Jon Rappoport: Images sent over thousands of miles, well-lit anchors who seem alert to everything of importance taking place in our world, field reporters in far-flung places who pop up and respond instantly to the anchors and deliver close-up accounts of vital events. And the same important faces of government leaders who, day after day, are struggling to improve our destiny against great odds, against intransigent enemies of progress. All this is delivered to us in the space of a few minutes, each night, like clockwork. The television news presents that little show of magic which the people sorely need. The need never dies. It's eternal. The television anchors can be obvious oafs, hucksters, cheap con artists. They can twist the truth, burn it, hide it, step on it, reverse it; it doesn't matter. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Krieger: The "Russiagate" scam-artist pundits and fake journalists have no shame and many of them already achieved fame and fortune. Moreover, just like the banker crooks of the financial crisis era and the Iraq war WMD peddlers that came before them, these people are more likely to be promoted than face any life-altering consequences for the society damaging lies they spread. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: There can be no real and effective "freedom" in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Friedrich Engels: Nothing is eternal but eternally changing, eternally moving matter and the laws according to which it moves and changes. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Helen Keller: The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
James Connolly: A revolution will only be achieved when the ordinary people of the world, us, the working class, get up off our knees and take back what is rightfully ours. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
James Connolly: In our day and generation there is only one class which can be depended upon for consistent revolutionary action. That class is the working class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Herman: The New York Times itself, both as a media institution and the product that is delivered in its name on a daily basis, is built and thrives on structures of disinformation and selective information that constitute Big Lies. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ulrich Tilgner: With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war. The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: We hear about the occasions when there are differences between the mainstream media and the government. What we don't hear about are the 95 percent of occasions where the mainstream media faithfully propagate disinformation stories which are often planted by the CIA. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Heinrich Himmler: Thereby I state that we are extremely interested in not letting eastern nations unite. On the contrary, we must spit them into small groups and branches. As for separate nations, we are not going to allow them to get closer and bigger, let alone allowing them to cultivate the sense of national identity and culture. Quite the contrary, we are concerned with splintering them into numerous small groups... wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Brandon Turbeville: In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media and, thus, to influence and control the information received by the American people. ... Contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community, there is ample evidence that America's leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services. ... Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the CIA were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier_Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps_Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald_Tribune. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michel Chossudovsky: Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine" The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America'. One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to fabricate an enemy. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Marxism differs from all primitive forms of socialism by not binding the movement to any one particular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied forms of struggle; and it does not "concoct" them, but only generalises, organises, gives conscious expression to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary classes which arise of themselves in the course of the movement. Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to the mass struggle in progress, which, as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually gives rise to new and more varied methods of defence and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
John Coleman: The Israeli intelligence agency - Mossad - has a skillful disinformation service. The amount of disinformation it feeds to the American "market" is embarrassing, but even more embarrassing is how America swallows hook, line and sinker such propaganda. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: The CIA owns numerous news organizations, publishing houses, and wire services abroad, which produce disinformation that makes its way back to the states. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Herman: The U.S. propaganda system is at the peak of its powers in the early years of the 21st century, riding the wave of capitalism's triumph, U.S. global hegemony, and the effective service of the increasingly concentrated and commercialized mainstream media. In such times its ability to ignore inconvenient facts, swallow disinformation, and work the public over with propaganda can easily compete with - even surpass - anything found in totalitarian systems. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
James Connolly: Apostles of Freedom are ever idolised when dead, but crucified when living. Universally true as this statement is, it applies with more than usual point to the revolutionary hero. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michel Chossudovsky: The CIA's relationship to the US media is amply documented. The New York Times continues to entertain a close relationship not only with US intelligence, but also with the Pentagon and more recently with the Department of Homeland Security. "Operation Mocking Bird" was an initiative of the CIA's Office of Special Projects (OSP), established in the early 1950s. Its objective was to exert influence on both the US as well as the foreign media. From the 1950s, members of the US media were routinely enlisted by the CIA. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Eric Zuesse: The media are not conduits for news and views; they are global systems designed and evolved to highlight a certain type of news to impose a certain kind of view. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: There is a Latin tag cui prodest? meaning "who stands to gain?" When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: "Who stands to gain?" It is not important who directly advocates a particular policy, since under the present noble system of capitalism any money-bag can always "hire", buy or enlist any number of lawyers, writers and even parliamentary deputies, professors, parsons and the like to defend any views. We live in an age of commerce, when the bourgeoisie have no scruples about trading in honour or conscience. There are also simpletons who out of stupidity or by force of habit defend views prevalent in certain bourgeois circles. Yes, indeed! In politics it is not so important who directly advocates particular views. What is important is who stands to gain from these views, proposals, measures. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Jeff J. Brown: Most of the Mainstream Western Media (MWM) works tirelessly and slavishly to protect the financial and corporate elite by creating a propaganda bubble for all of us to suffocate in. Only by escaping this stifling Western disinformation fog machine can we discover the true reality of the world. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Pre-Marxist socialism has been defeated. It is continuing the struggle, no longer on its own independent ground, but on the general ground of Marxism, as revisionism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Karl Marx: Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
James Connolly: Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Nick Davies: For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Yet the Second World War began not as a war with the U.S.S.R., but as a war between capitalist countries. Why? Firstly, because war with the U.S.S.R., as a socialist land, is more dangerous to capitalism than war between capitalist countries; for whereas war between capitalist countries puts in question only the supremacy of certain capitalist countries over others, war with the U.S.S.R. must certainly put in question the existence of capitalism itself. Secondly, because the capitalists, although they clamour, for "propaganda" purposes, about the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union, do not themselves believe that it is aggressive, because they are aware of the Soviet Union's peaceful policy and know that it will not itself attack capitalist countries. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: Down with the liars who are talking of freedom and equality for all, while there is an oppressed sex, while there are oppressor classes, while there is private ownership of capital, of shares, while there are the well-fed with their surplus of bread who keep the hungry in bondage. Not freedom for all, not equality for all, but a fight against the oppressors and exploiters, the abolition of every possibility of oppression and exploitation-that is our slogan! Freedom and equality for the oppressed sex! Freedom and equality for the workers, for the toiling peasants! A fight against the oppressors, a fight against the capitalists, a fight against the profiteering kulaks! wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Julian Assange: You can either be informed and be your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michel Chossudovsky: The most powerful component of any fear and disinformation campaign rests with the CIA, which secretly subsidizes authors, journalists and media critics, through a web of private foundations and CIA-sponsored front organizations. ... Disinformation is routinely "planted" by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels. Outside public relations firms are often used to create "fake stories". wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The traitors, blockheads and pedants of the Second International could never understand such dialectics; the proletariat cannot achieve victory if it does not win the majority of the population to its side. But to limit that winning to polling a majority of votes in an election under the rule of the bourgeoisie, or to make it the condition for it, is crass stupidity, or else sheer deception of the workers. In order to win the majority of the population to its side the proletariat must, in the first p)ace, overthrow the bourgeoisie and seize state power; secondly, it must introduce Soviet power and complete)y smash the old state apparatus, whereby it immediately undermines the rule, prestige and influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the non-proletarian working people. Thirdly, it must entirely destroy the influence of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeois compromisers over the majority of the non-proletarian masses by satisfying their economic needs in a revolutionary way at the expense of the exploiters. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Earlier, the bourgeoisie, as the heads of nations, were for the rights and independence of nations and put that "above all." Now there is no trace left of this "national principle." Now the bourgeoisie sell the rights and independence of their nations for dollars. The banner of national independence and national sovereignty has been thrown overboard. Without doubt, you, the representatives of the communist and democratic parties must raise this banner and carry it forward if you want to be patriots of your countries, if you want to be the leading powers of the nations. There is nobody else to raise it. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now "Marxists" (don't laugh!). wordsmith.social/protestation/…
