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"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."

-- Aldous Huxley

News and Opinion

It’s Not The Really Blatant Propaganda That Gets You

One of my favorite follows on Twitter right now is a smallish account run by an anti-imperialist activist who goes by “Left I on the News”, because he has a real knack for going through articles in the mainstream press and highlighting the mundane little manipulations we’re fed each day to shape our worldview in alignment with the US empire.

One story he singled out recently was a New York Times article titled “Russia Fires Drones and Missiles at Southern Ukraine,” which opens with the line, “Russian forces launched drones and missiles at cities in southern Ukraine from the Black Sea early Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said, a day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for an attack on a bridge linking the occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia.”

Can you spot anything funny in that sentence? It’s not super obvious at first glance.

“Look how the NYT phrases this subhead to make Russia sound extra evil,” Left I tweeted with a screenshot of the article. “Not ‘a day after Kyiv attacked the Kerch Bridge’, but a day after Russia blamed them for doing it (as if it’s just some wild accusation). Remember — the most effective propaganda is the subtlest.”

Look how the NYT phrases this subhead to make Russia sound extra evil. Not “a day after Kyiv attacked the Kerch Bridge”, but a day after Russia blamed them for doing it (as if it’s just some wild accusation). Remember — the most effective propaganda is the subtlest. pic.twitter.com/P8EO0Qnz6I

— Left I on the News (@leftiblog) July 18, 2023

“The most effective propaganda is the subtlest” is a phrase you should try to remember, because it’s so very true.

It is indeed ridiculous to try to frame this as some wild accusation by Russia, as though Moscow should have remained open to the possibility that the bridge was struck by Bolivia or Nepal. CNN reports that Ukrainian officials have taken credit for the attack, and just days ago Ukraine’s deputy defense minister publicly acknowledged that Ukraine was behind last year’s attack on the very same bridge. No serious person doubts that Ukraine was behind the attack, including those who support Ukraine.

But that subtle manipulation didn’t really stand out when you first saw it, did it?

As we’ve discussed previously, these subtle little adjustments of perception are what constitutes the vast majority of the propaganda westerners ingest through the news media from day to day. This is because the really overt, ham-fisted propaganda isn’t what’s effective; what’s effective is those sneaky little lies that slide in unchecked underneath people’s critical thinking faculties.

Contrast the above example with the response we’ve been seeing to Yeonmi Park, whose outlandish, larger-than-life propagandistic lies about what it’s like to live in North Korea have turned her into an internet meme. She’s become so widely mocked that even The Washington Post, among the first to help amplify her as a trustworthy North Korean defector after her arrival in the US in 2014, is now openly questioning her credibility.

This is because propaganda only works if it doesn’t ring people’s cognitive alarm bells. You can’t slide propaganda down people’s throats if it triggers their critical thinking gag reflex. If you want to poison someone’s food, you can only pull off the deed if they don’t taste the poison or throw it up before it takes effect.

So most propaganda isn’t of the Yeonmi Park “communists are so poor that they have to eat mud and get out of the train and push it because there’s no electricity” variety. It’s subtle. It’s these tiny little adjustments where US allies are reported on more sympathetically than US enemies, claims made by unaligned governments are reported with much more scrutiny and skepticism than aligned governments, and the sins which take place within the US-centralized power structure are overlooked while those outside it are amplified and condemned.

We’ve been ingesting these tiny little manipulations all our lives like microplastics in our water supply, and they build up within our reality tunnels to significantly warp our perception of what’s going on in the world.

And the fact that it’s been so many tiny little lies over years and years means it’s a lot harder to extract all the perception management from our worldview once we’ve discovered that it’s happening. If it was just a few really big lies we could reorient ourselves toward truth fairly quickly just by recognizing them, but because it’s so very many tiny manipulations it takes years of sincere work to fully free yourself from all the distortions and false assumptions you grew up with.

But it’s worth doing, because positive change can only come from an awareness of what’s true, whether you’re talking about individuals or humanity as a whole. Our task as humans is to come to a truth-based relationship with reality to the furthest extent possible, and that means fearlessly diving headfirst into the long, hard slog of sorting out fact from fiction, one lie at a time, no matter how subtle.

Odessa blockade. F16s not Leopard tanks. Orthodox priest arrested. Clooney goes after Wagner.

Odesa suffers ‘hellish night’ as Russia attacks Ukraine grain facilities

Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa has endured a second “hellish night” of attacks, with loud explosions audible throughout the city in the early hours of Wednesday and at least one missile landing within the city limits, as Russia targeted grain facilities and port infrastructure.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 63 missiles and drones at various targets across the country, of which 37 had been shot down, suggesting that more of Russia’s missiles got through air defences than has been the case in recent weeks. Odesa bore the brunt of the onslaught; the attack on the city was “very powerful, truly massive”, Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, said on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. “It was a hellish night,” he added.

On Wednesday morning, residents inspected a huge crater close to a dormitory building across the street from a grain facility not far from central Odesa. An investigator on the scene said it had most likely been caused by an Oniks, designed as an anti-ship cruise missile. Windows in the dormitory, as well as a courthouse across the street, were blown out, but remarkably people on the scene said there had been no casualties in the strike. ...

Ukraine’s southern military command said Russia had used a range of missiles, including the Kh-22, designed to target aircraft carriers, against Odesa’s port infrastructure. “[The strike] hit a grain and oil terminal, damaged tanks and equipment for loading, a fire started.

On Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry said it had hit military targets in southern Ukraine as “a mass revenge strike” for the attack on the bridge.

US Pressuring Ukraine to Push Harder in Counteroffensive

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that US officials believe Ukraine should be launching large-scale assaults against Russia’s defensive lines despite the risk of major losses and are blaming Ukraine’s tactics for the struggling counteroffensive.

The report said that the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive “has generated concerns in the West that the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky may not deliver as powerful a blow as it could.”

The main complaint from the US and other Western countries is that Ukraine is not using “combined arms” tactics, which integrate infantry, armored vehicles, and artillery. Instead, Ukraine is relying on artillery and sending small teams of engineers to clear minefields, which Ukrainian officials say they are doing to prevent unnecessary losses. ...

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, has hit back at Western criticism of the counteroffensive, saying NATO would never launch such an assault without air superiority. He’s been demanding that the US and NATO provide US-made F-16 fighter jets, which aren’t expected to arrive until next year.

"Of course it's not a failure! There's at least a few Ukrainians left and our war industries are making money hand over fist. Just imagine the corner office that I will retire into once I pass through the golden revolving door!"

Ukraine Counter-Offensive Is Far From Failure -US General

Ukraine's counter-offensive against Russia is far from a failure, but the fight ahead will be long and bloody, the top U.S. general said on Tuesday, even as casualties on both sides mount and the front lines have moved only incrementally.

The United States and other allies have spent months building Ukraine a "mountain of steel" of weaponry and training Ukrainian forces in combined arms techniques to help Kyiv pierce formidable Russian defenses during its counter-offensive.

Asked whether the counter-offensive was a failure, at least so far, General Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said: "It is far from a failure. I think that it's way too early to make that kind of call.

Corrupt Ukraine Defense Minister’s Daughter Buys $7 Million French House! Huh?

Taiwan Says It Detected a Record 16 Chinese Warships Around Island

China sent a record number of warships around Taiwan in a single day last week, topping a previous high set when the Chinese military responded to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in August 2022, The South China Morning Post reported.

The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said that it detected 16 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ships operating around Taiwan on Friday, although it’s not clear how close they came to the island. After Pelosi’s visit, the PLA sent 14 vessels around the island for drills that simulated a blockade. ...

Global Times, a Chinese state media outlet, mentioned that the PLA warship activity came as the House passed its version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes provisions to boost military ties with Taiwan, and after NATO issued a communiqué at its summit in Vilnius that took aim at China.

Dems, Republicans SNEAK IN Provisions That SILENCE SPEECH In 2024 NDAA

West Bank medics given bulletproof vests after rise in attacks by Israeli forces

Medics working in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are being supplied with helmets and bulletproof vests after attacks on healthcare workers and ambulances by Israeli forces and settlers.

According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, there were 193 incidents targeting staff and vehicles in 2023 – a 310% increase compared with the same period last year. Violence has been increasing steadily in the region since March 2022, when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) began launching near-nightly raids on the West Bank towns of Nablus and Jenin in response to a spate of deadly terror attacks against Israelis.

Recorded attacks include being targeted with live ammunition and steel-coated rubber bullets, both before reaching patients and during treatment, and the obstruction of ambulances trying to access or transport the wounded.

The tally does not include this month’s Israeli operation in Jenin, the biggest IDF action in the West Bank in 20 years. A total of 12 Palestinians and one Israeli were killed in the fighting, and there were reports of ambulances being targeted by live fire and blocked from reaching the wounded.

The UK gets a thumb in its eye:

Islas Malvinas: EU signs deal using Falklands’ Argentine name

Forty-one years after the Falklands war, the UK has suffered a diplomatic defeat over the archipelago as the EU appeared to endorse the Argentine name for the disputed territory, Islas Malvinas.

Brussels supported an Argentina-backed declaration referring to Islas Malvinas at a summit of EU leaders with Latin America and the Caribbean (Celac) leaders on Tuesday, which Buenos Aires called a “diplomatic triumph”.

On Wednesday, British diplomats requested that the European Council president, Charles Michel, “clarify” the bloc’s position.

However, citing Brexit, an EU official reportedly told the Financial Times: “This was agreed by 27 member states and the Celac countries. ...

“The UK is not part of the EU. They are upset by the use of the word Malvinas. If they were in the EU perhaps they would have pushed back against it.”

Texas women denied abortions ask court for clarity over ban exceptions

Women who sued Texas after saying they were denied abortions despite serious risks to their health are headed to court on Wednesday as legal challenges to abortion bans across the US continue a year after the fall of Roe v Wade.

The Texas case is believed to be the first brought by women who were denied abortions since the right to an abortion in the US was overturned, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing them.

The case before a Texas judge in Austin does not seek to reverse the state’s abortion ban, which is one of the strictest in the country. It instead asks the court for clarity on when exceptions are allowed in Texas, where the women say they were told they could not end their pregnancies even though their lives and health were in danger.

One woman had to carry her baby, who was missing much of her skull, for months, knowing she would bury her daughter soon after she was born. Others had to travel out of state to receive medical care for pregnancy-related complications after doctors recommended an abortion.

Texas doctors who perform abortions risk life in prison and fines of up to $100,000, leaving many women with providers who are unwilling to even discuss terminating a pregnancy.

Teamsters and UPS to resume talks next week ahead of looming strike

The Teamsters and the delivery giant UPS look set to return to the negotiating table next week as a strike deadline of 1 August approaches for 340,000 workers represented by the union who are seeking a new contract agreement.

On 5 July, contract negotiations broke down between the union and UPS as both sides were still apart on issues that include better starting pay for part-time workers, wage increases for full-time workers and more full-time roles.

But now the union says UPS has reached out about setting dates for fresh talks.

“As thousands of UPS Teamsters practice picket, rally, and mobilize around the country, UPS bowed today to the overwhelming show of Teamster unity and reached out to the union to resume negotiations. The Teamsters National Negotiating Committee and the company will set dates soon to resume negotiations next week,” the Teamsters said in a press release.

If a strike occurs, it would be the largest walkout in US history at a single private employer and the largest strike since 500,000 steel workers walked off the job in 1959.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush created ‘mousetrap for billionaires’, says friend

A one-time passenger of the submersible that imploded over the wreck of the Titanic last month, killing five, has reportedly said he believes OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush, who died in the accident, knew that expeditions of the Titan craft would end in disaster but continued to create a “mousetrap for billionaires”.

Karl Stanley, who was interviewed by 60 Minutes Australia on Sunday, told the broadcast that he’d warned his friend that the carbon fiber and titanium craft was dangerous.

“He definitely knew it was going to end like this. He literally and figuratively went out with the biggest bang in human history that you can go out with,” Stanley said. “He was the last person to murder two billionaires at once and have them pay for the privilege.”

Media IGNORES Biden IRS Whistleblowers

Trump under investigation for civil rights conspiracy in January 6 inquiry

Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including section 241 of the US legal code that makes it unlawful to conspire to violate civil rights, two people familiar with the matter said.

The potential charges detailed in a target letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.

Prosecutors appear to have evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the target letter, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.

The target letter to Trump identified a previously unconsidered third charge, the sources said. That is section 241 of title 18 of the US code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States”.

The statute, enacted to protect the civil rights of Black voters targeted by white supremacy groups after the US civil war, is unusual because it is typically used by prosecutors in law enforcement misconduct and hate crime prosecutions, though its use has expanded in recent years.

What Cornel West SHOULD’VE Said To Anderson Cooper About Ukraine!

Tulsi Gabbard FLAMES Dem Elites For VILIFYING RFK Jr, Cornel West: 'NO Conscience'

I'm not sure that I really like RFK Jr. all that much as a candidate, but the way that Democrats and their liveried media are assassinating his character has me feeling sympathetic. I hope that he drops out of the Democrat party and runs third-party, subsequently destroying the Whigs, er, Dems.

Worth a click and a full read.

Patrick Lawrence: Anything Anything Anything To Avoid Debating R.F.K. Jr.

Our corporate newspapers and broadcasters went into attack mode as soon as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced, in mid–April, he would seek the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for president next year. But it does not seem to have been enough to cast him as a conspiracy theorist—how weary one grows of this term—or a deranged fanatic, or a liar or a kook or a crank. R.F.K. Jr. is still standing. So are his polling numbers—which, in my view, are the true cause of the panic on the Democratic side of the political ledger.

There was only one obvious thing to do next. As of this past weekend R.F.K. Jr. must be marked down as an anti–Semite. Go ahead, try to persuade me you are surprised. Kennedy is now in for a Jeremy Corbyn job.

To the fullest extent conjured occasions permit, this is likely to resemble the concerted campaign to destroy the principled leader of the British Labour Party, who was removed as party leader in 2020 on fabricated charges of anti–Semitism. Words Kennedy never uttered will be put into his mouth. Words he uttered will be twisted or otherwise misrepresented. Thoughts he never thought will be assigned to him. If Kennedy articulates truths that cannot be denied, these will be distorted or airbrushed out of all the news reports, never to be mentioned. We know this, and—the saving grace here—Kennedy knows it better than we do: It is exactly what happened as Saturday tipped into Sunday. ...

“Covid–19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid–19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” the Post quoted Kennedy as saying with his usual aplomb. “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted, but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.” Caucasians and Blacks have proven more susceptible to infection, Chinese and European Jews less: This is what Kennedy found in the peer-reviewed scientific papers he cited. ... [A]nyone who finds it odd for someone to state that diseases strike some groups of people more severely than others is simply too prone to malign suggestion to make his or her way in our propagandized world. It has been understood for who knows how long that sickle-cell anemia strikes hardest in Black and Latin American communities, to take one common example. Covid–19 is no different. The Mayo Clinic has a report on its website analyzing the relative vulnerabilities of various racial and ethnic groups to Covid–19 infections.

As to Kennedy’s reference to European Jews and the Chinese, he clarified subsequent to the lunch that this relied on a study conducted by the Cleveland Clinic indicating that some ethnic and racial groups, among them Ashkenazi Jews, were less susceptible to the Covid–19 virus than other groups, among which are Blacks. This—the blood simmers as I write this sentence—is the basis of the charge that R.F.K. Jr. displayed anti–Semitic tendencies while consuming his pasta with white clam sauce at Tony’s earlier this month. ...

The Post, an afternoon paper on the print side, published the Levine piece at 7:55 a.m. Saturday. By Sunday morning the mainstream dailies and networks were abuzz with the Post report and had their teeth thoroughly clamped on the Kennedy-as-anti–Semite theme. CNN hid behind the Anti–Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. The latter “told CNN in a statement Saturday that Kennedy’s ‘assertion that Covid was genetically engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people is deeply offensive and incredibly dangerous.’” Deeply offensive? More deeply offensive than letting the AJC misquote Kennedy to say Covid–19 was genetically engineered to protect Jews and letting this gross distortion of Kennedy’s view stand without challenge?

The New York Times seems hardly to have contained itself, having a brand new way of smearing R.F.K. Jr. It headlined its piece in Sunday’s editions “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Airs Bigoted New Covid Conspiracy Theory About Jews and Chinese.” The Jonathan Weisman report that follows earns the distorting head. Kennedy does not speak with the authority of considerable knowledge, as anyone who has heard or watched him would say. He “rants.” And at that Upper East Side lunch he “strayed into new and bigoted territory.”

Oh, hell’s bells. We’ve got him down as a crank and a fanatic. Let’s get “bigot” on the list.

‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come

The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.

Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.

The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since mass industrialization, causing a 20% chance of having the sort of extreme summer temperatures currently seen in many parts of the northern hemisphere, up from a 1% chance 50 years ago, Hansen said.

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen, who is 82, told the Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality – we knew it was coming.”

He said the record heatwaves that have roiled the US, Europe, China and elsewhere in recent weeks have heightened “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response”.

“It means we are damned fools,” Hansen said of humanity’s ponderous response to the climate crisis. “We have to taste it to believe it.”

EPA Rule to Reduce Federal Oversight of Critical Waterways

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule that would guide how states can take over dredge and fill permitting authority over federally protected waters from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, also known as assuming 404 permitting. Dredge and fill permits are what industries like mining, factory farming, oil and gas companies, and real estate developers, need to dredge or fill a wetland, parts of a lake, or a river to build. This is mostly irreversible damage.

The Clean Water Act is under relentless attack from polluting industries, their friends in pollution-friendly states, and – most recently – the Supreme Court, who severely reduced the scope of what wetlands are protected by the Act in Sackett v. EPA. We have already seen states act to further weaken federal protections after Sackett, and we must be wary of other attempts to reduce federal oversight of our water and wetlands.

Flying in Europe up to 30 times cheaper than train, says Greenpeace

Europe’s cheap flights and pricey train tickets promote dirty forms of transport, campaigners say, with “outrageous” tax breaks encouraging people to heat the planet as they head on holiday.

Train tickets are double the price of flights for the same routes, on average, according to an analysis from Greenpeace published on Thursday. The campaigners compared tickets on 112 routes on nine different days. To get from London to Barcelona, they found, the cost of taking the train is up to 30 times the cost of jumping on a plane. ...

Holiday destinations across Europe this week have been baking in deadly heat made hotter by greenhouse gases released from burning fossil fuels.

“€10 airline tickets are only possible because others, like workers and taxpayers, pay the true cost,” said Lorelei Limousin, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace. “For the planet and people’s sake, politicians must act to turn this situation around and make taking the train the more affordable option.”

Flying is one of the most polluting activities a person can do and also one of the hardest to clean up. Unlike eating a burger or driving a car – which have cleaner alternatives such as plant-based meats and electric vehicles – there is no way to fly without changing the climate. Experts have criticised schemes claiming to offset emissions from flying as flawed.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

The $850 billion chicken comes home to roost

Grain Deal: Much Ado About Nothing

Leaked files suggest hidden British hand in latest Kerch Bridge strike

Historical falsification in the service of pro-war propaganda

BP Financed Colombian Military

The US’s Reckless Arming of Taiwan

Wildfires rage around Athens for third day as water bombers join effort

A Little Night Music

Mable John - Running Out

Mable John - Sorry About That (Take 1)

Mable John - You Made a Fool Out Of Me

Mable John - Able Mable

Mable John - Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Mable John - Take Me

Mable John - That Woman Will Give It A Try

Mable John - Looking For A Man

Mable John - Who Wouldn't Love A Man Like That

Mable John - If You Give Up What You Got

Mable John - Sweet Devil