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WATCH: "first annual REAL fake news awards"

You’ve seen the GOP’s version, but now it’s time for the REAL fake news awards. Join James for this special edition of The Corbett Report where he hands out dinos to some of the biggest propoganda poisoners and fake news stinkers of 2017!

Show notes here


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flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 6, 2018 10:14 PM
flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 3:21 PM

Perhaps the number 42 should get a special award

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 2:52 PM

Interesting stories, however, as 2017 has definitely been the Year of the Staged Event it is a little disappointing one wasn’t included. So many to choose from: Westminster, London Bridge, Manchester, Times Square, Stockholm truck attack, Charlottesville, Barcelona car rampage, Mogadishu bombing, Las Vegas, Parsons Green bucket bomb, Flinders St, Melbourne car rampage, 15 year-old car terror, Melbourne, Texas Church shooting, New York truck attack, Spokane high school shooting … and on and on.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 5, 2018 7:17 AM

In the light of nonstop bad news in the era ABL (After B.Liar) at last I begin to understand the reason for something which never sounded convincing at Sunday school: “Thou shalt not lie”. Until recently my attitude has been that of young Marcel Pagnol in La Gloire de Mon Pere: complacent but never completely at ease after finding out that other people could lie as readily as I could.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Feb 5, 2018 1:56 AM

And then there’s the ‘news’ that DOESNT MATTER.
Celebrities.
Sport.
Intergalactic travel.
Fluctuations in the Stockmarket.
etc etc

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 5, 2018 6:51 AM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

@fair dinkum. Though broadly in agreement re overwhelming trivia keeping the sheeple “distracted from distraction by distractions” I think the stock market can be serious — even for people who do not own stock. Because “nothing moves in the modern world until some money has changed hands” (the motto of International Business Machines).
So, this headline might seem trivial: U$ Dollar is Dying Fast – Last Week Market Plunge Signaling More To Come. Never mind that, it’s a correction, will go up again, and down and .. Central Banks own whopping T$ worth shares to keep market booming. If you bought at the top.. tough.. otherwise how does it affect you?
But what is important is that in the 1st 20 working days in January somebody, China(?), shorted Comex Gold for 1/4 of a year’s production.. say with a near one billion$ bet, (656Tonnes at 13440$/oz).
That gambler has requested execution_in_physical_gold — which means it cannot be settled by printing dollars (or pounds) as usual. Comex doesn’t have that gold, maybe London has. This means the decades of purely numeric manipulation of paper or electronic currency may be coming to a close. The reset is coming. 10-20KGold? And other real goods coming back as a measure of wealth? The stock market is really important when its dividends are matched to actual production of real goods by the companies concerned; what has made the stock market trivial today (and hence dangerous) is the linking of stocks to a currency which is mainly fiat debt — promises to pay.

BigB
BigB
Feb 5, 2018 9:40 AM
Reply to  vexarb

Solid point Vexarb: where is the physical gold to settle the options and derivatives equation (paper gold)? I surmise, not in London …and certainly not in Fort Knox. Ask Ron Paul? The imperium needed to invade Libya and Mali last time they needed gold, l believe. When it comes to paying the debt: it might as well be in Tulip bulbs!
The only commodity worthy of attention is energy input, measured in oil equivalent fuels …or easier still cubic miles of oil. All that debt is a future claim on human labour: leveraged by energy (at the rate of 99.5% energy to 0.5% human labour per hour of socially necessary labour time [my extrapolation of data from Nate Hagens]) The debt is unrepayable: the future is foreclosed ; and as our primary energy input dwindles – that will become more and more apparent. The solution we are currently employing: make more debt so the upper one percent can cash in. The paralysed precariat would do well to wake up and demand their future back?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 5, 2018 1:57 PM
Reply to  BigB

@BigB. “The paralysed precariat”. Apt; more apt than “proletariat” sounds today. “Precariat of the world, Arise! You have nothing to lose but your …?” Uncertainties, Fear, Depression, Debt?

pecteuw
pecteuw
Feb 4, 2018 6:01 PM

This was very much worth watching. Maybe, due to success, start a Monthly real fake news award?

rtj1211
rtj1211
Feb 4, 2018 5:53 PM

Quora should be entered next year. It is continuously asking fake questions like:
1) Why is Russia such a hateful country?
2) Are Russians friendly IN THEIR OWN WAY?
3) Do Russia and China, LIKE AMERICA, provide help to victims of natural disasters?
4) Why is the UK destroying itself?
5) Should the UK become the 51st State of the Union?
Note there are never questions about why America is a hateful country, why American should not be broken up, why Iran should not nuke San Francisco, IF RUSSIA ASKED IT TO?
Quora needs investigating on the following levels:
1) Are bots generating questions according to a predefinedd political agenda?
2) If so, who owns and controls the bots?
3) Should Mr DeAngelo, CEO of Quora, a geek in his early 30s, be questioned under duress to learn the truth about Quora, the CIA/NSA, the MIC etc etc.
Mr DeAngelo does not allow tough questions to be asked about America….he censors them…..he may need some extraordinary rendition to allow him the opportunity of helping real news investigators with their enquiries….
It may also be helpful to identify his investors to do the same with them…..this is how Hitler and the Nazis behaved…..

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 2:22 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

I was banned from Quora for asking (and answering) questions about the Manchester bombing. Someone else I know was banned too but I’m not sure why as he and was always polite and confined himself to 9/11 which is not taboo on Quora. They always have to ruin things with censorship.

ttshasta
ttshasta
Feb 4, 2018 5:52 PM

Observation: 15 years ago the U.S. spent $5 billion per year on weather disasters, Katrina bumped that up ten fold to 50, in 2017 Houston alone cost $200, adding Florida and fires must pass $300 billion. Is the 60x increase in the cost of weather disasters a glitch, are my numbers wrong (NYT circa 2009)? 20 years ago my tomatoes would freeze in October, I would ski in October. 2 years ago I picked tomatoes in November. Yesterday the ski park that should be open through March closed, it’s in the 60s we have mosquitos, and shrubs are a out to bloom.
People talk of Grand solar minimum, interglacial period, ” chem trails”(?), etc. Al Gore does want control of carbon trading, U.N. does have agenda 21, there is a HARP project. All stories have bias but personal observation indicates change in climate. If I run a 2 stroke motor in a closed garage I will die; how could 8 billion people burning fuel and deforesting the planet not change the climate seems a relevant query.

PartiiColoredHose
PartiiColoredHose
Feb 4, 2018 4:45 PM

I agree with most. But polar bears are dying because of manmade global warming, so how is this fake news?

pecteuw
pecteuw
Feb 4, 2018 5:59 PM

Scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming – that causes the melting of ice caps – is caused by human interference. But this does not prove that polar bears are dying because of a shortage of ice (the effect of global warming) . If you make this claim, it should be substantiated with valid evidence.

Paul Carline
Paul Carline
Feb 5, 2018 1:18 PM
Reply to  pecteuw

The “scientists overwhelmingly agree” meme is a major element of the fake news, in practice a canard. Please read my earlier article on Off-G: “A look at the “97.4% of scientists” meme.
If it were true it would only mean that scientists can be as unprincipled as bankers and politicians. There has been a lot of money and prestige in the “global warming” scam – but the claim that the extra CO2 we generate is capable of significantly heating the planet is bogus science.

Paul Carline
Paul Carline
Feb 5, 2018 1:25 PM
Reply to  Paul Carline

By “if it were true” I meant, of course, if the “scientists overwhelmingly agree” meme were true.
Doctors would probably “overwhelmingly agree” that vaccines are safe and effective. But it’s not true … and the chickens are coming home to roost on this lie too. Unfortunately, whereas polar bears are not dying from a reduction in summer sea ice, thousands of people are dying and being permanently maimed from the unsafe vaccines and other drugs the pharmaceutical and medical establishments are foisting on them (not to forget the role politicians play in this largely hidden mass murder).

Peter
Peter
Feb 5, 2018 11:55 AM

So Off-G harbours climate deniers, eh? Hmm. The problem is they’re not harmless.

Catte
Catte
Feb 5, 2018 1:10 PM
Reply to  Peter

What do you suggest we do with these “deniers”? Ban them? Censor them? Shame them into silence? You think suppressing opinion is a good thing – when it’s opinions you don’t like?

Peter
Peter
Feb 6, 2018 11:53 AM
Reply to  Catte

No, Catte, I’m not suggesting any such thing. I was actually referring to the number of thumbs-down given to PartiiColoredHose’s comment above. And I agree with Corbett’s awarding a fake-news dino to National Geographic for the dying polar bear story, which clearly had much to do with a sick animal and not loss of sea ice. The point Corbett was making is that pulling on the public’s heart-strings should not be a substitute for reasoned scientific argument, and that the starving polar bear video didn’t prove anything about global warming.
On the other hand, I don’t agree with climate-change deniers, and believe I should be able to express this disagreement on Off-G without being accused of wanting to ‘suppress opinion’. I don’t want to censor anybody – open discussion is one of the reasons I come to this website, much of whose content is very informative, as are many of the comments. Keep up the good work.

Paul Carline
Paul Carline
Feb 5, 2018 1:08 PM

Because it’s not true! It took me only 5 minutes to find this authoritative statement from the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
“In 2005, the official global polar bear estimate was about 22,500.
Since 2005, however, the estimated global polar bear population has risen by more than 30% to about 30,000 bears, far and away the highest estimate in more than 50 years.
A growing number of observational studies have documented that polar bears are thriving, despite shrinking summer sea ice.
By September 2007 sea ice extent was about 43% less than it had been in 1979 – a decline not expected until mid-century, and every year after was almost as low, or lower.
Yet no more drowned polar bears were documented, no more bears than normal starved to death, no unusual spikes in cannibalism occurred, and not a single polar bear population was wiped out.
New scientific evidence suggests that loss of summer sea ice, regardless of the cause, is not a major risk for polar bear survival. ”
Quoted from the full article at: https://www.thegwpf.org/as-polar-bear-numbers-increase-gwpf-calls-for-re-assessment-of-endangered-species-status/
The Foundation agrees that there has been a shrinking of the summer sea ice in the Arctic – but it doesn’t claim it is a result of human-produced CO2. There is no physico-chemical mechanism for the relatively minute proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere to raise temperature significantly – and all historical evidence says that CO2 increases come AFTER a rise in temperature, not before.

vexarb
vexarb
Feb 5, 2018 2:33 PM
Reply to  Paul Carline

@Paul Carline. Glad to hear that polar bears are thriving after all. But I notice that the Policy Foundation’s graph of Mean Global Temperature shows a rise of 0.5 degrees since 2000. And the govt link below shows a further rise of 0.5 deg since 1900. Being myself an easy going sort of fellow, this mere 1deg rise over the Century of Big Oil doesn’t bother me at all — but it certainly scares my physicist friend.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 2:44 PM
Reply to  Paul Carline

and all historical evidence says that CO2 increases come AFTER a rise in temperature, not before”

That’s an oversimplification – whatever starts the warming, CO2 becomes part of a positive feedback loop regardless of initiator, which in the current climate situation is, in fact, human production of CO2. And science does not say that whatever has happened in the past dictates what’s happening now – for goodness’ sake.
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

MLS
MLS
Feb 5, 2018 3:01 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

The “positive feedback loop” is a mere theory. There is no evidence for it either in the historical data or in current readings. It’s merely assumed because without it the numbers can’t be fixed to create catastrophic warming.
You’re an openminded sort flaxgirl, aren’t you wondering why all the neoliberal outfits are pushing AGW and exaggerating the level of evidence available?
(because they absolutely and demonstrable are exaggerating it). I don’t say they are inventing it. But they ARE exaggerating it. And simplifying it. And trying to censor contrary opinions.
If Goldman Sachs, the Guardian and Soros are uniting to tell us they believe in dangerous manmade global warming. If they are pouring billions into promoting it, and if they are punishing sceptics with every weapon they have – can we afford to assume it’s because they are just very worried about the planet?
I think you may be falling for the biggest fake event of all 😉

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 3:39 PM
Reply to  MLS

I am not sufficiently authoritative to argue the positive feedback loop with you so I’ll leave that alone.
That they would be pushing it certainly would make me suspicious, however, from the first moment I became aware of AGW it seemed a perfectly reasonable phenomenon. I remembered learning at school how CO2 was a gas that at only a very trace level in the atmosphere kept the earth from being a frozen ball so the fact that we’re adding 9 gigatonnes or whatever per year struck me as pretty alarming. Before the industrial age we were at about 285 ppm and now we’re at about 400 ppm. I’d imagine that would have an enormous impact … and, in fact, that is what the scientific evidence tells us. I mean, come on. It’s getting bloody hotter … although, I must say, we’re having a very cool start to February in Sydney … but then global warming and climate change are two distinct but interdependent phenomena thus global warming doesn’t always mean hotter weather.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 3:59 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

And also just to add – fossil fuels are bad in a number of ways and moving to renewables can only be a good thing so I think it’s worth the risk to act – assuming you think there is one, don’t you? There’s no downside to switching to renewables. And the cost is really not that great. The more it’s done, the cheaper it gets. The cost comes in sticking with fossil fuels.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Feb 5, 2018 10:28 PM
Reply to  MLS

Also, just to add the power elite don’t want ALL the slaves to die and their food sources depleted. Additionally, people can look to be doing a whole lot but still be sticking to their fossil fuels https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-23/peak-hypocrisy-rockefeller-fund-divests-fossil-fuels-finds-standard-oil-successor-ex?page=1&utm_source=example.com&utm_medium=link&utm_compaign=article

Schlüter
Schlüter
Feb 4, 2018 4:41 PM

And there should also be an Award for “Fake Narratives”!
„Media, Independent and Mainstream: Fake News and Fake Narratives“: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/media-independent-and-mainstream-fake-news-and-fake-narratives/
Regards