Public relations and the objective reality

Key Markets update for Wednesday, 18 December 2024

How do we know what we know? Until not so long ago, most people would have answered that they understand what's going on in the world by watching the news and reading newspapers. Today, people increasingly rely on social media which offer a much higher resolution image of the world from a huge number of independent sources. But for the most part, it's hard to know who those sources are and whether they are reliable and trustworthy. As a result, we can't really be sure whether the picture that emerges from any one issue, high resolution or not, accurately reflects reality or whether it's a distortion.

The recent collapse of Syria was a telling case. All at once we had a flood of stories explaining events on the ground. We learned that Syrian soldiers were paid very poorly, that their commanders and political class were all hopelessly corrupt and that Bashar al-Assad all but lost interest in governing the country.

With time, more and more negative stories about him came out: the Russians warned him about the state of his armed forces and suggested reorganizing the army, but he rebuffed them; the Iranians warned him about the imminent attack from Idlib but he ignored the warnings; he was all dazzled by the Arab league leaders and wanted to please them well enough to be accepted into the club.

Furthermore, Assad had a large collection of expensive cars, and then when he left the country, he didn't even bother to warn or evacuate his family members. He left them all behind and some of them got killed. So far we have no reports about him cackling with glee as he did so, but soon enough, we might - give it time... Meanwhile, the moderate, democratical head-choppers are consistently presented in a positive light, all with fresh haircuts and new, elegant western style outfits.

The mystery about how all that happens was unveiled a few years ago by Grayzone's Ben Norton in an article titled, "Leaked docs expose massive Syria propaganda operation waged by Western government contractors and media." Based on a trove of leaked documents produced under the auspices of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Grayzone revealed that Western PR agencies developed a vast propaganda network with the objective of demonizing the Assad government and generating support for its armed opposition. Practically every public appearance of the Syrian opposition was choreographed by Western government-funded public relations companies, from their branding and talking points to formulating their statements and choreographing their media appearances.

For he’s a jolly good fellow… and so say all of us!

They crafted English- and Arabic-language media coverage of the war on Syria to churn out a constant stream of pro-opposition coverage. US and European contractors trained and advised Syrian opposition leaders at all levels, from young media activists to the heads of the parallel government-in-exile. They arranged interviews for Syrian opposition leaders on mainstream outlets such as BBC and the UK’s Channel 4.

More than half of the "stringers" used by Al Jazeera in Syria were trained in a joint US-UK government program called Basma, which produced hundreds of Syrian opposition media activists. Western PR firms not only influenced media coverage of Syria, but even produced their own propaganda reports to broadcast on major TV networks in the Middle East, including BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Orient TV.

One contractor, called InCoStrat, relied on a network of more than 1,600 international journalists and “influencers,” and used them to push pro-opposition talking points. Another Western government contractor, ARK, crafted a strategy to “re-brand” Syria’s jihadists by “softening [their] image.” ARK boasted that the propaganda it produced “aired almost every day on” major Arabic-language TV networks.

Virtually every major Western corporate media outlet was influenced by the UK government-funded disinformation campaign exposed in the trove of leaked documents, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, CNN to The Guardian, the BBC to Buzzfeed. All of the firms named in the files were contracted by the British government, but many also were running “multi-donor projects” that received funding from the governments of the United States and other Western European countries.

The “regime” is out, new “leadership” is in: Al Golani with British Foreign Office reps.

Given all this, it would be safe to assume that much of what we think we know about Syria is largely distorted. Rather than being truthfully informed, as we expect that we should be, we are being deliberately deceived. Extraordinary resources are being expended to deceive us about the events in Syria. But Syria is just one of the consequential projects of our ruling establishments. There are many more where we can assume that similar, or greater resources are being expended to achieve a desired outcome. Here are just a few likely examples:

• In Ukraine, Western powers are fighting for freedom and democracy

• Russia bad

• China bad

• Putin is evil

• Trump is Hitler

• Vaccines are safe and effective

• Cows are destroying the planet

• Bill Gates is saving the planet

• Banking system is sound and secure

• We are free and live in liberal democracies

Of course, somehow news stories appearing in our media all consistently support the truths we are meant to believe, only we've no reason to believe that any of them are less distorted than the news stories about Syria. PR agencies have been and remain very active in manipulating how the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is perceived.

Lights, camera… and come to the dark side!

Discerning the truth in the empire of lies clearly requires a certain rigor and attention, not only to the quality of information we process, but also the patterns of unfolding events. What we think we understand about fields like medicine, economics, climate, and history is all likely distorted. The same is probably true about the information we obtain about financial and commodities markets.

If our knowledge about markets is distorted, our investment decisions can't be much better either. That's why we resort to systematic trend following for decision support. Trend following is based on the only kind of information that is accurate, timely and not subject to distortions or interpretation: the price itself.

Trading signals for Key Markets, 18 Dec. 2024

With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following signals: