The most insidious forms of oppression

“The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.”

‘Contrary Notions’ by Michael Parenti

Chomsky: America’s Rank Hypocrisy — Why Is it Only an “Atrocity” When Other Countries Do It?

I’m about 20% of the way into my new writing project “You Are Blind” – a look at how propaganda works in a corporatocracy – and it’s going very well.

Meanwhile, OpEdNews has this excellent new article by Noam Chomsky.

He starts by quoting  international affairs scholar James Peck who states:

“In the history of human rights, the worst atrocities are always committed by somebody else, never us” — whoever “us” is.

Chomsky then presents a few recent examples of how the western media loves to focus on atrocities by “the bad guys”, such as Syria, while ignoring (or justifying) similar or worse atrocities committed by “our side”. Or they highlight China’s treatment of dissidents like Chen Guangcheng while ignoring 0r justifying American treatment of dissidents like Bradley Manning.

It’s all part of what I’m writing about in my book. We are programmed from birth by our governments, corporate media, corporate PR departments, the education system (co-financed by the government and the wealthy elite) and religions to believe that a certain set of truths are self-evident – and that this programming is so pervasive that we don’t even notice it.

don't ask, don't tell

don’t ask, don’t tell

The 2008 Falsies Awards: In Memory of the First Casualty | Center for Media and Democracy

CMD have released their 2008 Falsies list. As always, it’s interesting reading.

Learn about:

  • PR industry tricks such as ” third party technique” and how the Pentagon has been using it to dupe American citizens;
  • Which PR firms are taking dirty coal money to try to dupe people into thinking ‘clean coal’ is anything more than a line of spin;
  • Which PR firm took China’s money to try to make them look better during the Olympics – and failed miserably;

The 2008 Falsies Awards: In Memory of the First Casualty | Center for Media and Democracy

Why Twitter Is Important To Me

And on Sunday, he rested…….

Holy god damn, what a week. Finally, this morning, TPN is back up (obviously, because I can write this and you can read it). I have to thank Phil Morle from Pollenizer for hooking me up with Jagadeesh from x-minds in India. Jag and his team got TPN back up in amazing time. I wish I’d known about Jagadeesh’s team 10 days ago when I started having problems. I could have saved myself (and TPN’s hosts) a week of grief. Well, they are on my radar now.

And, because I know that THE QUESTIONS THAT I ASK MYSELF DETERMINE MY PERSPECTIVE, I’m thinking up some good questions.

– What could I have done better to avoid this situation?
– How can I make sure we don’t go through that again?
– What made the difference?

The answer to the last one is – Twitter. Phil got involved, and introduced me to Jagadeesh, when I started screaming for help on Twitter. If I didn’t have ~900 people following me on Twitter, I wouldn’t have got that offer of support when I did. Twitter is important, something Misha Cornes obviously misses. If you have a low signal-to-noise ration on your Twitter, then start following better people. She should read my Fast Thinking article.

Before I go – Lee Hopkins wrote a good post about how Aussie PR folks STILL don’t get digital media, based in-part on a chat he and Trevor Cook and I had during lunch at ad:tech in Sydney a few weeks ago.

Over a table discussion after the Digital PR session I took part in, Cameron turned to Trevor Cook (knowing that I am not a PR person and have always taken great pains to point this out) and asked,

“It’s 2008, for f#$ks sake! How come PR companies here STILL don’t get it!?!?”

A very good question.

As he pointed out, we’ve had blogs as a part of our media landscape for at least 5 years, mainstream media are falling over themselves trying to ‘out 2.0′ each other, we’ve had podcasts for a few years, we’ve had YouTube for what seems like forever…

So how come Australian PR companies still play ‘hide head in sand and pretend it will all go away’ games?

It isn’t just PR – it’s Australian corporates in general. By the way, if you want to check out the work I’ve been doing for Telstra recently, visit their new Enterprise site. It contains podcast interviews I’ve done for them with some of their top executives, chatting about what they do in Telstra and what it’s like to work for for The Big T in 2008. The interviews aren’t scripted and don’t get subjected to much editing by Telstra PR. It’s just a real conversation between me, a member of the public, and a Telstra exec. It’s the closest thing so far I’ve seen in Australia where I large corporation is using Web2.0 to be more conversational.