— by Odysseus
There is an old saying that goes: if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he eats for the rest of his life. Some day, sadly, free press websites, like The Cassandra Times, may no longer be available to their readers. The world is an unpredictable place. To equip you for that eventuality, it has become time for a brief essay on how to be a “high information voter” on your own.
First, one must understand that information (news) is the first casualty in any war, be it a war between nations, a civil war or even a cold struggle between ideologies that has not yet risen to a “hot” or shooting war. The fight over information is a fight over what matters most in any struggle, the minds of the people.
There is an apocryphal story that, at the Paris Peace Accords, an American general told Ho Chih Minh that the Americans never lost a single battle to the North or the Viet Cong, to which he replied “so what?” The meaning here is that modern combatants understand that, to control territory, you must have the minds of the population of that territory. It is what the United States military now calls “the human terrain”. Although this is a fourth generation warfare concept, elements of this idea are as old as time.
Governments and movements have always sought to get “their side of the story” out to the public to shape public opinion. Likewise, those in power have always sought to limit the spread of news that was unfavorable to their agenda. Since a complete blackout is usually impossible, because there are too many witnesses with personal recollections which slowly filter out to the public, causing a complete blackout undermines credibility. Consequently, most governments and political organizations throughout history have sought to distort the truth or obfuscate the truth through “disinformation”. In other words, they put out a story that contains some facts, leaves out some facts, and distorts other facts in order that the truth be contained or discredited.
This practice goes all the way back to hieroglyphics in Egypt, where the Pharaohs would place their versions of historical events out for all to see. If a later Pharaoh found that inconvenient, he would chisel off the uncomfortable identities and ideas of an inconvenient predecessor. In his famous book “1984”, George Orwell portrayed this disinformation process in his Ministry of Truth, where old books, newspapers, and magazines were clipped of inconvenient facts, which were then dropped down “the memory hole”, which was, in reality, an incinerator.
Orwell based his writing on his knowledge of what was going on in the World War II Ministry of Information in wartime Britain. World War II saw the first truly modern use of “information management” (propaganda), by all sides in the conflict. Disinformation was developed and deployed with great technical skill and ability. Disinformation became a norm for governments which they did not abandon after the war. The Soviets’ use of propaganda and disinformation is well documented in the West; our own Allied efforts, less so.
Like attempts to completely black out the truth, disinformation is also not a perfect solution because it means that, at least, some indication is released to the general public that “something happened”. A critical thinker, can then read between the lines of the official story and glean some inkling of what is going on. The higher the IQ of the reader, the greater the creativity, and the greater general knowledge base of the reader, all allow the reader to formulate theories that approximate the likely true meaning behind the official story.The ability to analyze stories and to discern the valuable content from the official government chaff is the essence of doing what is known as gathering “overt intelligence” (as compared to covert intelligence which is the classic secret agent spy stuff).
The first great tool in analyzing “news” is truth. The important point to focus on, never forget, and never be persuaded otherwise is that there is an objective truth. Teachers, lawyers, politicians, philosophers, and preachers may all try to convince you that truth is just a matter of perspective. They may try to convince you that history is just what the most successful point of view records. Never fall for this fallacy, no matter how pompously, imperiously or with what level of faux sophistication it is offered. There is an objective truth to every single event that has ever happened or will ever happen. We may have the misfortune of not being able to uncover it because of a paucity of witnesses or the success of the disinformation spinmasters, but there is now, and there has always been, an absolute objective, truth. Keep in mind that it is there and that it is worth seeking, as your first key to proper analysis of news sources.
The second tool is to pay little heed to what any political figures of either party say in public. They are always coloring their words to make them the most appealing and least threatening to any listener. Consequently, you cannot tell what they really think or really intend. Nowadays, they are even unafraid of the outright, baldfaced lie. If you want to know what political figures, celebrities, titans of industry or media figures really intend, watch the history of what they actually do. Watch what organizations they support, what legislation they support, and where they spend their time. You can almost completely ignore what they say in public. If you want to know their true feelings or world view, again ignore what they say or write. Instead, look at what their parents were like. Look at where they grew up and their family history. Look at who they chose to associate with in high school, college, and on forward into their lives. Examine the known facts and ideologies of the people they surround themselves with. It is easy to see who someone really is when you learn to ignore what they say. Disinformation relies on lies, and lies depend on speaking (or writing).
The third tool, and the most difficult, is to learn to filter out what “does not make sense”. This is the more difficult skill because it depends on the knowledge base, IQ, and creativity of the reader. The more encyclopedic your knowledge base, the more powerful your analytical skills, and the greater your imagination, the easier it is to spot absurdities within a planted “news” story. Scientific impossibilities, timing impossibilities, or completely uncharacteristic behavior are all clues as to falsehoods in a story. One can also look for convenience issues. If the government (any government) suddenly gets news that is very beneficial to something that it is trying to push as part of its ideological agenda, that “news” deserves special skepticism.
Likewise, if an event occurs that is inconvenient for a government’s ideological position, but gets little attention, or is somehow characterized as something distinguishable from the uncomfortable way it refutes a government’s goal, then it deserves special attention and scrutiny. Governments are like children, they like to minimize problems and sweep them under the rug. However, also like children, they are frequently making their strident denials with cookie crumbs around their mouths and chocolate on their fingers. Do not listen to what they are saying, but, instead look at the crumbs and chocolate, which have far greater eloquence than even the most precocious child (or politician).
As a case study to explain this process, let us use the “Benghazi” incident of September 11, 2012. We are using this incident because it is obvious, easy, and based on widely-known information. The news came out that the embassy was under attack and that the ambassador had been killed. The official information released was that this was a response to an Internet film clip. Application of the first principle that there is an objective truth tells us that there was violence and it was carried out with weaponry, including rocket- propelled grenades, automatic weapons, and mortar fire. It tells us that this attack occurred at two separate American-controlled facilities in Libya.
Application of the third principle is based on our own knowledge base compared to the official story. The official claim was that these were spontaneous riots based on a clip from a film on the Internet. We had never heard of this “film” before, nor did anyone we knew. Prior to this event, there had been no news coverage or popular mention of this film that any of us had ever seen, so how well known could it have been, to spark a riot?
Even more obviously, this was an attack on American facilities on September 11th in an Islamic part of the world. Our knowledge base reminds us that this is the anniversary of the most successful Islamic terror attacks on the United States in history. Our knowledge base also tells us that America (and the West) are hated in the Islamic world and that we have been subjected to terror attacks from Islamic terrorists since at least the early 1970s, if not before. Our IQ, knowledge base, and creativity all let us know instantly that there are other possible versions of this event than the one our government is saying that seem much more plausible than the government’s version. Therefore, one of these other versions is more likely to be (our first principle) the objective truth.
Finally, upon application of our “second tool”, we know that this administration is staffed with people who desperately want us to believe that relations with the Islamic world have been repaired because of the election of President Barack Obama. We know that the administration has minimized our force levels in that part of the world, and that, in the past, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has objected to the presence of uniformed Marines on embassy grounds as “provocational”. Their past associations and actions show us that they may have been under-prepared for these events — even on the anniversary of 9/11 — which would be a horribly embarrassing dereliction of duty at a critical juncture in a presidential re-election campaign. There is tremendous motive and opportunity to lie.
Apply these principles when you read, watch, listen to or think about “the news”. There are many weapons in the arsenal of freedom and all must be fought for and protected. The first weapon, however, is the free mind. Open your eyes and free your mind. The mass media thinks you are stupid and credulous. Prove them wrong.
