Yes, it can get worse: Anti-union conservative Patrick Pizzella appointed to lead the Department of Labor.

Patrick Pizzella, anti-labor rights lobbyist now in charge of labor. Inhumane attitudes celebrated in WH.

Patrick Pizzella has been appointed to lead the Department of Labor as acting secretary. Alex Acosta announced his resignation due to criticism for his light prosecution of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Acoasta explained the light sentences: “We now have 12 years of knowledge and hindsight and we live in a very different world,” he said. “Today’s world treats victims very, very differently.”

Patrick Pizzella fought to keep minimum wages at $3.05 and worse.

Mother Jones reported: “Patrick Pizzella 1990s to help the Northern Mariana Islands—a US commonwealth 1,500 miles from Japan—defeat a bipartisan effort to rein in a guest worker program that the Labor Department found relied on indentured workers. When Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Pizzella whether he knew about reports of forced abortions and routine beatings at the time.” At the time he worked for Jack Abramoff, who later was found guilty of 21 crimes. Together they wanted to shape the Northern Mariana Islands as laboratories in which oppressors would be able to abuse people without any laws to protect the oppressed.

Wendy Doromol, a teacher turned human rights activist, reported on NPR in 2006: “The barbed wire around the factories faced inward so that the workers, mostly women, couldn’t get out. They had quotas that were impossible for these people to reach and if they didn’t reach them, they’d have to stay until they finished the quota and they wouldn’t be paid for that work. They were hot, the barracks were horrible. A lot of the females were told you work during the day in the garment factory and then at night you can go and work in a club and they’d force them into prostitution at night.”

Forced labor and forcing women into prostitution are Pizzalla’s idealized working conditions.

What Pizzella didn’t say in a 2017 Senate Hearing was that he helped lead a public relations campaign to rebrand the islands as a paragon of free-market principles. Between 1996 and 2000, emails and billing records reviewed by Mother Jones show that Pizzella and colleagues organized all-expenses-paid trips to the islands for more than 100 members of Congress, their staffers, and conservative thought leaders. When they got back, Pizzella helped them convince colleagues that the Northern Mariana Islands were, as his old boss (convicted fellon) Abramoff liked to put it, a “laboratory of liberty.”

In 2006 Daily Kos reported: “This is also about a GOP Culture of Corruption that sold their principles, honor, Party and Country for power. It is a story of Sex, forced abortions, prostitution, sweatshops and special favors for the worst Foreign Nationals on the World stage.”

Apparently Pizzella’s work paid off and he kept the $3.05 per hour minimum wage in the commonwealth, which lasted from 1997 to 2007, when President George W. Bush put an end to that. Pizzella celebrated that the minimum wage was lower than in the U.S. and some worker protections are weaker and seemingly non-existent, leading to lower production costs. That allowed garments to be labeled “Made in USA” without having to comply with all U.S. labor laws. 

Pizzella’s record as a lobbyist also includes work for a Russian front group, the government of the Marshall Islands, and a trade association fighting against the minimum wage in a U.S. commonwealth.

In a statement Friday, July 12 2019 , Kristine Lucius, the group’s executive vice president for policy and government affairs, said Pizzella’s record “shows he has a clear bias against working people’s rights – which may be good for Trump’s agenda, but bad for the people the department is meant to serve.”

Pizzella was appointed to the Federal Labor Relations Board by President Barack Obama in 2013. He previously served as the assistant secretary of labor for administration and management for eight years under President George W. Bush.

FCC Chairman no longer wants to be questioned in official hearings about Free Speech, Net Neutrality, Unfair Competition, etc.

Ajit Pai is tired of all the hearings. He prefers to receive complaints and concerns via suggestion box.

FCC CHAIRMAN INTRODUCES TWO NEW PROPOSALS TO MODERNIZE FCC PROCESSES

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2019—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today announced that he has presented his colleagues with two new proposals to modernize and streamline the agency’s processes.  Under the first, the FCC would continue the agency’s move toward electronic filing and correspondence by fully transitioning the Universal Licensing System—the agency’s largest licensing system—from paper to electronic format.  The second proposal would expedite the Commission’s hearing processes by expanding the use of written hearings (i.e. hearings conducted without live testimony).

“As the communications marketplace is being transformed by the digital revolution, we must continue to modernize our own operations.” said Chairman Pai.  “That’s why I’m introducing two new proposals to update and streamline our processes for the digital age.  By transitioning more records and communications from paper to electronic format, we can save money and increase our efficiency.  And by streamlining our hearing rules, we can resolve disputes more quickly, which will benefit the private sector as well as the Commission.  I hope that my colleagues will join me in supporting these good-government initiatives.”  

###

Address your concerns directly to: Will Wiquist, (202) 418-0509 or email correspondence to will.wiquist@fcc.gov


Media Relations: (202) 418-0500 / ASL: (844) 432-2275 / TTY: (888) 835-5322 / Twitter: @FCC / www.fcc.gov
This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. 

Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action.  See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).

Fact based Information is a thing of the past: Misinformation is protected by conservative Supreme Court

Lines are 20 feel long for free food in San Francisco, May 2018
Lines are 20 feel long for free food in San Francisco, May 2018

Children who are pregnant because they were molested and raped; young teenage mothers who are not equipped to raise a child – since clearly they are too young to take responsibility for themselves; impoverished mothers who have a hard time raising the kids they already have; they all no longer have a right to fact-based information.

The conservative leaning Supreme Court ruled that withholding information about options available to people who really may benefit from an array of information will now be misled, misinformed – legally.  There are a lot of women who are not equipped to be a parent they need options with help, not judgment and misinformation.   www.kidscount.org

Brave New World: 2018 US Supreme Court decided it is okay to mislead pregnant girls and women base on "religious" grounds.
Brave New World: 2018 US Supreme Court decided it is okay to mislead pregnant girls and women base on “religious” grounds.

The youngest person on record giving birth after being raped was Linda Medina who gave birth at six years and five months. It is not unusual for 11 to 12 year old girls to ovulate.  If they are raped or their sexual explorations end up in pregnancy they are faced with a very challenging life.

Now in 2018 the Supreme Court decided that religious extremists have the right to mislead and misinform and lie to women who really need information more than anyone else.  If they were informed they would not be in the plight they find themselves in.  They would not seek help from religious extremists who want to impose their apocalyptic views onto any miserable person that falls into their clutches.

Already without this debacle 1 in 4 women will go on a welfare benefit program within 3 years of their child being born.  Who will care for unwanted children who are a result of misinformation?  It is clear the Supreme Court doesn’t care nor is that in their job description.  Religious extremists want to abolish insurance, privatize welfare and they want to  mislead people who are ill equipped to be parents to have children.  60% of unwed mothers live in poverty.

14 Million children in the US go hungry every night.  There is no care for that clearly.  The religious extremists voted for a philandering president who had sex with porn stars.  Michael Cohen handled his behavioral issues of the president and  those of his  friends.   Mistresses were paid hush money and to have abortions.

The religious extremists clearly don’t have any consistent value system.  They want to control and impose their will on the victims who need help more than anyone. No one is more vulnerable than a pregnant girl or women  recovering from rape or sexual molestation, or even just a mistake.

The president is  friends, with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child molester who was convicted for soliciting underage girls for prostitution. Religious extremists voted in a friend of a convicted child molester and human trafficker.  They  mislead people just as their chosen leader enjoys to do. Important information about options are withheld.  The centers lie to and mislead victims.  It’s official:

The use of the freedom of speech laws is now used to protect liars. This is yet another low for the US.  This is a country of laws, and now:

Misinformation is now officially legal in the US. 

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, No. 16-1140 has been decided. The conservative Supreme Court voted for misinformation and is against California’s State Rights to handle their own affairs.

 

Are Facebook and Twitter becoming a bit more conscious and aware? Maybe!

Facebook in their media relations page claimed this:

“Over the past few months, we have taken action against fake accounts in France, Germany, and other countries, and we recently stated that we will no longer allow Pages that repeatedly share false news to advertise on Facebook.”

I rejoice since I think at last the manipulations of nefarious activities manipulating the public, whether it is Russians getting conservatives hyped up into a mob mentality against the LGBT community, or having an unqualified real estate maven,  who seemed surprised  that he was chosen to be president, or providing a platform for hate speech for German Nazi’s, which happened to be against the law.

I followed the development of the extreme right groups who are often sponsored and supported by Russia – take hold in Western Europe and I was surprised since it used to be against the law to even whisper the word “Nazi”  in Germany.   The punishment in the 1980s was severe – over $1000 in fines or 2 weeks in prison.

How the world has changed since the Reagan era when we become “one world.”  Germans seem to have forgotten their history and now Neo Nazis are running around demonstrating and promoting their hate freely in public, protected by the free speech laws.  Erdogan’s dictator supporting Turkish soldiers are running around Germany turning in ex-soldiers, if they practice German free speech, and Erdogan tried to shut up a, perhaps a bit tasteless, German comedian.  He launched lawsuits in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerlands.  Only in Germany he received an audience by politicians who pushed for silencing their own citizens in support of the dictator.

Facebook and Twitter helped these trends, there is no doubt about it.  No matter how much they wanted to deny it or ignore it initially.  They forbade pictures of classic Greek statues and paintings from the Renaissance if they offended some religious desire – but hate speech,  even illegal hate speech was entirely ok to them.  We now know that it was because they made good money with it.  The bot factories paid precious advertising dollars.  Art lovers who shared a beautiful Botticelli painting could not compete with the foreign dictators’ budgets. People who portrayed rape scenes were okay, women’s nipples were not.  When questioned in Germany, they arrogantly proclaimed that the Facebook police were run out of India, thus not subject to German law. Only when Merkel got so frustrated by the public furor that she promised to shut the site down altogether,  was she able to get Zuckerberg’s attention.

Now in Germany they are working on a “Facebook-Gesetz” – a law that is targeting social media companies. the law is meant to stop social media companies from spreading illegal hate speech.  The German press is concerned that while there is an attempt to create such a law, it is far from certain that there will be such a law. Political infighting points that in Germany freedom of speech and the fight against hate speech vs. mob rule attitudes are literally at odds.

While politicians are discussing the pros and cons of the formulation it is up to Facebook to keep order “voluntarily.”  In German fashion, they don’t seem to care if they tacitly allow hate speech free reign while they fight about the way the law is worded.

Thankfully, there definitely have been some improvements as the top management of Facebook finally is starting to become aware that they may be destroying Western Civilization by allowing “free speech” to extremists, while being responsive to complaints by extremists whose goal is quite literally to abolish the Freedoms of  Western Culture as we know it.

Facebook informs us:  “We are also experimenting with changes to help us more efficiently detect and stop inauthentic accounts at the time they are being created.”  

Hopefully this is a priority and completed before the next elections.  Trump fans are right that Western Civilization is under attack, mostly by ourselves.  Business leaders will ultimately decide whether democracy will survive. Business leaders are pro democracy and those who are against democracy will decide our future as they deploy artificial intelligence who write programs which determine how we will be able perceive our world now and in the future.

Misinformation … CNN has long been accused as a “cross-dressing” Media company

 Jane Fonda with Ted Turner
Jane Fonda with Ted Turner

CNN wrote in an article covering that the Trump/Putin joint effort to influence the US election was normal. We agree with the fact that every country always wants to influence as many other countries as possible.  Of course to keep a country safe and for its economic advantage politicians in the foreign office promote the countries values.  However CNN provides examples that are factually incorrect or at minimum slanted and actually seem to spread misinformation.  Full Article

For example the article claims that UK intelligence “spread rumors” about Charles Lindbergh. However, in fact the rumors were factually correct as the actual Autobiography of Charles Lindbergh shows.

Hermann Göring presents Nazi Medal to Charles Lindbergh on behalf of Hitler
Hermann Göring presents Nazi Medal to Charles Lindbergh on behalf of Hitler

The US government was not correctly informed about the rise of Hitler by Charles Lindbergh.  The UK government did not spread rumors it corrected the point of view that was based on false information, by Hitler fans, Charles Lindbergh and his Nazi admiring wife.  Here is a quote from a PBS article :

Charles Lindbergh was convinced that no other power in Europe could stand up to Germany in the event of war. "The organized vitality of Germany was what most impressed me: the unceasing activity of the people, and the convinced dictatorial direction to create the new factories, airfields, and research laboratories...," Lindbergh recalled in "Autobiography of Values." His wife drew similar conclusions. "...I have never in my life been so conscious of such a directed force. It is thrilling when seen manifested in the energy, pride, and morale of the people--especially the young people," she wrote in "The Flower and the Nettle." By 1938, the Lindberghs were making plans to move to Berlin.

The public’s cry for authenticity shows that there is a world wide trend of people being tired of being misled. While it is natural that every person wants to present their best possible public image, as they should, ideally people’s expressions and assertions are backed up by facts.

Particularly in the “new GOP” the Trump led GOP in contrast of the previous economically conservative GOP, the concept of facts being replaced by feelings that have nothing to do with facts is widely used and accepted.

Media, particularly the most prominent media companies, should return to fact based reporting. CNN has more people watching than any other media company. CNN recently hired Corey Lewandowski despite his rather questionable behavior toward women to tap deeper into the Fox TV audience. People who like history know that CNN was started by the successful advertising executive, Ted Turner in 1980. His business philosophy was so flexible it was aptly described by Eric Guthey (2001). Ted Turner’s Corporate Cross-Dressing and the Shifting Images of American Business Leadership. Enterprise and Society, 2, pp 111-142. doi:10.1093/es/2.1.111.  Until media companies like CNN who hold the largest audiences and therefore influence the majority of the people returns to seeking truths and spreading fact. We each need to take responsibility of getting out of the emotionally based echo chambers that erode out grasp on reality.

Today when even the top media companies are using feelings and opinions inter changeable with facts every intelligent person is required to fact check before choosing to be influenced.  Let’s to keep civilization alive.

 

Michelle Obama is beautiful inside out and outside in. True Beauty!

Vogue shows Michele Obama's outer beauty - her speech shows her inner beauty as a mother and leader.
Vogue shows Michelle Obama’s outer beauty – her speech shows her inner beauty as a mother and leader.

Her speech reflects the beauty of her mind and soul.  What a classy and beautiful woman.

When someone sais what they do and does what she says we can trust and admire that person with all our might.

The first Lady genuinely cares about the US, the world and people. She now is working with an organization called called Let Girls Lean.

Let Girls Learn is a U.S. government initiative launched by the President and First Lady that helps adolescent girls attain a quality education and enables them to reach their full potential. Educating girls is essential to healthy and thriving communities but, globally, 62 million girls are not in school, and barriers to adolescent girls completing school are particularly significant. In some countries, fewer than 10% of teenage girls complete secondary school. Learn more about it and how we can genuinely improve the lives for people, empower people to get jobs, improve countries infra structure and stop the hunger and power based wars and resulting refugee flows.

https://letgirlslearn.peacecorps.gov/

Happy Fourth of July 2016 and the fight for democracy continues

Chris Van Etten appears in the new Jockey campaign What's Underneath (PRNewsFoto/Jockey)
Chris Van Etten appears in the new Jockey campaign What’s Underneath
(PRNewsFoto/Jockey)

Chris Van Etten symbolizes the American Can-Do Spirit or did he do it in vain because we are too lazy to protect Democracy?

Marine Chris Van Etten, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in July 2012, returned to his family’s Illinois home for the holidays, after spending half a year at a Californian rehabilitation center. He was met with racist graffiti on his family home which was particularly strange as he is Caucasian. Someone spray-painted racial slurs on and threw raw eggs at the Van Etten’s house, likely as the family slept. Van Etten was critically injured from a roadside bomb explosion, which killed his best friend. Lance Cpl. T.J. Baune from Minnesota while on night patrol June 13.  Full Article

Chris Van Etten, a Marine fought for America, presumably to spread Democracy to Afghanistan.  He fought to stop Al-Qaeda from spreading their terror attacks to the West. He fought to uphold our freedom that began on July 4th of 1776 when Americans declared their independence from the British Tax System which they perceived as a yoke.

A few weeks ago the British Population declared that they wish to be freed from the yoke of the EU.  In a recent podcast, Mr. Krugman, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2008, says that “Brexit” was “a terrible blow to the elite leadership in Europe,” explains how the people who are most likely to emerge on top as a result of the move are “the Donald Trumps of England” and talks about the way in which the E.U. is fundamentally at odds with democracy and the idea of a democratically elected government.  Full article and podcast

The world is once again at a cross road.

Shall a few rule over the many and subjugate them or shall the many fight for freedom of information which demands the protection of freedom of speech? In the EU a few bureaucrats rule over the many without regards for their opinion, wishes, preferences. The European Parliament gave them the power to do so, without any recourse but extreme measures for the pubic. Is the Brexit a good idea? Many agree that it is not and that it is based on misinformation presented by the originally Australian Rupert Murdoch’s news empire. He also is working on his fascists aims in breaking Democracy in the US using Fox TV and since a few years the Wall Street Journal.

A book by Larry Bartels promoted by Princeton University explains what is going on in a succinct way:

Unequal Democracy debunks many myths about politics in contemporary America, using the widening gap between the rich and the poor to shed disturbing light on the workings of American democracy. Larry Bartels shows the gap between the rich and poor has increased greatly under Republican administrations and decreased slightly under Democrats, leaving America grossly unequal.” The review goes on to say: “Bartels demonstrates that elected officials respond to the views of affluent constituents but ignore the views of poor people. He shows that Republican presidents in particular have consistently produced much less income growth for middle-class and working-poor families than for affluent families, greatly increasing inequality.”

All of us have to choose whether the Independence our forefathers fought for should regress because we are too passive and allow the fascists and hyper-wealthy, uncaring people to repurchase yokes that make our lives miserable. The Brexit shows what dis-information can do to a civilized country. Will it happen here in the US?

With TTIP corporations will no longer be liable for any damage they cause. Time to remind us what freedom means?

Would TTIP have passed during the times of the Declaration of Independence?

declaration_of_independence_stone_630

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

TTIP is against democracy and it creates a framework for oligarchy to reign supreme.  Read this article for details.

Misinformation wars shape our minds and hearts unless we analyze the source of information.

Russia shapes opinions in the West by sponsoring anti-government media content

RTX21N3D-614x409

Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement PEGIDA take part in a demonstration march, in reaction to mass assaults on women on New Year’s Eve, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay Full Article

The war for “hearts and minds” is in full force like never before.  The internet has liberated both the distribution and the reception of content.

In the East, Radio Free Europe in particular has spread Western News and Western concepts for many years to counter act the spread of Communism in the Border States of the Soviet Empire.  This created a cushion of discontent and mistrust against the Soviet Union and eventually its disintegration. The Soviet people dreamed of living in a “free world” and they wished especially to gain the Western style material comforts.  What they had not learned while growing up in an oppressive society is the concept of trust, sharing, caring, and the fact that you have to actually work and earn that material wealth.  Many were well versed in “working the system.”  As a result the economies quickly became the personal playgrounds of oligarchs who were not at all interested in creating a strong middle class.  History shows that a strong middle class is a prerequisite of a free society.  It takes a lot of political will to support a strong middle class.  The oligarchs take and take and take and use the public without their knowledge.  This works primarily through misinformation.

For the past decades and especially since the inception of Cable TV and the Internet Russia has joined the information war.

Their press release reads:

RT’s (Russia Today) Spanish channel and pan-Latin American network TeleSUR in Venezuela launched a new joint project on Monday, aimed at providing a different perspective to Western mainstream media. RT is already the leading news provider on YouTube. Last December, RT hit 2 billion views on the popular video hosting resource. Only a year earlier, RT International was the first news channel to achieve over 1 billion views.

Are you aware how impactful the spread of the Communist point of view is?

On a daily basis misguided news clips that are fantastically well produced and design to spread hate and discontent are not only shown on YouTube but are spread on facebook, twitter and other social media outlets.

When watched without analysis as to the source of the material it may look like a “normal” news report.  But when viewed through the lens of what the news provider in RT’s case the Putin government and in TeleSUR’s Case the Venezuelan Communist Party are trying to accomplish it is rather ominous.

We are now entering an era of true democracy of information.  Everyone has access to every point of view.  When someone shares information make sure you analyze the source of the information before you swallow it hook, line and sinker.  One of the best ways to know if the source of information is trust worthy is to check whether the owners and their countries providing it protect freedom of the press. If a country openly suppresses journalists you already know dictators and/or would be dictators are trying to get you to support their nefarious cause to suppress knowledge and public opinion. Their goal is to undermine and destabilize countries that offer freedom of speech.   Let your friends know when they are being brainwashed by horrid people without realizing it.  Promote critical and analytical thinking.  Russia does not love freedom of speech as it is reported that 56 Journalists were killed since 1992.  When they sponsor people like Abby Martin to do their bidding in the West – Buyer Beware, know the source.  More When watching her Russia / Venezuela sponsored content knowing it comes from Russia makes it sound entirely different.

Reuters reported recently that until a few years ago Germany had been left out of the misinformation war stemming from Russia.  Those days are gone and while Putin is railing and making fun of Germany’s problems with Neo Nazi’s the Russian government is actually sponsoring it.  Full Reuter’s Article