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911 and the Propaganda Model

SDC and Z:

I'm sorry for the typo's and misspellings,, the bottom line is that I need a new pair of glasses and haven't got around to it yet: so my proofreading isn't as good as it should be.

Z:
I did not mean to be racist towards Americans, but can I politely say that I believe more Europeans are slightly more aware than the vast majority of Americans of the current world situation (youself excluded obviously).

SDC:
Have read a number of papers and articles by Chomsky, Parenti, etc. Why else would I mention them. I'm familiar with how the MSM works.

I do think we are at a crossroads here. If you are perceived as a truther, then you are ridiculed at this site. And of course, people come and find a lot of aggression, and perhaps react even more aggressively.
 
You can politely say it, but without evidence, I still won't trust your opinion on the matter.

Not that I'm saying Americans are all that aware of anything at all, but if you're going to make a blanket statement like that, you should be prepared to defend it (and, considering the content, to do so eloquently).

And, yes, if you are perceived as a truther, you are ridiculed here - because the whole truth movement is layer after layer of willful ignorance, topped with a fair amount of paranoia, and sprinkled with meaningless attention-whores. I mean, c'mon, it's been six years, and the best the movement can do is make some internet videos filled with fallacies, misdirections, and outright lies? No marches on Washington? No protest rallys with hundreds of thousands of supporters? No Congressional hearings or impeachments?

Nope, the problem is that the vast majority of truthers act the fool, and are treated accordingly.
 
Oxigen said:
SDC and Z:

Z:
I did not mean to be racist towards Americans, but can I politely say that I believe more Europeans are slightly more aware than the vast majority of Americans of the current world situation (youself excluded obviously).

SDC:
Have read a number of papers and articles by Chomsky, Parenti, etc. Why else would I mention them. I'm familiar with how the MSM works.
Click to expand...

Above trimmed by me.

Your first paragraph: "racist" isn't really the word, since Americans are not a "race" in any recognizable sense. "Biased against" will do. You certainly can politely say what you believe. On the other hand, I believe that no such thing applies. In my travels, research, and reading, I've found Europeans (including British ... that always seems to have to be stated) as across-the-board equally informed and equally ignorant as Americans.

Your belief is your belief, but I seriously doubt you have any way to back it up in convincing fashion. And now, if you bring up Bush, I'll mention Thatcher, and so on and so forth in a useless, endlessly reflecting series of mirrors; "Big fleas have little fleas, on their backs to bite 'em; little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on, ad infinitum." (Ogden Nash, who was an American.) And I will argue that you are repeating a traditional European upper-class, right-wing anti-American trope, and then I will muse about the irony of the European left picking up on that trope.

Your second paragraph, when you say, "why else..." I'm sorry to report that many people cite authors whom they've never read. I do it too, of course, though I hope less frequently than some. I know many people who quote the Bible who've never read it.
 
It is funny when someone speaks of Americans being ignorant when in fact they are showing themselves to be ignorant of Americans based on their OWN propaganda that they consume and readily believe because, hell, they want to feel superior.

And yes, truthers deserve to be ridiculed. As do creationists, flat earthers (although I don't think they're serious) and psychics.
 
SDC said:
. It is too bad, but that is human nature. Have you read any of them, by the way? Please provide chapter and verse for your favorite passages.

SDC:
This is a small snippet from an essay I wrote within the last six months. The essay was concerned with the use of photography and the censorship and propaganda of images in relation to American foreign policy.

..... Three centuries later, Wilsonian idealism adopted a similar strategy in America. By this time, the elite sectors in the US and Britain knew that coercion was not an option, new means were needed to tame the beast. These means would have to be able to control the opinion and attitude of the beast/masses. This thought control or propaganda would keep the decision-making in the hands of “largely unaccountable private tyrannies.” In order to control American thinking and public opinion, control of the media was a necessity. The corporate media’s threat to freedom arose because there is no similarity between the corporate media and a “free press.”

Many of the large media company owners are entertainment companies and have vertical integration (ie. own operations and businesses) across various industries and verticals, such as distribution networks, toys and clothing manufacture and/or retailing. While this is good for the business, it means that the diversity of opinion and issues discussed by them will be less well covered. (For example, Disney may not be to keen to discuss sweatshop labour as it has been accused of being involved in this itself.) Interlocking directorates is another problem. Interlocking is where a director of one company may sit on a board of another company. The US media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy has pointed out that media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, such as banks, investment companies, oil companies, health-care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies. In this instance, conflicts of interest can be numerous. One may therefore not see/read much criticism that would reflect negatively on these companies. As Herman and Chomsky have pointed out:

“The mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.”


The problem here is that the corporate media is required to serve the interests of ownership and maximize profits. Its top down style of leadership means that it will align itself with the political powers that will guarantee increased prosperity. The media therefore is the primary instrument of state policy. Its task is to shape the public’s perception of government and to project a benign image of the US to its own citizens and the rest of the world. Herman and Chomsky have examined a propaganda model in which money and power are able to just that. Selective filtering of the news and dissent are employed in such a way as to allow the government and private interests to get their message across. The essential components of their propaganda model involves a number of successive filters that the raw material of news must pass through. What must be taken into account before a story or image is printed is (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass-media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by the government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism.

Since the model was proposed, “anti-terrorism” has now replaced “anticommunism” as a control mechanism.


I have indeed read this material, though I must confess to not having read the Bible.
Click to expand...
 
Z said:
(BTW - I'm 1/8 Irish myself, and possibly part Scots, so you can take your charges of racism and... well, be creative.)
Click to expand...

Well then, you might enjoy this little bit of Irish humour. In an ad for Red Mist (I'm not exactly sure what this is), a little girl is reading the newspaper and comes across a passage or two referring to the exploits of the Irish soccer captain, Roy Keane, who in the last World Cup when he decided he had had enough of the coach, Mick McCarthey, who incidentally was born in England, but had in the past played (very well) for Ireland. Keane said, and I'm paraphrasing, "You're an English c**t, and you can stuff it up your b*****s.
Her little brother translated it, for his sister, who did not understand what the *** meant, and this may not be exactly right, "You have an English coat, and you can stuff it under the bananas."

That I think is creative. :D
 
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Z said:
(BTW - I'm 1/8 Irish myself, and possibly part Scots, so you can take your charges of racism and... well, be creative.)
Click to expand...

Well then, you might enjoy this little bit of Irish humour. In an ad for Red Mist (I'm not exactly sure what this is), a little girl is reading the newspaper and comes across a passage or two referring to the exploits of the Irish soccer captain, Roy Keane, in the last World Cup when he decided he had had enough of the coach, Mick McCarthey who incidentally was born in England, but had in the past played (very well) for Ireland. Keane said, and I'm paraphrasing, "You're an English c**t, and you can stuff it up your b*****s.
Her little brother translated it, for his sister, who did not understand what the *** meant, and this may not be exactly right, "You have an English coat, and you can stuff it under the bananas."

That I think is creative. :D
 
Z said:
(BTW - I'm 1/8 Irish myself, and possibly part Scots, so you can take your charges of racism and... well, be creative.)
Click to expand...

Well then, you might enjoy this little bit of Irish humour. In an ad for Red Mist (I'm not exactly sure what this is), a little girl is reading the newspaper and comes across a passage or two referring to the exploits of the Irish soccer captain, Roy Keane, in the last World Cup when he decided he had had enough of the coach, Mick McCarthey who incidentally was born in England, but had in the past played (very well) for Ireland. Keane said, and I'm paraphrasing, "You're an English c**t, and you can stuff it up your b*****s.
Her little brother translated it, for his sister, who did not understand what the *** meant, and this may not be exactly right, "You have an English coat, and you can stuff it under the bananas."

That I think is creative. :D
 
<message starts>
HQ, better turn down the orbital satellite and tell the hackers to lay off. It and they are getting a bit obvious.
<message ends>

:)
 
Oxigen said:
SDC said:
. It is too bad, but that is human nature. Have you read any of them, by the way? Please provide chapter and verse for your favorite passages.

SDC:
This is a small snippet from an essay I wrote within the last six months. The essay was concerned with the use of photography and the censorship and propaganda of images in relation to American foreign policy.

..... Three centuries later, Wilsonian idealism adopted a similar strategy in America. By this time, the elite sectors in the US and Britain knew that coercion was not an option, new means were needed to tame the beast. These means would have to be able to control the opinion and attitude of the beast/masses. This thought control or propaganda would keep the decision-making in the hands of “largely unaccountable private tyrannies.” In order to control American thinking and public opinion, control of the media was a necessity. The corporate media’s threat to freedom arose because there is no similarity between the corporate media and a “free press.”

Many of the large media company owners are entertainment companies and have vertical integration (ie. own operations and businesses) across various industries and verticals, such as distribution networks, toys and clothing manufacture and/or retailing. While this is good for the business, it means that the diversity of opinion and issues discussed by them will be less well covered. (For example, Disney may not be to keen to discuss sweatshop labour as it has been accused of being involved in this itself.) Interlocking directorates is another problem. Interlocking is where a director of one company may sit on a board of another company. The US media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy has pointed out that media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, such as banks, investment companies, oil companies, health-care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies. In this instance, conflicts of interest can be numerous. One may therefore not see/read much criticism that would reflect negatively on these companies. As Herman and Chomsky have pointed out:

“The mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda.”


The problem here is that the corporate media is required to serve the interests of ownership and maximize profits. Its top down style of leadership means that it will align itself with the political powers that will guarantee increased prosperity. The media therefore is the primary instrument of state policy. Its task is to shape the public’s perception of government and to project a benign image of the US to its own citizens and the rest of the world. Herman and Chomsky have examined a propaganda model in which money and power are able to just that. Selective filtering of the news and dissent are employed in such a way as to allow the government and private interests to get their message across. The essential components of their propaganda model involves a number of successive filters that the raw material of news must pass through. What must be taken into account before a story or image is printed is (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass-media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by the government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism.

Since the model was proposed, “anti-terrorism” has now replaced “anticommunism” as a control mechanism.


I have indeed read this material, though I must confess to not having read the Bible.
Click to expand...

Sorry to have not replied sooner; I missed this. This is standard, low-grade, knock-off, derivative Marxism. As such it is a vast oversimplification of a very complex topic -- oversimplified to the point of being no use at all in serious discussions. Anyhow, I'm certainly willing to accept that you have read the authors you cite.

With regard to the Bible, I'd suggest starting Ecclesiastes (English translation). At least in the King James version, it's beautiful prose, and some days, one cannot but accept the basic premise: "Vanity of vanities, saieth the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity./ What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?" I keep my great-grandfather's working Bible at my desk. Believe it or not, he was a (Southern US) Methodist minister.
Click to expand...
 
SDC said:
Oxigen said:
Sorry to have not replied sooner; I missed this. This is standard, low-grade, knock-off, derivative Marxism. As such it is a vast oversimplification of a very complex topic -- oversimplified to the point of being no use at all in serious discussions. Anyhow, I'm certainly willing to accept that you have read the authors you cite.

With regard to the Bible, I'd suggest starting Ecclesiastes (English translation). At least in the King James version, it's beautiful prose, and some days, one cannot but accept the basic premise: "Vanity of vanities, saieth the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity./ What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?" I keep my great-grandfather's working Bible at my desk. Believe it or not, he was a (Southern US) Methodist minister.
Click to expand...

OK that is nice.
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SDC said:
Oxigen said:
Sorry to have not replied sooner; I missed this. This is standard, low-grade, knock-off, derivative Marxism. As such it is a vast oversimplification of a very complex topic -- oversimplified to the point of being no use at all in serious discussions. Anyhow, I'm certainly willing to accept that you have read the authors you cite.

With regard to the Bible, I'd suggest starting Ecclesiastes (English translation). At least in the King James version, it's beautiful prose, and some days, one cannot but accept the basic premise: "Vanity of vanities, saieth the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity./ What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?" I keep my great-grandfather's working Bible at my desk. Believe it or not, he was a (Southern US) Methodist minister.
Click to expand...
So what have you to offer.
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