Andrew Gelman — Discussion of the value of a mathematical model for the dissemination of propaganda

On manufacturing controversy where there is none.

Also about relevance of mathematical modeling.

Short, not wonkish.

The propaganda ideal is to manufacture consent and that is too difficult, to manufacture controversy that paralyzes action. This is similar to the military strategy of achieving victory and where that is not possible to sew chaos.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Discussion of the value of a mathematical model for the dissemination of propaganda
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

Patrick Martin — The New York Times steps up its anti-Russia campaign

It's time to recall the part that the New York Times played in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, which some experts consider to be the greater strategic blunder the US has ever made. I don't know that it is the great strategic blunder but it is way up there on the scale. 

Now the Times is whipping up a frenzy to confront Russia, which could be the last strategic blunder the US ever makes is this goes nuclear.

History may not repeat but it certainly rhymes.

What is wrong with these people that they never learn from their mistakes, but instead double down on them?

Defend Democracy Press
The New York Times steps up its anti-Russia campaign

Patrick Martin

Gilbert Doctrow — How the Establishment Imposes ‘Truth’

A new “press freedom” paradigm has taken hold in the Western world, imposing establishment narratives as “truth” and dismissing contrarian analyses as “fake news,” a break from the Enlightenment’s marketplace of ideas, says Gilbert Doctorow. 

Consortium News
How the Establishment Imposes ‘Truth’

Gilbert Doctrow

Rob Urie — America Goes Insane

The "news" is not about actual news at all. It is about controlling the narrative after the principle, "Perception is reality." It's all propaganda. It’s not "post-truth" because there was no truth to begin with. This extends back at least a century. Yellow journalism led to the SpanishAmerican War (1898).

All governments do this both at home and abroad. Lose control of the narrative and lose control politically. It is as simple as that.

It is not just the press either.

According to legend, Abraham Lincoln greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 by saying "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Whether the story is true or not, the sentiment underscores the public connection between Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Civil War. — Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Slavery, and the Civil War

The fabric of the narrative is woven from many threads.

Counterpunch
America Goes Insane

Rob Urie

See also

Waking Times
Experts Reveal Techniques Used by the Media to Brainwash & Control Us

Dylan Charles, Editor at Waking Times

21st Century Wire — SYRIA: ‘Rebels’ Constructing Child Victims to Sell Western Intervention & Regime Change

Dissecting the propaganda coming out of Syria geared to Western media to promote "Assad must go."

Assad and Putin are "bombing children" while the US and its allies are "liberating Mosul."

21st Century Wire
SYRIA: ‘Rebels’ Constructing Child Victims to Sell Western Intervention & Regime Change

Alexey Khlebnikov — Russia is now monitoring the world’s mass media for bias

The Russian Institute for Strategic Studies introduced its first-ever World Mass Media Hostility Index, which measures potential anti-Russian bias in the media publications of different countries, and then assigns each country an overall score.

This analytical report is the result of detailed analysis of the media policies of different countries in 2014, when crucial shifts in the rhetoric employed by Western media about Russia occurred. The author of the mass media hostility index is a senior fellow at RISS, Dr. Igor Nikolaichuk. He suggests that, over the course of 2014, Western media started to "spread anti-Russian propaganda more actively than ever," which he calls the beginning of “the global information war” against Russia. 

The RISS positions its index as the first-ever comprehensive analysis of the world’s media content pertaining to Russia. The analysis is based on complex statistical data (provided by Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya) that is examined via a new applied discipline known as “political mediametrics.” A unit for analysis is a significant media publication that gives a reader certain assessments of Russia or its leadership.

Russia Direct
Russia is now monitoring the world’s mass media for bias
Alexey Khlebnikov

Joel Bleifuss — Parameters of Respectability

The function of the corporate media is to establish and patrol the boundaries of acceptable political thought and to marginalize those leaders who call for meaningful alternatives to business as usual.…

In These Times
Parameters of Respectability

Joel Bleifuss | former director of the Peace Studies Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, now the editor & publisher of In These Times

Also

It Wasn’t About Oil, and It Wasn’t About the Free Market: Why We Invaded Iraq

Neocons.

How Do FRB Economists Get Away With Outright Lies?

(commentary by Roger Erickson)

No Peer Review? They Can Spout With Impunity?

Taxes, Transfers, and State Economic Differences
by Israel Malkin and Daniel J. Wilson

"Taxes collected by the U.S. government are paid out through transfers that promote economic equity among states."

Their subsequent comments on State Transfer Payments are conditioned by that horrible, upfront perversion.

Were they trained by Bernays himself?

Those kinds of conditionals are classic propaganda. The authors are asking the audience to swallow the initially suggested condition, as the price for even examining the completely unrelated, subsequent data.

The WHOLE POINT of fiat, is that it is NOT conditional upon any prior condition whatsoever, save only Public Initiative, and then the subsequent tolerance limits of excessive inflation or deflation.

Ignorance? Collusion? Or just dumb orthodoxy run amok? Purposeful, or Ignorant Fraud?

Apparently these geniuses never learned the dictionary definition of fiat. Nor do they acknowledge the existence of their own forbears, like Beardsley Ruml (on p.35 of the link). They do, clearly, practice the manufacturing of consent among a public they show no respect for whatsoever. They may be brainwashed acolytes themselves.

And of course, they won't reference anyone not willing to promote them for tenure in any Ivy League Departments of Orthodoxy? Or does that Academic Protection Racket extend even to the Fed?

Would you be surprised if they argued that Corporate Welfare should be considered as Off-Budget Transfer Payments too?

Nothing like making outright lies the conditional for alluring common sense. The bigger the lie, the better.

(hat tip John Lounsbury)