Propaganda, dis-info, psy-ops and pranksters

[ketikoti]

As a reminder to ourselves how dificult it is to extract and distinguish truth from the very polluted information space, I present you here several links for your consideration.
Taken into account that everybody is cognitively biased, and that a lot of facts and evidence are actively supressed, and that the human state of affairs is all about power and keeping in control of the masses, it is a big uphill battle to know the truth but the search for truth is also one of the strongest drives for a lot of people. The links below made me realize that we have to be sceptic of anything, and I found them worthy enough to share them with you.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-28/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-completely-fake-we-all-lie-cia

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/nine-lessons-of-russian-propaganda

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/02/10/an-interview-with-lt-gen-ion-pacepa-the-highest-ranking-soviet-bloc-intel-officer-to-ever-defect/

http://www.benhammott.com/hammott-statement.html

[Ewan]

I think it is probable that all power structures end up in a position of having to lie to protect their position. So all major powers have their propaganda. I personally use RT to get myself a counterpoint. When I saw Hillary Clinton in a YT vid recently claiming they were losing the media war I said to myself, "Well why don't you try telling the truth?" I realised at that point that none of them can, they have forced themselves into a position of having to lie all the time. All of them. If the truth came out the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

I took a little time out to investigate who the SmallWarsJournal people were and it seems they're all ex-military and (likely) bleed red, white & blue. I cannot comment on the author of the piece, Roman Skaskiw, but I am skeptical of some of his claims. Could be my cognitave bias, hard to say I as I have no direct experience of the situaton upon which to draw.

In 2008, Wired published http://www.wired.com/2008/10/does-embedding/. An article that contained the following.


On one side, we’ve got Small Wars Journal’s Dave Dilegge and Bing West. "Just call me old fashioned – I have serious misgivings respecting and tolerating journalists who embed with an enemy," Dilegge writes.

West, for his part, implies that Rosen should be shot:

Which leads me to quickly conclude that the SWJ folks have their own cognitave bias in spades.

We also know that next to no news came out of Iraq that wasn't via embedded journalists. The Americans wanted to control the news. No surprise. But not all journalists embedded and those that didn't had to write books to get whatever they wanted to say out there.

Examples:
Beyond The Green Zone by Dahr Jamal
We Meant Well by Peter Van Buren

Actually the latter wasn't a journalist but a State Dept. member.

The point being though, we cannot accept anything we read as being factual. We can only attempt to investigate further. They don't make that easy.