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The Deep State
I hate Biden, Democrats, liberals, and their ilk, but I want Ukraine to kick Putin's ass. Fuck Russia.
I hate Biden, Democrats, liberals, and their ilk, but I want Ukraine to kick Putin's ass. Fuck Russia.
New Federal Disinformation Offices Created
Big Brother adds "Influence and Perception Management Office" & "Foreign Malign Influence Center" to his arsenal.
The Intercept recently reported the creation of two new federal offices to combat disinformation. The Pentagon will oversee the “Influence and Perception Management Office,” which is consistent with the fact that “Perception Management” is an old DoD euphemism for psychological warfare and deception. According to the investigative journalist Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra Affair, the Reagan and first Bush Administrations adopted the techniques of “Perception Management” for the objective of overcoming the American public’s “Vietnam Syndrome”—that is, its reluctance to get involved in foreign military adventures that were widely perceived as fruitless and likely to end badly.
Given that the federal government is already a Leviathan of agencies for conducting propaganda, influence, and surveillance operations, one wonders why it is necessary to create new offices for these activities. The new Biden Administration offices are purportedly to keep the homeland and its people safe from dangerous foreign adversaries. More likely they will work round the clock to keep our people insulated from outside sources of information that would serve to counterbalance U.S. government and MSM propaganda.
Given that the federal government is already a Leviathan of agencies for conducting propaganda, influence, and surveillance operations, one wonders why it is necessary to create new offices for these activities.
I hate Biden, Democrats, liberals, and their ilk, but I want Ukraine to kick Putin's ass. Fuck Russia.
I hate Biden, Democrats, liberals, and their ilk, but I want Ukraine to kick Putin's ass. Fuck Russia.
The West has been preparing for this war since NATO was organized; Putin finally started it.
Ukraine has corruption, how shocking.
The Pentagon budget is gigantic so let the Department of Defense pay for some equipment to waste more sorry Russians.
Putin fucked up; his excuse for the invasion was NATO expansion. He convinced a couple more countries to join NATO. Good job, Vlad.
Putin fucked up; his excuse for the invasion was NATO expansion. He convinced a couple more countries to join NATO. Good job, Vlad.
Putin fucked up; his excuse for the invasion was NATO expansion. He convinced a couple more countries to join NATO. Good job, Vlad.
Bidet&Co were ready to deliver, but Ukies flat-out refused
Nevermind the Ides, whatever they are, Beware the Bad Ideas of March. NBC-4 Washington ran a gloomy story yesterday headlined, “Can the government work with social media companies to combat disinformation? Supreme Court to decide.” On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the most important civil rights case in our lifetimes, Missouri v. Biden, and the judges' questions telegraphed bad news for free speech.
It used to be conventional wisdom that Justices’ questions in oral argument do not predict how they will rule. But in the post-pandemic era, nobody seems to think that anymore, and maybe for good reasons. While I remain stubbornly optimistic, Monday’s hearing was about as encouraging as a freezing-cold fried-cheese appetizer. Gnawing dejectedly on a chilly cheese stick, you realize you probably should have listened to those bad Yelp reviews.
Anyway, the Justices’ questions to the lawyers — especially the squishy center-right justices’ questions — stank of elite superiority and arrogant paternalism. Being themselves a part of government, the Justices seem to think that “government knows best,” especially in emergencies.
In spite of all the manifest evidence to the contrary.
In other words, all but the three reliably conservative Justices asked questions suggesting they would rather trust the Nation’s future to CISA’s 32-year-old “Disinformation Expert” — with zero medical training — over accomplished, recognized medical professionals who made epidemiology their lives’ work, like Martin Kulldorf (at the time, Harvard), Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford), and Sunetra Gupta (Oxford).
What I’m wondering is, even if Kulldorf, Bhattacharya, and Gupta did represent a minority view among scientists, who is Nina Jankowicz to decide which scientists are “spreading misinformation” and should be suppressed?
That’s not even how science works.
Specifically, several Justices pressed the States’ lawyers to explain: why is it so bad for government officials to just pick up the phone and call a social media company to discuss a potentially problematic post? Three of the Justices even referred to such calls as “common interactions.” The liberal Justices were even worse, signaling they expect the government to paternalistically protect citizens from encountering misinformation.
I wonder where the liberal Justices think all these unelected but wise government bureaucrats come from? Eggs maybe? Outer space? They don’t seem to understand we are all citizens. Even bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are just citizens who applied for a job with the federal government. Being a federal bureaucrat does not imply having any better knowledge or wisdom than any other citizen does.
Elected officials are even worse. As Exhibit A, watch smug Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Ca.), explain recently that the best way to combat disinformation is for people to watch MSNBC. I did not make that up:
It’s too early to panic over the questions. The Justice’s questions might not represent where the final decision is headed. And at this point the Justices are only deciding the preliminary injunction issue; the case itself will proceed to trial either way. Things might look a lot different after the evidence is presented. And, if the Court finds no Constitutional problem for government to lay its grotesque, oversized thumb on social media’s scales, then Congress will just have to outlaw that practice.
Ted can watch MSNBC all he wants. I hope he marries it and they live happily ever after. And good luck to them both. Just don’t make me watch that fake news, misinformation super-spreading nonsense.
NATO was perfectly content to buy energy from Russia, not invade it.
NATO should not even exist, as it should have been disbanded when the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact collapsed.
Her pushing of the Hunter Laptop is a Russian Hoax myth and her earlier praise of the now utterly discredited Steele Dossier?
She's now writing for Foreign Policy, to rah-rah the war.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-war-fatigue-weary-west
She's back where she started, working on leveraging Ukraine away from Russia.