Saturday, May 21, 2022
Friday, May 20, 2022
Exactly Like Zelenskyy: PATH TO POWER GET YOUR OWN MEDIA COMPANY
Intro: Orbán, recently elected to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blueprint to achieving and consolidating power to a special meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), under the slogan of “God, Homeland, Family”, held in Budapest.
Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’
"Hungarian leader also tells Republicans at Budapest conference that shows like Tucker Carlson’s should be broadcast ‘24/7’
The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has told a conference of US conservatives that the path to power required having their own media outlets, calling for shows like Tucker Carlson’s to be broadcast “24/7”.
The Hungarian prime minister said that with his fourth electoral victory on 3 April, Hungary had been “completely healed” of “progressive dominance”. He suggested it was time for the right to join forces.
“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops,” Orbán said.
He told Republicans in the Balnaconference centre on the banks of the Danube that media influence was one of the keys to success. In Hungary, the prime minister and his allies have effective control of most media outlets in Hungary, including state TV.
“Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left,” he said. “The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”
He portrayed the US media as being dominated by Democrats, who he claimed were being “served” by CNN, the New York Times and others.
“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend, Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”
. . .Journalists from international media outlets were denied access to the event, including the New Yorker, Vox Media, Vice News, Rolling Stone, and the Associated Press, despite months of requests. The organizers either ignored their requests for accreditation or told them to “watch the event online”.
Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union that runs CPAC, said the Central-European country is the right place to start a conversation about Europe.
Orbán’s 12-point action plan also included points on faith, “because the absence of faith is dangerous” and the importance in countering “LGBT-propaganda” which was “still new in our country but we have already destroyed it”.
> The second day of the CPAC conference on Friday is billed to start with a “surprise video message” that some speculate will be from Donald Trump, who was also invited to the event. The schedule also features Candace Owens, described as “Trump’s favorite influencer’, video messages from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Santiago Abascal, president of Spain’s Vox party, and Zsolt Bayer, a pro-Orbán pundit who formerly called Roma people “animals”, referred to Jewish people as “stinking excrement” and used racist slurs for Black people during the BLM protests. . .
Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/20/viktor-orban-cpac-republicans-hungary
RELATED CONTENT:
Rep. Madison Cawthorn Vows 'Dark MAGA' Revenge For His Election Loss
For Republicans who didn't have his back, "their days are numbered," Cawthorn warns.
Trends Reporter, HuffPost
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) has threatened retaliation for his primary election loss earlier this week.
Rather than take responsibility for a series of political stumbles that tanked his race, Cawthorn took to social media to target Republicans who failed to “have my back”:
Details of what “Dark MAGA” might do were hazy, but apparently it could involve the revelation of embarrassing secrets and, ominously, “numbered” days.
“We are coming,” he warned. . .
Read more >>
MUCH MORE THAN 'A FREUDIAN SLIP'...
Ooopsies!
George W Bush accidentally admits Iraq war was ‘unjustified and brutal’ in gaffe
Former president makes slip when speaking at his presidential library in Dallas on Wednesday
Sigmund Freud was unavailable for comment, but George W Bush saying Iraq instead of Ukraine when condemning “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion” certainly suggests he still has a lot on his unconscious mind.
The former president jokingly attributed the slip to his 75 years, but there has always been a faulty connection between his brain and his tongue. There are whole books full of “Bushisms”, like his boast that people “misunderestimated” him, and how much he felt for single mothers “working hard to put food on your family”.
There may have been something Freudian about his 2004 warning that America’s enemies “never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we”. And then there was the time he was thanking an army general for his service in 2008, telling him he “really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq”.
Bush has already told us that the fiasco of Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction still troubles him.
“No one was more shocked and angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons,” he wrote in his memoir, Decision Points.
“I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.”
But Bush sought to justify the 2003 invasion anyway, on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was a vicious despot “pursuing” weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and therefore the US was safer without him in the world.
The 43rd president was making a similar argument to an audience at his presidential library in Dallas when he made his gaffe on Wednesday.
Bush was making a distinction between a democratically elected Volodymyr Zelenskiy, “the Churchill of the 21st century”, and the rigged elections and despotism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where the absence of checks and balances led to “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq – I mean Ukraine”.
The audience laughed along, but the mistake was a reminder that the world is still living with the consequences of that invasion. It broke Iraq and set off a sectarian civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people died.
Nearly two decades on, it continues to weaken the US on the world stage, and is undoubtedly a factor in the ambivalence of countries in Africa and the Middle East over joining a decisive global response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. . .
The US failure to prosecute war crimes by US troops and contractors, its use of torture in the “global war on terror” and Bush’s campaign to undermine the international criminal court, all contributed to a more permissive environment for the many crimes against humanity that have followed Iraq, from Syria to Ukraine and well beyond.
Wednesday’s Bushism was a reminder that for all the former president’s aw shucks self-deprecatory jokes about Iraq, it was never really funny."
Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/19/george-bush-iraq-ukraine-speech
ISRAEL'S PROPAGANDA MACHINE
Intro: The Israeli response to Shireen’s killing has been predictable. Their hasbara (propaganda) machinery went into overdrive, doing what they have always done—a combination of denying, lying, and obfuscating about what may have happened. . Create confusion
After Shireen Abu Akleh’s Killing: Israel’s Propaganda Machine Ramps Up
The Israeli response to the murder of the beloved journalist has been woefully predictable—a combination of denying, lying, and obfuscating.
James Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute and was a member of the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2017
May 15, 2022
"After killing of Shireen Abu Akleh has left me furious. Furious that a wonderful journalist has been taken from the world. Furious because of the predictable way Israel has responded to this tragedy. And furious at the United States for its failure to take a principled stand in ensuring that the truth is known about Shireen’s death and there’s accountability for it.
Much has already been written about Shireen. She’s an American citizen and a journalist who for the past 25 years has been reporting from Palestinian lands. She wasn’t just a journalist, though. She was a storyteller who, like other greats in her profession, was able to get “under the skin” of an event to lay bare its human drama. Where Palestinian officials failed, she succeeded.
Shireen endeavored to bring to life the stories of individuals and families bearing up under the indignity, pain, and injustice of Israel’s occupation. Because of that, she posed a greater danger to the Israelis than any gunman ever could. She threatened their dehumanizing narrative that reduced Palestinians to faceless objects.
The Israeli response to Shireen’s killing has been predictable. Their hasbara (propaganda) machinery went into overdrive, doing what they have always done—a combination of denying, lying, and obfuscating about what may have happened.
Even before the military could begin investigating the killing, the early Israeli response was that they were “looking into the possibility that journalists were injured, possibly by Palestinian gunfire.” Another spokesperson added, “I don’t think we killed her…. if we indeed killed her, we’ll take responsibility, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.” While this effort at deflection was taking place, the Israelis took yet another tack, claiming that they had offered to conduct a joint investigation with the Palestinians—while even the Israeli press was noting that no such offer had been made. After reading press reports of this “joint investigation,” the Palestinians rejected the “offer,” saying “no one approached us and no one offered anything…. Whoever wants a joint investigation knows who to turn to.” This led an Israeli minister to suggest that the Palestinian refusal was “perhaps to cover up the truth.”
To answer why the Israelis engage in such a relentless effort to obfuscate, we need only look at an article that appeared in the Israeli press the day after Shireen’s killing.
> The article was written by the Israeli general who had been in charge of the division that was responsible for killing 12-year-old Muhammad Al-Durrah in 2000. That killing was captured on camera, and the image of a little boy being shielded by his father amid a hail of bullets became iconic. In the article, the general confesses that he erred in immediately accepting responsibility and notes that in the days and years that followed other “explanations” were posited—including positing that it was a hoax staged by the Palestinians to besmirch the good name of the Israeli military. The lesson he appears to have learned was to not admit to anything up front. Instead, wait until you have talking points that can muddy the waters for the Israeli public and Israel’s supporters abroad.
> This is the approach suggested by the famous Marx Brothers line, “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”—and it’s been used by the Israelis from the very beginning: “Palestinians weren’t expelled from their homes in 1948. Arab armies called on them to leave,” the Israeli narrative went, despite all historical evidence to the contrary. It might be a lie, but if it’s plausible enough to convince or confuse the Israeli public and Israel’s supporters in the international community, then use it.
> Finally, there’s the frustratingly predictable US response to Shireen’s killing that was on display at the State Department briefing the day of the killing.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price began on a sympathetic note, saying, “[W]e are absolutely heartbroken to learn of the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.… We send our deepest condolences…and strongly condemn her killing as we do the killing of journalists around the world…. We call for and immediate and thorough and full investigation and full accountability. Investigating attacks on independent media and prosecuting those responsible are of paramount importance.”
> That resolve, however, faded under intense questioning by the journalists present at the press session. While insisting that the investigation be full and thorough and that there be accountability, Price resorted to the usual deflections. When reporters pointed to instances where Israel either exonerated itself or only offered a slap on the wrist to its forces who had been found guilty of atrocities, Price would only reaffirm that the United States had full confidence in Israel’s ability to investigate itself."
The US refusal to hold Israel to the same standard it insists upon for other countries is upsetting. More so in this case because Shireen is a journalist and a US citizen. In the more than four decades that I’ve been bringing cases of US citizens who’ve been killed by Israel, arrested without charge, tortured, had properties confiscated, or been denied entry to the country, the US response has been the same: expressions of concern, quietly discussing the matter with the Israelis, and then doing nothing, as the issue is forgotten.
The result is that Israel operates with a sense of impunity, and Palestinians are left defenseless. In the case of Palestinian Americans, the message sent is that, to the Israelis and to our own government, our US citizenship offers no special protection.
And so, I’m furious."
To create further confusion, the Israelis offered a video that they claimed showed the direction from which the bullets may have been fired by Palestinians. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem debunked this claim by using satellite maps to show that it was impossible for Palestinian gunmen to have fired at and hit Shireen and Ali; given where the gunmen were located, it would have required them to have shot through walls and around corners.
Thursday, May 19, 2022
TODAY'S LEXICON: A plea for managers to use woolly words thoughtfully
Intro: When over-used they smother thinking,... unless they get shorn
The woolliest words in business
FIRE-FIGHTING FOAM starves the flames of oxygen. A handful of overused words have the same deadening effect on people’s ability to think. These are words like “innovation”, “collaboration”, “flexibility”, “purpose” and “sustainability”. They coat consultants’ websites, blanket candidates’ CVs and spray from managers’ mouths. They are anodyne to the point of being useless.
These words are ubiquitous in part because they are so hard to argue against. Who really wants to be the person making the case for silos? Which executive secretly thirsts to be chief stagnation officer? Is it even possible to have purposelessness as a goal? Just as Karl Popper, a philosopher, made falsifiability a test of whether a theory could be described as scientific, antonymy is a good way to work out whether an idea has any value. Unless its opposite could possibly have something to recommend it, a word is too woolly to be truly helpful.
Woolliness is the enemy of accuracy as well as utility. A word like “sustainability” is so fuzzy that it is used to encompass everything from a business that thinks sensibly about the long term to the end of capitalism. This column may well count as sustainable because it keeps recycling the same ideas. The lack of precision opens the door to grandstanding and greenwashing. Earlier this year Morningstar, a data provider, culled 1,200 funds from its European sustainable-investment list after a closer review of their prospectuses and annual reports. Regulators in America and Europe have been scrambling to define standards of sustainability disclosure.
Woolliness also smothers debate about whether you can have too much of a good thing. Take “innovation”, for example. Too much innovation can be a turn-off for customers. . .
“Collaboration” is another word that repays closer scrutiny. It can be marvellous: boundaries dissolved, expertise and ideas flowing. But collaboration can also run wild. It often means having more and more people on every email thread and in every meeting. It can paralyse decision-making, as everyone and their dog gets to weigh in with their view. (To be fair, the dog often makes the most useful points.). . .
A host of other woolly words also mask genuine trade-offs. The supremely fluffy notion of “purpose” disguises hard-edged questions of how managers should balance the interests of multiple stakeholders. “Flexibility” sounds like a boon to workers, but the reality for employees of coping with last-minute changes to schedules is often very different. The MIT study found that having a regular schedule was six times more powerful as a predictor of blue-collar-employee retention than having a flexible schedule.
Traits like innovativeness or collaborativeness are still qualities for firms to aspire to. And this is not an argument for constant qualification of what is meant: the one way to make “purpose” more annoying is to put the word “smart” in front of it. But it is a plea for managers to use woolly words thoughtfully. They are not going away, but they do not have to suffocate mental activity.'
Read more >> https://www.economist.com/business/2022/05/14/the-woolliest-words-in-business
QUICKER THAN ANTICIPATED??? ....Swift Corrective Procedural Action
Intro: Here are not one but two not-so-timely press releases from the City of Mesa Newsroom
Mesa Enacts Water Shortage Management Plan
May 18, 2022 at 1:47 pmDue to historic drought, climate change and over-allocation, conditions on the Colorado River are worsening. While deeper shortages may come quicker than anticipated, Mesa recognizes the situation is serious and continues to strategically plan for a . . ."
Mesa Police Roll Out New Public Portal to Simplify Complaint and Commendation Process
May 18, 2022 at 9:56 amIt is the policy of the Mesa Police Department to thoroughly record and expeditiously investigate all complaints, to take swift corrective disciplinary action when appropriate, to take swift corrective procedural action when necessary, and to protect...
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Flash News: Ukraine Intercepts Russian Kh-59 Cruise Missile Using US VAMPIRE Air Defense System Mounted on Boat. Ukrainian forces have made ...
