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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So what have you to offer.
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Oxigen said:
SDC said:
So what have you to offer.
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To offer? Concerning what? I referred you to Ecclesiastes, which is one of the most concise and profound works in the western canon. I was pretty proud of the reference. I even thought it was relevant to your essay. I hope you'll read it and think about it. (I often do.) I'm not advocating religious belief in this, by the way.

If you are asking me for a longer review of your essay, or that piece of an essay, I'm not going to do it. I have other work, mostly overdue. I gave you my brief and honest comment; it's warmed over, low grade Marxism. I don't know whether you regard yourself as Marxist, but the fact is that its basic tenets have become thoroughly assimilated into the general leftist approach to the modern world; you can hardly avoid it.

Ok, one example. Sure, Disney and other media giants want to avoid offending people, so they steer away from or even suppress bad news. Yet the bad news ("bad" ideas, whatever) still gets out and widely disseminated. The media are there to do business; for example, newspaper (and broadcast) revenue is actually from advertising, I believe. But the point of advertising is to sell stuff to as many people as possible, not to control them. The media and advertisers want to sell rather than control.

But one says, aha, they control in order to sell. To cite another less famous book, Fred Pohl/ Cyril Kornbluth... oh I forget the title. Famous science fiction novel about advertising, published in the 1950s. Anyhow, they thought they could control the minds of the masses 50 years ago; it was all new. Well, in certain limited ways, sure. I may buy a particular car or soap, but that doesn't change my politics or larger worldview.

This is simple stuff. The typical warmed over Marxism one encounters these days is no more relevant to the modern world than, oh I don't know, Fiorello LaGuardia to New York City. That is, it's part of our heritage, but citing Marxism is no more useful than saying "what would LaGuardia want us to do?" (I've probably just offended other New Yokers. By the way, LaGuardia was a great mayor in the 1930s-40s. Has an airport named after him. Named the NY Public Library Lions "Patience and Fortitude.")

That's all I'm going to do. I gather you are from Ireland or Britain. Folks from there, like other Europeans, often have astonishingly simple and uninformed views of the US. (And they rarely even notice Canada or Latin America, which I find pretty incredible.) Like my (Yorkshire) friend who, on a visit to NYC, assured me that if he ran out of money he could walk into any police station and they'd give him $10; he said he'd read it in an (English) guidebook. Or the one who figured he would fly to NYC and then rent a car and drive overnight to Arizona; it's almost 3,000 miles.

I prefer to start with facts and work my way to theory.
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LashL said:
And you'll find lots more of it at the site from which that snippet came (presumably Oxigen's):

http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp
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Gack. I try to avoid this stuff. Had enough of it when I was a young pup. Just what I said before; knockoff, low grade Marxism. Very formulaic; plus X in here and Y in there, presto! The world (and especially that bad, bad, naughty capitalistic America!!) all explained.

I'd rather read Ecclesiastes, both for content and literary qualities.
 
I meant "plug x in," not "plus."

A little more, as I wait for the family to get organized. That essay (and others of its kind) presents the mass media as closed systems; you get them integrated, or controlled, bingo that is it. All done. But they aren't. Cases:

1/ Publishing. Yep, the tops are consolidating. But as they do that, new enterprises pop up from below. (Look into the history of Workman Publishing). They are born, rise, often sell out, and then new entrepreneurs appear from below and keep churning the process. Why? Because people want to publish different stuff, people want to read different stuff, and everybody wants to earn a living in the way in which they want to earn a living. I like being a bureaucratic; others want to be entrepreneurs, or work in small shops. Don't discount that basic human factor.

2/ International. Yeah, an awful lot of American (or UK, or Irish) media outlets say the same damned things about the same damned story. (Though one gets a rather different view of the world in say the Toronto Star than one does in the NY Post, both of which I believe have tons of readers). But whoops! You can get Al-jazeera in the US, just to choose one very different example from the so-called "MSM". The US is very open to outside information -- not least because so many Americans come from outside. Something like 10+% of the US population is non-native born. (More in Canada, I think). They usually will have ties to the old country, and often follow both US-foreign language media, or the foreign media themselves (satellite dishes!). Even those whose families have been here longer have our foreign points of input. Without wanting to make this personal, I'll just say that I follow non-US media in Canada and England (friends and interests), and a couple of other countries where I have cousins or contacts. I do this more than most, I expect, but it's not unusual.

This is how life really works.
 
Lashl:

I haven't visited that site. My references were taken from Chomsky et al.,
I'm not saying I know everything, (far from it - education is important). I'm studying Cultural Studies at the moment and I do realize that I am only tipping the surface, but it does give you cause to wonder.
 
SDC:

Yes, I will read the reference you gave. I'm interested in good prose. Hard to find it lately.
 
Oxigen said:
Lashl:

I haven't visited that site. My references were taken from Chomsky et al.,
I'm not saying I know everything, (far from it - education is important). I'm studying Cultural Studies at the moment and I do realize that I am only tipping the surface, but it does give you cause to wonder.
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Well, in your post above, you said that this came from an essay that you wrote:

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.)
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Compare it to this from the site I linked:

Many of the large media company owners are entertainment companies and have vertical integration (i.e. own operations and businesses) across various industries and verticals, such as distribution networks, toys and clothing manufacture and/or retailing etc. That means that while this is good for their business, the diversity of opinions and issues we can see being discussed by them will be less well covered. (One cannot expect Disney, for example, to talk too much about sweatshop labor when it is accused of being involved in such things itself.)
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And this, from your essay:

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.
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Compare it to this, from the site linked:

Interlocking directorates is also another issue. Interlocking is where a director of one company may sit on a board of another company. As pointed out by U.S. media watchdog, Fairness an Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) for example, Media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, including banks, investment companies, oil companies, health care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies. ... In these cases where directors from numerous large corporations sit on each others boards and own or sit on boards of large media companies, he points out that conflicts of interest can be numerous.
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The question, I suppose, is who is plagiarizing whom?
 
LashL: I don't know whether you are in or close to the education industry, but it's a common complaint that "kids just cut'n'paste" and think that that is research.

I weep on my keyboard.
 
SDC said:
LashL: I don't know whether you are in or close to the education industry, but it's a common complaint that "kids just cut'n'paste" and think that that is research.

I weep on my keyboard.
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SDC,

I am not in the education industry but I do know that that is a common complaint. My daughter is in her second year of university and, in some courses, the students are required to submit essay assignments to an online service that checks for plagiarism before they are passed along to the profs.

As a trial lawyer, I value top-notch research skills, so it is disheartening, indeed, to see that it is necessary for schools to go to such lengths, thanks to the "cut and paste" culture that has sprung up with the advent of the internet. In addition, of course, there is a little matter of copyright violation, but that's a whole other topic, and quite outside the parameters of this thread.

*sigh*
[/off topic]
 
mjd1982 said:
1. Your 1st para is your opinion, and has no validity in an argument, I'm afriad.

2. Your 2nd para misses the point that has been made over and over and over again. Please read my posts- it will save you time. The sort of people who will work in these systems (like you, probably) are hired because they are not the sort of people to believe/find out about/report these things. Check out this instance of Andrew Marr being exposed for one example.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FSuaGIKTaEA
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Mate, you're a Brit. We are not that stupid.
 
The Common Potato said:
Dunno about that. I'm getting back into SimCity4. There's probably a model. Propaganda is also quite a good band.
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Fitting that this Thread is from 2007, and that is the year that Twooferism was scientificly debunked in the Physics and Engineering Community.
Because 6010 and 7018 welding Rods didn't bring down the Twin Towers or building 7, God How I wish I could post pictures here, like I used Too.
Does anyone have a photo of the Eyeball Macrosphere I posted in 2006?
 
pgimeno said:
The model is not from propaganda, it's from kraftwerk.
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Well, the 911 is a popular Porsche model and Porsche designed the Volkswagen Beetle, which was in a way a Propaganda Model. Hmmm, it's all starting to fall into place. Or something... :boggled:
 
all those years ago - bye bye woo

The Common Potato said:
I was aware of the time. I quite enjoy reading through very old threads. A tad too much wine might have had some influence.
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Wine:? Missed it again...

Did mjd1982 figure out the "bomb in the basement", was not a bomb?
Are PNAC themed conspiracy theorists doomed to the woo bucket with other bits from the bit bucket

mjd1982 mjd1982 mjd1982 (watch out this could summon the woo)
 
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