Re-upping this as I go through a second, closer reading of Suspicious Minds.

-- the year-long whoopup over Facebook losing control of personal data began with suspicion, an inchoate suspicion that big data collection by social media was plagued by more than just problems with transparency.

While early reporting was not yet loaded with suspicion that Cambridge Analytica failed to destroy personal data (collected ostensibly for an academic research purpose) ...  questioning stories emerged in the early months of 2017 and then broke out in the broader tech-left ecoculture and beyond into the lamestream by last fall.  The Data That Turned the World Upside Down | Watchdog to launch inquiry into misuse of data in politics 

If the 2017 headlines and Cambridge Analytica means not too much to you, see Michael's posts on the present spurt of intense follow-on whoopup, which sketch some of the cast of characters:

And ....

My suspicious mindset about "data" is about 'bad actors' and unforeseen consequences. What makes all the tumblers click and so unleash full scandalmongering coverage right now is I think that there were a lot of working pieces, some hidden from view. What was once only suspected is in part revealed to the world.  Suspected but not known is what kept reporters picking away at the official accounts from the players, I figure.

What was the actual hinge to the last forty-eight hours of grand hoopla?

I''d say"Whistleblower." The pink-haired guy, a Canadian as it turns out. And a Guardian scoop with fresh details of the nitty-gritties. And a subsequent official (if tortured) explanation from the social media behemoth.  And accelerated breathing  in many quarters once Facebook suspended the company from its platform pending investigation.

All the ingredients for Grand Supreme Hoopla, as I call it.  But just to linger on the basic factish area, I chose Wired as a search term for news -- as a sort of tech-left filter:

It is best to discount the emotive words and phrases -- the cognates of theft, intrusion, 'breach.'  The data was legally obtained from paid survey monkeys and Facebook friends, even if no one read the fine print or considered the notion that harvested data could be mined for use in a psychological operation slash persuasion campaign directed back at them.

Another interesting/useful search is on a phrase from Michael today, naming other hinges in the story, "Cambridge Analytica is a data firm that used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to pay a couple of hundred thousand people or so to fill out a personality profile." Using Michael's phrase, Google turns up earlier reporting I noted above. Click through the images if you want a shortcut to pictured search results, which you can then refine.

I forked up a couple flashy videos, but first what the 'scoop' looked like.

The Grand Supreme Hoopla triggered by revelations from the Pink-haired Whistleblower will be augmented by a just-presently broadcast 'undercover' video scoop from the UK's Channel Four**. From here on in, we are going to hear spin seventeen ways from Sunday. 

** Grand Supreme!

This could get a bit ouchy for Cambridge Analytica, if true:

Memeorandum highlights from this moment: the inevitable pushback on the more histrionic reporting to date ...

Quote

 Michael Brendan Dougherty / National Review: The Social-Media Panic

–

Discussion:

Matt Vespa / Townhall.com:   Bad Harvest: Meet The Data Guru Who Said He Created Steve Bannon's ‘Psychological Warfare MindF**k’ Tool'

David Harsanyi / The Federalist:   The Cambridge Analytica Panic Is The Silliest Conspiracy Of The Entire Russia Scare

Major Garrett / CBS News:   Trump campaign phased out use of Cambridge Analytica data before election

Karl Maier / Bloomberg:   Cambridge Analytica's Global Election Bombshell: Balance of Power

Daily Mail:   ‘They were on our side’: Obama campaign director reveals Facebook ALLOWED them to mine American …

Allum Bokhari / Breitbart:   Flashback: Obama Data Gathering Operation ‘Triggered Internal Safeguards’ at Facebook

Alex Griswold / Washington Free Beacon:   Obama Campaign Alum: Facebook Allowed Us to Exploit User Data Because ‘They Were on Our Side’

CBS Los Angeles:   What You Need To Know About Facebook And Cambridge Analytica

James Barrett / Daily Wire:   FLASHBACK: Maxine Waters Brags About Obama's Database With Info On ‘Every Individual’

Rachel Thompson / Mashable:   Facebook was kicked out of Cambridge Analytica's office while trying to ‘secure evidence’

Kalev Leetaru / Forbes:   Why Are We Only Now Talking About Facebook And Elections?

Nick Statt / The Verge:   UK seeks warrant to examine Cambridge Analytica servers after Facebook data misuse

Benjamin Hart / New York Magazine:   Cambridge Analytica CEO Proposes Bribes, Entrapment in Undercover Footage

Adam L Silverman / Balloon Juice:   Breaking: Britain's Information Officer Moves Against Cambridge Analytica

Stephen Johnson / Big Think:   Facebook's stock drops 7% after whistleblower speaks on Cambridge Analytica scandal

Matt Shuham / Talking Points Memo:   Hidden Camera Report Shows Cambridge Analytica Discussing Entrapment Methods

 David McLaughlin / Bloomberg: 
FTC Probing Facebook for Use of Personal Data, Source Says

–

Discussion:

The Guardian:   MPs summon Mark Zuckerberg and accuse Facebook of misleading them

Casey Newton / The Verge:   Facebook is losing control of the narrative — and maybe the platform

Chris Smith / BGR:   FTC is probing Facebook following Cambridge Analytica revelations

VICE News:   The U.K. government is going after Cambridge Analytica's data

Washington Post:   Calls for Facebook to testify to Congress are growing louder — and bipartisan

Reuters:   Cambridge University asks Facebook for evidence about role of academic

 Ben Shapiro / The Hill:  What's genius for Obama is scandal when it comes to Trump

–

Discussion:

Mayor / One America News Network:   FTC to investigate Facebook over use of personal data: report

Ben Shapiro / Daily Wire:   Shapiro At ‘The Hill’: On Social Media, What's Genius For Obama Is Scandal When It Comes To Trump

Allum Bokhari / Breitbart:   Obama Campaign Staffer Says Facebook Allowed Them to Harvest Masses of Data

Kyle Becker / The Daily Caller:   Obama Staffer: Facebook Knew Presidential Campaign Improperly Seized Data, Looked the Other Way

Brandon Morse / RedState:   WHOA!  Obama Campaign Manager Admits Facebook Sided with Obama in 2012 and Allowed MASSIVE Data Mining

 

Ouchies ...

There is no shortage of headlines and stories outlining and exposing the details of the fresh Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, and no shortage of stories that raise further suspicions.  There is also a sort of rump (highlighted above) where facts seem to be sloughed off in process. 

So, where do the various stories intersect ... ?  One intersection is that the scandal harms the Facebook bottom line.  Here's a story from the Hive at Vanity Fair.  The headers almost tell it all:

Quote

“THIS IS A SLOW ROLL”: SILICON VALLEY INSIDERS THINK THAT FACEBOOK WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AFTER THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL
The scandal, the latest in Facebook’s tortured history with privacy concerns, has eroded the potential for any of the company’s leaders to ever credibly run for public office. And it’s made Zuckerberg’s Chinese dreams a lot more fraught. One tech investor put it more succinctly: “They’re fucked.”

-- this video is the one that triggered the largest storm ... in which Nix blows holes in his own latter-day story of being catfished:

As will surprise no one, coverage in the media large and small has been breathless and at times histrionic. Of the not-bothered or less-bothered side of analysis, one line of argument highlights the Obama campaign's 'Big Data' programme previous election cycle.  Another line is that the big data firm did nothing 'out of the ordinary.' An example is Rush Limbaugh's line from a couple of days ago: Cambridge Analytica Did Nothing Unusual.

Interesting, if unconvincing and rather sloppy in assembling a fact pattern  ...

Now, is there a tribalistic hesitation to exploring this scandal -- to downplay or minimize, distract and deny that there is a scandal or at least something hinky or troubling?  That is hard to say.  

In any case, the "Other Side" from that tribe is keeping tabs. This is from boo hiss Media Matters for America:

Quote

Fox & Friends ignored the story completely. A Media Matters search of SnapStream closed captioning transcripts of the March 19 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends showed that the president’s favorite television show failed to mention the legal troubles of a data firm that helped him win the presidency.

Breitbart News Daily also ignored the story. Media Matters searched Veritone for mentions on Breitbart News Daily of “Cambridge,” “breach,” “50 million,” or “Facebook,” and found no relevant mentions of the Cambridge Analytica story. Breitbart News Daily was formerly hosted by Breitbart News’ then-executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, who is also former chief strategist for the Trump campaign and White House, as well as a former Cambridge Analytica vice president.

Wash. Free Beacon’s Elizabeth Harrington claimed the story simply scandalizes “what advertisers do all the time,” and is just another attempt to “taint[]” Trump’s victory as “illegitimate.” On a March 19 appearance on Fox News, Harrington also complained about a “double standard” because former President Barack Obama had “one of the co-founders of Facebook, Chris Hughes, working on his campaign” in 2008, which gave him “an advantage on social media.”

The Drudge Report suggested the story constituted a “data leak” at Facebook that could help to “sink” the company. Drudge also speculated that the data leak “violated [an] FTC privacy deal,” linking to a Washington Post article quoting a former Federal Trade Commission official speculating that Facebook may have violated a FTC consent decree by supplying information to Cambridge Analytica.

A Breitbart report uncritically repeated Cambridge Analytica’s questionable claim that they “deleted all data” they improperly received. Breitbart quoted a statement from Cambridge Analytica, which claimed “Cambridge Analytica deleted” all Facebook data that it improperly received. The Breitbart report did not mention that Facebook found reason to believe that potentially “not all data was deleted.”

Over the weekend, Fox’s America’s News HQ reported on Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook suspension.The day after the story broke, Fox News reported on Cambridge Analytica’s suspension from Facebook, citing reporting from the Guardian and New York Times that it “harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles.” The Fox report included Facebook’s statement that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted all of the data.

Rush Limbaugh downplayed the story as “nothing unique,” calling Cambridge Analytica’s tactics “the modern-day equivalent of high-tech grass-roots politics.” Rush Limbaugh dubiously claimed that the tactics used by Cambridge Analytica are part and parcel of modern political information gathering, saying, “The Democrats have perfected using the personal data stored by internet companies for I don’t know how long,” but he failed to mention that the information used by Cambridge Analytica was meant for academic purposes only.

Ben Shapiro claimed the Cambridge Analytica story is part of “a larger attempt to convince social media companies … to shut down conservative opinions.” The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro pointed to the Cambridge Analytica story to push the right-wing conspiracy theory that tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter are targeting and silencing conservative voices. Shapiro wrote of the reports about Cambridge Analytica, “This entire scandal is designed to pressure Facebook into cracking down on supposed right-wing activity,” and he claimed that “this is part of a broader pattern” of Democrats encouraging social media platforms to silence conservatives. Shapiro’s argument fits into a right-wing media narrative alleging censorship on the part of social media platforms that take action to address fake news and hate speech.

Fox host Greg Gutfeld: "I'm not sure it's really Cambridge Analytica that's at fault here." In a segment discussing Cambridge Analytica, The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld said "I'm not sure it's really Cambridge Analytica that's at fault here." Fellow co-host Jesse Watters joined Gutfeld in defending Cambridge Analytica and claimed "I spoke to the Trump campaign today, and they said that they never used any of the data that Cambridge Analytica used from Facebook."

Then there is this uncut gem from the world of Information Warfare ...

Somewhere in the middle -- if there can be a middle -- is the kind of reporting featured at Just Security.  Facts and speculation, and 'just asking questions,' but on balance a fuller theory, one that accounts for fact items blown past in the 'Nothing to see here' wing ... Did Cambridge Analytica Leverage Russian Disinformation for Trump?

Theory!

Quote

In an age of conspiracy theories and internet hoaxes, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. In the last few days, a number of incredible claims were made about the shadowy firm Cambridge Analytica and its relationship to both Facebook and the Trump campaign that seem like a combination of Black Mirror with Burn After Reading. But drilling down into recent and past reporting shows the likelihood that Cambridge Analytica helped spur the Russian disinformation operation during the 2016 election.

A whistleblower–a former Cambridge Analytica employee named Christopher Wylie–revealed evidence that the firm had extracted the information of 50 million Facebook users, which it then employed in the data models it used to help elect Donald Trump.  On the heels of Wylie’s revelations, the UK’s Channel 4 is in the midst of broadcasting a five-part exposé including undercover footage of recently suspended Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix offering to engage in not just microtargeting and data services, but also the dark arts of propaganda, entrapment, and other illicit tactics to win elections.

These revelations have provided evidence for a potential plot line perhaps stranger still. Despite its British roots, Cambridge Analytica was deeply tied to the Trump campaign. Was Cambridge Analytica a nexus for collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russian election interference campaign? No evidence directly supports that theory yet. But what is known supports another theory: that Cambridge Analytica knowingly used Russian disinformation to help the Trump campaign win the 2016 election.

I don't know if Mr Information Warfare watched this video ... but it is interesting for the claims made by the principals. Who ya gonna believe, the folks who go all mysterian-conspuracy over Angela Merkel's satanic plan to install her birthday party chums at the height of power in, er, Lithuania?  Maybe, maybe not. Your other choice is that this is all a "hoax."  

Another item I find interesting from a Nothingburger point of view -- is the notion that the Trump campaign did not use Cambridge Analytica after a certain 'cut-off' point.  The CBS story from the 18th is the hinge for this notion.

It looks like McMaster will be leaving the Trump cabinet, if you can believe the bloody New York Times.

Funny Chuck Ross:

On 2/16/2018 at 9:53 AM, Jon Letendre said:

The FBI knew the Boston bombing culprits, also. Russian intelligence had tipped off the FBI about them. But nothing was done because the FBI doesn’t “do” anything in such a case except continue grooming their terrorist.

Its what they do.

The mass murderers always turn out to be known to the FBI.

(But it’s always just an enormous coincidence, ?.)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pulse-nightclub-shooting-gunman-father-fbi-informant-seddique-mateen/

It's Sanctimony Week in the Greater Media Blob.  At the centre of the Hollywood Squares-style newsertainment is James Comey, whose gossip-laden book is getting a splash.

A bigger kersploosh of newsertainment may be the just-leaked declassified Comey Memos. Associated Press was the first to announce their appearance for you and me to read, after some unknown parties in Congress did what they do, leaked. 

This is the redacted version. 

We may have to wait a while before we know which Trumpist interpretation best serves the President.  This is an interesting moment in the Russia Russia Russia hoopla ...

In your long description of yourself, you forgot to list your recurring part on the TV show, "The X-Files." Was that an accident or intentional? Queue the spooky music to The Twilight Zone. 

2 hours ago, Peter said:

In your long description of yourself, you forgot to list your recurring part on the TV show, "The X-Files." Was that an accident or intentional? 

I do not recall that part of my life, Peter. Aliens may have removed my memory. If not aliens, maybe a mind-control cabal.

One fun part of the X-Files were evenings with siblings and madre ruthlessly deconstructing its plots and fancies. I was forged in a non-religious thus skeptical crucible, and the family posse were known to be able to utterly wreck the enjoyment of programs like X-Files in other people watching.  Our favourite awful episode was the humanoid in the sewers of DC. Almost on the level of the triumphantly awful movies Humanoids From The Deep and Without Warning.

Besides capturing and killing the implausible, another fun part of watching X-Files together was trying to recognize all the Vancouver and region landmarks in the series. 

My first encounter with spooky TV was the early 60s Outer Limits. I was five and was totally freaked out by the premiere episode where a microwave man came out of the television.  I lived in nightmare valley for a while. I figured out later this could be how people get freaked out into believing in gods, through spooking a childhood mind. 

Inducing fright is a powerful spell -- some of us relish a good scare if not suspense, dread, and horror. It took me a while for a growth of reason to shield me to some degree from childhood fears and forebodings, to use 'how do you know?' and 'is it true?' as tools to conquer fears.  Most lurking menaces have a shorter shelf life when the reality of their existence is challenged, grand cabal Illuminati deep state Soros or no.

From Wikipedia's helpful obsessives:

Speaking of fear, have you ever heard that deeply delusional radio person the Spaceman?  My conspiracy theory about him is that he is trying to hypnotize his entire audience and maybe succeeding, for all I know, because I have never been able to follow his train of "thought" for more than a few sentences and his deep voice and monotonous delivery , punctuated by eccentrically placed stops whenever he gets lost in his script, are trance-inducing.

In fact his voice reminds me of the guy in the famous old BBC clip who was unknowingly live as he recited a long poem about Alexandria from memory. Except that was entertaining, and the poem made sense.

18 hours ago, caroljane said:

Speaking of fear, have you ever heard that deeply delusional radio person the Spaceman?  My conspiracy theory about him is that he is trying to hypnotize his entire audience and maybe succeeding, for all I know, because I have never been able to follow his train of "thought" for more than a few sentences and his deep voice and monotonous delivery , punctuated by eccentrically placed stops whenever he gets lost in his script, are trance-inducing.

I hadn't heard of "The Spaceman" before your mention. It looks like he got fired last year from his gig in Toronto:

Quote

Corus Entertainment announced late last month that it had fired veteran broadcaster Gary Bell and cancelled his weekly program, A View From Space, following complaints of anti-Semitic content on the show.

On his Nov. 11 broadcast on AM640 in Toronto, Bell, known by his on-air handle “The Spaceman,” described the “Illuminati-controlled mass media,” the threat of a one-world government and an impending world war driven by “satanic forces” trying to take control of global finances.

He also spoke about “crypto-Jews” who belong to secret societies, “Judeo-Freemasonry,” powerful Jewish financiers from Europe, the bloodlines of Cain and Judah, as well as some bizarre theories about Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler and B’nai Brith.

The sudden end of the program surprised a lot of fans, with one penning an 'analysis' of what got the plug pulled:

Quote

The final hour of this clip is where Spaceman brought it all home. There was a moment in time during the 1700's when Adam Weishaupt, Jacob Frank, and Mayer Amschel Rothschild all got together - likely under the direction of yet another strata of Kabbalist power positioned even above them - and laid out the next huge leap in a long-running path towards world domination. Much of that history is now fairly elementary to those with even a rudimentary brush-up with "conspiracy theory." However, let it be noted that Gary Bell emphasized that he was talking about an elite sect of falsely-called Jews, or, apostate Jews, crypto Jews. This relatively small handful of people have been working against the best interests of millions of people who today refer to themselves as Jews. The tragic irony of history is that the people on this planet who are the most anti-Semitic, and even the most anti-Human, are these very same elite cabalists (and Kabbalists) who have always passed themselves off as Semites!

Sounds like this might fit in with Jon Letendre's giddy fantasies about the Luciferians ... 

On the other hand, maybe The Spaceman can be cited as a "sick mother fucker" ... as Jon did with you. Here is The Spaceman's final broadcast, cued up for the ultimate cognitive crash-landing at sea.

On 2/6/2018 at 10:09 PM, Jon Letendre said:

“Low threshold for fun,” fuck you, William.

It makes me sick that my country and the world is infested with so much of this filth.

And you too are starting to make me sick.

I let Jordan Sather speak through me ...

On 2/16/2018 at 11:08 AM, Jon Letendre said:

People think the FBI finds people who mean harm, but they really do not.

The primary business of the FBI is the creation of terrorists. They find good candidates, groom them, provide them with what they need, and then arrest them when enough exists for a case, but before they commit. And then they tell us how they prevented X attacks so far this year. The FBI is a criminal gang. Parkland looks exactly like all the other “attacks” they have arranged. Intentionally or not, this one went all the way. We will not be safe until the FBI is disbanded.

"Appeal the Objectivish within us" (re-up this offer to Jon Letendre to 'work past the clash')

No, Owen Shroyer is not the stupidest person appearing at Infowars.

On 3/7/2018 at 10:14 AM, william.scherk said:

 

 

I don't know why Roger Stone doesn't get more bookings on the flailing, failing, betraying, bovine monkey-hear-monekey-repeat Fey Canoes outlets. He is a lot of fun, even if we cannot always trust his instincts. In this video he lets loose with some intriguing speculation ...

Research topic for those of us with Suspicious Minds: "What is 'face validity' and how is it assessed?"

This doesn't have much to do with Trump (from which thread of endless love I excise this), so I transpose it here to my thread about the Brotherton book and its lessons and challenges.  A puzzler.

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

It's a fine line because the deep state actually executes false flags where they kill real people. They have done this for decades.

I'd like a list.

Sorry. I'm not playing. Do your own homework.

How tart.

If someone doesn't have at the tip of the tongue a few examples of the numerous false-flag events confidently asserted to have been grinding on for decades -- it cannot be extracted against an invincible will.

That being the case, there is a dangling item for our Epistemologue.  Can confident assertions be assessed by "face value"?

That is one for the sages.  If event X occurred, can we transfer that reality to a series of imagined scenarios Yⁿ without much further ado?

My concerns with False-Flag assertions are engaged on a case-by-case basis. The most recent and largest eruption of claims I contest was connected to the April 2017 Sarin attack in Damascus that led to US missile attacks (this  eruption reiterated after this years'  chlorine attack in the Douma case). I am prepared for an argument with anyone here who asserts it was a false-flag act by "The Rebels" ...

It's not like anyone has to come up with a List. But I imagine there is a List in some minds of arguable false-flag events in the 2010s, in the 2000s, in the 1990s, and so on back to the Gulf of Tonkin some decades ago.

But who cares?  Homework has the reputation of being arduous if not punitive. 

In the meantime, a relaxing Hawaiian spell on a VOX text-to-speech, which properly belongs on the Trump forever thread, but hey.

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

3 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I'd like a list.

Sorry. I'm not playing. 

How tart.

Somebody made a list, as people do.  I took a click-and-go snapshot of a part of a RationalWiki page.  RationalWiki is not affiliated with any blob organization, and so can be quite tart and mocking at times. I cannot vouch for the probity of its lurking editors, but hey -- it's a list and I like that.

Now, a philosophical discussion of epistemology in re the items on the list, as befits a philosophical forum -- this may be more difficult to come by.

Does this report from the lovely Faye Knuze convince anyone that things are not what they seem?

Syria may not have declared entire chemical arsenal, OPCW says
"Many Western countries are worried that the Syrian government continues to possess some of the precursors of sarin."
May.28.2018 / 1:45 AM ET / Updated 1:51 AM ET / Source: Reuters

Quote

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The head of the world's chemical weapons watchdog has questioned whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared his entire arsenal.

Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), highlighted that attacks involving chlorine barrel bombs and deadly nerve agent sarin have continued despite the landmark agreement that won the group a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.

Syrian “authorities have to explain in a plausible, technically plausible manner why the samples collected by our experts did prove the existence of certain chemicals which were never declared,” Uzumcu said in an interview with NBC News. "So they should explain why those chemicals were present in such places."

[...]

Uzumcu said a key issue hindering the OPCW’s work was that its current mandate was to only determine whether such attacks have taken place, and not who carried them out.

In November, a Russian veto stripped the organization of a mechanism that had allowed it to probe and assign blame when banned chemicals were used.

A Tucson, Arizona abandoned homeless camp was visited by 'Veterans on Patrol,'  which came to believe a child sex trafficking operation had been underway at the location.

The machinery of conspiracy theory then went full tilt boogie, reverberating with the hashtag #OperationBackyardBrawl.  Here, for example is Antischool aka Elliot Marxx aka Isaac Green: #OperationBackyardBrawl ROTHSCHILD linked Child Trafficking Den found in Tucson Arizona

-- Journalist JJ McNabb is on the case.

On a weird thread about North Korea and painkillers and etcetera, Michael made note of books rather under the heading here of "go-to" or recommended looks into theories about conspiracy theories. Everything is upside down now. I add links to the Front Porch topic and Trump thread comment post:

On 6/19/2018 at 3:18 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I was (and am still) going to write a long post on the Conspiracy Theory thread [ topic¹ ] (as a follow-up to Korben posting the Eisenhower talk [ post² ] about the military-industrial complex), but I've taken time because I just read two books that turned everything upside down for me. Four actually.

Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies by M. Stanton Evans

American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character by Diana West

Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance deHaven-Smith (I haven't finished this one, but it is a fascinating deep dive into how propaganda works.)

The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West by Michael Walsh (A fascinating cultural deep dive into the Frankfurt school and how it successfully sold leftie ideas into the American mainstream.)

1. 

2. 

Trump versus the Soy Boys ...

On 3/2/2018 at 10:10 AM, Truncated Michael Stuart Kelly said:

The soy boys and similar ilk

Soya Farmers of America Unite! 

US soybean farmers warn Trump trade war with China will cause 'serious damage'

Quote

 

The American Soybean Association (ASA) said in a statement that soybean farmers “rely heavily” on exports to China, and said that they lobbied Trump to reconsider the tariffs.

John Heisdorffer, an Iowa soybean farmer and president of the ASA, warned of the impact of the tariffs on farmers.

“Soybeans are the top agriculture export for the United States, and China is the top market for purchasing those exports,” Heisdorffer said in the statement. “The math is simple. You tax soybean exports at 25-percent, and you have serious damage to U.S. farmers.”

Soybeans are among the U.S. products, along with orange juice, whiskey, electric cars and others, that are threatened by retaliatory tariffs from China.

The tariffs came in response to Trump's 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese imports, which went into effect Friday. Trump has been critical of China on trade, and his tariffs have prompted China to accuse him of starting “the biggest trade war in economic history.”

The ASA’s concerns also support reports that China is using tariffs to target Trump’s base–most states where soybeans are grown voted for Trump in the election.

[...]

 

Heh.

Nothing wrong with soy beans unless you think they are virtue and steak is evil.

There is a difference between a meat and potatoes guy and a soy boy.

Michael

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Heh.

Nothing wrong with soy beans unless you think they are virtue and steak is evil.

There is a difference between a meat and potatoes guy and a soy boy.

 

Michael

Soy beans are so emotive to me!  My Eddie was the union president at Victory Soya Mills on the Toronto Lakeshore, surviving (and winning)  his battle with with the new American management and leading 2 strikes  - but as he said, nobody wins a  strike. The Confederates picked up their marbles and went home.

Personally I do not like soybean taste much although it is a very useful oil.

On 7/8/2018 at 10:18 AM, WSS, quoting some Soy Elite Farmer Communists said:

“Soybeans are the top agriculture export for the United States, and China is the top market for purchasing those exports,” Heisdorffer said in the statement.

So ... ?

On 7/8/2018 at 10:24 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Nothing wrong with soy beans unless you think they are virtue and steak is evil.

In other words, in other words, in other words, "I could give a shit about the whinging Soya Elites and their fears about losing markets for their goods. And I didn't even read the article, so I have no cogent comment!"

Whoopee.

Here's a video from FoxNews, otherwise known to elite OLers as "the hostile fake  mainstream news." 

5 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

In other words, in other words, in other words, "I could give a shit about the whinging Soya Elites and their fears about losing markets for their goods. And I didn't even read the article, so I have no cogent comment!"

William,

That's pretty accurate.

Nobody is eternal, so once you keep seeing the same crap over and over with the subtext that this time it's different (when propaganda for progressive ideas is presented as fact), or look how stupid and kooky people who you also look at are (when presenting the other side or alt media), you kinda know what's coming.

If only there were other messages, but there hardly ever is...

So you go on autopilot after a time. In psychology, this is called habituation.

To break habituation, there's a marketing concept called WIIFM that we all use as a standard when investing the unrepeatable minutes and hours of our time in consuming new material. (WIIFM means what's in it for me?)

If a person is presented with a topic that is totally irrelevant to him (like soybeans), he will access any points of parallel relevance he may carry (like interest in pegging propaganda) and judge whether to look or not from the packaging.

Will he be accurate 100% of the time? No. How about the majority of the time? Highly likely. And that's a savings on those unrepeatable minutes and hours of his time.

Relevance is key for maintaining interest--or, hell, even spreading propaganda--in a discussion.

Michael