Media Articles from 2020
A Guide for Free Thinkers: They’re Both Wrong
[Politics] [Media]
A Guide for Free Thinkers: They’re Both Wrong
by Ethan Yang
Posted November 24, 2020
If you get your information about American politics from the media, politicians, and even from a lot of Washington, DC think tanks, you’re doing it wrong. It goes without saying that politics is about mass mobilization and power; narratives and oversimplification are the tools of the trade. That would be fine if real-life consequences didn’t come out of half-baked ideas about policy, but guess what, they do.
Few people in politics seem to care about looking a couple inches below the surface and a few steps ahead into the future when it comes to making the case for their policies. Why would they? Politics is war, power is the end that justifies the means, victory is all that matters. If it riles up the masses and gets the right team elected, that’s all they could ask for. The problem with the way all this works however, is that politicians don’t need to live with the consequences of their decisions. The rest of us definitely do. More…
Why Propaganda is Vital In Upholding The Illusion of a Democracy
[Politics] [Media]
Why Propaganda is Vital In Upholding The Illusion of a Democracy
By Cynthia Chung
Posted November 22, 2020
Democracy is something that has been completely taken for granted here in the West. There is an ongoing triumph over past laurels, without paying heed to the road we have strayed from. We criticize others for failing to uphold a standard we consider ourselves the leaders of, but democracy is not something simply “acquired” and subsequently “retained,” it is not a “possession.” This is because a system of democracy is at every moment of its existence defined by the character of its citizenry. Democracy only exists if it is upheld, and if a citizenry fails to do so, it renders itself defenseless to an ever-creeping tyranny.
For such a “creeping tyranny,” control is conditional to whether the citizenry is satisfied with an ever-growing “illusion of democracy.” Such a construct needs to give its subjects the impression that they have “free choice” in what shapes their future and their way of life, including: who will be their “friends” and who will be their “foes.” More…
EFF Files Comment Opposing the Department of Homeland Security’s Massive Expansion of Biometric Surveillance
[Justice] [Politics] [Media]
EFF Files Comment Opposing the Department of Homeland Security’s Massive Expansion of Biometric Surveillance
By Saira Hussain, Jennifer Lynch, and Nathaniel Sobel
Posted November 20, 2020
EFF, joined by several leading civil liberties and immigrant rights organizations, recently filed a comment calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to withdraw a proposed rule that would exponentially expand biometrics collection from both U.S. citizens and noncitizens who apply for immigration benefits and would allow DHS to mandate the collection of face data, iris scans, palm prints, voice prints, and DNA. DHS received more than 5,000 comments in response to the proposed rule, and five U.S. Senators also demanded that DHS abandon the proposal.
DHS’s biometrics database is already the second largest in the world. It contains biometrics from more than 260 million people. If DHS’s proposed rule takes effect, DHS estimates that it would nearly double the number of people added to that database each year, to over 6 million people. And, equally important, the rule would expand both the types of biometrics DHS collects and how DHS uses them. More…
Court Records Show Google Gives Keyword Searches of Innocent People to Cops
[Justice] [Media]
Court Records Show Google Gives Keyword Searches of Innocent People to Cops
by Matt Agorist
Posted November 15, 2020
Everyone reading this knows that there are few things on the internet more revealing than their internet search data.
It is for this reason that police must seek out a warrant for an actual suspect in order to obtain said data.
However, a recently unsealed court document found that government can request such data in reverse order by asking Google to disclose everyone who searched a keyword rather than for information on a known suspect.
To spell it out more clearly, authorities can simply pick a search term and construct a warrant around it without anyone being accused of a crime or being a suspect in a crime, and then Google will simply hand over their data. What could possibly go wrong? More…
There Is A Solution To Big Tech Censorship – But No Politician Will Touch it
[Politics] [Economic] [Media]
There Is A Solution To Big Tech Censorship – But No Politician Will Touch it
by Brandon Smith
Posted November 14, 2020
If you value freedom and the Bill of Rights, then this debate leaves us at an impasse. Both sides (perhaps conveniently) lead to a totalitarian outcome. The thing is, the publicly presented argument is a contrived one, a manipulated discussion that only presents two sides when there are more options to consider. The narrative is fixed, it is a farce.
The public has been led to believe that government and corporations are separate tools that can be used to keep each side in check. This is a lie. Big government and big corporations have always worked together while pretending to be disconnected, and this needs to stop if we are to ever defuse the political time bomb we now face.
To solve the social media censorship debacle we need to examine the very roots of corporations as entities. First, corporations as we know them today are a relatively new phenomenon. Adam Smith described the concept of a corporation as a “joint stock company” in his treatise ‘The Wealth Of Nations’, and stood against them as a threat to free market economics. He specifically outlined their history of monopoly and failure, and criticized their habit of avoiding responsibility for mistakes and crimes. More…
Uncle Of Children Sick From Verizon 5G Tower Next To Home Fights To Prevent It Happening to Other Families
[Media] [Political]
Uncle Of Children Sick From Verizon 5G Tower Next To Home Fights To Prevent It Happening to Other Families
by B.N. Frank
Posted November 13, 2020
As the march to install superfast 5G wireless service continues across the country, advocates for patients with electro-sensitivity are questioning the technology’s safety.
Noah Davidson of Sacramento began lobbying to have 5G antennas moved away from people’s homes and offices because his five- and seven-year-old nieces got sick for two months straight, right after Verizon installed a 5G box on a light pole next to their home.
The family hired an expert to measure the radio-frequency levels.
“He conducted some measurements and told us it was the highest indoor measurements that he’d ever recorded,” Davidson claimed. “So, we ended up installing some shielding in the home, moving the kids into a back room. And within a few days, their symptoms went away.” More…
Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation
[Political] [Media]
Leaked Docs Expose Massive Syria Propaganda Operation
By Ben Norton
Posted November 12, 2020
Western government-funded intelligence cutouts trained Syrian opposition leaders, planted stories in media outlets from BBC to Al Jazeera, and ran a cadre of journalists. A trove of leaked documents exposes the propaganda network.
Leaked documents show how UK government contractors developed an advanced infrastructure of propaganda to stimulate support in the West for Syria’s political and armed opposition.
Virtually every aspect of the Syrian opposition was cultivated and marketed by Western government-backed public relations firms, from their political narratives to their branding, from what they said to where they said it.
The leaked files reveal how Western intelligence cutouts played the media like a fiddle, carefully crafting English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage. More…
Greenwald’s Intercept Resignation Exposes The Rot In All Mass Media
[Media]
Greenwald’s Intercept Resignation Exposes The Rot In All Mass Media
by Caitlin Johnstone
Posted November 28, 2020
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has made major waves throughout mainstream and alternative media by resigning from The Intercept, an outlet he co-founded in 2014 with the stated mission of holding power to account with the power of unrestricted journalism.
Greenwald says he resigned because Intercept editors refused to let him publish an article he’d been working on about the mass media’s role in covering up the Hunter Biden October surprise and obfuscating its nature, which he says is a violation of the conditions in his contract for editorial freedom. He also published part of the email exchanges he’d been having with the editors in the lead-up to submitting his notice of resignation.
Greenwald also reveals that The Intercept refused to report on the daily proceedings of the Julian Assange extradition hearing “because the freelance reporter doing an outstanding job was politically distasteful”. It’s unclear exactly what was meant by this; Greenwald has praised the excellent Assange trial coverage by Shadowproof‘s Kevin Gosztola and Richard Medhurst now of Press TV in the past, both of whom say they don’t at this time know who he was referring to. Regardless of what he meant, refusal of a media outlet whose motto is “Fearless, adversarial journalism” to cover the single most important journalistic freedom case in the world is outrageous on its face. More…
My Resignation From The Intercept
[Media]
My Resignation From The Intercept
by Glenn Greenwald
Posted October 30, 2020
The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.
Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.
The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.
The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication. More…
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Quotable Sayings
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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You do not become a billionaire through labor. You become a billionaire through inheritance, corruption or economic rents – or, in most cases, some mixture of all three.
Grace Blakeley
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Mainstream American liberals think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by Fox and Donald Trump, and mainstream American conservatives think they’re clear-eyed because they can see the propaganda strings being pulled by MSNBC and the Democrats, but the propaganda strings on both trace back to the same puppet master. And seeing that is just the beginning.
Caitlin Johnstone
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You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.
Deepak Chopra
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It is obvious that the US government is destroying Assange to signal to journalists the consequences of publishing information. It is therefore also obvious that any journalist who fails to use whatever platform they have to speak out against Assange’s persecution has no intention of ever publishing anything that the US government doesn’t want published. Their silence on or support for what is being done to this man can and should be taken as an admission that they are nothing other than state propagandists.
Caitlin Johnstone
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It’s quite fitting that the – imperially pre-determined – judicial fate of Julian Assange is being played out in Britain, the home of George Orwell.
Pepe Escobar
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