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Author Topic: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism  (Read 270543 times)

Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #750 on: January 12, 2019, 07:58:08 PM »
<snip, I've decided not to go through the same motions>

Martin, maybe you haven't noticed, but ever since I've taken some measures to limit the amount of space mainstream conditioned thinking gets to take up on this forum, the belligerent bitching has been reduced by 90%. I really like it that way, much more quiet and interesting. Things have improved massively.

This place can do without missionaries who impose their worn-out, 20th century narratives that come straight out of the divide-and-conquer strategies pushed by concentrated wealth (irrespective of nationality) to keep the wars and AGW going strong, because this Forum is about Arctic sea ice loss, not about politics.

So, I would kindly ask you to go find some other place to do your thing. I think it would be better for you, and it would definitely be a lot better for me, because it's wearing me out and I don't want to quit this project just yet.

Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, the mainstream media, Corporate Leftists around the world, and even rehabilitated neocons, they're all with you to make things reality.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 08:45:19 PM by Neven »
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Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #751 on: January 14, 2019, 08:54:13 AM »
<snip, I've decided not to go through the same motions>

Martin, maybe you haven't noticed, but ever since I've taken some measures to limit the amount of space mainstream conditioned thinking gets to take up on this forum, the belligerent bitching has been reduced by 90%. I really like it that way, much more quiet and interesting. Things have improved massively.

It's not that you have "taken some measures".
It's that a fair amount of commenters (including me) left, after we were told in no uncertain terms that our input on the ASIF was no longer appreciated.
And yes, that cleared up things tremendously, since now only the pro-Russia crowd is left over.
They are still promoting Jimmy Dore and RT, as you can see above.

It's just that there is no more push-back against that Russian propaganda.

Quote
This place can do without missionaries who impose their worn-out, 20th century narratives that come straight out of the divide-and-conquer strategies pushed by concentrated wealth (irrespective of nationality) to keep the wars and AGW going strong, because this Forum is about Arctic sea ice loss, not about politics.

You know, Neven : this hurts.

I came here in 2011, while fighting the deniers at WUWT, hoping to find here a crowd that was using evidence-based reasoning and science to come to conclusions about AGW and Arctic Sea Ice decline.

I feel extremely strong about AGW. Probably even more so than you do. But I approach the problem and the solution from a scientific, and engineering and economics point of view. For example : Solar farms make sense, and solar roads don't. Shutting down coal plants make sense, and so does installing grid batteries, but geo-engineering doesn't make sense, and neither does the Keystone XL (tar-sands) pipeline.

And yes, I feel very strong about Russia too. Russia has no business invading in Ukraine, and their role in the downing of MH17 cannot be denied, and neither can their meddling in foreign elections, including the US 2016 elections, and neither can we deny the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK nor the Russian bombing of hospitals in Syria.

I'm really sorry you disagree with me and some other posters here (like Martin, Susan, ASLR, Bob Wallace etc) on some issues.

But I think you are making a big mistake in booting these fine people out.

Instead, you could have booted out the Russian propagandists that we argued with.
That would have quieted down the discussion too.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2019, 09:37:53 AM by Rob Dekker »
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Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #752 on: January 14, 2019, 12:16:09 PM »
Rob, I'm not going through the same motions again, and I'm not booting anyone out. Everyone is free to use the only really useful category on this forum: Cryosphere. The ghostbusting can be done everywhere else on the Internet. Mainstream, neoliberal/neocon thinking has a firm grip in most places, so you really have nothing to complain (except of course that it's not going to solve AGW, but you don't see the connection).
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Susan Anderson

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #753 on: January 14, 2019, 10:01:54 PM »
The predominance of a very small cadre of intolerant commenters, with Neven's passive assent if not participation, is counterproductive. He's made the point, which is of some value, that we should go to the cryosphere where knowledge is growing rather than bother with this sump of single-minded self-righteousness. But I cannot help trying to find, from time to time, ways to convey how this posse might ask themselves if they are making things worse. In general, I'm using other's words to avoid being distorted or misunderstood. I'm trying for some cognitive dissonance in the hope of jolting good people from bile-infested attacks to consider working together.

One of the pieces of this is the way that bad people exploit muddy thinking focused on finding fault with people who are not 99% perfect according to some inflexible canon.

Quote
Terror's Advocate: Barbet Schroeder directed this fascinating, appalling documentary portrait, from 2007, of the French attorney Jacques Vergès, who represented such clients as Klaus Barbie and Carlos the Jackal. Vergès discusses his life and work, starting with the discrimination he faced in his youth (his mother was from Vietnam, his father from Réunion) to his first major case .... With probing interviews and intrepid legwork, Schroeder shows how the anti-colonialist movement was secretly hijacked by Nazis and other anti-liberals, and regretfully traces modern terrorism to the tactics of Algerian independence fighters. The story Schroeder unfolds is also his own—that of a generation that had its humanistic sympathies manipulated by unscrupulous people with agendas of horror.[/size]
https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/terrors-advocate-2

The point is, whether you are using or being used, be careful not to let your hatreds eat you alive, as you execute the agenda of those who wish to destroy and sow chaos, rather than work together to solve problems.

Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #754 on: January 15, 2019, 07:53:33 AM »
The point is, whether you are using or being used, be careful not to let your hatreds eat you alive, as you execute the agenda of those who wish to destroy and sow chaos, rather than work together to solve problems.

That's what I've been trying to get through to Rob again and again.

As for anti-colonialism being hijacked ago, are you trying to repeat the example of bad journalism, that people in the black lives matter or environmental movement are all being brainwashed by Putin? That's dangerous. Neoliberalism never seems to have this problem of being hijacked. I guess it's already perfectly evil.
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sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #755 on: January 15, 2019, 08:11:36 AM »
Re: people in the black lives matter or environmental movement are all being brainwashed by Putin?

The attack is a little bit, but not much, subtler than that. The argument is that evil is dominant and the populists must understand this, compromise with evil to attain some, limited, carefully chosen, moderate goals. Never mind that the reason evil is dominant is precisely that attitude.

Only if you are so far deluded as to not understand the necessity of compromise, in all its meanings and implications, why then, you must be a wild haired revolutionary and probably in the employ of sinister Russian machination.

See, it's easy when you understand all this. Goofacetwit all say so. Must be true, right ?

And then we have some who say, screw all those thieves, torturers, usurers, and thugs: Take it all down.  And who can blame them. O, wait, I forgot, I just described those who do.

sidd
« Last Edit: January 15, 2019, 08:17:58 AM by sidd »

Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #756 on: January 15, 2019, 09:56:17 AM »
Rob, I'm not going through the same motions again, and I'm not booting anyone out.

True. You are not booting anyone out directly. Yet you are making it clear that people on the side of reason are no longer welcome on the ASIF, while Russian propagandists are.

Quote
Everyone is free to use the only really useful category on this forum: Cryosphere. The ghostbusting can be done everywhere else on the Internet.

Sure. Then why do the Lurk's and the Red's and the Terry's of several shades continue to spread their Russian propaganda on this forum, while people holding a more level-headed, evidence-based opinion are chased off the forum by you ?

Quote
Mainstream, neoliberal/neocon thinking has a firm grip in most places, so you really have nothing to complain

That starts to sound like a conspiracy theory.

Quote
(except of course that it's not going to solve AGW, but you don't see the connection).

Of course selecting one commenter over another is not going to solve AGW.

AGW is going to be solved by people making wise decisions, and politicians allowing renewable energy to thrive.

We'll get there with or without you selectively discouraging people to post on certain threads on the ASIF.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2019, 10:20:27 AM by Rob Dekker »
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Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #757 on: January 15, 2019, 10:03:00 AM »
The point is, whether you are using or being used, be careful not to let your hatreds eat you alive, as you execute the agenda of those who wish to destroy and sow chaos, rather than work together to solve problems.

That's what I've been trying to get through to Rob again and again.

Seriously, Neven ?

I was the one pointing out that Bernie stated to "Bring people together" while you are the one "kicking Democrats out". Remember ?

There is even a thread about it.
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Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #758 on: January 15, 2019, 10:15:13 AM »
Thanks for re-iterating your opinions, Rob. Let's get back on-topic now.
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sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #759 on: January 16, 2019, 07:18:08 AM »
I do wish the larger media outlets would do such detail work. Applebaum on Steele dossier and everyone who touched it

https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-mechanics-of-deception/

Comments have many links also.

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TerryM

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #760 on: January 16, 2019, 07:40:24 AM »
Caitlan shines a spotlight on "NewsGuard", who as well as advising us to stay away from unapproved news sites, is also attempting to scare away advertisers.

Counter boycotts of MSM advertisers seem the only way to fight back. Perhaps alerting various ad agencies of our intentions would be productive?

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/a-new-narrative-control-firm-works-to-destroy-alternative-media-6b6ba43dc8ce

If they can't win hearts and minds by providing factual reporting, they'll try to choke alternative view points by cutting off their funding.

Dirty Pool
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Susan Anderson

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #761 on: January 16, 2019, 08:55:21 PM »
@Neven. Why ask for evidence when you consistently refuse to accept it?

I've tried and tried, and you appear to be so wedded to your opinion that you wouldn't accept anything you don't like. Your treatment of Rob Dekker who does provide sources and facts is an example of what happens to people who make the effort.

I expect this from climate deniers, and in that field you are irreproachable. Why not import that objectivity and tolerance to your opinions here?

Your attack language is mild, but it is still attack. Your acceptance of opinions from people making biased assertions, and dismissal of those trying to point to information that corrects this, is the reason so many of us no longer make the effort.

The only thing I am willing to do at this point is to post examples from other resources and parallels that might, just possibly might, get you to investigate your bias and treat the majority of us in the US as fellow humans, not people to be defeated and/or ordered to follow your lead.

What this world needs is people working together to solve problems, not people finding fault with allies who fall short of a demand for purity in a narrow spectrum.

Fact is, I suspect we agree that we need a radical remake into a sharing, caring society that regards waste with abhorrence and is desperately concerned about the way we are trashing our planet at speed. I just don't think you can achieve that by attacking allies who are trying to find practical ways to enlist a broad range of humanity in saving our planet.


Indulging in hatred and bile will not achieve anything except more hatred and bile.

This probably belongs somewhere else, but is a reply to your most recent reply. I don't have the time and energy to keep on trying to find sources that you will respect to show you what is actually happening when you dismiss it all and return to the unappealing opinions of the few, the proud, who are dragging this small posse into hatred and exclusion. I expect that from the fake Christians whose arrogance and victim blaming would disgust their putative leader. I didn't expect it from someone I've always admired and respected, who does amazing work in the cryosphere.

Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #762 on: January 16, 2019, 09:11:35 PM »
Thanks for re-iterating your opinions, Susan. Let's get back on-topic now.
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Susan Anderson

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #763 on: January 16, 2019, 10:23:43 PM »
@Neven
As usual, I have the impression you either didn't read it or made no effort to set aside your bias when you did so. Ignoring what one doesn't want to think about and promoting what one prefers is no way to discern the truth.

The posse "wins". The earth loses.

Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #764 on: January 17, 2019, 10:31:32 AM »
Thank you, Susan.

When Neven says :

Quote
Thanks for re-iterating your opinions, Susan. Let's get back on-topic now.

I think what he is trying to say is that as long as we stay on topic, it's now OK to post opinions that differ from his.

Which would be a great relief.

No more stuff like this :

Quote
So, I would kindly ask you to go find some other place to do your thing. I think it would be better for you, and it would definitely be a lot better for me, because it's wearing me out and I don't want to quit this project just yet.

or stuff like this :

Quote
.... if you can't even admit something as simple as George Bush being a war criminal, it may be best that you start looking for a forum that is more to your liking, or at least restrict your presence to the Arctic Sea Ice board. I think it would be better for you, and it would definitely be less tiresome and depressing for me.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,617.msg183118.html#msg183118

So, I think we are good to go.

Thank you, Neven !
« Last Edit: January 17, 2019, 11:06:20 AM by Rob Dekker »
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Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #765 on: January 17, 2019, 10:36:02 AM »
Global warming will happen faster than we think

Three trends will combine to hasten it, warn Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5

Prepare for the “new abnormal”. That was what California Governor Jerry Brown told reporters last month, commenting on the deadly wildfires that have plagued the state this year. He’s right.

California’s latest crisis builds on years of record-breaking droughts and heatwaves. The rest of the world, too, has had more than its fair share of extreme weather in 2018. The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change announced last week that 157 million more people were exposed to heatwave events in 2017, compared with 2000.
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Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #766 on: January 17, 2019, 10:57:04 AM »
McIntyre posted an invoice sent by Kaszeta’s firm, Strongpoint Security, billing II’s parent organization, the Institute for Statecraft, for about $800 for an article penned by the man.

This reminds me of ClimateGate.
McIntyre once again relies on hacked documents, and uses them to smear his opponents.

In this case it was about this article by Kaszeta :
<no links to climate risk denier sites or to manipulating warmongering parasite sites, thanks; N.>

Which is a pretty good article, showing that Russia's alternate theories, about what happened to the Skripals, are pretty absurd.
« Last Edit: January 17, 2019, 11:52:48 AM by Neven »
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Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #767 on: January 17, 2019, 11:54:05 AM »
Kaszeta needs to make clear that he gets paid for that kind of stuff by covert organisations that get paid millions to fuel conflicts with Russia. If he doesn't, it's BAD journalism.
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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #768 on: January 18, 2019, 01:25:11 AM »
Like politicians, i am not surprised that journalists are corrupt. The mighty Wurlitzer has been playing for a very long time. But what does surprise is how cheap they come.

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #769 on: January 18, 2019, 05:06:06 AM »
My last comment about Jimmy Dore may have been a bit over the top. Now (f...!) I won't apologize as planned (as I don't very seriously think Jimmy is a professional bullshitter - but sometimes an impression needs be told...).

But McIntyre definitely is 8) Ask e.g. Michael Mann. This source is truely toxic (not just a bit naive like Dore), a long rotten hopeless brain, thus no neurons or hormones should be wasted on any of its output.

« Last Edit: January 18, 2019, 05:24:07 AM by Martin Gisser »

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #770 on: January 18, 2019, 05:29:13 AM »
Ähmm what I wanted to suggest, seriously: Extend the topic to Good, Bad, and Bullshit journalism.
(For many years I suggested usage of that wörd in climate debate. It took poor Al Gore two Martinis to utter the wörd in closed session at Aspen. Then I stopped listening and suggesting.)


The neocons are full of paleo con men like McIntyre. Funny how some flowerpower people love to jump on their clown bus.

---------
Apropos: Flowers to Susan :)

P.S.:

« Last Edit: January 18, 2019, 05:49:12 AM by Martin Gisser »

Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #771 on: January 18, 2019, 07:07:39 AM »
Kaszeta needs to make clear that he gets paid for that kind of stuff by covert organisations that get paid millions to fuel conflicts with Russia...

And here, my friends, is where the founder of the ASIF sounds exactly like the number one climate science denier and ClimateGate keeper : Stephen McIntyre, in their attack on fact-checkers like (Bellingcat's) Dan Kaszeta.

Just so you know.
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Rob Dekker

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #772 on: January 18, 2019, 07:09:20 AM »
And no, Neven, the Integrity Initiative for which Dan writes is NOT "covert", and neither is it "warmongering" or "parasite" as you suggest.

In fact, it's wide open and clear in its objectives.

https://www.integrityinitiative.net/

They openly state that they counter dis-information and propaganda, and they have plenty of articles that debunk dis- and mis-information. Mostly from Russia, since that's where most dis-information comes from nowadays.

And judging by the amount of Russian attack articles against them (on Sputnik and RT and sites from the PropOrNot list), they are doing something right.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2019, 07:33:08 AM by Rob Dekker »
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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #773 on: January 23, 2019, 09:00:52 AM »
This could go in several threads, but it is a good piece of media so i post here: Giridharadas at the guardian:

"A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken ... now many of the people who broke the progress machine are trying to sell us their services as repairmen."

"many millions of Americans, on the left and right, feel one thing in common: that the game is rigged against people like them."

"the system – in America and across much of the world – has been organised to siphon the gains from innovation upward "

"All around us, the winners in our highly inequitable status quo declare themselves partisans of change. "

"these initiatives are not democratic, nor do they reflect collective problem-solving or universal solutions."

"Those at greatest risk of being resented in an age of inequality are thereby recast as our saviours from an age of inequality."

"the biggest beneficiaries of the status quo should play a leading role in the status quo’s reform."

" are we ready to hand over our future to the plutocratic elites, one supposedly world-changing initiative at a time? Are we ready to call participatory democracy a failure "

"By refusing to risk its way of life, by rejecting the idea that the powerful might have to sacrifice for the common good, it clings to a set of social arrangements that allow it to monopolise progress and then give symbolic scraps to the forsaken – many of whom wouldn’t need the scraps if society were working right."

"doing so not only fails to make things better, but also serves to keep things as they are."

"much of today’s charity and social innovation ... may not be measures of reform so much as forms of conservative self-defence – measures that protect elites from more menacing change."

"Elites ... have found myriad ways to “change things on the surface so that in practice nothing changes at all”. The people with the most to lose from genuine social change have placed themselves in charge of social change"

"Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of a culture that tasks elites with reforming the very systems that have made them and left others in the dust."

"The only thing better than controlling money and power is to control the efforts to question the distribution of money and power. The only thing better than being a fox is being a fox asked to watch over hens."

"Much of what appears to be reform in our time is in fact the defense of stasis. "

Read the whole thing:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/22/the-new-elites-phoney-crusade-to-save-the-world-without-changing-anything

sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #774 on: January 23, 2019, 11:21:31 AM »
Chris Hedges gets full-on 'medieval' with the climate denying 'Christian right' and corporate rape of the planet.

Confronting the Culture of Death
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-hedges/83130/confronting-the-culture-of-death
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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #775 on: January 23, 2019, 11:35:36 AM »

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #776 on: January 25, 2019, 06:56:51 AM »
Engelhardt at tomdispatch on Afghanistan:

" the memory hole that’s swallowed up parts of our all-too-recent history."

"Donald Trump was right that Russia’s Afghan misadventure is a remarkably logical place to start when considering the present American debacle in that same country."

"At the highest levels of the Carter and then the Reagan administrations, top American officials were working assiduously to embroil the Soviets in Afghanistan and would then invest staggering sums in a CIA campaign to fund Islamic extremist guerrillas to keep them there."

Brzezinski:  "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."

"suffering from what General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came to call “the bleeding wound.” "

"Brzezinski and his successors were just a tad too successful -- or, to put it another way, that they lured not one but two empires into their trap; the second being, of course, the American one."

"you might consider starting to refer to Afghanistan -- and I assure you this would be historically accurate (even if you were roundly criticized for it by the Washington punditariat) -- as America’s “bleeding wound.” "

"Because of that sense of amnesia, David Frum, Mr. Axis of Evil, like the rest of his neocon companions has, a decade and a half later, risen again in Washington."

"in twenty-first-century Washington, there’s no way you can be too wrong. "

Read the whole thing:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176519/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_amnesia_in_washington/

sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #777 on: January 26, 2019, 09:57:48 PM »
Interview with Tucker Carlson at salon: might vote for Warren

"Of the top 10 richest zip codes in the country, I think all 10 are now represented by Democrats. I think of the top 50, 42 are represented by Democrats."

"It's really simple. Drive from Washington, D.C., to Pittsburgh, that's all it takes. You stop four times for gas and something to eat, and open your eyes and what are you looking at? I mean, what are you looking at? You're looking at a society that has collapsed ... "

"I think that we talk too much and think too much about Trump, and that is again probably intentional, because it's a way to wade past the actual conversations which are uncomfortable about who is getting rich and who is not."

" the voices calling most loudly for a continued American presence in the Syrian war, which is totally pointless and crazy, actually. in my opinion, are from the left. It's all the chin-tuggers on CNN who are telling you it's irresponsible to leave or we need to support NATO or pick a fight with Russia or defend Latvia against Putin. "

"the effects of Trump getting elected have been a lot more confusing than I think anyone ever would have anticipated. Basically the parties switched sides."

"The goal is the society where parents can stay home with their kids if they choose on one income ... If she ran on that, I would vote for Elizabeth Warren"

Read the whole thing :

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/salon-interview-tucker-carlson-bashes-capitalism-says-he-might-vote-for-elizabeth-warren/

sidd

sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #778 on: January 27, 2019, 08:05:54 AM »
oldie but a goodie: Bertrand Russell in 1952



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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #779 on: January 31, 2019, 07:19:39 AM »
Johnson at truthdig takes a walk down memory lane: NYT as coup cheerleader

"the Times editorial board has supported 10 out of 12 American-backed coups in Latin America ..."

"Covert involvement of the United States, by the CIA or other intelligence services, isn’t mentioned in any of the Times’ editorials on any of the coups. "

" ... things seem to happen in Latin American countries entirely on their own, with outside forces rarely, if ever, mentioned ..."
"
The answer is that rank ideology is baked into the premise. The idea that the U.S. is motivated by human rights and democracy is taken for granted ..."

" the Times cheerled the CIA-sponsored coup against Iran’s President, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953 "

" ... the thing that’s being objected to by the White House, the State Department and their U.S. imperial apparatchiks is the redistributive policies and opposition to the United States’ will ..."

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/your-complete-guide-to-the-n-y-times-support-of-u-s-backed-coups-in-latin-america/

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Susan Anderson

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #780 on: February 01, 2019, 05:38:09 PM »
In my New Yorker (a wonderful US publication) there was a bit about Germans preferring Russia. It comes to a cheerful conclusion. As I look at the website, I quickly found two more articles to waste people's time.

Masha Gessen is a particular favorite, a brilliant Russian lesbian with a tolerant and eccentric point of view.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-trump-russia-investigation-and-the-mafia-state

Trump Lost the Shutdown, But At Least God Made Him President, and He’s Building That Wall https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trump-lost-the-shutdown-but-at-least-god-made-him-president-and-hes-building-that-wall

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/28/how-a-teens-death-has-become-a-political-weapon
Quote
In recent months, she has shared calls for Merkel to leave office, memes portraying Vladimir Putin as a protector of decent Germans, and a string of posts by a newly founded association called Jews in the Alternative for Germany.

Susan Anderson

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #781 on: February 01, 2019, 07:41:38 PM »
Masha Gessen is brilliant (link above)! Here's some of her take which may reconcile some of the opposing views of our otherwise well-intentioned colleagues:

Quote
What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power. Instead, it is an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate. What unites Yanukovych, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Stone, WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange, the Russian troll factory, the Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and his partners in crime, the “Professor” (whose academic credentials are in doubt), and the “Female Russian National” (who appears to have fraudulently presented herself as Putin’s niece) is that they are all crooks and frauds. This is not a moral assessment, or an attempt to downplay their importance. It is an attempt to stop talking in terms of states and geopolitics and begin looking at Mafias and profits.

The Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar, who created the concept of the “post-Communist mafia state,” has just finished editing a new collection of articles called “Stubborn Structures: Reconceptualizing Post-Communist Regimes” .... Magyar describes the Mafia state as one run by a “patron” and his “court”—put another way, the boss and his clan—who appropriate public resources and the institutions of the state for their private use and profit. When I talked to Magyar on the phone on Monday, he told me that Trump is “like a Mafia boss without a Mafia. Trump cannot transform the United States into a Mafia state, of course, but he still acts like a Mafia boss.” Putin, on the other hand, “is a Mafia boss with a real Mafia, which has turned the whole state into a criminal state.” Still, he said, “the behavior at the top is the same.”

The Mafia state is efficient in its own way. It does not take over all state institutions, but absorbs only the ones necessary for extracting profit. Some structures therefore continue to work as though they were part of a normal state.

Quote
A Mafia state, on the other hand, acts only in the personal profit-seeking interests of the clan. “That’s not a deviation,” Magyar said. “It’s a substantive, structural characteristic of the state. The state itself, at the top, works as a criminal organization.”

When members of the American media cover the story of Russian meddling, they implicitly portray Russia as a normal state, and the influence operation as an undertaking of the state aimed at furthering Russia’s national interests. This strikes Russians as absurd. ....

By the metrics of a Mafia state, though, the Trump Presidency has yielded great results for Russia. A Mafia boss craves respect, loyalty, and perceived power. Trump’s deference to Putin and the widespread public perception of Putin’s influence over Trump have lifted Putin’s stature beyond what I suspect could have been his wildest dreams. As happens in a Mafia state, most of the benefit accrues to the patron personally. But some of the profit goes to the clan. Over the weekend, we learned that the Treasury Department has lifted sanctions on companies that belong to Oleg Deripaska, a member of Putin’s “court” who once lent millions of dollars to Manafort. If a ragtag team employed by or otherwise connected to the Russian Mafia state tried to aid a similar collection of crooks and frauds to elect Trump—as it increasingly looks like they did—then the Deripaska news helps explain their motivations. The story is not that Putin is masterminding a vast and brilliant attack on Western democracy. The story, it appears, is that the Russian Mafia state is cultivating profit-yielding relationships with the aspiring Mafia boss of the U.S. and his band of crooks, subverting democratic institutions in the process.

Neven

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #782 on: February 01, 2019, 09:53:31 PM »
This is much better than the average Russiagate-New-Cold-War-McCarthyite hysteria.
The enemy is within
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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #783 on: February 01, 2019, 11:10:18 PM »
This is much better than the average Russiagate-New-Cold-War-McCarthyite hysteria.
Because who would know more about criminal hierarchy in a post Soviet State than a politician attempting to advance his own position in a post Soviet State. ::)
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Martin Gisser

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #784 on: February 02, 2019, 01:20:30 AM »
This is much better than the average Russiagate-New-Cold-War-McCarthyite hysteria.
What's the difference?

Maybe I've watched one Masha Gessen interview too many (e.g. on DemocracyNow). When I say "Putin" resp. "Russia" I refer to the boss resp. his organization. Hysterical language?

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #785 on: February 02, 2019, 01:32:37 AM »
Lionel Shriver at harpers on disappearance through disapproval: the mechanics of erasure

"it’s not enough to punish transgressors merely by cutting off the source of their livelihoods, turning them into social outcasts, and truncating their professional futures. You have to destroy their pasts. "

"Culprits are sentenced to cultural erasure."

"The contemporary impulse to rebuke disgraced creators by vanishing their work from the cultural marketplace exhibits a mean-­spiritedness, a vengefulness even, as well as an illogic. "

"Severing ties even to an artist’s output also provides cultural middlemen a precious opportunity for public moral posturing, to the benefit of the brand. Erasure is also a form of rewriting history—a popular impulse of late. In this touched-­up version of events, we were never taken in by these disgusting specimens. In the historical rewrite, there was always something fishy about Bill Cosby; he was never America’s dad."

"Do we really require the people who make our movies, fiction, and artworks to be above reproach in their personal lives? If so, how are they to understand their own material—in the main, the lewd, scheming, cheating, thieving, covetous, malign, murderous, hateful, and rapacious human race? I worry that requiring artists to be perfect means either no art or bad art."

" the distributor makes that decision for us. As if we need to be protected. (Or the distributor needs to protect itself—from association with sin. Clearly the real motivation here is to appear immaculate.) In truth, we’re being punished too, along with the alleged perpetrators. "

Read the whole thing:

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/02/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-2/

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #786 on: February 02, 2019, 07:40:58 AM »
Theater as propaganda: Stoller at the baffler on Hamilton as dangerous myth

"Miranda’s play is one of the most brilliant propaganda pieces in theatrical history. And its construction and success tell us a lot about our current political moment. Before it was even written, the play was nurtured at the highest levels of the political establishment."

" a status symbol within the Democratic establishment, offering them the chastened consolation that they might still claim solidarity with the nascent American democracy of the eighteenth century that’s stubbornly eluded them in the present-day political scene."

"you would think that he had fought to enlarge the democratic rights of all Americans. But Alexander Hamilton simply didn’t believe in democracy, which he labeled an American “disease.” He fought—with military force—any model of organizing the American political economy that might promote egalitarian politics. He was an authoritarian, and proud of it."

"His central role in founding both the financial infrastructure of Wall Street and a nascent military establishment (which supplanted the colonial system of locally controlled democratic militias) was rooted in his self-appointed crusade to undermine the ability of ordinary Americans to govern themselves."

"Indeed, the shifting popular image of Hamilton is itself a gauge of the relative strength of democratic institutions"

" By 1947, a post-war congressional report titled “Fascism in Action” listed Hamilton as one intellectual inspiration for the Nazi regime. Hamilton’s name practically became an epithet among Democrats of the New Deal era"

"Hamilton the play is not the real story of Alexander Hamilton; rather, as historian Nancy Isenberg has noted, it’s a revealing parable about the politics of the finance-friendly Obama era. "

" the Federalist Party was structured as an alliance between bondholders and military elites, who would use a strong central government as a mechanism to extract money "

"Hamilton was simply determined to shore up the enduring basis of a financial and industrial empire"

"Hamilton and his mentor Morris wanted to insulate decision-making from democratic influence. Morris told Congress that redistributing wealth upward was essential so that the wealthy could acquire “those Funds which are necessary to the full Exercise of their Skill and Industry,” and thereby promote progress"

"Hamilton wanted a large permanent debt; he wanted it financed so his backers could extract a steady income from the people by way of federal taxes. "

"In the 1780s and 1790s, Hamilton won this battle, and the effects were catastrophic ... an economic contraction similar in size to that of the Great Depression, with a foreclosure crisis as severe."

"Hamilton used indefinite detention, mass arrests, and round-ups; seized property (including food stores for the winter); and had soldiers administer loyalty oaths. "

"  liberals unhappy with the outcome of the 2016 election tried to convince members of the Electoral College to overturn Trump’s victory, and titled their project “Hamilton electors.” "

"the more extreme wing of the Federalist Party, which simply tried to have the election overturned, risking civil war to do so."

"His life sheds light on some deep-rooted anti-democratic forces that have always existed in America, and in particular, on Wall Street. "

"One of Hamilton’s biggest fans is Tim Geithner, the man who presided over the financial crisis and the gargantuan bank bailouts during the Obama presidency."

"As economist Simon Johnson pointed out ... what the bailouts truly represented was the seizure of political power by a small group of American financiers."

"The Obama era looks like an echo of the Federalist power grabs of the 1780s and 1790s, both in its enrichment and glorification of financial elites and its open disdain for anything resembling true economic democracy. The Obama political elite, in other words, celebrates Hamilton not in spite of Hamilton’s anti-democratic tendencies, but because of them."

"the play Hamilton is a feat of political alchemy—as is the stunningly successful marketing campaign surrounding it. But our generation’s version of Hamilton adulation isn’t all that different from the version that took hold in the 1920s"

"Hamilton is a great musical. The songs are catchy. The lyrics are beautiful. But the agenda is hidden, because in America, no political leader, not even Donald Trump, can credibly come right out and pronounce democracy a bad thing and agitate for rule by big finance. And the reason for that is that Alexander Hamilton, despite his success in structuring Wall Street, lost the battle against American democracy. "

I'm not sure that Hamilton lost. The usa is very far from a democracy, more accurately described as a plutocracy, just as Hamilton would have wished. But read the whole thing:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hamilton-hustle-stoller

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kassy

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #787 on: February 02, 2019, 06:02:32 PM »
Quote
What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power.

It´s 2019 and american democracy has long been subverted by hostile powers from within. Do keep worrying about russians and never ever wonder why there were no intercept fighters on standby on 9/11 or why most metal was scrapped in record time which is technically destruction of evidence.

Oh and also never think clearly about the amount of dollars you spent in the military compared to the social budget or meaningful infrastructure (also compare to the amount the rest of the world spends). What can you do with billions of missing dollars? Nothing...they are gone and that should piss people of but you prefer your political soap opera.

The politicians won´t care until the people do. You don´t get democracy for free.
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #788 on: February 03, 2019, 10:03:19 PM »
Anderson Cooper, perfectly channeling the conditioned thinking that protects the status quo:

The enemy is within
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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #789 on: February 06, 2019, 09:14:33 AM »
I also liked this quote towards the end:

Quote
It's cartoon now. It's cartoonland. And again, I want to point out that - you can bring this up in your own conversations - when it comes to Venezuela, Trump is backing the coup and wants to overthrow Maduro in Venezuela and take the oil, and Russia is stopping him. Now, if Trump is a Putin puppet, why is he opposing Russia in Venezuela? So, if you're for overthrowing Maduro, you agree with Trump. Trump is a Putin puppet, you already admit that. So, how could you be going along with a Putin puppet? And if you're against Trump in Venezuela, you're on the side of Russia, so now you're a Putin puppet. So, no matter which side of that equation you're on, you are a Putin puppet.

So, can we stop this now? Of course, we won't. But that's the easiest way to reveal that this Russiagate stuff is BS, and people pushing it aren't thinking. The people who are pushing Russiagate... Again, I'll explain to you what it is. Their lizard brain gets excited by Donald Trump, and their critical thinking skills go right out the window.

Some of the smartest people I know, Rachel Maddow, she's really smart. She's a maniac, she's worse than Glenn Beck used to be with his chalkboard and saying 'Muslims are coming, Muslims are coming'. She's doing it, she's saying it's Russians.
The enemy is within
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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #790 on: February 06, 2019, 06:09:21 PM »
The media is unhinged on both sides. I appreciate sites like this that drop nuggets of truth amongst the maelstrom of BS.

b_lumenkraft

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #791 on: February 07, 2019, 02:21:25 PM »
Holy forking sun of a moly!

FOX NEWS REPORTING ON CLIMATE CHANGE!!

Link >> https://video.foxnews.com/v/5999316942001/#sp=show-clips

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #792 on: February 07, 2019, 09:46:39 PM »
Joe Scarborough: 'Vladimir Putin considers America to be an enemy'. I don't believe Putin ever said that. So, either Morning Joe can read minds, or he's just pushing a new (cold) war.

But anyway, Tulsi Gabbard gets some air time on MSNBC, so they can attack her face to face:



If this was journalism, it would be bad journalism.
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sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #793 on: February 08, 2019, 12:32:14 AM »
Prof. Lukin takes a thoughtful look back: paying for past sins

"Many Russians who advocated democratic reforms in the early 1990s and for whom both the Yeltsin kleptocracy and the Communist dictatorship were anathema now have reason to blame Talbott and his like-minded associates for contributing to authoritarianism in Russia. Those policies served to discredit Russia’s pro-Western forces completely ..."

"Putin was not initially opposed to the West. Not only did he make several significant concessions to the United States shortly after coming to power ..."

"Putin went through the same stages as Yeltsin had: from hopes of establishing equal cooperation with the United States to the understanding that it was impossible and transitioning to a more independent course. Gorbachev went through a similar process, but only after he was no longer in power. Today, Gorbachev is extremely skeptical about the United States. The similar evolution in the views of three initially pro-Western Moscow leaders shows that it is nearly impossible to establish equal cooperation with the United States because Washington does not, in fact, accept this concept. "

"Like the “true communism” that never actually emerged, Western ideology anticipates a “liberal world order” that has never actually existed, but that the United States and its allies—as the global avant-garde—hope to create."

"the real Russia turned out to be very different from the Russia of their imaginations. In fact, the same can be said about the real America ..."

Read the whole thing:

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-united-states-got-russia-wrong-42977

Prof. Lukin is kinder than I would be.

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #794 on: February 12, 2019, 11:03:13 PM »
Bamford has a profile on the Butina case at the New Republic: it was a stitch up

"When I asked Frank Figliuzzi, the former head of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, about the prosecution’s conduct, he was angry. “I am troubled and hope there is a full inquiry,” he told me. “This is disturbing. The question is whether this is convenient ineptitude or something far deeper.”
 "

" “They manipulated the evidence,” was the opinion of a former assistant U.S. attorney familiar with the Washington, D.C., office. It was a place he had spent many years prosecuting cases. “The government is basically calling her a whore in a public filing.... I think it was an attempt to influence media coverage.” He added, “This seems like somebody panicked, they moved too early, now they’re trying to figure out what to do.”
 "

" It is also another example of the media marching in formation with the government, as it did in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. “I think journalism skepticism stops at whatever a prosecutor says,” the former assistant U.S. attorney told me.  "

" A senior CIA official who held one of the highest jobs in the agency’s Clandestine Service, and who worked closely with the FBI on many spy cases, offered a cynical view of the bureau’s counterintelligence work. “They want to generate headlines. They don’t care if the information is credible or not,” "

https://newrepublic.com/article/153036/maria-butina-profile-wasnt-russian-spy

Bamford has been writing about US intelligence agencies for decades. Anything by him is worth reading.

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b_lumenkraft

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #795 on: February 13, 2019, 06:35:10 PM »
Michael Mann on the The Majority Report!



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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #796 on: February 15, 2019, 07:40:32 AM »
Brana at blackagendareport on futility of reform within Democratic Party:

“What if we try to get a strong platform out of the Democratic Party?”

"... the Party just scrapped the platform passed by the delegates ..."

“What if we try to elect a DNC chair to take over the Party apparatus?”

"Party donors supported Tom Perez, so that’s who we got. "

“How about if we replace the DNC members and get a majority?”

"the Party simply picked out the progressives and purged them "

 “What if we try to reform the presidential primary process ahead of 2020?”

"The Party stacked it with a bunch of consultants, corporate lobbyists and people who participated in rigging the 2016 primary ...  gave all 30 seats on the Rules and Bylaws Committee to establishment loyalists ... the DNC ended up expanding its control over the primary process."

"It kept closed primaries to shut out independent voters ... kept joint fundraising agreements between the DNC and presidential campaigns, which allow establishment candidates to control the Party ... slashed the number of states that hold caucuses, which favor progressive candidates ... refused to eliminate superdelegates, moving them to the second ballot at the convention but reserving the right to force a second ballot if they choose ...  introduced a loyalty oath that allows the DNC chair to deny progressives access to the ballot if he deems that the candidate has been insufficiently “faithful” to the Party during their life."

“Well now we're at the midterms so let's try to elect some progressive Democrats and take power legislatively.”

"When the dust settled in November of 2018, it turned out that the “Blue Wave” had been a corporate wave. "

“In that case, let’s replace Pelosi as speaker of the House. "

" ... the progressives capitulated ..."

I am not sure that the Democratic Party is unreformable. But read the whole thing:

https://www.blackagendareport.com/left-must-finally-break-democrats

sidd

Martin Gisser

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #797 on: February 18, 2019, 08:10:01 PM »
Jimmy Dore loves BS, fails to check sources and facts:





--------
Meanwhile I have a WaPo subscription. The Dave Weigel piece mentioned above has a link to an RT piece and explains why it is BS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/20/the-seth-rich-conspiracy-shows-how-fake-news-still-works/
Required reading for those who haven't yet sorted out the DNC-Bernie thing - and more evidence for my recent statement here about spreading Trumputin propaganda.
Quotes later.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2019, 08:30:36 PM by Martin Gisser »

sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #798 on: February 19, 2019, 05:41:51 AM »
Greg Grandin at the london review of books: densely argued historical perspective on sovereignty in the americas

" Woodrow Wilson’s Latin American experts, as they prepared for the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, ranked countries ‘as mature, immature or criminal’ and came up with a series of tests ‘to determine whether they are yet ready to be allowed to conduct their own affairs in a world to be governed by reason’. "

"Such questions are based on the premise that only a morally responsible nation could be sovereign. The definition of morality changed according to circumstance: either it meant the ability to exercise effective control over a population; or it meant democratic or procedural legitimacy. Which standard Washington used – control or legitimacy – depended on which was best able to protect foreign private property."

"American exceptionalism was good to justify US intervention, but not good when deployed, by other kinds of Americans, to contain interventionism."

"Washington’s decision to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in 1986 – in response to a ruling that the US had to pay Nicaragua billions of dollars for laying mines in its waters and conducting an illegal war of aggression – was a ‘watershed moment’  "

"The 1989 invasion of Panama had a transformative effect on international law. "

"Between 1898 and 1994, Washington overthrew at least 41 governments in Latin America."

" The international community returned – in Iraq and beyond – to an ethic of interventionism in the name of a higher purpose."

"There is an ethical and logical consistency to interventionism: a moral common sense that, just as borders shouldn’t divide markets or capital, they shouldn’t protect repressors and illegitimate governments. The world should do something to stop barbarism. The rhetorical consistency of such common sense only amplifies the hypocrisy and double standards – not to mention the often disastrous consequences – of its application. "

"Economic globalisation promised a prosperous, borderless world, even as its promoters signed a raft of treaties that freed capital but effectively criminalised labour mobility. Humanitarian interventionism justifies itself by a universal ideal morally superior to the concept of national sovereignty, but then picks its targets – Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and now Venezuela – according to criteria that have to do with something other than universalism."

Read the whole thing:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/2019/02/08/greg-grandin/whats-at-stake-in-venezuela

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sidd

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Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism
« Reply #799 on: February 19, 2019, 05:45:47 AM »
Hedges at truthdig: infantilization of dialogue

I will give one xtended quote from the article, but do read the whole thing:

--
Postman, in his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” writes that after the development of the telegraph, “News took the form of slogans, to be noted with excitement, to be forgotten with dispatch.” Arguing that the 19th-century invention is the basis for communication in the digital age, he says, “Its language was also entirely discontinuous. One message had no connection to that which preceded or followed it. Each ‘headline’ stood alone as its own context. The receiver of the news had to provide a meaning if he could. The sender was under no obligation to do so. And because of all this, the world as depicted by the telegraph began to appear unmanageable, even undecipherable. The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. ‘Knowing’ the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative.”

Those who seek to communicate outside of digital structures to question or challenge the dominant narrative, to deal in ambiguity and nuance, to have discussions rooted in verifiable fact and historical context, are becoming incomprehensible to most of modern society. As soon as they employ a language that is not grounded in the dominant clichés and stereotypes, they are not understood. Television, computers and smartphones have addicted a generation and conditioned it to talk and think in the irrational, incoherent baby talk it is fed day after day. This cultural, historical, economic and social illiteracy delights the ruling elites ... "
--

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/worshipping-the-electronic-image/

sidd