MSM Noise Cancellation

No casual observer of politics can ever achieve a real understanding of the modern world. Just 30 to 60 minutes catching some commercial news outlet every day will hurt more than help. Even using the best sources for an hour daily would be inadequate. Otherwise you’ll still be bombarded and infected by BS from all aspects of our “American Exceptionalist” western culture.

Imagine being so arrogant as to believe you are “the one essential nation”.

Corporate profit driven media is designed to keep customers and sell products even when that product is tacitly empire and perpetual war. Many people believe it’s designed not just to distract but to keep you in the dark. The main value of watching them is teaching us to detect bias and the propaganda techniques they use. To become really knowledgeable requires going outside them using the kind of time and effort of having a part-time job, which we may not have.

So here are 8 steps towards networking while avoiding being conned by the mainstream (MSM) propagandists. (Elaborations on these eight steps are may be added later.)

1. Never rely on TV, newspapers, magazines, apps or sources owned by large corporations. That includes “political” talk or comedy shows.
2. Cultivate politically educated foreign friends not raised with or indoctrinated by western media.
3. Cultivate foreign media sources directly and not just western ones.
4. Look for independent American non-corporate journalists, left or right. Also look for prolific politically sophisticated friends on social media to feed you linked sources.
5. Don’t be too easily manipulated by culture war divisions as is common in the US. Instead look for how such factions in power are far too similar on promoting our violent empire.
6. Read, listen to or watch censored anti-imperialism dissidents rarely or never allowed on corporate media.
7. Put current events aside sometimes to study the past, knowing that the victors usually distorted it. Remember that each new generation is limited by what it hasn’t lived through and won’t usually recognize manipulations used in the past.
8. Avoid rabbit holes of all-consuming old conspiracy theories to focus on what’s provably factual here and now.

EMPIRE HISTORY PRIMER

1940’s: For over 100 years the British empire was the dominant near hegemon ruling the world. Europeans were mostly colonizing Africa. The UK’s self-interested partitioning of the middle east screwed up that region until this very day (including the foolish and unjustified creation of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine). Since Great Britain had been destroyed in the war, the USA essentially inherited the role of the British empire militarily in the 1940’s. Contrary to what FDR wanted, the rube Harry Truman created an unnecessary cold war with Russia and China that lasted for 45 years. With that we soon became the dominant economic hegemon when the US dollar began to dominate and became the Saudi aligned petrodollar. That was eventually used to dominate, threaten, sanction and punish smaller or disobedient smaller nations, although larger ones like China and Russia could still resist some. But now, even the Saudis are tired of our bullying and refusal to use diplomacy.

The US version of neo-colonialism is slightly different than the old UK type. Most recently, those petrodollar financial institutions were used to steal Russian money from banks and we had fully sanctioned them by 2021 but that backfired as the war in Ukraine has only improved Russia financially and militarily.

1970’s: Richard Nixon went to China and made deals for some cooperation which reduced tensions. But that mitigated only part of the anti-communist cold war that Truman had begun.

Also in the 70’s, the illegal activities of the CIA like covert coups and assassinations were discovered and the Church Committee in Congress investigated and forced some minor reforms on them. To compensate, by 1980 Ronald Reagan created NED (National Endowment for Democracy) to more openly do some things that the CIA had been doing illegally minus the guns and commandos. Since NED is technically an NGO and not an intelligence agency they are not subject to Congressional oversight, even though they are largely funded by the USG and ”Defense” contractors and their allies. Especially since 1991, NED moved into multiple foreign countries the US didn’t like or control to foment division and unrest. These are known as “color revolutions” where NED or its affiliates fund opposition groups, political parties, protesters, rebels or anyone willing to align with western capitalists and against the current government. This is to promote economic controls by western corporations that can then better exploit their markets. It has far more to do with corporate profits than democracy, of course.

This is how NED helped foster parts of the “the Arab Spring” and dozens of other “color revolutions” over the years in any country that the CIA would previously have just illegally overthrown with a coup. NED still does so by funding a vast network of similar but separate NGOs including some similar pro-war ones funded by European nations. NED used to target the middle east more but the latest targets are Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines in order to disrupt their heavy trade relations with China. And now Taiwan is next in sight. They are still targeting former Soviet Republics like Georgia, too.

1990’s: When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the US quickly took advantage of what remained of the weakened Russia. Despite earlier promises to Mikhail Gorbachev to not expand NATO one inch eastward, we did just that, encroaching further towards the Russian border. Funded by Bill Clinton, we then helped install corrupt, drunken fool Boris Yeltsin in Russia who leased or sold off many assets to western corporations. Russia floundered and suffered further. The western goal was to further bankrupt and balkanize Russia. Ukraine was key to that as well as it had been for neocon types among American planners and strategists for decades.

When Vladimir Putin came to power he undid much of that, tossed out western companies and there was a significant economic revival in Russia, which made Putin even more popular. Now native Russian Oligarchs own these companies. That’s when Putin became a threat to American interests by succeeding independently of the US. Russia was becoming a regional power again including working with Europeans, especially Germany on cheap energy like the natural gas of the Nordstream pipeline. And that is why Putin has been demonized here for decades.

In 2016 that hysteria was amplified with the false claims of the MSM about helping Trump steal the election, aka Russiagate. Many of us following the best independent reporters knew it was BS even back then but today the evidence of Russiagate fakery is obvious and deep, not that we like Trump’s criminality any better than Hillary’s.

That Russo-phobic hysteria and irrational hatred did make it that much easier for most Americans to support the proxy war in the notoriously corrupt Ukraine once Russia invaded after years of provocations and months of western sabotaged negotiations. The US, UK and Germany refused to let Ukraine negotiate a reasonable deal and now, as many as 300,000 dead or more Ukrainians later, Ukraine has lost just as we predicted. It was all unnecessary if a demented Biden had been a diplomat instead of the warmonger he’s been his whole life.

2014: Speaking of color revolutions, the Maiden coup in Ukraine in 2014 that removed the legitimately elected Ukrainian president and installed an American puppet is similar although in that case we enabled neo-Nazis instead of just agitating parts of the populace. For the next 8 years we and NATO armed Kiev, Ukraine as they killed 15,000 of their own people in Eastern Ukraine in a de facto civil war. Color revolutions often start civil wars. Only then did Putin invade with the SMO in February 2022.

Despite the US and NATO having poured over $120 billion into making Ukraine the largest army in Europe it has failed and now that army is mostly gone, also as some of us predicted. That only shows the world how weak the USG and NATO are.

The majority of the world, aka the global south, never supported the proxy war in Ukraine. Now finally, even more Americans are waking up to what a fiasco it was. Something similar could be happening in Israel, another Biden led bi-partisan project being run by the western psychopaths known as neocons.

In short, the majority of the violence and misery in the world is caused by the US, either by economic intimidation, covert coups, destabilizing NED style “color revolutions”, proxy wars (Syria and Ukraine) or just direct wars like Afghanistan. We were there accomplishing nothing for 20 years and it only took the Taliban a week to regain all control. Within a year Biden would provoke and then support a new proxy war in Ukraine and suckered Americans would fall for it for exactly the same kinds of reasons as usual.

NOW: This is evidence that the US/Europe/western empire is crumbling as the USA and now NATO have lost yet another war after the previous 7 or 8 starting with Korea and Vietnam. Other nations fear us less and are trying to bypass us, including Arab, African and Central and South American ones, aka the Global South. But that’s really just most of the world.

Similarly, the new economic alliance of BRICS started by Lula of Brazil years ago is already becoming stronger than the western economic alliance of the G7. Many more nations wanted to join BRICS and they just added 6 new members to their original 5 of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, including Saudi Arabia. If BRICS succeeds further, then the US can no longer economically intimidate and punish smaller nations like it has for decades, which is great news for the world but bad for western empire and the MIC that drives it. We hope.

Is the world indeed changing from the bullying unipolar US controlled one to the multipolar one where each nation has proportional access and opportunity and better autonomy and is no longer just a vassal to some hegemon. Always remember that the so-called “rules based order” west is only 13% of the world’s population. It hogs world resources yet can’t house and feed it’s own but can always afford to fund and profit from international violence. That global wealth disparity driven by violence and distractions is mirrored in our domestic policies. That’s no coincidence. Don’t imagine those crimes abroad aren’t affecting you at home.

Note: Since the geopolitics of empire is so vast, complex and hidden from plain sight, this simple primer is written for some relative political newbies I recently met with questions who I didn’t want to overwhelm with dozens of detailed or linked references. Even so, it’s more complex than the easily digestible sound bytes and cliches that the MSM uses to avoid uncomfortable realities. Now with events in Gaza, their attempts to censor critics, dissidents and protesters is worse than ever as the West grows ever more like the authoritarians it uses as scapegoats.

ELABORATING ON THE EIGHT STEPS

1. Never rely on TV, apps or sources owned by large corporations. That includes “political” talk or comedy shows. Anything they present (whether “news” or entertainment) has no incentive to be honest. They have specific target audiences to earn greater profits and won’t allow broadcasting anything that will jeopardize that. MSNBC and Stephen Colbert won’t dare offend Democrats, Fox and Greg Gutfeld won’t dare offend Republicans, “Centrist” News won’t risk challenging the imperial foreign policy agendas of geopolitical elites (in government or national security state).

2. Cultivate politically educated foreign friends not raised with or indoctrinated by western media. Travel broadens perspectives but the social media on the Internet can travel faster and further. Politically astute foreign friends that weren’t indoctrinated into American myths are invaluable and they can also serve as a window into what it’s really like to live elsewhere including “adversary nations”. They aren’t 100% free of their own cultural biases and state propaganda but at least you’ll see alternative views. Ed Schultz worked for MSNBC but was fired for backing Bernie Sanders. Chris Hedges worked for the NY Times and also went to RT. Does that make their comments on RT propaganda? They both said they got no flack from the Russians like they’d gotten from their American corporate media editors and owners.

One of the sharpest and most analytically thoughtful guys I know was a Serbian who was there after Bill Clinton bombed them under false pretenses in the 1990’s. He is now living in China. I didn’t always agree but I’m certain he’d have been muted in major American media altogether if he spoke honestly about either country.

Try to listen to world leaders like Lula, Putin, Xi, MBS, Erdogan and other ”enemies” directly if possible rather than relying on propagandized western media interpretations. Such foreign boogeymen are always used to rationalize western global ambitions and crimes and you’ll learn that they aren’t the stereotypical “madman dictator” as often portrayed here.

3. Cultivate foreign media sources directly and not just western ones. Your foreign friends can help you find foreign media sources, including podcasters and authors that you’d never otherwise see.

4. Look for independent American non-corporate journalists, left, right or middle. Also look for prolific politically sophisticated friends on social media to feed you linked sources. Sometimes even those groomed by establishment institutions (e.g. Daniel Ellsberg, John Mersheimer, Jeffrey Sacks, Edward Snowden, Brian Berletic, John Perkins) have awakened to honestly better see the worlds they came from.

Whether written or podcast, non-corporate dissident analysts and journalists from the US and UK are accessible, in fact far too many to list. For me that’s mostly been lefties but it’s good to hear the occasional dissident right winger now and then. Even Tucker Carlson (who is crap 90% of the time) was only fired from Fox after he started questioning the proxy war in Ukraine and in spite of him being their biggest and most lucrative star by far.

Find well-informed and well-sourced political junkie American friends on social media who may have the time to do the depth of research from a wide variety of sources. I have at least 5 friends on FB who constantly post valuable links that you can at least skim if there is no synopsis.

5. Don’t be too easily manipulated by partisan or culture war divisions of the duopoly as is common in the US. Instead look for how such “opposing” factions in power are far too similar on promoting violent empire. You can and should fight for social justice at home but not at the expense of either dehumanization or by ignoring greater international injustices that bi-partisan American exceptionalism inflicts. It also obscures the potential ally you could have in class distinctions and struggles that allow the 1% wider control to corrupt the system. Don’t let outdated party or organizational loyalties blind you to a potential shared humanity or how your own political party has rotted and changed.

6. Read, listen to or watch censored anti-imperialism dissidents rarely or never allowed on corporate media. Dissident analysts and critics of empire like Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent) , Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States) are a good start for deconstructing propaganda but the list is nearly endless. Or go back further to Marx, Bakunin and so on. None are perfect. All are valuable.

7. Put current events aside sometimes to study the past, knowing that the victors usually distorted it. Remember that each new generation is limited by what it hasn’t lived through and won’t usually recognize similar manipulations used in the past. Well-tested propaganda techniques are re-used constantly and across generations by appealing to the worst in us. Look for independent historians without national or ideological allegiances. Understand independent history. If a historian is widely popular (e.g. Heather Cox Richardson) it is usually because they are flacking for some self-serving agenda that is not honest but perfectly acceptable to elites.

8. Avoid rabbit holes of consuming old conspiracy theories to focus on what’s provably factual here and now. Use evidence. Limit speculating which only discredits you if you are wrong, although you can sometimes use provable past conspiracies as analog for today. There are already thousands of people who’ve been trying to definitively solve the JFK assassination for years. Let them. Wish them luck. You are most needed today as that rare gem who will contest the crimes and injustices of today.