Category: Media

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Robert Steele: Slate and New America Foundation a Propaganda Front – Taking Money Under the Table?

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Media, Non-Governmental
Robert David STEELE Vivas

Warning: This Site Contains Conspiracy Theories

Does Google have a responsibility to help stop the spread of 9/11 denialism, anti-vaccine activism, and other fringe beliefs? 

By |Posted Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, at 7:43 AM ET

In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse—a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened—but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles—with no or little quality control.

Such democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

Read full article.

Robert Steele:  I am disengaged from Phi Beta Iota most of the time, but this piece was brought to my attention with the observation that it combines a claim to legitimacy involving Stanford University and Foreign Policy (no longer a serious rag, now a sub-set of secrecy & rendition apologist The Washington Post), and that it appears to be an early shot in a new national security propaganda theme aimed as neutralizing the use of the Internet for self-education.  When Obama said in the State of the Union that it is known kids do better when they are forced to stay in school until graduation, I was sharply critical–the reality is that the best and the brightest leave school as soon as they can pass the GED, realizing that rote learning of old knowledge from poorly-paid burn-outs is not the way to “jack in.”  What we have here is a very troubling indicator that the New America Foundation (wittingly) and Slate (perhaps unwittingly) are now part of the domestic propaganda arm of the military-industrial complex.  The idiocy and illegitimacy of this piece should not have to be pointed out, but since Slate, which I thought had educated leadership, evidently saw nothing wrong with this piece, I will just point them to several books that will explain to them why collective intelligence, open source everything, and the three values of clarity, diversity, and integrity, are all essential to resilience and sustainability.  Transparency, truth, and trust are the heart of the matter.  This article is a disgrace to Slate and to Stanford, and confirms my growing disdain for the New America Foundation and Foreign Policy.

Robert David Steele, The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, 2012)

David Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room (Basic, 2012)

Robert David Steele, Intelligence for Earth: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (Earth Intelligence Network, 2010)

Mark Tovey (ed.), Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (Earth Intelligence Network, 2008)

David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Holt, 2008)

and then of course there are all the other books that in the aggregate would suggest to any intelligent reader that Slate has just published the biggest piece of crap in the recent history of digital journalism.

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive)

Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative)

2012-01-28  Berto Jongmanprovides link to:

Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories

Phi Beta Iota:  The puported article is totally inept, using students and a very narrow range of information provided to the students to attempt to replicate a much more nuanced and comprehensive range of networks with access to vaster information resources.  The article also does not provide for new sources coming into the public domain, with the inevitable result that the truth ultimately comes out, for example, on the JFK and MLK assassinations, the USS Liberty, and increasingly, 9/11 as a mix of let it happen, make it happen, and cover it up.

Lead Author Responds:

Thanks for your interest in the SPPS article. In response to your queries in the linked blog post, we didn't seek to inform people about particular theories in any great detail, to provide a model of the broader communities which advocates conspiracy as an explanation for world events, or to model opinion change as new information is presented. While those are interesting topics and we certainly hope to examine them in some detail in the future, they are beyond the scope of this rather small study, in which we attempted to extend previous work on correlations in beliefs between different conspiracy theories and examine the source of that correlation through multiple regression analysis of some novel data. As such we pass no judgement on the truth or falsity of any of the theories discussed; while the media may attempt to spin the study as “those crazy conspiracy theorists!”, be assured that this wasn't our intention, and in the paper itself we make the point that apparent contradictory belief is probably present in many different contexts, populations, and ideologies, rather than unique to people who hold particular opinions about geopolitics.

Yours,

Michael Wood

Ph.D. Candidate & Associate Lecturer, School of Psychology
Keynes College, University of Kent
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Iran Boogie, Jew on Jew, Jew on Gentile, Hype on Hype . . . .

05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media

Killing Obama – Andrew Adler in an Emotional Video Apology

Update: Atlanta Jewish Times Editor Andrew Adler – a Victim of Israeli Iran Threat Hype – Classic Game Theory Warfare on Steroids

Jim W. Dean

Veterans Today, 24 January 2012

Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasters got an exclusive interview with  Andrew Adler, below.  They are a long time non profit broadcast booster to the Atlanta faith community, providing a pooled resource platform. VT is happy to offer you a front row seat to hear his story.

What you are about to view is a classic broken man…with no acting going on.  Those of us who have seen this numerous times, you can always tell. So I think now that we have a true blue believer here that got wound up a little too tight. More on that later.

Please pay close attention to the part where he let says that in an interview show he had with the Deputy Israeli General Consul for the Southeast, that he was upset by her description of the dire threat that Israel was living under…the 15,000 rockets.

This is pure Israeli-Iran threat hype, of course.  It should be prosecutable under the Nuremberg precedents, ‘waging an offensive war’, and all of us here look forward to the day where we can watch the trials online.

We have written many times that Iran is of no offensive threat to the U.S. or Israel, with their military totally deployed in a defensive mode which it has to be from the threat of Israel’s Weapons of Mass Destruction umbrella.

Read full article with many links.

Phi Beta Iota:  Fascinating at multiple levels, including the exploration of current best-selling book in Israel, Israeli political crime families, and more.

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Penguin: US Empire Declares War on White Guys

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Officers Call
Who, Me?

Read this at least three times.  This is a talking points memorandum for the Empire cabal, which is now ready to take on the white guys (including the white guys with guns).  They believe blacks and hispanics are cowed, “weed and seed” has been a success story (in their view).  This is a subtle hit job that sets the stage for treating white guys as failures who lost their cultural compass and must now be treated with the same federalization of state and local force and ultimate incarceration that has been used so extensively on blacks.

The Rodney King riots were the beginning of the breakdown of US Government legitimacy in the eyes of its own public.  The economy is being juiced and the Republicans are playing along with the fiction that the economy is getting better.  It is not.  Unemployment is at 22.4% and 2013 is going to be catastrophic.  Now imagine the Rodney King riots, this time with while guys who are armed to the teeth and very very pissed off, with nothing to lose and everything to gain from a populist revolution.

The New American Divide

The ideal of an ‘American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.

Charles Murray

Wall Street Journal, 21 January 2012

EXTRACT

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

. . . . . . .

As I've argued in much of my previous work, I think that the reforms of the 1960s jump-started the deterioration. Changes in social policy during the 1960s made it economically more feasible to have a child without having a husband if you were a woman or to get along without a job if you were a man; safer to commit crimes without suffering consequences; and easier to let the government deal with problems in your community that you and your neighbors formerly had to take care of.

. . . . . . .

Meanwhile, the formation of the new upper class has been driven by forces that are nobody's fault and resist manipulation. The economic value of brains in the marketplace will continue to increase no matter what, and the most successful of each generation will tend to marry each other no matter what. As a result, the most successful Americans will continue to trend toward consolidation and isolation as a class. Changes in marginal tax rates on the wealthy won't make a difference. Increasing scholarships for working-class children won't make a difference.

Read full article.

Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010” (Crown Forum) will be published on Jan. 31.

Phi Beta Iota:  The eight stages of genocide established by Dr. Greg Stanton are as follows:  1) Classification (us versus them); 2) Symbolization (codewords–e.g bums); 3) Dehumanization (equated with animals, eugenics applies); 4) Organization (federalization of state and local police, opening of the Halliburton-build civil disturbance camps now ready for use); 5) Polarization (attack all independent and centrist movements and leaders); 6) Preparation (use NDAA to incarcerate without due process those who object to the nazification of the USA); 7) Extermination (through a mix of precision kills and “accidental” epidemics, gut the white middle class now diving into poverty); 8) Denial (already taking place at Davos 2012 – capitalism failed, not the elite).

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Patrick Meier: Crisis Mapping Shows Henry Kissinger Wrong in Cambodia, Spatio-Historical Analysis Illuminated

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Media
Patrick Meier

How Crisis Mapping Proved Henry Kissinger Wrong in Cambodia

Crisis Mapping can reveal insights on current crises as well as crises from decades ago. Take Dr. Jen Ziemke‘s dissertation research on crisis mapping the Angolan civil war, which revealed and explained patterns of violence against civilians. My colleague Dr. Taylor Owen recently shared with me his fascinating research, which comprises a spatio-historical analysis of the US bombardment of Cambodia. Like Jen’s research, Taylor’s clearly shows how crisis mapping can shed new light on important historical events.

. . . . . . .

In particular, Owen’s analysis shows that:

Click on Image to Enlarge

“… the total tonnage dropped on Cambodia was five times greater than previously known; the bombing inside Cambodia began nearly 4 years prior to the supposed start of the Menu Campaign, under the Johnson Administration; that, in contradiction to Henry Kissinger’s claims, and over the warning of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Base Areas 704, 354 and 707 were all heavily bombed; the bombing intensity increased throughout the summer of 1973, after Congress barred any such increase; and, that despite claims by both Kissinger and Nixon to the contrary, there was substantial bombing within 1km of inhabited villages.”

Phi Beta Iota:  This is very exciting stuff.  The public does not read nor think well, in large part because the rote “teaching” was designed by Carnegie and Rockfeller to create obedient factory workers able to follow instructions.  Visualization–including spatio-historical analysis but also including advanced visualization as well as the simple visualization for flag officers (red, yellow, green), could be the next revolution in education.  At a minimum it will demonstrate that experts know nothing and elites cannot be trusted.

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Chuck Spinney: War Drums Beat within Versailles on the Potomac — War with Iran Promoted — More Lies and Miscalculation

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Media, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney

On 12 December, I described a concatenation of warmongering pressures that were shaping the popular psyche in favor of bombing Iran.  Now, in a 21 December essay [also attached below], Steven Walt describes a further escalation of these pressures — in this case, via the profoundly flawed pro-bombing analysis, Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike is the Least Bad Option, penned by Matthew Kroenig in January/February 2012 issue of the influential journal Foreign Affairs.

One would think that our recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and our growing strategic problems in Pakistan, not to mention our economic problems and political paralysis at home, would temper our enthusiasm for launching yet another so-called preventative war.  But that is not the case, as Kroenig's analysis and the growing anti-Iran hysteria in the debates among the the Republican running for president show (Ron Paul excepted) show.  Moreover, President Obama’s Clintonesque efforts to triangulate the pro-war political pressures of the Republicans, while appeasing the Israelis, may be smart domestic politics in the short term, but they add fuel to the pro-war fires shaping the popular psyche. Finally, as I wrote last January, lurking beneath the fiery anti-Iran rhetoric are more deeply rooted domestic political-economic reasons for promoting perpetual war — reasons that have more to do with sustaining the money flowing into the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex in the post-Cold War era than in shaping a foreign policy based on national interests.

While it is easy to whip up popular enthusiasm for launching a new war, our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that successfully prosecuting wars of choice are quite another matter.  Nevertheless, as my good friend Mike Lofgren explains in his recent essay, Propagandizing for Perpetual War, devastating rebuttals like Walt's are likely to have little effect on the course of events.

One final point … a surprise attack on Iran would trigger a far tougher war to prosecute successfully that either Iraq or Afghanistan.  If you  doubt this, I suggest you study Anthony Cordesman’s 2009 analysis of the operational problems confronting Israel, should it decide to launch a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Yet, the beat goes on.

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster

The worst case for war with Iran

Stephen M. Walt

Foreign Policy, 22 December 2011

If you'd like to read a textbook example of war-mongering disguised as “analysis,” I recommend Matthew Kroenig's forthcoming article in Foreign Affairs, titled “Time to Attack Iran: Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option.” It is a remarkably poor piece of advocacy, all the more surprising because Kroenig is a smart scholar who has done some good work in the past. It makes one wonder if there's something peculiar in the D.C. water supply.

There is a simple and time-honored formula for making the case for war, especially preventive war. First, you portray the supposed threat as dire and growing, and then try to convince people that if we don't act now, horrible things will happen down the road. (Remember Condi Rice's infamous warnings about Saddam's “mushroom cloud”?) All this step requires is a bit of imagination and a willingness to assume the worst. Second, you have to persuade readers that the costs and risks of going to war aren't that great. If you want to sound sophisticated and balanced, you acknowledge that there are counterarguments and risks involved. But then you do your best to shoot down the objections and emphasize all the ways that those risks can be minimized. In short: In Step 1 you adopt a relentlessly gloomy view of the consequences of inaction; in Step 2 you switch to bulletproof optimism about how the war will play out.

Kroenig's piece follows this blueprint perfectly.

Read full article.

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Reform Coalition: CNN – A Vote for Ron Paul is a Vote Against Establishment — and Now the Zionist Lobby Is After Ron Paul

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Media

CNN has done a very good job at framing how Ron Paul is drawing out the anti-government / anti-establishment vote.

They have done less well at using the talking points they were obviously given by a Zionist group, attacking Ron Paul for appearing on the Alex Jones show, for commenting immediately after 9/11 that the Bush Administration was over-joyed because it gave them a pretext for war on Iraq, and–from the Wall Street Journal but clearly part of some talking points paper–for connecting 9/11 and attacks on the US to what the US has done in the Middle East [to which we would add, US support for all but  two dictators for the past fifty years].

It's bad enough that we have to deal with Republican candidates and a Democratic incumbent unable to discern the truth, much less articulate it.  To have a broad attack unleashed against Ron Paul–one with enough money behind it to draw in CNN and the Wall Street Journal, is of grave concern.  He speaks truth–those that seek to diminish him profit from lies.

Sample Headlines [Clearly an Orchestrated Funded Campaign]

2011-12-22 What Ron Paul Thinks of America [WSJ, Dorothy Rabinowitz]

It seemed improbable that the best-known American propagandist for our enemies could be near the top of the pack in the Iowa contest, but there it is. [Dorothy Rabinowitz]

Continue reading “Reform Coalition: CNN – A Vote for Ron Paul is a Vote Against Establishment — and Now the Zionist Lobby Is After Ron Paul”

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Marcus Aurelius: Hackers to Attack Feds Over Manning?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Law Enforcement, Media
Marcus Aurelius

Feds involved in Manning prosecution enter hackers' crosshairs

By Aliya Sternstein

NextGov, 12/20/2011

A government-hired forensics specialist and an Army investigating officer could face online backlash from WikiLeaks supporters who are unhappy with this week's prosecution of a U.S. soldier accused of releasing confidential government files to the anti-secrets website, a computer engineer affiliated with hacktivist group Anonymous said.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Hackers to Attack Feds Over Manning?”