Propaganda

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Re: Propaganda

Postby wildrose » Sun Oct 04, 2015 6:44 am

Wikileaks: US State Dept attempted to influence media to 'balance' interview w/ Assange
There's really nothing unusual or alarming about governments working with the press to get their side of the story out. I think the problem is that what is often called propaganda is really just the situation as told from a particular point of view. However, what happens is that governments oversell their point of view and often push misinformation in order to convince people that their point of view is the only legitimate point of view. This practice makes it difficult for ordinary citizens to sift through all the BS and to discover what's really going on.
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Re: Propaganda

Postby cactuspete » Tue Oct 20, 2015 6:29 am

There was an article about censorship that I came across several days ago. The claim was that several twitter accounts had been terminated and the contention was that they were terminated because they were expressing anti-Israel views. Even though they never used insulting or inappropriate language, they were terminated as a way to shut them up. They were far too influential and the powers that be are pro-Israel and so an excuse was found to terminate the accounts. One way or the other, the article seemed quite credible to me, but I can't find it anymore.
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Re: Propaganda

Postby a2z » Thu Nov 05, 2015 6:35 pm

The Danger of American Fascism
This is from an article by Henry A. Wallace. It appeared in the New York Times, April 9, 1944. Corporations and government work together very closely here in the USA. The result is a form of fascism which is subtle, but pervasive.
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of ... Russia. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

LINK: http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm
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Re: Propaganda

Postby recluse » Mon Nov 09, 2015 7:24 pm

Hitler EXPLODES Over Putin in Rupert Murdoch's Bunker
This is pretty funny and there's a lot of truth in it too! :curse:
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Re: Propaganda

Postby pcslim » Tue Mar 29, 2016 7:49 am

WOW: Clinton leaked emails revealed Google wanted to overthrow Syrian president Assad
This provides a pretty good example of how social media can be used to encourage groups of people to band together to overthrow a government. There will always be discontents and if they can be spurred into action through manipulations like this, then it is possible for whoever controls social media to instigate the overthrow of a government they don't like at any time. This is in theory exactly what happened during the so-called Arab Spring. This is also why China insists on "censoring" the internet. Sophisticated manipulation of social media and other information sources is a way of influencing (possibly controlling) large groups of people and the last thing China wants is to be controlled by a foreign power. Therefore, unless they can develop sophisticated anti-manipulation technology, the only option is censorship, which works against them since then they can be portrayed as a totalitarian regime, when all they are actually doing is protecting themselves from outside manipulation.
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Re: Propaganda

Postby cactuspete » Tue Apr 05, 2016 6:29 am

Panama Papers: It's interesting that no prominent Americans are named in this leak. It's almost as if someone from America created a fraudulent document to smear someone in particular. Any ideas who might have created the so-called financial records and who they might want to implicate in order to make that person look bad? If it isn't glaringly obvious, then I don't know what is.
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Re: Propaganda

Postby desertrat » Tue Apr 05, 2016 7:12 am

cactuspete: They weren't exactly subtle about it. It's just a little too obvious. If financial sanctions don't work and if conspiring to lower the price of oil doesn't work, then why not create a financial scandal? When CNN and USA Today are focusing on one person who isn't even named in the documents, then it is just a little too obvious that this is all contrived.
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Re: Propaganda

Postby a2z » Tue Apr 05, 2016 8:34 am

Panama Papers: There's already pretty good evidence that at least some of the documents were falsified. It appears that a large portion if not all of the documents were generated using some kind of automated, but intelligent software agent. It took real data and extrapolated from there being sure to include data intended to incriminate one person in particular, but also including a few other targets as well. Most likely our intelligence agencies were involved, but there was probably outside help. Like cactuspete and desertrat point out, this is pretty obvious.
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Re: Propaganda

Postby Sparky of SoCal » Tue Apr 05, 2016 9:30 am

there must be some truth to those papers as teh PM of Iceland resigned. This may be more "If there is smoke there is fire"
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Re: Propaganda

Postby cactuspete » Tue Apr 05, 2016 4:33 pm

Sparky of SoCal wrote:there must be some truth to those papers as teh PM of Iceland resigned. This may be more "If there is smoke there is fire"

More likely this is a case of smoke and mirrors. Mixing truth with fiction is a time-tested propaganda technique.
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