Paychecks, Perception, Propaganda & Power
by James Quinn
Posted January 24, 2012

I had been trying to wrap my head around what happened with the Occupy Movement since the Department of Homeland Security coordinated destruction of most of the encampments around the country in November. The corporate mainstream media immediately moved onto more pressing issues like the Kim Kardashian divorce and Jessica Simpson's weight gain. The American public has been instructed by the media the Occupy story is history, just like the BP oil spill, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and the Egyptian revolution. In a society consumed by reality TV Occupy Wall Street was just another show.

Obama's signing of the NDAA, overwhelmingly supported by politicians of both parties, now gives the ruling class the ability to track down and imprison indefinitely any American citizen they consider a threat to their power, without charges. The only remaining thorn in their side is the internet. The internet has allowed critical thinkers to share information, organize resistance to the oligarchs, create communities of like-minded citizens, and allow individuals the opportunity to turn the tables and perform surveillance on the state. The state does not like an unfettered internet because it allows citizens to find the non-manipulated truth and undermines their mainstream media propaganda machine. Young people are less able to be manipulated. The introduction of abominable legislation like SOPA and PIPA are a blatant attempt by the governing elite to crush dissent by locking down the internet and eliminating sites that question their version of reality. More...

Call It Tyranny
By Paul A. Heise PhD
Posted January 8, 2012

Tyranny is not a word to be used lightly. It is an accusation of a deliberate attack on basic liberty. It is especially not to be used in regard to partisan politics. Tyranny is something more fundamental and more noxious. So why did the Lebanon Daily News use that accusation in an editorial last Sunday?

The paper was condemning as tyranny and as "extremism writ large," Senate Bill 1867, The National Defense Authorization Act. That bill, which passed the Senate on a vote of 93 – 7, deserves the accusation and an appropriate response.

The bill is so shrouded in stealth and duplicity that it has the smell of conspiracy. The main provisions were drafted in private by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain but without consultation with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Intelligence Committee, the Defense Department, the FBI or the Intelligence Community. The word is apparently out that no one is to challenge or discuss this bill. And the entirety of the mainstream media is a willing accomplice. More...

Billionaire Media Moguls vs. Occupy Wall Street
by Eric Alterman
Posted November 18, 2011

Hundreds of police officers, many wearing riot helmets, marched into lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park early Tuesday morning to clear out the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The operation required boroughwide task forces and "scores of mobile officers who are usually used to flood high-crime neighborhoods." According to the police, 142 people were arrested, largely for "disorderly conduct and resisting arrest," though it turned out that according to a judge's ruling, the police did not have the right to clear the park at all, but merely to dispose of its tents and sleeping bags.

The first thing the police did was clear out the journalists so that they could not see what was going on—just as they routinely do in totalitarian nations. At least 10 reporters were arrested. Ironically, the owners of at least three New York newspapers could not have been happier. Of course, all three are not merely members of "the one percent" but the 1 percent of the 1 percent.

Lost among this tone of self-congratulation by the millionaires and billionaires who are lucky enough to buy their ink by the barrel are not only their alleged commitment to the protection of the first amendment but the facts themselves that inspired the protests. More...

Journalists Funded By "Vulture Capitalist" Paul Singer Campaign To Smear Wall Street Protests
By Lee Fang
Posted October 11, 2011

The campaign to marginalize and destroy the growing 99 Percent Movement is in full swing, with many in the media attempting to smear the people participating in the "occupation" protests across the country. However, several of the so-called journalists deriding, and in some cases sabotaging the movement, have paychecks thanks to a billionaire whose business practices have been scorned as among the worst of the financial elite.

As the New York Times has documented, Paul Singer, a Republican activist and hedge fund manager worth over $900 million, has emerged as one of the most important power brokers within the GOP. Now, it appears that the reporters financed by Singer are at the forefront of efforts to tarnish the reputation of 99 Percent Movement demonstrators. More..

Looks like the bankers are starting to get nervous.

Conservative journalist says he infiltrated, escalated D.C. museum protest
by Suzy Khimm
Posted September 10, 2011

A conservative journalist has admitted to infiltrating the group of protesters who clashed with security at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum on Saturday — and he openly claims to have instigated the events that prompted the museum to close.

Patrick Howley, an assistant editor at the American Spectator, says that he joined the group under the pretense that he was a demonstrator. "As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause — a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator," Howley wrote. (The language in the story has since been changed without explanation.) More...

Click here for a screen capture of his article.

US media blackout of protest is shameful
by Chen Weihua (China Daily)
Posted September 30, 2011

One of the best-kept secrets in the United States over the past two weeks seems to be the protest on and near Wall Street in New York.

More than 1,000 people protested on the first day, September 17, marching and chanting slogans. Yet the demonstration, known as Occupy Wall Street, did not appear on the major networks' evening news or in major newspapers the next day.

The protest, now in its 14th day, only got limited coverage last Saturday when heavy-handed police arrested close to 100 people and pepper-sprayed several female demonstrators. But most coverage that day was not in-depth. More...

Another article on this issue, also from a foreign news outlet.

What's behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?
by Glenn Greenwald
Posted September 29, 2011

Financial elites and their political servants are well aware that exploding wealth inequality, pervasive economic anxiety, and increasing hostility toward institutions of authority (and corresponding realization that voting fixes very little of this) are likely to bring London-style unrest -- and worse -- to American soil; it was just two weeks ago that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned that the unemployment crisis could trigger "riots." Even the complacent American citizenry -- well-trained in learned impotence and acquiescence to (even reverence for) those most responsible for their plight -- is going to reach a tipping point of unrest. There are numerous weapons of surveillance and coercion that have been developed over the last decade in anticipation of that unrest: most of it justified in the name of Terrorism, but all of it featuring decidedly dual-use domestic capability (illustrating what I mean is this chart showing how extensively the Patriot Act has been used in non-Terrorist cases, and how rarely it has been used for Terrorism). More...

The Dark Heart of Corporatism
by Jesse
Posted June 29, 2011

A few seem to be waking up to the irony. A drumbeat of corporate persuasion that is noticeable to those outside the culture, and those who have switched off the propaganda feeds on the internet and in the mainstream media. But the illusion is unnoticed by those seeking an escape from complexity and the uncomfortable in simple solutions and slogans, quickly mouthed as a subtitute for thought.

So astonishingly successful has this farce been that our domestic debate about spending and deficits today is somehow primarily about demonizing the publicly financed five-figure salaries of teachers, police officers and firefighters, rather than about reducing the publicly financed seven- and eight-figure salaries of Wall Streeters. In Fox News parlance, the former are simply tarred and feathered as the takers in an "Entitlement Nation," while the latter are celebrated as the earnest John Galts who are keeping America afloat. More...

The Corporate Media Complex:
Drawing Back the Veil on the U.S. Propaganda Machine
by Dr. Robert P. Abele
Posted June 6, 2011

Even to the casual observer, the last thirty years has witnessed a revolution in American media,

1 No longer fulfilling the valued democratic function of "the fourth estate," the media complex has co-opted itself simultaneously into both mega-corporations and government megaphone.

2 The result is a government-corporate-media complex, whose function is to profit those who run them and use them. It is the point of the following analysis to elucidate the existence, structure, and values of this mega-complex. The ensuing eight-part argument is intended to produce in the reader the commitment to become the media, since there is currently no fourth estate in the U.S. More...

Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation
by Washington's Blog
Posted May 24, 2011

Preface: This handy set of rules covers most of the games which disinformation artists play on the Internet (and offline). When you know the tricks, you'll be able to spot the games. Even if you've read this list before, you might be surprised at how useful it is to brush up on these tricks.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don't discuss it -- especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it's not reported, it didn't happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.

Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as "kooks", "right-wing", "liberal", "left-wing", "terrorists", "conspiracy buffs", "radicals", "militia", "racists", "religious fanatics", "sexual deviates", and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain criticism reasoning -- simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent's viewpoint. And much, much. more.......