Category: propaganda

By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, localism/locavore, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,

In his daily blog, Seth Godin wrote today,

The last hundred years have also seen a similar ratchet (amplified, I’d argue, by the technology of media and of the economy) in civil rights. It’s unlikely (with the exception of despotic edicts) that women will ever lose the vote, that discrimination on race will return to apartheid-like levels, that marriage will return to being an exclusionary practice… once a social justice is embraced by a culture, it’s rarely abandoned.

Unfortunately, those “despotic edicts” are all-too-common. While the general trend is not to reverse progress, there are far too many exceptions:

And, sadly, dozens more examples from around the world.

If you think “it can’t happen here,” do some research on Berlin in the 1920s–or read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale). Or look at the scary anti-Arab and anti-Muslim acts of violence that started showing up regularly in the US starting in the aftermath of 9/11/01 and are still escalating.

Although this is a pessimistic post, I am ultimately an optimist. I think Godin is basically right–but there are many, many exceptions. Let’s work together for a world in which those exceptions are no longer tolerated–we can do this!

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Guest post by Paul Loeb

Remember the World Trade Organization, which slipped into the shadows after massive Seattle protests in 1999? The same day last week that Congress initially blocked the possibility of fast track approval for the TPP trade agreement, the House voted to overturn rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat. Those supporting the vote said they were responding to a World Trade Organization ruling, judging US country-of-origin labeling unfair competition with meat coming from foreign countries like Canada and Mexico, and therefore a violation. They said they had no choice for fear of triggering sanctions or lawsuits from countries exporting meat across our borders.

I don’t know about you, but I like knowing whether my meat comes from Iowa or Uzbekistan, Montana or Mexico, Kentucky or Kenya. So do 93% of Americans, according to a Consumer’s Union survey. People like supporting US farmers, cutting down distance travelled, knowing there will be at least minimal inspection standards, even if the delights of e coli occasionally slip through. It seems commonsensical that we’d want at least the chance to become informed consumers, whether with the origins of our meat, GMO-derived crops, or the amount of sugar and calories in our baked goods.

Maybe the House members are wrong in insisting that the international tribunals that adjudicate trade disputes would deem this a violation. But if this particular House bill passes the Senate and gets signed by Obama, even the mere possibility of a lawsuit will have struck down a wholly reasonable law that protects our health and supports our local economies. And if TPP passes the Senate, other attempts to regulate commerce for the common good will be potentially gutted as well, from attempts at financial regulation to limits on the prices charged for drugs, to environmental rules and seemingly innocuous actions like requiring accurate labeling. Some of this could occur through legal action, and some through the mere fear that such action could occur.

Now maybe TPP won’t contain rules on meat. Maybe it will simply limit other ways we might try to exert our sovereignty over critical choices that affect us. But we do know that this agreement—involving countries constituting 40% of the global economy—through what’s called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, will establish unaccountable tribunals with the power to let corporations collect damages for loss of profits. We don’t know the precise reach of the agreement because ordinary citizens haven’t seen it. Even Congressional opponents were prohibited from taking notes when they looked at it, and “cleared advisors” who’ve seen it have been legally prohibited from talking specifics. Yet we’re told it represents an inevitable future, that the benefits will trickle down to ordinary citizens, and that those who ask reasonable questions about its profound implications are merely obstructionist whiners.

So do we demand full transparency before moving ahead? Or do we trust that the corporations that negotiated these rules have our interests at heart, and would never, in the slightest, harm our democracy? Whether or not the country-of-origin labeling on meat survives or is ended by the House bill and WTO ruling, TPP plays for far larger stakes, the ground rules that affect our very potential to take common action. The meat bill is one more warning that there are some rules and agreements where we should be careful to eagerly swallow.

Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Diversity, General Commentary, language, propaganda, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

A friend shared a meme on Facebook this morning: photo of an Assembly of God church marquee with this message on its movable sign: “A free thinker is Satan’s slave.”

Interestingly, many of the most deeply religious people I know would take strong issue with that. They engage with God intellectually. They argue with God when they feel it’s justified. An honorable tradition that goes back at least to Abraham—who, in one of the most remarkable stories in the entire Bible, argues with God about destroying Sodom and Gomorra. Abraham asks if God would spare the cities if there are 50 righteous citizens. God agrees. And then Abraham keeps negotiating, until God agrees to save the city if only 10 righteous souls are present.

But apparently even this is too high a barrier. All they can find are Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family—and they are not exactly models of terrific human behavior. They are taken to safety and the cities are destroyed.

Though I’m not particularly religious, I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. People obeyed the commandments as they understood them, but spent lots of time debating their merits—and, for that matter, dissecting the world’s news. And of course, much of the commentary on the Torah came from the sages of old, who would spend hours discussing the intricacies and shades of meaning of some obscure passage. In today’s world, the Jewish Renewal movement (which I do consider myself a part of) has again, actively engaged, reinvented traditions, and provided lots of commentary.

And this is certainly not an exclusively Jewish trait. From the Catholic Worker, Vatican II, and Liberation Theology movements to the preachings of Pope Francis, we see active engagement permeating Catholicism. And we find similar movements in the Islamic, Protestant, and Buddhist worlds (think about the Dalai Lama, for example). And, I’m guessing, in every other significant religion.

The miracle of religion, in my mind, is that people do question, grapple, argue, test out theories—and continue to come back to their own personal version of God.

I feel sorry for the person who crafted the message on the sign.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Media Ethics, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

A couple of Facebook friends (both well-known marketers based in Canada, as it happens) posted a link to an article called “FDA to Crack Down on Home-based Soap Makers.”

Having seen government overreach in such areas as raw milk, I clicked over and took a look. And found very little information. Rather than spend my morning following links on a Google search, I merely posted this response:

But the article says very little about what the proposal actually would do. European cosmetics standards are a GOOD thing, and, as I understand them, would make it far harder for big corps to sell us harmful “personal care” products. Which doesn’t mean this law isn’t overreaching–just that I don’t know because the article doesn’t tell us. Seems like an easy way around this would be a minimum number of bars per year underneath which producers would be exempt. But even artisanal soapmakers *should* disclose ingredients.

Artisanal organic soap bars
Would small-batch organic soaps be affected? No.

Later, I saw another comment from someone who did take the time to do the research; businesses with less than $100,000 in sales are exempt.

In short, this article is an attempt to stir up hostility with a nonexistent controversy. And it seems that Senator Dianne Feinstein is not an evil tool of the personal care companies after all.

I wonder, if we dig deep enough, if we would find some of the big chemical-based personal care products companies—or perhaps an opponent of Senator Feinstein—have a hand in this disinformation campaign. The list of industry giants supporting the new legislation (and thus, imposing tougher standards for themselves) is a long one but it’s certainly not every company.

Incidentally, I’ve said for years that the tough European Union rules on personal care products were a huge marketing opportunity for companies that meet the standards. Whether based in the US or Europe, the first few companies that demonstrate they meet the tougher standards ought to go be very successful in the stores.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Today, I encountered a post from an Internet friend who lives in Israel, urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netenyahu to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

The post made me feel queasy. My original response was a desire to scream and yell that this was racist. Fortunately, I had enough self-control not to give into that stupid and unproductive urge. I also didn’t want to start a firestorm of negative attacks on me because I had the temerity to disagree with a view that I felt was both racist and extremist. And yet I wanted to confront this way of thinking and not let it go unchallenged.

So instead, I thought for a couple of minutes about what type of response would actually be heard and not blocked out—what could actually advance a dialog. (I will confess that I haven’t always been skilled in that type of response, but I think I’ve gotten much better in the past several years.

And this is what I finally wrote—knowing that my friend is deeply religious, and that an appeal to his religious convictions might actually get through.

Even as poor a student of the Torah as I am knows that God does not want to see innocent blood shed. Your recipe for Bibi would leave hundreds of thousands dead and the Middle East–including Israel–in flames. Possibly the entire world. I urge you to think carefully about unintended consequences.

And amazingly enough, this actually did open a door for some mild and thoughtful dialog. Not a perfect outcome but one I could feel reasonably good about. I had used the marketing principles I teach, and given the right message for the audience.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,
Old Movie Camera: How much real news went through these cameras? And how much goes through today's?
How much real news went through these cameras? And how much goes through today’s?

When I’m in airports, fitness centers, and other places that force-feed TV news, I’m always astonished that anyone takes it seriously. Even in the 60s when they had real news staffs, it was so superficial. I read somewhere that an entire 1-hour newscast transcript would only fill a couple of columns on a page of the NY Times.

These days, it’s far worse than “if it bleeds, it leads.” Murder, mayhem, celebrity gossip, and an astonishingly small amount of actual news, and even less serious analysis. And those are the serious networks. Add in a serious case of propaganda and distortion and you can’t be surprised at how little most Americans understand their world, if they accept what’s fed to them by the medium they’ve chosen to “consume” the news.

Of course, the good news is that anyone who wants to educate themselves now has unlimited choices from around the world. My favorite newspaper these days is London’s The Guardian. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual paper copy.

In the 1980s, I used to subscribe to a magazine called World Press Review, which featured reportage on the same story from 8 or 10 different papers around the world; it was like a one-stop course in media literacy and the nature of 1) matching message to audience, and 2) shaping the audience through the message. Since I made (and continue to make) my career as a marketer and a journalist, these were crucial lessons.

However, it was a monthly, and the stories were at least three months old by the time they got to my mailbox. Of course, technology has passed it by now, and I don’t miss it; we can easily get the same effect by viewing the same story on NPR, Fox News, Al Jazeera-English, the New York Times, Paris Match (which Google will even translate for you, sort of), and your local newspaper.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , ,

This may be a new level of stupidity. Murdoch-owned publishing behomoth HarperCollins actually prepared and started to sell an atlas that does not show Israel. At all. Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank are there.

No big surprise, there was lots of pushback when word got out, and HC removed the atlas from circulation and said it would pulp any remaining copies. Even the UK Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs condemned the publication as a blow against peace in the region.

The company sheepishly withdrew, saying,

HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.

But the company is talking out of two sides of its mouth. Earlier, as reported in the Washington Post, it tried to justify the omission:

Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”

HarperCollins has quickly found out that it’s also unacceptable to abandon truth in a volume that claims to offer

“in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”

Ummm, hello, and just how do you intend to put the region in context if you ignore the most conflicted issue it faces? Do you really think students in Arab countries haven’t heard of it? Did you really think this would stay a safe little conspiratorial secret just for the cognoscenti?

HarperCollins would have been totally justified in marking the West Bank and Gaza as disputed territory held by Israel, following conquest. But there’s no dispute about Israel being a nation.

This is a time when we all have social media at our disposal. That means it not only should have been totally obvious that this would backfire, but HarperCollins had the tools at its disposal to make the governments demanding this absurdity to be the ones looking ridiculous. If any governments insisted on refusing entry to accurate atlases, the company could have had a skilled social media manager explain why HC would no longer sell atlases into these countries, and create a pressure movement both from outside the country and from those inside who recognize that not knowing geography is a handicap in the global economic arena, and the Gulf states would have lifted the restriction.

Instead, what HarperCollins has done is to eliminate its own credibility. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the future trusting any reference materials from this publisher. Blatant and deliberate repudiation of truth is not a recipe for success in the world of reference books—especially reference books about the world.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

I got sucked into a debate on Facebook following a high school classmate’s posting a meme of some of Obama’s  economic achievements: Dow Jones increasing from 7949 to 17,830 (that’s more than 124 percent, if I’m figuring correctly); unemployment down from 7.8 to 5.8 percent; GDP from NEGATIVE 5.4 to POSITIVE 3.5 percent; and consumer confidence from 37.7 to 94.5 percent from the time Obama took office.

But as these kinds of discussions often do, it quickly turned toward non-economic politics. And good progressive that I am, I put in this comment:

Robin, you wrote, “OH I know Bush had his share of crap also but at least he proudly and openly loved this country.” I am sorry, but if loving your country means bringing it illegally into wars under utterly false pretenses, wrecking the economy, suppressing dissent (continued, to his shame, by Obama), instituting torture, dissipating international goodwill, etc., this is a “love” that needs serious social-work intervention. When an abuser says “I love you and I’ll never hit you again,” we’re skeptical. Bush was an abuser.

The person I quoted than asked me if I didn’t remember 9/11, and wasn’t Bush justified in going to war. She also asked me if I was “also a Jewish Democrat that thinks Obama is good for Israel or do you care”

I responded:

1. Of COURSE I am aware of the horrors of 9/11. I spent two weeks afterward trying to find out if my ex-housemate from Brooklyn days was OK; she was living two blocks from the WTC (she was uptown at the time, fortunately, and now lives in Colorado). And I’m one degree of separation from a couple of people who died that day. BUT Bush made war on Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with it (it’s well documented that Bin Laden and Saddam hated each other)–and, it turned out, didn’t have WMDs either. The terrorists were mostly Saudi. Afghanistan, along with Pakistan, actually did shelter the terrorists–but the appropriate response to a criminal conspiracy and criminal acts is not to destroy an entire country but to go in with a police action, capture the perps, and put them on trial. You talk about “an arrogant and narcisitic man who has tunnel vision and refuses to listen to the American people.” That would describe several US presidents, including both Obama and Bush, as well as Nixon, among others. I was out there as part of the largest peace demonstrations in history, urging Bush NOT to make war on Iraq. It was totally predictable that this would only create instability, blow away our foreign allies, and provide lots of recruitment material for terrorists. I think the Iraq war may be the worst foreign policy debacle of all US history.

2. As for Israel: I was just there this summer, and spent a LOT of time talking to all sides (including my Israel-right-or-wrong West Bank settler family members). This is not a simple situation, but ultimately, the repression and racism from Israel against the Palestinians is a far more destabilizing influence. Netenyahu’s policies do not encourage peace. They inflame hatreds. Then the Israelis cry that the Arabs hate us. There have been horrible crimes on both sides–but revenge is not the answer. Somehow, we have to get past that and make peace, as happened in Ireland/Northern Ireland and South Africa. Wallowing in the hatred just boils the cauldron harder. I do think that the majority of Israelis AND Palestinians actually want peace–but the extremists on both sides look for any wedge they can. I take hope from groups like Combatants for Peace and Neve Shalom, and it made me very sad today to hear that a joint Jewish-Arab school was torched by anti-Arab extremists. You make peace with your enemies, not necessarily your friends. Obama showed some leadership early in his presidency and then largely ignored the whole issue. He should show some more.

So, at the risk of throwing kerosene on the flames, let me ask you: what do you think of these two presidents’ foreign policy legacies? I will not censor dissent, but I will block name-calling and uncivility—so play nice, but tell me what you think.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

I revisited a post I’d written on election reform, back in 2007. In that post, I listed seven specific steps the United States could take to make its elections more representative and relevant.

But I left out a huge one—did I think back then, that it was so obvious it didn’t need to be listed?

Getting. Money. Out. Of. Politics.

That means not only repealing the wretched anti-democratic Citizens United decision, but much more. It means making politicians once again responsible to the people, and not to well-funded lobbyists. It probably means public funding of candidates, and limits on the dollars that can be spent. Ideally, it would mean an end to TV advertising of smear ads, and replacing them with a list of candidate websites (not just the largest parties but any party that achieves an agreed threshold of support) where people could learn the candidate’s positions on actual issues—in more depth than attack sound bites.

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By Posted on Posted in language, Media Ethics, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This year’s “Shame On You, That’s Propaganda, Not Journalism” award goes to AP reporter Julie Pace, the Associated Press for distributing it, and the dozens of newspapers and blogs that ran the story on President Barack Obama’s decision to consult Congress before going to war with Syria over chemical weapons.

Pace’s story, “Analysis: Obama’s credibility on line in reversal,” greeted me from Page 1 of my local newspaper this morning. Her message: Obama will be seen as weak if his line-in-the-sand on chemical weapons doesn’t lead him to military action.

Perhaps channelling the discredited Judith Miller of the New York Times, who helped drum up domestic support for the ill-advised, illegal, and tragic war in Iraq during the George W. Bush presidency, Pace writes, among other zingers,

President Barack Obama’s abrupt decision to instead ask Congress for permission left him with a high-risk gamble that could devastate his credibility if no action is ultimately taken in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack that crossed his own “red line.”

The stunning reversal also raises questions about the president’s decisiveness and could embolden leaders in Syria, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere, leaving them with the impression of a U.S. president unwilling to back up his words with actions.

If you ask ME…

  1. The President is constitutionally required to get Congress’s permission. Even G.W. Bush did so, though based on a tangled web of fabrications, untruths, and misleading statements.
  2. It is fairly clear that chemical weapons were used in Syria, and that is definitely not acceptable. However, there’s been quite a bit of speculation about who actually used them. Here, for example, a Congressman in Obama’s own party expresses skepticism about who used the weapons—and about their use to justify military action. And here, an AP story that speculates the rebels may have been the ones using chemical weapons, in order to draw other countries into the conflict.
  3. Pace makes an assumption that military force is the only acceptable response. That, frankly, is just plain crazy. Why not just send in a small, well-protected squad of international peacekeepers to arrest Assad, and try him? This is not so different from the way the US killed Bin Laden, after all.
  4. If the justification is to save innocent lives, please explain to me how the far greater bloodshed that inevitably occurs in war will accomplish anything other than the embitterment of the local populace against us and their recruitment by terror elements, as has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan—which, not coincidentally, undermined most of our credibility and our reservoir of good will in those parts of the world.
  5. War generally does not solve problems. Usually, it makes things much worse.
  6. In this case, war with Syria runs huge risks of involving Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, and Iran. Do we really want to create a regional holocaust and the potential for World War III?
  7. Diplomacy and example are much more powerful credibility builders than macho posturing.
  8. Speaking of example, the US is not in a position to throw stones here. The US has a long and ugly history of using unconscionable weapons that disproportionately affect civilians. Examples include the Dresden firebombing against German civilians and the use of atomic bombs against Japanese civilians during World War II, Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam (aren’t those chemical weapons?), and depleted uranium in Iraq.

Lastly, which part of Obama’s noncredibility do we want to focus on? Is it the red line in the sand about chemical weapons that Pace focuses on—or the deeper issue that even she mentions later in the article?

Obama could make good on the promises he made as a senator and presidential candidate, when he called for restraint and congressional consultation by White House’s seeking military force. And with the American public weary of war and many opposed to even modest military action against Syria, Obama could share with Congress the burden of launching an attack.

To me, he started losing credibility when he failed to make good on those promises of peace for which he was elected. He has proven himself a war hawk, a lover of the Bush-era NSA spy apparatus, an enabler of torture and false imprisonment at Guantanamo, a suppressor of dissent, and  unworthy of my trust. If he tries to be a Boy Scut about his promise of retaliation if chemical weapons are used, he breaks those earlier, more crucial promises yet again.

Barack Obama is still an improvement over Bush, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

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