Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Economic Update: Capitalism, Changed by its Contradictions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cqi70chieE
US Government Admits It’s Making Fake Social Media Accounts to Spread Propaganda in Cuba
By: Ben Norton | August 27,
2018
The United States has
repeatedly accused the Russian and Iranian governments of using social media to
spread “disinformation” and foment chaos. Under US government pressure, Big
Tech corporations have banned large numbers of accounts accused (in
some cases falsely) of being Russian and Iranian “troll” accounts.
At the same time, however, the
US government is doing exactly what it is accusing its enemies of: the US
Office of Cuba Broadcasting is secretly creating fake social media accounts to
inspire dissent and to spread right-wing pro-US, pro-capitalist propaganda in
Cuba.
During the Cold War, the US government tried
to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro more than 600 times.
Washington also simultaneously waged an information war. For decades, the US
has maintained an elaborate propaganda apparatus committed to toppling Cuba’s
socialist government.
In its 2019
congressional budget justification report — which was first
reported on by the Miami
New Times — the US government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
disclosed that it “is establishing on island digital teams to create
non-branded local Facebook accounts to disseminate information.”
The US government body noted
that these “native pages increase the chances of appearing on Cuban Facebook
users newsfeeds.”
And it is not just Facebook
where the US government will be creating these accounts. “The same strategy
will be replicated on other preferred social media networks,” the BBG added.
The propaganda office said it
“will continue to engage audiences on the internet using Facebook Live and
YouTube as distribution channels into Cuba as the Communist regime has been
wary of blocking these popular channels.”
Put more directly, the US
government is creating fake accounts on Facebook and YouTube inside Cuba and
going out of its way to portray these profiles as “local,” to more effectively
spread this propaganda among Cubans as if it were somehow organic.
“Working with Cuban
independent journalists and encouraging citizens to create user generated
content on the island for OCB’s platforms continues to be a top priority,” the
US government body continued in its report. “As Wi-Fi service has expanded in
Cuba and with substantial numbers of Cubans now using Facebook and other social
networking sites, OCB’s social media presence has increased.”
Propaganda broadcast to 11
percent of Cubans on a weekly basis
The US Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB)
presently has 117 employees and an annual budget of $28.1 million. It estimates
its audience at 1 million.
The OCB, which is
headquartered in Miami, Florida, runs the broadcaster Radio y Televisión Martí,
along with the website Martínoticias.com. These outlets publish extremely
partisan reports that have a very clear conservative bias, and give large
platforms to right-wing leaders in Latin America — not just from Cuba, but
also from
Venezuela and beyond.
The OCB also holds the annual Cuba Internet
Freedom Conference in Miami.
The US government body claims
that its propaganda broadcasts “currently reach 11.1% of Cubans on a weekly
basis with audio, video, and digital content delivered by radio, satellite TV,
online, and on distinctly Cuban digital ‘packages’ (paquetes).”
It also claims that 96 percent
of its audience say the US government propaganda “helps them form opinions
about current events and most users both share information they get from Martí
and would recommend it to others.”
Distributing propaganda on
DVDs and flash drives inside Cuba
The US Broadcasting Board of
Governors furthermore reveals in its 2019 report that its Office of Cuba
Broadcasting distributes propaganda on DVDs and flash drives inside Cuba, for
those who do not have internet access.
“To circumvent the blockage of
TV Marti signals, OCB is dramatically increasing the distribution of DVD’s and
USB drives with Marti content, radically altering its distribution strategy to
avoid dealing with bulk amounts of content entrance into the island,” the
report noted.
“The content is now downloaded
once inside the island, copied on the island and distributed immediately.
Previously, the information was downloaded elsewhere and carried onto the
island. Much of it was intercepted at the border before reaching its intended
audience,” the OCB continued. “This optimization of OCB’s content supply chain
will increase its availability on the island tenfold at the same cost level.”
A long history of US
government propaganda campaigns worldwide
This is far from the first
time the US government has been exposed for manipulating social media to spread
propaganda. And these US propaganda operations are by no means limited to
China.
The Broadcasting Board of
Governors noted in its report that its propaganda efforts are targeting
audiences “in Russia and its periphery, China, the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea, Iran, and Cuba.”
The US government has long
used social media to sow discord in Cuba in particular. In 2014, it was
revealed that the US Agency for International Development (USAID),
the government’s ostensibly “humanitarian” soft-power arm, had created a fake
Twitter-like app called ZunZuneo to
stir unrest inside Cuba.
In January 2018, the US State
Department announced the creation of a Cuba
Internet Task Force to try to undermine the socialist government in
Havana.
Cuban state media condemned
this new institution as an attempt “to subvert Cuba’s internal order.” The
Cuban government’s newspaper Granma wrote, “In the past, Washington has
used phrases like ‘working for freedom of expression’ and ‘expanding access to
internet in Cuba’ to cover up destabilizing plans.”
And back in 2011, The
Guardian likewise revealed that the US government was creating fake
“sock puppet” accounts on social media to spread propaganda and manipulate
public opinion.
Ben Norton is a producer and
reporter for The Real News. His work focuses primarily on U.S. foreign policy,
the Middle East, media criticism, and movements for economic and social
justice. Ben Norton was previously a staff writer at Salon and AlterNet. You
can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.
Skirball will host NYU Global Distinguished Professor of German, Slavoj Žižek
[…]
Calling all thinkers: as part
of the Karl
Marx Festival running from Oct. 17 to 28, Skirball will host quirky
Slovenian philosopher and NYU Global Distinguished Professor of German, Slavoj
Zizek. The night will
be dedicated to a discussion of a Marxist view of the commons — a collection of
spaces shared by the public rather than owned by the individual — and how it
applies to the current digital age. The discourse will continue with an
analysis of late Marx theorist and Soviet politician Leon Trotsky’s execution
of the October Revolution and its links to Marxism. This rare opportunity to
probe the mind of a fascinating, prolific philosopher is one that beckons to be
seized.
[…]
Trump Administration Helped Banks Rip Off Student Borrowers, Official Alleges
The Trump
administration’s Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau(CFPB) suppressed a report with “new evidence” that some
of the nation’s largest banks were saddling students “with legally dubious
account fees,” according to the bureau’s outgoing ombudsman for student loans.
The ombudsman, Seth Frotman,
made this allegation as part of a broad critique included in his resignation
letter, which he sent to director Mick Mulvaney on August 27. The bureau
has “turned its back on young people and their financial futures” while
“protecting bad actors” in the lending business, the letter alleges.
“You have used the bureau to
serve the wishes of the most powerful financial companies in America,”
Frotman wrote,
addressing Mulvaney. “The damage you have done to the bureau betrays these
families and sacrifices the financial futures of millions of Americans in
communities across the country.”
Frotman’s resignation letter
sheds light on a pair of very important problems: a student
debt crisis that has put millions of Americans in financial peril at
the hands of bad-faith lenders, and the Trump administration’s internal
dismantling (with help from GOP
legislators) of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and complete
disregard for consumer protections in general.
“The CFPB has become a cruel
joke under the current administration,” said Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice, in an interview
with Truthout.
“People being preyed upon by
their student loans had better be looking elsewhere for help. At this point,
they are pretty much on their own.”
1,000 First Responders Urge Congress to Restore Net Neutrality After Verizon Throttles California Firefighters During Wildfires
"It is unconscionable for
corporations to endanger public safety for the sake of profit."
More than 1,000 first
responders from across the country threw their support behind net neutrality
protections on Tuesday, with a letter demanding that lawmakers in Congress pass
the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to reverse the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC)'s repeal of net neutrality.
"We are joining with
millions of businesses, veterans, and Internet users in asking Congress to use
their Congressional Review Act (CRA) powers to restore the strong net
neutrality rules and other consumer protections that were lost when the FCC
voted to repeal its 2015 Open Internet Order," reads an letter endorsed
by the internet freedom advocacy group Fight for the Future.
The letter comes days after
Californians got a first-hand
look at how their lives are already being affected by internet service
providers (ISPs) that are unencumbered by net neutrality rules, which prohibit
companies like Verizon and Comcast from slowing down internet speeds and
creating paid "fast lanes" for wealthy internet companies.
As Common Dreams reported last
week, Verizon throttled, or slowed down, data speeds for the Santa Clara County
fire department and suggested it should pay an extra fee for faster
service—while fire fighters were battling some of California's biggest
wildfires ever earlier this summer.
Verizon's move "had a
significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services," according
to fire chief Tony Bowden, and the throttling resulted in a loud
endorsement of California's state-level net neutrality bill (SB 822), which the
state Assembly could vote on as early as Tuesday, by the California
Professional Firefighters (CPF) union.
The incident provoked
emergency workers from California as well as other states to urge the passage
of the CRA.
"Our call paging system
relies on private ISPs to relay information from 911 dispatchers to
ambulances—it is unconscionable for corporations to endanger public safety for
the sake of profit," said Corey, a paramedic in San Diego, in a personal
note added to the open letter.
"EMTs rely on data to
receive pages, vital paperwork necessary for patient care, and to help locate
calls outside of our service area," added Larry, an EMT based in Little
Rock, Arkansas. "Throttling speeds can delay care and cost lives."
If 9/11 Attacks Can Spark Trillions in War Spending, Asks Ocasio-Cortez, Why Can't US Find Funding for Puerto Rico 'Marshall Plan'?
"The U.S. treats Puerto
Ricans as second class citizens," notes the ACLU. "Thousands of lives
were lost because of it."
A study commissioned by the
Puerto Rican government has found that an estimated 2,975 people died after
Hurricane Maria devastated the U.S. territory last year, corroborating previous analyses that
have long challenged the official
death toll of 64 and bolstering calls that the American government
provide substantially more aid to help with rebuilding efforts.
Acknowledging the new findings
from George Washington University on Tuesday, progressive New York
congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned to Twitter to demand a
"Marshall Plan" for Puerto Rico and a "just transition" to
a renewable energy system that would replace the existing "unstable
and unreliable power grid," which faced operational and financial issues
even before the storm struck.
Ocasio-Cortez is one of the
many political figures—along with Sens. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth
Warren (D-Mass.), and Jeff Markey (D-Mass.), as well as Rep. Luis
Gutierrez (D-Ill.)—to urge Congress and the Trump administration to
significantly step up relief efforts. In a follow-up
tweet, she promoted a one-year anniversary event in New York City to
amplify the work of grassroots groups on the island:
Attendees will include Emily
Yeampierre of the organization UPROSE as well as author and activist Naomi
Klein, who have both warned about
"shock doctrine" tactics being deployed on the island. As Klein
has written
about extensively and explained on Democracy
Now! in March, the strategy has been used in "many other disaster
zones" and involves "exploiting that state of shock and distraction
and emergency to push through a radical corporate agenda."
As the island struggles to
rebuild, news reports from the ground have captured the long-lasting
devastation, while various analyses have estimated the actual death toll to be
in the thousands. One such study put
out by Harvard researchers in late May concluded that between 4,645
and 5,740 people died due to the hurricane.
In light of the new report,
which sought to update the official government death toll by measuring deaths
on the island between September 2017 to February 2018, the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) pointed to the United States' long history of treating
the residents of Puerto Rico as second-class
citizens:
Some Democrats in Congress,
noting the new report, highlighted the Trump administration's widely
criticized response to the hurricane and the humanitarian crisis that
followed. Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.) called federal
action "inadequate" and "shameful," while Rep. Val Demings
(Fla.) denounced it
as "an inexcusable failure."
Rep. Nydia Velázquez,
(D-N.Y.), who has introduced
legislation to establish federal standards for calculating death tolls
after disasters, said in a statement,
"Once again, we have yet more mounting evidence about the enormity of the
tragedy that befell Puerto Rico last year."
"Notably, this study also
confirms that lower income communities disproportionately suffered the greatest
loss of life," Velázquez added, emphasizing that the "disastrously
inadequate" response from the U.S. government "failed the people of
Puerto Rico and we can never allow such an inexcusable moral lapse to occur
again."
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
The Battle for Control of the Democratic Party is heating up in Arizona
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc8DkqUVCRw
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