<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
</head>
<body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">
And quoting Caitlin Johnstone:
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<p style="direction: ltr; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 1em;" class="">
There is at this time no legitimate reason to believe that the GRU was involved in any kind of cyberattack on Burisma, let alone that it found anything worth publishing.
<b class=""><i class="">At the moment the only information we've gleaned from this incident is more insight into the fact that the news media environment of the most powerful nation on earth is deeply, profoundly unhealthy, and so are the individuals operating
within it.</i></b></p>
<p style="direction: ltr; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 1em;" class="">
<b class=""><i class="">These are the people who shape the dominant narrative. These are the thought leaders, who really do lead the way a very large sector of the population thinks. We need to bring more consciousness to how wildly dysfunctional this is.</i></b></p>
<p style="direction: ltr; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0px 0px 1em;" class="">
2020 has been wild already. And all signs indicate that it's only going to get a whole lot crazier.</p>
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Jan 17, 2020, at 2:07 PM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss <<a href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net" class="">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>> wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div class="">" The press ideally should sift fact from fiction and give the public the<br class="">
information it needs to make enlightened political choices. "<br class="">
<br class="">
I absolutely agree. The problem is that CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA does NOT sift<br class="">
fact from fiction. It produces and repeats corporate propaganda fiction and<br class="">
ignores and buries the facts.<br class="">
<br class="">
" If you short-circuit that process by saturating the ecosystem with<br class="">
misinformation and overwhelm the media's ability to mediate, then you can<br class="">
disrupt the democratic process. "<br class="">
<br class="">
So they are saying that there is too much information, therefore anything<br class="">
but corporate owned and financed media should be banned.<br class="">
<br class="">
The corporate media does NOT " mediate " and in fact is one of the largest<br class="">
impediments to REAL democracy in the U.S. and the rest of the world as well.<br class="">
<br class="">
Why do you think so many people have been deserting corporate media as their<br class="">
info source ( especially people under 40 ) for the last 15-20 years and<br class="">
turning to REAL independent journalists on the internet and YouTube ?<br class="">
...Weapons of mass destruction anyone ?<br class="">
<br class="">
Journalists like ; Glen Greenwald, Abby Martin, Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore,<br class="">
Aaron Matte, Chris Hedges, etc.. Who are banned from corporate media.<br class="">
<br class="">
Lastly Ron.....Look at your source for this article ...." VOX " - The<br class="">
corporate hipster magazine for Neo-Liberalism and the U.S. corporate empire.<br class="">
<br class="">
David J.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
-----Original Message-----<br class="">
From: Peace-discuss [<a href="mailto:peace-discuss-bounces@lists.chambana.net" class="">mailto:peace-discuss-bounces@lists.chambana.net</a>] On<br class="">
Behalf Of Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss<br class="">
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2020 1:40 PM<br class="">
To: <a href="mailto:peace-discuss@anti-war.net" class="">peace-discuss@anti-war.net</a><br class="">
Cc: peace-discuss<br class="">
Subject: [Peace-discuss] The futility & nihilism factory<br class="">
<br class="">
"Flood the zone with shit": How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy<br class="">
The impeachment trial probably won't change any minds. Here's why.<br class="">
<br class="">
By Sean Illing @seanilling <a href="mailto:sean.illing@vox.com" class="">sean.illing@vox.com</a> Jan 16, 2020
<br class="">
<br class="">
No matter how President Trump's impeachment trial plays out in the<br class="">
Senate, one thing is certain: Despite the incontrovertible facts at the<br class="">
center of the story, the process will change very few minds.<br class="">
Regardless of how clear a case Democrats make, it seems likely that a<br class="">
majority of voters will remain confused and unsure about the details of<br class="">
Trump's transgressions. No single version of the truth will be accepted.<br class="">
This is a serious problem for our democratic culture. No amount of<br class="">
evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way<br class="">
or the other. We can attribute some of this to rank partisanship - some<br class="">
people simply refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts about their own side.<br class="">
But there's another, equally vexing problem. We live in a media ecosystem<br class="">
that overwhelms people with information. Some of that information is<br class="">
accurate, some of it is bogus, and much of it is intentionally misleading.<br class="">
The result is a polity that has increasingly given up on finding out the<br class="">
truth. As Sabrina Tavernise and Aidan Gardiner put it in a New York Times<br class="">
piece, "people are numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real<br class="">
in a sea of slant, fake, and fact." This is partly why an<br class="">
earth-shattering historical event like a president's impeachment has done<br class="">
very little to move public opinion.<br class="">
The core challenge we're facing today is information saturation and a<br class="">
hackable media system. If you follow politics at all, you know how<br class="">
exhausting the environment is. The sheer volume of content, the dizzying<br class="">
number of narratives and counternarratives, and the pace of the news cycle<br class="">
are too much for anyone to process.<br class="">
One response to this situation is to walk away and tune everything out.<br class="">
After all, it takes real effort to comb through the bullshit, and most<br class="">
people have busy lives and limited bandwidth. Another reaction is to retreat<br class="">
into tribal allegiances. There's Team Liberal and Team Conservative, and<br class="">
pretty much everyone knows which side they're on. So you stick to the places<br class="">
that feed you the information you most want to hear.<br class="">
My Vox colleague Dave Roberts calls this an "epistemic crisis." The<br class="">
foundation for shared truth, he argues, has collapsed. I don't disagree with<br class="">
that, but I'd frame the problem a little differently.<br class="">
We're in an age of manufactured nihilism.<br class="">
The issue for many people isn't exactly a denial of truth as such. It's<br class="">
more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And<br class="">
that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth<br class="">
is knowable.<br class="">
I call this "manufactured" because it's the consequence of a deliberate<br class="">
strategy. It was distilled almost perfectly by Steve Bannon, the former head<br class="">
of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump. "The Democrats<br class="">
don't matter," Bannon reportedly said in 2018. "The real opposition is the<br class="">
media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."<br class="">
This idea isn't new, but Bannon articulated it about as well as anyone<br class="">
can. The press ideally should sift fact from fiction and give the public the<br class="">
information it needs to make enlightened political choices. If you<br class="">
short-circuit that process by saturating the ecosystem with misinformation<br class="">
and overwhelm the media's ability to mediate, then you can disrupt the<br class="">
democratic process.<br class="">
What we're facing is a new form of propaganda that wasn't really possible<br class="">
until the digital age. And it works not by creating a consensus around any<br class="">
particular narrative but by muddying the waters so that consensus isn't<br class="">
achievable.<br class="">
Bannon's political objective is clear. As he explained in a 2017<br class="">
Conservative Political Action Conference talk, he sees Trump as a stick of<br class="">
dynamite with which to blow up the status quo. So "flooding the zone" is a<br class="">
means to that end. But more generally, creating widespread cynicism about<br class="">
the truth and the institutions charged with unearthing it erodes the very<br class="">
foundation of liberal democracy. And the strategy is working.<br class="">
<br class="">
<snip><br class="">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"></span>#<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">
</span>#<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>#<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
_______________________________________________<br class="">
Peace-discuss mailing list<br class="">
<a href="mailto:Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net" class="">Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a><br class="">
https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss<br class="">
<br class="">
_______________________________________________<br class="">
Peace-discuss mailing list<br class="">
Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net<br class="">
https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss<br class="">
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
</body>
</html>