propaganda & marketing

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers ...

Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen - far from any battlefield and with no due process - it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager's life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people. News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki's son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: "anyone killed by the U.S."), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. As The New Yorker's Amy Davidson wrote: "Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the the quality of the government's evidence - or the honesty of its claims - and about our own capacity for self-deception." The boy's grandfather said that he and his cousin were at a barbecue and preparing to eat when the U.S. attacked them by air and ended their lives. There are two points worth making about this:

One is worth $39 billion, while the other has a comparatively meager $450 million but significantly more street cred with young people. So Warren Buffett and Jay-Z are teaming up to teach kids about financial literacy. Buffett's animated series Secret Millionaires Club is set to move from the web to television this month, and an animated Jay-Z is the guest star for the first episode on October 23. During the episode, Jay-Z invites four students to his office and applauds their hard work in school, then gives them some tips on how they can become successful later in life. The idea is to get kids hooked by Jay-Z's endorsement, then keep the lessons going long after the television is turned off. Secret Millionaires Club is simultaneously launching "Learn and Earn," an initiative to teach students a well-organized series of lessons on financial literacy. To that end, the program is providing more than 100,000 educational kits to teachers, and putting a pretty fantastic collection of free, downloadable materials online. To ensure that students put the lessons into action, the program is also kicking off "Grow Your Own Business Challenge"-an online competition designed to spark students' enterpreneurial ambitions. While most kids who watch Secret Millionaires Club probably won't end up as wealthy as Buffett or Jay-Z, who couldn't use money management lessons from two of America's most successful people?

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

Beyond the anti-Greek media campaign lies the story of a weary people caught between a corrupt political system and rapacious financiers. Sound familiar?

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

The administration manipulates secrecy to disseminate beneficial information while supressing what's embarrassing

Unlike the U.S. media, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer present the full picture of what happened