Paul Haeder, Author

as we slide more toward Bedlam and Babylon, a Tower of AI-VR-AR Babel rises

Bedlam? (Modelled after a mental asylum . . . When it was rebuilt in 1676, London’s Bethlem Hospital was the most opulent mental asylum the world had ever seen – from the outside. Inside, it was another matter entirely.)

[Photo: The hospital may have looked like a palace, but treatment of patients was hardly ideal, as shown in this etching of William Norris in 1814 (Credit: Wellcome Library, London)]

Indeed we are in a controlled demolition, a programmed and set upon Tower of Babel rising, falling, rising, and falling and rising again :

And so there is so so much out there, from TikTok, to Netflix, to SmartPhones, and then beyond the unending media trolling creating these stories, these humans (sic) who joke about killing Russians, and money well spent:

“Lindsey Graham calls ‘Russians dying’ the ‘best money US has spent’ in a meeting with Zelensky: US senator Lindsey Graham dubbed ‘Russians dying’ as ‘the best money’ the US has spent during a meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky on Friday (26 May).

Footage from inside the room where it took place shows Graham joking with Zelensky that it’s ‘free or die’, as Ukraine requested more ‘long-range weapons’ to aid the ongoing invasion.

In a statement after the meeting, he said he expected the Ukrainian counter-offensive to ‘yield results’.”

Watch it!!

Again, these are words of a murderer, two of them, and full-stop, my world is one where these murderers, and those pushing murder onto more crazy and empty headed people to commit, adopt and approve of this murder, should be, well, taken out.

For fuck’s sake, dudes and dudettes, do you approve of this unelected governor of an un-resolved 51st state, Ukraine, laughing it up about “free or die” in their remarks?

Come on, wimps, just bend a bit toward humanity, toward what you should do if you see men pounding a lady with a puny steak knife with taser high voltage wires?

Babel. Bedlam.

Another form of this Charlatan Fleecing is the criminality of the software and application and hardware criminals: “Many Colorado districts bought Chromebooks to get kids through COVID. Now, thousands of computers are nearing their end.

Chromebooks reach their “death date” when they are no longer capable of receiving operating system updates. Replacing them straps district budgets and harms the environment.”

This dirty Capitalism, Chlamydia Capitalism, has built in assassin genes, shelf lives, preprogrammed obsolescence! Chromebooks, basic laptops programmed by Google that are primarily used for connecting to the Internet and running simple programs, have a notably shorter lifespan than other devices. Each is hardwired with a so-called “death date,” a predetermined date when they can no longer carry out operating system updates and consequently stop enabling students to navigate to secure websites even as the devices themselves still function. All of Google’s devices will expire in an average of four years, according to a recent report focused on the impacts of technology turnover by nonprofit advocacy organization CoPIRG.

Google and Samsung, and now, tech manufacturers like HP, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo offer their own versions of Chromebooks! “With a collection of about 78,000 Chromebooks for both students and staff, Denver Public Schools as invested more than $18.3 million in Chromebooks since 2021, about half using bond money and the rest from federal COVID relief funds, according to figures the district provided.”

All of this is pure Merchandizing Death, not just Graham and Zelensky Murder Incorporated Hit Squads and Assassin Drone Squadrons Killing Anyone of Russian “stench,” but also the death of people’s spirituality, spirit, soul, intellect, hope, through this killer stuff, Chromebooks. Hard-wired end of life Zoom School.

Snake oil and Charlatan Mojo?

It’s a no brainer why there is addiction, why the opioid crisis is a crisis. For fuck’s sake, this is lawyer, Californication Robert Kennedy Junio, blathering about a work camp style in fascist Italy, today?

Five years on the farm, and if you don’t do your chores and work for free and stay chained up when we say you stay chained up, then, watch out, brothers and sisters.

These all relate — Murdering Russians with USA Money, a Good Deal, Best Deal Behind Door Number Two; then, this criminal enterprise, this end of teaching/teachers/bricks and mortar for the Dirty Chromebook and WWW and insipid junk in these machines as well as a behavior experiment in compliance and acceptance of all things digital; and then this upsidedown world of RFK, Jr. (and I am 100 percent on record stating anyone going for the POTUS, anyone with a campaign, today, anyone getting press for POTUS aspiration, all of them are THE ENEMY).

But think about the stupidity of the lawyer Kennedy saying 100,000 opioid deaths a year is twice the number of those young boys dying in Vietnam over a 15 year period. What the fuck is that? Young boys? Hmm? US bombing, use of chemical weapons, napalm and phosphoric bombs as well as the ground operations of the US army caused the death of 3 million Vietnamese in the Vietnam war.

Work camps. Forced labor. Five years in a lock-down. Whew. RFK, Jr. touts this shit:

But the reality is, what causes addiction? Production? Working for criminals? War?

A well in My Lai

Mass murder of civilians by American soldiers in My Lai, Vietnam 1968

The city of Novi Sad for NATO bombing

Coalition F-15E aircraft during Operation Inherent Resolve

Afghanistan: Operation Enduring Freedom began on October 7, 2001

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Ahh, so what is the root of Babel, or this Bedlam, of this Insane Doublespeak, Newsspeak, Equivocation, false balance, stacked deck, agnotolgy? Propaganda 101, and when we looked at these in my many dozens (hundred-plus) of classes I taught, well, now, what can we do NOW to get a Haeder Faculty Member Fired? There are more rhetorical devices and constructed ways to induce stupor or stupidity or blind ignorance or blind rage, but here, a short list for First Year Composition List.

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES TO RECOGNIZE:

1. NAME CALLING or STEREOTYPING:  Giving a person or an idea a bad label by using an easy to remember pejorative name.  This is used to make us reject and condemn a person or idea without examining what the label really means.  Examples: “Republican”, “Tree-Hugger”, “Nazi”, “Environmentalist”, “Special-Interest Group”.

2. VIRTUE WORDS or GLITTERING GENERALITY: These words are used to dupe us into accepting and approving of things without examining the evidence carefully.  Examples: “Natural”, “Democratic”, “Organic”, “Scientific”, “Ecological”, “Sustainable”.

3. DEIFICATION:  This is when an idea is made to appear holy, sacred, or very special and therefore above all law.  Any alternative or opposite points of view are thereby given the appearance of treason or blasphemy.  Examples: “God-given right to…”, “Mother Earth”, “Gia”.

4.  TRANSFER:  Transfer is when a symbol that carries respect, authority, sanction, and prestige is used along with and idea or argument to make it look more acceptable.  Examples: American Flag, University Seal, Medical Association Symbol (or something that looks like it).  This method is also called GUILT- or VIRTUE-BY-ASSOCIATION.

5.  TESTIMONIAL:  When some respected celebrity (or alternatively someone generally hated) claims that an idea or product is good (or bad).  This technique is used to convince us without examining the facts more carefully.

6.  PLAIN FOLKS:  This is a way that a speaker convinces an audience that an idea is good because they are the same ideas of the vast majority of people like yourself.  Examples: “This is the will of the People”, “Most Americans…”.  Another example would be when the speaker tells a story about a family or people that are “just like you” to reinforce the speaker’s point of view.

7.  BAND WAGON:  This common propaganda method is when the speaker tries to convince us to accept their point of view or else we will miss out on something really good.  The Band-Wagon technique is often used in advertising.  Examples: “This is the wave of the future”, “Be the first on your block”, “Act Now!”.   You might ask yourself “What if I was the only one on my block because no one else was interested (duped)?”.

8.  ARTIFICIAL DICHOTOMY:  This is when someone tries to claim there are only two sides to an issue and that both sides must have equal presentation in order to be evaluated.  This technique is used to dupe us into believing there is only one way to look at an issue, when in fact there may be many alternative viewpoints or “sides”.  Like most propaganda techniques it simplifies reality and therefore distorts it, often to the advantage of the speaker.  A classic example is the “intelligent design” versus “evolution” controversy.

9.  HOT POTATO: This is an inflammatory (often untrue) statement or question used to throw an opponent off guard, or to embarrass them.  Examples “Have you stopped beating your spouse”, “When will you pay the taxes you owe?”  The fact that it may be utterly untrue is irrelevant, because it still brings controversy to the opponent.

10.  STALLING or IGNORING THE QUESTION :  This technique is used to play for more time or to avoid answering a pointed question.  Examples: “More research is needed…”, “A fact-finding committee is working on this issue…”  “I am calling for an investigation on this failure..” When asked about a tax increase possibility a senator replies: “I have always met the obligations I have to those I represent.”

11.  LEAST-OF-EVILS is used to justify an otherwise unpleasant or unpopular point of view.  Example: ‘”War is hell but appeasement leads to worse disasters”.

12.  SCAPEGOAT: This often use with Guilt-by-association to deflect scrutiny away from the issues.  It transfers blame to one person or group of people without investigating the complexities of the issue.  Examples: “George W. Bush got us into Iraq”, “President Reagan caused the national debt”.

13.  CAUSE AND EFFECT MISMATCH:  This technique confuses the audience about what is really cause and effect.  In fact the causes of most phenomena are complex, and it is misleading to say just one of the following: “Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria”, “Tuberculosis is caused by un-regulated capitalism that creates poor working conditions”, “Tuberculosis is caused by a lack of effective antibiotics”.

14. DISTORTION OF DATA or OUT OF CONTEXT or CARD STACKING or CHERRY PICKING:  This technique is used to convince the audience by using selected information and not presenting the complete story.  Examples: “A study was done that showed eating peanut butter causes liver cancer” (the fact that later the study was later shown to be flawed or funded by the peanut butter haters and therefore suspect, is not revealed).  A variation would be “Raising the speed limit to 65 mph resulted in many fewer traffic fatalities”.  Such statements need to be checked with how many people were driving before and after the change in speed limit.  Fewer people may be driving after the speed limit change, even though the fatality rates (deaths per 100,000) may be higher, leading to the overall result of fewer fatalities.

15.  WEAK INFERENCE (or False Cause):  Weak inference is when a judgment is made with insufficient evidence, or that the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the evidence given.  For example:  Ducks and geese migrate south for the winter, therefore all waterfowl migrate south for the winter.  Or, most rich folks vote republican, therefore most people who vote republican are rich.

16.  FAULTY ANALOGY:  This is when a comparison is carried to far.  Example: “The economy is following the same path as right before the great depression, therefore we will experience a stock market crash soon!”  SLIPPERY SLOPE would be an example of faulty analogy.  Slippery slope makes the argument that a shift in one direction will continue to lead to extremes (ex. smoking pot will lead to heroine addiction).  It is not necessarily so.

17.  MISUSE OF STATISTICS:  Some examples: Average results are reported, but not the amount of variation around the averages.  A percent or fraction is presented, but not the sample size as in “9 out of 10 dentists recommend…”.  Absolute and proportional quantities are mixed as in “3,400 more robberies occurred in our town last year, whereas other cities hand an increase of less than one percent”.  Graphs are used that, by chopping off part of the scale or using unusual units or no scale, distort the appearance of the result.  Results are reported with misleading precision.  For example, representing 13 out of 19 students as 68.42105 percent.

18. FEAR:  “Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

19. ad hominem ATTACK (also called Deflection):  You attack the messenger, instead of the argument or evidence that is presented.

 20. tu quoque ATTACK: Pronounced too-kwo-kwee.  This technique is when you respond to your opponent by accusing them of committing a logical fallacy or propaganda technique instead of addressing the claim of your opponent’s argument and evidence.  Ex. “You too are using fear as a propaganda technique”

21. Preemptive Framing: “Frame an issue before other people get a chance to” (George Lakoff – On the Media Jan 2017) Ex. “The only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC (Democratic National Committee) is discussed, is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they were totally embarassed”  -Donald Trump.  When in fact the Dems did not lose big, nor was is their fault that they got hacked.

22.  Diversion: When a major issue comes up that is embarrassing or threatening, so a diversion is created so attention is directed away from the issue.

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Now, it is not to say we can’t parse our own propaganda, and the merits of critically looking at arguments, debates, and seeing how lawyers manage ethos, pathos, logos, and how we have the ability to dig deep into ideas and emotions and the collective as well as the individual perspectives and points of view and language and discourse and contexts to determine how and why and what people disagree on, those merits rank high.

Shit dog, I have studied this in graduate urban planning course, and have taught variations on a theme of the underlying principles: Systems Thinking for Social Change by David Peter Stroh. There is a lot of psycho-babble, a lot of systems language, much emphasis on change and consensus harmony. Certainly the Wikipedia definition makes more sense if applied correctly: Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts, enabling systems change.

However, we all are framing things from our cultural biases, or our own critical significant emotional events generating some interesting strata, all those events in the womb leading up to the school, throughout life, carving into us. The brain of the human is very very malleable and mutatable. It’s been evolving to forget, to screen, to invent, and to amplify or deattenuate. And there are inbred peoples, that is, people who have a very thin margin of diversity in their familial lines, and that too has generated some interestingly cohesive and colluding mental states, emotional states and so-called consistently common IQs within family lines.

Well, we don’t want to get too weird, but, yes, we do inherit stature, ear lobes, eye color, hair, and, well, disposition and various emotional states. Are we the product of the sins of our fathers/mothers?

Who knows the direct and indirect ethos, pathos and logos of say being a Hillary and Bill offspring, or an offspring of Zuckerberg and Chan?

The Meta CEO, 38, and wife Dr. Priscilla Chan welcomed their third baby together, daughter Aurelia Chan Zuckerberg, the proud dad announced on Instagram March 24, 2023.

The dad of three shared sweet photos of the couple with the newborn, soaking up the first few moments with their baby girl.

“Welcome to the world, Aurelia Chan Zuckerberg! You’re such a little blessing,” he captioned the post.

Zuckerberg and Chan, who are Co-Founders and Co-CEOs at CZI [RE: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education, to addressing the needs of our local communities. Our mission is to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.] , are also parents to daughters August, 5, and Maxima “Max,” 7.

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax —- and this is nothing, really, compared to what these Panama Papers and Pandora Files have revealed.

The Bezoses of the world have no need to be paid a salary. Bezos’ Amazon wages have long been set at the middle-class level of around $80,000 a year.

For years, there’s been something of a competition among elite founder-CEOs to go even lower. Steve Jobs took $1 in salary when he returned to Apple in the 1990s. Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Google’s Larry Page have all done the same.

Yet this is not the self-effacing gesture it appears to be: Wages are taxed at a high rate. The top 25 wealthiest Americans reported $158 million in wages in 2018, according to the IRS data. That’s a mere 1.1% of what they listed on their tax forms as their total reported income. The rest mostly came from dividends and the sale of stock, bonds or other investments, which are taxed at lower rates than wages.

Now, who said this?

“Well, look, you can take — steal — all the money from the rich. I mean, multimillionaires, billionaires, us, and, that’s around 4,000 billionaires and a hefty 20 million multimillionaires. Take it all, and from Blackrock, from those Fortune 5000 companies. I guarantee, in five years, we will get all that money back from you. Go ahead, give me a stat: ‘One billion women around the world can’t access loans, markets, business training, or even open bank accounts. And when they can, other barriers stand in their way, such as gender-based violence and grueling household work. … This lack of opportunity perpetuates the cycle of poverty and hunger in their communities.’ Okay, then another stat — ‘ a majority of the world’s population (56%) continued to live a low-income existence, compared with just 13% that could be considered middle income by a global standard’ — so that’s what Seventy Percent of the World poor and low income. Hell, give the other 25 percent our wealth. That’s 95 percent of the world given all our wealth, and sure, land, holdings, what have you. I guarantee, that in five years WE will get all of that back. Hands down. All of it. And, with interest. All of it. Sure, the land and companies will be shit storms, all fucked up, broken down, useless, kaput. But just let the billionaires — the smart ones, the elite, the uber geniuses and quick on our feet ones — and their minions who are multimillionaires because we have given them a chance to work with and for us get tp work on fleecing you all. All that money, all of it, all back in our pockets. Hell, just one family, those drug dealers, the Sackler Family, take them for example. Hit them with 99 percent fines and taxes. What, forty members of that family. Here, more stats — ‘In 2016, the remaining 40 members of the Sackler family were worth $13 billion, which makes them the 19th richest family, according to Forbes. Since then, the figure has shifted due to litigation and settlement fines. As of September 2021, Bloomberg estimated that the Sackler family’s wealth had dropped to about $11 billion.

According to a CNBC report in March 2021, members of the Sackler family had written in letters to the U.S. House Oversight Committee that family members on the board had assets of only about $1.1 billion.

If the figure above ($11 billion) is accurate and the family pays out the $6 billion it agreed to as part of the recent settlement, it could drop the Sackler family’s net worth to $5 billion or less.’ —-

Do you get it? These forty, no matter how screwed up some of them are, including in-laws, etc., the Sacklers will amass a fortune in five years starting today, much more than what you all think you could have taken from them.

You’d be eating nettles and running around with leprosy and fornicating in the bushes and trying to start fire with rocks without us. Hahaha.”

Okay, that was poetic license, but I have heard it before — “Take my millions and millions away, and I bet in five years I or my offspring will get it all back from you. You’d be on a bender, like those Lottery Winners. Useless stuff. Yachts that end up sinking. Esates with no plumbing. Foreclosed on properties. You’d cocaine and prostitute yourself back into poverty. And I’d have it all back, from my investments in private prisons, booze, cigarettes, insurance, PayDay loans, Porn Hub, Walmart, health care, you name it, I’d be back fleecing you in no time.”

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Ahh, here you go, Michael Parenti:

85 Billionaires and the Better Half by Michael Parenti

The world’s 85 richest individuals possess as much wealth as the 3.5 billion souls who compose the poorer half of the world’s population, or so it was announced in a report by Oxfam International. The assertion sounds implausible to me. I think the 85 richest individuals, who together are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars, must have far more wealth than the poorest half of our global population.

How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States.

Most of the 3.5 billion earn an average of $2.50 a day. The poorest 40 percent of the world population accounts for just 5 percent of all global income. About 80 percent of all humanity live on less than $10 a day. And the poorest 50 percent maintain only 7.2 percent of the world’s private consumption. How exactly could they have accumulated an amount of surplus wealth comparable to the 85 filthy richest?

Hundreds of millions live in debt even in “affluent” countries like the United States. They face health care debts, credit card debts, college tuition debts, and so on. Many, probably most who own homes— and don’t live in shacks or under bridges or in old vans— are still straddled with mortgages. This means their net family wealth is negative, minus-zero. They have no propertied wealth; they live in debt.

Millions among the poorest 50 percent in the world may have cars but most of them also have car payments. They are driving in debt. In countries like Indonesia, for the millions without private vehicles, there are the overloaded, battered buses, poorly maintained vehicles that specialize in breakdowns and ravine plunges. Among the lowest rungs of the 50 percent are the many who pick through garbage dumps and send their kids off to work in grim, soul-destroying sweatshops.

The 85 richest in the world probably include the four members of the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart, among the top ten superrich in the USA) who together are worth over $100 billion. Rich families like the DuPonts have controlling interests in giant corporations like General Motors, Coca-Cola, and United Brands. They own about forty manorial estates and private museums in Delaware alone and have set up 31 tax-exempt foundations. The superrich in America and in many other countries find ways, legal and illegal, to shelter much of their wealth in secret accounts. We don’t really know how very rich the very rich really are.

Regarding the poorest portion of the world population— whom I would call the valiant, struggling “better half”—what mass configuration of wealth could we possibly be talking about? The aggregate wealth possessed by the 85 super-richest individuals, and the aggregate wealth owned by the world’s 3.5 billion poorest, are of different dimensions and different natures. Can we really compare private jets, mansions, landed estates, super luxury vacation retreats, luxury apartments, luxury condos, and luxury cars, not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in equities, bonds, commercial properties, art works, antiques, etc.— can we really compare all that enormous wealth against some millions of used cars, used furniture, and used television sets, many of which are ready to break down? Of what resale value if any, are such minor durable-use commodities? especially in communities of high unemployment, dismal health and housing conditions, no running water, no decent sanitation facilities, etc. We don’t really know how poor the very poor really are.

Millions of children who number in the lower 50 percent never see the inside of a school. Instead they labor in mills, mines and on farms, under conditions of peonage. Nearly a billion people are unable to read or write. The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population. So poverty is spreading even as wealth accumulates. It is not enough to bemoan this enormous inequality, we must also explain why it is happening.

But for now, let me repeat: the world’s richest 85 individuals do not have the same amount of accumulated wealth as the world’s poorest 50 percent. They have vastly more. The multitude on the lower rungs—even taken as a totality—have next to nothing.

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Michael Parenti is an award winning, internationally known author. His most recent books are The Face of Imperialism (a critique of the U.S. global empire; 2011) and Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid’s Life (an ethnic memoir about his early life in Italian Harlem; 2013); Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies, and Against Empire (1995). For further information about his work, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.