The legacy press continues its endless campaign to promote the belief that Russia is waging a never-ending battle against US diplomats and spies thanks to the secret weapon that provokes the dreaded “Havana syndrome.” Two Washington Post journalists, John Wagner and Miriam Berger, have...
In an important article in Foreign Affairs cited yesterday in this column, Charles King mentions a particular initiative of media manipulation that an increasingly panicked President Lyndon Johnson undertook to defuse criticism of the war he had engaged in Vietnam. King describes a game of...
Reporting on a defamation trial brought against Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Business Insider notes a rare but significant crack in the facade of contemporary media that could, if we were to pay attention, help to deconstruct the reigning hyperreality that has in recent decades overwhelmed...
In an article published by Al Jazeera with the title, “What is behind the hype about the new Iran-China partnership?” Pakistan-based journalist Tom Hussain weighs in on how media in the US have become dedicated to magnifying real events not to further our understanding of them, but to...
In early 2019, Foreign Affairs took a detailed look at the social and potentially political implication of the emergence of a phenomenon called “Deepfakes,” the result of recent advances in digital technology. The article describes the kind of manipulation of images and sound that now...
The measure of the dysfunction of US democracy and the US empire has never been more apparent as the population resigns itself to seeing another war, feared by the public but craved by the media. Last week, a public opinion poll by Reuters/Ipsos revealed that “51% of adults felt that the...
It is time for all of America’s institutions of democracy to engage, activate the citizenry and make its democracy function as it should. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” said Thomas Jefferson, America’s third...
