Caitlin Johnstone — The Official Bad Guy Of The Day: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Warning: This is a rant. But it is a pretty good one.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
The Official Bad Guy Of The Day: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Caitlin Johnstone

The Last Debt Rattle? — Raúl Ilargi Meijer

And did I mention the Automatic Earth has been almost wholly demonetized by Ad Sense? We’re going to need a lot more donations, the entire model for sites such as this one is rapidly changing. And I don’t want to also disappear behind a paywall, that defeats the purpose. More on that later as well. It’s not the direct reason behind halting the Debt Rattles, but it has crossed my mind. We can’t go on like this. Losing 85% of ad revenue is lethal at some point. Donations via Paypal and Patreon can be made at the top of the left and right sidebars.

The squeeze is on. Censorship by another name — economic warfare.

The Automatic Earth
The Last Debt Rattle?
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Washington’s Blog — October 31st Is Our Last Day

Regaining control of the narrative through economic censorship.

We’re grateful for the support we’ve received over the years …

Loyal readers have made insightful comments for many years.

Some loyal readers have donated $2/month, or $5/month or $10/month, (and a few have donated even more) which we appreciate.

Passionate writers have burned the midnight oil to report on stories which no one else is covering.

But we simply can’t afford to keep paying the thousands of dollars of hosting fees it takes to keep this site running each year.

We’re not going to whine about how we got smeared and blacklisted by agents of disinformation, which took away 99% of our ad revenue. Alot of other good sites did as well …

We simply can’t afford to keep Washington’s Blog going given financial realities....

This is not an isolated case. The Internet is narrowing.

Washington’s Blog: October 31st Is Our Last Day

See also

The Duran
Tulsi’s Youtube, suppressed

Once upon a time — Diane Coyle

Diane Coyle reviews Robert Shiller's new book, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, on the power of narrative, i.e., story. The most ancient from of knowledge transmission in social reproduction was myth. Mythos means "story" in Greek. Ancient cultures were characterized by teaching stories.

This so-called primitive technology (concepts and numbers) still works to influence. Why? Because it is holistic, engaging the spectrum of human response. MMT presentation makes liberal use of narrative technique, e.g., "ten dogs and nine bones." Anyone can get that.

As the preface notes, the idea isn’t new; the 1894 Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy mentions narrative economics. Robert Merton’s well-known concept of self-fulfilling (or self-averting) prophecies covers much of the territory of narrative dynamics. But perhaps today’s economy is more vulnerable than ever to contagion. An early chart in the book illustrates the surge in the proportion of articles across several socal science and humanities disciplines that contain the word ‘narrative’. Economics and finance are well behind history (of course) but also anthropology, sociology and political science.

Anyway, the book is about how narrative contagion affects economic events. It has in mind epidemic models, as well as – well, narratives. Each chapter focuses on a number of examples. The first section starts with Bitcoin as an example of how narrative affected behaviour and outcomes, then introduces some of the concepts concerning how narratives ‘go viral’ and the psychology of contagion. Part 2 is a brief section setting out ‘seven propositions of narrative economics’ (including ‘truth is not enough to stop false narratives’. Quite.) Part 3 describes recurring economic narratives such as financial boom and bust, or automation and jobs. The final part of the book sets out questions for research....

The Enlightened Economist
Once upon a time
Diane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation

Funny old world — Paul Robinson

Press freedom and narrative control.

Irrussianality
Funny old world
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Ray McGovern — CIA: Mission Accomplished; Americans Believe What We Tell Them

At his first White House performance with other senior officials of the incoming Reagan administration, freshly appointed (but veteran covert action operative) intelligence chief William Casey told President Reagan and the others assembled:“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Hard to believe? Read below what an eye-witness has attested to:

“I am the source for this quote, which was indeed said by CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of the newly elected President Reagan with his new cabinet secretaries to report to him on what they had learned about their agencies in the first couple of weeks of the administration. The meeting was in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, not far from the Cabinet Room. I was present at the meeting as Assistant to the Chief Domestic Policy Adviser to the President.

As he did to all the other secretaries of their departments and agencies, Reagan asked Casey what he saw as his goal as director for the CIA, to which he replied with this quote, which I recorded in my notes of the meeting as he said it. Shortly thereafter I told Senior White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, who was a close friend and colleague, who in turn made it public.” Barbara Honegger

There are hundreds of examples that could be adduced to show that the major corporate-owned media — whether by intimidation, misguided “patriotism,” or self-censorship — have made Casey’s dream come true....

Ray McGovern
CIA: Mission Accomplished; Americans Believe What We Tell Them

Narrative Management = Reality Management — Caitlin Johnstone

Press (media) freedom is not enough. A free press must also serve the function for which is the right to free expression, especially in a liberal democracy where freedom depends on an informed electorate rather than a manipulated one. Using media for narrative control is antithetical to liberal democracy.

This includes investigating sources rather than acting as a stenographer for propaganda fronts and intel disinformation plants.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Narrative Management = Reality Management
Caitlin Johnstone

See also

Russia Observer
A MONTH IN THE LIFE OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST MAN
Patrick Armstrong

Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems — Caitlin Johnstone

Bingo!

By "propaganda" Caitlin Johnstone means "narrative control."

Maintaining narrative control was relatively easy prior to the Internet and social media. Now, the process has turned to access and exclusion as the means of censorship through control of the media and social media in particular. Access and exclusion have always been a reality in the case of print media. Now this is being extended to digital platforms.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems
Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone — Tulsi Gabbard Is Driving The MSM Bat Shit Crazy

If you haven't seen the Morning Joe interview with Tulsi Gabbard, you should. It's even worse than Caitlin Johnstone makes it out to be. Pictures are more powerful than words. This is supposed to be professional journalism and expert opinion?

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Tulsi Gabbard Is Driving The MSM Bat Shit Crazy
Caitlin Johnstone

Whitney Webb — Newsguard Turns to EU to Push Controversial Ratings System on Tech Companies, Smears MintPress as “Secretly Supported” by Russia

Censorship watch. Narrative control in full swing. Again, "Putler did it." Haven't these people heard of the story of the boy that called wolf? Or have they forgotten it? It is one of Aesop's fables, after all.

Newsguard co-CEO Steven Brill in Brussels on Tuesday claimed that news sites that have recently criticized Newsguard’s motives — MintPress among them — are “secretly supported” by the Russian government, a claim for which he provided no evidence....

MintPress News
Newsguard Turns to EU to Push Controversial Ratings System on Tech Companies, Smears MintPress as “Secretly Supported” by Russia
Whitney Webb

Not only narrative control.

But "be afraid of Huawei."

Bloomberg
Major DNA Testing Company [Family Tree] Sharing Genetic Data With the FBI
Kristen V Brown

Caitlin Johnstone — Mainstream Media Is Now Killing People Directly

...the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it’s in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience....

Fear-mongering is taking its toll. Caitlin Johnstone observes that the problem is not as much Trump as the media and its manufactured narratives. Good read.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Mainstream Media Is Now Killing People Directly
Caitlin Johnstone

Whitney Webb — How a NeoCon-Backed “Fact Checker” Plans to Wage War on Independent Media

Prediction: This is going to backfire big time. The boy has cried wolf too many times.

I  for one will be looking for the red flags to identify the real news.

Mint Press News
How a NeoCon-Backed “Fact Checker” Plans to Wage War on Independent Media

Whitney Webb

Bill Mitchell — More Brexit nonsense from the pro-European dreamers

What editorial control does the UK Guardian exercise on Op Ed pieces? Seemingly none if you read this article (December 24, 2018) – What Labour can learn about Brexit from California: think twice – written by some well-to-do American postgraduate working for DiEM25 in Athens. But when Thomas Fazi and I sought space to discuss our book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017) – or when I have sought space to provide some balance to the usual neoliberal, pro-Europe bias, the result has been no response (yay or nay). We never received a response to our solicitation. Even if we ignore the obvious imbalance in experience and qualifications (track record) of the respective ‘authors’, it seems that the UK Guardian only wants a particular view to be published even if the quality of that view would make the piece unpublishable in any respectable outlet. Go figure. Anyway, I now have read the worst article for 2018. And, I thought that the Remain debate had reached the depths of idiocy but there is obviously scope for more if this Guardian attempt at commentary is anything to go by. And I know the Guardian journalists read this blog – so why not allow Thomas and I to formally respond to all this Remain nonsense?...

Maybe because the Guardian has become the voice of the UK neoliberal pseudo-left, much like the New York Times and the Washington Post are in the US? Can the deep state be far behind, too, providing anonymous sources off the record? Even the "news" is no longer actually news. What then of opinion pieces?

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
More Brexit nonsense from the pro-European dreamers

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Caitlin Johnstone — Mass Media’s Russia Hysteria Is Openly Acknowledging The Power Of Propaganda

FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver, a fairly reliable establishment loyalist, tweeted today about the new Russia report saying “If you wrote out a list of the most important factors in the 2016 election, I’m not sure that Russian social media memes would be among the top 100. The scale was quite small and there’s not much evidence that they were effective.”

“For instance, this story makes a big deal about a (post-election) Russian social media disinformation campaign on Bob Mueller based on… 5,000 tweets? That’s **nothing**. Platform-wide, there are something like 500,000,000 tweets posted each day,” Silver continued.…

What fraction of overall social media impressions on the 2016 election were generated by Russian troll farms? 0.1%? I'm not sure what the answer is, but suspect it's low, and it says something that none of the reports that hype up the importance of them address that question.

Then there is the question, "what to do about this?"

They tell you their concern is that Russians are trying to manipulate your mind with propaganda, but really their concern is that they want to be the only ones manipulating your mind with propaganda. They tell you Russian propaganda is so dangerous that it’s necessary to censor the internet and hide all narratives which aren’t in line with the ruling establishment in order to protect democracy, but really all they want is to have full control of the narratives you consume. This is evidenced in the article by the Washington Post which kicked off this latest round of Russia panic, which reports the following:

The report expressed concern about the overall threat social media poses to political discourse within nations and among them, warning that companies once viewed as tools for liberation in the Arab world and elsewhere are now threats to democracy.

“Social media have gone from being the natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike,” the report said.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist

Mass Media’s Russia Hysteria Is Openly Acknowledging The Power Of Propaganda
Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone — The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department

I saw a recent post by the WikiLeaks Twitter account which referred to the corporate media as “the narrative business pretending to be in the news business,” which is in my opinion a perfect way to phrase it. The real currency of the world is not gold, nor is it bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military force; it’s narrative control. The ability to control the stories people tell about what’s going on in their world means the ability to control how they think, how they vote, how they behave, and how they all agree money and power itself operates within our society. Since society is made of narrative, controlling the narrative is controlling that society.

Conspiracy theories are a way for those in power to manipulate the narrative without actually giving the public any hard facts and evidence, and the world’s most powerful institutions are increasingly relying on conspiracy theories because they don’t have facts and evidence on their side. And why would they? The same power establishment which deceived the world into destroying Iraq is obviously far too depraved to be able to justify its global hegemony with factual evidence. All they have is narrative control, and they’re starting to lose even that.

Another good rant.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department
Caitlin Johnstone

See also

The Greanville Post
How Big Brother Grips Americans’ Minds to Support Invasions
Eric Zuesse, Senior Contributing Editor

Paul Kindlon — The Psychological Origins of American Russophobia

Narrative creation operates based on pattern-recognition and repetition. "Tell a lie big enough and often enough and ….

The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. — Joseph Goebbles, Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik, quoted in Big Lie at Wikipedia

 Paul Kindlon explains the mechanism.

 The psychological reason behind this trick has to do with “pattern recognition”. Human beings – through evolution – have learned to identify a phenomenon as real and true because it repeats again and again and again. After a while, the mind interprets this consistent pattern as proof of truth value. In psychological terms, “schemata” are created by a layering of memories similar in nature over time so that all events associated with the phenomenon are perceived through a prism of previous repetitions. In other words, even if a certain type of behavior is different from the norm it will still be identified as belonging to the typical pattern regardless. It is literally a trick of the mind…

This process induces the cognitive biases of anchoring and confirmation bias.

Russia Insider
The Psychological Origins of American Russophobia
Paul Kindlon | Professor of Humanities (1994-2017)
Moscow University Touro, Russia

Related

Visual Capitalist
24 Cognitive Biases That Are Warping Your Perception of Reality
Jeff Desjardins

Patrick Lawrence — The Battle for Our Minds

After reading The New York Times piece “The Plot to Subvert an Election” I put the paper down with a single question.

Why, after two years of allegations, indictments, and claims to proof of this, that, and the other did the newspaper of record—well, once the newspaper of record—see any need to publish such a piece? My answer is simple: The orthodox account of Russia-gate has not taken hold: It has failed in its effort to establish a consensus of certainty among Americans. My conclusion matches this observation: The orthodox narrative is never going to achieve this objective. There are too many holes in it. 

“The information age is actually a media age,” John Pilger, the noted British–Australian journalist, remarked during a symposium four years ago, when the Ukraine crisis was at its peak. “We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media—a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.” Pilger revisited the theme in a piece last week on Consortium News, arguing that once-tolerated, dissenting opinion has in recent years “regressed into a metaphoric underground.”

There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds....

That's what propaganda is — a battle to control minds and controlling the narrative. Those who control the narrative control the agenda and, more importantly, the hidden agenda that is actually driving policy and strategy.

Of course, this is nothing new. What is different now is the medium, with the introduction of the Internet and social media.

Consortium News

The Battle for Our Minds
Patrick Lawrence

Caitlin Johnstone — Society Is Made Of Narrative. Realizing This Is Awakening From The Matrix.

It's actually more than this. All of us have a world view, but we don't all share the same world view. Everyone takes their own world view to be "reality," and rejects other world views as erroneous, deceitful, degenerate, primitive, or uneducated, or primitive view of reality.

Culture, including early upbringing and education, and especially group think heavily influence the formation of one's world view. Group think is fostered by narratives. Whoever controls the narrative controls the view of reality in that group, whether it be a subgroup or an entire society. 

America and Britain as doing their best to impose their joint world view on the world in the name of liberal globalization based on "freedom and democracy."

In the movie The Matrix, humans are imprisoned in a virtual world by a powerful artificial intelligence system in a dystopian future. What they take to be reality is actually a computer program that has been jacked into their brains to keep them in a comatose state. They live their whole lives in that virtual simulation, without any way of knowing that what they appear to be experiencing with their senses is actually made of AI-generated code.

Life in our current society is very much the same. The difference is that instead of AI, it’s psychopathic oligarchs who are keeping us asleep in the Matrix. And instead of code, it’s narrative.

Society is made of narrative like the Matrix is made of code. Identity, language, etiquette, social roles, opinions, ideology, religion, ethnicity, philosophy, agendas, rules, laws, money, economics, jobs, hierarchies, politics, government, they’re all purely mental constructs which exist nowhere outside of the mental noises in our heads. If I asked you to point to your knee you could do so instantly and wordlessly, but if I asked you to point to the economy, for example, the closest you could come is using a bunch of linguistic symbols to point to a group of concepts. To show me the economy, you’d have to tell me a story.…"

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Society Is Made Of Narrative. Realizing This Is Awakening From The Matrix.
Caitlin Johnstone

Rosa Miriam Elizalde — Colonialism 2.0 in Latin America and the Caribbean

Narrative control.

Once the internet became the central nervous system of the economy, research, news, and politics, the United States’ borders were extended across the planet. Only the U.S. and its corporations are sovereign, no other nation-state exists that could reshape the net by itself, to put a brake on Colonialism 2.0, despite local anti-monopoly laws and clear policies supporting sustainability on the social, ecological, economic, and technological order–much less build a viable alternative to disconnect from the so-called information society.
Very early on, Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro warned that with the arrival of revolutionary technologies, “A true colonization is unfolding. The United States is playing its role with great efficiency, seeking complementarities that will make us permanently dependent on them,” adding, “Seeing this new civilization and all its threats, I fear that once again we will be peoples that do not gel-peoples that despite all our potential remain in second place.”...

Granma — Official Voice of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee
Colonialism 2.0 in Latin America and the Caribbean

Rosa Miriam Elizalde, Granma

See also

teleSUR
What Is Behind Facebook Deleting teleSUR English's Page?

See also

Venezuelanalysis
Violent Fascism in Nicaragua and Venezuela: Interview with Fernando Bossi

Fernando Bossi and Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis

Pam and Russ Martens — Would Sen. Warner’s Ambitious Plan to Regulate Social Media Giants “Ruin” the Internet—Or Save it?

Need to regulate versus opportunity to control versus threat of ruining.

Wall Street On Parade
Would Sen. Warner’s Ambitious Plan to Regulate Social Media Giants “Ruin” the Internet—Or Save it?
Pam Martens and Russ Martens