Looking For Clarity On The Situation In Lebanon? You Won’t Get It From Democracy Now Where Its Question Is: “Can you respond to the World Bank saying Lebanon is in one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years?”

Democracy Now pitches the question: "respond to the World Bank saying Lebanon is in one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years"

Want to get clarity about what might possibly be happening now in Lebanon?  You are not going to get it from the reporting of Democracy Now, or as we might better call it these days, Democracy Not Now What It Once Was (“DNNWIOW” or #DNNWIOW).  What you’ll get from DNNWIOW is that the situation in Lebanon is confused, awful, pretty much impossible to explain and just about anything that happens next will probably be alright, maybe perhaps better, or at least acceptable.  Like it might be acceptable if Lebanon was one more country subjected to the kind of externally provoked regime operations we conduct?  OK if its government is  replaced by a puppet subservient to our interests?  Or maybe, not really so bad if, like Lybia or a number of other countries where were we have meddled, Lebanon was just kept in perpetual chaos?

In other words, DNNWIOW’s `there is terribly confusing awfulness in Lebanon you’ll never understand’ reporting is very much the same thing that you get from mainstream corporately owned media all the time about Israel and Palestine; it’s the kind of befuddlement building that then allows Israel, without significant protest from the American populace, to continue carrying out its persecution and removal of Palestinians from what was their country.

In other words, I make the case that DNNWIOW’s reporting on Lebanon, similar to the New York Times reporting on Lebanon, is just a useful conduit of the narrative that the United States Government wants put out there.  Or to cut through the crap: It’s pure propaganda.

We are talking right now about DNNWIOW’s first segment, its opening segment, on Thursday, October 14, 2021, an interview of more than 20 minutes of Lara Bitar, the editor-in-chief of The Public Source, what DNNWIOW described as “a Beirut-based independent media organization.”

Probably the interview question that most quintessentially captures the flavor and content of the interview is when DNNWIOW host Amy Goodman asks Bitar: “Can you respond to the World Bank saying Lebanon is in one of the worst economic collapses in the last 150 years, a bit further explain?”  (Much of the interview was conducted by co-host Nermeen Shaikh, but Amy Goodman chose to step in to ask this question herself.)

Gee, Lebanon is suffering `an economic crisis’?  That’s what’s going on?  The World Bank says so?  The World Bank’s assessments and characterizations of what are going on are referred to a half a dozen times in the interview and any offered understanding of Lebanon’s plight basically stops there.  

To read or watch the interview:  Snipers Fatally Attack Protesters in Beirut as Lebanon Reels from Devastating Economic Collapse, October 14, 2021.

Amy Goodman on left, Lara Bitar on right

The DNNWIOW propaganda is basically the subtle kind of propaganda that relies on misdirection and what is tactfully, or, as a matter of tactics, left out of the picture rather than being an attempt mounted to sell unadulterated and obviously false misinformation.  The best way to recognize what DNNWIOW was providing as the propaganda, is to hold it up against some actually good, context-setting reporting that will give you a very clear view of the situation in Lebanon.  I recommend that, for that contrast, you go to another interview about what is happening now in Lebanon– Again it is two women. Again it’s a female show host doing the interview, and again, the interviewee is a woman residing in Lebanon.  I’ll make the case, that in this instance, the dialogue between these two women and their ability to analytically present relevant facts does a much better job to qualify each of them as competent and sincere journalists.

The interview is conducted by Mnar Muhawesh, founder and editor-in-chief of MintPress News, interviewing Rania Khalek an American journalist living in Lebanon.  Ms. Khalek, writing under her Breakthrough News brand, was on my National Notice list of the many alternative media female journalists well worth paying attention to these days.  Ms. Muhawesh should have been on my list also; sorry I missed her.

Mnar Muhawesh on left, Rania Khalek on right

Here is the interview via Twitter, MintPress News' Facebook post, and via PSCP TV: Lebanon economic crisis, US Sanctions wars & Israeli resource exploitation in the Middle East region with @mnarMuh & RaniaKhalek

What do we learn from this interview that explains and puts Lebanon’s crisis into perspective?- We learn the following:

    •    Lebanon, a small country of about six million people, is mostly bordered by Syria a country that’s now war-torn nation in the throws of a regime change violence and destruction largely set in motion by the U.S. government.  Syria is naturally an important trading partner for Lebanon (Syria supplied about 10-15% of all of Lebanon’s power- now lack of power is another critical shortage Lebanon deals with), and because of US sanctions against Syria, Lebanon, locked in, cannot now trade across this crucial border.
    •    The other country bordering Lebanon is Israel on Lebanon’s southern border.  But Lebanon is on a continuing war footing with Israel so it cannot trade across that other border either, and instead must deal with continued threats by Israel, a country which previously invaded it.
    •    The only other access to Lebanon is the Mediterranean Sea, but a year ago last August there was a huge destruction in the port of Lebanon from a truly extraordinarily massive explosion.  Khalek does not assert she exactly knows the explanation for the explosion that involved stored fertilizer, but can give important background about it and she can expertly recite what she refers as the many politicized theories offered to explain what actually happened.
    •    The structure of the Lebanon government (set up in compromise when its civil war ended in 1991 and with the intention that the government be “intentionally weak”) carefully divides and shares power between different factions, different sects.  A substantial portion of the government, part of its majority coalition, is allied with Hezbollah and for that reason that portion of the government is the subject of US sanctions. The sanctions have the effect of hamstringing the entire country in its dealings with the rest of the world.  Plus the US backed and Saudi financed sect has worked in an adversarial fashion to make the harmful US sanctions apply more and cause more harm than they have to.
    •    Lebanon desperately needs fuel and power, it affects just about everything. Iran was willing to supply oil to Lebanon, but that help was blocked by other US sanctions, the US sanctions against Iran.
    •    The US also got involved to block help to Lebanon from China, Russia, and from Qatar.    At the same time the West is generally pulling back and refusing to help.  One excuse is that they want Lebanon to change the structure of its government, which is not about to happen. 
    •    The US and its banks and financial institutions are allied with Lebanese elites and with the International Monetary Fund and they, through this alliance, set up the Lebanese financial systems institutions that are now failing.
    •    The US and Western powers are also interfering with local Lebanese politics by providing support for both fascist and failing parties and factions in Lebanon. The many factions in the country provide ripe opportunities for co-optation, which the US takes advantage of and tries to weaponize.
    •    The US, and Israel along with it, wants, dominance and hegemonic power in the region.  The US, and Israel along with it, is therefore directing much of its energy toward trying to quash Hezbollah in Lebanon, but Hezbollah is immensely popular particularly in certain parts of the Lebanon because, ‘as a force of protection’ for the country, Hezbollah defeated and evicted Israel when Israel invaded, plus Hezbollah was critical in repelling ISIS and Al-Qaeda when they came into the country, with Hezbollah then pushing ISIS back even into Syria because of its threat.
    •    Continued chaos is probably what the US and its allies want in Lebanon, because the probably emerging alternative would be Hezbollah running the country.
    •    The formerly praised structure of the now collapsing Lebanese financial system that was set up with US banks involved was always something of a Ponzi scheme. Hezbollah was shut out of participation in and creation of that now collapsing defective financial system.    
    •    Not that it is high on the list of causes for the current crises and power shortage, but Israel repeatedly bombed Lebanon’s power stations in the past decade.
    •    Lebanon is also dealing with climate change and wild fires.
    •    Toward the end of the discussion, all this was related to how have an overall strategy of promoting sectarianism, balkanization and division in the entire region to the extent the US and Israel actually promote and fund right-wing religious fundamentalism.  (Reminder: Israel was the first sectarian state in the region.) Without this regional debilitation, Lebanon might, through its relationships with its neighbors might have a much stronger and resilient economy.

Much of what is important above is pure fact.  Some of it ventures into characterizations with a point of view.  It is not necessary to agree with all of the characterizations above- some might choose to dispute a few (but everything said seems pretty on target to me)-- Still these points all go a long way in explaining a lot and to provide much needed clarity.

By contrast, the 20-minute Democracy Now report (pardon, that's the "DNNWIOW report") mentions absolutely none of the facts set forth above.  Its only allusion to Lebanon’s long border with war-torn Syria is to note passingly that for some reason there is a bad situation with destitute Syrian refugees (as well as Palestinian and "other" refugees) who for some reason now live in Lebanon.  Nowhere is Israel mentioned nor the threat posed by it at the southern boarder.  There is no mention of any of the sanctions imposed by the US or their effect, not the sanctions against trade involving neighboring Syria, not the sanctions blocking aid from Iran, not the sanctions against Hezbollah nor their effect on the rest of the country.  Hezbollah does get mentioned, but only to describe the political party that's part of the government as trouble making and a source of problems being faced.

When it comes to trouble making in Lebanon, there is no mention of any covert involvement of the US to manipulate things or how, when there is mysterious trouble making, it is hard to know whom to pin the blame on.

Simply put, coming to it with some understanding, the DNNWIOW report is so inadequate it’s virtually the most laughable of jokes.  Unfortunately, this is not a laughing matter.  The people at whatever this new Democracy Now is cannot be unaware of the deceptive nature of their Lebanon reporting.  This certainly includes chief show host, executive producer, and long term figurehead for the program, Amy Goodman herself.  They must obviously be aware of the deceptive nature of their reporting because Democracy Now for decades, since its early origins out of WBAI 99.5 FM New York, has a long and distinguished history of covering Israel and its occupation of Palestine in a way that was a meaningful counter on that subject to exactly that kind of reporting about that situation emanating from the US corporate media.

What is the thinking of those working at DNNWIOW when they work to put out this kind of misleading reporting?  Is the thought that by acquiescently conduiting mainstream US State Department narrative one day, they'll get an improved chance at doing something good in the world the next? Is the thought that they will please their big money foundation funders by going along to promulgate these narratives so that they can later go on later, with good, glitzy production values, to accurately cover other more important controversial, undercovered, stories they want to deliver to a big audience on later occasions?  . . Maybe?

Maybe, but if that is the case, DNNWIOW is getting to be an insidiously dangerous program to watch.  That’s because you’ll never know when you are getting reliable reporting on an important story and when you are getting a spiel of establishment propaganda.  Moreover, as DNNWIOW keeps promoting itself as “independent global news” and “the war and peace report,” and has a fabled and reputable history, and as DNNWIOW wears its social justice “heart” on its sleeve, unsuspecting members of the public are all the more likely to be confused when these ruses in reporting are subtle enough.

Confused?. . .  Here, as just that sort of example-  the next story DNNWIOW was reporting that day on October 14, 2021 (about our withdrawal from a senseless 20-year war) was this- see if you find any of its slant identifiable and suspicious:

Afghan Interpreter Who Rescued Biden in 2008 Is Evacuated from Afghanistan with His Family- After weeks of pleading for help, an Afghan interpreter, who helped rescue then-Senator Joe Biden when he was stranded 13 years ago in Afghanistan, has finally escaped Afghanistan. Aman Khalili describes his journey out of the country, and we speak with the reporter who broke the story. “I was in the safehouse for 15 days,” Khalili tells Democracy Now! Khalili is “representative of a group of people that are still appealing for help from America.

A Week of Reporting Important Conspiracy Theories Respecting The Pharmaceutical Industry, Including Participation of One of The Major Covid Shot Manufacturers in One of Those Conspiracies

Two stories in the New York Times the same day published across from each other on a double page spread both about the pharmaceutical industry conspiring with government officials and deceiving the public, one about a bogus "Alzheimer's" drug, the other about selling the public addicting heroine pills, the ingredients supplied by Johnson & Johnson.

It’s been an interesting week in terms of seeing two conspiracy stories published about the pharmaceutical industry and its collusion with government regulatory agencies to put out dangerous and harmful drugs whose supposedly beneficial effects were misrepresented in order to foist them onto an unsuspecting public.  Yes, there are two of these stories out this week, at least two of them where the outlines of the conspiring seem to be endorsed by outlets like that paper of record, the New York Times.  One of the stories prominently features as a wrong-doer, Johnson & Johnson, a company elsewhere very much in the news these days as a top tier manufacturer of Covid vaccine shots.        

The alleged suspicious collusion with government in these stories also involves the way that pharmaceutical industry wrong doers are getting off practically scot-free for their misdeeds, and are being allowed to ultimately profit by keeping their ill-gotten gains.  That may be ascribed to state attorneys general not being sufficiently aggressive (or just being feckless stage props?) while courts friendly to the pharmaceutical corporations and the wealthy opiod-manufacturing Sackler family steer things in the direction of ensuring the wrong doers are protected from paying any real price.  Fiendish collusion? Amounting to conspiratorial behavior?

Here is what is being reported.

In the smaller scale, less notorious of the two stories, a very expensive ($56K per annum) multi-year drug, aducanumab, that Biogen wanted to market for Alzheimer’s even though there was insufficient evident that it worked and might instead have harmful side effects (brain swelling or brain bleeding) was approved by the FDA., with the FDA involving itself to work and closely collaborate with Biogen to help the company deal with the fact that they were asking for approval of a drug that shouldn’t be approved given that the evidence wasn’t there that it worked.  (That FDA assistance reportedly included at least one secret off-the-record meeting.)  Oh well, whatever the medical side effects, what’s more important to everyone, bad actors included, is that Biogen would be soaking Medicare and, via expensive co-pays, families desperate to treat their Alzheimer’s suffering family members . .  . The what-the-heck approach to someone with Alzheimer’s apparently being `what they don’t know can’t hurt them’?

I recommend the coverage that comes from FAIR in its second segment of their weekly half-hour Counterspin program:  Chris Bernadel on Haitian Assassination, Michael Carome on FDA Alzheimer’s Investigation, July 16, 2021.
 
Here is the program segment summary:

Cronyism between pharmaceutical companies and their ostensible government regulators is an infuriating fact of US life, along with the unsurprisingly obscene cost of drugs. Yet somehow the story of aducanumab takes it to a new level. We talk about what pharma and the FDA call a breakthrough Alzheimer’s drug, and what public advocates call an example of all that’s wrong with the FDA, with Michael Carome, M.D., director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen.

In that interview Dr. Michael Carome ends by laying blame squarely at the feet of Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting head of the FDA.  He calls for her resignation as commissioner.  He says, that for three decades she was director of the center of the FDA that reviews and approves new drugs and asserts that over her three decades she has:

fostered an ever cosier relationship between her agency and pharmaceutical companies and that has resulted in regulatory capture of the agency by the pharmaceutical industry. She regularly refers to the agency as being a partner with industry, a partner– that they work with, you know, collaboratively– and she actually defended the collaborations that occurred between her agency and companies like Biogen.

Dr. Carome says she needs to be replaced by someone who is more aligned with protecting public health instead of the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

The more notorious of the two stories during the week is about the pharmaceutical industry and the Sackler family’s responsibility, again working with the FDA (yes, recently and within that last three decades), for drug approvals that have led to an estimated 500,000 opiod addiction deaths in this country.  Most recently, in just the 12-month period ending in November, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures show that drug overdoses were soaring during Covid (egged up by Covid despair?) causing deaths just shy of another hundred thousand (92,000) ascribed to the “increasing availability of synthetic opioids” like fentanyl.  Now for the last year of 2020 the figure is stated to be up to 93,000. Compare that to the figures offered the national toll offered for Covid since it was first announced.  They are actually in the same neighborhood.

Among others covering this story during the week was Democracy Now, giving time to documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney who has a new documentary out about the collaborative and highly coordinated misconduct generating all that opiod addiction sickness and death. According to Gibney there were all sorts of “terrible incentives, where the incentive is not to cure the patient.”  See: “Crime of the Century”: How Big Pharma Fueled the Opioid Crisis That Killed 500,000 and Counting, July 19, 2021

According to Democracy Now’s story “overall, drug overdoses accounted for more deaths in 2020 than car crashes, gun violence and HIV/AIDS combined.”

In the Democracy Now segment it is described how with the Sackler family’s oxycodone marketed by their Perdue Pharma involved selling “drugs that are essentially heroin pills.”   Gibney says that “Purdue didn’t have any evidence that the drug was safe,” so the company obtained help from a medical officer at the FDA to deal with that.  Is this, perhaps, beginning to sound familiar?  Gibney says that, working with an FDA officer, Perdue took actions that “really coalesce around the idea of fraud” and “launched that fraud with a drug called OxyContin” working with the FDA official to “write the review of their own application.”   They got “inserted into the package insert, the paper that comes along with a prescription,” what Gibney observes were two very consequential falsehoods: “one, that it [the drug] wasn’t terribly addictive, and, two, because of the time-release mechanism, the Contin system, it wasn’t prone to abuse.”

According to the Democracy Now story, when Purdue was pursued by the authorities, the company lied under oath.  Moreover, when there were efforts to hold the pharmaceutical companies “accountable,” the companies “decided to change the statute,” changing the rules rather than their behavior.  It’s not just regulatory capture of federal agencies, it’s also insanely cooperative law making legislators.

Beyond the pharmaceutical companies and the Sackler family playing its part, the unfolding of the opiod addiction crisis permeated many aspects of the industry, a legion of doctors complicit in prescribing pills, pharmacies or “pill mills” filling the prescriptions.  The Democracy Now interview goes into financial incentives that drove this permeating complicity, vacation jaunts, payments (including for “speaking” fees) and, for instance, job promotions that made it clear that Purdue knew what it was doing.  Not everyone in the industry was directly involved, of course, but with something so widespread and effects that must have been widely evident, one wonders where the whistleblowers were.  Was everyone else just a passive bystander?  Of course, we know that whistleblowers pay prices.  And with all the interlocking ownership and interconnected interests, you never know whose toes you might be stepping on, so you have to be careful before taking any risks.

Running a big scale heroine selling racket sounds a lot like what we tend to classify as the work of organized crime.  If fact, Amy Goodman, the Democracy Now host, noted that Gibney’s documentary “describes the Sackler family, Purdue Pharma, as a kind of crime syndicate” and Gibney says it’s a “blurry line between licit pharmaceutical sales and, essentially, cartel sales,” that “they’re not so very different.”    

But there is more to this conspiracy tale of collusive bad behavior; the final part of it is the kind of intricate coordination that got the Sacklers and other wrong doers off essentially scot-free.  This is part of exchange between Goodman and Gibney on that about the Sacklers using political “muscle” from those high up the government ladder to escape liability and keep their misdeeds secret:

    AMY GOODMAN: So, Alex Gibney, in fact, while you talk about Insys, people there were jailed. The Sackler family — and this goes to the recently settled lawsuit, and I’m wondering if you could comment on this — 15 states recently abandoning their fight to block the bankruptcy plan of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin; in exchange, Purdue releasing tens of millions of documents, paying a settlement expected to reach $4.5 billion, but the Sackler family agreeing to cede ownership of Purdue but will not have to admit responsibility.

    ALEX GIBNEY: Yeah, it’s really — that settlement was designed to sound good, like, “Oh my gosh, $4.5 billion, that’s a lot of money.” It is a lot of money. But the Sacklers have about $11 billion. And that $4.5 billion gets paid over nine years. So, if you’re taking in at least 5% on your money, it’s really not affecting the principal at all.

    But I think the larger thing here goes to a failure of accountability. You know, Purdue was investigated by the federal government back in 2006, and indeed found guilty. But that investigation, which was a very robust investigation, really laid out the roadmap for how Purdue did what it did. And the attorneys were arguing for very extensive felony convictions. Ultimately, Purdue used its muscle to go above those attorneys and have the charges knocked way back to misdemeanors and a fine. And most importantly — and this gets to the current episode — they were able to seal all the records relating to the prosecution. So the most important evidence was buried, which meant that all of us, the public, couldn’t see what had really happened, in order to be able to stop it.

If you want to hear essentially this same assessment of the Sacklers’ escape act repeated you can read it in an New York Times opinion piece of the week by Patrick Radden Keefe, who says “it is difficult to overstate the fiendish brilliance” of how the Sacklers manipulated the court system to come out still ultra-wealthy and essentially unscathed: See: How Did the Sacklers Pull This Off? July 14, 2021.

He notes:

American corporations can pick the jurisdiction where they file for bankruptcy and, thus, often the judge who determines their fate. Even though Purdue has never had any real business presence in White Plains, N.Y., that is where it filed its bankruptcy case. Purdue has maintained that this choice was driven by proximity to the company’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn. But it may also have been relevant that only one federal bankruptcy judge presides in White Plains: Robert Drain. In the past, he indicated a willingness to shield from litigation certain parties who had not even filed for bankruptcy in his court. He promptly granted the request, temporarily protecting the Sacklers from those suits.

    * * * *

    . .  Their offer: $4.5 billion, with no admission of wrongdoing by the family and permanent immunity from any future civil liability related to the opioid crisis.

That may seem like a lot of money, but billionaire math can be deceptive. The Sacklers proposed to pay the $4.5 billion out over nine years. Their current fortune is estimated to be at least $11 billion. Conservatively, with interest and investments, this means they can expect a 5 percent annualized rate of return on that fortune. If that’s the case, they’ll be able to pay the fine without even touching their principal. When they’re done paying in 2030, they will probably be richer than they are today.

It’s not just about the Sacklers.  Especially, now, today, we should notice that, along with others in the industry it is also about a top-tier Covid vaccine manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson who got a similar settlement.  Here is Gibney, again on Democracy Now:

one thing I would like to point out, as much as we talk about the Sacklers — and it’s very important to talk about them and Purdue — we shouldn’t be naive and think that that was the only company that was making extraordinary profits out of the opioid crisis and indeed didn’t know better. I mean, you know, [the huge companies distributing the drugs] knew very well that their pills, their opioid pills, were being diverted in ways that were causing massive addiction, but they didn’t do anything about it. And indeed, they ended up influencing Congress to pass a law which made them even less accountable, because they used the power of the revolving door to rig the rules. Johnson & Johnson, you know, famous for baby shampoo, was one of the biggest manufacturers of a potent kind of opioid, produced in Tasmania, that actually supplied Purdue Pharma with all the oxycodone that they needed in order to be able to market their drug. They wouldn’t have been able to do it without Johnson & Johnson. . . .

The amount of the settlement, Johnson & Johnson paid for their role working with Purdue in fueling the opioid crisis?: A paltry $230 million to New York State announced the end of June, and, bore broadly, in a settlement announced this week affecting other of the big pharmaceutical companies alongside of which it acted badly, $5 billion over nine years.  In other words, it wasn’t it wasn’t meaningful.

Maybe there will be those who say that this could have been all for the best if  Johnson & Johnson, after paying dividends to its shareholders, managed to squirrel away extra cash from the profits it made from selling opiods to  Purdue Pharma* on the theory that the extra cash might have helped the company come out with their Covid vaccine.  That’s the same sort of the thinking behind the idea of what makes it OK for the CIA to self-finance off the books through its engagement over the years with the illicit drug trade.

(* Johnson & Johnson also famously made money knowingly selling asbestos laced baby talcum powder.)

What a week! Two conspiracy theories at the same time about Big Pharma being engaged with government officials to cause harm to the public by marketing drugs that are misrepresented and shouldn’t have been approved– And one of those conspiracy theories extends to secrecy and coverups aided by more government officials outside the FDA and the politically very high up?  And that conspiracy theory involves one of the most prominent of the Covid vaccine manufacturers?  Are we allowed to believe in such conspiracy theories?  Well the New York Times in subdued, grey lady, respectful-of-power fashion is endorsing both of them.

For an official answer on the question of what we are allowed to believe, we could consult Cass Sunstein, an expert on conspiracy theories, an expert on what should, and should not, be censored by the media and a man who is also in charge of World Heath Organization group charged with steering what the public should think about Covid.  See: Samantha Power, “Humanitarian Hawk,” Is Married To Cass Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalist”: They Both Advocate Censorship– Should That Advocacy Be On WBAI “Free Speech” Radio 99.5 FM?

(Note: Both FAIR's Counterspin and Democracy Now are programs who reporting is cited here air on WBAI radio 99.5 FM in New York City.  I am currently a member of the WBAI Local Station Board and urge people to donate to the station.)

Postscript: After this article was posted July 25, 2021, Democracy Now ran another story July 28, 2021 about how the pharmaceutical industry is corruptly and incestuously connected to government to make decisions that shortchange and fleece the public, decisions that are definitely contrary to the public’s interest and decisions that put Big Pharma profit and payoffs to the government officials they work with ahead of actually attending to the public’s healthcare needs.  See: Workers Beg Joe Manchin to Save West Virginia Pharma Plant as His Daughter Walks Away with $31M, July 28, 2021.

The story probably ran getting the prominence it did, because it is comfortably in the current vein of other let’s make Joe Manchin the villain (calling him “the most powerful man in Washington”) stories, so we have a someone to blame and a distraction from the rest of lawmakers as a whole should be held accountable as they deliver, both the Republican and the Democrats doing it, the spoils that the corporatist interests that placed them in office expect.  Nonetheless, this story is valuable as another window into how brazenly connections can be in place between the pharmaceutical companies and government officials that conflict with the public interest, allowing what are pretty clearly payoffs so that government officials don’t protect the public’s health.

In this story we learn that Joe Mansion’s daughter Heather Bresch, heads a pharma company in his state of West Virginia, Viatris, and formerly Mylan.  Pfizer is involved because Viatris, which Ms. Bresch heads and was thereby able to recently pocket $31 million, was created through a merger involving Pfizer in December 2020.  Ms. Bresch is likely mainly qualified for the job and to pocket such sums (in 2014 as head of Mylan she pocketed $25 million) via her relationship with her father.  There was a scandal concerning how her MBA had to be revoked by West Virginia University.  She had been given the now revoked degree right after Manchin became governor, (before he became senator) without doing the course work on the basis of doctored transcripts.

As Mylan’s chief executive, Senator Manchin’s daughter was famous for her company’s raising by 400% the price of its life-saving EpiPen, used by millions who are vulnerable to reverse fatal allergic reactions.   And more in the family: Mansion’s wife, Gayle Conelly Manchin was on a school commission that was trying to get the U.S. government to mandate that schools purchase the EpiPen at the insanely inflated price.

The Democracy Now story reports about how Viatris is, with government, Biden and Mansion all doing nothing about it, shutting down its West Virginia plant (that should be designated “vital infrastructure”) and moving manufacturing operations abroad although according to Katherine Eban, author of the book Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom and Dangerous Doses: A True Story of Cops, Counterfeiters, and the Contamination of America’s Drug Supply:

We have seen five years of congressional reports, policy reports and bipartisan agreement that we need to make as many of our own pharmaceuticals as possible. We know from data, from reporting, that the drugs that are made overseas can be full of carcinogens and toxic impurities. There is all kinds of data fraud and other quality questions that the plants overseas are riddled with, including Viatris’s own plants, which are operating in India under an official action indicated warning from the FDA. So, why, in the middle of a pandemic, are we going through this exercise that every single report has told us is absolutely counterindicated to public health and our national interest?   

Ms. Eban says there is a:

sort of cone of silence that has come down over this shuttering of this critical manufacturing plant in West Virginia. It seems like it is both pharmaceutical and national security suicide to close this plant.

PS #2- Democracy Now October 22, 2021- Remember the TPP?  The Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty?  It was a proposal to use a “treaty” between countries to override national laws and invert the relationship between government and corporations; government would become subservient to and accountable to corporations rather than the traditional vice versa; corporate contracts would tell governments what laws could be passed.  Democracy Now did a story about how, during Covid, Pfizer has used contracts with countries worldwide to exactly that. . . Contracts that put Pfizer in charge so that the Pfizer corporation tells the countries what they can do when conducting what would normally be the province of government.  See: Public Citizen Blasts Pfizer for Putting Corporate Profit Over Increasing Access to COVID Vaccines, October 22, 2021.  That leaves us with a peculiar situation when it comes to these medical matters- Is it government or Big Pharma that we are dealing with? You'll never know which is which.

The Fourth of July- Quashing The Independence of Other Countries Day!- What We Now Celebrate: Enough Said?

 

Samantha Power, “Humanitarian Hawk,” Is Married To Cass Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalist”: They Both Advocate Censorship– Should That Advocacy Be On WBAI “Free Speech” Radio 99.5 FM?

With their Harvard professorship and presidential administration connections Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein appeared holding hands as a “Power Couple” in pictures in a “Presidential-Love Issue” of the Harvard Independent.- They both promote censorship of viewpoints that trouble them.

They are a strange couple.  Between them, they probably both wield a lot more power than is immediately obvious or generally acknowledged.  Even though they both write books they are both probably largely off the American public’s radar screen for what and who they really are. . .

They have each, respectively, been christened with oxymoronic monikers.  The fact that they are married almost certainly informs how those monikers should be interpreted: She, Samantha Power is the “Humanitarian Hawk,” (as in war advocacy “hawk”); he, Cass Sunstein, is the “Libertarian Paternalist.”

They are both out in the world advocating censorship.
   
Should their advocacy for more censorship be carried on WBAI “free speech” radio?  WBAI is the one truly listener supported public radio station in New York City, 99.5 FM.  WBAI is part of the Pacifica network.  With its record of free speech, WBAI, along with the rest of the Pacifica Network, has a long and venerable history of supplying counternarratives to those official narratives of the American Empire that have taken us to war repeatedly.

And if we engage in the kind of increasing censorship Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein propose?: Well then there is an extreme likelihood that free speech and those anti-war narratives would be censored and hollowed out.  Accordingly, should such advocacy for censorship be broadcast on WBAI “free speech” radio?

Should it?- Good question, and a real one, because I did hear exactly such advocacy for censorship on our "free speech" radio.

Unlike Cass Sunstein, I believe that the remedy for dangerous speech, no matter how pernicious, is pretty much always more better speech.  We are going to try that very thing in this article.  Consequently, I do not believe that Cass Sunstein appearing on WBAI “free speech” radio to advocate for censorship should be censored. . . .

. . . Instead, I believe that the remedy is to discuss who Mr. Sunstein and his wife Samantha Power are and the remedy will include exploring what they are really up to.

Once you know that Cass Sunstein believes in and studies how to use covert manipulation, then his recent appearance on WBAI can become a learning exercise with which to sharpen your ability to listen for the tactics he uses.  Moreover, while I believe that it is essential to reveal who Cass Sunstein is when he appears on WBAI, his choice to present himself in a more covert way is also actually something to learn from. . . .

What might be incumbent for Mr. Sunstein to reveal about himself in an interview?  We’ll get to consider that here.  Ought he be going so far as to tell us he is married to Samantha Power and to tell us who she is? . . . Maybe that’s a little extra, but let’s, in fact, start by discussing who Mr. Sunstein’s wife is.

Samantha Power (“Humanitarian Hawk”):

Samantha Power is in the news right now because President Biden has nominated her to head U.S.A.I.D. (U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID).  Biden says that if she is confirmed he will also appoint her to the National Security Council where she will, according to one former national security adviser, contribute “substantively to important interagency deliberations and effectively articulating how USAID is an essential component to help advance U.S. national security interests and to achieve our foreign policy objectives.”

USAID is generally understood by most moderately aware people to effectively be a semi-covert branch of the CIA.  The CIA edited Wikipedia currently goes at least this far:

Some say that the US government gives aid to reward political and military partners rather than to advance genuine social or humanitarian causes abroad. William Blum has said that in the 1960s and early 1970s USAID has maintained "a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover."

There is hint that Power’s appointment to USAID will entail an increase to the agency’s staff, its portfolio (the “scope of the knowledge” and the information it will be responsible for), and, along with that probably the agency’s budget.  We’ll note that, among other things, USAID is currently a channel for “billions” to “to fight COVID-19 in more than 120 countries” with a focus that “the Agency must prepare for lasting changes to the development and humanitarian landscape” in a context where “the COVID-19 pandemic threatens security and prosperity at home, challenges democratic governance globally, and has led to adversaries exploiting the pandemic to compete with the U.S.”  

This USAID role with respect to Covid should be filed away for future reference when we get to discussion of Ms. Power’s husband.

The term “high profile” is being widely used to describe Power as the nominee to head USAID it even being said that she would be the “among the highest-profile figures to ever occupy that role.”  She is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.  She was also previously on the National Security Council once before, where, according to the New York Times, “during the Obama administration she pressed for military intervention to protect civilians from state-sponsored attacks in Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2013.”  She was also involved in launching the United States into the illegal war being waged against Yemen.  That same New York Times article tells us that, if confirmed, Power “will confront adversaries by bolstering democracy and human rights,” and that “China is an early focus.”

“Confronting adversaries” using “human rights” as her excuse is what Ms. Power specializes in. It’s why she is called the “humanitarian hawk”; She leads or manipulates us into wars by selectively focusing on and proposing the premise that we are coming to aid of certain victims.  Back in 1988 in their book “Manufacturing Consent,” Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky laid out the concept of the “worthy victims” of the world versus the world’s “unworthy victims.” It’s a construct that American corporate press routinely aligns with to manipulate the American public into supporting or tolerating American military adventurism. The “worthy victims,” no matter how many or few and no matter how fictionally described, are those victims of regimes we supposedly must go to war with to rescue. The “unworthy victims,” no matter how many, are the direct victims of our country’s imperialist and military activities to whom we are supposed to give little thought to. As we give little though to them, they are often undercounted and unsympathetically described.

In 2015 journalist Robert Parry astutely nailed “interventionist” Samantha Power, very influential within the Obama administration, for exactly these kinds of manipulations; “promoting aggressive strategies that will lead to more death and destruction.” He argued that, with her liberal posing, Power was “laying the groundwork” for “potential ethnic slaughters.”  He noted that:

Though Power is a big promoter of the “responsibility to protect” or “R2P” she operates with glaring selectivity in deciding who deserves protection as she advances a neocon/liberal interventionist agenda. She is turning “human rights” into an excuse not to resolve conflicts but rather to make them bloodier.

Parry writes that Power “was one of the instigators of the U.S.-supported military intervention in 2011 which was disguised as an `R2P’ mission to protect civilians in eastern Libya” where Obama signed onto “a military mission that quickly morphed into a `regime change” operation” with Gaddafi’s troops being bombed from the air and Gaddafi eventually “hunted down, tortured and murdered.”  Parry observes:

Propaganda and genocide almost always go hand in hand, with the would-be aggressor stirring up resentment often by assuming the pose of a victim simply acting in self-defense and then righteously inflicting violence on the targeted group.

(See: Consortium News: Samantha Power: Liberal War Hawk, By Robert Parry, June 15, 2015.)

Parry was writing in the late spring of 2015, not that long after Max Blumenthal had also written about how Power is a “dangerous cynic” who is intent on “shrouding” who she really is by dressing herself up as someone who cares about human rights.  See: Samantha Power, Obama’s Atrocity Enabler, by AlterNet and Max Blumenthal, October 27, 2014.  In that article Blumenthal described how Power advanced her career when she theatrically teared up with an “incredible display of pain and emotion.”  Blumenthal details how one of Power’s most important roles in the Obama administration was to protect Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territory (“the world’s only active settler-colonial state”) from scrutiny, legal and otherwise, for charges of crimes against humanity in that country’s treatment of Palestinians (e.g. the Goldstone Report).

Power’s pose as humanitarian and interested in preventing human rights abuses is based importantly on a book she brought out just after 9/11 (February 20, 2002), “`A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide.”  

Her book makes the case that `decent Americans’ inside and outside government should not be so reluctant and refusing to get militarily involved to stop genocides.  Jeremy Kuzmarov, writing about Power when she had become “Obama's new ambassador to the United Nations” (she assumed that post August 5, 2013), took on the narrative of Power’s book and her assertions that U.S. policymakers should “intervene more forcefully to prevent human rights crimes” including arguing in this vein as a rationale for promoting the war in Afghanistan. See:  History News Network (Columbia and Georgetown)- Samantha Power: Liberal War Hawk and Second Rate Scholar, by Jeremy Kuzmarov.        

He notes that “Despite its being advertised as providing a comprehensive analysis of American response to genocide in the twentieth century, Power’s book does not discuss several major genocides of the post-World War II era.” He cites some omissions: the Indonesian genocide of 1965-66 with “between 250,000 to a million people . . slaughtered,” many of them targeted after being “identified through lists provided by US military intelligence”; nearly a billion dollars in economic assistance to Guatemalan General Efrain Rios Montt provided by the Reagan administration while he genocidally killed Mayan Indians who supported left-wing guerrillas; the U.S. military pacification campaigns in Vietnam that killed an untold and vast number of civilians; the Nixon administration's secret 1970 bombing of Cambodia that killed “anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 people” and overthrew the neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and destabilized the country leading to even more chaos and killing..

Kuzmarov says that Power’s book:

ignores the structural variables underlying most military interventions, including the quest for overseas military bases, access to mineral resources, and the imperatives of the U.S.-military industrial complex. For Power, the U.S. is an innocent country which can only do good. That successive presidential administrations have been complicit in major human rights violations through arms sales, police and military training programs and warfare escapes her notice.

Kuzmarov’s verdict is that Power’s book is “more fiction than history.”  It says a lot about the world we are living in and its power structures that, in 2003, Power’s book won her the Pulitzer Prize.  That means very few people will be asking how much of a work of fiction it actually is.

Currently, one of the most massive genocides going on is the siege warfare and bombing of Yemen for which the United States is one of the countries that must take principal responsibility. The U.S. is very involved in supplying support and all of the weapons used.  Jimmy Dore has taken on Power for being two-faced and hypocritical about Yemen given her role in arming the Saudis and authorizing the war and its funding this and thereafter `criticizing’ Trump for continuing the policies she and Obama implemented. See: Jimmy Dore Show- Saudi Arms Deal Exposes Obama Administration’s Jaw Dropping Hypocrisy, May 26, 2017.

The mainstream corporate media generally presents a flattering portrait of Samantha Power, but, obviously, right now, if you look on the internet you can find much that is far from flattering and very far from how Power would like to be portrayed when she coaxes us into new wars on humanitarian grounds.

Maybe one day she’ll have less of a problem with what people find on the internet: Samantha Power is calling for the internet and its public forums to be more censored than currently.  See this MintPress News, By Alan Macleod: Obama-Era Officials Call for More Government Control of Your Facebook Feed- Facebook content is already partially curated by government-linked think tanks, but for Samantha Power and others, that is simply not enough, October 26, 2020.

Hers is some of what Macleod has to say:

Writing in the Washington Post, senior Obama-era official Samantha Power has called on social media giant Facebook to do more to crush what she calls conspiracy theories and disinformation circulating on its platform.

Describing it as being “overrun with foreign disinformation,” Power demanded Mark Zuckerberg “take far more drastic steps” to “detox” the company’s algorithm. The former United States ambassador to the United Nations compared the viral vitriol circulating on Zuckerberg’s platform to the weaponized disinformation campaigns in the former Yugoslavia, implying that it could help spark a conflict in the United States.

Go to Macleod’s article to find more about how Facebook, since at least 2017 is already deliberately throttling traffic to left-wing alternative news sites and how the militaristic Atlantic Council is involved in such censorship while promoting war-promoting narratives the Atlantic Council would prefer not to have contradicted with facts.

From the Macleod article, Samantha Power who advocates censorhsip at an event of the militaristic Atlantic Council, an organzation charged with censorhsip responsibilities

Samantha Power, an interesting woman; she likes power and war and likes to be seen as something other than she is; she advocates censorship for more control as she wields such power.  Who would like to marry her?

That’s what we get to next!  In 2008, it was on July 4th,  Samantha Power married Cass Sunstein.  July 4th?  The Fourth of July?
 
Cass Sunstein (“Libertarian Paternalist”):
            
Sunstein and Samantha Power are said to have married in 2008 after they met working on Barrack Obama’s campaign.

That year, during the campaign, right around the time Sunstein and Power were married, Sunstein demonstrated himself to be a friend of illegal surveillance and of George W. Bush and those in his administration along with the telecommunications companies they had worked with to engage in such post 9/11 abuses of power.  Constitutional law professor Cass Sunstein is said to have been a key influencer who persuaded former Constitutional law professor, now presidential candidate (the presumptive Democratic nominee), Senator Barack Obama to vote on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 to give all of these characters retroactive immunity for the illegal warrantless wiretapping program by which the privacy of the telecommunications corporations customers was violated.  (Senator McCain against whom Obama was running skipped the vote.)  Obama also voted, “siding with Republicans,” to prevent debate on the retroactive immunity legislation.  

Max Blumenthal described it this way:

With Sunstein by his side, Obama reversed his initial objections to the NSA’s domestic spying operations, voting as a Senator for retroactive immunity.

The vote allowed the NSA to expand its domestic spying operations, clearing the legal hurdles obstructing the creation of PRISM. The stage was set for the second term scandal that would leave Obama reeling.   

Let us note at this time, that had the incredibly large scale government and telecommunication corporation illegal wiretapping activities not been accidentally discovered by someone willing and courageous enough to report it in a documented way, that to speak about describe the program or imagine it existing would have been to engage in conspiracy thinking.

Our intelligence agencies don’t just engage in passive surveillance.  Harry Truman, under whom the modern CIA was charted and launched replacing the OSS, regretfully considered that it was a mistake for the CIA to also be allowed to also have a nonpassive operational arm.  But that is what we must contend with when it comes to dealing with our intelligence agencies.

Cass Sunstein also believes in covert intelligence agency type operations. And in 2008, along with advocating retroactive immunity for illegal surveillance,  he was expressing his belief in such covert activities.

Project Censored is an organization that works to bring to light news, information and important narratives that are going unreported in the mainstream press.  It delves, in a media literate way, into the reasons those things are going unreported. As part of its work, every year Project Censored publishes a list of the top 25 stories of the year that are not being reported.  In 2010 one of those stories involved Cass Sunstein.  (Project Censored also, in the recnt decade, has an ecellent hour-long show that airs weekly on the Pacifica Network.)

Cass Sunstein was a member of the Obama administration in October of 2010. The official title he’d been appointed to by President Obama was head the Office of Information. Number 14 on Project Censored’s list of unreported stories October 2010 was, to a significant extent, about how in 2008 Cass Sunstein wrote a paper calling for groups with views unacceptable to the government (“extremist”) to be cognitively infiltrated by the government because “refuting these groups in public is not productive.”    

The Project Censored article noted that:

Sunstein is essentially calling for a return of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) from the cold war days when agents of the US government covertly infiltrated antiwar and civil rights groups with the intent to disrupt and discredit their activities—provoking violence or planning illegal acts themselves in order to bring groups up on criminal charges.

Glen Greenwald (in his pre-Edward Snowden reporting days, before the Snowden PRISM program revelations) had already caught on to the danger of what Sunstein was proposing and he wrote about it in January, prior to publication of Project Censored’s list that year.  See his piece in Salon: Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal- Cass Sunstein wants the government to "cognitively infiltrate" anti-government groups, By Glenn Greenwald, January 15, 2010.

Greenwald wrote:  

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs."  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  

    * * * *

Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social objurgates, or even real-space groups."  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).   This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role."

Greenwald’s January 15, 2010 Salon article linked to the abstract of Sunstein’s January 2008 paper.  A visit to that link indicates that on January 18, 2010, three days after Greenwald’s article, revisions were made to the page presenting Sunstein’s article.

Sunstein’s abstract, which scolds “conspiracy theories,” starts out:

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event.

Yes, the idea that `powerful people would act secretly in their own interests contrary to the public’s’ is a typical, serviceable definition of a conspiracy theory. As such, there is brazen Orwellianess to paradoxically propose that beliefs in conspiracy theories are somehow “antidemocratic” or “dangerously threaten” democracy.  Nonetheless, that’s a message we are being bombarded with now.  In another Orwellian turn, we are also being told that “free speech” is an enemy of democracy.  In yet one more paternalistic `leave democracy in the hands of the experts and establishment powers’ gambit, it is now being argued that we shouldn’t think too much about challengingly complex matters (so-called “rabbit holes”), but instead go to and rely on more mainstream official sources whenever there are controversial matters to be evaluated.

Sunstein, writing in 2008, asserts that “conspiracy theories” are the result of “cognitive blunders” by those who “suffer from a crippled epistemology.”   This was long before QANON’s the recent mysterious and heralded arrival on the scene as the embodiment of a strawman foil perfectly tailored to bolster Sunstein’s argument.  When Sunstein wrote in 2008, he cited 9/11 conspiracy theories as his principal target for excoriation saying that those who subscribe to such theories offer “serious risks” of “violence” and raise “significant challenges for policy and law.”    

Sunstein would undoubtably not be pleased by the Architects and Engineers For 9/11 Truth having just produced “Seven” the new 45 minute documentary about the engineering and mysterious "collapse" on 9/11 of the third building, World Trade Center Building 7.  Sunstein certainly wouldn’t be happy with the way their film forthrightly questions a key part of the official narrative about 9/11, nor would he be pleased that the Architects and Engineers have carefully, and patiently assembled evidence, including taking three years for a two pronged computer assisted engineering study of Building 7, given that their meticulously sober conduct fails utterly to conform to Sunstein’s preferred portrait of conspiracy theorists.

The tactic of scorning and dismissing conspiracy theories in a ridiculing manner is generally, by those who have examined the question, traced back to a CIA memo dated April 1, 1967 with instructions about how best to counter widespread public belief that the official stories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy weren’t to be trusted.  Yes, that memo was actually dated April 1st , April Fool’s Day.  But there's was no April fooling about its existence.

The notion that the CIA’s April 1st memo launched a now time honored tradition of trying to derogate “conspiracy theories” as “crazy” has, itself been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” if you would like to accept the judgement of Snopes rather than treat Snopes as suspect.  The CIA memo came out after the February 21, 1965 assassination of Malcolm X where government and police were involved in the plot that killed him.  Part of the CIA’s 1967 memo’s suggested argument for dismissing JFK assassination conspiracy theories was that Robert F. Kennedy would not have allowed such a conspiracy to remain hidden. June 6, 1968 brought the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, which itself came hard on, just months after the April 4, 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which was just a year after the CIA memo.  December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton was murdered by Chicago Police officers who plotted with the FBI to set up his execution. 

Snopes asserts that it’s a “conspiracy theory” to claim that the CIA launched the tactic term in 1967 to disqualify those who questioned the official version of John F Kennedy’s assassination, because:

the actual term “conspiracy theory” emerged much more recently. It was only a few decades ago that the term took on the derogatory connotations it has today, where to call someone a conspiracy theorist functions as an insult.

Actually, Snopes is wrong: On January 3, 1968, the New York Times ran a story closely tracking the instructions of the then recent CIA memo saying “Johnson Aide Is Critical of Conspiracy Theorists,” in which conspiracy theorists were “dismissed as ‘marginal paranoids’”  April 11, 1968, the New York Times ran a story “False Police Reports of Chase After Dr. King's Death Give Impetus to Conspiracy Theories.”

If Sunstein’s 2008 urging has been followed, that covert agents should by stealth "cognitively infiltrate" online groups, websites, activist groups, chat rooms, online social networks, and even real-space groups, and, if his goals of discrediting “conspiracy theorists” had been borne in mind, then who and what we are dealing with whenever we encounter almost anybody gets called into question.  As one critical example, who knows, what to make of so-called QANON?

Aside from giving government a fairly free hand with illegal surveillance and advocating covert and cognitive  infiltration and Sunstein has other ideas, as we will get to (censorship and clever techniques for choice manipulation) that he backs for controlling the behavior of his fellow citizens.  We need to mention one of the important things Sunstein is doing now and we should also mention what else he has been doing more recently . . .

We know from the short form summary bio information often posted in connection with Sunstein appearing in various places, that after 2012, after Sunstein was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, he served on: 1.) the President's Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, and 2.) on the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board.  Sunstein’s LinkedIn profile doesn’t have information about either of these two positions and neither does the relatively complimentary Wikipedia page about Sunstein.  Each of these positions sound like they’d be ideal for Sunstein to continue to pursue his ideas about manipulating public debate, but they were not exactly the same thing.

Although it isn’t easy to find information about Obama’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, it issued a report at the end of 2013 that was partly a quick response to the Snowden revelations in the spring of 2013.   The Washington Post, having just been acquired by Jeff Bezos, described the report as advocating “curbing” surveillance.  The ACLU accepted it at face value as proposing surveillance reforms.  It was opposed by some as proposing that surveillance be too severely restricted.

The report recommended the solution, which you may remember from the time, that instead of having the government collect private data on citizens, that this function be done by private third-party companies who would then be ready to turn such data over to the government when the government sought it.  That solution, entrusting third-party companies like Google and Amazon to collect private data is actually founded on a line of court cases that make the spying and data collection arguably Constitutional.  It is also consistent with the general trend pursuant to which most of the government’s surveillance operations have been privatized by contracting those activities to the private sector.  (See: Tim Shorrock’s 2008 book “Spies for Hire- The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing,”)

Sunstein joined the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board in July of 2016 the same time that Jeff Bezos was added to the board.  Already on the board to greet them was Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google’s Alphabet Inc..  Sunstein’s bio posts refer to his being on that board in the past tense and it is unclear to me what the usual tenure on the board is.  Schmidt, on the board when Sunstein arrived that July 2016, reportedly stepped down four years later in September 16, 2020.

The Pentagon's Defense Innovation Board does things like make recommendations about what makes Artificial Intelligence warfare ethical.  Meanwhile we find Sunstein participating (November 2020) in a “colloquium on AI Ethics” that is, among other things “part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities” (i.e. Stephen A. Schwarzman who has been involved as a NYPL trustee in dismantling NYC libraries), where it was being discussed why it is “very good” when algorithms eliminate the noise of “variability in judgments that should be identical.”

Cass Sunstein is leading the WHO advisory group (seen here) on “how best to increase” Covid-19 vaccine  demand

Our news these days is 24/7 about Covid-19.  Therefore it’s of the utmost importance that right now Cass Sunstein is the Chair the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health, which is working and giving advice under his leadership on “how best to increase” Covid-19 vaccine “demand in settings with high virus transmission & low demand, & to forewarn on risk reduction & equity.”  Does the `WHO affiliation' make this recent Sunstein role sound innocuous?  That’s a probable reaction for many, unless, as is unlikely, they have read the Grayzone’s article of last July, about how the WHO has, through various financial machinations, become more or less a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bill Gates who, himself is now strangely in charge of leading the world’s Covid response.

All that in mind, let us think back now to remember that Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, will be in charge dealing with the U.S.’s interactions concerning Covid with other countries worldwide if and when she’s appointed to head USAID.

Cass Sunstein Takes The Argument For Censorship To “Free Speech” Radio

Some months ago, I tuned in recently to listen to one of the Pacifica Network’s West Coast stations and was perturbed to hear what I thought were fairly naive arguments for more vigilant and aggressive censorship of so-called “fake news” by the big tech companies. I was troubled, because, after all, the Pacifica Network stations do brand themselves as “free speech” radio.  `That would never happen on Pacifica’s New York Station, WBAI,’ I told myself.  Full disclosure, I am a member of WBAI’s local station board, my wife also.

Then on a recent Sunday, I tuned into WBAI in the middle of a program and I heard a very similar argument for censorship of so-called “fake news.”  Muttering, I predicted than when we came to the end interview identity of the advocate for such censorship would be announced to be one of the amply paid professors whom I have been compiling into a list: These professors seem to have been seeded in colleges across the country as `experts’ on controlling `fake news.’  These “experts” seem always to be expert at teaching their students, like children at a playground, to ridicule and deride “conspiracy theories” as fake news, . .    But they never, ever seem to teach about the fake news involved in “Manufacturing Consent” (typically for war), as carefully analyzed with great scholarship and erudition by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.  One of these professors featured recently in the New York Times as a “pioneering scholar of misinformation and media manipulation” is Joan Donovan.  Like Sunstein and, his wife Samantha, Donovan can boast of being yet another Harvard professor.  

Oh my!. .

. .  When the name of the interviewee advocating censorship on WBAI was finally announced, I was stunned to find that it was none other than Cass Sunstein himself. . .

 The program was City Watch, Sunday, April 18, 2021, 10:00 AM.  Officially Sunstein was on this program that deals with New York politics and political affairs to discuss his book, “Liars: Falsehoods and Free Speech in an Age of Deception.”

Analyzing it closely, the WBAI interview serves to teach us a lot about Sunstein’s modus operandi.

Tweet annoucing that Cass Sunstein is going on WBAI "free speech" radio- can you guess from this that it will be to advocate changing the Constitution to allow for greater censorship?

Background: The structure of the Cass Sunstein interview is interesting in terms of whether it incorporates formulae Sunstein has advocated for manipulating choice.  As set forth in the Amazon summary for Sunstein’s earlier, more famous 2008 book, “Nudge” (supposedly about “Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness”) Sunstein considers “that no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way, and that we are all susceptible to biases” and that “by knowing how people think” and “choice architecture” we can push people into making decisions that those in charge think best “without restricting our freedom of choice.”  His “Nudge” book was published April 8, 2008, just months after he published his paper advocating covert cognitive infiltration to manipulate groups.

Because Sunstein seeks first to manipulate instead of actually restricting “freedom of choice,” he gets, as we have already noted, the seemingly oxymoronic moniker of a “libertarian paternalist.”  But he is not libertarian: He is about top-down societal control.  To reiterate, he and his “humanitarian” war advocating wife both advocate censorship and banning information whenever it its necessary to control thought and choice if manipulation fails.  He is, if you will, about starting out with `gentler’ more subtle forms of control and then graduating to stronger, more forceful controls. Given that he has advocated what is essentially an updated version of the covert COINTEL program, it is unclear where he draws any line, if, in fact he ever does.

The CIA edited Wikipedia says that the following criticism of Sunstein’s “Nudge” book (co-authored with Richard H. Thaler) has been offered by American law professor Pierre Schlag: that framing their issues, Sunstein and Thaler neglect a number of important questions: “(1) What to optimize? (2) When is a nudge a shove? (3) Should we prefer experts? and (4) When do we nudge?”   Most important, and left off Professor Schlag’s  list, is (5) Who is doing the “nudge” manipulation, and (6) What is their motivation, do they really want what is best for the person being manipulated, or, as with the example of Samantha Power, Sunstein’s wife, are they pushing for wars or other ill-advised things to generate cooperate profit?  Lastly, (7) does resort to this “nudge” approach value and encourage dumbing down the public– Thus will it lead to unexamined lives where the public doesn’t reflect on important decisions or engage in complex thinking about complex issues, leaving all such thought to those who are in power?

The Guardian thought Sunstein’s book was a “jolly” “romp.”

Sunstein’s Nudge concepts are not just theory.  He puts it into practice.  For example, Sunstein serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.  From the Deloitte consulting firm we learn:

In 2010 [i.e. two years after publication of Sunstein’s Nudge book and cognitive infiltration paper], the United Kingdom’s Behavioural Insights Team became the first governmental “nudge unit” to study and harness behavioral patterns for more informed policymaking and improved government services. Since then, there has been a proliferation of formal and informal nudge groups within government agencies, as hundreds of countries, states, and cities have applied the concepts of nudge thinking to improve outcomes.

It's something he might even proudly acknowledge: Cass Sunstein is an obvious inheritor of the mantle of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, the “grandfather of spin, public relations.”  Mickey Huff of Project Censored has pointed more than once to this significant Bernays quote (with ellipses) from Bernays 1928 book "Propaganda" (he thought “propaganda” was a good thing): 

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country . . . We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society . . . In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Sunstein’s concept about manipulating decisions (because he asserts people have `two systems of thinking’) is that when decisions are complex, or are not simplified and presented as complex, people can be pushed to make decisions based on emotional and reflexive biases.  
     
So-called “nudge theory” gets into the possibility of lots of little “micronudges” (cumulative?) And microtargeted designs targeting specific groups of people broken down differently. It is important to think about the extent that all of this is already integrated thoroughly into the technological ways big tech, including all of social media, now provide most of our means to interface with world and the public square.  Now even more so with the Covid lock down forcing on us more technology to interface with the world.

Although the WBAI Sunstein interview never mentions or even hints at Sunstein’s chairmanship of the WHO Behavioural Insights groups that is working to increase demand for Covid injections, the WBAI interview is to a large extent about Covid and controlling information about Covid.

The highly politicized subject of Covid has gotten to be a touchy one, i.e. also an emotional one.  When we get to reviewing the WBAI Sunstein interview in a minute, you will see how the touchiness of what people are supposed to, or not ask supposed to, ask questions about in this regard plays a factor in the arguments Sunstein makes for censorship.

Comedian and political show host Jimmy Dore (who has been advocating that people wear masks to protect themselves) has presented a number of clips of Dr. Anthony Fauci on his show demonstrating that Fauci cannot be relied upon to tell the truth and that Fauci has contradictorily changed, sometimes even during the course of an interview, what he is saying and clearly will dissemble.

Dore ran Fauci clips like that as part of his April 22, 2021 program and, at the end of that program (53:50), noted that when he first ran such a clip of Fauci lying about wearing masks, he was called in to meet with the General Manager and the Program Director of KPFK, the Los Angeles station that is part of the Pacifica network where his program was airing for over ten years. Asked by them about his Fauci reporting, Dore said he told the GM and Program Director that his reporting was accurate and that if they had a problem with the facts he reported they should let him know. Dore was oblique about what happened next and it is not entirely clear (although Dore opined that the station was moving a McCarthy-censoring way to the neocon right). But Dore said that he was off KPFK's air soon after.  (His show continues as a not yet censored internet podcast.)

KPFK’s website has a January 29, 2021 post consisting of  Jimmy Dore’s brief “Thank you” to Pacifica Radio and KPFK, saying in part:

    It was an honor to uphold a proud heritage.

        Being a voice against War,
        being a voice against Cold-War McCarthyism,
        being a voice for The People,

    Dissenting journalism that questions Establishment narratives will be needed more than ever now.

Knowing Sunstein’s penchant for manipulation and control and the subtlety of some of the techniques he espouses, it is interesting to see the extent to which the WBAI interview follows formulae for manipulation.  Here is the structure of the interview.  It is a very tight 22 minutes commencing the show that appears to have been carefully scripted on both sides (it would be interesting to know more about that scripting): 

    •    Nice relaxed folksy guitar intro.
    •    Host- A friendly, `Hope you’ve got your coffee.’
    •    The host then needs to slide into the subject because the program is about to go outside of its usual lane of covering New York affairs.  The host explains that the show has focused on health and that the Covid and death rate in NYC remains at a high level- `on Friday 58 more New Yorker died of Covid, 35 in New York City’.. But now 50 or older can get vaccines.
    •    A `concerned’ host speaks more about the danger to his listeners: I realize it is a personal choice and among our listeners there are people who do not believe in vaccinations, but I also worry about your health, and the fact that the virus is still mutating and there are recent discoveries of more contagious versions around the world.
    •    The host links that danger to misinformation and asks for their trust: I also worry about misinformation and who we listen to, where we get the information that we trust, and trust is an important word. - Who we treat as credible.
    •    The host asserts he is broad minded: I watch multiple TV shows consume a lot of media and read both liberal and conservative media so I can hear different political observations.
    •    Now the host sets up the dichotomy to manipulate listeners about who they are going to trust: “We just finished a presidency [Trump!] where it was clear that depending on what you watched you ether believed that at the outset of the virus it was under control and nothing to worry about [Trump!], or you felt that this was an imminent threat and we needed to act quickly or more quickly to rein in this virus and ultimately save more lives [I’m on the life-saving side]
    •    Now the host invokes another listener-hated right wing person to ensure the audience will respond emotionally and to cue the listeners that what is about to be presented as an alternative is more in line with their own political leanings, and thus ought to be more readily accepted: Just a few days ago Tucker Carlson said that perhaps the Covid vaccine doesn’t work [There are actually multiple “vaccines” or more accurately "shots"] and they are simply not telling you that.
    •    The host tells the audience: This is despite clinical trials [conducted by big Pharma and excluding normal  FDA oversight]
    •    The host invokes Dr. Fauci as a trusted figure while dissing conspiracy theories: And Dr. Anthony Fauci has called this a “crazy conspiracy theory.”
    •    Host posits falsehoods and equates them with danger: So when we think about distortions and lies, at what point do they become dangerous?
    •    Host makes a pitch for the safety of paternalism: Especially if we ourselves are incompetent in deciphering fact from fiction?
    •    The subject of censorship is broached with a less threatening euphemism: Should there be some type of a sanction [censorship]?
    •    Host: That brings me to my guest Cass Sunstein- Sunstein gets presented with happy sounding, noncontextual, and reassuring credentials:

        •    Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard
        •    He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School.
        •    A prize [from the lovely, reliable country of Norway] described as the “equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Law and the Humanities [very reassuring]
        •    He’s the author of dozens of books that you’ve heard of. [i.e. you know who he is and he’s a safe authority.]
        •    His wrote the “Citizen’s Guide To Impeachment” [He’s against Trump and on your side!]
        •    His newest book is about “liars” [i.e. he’s not one and wants to do something about them] and how we should deal with “false speech” in the modern era and how we should deal with it given the problem [“problem”?] of protection of free speech as a Constitutional principle to deal with.
        •    He “explores these issues with a creative and rich set of perspectives.” [Certainly, an invitation to be creative and share his "perspectives."]

    •    The intro doesn’t reveal that Sunstein has argued for covert infiltration and manipulation to control thought.  It doesn’t say that his wife is Samantha Power who has played a key role in manipulating the United States into several major wars.  It doesn’t say that Cass Sunstein is chair of World Health Organization World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights & Sciences and as head thereof is actually tasked with the responsibility to steer behavior to accept the Covid-19 narrative and vaccinations.  It doesn't mention his work on the Pentagon advisory board alongside the big tech guys.
    •    The Host suggests that fake news comes from hated figures like Trump and not, for instance from those who want to steer us into wars: The book is “timely” right now because of the four years of Trump [raise emotional hackles?] and how it raises the issue of “fake news” and “alternative facts.”
    •    Host links "lies" to death: In this last year, as you worked on the book, lying had “deadly [oh my!] consequences.”
    •    Sunstein makes the case that lying is different than it used to be and also more fearsome: Last few years the omnipresence of falsehoods, sometimes intentional, and they can spread to a lot of people in a hurry, has become clearer than ever.
    •    Sunstein: These might be lies about the source of the virus [more and more we are seeing revisions in the official story about the source of the virus leading us to a new official narrative that the source was a lab leak- officially an accidental one, which means that the first official stories about the source were actually false], lies about existence of the virus, lies about responses to the virus.  These lies, not hyperbolically speaking are literally dangerous [reptile brain], they can and have cost lives.
    •    Host goes back to anchor this in rejections of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity- And goes back, based on this dichotomy to ask the question of who to trust.
    •    Host and Sunstein play a game of “rating” the danger “from one to ten” and then don’t actually.
    •    Sunstein suggests that he has statistics that Carlson’s viewers were safer than Hannity’s viewers because Carlson was more in line with the official narrative.
    •    Host then says that there is a second chapter to Sunstein’s book that provides an official grid for determining when to censor people.  Host encourages listeners to study the grid to assess the level of possible harm.  Sunstein says the second chapter is his favorite and then supplies an anecdote that it was included at the suggestion of a friend.
    •    Sunstein says that the grid “helps break the logjam” between those “who think `freedom of speech, freedom of speech, freedom of speech,’- God Bless them [curtly dismissive- `freedon of speech’ - blah, blah.] and those who think `danger’ exclamation point.” [Appealing to simplistic thinking] He says “we are concerned about four things, just four; it’s not that complicated” [It’s not that complicated unless you ask whether the censor in charge of censoring is acting with good intentions.  Sunstein thereby has totally shifted the discussion away from whether the statements are true or need to be considered.]
    •    The host, making the Constitution seem unpleasant, asks: “Is there a constitutional right to lie”?
    •    Sunstein says we are “really at the frontiers now: He dismisses the 2012 Supreme Court decision that there is no Ministry of Truth [Stolen Valor case]  as from a bygone era that is so “Brittany Spears.” [i.e. he is encouraging that traditional value of free speech be discarded simply to keep pace with those new fashions your peers are probably moving on to- don’t be left behind.]
    •    Sunstein says you shouldn’t be able to sell health nostrums that don’t actually help heart disease. [A potential inoculation, because people who focus first on natural paths for maintaining their health might be among those more apt to question certain pharma-based narratives about Covid.]
    •    Host again makes the case that traditional values don’t apply because lying is now new and different, not what it used to be: We are in this age where it is so much easier to lie and where lies spread more quickly and widely through doctored videos, social media.
    •    Sunstein says were are “on a precipice” [frightening] and we need to do something about it! [i.e. living, like we used to, in a world like your grandparents and parents lived in, where everyone is aware that people lie, is no longer acceptable- action has become imperative].
    •    Sunstein explains the “truth bias” paradox that you can’t state a negative without invoking the positive and lodging that positive in people’s consciousness as a likely fact.
    •    Sunstein then says falsehoods tend to spread more rapidly than truth, maybe because they are more vivid and jarring and scary- This drives falsehoods to have comparatively more power than truth [That’s scary and vivid!].
    •    Sunstein belittles as silly `homilies’ what people traditionally believed about addressing falsehood: Social media companies shouldn’t resort to “homilies” about how the best remedy for false speech is more speech.
    •    Giving Sunstein extra validation, the host takes this opportunity to say he is glad that Sunstein will now tell the listeners about the “responsibility” that social media has to “censor or respond to” clear falsehoods.
    •    Sunstein says the social media companies should censor what they deem to be false content according to the guidance of his grid.  [sounds so reliably scientific!] He manages to sound sage and considered by saying some cases will be easy cases to decide, some will be hard and in some cases reasonable people may differ.
    •    The host asks again about “counterspeach” as a remedy [previously alluded to by Sunstein as a `homily’].  Sunstein says it is generally a remedy, but he says that “with fear and trembling” it isn’t a full remedy.
    •    The host then goes sideways to get into the case for paternalism.  He asks whether the lies are hurting society or causing people to become more astute, ‘better learners” who are about to discern falsehood.
    •    Sunstein says that the lying is hurting us “a lot.”  He says its “all very well to talk about freedom of speech,” but with the “vivid” example of health and safety and if you have “say 200 people dead from a health related matter that’s a tragedy, and not an abstraction. .[even though he had just offered “say 200 dead” as a theoretical]  . really causing damage, and we all need to think what to do about it”
    •    Sunstein tells us our law and Constitutional law needs to be reassessed. To make this less scary he says “not radically.”
    •    AND Sunstein tells us “the practices of our social media platforms website operators need to be reassessed.” [In other words the entire internet world that now constitutes our public square and most of the basis for interfacing with anyone else these days needs to be reassessed fro how it is used- By people like Sunstein?]                             
    •    Then Sunstein does something really cute: As to whether or not people are smart and learning to deal with fake news, he says its an empirical question with no data, but he divides up the public saying there’s “a lot of diversity out there.”  The division?  Getting specific on two fronts, he refers to “all of us have heard from friends and family something crazily preposterous, that they actually believe and they tell us that crazy preposterous thing.”  This is an oblique, but fairly obvious reference particularly to the QANON convenient strawman foil.  (Remember that Cass Sunstein advocated squelching what he defined as “conspiracy theories,” long before QANON’s arrived as a serviceable strawman to mock them.)  Then Sunstein offers his other category, that some people are “astute and cautious” [that allows listeners to self-flatter by imagining themselves in this category- it also allows them to imagine themselves as being part of the paternalistic elite who will do the censoring].  He also says that it can be a question about what people want to believe.    
    •    The last thing Sunstein signs off with as the host concludes is to say that if you put his name into Google you’ll find what his Harvard employer website says, which, he jokes, is “mostly truthful” and “you will find a lot of falsehoods about me.” [I don’t know if the WBAI show host was intrigued enough to look to see what falsehoods Sunstein was referring to, but it does not appear to be easy to find internet falsehoods about Sunstein, only the true things that are out there.]

Conclusion:

WBAI and Pacifica were key in opposing and publishing reliable information about the war in Vietnam when that war was underway. WBAI, Pacifica and its listeners are therefor naturally acutely aware of the COINTEL program that infiltrated and worked to debilitate the antiwar movement, not to mention also the civil rights movement and groups like the Black Panthers. It would be naive to think that WBAI and Pacifica did not experience some of that debilitating infiltration itself.  Sunstein being the advocate, with very limited gloss to it, of what is essentially a modern day continuation of the COINTEL program, there is perhaps a certain hubris on Sunstein’s part to also venture onto WBAI’s "Free Speech" radio and advocate for censorship based on the idea that those, like him, put in charge of the censoring, will know best. . .

. . . His visit as a guest on the station is almost like a reconnaissance mission into enemy territory to see if he will be recognized.  It is even more like a traipse into enemy territory given that Pacifica and WBAI continue to be critical of the wars and the false narratives that lead the American empire into them.  We are talking about the kind of narratives that Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power is so much a part of.

True hubris?: Or is Mr. Sunstein guessing that he will be recognized and simply trying to provoke a reaction?

PS: I have a coda to this article that I will publish separately concerning whether Pacifica’s flagship news program, incubated out of WBAI, has been affected by Mr. Sunstein- But that is another article, for later publication.