Disinformation | Climate, technology and chaos Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Disinformation’

Introduction to Neoliberalism, Plutocracy and Liberty Posts

December 17, 2019

This series of posts investigates some of, what for most supporters of neoliberalism, are its unintended consequences. I am, however, not entirely sure that these unintended consequences were not predictable and were not intended by the power elites.

In particular, this series of posts focus on neoliberalism’s effects on liberty. Neoliberalism has been sold as increasing liberty and destroying the interfering State, but I argue that this is dubious at best, and that neoliberalism promotes the liberty of the power elites through capitalist plutocracy and declining liberty for everyone else.

The arguement proceeds by:

1) Discussing liberty and types of liberty. This is all very basic, but necessary to begin with. The suggestion is that changes which increase the liberty of the power elite and business, will not necessarily enable the liberty of other people. Liberty may need to be enabled to exist, rather than simply come into being through lack of restrictions on the ruling class. Furthermore, some argue that liberty involves self-knowledge and self-control, and that this is hard to gain in capitalism which encourages indulgence and false information, as a normal part of its operation.

2) We then look at Neoliberal ideas of liberty, and the reduction of liberty to action in a free market. The market allocates more freedom to those who are wealthy, and less to those who are not, and therefore boosts the opportunity for rule by wealth, or plutocracy. Capitalist markets make people dependent on jobs and obedience, turn liberty into consumption, and put extraction of profit before everything. Making the market both primary and good suggests that profit should be the main indicator of value, makes the interests of big business overrule all others, and strongly implies that people who demonstrate competence in the market are superior and should rule, which further encourages plutocracy.

3) Neoliberals demand a small weak state but they usually neglect to tell people that they mean a State which is weak at helping ordinary citizens, but strong in defending the power of wealth. They pretend that the State is the only form of oppression, but the weaker the State, the easier it is for big business to have disproportionate influence, and the more oppressed other people can become. Wealth enables plutocrats to buy and control all other sources of power from violence to information.

4) After setting out the problems and apparent dynamics of neoliberalism, I then discuss some suggestions for remedying the problems, including the Convention of the States process, and the people’s recapture of the State to break corporate power.

5) Finally there is a note on social mobility. I describe some of the problems with assuming that social mobility is a solution to plutocracy. Social mobility does not have to threaten plutocracy, if it does not threaten the modes of plutocracratic power – it might just change the personnel, at best, and it might not even do that, because the control of wealth is concentrated in so few hands.

Some Definitions:

Neoliberalism is a movement largely sponsored by the corporate sector through its funded think tanks (from the Mont Pelerin Society to the Cato Instute and IPA), media organisations (like the Murdoch Empire, but nearly all media is corporately owned, and sponsored, and neoliberal in orientation) and university chairs. The team-up between business and academics, just happens to consolidate corporate power and dominance. Neoliberalism involves a lot of talk of “free markets” but in practice involves the cutback of the participatory State that is mildly helpful to everyone, and the promotion of State protection for, and subsidisation of, the established corporate sector. It may actively promote the harm of ordinary people in order to reinforce the power and liberty of wealth.

In other words, neoliberalism seems to aim at making the State a tool of the wealthy ruling class. Those who promote the idea that the State is the sole problem, and the free market the sole solution, seem to act as unwitting supporters of this corporate take over of the State.

In practice, whatever they say to the contrary, neoliberals make profit the only good. If liberty conflicts with profit, then profit will win out. The short truth appears to be that neoliberalism has everything to do with maintaining established power and profit, and nothing to do with liberty or solving real problems.

In general, neoliberal, or other pro-capitalist politicians and theorists, do seem to find it easier to work with self proclaimed authoritarian fascists or religious fundamentalists than they do with democratic socialists, or people opposed to tyranny or oppression. The History of US foreign policy , and business support for Hitler, should pretty much demonstrate that. The tendency of capitalists to try and capture the State to suppress protest against their rule through hardening laws against protest (as is happening in Australia to stop climate change protest) also gives them that affinity. Arms manufacturers support military action, and massive unaccountable military spending, and this activity implies military action or threat of such action. Some argue that the US has engaged in quite a few wars to protect corporate oil supplies and property, not only to project the power of the plutocratic state.

Neoliberalism is often sold as conservatism but, as I have argued previously [1], [2], [3], it is not conservative at all, it aims at a radical transformation of society, and the destruction of all tradition that considers life and virtue is about anything other than profit.

Plutocracy is defined as as rule by wealth, and the direction of all policy to support the wealthy (or wealthy families) and increase their power and wealth, and to suppress, deliberately or otherwise, any other variety of power or counter-power.

Rather than being an accidental feature of capitalism, I would suggest that crony capitalism, attempts at State capture and the imposition of plutocracy are an inevitable feature of that system. I know of no capitalism which is: not full of cronyism and collaboration; does not involve attempts at state capture and buying politicians; setting inheritance rules so that families (like the Bush’s and the Trumps) retain their power for as long as possible; and implementing market regulations that favour their established patterns of behaviour while preventing others from rising to challenge them. This arises because humans “team-up” for the benefit of their identity groups. Neoliberalism encourages team-ups in business, and in the politicians that speak for it, but not elsewhere.

Final Remark

I apologise in advance for the length of these posts and the absence of much empirical documentation. The lack of documentation is excused because it would make these posts about the length of a book. Besides, some highly influential forms of neoliberal economics don’t even give a nod to empiricism in their formulations either, and at least I’m not attempting a general theory of human action.

Next: Casual Remarks on Liberty

Tags:Disinformation, neoliberalism, politics
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Climate arguments

November 26, 2019

Hardly original, but…. A small number of arguments against doing anything about climate change get eternally repeated.

“CO2 is a natural product, produced from respiration, would you alarmists ban people from breathing?“

CO2 like a lot of other substances is absolutely necessary at low levels. At high enough levels (say 15% or so) it is poisonous to humans – which is why putting your head in a completely intact plastic bag, and sealing it around your neck, is not a good idea.

If there is enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then they act like blankets on beds, and trap the heat in. The person in the bed gets warmer. The areas under the Greenhouse gasses get warmer. The basic science of this has been known for over 100 years. It has not been successfully overthrown, or falsified, in all that time, which is pretty impressive for a theory.

All the respiratory creatures in the world breathing together are not a problem as they have evolved within the system over a long period of time – that system was reasonably balanced; we recently have disrupted that balance. There is no need to worry about breathing, unless you are worrying about breathing in particulate pollution from massive forest fires, coal dust from coal trains, fumes from coal burning, smog from car exhausts, and so on; that is often quite harmful, and should be worried about.

“There is only a small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it cannot have any significant effect. Why is this only a problem now?“

We might have only increased the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere a small amount, but in complex systems sometimes small changes have large results. That is just life.

The real problem is the rate of change. In the last 70 years we have massively increased greenhouse gas emissions. In the first decade of this century we doubled world coal consumption. An article I read today, argued that Global CO2 emissions have grown by 62% since 1990, and we were currently on track to beat last years record emissions. This increase stresses the natural systems, a stress which is increased by deforestation, ocean acidification and so on, all of which lessen the capacity for draw down of the emissions. There are a lot of factors at play, such as methane discharge, which make the consequences worse than they might have been otherwise.

We have not been burning fossil fuels for that long. Previously, people did notice the hideous smog pollution in cities from the burning of coal; London was famous for its ‘pea-soupers,’ and people died of respiratory complaints generated by the smog. This was fixed in the 1950s, and pollution lowered. It is still a problem in many cities.

Fossil fuel burning is releasing hundreds of millions of years of accumulated and stored carbon into the atmosphere in a very short period of time. The earth system is extremely unlikely to be able to cope with this, any more than your body system might if you drank an alcoholic’s life-time’s worth of alcohol in half an hour.

“Humans are too puny to destroy the world.”

Let us hope so, but we have no evidence for that position always being true. Anyway, we are not talking about destroying the world, just about it being altered enough to undermine current civilisation and its comforts.

Humans have changed and destroyed environments repeatedly, often completely destroying their own societies in the process. Now we have the opportunity to do it globally.

While we are not predicting that all humans will die, it is true the world will happily go on without humans.

“Climate changes Naturally“

Yes it does. That does not mean humans are not changing it now, or that climate change is always going to be gradual and easy to deal with.

Climate can change as a result of events such as volcanic action, large enough meteorite strike, rotation of the magnetic fields, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The fact that climate can change because of these kind of events, suggests that it is also possible that humans could change climate. Indeed, the idea of solar radiation management, depends on the idea that humans can change climate.

“Life flourished when CO2 Levels have been much higher than they are in any foreseeable future.“

True. Life will flourish eventually under almost any circumstances: the previous five great extinctions show that. I’m just not sure human life, of the kind that we have now, could flourish during the unstable transition period. And some geological period’s climates would seem to have generated conditions which could have been difficult for humans to survive in, without biological change.

“Climate is complex you cannot predict what will happen. You can’t even predict the weather next week with certainty. Saying climate change is going to destroy us is extravagant alarmism. It won’t happen.“

It is true that climate forms a complex system. However, that does not mean you cannot make any predictions at all. You can often predict trends, even while you cannot predict specific events at particular times. It is quite legitimate to expect that weather will be colder in Winter than in Summer. It is also legitimate to predict that weather will become more tumultuous and intense, with increasing warming, while not being able to predict the weather in a specific place in a year or more.

If climate is complex, which it is, I don’t understand how ‘skeptics’, can be so certain that we can have no effect on it, and that any change won’t be too bad.

“All the models have failed and there is no proof of climate change, and no proof that CO2 is responsible.“

That depends on what you count as proof. I find the evidence and theory pretty persuasive myself, although it is true that I am not qualified in climate science. It is also true that some of the predictions have seriously underestimated the changes that are happening.

An increase in rates of warming will make things worse, that’s just logic: it cannot make things better.

We are already getting runs of temperatures in Australia, which can make survival without air conditioning difficult, and certainly lowers the amount of day time work people can do outside. The water losses we are suffering from could be primarily arising because of financialisation of the water supply, rather than climate change, but society can always make things worse. Drought will increase the severity and spread of bushfires. For some reason some governments are refusing to prepare for climate disruptions. This seems to be a bad idea – we generally prepare for forecasted threats even if they are relatively unlikely and small scale.

“Global Warming is just a theory.”

Yes. That is true. It is a theory on which a lot of work has been done, and most people who are experienced in the field, think that it is pretty good, and that the facts seem to support it.

That there is no global warming, that global warming is entirely natural, that we cannot do anything about it, and that climate change is not that bad, are equally theories, even if some people think they are true. Most people who are more qualified than me to make pronouncements on the issue, do not think these particular theories are correct or that there is much evidence for them. You may know better of course, and let us hope that you are correct, but we cannot be certain you are.

“I’ve found this paper which disproves global warming. It shows it’s all a hoax.”

If true, that’s a massive amount of work to be done in one paper. If the paper is that revolutionary it will certainly make the author’s name and be noticed in the field.

Where was it published? Is that a name journal reviewed by other climate scientists, a pay to be published journal or some think-tank journal?

What does it actually argue? Sometimes the connection between these supposedly path breaking articles and humanly generated climate change is not that great. I have been shown supposedly revolutionary, articles which are said to argue that climate change has occurred without human intervention. Yes, that’s true. No big deal, it does not mean human acts cannot produce climate change. Or someone might say this article shows that climate models ignore some obvious feature of climate (like cloud cover). I don’t know enough about the models to say for sure, but if it is obvious and ignored, I’m pretty sure someone will factor it into a model now and run them to see what results are produced. That is the point, science is meant to improve with criticism; if the article is good, then some people in the field will probably take up the ideas.

Sometimes we will hear that one set of measurements completely refutes climate change. This is improbable. If we used the sets of measurements I gathered in high-school physics then Newtonian mechanics is inaccurate as well. The data which allows us to say climate change is happening comes from a large variety of sources, and was made by many different groups, and checked by many different groups, and the correlations between different data sources would be examined. Scientists are not inherently more stupid than non-scientists. Given that climate is a complex system, it would not be surprising if some sets of data where anomalous or surprising. Again, it is the general trend that is important, one set of results proves nothing. It could have been warmer in one part of the polar circle in the past than it is now, while it was colder everywhere else.

I don’t actually know the consequences of one paper or one set of results, but I suspect the person bringing it forward does not either.

“AGW is a religion in which faith is enough.”

It seems to me that there is no proof that civilisation can survive growing ecological destruction and climate change either. Thinking that we can do so without any change in the ways we live is a matter of faith, as it does not depend on the best knowledge that we have.

In fact, it depends on the best knowledge that we have being completely wrong. That may even be true, but I would not want to risk the fate of my children and myself on such an assumption.

“Climate change is global socialist conspiracy to get the State to control us…“

That many solutions to climate change involve some kind of change in capitalism does not mean that climate change is a socialist conspiracy, it just means that, on the whole, pro-capitalist thinkers and politicians can’t, or won’t, deal with the problem, or they can’t see a way out without changing something they want to keep. If you really don’t want a ‘socialist solution’, then work towards a solution which pleases you (surely you are smart enough); and this does not mean leaving it to fossil fuel companies to decide not to make a last ditch profit out of burning and pollution.

Anyway, were the socialist 1950s to 60s with their high tax rates, extension of political participation and expanded social security really that terrible? I don’t think so. Socialism is just about increasing the participation and influence of ordinary people on the State, and that is what happened. It does not aim at control of the people, but it does oppose leaving rulership to the liberty of capitalist elites and their cronies. But, by all means choose something else.

By the way, those anti-recognising-global-warming types do seem quite prepared to use the State to threaten and control people who want to do something – so as that could be seen as a State based infringement of liberty, how about you help stop them?

“Scientists are conspiring to produce junk science“

Do you have any real evidence for that, other than a lot of scientists agree that the evidence supports a proposition that you don’t like?

Have you ever met any scientists? Do you know how unlikely it is that all climate scientists are socialists? The whole career path of many scientists is based on the idea that they will discover something new and overthrow some piece of established science. They don’t sit around trying to figure out how to ignore data that is contrary to other people’s research. In my experience they can spend all night arguing about some obscure piece of stuff, that nobody cares about. They don’t all have great social skills, and they seem unlikely to manage to get a group of people scattered all over the world, with no particular connection (except membership in some scientific body to get a bit of prestige), to agree on anything, certainly not something political. Unless, that is, they think the theory and data are true. Let’s also be real here, how many people outside science actually read scientific papers? They have almost no commercial or popular pull. Scientists, on the whole would be lousy politicians.

On the other hand fossil fuel companies are linked by organisations whose sole purpose is to promote sales of fossil fuels and make them look good. They are notorious for trying to gain political advantage for themselves, teaming up to deceive people and buy politicians to implement their will. They are prone to bribery, corruption, threat, taking tax payers’ money and refusing to clean up after themselves. They routinely lie about the extent of the damage they cause and the ease of fixing it up. We know, they have known about climate change and ignored the data, because it would affect them economically. Exxon is currently in court over this. They have interests in commercial media and can, to a large extent, control the stories that people hear. They have connections with other businesses which also work towards complete corporate domination over the political process disguised as ‘free market’ think tanks. Think of the Atlas Network for example.

Unlike scientists they have the tradition, the money, the motivation, the power, the ability and the organization to conspire.

Is it more likely that a disorganized bunch of nerds has managed to deliberately scare the world for obscure political purposes, or that a bunch of powerful well connected companies are trying to deceive you about the danger to keep their profit going?

I’d say, any realistic political worldview would choose the fossil fuel companies as the most likely villains.

“You just want to pull down capitalism, or society, or do something unpleasant.“

No. I want to avoid the ecological destruction that arises from our success, and I would rather that production, and the extraction of resources, does not poison humans or other creatures, and make it impossible for current societies to continue to improve. Let’s face it, if climate change does keep coming, the results will be very unpleasant.

“Lots of good things are happening in the world, like poverty reduction, and you want to stop them”

The idea that we can have lots of good things happening, does not mean that no bad, or disastrous, things can be happening at the same time.

However, the bad things which are likely to happen because of climate change will almost certainly primarily affect the world’s poor in the initial stages. So if you really do care about poverty, then you would probably want to stop climate change.

“The Socialist agenda of AGW types, means that solutions cannot be debated on merit. The politicisation has driven the Right away.”

Personally, I would expect people to try and solve problems in accordance with their normal social and political agenda. It is not as if the Right has never done this. They usually apply their neoliberal agenda to everything.

However, with this problem, they have rather oddly insisted on doing nothing and pretending the problem does not exist. They offer no solutions, they don’t even promote adaptation. They did not have to do this, and they would not normally deal with problems in this manner.

This unusual behaviour cannot be blamed on the Left. How could the Left force them to do nothing? – that was their own decision; they should take responsibility for it rather than excuse themselves by blaming others for their own actions. Blaming others is just more politicization of the reality.

“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.“

and “We all admit that Climate is changeable and variable. There is nothing new here”

This is perhaps a uniquely Australian objection. However if Australia is subject to floods, droughts, bushfires and variable and extreme weather events, then we can expect that climate change and other ecological destruction (forest clearing, fracking, massive water use in mines, building over fertile land, etc.) will make the situation worse.

Therefore it would be sensible to prepare for longer droughts, bigger floods, and earlier, more intense and widespread bushfires. We need to train more fire fighters, and have the military trained and ready to help. It would be good to prepare country towns for longer water shortages and to make sure rivers flow rather than get held back for industrial crops which require huge amounts of water, and where the profit all ends up overseas. We need to stop mining under catchment areas, so that our water does not disappear down cracks. We may need more solar or wind powered desalination plants (rather than mock the few we have as unnecessary alarmism). We possibly need to protect endangered wildlife and scenic areas as well, if we want to retain our tourist potential. And we may need to change farming techniques to retain soil fertility and reduce moisture loss.

To keep Australia economically functional we cannot pretend that climate change is unlikely to have any significant effects on the country because the country is ‘harsh’. The harshness means we have to look after it better, and expect even wilder turns. Things are not the same as they were, even if we neglect climate change – larger population (as encouraged by both sides of politics) is also adding strains given the way we organise our ecology. We need to think hard about the way we live in our country.

“Its not our fault, we make only a small amount of emissions, so there is no reason for us to do anything, it won’t make any difference.”

See Only 1.3%

While Australia only emits 1.3–4% of global emissions, this puts us in the highest emitters per head of population, and we export masses of coal and gas which also increases emissions elsewhere in the world, so Australia is directly responsible for a lot of the pressures leading to runaway climate change.

Basically if wealthy developed countries can’t be bothered to cut their emissions, then we cannot expect poorer, still developing countries to be careful about their emissions either. The most likely result or our refusing to do anything, is that it will encourage us to encourage others to do nothing, and embolden others to refuse to do anything, and climate change really will get out of hand.

It is often difficult to set a good example, but that does not mean it should not be done.

Tags:climate change, Disinformation
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Australia increases fossil fuel exports

November 24, 2019

This is largely a series of quotes from the UN 2019 Production Gap report.

Governments [through out the world] are planning to produce about 50% more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with a 2°C pathway and 120% more than would be consistent with a 1.5°C pathway.
P.4

Australia is not only a major fossil fuel producer, but also the world’s leading exporter of coal (IEA 2019a) and the second largest producer and exporter of LNG (IGU 2018). With government backing, and proposed major new investments in mines and port facilities, Australia’s coal and gas outputs and exports could continue their rapid rise (Office of the Chief Economist 2019). Proposed large coal mines and ports — if fully completed — would represent one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expansions (around 300 Mt per year of added coal capacity) (Buckley 2019a; Department of the Environment and Energy 2018). The rise of hydraulic fracking has also opened the door to discussions on tapping into the country’s vast resources of unconventional (shale) gas (Westbrook 2018).
Australia supports increased fossil fuel production through several measures:
Tax-based subsidies total more than AUD 12 billion (USD 9 billion) per year (Market Forces 2019). This includes the fuel tax credit scheme, which allows fossil fuel companies to claim tax credit on their fuel use (Australian Taxation Office 2017), and a budgeted AUD 1.7 billion (USD 1.3 billion) for accelerated depreciation for oil and gas assets (Australian Department of the Treasury 2015).
Geoscience Australia, a government agency, absorbs sector risk by financing and conducting resource exploration, which was worth AUD 100 million (USD 75 million) in fiscal 2017 (Department of Industry, Innovation and Science 2018).
The government takes various steps to support increased coal production, including, for example, fast-track approval, private road construction, and reduced royalty payments for Adani’s recently approved Carmichael coal mine project in the Galilee Basin (Buckley 2019b).
Recent legislation increased government support for investment in new overseas infrastructure projects from AUD 2 million to AUD 1.2 billion to accommodate Australian coal and gas exports (Parliament of Australia 2019; Hasham 2019).
Government projections show coal production growing another 10% by 2024 and 34% by 2030, relative to 2018 levels (Office of the Chief Economist 2019; Syed 2014). As shown in Figure 4.6, the government also envisions gas production growing 20% by 2024 and 33% by 2030 relative to 2018 levels (Office of the Chief Economist 2019; Syed 2014).
Under these projections, Australia’s extraction-based emissions from fossil fuel production would nearly double (a 95% increase) by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. However, its NDC targets a reduction in territorial GHG emissions of 26–28% over the same period (Government of Australia 2016)”
p.35

This likely illustrates:

The heavy symbolic importance that coal has for developmentalism and prosperity, even faced with ecological destruction and massive climate change: the coal rush continues.
The dominant groups in the world are heavily identified (self-cateogrised) as belonging with fossil fuel companies, the use of fossil fuels, or the traditional trajectories of development through fossil fuels. They do not seem to care what will happen to their populations if climate scientists are correct about the likely tumultuous effects of higher Greenhouse gas emissions.
Dominant groups do not see that a method which used to produce order, is now highly likely to produce chaos, unintended effects or blowback. Reality has changed but ideology lingers, as do the power and wealth relations of fossil fuel societies.
The mess of information, provides many alternate stories which can make it seem that the risk of the process is negligible, and that the dominant groups find it easy to dismiss information which suggests the risk is not negligible, which further reassures them. I have been told that Right wing MPs in Australia refuse to attend climate briefings, and we know that despite the requests of State Governments, the Coalition recently refused to allow a general briefing of State Treasurers by a member of the Reserve Bank, on the risks of Climate Change. Acceptance of Information seems now almost totally driven by political and market allegiances. They also deny large bush fires could have anything to do with extended droughts, higher than average temperatures, and longer runs at peak temperatures. Instead they and the Murdoch Empire blame the effect on non-existent Greens policies.
The green paradox; the more likely it is that fossil fuels will be stopped, the more pressure there is to mine and sell them before it is too late, and there are fewer purchasers.

Tags:climate change, coal, Disinformation, economics
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Rewrite of the Toynbee cycle

November 23, 2019

I have just extensively revised the post called Corporate society and the Toynbee Cycle I was intending to make it a new post here, but blew that completely 🙂

So if you are interested then please click the link above, and check it out….

Tags:Anthropocene, climate change, Disinformation, disorder, economics
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Clinton and Gabbard

November 17, 2019

Everybody knows that Clinton attacked Tulsi Gabbard, and this is causing a scandal.

I thought I would have a quick look at what this was all about. What I found was another example of (dis)information, or mess of information, at work, and it is of some interest to look at how this mess operates.

Firstly, Clinton gave an interview on the 17th of October 2019 in which she said some members of the Democrats were likely Russian Assets and aiming at splintering the Party like Jill Stein had done…

Her argument was pro-Trump forces would not necessarily only try to get people to vote for Trump, but to actively not vote for the Democratic opponent. She said they would say:

You don’t like me? Don’t vote for the other guy because the other guy is going to do X, Y and Z or the other guy did such terrible things and I’m going to show you in these, you know, flashing videos that appear and then disappear and they’re on the dark web, and nobody can find them, but you’re going to see them and you’re going to see that person doing these horrible things.

This might be a bit exaggerated, but it does seem to encapsulate a lot of what was happening during the last election. Clinton continued that the Republicans,

They’re also going to do third party again. And I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up. Which she might not, ’cause she’s also a Russian asset.

Many early media reports suggested that Clinton had said the Russians, rather than the Republicans, were “grooming” a candidate. In either case, no evidence seems to be presented by Clinton.

This was not wise set of statements, but Clinton probably lost the Presidency, and we got Donald Trump, because of people splitting the ‘left’, so it is not unreasonable she should have feelings on the matter, and warn that more intense versions of the same techniques are likely to be used again.

Apparently Tulsi Gabbard went on twitter claiming that Clinton and the Democrats were smearing her, and implying that the Democrats were corrupt. It is not clear what Gabbard’s source of the story was, possibly earlier mainstream media reports.

Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain,

it was always you, through your proxies and … powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.
It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

We can see several standard approaches here.

Trying to make the tweeter look as though they are being suppressed
Trying to make the Tweeter look important – the others are frightened of the threat she poses, hence things they say are to be discounted.
Responding to a smear with a bigger smear taken as common sense, or what everybody knows.
Discrediting news which the tweeter finds objectionable by ‘dissing’ media in general; as if there were not more accurate and less accurate media organisations.
Accusing the other person of inherently taking a position which they may not have taken, and cannot deny without appearing to take that position.
There is also some soothing of any of the ‘Left’ who did not vote for Clinton and thus helped Trump to victory, by opening with the unsupported accusation that Clinton is the “Queen of warmongers” and “embodiment of corruption”. To reiterate, Clinton has been endlessly investigated by hostile inquiries, and they have never found an offence she can be charged with, or even thoroughly accused of. She is hardly the exemplar of evil – unless you take the absence of evidence and charges as showing how evil and cunning she is.

The Story was taken up by Fox News who broadcast Gabbard’s twitter statements and interviewed her. Gabbard clearly liked the segment as she tweeted it. It is probably not going too far to postulate that Fox saw a story which would cast the Democrats, and their favourite villain, Hillary Clinton, in a bad light and so were eager to participate in the issue, and stir it up for their own political aims.

On the 19th of October, CNN host Van Jones said that Clinton had come out against Gabbard, “a decorated war veteran” with “just a complete smear and no facts.” CNN seems to have heavily promoted the allegations and the conflict, although I have not checked thoroughly as to how heavily they promoted the line.

We can, therefore, note that at least two examples of the “corporate media” which Gabbard condemns, seem to have been fairly sympathetic to her position.

Someone asked a person, Nick Merril, who is associated with Clinton (I don’t know to what degree, although he likes portraying himself as close), if Clinton had meant Gabbard, and he replied something like:

Divisive language filled with vitriol and conspiracy theories? Can’t imagine a better proof point than this.

and

If the nesting doll fits

There is no evidence from his statements that he had any inside knowledge, but that he thought Gabbard’s response to Clinton made the general point.

Most mainstream news companies went with Gabbard’s version of the story as this was the only version being broadcast, until some of them checked the interview and found that Clinton had not named Gabbard. They then attempted to clear things up.

Other news companies then attacked the retractions. One I saw, argued that Clinton did attack Gabbard and was lying, and played the interview, concluding, to the effect that ‘there you are no question of it’. Unfortunately, in the clip they showed, Clinton did not mention Gabbard at all, despite their explicit claims to the contrary.

If that was the best they could do, then it is clear that Clinton did not attack Gabbard by name, and apparently not by implication either (unless you consider the use of ‘her’ as an implication).

A day or so later (20th October or thereabouts), the President saw this as an opportunity to use the story to defend Gabbard and himself, saying:

Hillary Clinton, I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, she’s the one accusing everybody of being a Russian agent. Anybody that is opposed to her is a Russian agent. That’s a scam that was pretty much put down.
I don’t know Tulsi, but she’s not a Russian agent, I don’t know Jill Stein. I know she likes environment. I don’t think she likes Russians. If she does like them, I know she’s not an asset.
These people are sick. There’s something wrong with them,

[Different media sources give different orders, and slightly different phrasings for Trump’s statements, probably because he made them several times, (probably at a Press Conference, and in a hyper-friendly interview on Fox) as he saw it as an opportunity to dismiss the Mueller inquiry’s findings, and the general evidence he both received Russian support and his campaign attempted to attract Russian support]

This acts to keep the story going, and to keep it phrased in a certain way.

However, what can we conclude about Gabbard’s quick response to Clinton?

a) At best, Gabbard is thin-skinned and likely to completely break up under pressure from the Republican media. If she can’t handle this she has no chance of survival in real heat.
b) She may have a guilty conscience and recognised herself in the comments.
c) She tried to smear Clinton and the Democrats, in order to persuade her followers not to support whoever is chosen to run for President if it wasn’t her (and her nomination is probably unlikely), and therefore keep Trump in power.

According to some reports, rather than just backing down and getting on with her campaign Gabbard is pressing Clinton to retract “her accusations”, through her lawyers. According to these stories (which may not be true of course), she demands that Clinton say:

“On October 17, 2019, I made certain statements about Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Among other things, I accused her of being a Russian asset and that Russia was grooming her to be a third-party candidate.

“I was wrong. I never should have made these remarks, and I apologize. I did not have any basis for making the statements. I acknowledge my grave mistake and error in judgment in this matter.” [there is more]

Clinton cannot retract what she did not do, but Gabbard appears to want to create as much chaos as possible, as you would expect if she was trying to splinter the Democratic Party and keep Trump in power. She may not be trying, but that is what she appears to be doing.

At the best, it means that the information so strongly fits with her filters (“Clinton is corrupt,” “The Democratic Party authorities are against me,” “people who support me agree Clinton named me”), that Gabbard cannot be bothered to check what she already knows, or that she does not want to loose face, media attention, or campaign momentum, by admitting the story is distorted.

We already have that problem, in a President who seems to primarily believe what Fox News tells him is the case, and who throws aside counter information, that does not fit with his bias and filters.

We can also see the story being used for political purposes, and in attempts to settle scores, and hostilities. This distracts from attempts to find out what is correct or even what is plausible. Some reports suggest that Gabbard’s fund raising was boosted by the ‘scandal’, which would provide another reason to keep going with the story, but I’m not accepting that as correct at the moment.

This now, seems to be becoming the normal response to news. Accept what fits with your existing bias, or political strategy, and don’t check to make sure its correct. If you are wrong, then let the news cycle move on, or create a new disturbance. Being wrong is irrelevant, and people will eventually forget you were wrong.

For me, this series of events as well as describing motivators of the information mess, opens the question of whether Gabbard is a suitable candidate for President? Let us compare her with someone who is not a presidential Candidate. AOC.

AOC is intelligent and competent, she handles pressure well, she deals with conflict wittily, she makes news, she does things, she works well with others, and she improves the standing of her Party.

Gabbard may have good policies, but clearly does not handle pressure or conflict well, and she does not seem to do much to improve the Party’s standing. I don’t know anything about how she works with other people, and so far I have seen no evidence that Gabbard has done anything, above the routine, with her four terms in Congress. However, she does appear to be trying hard to split the Party, and keep Trump in office. If she is not trying to do this, then it is hard to praise her intelligence.

Incidentally, it was reported in February that:

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

So the Russians may like her. She has supported their actions and propaganda in Syria [1],[2],[3] which makes that support plausible. [I’m not quite clear why realistic suspicion of US foreign policy, translates so often into the ideas that everyone the US supports must be bad and that Putin is the Good Guy. But it does]. The conspiratorial right and Fox has also apparently supported her, although I doubt this would translate into support for her in an election against Trump. If so, then this adds to the likelihood of the news being stirred and distorted, for the Right’s benefit.

Let us be clear, that despite the popularity of the “both sides are equally bad,” meme, there is no doubt that Trump is far worse than Clinton would have been, and if you are remotely Green, then that should be obvious. Trump will gladly destroy and poison people to boost corporate power. He joyfully supports destruction of the environment. Throughout the world, we have all had our probabilities of uncomfortable eco-death increased by the election of Trump. It is not smart to fall into the same trap again.

This means, of course that if Gabbard does win the primaries, then it is important to support her against Trump, and not get caught up in counter wars against her of the kind the Republicans will try to start up.

It is that vital to defeat Trump.

Tags:Disinformation, politics
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Neoliberalism, Climate and Fire…

November 14, 2019

The public service association of NSW has said that National Parks and Wildlife Service has been gutted of staff by the Coalition, especially of experienced fire managers. The number of experienced staff was cut from 289 to 193. The government appears to have assumed, as neoliberals do, that all workers are interchangeable, and replaced knowledge and experience with basic entry level people, and they have pretended this makes no difference.

The chief of the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, told their staff this month that Treasury (actually the government hiding under another name as usual) had ordered savings of $81.4 million by July 2020, and that despite their best efforts this would result in further cuts to the National Parks service and to the Energy and Science division.

The government has tried to blame previous governments of many years ago for a perceived lack of hazard reduction fires in the present, but the National parks service actually exceeded the Government’s own targets, despite the shorter season in which is safe to do hazard reduction (due to climate change)…. So as usual the only people to blame are the Coalition themselves.

The government also claims that the number of trained fire fighting staff as been increased, but it has actually fallen from 1349 to 1060. The Coalition’s own “Labour Expense Cap” means that $20m a year has to be cut from wages budgets by the fire service, which means even fewer experienced fire fighters.

The problem here needs to emphasised, because the volunteer fire services have been stretched to exhaustion already and summer is yet to come. Firefighters will die. I guess the neoliberal attitude is that you can always buy another.

Former NSW Fire Chief, Greg Mullins tried to organize a meeting of fire chiefs with the Federal Coalition to discuss responses to climate change earlier in the year, and was rejected twice.

Structurally, we would like to actually go back to being retired and not to have to speak out. We would like the doors to be open to the current chiefs, and allow them to utter the words “climate change”. They are not allowed to, at the moment.
The Guardian 14 Nov 2019 11:17

On a slightly different note, workers from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment who were attending an AdaptNSW forum on showcasing best practice in reducing the impacts of climate change on communities, received an email stating “Public Affairs has issued advice [to you] not to discuss the link between climate change and bushfires.” The next day, the minister said this was a mistake, but it was a mistake entirely in keeping with Coalition policy, and it had its effect.

The government does not appear to recognise that Climate change, and increased ecological destruction causes any problems for NSW that cannot be solved by taxcuts, taxpayer funded gifts to developers, destruction of knowledge, misinformation, suppression of disagreement, denial of responsibility, silence and sacking workers.

Tags:climate change, Disinformation, neoliberalism
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Climate and politics

November 13, 2019

It is, we have been told, (by the Deputy PM, no less), a “bloody disgrace” to talk about climate change during the current massive bush fires, because we have lost lives and property. However, the Coalition don’t refuse to talk about the drug problem after a group of people die from drugs; they do talk about terrorism if people are being fire bombed by terrorists; and they do pretend all sick refugees are criminals and cannot be let into the country. They also don’t seem to have a problem with the Murdoch Empire’s attempts to blame the fires on apparently non-existant Green party policies or influence.

So why can they not talk about climate change, when there are horrific bush fires threatening people everywhere? Why do they say it is not helpful to lessen the cause of the problem?

The problem for the Coalition, is that they think it a “bloody disgrace” to talk about climate change at any time, unless they are pretending to be doing something.

Perhaps talk about climate change would lead to them having to admit they have been mistaken for a long time about climate, about water, about fossil fuels, about mining in or under water tables, about land clearing, and so on. Being wrong something the Coalition seems to find incredibly difficult to admit.

Who knows, if we talk about climate, perhaps we might start talk about whether their economic policies have done anything other than benefit very small sections of the population.

One crack and the whole thing might start falling apart.

Tags:climate change, Disinformation
Posted in free markets economics, | Leave a Comment »

Even handed climate politics

November 13, 2019

In Australia we are in the midst of horrendous early bush fires, driven by drought and high temperatures…. They may be the most widespread we have had. It is estimated by the Rural Fire Services that 300 homes may have been lost There is political dispute as well: should we talk about climate change at this moment?

We have a classic example of the “both sides are equally bad” meme, being used to excuse and support the political Righteous in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. To give more context the SMH is frequently denounced by the Murdoch Empire and the Right wing Coalition government as rabidly leftist.

The papers’ chief political correspondent, David Crowe, wrote that: “A crisis is supposed to bring out the best in Australians. For too many of our politicians, it only brings out the worst…. [the fires] should jolt politicians out of their tired games about who is to blame for the emergency.”

He mentions Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack ranting about “inner-city raving lunatics” who talk about climate change, but mentions “McCormack’s defenders say he was provoked by the Greens” – so its not really Mr McCormack’s fault.

He glibs over Barnaby Joyce saying two people died because they were Greens, and excuses him because later in the day he was tired from fighting a fire at his parent’s farm.

He then castigates Jordon Steele-John, a Green, for saying “You [the Coalition] are no better than a bunch of arsonists – borderline arsonists, and you should be ashamed…. Your selfishness and your ignorance have known no bounds for decades, and now our communities are paying the price.” (Crowe only uses parts of this statement, so the above came from another article and, according to some people, Steele-John was speaking in a parliamentary debate in which public money was being offered for new Coal power stations. I have not yet been able to check this as there is so much indignation about this statement.)

Crowe strangely does not remark that Greens and others have been frustrated by years of inaction and insult, only to see their predictions coming true, and still the government refuses to do more or less anything but insult people, stir up anger and then call for calm…

Crowe is then lined up to say that the PM Scott Morrison “rightly argued for a collective calm in the political rhetoric, while NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian adopted a no-nonsense approach to questions about the fires and climate change.” Ms Berejiklian was not quite that no-nonsense if you read her comments – she too did not want to talk about climate change, or what to do about it, either and suggested it was appropriate to shut up and help people, as if helping and discussing were impossible at the same time.

So, according to the “both sides are equally bad” meme, Right and Left are equally bad but the Right is much better…. Nice move.

Crowe keeps up the pressure on Steele-John writing…. “Using the fires to call for an end to coal mining is as cynical as any of the politics from the major parties. And anyone who accepts the science on climate change should also accept the science that says shutting down the Australian coal industry on its own would make no substantial change to future bushfire risk.”

Of course it must be “cynical” to propose that something should be done when the right still proposes nothing except penalising protests against companies who promote climate change.

However, it is true that due to the delays of the political righteous in Australia and the US stopping burning coal will no longer make things better.

However anyone who accepts the science should know that not stopping coal will make things much, much worse in the long run.

Strange that the idea must be crushed by this even handed approach……

Tags:climate change, Disinformation
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

On Conspiracy Theory

November 1, 2019

You can easily be dismissed in academia for proposing conspiracy theory, indeed the very name is a dismissal in itself. However, this reaction also dismisses an important trope in modern life.

This post has frequently collapsed which is possibly evidence of conspiracy. 🙂

It continues in the next post

Plausibility of conspiracy

People naturally “team-up” to do things because people can do more together than alone, and coordinating the actions of different groups acts as a source of power, just as wealth adds to that power. Sometimes people join together without telling outsiders – although sometimes it won’t be hidden, the collaboration can just avoid publicity, perhaps through the group’s influence on the media, and perhaps because of fear of legal action. In these cases we can call it conspiracy, if we want.

As Right wing conspiracy theorist Gary Allen argued, we know relatively powerless people can produce great effects by conspiring (as with those people who organised the French and Russian revolutions), so why not accept that already powerful people could also conspire/collaborate with effect against other powerful people or against the populace?

Indeed we know powerful people team up to magnify their effect, in things like the “Minerals Council of Australia”, and the “Business Council of Australia”. We know that wealthy people subsidise news organisations to promote their ideals and politics, or to hide news that might disturb those ideals and politics. We further know that wealthy people subsidise think-tanks to support them, and provide “independent testimony” for their ideals and politics. Some of these wealth-founded media organisations, like Breitbart, and Fox news pretend to be reacting to left wing bias elsewhere and hide their embedding in elite wealth.

Conspiracy theory could always arise with investigation of how the ‘ruling classes’ go about ruling, rather than just being crazy stuff. The problem, then, is to identify that class and its actions plausibly. Before we move onto that problem let us consider a few other problems with conspiracy theory.

Problems with Conspiracy Theory

Popularity and persuasion do not equal truth The most obvious problem is that such theories can be very popular and very wrong. They can be promoted by agents of the powerful, to distract from the operations of those powerful people, and to motivate hatred against possible enemies, or because it is easier, quicker and more appealing to construct an imagined conspiracy, than to do real analysis, and to check initial bias.

As the people identified as being in a conspiracy are generally acting politically according to the conspiracy theory, then conspiracy theory tends strongly to be an arm of politics and affected by political bias and intention.

For example, it seems extremely unlikely there was ever a world wide conspiracy involving all Jewish people, or even some Jewish people, which aimed at taking over the Western World. I don’t know of any evidence other than a few obviously fake documents, and a few statements attributed to members of powerful and wealthy Jewish families, which may or may not be theirs, or which may be taken out of context. While inaccurate, the theory summarised in an acceptable symbolic form a lot of conservative nationalist problems with world capitalism. It was also based in a wide-spread anti-Semiticism which had been fueled by Christianity for a long time and so fitted in with existing pre-conceptions. As such it was obviously believable to many and the consequences of this theory were horrific, and enabled horroric acts to be carried out. This particular conspiracy theory still hangs around.

Are conspiracy theories themselves conspiracies? We may even ask whether this conspiracy theory was a result of a conspiracy against Jewish people, which aimed to make them scapegoats for problems, and use this scapegoating to gain power?

At a much lesser level, we can also think of many of the conspiracies that Hillary Clinton was supposedly involved with, from Pizzagate to the vanished emails, or the accusations she had people, who threatened her, killed. Nothing incriminating has ever come to light from the many and wide hostile investigations into her. Indeed, so little criminal activity has been revealed by people eager to attack her, that she may be the cleanest politician in US history. However, as a result of the promotion of these theories and inquiries, her name was blackened and many people in the US hate her in particular and use her as an exemplary example of a corrupt politician. Does this hatred result from a conspiracy to discredit her? Or was that ‘team-up’ an accident? While she may not have conspired, it may be interesting to ask why so many appear to have acted together against her – especially given that the failure of these investigations was not used to promote her integrity.

The consequences for the world, of the apparent conspiracy against her seem to have been pretty grave so far, and are likely to get worse.

This selective bias factor is also illustrated by the comments on a youtube video in which Noam Chomsky outlines the ways that the Right made climate change into a “liberal conspiracy” rather than a distressing fact. It seems that many people commenting were eager to accept Chomsky’s accounts of US foreign policy and military action, but thought he had sold out (or become part of a conspiracy) when he denounced the conspiracy to denounce climate change. People choose what conspiracy they believe in by their existing ideologies and biases, or by their loyalties to particular groups, not by the strength of the evidence presented.

As another example of how existing bias filters ‘facts’, Gary Allen, if I remember correctly (and I don’t have the book with me to check at this moment, but I will), argued that American capitalists subsidised Lenin. He then concluded that some wealthy people in the US establishment were Bolshevik communists, rather than concluding that (if these facts where correct) Lenin probably was doing what he was paid to do which could explain why the revolution was totalitarian and not liberatory. Allen was also celebratory that Americans had such common sense they hated communism, without knowing anything about it…. Nothing to do with US media propaganda, and the wealth elites, of course.

Other conspiracy people point to the mention of ‘Liberals’ as tools of the Elders of Zion in the Protocols to argue that modern Democrats and left-wingers are tools of international jewry, rather than bother to check that ‘Liberal’, in the days the Protocols were written, meant something more like modern Republican supporters of unrestricted capitalism, ie themselves – which would surely produce some dissonance for them. Again the bias, and group loyalties and hostilities, foreclose understanding and make links that are not likely.

People rarely ever seem to think that some conspiracy could be deliberately affecting what they think about the world at this moment. They assume their ability to track conspiracy is evidence of the conspiracy they are tracking. But, if conspiracy is a mode of politics, how can you trust the information you are using to prove conspiracy?

As implied earlier, we can assume that these supporters of the validity of the Protocols and Allen are part of the conspiracy they are supposedly denouncing; either operating as false flags, or being manipulated by those engaged in conspiracy…. and that demonstrates another problem with conspiracy theory: everything can be made to fit together neatly, by supposition and bias. This leads to another problem…..

Bias Expansion. This occurs when people accept a reasonable possibility of conspiracy and then expand it in areas which are less and less plausible.

For example, it appears that the QAnon movement reasonably argues that people with criminal aspirations, can come to power in hierarchies. These people are likely to have no empathy for others, threaten, lie, cheat, and be focused on their own power, rather than on robbing the corner store. This is plausible, we can see criminality or sociopathy in Religious organisations where we might expect otherwise, and in the management structures that we experience everyday. It is not quite so clear that these criminals always collaborate with each other. However QAnon extend this plausibility, and seem to argue that every person who they dislike is criminal and probably satanic (Hilary Clinton being a good example, because if you are pro-Republican she must be evil), and that President Trump is fighting for the American People against this criminality. Given Trump’s business record, and his actions against his enemies while in power this seems highly improbable. If he is fighting against criminals, it is probably to benefit himself or other criminals he sees as being on his side. However, the theory allows any criticism of Trump’s actions and policies to be dismissed as the work of criminals – Trump is not trying to obstruct the course of justice for example, but obstructing subversive criminals – and thus the theory supports bias in favour of Trump, which again leads to the possibility it is part of a pro-criminal-pro-Trump conspiracy.

I have also read the suggestion that QAnon is satire, directed at ‘ignorant’ Trump followers but, if so, many people (on both sides) take it as genuine. And if it is a satire, then for some people it might well be a satiric conspiracy.

Again people who suspect US foreign policy of being imperialistic, often end up extending their bias and supporting Russian intervention in Syria or Ukraine, when there is little to suggest that Russian interventions are any less imperialistic than the US, but it fits in with an anti-US bias.

There is no end.

Secrecy and projection Another problem with conspiracy theory, involves the fact that a conspiracy is usually secret and so it is hard to get evidence, but this secrecy also makes it easy to fake information (there are few sources that contradict the fakery), easy to interpret data however you want through projection (ie attributing your own vices to despised others who are not that visible) and to use the fakery politically because it seems right according to your existing biases which make the fakes seem plausible.

There is always so much happening in the world, that some evidence for anything you want to prove will probably exist somewhere, and can be linked through some mechanism to others. Such as, if people meet occasionally they must conspire together, or if people agree about something they must conspire together. However, people can agree independently of each other, and anyone can occassionally meet people they have little connection with. The FBI, the Intelligence agencies, the military and many lawyers and judges, may all agree that it looks as if President Trump is behaving in ways which will damage the US, without them having conspired together against him. They may simply agree as to the apparant facts. Just as scientists who think there is a climate crisis, do not have to have conspired together to come to that conclusion. However, if both cases if you believe that Trump is good, or that climate change cannot occur, then the conspiracy functions as an explanation for why others disagree.

Likwise, if you believe that the real reasons for US foreign policy is hidden, which is not unreasonable, and you believe that the US government hides contact with aliens (which a secretive organisation might do), then this secretive foreign policy could have something to do with the secrecy about aliens. Perhaps it is an alien inspired attempt to control the world. Perhaps President Trump (who is known for his tough stance against ‘illegal aliens’) is fighting hard against the aliens, or for the aliens…

And some people have no issue with making up evidence or accusations to support their bias (it must be true if it confirms the enemies’ badness), as seems to be the case with Clinton or Soros.

Assumptions of success Another problem of conspiracy theory is that it often assumes that conspiracies have their intended consequences, which makes them far more effective than normal political movements which fail all the time. A consequence of this is that conspiracy theories are often proposed to explain why the results of an action by the conspiracy proposer’s side did not work. This ‘proves’ that not only were the proposer’s theories correct, but the ideal results were foiled by deliberate evil, exonerating them from attempting to discover if they have innacurate theories and policies, or from making any changes to how they behave.

When one’s favoured side looses, is often a clear sign of conspiracy. Thus I read a lot of conspiracy theory alleging that US Democrats are criminals and evil because some established members of the party can conspire or collaborate together against ‘the Left’ and out-manoeuvre them. To me, this sounds like normal politics in action; calling it conspiracy when one faction defeats another is possibly going too far. Clinton was better at the numbers game than Sanders. But this is probably what we should expect, given that Sanders had only recently joined the party and had not built allegiances, and was probably seen as a something of an opportunist by many members of the party. It does not need active evil.

Again the question arises, who is making this apparently normal internal politics into a conspiracy? Why are they doing so? And are they participating in a conspiracy themselves? The articles alleging dirty tricks in the Democrats seem to aim pretty clearly to discredit mainstream Democrats and persuade people not to vote for them. This benefits the Republicans. So we can wonder if this news is a Republican conspiracy, planted amongst the Left, to split potential democrat Voters? Or are the Left doing it to themselves? The articles might benefit the Republicans without them being a Republican conspiracy: effect does not always imply intent.

One thing that might convince people these articles are a Republican conspiracy is that they seem part of the “both sides are equally bad” meme which, at the moment, benefits the Republicans, especially as nobody points out the problems of their internal politics to such a degree. Also it seems notable that when the Republicans do bad things overseas, the articles say the US is doing bad things, but if it is the Democrats doing bad things, then that is pointed out. But this is not proof, only suggestion. What would be required would be the incredibly difficult work of tracking the articles as they circulate, and who they are circulated by.

Given the massive choice of conspiracies, when I see conspiracy theories in action, I look at what people do with them. If they primarily attack one side of politics, and largely ignore conspiracies which suggest the other side of politics is bad, then I guess they are working for the side which is not blamed, whether deliberately or otherwise.

While people can claim certain allegiances, their selection of conspiracy theories may indicate others or have the effect of supporting those others. But this may not itself be conspiracy.

Conclusion of part 1

People may work together without conspiring, and without even knowing they are working together. This kind of effect happens all the way through complex societies. People make things, which help other people to act. People have similar ideas without ever talking to each other and so on. This is normal, but the interdependence probably can be manipulated.

Interdependence can suggest conspiracy, but it is normal without conspiracy.

However, it is also plausible that members of the Ruling Classes do conspire with others against each other and against those they rule. They may well make use of people who see an advantage in supporting them, or who think that their rule is good and justifies support. These people may not only conspire, but they may use conspiracy theory to hide their own conspiring.

This is not inherently implausible. As implied it is likely that the way the ruling class rules resembles conspiracy.

This discussion continues in the next post, on probable conspiracy.

https://cmandchaos.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/on-conspiracy-theory-02/

Tags:Disinformation, social category theory
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Reflections on the ‘Deep State’

October 20, 2019

The idea behind the term “Deep State” is important, but the term, as is currently used, seems to function as a propaganda device to justify pro-corporate factions in their struggle against any curtailment of corporate power, or corporate ability to distribute costs to the public, often in the context of climate change. For the idea to regain its use, we might have to replace it with some other term such as the “factional State”

Definition and basic Propaganda Functions

Wikipedia gives the following, apparently unattributed, definition of the Deep State:

a hybrid association of government elements and parts of top-level industry and finance that is effectively able to govern the…. [Nation] without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.

While this definition gives the impression that the State is a monolithic unity (when it is not unified but full of conflict, as the term ‘factional state’ suggests), it is important to recognise that, in the US and much of the Western World, one of the main drivers of the ‘deep state’ is the commercial sector (“top-level industry and finance”), as the current propaganda use of the terms tends to ignore this part of the definition altogether.

This definition and the propaganda usage, both ignore the different types of power (including military power), and their different ways of operating. (Not to mention the relationship between power and incompetence). This again, serves an ideological function because it makes the State the only form of power, as well as the single and simple oppresive power which needs to be curtailed. In particular, usage ignores the power of wealth, and the way it can operate against freedom, and control most of the other sources of power. It also deletes the idea that ‘the people’ can use, and have used, the State to benefit themselves (even if this involves struggles with other factions).

The role of commerce in the State, and in power relations, is perhaps being ignored because the Right want to get rid of any regulation of corporations, or rules that help protect citizens from corporations. This certainly seems to be one of President Trumps most consistent aims – other than when he thinks he can curtail international trade, for America’s benefit.

In this context, it is also notable that the ‘Libertarian Right’ is always vitally keen on cutting government spending which benefits (or could benefit) ordinary citizens, but generally has little energy to agitate for cuts to military spending, perhaps because most of that spending is subsidy of large parts of the corporate sector.

The pro-corporate propagandists probably also do not want the commercial sector to be held responsible for any wars held to capture or defend oil, labour and markets for US business, which was pereviously quite a well known idea. It seems unlikely that the propagandists do not recognise that increased military spending, such as the massive increases boasted of by Trump, is likely a prelude to the actual use of the material in war or threat of war. However, they certainly behave as if they do not recognise this.

Some of the Possible Factions in the Factional State

The “factional State” idea suggests multiple forces are involved in the State, not only pro-corporate forces, or malicious hidden actors, are at work, and we don’t have to assume all corporations have exactly the same interests and are completely unified, either. Some forms of possible factions include bureaucrats in various departments, pro-science factions, foreign affairs, intelligence, military, economic and political party factions. Not all of which are intrinsically harmful.

The State depends for continuity on bureaucrats who try to maintain that continuity while protecting their place in the State. These bureaucrats may tend to try to protect the State and the nation from mad, or overly-idealistic, kings or emperors. This is why the Roman State survived so long after madness and incompetence seemed the hallmark of rulers. In an extreme form, this illustrates the ‘Yes Minster’ theory of the State, in which the civil service obstructs both politicians’ fantasy, and their good ideas.

As part of this State faction, there may be dedicated public servants who try and stop corporations from poisoning, or otherwise maltreating normal citizens, and are thus also identified as enemies of business, and who need to be removed. This faction might also represent what we might call, the “green State,” the “humanitarian State” or the “useful State.”

There are also other public servants who favour the pro-corporate line, and who welcome the possibility of making transition into much higher paid jobs in the private sector, while using contacts to influence State action. Again the point is that the State is factional, and a site of struggle between factions. The State is not unified or uniform.

At one time there might have been somsething we could call techno-scientific factions in the State. These were composed of the people who made sure there was money for State-useful research that was unlikely to be done by the private sector, or done properly by the private sector. They also advised on energy, water, satellites, disease control, and what we call ‘infrastructure’. They would also try and persuade the State to keep the infrastructure functional. Again, it is improbable there would be complete unity here. Medical experts, Physics experts and others would compete for finance, priority and influence.

There are also the diplomats and foreign affairs people who might try and keep relationships with other States concentionally ‘functional’ despite the rantings of local politicians who would happily insult other rulers or threaten war to raise local support. Again, it seems probable that some of these people would recommend support for different other States, different levels of support for other States, different levels of military threat (either way) and different forms of covert action. There would only rarely be unity.

Intelligence people would try and find out what other States where actually doing and sometimes undermine those efforts to keep things “smooth.” It is not hard to imagine them trying to undermine dissent in the State itself and support establishment politics, but that is an uncertain field. During the cold war, it seems to be well documented that in the West intelligence agencies kept a “strong eye” on left wing politicians and dissenters, and it seems doubtful they have changed.

It seems highly probable that the English-speaking State’s economic experts have been largely captured by pro-corporate, pro-free market, pro-development, pro-growth forces. This is a rare moment of unity. These theories seem more or less unchallengable, although there is some dispute between more humanitarian factions and more stringent ‘sacrifice the poor and workers’ factions. This also seems to have been well documented. Such economism may be resisted outside the State, but it seems usually to be popular with establishment politicians as it provides justification for the increase of corporate wealth and power.

Politicians are another faction in the State. Long standing politicians, in particular, will have built up alliances with other long standing actors in the State (including other politicians), they may even have selected them. Politicians are likely to have relationships with those who finance them, and will fight to support the interest of these financers and the interests of commercial power in general. This is one of the powers of wealth; representatives can be bought. Politicians can also be run by ideology, and may have little experience in the day to say running of the State, so the Nation and the State may be harmed by their actions. Ultimately, politicians can seem to be able to force the State to behave as they wish. The Government, or even the President, can declare war against the advice of foreign affairs, intelligence, military and treasury. The government can change relatively successful economic policies against advice. The government can ignore scientific advice to favour their backers as with climate change. And the government can direct offices to find information which matches with political ideology, but does not match with reality, and the departments be left to sort out the mess.

The existence of different factions does not mean there cannot be alliances between them which work against one side of the political faction, but these are likely to be opposed by other alliances. And it is rare for any political party to hold the support of much more than 55% of the population, and thus even those who claim an overwhelming mandate should accept the presence of opposition and be willing to try and justify their position by ‘facts,’ persuasion, and acceptance of advice from others, rather than aim for total victory and destruction of opposition (which could be considered tyranny).

Destruction of Continuity by Ideology: More use of the ‘Deep State’ idea

It seems to be becoming more and more common for Politicians and governments to deploy a version of the American system whereby the heads of departments and high level advisors are political appointees with prime loyalty to the incoming President or government (ie one group of politicians), rather than loyalty to the State or nation iself. These appointments break continuity, break knowledge, break experience, break up convention, break up resistance to stupidity and ideology, and establish the relative dominance of the political factions for the time they are in power.

The Trump transition was apparently remarkable for its lack of interest in what the State actually did for the US and non-corporate citizens (See Michael Lewis). This seems to have been part of an ideological drive to demolish the ‘useful’ State while keeping the oppressive state. President Trump, while erratic, is fairly coherent on his project of support for parts of the corporate sector, via tax cuts, increased military spending, and reduction of red tape and restrictions on corporate victimisation of ordinary people. He especially seems to desire to cut back controls on pollution and environmental despoliation, and I have frequently seen this portrayed as part of Trump’s fight against the Deep State, who are supposedly against business (another reason why the propagandists want commercial input into the state not to be mentioned). This is probably why he gets such huge support from the Republican Party despite his levels of random incompetence. Indeed a competent, well connected and popular President might be the pro-corporate state’s nightmare.

It is useful to the Right to suggest that people are hostile to Trump, not because of his incompetence or tyrannical moves, but because of Deep State plotting. By a careful use of the term “deep state”, it can be implied that attempts to hold Trump responsible to the consitution and for his acts, are profoundly undemocratic. They can also imply that the reason Hillary Clinton was not prosecuted, was not because Republicans could find no coherent evidence against her despite years of trying, but because she was protected by secret elites. The State must be made evil to justify its cutback and promotion of unregulated corporate abuse.

Secondly, the term reinforces the attempt to ignore experts who give scientific reports that disagree with Politicians’ ideology; the reports can be dismissed as just the deep state working against people.

Another part of the propagandist use is to suggest that wars are brought about the intelligence agencies, controlling the President through misleading information – hence it does not have to be a concern that it is widely reported that President Trump ignores this information. However, it is also clear that Intelligence agencies may not always want war. This was demonstrated during the build up to Bush Jr’s Iraq war. It perhaps depended on the media you read at the time, but it was pretty obvious the US and British Agencies were leaking profusely, trying to give people the information they needed to see through the Republican media lie machine and its reports of “weapons of mass destruction”. The Agencies were warning about the likely spread of war to other countries and its destabilising consequences. All of which happened as predicted. They appeared not to want to be blamed for the disaster they thought the war would be. However, they were completely unable to control the President or his ‘war machine’.

[I also remember reading but cannot remember were, so this might be rubbish, that Bush Jr and friends also ignored the advice of the military not to go into Iraq.] They definitely, and completely, ignored the military’s contingency plans for what they should do after victory. In fact they seemed not to have any plans for what to do after victory.

Later the Republicans somehow seem to have managed to lay the blame for the war on the Intelligence agencies rather than on themselves, perhaps because the media naturally tends towards that party or because intelligence agencies make for easy villains. The idea of the Deep State was part of their avoidance of responsibility. They used the term to try and convince people that the Right was not a party of war, or at least not worse than the other side, so they could be tolerated despite the mess they got the world into.

Interestingly, during the time that the Arab Spring looked successful, many Republicans seemed to be claiming that the war in Iraq had worked and their decision was justified. The point is that it seems far more likely that Republican politicians won the struggle within the Factional State, and were mistaken in their anticipation of the results and course of the war, rather than they were taken in by secretive actors within the State.

Summary

The State is not unified, it is a site of struggle between different factions, and that often includes struggles with the ruling politicians and their supporters (particularly financing supporters) – who find this resistance annoying. Supressing the conflicts and distinctions between factions, amounts (in the current day) to supporting the corporate-military State at the expense of everyone else.

Comparison between Deep State theory (DS) and Factional State theory (FS):

1: DS) The state is monolithic and unified

FS) The State is a site of struggle involving many factions

2: DS) The State is bad (unless it supports the Corporate sector)

FS) Whether the State is useful or not, depends on the results of struggle between factions.

3: DS) There is only one source of oppressive power; the State.

Vs.

FS) There are many forms of power. Whether they are oppressive or not depends on how the power is wielded, and often who by. The State is not the only oppressive force.

4: DS) The state is only responsible to itself

Vs.

FS) The State is potentially responsible to many factions, including the political faction

5: DS) The State always ignores the views of the people

Vs.

FS) The State can ignore the views of the people, but it does not have to. It is likely to respond more speedily to the views of the ruling class (in the US this is the Corporate class), but it can be used to curtail the acts of the rulers – this may lead to it being attacked by the rulers and their representatives, and those they manage to persuade.

6: DS) The Deep State is to blame when ‘our’ policies do not work, or our view of reality seems not to deliver the results we would like.

FS) The States is a complex system, within other complex systems. It is natural for results of policies and actions to be partly unexpected. This does not have to be explained by resistance alone. Neither will eliminating the State mean that a political party’s vision of reality is correct, and only good things will result.

Tags:Disinformation, politics, power
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Climate, technology and chaos Blog