Coming to a Neighborhood Near You: "The Explainers" will explain complex issues

The Explainers ^ | January 5, 2009 | Scott Lewis

[bd476]

San Diego Explained: Chargers Stadium Quest

Below is the first of many video explainers we'll be doing in partnership with NBC 7/39.

I'm going to be helping with them a lot as we get the ball rolling, but the whole team will work to

break down major, complex issues in San Diego to help
residents understand what's happening in their community.

We'll talk more about it as the program gets revved up.

[bd476]

"...The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction.

Beware, I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of allowing events to drift along until it is too late.

If there is to be a fraternal association of the kind of I have described, with all the strength and security which both our countries can derive from it, let us make sure that that great fact is known to the world, and that it plays its part in steadying and stabilizing the foundations of peace.

There is the path of wisdom. Prevention is better than the cure..."

Winston Churchill's Sinews of Peace Speech March 5, 1946

[bd476]

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You

Their agenda is clear: break down into simplest terms the disinformation the leftist media is already delivering.

• Just who are these "Explainers"?
  
  
• Who funds them?
  
  
• Who needs them?

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Is there one simple problem you think you could solve in 2010 if people just understood it better? What?

I don't believe any of our environmental problems are simple at all. And it's not a matter of educating people.

The fact is, there is a large segment of society that is so ideologically out of sync with the progressive/environmental "agenda" that it doesn't matter how many facts are put on the table, they will never agree with us.

I wish I were more optimistic, but the reality of the situation is that society is governed from the fringes, not the center.

The Explainers - Voice of San Diego

[bd476]

Dezinformatsia: active measures in Soviet strategy. - book reviews

National Review, July 13, 1984 by Arnold Beichman

YOU WILL NOT find the word "disinformation" in the Oxford English Dictionary nor in the OED supplement published in 1972. Nor could I find it in Webster's Third, or in the 1973 Webster's New Collegiate. So, very wisely, the scholarly authors of this fascinating volume on one aspect of Soviet intelligence--media activities and political-influence operations--decided to use the transliterated Russian form of the neologism in their book title. "Dezinformatsia" describes an important and successfull exploited weapon in the Soviet war against the West.

To define "disinformation" one must first understand the organizational structure for carrying out what the Kremlin calls "active measures." These include an "integrated array of overt and covert techniques for influencing events and behavior in, and the actions of, foreign countries." The basic aim of "active measures" (or AMs) is "to deceive the target and to distort the target's perceptions of reality."

AMs are executed on two levels: 1) Overt: diplomatic exchanges, officially sponsored propaganda channels, international cultural activities. 2) Covert: the attemp to influence media in foreign countries by placing soviet-authored or Soviet-inspired articles in foreign publications with attribution to a non-Soviet writer or without any attribution at all; sponsorship of clandestine radio broadcasts; use of international front organizations; military maneuvers and paramilitary operations, such as support of insurgency movements and terrorist groups.

"While every state seeks to influence foreign governments and public opinion," Professors Shultz and Godson write, "the Soviets also use covert (i.e., secret) political techniques to increase dramatically the effectiveness of their overt propaganda and overt political efforts." A 1980 congressional report cited a KGB manual's definition of "strategic disinformation" as a way of assisting "in the execution of state tasks [by] misleading the enemy concerning basic questions of state policy, the military-economic status, and the scientific-technical achievements of the Soviet Union; the policy of certain imperialist states with respect to each other and other countries; and the specific counterintelligence tasks of the organs of state security."

The authors define covert disinformation as "as non-attributed or falsely attributed communication, written or oral, containing intentionally false, incomplete, or misleading information (frequently combined with true information), which seeks to deceive, misinform, and/or mislead the target."

The one aspect about which little is publicly known is the agent-of-influence operation "carried out by a person who subtly and artfully uses his or her position, influence, power, and credibility to promote the objectives of a foreign power in ways unattributable to that power." The agent of influence can be someone recruited for his task or can be an unwitting, manipulated individual. In between the controlled agent and the unwitting collaborator is what is called the "trusted contact." Any well-informed Washington observer could with little difficulty make up a list of individuals who fit easily into the agent-of-influence category but about whom there is no evidence other than the question: Cui bono?

What makes this book particularly valuable is that it is not merely theory (even though both authors are professors of international relations and both are attached to the academic Consortium for the Study of Intelligence). It n contains interviews with two former Communist disinformation specialists, Ladislay Bittman and Stanislav Levchenko, who spell out the clandestine techniques used by the KGB and its satellite agencies in the secret war and explain why these techniques are, more often than not, successful.

Anyone who doubts the success of Soviet active measures in creating an atmosphere favorable to the Soviet Union should ponder questions such as the following:

When was the last time Professor Marshall Shulman or Professor Seweryn Bialer condemned the Afghanistan invasion, the Berlin Wall, or Soviet anti-Semitism; or raised moral questions concerning the inhuman treatment of, say, Anatoly Shcharansky; or attacked the Soviet dictatorship's "strident rhetoric" about the U.S. with the same disdain as they attacked President Reagan's "strident rhetoric" about the USSR?

Why is Namibia (like Rhodesia in the 1970s) a global crisis, but Moscow's satellization of Syria a non-global non-crisis? Why is Somoza bad and Ortega Good? Why are "death squads" always right-wing? Why is Pinochet's martial law worse that Poland's martial law, about which you never hear any more? Why are the CIA's covert operations always overt? Why don't the KGB's covert operations receive congressional scrutiny when- these operations--like eavesdropping--affect American civil liberties?

What member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, would dare suggest reviving the House Committee on UnAmerican Activites or she Senate Internal Security Subcommitee to look into the operations of the Institute for Policy Studies?

Dezinformatsia: active measures in Soviet strategy

[john in springfield]

California already has some people who are really talented at explaining and solving the complex issues that face our society:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5oVzbwYWpg&feature=related

[bd476]

ROFLOL!

However ...


God Bless that poor girl, I'm sure she means well.
Uhm, I mean she thinks the East Coast allows slaves and
land is free and why do they have to charge rent
... and junk

[AmericanInTokyo]

Additional "Explainer Brigades" fan out throughout North San Diego County:

But of course! FOR THE CHILDREN>>>>>>>>>>>

[Enchante]

oooooohhhhh...... ROFL

Did she need drugs to destroy her brain or is this merely the usual result of Cali brainwashing???

She made me want to bang my head against the wall, because it was just too painful to realize that this is supposed to be an adult person in our society.

Another reminder of how the Obamanation got himself elected!

p.s. Maybe all those “slaves” on the east coast could be brought west to work all the “free” land she talked about..... free labor + free land and those organic crops will cost the hippies less than ever!

[gunnyg]

Hmmm...
First Impression:
Is a Community Explainer anything like a....
....community organizer?

Of course not.

[gunnyg]

And...

to whom will the book be dedicated?

:)
Citizen G
**********

[razorback-bert]

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