oh just the one?
The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
101–110 of 124 posts
Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#102What I think many of the jaded comments about how "it was ever thus" miss is what it means that American soft power is reduced to AI slop. During the Cold War, the CIA famously funded all sorts of cultural endeavors, but much of the output (if not directly CIA-created, then at least bolstered by the Agency) is still held to have been culturally relevant: abstract expressionism ( https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20…
School of Americas-trained death squads on one hand and hoity-toity arts and culture on the other. Soft power certainly casts a wide net.
Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#103What I think many of the jaded comments about how "it was ever thus" miss is what it means that American soft power is reduced to AI slop. During the Cold War, the CIA famously funded all sorts of cultural endeavors, but much of the output (if not directly CIA-created, then at least bolstered by the Agency) is still held to have been culturally relevant: abstract expressionism ( https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20…
School of Americas-trained death squads on one hand and hoity-toity arts and culture on the other. Soft power certainly casts a wide net.
Yeah, good point. And I think you could probably make a fair case that the choice of where to apply that sort of ugly anti-democratic violence and subversion probably reflected culturally chauvinist and racist ideas about which cultures would be receptive to hoity toity arts and culture (European, White) and which would not (the others).
But I don't know that I find a lot of fault with, like, funding the Kenyon Review. That sort of seems like a fine thing to do. I'm not sure there's a discernible difference between that and just sort of generally funding arts and culture, which a) seems fine, but b) also certainly serves to aggrandize "our" culture and promote the glory of "our" way of life.
Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deliberate starvation is more of a capitalist thing. It's not like China or communist parts of India have a big famine problem, while the US and their partners are causing famines in e.g. West Asia right now. Left wing policies actually work pretty well, this is why the US has spent so much resources undermining movements and states trying to implement them, and this is why the Soviet needed nuclear weapons to surviv…
Famine ceased to be a major world issue after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which abetted infantilism of different types in most of the countries that originated after WW2. In my childhood there were always children starving everywhere but the causes of this were finally throttled, by and large, in the 90s and 00s, with a bit of regression in the recent past. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?lo…
Yeah, because to the capitalist starvation is not a bug, it's a feature. It's how you manage to keep up profits under competition and automation, by pressuring the cost of labour with the threat of misery. Almost fifty million people in the US, of which some fourteen million are kids, are food insecure.
Deliberate famine and starvation campaigns is still a thing capitalist countries engage in, e.g. in Yemen, Cuba, Haiti and Palestine. Due to international support of RSF the ongoing crisis in Sudan could count as well.
Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#105Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deliberate starvation is more of a capitalist thing. It's not like China or communist parts of India have a big famine problem, while the US and their partners are causing famines in e.g. West Asia right now. Left wing policies actually work pretty well, this is why the US has spent so much resources undermining movements and states trying to implement them, and this is why the Soviet needed nuclear weapons to surviv…
A better example of capitalism doing actual famine would be the Irish Potato Famine, which was concurrent with the writing of the actual Communist Manifesto. Communism has also had famine, famously both the Holodomor in the USSR and the Great Leap Forward in China. The only thing that really seems to end famine, is a deliberate policy of subsidising the overproduction of food.
How is it better?
It's kind of weird to attribute those famines, or e.g. the Kazakh famine contemporary with the holodomor which was arguably worse but is less well known, to communism. Quick industrialisation would be a much better, though partial, explanation. If it was a property of communist or socialist projects, why'd you need to reach almost a century back to find examples?
We're massively overproducing food now, and still have famines. Egalitarian distributive policies are key to ending hunger.
Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better example of capitalism doing actual famine would be the Irish Potato Famine, which was concurrent with the writing of the actual Communist Manifesto. Communism has also had famine, famously both the Holodomor in the USSR and the Great Leap Forward in China. The only thing that really seems to end famine, is a deliberate policy of subsidising the overproduction of food.
How is it better? It's kind of weird to attribute those famines, or e.g. the Kazakh famine contemporary with the holodomor which was arguably worse but is less well known, to communism. Quick industrialisation would be a much better, though partial, explanation. If it was a property of communist or socialist projects, why'd you need to reach almost a century back to find examples? We're massively overproducing food n…
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Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much every remotely developed country is capitalist. The wealthiest country with a non-capitalist economy is Cuba or Turkmenistan, depending on where you draw the line.
Uhh, China...
US has a higher government spending as a % of GDP than China.
Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#109Re: The Pentagon is running an AI propaganda mill targeting Latin America
#110What I think many of the jaded comments about how "it was ever thus" miss is what it means that American soft power is reduced to AI slop. During the Cold War, the CIA famously funded all sorts of cultural endeavors, but much of the output (if not directly CIA-created, then at least bolstered by the Agency) is still held to have been culturally relevant: abstract expressionism ( https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20…
School of Americas-trained death squads on one hand and hoity-toity arts and culture on the other. Soft power certainly casts a wide net.
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