Federico Pieraccini: The mainstream media will never tell us that the reason why Washington has been at war for half of the last two centuries is because of US imperialism. They will never tell us that the ceaseless interventions are driven by an insatiable greed for resources, or often enough by the simple desire to plunge a country into chaos if its recalcitrant leaders refuse to genuflect appropriately and show due respect. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: This is the radical difference that distinguishes the psychology of the peasant, handicraftsman, intellectual, the petty bourgeois in general, from that of the proletarian. The petty bourgeois sees and feels that he is heading for ruin, that life is becoming more difficult, that the struggle for existence is ever more ruthless, and that his position and that of his family are becoming more and more hopeless. It is an indisputable fact, and the petty bourgeois protests against it. But how does he protest? He protests as the representative of a class that is hopelessly perishing, that despairs of its future, that is depressed and cowardly. There is nothing to be done ... if only there were fewer children to suffer our torments and hard toil, our poverty and our humiliation-such is the cry of the petty bourgeois. The class-conscious worker is far from holding this point of view. He will not allow his consciousness to be dulled by such cries no matter how sincere and heartfelt they may be. Yes, we workers and the mass of small proprietors lead a life that is filled with unbearable oppression and suffering. Things are harder for our generation than they were for our fathers. But in one respect we are luckier than our fathers. We have begun to learn and are rapidly learning to fight-and to fight not as individuals, as the best of our fathers fought, not for the slogans of bourgeois speechifiers that are alien to us in spirit, but for our slogans, the slogans of our class. We are fighting better than our fathers did. Our children will fight better than we do, and they will be victorious. The working class is not perishing, it is growing, becoming stronger, gaining courage, consolidating itself, educating itself and becoming steeled in battle. We are pessimists as far as serfdom, capitalism and petty, production are concerned, but we are ardent optimists in what concerns the working-class movement and its aims. We are already laying the foundation of a new edifice and our children will complete its construction. That is the reason-the only reason-why we are unconditionally the enemies of neomalthusianism, suited only to unfeeling and egotistic petty-bourgeois couples, who whisper in scared voices: "God grant we manage somehow by our selves. So much the better if we have no children." wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Wolfgang Vyslozil: News agencies are rarely in the public eye. Yet they are one of the most influential and at the same time one of the least known media types. They are key institutions of substantial importance to any media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts of this system. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Richard M. Cohen: We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Hal Becker: I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television. Americans are wired into their television sets. Over the last 30 years, they have come to look at their television sets and the images on the screen as reality. You put something on television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the television set contradicts the images, people start changing the world to make it more like the images and sounds of their television. Because its influence is so great, so pervasive, it has become part of our lives. You lose your sense of what is being done to you, but your mind is being shaped and molded. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Nick Robinson: It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking. That is all someone in my sort of job can do. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ted Koppel: People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Chaim Kupferberg: A relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the scoops, that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream news sources, where the parameters of debate are set and the "official reality" is consecrated for the bottom feeders in the news chain. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
R. Palme Dutt: The subjection of women has always been inseparably bound up with class-society, and is one of the indispensable foundations without which private-property society could not maintain itself. Capitalism has taken over from the preceding period and adapted to its own purposes the social institutions built on the subjection of women. While revolutionising and organising production and trade on a gigantic scale throughout the world, it maintained, preserved and even intensified in a still more limited and narrow form the primitive and anarchic basis of the small-scale individual household, of the family and its ties, and sought to make of this pre-capitalist institution its most powerful conservative pillar of support. Only on this basis could capitalism, with its complete individualist cash-nexus repudiation of all social obligations and ties, nevertheless successfully maintain itself, and through the institution of the family throw off its own shoulders all social responsibility for the proper conditions of motherhood, of the bringing up of children, of the support of the sick and the aged, as well as the enormous volume of so-called "domestic labour"-all socially necessary labour indispensable for the maintenance of society, but offering no profit for capitalism to organise, and thrown off as unpaid labour on to the shoulders of the working-class wives and mothers to be performed in the heaviest, dirtiest, most unproductive and wasteful pre-machine conditions alongside highly organised large-scale machine industry in the world outside. The consequent economic and social institutions, involving the subjection of women and the forcible compulsion of the majority of women to economic dependence on marriage as their sole means of livelihood, are bound up with the existence of private-property society, and can only be ended with communist social organisation. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
David Rovics: he first great large wave of Amazon book-bannings was the early 2017 purge of many dozens of scholarly texts by revisionist historians who had argued at great length and in considerable detail that the Holocaust was largely a hoax, concocted by Jewish activists and Hollywood filmmakers as a powerful shield against any criticism of Jewish or Israeli misbehavior. Although many of these books are still available for sale by their publisher, their complete disappearance from Amazon has greatly reduced their potential distribution. Amazon today possesses a near-total monopoly over Internet book sales, and if American society continues to allow it to ban serious works of scholarship on political or ideological grounds, our future intellectual freedom has already been lost. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Krieger: What Facebook, Apple, Google and others have made clear at this point is that fake news is fine as long as it's repeating lies of the government or intelligence agencies. There's no amount of war-creating government inspired fake news someone can spread that will ever get you banned by the tech giants, but if you dare to have a discussion about vaccines or 9/11, you'll never be heard from again. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Katerina Matsa: Concerns about the inaccuracies in news on social media are prevalent even among those who say they prefer to get their news there... Still, those social media news consumers who prefer other platforms such as print or television for news are even more likely to say they expect the news on social media to be largely inaccurate. Not only do social media news consumers expect the news they see there to be inaccurate, but inaccuracy is the top concern. ... Even though social media news consumers have concerns about the accuracy of the information there, they also cite some benefits of getting news on social media, which may help explain why getting news on the platform is still so common. The most commonly named positive thing about getting news on social media is convenience wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michel Chossudovsky: The use of social media to control a targeted nation's information space, and use it as a means of carrying out sociopolitical subversion and even regime change reached its pinnacle in 2011 during the US-engineered "Arab Spring." Portrayed at first as spontaneous demonstrations organized organically over Facebook and other social media platforms, it is now revealed that the US government had trained activists years ahead of the protests, with Google and Facebook participating directly in making preparations. Opposition fronts funded and supported by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries Freedom House, International Republican Institute (IRI), and National Democratic Institute (NDI) were invited to several summits where executives and technical support teams from Google and Facebook provided them with the game plans they would execute in 2011 in coordination with US and European media who also attended the summits. The end result was the virtual weaponization of social media, serving as cover for what was a long-planned, regional series of coups including heavily armed militants who eventually overthrew the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with Syria now locked in 6 years of war. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gary Null: There is an assumption and a reasonable expectation that the information that you will find on Wikipedia is accurate, soundly-researched and referenced from high-quality reliable sources, written by credentialed writers, scholars and editors, who have expertise on the subject, is unbiased, and that it is objective and balanced. Unfortunately, our two-year investigation into Wikipedia's treatment of health issues reveals exactly the opposite. ... In addition, there are many individuals with outstanding credentials who are faced with slander, character assassination and denigration about their careers and life's work, in biographies put up on Wikipedia, in which they had no input and over which they have no control. They are faced with the reality that they will not be able to change a single syllable on their Wikipedia page. And, there is no possibility of redress. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Brandon Turbeville: Reuters or Associated Press reports a story and every other major outlet follows suit, reporting the same story with the same perspective as all the others. In a sense, it is only necessary to influence the two and one has drastic levels of influence over the entire corporate media (now made up of only about 6 companies). The CIA, however, has influence over many more outlets than Reuters and AP. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
globalresearch.ca: Without the central role of the global news agencies, the worldwide synchronization of propaganda and disinformation would never be so efficient. Through this "propaganda multiplier", dubious stories from PR experts working for governments, military and intelligence services reach the general public more or less unchecked and unfiltered. The journalists refer to the news agencies and the news agencies refer to their sources. ... The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily media outlet can manage without them. So the news agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know what they have selected. ... Some media have outsourced their entire foreign editorial office to a news agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals on the internet mostly publish news agency reports. In the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking similarity in international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics, using many of the same phrases - a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated with controlled media in authoritarian states. ... The central role of news agencies explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. ... The dominance of global news agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and events - which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too "unimportant" - are not mentioned in our media at all - if the agencies do not report on something, then most Western media will not be aware of it. ... Due to the rather low journalistic performance of our media and their high dependence on a few news agencies, it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
R. Palme Dutt: The bourgeoisie will use any and every instrument of struggle as occasion arisese It is for the working class and its allies to be prepared for the fight in front. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
R. Palme Dutt: The traditional tactics and methods of domination of the American bourgeoisie are equally adapted to Fascism, in proportion as occasion arises. If they have not had the same experience as the British bourgeoisie in the domination of colonial peoples, save more recently and on a smaller scale, they have had plenty of experience in their own domain in the suppression of the twelve million Negroes within the United States and of the heavily exploited immigrant populations. The combination of violence, lawlessness and corruption for the maintenance of capitalist domination has reached classic heights in the United States. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Jim Marrs: By the second decade of the twenty-first century virtually all news and information delivered to the American public, including publishing, movies, music, TV, and networks is controlled by a few owners of only six multinational corporations. These six conglomerates are General Electric (NBC), Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (former owner of CBS). This media monopoly may not tell the public how to think, but it certainly sets the agenda for what to think about. The monopoly creates an electronic "matrix" all around us. ... Topics such as climate change, gender identity ambiguity, anti-gun legislation, harmful prescription drugs and vaccines, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) continually fill the media owned by these corporate giants only because such issues keep society divided and in conflict, which serves to divert public attention from the true rulers of the world. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Peter Phillips: The media are increasingly dependent on governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox and CNN maintain constant contact with the White House, Pentagon, and public relations companies representing both government and private corporations. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Fred Reed: You don't need to ban unwelcome books, because the only people who read them already agree with them. You don't need to kick in doors at three in the morning to seize forbidden typewriters. People might revolt against that sort of thing. Just keep prohibited topics off the networks and out of the papers. It is enough. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
blacklistednews.com: The Western media as it exists today under near-monopoly corporate ownership is a more sophisticated and total propaganda system than early 20th century propagandists ever dreamed of. As media corporations profit from Western geopolitical and commercial expansion, the propaganda function that supports that expansion is an integrated part of their business model, not something exceptional they do under duress from the state. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Aldous Huxley: In the press, which is owned by rich men, the interests of the investing minority are always identified with those of the nation as a whole. Constantly repeated statements come to be accepted as truths. Innocent and ignorant, most newspaper readers are convinced that the private interests of the rich are really public interests and become indignant whenever these interests are menaced by a foreign power, intervening on behalf of its investing minority. The interest at stake are the interests of the few; but the public opinion which demands the protection of these interests is often a genuine expression of mass emotion. The many really feel and believe that the dividends of the few are worth fighting for. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Tony Cartalucci: The use of social media to control a targeted nation's information space, and use it as a means of carrying out sociopolitical subversion and even regime change reached its pinnacle in 2011 during the US-engineered "Arab Spring." Portrayed at first as spontaneous demonstrations organized organically over Facebook and other social media platforms, it is now revealed in articles like the New York Times', "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," that the US government had trained activists years ahead of the protests, with Google and Facebook participating directly in making preparations. Opposition fronts funded and supported by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries Freedom House, International Republican Institute (IRI), and National Democratic Institute (NDI) were invited to several summits where executives and technical support teams from Google and Facebook provided them with the game plans they would execute in 2011 in coordination with US and European media who also attended the summits. The end result was the virtual weaponization of social media, serving as cover for what was a long-planned, regional series of coups including heavily armed militants who eventually overthrew the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with Syria now locked in 6 years of war as a result. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
David Bowie: Google is destroying the most glorious gift humanity was granted in the last 300 years (the internet). The future under Google is a fascist dystopia, their way or the highway, no room for dissidents, no room for free speech. Google is a boot stomping on your face for eternity. Google is the deep state. Forget about conventional wars, forget about spies, forget about intelligence agencies, forget about all of that. It's all about the internet and Google running the internet. They decide how you feel, what you think, what information you can and can't look at, and ultimately who does and doesn't have a voice. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
