPID?}
Facebook provides some details on how its algorithm works in its “News Feed FYI” blog. Some of those mechanisms already arguably constitute censorship of a sort. For example, the company heavily downgrades items with headlines that it judges to be “clickbaity,” based on a Bayesian algorithm (similar to those used to identify spam) trained on a body of such headlines. That means that if you write a story with a headline that fits that pattern, it is unlikely to be seen by many Facebook users because the company will hide it. Since January 2015 Facebook has also heavily downgraded stories that Facebook suspects are “hoaxes,” based on their being flagged as such by users and frequently deleted by posters. (That would presumably cover something like the Drano example.)
{OBVIOUSLY WHEN MILLIONS OF VOICES ARE IN PLAY THERE CAN BE INFORMATION CHAOS AND INFORMATION CORRUPTION WHEN THERE ARE FEW GATEKEEPERS PAYING ATTENTION IN A WORLD THAT CAN HAVE REAL DANGERS. LIBRARIANS DO NOT LECTURE PEOPLE ON WHAT THEY SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT THINK ABOUT. STILL THERE IS A TRADITION OF PUBLISHING INSTITUTIONS PROVIDING A WIDE RANGE OF COMPETING BOOKS, MAGAZINES, AND FORMS OF PUBLICATIONS THAT HAVE SOME HISTORY, AND SOME REVIEW. BUT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS A DIFFERENT ANIMAL OF BEING TRUSTWORTHINESS. IT IS NOT THE COMMON PERSON’S FAULT THAT LESS THAN 10% OF THE PUBLIC GIVES AN APPROVAL RATING TO EITHER THE CONGRESS OR THE MEDIA. THE REAL NEWS FROM WIKILEAKS IS THAT THE MSM COLLUDED WITH THE HILARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN (UNETHICAL AND ILLEGAL). AMERICANS AT THIS TIME HAVE NO AUTHORITY FIGURES THEY CAN TRUST—THEY ARE BEING FORCED TO BE MORE RESOURCEFUL FOR THEMSELVES (A POSITIVE REALTIY).}
Most of this interference with the neutral flow of information among Friends is aimed at making Facebook more fun and entertaining for its users.
{SO ACLU HONCHO ROMERO IS FOBBING OFF THIS SINGLE ANGLE ABOUT FAKEBOOK AS IF THEIR RESPONSE TO THE ENTIRE FAKE NEWS BLITZ? SOUNDS KIND OF FAKE FROM AN ORGANIZATION THAT SUPPOSEDLY IS PARTIALLY FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS?}
Though I’m uncomfortable with the power they have, I don’t have any specific reason to doubt that their algorithm is currently oriented toward that stated goal, especially since it aligns with the company’s commercial incentives as an advertiser.
{AS IF THIS WERE MERELY ABOUT SOME MERE COMPANY ISSUE. WHY IS ZUCKERBERG MEETING WITH BENJAMIN NETANYAHU IN ISRAEL GIVEN ISRAEL IS SO INTERESTED IN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SPYING ON THE U.S.? IS FACEBOOK MERELY AN AVERAGE COMPANY HAVING AVERAGE COMPANY ISSUES? NO. FACEBOOK IS A HEGEMON.}
There are of course very real and serious questions about how Facebook’s algorithmic pursuit of “fun” for its users contributes to the Filter Bubble, in which we tend to see only material that confirms our existing views.
{DO WE NEED TO STUDY THE SYNONYMS OF THE WORD ‘FUN’? ARE YOUNG PEOPLE MOSTLY CONCERNED ABOUT HAVING FUN OR COULD THE YOUNG (WHO HAVE INHERITED SUCH A MESSED UP SOCIETY AND WORLD) ACTUALLY BE INTERESTED IN REAL WORLD AFFAIRS? DOES THIS ARGUMENT NOW DEVOLVE INTO IRRELEVANCE?}
The difference between art and commerce has been defined as the difference between that which expands our horizons by getting us out of our comfort zone—i.e. by making us uncomfortable—and that which lets us stay complacently where we already are with pleasing and soothing confirmations of our existing views. In that, Facebook’s News feed is definitely commerce, not art. It does not pay to challenge people and make them uncomfortable.
{THE ACLU IS NOW GETTING ACADEMIC WITH ART AND COMMERCE? HERE IS MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY OF THE WORD FAKE: DEFINITION OF FAKE
1. : ONE THAT IS NOT WHAT IT PURPORTS TO BE: AS A : A WORTHLESS IMITATION PASSED OFF AS GENUINE B : IMPOSTOR, CHARLATAN C : A SIMULATED MOVEMENT IN A SPORTS CONTEST (AS A PRETENDED KICK, PASS, OR JUMP OR A QUICK MOVEMENT IN ONE DIRECTION BEFORE GOING IN ANOTHER) DESIGNED TO DECEIVE AN OPPONENT D : A DEVICE OR APPARATUS USED BY A MAGICIAN TO ACHIEVE THE ILLUSION OF MAGIC IN A TRICK}
But for Facebook to assume the burden of trying to solve a larger societal problem of fake news by tweaking these algorithms would likely just make the situation worse. To its current role as commercially motivated curator of things-that-will-please-its-users would be added a new role: guardian of the social good.
THIS ACLU ADVOCATE GUY MUST BE SOME GRADUATE OF AN IVY LEAGUE COLLEGE? SNEER.}
And that would be based on who-knows-what judgment of what that good might be at a given time. If the company had been around in the 1950s and 1960s, for example, how would it have handled information about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, gay rights, and women’s rights? A lot of material that is now seen as vital to social progress would then have been widely seen as beyond the pale.
{A LOT OF STUFF SEEN AS VITAL TODAY FROM THE SO-CALLED LEFT IS BEYOND THE PALE (MOSTLY DEBUNKED BY OTHERS ELSEWHERE). OH THE PAST WAS SO NAÏVE TO THE CURRENT AGE OF SOCIAL RIGHTEOUS WARRIOR LIKE LEFT-WINGERS SCREAMING THEIR HATRED ABOUT THE HATRED ON THE RIGHT.}
The company already has a frightening amount of power, and this would increase it dangerously. We wouldn’t want the government doing this kind of censorship—that would almost certainly be unconstitutional—and many of the reasons that would be a bad idea would also apply to Facebook, which is the government of its own vast realm.
{WHY DOES THIS SOUND LIKE SOME PATRONIZING CYNIC IN A CLOUD OF MEDIOCRITY WHO ACTS AS IF HE HAS NO IDEA OF CURRENT CORRUPTION BY THE STATUS QUO AND NO MENTION OF AN ALREADY EVOLVED POLICE STATE?}
For one thing, once Facebook builds a giant apparatus for this kind of constant truth evaluation, we can’t know in what direction it may be turned. What would Donald Trump’s definition of “fake news” be?
{ANY HIRED FAT MAN DRESSED AS SANTA CLAUS IN A SHOPPING MALL COULD ARGUE BETTER THAN THIS LAWYER-BASED ACLU SWITCHING TO TRUMP RATHER THAN DEALING WITH NON-PARTISAN REALITIES HEAD-ON. SANTA CLAUS DOES NOT MAKE 120 DOLLARS AN HOUR LIKE LAWYERS.}
Social Media Helps Police Spy On Activists Act now
The ACLU’s ideal is that a forum for free expression that is as central to our national political conversations as Facebook has become would not feature any kind of censorship or other interference with the neutral flow of information. {THERE ARE LAWS ALREADY. THIS IS NOT ANARCHISM TO SPEAK REAL TRUTH IN A WORLD OF CORRUPTION.}
It {PRONOUN} already does engage in such interference in response to its commercial interest in tamping down the uglier sides of free speech {NOT ESPECIALLY CLEAR} , but to give Facebook the role of national Guardian of Truth would exponentially increase the pitfalls that approach brings.
The company does not need to interfere more heavily in Americans’ communications. {THIS IS ALL SO NEBULOUS ISN’T IT?} We would like to see Facebook go in the other direction, becoming more transparent about the operation of its algorithms to ordinary users, and giving them an ever-greater degree of control over how that algorithm works.
{WE (WE OF THE TRUTH COMMUNITY) WOULD LIKE TO SEE ALL TECH COMPANIES TELL THE GLOBALISTS TO FACE REALITY—THEY HAVE BEEN CAUGHT BLATANTLY WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN COLLUDING WITH THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICAL COUPLE IN AMERICAN HISTORY (AS WELL AS GIVING COVER FOR AN ELABORATELY CORRUPT POLITICAL CULTURE). TELL THE MSM AND THE STATUS QUO TO EAT CROW. LIVE AND LET LIVE.}
The real problem
{OH YEAH YOU ARE FINALLY GOING TO ADDRESS A REAL PROBLEM???????}
At the end of the day, fake news is not a symptom of a problem with our social-communications sites, but a societal problem. Facebook and other sites are just the medium.
{TRUE AND FALSE: FAKEBOOK COULD BE MOSTLY A MEDIUM (SAME WORD AS MEDIA). BUT MEDIA IS ULTIMATELY CONTROLLED BY LAWS, PRACTICES AND PERSONS. IT WAS NOT THE ACLU THAT WOKE UP THE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO THE SNOWDEN LEAKS. NOT MUCH SO FAR IN THE RESPONSE HAS THERE BEEN MENTION OF JULIAN ASSANGE OR WIKILEAKS? THIS TOO SEEMS TO BE A PROBLEM?}
Writing in the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann looks beyond information regulation by Facebook to another possible solution to the fake news problem: creating and bolstering public media like the BBC and NPR. But whatever the merits of public media may be, the problem today is not that there aren’t good news outlets; the problem is that there is a large group of Americans who don’t believe what those outlets say, and have aggressively embraced an alternate, self-contained set of facts and sources of facts. This is not a problem that can be fixed either by Mark Zuckerberg or by turning PBS into another BBC.
{THE ALTERNATIVE IS NOT SELF-CONTAINED (IT IS COMPRISED OF POTENTIALLY MILLIONS OF DIVERSE SOURCES). THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS VERY MUCH SELF-CONTAINED. AND THIS IS THE REAL PROBLEM.}
There are two general (albeit overlapping) problems here. The first is simply that there are a lot of credulous people out there who create a marketplace for mercenary creators of fake news, which can be about any topic. The timeless problem of gullible people has been exacerbated by the explosion of news sources and people’s inability to evaluate their credibility.
{BY NOW WE REALIZE THAT THIS ACLU SPOKESPERSON HAS DECIDED TO PLAY GULLIBLE AND SELL WHAT AMOUNTS TO AS DETRITUS FOR WORTHY ARGUMENT. THIS ORGANIZATION THAT CLAIMS TO REPRESENT LAWYERS HAS BECOME AN EMBARRASSMENT FOR THE IDEA OF PUTTING FORTH AN ARGUMENT. THEY “TALK DOWN” TO DONORS AND THE SUPPOSED GULLIBLE? IF YOU KNOW THE WORD ‘MERCENARY’ THEN YOU ARE OF THE ELITIST CLASS.}
For much of the 20th century, most people got most of their news from three television networks and a hometown newspaper or two. If a guy was handing out a leaflet on a street corner, people knew to question its value. If he was working for their union or for the Red Cross, they might trust him. If he was a random Macedonian teenager, they might not. The wonderful and generally healthy explosion of information sources made possible by the Internet has a downside, which is that it has collapsed the distinctions between established newspapers and the online equivalent of people handing out material on street corners. The physical cues that signal to people whether or not to trust pamphleteers in the park are diminished, and many people have not yet learned to read them.
{ARE WE GOING TO GET A WHOLE CLASS ON SOCIOLOGY BECAUSE A GOOD ARGUMENT DOESN’T NEED TO RAMBLE ON CLICHÉS.}
We can hope that someday the entire population {OF POST GRADUATE LAWYERS} will be well-educated enough to discriminate between legitimate and bogus sources online—or at least adapt and learn to be more discriminating online as it’s natural to be off. But until that day arrives, gullibility will always be a problem.
{SYNONYMS TO THE WORD ‘GULLIBLE’: DEWY-EYED, EXPLOITABLE, EASY (ALSO GULLABLE), NAIVE (OR NAÏVE), SUSCEPTIBLE, TRUSTING, UNWARY, WIDE-EYED.}
The second problem is the existence of a specific political movement that rejects the “mainstream media” in favor of a group of ideological news outlets like Breitbart and Infowars—a movement of politically motivated people who eagerly swallow not just opinions but also facts that confirm their views and attitudes and aggressively reject anything that challenges those views.
{SUDDENLY WE DISCOVER “IDEOLOGICAL NEWS OUTLETS”? THIS AUTHOR WAITS THIS LONG IN THIS MEDIOCRE NARRATIVE TO SHOW HIS CARDS. (BY NOW ALMOST NO ONE THAT STARTED READING THIS ATTEMPT AT PERSUASION HAS BOTHERED TO GO THIS FAR). FINALLY PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT PART OF THE FACEBOOK PAGE COMPANY ARE BEING ADDRESSED?}
Left and right have always picked and chosen from among established facts to some extent, and constructed alternate narratives to explain the same facts. But what is new is a large number of Americans who have rejected the heretofore commonly accepted sources of the facts that those narratives are built out of.
{YES THAT IS CORRECT—YOU HAVE STATED SOMETHING TRUE BUT OBVIOUS.}
The defense mechanisms against intellectual challenge by those living in this world are robust.
{A PROPHET PARTING HE SEAS.}
I have encountered this in my own social media debates when I try to correct factual errors. When I point posters to a news article in a source like the New York Times or Washington Post, {SPECIFIC NEWSPAPERS ARE FINALLY MENTIONED (THOSE THAT ARE SO HEAVILY GUILTY OF DISINFORMATION} I am told that those “liberal mainstream media sources” can’t be trusted. While these sources certainly make mistakes, and like everyone are inevitably subject to all kinds of systemic biases in what they choose to publish and how they tell stories, they are guided by long-evolved professional and reputational standards and do not regularly get major facts wrong without being called to task.
{THE REAL NEWS IS THE ALLEDGED FAKE NEWS PEOPLE, THE GOOD ONES, TOO OCCASIONALLY MAKES MISTAKES AS DO ALL MERE MORTALS, BUT THEY STILL MOSTLY ABIDE STRICT STANDARDS.}
When I point people to the highly reputable fact-checking site Snopes, I am told that it is “funded by George Soros,” and for that reason can apparently be dismissed. (This is itself a false fact; Snopes says it is entirely self-funded through advertising revenues.)
{WHY IS THE ACLU ARGUING FOR SNOPES WHEN OVER HALF THE DRAWN OUT DIATRIBE WAS ABOUT FACEBOOK? WHY IS ACLU EVEN ATTEMPTING TO LABEL CERTAIN SOURCES AS EITHER WORTHY OR NOT WORTHY?}
This phenomenon has been dubbed “epistemic closure.” {SAY WHAT??} While originally a charge levied at intellectuals at Washington think tanks, it is an apt term for everyday readers of Breitbart and its ilk who close themselves off from alternate sources of information.
{NEUTRALITY REIGNS AT THE ACLU? I THINK I WILL CANCEL MY MEMBERSHIP.}
This is not a problem that can be fixed by Facebook; it is a social problem that exists at the current moment in our history. The problems with bogus material on Facebook and elsewhere (and their as-yet-undetermined role in the 2016 election) merely reflect these larger societal ills. Attempting to program those channels to somehow make judgments about and filter out certain material is the wrong approach.
{THE PROBLEM IS THAT I GOT THIS NOT THROUGH FASCIST BOOK (THANKS LISA HAVEN FOR THAT GREAT REWORD) BUT THROUGH AN EMAIL OF AN ORGANIZATION THAT WASTES TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS (SEEMINGLY) IN SOLICITING FOR MORE DONATIONS FROM PEOPLE THEY TAKE FOR GRANTED (LIKE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS DONE).}
Note: I participated in a panel discussion on this issue at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on Tuesday, which can be seen here. {NO THANKS}
{ANONYMOUS}
In this time of post-election hysteria, your site has risen to the top of my list for your superb combination of progressive principles, non-partisan high journalistic standards and willingness to challenge the establishment propaganda.
If you ever felt able to add a podcast to your offerings I would love to put it on our local LPFM community radio. But don’t over stretch your resources, what you are doing now is vitally important!