Yes, but remember, when the people with whose goals we agree , do it, we call
it educating and organizing. When the people with whose goals we disagree , do
it, we call it propagandizing and manipulation. All those folks with whom you
worked, are like the many white working class people who voted for Obama who
promised, "hope and change". He didn't deliver. They then listened to Bernie
Sanders who talked about their issues, and to Donald Trump, who appeared to be
also talking about their issues. The DNC decided that Bernie was too dangerous
so they turned to Trump. They either couldn't differentiate between his message
and Bernies, or they didn't care that one was laced with racism and hate, while
the other was benign. Is that stupidity or selfishness? In the end, what
motivates all of us is self interest.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2020 10:44 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Obama-Era Officials Call for More Government
Control of Your Facebook Feed
All that which you say is true, is true, Miriam.
But equally true are the thousands of men and women Cathy and I visited over
these past 26 years who struggle attempting to make ends meet. Despite years
and years of being lied to, or being denied information about the activities of
the government. They know full well that the government is looking out for the
wealthy, and that they are paying the bill. Many of them still vote, having
been conditioned to believe that we are a two party system, and they keep
hoping that they will vote in some caring politicians. But they are not
ignorant people. They are people who have been lied to, as their parents
before them and so on back through time. They are people who basically play by
the rules, and assume everybody plays by the same rules. Most of the area we
worked in was covered by commercial radio and TV. Dozens of stations pumping
out the Capitalistic point of view, as opposed to one or two FM channels
operated by public broadcasting, and in our entire state there is only one
public TV channel.
It's funny to me to think that a few folks could change the beliefs of millions
of brainwashed citizens. Reminds me of my years in the NFB.
We told ourselves that we could change public attitudes regarding blindness.
All a person had to do was to close their eyes in order to confirm their belief
that being blind was about the worst thing that could happen.
And yet, we should not stop trying. It's about our only small chance to save
our planet. Keep working, but understand the odds, and be willing to struggle
even knowing that it could very well be a losing fight.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/27/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
I wish I could believe that you were correct. But my observations tell
me that the masses are gullible and dumb. They are easily manipulated.
They believe the lies that are told to them. That's why they fight in
wars, the purpose of which is to enrich their governments or the
corporations in their countries. That's why they get caught up in
supeerficial issues used by our political parties to win points rather
than seeing through all of the propaganda to the real issues. I
remember listening to Obama's talks to the nation, the ones that
everyone praised because he sounded so erudite and intelligent, and
being furious because I felt like he was talking down to all of us.
And as I have been reading Belafonte's book, what has become clear is
that to accomplish something good, whether it be racial integration
here or relief for famine victims in Africa, what was needed was huge
amounts of money and the use of celebrities to sell the cause to an
otherwise, uncaring public. He also describes how a good socialist
African country turned into a dictatorship, partly because of the
paranoia of its leader who was once his friend. My feeling is that the
Left has the same faith in believes, unsupported by evidence, as
religious people have in their stories, unsupported by evidence. And
I'm also currently reading an excellent, detailed fiction book about
people in Nazi Germany called Wanderland. It describes how people can be
seduced into a pathological belief system.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2020 1:59 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Obama-Era Officials Call for More
Government Control of Your Facebook Feed
If our government officials treated Americans as adults, and practiced
truth telling instead of lying or hiding vital information, or
distorting facts, or patting us on the heads and sending us off to
bed, we would see a major reduction in speculation. But the federal
government has not gotten the message. We, the People, are not the
stupid fools the federal government sees us as. The real fools are
those politicians who think that shilling for the billionaires will
provide them with a lifetime security. Have they not noticed the mass
demonstrations and the rioting? Have they forgotten such events as
the French Revolution or the Russian overthrow of Czar Nicholas II?
And what about that little uprising when the Colonists became fed up
with being treated like serfs, back around 1776?
On 10/26/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Obama-Era Officials Call for More Government Control of Your Facebook
Feed Facebook content is already partially curated by
government-linked think tanks, but for Samantha Power and others,
that is simply not enough.
by Alan Macleod
October 26th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
Writing in the Washington Post, senior Obama-era official Samantha
Power has called on social media giant Facebook to do more to crush
what she calls conspiracy theories and disinformation circulating on
its platform.
Describing it as being "overrun with foreign disinformation," Power
demanded Mark Zuckerberg "take far more drastic steps" to "detox" the
company's algorithm. The former United States ambassador to the
United Nations compared the viral vitriol circulating on Zuckerberg's
platform to the weaponized disinformation campaigns in the former
Yugoslavia, implying that it could help spark a conflict in the
United States.
52 percent of Americans get news on Facebook, making it an enormously
powerful and influential news service, not just a social media or
messaging app. For years, it has at least partially outsourced its
news feed algorithm cultivation to the Atlantic Council, a NATO
cutout organization funded by the U.S. government and headed and
controlled by former CIA chiefs. Thus, the government already has
significant control over the content on America's most important media
platform.
Zuckerberg also recently admitted that in 2017 he changed Facebook's
algorithm to deliberately throttle traffic to left-wing alternative
news sites, even those as mainstream as Mother Jones. MintPress News
was similarly negatively affected.
One reason to be skeptical of greater censorship of Facebook to fight
fake news is that the Atlantic Council itself is perhaps the chief
driver of one of the modern era's most prominent conspiracy theories:
that of RussiaGate.
Samantha Power Atlantic Council
Samantha Power speaks at the Atlantic Council to warn of a "Russian
Threat"
in January of 2017. Victoria Langton | Atlantic Council
The extent of Moscow's involvement in domestic affairs can be
debated, but the Atlantic Council has produced report after report
making outlandish, unverified assertions, including that virtually
every non-establishment political party in Europe, from Labour and
UKIP in the UK, Podemos in Spain, Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece,
and the Five Star Movement in Italy are all secretly the "Kremlin's
Trojan Horses" - under the personal thumb of Vladimir Putin.
As part of Obama's National Security Council, Power herself strongly
pushed for war in Libya, which was sold to Americans on the claim
that Colonel Gaddafi was giving his troops Viagra to encourage mass rapes.
No evidence was presented for such a remarkable claim. Even after the
destruction caused, turning the country into a failed state with
active slave markets, Power praised her government's response for
"[helping] orchestrate the fastest and broadest international
response to an impending human rights crisis in history," brushing
off criticism of the country's current state by claiming that she,
"could hardly expect to have a crystal ball when it came to
accurately predicting outcomes in places where the culture was not
our own." She also supported the U.S. bombing of Syria on grounds now
proven incorrect. Thus, misinformation merchants are themselves
calling for restrictions on conspiracy theories online.
While Facebook is undoubtedly flooded with conspiracy theories and
other types of fake news, the term is a loaded one that means very
different things to different people. While readers might associate
"conspiracy theories" with ideas about the Moon landing, aliens or
various political assassinations, the establishment often uses it in
an altogether different context. An example of this comes from an
article on conspiracies from The Guardian, the most liberal of the
United Kingdom's major newspapers. The outlet claimed that the
statement that, "even though we live in what's called a democracy, a
few people will always run things in this country anyway" was a
conspiracy theory, comparing it to the neo-Nazi white genocide myth.
Thus, to many at the top of society, basic scrutiny of the rich and
powerful on the grounds of their class is akin to lurid fantasies
about an attempt to destroy the white race.
Power's husband Cass Sunstein, another influential high-ranking Obama
official, has, since at least 2009, argued that the U.S. government
should be conducting "cognitive infiltration and persuasion" of
anti-establishment groups he calls conspiracy networks, suggesting
that "government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms,
online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to
undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about
their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political
action." Sunstein stressed that this must be aimed only at
demonstrably false theories, and done in secret: "Although government
can supply.independent experts with information and perhaps prod them
into action from behind the scenes, too close a connection will prove
self-defeating if it is exposed," he cautioned.
Whether Sunstein got his wish or not is unclear, but two years after
he published the article, it came to light that the U.S. military was
using an extensive network of fake online accounts and personalities
to spread propaganda conducive to their interests. The military did
not deny it, but instead insisted that their entire operation was
aimed purely at foreign audiences, as anything else could be deemed
unconstitutional.
While attempting to combat the spread of misinformation is a laudable
goal, those calling most loudly for it are often those most
responsible for pushing some of the most dangerous lies themselves.
Furthermore, the effect has been to limit public debate and
discourage legitimate criticism of those in power. Fake news and
conspiracy theories continue to run rampant on the Internet, but
legitimate criticism to power is harder to find every day.
from Mint Press News
