Just shot through Cockburn’s most recent article at Counterpunch. Along with a rather fascinating look at eugenics, immigration policy, Zyklon B & the El Paso delousing facilities that later became the model for Nazi death camps, there is a fantastic article by MIT prof Richard Lindzen he quotes at length on the interstices between science, advocacy groups, and public policy:
The interaction of science, advocacy and politics in both the global warming and eugenics cases share a number of characterisics:
Powerful advocacy groups claiming to represent both science and the public in the name of morality and superior wisdom.Simplistic depictions of the underlying science so as to facilitate widespread ‘understanding.’
Events’, real or contrived, interpreted in such a manner as to promote a sense of urgency in the public at large. Scientists flattered by public attention and deferent to ‘political will’ and
popular assessment of virtue.Significant numbers of scientists eager to produce the science demanded by the ‘public.’
Given the automatic tendency of our educated elites to form advocacy groups, the above interactions would appear to have a certain inevitability, and the advantages of advocacy groups over individual scientists in communicating with the public will inevitably give advocacy groups an opportunity to dominate the presentation of the science.
While I have issues with Cockburn’s position on global warming, I think the above applies to just about every biological discipline which can result in public policy - most notably, health policy. The public will always be unaware that ‘consensus’ is not something built by scientists, but by advocacy groups with underlying motivations [or by industries with profit motivations]. In fact there are very few areas of science in which there is ‘consensus’ - and the history of science [at least as seen through Kuhn] is based precisely on the breaking of accepted scientific paradigms. We all need to keep this in mind when faced with other current idiocies like ‘global bird flu pandemic’, etc.
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In other news, my favorite Hasbara troll, dcoronata, made a lovely appearance today, trotting out some of his greatest hits:
What country was that? (3+ / 0-)
Recommended by:redcardphreek, Doughnutman, MBNYC
If you know your history, the area was a British protectorate, previously a part of the Ottoman Empire.There was no previous country in history, that went by the name of Palestine.
Right, so it’s fine that a bunch of Europeans came in, stole the land from the hundreds of thousands of people living there & then instituted policies of ethnic cleansing that continue to this day… Just so that’s settled…
In that diary though, mattes linked to a very interesting article I hadn’t seen before on the Mizrahi rejection of Zionism. Very good read & completely blasts the myth of the great Arab expulsion of Jews after the creation of Israel.
Anyhow - have at it vipes.
15 responses so far ↓
Sabrina Ballerina // June 25, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Nice post, Lucid!
I wish there was a way to just get information without the interference of any special interest groups. Although a truthful, investigative media would be the best solution to simply give people the facts, and which ‘facts’ are being pushed by whom, so that we could judge for ourselves.
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I love that old rightwing argument that ‘there never was a country called Palestine’! Not surprised to see it on DK. I don’t think there was a country named the USA either at one time, or for that matter, this could be said of any nation if you go back far enough.
What is so infuriating about that specious argument is the obvious attempt to dehumanize the people who lived there.
They can spin it any way they want, but what is happening in Gaza right now is criminal. What happened in Lebanon last summer, was criminal.
Oh, yes what matters is the name of the place, not what’s happening there. I first saw that ‘no Palestine’ talking point on a rightwing site about five years ago. They are sooooo clever, they think!
lucid // June 25, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Yeah - didn’t you know that if a group of people living on a patch of land don’t have an ‘official’ government recognized by western powers that the land isn’t really theirs - regardless of how many generations they lived there.
As for getting rid of the interference - well I say just read & read and read. I hang out on pub med all the time, fishing around on my topics of interest. There are a lot of neutral resources out there. Unfortunately most people don’t have the time, or have been brow beaten into the belief that they need to listen to ‘experts’ and can’t understand the info on their own. Oh well.
Sabrina Ballerina // June 26, 2007 at 3:21 pm
There are a lot of neutral resources out there. Unfortunately most people don’t have the time,
True, Lucid - and many do not have access to computers, which is still the best way to find information and to diseminate it. Which is why the media is so important.
But since our media has sunk to approximately #53 on the scale of the world’s ‘free press’, the public can hardly be blamed for taking so long to realize the extent of the false information that shamefully funnelled to them by our corporate media.
Thomas Jefferson, who often suffered greatly himself from the press of his times, still stood by his conviction that without a free press, there is no Democracy.
The printing press was to his time what the Internet is to ours, imo. He had much to say about its great potential as an instrument powerful enough to protect the ‘experiment’ of democracy, as well as its potential for abuse by uncrupulous individuals.
He never lost faith in his belief that the people could be trusted IF they had access to truthful information even despite often being the victim of the most vile slandor in the press, himself.
The Internet when populated by ‘citizens’ was on a good course of doing what Jefferson envisioned the role of the press to be to a free society. Sadly, I think he would shake his head in sadness at what has become of it with the emergence of the controlled and commercialized sites such as DK et al.
But he wouldn’t be surprised.
lucid // June 26, 2007 at 3:36 pm
It doesn’t bother me so that there are controlled and commercialized sites online - what bothers me is that so many people are unable or unwilling to recognize them as such.
For instance, while many are quick to dismiss links to studies on nutrition and supplements because the sites on which they occur happen to hawk vitamins, they’re quite happy to take medical advice from sites raking in hundreds of thousands a year from pharmaceutical companies…
And they’d rather read Dkos, propped up by Big Oil money, than surf the non-aligned, adless blogs.
Sabrina Ballerina // June 26, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Well, I agree. Like Jefferson, who also did not believe in silencing those who engaged in yellow journalism, I too believe the fault lies with those who choose not to look elsewhere from what is obviously a controlled message site. Otoh, I think it takes a little time to realize that. It took a few months for me, and that would have taken longer had I been there before the 2004 election when people were literally desperate for a place to discuss the removal of GWB from the WH.
If I gave the impression that I think they should be removed, that is not what I intended. But I do like what is happening finally, and that is that they are being exposed for what they are on sites like Marisacat’s and others. That is how it should work.
delarue // June 27, 2007 at 5:47 pm
boy, the blogosphere is just like a slum. The kids and the artists move in, clean up the mess, then all of sudden it’s cool and trendy to go there. Luxury condos and Humvee limos follow, along with their occupants. Meanwhile, most people are slow to realize that it’s no longer the cool part of town.
Looks like we’ve been balkanized. Again.
Let the BBBs have their condo sensibility, maybe it was bound to happen
Sabrina Ballerina // June 27, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Lol, that’s a good way to describe it, delarue … having been there before the BBBs moved in, I liked it a lot better then.
Probably was bound to happen … I think they were waiting in the wings, letting us pioneers pave the way, fight off the rightwingers, and then they made their move, probably armed with case which none of the early blogs had. Once in, they began purging the ‘undesirables’.
Except that the undesirables are what made it all so much fun. They were the ones with the ‘ideas’, which is now a bad word! Pragmatism is what they want, boring, humorless and mundane, but safe for the politicians to associate with.
And the politicians for some reason, don’t like people with ideas.
ms_xeno // June 28, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I don’t even think that there’s any such thing as a neutral source for any news. Everyone has an agenda. I’d suspect anyone immediately who claimed to not have one.
Sabrina Ballerina // June 29, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Hi ms x - well, true everyone does have an agenda. Mine, when I first turned to the internet was to find out whether or not I was alone in thinking that something was going terribly wrong, and that was before 9/11.
I learned a lot that I had not known before, from other ordinary people and from more well-known writers.
I’m sure tens, maybe millions of people did the same thing. Yet, all that newly acquired knowledge did nothing to stop any of what has happened.
I’m sure it will take a very long time to undo the propaganda, the ‘we are numero uno and cannot do anything wrong’ meme. Until America learns to self-reflect, to admit wrong-doing and to repent, I imagine nothing will change.
But whatever hope there was for the Internet to be a big part of that change, imo, the BBBs have successfully interefered with it. The energy has been re-directed back to turning a blind eye to what ‘our guys’ are doing.
Sabrina Ballerina // June 29, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Speaking of agendas, I wonder a lot about the sudden success of DK and the almost instant elevation from poor ‘barely-able-to-pay-the-rent’ to ‘mansion-dwelling, NYC-crashpad-owning, nationally-known spokesperson for the ‘liberal, left blogosphere’ Markos Moulitsas!
Banned dk user Francis Holland, on a mission to expose whatever agenda dk has since being banned, has this post up at MLW, linked to the audio of a speech by Kos wherein he admits to having been employed by the CIA for six months until he decided to work for the Dean campaign!
Marcos Moulitsas Admits Working for the CIA
So he gave up a stable job and salary, with future benefits, to run a blog, not exactly a money-making proposition by any means, and still isn’t unless someone is funding it.
Agendas, what really is the agenda of dk, or better question, who is really behind it? No other small blog, as his was in 2002, even the most successful as far as exposure and membership, has come close to the ’success’ of dk. Or the financial success of their owners.
And no other progressive site outside of dk, has ever employed such abusive, thuggish tactics to purge the site of dissenting voices.
Maybe someone like Greg Palast, so badly treated and smeared on dk, could use his investigative skills to find out what exactly is the agenda, whether Kos is just a tool, and who, if anyone, is supplying the money to provide such a lucrative ‘life-style’ to the former, poverty-stricken blogger.
ms_xeno // June 29, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I think we all know that Kos is a tool. The main question is just how much of one he is, and how many, er, toolmasters he has contracts with.
I have indeed been on other boards where the tactics were the same. Ms. was very much like that near the end of its life, for instance.
Sabrina Ballerina // June 29, 2007 at 8:42 pm
I was never on Ms., ms x - and if it came even close to what goes on at dk, it’s a good thing it is gone.
What is certain about dk is that many of the thread thugs are political operators with a definite agenda. What is also certain is that they suppressed discussion of important issues such as voter fraud when they could have played a leading role in helping to expose it.
The recent DK/Greg Palast/Bradblog affair where a DK diarist started a firestorm by calling Greg Palast ‘Dangerous’ is an example of why they have no credibility as a site claiming to be progressive. While the diarist may have been simply blowing off steam, as he now admits, it was the thugs who appeared in the thread jumping on the opportunity to discredit Palast, that raises questions.
That controversy is still going on, btw. The original diarist has a Rec’d diary on the list today, unconditionally apologizing to Palast and retracting all of his previous, denigrating comments.
Apparently he did some more work on the issue of Voter Caging (first reported on in 2004 by Palast,) and concludes that Palast was correct in his overall accusation that the caging was biased against minorities, but did uncover some minor mistakes by Palast.
DK is all too ready to smear any real progressive, like Cynthia McKinney or Greg Palast eg. It’s fine to not like their style, but it is the essence of their work that is important. Over and over, anyone exposing the truth about this government, or even questioning it are slammed routinely on DK.
Anyhow, the left blogs seem to spend most of their time engaging in flame wars, not with the right, but with each other. What a waste of what could have been such a powerful resource.
On a lighter note, I’m looking forward to the 4th. Spending it with friends …. we have some great fireworks out here down on the beach and this little island gets about 10,000 visitors now on July 4th every year. When we first moved here about ten years ago, it was almost empty …..
Btw, I do love Lucid’s and Delarue’s wonderful posts on the NYC music scene. Makes me want to take the bus and go in which I haven’t done for about three years now.
ms_xeno // June 29, 2007 at 11:29 pm
SB, I wonder if the ops are aware that calling somebody like Palast “dangerous” says a lot more about them than it does about Palast.
Speaking of McKinney, would you believe that I only got to see about ten minutes of American Blackout ?! Gack. The disc mr_xeno rented was defective and had to be sent back. I hope they send the replacement soon.
Probably have to pass on the fireworks this year. Which is too bad because I love helping our friends across town set them off. But since I got/got over the lung-rot, I’ve become much more sensitive to smoke and the like. Bah. :/ Anyway, have a ball.
Sabrina Ballerina // June 30, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Lol, yes it does say a lot about them. He is dangerous to the croooks, which is why he was mentioned in those infamous emails, but Rove and his cabal knew the US media would never touch his stuff so had zero concerns about him back then. And that shows how much control they have over our media.
Re American Blackout, ms x, I have not seen it yet …. too bad about disc … I heard it was excellent. It’s really a shame that women like McKinney are considered such a threat …. sort of lik you and all the other inconvenient women who fail to fall for the federal fairy tales we are told, or to bow down and be happy with a pat on the head.
Fireworks! Lol, I really never cared about them much, but I have to admit, when you are really close to where they go off, it is thrilling to lie on the beach or the road nearby and feel the earth move! Cheap thrills! Lol, that’s the name we put on our dinghy!
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Speaking of cheap, I just read through a thread on dk that someone sent me to … seems the ‘feminist’ faction on dk most likely being manipulated by DHinMI and his minions, have been going after Buhdydharma, pulling out the ’sexism’ card, for quite a while now. Ever since he went after the bullies! What a little gulag that place is.
It’s laughable who they think speaks for women over there! ‘Yay!! It is just so fab how sexy my new wardrobe is!’ But then again, perfect for DK considering its owner’s stated opinion of women who dare to speak out on important issues. Their stats show that the site is overwhelming white, yuppy male with something like a 2% minority membership. One quick cruise throught the ‘feminisssms’ threads would be enough for any woman hoping to talk about something other than her worth as a sex magnet. They threw HRH off the board after she started her series on women’s issues, then took it over and gave to the two most disliked bullies on the site. Not to mention uninformed as to real issues that face women in this country today -
Sorry you can’t enjoy fireworks, ms xeno. I have to admit that I have come to like them a lot especially the showers of little stars which fall slowly down all over the water. I also love the boats that gather in the water to see them. It is a beautiful sight, especially if it’s a nice, clear summer night ….
It’s a beautiful day here, wish all you vipers were here …. so I’m off to enjoy the sunshine for a while ….
Francis L. Holland // July 7, 2007 at 12:27 am
Thanks for running this post! But don’t miss the article at MyLeftWing entitled, “Markos Moulitsas’ “Family Business” Linked to Death Squads in El Salvador “
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