Showing posts tagged propaganda
crookedindifference: The 1 Percent View high resolution

crookedindifference:

The 1 Percent

(Reblogged from crookedindifference)
mohandasgandhi: WWII propaganda was, of course, “fun” too. Look at this lovely gem. Check out a collection of STD propaganda posters from WWII. Some of my “favorites”: “Don’t take chances with pickups! VD is not Victory! Loose women may also be loaded with disease!” “Booby Trap” (Classy.) “Surgeon Sage says - Only a poor boob pays his money, loses his watch, gets the syph, and brags that he’s had a good time.” “A minute with Venus… A year with Mercury!” “V-Gals” “See the high price of easy love! The flesh pots of Africa!” Damn all those loose women trying to destroy America.

mohandasgandhi:

WWII propaganda was, of course, “fun” too. Look at this lovely gem. Check out a collection of STD propaganda posters from WWII. Some of my “favorites”:

Damn all those loose women trying to destroy America.

(Reblogged from mohandasgandhi)

thenoobyorker:

politicalprof:

Is Rick Perry running for President, or for the lead in a Michael Bay disaster movie? You decide!

I was thinking someone more like M. Night Shymalan, the twist becomes evident when the video suggests that Rick Perry is the one to ameliorate the problems ailing the nation.

That is some mighty fine propaganda there.

(Reblogged from thenoobyorker)
“

When news of China’s “50 Cent Party”, a cabal of internet commentators hired by the country to leave pro-government comments on blogs and forums broke a few years back, it was largely ridiculed in the Western media as an unwinnable PR strategy.

It is difficult to say whether China’s strategy has been a success, but it has certainly inspired copycats, with a recent report suggesting the phenomenon might be coming soon to Russia.

According to a report from Global Voices, Russian bloggers have recently uncovered a job description looking for someone to leave seventy comments per day from up to fifty accounts on a single blog.

It appears that the United States has been won over by the idea. Not only does the department of state employ paid commenters, but a new $2.75 million initiative led by US Central Command would allow for the creation of sock puppets in order to combat online extremism.

US Centcom targets online violent propaganda | Jillian C. York, Al Jazeera (via pantslessprogressive)
(Reblogged from pantslessprogressive)
nickturse: The New York Times’s journalistic obedience - Salon.com Glenn Greenwald on how the Gray Lady has been lying to you for weeks. He writes: “In other words, the NYT knew about Davis’ work for the CIA (and Blackwater) but concealed it because the U.S. Government told it to. Now that The Guardian and other foreign papers reported it, the U.S. Government gave permission to the NYT to report this, so now that they have government license, they do so — only after it’s already been reported by other newspapers which don’t take orders from the U.S. Government. It’s one thing for a newspaper to withhold information because they believe its disclosure would endanger lives. But here, the U.S. Government has spent weeks making public statements that were misleading in the extreme — Obama’s calling Davis ‘our diplomat in Pakistan’ — while the NYT deliberately concealed facts undermining those government claims because government officials told them to do so. That’s called being an active enabler of government propaganda.” photo credit: Hamza Ahmed/Associated Press View high resolution

nickturse:

The New York Times’s journalistic obedience - Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald on how the Gray Lady has been lying to you for weeks. He writes:

“In other words, the NYT knew about Davis’ work for the CIA (and Blackwater) but concealed it because the U.S. Government told it to. Now that The Guardian and other foreign papers reported it, the U.S. Government gave permission to the NYT to report this, so now that they have government license, they do so — only after it’s already been reported by other newspapers which don’t take orders from the U.S. Government.

It’s one thing for a newspaper to withhold information because they believe its disclosure would endanger lives. But here, the U.S. Government has spent weeks making public statements that were misleading in the extreme — Obama’s calling Davis ‘our diplomat in Pakistan’ — while the NYT deliberately concealed facts undermining those government claims because government officials told them to do so. That’s called being an active enabler of government propaganda.”

photo credit: Hamza Ahmed/Associated Press

(Reblogged from jonathan-cunningham)

Why are wars not being reported honestly?

In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a “war of perception … conducted continuously using the news media”. What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where “the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences”. Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. “We had a secret weapon,” he boasted. “We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media.”

Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the media-friendly generals, are now “perpetual”. In echoing the west’s more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated “50 years of war”, they plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public.

At Chicksands in Bedfordshire, the Ministry of Defence’s psychological warfare (Psyops) establishment, media trainers devote themselves to the task, immersed in a jargon world of “information dominance”, “asymmetric threats” and “cyberthreats”. They share premises with those who teach the interrogation methods that have led to a public inquiry into British military torture in Iraq. Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial war have much in common.

Read more and watch the trailer.

There Is A War Going On For Your Mind

There is a war going on for your mind
Media mavens mount surgical strikes from trapper keeper collages and online magazine racks
Cover girl cutouts throw up pop-up ads, infecting victims with silicone shrapnel
Worldwide passenger pigeons deploy paratroopers
Now it’s raining pornography - lovers take shelter
Post-production debutantes pursue you in NASCAR chariots
They construct ransom letters from biblical passages and bleed mascara into the holy water supplies

There is a war going on for your mind

Industry insiders sling test tube babies to corporate crackheads
They flash logos and blast ghettos, their embroidered neckties say “stop snitchin’”
Conscious rappers and whistleblowers get stitches made of acupuncture needles and marionette strings

There is a war going on for your mind

Professional wrestlers and vice presidents want you to believe them
The desert sky is their bluescreen, they superimpose explosions
They shout at you,
“Pay no attention to the men behind the barbed curtain
Nor the craters beneath the draped flags
Those hoods are there for your protection
And the meteors these days are the size of corpses”

There is a war going on for your mind

We are the insurgents

-Flobots

“
Imagine an election in a Third World nation where a small number of millionaires and billionaires spent massive sums to push the outcome in their preferred direction. Wouldn’t many people here condescendingly tut-tut over such a country’s “poorly developed” sense of democracy and the inadequacy of its political system? That, of course, is what is going on in our country as you read this. If you travel any place where there is a contested House or Senate race, you are bombarded with attack ads, almost all against Democrats, paid for by groups that do not have to reveal where their money comes from.
E.J. Dionne Jr. (via azspot)
(Reblogged from stfupenguins)

How propaganda is disseminated: WikiLeaks Edition

Despite Gates’ ongoing assertion that “the initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security” and that “there is still concern Afghans named in the published documents could be retaliated against by the Taliban,” even the DoD and NATO admit that the WikiLeaks release “did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods” and that “there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.” Nonetheless, the accusation that WikiLeaks and Assange have “blood on their hands” was — as intended —trumpeted around the world for weeks without much question or challenge.

It’s been clear from the start that — despite the valid concern that WikiLeaks should have been more vigilant in redacting the names of innocent Afghan civilians — the Pentagon (and its media and pundit servants) were drastically exaggerating the harms, as The Associated Press noted on August 17:

The WikiLeaks leak is unrivaled in its scope, but so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation.

Some private analysts, in fact, think the danger has been overstated. “I am underwhelmed by this argument. The Pentagon is hyping,” says John Prados, a military and intelligence historian who works for the anti-secrecy National Security Archive. He said in an interview that relatively few names have surfaced and it’s not clear whether their present circumstances leave them in jeopardy.

And on August 11, even the DOD was forced to admit to The Washington Postthe complete absence of any evidence to support its wild accusations: “’We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents,’ [Pentagon spokesman Geoff] Morrell said.” Nonetheless, the initial spate of hysterically accusatory rhetoric, combined with the uncritical media dissemination, poisoned public opinion about WikiLeaks, and the fact that those accusations have been subsequently revealed as baseless will receive little attention and undo none of that deceit-based damage.

Hungryghoast's Web Presence: The Islamophobia-Industrial Complex

hungryghoast:

jhnbrssndn:

…

Click through and read the whole thing, of course, but pay special attention to John’s conclusion:

…

So where does it come from and why isn’t it likely to go away?

This racism is part of a psychosis that is absolutely necessary to war. One component is the…

I highly recommend reading this.

(Source: jhnbrssndn)

(Reblogged from hungryghoast)