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#14913072
“On the Offensive”: US State Dept. Gives $40M Boost to “Troll Farm” Propaganda Efforts

The push to boost the capabilities of the GEC – which critics had called “low priority, understaffed and without real leadership” – is the most recent move in Washington’s “long war” to win the hearts and minds of global netizens.

WASHINGTON — As U.S. corporate media outlets and lawmakers continue to work themselves and the U.S. public into a lather over alleged “foreign propaganda,” the State Department has launched a new initiative to advance the U.S. government’s own disinformation operations in league with its allies in Silicon Valley.

Announced on Monday, the move will see $40 million in Defense Department funds added to the existing $35 million budget of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), more than doubling the amount of money in the counter-propaganda office’s war chest.

Jason Ditz of Antiwar.com has mocked the hypocrisy of the move, calling the center a “troll farm” meant to continue the “embarrassing” and failed past attempts to manage online narratives.

The move comes as netizens at home and abroad increasingly question the dubious legitimacy of U.S. imperialism, while beltway figures pin the blame for online skepticism on state-run and independent news outlets deemed “fake news.”
#14913092
Sivad wrote:I'd be pro-war if the goal was establishing freedom and democracy and I thought it was feasible.

Then all the mass media has to do is to convince you that "freedom and democracy are feasible" and you will support destroying yet another resource-holding nation.

Sounds like you're an easy sell. "Freedom and democracy" can mean virtually anything mainstream media wants it to mean. Since the USA has lots of these things, "freedom and democracy" doesn't mean that citizens have any power over their governance, and don't get basic health care or decent education. Just lots of freedom and democracy to spread on their Captain Crunch each morning as they eat alone in front of the TV.
#14914247
Abe Rosenthal, was a New York Times Executive Editor (1977–1988)
Rosenthal was also reported to be extremely homophobic,[13] with his views affecting how the New York Times covered issues regarding gay people (such as AIDS).[14] According to former Times journalist Charles Kaiser, "Everyone below Rosenthal (at the New York Times) spent all of their time trying to figure out what to do to cater to his prejudices. One of these widely perceived prejudices was Abe’s homophobia. So editors throughout the paper would keep stories concerning gays out of the paper."[14] One result of this is that the Times "initially 'ignored' the AIDS epidemic."[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._M._Ros ... ical_views


Abe Rosenthal, the neoconservative former executive editor of the Times, banned critics such as Noam Chomsky from being quoted in the newspaper, and decreed that no story involving Ralph Nader's anti-corporate research could be published until the Times could secure a response from the relevant corporations. When the corporate world got word of Rosenthal's decree, it simply refused to respond, thereby killing Nader's coverage by the Times. Nader's disappearance from the "newspaper of record" had a snowballing effect and the other major newspapers and networks also ceased to report on his investigations.
https://books.google.com/books?id=x8_No ... er&f=false
#14915438


NYT Edit Board Are Last Humans on Earth Who Believe US Neutral in Israel/Palestine Conflict
The fact that the United States favors Israel in its decades-long “conflict” with the Palestinians is not a subjective or abstract question; it’s a well-established empirical fact. The US gives over $3 billion a year in military aid to Israel (more than the US spends on aid for the last seven countries it’s bombed combined), and defends it from sanction almost uniformly at the UN Security Council. Israel’s support from the US Congress borders on sycophantic. The US, on the other hand, gives no military aid to Palestine, and opposes resolutions that even acknowledge Palestine exists—much less support its resistance to Israeli occupation. The US gives some aid to the Israeli-approved and corrupt Palestinian Authority, but this largely serves to buy off the docile and unpopular PA.

None of these simple, clear-as-day facts however, seem to be known—or at least acknowledged—by those who make up the New York Times editorial board. In an otherwise decent scolding of President Donald Trump for moving the US embassy, the Times (5/14/18) fired off this cartoonishly naive and ahistorical gem:

Mr. Trump’s announcement that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and moving the embassy from Tel Aviv, swept aside 70 years of American neutrality.

It’s difficult to imagine any of the seemingly knowledgeable and healthy adults at the Times editorial board actually thinking the US has been “neutral” in its dealings with Israel and Palestine. Perhaps not 100 percent lockstep. Perhaps sometimes pushing back against the most right-wing elements in Israel. But “neutral”? It flies in the face of decades of evidence to the contrary.

This isn’t the first time the New York Times has played the part of a kindergartener finding out Santa Claus isn’t real. As FAIR noted last December (12/30/17), Times reporter Mark Landler used the specter of Trump to totally whitewash America’s aggressive and violent past, in a manner that crosses from jingoistic to outright goofy:

Above all, Mr. Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from a reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. That is a seminal change from the role the country has played for 70 years, under presidents from both parties, and it has lasting implications for how other countries chart their futures.

How they know this wasn’t made clear. Perhaps Landler and his editors at the Times did a secret poll and found out the United States has been viewed by “the world” as a “reliable anchor of the liberal, rules-based international order,” rather than a superpower bully that defends rogue apartheid states and launches wars of aggression without UN sanction. But in the article, this “view” was simply asserted, all the ideological lifting being done by the reporter’s back-of-the-napkin editorializing.

In a similar bout of amnesia (FAIR.org, 2/9/17), the Times editorial board argued earlier that year that America’s wars over the past decades were started for purely noble intentions:

At least in recent decades, American presidents who took military action have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy, sometimes with extraordinary results, as when Germany and Japan evolved after World War II from vanquished enemies into trusted, prosperous allies.

Again, one is compelled to ask, how do Times editors know what’s in the hearts of our beloved leaders? What’s the evidence that their motives were benevolent, their empire an earnest, aw shucks effort to help out the little guy?

It’s understandable wanting to impress upon readers how dangerous and flagrant President Trump’s actions are and have been. But in doing so, there’s no reason to rewrite history and whitewash America’s crimes, or its prior bad-faith actions with regard to Palestine—if not for the sake of history, at least for the sake of their paper’s credibility.
https://fair.org/home/nyt-edit-board-ar ... -conflict/



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