In March, the United States Special Operations Command, the section of the Defense Department supervising the US Special Forces, held a conference on the theme of "Sovereignty in the Information Age." The conference brought together Special Forces officers with domestic police forces, including officials from the New York Police Department, and representatives from technology companies such as Microsoft.
This meeting of top military, police and corporate representatives went unreported and unpublicized at the time. However, the Atlantic Council recently published a 21-page document summarizing the orientation of the proceedings. It is authored by John T. Watts, a former Australian Army officer and consultant to the US Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.
[...] The private sector, therefore, must do the dirty work of the government, because government propaganda is viewed with suspicion by the population. "Business and the private sector may not naturally understand the role they play in combating disinformation, but theirs is one of the most important.... In the West at least, they have been thrust into a central role due to the general public's increased trust in them as institutions."
But this is only the beginning. Online newspapers should "consider disabling commentary systems—the function of allowing the general public to leave comments beneath a particular media item," while social media companies should "use a grading system akin to that used to rate the cleanliness of restaurants" to rate their users' political statements.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/05/pers-o05.html
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:12AM (1 child)
Many Republican elected officials have long opposed the teaching of Critical Thinking in schools for such reasons as that they claim it leads children to disobey their parents.
My own education had quite a lot of Critical Thinking study.
This was always taught in English or Literature classes. Math and Science admit no or little ambiguity, but natural language is chock full of it.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @01:22PM
(Sorry, this one's a bit off topic. Not terribly I hope.)
Don't worry. The witch hunt started by the #metoo movement will soon eliminate the last vestiges of critical thinking. #MeToo-style allegations used to oust popular University of Michigan professor [wsws.org]: