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Companies learning to flip elections perfected their tactics in smaller or emerging countries, such as Latvia, Trinidad, or Nigeria, before turning to markets involving elections in developed nations. Paul Mason suggests that while at the moment there is a lot of angst from people being reminded of how their harvested data is used, it is really the union of private espionage, cracking, and "black ops" capabilities that should be setting off alarms.
Disturbingly, both CA and SCL have high-level contracts with governments, giving them access to secret intelligence both in the US and the UK. SCL is on List X, which allows it to hold British secret intelligence at its facilities.
It now appears that techniques they used in Ukraine and Eastern Europe to counteract Russian influence, and against Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, were then used to influence elections in the heart of Western democracy itself.
Let's be clear about what we're facing. A mixture of free market dogmatism plus constraints imposed by the rule of law has led, over the past decades, to the creation of an alternative, private, secret state.
When it was only focused on the enemies and rivals of the West, or hapless politicians in the global south, nobody minded. Now it is being used as a weapon to tear apart democracy in Britain and the US we care — and rightly so.
From New Statesman: We need to destroy the election-rigging industry before it destroys us
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:42PM (4 children)
Foreign meddling in elections needs to end, shut down AIPAC!
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:13PM (3 children)
Also, prosecute sanctuary cities, deport illegals and build the wall! Demographic rigging is the worst form of election rigging.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:58PM (2 children)
You are a jackass. That is all.
(Score: -1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:29PM (1 child)
Thanks for calling me stupid rather than calling me racist, the slurs are still inaccurate but are at least becoming more polite. Clinton, Obama and cryin' Chuck Schumer voted for the Secure Fence Act in 2006, are they jackasses too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:07PM
I am admiring your other post's "-1, Insightful".
I did not think it was possible! I guess we all can be negatively positive in our own way.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Virindi on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:50PM (39 children)
Oh noes, the evil free market, and, EVEN WORSE, the rule of law! If only we could get rid of such pesky things as "freedom of speech", "freedom of association", "due process", and "commerce", the world would be perfect.
Is anyone being paid for their vote? No, not here at least.
Is anyone being blackmailed for their vote? No, not here at least.
Is anyone rigging the vote counts? To some extent, but progress is being made in that regard (paper ballots are back!).
No, what they are worried about is propaganda. Propaganda is not a weapon. What they are saying is that the people are too stupid to pick the right person (defined as someone those in power think is appropriate) unless the message the population is allowed to see is carefully controlled. That is not freedom, folks, that is despotism.
Focus on securing the actual voting process, such as vote secure counting, preventing intimidation, etc. The rest is up to the voter. Don't whine if you don't like who they chose.
(Score: 5, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:36PM (34 children)
> Propaganda is not a weapon.
A little thing called History would like a word with you...
(Score: 5, Informative) by edIII on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:42PM (7 children)
He has a point though. Propaganda is only a weapon because apparently we are no longer the educated and sophisticated population we project ourselves to be. Some fake information, and existing unrest and negative sentiment, and you can steer the election. All of that makes us look very bad, as if we no longer have the critical thinking skills, or the ability to perform research.
I'm old enough to remember a time when going to the library, using the index, and collecting information was a real skill. A valuable skill. Now you just ask the Google questions and then proceed to give the results far more validity and respect then they deserve.
If Facebook rigged the election, it can only be because we devolved into the stupid deplorable idiots that can be manipulated by clearly fake information about a fucking pizza place.
Still, after all that, the government and the Elites take all of the rest of the blame, if not the majority of it. Trump was chosen by *roughly* half of the electorate that even bothered to vote. Not all of them were duped, but greatly disillusioned about their own government.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:51AM (5 children)
The point you're missing is that it doesn't need to be fake in order to be propaganda. Some of the most effective propaganda comes from just shining a flashlight on things strategically.
Sort of like how American history has largely been purged of all the times that there was significant racism directed at white people. The Irish, Jews and Italians commonly were boxers during the first half of the 20th century for a reason. They were all discriminated against harshly, but you'd think that was never real because people of color are now the ones that are defining racism in ways that are deeply problematic by making so much noise that nobody pays attention to all the other groups that were oppressed but that society no longer considers to be vermin.
Yes, it is true that slavery was a thing for most of the 19th century and pockets existed into the 20th century, but it's misleading to claim that white people were a homogeneous group that tolerated each other when the historical record is pretty clear that the concept of white people as a group wasn't something that was a thing in the US until relatively recently. But it doesn't stop people of color from blaming it all on whitey and refusing to do anything on their end to not reinforce stereotypes that they don't like. Sort of like how the Irish got together and decided that it wasn't good to keep reinforcing stereotypes that they didn't like and by the early 20th century you were as likely to think of them as patriotic police officers rather than white nigger, simians.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:09AM
Interesting that close to that exact phrase was used by one of the greatest masters of propaganda of the 20th century, who commented that "man muss die Dinge so beleuchten" (one must shine a light on things in a specific manner) that the common folk would agree with you. I can't remember the exact quote, but that phrase stuck out.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:59AM (2 children)
Really? Where exactly did you get that idea?
I'm sorry to spoil your little "whites were so good to the poor little black people. They just took them right into their houses and begged them to fuck their daughters!" buillshit narrative.
For pretty much the entire 18th and 19th centuries, the white *abolitionists* overwhelmingly wanted to repatriate all blacks back to Africa. After the civil war, a large majority of white Americans still favored repatriation.
Why do you think Liberia exists? That was in 1820. And additional ventures took free blacks to Haiti and Sierra Leone [kalamu.com].
The overwhelming majority of non-slave owning whites (including most abolitionists) wanted to keep the US free from blacks and other non-protestant, non-europeans. Which is, of course, why the Irish and Italians (catholics), the jews, the Chinese, the Japanese and anyone else who wasn't white, protestant and of European extraction were discriminated against, both informally and legally. And the blacks were beneath all of those groups in the eyes of the white majority, well into the second half of the 20th century.
Abraham Lincoln himself frequently said that while he didn't want slavery, he didn't want to live among blacks either, and favored repatriation/re-colonization.
As well as earlier cases smacking down the blacks, in 1896, SCOTUS in Plessy v. Ferguson [wikipedia.org]Plessy v. Ferguson ruled that:
If you want a more immediate discussion of this, check out CSPAN's recent review [c-span.org] of the case.
In this case, SCOTUS codified the horrendous Jim Crow laws [wikipedia.org] and giving the imprimatur of the federal government to completely segregate blacks and whites. While the most egregious, blatant, government-sponsored forms of segregation were *mostly* stopped no more than 50 years ago.
And you wonder why black people are really touchy about this stuff? Many places are still highly segregated, and blacks are subject to much more police harassment, discrimination in jobs, housing and a raft of other ways.
And some asshole like you comes out and spews a bunch of complete bullshit that doesn't comport *in any way* with reality, then gets modded +5 'insightful'?
You're spouting off with absolutely no facts to back you up. Why don't you study a little history? No wonder blacks are pissed off.
But it's so much easier to get folks to nod sagely and agree with your completely bigoted, and completely false, account of history. Fewer folks would do so if you just wandered around talking about how inferior the niggers are.
Either way, you're woefully misinformed, a bigoted scumbag or both. Probably both.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:23PM
Irrespective of all the woe-is-me bitching that "African" Americans seem to promulgate, I have yet to see any of them to scramble for tickets back to the motherland where they seem to think they had it so well if the white man had not stripped them of their peaceful, Utopian existence. Victimhood seems to be the only industry they excel at. It's time to grow up and stop acting like a petulant child, and maybe things would go better for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @05:01AM
Let's not forget that there is physically difference between Europe and Asia apart from color of people living there. And it is purely an invention of the whites, nobody in rest of the world bothered to create a place for people based on color.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @04:53AM
Italians are about as White as Arabs are Black. White is Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic. Spaniards aren't White either; they're Hispanic.
Not sure what you'd call the Portugese though. The Census Bureau tried to classify them as Hispanic, but the backlash was deafening. Guess they get their own designation (which Brazilian is generally lumped in with).
If all you mean is European, say European.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:04AM
It's still a valuable skill, only now its "fact-checking the public-outrage clickbait you've just read to see what the real story is". I have a friend who's a refugee from a close-to-failed state who occasionally forwards me "look what they've done now!" type news stories. In every single case, without exception, a few quick checks on primary sources revealed that the outrage-generating clickbait was anything ranging from a gross misrepresentation of what happened through to outright fabrications, reports of "events" for which there's no evidence that they ever occurred in any primary source. That doesn't mean to say that bad shit isn't happening there, but so far all the horror stories I've been forwarded have been bogus. What's scary is that this junk is displacing the balanced reporting on the issue, to the extent that it's almost instantly dismissed because it's not full of shock-and-horror outrage reporting so they're obviously hiding the truth on behalf of sinister parties yet to be determined.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Virindi on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:55PM (25 children)
Saying propaganda is a weapon is saying that the population is too stupid to determine truth from fiction, and that government censors must do it for us.
But the whole point of elected government is that the population is more trustworthy to make such a determination than some smaller authority. Otherwise that authority would choose the leaders.
If you do not trust the population, you do not believe in elected government.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:53PM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure you can easily find non-censorship examples of propaganda painting the truth with a specific agenda.
The facts described on the front page of Fox News are often the same as the facts described on the front page of MSNBC.
The cop who put a couple bullets in an innocent's chest IS the cop that was told to rush in and thought there was a gun.
The kid had a clock, which did look like it was a bomb.
The pizza parlor's basement did not exist, but if it did, Hillary would have certainly needed to be stopped by a brave man rising against trading children there for prostitution (Ok, fine, it doesn't always work).
Propaganda isn't just lies. It's about presenting The Truth that you want people to hear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:33PM
That was the original meaning of alternative facts, which was twisted and scoffed at. The MSM try to post information like there is just one story and these are the facts, while the truth is it is almost impossible to tell a story without putting a slant on it. Take the current cops shooting unarmed man. Interview family and people who knew him and you have slanted in favor against the cops. Interview the cops and police chief and you have slanted the other way. interview both, and the order of the interviews and connecting words determine the slant. And the media have given up on maintaining as close to middle reporting as possible due to consumer requirements. Nobody wants it. We want propaganda machines.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:09PM (14 children)
That's kind of like saying the population is to stupid to avoid eating lead, and that government enforcers have to go around checking all our food for us. Its not, that we're too stupid, its that it would take an inordinate amount of time to personally check all the food, so it makes sense to outsource it, and to have regulated channels I can rely on where the food is safe. So that I don't have to worry about eating lead at every meal.
Likewise, its not that the population is "too stupid" to determine truth from fiction -- but its a LOT of work. We are human beings with limited resources already working jobs and managing families and liesure time. So we intelligently outsource the gathering and processing of news and other information so that we can spend a small amount of time efficiently consuming and processing it. It would be far to time consuming for me to personally verify the fact of every single thing that is reported. I'd barely get anything done even if I did it as a full time job. So I either have to operate under the presumption that all these feeds are honest and accurate, or I have to ignore them as worthless.
Either solution is valid, but if I ignore them as worthless, then I am left with no information upon which to form opinions beyond what I see myself on my way home from work. That's not enough to go on to decide which politicians have the right approach to immigration, or north korea, or anything. So that's not very useful.
That leaves me having to presume the news feeds are honest and accurate. As this iscritical to ability to form informed opinions, then like food inspectors check for lead, I would definitely want to protect these channels to ensure they are not corrupted cess pools of targeted misinformtion. I would want them held to standards.
You call them "censors" with the implication they are bad, but do hold such a dim view of the people who test the food and water supply of lead ? Or are they just evil government 'food censors' deciding what you are allowed to eat?
I am optimistic the population will collectively make reasonable choices given accurate information to work from. And I think it serves democracy to ensure the population is not deliberately fed misinformation specifically to corrupt it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:34PM (9 children)
Free speech is a fundamental right whereas lead in food and water is not. Your attempted equivalence here is absolutely 100% false.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:31AM (4 children)
No it's not. Lead is poisonous. Spreading lies to corrupt the American elections, and therefore democracy is treasonous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:16AM (3 children)
And spreading truth, such as Hilary Clinton emails, is patriotic even if the patriot is an alien.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:00AM (1 child)
This is one nice recent example of frugal use of truth as a propaganda : where are the trump emails?
That's why some oath requires telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:27PM
Is this some of that whadaboutism I constantly hearing the left complain about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:42AM
I hope you meant DNC emails, where real conspiracy to commit fraud was found, and what mass media is still trying to cover up with Russia! Russia! Russia! Hillary's emails are a bullshit issue. And both factions of the corrupt party are still getting full public support. We are not making any progress on this issue, in fact, we are falling backwards, badly.
If you want an honest media you can use your government to create a public channel. It will be as honest as you demand it to be, just like everything about about your government. When it is run by crooks, it is because you vote for and reelect crooks. don't try to blame 'propaganda'. You believe because you want to believe.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:37AM (2 children)
"Free speech is a fundamental right whereas lead in food and water is not. Your attempted equivalence here is absolutely 100% false."
I'd argue that the equivalence is better than you think. A lot better. I'd agree 'free speech' is a fundamental right. I'd also argue that one should have the right to put whatever one wants into their own body; and the implicit self determination of that is just a much a fundamental right. So the 'attempted equivalence' is 100% accurate.
Further, the analogy carries -- while i think I should have the fundamental right to put anything into my body I want, I *also* don't want lead poisoning. If someone wants to poison themselves they should seek help, but they are free to procure lead and inject into themselves if they are so inclined. However if they don't want to poison themselves, as collectively most of us do not, we can and should give agency to government to act on our behalf in this matter, to prevent unwanted poison from reaching us.
With speech, likewise, I think you should be able to say whatever you want. But I don't need or want your un-sourced, unverified, deliberately malicious propaganda nonsense presented to me as news and again would like to give agency to the government to act on my behalf to help me avoid that poisoned information coming to me in my news feed as bona fide news. IF I feel like reading random nonsense, then I'll seek out your conspiracy site (I've amused myself reading moonhoaxers and flat earthers gibberish on more than one occasion). But I don't want that coming at me undistinguished and indistinguishable from real sourced and vetted news. I value well sourced facts presented neutrally with minimal bias. And I value diverse viewpoints in editorial and opinion. But I don't value deliberate misinformation and outright lies presented as news, and I don't value opinions presented as news. There are standards we can have, and news organizations have in the past been reasonably noble in their pursuit of those ideals. The modern news networks aren't too bad, even fox news 'news' is reasonable. But garbage like Sean Hannity, like infowars, the alt-right, the stuff emerging as alt-left... it doesn't belong on the same shelf.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:56AM (1 child)
All well and good to call out specific programs you feel are garbage, while you wolf down huge helpings of liberal claptrap without a whimper. But your seemingly calling on government to stand guard over the news exibits a level of naievity that can scarsely be believed.
Are ye daft Mon?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:42AM
I said I watched fox news *news*, and that it was fine. And I consume other conservative media as well. If I had a criticism of CNN its that its gone overboard on stormy daniels and that's excessive... but fox is almost burying the story and that's worse. Meanwhile the 'commentators' like hannity and carlson outright speculate and lie to my face.
I don't dispute there's liberal claptrap, and I'm happy to call it out when i see it. But its not as bad as the conservative claptrap out there. (Although, and I mentioned this in my post, an equally ridiculous alt-left is emerging.)
I *am* not calling on the government to vet the news. Nor am i calling on government to decide what is newsworthy. But I am calling on government to help be part of the solution to the problem we have now of news and fake-news being given equal billing without any means to differentiate them. Just like truth in labelling laws -- the consumer has a right to know what they are getting. The governement can help regulate this so that shit on facebook isn't competing for credibility with real actual well sourced news on equal footing.
I shouldn't be allowed to call ground racoon and sawdust '100% grade A beef'. Why should the information equivalent to ground racoon and pulp be allowed to pretend its real news?
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:49PM
1. No.
Both are regulated by laws. Local laws vary - free speech in North Korea is not a fundamental right. In the USA, an extension to the country's constitution happens to say something about free speech. That does not make it a fundamental right - except, perhaps, in the USA.
Then again: the USA is the only country I know that has free speech zones [wikipedia.org], so I very much doubt that free speech is a fundamental right in the USA.
2. As pointed out already: The right to put whatever you like into your body - food, poisons, lead, bullets - seems at least as fundamental as the right to say whatever you like.
There are legal restrictions on polluting the pool of fresh air or the pool of potable water. The argument here is that there equally should be restrictions on polluting the news-pool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:35PM (3 children)
How many people took the tide pod challenge or feasted on the cotton candy in the attic? You cannot legislate against outright stupidity without infringing on the freedom of the majority.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:47AM (2 children)
Nobody ate a tide pod thinking it was something else. People weren't fooled into eating a tide pod. They knew what they were doing.
People ARE misled by the crapflood of fake hysterical news; and there's so much of it that not only does confuse and confound people, but it crowds out real news. So that even if people ARE making the effort to filter out garbage, their still less informed due to the opportunity cost of filtering out that garbage; leaving less time and energy to spend on what is real.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:46AM (1 child)
If that is the case, you've disproven your own argument.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday March 29 2018, @02:08AM
Despite it going viral, the number of people who have actually eaten tide pods is pretty small. And the majority of them were still kids (teens yes, but still kids), and not old enough to vote.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:01AM (4 children)
I dunno: that sounds like propaganda to me.
The U.S. spies on its' people, spies on its' neighbours and allies.
The US gov. is slowly (not so slowly?) taking away all of your rights and can easily take you away to Guantanamo without any counsil or without letting any of your family know where you are.
The media is becoming more and more controlled by a few who could EASILY be controlled by the government ("what do you mean? we've not done a THOROUGH AUDIT on you and your companies this year? Or the year before? Or the year before??? I guess we might have to!
./.// oh, and by the way, you might start having computer problems: the NSA say you're about to have some ongoing and major hacker/cracker siti-ations.
Oh yeah... also, any etc we may need to pressure you with."
The US is heading towards a dark place where propaganda is your only means of news. How are you going to be able to tell what is the truth and what is not when the only news you get is the governments truth.
AND, when the only people you have to vote for are people like Trump and Hillary... propaganda doesn't really matter: you vote, you lose (unless you're willing to vote for those 'nasty, corrupt, lousey independents' that the 'news' keeps telling you is a bad choice.
Governments USE propaganda because it ABSOLUTELY WORKS (ask the Germans, circa, what, 1930-ish to 1944). YOU may not be a sheeple, but the flock is full of them (notice, again, that Trump and Hillary were the only choices even though they were both about the worst choices you could have been given. Maybe good government is being taken away from you for a purpose (re: bread (but with hold the bread) and CIRCUSES).
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
//:-=|
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:24AM (3 children)
This is absolutely correct, but the Nazis had the honesty to call their Propaganda Ministry The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. [wikipedia.org]
The US government has outsourced their propaganda to the private sector, who have taken the job up with enthusiasm.
Have you ever wondered why the NFL have their "Salute to Service" round, and who pays for it?
Turns out you do [sbnation.com] if you're a US taxpayer. If you're an NFL fan from outside the US, you tend to look at "Salute to Service" as a weird sort of Nuremberg Rally. That's just one example of the propaganda you're subjected to every day.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:56AM (1 child)
Huh, never saw that (I never watched the NFL (ex CFL fan here (Ottawa Roughriders of old (George Brancato, Tony Gabriel) fan here).
America is BIG on propaganda: USA! USA! USA!: That WW2 movie where the Americans took that enigma machine from the sub even though it was really the British who did it, etc etc. Rewrite history.
Yeah, to say propaganda is worthless or useless is kind of dumb when the US is second only to the Nazis.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:50AM
In my view the biggest lesson the US military took out of Vietnam was that they needed to prevent anti-war feeling at home.
They seem to have done a great job of deifying military people to such a degree that any criticism of anything they do seems to fall under the "disrespecting the troops" umbrella and gets shouted down.
It's weird how some US people can't see it, but it seems to have given them a license to wage Forever Wars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:18AM
I just looked at Salute to Service (never seen it before), and you're right, it is a bit like that. The Cathedral of Light was done better though, and I don't quite get the flag dicksize war the different groups seem to be engaging in ("it's half the size of the stadium" / "it fills the stadium" / "it overflows the stadium" / "it covers the city" / "it's coming for us, run, run!").
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:30AM (1 child)
Some food for thought:
On 9/11/01 a group of men, mostly Saudi Arabians, destroyed a couple of buildings at the center of US economic wealth. In retaliation, the US has destroyed two governments, and executed a number of people in other countries, but we have taken no actions at all against Saudi Arabia.
That entire British dossier on Saddam Hussein, yellow cake and all, was entirely fiction, but most of the population of the western world chose to believe all the nonsense in the dossier.
Propaganda works.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:59AM
Damn, you nailed it!
Reading that was AWESOME!
US propaganda, US propaganda, US propaganda!
MAGAwP!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:47PM
I think it's pretty easy to say that the people that own the companies that run our country (US) do not trust the rest of population. Look at our choices for office.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:37PM
FTFY
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:32PM
Yes, and it happens right now.
Are you saying this is not important enough to fight back because the free market fairy may get upset? That fairy won't blink an eye if the media is controlled enough to present a filtered image of the reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NewNic on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:40PM
It's not just propaganda.
They are using non-public information to target and influence individuals.
There is a reason that insider trading is illegal. This is the election equivalent of insider trading.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:04PM
You're jumping right to the conclusion that the only solution is government control of the media. The author of the original article never advanced that position, and neither did anyone here. Thanks for trolling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:00PM
We will certify no election before its time.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:02PM (2 children)
Is any of this stuff half as effective as the voter manipulation from ABC, Disney, NBC, Universal Pictures, CBS, Viacom, CNN, HBO, government owned PBS, BBC, DW, etc? Or the new twitter, Youtube, etc. political censorship? Lets start worrying about the bigger threats, ok?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:46PM
You forgot Al Jazeera, RT, Fox, France24, FoxNews, CCTV, Kyodo, The times of India, AP, AFP, NHK ...
Don't let your hatred of a particular bias blind you.
Read all of the ones we've both listed, and in their commonality, you will see the Truth ... the full unbiased Judeo-Marxo-Illuminati message undelying all "News", brother.
*makes cryptic sign*
*vanishes in a puff of smoke*
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:41PM
How, oh how, did you leave out Facebook?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:09PM
We shall start calling it British election meddling or better yet Long Island election meddling. Hold on, Renaissance Technologies moved to Manhattan. Manhattan Election Project, how does this sound?
The same people probably poisoned the Russian spy as well to divert attention.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by slinches on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:12PM (2 children)
I wish we could go back to the days when the assumption that you weren't being tracked 24/7 was valid, but that can't happen. The amount of authoritarian control required to cure it would be worse than the disease.
I don't like the situation at all, but we have to accept that the use of data aggregation and analysis to influence society is not going to be stopped. It's far too powerful of a tool and too easy to build to just take away. A reactionary ban will only result in driving the use (further) underground where access will be limited to those who are willing to break the law to benefit from it. Instead, open it up. Embrace the technology and make anonymized data publicly available. Allow enough people with competing ideologies to attempt to influence the public and their efforts will mostly cancel each other. It probably won't help ramp down the divisiveness in the short term, but hopefully by making it transparent that people are trying to manipulate each other we can eventually find a way to get past that.
I don't know what to do about international influence other than to try to out-spend them. That's something that we have almost no control over anyway, short of going to war.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:40PM (1 child)
No, all we need are some decent privacy laws. If governments and corporations were forbidden from conducting mass surveillance on the populace, that would be a boon, not "authoritarian control". Good luck getting it to happen, but it's not a bad idea.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:15AM
That's exactly the point. You have no enforcement mechanism.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jimbrooking on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:14PM (16 children)
I ran across an article from the Guardian, a British newspaper. It seems to confirm what I've come to believe: American democracy is under seige and has been for decades. The "haves", the 99% or whatever you want to call them, personified by the Koch brothers, have instituted a long-term, stealthy (by design) war on democracy, and by all measures, they are winning. Here's the link to the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/despot-disguise-democracy-james-mcgill-buchanan-totalitarian-capitalism/ [theguardian.com]
And this is the book on which the Guardian article was based:
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980965/ [penguinrandomhouse.com]
I just finished the book I recommend it highly to anyone who thinks the "free market" is the be-all and end-all of economics and economic politics. It is a heavily researched and footnoted, yet very readable account of how the "economic freedom" crowd is incrementally taking over the USA using diabolical strategies hatched over the past 70 years or so. The funding is largely Koch in origin. My reading staple lies in the genre of mysteries, horror and the like, but I will say that MacLean's book is the scariest thing I have ever seen.
Hey y'all frogs: enjoy the warm bath! ( Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog [wikipedia.org] )
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:22PM (3 children)
America is not a free market. We are far closer to Mussolini's vision of an ideal fascist state than Adam Smith's vision of a capitalist one.
An economic system where government and private business are technically separate but exert influence on each other to the extent that they operate as a single entity is about the farthest thing from a "free market" as you can get. The entire recent conversation about "election meddling" unfortunately centers around Facebook, a company that's been in bed with the US intelligence sector since its inception. They're basically an arm of the CIA.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dry on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:58AM (2 children)
A free market includes the freedom to buy politicians, laws and elections. And being a free market, it will reward efficiency and it is always more efficient to change the rules to heads I win and tails you lose then to actually produce a superior product.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)
A free market does not entail the ability to buy politicians to establish different rules for your competitions and ensure a monopoly. That is the opposite of a free market.
Play your semantic games if you want, but a "free market" extends to everyone, not just billionaires. If America were a free market, I would be able to start a barber shop without restrictive licensing. Dental assistants would be able to clean teeth without working under a dentist. Cable companies would be able to serve new areas without jumping through hoops to gain access to the infrastructure AT&T bought exclusive rights to ten years ago.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:50PM
Ah, the limited free market where you are free to do stuff but others aren't free. Why should the freedom of the other barbers be limited? Why should the freedom of dentists be limited and why should the freedoms of the cable companies be limited?
The thing is freedom goes both ways, your free to open a barbershop and the other barbers are free to band together and stop you. Perhaps you're arguing for regulations?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:06PM (4 children)
Or
Or
So notice some of the situations described here: fabricated quotes, interpreting what is said in the worst possible light, and not consulting living experts on Buchanan. But it doesn't stop there [spectator.org].
There's a really simple explanation for this book. With the Trump election there's a lot of butthurt suckers out there waiting to be parted from their money. She's just working the crowd. And she picked a comfortably dead academic because he can't sue for the extensive libel of his character and life.
Now, on to your own words:
Who knows, maybe there is such a conspiracy using such "diabolical strategies". They certain have the money and resources to give it a go and a history of economic freedom advocacy. But maybe we should have some sort of non-fiction evidence first rather than an outright lie, eh?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:40AM (3 children)
"Who knows, maybe there is such a conspiracy using such "diabolical strategies""
I don't know how much fiction her story is, but just by looking around you can see the rich are using a strategy to make things go their way...you don't need people like her (the sheeple do, but they'll never listen).
Smart people just need to look up once in a while and they need to protest and wake the sheeple.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:31AM
You don't need liars like her, unless you're trying to snow the sheeple. Sorry.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:03AM (1 child)
The reason I'm aware of this particular book is because I read up on criticism of it back last year and found myself interested in the psychology of the author. Why would she assault some dead academic? It seems so bizarre. It's also a glaring example of recent historical revisionism (would be my principle example of SJW run amok). There seem to be two sorts of reviews. The first group speaks of how well-written and stirring it is. The second group did some actual fact checking and determined that the thing is a load of crap.
I now steer you to the definitive critic of her work, Phil Magness [philmagness.com], who wrote several articles on his blog analyzing this particular book and the claims it made. For example [philmagness.com]:
Plenty more where that came from. My view is that all she needs to do is sex it up a little more and she'll have the next Secret History [wikipedia.org] or Protocol of the Elders of Zion [wikipedia.org]. Maybe Buchanan showed his demonic form on occasion or drank more than the usual amount of blood of the newborn. These details matter.
Very quickly, I became interested merely because of the psychology of the author. It seems to be a straightforward case of a budding con artist mixing with a very gullible audience. In addition to the book itself, we then had bizarre behavior from the author, MacLean such as a Koch-driven conspiracy [washingtonpost.com] (note how she gives a very different story to the linked NPR interview than she had on her Facebook page) to discredit her and the keen, unprompted observation that libertarianism appeals to autistic people [reason.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:38PM
A bit too close to home, eh, khallow? Khallow? Khallow!!!! Damn autistics! Never look you in the eye when they are lying.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:09PM
Once again, though, disruptive technology [youtube.com] will save us, at least temporarily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:58AM
It seems to confirm what I've come to believe
That is called cognitive bias.
You will ignore what does not match it. Your brain has declared that you are smart. So therefore your theory is right. It is a logical fallacy.
"free market" works best for the longest. It *will* degenerate into a feudal state. If not kept in check. It does have a flaw of being subverted by money and power. You are not invited.
"Socialism" almost always degenerates into fascist states. We have a fairly exhaustive list of them. It is also heavily researched. The "free market" flaw is even more prevalent here. Think about that nice revolution all of these systems call for. Notice how pretty much every time they overthrow a gov they become even worse than what they overthrow? They seize "the means to production" then basically keep it for themselves. You are not invited.
Do not think you have nailed what the best economic solution for every out there. You have not. Just like millions before you.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:41AM (3 children)
Looks interesting. Odd, though, that this author focuses on the Koch brothers, but I see no mention of Soros. In effect, we have two ideologically opposed rich families fighting for control of the US political machine. Where's the book that exposes that warfare? For that reason, the author is somewhat suspect - there might be some tacit approval of Soros' actions and methods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:46AM (2 children)
Soros does not actually exist. He is creation of the Kock Bros, the Mercer Family, Adelson, and Bill Gates and Peter Thiel. Why, do you think, there is one billionaire bête noire of the right, but dozens of billionaire scumbags trying to subvert democracy through Cambride Analytics and like? Could it be, Runaway, that you are the one who is bamboozled, the victim of fraud and misinformation? Could it not be that you are just enough of an idiot to be taken in by all the bullshit, and then repeat it on an internet forum? Is that even remotely possible?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:03PM (1 child)
No, 'cause I'm not taken in by your inanities, or your insanity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @11:42PM
Of course not, Comrade Runaway! But that is the first requirement of successful propaganda, the blithe ignorance of the victim that it is propaganda, and immunizing them from all attempts by others to rescue them.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:16AM
Yes. This. And for those of you who don't read books or prefer video, you can see a book discussion by the author of Democracy In Chains [penguinrandomhouse.com] over here [c-span.org]. Professor Maclean covers the major themes of her book and details the research she did in getting the information that's in it.
I also highly recommend the book and/or the video.
Another book which isn't really related, but addresses many of the issues we're seeing is How Democracies Die [c-span.org] which details the causes and results of the failure of democracy around the world in the 20th century, and draws parallels to what's going on in the US and other Western democracies. An excellent book, and the video details most of the major themes.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:37PM
Instead, we have one dollar, one vote.
America is doomed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @08:49PM
Rather than outright ban stuff just yet, perhaps require that orgs register with an agency before sending out ads or what-not that exceed a minimum threshold of recipients or money spent. And this may include required public disclosure.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by meustrus on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:01PM (25 children)
I find it deeply troubling that right-wing voices here have already risen to the defense of these propaganda groups. Whether it's equating explicit voter manipulation with media bias or asserting that the free market is always right, the arguments are transparent and the purpose behind them disturbing.
We are talking about soviet-style, government-backed, powerful-controlling-the-masses psychological manipulation. This is a 1984-level threat being leveled against us by the Big-G Government itself.
I don't even need to try to explain how a politician is effectively a part of the government while running for office. These groups have explicit "high-level contracts with governments". Signed by acting agents of said governments, not just those seeking office or their financial supporters.
I think this comment section can be an effective litmus test for actual libertarians vs shills/trolls. Libertarians tend to be very much opposed to the government trying to psychologically manipulate its own people. Shills and trolls, however, will still equivocate and make excuses to make an argument they never believed in to begin with.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:09PM
It's straightforward freedom of speech.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:25PM (14 children)
What do you think the libertarian response should be? Remove everyone's civil liberties so only government has access to the psychological manipulation data and analysis tools? I understand why that would be an acceptable answer for the authoritarian left and right wings, but I would think that sort of thing would be an anathema to libertarian philosophy.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:18PM (10 children)
I don't know, I would have to guess the libertarians would like their privacy rights unalienable, so that there's no psychological data to analyse and manipulate to begin with.
Is this too common-sensical for a rational idea nowadays?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by slinches on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:43PM (4 children)
What is inalienable here? It's not about other people stealing data, it's about people voluntarily exchanging rights to use their data in exchange for use of the platforms that collect it. Are you suggesting that Libertarians would be in favor of restricting individuals from entering into consensual, mutually beneficial agreements? The only thing in this that appears to be counter to libertarian views is that there is was a violation of an implied contract. So I think Libertarians would likely support some regulation that mandates greater transparency in how the data is to be used and more rigorous adherence to the contracted agreement (e.g. a company can't use already collected data for a new purpose without explicit written authorization from each individual).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:16AM (3 children)
If you are Ok with a platform "altering the deal, pray that I don't alter it any further" at their whim, without letting any recourse to the users, who am I to object?
I'm not libertarian after all, maybe this is why I can afford to want my private things kept private at the expense hurting the "platforms' liberty to exploit them as they wish".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:47AM (2 children)
Either I didn't state it clearly or you misread what I wrote. I specifically intended to say that Facebook unilaterally altering the deal was the objectionable part. Hence, why I suggested targeting regulations toward making it clear what is being exchanged and requiring explicit consent to change the deal.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:54AM
Most probably both. Thanks for the clarification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:05AM
Facebook never made any deal with me. I think I accidentally went there a couple of times a long time back, wasn't interested and have avoided them since. Yet they probably have more info on me then most anyone else has and it sounds like they're quite wiling to share it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:57PM (4 children)
Not feeling it here. Remember Facebookers voluntarily gave that up. Then CA didn't do much with what they supposedly had, except talk a great game. It's not one of those things you'd expect libertarians to rally around because it's not so clear cut as it sounds in your head neither the privacy right or the harm from exploiting said privacy right.
This may well be an ideological blind spot for libertarianism, but I don't see any acknowledgement of slinches's point here. A lot of the problems with outlawing such things, is that it then becomes the purview of governments. If we need to run a database on a zillion people, say to find urgent medical conditions like unfolding epidemics, then we just made the government the monopoly provider.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:23AM (3 children)
Their loss, then.
I mean, if they choose not to insist that the ToS at the sign-up should, as a contract be applicable for the entire period of interaction or be amendable with the consent of both parties or the deal is off.
As it is right now, FB has the liberty to unilaterally alter the deal as they see fit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:35AM (2 children)
And the user has the liberty to just stop using FB at any time without telling FB a thing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:30AM
How about the private information already accumulated by FB under a different agreement, now usable by FB under an agreement no longer suitable for the interests of user?
You reckon that bait-and-switch practices are a thing that libertarians should be Ok with?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @10:22AM
You think just because you don't use FB means that FB has no information on you? Dream on.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:50AM (2 children)
Libertarians are just useful idiots.
My 3 year old niece is a libertarian too, because she has no fucking idea how the world works either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:44PM (1 child)
Whereas Progressives are just idiots. Utterly devoid of usefulness.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday March 29 2018, @12:23AM
So libertarians are cowards as well as stupid. Won't even log in and be identified.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:52AM (5 children)
In American politics there are several factions fighting it out.
The koch/murdoch group. These have controlled the republicans narrative for about 20 years. They have their set of media outlets (such as fox)
The clinton/obmama/sorros group. These have controlled the democrat narrative for about 25. They have their set of media outlets (such as CNN)
There is a new set of players on the board.
The FANG group. They have aligned themselves with the traditional DNC group. They are their own media. They do not really need the 'old media'. They basically tripped over themselves to see how they could help the DNC.
Some of the ycombiner group. They have aligned themselves with a new player, the rest following FANG. The trump group. This group hijacked the 'new media' in many ways. Using their own methods and even at times their own server clusters against the FANG messaging.
The 'netizens'. We are among them. We randomly assign ourselves to one of the groups. Depending on what propaganda we have been exposed to.
The 'trump' group is not playing nice with the other 3. They want to 'tip over the apple cart' as it were. The other 3 were *very* comfortable with the status quo, and the string of armored cars with cash in them. The 'trump' one is slightly aligning itself with the RNC group to draw in votes.
The parties that have popped up out of this have 3 fairly distinct messages 2 of them overlap somewhat but not totally.
The RNC is "dont fuck with it and lets let the multinationals write our laws". Basically "the man". Money is their leaver of power.
The DNC is "say whatever and use our media to make you vote for us because we know best THEN let the multinationals write the laws". Basically the puritains recreated. Shame and emotion is their leaver of power.
The 'trump party'. This will be a short lived thing. It will fracture into the other 2 groups eventually. But for now it is "lets make jobs for everyone and throw out the freeloaders". This attacks the very base messages both the DNC and RNC have been carefully cultivating for years. The RNC with their cheap overseas labor (free trade). The DNC with their cheap imported labor (undocumented workers).
This is a 1984-level threat being leveled against us by the Big-G Government itself.
I would look more towards FANG to pull that off. They control the means to communication. That is how 'big brother' worked in 1984. Look to who they are aligning themselves with. https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ [wikileaks.org]
Everyone is acting like this is 'new'. Hardly. I first noticed it around 1999. I have watched in horror as it has got worse and worse. I researched it back to the 1930s and gave up on it because it became too depressing. The only new twist is the naked brazen hypocrisy the DNC has show with its media groups. They copied everything shitty about FoxNews and turned it up to 11. Trump has shown many in our gov are little more than paper tigers who hold a crazy amount of power and should not be allowed in charge of anything. Very few vote for their constituents and vote straight party line for years on end.
Here is food for thought (hehe) https://fanaticcook.com/2015/05/05/when-and-why-did-americans-start-eating-bacon-and-eggs-for-breakfast/ [fanaticcook.com]
Think about that. Before this dude got involved we did not eat bacon for breakfast. One of our key meals for the day is corner-stoned with an advertisement campaign. Anyone I mention it to fails to see why it is important. We are manipulated on a scale that is amazing and frightening and we do not see it at all. We are incapable of seeing it. Take for example the current DNC pet project. Revoking the 2nd amendment. The puritans have returned, with a new set of causes. With mass surveillance now in the open they are doubling down on it. With new laws to enact what they want and tame the internet. Watch for the sweeping seizing of power and using Trump hysteria (that they created) to do it with. These are open attacks on the bill of rights. They have already subverted the 4th and 5th. By using the idea of 'not the gov doing it'. Watch them use the same methods to attack the 1st and 2nd.
Scott Adams noticed in 2016 how shockingly bad the DNC was acting in 2016 compared to a fairly normal RNC. Their message was trite and poorly formed and one bound in arrogance. The Trump camp seized on it and made them eat it and live it by using their own platforms they designed for the RNC and DNC to push his message. They have corrected that mistake by 24/7 Russia/hookers take on Trump. A distraction from what is going on. There is a power struggle that we only see in glimpses going on.
I find it deeply troubling that right-wing voices here have already risen to the defense of these propaganda groups
You find it troubling because they are defending the 1st amendment? Interesting. Why is that? Is it because you have decided 'right-wing' are something to be hated? Stop and think WHY do you hate them? Is it because of what they do or because someone told you what they do. You are being manipulated. Specifically by use of innuendo and rumors. You may think you are immune to it. You are not. Con artists actually like smart people to con. They always think they are too smart to be taken.
When Trump said its all rigged, he meant it and was mocked for it. Yet here we are.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:01AM
You mention bacon and eggs. Did you miss the cereal campaign? Sweetened grains for breakfast? There was another advertising campaign devoted to popularizing breakfast cereals. We have the very same manipulation of the public that you mentioned. A lot of people have made greater and lesser fortunes on that manipulation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @05:22AM (2 children)
And they should. Let's look at the story in more detail:
In other words, a shitty breakfast.
Bacon and eggs can be cooked in a similar length of time as the grain porridge (Beech-Nut sliced [google.com] its bacon thin (ad is from 1905 no less and they're pushing thin, sliced bacon for breakfast then), making it a quick cooking food). And there's a synergy there. Cook the bacon first and then you can reuse the grease for cooking eggs (need some oil/fat to keep from sticking to the pan). Third, bacon and eggs just taste good for most people. And the aroma fills the house. It's definitely a better experience to wake up to.
Instead of a silly story about Beech-Nut getting propaganda cooties on our sacred bacon, perhaps we should consider what was actually going on. People from the late 19th Century through to the early 1920s were steadily becoming more affluent. And one of the many things affluent people do is eat better tasting and better cooked food. That means more meat, eggs, and milk products among other things. At that point, you run into the gritty realities of making breakfast. You want something that cooks and cleans fast. The wife isn't going to get up two hours early just to make breakfast. Any tricks like the above reuse of bacon fat for cooking eggs is a time-saving synergy that a busy wife would appreciate. So meats that are suitable for breakfast? Ground or thin sliced meat will cook faster. Poultry and fish don't have a good texture for that. You're stuck with stuff like pork, beef, or mutton. Bacon and eggs probably just survived this breakfast evolution process better and Beech-Nut was one of the lucky benefactors of that.
They, of course, advertised. And the dude who specialized in modern advertisement is, of course, going to claim that he was instrumental in selling said bacon and eggs even though Beech-Nut had been pushing bacon for at least two decades before. People weren't going to continue to eat the old crap.
Tl;DR. Cool story bro, but I notice nobody actually looked hard at how successful this advertising campaign was supposed to be.
Drama much? I'm sure there are interesting parallels to the Third French Republic which had a similar nasty struggle between groups with similar ideologies. But that's not particularly sexy since that particular problem shows up again and again over the centuries with no special merit to the 1930s instance.
So you are no doubt considering the Wiemar Republic. But that had the special flaw of being ignominiously imposed by the victors of a brutal war with numerous parties vying hard to be the engineer when the trail finally ran off the rail. This key factor isn't present in the US which has a government that was imposed voluntarily and has stuck around for a couple of centuries.
I doubt that fluff can convince anyone who wasn't already convinced. It's a colossal waste. A key thing to remember about these propaganda people is that the only person that they need to convince is the one writing their checks. Something like Cambridge Analytica seems more like a bunch of grifters shaking down sugar daddies than a credible propaganda threat.
I think of these propaganda games more as voluntary wealth redistribution than something dangerous that we need to ban.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:22PM (1 child)
I have been saying this shit since the election but the left is convinced that we were all brainwashed into voting for Trump because Facebook told us to.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:57PM
The belief is its own reward. (Or is that "The disease is the cure."?) I foresee a lot of such people dumping funds into social media and other money sinks because of their belief in its magic efficacy. That's one thing market economies do well, is transfer money away from clueless people efficiently.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday March 28 2018, @07:16PM
First, can you explain FANG? Do you mean Lee Fang [wikipedia.org]?
Second, to ratchet things down a little bit, I will point out that the American government was built to move slowly. There are checks and balances in place to make actual subversion of the Bill of Rights nearly impossible.
Granted, the Supreme Court seems intent on changing their scope dramatically to suit political opinions. But various decisions have both reduced and grown the scope of the Bill of Rights. The conflict between the 1st and 14th amendments in particular keeps swinging between one or the other being more powerful.
Third, I take strong issue with your assertion that the DNC is working to "revoke the 2nd amendment". That is and has always been blatant NRA propaganda. It's been a foregone conclusion for many years that the "right to bear arms" does not give people a right to possess military-style equipment of warfare. I personally disagree that banning nuke ownership is allowed under the 2nd amendment, but I am objectively safer as a result. I am also safer because of the Firearms Act of 1934, which effectively banned fully-automatic weapons and has been found to be consistent with the 2nd amendment.
Even if the leftist boogeyman the gun manufacturers running the NRA want you to be afraid of were successful in banning gun ownership entirely, the Supreme Court would find it just as unconstitutional as they find anti-abortion bills that stray too close to outright bans. And abortion isn't even a specifcally-outlined right of the people like guns are.
The question on guns is not whether the government can or should ban certain weapons. They already do. The question is: which ones? The Democrats, backed by increasingly massive public support, want to answer that question by saying: just the ones we already ban, but do it better. That's what comprehensive background checks and waiting periods are for. Only a minority of Democrats want to ban semi-automatic firearms, and the DNC sure as hell isn't getting back into that fight after how badly it wounded them in 1994 with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
Of course, if gun owners weren't being manipulated by fearmongers trying to sell them guns, Republicans could pass some gun control legislation that would actually fix some things without infringing on anybody's rights. You're right not to trust urban liberals to keep your guns safe. So write the bills yourself before you become irrelevant to the conversation.
Lastly, I do not hate the right wing; I hate corporate speech being treated as deserving of equal protection as individual speech. Your claim about me is exactly the partisanship I am talking about. Just because I think that right wing propaganda is bad, you assume I must think that left wing propaganda is just fine.
For the record, I cannot stand real liberal media (MSNBC and Bill Maher types) unless it's actually funny. Even then, I can't remember the last time I watched The Daily Show. Being pandered to just does not interest me. That's why I get my news here and wander into the political comment sections.
I also want to say that having been around a lot of liberals and progressives, I find the politics of the so-called mainstream media (NYTimes plus CNN and other TV news) unrecognizable. They feel Republican to me in the same way they must feel Democratic to you.
I think the truth is that the mainstream media are just corporatist. It's the part of the RNC I dislike and I think it's the part of the DNC you dislike. I am coming more and more to see them both as mainly corporatist, with their differences existing only to play the democracy game. Those of us who dislike corporatism have found ourselves in various groups depending on the rest of our politics - Occupy, Tea Party, DSA, alt right - but anti-corporatism still has not found its way into mainstream politics.
The anti-corporatists got a "win" by electing Trump. But the win only goes so far as coalescing the anti-corporatists towards a single candidate. He's still an urban billionaire that wants to redistribute the economy towards the wealthy, and by the way also wants to take your guns without due process. He promised to "drain the swamp" because he's a serial liar and his voters don't seem to care.
I did not vote for Trump because he's a liar and a racist. That's it. If there were another candidate making the same promises who wasn't a liar or a racist, I'd be out knocking doors for them. I'm the kind of leftist who wants to kill NAFTA etc., get us out of the world police business (especially in the middle east), make good union jobs be available again to anyone with a high school diploma or GED, and keep the government out of my morality thank you very much. This is more in line with what Trump promised than what Hillary promised, but again, did not vote for Trump because those promises were always lies and he was always the more likely candidate to do stuff like making the federal deficit worse to pay for tax cuts to the rich.
All of that said, I should not have to explain my politics to avoid being called a partisan. My OP was a direct response to what people wrote, not what they are. That you would begin to attack me based on the straw man identity you assume of me is literally the root of the problem I wrote about.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:54AM (2 children)
Good enough. But, what I'm not seeing here, is any outrage over those elections outside of the US/UK that have been manipulated. It's kinda like none of those elections really matter. It's only important when the political machines that have been screwing half the world, decide they want to screw with us.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:56AM (1 child)
It's pretty normal for people in the US to care more about US elections than non-US elections. The US tends to have a pretty insular view on things, so not caring about other countries isn't exactly news. That said, the US government's meddling in foreign elections (e.g. Iran's) comes up a lot in my experience, always spoken of very negatively. Just never in any vaguely mainstream publication.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:01PM
It's almost as if the mud people don't matter?
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:16PM
The Party beat you to it. They learned from the "Cola Wars" advertising campaign of the 1980's, as well as the "feud" between McDonald's and Burger King.
Good to see you're finally aware of it, though.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday March 27 2018, @09:49PM (5 children)
.....I was just starting to enjoy Trump, Brexit, Putin, Erdogan... Dying destitute in a nuclear winter sounds such fun. An Nigel Farage is a Man of the People(TM).
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @10:05PM (3 children)
Think you'd prefer the elitist politics of the Fabian New Statesman? [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:14PM (2 children)
Ah, there's that magic word again: elitist.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)
Get used to it. When the politicians think they know whats better for the people that elected them than those same people, you're going to hear that word.
adjective
1. (of a person or class of persons) considered superior by others or by themselves, as in intellect, talent, power, wealth, or position in society:
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:28AM
Great Unwashed: Collective term for those who support Putin, Erdogan, Farage, Trump, Wilders and Le Pen. Get used to it.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:46PM
Not as much fun as to die in the first attack. Almost Instantaneously.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.