Journalist says CBP withheld passport until he agreed he writes ‘propaganda’
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The priorities of the current administration have allowed the organization to rapidly balloon in size. Those of us who have worked at fast growing startups are aware of how quickly the character of an organization can change when it doubles or triples in size too quickly. And then the kind of person who wants to be a CBP officer in this political climate is... possibly worrying?
Will the next adminstration try to purge this organization? Will they even be able to? Are we going to be stuck with a dramatically more authoritarian customs organization for the next few decades?
I'm moderately concerned.
As a meta-addition to this comment, self-censorship is absolutely real here. I normally interact online using my real name, but obviously that seems a little more fraught when there's a real possibility that your comments will be thrown back at you when you interact with a customs officer at an airport. "You clearly don't like customs agents. That probably means you're hiding something" etc.
As a person of color I've always self-censored when dealing with the government. You give them just the information they need to know and nothing else. Lying to a federal officer is a felony; jokes, embellishments, or casual chat is simply something you don't do. You don't know who's recording and if it will be used against you later.
I think it's both. You can swap the head out in a company, but the rank and file can still resist and even have the person at the head removed by political pressure. At some point, the organization itself is completely morphed and needs pruning essentially to change it. If we want to see reform, I think politically the DoHS needs significant reforms bordering on amputation in some cases. It's hard to mildly reform such an organization such that it actually result in significant, lasting change.
BP specifically went from like 4K in the 90s to 20k by 2010, the damage was done a while ago.
IE- Conservative aggressive males use police jobs, the DHS, and border protection to give jobs to their chums. It’s like welfare for people who lack self control. You could say that the far left has taken over Silicon Valley, but it is not the same, skilled conservative tech people still get jobs, they just need to shut their mouths and blend in when people talk at lunch or whatever. For police departments taken over by assholes, I think they filter more heavily.
"Skilled colored people get jobs, they just need to keep their mouths shut and respect their betters. Skilled women get jobs, they just need to keep their heads down and endure a bit of sexual harassment."
IMO that's what that argument sounds like. Toxic work environments are toxic. And just like you don't take the white dude's word for it that his workplace isn't toxic to women or African Americans, perhaps we shouldn't take the word of the left that their workplaces are not toxic to conservatives.
This is one of those times when I don't think discrimination is needed to explain something. I doubt you find many conservatives working for LGBT or climate change charities either, but that wouldn't be for reasons of discrimination.
There is something deeply wrong about the authoritarian swing we are experiencing. There's a sizeable chunk of the populace complaining they're being suppressed or oppressed and using the attention they gain to form their own filter bubbles where they oppress and suppress thoughts they don't like. Without a second's thought about the double standard.
The west's attitude towards valuing freedom as a goal to be achieved is put under a large question mark. Are we even aiming at that anymore? Where do you go to be free? We seem to be aiming at the right to oppress others. Hm I'm not sure about that. I'm trying to figure it out in the sunlight. It seems the only way to be 'free' in the old sense is to be the king of yourself. Willing to throw away everything you could ever have or gain simply to retain authority over your own being.
Is the only place left for "the left" to be in exile? Underground and unseen is the only place left to be free? Dodging the spotlight, jailbreaking and refusing orders. Seems like a shitter world than I'd like.
You are channeling Epictetus[0]:
That is why [Diogenes] used to say, "From the time that Antisthenes set me free, I have ceased to be a slave." How did Antisthenes set him free? Listen to what Diogenes says. "He taught me what was mine, and what was not mine. Property is not mine; kinsmen, members of my household, friends, reputation, familiar places, converse with men—all these are not my own. 'What, then, is yours? Power to deal with external impressions.' He showed me that I possess this beyond all hindrance and constraint; no one can hamper me; no one can force me to deal with them otherwise than as I will. Who, then, has authority over me? Philip, or Alexander, or Perdiccas, or the Great King? Where can they get it? For the man who is destined to be overpowered by a man must long before that have been overpowered by things." Therefore, the man over whom pleasure has no power, nor evil, nor fame, nor wealth, and who, whenever it seems good to him, can spit his whole paltry body into some oppressor's face and depart from this life—whose slave can he any longer be, whose subject?
[0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3ADiscourses_of_Epictetu...
We are all individually doomed to stand and burn in the sunlight, as a hierarchy of authority forms around us. But this is only half the equation. In the past the exiled half was a matter of flesh and assumed racial identity. We aren't doing that again. But what is the exiled status? An individual that says no to authority? What is the core problem with somebody who does not bend to our current wave of authoritarianism? How do we harness this power for good? It would be trivial to f* it up. Give past dictators the power of tagging & labeling in a secret worldwide internet database that contains everybody's face & data and the world becomes very dark very quickly. We must figure out what we are fighting to protect before it's gone forever.
Those who reject authoritarianism still have the paradox of tolerance and tyranny of the minority to deal with.
Those who band together have more power than individuals. Those who use their power to gain more followers gain more power. Eventually it doesn't really matter what they're selling, because absent any other forces, the majority will buy it.
What needs fixing is human nature on a majority scale, and no one's figured out how to do that.
It's a bit like geoengineering: we can hack it a bit in the short term, but the longer-term consequences are still beyond our comprehension/attention span.
And besides, whose 'fix' would we trust...
'Be excellent towards one another' is probably the best guidance we'll get. Enforcing that? Well, then we need definitions and rules and people exploiting them.
Personally, 7 years ago I (a Canadian) had much more grief flying into England than this year (or ever) going to the US.
This is the unfortunate reality of CBP (and the TSA): they can make your life miserable if they’d like to, so most people just accept it in the interest of being able to get out of it quickly and going wherever they need to.
It’s really time these people were held to account for their crimes.
Then you will be harassed every time. They know exactly how much they can inconvenience / intimidate you without breaking the law. The nail that sticks up gets hammered, unfortunately.
This is why I never travel outside the US.
They really, really don’t like that. But they have to let you in, and they know it, so they lie, threaten, intimidate, strip search, et c. I’ve had non-citizens traveling with me through the border physically molested and denied entry simply because of their attempt to enter with someone who uses their basic human rights.
The US CBP is a travesty, a national shame.
Here's the part of the video mentioned above (Spanish, the English subtitles are okay):
In any story I'm familiar with, the only newspapers that do unbiased reporting are the Financial Times and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
Especially in SJW stories these are the only ones that do not misquote the targets.
This is not to criticize those journalists that really do justice to their subjects, for which we should definitely be thankful.
Yes, if you define propaganda as "intentional lies" then the media doesn't put out much of it. But that category also excludes things like "look at our wonderful town of Pripyat, the future of our glorious union!" and other such classic propaganda. (Would you describe a WW2 era poster of a Japanese soldier with a bayonetted baby as propaganda? After all, that kinda happened, and quite a few times) But I fail to see much difference between "news generated with the express purpose of changing people's minds" and "have an agenda and to select from the facts”.
The wonderful town of Pripyat can be ignored easily, the demonization of another country's inhabitants less so.
Propaganda: The press is lying to you.
Journalism: All news organizations have an agenda and will bias their writing to suit that agenda.
Which is why I say everything on that spectrum is some variety of propaganda, and the difference between journalism and propaganda is objectivity.
There are some orthogonal components as well though: for instance, one form of propaganda could simply be labelled as distraction, a bunch of feel-good happy-go-lucky stuff that serves to take your attention away from the stuff that actually matters. It can all be totally objective and still be propaganda, just like trolls that stir up the pot can be part of a propaganda machine, even if some of the stuff they write is true.
In the end, in propaganda the ends are what matters, much less the facts. In journalism the facts are what matters, and the ends - if there are any - much less so.
[0] https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/214
[1] https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/215
-- Hannah Arendt, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/10/26/hannah-arendt-fr...
We could force them to identify their owners, just like drugs have to list side-effects. Make them change 'NBC' to 'NBC (Comcast)'.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial%E2...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownersh...
It’s not clear to me that the press as an institution is still necessary in the age of the internet. It’s also not clear to me that the media, as it exists, deserves the protections that have developed over the years. The notion of writing articles that not only don’t cite sources, but keep them secret, is obsolete.
Americans no longer trust the press: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/25/18022956/amazon-tru...
> The top five were the military, Amazon, Google, local police, and colleges and universities. The bottom five were the press, the executive branch, Facebook, political parties, and Congress.
And with good reason: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/a-certain-bloombe...
While Trump has undoubtedly degraded the office of the President, the blatant politicization of the media in response to him has degraded the press just as much: https://www.dailywire.com/news/leaked-transcript-nyt-staff-m...
The fact that a press is necessary to a free society does not mean that this press is what should serve that function. In this day and age of universal literacy and universal access to information via the Internet, we need reporting of facts, not self-appointed guardians of the “narrative.”
Go back and look at CNN tapes from the late 1980s or early 1990s. They’re unrecognizable compared to news broadcasts today. Neutral, unemotional, reporting of facts. No attempt to construct larger narratives or push them down viewers’ throats.
> It’s not clear to me that the press as an institution is still necessary in the age of the internet. It’s also not clear to me that the media, as it exists, deserves the protections that have developed over the years. The notion of writing articles that not only don’t cite sources, but keep them secret, is obsolete.
That's a strange worldview. The press is not limited to dead trees but has encompassed all media that can be used to perform journalism, including the internet. It's very much an essential component of democracy, because it is the only party that is not directly or indirectly part of the government, as such they are closure to 'us' the voters than any of the other components and that is something precious. They're not called the fourth estate for nothing.
> Americans no longer trust the press: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/25/18022956/amazon-tru....
They've been screamed at for years by buffoons that have a vested interest in getting people not to trust the press, so that shouldn't surprise you. And while you are being distracted they make off with billions and more if they can.
> The top five were the military, Amazon, Google, local police, and colleges and universities. The bottom five were the press, the executive branch, Facebook, political parties, and Congress.
Yes, and that's sad. But again, not surprising.
> And with good reason: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/a-certain-bloombe....
Talk about unbiased sources.
> While Trump has undoubtedly degraded the office of the President
No kidding. And besides that he's set back the United States about three decades in international relationships and harmed the planet in numerous ways. Whoever wanted those applecarts upset succeeded beyond their wildest imagination. And it isn't over yet, given the amount of fear in the American political system and the tendency to see personal gain as more important than the country or the planet there is a substantial chance you'll see another 5 years of this.
The damage is already larger than what will likely be recovered during my lifetime, if that happens we can add the lives of my children to that as well.
> the blatant politicization of the media in response to him has degraded the press just as much:
That happened well before Trump. Just tune in to Fox News ("Fair and Balanced", if you need to add that you know you're being taken for a ride) for a 1/2 hour if you can stomach it to see how far that BS has gone.
> https://www.dailywire.com/news/leaked-transcript-nyt-staff-m....
You do realize that you are quoting that very same press here to expose wrongdoing by one of their own?
> The fact that a press is necessary to a free society does not mean that this press is what should serve that function.
It's the best we've got. The only alternative that is viable would be to start something new. Some people are trying that, with mixed success, and the majority become part of the press establishment within a few years.
> In this day and age of universal literacy
Literacy is not enough. The ability to read does not yet equate to being a well informed voter. The degree to which people are willing to vote against their own interest never ceases to surprise me.
> and universal access to information via the Internet, we need reporting of facts, not self-appointed guardians of the “narrative.”
Yes, that would be nice. But it's a pipe dream that you'll get that off the ground in a vacuum. So it will have to be as an alternative to that which exists, it will have to be commercially viable and it will have to show that it is in for the long haul. And even then, people are lazy: they don't want just the facts, they want their thinking done for them, hence the 'editorial pages'.
> Go back and look at CNN tapes from the late 1980s or early 1990s. They’re unrecognizable compared to news broadcasts today. Neutral, unemotional, reporting of facts. No attempt to construct larger narratives or push them down viewers’ throats.
If you think CNN of the 90's is so good have a look at BBC news reporting from the same period.
CNN has always had a very clear slant: pro American. The whole idea that CNN was somehow neutral is hilarious. But it's still miles ahead of anything Fox, Breitbart, RT or any of the other fantasy news services spit out. You get the good with the bad. And that's fine. We still have some responsibility after all: read from multiple sources, try to remove the bias as much as possible and figure out what parts you want to believe. Follow the money and keep your eye firmly on those things that vested interest would like you to ignore.
I am literally laughing out loud.
Also, CNN has always been pro-US-establishment pro-corporate pro-military, a general center–right outlook, with a focus on sensationalism and opinion, lots of time given to various “Washington insiders” and ex officials, and mediocre coverage of the news. It wasn’t (like Fox) explicitly set up to be a propaganda network, and there are many good journalists working for CNN, but the end product is still pretty bad. The whole concept of a 24–hour cable TV news station is absurd, in practice. It’s not that there couldn’t be enough material to fill the day, but since cable stations have to compete for channel-surfers, every incentive is to be as salacious and repetitive as possible. 1 hours per day is about the maximum most viewers have attention for TV news coverage, and e.g. the BBC or PBS are reasonably successful at filling a bit of TV time with news, but for extended coverage newspapers are inherently a much better format. All the small important stories on the later pages are never going to make it on TV.
For those who don't feel like consenting to tracking/ are using firefox incognito like me, and can't seem to get past consent page.
Orange man bad.
Since I read the liberal media, surely I would know if there were a historic level of low unemployment level. Maybe the true level is extremely high - 15-20% or something.
I have two tasks for you:
1. Task 1. Find the true current unemployment level. This is closely tracked, should take you less than 15 seconds.
2. Compare with the liberal media reporting. Is the tone appropriate?
Spoiler below:
Spoiler spoiler spoiler
The first article I found was "Hiring Slowed in September as Unemployment Rate Fell to a 50-Year Low", in the New York Times. If you did 1 and 2 you would find this is totally inappropriate reporting. I like this example as it's very natural and factual. The unbiased headline would be: unemployment hits 50-year low.
The facts are still there, but the actual headline is clearly biased and totally inappropriate.
There is no way that can be considered an appropriate headline.
It's like imagine if Iran agreed to denuclearize and stop seeking nuclear weapons, and the headline said: "Iran armies, planes and helicopters have the U.S. in sights, but won't be sending nuclear bombs for now". The greatest possible success could be misreported to an absurd level.
Or let's say Trump makes vaccines mandatory and signs legislation introducing fines for parents of unvaccinated children, due to child endangerment.
This would be an amazing win, but based on my research, the news would report it in an outrageously biased way. Like what's the most biased thing you can think of. Maybe:
"Trump still doubts vaccines, even as he makes some mandadory." Just something outrageously biased that takes everything away from the huge win.
Go ahead and do the exercise and you will get really clear results.
It's a really interesting exercise. If I had time I would look at a Republican (Trump) list of "wins", then do 1 and 2 for each one: find the actual facts or figures, usually quite straightforward. 2. Decide what would be appropriate reporting. See if they are reported appropriately or in an outragrously biased way. (Instead of man lands on moon, some outrageously negative version).
(I would assume if you do this exercise you will fine many Republican points are false or exaggerated, hence why it is a 2 part exercise for each point.)
Collecting confessions for the future.