Media Articles from 2020
Video Analytics User Manuals Are a Guide to Dystopia
[Community] [Justice] [Media]
Video Analytics User Manuals Are a Guide to Dystopia
By Dave Maass and Matthew Guariglia
Posted December 31, 2020
A few years ago, when you saw a security camera, you may have thought that the video feed went to a VCR somewhere in a back office that could only be accessed when a crime occurs. Or maybe you imagined a sleepy guard who only paid half-attention, and only when they discovered a crime in progress. In the age of internet-connectivity, now it’s easy to imagine footage sitting on a server somewhere, with any image inaccessible except to someone willing to fast forward through hundreds of hours of footage.
That may be how it worked in 1990s heist movies, and it may be how a homeowner still sorts through their own home security camera footage. But that’s not how cameras operate in today’s security environment. Instead, advanced algorithms are watching every frame on every camera and documenting every person, animal, vehicle, and backpack as they move through physical space, and thus camera to camera, over an extended period of time. More…
The Ruling Elite’s War on Truth
[Political] [Social]
The Ruling Elite’s War on Truth
by Chris Hedges
Posted December 28, 2020
Joe Biden’s victory instantly obliterated the Democratic Party’s longstanding charge that Russia was hijacking and compromising U.S. elections. The Biden victory, the Democratic Party leaders and their courtiers in the media now insist, is evidence that the democratic process is strong and untainted, that the system works. The elections ratified the will of the people.
Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani are vulgar and buffoonish, but they play the same slimy game as their Democratic opponents. The Republicans scapegoat the deep state, communists and now, bizarrely, Venezuela; the Democrats scapegoat Russia. The widening disconnect from reality by the ruling elite is intended to mask their complicity in the seizure of power by predatory global corporations and billionaires.
The two warring factions within the ruling elite, which fight primarily over the spoils of power while abjectly serving corporate interests, peddle alternative realities. If the deep state and Venezuelan socialists or Russia intelligence operatives are pulling the strings no one in power is accountable for the rage and alienation caused by the social inequality, the unassailability of corporate power, the legalized bribery that defines our political process, the endless wars, austerity and de-industrialization. More…
US – UK Intel Agencies Declare Cyber War on Independent Media
[Media] [Social]
US – UK Intel Agencies Declare Cyber War on Independent Media
by Whitney Webb
Posted December 20, 2020
In just the past week, the national-security states of the United States and United Kingdom have discreetly let it be known that the cyber tools and online tactics previously designed for use in the post-9/11 “war on terror” are now being repurposed for use against information sources promoting “vaccine hesitancy” and information related to Covid-19 that runs counter to their state narratives.
A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK’s signal intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be “propaganda” that raises concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved. More…
What countries are in the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes agreements?
[Media]
What countries are in the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes agreements?
by Richie Koch
Posted December 15, 2020
The Snowden revelations revealed that the NSA is carrying out electronic surveillance on a global scale. But it also unveiled the shadowy networks of intelligence agencies that act as accomplices.
When people think of mass surveillance, they rightly think of the NSA, but nearly every country in the world has its own signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency. From the UK’s GCHQ to Germany’s BND, these organizations focus on intelligence gathering, counterintelligence operations, and law enforcement by intercepting communications and other electronic signals. SIGINT covers a wide range of activities, from tapping phones to accessing a user’s email database with XKEYSCORE. Typically, one of the few legal restrictions set upon these agencies is that they cannot spy on their own citizens. This creates a strong incentive for them to cooperate and trade information. The 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes are the largest and most important agreements that create the legal framework for such coordinated activity.
All SIGINT agencies rely on the cooperation of telecommunication companies and internet service providers to gain access to individuals’ private data. By installing fiber-optic splitters at ISP junction points, the SIGINT agency is able to make an exact copy of the data being processed at that point. This data is then analyzed using deep packet inspection and stored at different data centers. More…
Research: Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news
[Media]
Research: Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news
by Gordon Pennycook, Tyrone D Cannon, David G Rand
Posted December 11,2020
The 2016 U.S. presidential election brought considerable attention to the phenomenon of “fake news”: entirely fabricated and often partisan content that is presented as factual. Here we demonstrate one mechanism that contributes to the believability of fake news: fluency via prior exposure. Using actual fake-news headlines presented as they were seen on Facebook, we show that even a single exposure increases subsequent perceptions of accuracy, both within the same session and after a week.
Moreover, this “illusory truth effect” for fake-news headlines occurs despite a low level of overall believability and even when the stories are labeled as contested by fact checkers or are inconsistent with the reader’s political ideology. These results suggest that social media platforms help to incubate belief in blatantly false news stories and that tagging such stories as disputed is not an effective solution to this problem. It is interesting, however, that we also found that prior exposure does not impact entirely implausible statements (e.g., “The earth is a perfect square”). These observations indicate that although extreme implausibility is a boundary condition of the illusory truth effect, only a small degree of potential plausibility is sufficient for repetition to increase perceived accuracy.
As a consequence, the scope and impact of repetition on beliefs is greater than has been previously assumed. More…
Life Starts from Here. Counteract the “Great Reset” by “Puppet Master Big Banker”
[Social] [Media]
Life Starts from Here. Counteract the “Great Reset” by “Puppet Master Big Banker”
By Julian Rose
Posted December 3, 2020
Let’s do a reality check: many of us wake-up in the morning with our default memory sleepily reverted back to a pre-covid state of seeming ‘normality’. But after splashing our face with cold water, taking the dog for a walk and having some breakfast, it dawns on us that we are being strung-along by the hands of a puppet master, whose tweaking of the strings of power is making us dance to a tune which is 100% alien to our natural evolutionary inclinations.
That puppet master is actually not one person, but a number of people; although calling them ‘people’ might already be an error, since they operate in the shadows of a life less than human and impose their will based on a narcissistic ambition to ‘own’ everything – and of course, to control it too.
So you turn on your radio/television, open a newspaper/computer and you get something called ‘The News’. And what is it you are actually getting? Is it really The News? More…
The COVID-19 RT-PCR Test: How to Mislead All Humanity. Using a “Test” To Lock Down Society
[Politics] [Social] [Media]
The COVID-19 RT-PCR Test: How to Mislead All Humanity. Using a “Test” To Lock Down Society
By Dr. Pascal Sacré
Posted December 2, 2020
It is time for everyone to come out of this negative trance, this collective hysteria, because famine, poverty, massive unemployment will kill, mow down many more people than SARS-CoV-2!
Official postulate of our managers: positive RT-PCR cases = COVID-19 patients. [1]
This is the starting postulate, the premise of all official propaganda, which justifies all restrictive government measures: isolation, confinement, quarantine, mandatory masks, color codes by country and travel bans, tracking, social distances in companies, stores and even, even more importantly, in schools [2].
This misuse of RT-PCR technique is used as a relentless and intentional strategy by some governments, supported by scientific safety councils and by the dominant media, to justify excessive measures such as the violation of a large number of constitutional rights, the destruction of the economy with the bankruptcy of entire active sectors of society, the degradation of living conditions for a large number of ordinary citizens, under the pretext of a pandemic based on a number of positive RT-PCR tests, and not on a real number of patients. More…
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…
End The Illusion Films
End The Illusion Blog
Electronic Frontier Foundation
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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