Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • RUSSIA’S PROPAGANDA STRATEGY (Roman Skaskiw) 1) Affect the first impression. Fir

    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/17/russia-words-to-destroy-meaning-writers-nobelII. RUSSIA’S PROPAGANDA STRATEGY

    (Roman Skaskiw)

    1) Affect the first impression. First impressions are known to be very sticky even after future, contradictory evidence. So with every story, they try to create a firestorm of competing narratives. (Ukraine’s protesters are CIA NAZI’s, Russia is NOT ivading, Boris Nemtsov was killed by Chechens – or by the CIA, MH-17)

    They have a rapid reaction force of liars and propagandists.

    2) Create confusion and hesitation. It doesn’t matter if they are proved wrong. There’s no shame in lying. They have a short sited strategy of getting enemies and other political forces to hesitate.

    3) Destroy the very idea of truth — by making it seem like the least interesting of many equally valid possibilities.

    This was first observed by Peruvian nobel-prize winning writer Mario Vargas Llosa. (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/17/russia-words-to-destroy-meaning-writers-nobel)

    4) Pollute the communication commons, especially the internet – because they fear their people.

    —” Also, by working every day to spread Kremlin propaganda, the paid trolls have made it impossible for the normal Internet user to separate truth from fiction.

    “The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” Volkov said, when we met in the office of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “You have to remember the Internet population of Russia is just over 50 percent. The rest are yet to join, and when they join it’s very important what is their first impression.” The Internet still remains the one medium where the opposition can reliably get its message out. But their message is now surrounded by so much garbage from trolls that readers can become resistant before the message even gets to them.”— (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html)

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-10 04:54:00 UTC

  • WHY WESTERNERS ARE VULNERABLE (roman skaskiw) 1) Everyone accustomed to truth te

    http://romaninukraine.com/tex-fighting-for-world-communism-with-the-dnr/III. WHY WESTERNERS ARE VULNERABLE

    (roman skaskiw)

    1) Everyone accustomed to truth telling

    2) Journalists accustomed to relying on official sources

    3) Journalists accustomed to telling both sides

    4) Russians extremely good at penetrating and influencing dissenting political movements (they’ve been doing it for centuries — see Joseph Conrad’s “Secret Agent” for an albeit fictional pre-Soviet example).

    ^^ this is why you hear Russian propaganda coming from libertarians, nationalists and communists.

    Amazing that Russia is able to create an imaginary world for communists from Italy, Spain, and Texas who will fight for the separatists thinking the goal is world communism (or else they pretend to think it):

    http://romaninukraine.com/tex-fighting-for-world-communism-with-the-dnr/

    http://romaninukraine.com/spaniards-arrested-after-fighting-for-rebels-in-east-ukraine-say-half-of-foreign-fighters-were-communists-half-nazis/

    http://conservative-headlines.com/2015/02/violent-marxist-antifa-gangs-allegedly-fighting-in-ukrainian-civil-war/

    A Russian dissident recently wrote a book called “Nothing is True and Everything is Possible”. (http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Is-True-Everything-Possible/dp/1610394550)

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-10 04:53:00 UTC

  • IV. EXAMPLES THAT LYING (AND PARANOIA) RUN DEEP IN THE RUSSIAN PSYCHE (Roman Ska

    IV. EXAMPLES THAT LYING (AND PARANOIA) RUN DEEP IN THE RUSSIAN PSYCHE

    (Roman Skaskiw)

    1) Patton – “The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”

    2) Bismark – “A treaty with Russia is not worth the paper it is printed on.”

    3) observed in 1893 by theologian Vladimir Solovyov:

    “Let us imagine a person healthy in body and strong, talented and not unkind — for such is quite justly the general view of the Russian people. We know that this person (or people) is now in a very sorry state. If we want to help him, we have first to understand what is wrong with him. Thus we learn that he is not really mad; his mind is merely afflicted to a considerable extent by false ideas approaching folie de grandeur and a hostility towards everyone and everything. Indifferent to his real advantage, indifferent to damage likely to be caused, he imagines dangers that do not exist, and builds upon them the most absurd propositions. It seems to him that all his neighbours offend him, that they insufficiently bow to his greatness and in every way want to harm him. He accuses everyone in his family of damaging and deserting him, of crossing over to the enemy camp. He imagines that his neighbours want to undermine his house and even to launch an armed attack. Therefore he will spend enormous sums on the purchase of arms, revolvers and iron locks. If he has any time left, he will turn against his family. We shall not, of course, give him money, even though we are eager to help him, but will try to persuade him that his ideas are wrong and unjustified. If he will still not be convinced and if he perseveres in his mania, neither money nor drugs will help. “

    4) 19th Century French Traveler & Writer Marquis De Custine:

    – He describes a Russian civil servant bragging in 1839: “Russia lies, denies the facts, makes war on the evidence, and wins!”

    – “Russia is a nation of mutes; some magician has changed sixty million men into automatons.”

    – “I don’t reproach the Russians for being what they are; what I blame them for is their desire to appear to be what we [Europeans] are…. They are much less interested in being civilized than in making us believe them so… They would be quite content to be in effect more awful and barbaric than they actually are, if only others could thereby be made to believe them better and more civilized.”

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-10 04:53:00 UTC

  • Mr. Doolittle, I believe you will “enjoy” this. PS : How intellectually dishones

    Mr. Doolittle, I believe you will “enjoy” this.

    PS : How intellectually dishonest someone must be to do this?

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-09 02:51:00 UTC

  • and you know, it’s not like I’m saying anything original. There are plenty of bo

    and you know, it’s not like I’m saying anything original. There are plenty of books on the economics of the civil war

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-08 20:51:22 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/618885105692491776

    Reply addressees: @randiego2 @voxdotcom

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/618660498268012544

    IN REPLY TO:

    @randiego2

    @curtdoolittle @voxdotcom Wow, that’s some laughably twisted historical revisionism.

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/618660498268012544

  • Curt Doolittle shared a post

    Curt Doolittle shared a post.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-07 14:45:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a post

    Curt Doolittle shared a post.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-07 03:42:00 UTC

  • Universities are Repositories for Discarded Theories

    [P]riceless

    —“Universities may see themselves as bastions of knowledge and intellectualism, but they have long since forfeited this role. Instead, they have become repositories for theories long since discarded in the region and which bear little resemblance to reality today. The more professors prioritise theory over fact, the more they will condemn themselves to irrelevance. Unfortunately, when policymakers embrace blindly their untested conventional wisdom, the consequences can be far worse.”—–

    I could not have done this work in the Academy.  It wouldn’t have been possible.  You can’t really assemble degree in this kind of philosophy, this kind of economics, this kind of politics. The system is the problem. Source: Curt Doolittle

  • Universities are Repositories for Discarded Theories

    [P]riceless

    —“Universities may see themselves as bastions of knowledge and intellectualism, but they have long since forfeited this role. Instead, they have become repositories for theories long since discarded in the region and which bear little resemblance to reality today. The more professors prioritise theory over fact, the more they will condemn themselves to irrelevance. Unfortunately, when policymakers embrace blindly their untested conventional wisdom, the consequences can be far worse.”—–

    I could not have done this work in the Academy.  It wouldn’t have been possible.  You can’t really assemble degree in this kind of philosophy, this kind of economics, this kind of politics. The system is the problem. Source: Curt Doolittle

  • I have been looking into political correctness. I’m sure you must have covered t

    I have been looking into political correctness. I’m sure you must have covered this, but can’t see where – unless it’s just covered by generally being untruthful. I came across the book ‘Thought Prison: the fundamental nature of Political Correctness’, by Professor Bruce Charlton, which looks a useful discourse on the subject. The author uses the term instead of liberalism or socialism.

    He believes that the PC are nihilists, truth is a social construct and that this strikes at the root of vitality.

    What is your take on the subject? Apologies for the Amazon link, but it was the best I could find – there’s also a useful blog on this that FB didn’t seem to want to let me post:

    Source date (UTC): 2015-07-06 12:23:00 UTC