Sunday, January 28, 2018

Truest statement of the week

I’m beginning to organize a Women's March on the Pentagon because since 2007, when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats regained a majority in the House of Representatives, there has been an incomprehensible absence of protesting the USA's wars and empire. After Obama took over as president, the antiwar movement all but died. Now we have these huge Women's Marches, climate marches, and so forth, but many of us think that one cannot separate the global emancipation of women, or the destruction of our planet from the issue of war. I feel that instead of beating our heads against a wall to call on these liberal marches to address the issue, we should do what we can to do so ourselves.

-- Cindy Sheehan, "Women's March on the Pentagon? Confronting the Bi-Partisan War Machine an Interview WITH Cindy Sheehan" (CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX).








Truest statement of the week II

The Times and the Post have been at the forefront of the drive to censor the Internet. The Times continued its campaign in an op-ed by Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, published online yesterday. The column, “Russian trolls are only part of the problem,” openly admits that the effort to censor the Internet is not primarily about Russia.
Jankowicz writes that while it is “refreshing” that Facebook and Twitter “finally realized their culpability in the spread of online disinformation,” their solutions have concentrated “too heavily on removing Russian content while ignoring the problematic articles and posts created and shared by American outlets and users.”
She concludes: “If these tech giants want to contribute to democracy instead of help to tear it down, they need to recognize that homegrown threats to civil discourse exist among the very users to whom they are bequeathing more responsibility.”
The Times has become increasingly fearful in recent years that the growth of the Internet and smartphone technology has allowed millions to circumvent its control over what the population reads, shares and sees. Two-thirds of the American population now access some news on social media, according to a September 2017 poll by the Pew Research Center.

The mainstream media outlets have seen their readership drop precipitously over the last two decades, as their functioning as state propaganda outlets has led growing numbers of people to turn to alternative sources of information. According to an annual Gallup poll, the proportion of Americans who trust the media to “report the news fully, accurately and fairly” fell to 32 percent in 2016, the lowest level since Gallup began asking the question annually in 1997. This compares to 76 percent who answered in the affirmative in 1976.

-- Will Morrow, "New York Times cashes in on Facebook’s news censorship" (WSWS).







A note to our readers

It's Sunday!!!!




Let's thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:






The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.


And what did we come up with?

Cindy Sheehan gets another truest.
Will Morrow gets his first truest.
It's what it was always about.
Ava and C.I. reflect on major disappointments in the so-called second golden age of TV.
We test three products this go round.
It's sexist, Wikipedia is sexist.  They pretend otherwise but when you list all the 'stars' someone has worked with and everyone of them is a man and the same actress has worked with Jane Fonda, Maggie Smith, Shelley Winters, etc and you don't note them -- you are sexist and you are saying the standard is and always will be male.
Margaret Kimberley says it all.
Lindsay Buckingham's always been dead weight as a singer and as a songwriter.
The Iraq War isn't over.  If you don't know that just don't Tweet about Iraq because you're too damn stupid.
What we listened to while writing.
WSWS.
Michigan Greens.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.


See you next week.

Peace,





-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.


P.S. Be sure to check out:





Ava and C.I. participated in this and it went up on our site late last week.









Editorial: Oil

It was always about the oil.


15 years after the invasion of Iraq, and now largely out of the glare of the media, US and UK oil corporations start to flaunt the spoils of imperial conquest.




The Iraq War was always about the oil.

Rory (GLOBAL RESEARCH) notes:



Not for the first time in their history (see the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat) BP succeeded in convincing the UK government to forcibly seize the resources of a sovereign foreign nation to bolster the share prices of large corporations like themselves. Cronies who endlessly spin around the revolving door between military/government positions like Sir John Sawers no doubt made a fair few quid in dividends and obscene salaries; in fact, Sawers is now a regular feature at Bilderberg conferences, rubbing shoulders with Hillary Clinton and George Bush. I imagine they got on famously.
The only cost was more than 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives.

At least now we can say conclusively that, yes, the Iraq War was about oil.



It was always about oil.

No blood for oil -- that was the rallying cry against the illegal Iraq War.

It's still going on.


Any American pretending to be about social justice is a f**king liar if they're not calling for an end to the still ongoing Iraq War.









TV: When it's disappointing

It's a new Golden Age of TV -- or so we're told over and over.

But we keep seeing a lot of disappointing TV -- and a lot of the same disappointments that have long plagued TV.

a new illst

Take THE YOUNG TURKS.

It's allegedly a progressive program.

We've noted our problems with the program and its main host for some time.

Remember, host and plus-size model Cenk Uygur made "The Whore List" -- he was part of Journolist -- where all the "Save Barack" narratives were produced in secret.

In July of 2011, we offered "The unexamined (American) lives" which included the reality about Cenk's firing from MSNBC and how it was no great tragedy:



Cenk Uygur is out as host on MSNBC for a number of reasons including the fact that he was a temporary host of a program due to go dark when he was brought on as host. Here's another fact, while Uygur brags that he increased the ratings of MSNBC Live, it wasn't by much and he continued to lose viewers. Hardball aired before his program and after and both Hardballs had higher ratings on most days than Uygur. Meaning people went out of their way to turn off the TV or watch another channel when Uygur came on. Al Sharpton will be hosting a program in the hour Uygur previously occupied; however, Sharpton was not the first, second or third choice. Had MSNBC been able to close the deal they wanted to in February, Uygur would have left the airwaves as host by the end of March. There is also the issue of likability and, as one MSNBC executive joked, "Leona Helmsley has a better TVQ rating than Cenk."


Oh, how Cenk hissed back.

But we didn't care.  We told the truth and we didn't really care what Cenk thought of us.  He's a sexist pig.

In 2014, we covered THE YOUNG TURKS in "TV: The Brave New World?" and again in "TV: The useless huffing and puffing of flaccid men."

We know the show provided a purpose for some on the left in 2016 before Hillary Clinton was officially pronounced the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.

We weren't all that impressed but we rarely are.

We've never been impressed with Mika so why would we be impressed with THE YOUNG TURKS and their use of a woman as den mother to the unruly boys?

That was the only role for women on the sexist show.

And apparently the only role at the 'network.'  They made news earlier this month for hiring Dan Rather to host a program.

If you missed it, White males have traditionally faced great barriers to hosting news programs.

There have been only a handful who have broken through the glass ceiling over the years --

Oh, wait.

White males have always hosted news programs.

And here's TYT giving how much money to Dan Rather to host one?

Cenk insisted, "Dan Rather is an institution who we all grew up respecting tremendously for his brand of fearless, iconoclastic journalism.  We jumped at the opportunity to bring Dan onto TYT because in addition to decades of invaluable experience, he clearly understands and embraces that millennials prefer to get their news online instead of from the cable TV formats their parents and grandparents watched."

What a bag of lies.

Dan Rather hosted the third rated network news broadcast out of three network news broadcasts.  He was chronically low rated.  They tried every stunt in the book -- even a co-host -- to increase his ratings.

Nothing worked.

And, no, he did not understand "that millennials prefer to get their news online" as Rather's CNN interview demonstrated.

Do they also prefer to get their news from geriatrics?

At any rate, this is Dan Rather who lied -- for years -- about the JFK assassination -- lying that the Zapruder film -- which he had seen -- showed JFK being hit from the front -- the film shows him being hit from the back.  A huge lie.

For more of the lies that Rather and CNN took part in regarding the assassination show James DiEugenio's "How CBS News aided the JFK cover-up" (CONSORTIUM NEWS -- Robert Parry has passed away, by the way, our condolences to his family and his work and his person will be missed).


There was no reason to hire Dan.

He's 86-years-old.  Why would you build a new program around him?



It only got worse once his first program aired.

His 'lead story' (jaw boning, no reporting) was the three week continuation of government that might continue after three weeks or might stop.  Love the 'mights' in news broadcasts, don't you?


Dan tried to pretend that it was also about immigration.

But last time we took, Senator Dick Durbin wasn't an immigrant nor was he in danger of deportation.

The government shut down "crisis is not over," Dan wanted you to know, "it is only slowed back down."


"America did not teleport into 2018, we walked a path," Dan insisted as he continued jaw boning -- apparently forgetting that part of the way we ended up here was via whoring journalists like, hmm, maybe Dan Rather who declared of Bully Boy Bush on THE LETTERMAN SHOW, "Wherever he wants me to line up, tell me where."



He faced the camera for a static shot the entire program except when we had 'graphics' around the 13 minute mark for about two minutes as his face vanished and text of his words being spoken danced around the screen.  A Jefferson Airplane Filmore light show would have been more cutting edge than that garbage.

Wait?  Was that a commercial?  Because it popped up twice. "I see what we all see . . ." words splattering across the screen.



Oh, wait, there was also the nearly minute and a half of CPSAN footage.


Where was the reporting?

There was none.

It was a half hour of Dan Rather reading a teleprompter in a single static shot.

Apparently, Dan's being paid so much that they can't even afford a camera operator so they have to lock it down for the entire show.

THE YOUNG TURKS are being sued for racist work practices.  Anyone can file a lawsuit.  Doesn't mean that what happened happened.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out or doesn't.

The lawsuit has drawn some more attention to Cenk's blog posts*.

Those blog posts?

We don't give a s**t.

Cenk is sexist on air.  That matters to us.

Cenk calls women "girls" on air -- adult women.

When he's trying to be 'compassionate' and 'understanding.'

Cenk hires one man after another but women don't join the ranks of the on air staff.

Those are the things we care about.

Cenk's a sexist.  He can say whatever he wants off the air -- even on a blog*.  We don't care.  We care about the sexism on the air every episode of THE YOUNG TURKS.

Equally embarrassing has been the launch of THE PARAMOUNT NETWORK.

PARAMOUNT, for those who don't know, is a film and TV studio.

It created films starring Carole Lombard, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, Clara Bow, Bob Hope, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, Audrey Hepburn, Jack Nicholson, etc.  In the 90s, they created UPN which had shows like EVE, STAR TREK: VOYAGER and STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE.


Now they've created THE PARAMOUNT NETWORK and they want you to watch.

Watch what?

LIP SYNCH BATTLE?

Well some people apparently can't watch the Kardashians all day.

But for those looking for real programming?

Nothing.

Movies -- movies already available at AMAZON PRIME or NETFLIX or HULU or CRACKLE or . . .
They do have the TV show HEATHER (based on the film).

Or, rather, will have.

Come March.

In June, they'll have a sitcom entitled AMERICAN WOMAN.

Gee, maybe next time, wait until you have programming to air before your network starts broadcasting.

They do have the mini-series WACO.

This is the worst mini-series we've ever seen.

This is not us going after Harvey Weinstein (who produced the mini-series -- a fact we only discovered a few minutes before we started writing this).

This is about an awful mini-series.

If, for example, that's how David Koresh spoke, don't speak like him.  It destroys everything, the voice is so weird.

It's bad acting, it's bad writing, it's bad everything.

And we were eager to watch this. One of us is too young to remember this as it happened, the other was out of the country when it happened.  Waco is often mentioned in conversations and we always cop to the fact that we know very little about it.

This mini-series won't teach us any thing.  It's hideous and never should have aired on any channel or network.


In the so-called new Golden Age, the best THE YOUNG TURKS can do is dig up the moldy, oldy Dan Rather and the best the 'new' PARAMOUNT NETWORK (it previously was part of DUPONT back in the original Golden Age) is a bad mini-series?


The second Golden Age of TV?


Visionary would be wonderful but, at this point, we'd settle for flat out reflective -- something both have failed at.




-------------

*Cenk on his blog.  Was he sexist?

We've only read a few examples of that writing from 14 years and longer ago.

He talks about women's breasts.  Is that sexist?  No.  Women have breasts.  Many straight men and many lesbians love women's breasts.  That's a reality.

He says women should do this by the third date and that by . . .

Is that sexist?

Not necessarily.

He's allowed to make the rules for his own dating.

And we'd rather a guy who expects you to put out post that intention/desire online so that women have a chance of knowing what they're getting into if they date him.

Cenk is a sexist on air because of the reasons we outlined.

What we've read that he wrote on his blog did not strike us as sexist -- what we've read of the posts he long ago deleted.






From The TESR TEST KITCHEN

tai pei shrimp fried rice sweet and sour chicken


Tai Pai has ditched the little square boxes and gone with containers that look like Blue Bunny ice cream container.  Has the taste gotten better?

We tried Shrimp fried rice and we tried Sweet and Sour chicken.

And they were similar.

Both were way too damp and moist and watery.

While they added a great deal of water to the frozen product, they also reduced the portion of meat and rice.

We give this an F.

We love Chinese.

The old Tai Pai was far from perfect.  We'd give it a C.  But even so, as Chinese food lovers, we'd buy it and eat it despite it being mediocre.

This reboot is is worse than mediocre and we can't imagine ever wanting to eat it again.

Meanwhile, Nestle's has a new product.


nestle drumstick peppermint variety

Limited Edition Drumsticks Peppermint Variety.

The container has three different flavors: Peppermint, peppermint fudge and chocolate peppermint.

Which is the best?

Buy two boxes so you can go through both and realize that you'll never know which is the best flavor.  They are all wonderful.  We love this.

Nestle's gets an A+ and we consider this to be the best tasting product to ever make it through our test kitchen.








Remember, kids, it's CRAPAPEDIA

The actress Claire Bloom was on TCM talking about filming LIMELIGHT (1952) with Charlie Chaplin.


Curious, we wondered how CRAPAPEDIA would describe her.

We have been, after all, calling it out for its sexism and racism for almost 13 years now.

And it never really gets better, does it?

Nope.

Take this:

During her lengthy film career, she starred alongside numerous major actors, including Richard BurtonLaurence OlivierJohn GielgudPaul ScofieldRalph RichardsonYul BrynnerGeorge C. ScottJames MasonPaul Newman and Rod Steiger, whom she would marry.


Wow.

According to CRAPAPEDIA, Claire never starred alongside any women.

Who could have guessed?

Except her most famous films after LIMELIGHT would be THE HAUNTING which stars . . . five time Tony winner, 3 time Emmy winner Julie Harris.


Also in the cast is Lois Maxwell, famous the world over for playing Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond films.

And she made INNOCENTS IN PARIS with Margaret Rutherford -- the Academy Award winning and Golden Globe winning Margaret Rutherford.


And she made ALEXANDER THE GREAT with the legendary French actress Daniell Darrieux who was twice nominated for a CESAR and whose film career spanned 1931 - 2010.

Maria Schell was billed above Claire in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.

On LOOK BACK IN ANGER, she worked with BAFTA winner, Golden Globe winner and three time Academy Award nominee Edith Evans.


THE CHAPMAN REPORT found her working with Emmy winner,  two time Academy Award winner, two time BAFTA winner, three time Golden Globe winner,  Jane Fonda as well as with Emmy winner, Golden Globe winner and two time Academy Award winner Shelley Winters. (She'd work with Winters again on 1985's DEJA VU starring Jaclyn Smith.)

Wait, we're not done with THE CHAPMAN REPORT yet.

Also in the cast, Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe nominee Glynis Johns (famous forever for playing Winifred Banks in MARY POPPINS).

Tony winner, BAFTA winner and two time Golden Globe winner Lee Remick starred in A SEVERED HEAD with Claire.

In CLASH OF THE TITANS, she starred along with not only the legendary Ursula Andress but also Tony award winner, two time Academy Award winner, three time Golden Globe winner, four time Emmy winner and  five time BAFTA award winner Maggie Smith.

She's worked twice with International Emmy Award winner and BAFTA winner Helena Bonham Carter (MIGHTY APHRODITE and THE KING'S SPEECH).

We could go on and on.

But, hopefully, you get the point.

CRAPAPEDIA states:

During her lengthy film career, she starred alongside numerous major actors, including Richard BurtonLaurence OlivierJohn GielgudPaul ScofieldRalph RichardsonYul BrynnerGeorge C. ScottJames MasonPaul Newman and Rod Steiger, whom she would marry.


That sentence should also include -- bare minimum -- Jane Fonda, Shelley Winters, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Lee Remick, Edith Evans and Margaret Rutherford -- bare minimum.


If women's contributions were truly valued -- truly and equally valued -- the sexism at CRAPAPEDIA would have ended long ago.




Tweet of the week



I have not changed my opinion of . He killed one million people in Iraq. I can’t forget about that.









Fleetwood Mac yet again pretends everyone deserves a trophy

All these years later and Fleetwood Mac's still indulging king titty baby Lindsey Buckingham.  The eccentric cry baby is a good guitar player, he's just a so-so singer and a lousy songwriter.

Yet again, the band elected to pretend otherwise Saturday as MUSE held a benefit in their honor.

First up?

Cover versions of the group's hits -- or 'hits' since artists relied on Linsdey's droppings.

From ROLLING STONE:


"Big Love" (Imagine Dragons)
"Say You Love Me" (Brandi Carlile)
" So Afraid" (Portugal. The Man)
"Hold Me" (Juanes)
"Songbird" (Alison Krauss)
"Gypsy" (Haim)
"Second Hand News" (Keith Urban)
"Silver Springs" (Lorde)
"Everywhere" (OneRepublic)
"Dreams" (Little Big Town)
"Never Going Back Again" (Jared Leto)
"Landslide" (Miley Cyrus)
"Don't Stop" (Zac Brown Band)



Lindsey's "Big Love," "I'm So Afraid," "Second Hand News" and "Never Going Back Again."

13 songs covered -- four were Lindsey tunes.  Only one of which was a single ("Big Love").

"Don't Stop" was written by Christine McVie despite so many wrongly thinking Lindsey wrote it.

She also co-wrote "Hold Me" (with Robbie Patton).  Her other hits covered were "Say You Love Me" and "Everywhere."  Though not a single, "Songbird" was an AOR staple.

Stevie Nicks, the star of the group, is covered with the hits "Gypsy," "Silver Springs," "Landslide" and "Dream" ("Dreams" is the band's only number one single) -- all of which she wrote.  Four songs.

Four songs.

She wrote countless hits for the band and she only gets four songs.  The same number as Lindsey who remains one of rock's worst songwriters -- he's never met a stale bromide he couldn't try to twist into a lyric.

It only got worse when the band itself performed:

"The Chain" (Feat. Harry Styles)
"Little Lies"
"Tusk"
"Gold Dust Woman"
"Go Your Own Way"


Five songs.

"The Chain" was a group songwriting effort.

That left four more songs.

Yet again, Fleetwood Mac fans were stuck with Lindsey damage: "Tusk" and "Go Your Own Way" while Christine got one ("Little Lies") and Stevie got one ("Gold Dust Woman").

Including six songs by Lindsey meant overlooking hits like Stevie's "Rhiannon" (number 11 on the pop charts), Christine's "Say You Love Me" (number 11 on the pop charts as well), Stevie's "Sara" (top ten), Christine's "Over My Head" (top twenty), Christine's "You Make Loving Fun" (top ten), Stevie's "Fireflies" (top sixty), Christine's "Think About Me" (top twenty), Chrstine's "Love In Store" (top thirty), Stevie's "Seven Wonders" (top twenty -- Stevie sings lead and added additional lyrics to this song written by her friend Sandy Stewart), Christine's "Save Me" (top thirty)

Since 1992, they've charted five times on the Adult Contemporary charts.  Four times were songs by Stevie ("Paper Doll," "Say You Will," a live version of "Landslide" and a live version of "Silver Springs") and one was by Lindsey ("Peacekeeper").

18 songs were performed.

"The Chain" was written by the entire band.

That left 17 songs.

Six performed were written by Lindsey.

Which only left five spots for Stevie and Christine's work to be spotlighted with.

Lindsey is responsible for damn little beyond playing the guitar.

His fussbudget production, it can be argued, has helped tank Fleetwood Mac and ensure that they have eradicated from rock radio.  All those tinkles and dings and quirks may describe his state of mind but they do not make for music.

It's really past time that the band stopped being so sexist and stopped tip-toeing around Lindsay's fragile ego.  His work is not worth highlighting and the fans spoke on this long ago.












Baby Cum Pants of the Week

Meet Jimmy McHugh.  Meet Jimmy McHugh.










Jimmy McHugh

Jimmy McHugh

@jimmymch99

University of Toledo🚀'21 ðŸ‘¬snap:jimmymch13
Sylvania, OH
Joined June 2013

He thinks he's smart enough to operate Twitter.

He also thinks he's big enough to be out of diapers.

Let's hope he's right on the second one because he's completely wrong on the first.



President Obama still never seems to get the credit he deserved. He got us out of the Great Recession and the Iraq war while promoting a world of equality. The auto industry bounced back and he cut the deficit by 3- quarters by the end of his term.






The Iraq War continues.  It hits the 15 year mark, in fact, in March.


Poor little Jimmy.  Such a little boy, such a scared little boy.

He's turtling even now because he's Baby Cum Pants of the Week.






This edition's playlist




samsmith2





1) Sam Smith's THE THRILL OF IT ALL.



2) Tori Amos' NATIVE INVADERS.




3) Alicia Keys' HERE.





4)  Aretha Franklin's ARETHA SINGS THE GREAT DIVA CLASSICS.




5) Janet Jackson's UNBREAKABLE.



6) Diana Ross' DIAMOND DIANA: THE LEGACY COLLECTION.



7) Taylor Swift's REPUTATION.


8) Sam Smith's IN THE LONELY HOUR DROWNING SHADOW EDITION.



9) Ben Harper's BOTH SIDES OF THE GUN.



10) Ben Harper's CALL IT WHAT IT IS.














An open letter from the WSWS: For an international coalition to fight Internet censorship

From WSWS:





The World Socialist Web Site has issued an open letter to all socialist, anti-war, left-wing and progressive websites, organizations and activists calling for an international coalition against Internet censorship. The letter states:
"The United States government, in the closest collaboration with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other powerful information technology corporations, is implementing massive restrictions on Internet access to socialist, antiwar and progressive websites. Similar repressive policies are being enacted by capitalist governments in Europe and throughout the world.
"The new regime of censorship is being combined with an intensification of surveillance operations, aimed at monitoring what people read, write and think while on the Internet. The actions of this alliance of the state, military-intelligence agencies and oligopolistic technology corporations are a dangerous threat to freedom of speech and other core democratic rights.
"Under the fraudulent cover of eliminating “fake news” and “Russian meddling,” the technological scaffolding of a 21st century capitalist police state is being erected."

It outlines a series of principles and tasks upon which an international campaign to oppose this regime of censorship can be based. 
Read the full letter on the WSWS.
Representatives of websites or organizations interested in joining the coalition should direct inquires to endcensorship@wsws.org. Individuals who want to participate in the work of the coalition should submit the form on this page.
Fraternally,
World Socialist Web Site

 

Twitter warns users: We're watching you

By Andre Damon
In an overt act of political intimidation, the social media platform Twitter emailed hundreds of thousands of users Saturday informing them that they had shared or followed “Russian propaganda.”
Twitter made these claims without substantiation, refusing to tell its users exactly what content they shared or viewed that fell afoul of the US government and its social media enforcers. Among the recipients of the email was the Senate’s second-highest ranking Republican, John Cornyn.


Julian Assange calls effort of corporations to control Internet discourse “an existential threat to humanity”

The following statement was sent by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the January 16 webinar Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship, featuring journalist Chris Hedges and WSWS Chairperson David North. Assange sent the statement from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been trapped for five and a half years.

The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control machines and machines that control humans. Between the democratization of communication and usurpation of communication by artificial intelligence.
While the internet has brought about a revolution in people’s ability to educate themselves and others, the resulting democratic phenomena has shaken existing establishments to their core. Google, Facebook and their Chinese equivalents, who are socially, logistically and financially integrated with existing elites, have moved to re-establish discourse control. This is not simply a corrective action. Undetectable mass social influence powered by artificial intelligence is an existential threat to humanity.
While still in its infancy, the trends are clear and of a geometric nature. The phenomena differs in traditional attempts to shape cultural and political phenomena by operating at scale, speed and increasingly at a subtlety that eclipses human capacities.
I commend WSWS for drawing attention to this phenomena.
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