Lordre: propaganda

Showing posts with label propaganda. Show all posts

Reasons social media should end

Social media is central to many people's lives. It is increasingly a focal place for political expression, too, with many having no means of doing so other than social media. However, there are reasons to think humanity is better off without it.

Stop (most) fake news

It is likely true that lies spread faster than truth on social media. Social media users are able to lean on one another as sources of information rather than going to official sources that at least have some (albeit not always) reputation to maintain for accuracy. Random people you meet on the internet are under no pressure to be accurate or reliable. In addition, mainstream news sources are able to get away with more fakes with the help of social media, since it allows to creation of media that can be quickly deleted and swept under the rug when it is not convenient, or followed up with haphazard apologies.

Improve mental health

There is adequate reason to think getting rid of social media would decrease mental illness and especially suicide among young people. Such a move would be a problem for some though, and result in them being more isolated. However, those isolated people would just be fringe minority communities who naturally are isolated anyway. If the majority at risk, their welfare has to always be addressed before that of any minority.

Reduce political interference

Dismantling social networks would remove a threat to governments by unpredictable and profit-driven actors. It would remove the ability for foreign governments where the social media companies are located, mainly the United States, to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Likewise, it would allay Western fears of election interference by Russia and China, which are continuously voiced by politicians and journalists.

Improve political discourse

Social media may be ruining political discourse simply due to the way it works. Whether you are a conspiracy theorist or someone who just relies on mainstream media, you are similarly being duped by an industry that focuses on the endless, mindless consumption of news under a model intended for entertainment, rather than stopping to analyse or understand the world.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that social media will be eliminated for the reasons above, because it is too lucrative to the companies involved and the politicians they influence. Nevertheless, governments should certainly create options to get rid of it in the least disruptive way, in the interests of preparation against foreign interference. How to effectively do this will eventually be the subject of another post.

In a way, accusing the other side of weaponising all sorts of things is itself an attempt to weaponise those things. By saying others are weaponising information, for example, as the Guardian does, you are basically turning information sources into targets for military action.

Or, you are telling people to close their ears to other sources and listen instead to you. You are taking the war to the information sphere and telling your audience to fight for you by only listening to you, thereby unnecessarily militarising and weaponising this sphere. You were the one who adopted the idea that making people hold specific beliefs is a military objective you want met, and declared this view publicly. Others may just have welcomed a healthy debate, with every point, from the most banal to the most diabolic, open for consideration. So, who really weaponised something?

Pandemic of censorship

In a 2020 exchange of ideas, the Mont Order information-sharing society agreed that “The way content related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been controlled is a potential gateway to increasingly aggressive censorship by Western governments”. This referred to the handling of medical disinformation, which can indeed be fatal, but later, disputed political information was increasingly being dealt with in the same way.

The Mont Order prediction seemed to come true later, when all dissenting sources on the Ukraine conflict were being treated as enemy operators rather than legitimate participants in a debate. Virtually every statement critical of the West and NATO was also suddenly treated as the statement of none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself. The accepted idea became that everyone must promote a single narrative on any controversial issue, and all dissent must be dealt with like enemy shellfire, and silenced immediately.

Attention given to the idea of Russia spreading propaganda, and a lack of grasp of what propaganda is (other than that it is enemy information and therefore bad), has likely made many people in the West incapable of spotting a lot of very obvious and shoddy propaganda from the West itself. The cliché that the other side only produces propaganda and its claims can all be dismissed (even if true) is a huge accomplishment in propaganda. Inconvenient information is to be dismissed without consideration and even any source dismissed as an enemy agent, regardless of where it is located or its prior reputation. Everything becomes ad hominem attacks and shooting the messenger (in Ukraine itself, that probably is happening literally).

Being right doesn't mean being correct

Control of all publicly-consumed information works well for winning information wars where the goal is to convince the people of something, but it does not create informed experts. It is not hard to guess that Western journalists and politicians are themselves consuming dubious information, confusing a sense of righteousness for accuracy (the word "right" being the same word used to describe things that are morally encouraged or factually correct is a source of confusion, maybe). A rational person, meanwhile, concedes that our own regimes and the small, narrow blob of familiar corporate sponsors in the West could be motivated to spread their own fakes and propaganda.

In some ways, the discouragement of anything contrary to the single supreme narrative on a given controversy makes the West every bit as vulnerable to mindless propaganda as the most totalitarian societies in history. At worst, it means the very foundations of our supposed Western civilisation are just fakes and falsehoods, devoid of substance. We do not enjoy liberty, and lack access to the truth.

Weaponisation of TikTokers and YouTubers

The Biden administration actually intervened to convince TikTok creators to help it convince users of its position on the fighting in Ukraine. To the US government, everything is a weapon, and its foreign policy goals need to be achieved using every ethical and unethical method it can find.

It can seem as if genuine grassroots voices are rising up to support Ukraine's apparently morally just cause on YouTube, unanimously siding with the West and the supposed universal decency it represents when it comes to conflicts. The reality, though, is that even this behaviour is explained more by these people's reliance on a single platform aligned with the West and the sanctions it uses to control content creators. Creators want to stay in good standing with the platform, and this has more to do with what they say than any genuine moral stance on anything.

The sanctioned point of view

If we focus on YouTube's weaponisation, it is not hard to notice that content (even from entertainers) praising Ukraine or NATO in the ongoing conflict in Europe retains its monetisation (ads still play), in addition to which pro-Ukraine ads are allowed all over the site itself, despite this cause being ethically dirty and politically aligned in a violent conflict (revenue is blocked for video content on other conflicts). This tells us two things. First, that YouTube's management are guided by agents of the US government when it comes to foreign policy (certainly, Google is). Second, that the users creating the content had some kind of advance knowledge of the measures in place to reward or punish people depending on what conclusions their videos endorsed regarding the Ukraine conflict. With such factors in force, how likely is a content creator to arrive at balanced conclusions on the war in Ukraine? Basically, they have been given financial incentives to promote a specific view in their videos.

Clearly, the same narrow group of people who have sway over Western regimes and are able to treat politicians to all kinds of carrots and sticks are doing the same with even small content creators online. Consequently, what appears to be mass support popping up for a cause is always more likely to just be financially motivated and originating from a very narrow source.

To display a Ukrainian flag at one's church, or on one's car or social media profile, is not an autonomous action by people. Nobody was really moved by what they saw in Ukraine or in any other foreign conflict, but by sanctions, i.e. a cycle of reward and punishment by the powerful, which is the basis of all Western policy and morality. The resulting activity supporting the state's policies is subtly state-controlled. One way or another, incentives are created by the state and influence operations take place, in an effort to weaponise everything and everyone to sanitise and prop up an otherwise dubious and dirty policy of inflaming a foreign conflict.

Russia and China’s dismissals of the US and the West’s authority in the international system (the rules-based order) by pointing to Western wars such as the Iraq War of 2003 or the 2011 bombing of Libya are in turn rejected in Western circles as ‘whataboutism’. But is this succinct reply a sufficient defence of the West?

Someone saying 'what about', and bringing up the other fellow's own failings or sins, like any ad hominem attack, is not necessarily a false argument. If someone’s whole point in an argument is that you are a thief, and you are in fact a thief, then their argument is in fact valid.

In logic, ‘Whataboutism’ is only a false argument when its structure contains a conclusion that does not really follow, for example, 'you are a thief too, therefore I am not a thief'.

No-one really says anything so absurd, so to accuse someone of this logical fallacy is ridiculous. The Russians and Chinese have never made the claim that they are innocent of crimes because they can show the West also commits crimes.

Western hypocrisy is the point

When Russia and China defenders point to the West’s hypocrisy, they are never asserting a false conclusion or falsely claiming to refute a Western allegation. They are just refusing the discussion entirely, because they have another topic they would prefer to talk about.

To claim this refusal of the subject, in favour of attacking the West’s hypocrisy, is an ad hominem fallacy, is no more correct than to claim that Russian diplomats refusing to talk about hot dogs is an ad hominem attack on the intellects of American barbecue-goers, and that Russian answers must be about hot dogs or else they are doing ‘whataboutism’. If you think someone is talking nonsense, you don’t have to address the minutiae of it. If you want, you can wisely change the subject to their credibility, which should have been established first anyway.

As soon as ‘what about Iraq?’ is asked, the United States’ moral authority and its right to confront other nations on moral issues in the first place becomes the subject of the discussion. Under those conditions, whataboutism is a valid argument. We are rewinding the discussion to where it should really start. We are judging the moral character that the US and the West are tacitly claiming (which they need to establish first, before appointing themselves to accuse other nations), so facts that hurt their character are valid to bring up.

'What about whataboutism?'

In fact, invoking the term ‘whataboutism’ when facing Russian and Chinese claims about the West may itself be a form of ‘whataboutism’ (in this case it takes the form ‘what about whataboutism?’), and an example of this as a real logical fallacy. Western apologists in this case really are falsely inferring that they have refuted Russian and Chinese accusations of Western hypocrisy by dismissing them as logical fallacies, when the accusations may not be logical fallacies but distinct and accurate claims that hurt the West's standing.

Someone being guilty of a crime himself arguably destroys his moral authority to judge others committing the same crime and removes his right to take the podium to talk about another fellow's crime. His own actions in committing the crime make his moral authority and statements on anyone else’s crimes dubious, and call his motivations into question. It may show that he is actually just looking for a monopoly on force or the right to commit crimes, rather than sincerely addressing crimes.

When used to challenge someone’s moral authority or ideology, ‘whataboutism’ is a valid and healthy starting point before addressing someone’s claims in the first place. It is not only logically valid but devastating to an opponent, if they cannot withstand it.

WHOAREYOUism

Whataboutism is not a rude interruption to the West's accusations against any regime. It is a legitimate attempt to rewind the conversation to where it ought to begin. The correct phrasing actually goes: 'who are you'?

If the West’s claim is that it represents some kind of moral purity or higher authority, which is indeed its claim when it uses the term ‘rules-based order’ to describe a vision of itself safeguarding international rules and norms, then for Russia and China to point out that it is untrustworthy because of its hypocrisy is fatal to the West.

‘Whataboutism’ is the winner. A ‘rules-based order’ proposed by cockroaches is no way to start cleaning the world, because their very nature disqualifies them from talking about it.

Popular billionaire tycoon Elon Musk has been the target of sexual harassment allegations reminiscent of those against Donald Trump, including the familiar claim of paying for an individual’s silence.

Such claims against Musk are carried by journalists, and occurred at a time when he was clashing with the very same journalistic community about freedom of speech. This indicates that what is happening is a smear campaign, likely by elements associated with the Democratic Party in the United States

Journalists lie

Journalists and mainstream media outlets cannot be trusted. They are able to lie, and then later retract their claims and apologise when the damage is done, thereby continuing to maintain their supposed reputation for journalistic integrity. This 'oops' model of disinformation means that none of the current headlines can be taken seriously, since every point they make may simply be retracted quietly later.

It is entirely possible that some months after all the damage is done, it will quietly emerge that Elon Musk didn't do anything. One could point to Musk's ability to sue for defamation, but this can neither undo the damage to him, nor necessarily cause damage to the business of the offending publication or network.

It could alternatively be the case that Elon Musk’s transgressions are true, but that they are true of virtually all celebrities of similar status in the US. It may be that journalists just use this as a way of attacking the person if they become a political enemy. There seems to be virtually no high-profile individual, especially a political target, in the United States. who doesn't eventually get accused of something grave.

Non sequitur in the free speech debate

Finally, people should bear in mind that Elon Musk’s personal character has little to do with his disputes with journalists and management at Twitter after securing a deal to buy the company. It does nothing to discredit his views of journalistic and online freedoms, any more than spurious and eventually withdrawn rape allegations discredited Julian Assange's journalistic work.

In my country, it seems Ukraine is a successful feelgood cause.

And who can doubt the ability of the British to recognise good causes, and support them? The eventual Sir Volodymyr Zelensky is most probably adored in households across Britain, in a similar way to Sir Jimmy Savile, who was to be followed by Sir Tony Blair.

What surer security is there against being discredited, than the favour of the British public?

The movie

Everyone in Britain seems to assume the war in Ukraine will end swiftly and righteously in Ukraine’s favour, for no reason other than our belief that Ukrainians are playing the hero role and the Russians are the villains of the story. Many people are so accustomed to dramatic structure, from the entertainment they consume, that they are quick to assume they know how history ends. They think we are just a little more than half way through this story.

But what if the war doesn’t end? What if, like the War on Terror, this movie just goes on and on, until we just decide to leave the cinema?

The arrest

What if Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s term goes on and on, with no elections, due to the war and the complete lack of opposition in the country? What if we see him presiding over a country in ruins, inhabited by a disease-ridden, war-fatigued, starving population with no way out in the conflict with an uncompromising Russia, even while retaining power after five or even ten years? What if, under the pressure of the war, there are increasing arbitrary executions of suspected traitors and defeatists by his regime? Worse for audiences, what if his beard grows long and he becomes unsightly, unsanitary or insane? What storytelling would work for him, then?

Eventually, prolonged war could turn Ukrainians against Zelensky or turn our own country against him, as he could be associated with a certain phase of war that could become inconvenient to us as we become more level-headed about the conflict. Zelensky himself may try to stay in power indefinitely, afraid that he will be used as a scapegoat or face some sort of prosecution under the next administration, if he leaves office. Remember that he himself tried to have his political rivals arrested, including former president Petro Poroshenko.

If Zelensky is arrested, then our obligation to encourage Ukraine as an ally will require our media to go after Zelensky and destroy him, just as easily as we had built him up and lionised him.

The long struggle

In the West, the public will become fatigued by the propaganda if the war drags on, like it did with the former Syrian rebels, now reduced to shabby terrorists at the country's fringes. We originally thought the Syrian rebels were brave, portraying them like rock stars, but that image sagged as ISIS grew and the image of those rebels turned into dying victims in Aleppo, rather than brave victors marching on Damascus for democracy.

People are receptive to simplistic messages and marketing at first, but it begins to wear thin if the same level of enthusiasm is being continuously demanded of them. If a face is shown to us long enough, we will begin to find it ugly. Zelensky's scowling, bearded face will be no different and people will begin to suspect something is hideous about him.

Wars are no longer fought over a few years, with a clearly marked turning point or end. Almost every war now seems to last immeasurably long, and only be ended out of fatigue. The Russians feel they have a centuries-long bond of blood with lands that encompass Ukraine, where millions of Russian soldiers died in the Second World War, whereas our connection to that land is nothing more than a simplistic marketing and messaging campaign that began in February 2022. An influx of Ukrainian refugees does not create any strong personal or cultural bond between Britain and Ukraine, other than as a fleeting illusion. As such, the long-term investment, emotional commitment and willingness to endure hardship in this conflict is more likely to be on the Russian side than ours.

Fatigue

As the hardship of the Ukrainian conflict may really affect us, like Covid measures did, Western populations could become fatigued by the efforts to prop up Ukraine after only two years, thereafter deciding to actively scorn and mock the Ukrainian cause. This would be in stark contrast to the twenty years it took for us to give up in Afghanistan and no longer care what happened to the regime in Kabul. The handling of dissent in Western regimes, where authorities simply try to brand anyone who raises questions as an enemy or a cretin, is also extremely ineffective and just increases resistance to whatever message the government tries to spread.

It is likely that the Russians will never grow tired of the conflict in Ukraine, no matter how bad we try to make it for them, as to them Ukraine is sacred ground lit by their memorials and eternal flames. Western media can claim the Russians are just temporary invaders, but the Russians see themselves as holy warriors fighting on their own territory. Our pretence as if Russia had just invaded Switzerland, and so doesn't belong there, is purposely ignorant and we know it.

If you are seeing a lot of stories saying something bad about China in your news feed, don’t bother clicking on any of them. They are all paid for by the US government.

Last year, the US government allocated a quarter of a trillion dollars from its budget to simply stifling China, all out of resentment at that country’s competition with the United States.

Since that time, the US government allocated half a billion dollars specifically to negative news coverage of China, with or without any relationship to the truth.

Whether it relates to the pandemic, to the situation in Xinjiang, to the Solomon Islands, to Taiwan, or whatever else, every negative story about China may as well have been spotted being printed at a US government office. It all ought to be rejected as rubbish, without us even looking at it.

Racist state propaganda

The stories about China are despicable and racist in character, and have likely contributed to soaring anti-Asian hate crime in the United States. This rivals how the establishment press cultivated Islamophobia during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is as if, even as it condemns racism, the warmongering armada we call the "West" bumps into civilisations and races it deems inferior, declaring war on them one after the other. However, each and every case it attempts to build against these victims consists of lies and recycled canards of past centuries, including vile rumours that the supposedly inferior races are the source of plagues.

Sponsoring conflicts on rivals' borders

The US is actively pursuing a policy to aggravate all conflict with China, under the same model as it did against Russia in Ukraine, where it fanned the flames of war on the Russian periphery for no purpose other than creating endless security threats to a "rival". That model is applied, in almost exactly the same way, with regard to Taiwan. There is clearly a strategy to drag China down into misery and conflict, out of resentment at its development.

Fortunately for the Russians and Chinese, the US and Britain seem to be acting on a very tight schedule, attempting a Herculean task of trying to defeat all the rival states across the world in the course of only a few years, beginning with the strongest - Russia and China. Whether this will be more successful than the failed attempts to bring down Iran, North Korea, Cuba and even the Taliban, is yet to be seen.

Julian Assange is expected to be extradited soon, once the order is approved.

At the same time, the loyalist war hysteria related to the fighting in Ukraine dominates what is left of a supposedly free press. It should be noted that while Assange faces punishment, the journalists presented as legitimate by governments and the media are increasingly deranged and embrace violence, wishing all manner of censorship, adversity and even death on people who disagree with them.

Dominant discourse

Most of the labelled “independent media” appears to be falsely labelled thus, and a majority of “journalists” seem not to be journalists but in fact vile combatants, who would deserve no protection internationally and in fact their death or absence would have no effect on people’s access to truth, and may even be met with cheer. The same cannot be said of the victim of the state, Assange, whose very punishment is the result of him increasing people’s access to truth (that much is not denied even by governments themselves, which hold it against him, preferring instead scribblers who parrot their justifications for increased murder and misery).

One can only hope things are not so bad.

The Ukraine war perfectly illustrates how outrage regarding foreign conflict zones is generated selectively and handed to passive consumers, who drink stories like cans of Coke. Countless conflicts and even the names of countries are unheard of until someone decides to sell them.

With Ukraine, we are presented (through the international media and through social media) with a supposed reality in which a country (Russia) launched an unprovoked attack on its neighbour. This caused citizens all across the world to spontaneously denounce this apparent act of evil.

Ukraine seemed to come into existence in February 2022. People were given primers explaining what Ukraine is and where it is, so they can know better than everybody in Russia and in Ukraine itself.

Likewise, many conflicts and supposedly valiant struggles, such as in Syria, ceased to exist when the stories stopped, because the enemy (in that case the "Assad regime") was not being defeated as planned. As the manipulators lost interest, so too did the manipulated.

Bought outrage

Ukraine came to nobody's attention by their own will.

In reality, no citizen of any country denounced anything or rose up against anything that happened in Ukraine. The government and the international media simply decided to coax and convince the population of countries like Great Britain into thinking it was "the done thing" to condemn Russia. We used just the same approaches we use when marketing soft drinks to people, to get them to buy a ticket on the outrage bandwagon that the government thinks they should buy.

Setting aside the question of whether or not it is morally righteous for us all to fly Ukrainian flags from our windows, we should also be interested in knowing if we have strings, and if somebody is pulling them.

Consider whether the decision to care so much about Ukraine, as opposed to conflict-ridden Yemen or Ethiopia, was really your idea. Was it not in fact caused by your awareness of Ukraine, and complete unawareness of Yemen and Ethiopia? If so, is the one pulling the strings of your outrage in fact the one responsible for providing your daily news digest or delivering your evening news broadcast?

Where are all your other flags?

Which side are you on, between Morocco and the Sahrawis in Western Sahara, or between rebel Tigray and the forces of Addis Ababa? Between the Ansar Allah-led administration in Sanaa and the exiled government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi? Between Kashmir and the Indian occupation? Oh, of course, these places and combatants don't exist, because the media has not given you a primer on them and told you who the bad guy is.

Whose side were you on between Kiev and Donbass, during the eight-year-long phase of the Ukraine conflict before the Russian invasion? But of course, that never happened, because the media ignored that.

One could argue that some of those conflicts aren't worth choosing a side in, because they aren't severe enough and the casualties are too low, but why should that influence anything? Is the "bad" side really just the side that was reported to have caused casualties or escalated the situation at a particular moment of news coverage, and no history or context is needed? What kind of moral system would that be?

For many, only the things appearing on television screens or socially encouraged social media feeds exist or deserve any comment. Occasionally, someone might make a social media post trying to showcase horrors in their country, but if it wasn't on the news, most of us will just ignore it and move on, dismissing the poster as some liar or lunatic. The news media may later assert something with no evidence at all, and people will accept it.

Build your own news service

People have committed themselves to the silliest causes due to some minute of tear-jerking manipulation, while being blissfully unaware of other causes in the world, because someone else they can't even name is manipulating their news feed. People even ultimately end up giving their lives for that reason, too, misled like cattle by personages they know nothing of.

It is also really easy to break someone's control of your information. You can simply build your own news digest, using tools like paper.li or any number of news aggregator services, according to which you can select the sources you feel provide balanced coverage of world events. There is no reason to only be aware of a conflict or controversy that some talking heads think it is important to talk about, for their own reasons.

The person deciding if a country needs your support can easily be you, rather than someone else. It is in fact possible to know about every country in our world, to be aware of the strife or injustice taking place in all of them at all times. Is this not better than receiving the painfully abridged account that someone else wants to give you, covering a particular locale and a particular time favourable to them?

People have many buttons that can be pressed by others, wanting to control them like robots. It makes sense to at least try to guard some of them, especially the button of emotional appeal, so you are more independent of manipulation and able to come to independent opinions.

The word "democracy" has particular appeal to people. After all, it means the rule by the people. But it also has a dull meaning: the mere ritual of elections, in what could still be an unrepresentative and despicable regime with no legitimacy.

Leaders of Western "democracies" often have embarrassingly low approval ratings and perpetual dissatisfaction exists in society, and they rely on looking tough on alleged threats, to gain a meagre rise in popularity, rather than actually doing anything for their people. Those leaders, such as Justin Trudeau, are condescending to many of the people, which is hardly what you would expect in a system of rule by the people, the very intended meaning of democracy.

Something being "democratic" doesn't necessarily mean the introduction of the system we call "democracy" - the practice of elections, together with the money-drenched marketing campaigns and deceptions that influence the plutocratic result.

Popular rule by other means

Countries may deem themselves democratic based on other aspects of how their state works, such that they manage to embody the will of a sovereign people. This is why countries like the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) refer to themselves as democratic although they do not hold televised debates or nationwide elections. The Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development pledged Russian and Chinese support for local, authentic expressions of democracy around the world rather than the foreign-imposed and inauthentic systems that are called "democracies" by the dull.

There is something to be said for examining the democraticness, or lack thereof, in a regime's behaviour, rather than agreeing with the simplistic classification of different constitutions as a democracy or dictatorship. In the case of many Western governments and leading institutions, we indeed come up short when it comes to democraticness, despite the continuous use of the word "democracy", often by those who aren't elected.

The thwarting of the people

Across the US, the UK and the EU, for example, populism evokes horror among leaders, despite it really meaning that one is deferring to popular concerns, which is an essential aspect of being actually democratic. Populism is presented as a threat to "democracy", which only raises the question of what "democracy" they refer to, if it is incompatible with being popular.

Leaders of self-proclaimed liberal democracies such as the United States cringe at the idea of their populations actually getting anything they want, and are delighted at the idea of thwarting the wishes of the majority. The entire practice of elections, for them, is a game according to which they trick the people and manage to force upon them whatever they didn't want.

Disdain for the people

Not a word is ever uttered by the leaders of these countries about the wisdom or merits of the people, although leaders continuously use the word "democracy" with forked tongues. In fact, they deplore vast numbers of the people and make it their job to lecture and convert the people to their cause rather than represent them.

Does a sincere advocate of democracy - the system of rule by the people - have nothing nice to say about the wisdom of people, conceal facts from them, view them all as fools easily duped by intelligence services, and only offer to rule and protect them rather than obey them?

A country that actually valued the will of the people might actively labour to make all the people wiser, and then defer to the wishes of those people, treating them like an oracle. What happens instead is that the people are pressured to agree with the authorities, rather than vice versa. So, on top of the mountain of garbage that is a so-called "democracy", rests some small crumb representing how much that regime actually cares about what the people think and how much it actually shares their pain.

Through practices like corrections, retractions and social media follow-up posts, it may be that mainstream news organisations are able to preserve the appearance of journalistic integrity even while they get away with spreading disinformation to a majority of their audiences.

When retracting false claims, apparently to preserve their journalistic integrity (or, rather, just the false image of it), publishers may be only reaching a tiny number of people with their corrections. There is also the issue of false coverage or false "fact-checking" at a decisive moment, such as an election, followed by retraction or correction after the decisive moment has subsided, as can be seen with the story of Hunter Biden's laptop.

Always deception at a critical moment

Many media sources will assert certitude at times when decisions are being made by people on an issue, to purposefully press them into taking a position when it matters, like with the allegations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq nearly twenty years ago, or chemical attacks in Syria more than five years ago. They don't mind later casting doubt on allegations, as long as the moment when decisions are being made has passed and they got their result.

Another example is the triumphant US strike against ISIS-K in Afghanistan, which followed a lethal suicide bombing against US Marines at Kabul Airport. The revenge strike was presented in the press as some sort of victory, only for it to later be quietly revealed that the US strike hit no terrorists but managed to kill an entire family, seven children included. What the American journalists did during that series of retaliatory drone strikes was about as good as drinking the blood of those Afghan children when they died, lapping up the US government's triumphant statement, and they had no shame later. Apologies and corrections are worthless, as their act of vile propaganda at the cost of real lives and the deceiving of their audience about an American revenge operation had already been done. To this date, there is no indication that US revenge strikes in response to the deaths of their Marines killed anyone other than innocent people.

When it comes to outrage-generating headlines relating to decisive elections or world conflicts, what we see is every dirty tactic being used by the press to convince people to support a narrow agenda or side. A lot of it is later passed of as mistakes, like showing pro-regime rallies in a country and miscaptioning it as opposition rallies, although they will only do the same again and again in similar conflicts. But, in every case, they make sure the damage is done and the public is thoroughly misled at a decisive moment before making any correction.

Red-handed journalists

When the media engages in false or misleading coverage, and later discretely apologises or tidies up its mistakes once it knows nobody is looking, it does the equivalent of what many nations keep doing on the foreign policy front when they enter conflicts. That is, despite repeatedly making everything worse and getting everything wrong, they keep giving themselves another chance to get it right, like a doctor who kills a hundred percent of patients he operates on. Although every attempt at intervention in other nations by Western military forces has been an unmitigated disaster for the last thirty years or so, and much of the Western media coverage of such conflicts has consisted of endless lies, still they try. And, they will try to convince us, it is all just innocent mistakes. They will go back later, offer a half-apology here and there, delete this or that offensive lie that killed so many people, and then move on after washing their bloodied hands in blood.

Yes, bloodthirsty interference and attempts to change the regime abroad are innocent mistakes by the well-meaning and sweet people of the United States, just as misleading the people about the change of regime at home is also an innocent mistake by sweet journalists. That is what you believe, if you are the kind of dupe they are looking for.

It would be good if some laws governing journalism forced news sources to thoroughly publicise their own errors in subsequent articles or segments. They should be forced to provide self-denigrating coverage that must reach as many people as their false information did, in order to compensate.

Should we believe extraordinary claims from government sources, such as the "Tic Tac" UFO encounter footage from the US government?

While extra-terrestrials may be a favoured explanation for some, for UFO sightings, a secret military technology is more plausible, because we are at least aware that military secrets are real. However, even that is far-fetched. A technology that is truly beyond anything known to science, for example, having the ability to fully neutralise g-forces, is also countered by a more likely possibility.

Extraordinary claims

The most reasonable explanation for any compelling video evidence of extra-terrestrial or truly unexplained UFO encounters, if they originate from a government source, will be that they are nevertheless fake. An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, so video and official endorsement of video is not enough. People also saying they saw it doesn't help, as testimony is unreliable.

In 2003, the American people believed their government's mere word about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. After waging the war, they learned it was not true. Many lost faith in the mainstream media, and now obstinately disbelieve even the more mundane claims of governments.

In 2022, prior to it happening, we had headlines and pictures in tabloids about a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many believed it, because it came from government sources, namely the US government. Others disbelieved it for that very same reason. Unfortunately, the American warnings turned out to be true in the case of a Russian incursion into Ukraine, and the Russians seemed to begin the very operation they were insisting would not happen.

For many Americans, Russia's deceptions will vindicate the US government and they will be more likely to trust the US government's authority again, even when it is lying.

Distrust them

Despite the above change, governments still lie. The most effective lies are those that are mixed with confirmed reality by those telling the story. Many believe that if they can confirm some part of a story, the rest must be true.

In the case of formal, government-stamped evidence of the seemingly impossible, what we are looking at could be an experiment in the authority of the state. It could be a test of how credulous a citizen can be, if their government verifies something as true, or a sort of experiment in how far the militarisation of false information can go when pushed from government to journalists. How far do loyal citizens actually go in believing the state? Might they even believe in alien invaders if they are reported on the news?

Government authority lends credibility to a report, but it by no means confirms it to be accurate.

In a normal and healthy polity, one can accept the word of the state as factual. However, as failings mount, it becomes impossible to actually maintain that trust.

If we are determined to be sceptics, then, in all cases, what officials said can only really be evidence of what they have said. It can be reported accurately as the rationale behind their decisions, and whether we adhere to the narrative might be considered evidence of loyalty to the state, at least until evidence emerges that the state is mistaken.

The word of Uncle Sam as ultimate truth

In a verbal duel with journalist Matt Lee of the Associated Press, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price insisted that the US government can be accepted as an honest source of information. Specifically, Ned Price wanted his far-fetched allegations about a Russian false-flag operation in Ukraine, including references to unpublished and undisclosed video evidence, to be reported by the press as facts.

Looking at the journalist as if he was crazy, Price suggested that the words he (Price) was uttering may be printed by Lee onto a piece of paper, and that this paper can then be given as evidence. When told that he had presented no evidence, a flustered Price went on to claim that not believing his classified US sources would be tantamount to adoration towards Russian propaganda.

Obvious baloney

Not only is there valid reason to doubt Ned Price's honesty, but there are clear indications he and his organisation were lying.

Explicit references by Price to video media, accompanied by no release of such video media, indicate deliberate dishonesty of the same type most of us already know as "clickbait". An honest source that could only give its word would not speak words about a video. Such a source would instead admit that it can only give its word, hand on heart. To speak otherwise, and make reference to specific undisclosed video, is a tactical move aiming to deceive, like offering a preview of a video to an audience, only to then provide a narrating voice throughout the actual file.

This reference to video evidence that won't be released is clearly intended with cynicism. The aim is to mislead those who glance headlines in our busy age into mistakenly thinking video evidence exists that they just don't have time to look at. Without a video, someone wants you to react as if there is a video. Ask yourself, is such a tactic typical of authentic behaviour, or is it in fact deliberate dishonesty and manipulation, in keeping with the character of liars?

Flipflopping on command

As soon as the CIA deems something to be acceptable, all American institutions and journalistic outfits immediately start saying it is acceptable, ultimately making reference to it being the CIA's wish. Wikipedia cites US intelligence officials as arbiters of fact, ignoring any need for independent confirmation. For them, it is America first, and all other countries' points of view are rejected as disinformation. Fact-checkers then rely on this US-aligned source to distinguish fact from falsehood, which is then used to inform labelling on social media platforms.

In the case of the Wuhan lab leak theory, which is still unconfirmed, it was originally labelled as false while the CIA did not agree with it. As soon as US intelligence officials began stating that it was credible, the label was lifted by international media and social media platforms and the story was considered credible.

Are liars reliable sources?

Unfortunately, the CIA and NSA have a clearly established record of telling lies, as in the case of the Iraq War and mass collection of Americans' data. The targets of these lies are often the American public and even elected officials, as the CIA tries to disseminate whatever it finds expedient or in its interests for you to believe.

Ned Price formerly worked for the CIA, as did many of the venerated and undisputed heroes of current American foreign policy. Sordid organisations with dark pasts, committed to lies and omission, devoted to the prosecution, defamation and torture of journalists, are presented to Americans as windows into all truth about the reality they inhabit.

Assuming that the persecuted Australian publisher Julian Assange is taken into US custody following the UK's probable failure to provide any kind of justice for him, Russia should offer Alexei Navalny in a prisoner swap.

This in no way is intended to lend credence to the idea that either man is an international spy, as figures from both the Russian and American governments have claimed, but to acknowledge that each man is the other's parallel. Who is the good, the bad, and perhaps the ugly would depend on which of the two nations should refuse such a swap.

Navalny the politician, Assange the publisher

It should be quite telling that Russia's most famous dissident is a partisan politician, whereas the West's most famous dissident is a nonpartisan publisher. Navalny is sometimes falsely presented as a whistle-blower, yet what he does is make partisan propaganda films boosted by foreign media with an interest in regime-change in Russia. Assange, in contrast, never presented any message or agenda, and simply published raw data that exposed government officials in the act. Assange is everything Navalny pretends to be.

Navalny really seems to be the kind of traitor the US government accuses Assange of being. He roots for NATO forces amassing on Russia's frontier, and supports Western sanctions against his own country's defence and industrial sectors. From this, Russians can know Navalny is a Guaido.

It should be suspected that, were a hypothetical swap offered, Russia would almost certainly want to get rid of Navalny but the Americans would never let go of Assange. This should tell us something.

The test of the miserable little worm

Assange was instrumental in exposing the truth about America being a regime of murderers in raw, unedited video, and is effective at continuing to expose America's regime no matter where he is, whereas Navalny was always just America's favourite candidate to rule Russia. As such, a Julian Assange in Moscow would likely be very useful to the Russians, but an Alexei Navalny in Washington is probably useless to the Americans.

Assange is an undisputed icon of truth and selfless, virtuous journalism, invaluable to all the world's nations. Navalny is the dishonourable propagandist whose goal is power, not revealing facts to the public. He is, to quote a certain former UK Member of Parliament, a miserable little worm.

The profound inferiority of the West's championed dissident, this failed politician, in contrast to a journalist who exposed their regimes, would be undisputed in the event of inevitable US refusal to take the rotten Navanly in exchange for Assange.

If Assange dies, might Navalny then die?

It is likely that an entirely innocent and humble Julian Assange will die in the cruel custody of the American despots who hide behind the democratic pantomime, and who could not tolerate the humiliation at the exposure of their regime's crimes. In such an event, the Russians could similarly eliminate Navalny in turn, and this would be no loss as far as the world or even the United States is concerned.

A swap offer would give the Americans a difficult choice: either expose the worm they support in Russia, by showing their refusal to take him, or send Assange to Russia and risk a resurgent WikiLeaks. A successful swap would be a coup for Russia's reputation, and a failed swap would be equally incriminating for the US and make the US hesitant to harm Assange.

The Americans have a disgusting regime, whose leaders turned as red as gammon when their war crimes were exposed, and the world's focus should stay on them rather than Russia.

Maybe as long as ten years ago, I heard about the problem of items and fat accumulating in the sewage system, forming what is known as fatbergs. However, more than just being the problem of the infrastructure - of the state - a similar build-up in plumbing threatens the homes of those causing the problem, so they ought to care.

This problem was always the problem of the individual, in the sense that individuals are causing the problem by what type of waste they attempt to wash away and in the sense that ultimately it will have repercussions for the individual if the infrastructure suffers. However, is it possible that the threat to individual homes is somewhat exaggerated? Authorities sometimes exaggerate or even lie in order to move individuals to action, where they were unmoved by the plight of the collective.

Your country needs you

In the past, it was possible to move people to action through patriotism or some notion of the collective good. The call to do something for your country was one that could motivate people. As the appeal of selfish individualism grew globally, likely through the spread and normalisation of American popular culture, appeals to national wellbeing may have fallen on increasingly deaf ears.

As a result, we now have people in countries like Britain, who fundamentally cannot grasp that problems affecting the state and the infrastructure could have any effect on them. They instead view the state as an unwelcome and intrusive authority, whose problems don't concern a citizen - some sinister big brother with his own agenda.

The ability to maintain infrastructure such as roads and the sewage system, and the ability to provide emergency and medical services are things anyone can scoff at and say they don't need them. Maybe they have a big off-road capable car, so they don't need the roads. Maybe they have experience of camping in the wild, so they don't need the sewage system. Maybe they carry guns and first aid kits, so they don't need the police or any medical workers. Such a person is rare, and they likely still are dependent on something maintained by the state, without being aware of it. The point of this post, though, is not to deride libertarianism or minarchy; most of the work done by states could hypothetically be provided by non-states in a possible future. The point is that many people bafflingly believe a problem isn't theirs until it directly affects them.

You don't need your country?

In the case of the selfish individualist, they soon realise they need a hospital if their child becomes ill, but most of the time this isn't happening, so reading about hospitals closing down probably doesn't bother them. They hear of other people's children getting ill, but their own child seems very healthy, so they don't need hospitals. This kind of thinking is exactly the problem.

Governments do not manage your life, but manage the lives of millions of people. As such, you can say you don't care what the government wants, but the state is built in such a way that you will suffer the consequences of that attitude if the infrastructure and services break down. The state won't be so rude as to say it does not care about you, but it indeed does not care, and it suffers no consequences for that attitude. Although your life ends with you, the state's life continues with everyone else, so it will always be more concerned about the wellbeing of the collective than an individual's sob story. This is at the heart of the debate over the current pandemic and the issue of vaccinating the population.

An immunised population

The state wants the population vaccinated against this pandemic. It is absolutely sensible, from the point of view of those authorities who manage millions of lives, to do what is best for that mass of people, including those millions who are vulnerable to disease. For an individual with no medical disorder putting them at risk, however, the state's goal appears intrusive.

You, you may say, are not individually at risk. But, the state retorts, what of one person's risk to others? And what of the risk of failing to efficiently manage the health of many millions of people? What of the risk to the medical services, if they should fail? 'Not my problem,' you may then say.

Then, enter the exaggerations and (possibly) the lies.

Noble lies

The state's advocates, being tasked with the health and wellbeing of millions of people rather than the comfort of the individual, are pushed to be economical with the truth in order to convince the individual to do something. If people are too selfish to see the value in any kind of collective or state wellbeing, it is inevitable that authorities will eventually try to convince them that their individual wellbeing is more at risk than it really is.

None of this should be necessary, but it seems as though it is. We are faced with the modern citizen's immature selfishness, poseur individualism and anti-establishment bias, all accidentally inspired by the American global pop culture.

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