The obvious evidently is ignored. Why is the leadership of the West destroying the West? They are following orders. Why was the Ukraine allowed to be a dagger after 2014 and why immediately as Corona hysteria subsides does the Ukraine hot war erupt greatly hastening the Great Reset? Globalism is in the saddle and rides mankind. Russia as much as the USA is woven into the Reset. War enables cover ups of the many crimes to date including lethal non-vaccinations. The Gross Universal Cash Heist in order to continue to grow parasitically is somewhat a rules based normative system. In enacting sanctions that drive Russia and China together the Chinese mode of Communist Capitalism triumphs.
===
GIORGIO AGAMBEN
First published on Quodlibet, December 15th, 2020
The form of capitalism that is being consolidated on a planetary scale is not that which it had assumed in the West: it is, rather, capitalism in its communist variation, which unites an extremely rapid development of production with a totalitarian political regime. This is the historical significance of the leading role that China is taking on, not only in the realm of the economy in a narrow sense, but also – as the political use of the pandemic has so eloquently demonstrated – as a paradigm for the government of men. That the regimes established in so-called communist countries were a particular form of capitalism, specially adapted for economically backward countries and thus labelled ‘state capitalism’, was perfectly clear to anyone who knows how to read history; what was entirely unexpected, however, is that this form of capitalism, which seemed to have exhausted its function and was thus now obsolete, was instead destined – in a technologically updated configuration – to become the ruling principle of the current phase of globalized capitalism. Indeed, it is possible that today we are observing a conflict between Western capitalism, which used to exist alongside the ‘state of law’ and bourgeois democracy, and this new communist capitalism, a conflict in which the latter version appears to have emerged as the victor. What is certain, however, is that the new regime will combine the most inhumane aspects of capitalism with the most atrocious aspects of state communism, combining the extreme alienation of relations between people with an unprecedented social control.
– Giorgio Agamben
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/11/01/the-neoconservatives-and-israel-are-reopening-the-middle-east-wars/
http://new.wymaninstitute.org/2023/10/who-gave-hamas-the-cement-for-tunnels/
Ross has been appearing as an expert commentator on major media outlets in recent days, including on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” on October 8, CNN’s “Amanpour and Company” on October 13, and Fox News on October 14, among others.
Yet Ross did not think it was relevant to mention in any of those interviews that he himself pressured Israel to let Hamas obtain the cement—a role he admitted in a Washington Post op-ed on August 8, 2014.
In the op-ed, Ross described how, as a U.S. envoy, he urged Israel to allow Hamas to import cement even though he knew, at the time, that Hamas had been using cement for military purposes.
“At times,” he wrote in the Post, “I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built. They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.”
===
An overlooked classic of information warfare/operations, disinformation, and fake news is Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda:
"The Formation of Men’s Attitudes" (1965). Jacques Ellul was a French sociologist and philosopher who served as professor at the University of Bordeaux.
12 thoughts from Propaganda (1965) by Jacques Ellul
1. Breaking news is brainwashing you. Ellul: "To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection." When everything is urgent, you are forced to "remain on the surface of the event."
2. Jacques Ellul predicted echo chambers: "Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. We see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself."
3. Modern man can "never stop to reflect." He's not allowed to synthesize his information. Rather, Ellul writes: "One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones."
4. Clear thought has been replaced by vague feeling: "Modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them."
5. Ellul on how the modern man lacks a center of gravity: "Lacking landmarks, he follows all currents." His soul is "discontinuous and fragmented." Life reduced to unconnected moments...
6. Everyone can read but not everyone can think. This makes propaganda more, not less, common. Ellul: "The vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word...they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition."
7. Once a person is compromised...once they've acted out a lie...they are yours forever. Ellul: "He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable."
8. Propaganda works by channeling the energies of a society's "fundamentals myths." These are the central stories operating inside the collective mind: "The myth of happiness, the myth of progress, the myth of the nation." A skilled propagandist will always borrow from, and build on, the "current beliefs and symbols" of a society.
9. Propagandists set up "psychological levers." They ensure that "certain words, signs or symbols" start provoking certain reflex actions...and then they wait. The levers can now be turned when and how needed.
10. Indirect propaganda works best. Aggressive attempts at manipulation will fail as people's defenses will go up. But give a man plausible deniability, feed him convenient information, make him feel that he's "obeying reason" as he follows your command, and you have him where you want him.
11. Lonely, depressed people are the easiest victims of propaganda. Jacques Ellul: "An individual can be influenced by forces such as propaganda only when he is cut off from membership in local groups because such groups are organic and have a well-structured material, spiritual and emotional life; they are not easily penetrated by propaganda."
12. The conditions of modernity are actually the conditions of unprecedented propaganda: "The permanent uncertainty, the social mobility, the absence of sociological protection and of traditional frames of reference — all these inevitably provide propaganda with a malleable environment that can be conditioned at will. The individual left to himself is defenseless..."
Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity
The Journal of Lingering Sanity is a reader-supported publication. We are beholden to truth not party. “The time has come," the Journal said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."
Refined on Bernays but used for Millennia