It makes no sense, yet it seems to be the direction things are going. The quote at the end from Whitney Webb puts things into a bit more context for me. I've wondered why on earth advertisers would put up with trying to sell products to a computer algorithm instead of an actual consumer. Turns out maybe the corporations aren't the only driving force. The powerful want to control the narrative, and it appears they've decided the best way do that is confuse the hell out of an already exhausted populace.
Petraeus said: "We bring out the moderate voices. We amplify those." Of course by this he means "moderates" like the Al Qaeda terrorists we armed, trained & funded so they could overthrow the government of Syria. Moderates. 🙄
Assad had huge issues, but his main crime in the eyes of the West was denying their massive natural gas pipeline and supporting Russia's instead. They've been trying to oust him since 2011, using "moderate rebels" who were indistinguishable from the "terrorists" we were supposedly fighting against. Assad was the subject of a huge disinformation campaign, accused of "gassing his own people," which was proven to be a lie. The Syrian Civil War was a tragedy for the nation, but it was made far, far worse by NATO intervention. The U.S. and Israel were illegally bombing Syria off and on for 10 years, and within days after Assad was overthrown, Israeli tanks were entering Syria. Assad had excellent relations with the Syrian Christian Church, the oldest continuous Christian group on Earth. His replacement has vowed to wipe them out. Thousand year old churches have been bombed to destruction. You will hear none of this in the Western media because of people like David Petraeus and his "moderate voices."
“All of that said, I think there usually are no heroes when it comes to contemporary wars. This new use of AI-generated influencers is just a scarier escalation of an already grim reality.”
We definitely agree on these points, as well as the important truth that civilians caught in the middle are the only innocent victims. Having communicated online with both people in Syria and refugees who left, I was familiar with most of what you wrote. I would never call Assad an innocent or even claim he was a “good” leader, but the destruction of Syria was hastened and increased by outside influences (U.S., Russia, Israel, etc), all of whom seemed far more interested in gaining wealth and power in one form or another than doing anything to help the people of Syria. Part of that process has involved an intense amount of lying, to put it bluntly, and that lying is facilitated by media — in Europe, the U.S., Russia, Israel — and the concept of AI-facilitated lying making it even more difficult to find the truth depresses me severely.
I read recently about a conversation former President Carter had with Donald Trump during his first term. Apparently Trump actually sought advice from Carter, which kind of floored me. Anyway, Jimmy told him that, if he actually viewed China as a threat to America, he should look at why China has grown so much economically over the past few decades, and the main reason was that they were involved in exactly zero wars. Instead of putting trillions into military, they put it into infrastructure. If America were to follow this example, Carter said, we would very shortly have no worries about China becoming the dominant world power.
I have no illusions about Trump's intentions or that he possesses a shred of human dignity, but if he could somehow be persuaded that the way to "make America great" (which really means "make American corporations wealthier and more powerful") would be through rebuilding our infrastructure and ending our insane militaristic presence (over 800 bases worldwide - China has 30), it would make it much easier to live with the rest of his awful policies.
It makes no sense, yet it seems to be the direction things are going. The quote at the end from Whitney Webb puts things into a bit more context for me. I've wondered why on earth advertisers would put up with trying to sell products to a computer algorithm instead of an actual consumer. Turns out maybe the corporations aren't the only driving force. The powerful want to control the narrative, and it appears they've decided the best way do that is confuse the hell out of an already exhausted populace.
Petraeus said: "We bring out the moderate voices. We amplify those." Of course by this he means "moderates" like the Al Qaeda terrorists we armed, trained & funded so they could overthrow the government of Syria. Moderates. 🙄
Assad had huge issues, but his main crime in the eyes of the West was denying their massive natural gas pipeline and supporting Russia's instead. They've been trying to oust him since 2011, using "moderate rebels" who were indistinguishable from the "terrorists" we were supposedly fighting against. Assad was the subject of a huge disinformation campaign, accused of "gassing his own people," which was proven to be a lie. The Syrian Civil War was a tragedy for the nation, but it was made far, far worse by NATO intervention. The U.S. and Israel were illegally bombing Syria off and on for 10 years, and within days after Assad was overthrown, Israeli tanks were entering Syria. Assad had excellent relations with the Syrian Christian Church, the oldest continuous Christian group on Earth. His replacement has vowed to wipe them out. Thousand year old churches have been bombed to destruction. You will hear none of this in the Western media because of people like David Petraeus and his "moderate voices."
“All of that said, I think there usually are no heroes when it comes to contemporary wars. This new use of AI-generated influencers is just a scarier escalation of an already grim reality.”
We definitely agree on these points, as well as the important truth that civilians caught in the middle are the only innocent victims. Having communicated online with both people in Syria and refugees who left, I was familiar with most of what you wrote. I would never call Assad an innocent or even claim he was a “good” leader, but the destruction of Syria was hastened and increased by outside influences (U.S., Russia, Israel, etc), all of whom seemed far more interested in gaining wealth and power in one form or another than doing anything to help the people of Syria. Part of that process has involved an intense amount of lying, to put it bluntly, and that lying is facilitated by media — in Europe, the U.S., Russia, Israel — and the concept of AI-facilitated lying making it even more difficult to find the truth depresses me severely.
I read recently about a conversation former President Carter had with Donald Trump during his first term. Apparently Trump actually sought advice from Carter, which kind of floored me. Anyway, Jimmy told him that, if he actually viewed China as a threat to America, he should look at why China has grown so much economically over the past few decades, and the main reason was that they were involved in exactly zero wars. Instead of putting trillions into military, they put it into infrastructure. If America were to follow this example, Carter said, we would very shortly have no worries about China becoming the dominant world power.
I have no illusions about Trump's intentions or that he possesses a shred of human dignity, but if he could somehow be persuaded that the way to "make America great" (which really means "make American corporations wealthier and more powerful") would be through rebuilding our infrastructure and ending our insane militaristic presence (over 800 bases worldwide - China has 30), it would make it much easier to live with the rest of his awful policies.