Reality Based People Can Fact Check The 'Fact-Checkers'
Stavroula Pabst, a writer in Greece, has published an interesting piece on the nefarious purpose of fact-checking and 'dis-information' debunking.
The piece explains this by going back to the writings of the French philosopher Guy Debord and his musings about 'spectacles'.
While anti-disinformation efforts proliferate, what’s missing from the conversation is a discussion about power. Of course, the powerful have reasons for wanting to combat what they consider to be “disinformation” — they want their version of the truth to become ours. Many commentators observe as such, noting that so-called disinformation researchers, fact-checkers, and experts are often partisan in nature, and themselves frequently disseminate things that are not true.
Basically, anyone calling themselves a “misinformation expert” or “disinformation reporter” is a partisan fraud, trying to make their activism seem scientific: https://t.co/5gbDf2WJoD
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 21, 2022
But a larger force is at work within the rise of fact-checking and other counter-disinformation efforts. That force is our society’s current arrangement of appearances, the totality of social relations mediated by images, or spectacle. Spectacle, as elucidated in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, is a concept that can help us to understand seemingly unconnected, yet deeply intertwined phenomena that have come to fruition as the economy has subjugated society to its needs (as opposed to the other way around), and thus recover our ability to experience life directly.
As its dominance over our everyday lives grows complete, the spectacle has become powerful enough to turn our understanding of what is true upside down. Because spectacle replaces real life with a mere mediated representation of life that cannot be experienced directly, it provides a framework where mass deceptions and lies can consistently and convincingly appear as true. Thus, spectacle is perhaps one of the most effective tools we have to explain how elite deceptions, including fabrications and lies about imperialist wars like those in Iraq and Syria, can consistently go unpunished and even unnoticed. As such, it follows that spectacle can help us understand how modern fact-checks and counter-disinformation initiatives can consistently do the opposite of what they claim, as many have observed.
In Germany one provider of the daily spectacle is the premier news program of public TV, 'Die Tagesschau'. It has an online presence which includes a section for 'fact checking' deceptively called Faktenfinder - fact finder.
Its current main purpose is to promote the NATO war in Ukraine and to blame Russia for waging it.
It is quite embarrassing to read its highly manipulative pieces. Last week though it topped its usual nonsense with a mistake that exposed it to a wider audience and led to lots of taunts and jeering.
Its main writer was tasked with debunking Symour Hersh's piece about the U.S. terror attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. Not being sufficiently capable of understanding the original English text, the writer used Google Translate to convert it to German. Google Translate is quite good if you need some base to work from but it is far from perfect:
bigger
The original sentence in question:
That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers.
The 'translation':
Das wäre gut im Bereich der Taucher, die von einem norwegischen Minenjäger der Alta-Klasse aus mit einer Mischung aus Sauerstoff, Stickstoff und Helium tauchen würden, die aus ihren Tanks strömt, und pflanzenförmigen C4-Ladungen auf den vier Pipelines mit Betonschutz Abdeckungen.
The descriptive "plant shaped C4 charges" had become "pflanzenförmigen C4-Ladungen" which I would translate back into English as "plant like C4 explosives" or "C4 explosives formed like plants".
The verb 'to plant' had suddenly turned into the noun 'the plant'. But outside of the spectacle, in reality, "C4 explosives formed like plants" do not make sense.
So what did the fact-finder do? He could have turned to a different site like Deepl which, in this case, produces a correct translation. Or he could have turned to the original English text to recheck that sentence. He would have found that without the verb 'plant' it would have no other one and would make no grammatical sense.
But that is not what he did. His task was to reinforce the spectacle, to hide the truth of Hersh's report. He thus called a German explosives expert and asked him about "C4 explosives formed like plants". The expert (he actually is one) knew of course that there were no such explosives and that camouflaging pipeline explosives as plants would not make sense to anyone. He responded in length and thus helped to debunked the alleged Hersh claim.
The fact finder writer was happy to learn that explosives formed like plants do not make sense. He wrote that up and published it.
bigger
The headline says "Further Discrepancies in Hersh Report", the sub-headline "Explosives formed like plants are unlikely".
My back-translation:
The details related to the detonations are also not clear. Hersh writes the divers had placed the C4 plastic explosives "in form of plants onto the 4 pipelines with concrete protected covers".
That is of course not what Hersh wrote but what a cognition challenged fact-checker with rudimentary English skills made of a report written in that language.
A few hours after it the 'fact finding' piece was published the German Twitter world erupted in laughter.
Someone contacted the explosives expert who had been quoted in that piece. He of course was embarrassed when he learned that his musings about 'explosives formed like plants' were caused by a false translation. He contacted the fact finder which only then corrected the error.
The whole 'plant based' part was removed from the piece but no remark or explanation was attached to it. That can only be found on a separate correction page where it is simply noted as 'translation error'.
The spectacle lost that one when itself got debunked by people who live in reality and talk to each other.
As Stavroula Pabst concludes in her piece:
The spectacle’s totality of domination over our lives is an amazing yet shocking feat that forces those recognizing the phenomenon to reckon with the “un-lives” we live. Thus, while “ignorance knows… it has nothing to say,” overriding and dismantling the spectacle requires finding something to say: as Debord writes, a “practical force must be set in motion.”This “practical force” needs the meaningful dialogue that spectacle’s creep into our lives has largely eliminated, if not wholly erased, via phenomena including today’s fact-checking and anti-disinformation crazes. And that dialogue and communication cannot be initiated by atomized individuals or by lonely crowds susceptible to spectacle’s influence, but by people who share community and a meaningful connection to what Debord describes as “universal history,” “where dialogue arms itself to make its own conditions victorious.”
And that is perhaps what this Moon of Alabama is about.
Despite all the pessimism that nothing ever changes I continue to believe that a steady uncovering of spectacle nonsense, and talking about it, will over time change things - even if only a bit.
Posted by b on March 3, 2023 at 18:11 UTC | Permalink
next page »During the War to Destroy Yugoslavia many of us painfully learned that bald faced lies are the common currency of the War Party. The War Party‘s contempt for the citizenry is something fo behold.
Posted by: Exile | Mar 3 2023 18:26 utc | 3
Karl Rove spilled the beans a long time back, when the NeoCons really ramped up.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
This is the Script these murderous sleaze-bags have been over-using for decades now. Might makes Right, we can force the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid down our followers throats . . . Grayzone had a nice piece up in last 48 about the rise of protests across Europe where large sectors of the suckers might (?) be waking up. Here in the heart of the beast, U$A, there is little evidence that more than 10% of the sheeple are even sentient. When things get noticeably worse (which I think will be soon), a higher # may awaken, I like to think.
Posted by: SkepticalThinker | Mar 3 2023 18:28 utc | 4
Speak the truth and speak it loudly,
Cause it what it will.
For he who hides the thing he did,
Does the wrong thing, still.
Posted by: zendeviant | Mar 3 2023 18:39 utc | 5
"..Despite all the pessimism that nothing ever changes I continue to believe that a steady uncovering of spectacle nonsense, and talking about it, will over time change things.."
This is the truth. There is no enemy more insidious than the congenital nay-sayer, the coward pretending to be wise, the cynic, the pessimist.
And, as b, modestly, hints MoA is a perfect example of how one person can change global politics. The fact that that one person employing language to communicate does so in his second language makes it even clearer that the world can be changed, even by such as are we.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 3 2023 18:50 utc | 6
Thanks for the posting b and for Moon of Alabama
This fits with the Wag The Dog movie meme and other control of narrative schemes
I hope this civilization war ends before all of the reality push back options are eliminated
Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 3 2023 18:52 utc | 7
The real story here is the disinformation that the unproven claim is about Norwegian participation in the NS bombing (it may or may not be true, I don't know) is sold as fact in a story that presents itself as discrediting disinformation.
Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 3 2023 19:01 utc | 8
MSM completely corrupted.
Most of the consumers don't notice or care.
Posted by: jpc | Mar 3 2023 19:05 utc | 9
The Zeitgeist is Quantum Uncertainty. It pervades modern society in an objectively stupid way.
Posted by: too scents | Mar 3 2023 19:07 utc | 10
I gave an ironic chuckle to
Of course, the powerful have reasons for wanting to combat what they consider to be “disinformation” — they want their version of the truth to become ours.as the powerful themselves are the progenitors of disinformation.
I distinctly recall Reagan getting on tv along with Berger, Casey and other degenerates and gently explaining that government statements would include what he called "disinformation." The ostensible purpose was to keep the Evil Empire off balance. Many here have already noted that this ain't exactly new; the host reminds us of this regularly, too.
A related note about the use of spectacle to enable the process of dis/misinforming us rabble; Robert Graves makes much the same point when he postulated that the myths of Zeus and his daliances/rapes, the adventures of the Argonauts, etc. were contemporaneous "editorial cartoons," depicting events within the ruling elite of the time. Plus ça change..., I guess.
Thanks again for serving the good stuff, b.
Posted by: robjira | Mar 3 2023 19:09 utc | 11
I am embarrassed to admit that I fell for that "fact checking" scam many times. Of course, people who spend their entire careers simply looking for errors of fact in other peoples writing will find them. The obvious question when this "industry" first appeared in the US is "who is paying their salaries". I did not ask that question.
Obviously, it appears, these so called objective "fact checkers" are employees of US organizations dedicated to promote US imperialism. It took awhile to see the pattern since in the first few years their targets were part of the US right wing. Coming from the American left, (and being a victim of the post WWII red scare.) I did not have too much sympathy for the right wing nuts.
But things have changed in the last few years. These fool fact checkers are without doubt new cadre in war against the left (and we should admit, many on the right are sharing our issues.)
Posted by: Toivos | Mar 3 2023 19:24 utc | 12
I continue to believe that a steady uncovering of spectacle nonsense, and talking about it
and perhaps
the German Twitter world erupted in laughter.
laughing at it. I firmly believe that the psychopathic elites, and their minions, absolutely hate being laughed at, mocked and derided.
Laughter can be highly infectious, so of course we will be told to wear masks...
Posted by: West of England Andy | Mar 3 2023 19:26 utc | 13
war against the left
Posted by: Toivos | Mar 3 2023 19:24 utc | 13
---
Left, right, up, down. They are at war with objective reality. They are at war with words.
Posted by: too scents | Mar 3 2023 19:29 utc | 14
I've read Debord and his fellow Situationists (being anarchists). I never quite grasped what was meant by "The Spectacle" other than the general terms of society basically living in a world unrelated to the real world. The Situationists, being mostly French, tended to use "high-concept" words like "mediation" which tended to undercut their own rhetoric. Nonetheless, they were quite right.
For those who haven't read "The Society of the Spectacle", it's available for free here in various translations:
Society of the Spectacle
AKPress, 2005
Guy Debord, Ken Knabb
https://annas-archive.org/md5/4e589bd7ebee15b2e508add70c94ae16
The other main Situationist piece, by Raoul Vaneigem is here:
The Revolution of Everyday Life
2001
Raoul Vaneigem
https://annas-archive.org/md5/df3a89439fe15449ecc381166ca9b1fa
From the blurb:
“Finally, back in print again, the essential handbook for all of us still alienated by modern capitalism. Together with Debord, Vaneigem was the main theorist of Situationist ideas. He has the added benefit of being eminently more readable! An incredible work, more potent now than ever. "We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom.......You want to fuck around with us? Not for long."”
For the general Situationist milieu and concepts, there are a number of texts which can be found by searching Anna's Archive for "Situationist":
Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents (October Books)
The MIT Press, 2004
Tom McDonough
https://annas-archive.org/md5/0e375459b24b824d564223e71b6c7d23
Situationist International Anthology
Bureau of Public Secrets, Paperback, 2007
Ken Knabb
https://annas-archive.org/md5/d0a543ca7b654bdc2470fb1611e15da1
“"Rejecting all morality and legal restraint, making sweeping denunciations of their fellow students, their professors, God, religion, the clergy, and the governments and political and social systems of the entire world, these cynics do not hesitate to advocate theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion, and a permanent worldwide proletarian revolution with 'unrestrained pleasure' as its only goal." -- Judge Llabador, Strasbourg District
The most radical gesture : the Situationist International in a postmodern age
Routledge, 0, 1992
Plant, Sadie
https://annas-archive.org/md5/41f304b724ac6c732181e488e8989769
“This book is the first major study of the Situationist International. Tracing the history, ideas and influences of this radical and inspiring movement from dada to postmodernism, it argues that situationist ideas of art, revolution, everyday life and the spectacle continue to inform a variety of the most urgent poltical events, cultural movements, and theoretical debates of our times.”
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 3 2023 19:33 utc | 15
Excellent piece by both b and the underlying author (not the German fact checker obviously, poor guy).
It is, in my opinion, all because of social media and the phenomenon web 2.0. We still dont understand fully the fundamental ways we have changed since then but glimpses like these are very valuable. Its like looking behind the veil.
For example, herd mentality (the “mob”) has been strengthened in what are self-reinforcing internet bubbles today.
Another one is the atomization of the individual, placing a screen between it and the rest of the world, the screen is where the “spectacle” lives.
We seem to have strengthened the negative aspects of our characters, “keeping appearances” has become now the single most important driver of societal interaction. Because screens make it very natural to want to keep up appearances and help us affirm self-images as well as our relative importance/status in a group.
And even darker: it is my opinion that the rise of radical feminists is caused by the rise of female influencers that appear so perfect in all ways that girls lose self-respect and self-image trying to rise up to a unachievable fake standard. And they think it is the patriarchy’s fault to set such standards so fire away at men. Same is valid also for men to a certain extent.
And yeah, why nothing ever changes. We have changed in fundamental ways that we still dont understand fully and that in any case cant be undone since its evolution we are talking about.
Posted by: alek_a | Mar 3 2023 19:43 utc | 16
For people to wake up, it is necessary for those of us who have left the cave to return to help them. The problem is that due to poor education, probably more than 90% of the population is unaware of Plato's allegory of the cave. Maybe even the same percentage don't know who Plato was.
Young people should leave school with certain knowledge tattooed on their brains to face the real world. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Posted by: josesan | Mar 3 2023 19:48 utc | 17
Situationists? How will these freeloading hedonists sustain themselves?
They are merely a reflection of society in collapse.
Posted by: too scents | Mar 3 2023 19:52 utc | 18
I agree. BS in the MSM has been going on forever, but an overworked society like the the US has very little time to read, relying on broadcast news, be it TV at night or radio in the car to get their information. That, combined with the extra emotional appeal perfected following 9/11 has made rational thinking and historical memory a rarity.
The results are a populace who cannot get past the charge in their gut to have a rational discussion, and as a consequence no discussion with fellow human beings occurs. It’s a perfectly manipulated society.
Pavlov and Skinner would be proud.
For those who have the luxury to read, Moon of Alabama is a godsend.
Posted by: Michael.j | Mar 3 2023 19:57 utc | 19
Maybe even the same percentage don't know who Plato was.Posted by: josesan | Mar 3 2023 19:48 utc | 18
Plato... PlayDough
Tom-eh-to... Tom-ah-to
How can you take a philosopher seriously if he is named after a child's toy.
Posted by: Sanctions R US | Mar 3 2023 19:58 utc | 20
Thanks b. There must be something to fact-checking nowadays.
Google has changed their news feed link to have a section on — you guessed it — fact-checking, and it sure is a doozy.
Selectively selected by Google and fact-checked by…
Who do you want to believe, me, or…
Posted by: Sakineh Bagoom | Mar 3 2023 20:06 utc | 21
Don’t know whether this destruction has been mentioned
It took John Mearsheimer just 120 seconds to completely debunk and destroy the NATO war narrative on Ukraine … in debate with Carl Bildt 😂
Transcript of the 2022 Holberg Debate: "Will Fear Keep Us Safe?"
b, my home IP has been added to some kind of blacklist. I have to use a proxy or cellular network to comment since about 2 days ago. I'll email the details.
Best,
Thomas
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 20:09 utc | 23
@ Sanctions R US | Mar 3 2023 19:58 utc | 21
You can have a lot of fun with your child's toy PlayDough, at any age, inspired by the similarity of it's name to a serious philosopher of antiquity, such as Plato. ;)
Well said, sir ... very well said.
Truth will eventually emerge.
It always does.
You are amongst the top tier truth tellers in these matters and the numbers are ever increasing.
Never. Ever. Quit.
Posted by: Joe B | Mar 3 2023 20:19 utc | 25
kudos to you b.. keep on shining a light in the darkness.. you are very good at it!
Posted by: james | Mar 3 2023 20:21 utc | 26
It's hard to not get cynic when MSM spouts lies 24/7 and tries really, really hard to put you on their diets of information perversion. At least MoA and the likes help keep sane in a world that is increasingly enveloped by lies. A problem with these truth perverting fact checkers is that effort is being poured by governments to have them decide what news sources that deviate from the consensus (set out by MSM) should be banned throughout societies. Today RT and Sputnik News are banned and so are other news sources. It's not pleasant to think of what might be banned tomorrow.
Scholz is currently in the empire palace kissing the ring of the emperor. Bloomberg has a piece titled: "German Chancellor Set for Heat From Biden Over Ukraine Ammunition Supplies: What to Watch" while in a sane world where journalism works for the people the title should have read: "President Biden Set for Heat From German Chancellor Over Nord Stream Attacks: What to Watch".
Posted by: xor | Mar 3 2023 20:22 utc | 27
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 20:09 utc | 24
i wonder how that works? is this an american thing, soon to come to canada?
Posted by: james | Mar 3 2023 20:23 utc | 28
I dunno ... In Vietnam the US used radio-transmitting motion-sensors in the form of plastic animal turds on the Ho Chi Minh trail, so plant-shaped C4 isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Posted by: Cato the Uncensored | Mar 3 2023 20:35 utc | 29
@ xor | Mar 3 2023 20:22 utc | 29
so true! we have moved into this orwellian reality now...
Posted by: james | Mar 3 2023 20:38 utc | 30
Bernhard, you provide a rare and highly prized service born of admirable effort, motivation and knowledge. Thank you.
Posted by: suzan | Mar 3 2023 20:44 utc | 31
In Germany, this affair has now made place for another embarassment for the mainstream faktenfinders:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/klamroth
https://twitter.com/hashtag/klamrothluegt
It's about a moderator (Klamroth) of one of the most popular political talkshows who thought he could lead Sarah Wagenknecht into a trap (the trap of formulating a false claim as truth), but failed and fell into the trap himself because of his lousy investigation skills.
Posted by: mk | Mar 3 2023 20:53 utc | 32
what a hysterical story. i recall intercepting some of the plant jokes in the form of cartoons, although admittedly had no idea what they were really about.
partisan 'fact checkers', whose job it is to debunk the narratives they disagree with, narratives that go against establishment grain, are not fact checkers at all and not interested in truth first and foremost. they are just coming up with stories to debunk that which they don't like.
thanks for everything b, you are so awesome. always bringing us logic, rationality and .. yourself.
Posted by: annie | Mar 3 2023 20:53 utc | 33
What we are witnessing is close to what Jean Baudrillard called 'the precession of simulacra'. But how could it be otherwise? After all someone is paying the "fact-checkers". Just like journalism, perhaps fact-checking began as a noble endeavor but it's naive to think that the rulers would allow it to flourish without intervention. Look at religions, NGOs, any international organizations etc.
Posted by: Steve | Mar 3 2023 21:05 utc | 34
The thing about these fact-checking organizations and agencies is - if one digs deeper beneath the surface, one will very quickly find that they are a profitable business model. That is, the "fact checker" will debunk or produce any kind of result their owners or investors want them to. Basically no different from corporate media.
Posted by: unimperator | Mar 3 2023 21:06 utc | 35
But things have changed in the last few years. These fool fact checkers are without doubt new cadre in war against the left (and we should admit, many on the right are sharing our issues.)
Posted by: Toivos | Mar 3 2023 19:24 utc | 13
----------------------------------------
Your comment is a strange analogy as US capitalist imperialism has, since the early 20th Century, to the present time, has been a war on the working class and its ideas'. For example, the Red Scare of the 1920's and the 1950's. In the 1970's and 80's I worked with a movement that opposed the Reagan war against the Sandinistas and in opposition to another US proxy war against the people of Nicaragua, and a war against the people of El Salvadore. We were all investigated by the FBI
But I never noticed an imperialist war against the Right: Guess I just missed all of that.
Posted by: Ed | Mar 3 2023 21:07 utc | 36
I've been recently reading "The Rape of the Mind", about psychological control by totalitarian means. It was written 60 years ago and is ever more valid now. Thought police are alive and well - and insidious, since the population has been taught to thought police each other.
I'd say the ever rising mental health issues are related to this. Part of mind rape is a disconnection from the self, from others, and what gives life meaning. Unfortunately most therapy is also part of this control, invalidating many emotions and real issues.
Posted by: Matthew | Mar 3 2023 21:13 utc | 37
Bravo b, one of your best pieces yet. Weaving in a philosophical critique adds another string to your bow.
Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 3 2023 21:15 utc | 38
@ Cato the Uncensored | Mar 3 2023 20:35 utc | 31
And it and all the similar associated high-tech wunderwaffe projects failed utterly at the cost of hundreds of millions (in '60's/'70's $s), unless the objective was to donate explosive, batteries & circuitry & sensors to the NVA/VC/Village militias ... by the most inefficient means available at the highest possible incurred cost ?
The author of this Faktenfinder seems to be a young unexpirienced but ambitious journalist.I could not get any substantial information abbout him. The fact that there was not an solid jounalist at work, shows that the whole Faktenfinderei ist not taken very serious. It really is a Spektakel and you know from the beginning what they find out. It has nothing to do with the oldfashioned Wahrheitssuchen oder -finden (truth-seeking or finding).
Posted by: Wolfgang | Mar 3 2023 21:34 utc | 40
"The change of the media and propagandists, basically interchangeable now, from educated people to random sons and daughters of the upper classes has led to a disintegration of the ability for the elite class to present their propaganda in a professional manner like they used to."
-Posted by: kana | Mar 3 2023 18:15 utc | 1
Yes! Great insight. The same effect seems to be at work in upper echelons of western bureaucracy. It seems like one can hardly turn around in the U.S. State Department without seeing some blithering fratboy playing at spectacle.
Posted by: Figleaf23 | Mar 3 2023 21:39 utc | 41
@6
"So, was this also the work of the traitors in the Russian High Command?"
I suppose that's one possible explanation, although it's hard to imagine that would have been allowed to go on for so long. But is it not also possible that Russia does not want to kill any more Ukrainians than it has to? Especially considering the bad way the country is in for national soldiers, relying heavily on 'volunteer foreign legions'. Several published studies by generally-reliable demographers suggest the Ukrainian ethnicity will never recover from the savaging it has experienced already, with nearly 200,000 prospective young fathers dead and many of the women scattered to foreign countries from which they will not likely return. Consider also that what remains of Ukraine afterward will be an economic black hole, with much of the workforce killed and the tax base shrunken to a shadow of its former self.
I realize that if true, an argument might be made that this is at odds with Russia's stated aim of demilitarizing Ukraine, deliberately letting soldiers escape after luring them into a position where they might be easily killed. But so was its earlier policy of distributing leaflets encouraging Ukrainian troops to surrender without fighting, whereupon they would not be harmed. Was that the work of traitors in the Russian high command as well?
Testing...had three identical comments disappeared into the ether...
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 21:57 utc | 43
How strange. Trying this one last time:
Posted by: james | Mar 3 2023 20:23 utc | 30
I have no idea what happened. I emailed b a few minutes ago and hopefully he sees it. I'm using a proxy service to leave this comment in case, but I am copying it to my text editor in case it doesn't go through and I have to wait to see what has happened re: my home IP address.
Regarding the main theme of b's article and the thread, I read the linked piece about "spectacle" and immediately thought of this book, which I just learned of and read last year. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/159979
A spectacle is something - either arising naturally or manufactured - designed to draw spectators.
The author defines (coins, even) the term "psuedo-event" and goes about discussing it at length.
First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of “pseudo-events”—events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported—and the contemporary definition of celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.” Since then Daniel J. Boorstin’s prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any reader who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
I'd argue that a psuedo-event is one type of spectacle. As with spectacles, pseudo-events are mediated representations of life that cannot be experienced directly. Spectacles and psuedo-events are presented as reality; in fact the *only* acceptable reality of a given time or place. Here in the collective "west" (a term that, to me, means any country under the umbrella of primarily US influence, especially re: economy or geopolitics) there is currently an acceptable reality that is as broad as it is deep and to sum it up it involves the sanctity and exceptionalism of the US anglophone/europhone ("western chauvinism" is one way to put it) approach to managing and policing the world. This of course involves a need for enemies or rivals and anything such a person or entity does is by definition wrong, evil or backwards. Every spectacle and psuedo-event presents an opportunity to drill this into our heads.
As far as meaningful political action and ability of the population to actually affect what our governments do at home and abroad, our masters want our entire lives to devolve into consuming spectacles and psuedo-events on a 24/7/365 basis where we are merely viewers absorbing content and "facts" (thus "fact checking" done for us) as our main reality. To me this is an extension of corporate control over all aspects of life including government with some types of corporations (MIC, social media, legacy media) holding greater sway in preventing us from taking real-life actions like mass protests and stop-work strikes. Spectacles and psuedo-events are a way to manage us and curate a particular version of "the truth" and "history" which keep us mostly placated.
Blah blah, anyway I hope this comment gets through and I do recommend "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America" despite it mainly focusing on the USSA and its age (1960s!).
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 21:57 utc | 44
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 21:57 utc | 48
tom... it looks like an excellent and short read... i think the author is really on track since 1962 as this kind of craziness has ramped up a lot since then... i hope you are able to post without interruption.. cheers james
Posted by: james | Mar 3 2023 22:09 utc | 45
Since this IP seems to be working, I figured I'd follow up with a little better description of the book I recommended above. It really is apropos to the topic.
From Wikipedia (yeah, yeah they're OK on stuff like nature, geography and celebrities):
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America is a 1962 book by the political historian Daniel J. Boorstin.[1] In his book, Boorstin argues that Americans have a false "image" of what "news" actually is. He argues that Americans mistake certain "pseudo-events" for real news, when in fact they are the contrivances of politicians and news corporations.[2]The Image begins by noting that Americans have "extravagant expectations" when it comes to their news consumption. To a degree, they demand to be entertained. Truly important, naturally occurring news stories, however, do not occur regularly or predictably -- there may be droughts of newsworthy stories. In order to "fill the gap," news corporations report what Boorstin calls "pseudo-events." Pseudo-events are political spectacles (usually) organized by politicians to tell a certain narrative. For example, a mayor may "cut the ribbon" at the grand re-opening of a historic hotel; the President may "pardon a turkey"; or, most commonly, a politician might organize a press release. These pseudo-events, however, are often mistaken for real news. And, more importantly, the media consumers seeing these pseudo-events often mistakenly believe these politicians are engaging "in politics."[3]
The Image is also well-known for defining a celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness." Boorstin argued that in the 1960s leaders were beginning to resemble "media stars," rather than politicians. Boorstin further warned that if the voting public continued to be inundated with pseudo-events and un-nuanced media coverage, these media stars would soon dominate the political landscape. Of important note, this book was written in the years following the 1960 Presidential Election, where many commentators have noted that Kennedy's appearance and demeanor on the first televised presidential debate may have swung the election.[4]
From Encyclopedia Brittanica:
The term pseudo-event was coined by American scholar Daniel J. Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), his book about the effects of media publicity and advertising on political and social practices in the United States in the 1950s. Boorstin defined a pseudo-event as an ambiguous truth that appeals to people’s desire to be informed. He argued that being in the media spotlight was a strong incentive for public figures to stage artificial events, which became real and important once validated by media coverage. Boorstin described pseudo-events as the opposite of propaganda, although both forms of communication have similar consequences and result in public misinformation. Whereas propaganda slants facts to keep the public from learning the truth, pseudo-events provide the public with artificial facts that people perceive as real.Pseudo-events are carefully choreographed, following a prepared script and leaving nothing to chance. In order to maximize the event’s exposure, they are scheduled in advance, and journalists are informed of the specific time when the event will occur. Pseudo-events are designed to be dramatic, to make them interesting for the public, and they tend to generate iconic images, such as big enthusiastic crowds. Pseudo-events can include press conferences, advertisements, speeches, and other similar events covering issues with little value in terms of content and importance.
And finally, this appears to be the full book available for free.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/edit/boor.html
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 22:09 utc | 46
Back when Hollande was president of France, I was continually amused by Google's mish mash of texts referring alternatively to Holland, the president of Holland, and the president of France.
Posted by: Webej | Mar 3 2023 22:14 utc | 47
Transcript of the 2022 Holberg Debate: "Will Fear Keep Us Safe?"
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aNMOEQ0248
Posted by: Oui | Mar 3 2023 20:06 utc | 23
Not sure if you intended the quotation to be a hyperlink, but the YouTube video link goes to the 2020 Holberg Debate. In which the perpetual asshole US chauvinist John Bolton cries and moans about evil China.
Here's last year's debate on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aNMOEQ0248
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 3 2023 22:18 utc | 48
Cato the Uncensored | Mar 3 2023 20:35 utc | 31
» plant shaped C4 «
Petal mines all over Donetsk, green/brown for camouflage
Posted by: Webej | Mar 3 2023 22:29 utc | 49
Replying to i seem 2 b banned | Mar 3 2023 18:41 utc | 6
I guess you just proved B's point about fact checking lies, propaganda with what you said in this post, Even the CIA and MI6 know nothing, zero of what is happening in Moscow and Beijing so your speculation of traitors in the Kremlin is just spouting Bull. You don't know it as a fact you are just trolling which doesn't relate to the topic at hand, which is fact checker spouting lies and misinformation much as you have just done
Posted by: Les | Mar 3 2023 22:34 utc | 50
@ Wolfgang | Mar 3 2023 21:34 utc | 44
» Faktenfinder seems to be a young unexpirienced but ambitious journalist ... The fact that there was not an solid jounalist at work, shows that the whole Faktenfinderei ist not taken very serious. «
Doesn't need to be. It's just so others can later say Hirsch has been thoroughly debunked by myriad sources.
Luckily the authorities just can't help themselves and always insert little tid-bits as clues, e.g.,
– A policeman finds al-Suqami's passport in the vaporized dust of 911 ... including such a detail is their way of mocking their audience.
– Terror acts where the perpetrator has his passport on him, helping the police to put out the narrative within 10 minutes ... the passport is required by the drinking whoring ‘Muslim’ jihadi because he is afraid Allah would otherwise not know who he is.
Posted by: Webej | Mar 3 2023 22:41 utc | 51
Words have meanings.
Fact-checking is an ordinary editorial function, most often performed by copy editors. Any other use of the term is automatically suspect and probably comes with a load of freight. Of course copy editing almost no longer exists.
The French use of 'spectacle' is not far from the English word 'show', in the show business sense. You could try 'the big show' or Ed Sullivan's "really big show tonight". It is not a big deal of a word in French.
Raoul Vaneighem was not plausibly the author of Savoir Vivre Pour Les Jeunes, implausibly translated as Revolution of Everyday Life. It was Debord again.
Remember Wild Bill Casey and his quip "when everything the American public believes is false, we will know our information operations have been successful." First item on the CIA 1947 agenda was taking over Hollywood. The mafia was happy to oblige. CIA + Hollywood would be a fair approximation of 'spectacle'.
Posted by: oldhippie | Mar 3 2023 22:43 utc | 52
@ Oui | Mar 3 2023 20:06 utc | 23
The tape is 120 mins. Which 120 secs you refer to is best communicated with a time cue.
Posted by: Webej | Mar 3 2023 22:45 utc | 53
The comment @6 is pure spectacle.
//////
Excellent article b, and so kind of spectacle makers to aid in its production. Debunking the Narrative is the movement and efforts made in its pursuit. I provide Putin, Lavrov and other Russian primary sources as one major aspect of my part in that Crusade. Polling within the Outlaw US Empire shows a continual decline in the public's appraisal of Media credibility to the point where it's well under 35% overall, with Rs and Independents being much lower. The faction that lies the most--The Ds--also have the greatest percentage of believers, Russiagate being an excellent example. The battle against Truth is older than the Bible, and I'm surprised more trolls haven't polluted this thread.
Posted by: Mark | Mar 3 2023 21:45 utc | 46
My sentiments exactly. Anyone familiar with the demographic population pyramid of Germany, post WW I and WW II would support the decisions of the Russian high command to let Ukrainians live.
The Ukie soldiers in Bakhmut are shown to be grandfathers and teenagers, not clear how many. Live and let live is always a good plan. Credits to the Russians who do prefer to not waste Ukie lives. Nazis OTOH, not so much.
May Zelensky suffer Khadafi's fate.
Posted by: Acco Hengst | Mar 3 2023 22:56 utc | 55
@ Mark | Mar 3 2023 21:45 utc | 46
Stooge, you have selectively chosen to respond to a serial troll's multi-thread spam shit-posting. :(
A practical example of the very subject of this thread ... Spectacle.
Hey, anyway, can S-300P ADS models be used by design in a secondary ground attack mode ? Any ideas ?
Glenn Greenwald is correct about partisan cranks pretending to be fact-based reality lovers, and theres no better example than glenn greenwald
Posted by: Hrughus | Mar 3 2023 23:26 utc | 57
@ Hrughus | Mar 3 2023 23:26 utc | 61
i generally like and support greenwalds work.... so we see that very differently...
Posted by: james | Mar 3 2023 23:29 utc | 58
If you bothered to follow Telegram channels you'd know the elite Nazi units have left Bakhmut. In the almost closed sack are teenagers and old men grabbed off city streets and dumb as meat bags to hold off the Wagner's.
Russia's war is not against the innocent people in Ukraine, but the Nazis who do the dirty work and run at the first sign of trouble.
Anymore questions why the Russians are leaving a passage open for retreat without heavy equipment?
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/35778?single
Posted by: Surferket | Mar 3 2023 23:46 utc | 59
There is a long history of people nitpicking Seymour Hersh’s pieces, as though finding minor errors here and there will discredit his entire theses. The disingenuousness is palpable. Hersh pisses off certain people, because he has made a career out of exposing US lies and crimes.
Posted by: Rob | Mar 3 2023 23:58 utc | 60
As amusing as this undetected translation blunder seems, it was only made possible by a lack of competent supervision by the author's "manager(s)" (cough, cough). A core role of a manager is to oversee the work of a new recruit to a specific duty in order to accurately assess his or her strengths and weaknesses and ability to perform reliably unsupervised.
It's anyone's guess why the author in question was permitted to operate autonomously before he had been properly assessed but it suggests that propaganda outfits are under TOO MUCH pressure.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Mar 4 2023 0:02 utc | 61
Here's va very good article on the org chart of the Russian Baths, and their weapons.
Also touched on the current slow progress of the Russian movements. The situation is that the area contested is very much heavily fortified towns, large open plains in between, littered by strips of forest, which the Nazis have dug in.
It's is suicidal to charge across the open spaces due to Nazi artillery fire, so the Russians do hedge hopping in the forest belts to minimize their casualties.
See telegram to see the actual fighting in the forest belts with the Nazis dug into firing points and the connected trench systems.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/the-btg-is-dead-long-live-the-btg
Posted by: Surferket | Mar 4 2023 0:05 utc | 62
One has to be exceedingly well self educated to not be fooled much of the time. Our education system is not up to date. Furthermore most people just do not have the "time" or "critical thinking" skills needed to understand the world. We depend on our own intuition and evidence to get things right, but our intuition needs to be retrained. Per Hans Rosling most journalist are particularly poorly informed. Besides being ignorance many journalist even are encouraged to create click bait. On ordinary person can only spend so much time tracing down sources. An interesting place to start is gap minder started by Hans Rosling and his son. If someone wants to get on the evidence based thinking track gap minder is a good place to start. https://www.gapminder.org/
Posted by: ATM | Mar 4 2023 0:49 utc | 63
in all fairness: "mushroom" clouds.
anyhoo, this is just footnotes to plato. you can't "fact check" objective opinions because they aren't facts. and sometimes they're "not even wrong" to begin with. as deceased fatty chris hitchens put it: "that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
Posted by: the pair | Mar 4 2023 0:58 utc | 64
Situationists? How will these freeloading hedonists sustain themselves?
They are merely a reflection of society in collapse.
Posted by: too scents | Mar 3 2023 19:52 utc | 19
-------------------------------
Tell b how you really feel.
Posted by: Ed | Mar 4 2023 1:29 utc | 65
Seems to be a ton of fact checking right here at moon. Just saying, if something is not politically-correct then the post is banned, which is still censorship.
Recently I tried to make a point on why the call on DOE "Dept of Energy" saying that COVID was most likely a lab-leak, and why DOE was significant.
In the world for USSA, DOE is responsible for securing both atomic weapons and bio-weapons; The fact that DOE is says one of their bio-weapons escaped from a lab, means they're admitting that they lost a 'football'. Now within circles this is impossible, DOE has never lost a weapon in all their history; They generally recruit retired navy seals and army ranger to do the security at weapon sites; These are the best trained men on earth;
Now of course we all know the COVID didn't just walk out of the BLS4 lab, or was stolen, most likely it was FEDEX'd to some CIA contractor, but still for the DOE to admit a loss is significant;
Now why would moon censor this observation??
Posted by: paracetamol | Mar 4 2023 1:57 utc | 66
FAIR on the news blackout in-what's the name of that rebel colony full of bloodthirsty creoles and bumptious fascist wannabes?- US media.
"... what is most striking about the page after page of results from Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo in the weeks following the February 8 posting of Hersh's story isn’t what is there, but what is not to be found:
" The Times of London (2/8/23) reported Hersh’s story hours after he posted it on his Substack account, but nothing in the New York Times.
"Britain’s Reuters News Agency moved at least ten stories (2/8/23, 2/9/23, 2/12/2, 2/15/23, among others), the Associated Press not one.
"Not a word broadcast by the major US broadcast networks—NBC, ABC, CBS—or the publicly funded broadcasters PBS and NPR.
"No news stories on the nation’s major cable outlets, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News...."
And then came the 'fact checkers' to check whether Hersh was a real journalist:
"... Snopes (2/10/23), the only major factchecking site to weigh in on Hersh’s claims. But Snopes, which bills itself as “the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors and misinformation,” didn’t check any disputed facts. Instead, it starts with an ad hominem attack, asking “Who is Seymour Hersh?”
"Snopes answers that rhetorical question by summarizing his body of work—uncovering the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, revealing the secret bombing in Cambodia and the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq—but emphasizing that “his later work, however, has been controversial and widely panned by journalists for promoting conspiratorial claims that hinge on dubious anonymous sources or speculation.”
"Snopes’ presentation is hardly even-handed. No defenders of Hersh are cited in the four-paragraph overview of his work, which includes seven hyperlinks to sources. That looks impressive. But clicking on the links reveals four are to the same source: the Business Insider hit piece.
"Snopes’ failure to acknowledge multiple links to the same source isn’t just sloppy, it’s misleading, because most readers don’t check to see if the same source is cited repeatedly..."
The weird thing is that none of the US media noticed the 'plant shaped explosive' angle in their desperation to discredit Hersh.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 4 2023 2:13 utc | 67
by: too scents | Mar 3 2023 19:52 utc
Situationists? How will these freeloading hedonists sustain themselves?
They are merely a reflection of society in collapse.
......................................................
A concern troll for opponents of the system, with no idea about anything but an opinion about everything.
Posted by: theresamarquesa | Mar 4 2023 2:20 utc | 68
The media are always followers, and totally incurious. They'll report what's handed to them by those most prepared to form a narrative (host governments, corporations, and NGOs) and then sometime later, when the truth becomes impossible to ignore they'll report the facts.
Unless those stubborn facts go down to history as "conspiracy theory" in which case they'll uphold the fiction in spite of everything.
Posted by: Guest777 | Mar 4 2023 2:26 utc | 69
As Debord put it, “We can truly understand this society only by negating it.” If the “experts” lose influence, it will be because the public has rejected them outright, and can articulate that their societal role is to deceive on behalf of the powerful.
Paul Schreyer’s video, “Pandemic simulation games – Preparation for a new era?” presents the USG’s pandemic preparations in historical context, a fascinating hour.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d3WUv5SV5Hg
At ~ 22:40 — 28:00 minutes the 2001 simulation “Dark Winter” is covered,
the 3rd infectious disease simulation held by the feds since the end of Cold War I. It was a Hollywood-like spectacle enacted with PR at the fore of planning. The notorious Judith Miller participates as part of ‘news’ simulation. Robert Kadlec plays himself.
~~
“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organisation. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie.”
Posted by: suzan | Mar 4 2023 3:11 utc | 70
Posted by: Guest777 | Mar 4 2023 2:26 utc | 74
-----------------------
Long time no see, guest77
I don't see what any personal sympathies with the protestors even matters. Sure, we all want people to be able to fight for their rights and have the government they want, but right now there is a larger priority, and that is making sure that the world maintains a multipolar political structure. The importance of a multipolar world outweighs even our desire to see vocal minorities to take to the streets, I think. (And these are vocal minorites, no doubt).I think, as "westerners" we have to support the group that will insure the independence of the state in question. We cannot support any group that looks to the US as a model or a hope, because we here know better than anyone that this is a sham. And any group that panders to the US and it's citizens via social media has to immediately be suspect.
Sloppy always comes to crow about how much b hates America. I don't think b "hates" the USA, but he is certainly right to make the USAs aggressive moves toward hegemony the key focus of all of his posts, and right to make a stand against this issue over all others because it is truly the gravest threat the world faces today.
- if the emergence of liberal freedom in every corner of the world means it's sure evaporation from all parts very soon after (which will surely occur if the USA achieves total global domination) we cannot support this. We will only see real opportunities for peace, political expression, and true democracy only after the US is prevented from perverting these good things into instruments of its domination. But until then, the independence of foreign governments is far more important for world peace, stability, and prosperity than the rights of a few minorities to threaten their governments in Russia, China, or Iran.
guest77 | Oct 5, 2014 7:23:42 PM | 86
We need more clear headed posters here .
There's been an invasion of self appointed 'progressives' who champion the 'right to self determination' for TW, TIBET, XINJIANG ', HK....
[eg scorpion, oppo north, down south...etc]
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 3:51 utc | 71
There's been an invasion of self appointed 'progressives' who champion the 'right to self determination' for TW, TIBET, XINJIANG ', HK....Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 3:51 utc | 76
Add me to that group, though I disagree with the "self appointed progressive" label.
Smaller locally controlled government structures will cause less damage than the current behemoths. The city state model, like the Doge of Venice, would be perfect. Multi-culturalism would flourish. Nothing "progressive" about that model.
Posted by: Sanctions R US | Mar 4 2023 4:55 utc | 72
Smaller locally controlled government structures will cause less damage than the current behemoths. The city state model, like the Doge of Venice, would be perfect. Multi-culturalism would flourish. Nothing "progressive" about that model.
Posted by: Sanctions R US | Mar 4 2023 4:55 utc | 77
--------------------
According to this shithead,
A balkanised China, Russia, Iran etc is preferable to an independent China, Russia, Iran opposing pax merikka,
amazing .
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 5:12 utc | 73
In response to
"
According to this shithead,
A balkanised China, Russia, Iran etc is preferable to an independent China, Russia, Iran opposing pax merikka,
amazing .
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 5:12 utc | 78
"
Agreed!
This poster makes no mention of what sort of structure is on top of those small locally controlled government structures....don't look, its Hand, The Invisible
You have to laugh at the drive by idiots
Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2023 5:25 utc | 74
@ Guest777 | Mar 4 2023 2:26 utc | 74
@ denk | Mar 4 2023 3:51 utc | 76
Guest77(7) (?)
Welcome back ? drinks on my tab. Well said denk, too true re dissembling. Cheers & Prost!
Peace
Despite all the pessimism that nothing ever changes I continue to believe that a steady uncovering of spectacle nonsense, and talking about it, will over time change things - even if only a bit.Posted by b on March 3, 2023 at 18:11 UTC | Permalink
There was an article somewhere contemplating that if Jesus was preaching on earth today, He will be charged with spreading desinformation... Again.
So 2000 years later, nothing really changed.
Posted by: Vikichka | Mar 4 2023 5:27 utc | 76
In response to
"
There was an article somewhere contemplating that if Jesus was preaching on earth today, He will be charged with spreading desinformation... Again.
So 2000 years later, nothing really changed.
Posted by: Vikichka | Mar 4 2023 5:27 utc | 81
"
The bible speaks against usury and Jesus reportedly threw the money changers out of the temple. Pope Frank and the Catholic church has supported usury since the 13th century, as I recall, but they still profess to be doing God's work... and have their own money changing temple mired in corruption.
And then there is King Chuck, a stellar example of the morals of monarchy and whatever church blesses his geopolitical farts.
They are doing God's work (God Of Mammon), not the peoples work.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2023 5:36 utc | 77
It is incredible how Hersh’s Syria stories are now used against him.
“he was good untill AbuGraib but after that he went of the rails…blabla…i respect him but he is a old fool now.” / heard and read this “quote” contless times the last weeks.
Something radically shifted in this time! The war in Syria consolidated the “ethier with us or against us” attitude of much of journalism in the west. Or the agency's finally took full control.
I always wondered how the ratio of complicity vs. ignorance is/was for journalists that go after Hersh or the Greyzone like this. So much madness happened in Syria and we were only fed this comical reduction of complex realities.
Not only did much of the media not help to understand the reality but they helped some real monsters to get away with unspeakable crimes (Al Gouta and Douma for example!). If Assad did not use the Gas than somebody else did and this somebody did so with full impunity and the confidence that nobody will ask questions.
Ignorance or complicity?
The Northstream story pales compared to what happen in Syria.
Posted by: El.Lissitzky | Mar 4 2023 5:54 utc | 78
Agreed!
This poster makes no mention of what sort of structure is on top of those small locally controlled government structures....don't look, its Hand, The Invisible
You have to laugh at the drive by idiots
Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2023 5:25 utc | 79
Indeed. The quality of relationship between debtor and creditor, thus the health or decay of society, relies precisely upon the power of government. Is government strong enough to fight off a vampire squid predatorial class or is it itself a vampire squid vulture. Weakness is not strength when it comes to facing down such anti-human forces.
Posted by: suzan | Mar 4 2023 5:56 utc | 79
Fantastic, congratulations b, this has to be one of your best. My hope is that the spectacle is becoming of such a low quality that even the least interested, dedicated or time pressed fellows will realize how those soulless string pullers are fooling and ruining us.
Posted by: Paco | Mar 4 2023 6:15 utc | 80
Just finished reading "THE IMAGE
A Guide to Pseudo Events
in America", I think posted by Tom Q.
Thanks, it was interesting. While positing nothing new to me, it was stated in a way I was incapable of relating to others.
Posted by: David F | Mar 4 2023 6:26 utc | 81
Spectacle ? Here's a little bit of 'Remembering' (Vale R'Giap) ...
The British authorities fabricated the 2018 Salisbury incident to prepare their population for a confrontation with Russia. This is stated in the statement of the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom.
“In 2018, this provocation could still look like a single incident used to dismantle the construct that was present at that time in relations between our countries,” it says. “Now we understand that official London was not interested in searching for the truth. The British fabricated the Salisbury chemical incident in order to start preparing their population and their allies for a confrontation that has now turned into a military-political plane in Ukraine ."
The embassy added that a note was sent to the British Foreign Office demanding to clarify the situation with the health and location of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
See RF UK Embassy Twitter post: (censored/filtered) (Heavy NAFO & deluded infestation ...)
A direct link to the detailed Russian report, 'SALISBURY: FIVE YEARS OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS, Mar032023', with refs/citations, is linked there (censored/filtered)
The Collective consciousness can be mistranslated on purpose and conscience muted for ‘evil’ to triumph.
Truth gets Lost in Translation.
So it is absolutely delightful that the Great Communicator Lavrov , in India for G20 , is for once speaking in English to that audience which speaks it as a native language after 300 years of British imperial indoctrination of it.
Just so that his Indian interlocutors don’t get an edge over him in a live q&a with the Indians. Brilliant! Brilliant Lavrov.
English is a weapon of imperialism? Well let’s make sure it is a ‘double edged’ one and cuts both ways.
😄
Ps @GeromanAT is BACK on Twitter - why he was cancelled is unknown.
Posted by: DunGroanin | Mar 4 2023 6:56 utc | 83
b. I live in Australia. Last week the Public Broadcaster, the ABC, published a piece in which geopolitical analysis of the Ukraine war was described by a writer as 'Chinese propaganda derived from Russian disinformation.' The implications of that I will leave to your imagination. The geopolitical analysis in question was the Chinese publication - US Hegemony and Its Perils, or some such title. But the content of this document echoed western dissenters criticisms over the past couple of decades, and to some extent must have been a source for the writers of the Chinese account. I have little or no criticism of the Chinese analysis, which largely aligns with my own geopolitical analysis. Although mildly shocked, I was not surprised, because for a few weeks now I have been thinking that in the present state of things, it was only a matter of time before geopolitical analysis was rebranded as conspiracy theory. A somewhat ominous development.
Posted by: malcolm harrison | Mar 4 2023 9:22 utc | 84
Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2023 5:36 utc | 77
The argument was whether a society based on lies can be changed by dissidents exposing the lies and the hypocrisy.
Some 2000 the elite was the pharisees, 1000 years ago it was the Vatican and kings, today its the deepstate oligarchy. Nobody managed to create a society where the elite was not corrupt. The only thing they tried differently was to divide powers in the hope the elite would be less corrupt and that effort also failed.
Posted by: Vikichka | Mar 4 2023 11:09 utc | 85
a steady uncovering of spectacle nonsense, and talking about it, will over time change things - even if only a bit.
As I said once before, almost certainly as follows:
"Little by little ... then suddenly all at once"
Posted by: BM | Mar 4 2023 11:35 utc | 86
As to the "plant shaped C4 charges":
Hilarious!
It is inevitable that the "Spectacle" will largely be published by dimwitted low-lifes like this one, which eventually will be its undoing. Already the narrative is flaking at the edges as the elites get more and more desperate and do more and more stupid things. More and more people are "waking up" - but still a minority in the bondaged US and Europe. Of the majority who are still living in bondage though, I suspect the narrative is already getting flakey at the edges - as I said, "Little by little ... then suddenly all at once"
Posted by: BM | Mar 4 2023 11:46 utc | 87
I continue to believe that a steady uncovering of spectacle nonsense, and talking about it, will over time change things - even if only a bit.
A lofty ideal and one can only respect it. Personally I'd go with something closer to Baudrillard's vision on the "empty dialectical stage". The disappearing boundaries between fact & fiction, (even more) correction & (even more) error. The thinning lines between analysis & fantasy are effects, not causes. If there's any cause to be named beyond the rather vague idea of decadence or Bau's own "overproduction of reality", it would be about the shift and possible disappearing of the horizon of signification itself. The contrast between important & mundane. Far & close. Future & past. The field of consciousness is narrowing and at the same type more detailed and laser-focused as ever. But mostly seeing wallpaper.
For those acknowledging the above picture and still looking for fixes: learn accepting some of the larger ebbs & flows of things. Swim with the tides and not try to "transform" anything into ones own ideologies. Unless you must./
Posted by: John Dowser | Mar 4 2023 12:09 utc | 88
Nobody ever thinks anything is changing until it does.
Nobody thought, in 1939, that the empire that straddled a third of the world and half its population would, by 1945, be a beggar only able to feed its own people by the kindness of the new global power.
Nobody thought (and especially nobody in the US State or War departments or their myriad intelligence agencies), in 1985, that the existential enemy empire they were both feeding and supplying with missile technology would, by 1991, be a beggar falling into penury by the sheer weight of corruption and bereft of all its conquests.
None of them anticipated a man capable of rebuilding that nation into a major political and economic power, either.
Yet here we are.
Posted by: ScuzzaMan | Mar 4 2023 12:20 utc | 89
Greetings to Exile (3) from another who followed the abominable lies and worse during the West’s anti Serb crusade of 1990s and wrote endless letters to the media. We witnessed so many of the same techniques from that time which spanned the old “paper and broadcast” media to the dawning of the internet though pre “social media”. I always saw the dismantling of Yugoslavia as the precursor to a final assault on Russia and see nothing to change my mind. My lesson was the best technique is to quote the MSM itself where it evidently contradicts the “main message” whether it is genocidal Serbs or imperialist Russia. Appeal to things that are well established in the public mind but are evidently contrary to the “line”.
The main difference is that it was never credible that Serbs would ever fire a shot in anger within range of the armchair crusaders…
According to this shithead, A balkanised China, Russia, Iran etc is preferable to an independent China, Russia, Iran opposing pax merikka,amazing .
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 5:12 utc | 73
Hey donk... that would be your illogical conclusion.
The US should be broken into 5 or 6 as well.
Posted by: Santions R US | Mar 4 2023 13:19 utc | 91
I started reading Guy Debord back in 1970. Franklin & Penelope Rosemont had made a trip to France and came back with a small stack of Internationale Situationiste. Twenty copies? Which were displayed at the old Solidarity Bookshop. They were kind of expensive so I stood and read in the store, which is what most did. Franklin had asked Debord for 500 copies. There never were that many copies. It was all handprinted and the magazine was a work of art.
The number of people who have read the first page of Society of the Spectacle is a tiny fraction of those who talk about Situationism. Do yourself a favor and go read a book.
Posted by: oldhippie | Mar 4 2023 13:22 utc | 92
The US should be broken into 5 or 6 as well.
Posted by: Santions R US | Mar 4 2023 13:19 utc | 91
======================
hey moron,
The Unitedsnakes, being the biggest and meanest
behemoth, should be chopped up into multiple smaller snakes .
Better still, These snakes should fight among themselves and leave the world alone.
Problem solved.
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 13:46 utc | 93
Aside from the ridiculous translation, asking whether planted explosives are likely or not isn't fact checking.
"Fact checking" would be: "Someone said this bomb contains X explosives, but in fact it contains Y explosives".
Or: "The article said X distance from Norway, but it's Y distance from Norway."
Or: "The article said the exercise took place on this date, but it was in fact on this date."
Calling an expert to ask if an explosive is "likely" is propaganda, not fact checking.
Posted by: Hegar | Mar 4 2023 13:48 utc | 94
Nobody ever thinks anything is changing until it does.
===
Yet here we are.
Posted by: ScuzzaMan | Mar 4 2023 12:20 utc | 89=
Actually, lots of people thought those things at the time and still do. Stop believing corporate media lies. The thing that "nobody does" is listen. What do you get when your world is full of crooks trying to bullshit everybody else? The USA.
Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 4 2023 13:56 utc | 95
Facts are the building blocks of truth. To construct a house of truth, the facts have to be of reliable material: they have to be verifiable. Politicians frequently employ historical “facts” to argue their contemporary positions relating to war. Facts can be verified. The simplest way is establishing facts that are not in contention. That at least allows the basis for discussion. But people have a different motive, which compels them to approach history in a selective evidence-based way. There are still the facts that are not in contention: it’s just that they are deemed irrelevant to the desired narrative. This is where “fact-checking” gets confused with propaganda: the former serves the purposes of the latter. Propaganda is about building morale on one’s own side, while demoralizing the enemy – not about truth. Truth is found in those dull historic facts not in contention. They show that nations go to war for interests and power. They also warn, that motive eventually leads all empires to the conflict they are trying to avoid, their own destruction.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
Posted by: peter mcloughlin | Mar 4 2023 14:18 utc | 96
Igor Ashmanov
Control of the MSM is like air superiority in a war
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 14:22 utc | 97
Stavroula Pabst is carrying extra coal to Old Castle. What a revelation that fact-checkers are politicized from inception.
An even shorter route is take out the Guy Debord self-spectacle which is also a dressed up lump of old coal--yes, we know his point in other, sturdier, just-open-your-eyes terms.
Posted by: Elmagnostic | Mar 4 2023 14:31 utc | 98
You have to laugh at the drive by idiots
Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 4 2023 5:25 utc | 74
--------------------
too true re dissembling. Cheers & Prost!
Posted by: Outraged | Mar 4 2023 5:26 utc | 75
-----------------------------
I chuckle every time someone holler..
Its time for another rev.
Well ,
The aint no 2nd rev in USAss
cuz
There aint no US embassy in Washington DC !
Besides, the majority of gringo [such as sanction r us] are more interested in revolutionising ....China. !
Posted by: denk | Mar 4 2023 14:46 utc | 99
Stop believing corporate media lies.Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 4 2023 13:56 utc | 95
But people do listen to corporate media because it "enriches them". Theyd feel empty without. Shoppenhauer wrote
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money.
Posted by: Vikichka | Mar 4 2023 15:11 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
The change of the media and propagandists, basically interchangeable now, from educated people to random sons and daughters of the upper classes has led to a disintegration of the ability for the elite class to present their propaganda in a professional manner like they used to.
It used to be that the media had to be infiltrated by security services in order to control political and social narratives that favored the political/corporate elites. They wanted as much political and social control as they could get to maintain or increase their power and wealth. By the 1990s the elite establishment had taken the route of media consolidation as the most foolproof method of information control. The Internet then made that system of control obsolete overnight.
The establishment has been trying ever since to put the genie of the information superhighway back into their tightly stopped bottle. One by one they co-opted newly minted millionaire tech CEOs or social media owners to do their bidding. They threatened them, or bought them out, payed them off, or convinced them to accept the dominant worldview among the power elite in upper-class society—that the end justifies the means. With the end being to force their desires on as many as they can, legally or illegally.
Posted by: kana | Mar 3 2023 18:15 utc | 1