If the Nation or any other liberal-labor-left publication really wanted to increase their circulation they would have sent somebody like Doug Henwood, Mike Davis or Michael Moore to Yugoslavia by now. It would be interesting to see what a John Reed, a Jack London or an H.L. Menken would make out of the Yugoslavian Affair, if they were there today. Do any of you Californians' know anything about this Watson fellow who is in Yugoslavia for the LA Times? His stuff is original. 33's, Tom L. Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > At 08:09 PM 4/20/99 -0500, Yoshie wrote: > >P.S. I wonder how long we can continue to post this sort of info, in that > >NATO regards Yugo media (especially TV but not limited to them) as > >legitimate bombing targets and that the US military is developing what to > > Yoshie, I also periodically check the Yugoslav web sites, but I do not find > the information posted there particularly trustworthy either. Two lies do > not make one true statement, so repeating "alternative" lies does not seem > to be a very effective means of getting information. > > The problem is that we are beeing spoon fed pulp fiction by well organized > propaganda machines, especially on this side of the Atlantic Ocean - but we > do not have any effective means of sorting out truth from fiction. > Reliance on the multitude of sources can only work when those sources are > independent of each other - in which case we can assemble some 'central > tendency" by scanning multiple sources, and thus approximate the truth. > > But in today's reality - no independent media exist (Michaal Parenti made a > quite convincing argument for that) - what we have is a chorus - many > voices singing a single tune. The US media essentially parrot the same > line spoon-fed to them by the government and corporate PR departaments, > adding only their own spin. The same holds for the Yugoslav media (I guess > there is a slighgtly greater variety of voices in Western Europe). > > Surveying the opinions posted on the net does not solve the problem either, > because: > > 1. people often repeat hearsay and fantasies they heard in the media of > from other people, and more importantly > > 2. There would have to be a mechanism in place that samples internet > opinions across the entire spectrum, but no such mechanism exists. What we > have is self-selection - people tuning to what they want to hear and > avoiding what theyr do not. > > Moreove, internet is a far more effective tool for disinfiormation > operations than organizing tool for the oppositions. All that government > spooks need to do is to post fabricated "news" to the NGO listservs and > discussion groups - it is really easy and the risk of being detected is > close to nil. But there is a long way between laptop networking and real > life organizing. > > I think we are quite screwed in this (dis)information age - because the > truth can be more effectively drowned in fabricated pulp fiction than ever > before. > > Wojtek
