Information & disinformation, the new media & the old

These posts discuss the flow of information in our society, and how it’s changing.

The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.
— Sir Arthur C Clarke, interview with Nalaka Gunawardene, posted at OneWorld, 5 December 2003

Contents

Click on the title to jump to that section.

1. The new media
2. About propaganda and info warfare by military and intel agencies
3. Other propaganda and information operations run against us
4. Rumors and misinformation (the Internet can make us dumber)
5. Propaganda about climate change
6. Media Madness — rumors and errors from both the old and new media
7. The mainstream media
8. Wikileaks

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(1)  About new media

1. Cable Cut Fever grips the conspiracy-hungry fringes of the web, 7 February 2008
2. Resolution of the Great Submarine Cable Crisis – and some lessons learned, 8 February 2008
3. What do blogs do for America?, 26 February 2008
4. The Internet makes us dumber: the Bakken euphoria, a case study, 15 April 2008
5. When did “Dude” predict a recession? How severe?, 6 June 2008
6. Making us dumber, chanting “Dude, where’s my recession?”, 3 June 2008
7. Does reading Debkafile make us smarter, or dumber?, 15 June 2008
8. A guide to sources of geopolitical insight on the Internet, 6 December 2008
9. The future, always in motion and therefore difficult to see, 18 March 2009 — About Clay Shirkey’s analysis.
10. A new news media emerges for our new world, unseen and unexpected, 9 July 2009
11. The Raymond Davis incident shows that we’re often ignorant because we rely on the US news media. There is a solution., 18 February 2011
12. We can learn an important lesson about ourselves from the “Three Cups of Tea” affair (part one), 26 April 2011
13. The lessons about ourselves we can learn from the “Three Cups of Tea” affair (part two), 27 April 2011

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(2)  About propaganda and info warfare by military and intel agencies

1. News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW!, 2 September 2009
2. 4GW at work in a community near you , 19 October 2007 — Propaganda warming us up for war with Iran.
3. Successful info ops, but who are the targets?, 1 May 2008
4. Recommended:  Does reading Debkafile make us smarter, or dumber?, 15 June 2008
5. The most expensive psy-war campaign - ever!, 13 July 2008
6. Psywar, a core skill of the US Military (used most often on us), 26 November 2008
7. Concrete evidence of government info ops against us, but it’s OK because we are sheep, 2 December 2008
8. Iran’s getting the bomb, or so we’re told. Can they fool us twice?, 16 February 2009
9. How the Soviet Menace was over-hyped – and what we can learn from this, 13 October 2009
10. Another example of war advocates working their rice bowls, 24 December 2009
11. Think-tanks bribe journalists to promote our wars, 24 December 2009
12. Iran will have the bomb in 5 years (again), 20 January 2010
13. Another sad little bit of agitprop, this time from John Nagl, 28 February 2010
14. Every day brings new advocacy for war. That’s our America., 1 November 2010
15. The Iranian Assassination caper was a complete success!, 17 October 2011
16. Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons, generating waves of fear in America for 20 years, 9 November 2011
17. Using covert operations to discredit your enemies, 27 November 2011

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(3)  Other propaganda and information operations run against us

1. Successful propaganda as a characteristic of 21st century America, 1 February 2010
2. More propaganda: the eco-fable of Easter Island, 4 February 2010
3. Can Obama turn America into something like Zimbabwe?, 22 February 2010
4. Dumbest headline of the week, 1 March 2010 — Where are the good political smear artists?
5. A note about practical propaganda, 22 March 2010
6. About the political significance of the conservatives’ health care propaganda, 23 March 2010
7. The similar delusions of America’s Left and Right show our common culture – and weakness, 26 March 2010
8. Programs to reshape the American mind, run by the left and right, 2 August 2010
9. Our leaders have made a discovery of the sort that changes the destiny of nations, 15 September 2010
10. The easy way to rule: leading a weak people by feeding them disinformation, 13 April 2011
11. Why Conservatives are winning: they use the WMD of political debate, 28 April 2011
12. Facts are an obstacle to the reform of America, 20 October 2011
13. Our minds are addled, the result of skillful and expensive propaganda, 28 December 2011
14. More use of the big lie: shifting the blame for the housing crisis, 29 December 2011
15. What does Greenpeace’s “Shell” hoax tell us about America?, 22 July 2012
16. Understanding our political system: the how-to guide by its builders, 7 October 2012

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(4)  Rumors and misinformation (the Internet can make us dumber)

1. Cable Cut Fever grips the conspiracy-hungry fringes of the web , 7 February 2008
2. Resolution of the Great Submarine Cable Crisis – and some lessons learned , 8 February 2008
3. More rumors of war: our naval armada has sailed to Iran!, 9 August 2008 — No, it hasn’t.
4. Update on the rumored armada sailing to Iran, 13 August 2008
5. A US naval armada is en route to blockade Iran and start WWIII (the story gets better every day), 14 August 2008
6. UPI reports on the multi-national armada sailing to Iran, 15 August 2008
7. Stop the presses: no naval armada has sailed to blockade Iran!, 20 August 2008
8. Proposed legislation prepares the way for war with Iran!, 25 August 2008
9. Forensic analysis of propaganda: “Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books in the White House”, 19 February 2010
10. We are ignorant because we enjoy being lied to.  Today we look at lies about the US debt., 8 August 2011
11. A small incident that tells much about America – a flag gets lowered in a classroom!, 5 September 2011
12. Facts are an obstacle to the reform of America, 20 October 2011
13. Assassination of an important Saudi Prince! By Syria. Or Iran. Or both. Or it might be a fake story., 1 August 2012

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(5)  Propaganda about climate change 

1. The media doing what it does best these days, feeding us disinformation, 11 February 2008
2. More attempts to control the climate science debate using smears and swarming, 19 October 2009
3. The facts about the 1970′s Global Cooling scare, 7 December 2009
4. About Wikipedia’s handling of controversial topics…like climate science, 20 December 2009
5. The floodgates slowly open and the foreign news media debunk climate change propaganda, 24 January 2010
6. Quote of the day – hidden history for people who rely on the mainstream media for information, 12 February 2010
7. The hidden history of the global warming crusade, 19 February 2010
8. A real-time example of the birth and spread of climate propaganda, 9 March 2010
9. Lies told under the influence of the Green religion to save the world, 30 July 2010
10. We see the world in terms of facts (mostly numbers). Our world changes rapidly, including the past’s numbers, 2 August 2010
11. A new video about global warming, a Leftists’ wet dream pretending to be humor, 1 October 2010
12. Shaping your view of the world with well-constructed propaganda, 21 June 2012 — About rising sea levels.
13. Run from the rising waves! (The latest climate catastrophe scare), 27 June 2012
14. Ignorance and propaganda about extreme climate change, 10 July 2012
15. Mother Jones sounds the alarm about global warming! This time about the north pole., 10 December 2012
16. Lessons the Left can learn from the Right when writing about climate change, 12 December 2012 — Propagandist Phil Plait
17. Fierce words about those “wacky professional climate change deniers”, 20 January 2013 — More by propagandist Phil Plait
18. We can see our true selves in the propaganda used against us, 14 May 2013 — Skillful actually inaccurate article in The Guardian

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(6)  Media Madness — from both the old and new media

1. More media madness: rich fat bankers get flu vaccine while children die!, 7 November 2009
2. Media madness #1 – their lies and ignorance make us stupid, 1 December 2009
3. Media madness #2 – their lies and ignorance make us stupid, 4 December 2009
4. Anatomy of a rumor, showing how the Internet can make us dumber, 11 February 2010

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(7)  About the mainstream media

1. A time-saving tip when reading the daily news, 2 Januaary 2008
2. The media discover info ops, with outrage!, 22 April 2008
3. Only our amnesia makes reading the newspapers bearable, 30 April 2008
4. The myth of media pessimism about the economy, 13 June 2008
5. “Elegy for a rubber stamp”, by Lewis Lapham, 26 August 2008
6. “The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism”, 23 December 2008
7. The media doing what it does best these days, feeding us disinformation, 18 February 2009 — About sea ice
8. The media rolls over and plays dead for Obama, as it does for all new Presidents, 19 February 2009
9. The magic of the mainstream media changes even the plainest words into face powder, 24 April 2009
10. The media – a broken component of America’s machinery to observe and understand the world, 2 June 2009
11. We’re ignorant about the world because we rely on our media for information, 3 June 2009
12. About campaigns for high office in America – we always expect a better result from the same process, 17 June 2009
13. The perfidy of ABC News (tentative conclusion on a breaking story), 18 June 2009
14. Are we blind, or just incurious about important news?, 6 July 2009
15. We know nothing because we read newspapers, 12 October 2009 – About mythical numbers
16. Must the old media die for the new media to flourish?, 29 October 2009
17. Clay Shirky is brilliant and American – hence often delusionally flattering, 24 November 2009
18. Journalists, relying on anonymous government sources, attack anonymous bloggers who correct journalists’ errors, 25 July 2010
19. Exaggerations and false predictions are good; truth is bad, 10 August 2010 – About peak oil research
20. The Raymond Davis incident shows that we’re often ignorant because we rely on the US news media.  There is a solution., 18 February 2011
21. How to lose an ally: updates on the Raymond Davis affair, 20 February 2011
22. The core of the dispute with Pakistan about Raymond Davis (let’s understand it before it sparks fires with Pakistan), 25 February 2011
23. An explanation of the US and Pakistan governments’ odd behavior in the Raymond Davis affair, 27 February 2011

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(8)  Wikileaks

1. A major leak of government secrets – read all about it!, 9 February 2010
2. About the Wikileaks footage of possible war crimes, 7 April 2010
3. Afghanistan war logs: Shattering the illusion of a bloodless victory, 28 July 2010
4. The full story of the rape charges against Julian Assange of Wikileaks, a possible covert op., 27 August 2010
5. Update to the Wikeleaks rape story, and why it’s important, 29 August 2010 – If a covert op, it’s working
6. New and strange developments in the prosecution of Julian Assange (Wikileaks), 1 September 2010 – New but not more enlightening.
7. Endgame for the affair Assange: a big win for the government, 27 September 2010
8. The US government successfully smears Wikileaks, while America sleeps, 22 October 2010