Bias – The New Impartiality
Kit
Impartial: n. not partial or biased, treating or affecting all equally.
That’s the dictionary definition of the word “Impartiality”. Up until very recently, it was not a complicated or controversial concept in any way. But these days meanings are rather more fluid than they used to be. Free speech doesn’t necessarily involve being able to speak freely. Democracy doesn’t necessarily involve voting.
And “impartial journalism” doesn’t necessarily involve being impartial.
At least, according to ITV’s political editor Robert Peston. Speaking at the Cheltenham literature festival, he’s quoted in the Guardian as saying:
Impartial journalism is not giving equal airtime to two people one of whom says the world is flat and the other one says the world is round. That is not balanced, impartial journalism.”
You see, under the OLD definition of “impartial journalism”, a representative from each side of a political issue would be given equal air-time to make their case and present their evidence to the public. The people watching at home, being informed, would then make their own decision as to who was more likely correct.
But that’s not TRUE impartiality anymore, according to Robert.
[impartial journalism is about] weighing the evidence and saying on the balance of probabilities…this is the truth. It is the role of a journalist to say, ‘we’ve got these two contradictory arguments, I’m now going to advise all of you which is likely to be closer to the truth.’”
Under Robert’s new and improved version of “impartial journalism”, one side would get more air time because they are probably right. The other side, the wrong side, would get some time to make their case, but afterwards a friendly (and “impartial”) servant of the state would tell all their viewers to ignore it. That it had been declared officially wrong by the powers that be, and all good citizens should disregard it entirely.
This is, of course, nonsense.
Journalists aren’t interpreters, nannies, teachers or parents. They’re not priests or scientists or experts. They are not there to make our decisions for us, wipe our noses or check under our bed for monsters. It’s not their job make sure we don’t get frightened or to keep us from getting confused or to save our souls.
Television news has a simple task: Provide an unbiased, open and honest platform to supply the public with information.
Robert’s words attack this very idea, instead turning the news into a means to enforce state-sanctioned consensus through emotional blackmail and manipulative corporate virtue-signalling.
This follows a disturbing trend, a direct flow from no-platforming on campuses, to calls to shut down RT or banning Alex Jones from social media. It can all be read as one thing: a direct, media-driven push toward state-backed censorship under the guise of protecting the public. Enforcing a one-sided consensus under the false-flag of a sacred duty to “truth” or a hallucinatory public virtue.
Whatever mask it wears – whatever veneer is layered on its surface – the solid body of the issue is still the same: censorship.
Media corporations, both public and private, deciding amongst themselves what viewpoints are fit to air, and which opinions should be frozen out.
Ask yourself: Who gets to decide whether or not an opinion is fit for public consumption? To whom are they accountable? On what grounds is that decision made? What other issues would fall victim to this new meaning of “impartial coverage”?
It was widely reported that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite. Would the people defending him from those charges be rejected, declared “officially wrong”, and filed away alongside flat Earthers?
How about people who believe the West is enabling fascists in Ukraine in order to undermine Russia?
Or people who thought Hillary Clinton was a dangerous warmonger?
Or people who claimed Saddam had no WMDs?
Or people who support Palestine?
Or people who voted for Brexit?
Scottish Independence?
Donald Trump?
How many political issues would be safe from the BBC’s new mandate to be “impartial” by picking a side? How often in the past has the official state-backed position been shown to be nothing but a pack of lies?
The truth doesn’t require a shield. The truth isn’t fragile or vulnerable or soft. It doesn’t need guards to protect it, a filter to clarify it or a marketing campaign to promote it. The truth doesn’t need a bullhorn to blare it out or censorship to prop it up. The truth is a lion, not a lamb.
You know what happens when you split equal time between the flat-Earth and round-Earth arguments? The flat-Earther loses. Because an impartial viewing of the evidence proves them wrong.
Propaganda is fragile. A false consensus has fault lines. Lies can be torn down by the gentlest of winds. The truth always wins a fair fight.
That’s the real reason the mainstream media are so desperate to stack the odds.
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Catte writes:
Every day independent news outlets are being closed down….
And the people doing it are using EXACTLY THE SAME ARGUMENTS YOU USE
Don’t you get it? People ALWAYS rationalise their own prejudice. They ALWAYS believe the censorship they inflict is for the public good.
Well this wasn’t addressed to me, but I DON’T GET IT.
Does it not matter that the people who are closing down political dissent online are, ultimately, the same people who are integral to the system that maintains an ecocidal activities under discussion? Would it make any difference to Catte’s argument if climate change social media sites were shut down ? Does it nuance the argument at all if we recognise that AGW is under-represented in corporate media coverage? Is there total equivalence in all instances of editorial decisions to give unequal weight to one side in a two sided argument ? Is the call for fair representation of the scientific opinion on climate change the same as a demand to censor AGW out of existence ?
This is poor reasoning from Catte in my opinion. There is no morally neutral ground from which to claim blanket endorsement of free speech. There are moral limits to anyone’s presentation of opinion, selection of facts or basis of argument. [To make the case through extreme example: Are we obliged to give open platform to people who want child abuse to be normalised? – No of course not, there are limits, because media – even independent media- have responsibilities].
We have a responsibility to humanity present and future.
As Dennis Skinner said, ‘Your involved’:
‘you’re involved.’
-please, an edit option.
If the price of having independent news sites like this is having to use a spell check before you post, I’d try that for a while, before you start getting too entitled and demanding.
Regardless of any judgements as to rights or whatever, a spell check flags words that do not exist such as yoor while your and you’re both pass.
There can also be ‘autocorrect’ or predictive text services that make errors and not corrections or shortcuts.
The momentary frustration of releasing an error and being unable to correct it may have overstated itself.
But the desire for an edit option is in itself a reasonable desire but may not be an immediately practical option.
Ideally I would not type into a text box but into a text program that I then paste into the text box after proper review. I have thought this many times but have not done it. Having stated it publicly, perhaps I may find I now do it. I will see.
Would it make any difference to Catte’s argument if climate change social media sites were shut down ?
If you are like me and see radical politics as an essential component of responding to climate change then this is in a sense already the case. There has already been plenty of state repression of green politics in other arenas, most notably NVDA.
The ‘argument’ that ANY opinion, even one that, like anthropogenic climate destabilisation denialism, is void of any merit and anti-scientific and omnicidal in its consequences, must be allowed to be disseminated, is grotesquely mistaken. The calculus of good and Evil tells you that in an instant. One must also note that this site does not just allow specious propaganda that works to prevent humanity from saving itself from the greatest threat in all our history, but actively supports it, and attacks critics of this moral insanity.
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1050480658043363329
If you support censorship of opinion, you can’t complain when others do the same. This is where it leads unfortunately
@Admin,
That is sounding like a rather robotic response I’m afraid. I’ve read no engagement with the points raised against such absolutism in these comments.
I am reminded of a series of articles by Tarzie on related matters:
With truly painstaking simple-mindedness, absolutists render all contested expression equal. If all expression is equal, all “offense” taken is equal too, which means it’s all equally irrelevant, since only the speaker’s interests matter. There is no burden to consider power disparities between speaker and spoken to….
The answer to bad speech, they say, is more speech. That sounds nice, but let’s say I’m a Muslim and Bill Maher’s routine slanders against me and my loved ones, not only offend, but frighten me. What if I think, with some basis, that he’s fostering prejudice, empowering other Islamophobes, and making an already precarious political and social situation for me and mine worse? Without my own widely watched HBO show, how do I reach an equally large audience to undo the damage? The answer is, I can’t, a fact that seemingly never occurs to free speech absolutists when they’re thoughtlessly reciting their bad speech/more speech bromide while performing their awesomely more principled understanding of liberty.
https://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/white-supremacy-and-magic-paper-67-putting-the-libertarian-in-civil-libertarian/
If we consider the power disparities between, say, big oil, business round tables, their propagandist contractors, and the corporate media on the one hand, and subscription environmental organisations and tiny political parties on the other…you get the picture. OffG doesn’t exist in an absolutist vacuum, they are an actor on the scene, and one that is fine with climate denial.
Lying, omnicidal, propaganda is not mere ‘opinion’.
But what you are doing is what you are SAYING that you hate!?
It is your current opinion or choice to hold such an extreme view and assert it in extreme terms.
You have your own reasons for what you do or don’t choose to think and say and do.
I feel you undermine yourself and your root cause by the way you go about it.
What is the core foundational motive for getting behind and investing in the AGW or ACC or ACD political campaign?
You may think you are being aligned with life but the way you are reacting indicates otherwise.
I read you as aligning with what you take to be a source of power and support.
Most everything in the corporate sector is being obliged to comply and fit in with a globally applied top down framework for enforced austerity, by first canonising its belief system as ‘accepted science’, and using power of influence and deceit to espouse and enforce a fear-inducing narrative that to speak against invites vilification, loss of funding, loss of career and etc. Hardly a consensual consensus!
The whole thing stinks – but rides upon a genuine environmental awareness that recognises human activity is poisoning, desertifying and degrading our Living Planet – which includes our bacterial and biological as well as our waters and atmosphere. But NONE of these destructive activities and true causes are addressed by demonising CO2! Only some sense of self-satisfaction in ‘bringing down the fossil fuel energy cartel’ (what a joke!), and forcing people (nations and corporations) to self-deny within a framework of implicit guilt as enforced atonement by which to earn ‘feel good’ of an acceptable ‘identity’. Bollocks to that!
An understanding of human being and social extension requires the understanding of the ‘template’ of ideas and definitions from which and by which we identify ourselves and our world. The framework of guilt and guilting is an interjection and distortion into such foundation from which a manipulative sense of power and possession usurps a true relational communication. This ‘power’ rises from the felt compulsion to hide guilt and escape penalty by projection and denial – and has all the power you or I -GIVE IT, in defending against its ‘coming back in’ or exposure within us.
Yet it is the facing of guilt and the owning of what is truly ours, that works not only its undoing but a reconciliation within our being, from which to give and live a self-honesty of no more than and no less than we are. In other words a freedom from manipulative deceits upon ourself, and therefore to others. We meet a different world.
The employ of guilt as leverage for disempowerment, invalidity, unworthiness and unfitness for life or humanity is the
mark of the deceiver – or false thinking given power, worship, and sacrifice. What you ‘get power from’ becomes you.
Thanks – but no thanks!
But if you are ON purpose for honouring Life and aligning truly in Health, Wholeness and Sanity in whatever way is your natural or preferred expression, then we walk together in purpose regardless the forms it takes.
Life in expression and experience is change. Change when associated with fear an loss is resisted. Any established identity operates a handle of a sense of control or limiting of fear and loss as an automatic habit reaction. This works a segregative and private agenda – or power struggle that consolidates in frameworks of systemic powerlessness. The attempt to institute systemic changes is the conscious manipulation of the ‘template level’ of consciousness – or ‘making Reality’. Power corrupts the personal sense by setting it as a cause instead of an effect or expression of cause. It goes to the ‘head’ instead of being aligned in the heart or a recognised wholeness of being.
Another way to illuminate the choice for human being is between the fruit of the tree of the judgement of good and evil – by which to become ‘as gods’ or to partake of the fruit of the tree of life – which is the extension and expression of the True.
So the conflicts and divisions of good v evil narrative dictate give way to discernment of false from true, the instant the investment in a corrupt and corrupting sense of self-power is released or disinvested of.
But the nature of the choice for the mind of the judge is the experience of being judged and believing its conviction as your own. That is to say once you put the VR helmet of a relational fragmentation on, you are induced to completely FORGET who you are in the shock and horror of what you seem to have become.
To ‘become evil’ is to seek to kill yourself. This re-enacts in endless permutations of a theme acted out upon projected shadows ‘seen’ in others but at some point, persisting in a behaviour and expecting a different result runs out of fuel.
Your responsibility is first to yourself.
The idea of being responsible for humanity is a grandiosity of arrogance and ignorance.
To thine own self be true – not to anyone else’s agenda.
A lack of alignment in self-honesty is effected by subjugation under the guilting of moral culpability.
But your integrity of thought and action is your own witness and your own experience.
Give others the freedom to uncover and align in the integrity of their being or lose your own under the power of deceit.
It may seem a long shot because, to a lack of worth, the mass of humanity seem massively unworthy. Such is the reward of judgement that selects by rejecting and possesses by denying.
Deceit runs down to foundations that no one like to look at. So when you open the ‘territory’ of horror or terror, know that you are closer to looking upon the LACK of true foundation for deceit – and all that then comes from it. And that the intent of the deceit is to PREVENT you from seeing by tricking you or seducing you into seeing something ‘else’. But a desire for truth is not led into temptation. Hence be mindful of your active desire.
Pravda (the Kremlin Truth), Guardian (for London’s Deep state), the Independent (of common sense), the Times (of the City), New York Times (Manhatten’s elite), Washington Post (Pentagon’s paper), a dime a dozen.
Money – power (=fake happiness).
“Impartial journalism is not giving equal airtime to two people one of whom says the world is flat and the other one says the world is round. That is not balanced, impartial journalism.”
Apologies for coming late to the party and my slow-thinking. Suppose Mr. Peston had been around doing the Dark Ages, then no shrift would be given to those who argued that the world was round: as any fool knoweth, the world is held up on the back of a large tortoise. Heretics should be burned at the stake. Ah, but those were the Dark Ages; if there is future for Humanity, what name might future historians label these precious few years?
And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper…
There’s a FB meme going about…if one person says it is raining outside and another person says it’s not, it is the journalists job to look out the window to check the Weather rather than give equal airing to both views.
I find myself really torn with this article. The problem is that when you give equal time to flat-earthers and round-earthers, you misinform the viewers into thinking the arguments have equal weight. That can be propaganda just as much as silencing the flat-earth voices altogether.
I regard the journalist’s job as being to publish facts. Anyone is entitled to their own opinion, but the more facts we have in the public domain, the better informed we will all be.
If you present arguments as equal without fact-checking them objectively, that is not good journalism.
If there is someone willing and able to present the ‘flat earth’ position – let then speak and listen.
If anything is said that merits response in terms of a dialogue – engage with them in making or challenging the point.
My limited sense of the ‘flat earth’ position is that a world of lies operates and has done for who knows how long. There might be something in that, but what is to say that ‘flat earth’ isn’t just another shifting form of deceit?
The sense of being lied to by authorities that are either blind or complicit does not mean the Earth is flat, but it is the psychic-emotional basis for a refusal and defiance of ‘authority’.
The pattern of the possessive, oppressive and growth denying ‘parent’ is the defiant bound-breaking and even usurping ‘child’.
Can dialogue in strictly ‘scientific’ terms only be carried our by the scientifically trained and qualified?
Is that not also a ‘post-truth’ politic?
Dialog in HUMAN terms can also embrace scientific theories and observations. Narrative expression or interpretation is always a human choice.
Scientists don’t all ‘agree’ so much as scientific institutions (and the funders of such) set official narratives. To hold a position outside or against any official narrative is to invite lack of funding, loss of reputation and ridicule and persecution – perhaps to be ‘made example of’ so as to ‘send a message’.
The elitism of a ‘parental’ body develops a bubble or ivory tower of imposed insignificance while remaining ‘out of reach’. The response may be in like kind – deliberately choosing to be bubbled off and out of reach – but in resentment that at the bottom line is an intent to punish or withdraw and withhold.
‘Sexing up’ science in order to ‘attract’ young minds is insulting and patronising – and de-conditioning of the native ability to question and follow curiosity in a disciplined but also inspired way. Science as being practiced or allowed to operate is becoming increasingly irrelevant and obstructive to true human endeavour, not least because its premise is of defining, predicting and controlling for private agenda at expense of the whole.
The application of science to a corporate-level capture of a farmed and managed humanity includes the reverse engineering of the human psyche as a machine to be manipulated – vix a ‘matrix’ of narrative control inculcated from birth through to death. It isn’t that this is new, so much as new technologies extend its reach as pervasive and granular. Whatever else the mind is, it is adaptive and responsive. When other people do not act in conformity with our own identity patterns we judge them as lacking.
But they are living their life – not ours.
I lean more to the Earth as a Torus in energetic terms if not actually doughnut shaped.
The Electrical force in both atomic and galactic scale offers an Open Creating Universe – which I find resonant and coherent in principle. If Flat Earth is a psyop, one of its payloads would be to undermine the EU – that is – the view of the Universe as a primarily electrical phenomenon.
However I am generally content to accept we can invoke or co-create our own psychological deceits and obstructions, with or without the innumerable acronymed ‘agencies’ of compartmentalised and fragmented accountability.
If we are not ready to accept something true, we will generate a way to accept something else to SAVE us from the feared true.
The western dominated world order is facing an unprecedented crisis, both internal and external: political, geopolitical, economic and cultural.This has been largely brought about by US hegemonic ambitions. Russia and China are sovereign states preventing the realisation of this neo-con project – thus all the brouhaha in response to this geopolitical roadblock. This is preventing the project of a ‘benign’ US global empire. But this is absolutely unacceptable to the neo-con vermin in DC. The populations of the west must therefore be blitzed with an unrelenting propaganda campaign to get them ready for conflict.
In essence this is what all the froth and trivia regarding the Skripals, the Russian alleged ‘meddling’ in US politics, the confrontations in the Baltic, Ukraine, Syria and the South and East China seas are about. The facts of the matter are that the US has been at war for 220 of the 241 existence; the Unites States military budget is greater than the next 10 states put together. Just for the record:
Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:
—Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments most of which were democratically-elected.
—Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
—Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
—Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
–Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
–Though not as easy to quantify, has also led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American instructors.
Where does the United States get the nerve to moralize about Russia? Same place they get the nerve to label Putin a “killer” … a “butcher” … a “thug”. It would be difficult to name a world-renowned killer, butcher, or thug – not to mention dictator, mass murderer, or torturer – of the past 75 years who was not a close ally of Washington.
Does the MSM report on any of this. Well, that is a bit of a rhetorical question. However, Gallup Polls taken throughout the world clearly demonstrate that most people asked regard the leader threat to world peace as the US. The above facts, never get an airing in mainstream discourse. Of course they couldn’t since this would blow-up the whole configuration of lies and deception.
“Does the MSM report on any of this.” – not if Preston, or other top churnos have their way, those dozy bastards have been asleep at the wheel for decades.
IN a sense is not the wholesale shift into fake news the symptom that reveals the underlying crisis or paralysis.
Reading the ‘news’ is a matter of discerning beneath its presentation. Insofar as one reads it at all!
The Ministry Of Truth becomes more pervasive day by day.
‘You know what happens when you split equal time between the flat-Earth and round-Earth arguments? The flat-Earther loses. Because an impartial viewing of the evidence proves them wrong.’
What just a one off?
Two examples – 1. Judy Wood gets hundred of thousands of views and subsciptions on Youtube, when she has been putting out discredited nonsense for years – and that is in a field where there supposedly are no censorship boundaries or coroporate/state interests promoting one side at the expense of the other (vis-a-vis demolition theory).
2. The clear tactic of the fossil fuel lobby has been to rely upon the axiom that climate scepticism always demands a fair hearing. This is still the case now after literally hundreds of ‘impartial viewings of the evidence’, and we still have a mainstream media narrative on AGW that presents two sides as of the science is not settled.
Human belief is not solely rational and is not settled by sober consideration of equal opposed opinion. Regardless of Peston’s bullshittery, there is some truth to the argument that emotions can sway a lot of people more than reason. ‘Wow, a new, secret energy technology’…..’Ah, climate change might be a thing, or might not, I’ll not bother myself about it today’.
The problem for me is the power structure of the organisations who are charged with the job of filtering, rather than the act of filtering itself. The media are, of course, psychopathically corrupt at present. Is there not a means of making them genuinely demcratic and accountable, and thereby making a focused information stream that is genuinely representative and much less corrupt?
All media should be reader funded, worker owned, not for profit organisations by law.
What is given attention, is what serves the purpose of the mind in the moment of giving it and so it is the active definition running at the time that sets or frames the ‘choice’ or response of action and not ‘objective facts’ or ‘rational thinking’.
The entanglement of the personality structure in the manipulative or predatory intent is very ancient and very complex – as an ‘evolution’ of stratagems and counter stratagems for ‘getting’, dominating or using others – and thus of being subject to the same from others.
The development of the manipulative or ‘war’ mind has extended its reach with technology as with the currencies of thought and indeed money – such that no one is able or equipped to outsmart it or understand the complexity of its obfuscation-by-design. Shadow power operates by remaining hidden from light.
However, every one in their right mind can simply feel when they are being demanded of, coerced or required or seduced into being something they are not – and learns and becomes strategies of apparent compliance, conformity, avoidance or opposition so as to persist in whatever their sense of their lives is being for them.
Therefore the manipulator operates always to nurture and take advantage of those not in their right minds by appeals to salvation from the triggering of hidden fears and doubts that operate emotional reactivity – and this applies no less to those induced to conform or comply with ‘settled science’ (sic).
The underlying patterns of deceit are recognisable and generalisable to archetypal conditioning or structural developments of the human mind or consciousness. But the core driver of all deceit is of course the wish that something be true that ISN’T – and the giving of power or the sacrifice of true to its ‘worship’ or acceptance.
The fear that something UNtrue is true operates AS belief until challenged. Likewise the fear-belief that truth is destructive or fearful to self-possession, operates a dictate that frames the mind against stepping over boundaries of self-concealment.
That emotionally triggered reaction is auto-given to diversions and distractions is simply a ‘self-defence’ running unattended or without conscious evaluation. It does not constitute a Creative force or impulse to human affairs so much as a sense of reinforcement and momentum to ‘old thinking’.
That a few who cross the boundaries of fear’s dictate in willingness for truth serve the renewal or regeneration of human thought and culture is simply fact – even if they seem to live in advance of being consciously recognized.
The mind of a pre-emptive defence has never had any call to look at all that it had previously discarded, denied or disregarded in its driven need for defence.
The straitjacket of a corporately captured science is evident in the willingness to explore outside its official narrative dictate – especially after discovering the nature and cost of its conceit.
Imagination is free to follow the lines of its own discovering, but of course a fearfully driven imagination is only free to discover a conflicted complex of a dead model that demands sacrifice of true to ‘keep it alive’.
The alignment of our ‘reality’ with the true of who and what we are is its coherence and transparency to fulfilment of being – which is where the wonder lives.
The bankruptcy of the old system is its destructive demands by which to seem to ‘survive’. Giving attention to what is no longer serving or supporting is the freedom to uncover and align in what Is – and does. Or indeed the ‘intent to dominate’ may have its pyrrhic ‘victory’ as an ‘extinction event. Which I for one moment do not associate with carbon dioxide.
The environmental movement was nurtured and subverted to serve as a proxy for corporately driven dominance (under financially controlled manipulations). But of course, that is my sense of how ‘power in the world’ works. Or rather, prevents our world from ‘working’ in terms of true fulfilment.
The fakestream media sewer in Austfailia, particularly the Murdoch cancer, does NOT provide ‘balance’ between science, rationality and simple observation, and rank denialism in the case of the anthropogenic climate destabilisation Holocaust just beginning to descend upon us. No, the Murdoch cancer is STILL fully denialist (but denies that truth in a weird assault on reason)and a vicious, bitter, enemy of all environmentalism, and the rest of the outlying media sewers are either ‘balanced’ between the sane, and the omnicidal Rightwing psychopaths, or totally ignore the subject. When, in the next few years, the real truth of our terminal predicament finally penetrates the obdurate skulls of the great Medocrity, the outrage will be considerable. Pity, or not if you prefer, the poor denialists then.
Pity, or not if you prefer, the poor denialists then.
Sadly that seems to include some who are astute on many other issues. Ryan Dawson who I endorsed the other day on matters geopolitical, sees fit to put up two barely readable graphs as a claimed debunk of AGW. James Corbett still vaunts his lack of understanding of how scientific arguments are constructed. Even one of the OffG editors seems to see more of ‘an agenda’ in the BBC running reports of the IPCC announcement, than in the speed at which those reports are swept away behind trivia and lies [see twitter].
Pity us all.
And the latest IPCC Report was, as ever, a pile or ordure that downplays the extremity of our situation, as they have for years.
Absolutely mulga.
There is a kind of thinking that is blind to how the establishment have manipulated and suppressed the climate debate that seems rooted in Rightwing Libertarian thinking. Capitalism and de-carbonisation are mutually exclusive, it is as simple as that. [see Roy Scranton].
The more European traditions of Left anarchism have been clearer eyed on the subject, more closely tied to science and anti-religion, and this is a matter of science.
No matter what is presented here on this forum, there is no argument anymore and it takes remarkable ignorance to insist that there is.
I agree it reflects badly on OffG when editors say otherwise.
The test of a theory is if it can predict events.
AGW has and is. Next year (El Ninio), the IPCC will likely fess up that there is no safe level of emissions and that we should start spending on coping mechanisms and emergency measures.
Sorry, Mog, but nothing is going to persuade us to start suppressing one side of a scientific debate. We are not scientists and we don’t feel qualified to say whether or not the arguments are beyond questions. But we DO believe the truth doesn’t need to be defended by censorship.
Fair enough, although my point is that there are no two sides of a ‘debate’.
By being ‘impartial’ you are giving equal footing to, on one side climate science, and on the other, state/ corporate lies and disinformation.
Everything that I have read by sceptics/deniers is either religiously driven psuedoscience, astroturf propaganda or has been considered and integrated by climate scientists for many years (as per the scientific process).
If you are cool with that, then press on, although I am bemused at how you clearly are so well versed in the propaganda of vested interests yet cannot seem to see the interests or the propagation here.
Can you not see how ‘impartiality’ can be subverted by nefarious forces?
Exceptionalism cant help but accuse itself in the other – and then coerce the other for its own good.
I’m sorry to hear that Admin, because that is quite an indefensible POV. I can only echo mog: there is no ‘scientific’ debate, just a hot air anti-dialogue that is as disempowering as it is pointless. As if ‘impartial’ uninformed debate could establish it either way?
You are not defending anything with non-committal ‘impartiality’, except the status quo ante …and I might as well add the last word that everyone drops – bellum …i.e. the war on everything that lives. At some point the talking has to stop, and the defense of life and living begin in earnest. The point is no longer moot: the point is we have to change everything.
Only the blind, inured of what is, can’t see that the world is dying. And if anyone can’t work out the cause, well …
…everything we collectively do is anti-life and anti-human. Ultimately, what we do to the planet, the climate and our planetary boundaries (at least nine have been identified: the only three we have not breached are due to them not being quantified), we do to ourselves.
I just happen to be the same age as the environmental movement (b. 1962). In my life, there has been a lot of talk, and not much action …not real action. No one can say whether a mortal rupture or metabolic rift has already occurred. So sure, let’s talk some more: it’s bound to become clearer with debate…
…we’ve got all the time in the world, haven’t we?
AGW or no AGW: our ‘Three Ecologies’ (of mind, economy, and environment: Guattari) are on borrowed time. And the bank they borrow from is our collective future. To anyone who wants a future: there is only one debate worth having …how are we going to change?
The Three Ecologies have to become a singular praxis to do that …to heal the web of life: to which we are a structurally coupled. Can you see any orthodox ideology offering that? Isn’t it about time we defined one …or do we just define the parameters away in pointless impartial anti-dialogue; and let the ruling classes make the decisions?
Because I can assure you: they have it all worked.
Let’s talk some more and see what they have lined up?
It’s going to be a long century if all we do is talk. Or a very short one full of hot air!
You’re SORRY to hear we don’t intend to start censoring opinions here?
Reflect, please, on what you just said. And then remind yourself about why we started this site.
Some people have attacked us in just this way for giving a platform to 9/11 sceptics. In just the same way as you express above, they think this is an “indefensible POV” and they tell us we are discrediting ourselves etc etc by allowing these “conspiracy theorists” to have their say.
You, in fact, are one of those “conspiracy theorists” aren’t you, and you appreciate our comment is free policy which allows you to speak out.
The downside of this freedom is that you have to permit the same freedom to others whose opinions you DON’T share. That’s the tricky bit, where most concepts of free speech break down.
Even Stalin was in favour of free speech for the opinions he agreed with, BB. And every zealot has defended his de-platforming of apostates or non-believers by claiming they were “dangerous”.
We intend to try very hard not to follow any such examples
By supporting the lunatic Evil of anthropogenic climate destabilisation denialism with the oxygen of publicity and acceptability, when billions of lives are art risk, is truly despicable, and will bring this entire site into well-deserved contempt. Would you allow ‘opinions’ that call for the murder of children, in their millions, to be published, on the grounds of ‘freedom of expression’, because that is what supporting anthropogenic climate destabilisation deniers amounts to.
Is there a direct comparison between scepticism of 9/11 and scepticism of climate science? Are you (Catte) comparing like with like?
I get to read climate denialism in mainstream newspapers or on the radio/TV regularly – either in its explicit form or in the form of censorship by omission. Not so 9/11 scepticism.
The so-called scientific argument of the official 9/11 story is not science. ‘Science is not done in secret’ as Margulis so clearly stated.
The science of climate change is a huge, open, transparent effort of thousands of professionals around the world, who have worked for oil companies, environmental organisations, state funded universities and research institutes, to name but four groups.
I say that you make an argument of false equivalence.
That aside. I am arguing that any reputable political discussion space must be biased, and should be open about it. There is no real impartiality, no absolute neutrality or objectivity. We are all subjects.
If OffG editors collectively decide to take a position on climate change such that they want to give equally weighted space to deniers of AGW in a ‘debate’ then that itself is a poltical stance. There is no escaping it. It is the biggest political story of our lifetimes and will continue to be from here on in.
There is a huge story of conspiracy to cover up the scientific studies of climate research from 30+ years ago, the poltical maneuvers to safeguard the fossil fuel industry, collusion between corporations and governments, all documented, all shocking in its consequences. Yet on the ‘other side’ is what ? – some vague notion that climate destabilisation is going to be a gateway to global totalitarianism ? – as if that is a challenge to the science; a liberal plot that controls the entire scientific community? -as if liberals could control anything other than their bodily functions; or, weather engineering so advanced it is killing the planet ? – as if the 250 trillion watts per second comes from nowhere.
It’s garbage, and if that ain’t apparent now, it sure as hell will be soon.
The Guardian runs climate articles and it gives space to the climate debate. Through this it is selling cars, flights and imperial war. I despair at the emerging green liberal fascism on the one hand and a denialist petro-Russian nationalism on the other. Both are paths to death.
You will of course do as you see fit, but know that some here think OffG’s comments on climate change discredit their other work.
Catte: you conflate your own position …there is solid empirical reasons to be skeptical about 9/11. So much so it is impossible to believe the “official” version …9/11 skepticism is based on fact. So are you declaring OffG is a platform for fact-free opinion? Because the climate holocaust we face is at least as important a catalyst for change as 9/11 …but climate skepticism is built on thin air.
It is not about being right or de-platforming a countervailing opinion: it’s about being empirical. Facts etc.
Without empiricism, uninformed opinion is pointless hot air. Anyone can say anything. How can anything be decided? I’m anti-scientism, but not anti-science: scientific revolutions (Kuhn’s preferred term) occur as a response to anomaly and crisis in the established paradigm. A new paradigm is proposed that better accounts for anomalous results. The revolution occurs and the paradigm shifts. What part does uninformed hot air play? Are you platforming anti-science?
Why has no one put forward a better paradigm?
Is it really Stalinistic to champion empiricism? Are facts now secular and subjective? It has nothing to do with censorship, but everything to do with epistemics. No one wants to close down debate: but how long do you keep debating for? Is the earth the centre of the universe? Shall we debate it, or is that debate done?
To prevent bias becoming the new impartiality: sometimes you have to make a decision …to make a stand. That might mean denouncing a few positions: which is not impartial or what you set out to do. You might have to weigh up what impartiality means in terms of inaction. When does impartiality become bad-faith self-deception?
Carrying on with the patterns of action we are carrying on with makes our future virtually deterministic, if not fatalistic. I’m pretty sure you know what that future is (I remember green Catte: you were the reason I came here). In wanting to avoid ecocide: impartiality becomes a lie. Time to be biased, biased toward survivability. Do you seriously contend that the current war on the web of life offers such an option?
Is it really totalitarian to point out that POV is no longer viable?
And if AGW is a hoax, and somehow we manage to paradigm shift away from ecocide and an authoritarian future …there really is no argument for impartiality.
BB – we are obviously coming at this from very different perspectives.
I am a founding editor of OffG, alt media is a milieu I spend a lot of time in.
Right now we are all facing censorship on a level previously unknown. Every day independent news outlets are being closed down, de-monetised, thrown off social media. OffG could be next. We might not even be here tomorrow for all we know.
And the people doing it are using EXACTLY THE SAME ARGUMENTS YOU USE.
Don’t you get it? People ALWAYS rationalise their own prejudice. They ALWAYS believe the censorship they inflict is for the public good.
I’m not debating AGW with you here. Yes, indeed I am a lifelong Green. But that’s not what this is about.
You either understand that or you don’t.
Catte: It seems we are coming from exactly the same environmental perspective: only with different practical outlooks. The time for talk was in the 1970s, the time for action has also past. Talk and inaction compound the magnitude of the task (very possibly insurmountable task) of finding an enacting solutions …that is solutions for survivability.
My POV is a version of the Sartrean Existential of radical responsibility and conscious choice toward Universal Humanism. I said we are facing mortal rupture of the web of life, and an integration of the Three Ecologies (mind, economy, and environment) is an emergent paradigm that we need to tackle a Trinity of Ecocides (the deterministic and fatalistically predictable outcomes of the same Ecologies). I very much doubt if anyone uses those arguments to threaten censorship. But if you want to lump me in with the fascists and imperialists…
Reflect on what I said, and what I have said previously: AGW is a null hypothesis and anti-dialogical debate. It is in itself a legacy of the very Cartesian stochastic-mehanistic reductionism and fragmentation that has to change. THE CLIMATE IS NOT A THING. It can’t be isolated or quantified. In this sense the anti-AGW arguments are TRUE …but that in itself is a deadly trap to fall into. Quietly, the Cartesian-Newtonian-Darwinian synthetic composite has been found wanting. There are no fundamental parts or things: reductionism and isolationism are nihilisms. Nihilisms that the emergent paradigm of systems thinking is gradually replacing.
From a systemic perspective: there is no argument. The argument itself is a Cartesianism of fissure and fracture. Autopoiesis, dissipative systems, nonlinearity, emergence, self-organisation, are presenting us with the tools to analyse our actions holistically. What do you suppose that will tell us about human activity?
Well, I’m sure I know that answer. If that makes me a fascist – I’m a Fascist. There are two basic ontologies at this point, let’s call them ontological dualism (the historic nihilism of fracture and death) …or ontological holism (the autopoiesis of life). Which do you want to be? Choosing means bias. Impartiality means stasis and reversion to the status quo ante bellum.
The only reason I ask is that I know those who threaten this sites existence are historic nihilists. I know where their future lies. I’m siding with life, something I’ve tried to make abundantly clear. I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to be able to make that distinction that I am coming from diametric opposition to their evolutionary redundant way of death. I do not want their future.
Somewhere, we all have to draw a line and declare No Pasaran. We will all have to decide which side of the future we are on. Impartiality is not an option for survivability. It lets the very forces that you rail about every day take things one step closer to their inevitable outcome. I ask you Catte, when will we take our future back? Because like it or not, you get to choose what people think.
“I’m siding with life” – you say – but are you merely defining life in terms of death and accepting that as a substitute for the living?
Orwell’s boot on the face of humanity may very well turn green.
The subversion of the movement of the heart is the art of the deceiver.
And to rule out any challenge to your mind-set is to claim yours is the only true god.
Of course no one states in in such terms – but the pattern is a very old one – as is the pattern in the human guilt >> Catastrophe>>human sacrifice.
If human joy can create (extend and appreciate in) ‘the Good the Beautiful and the True’, human guilt can turn it all to nightmare and ruin – but not without a brief sense of ‘power’.
I also see a choice – and illuminating this choice is the direction of my writing regardless the current inability to recognize anything BUT through the framing of guilt.
St Paul would have made a very effective carbon tax collector until his foundation was undone from beneath him. His developed abilities were then re-purposed.
To discern the active purpose that we are thinking and acting FROM in any given moment is to be awake in self-responsibility for thought, but in any phished moment of mis-identification we are as if mind-captured by thoughts. This is well known by those who seek to control the minds of their ‘ignorant or weaker’ brothers and sisters by choosing to use words and phrases that frame in emotive appeals or some un-arguable FACT against which is only a false emotional self-invalidation.
The usurping of the love of our living Planet by an anti-human and anti-life agenda is something to have lived to see. But then I was curious once as to how it could possibly have unfolded that if God is Love – that so many (Angels or Humans) would actively choose to align in a dissonance of deceit?
Is it not because dissonance is associated with guilt?
What if the dissonance is no more or less than an alarm feedback by which to know a state of divided attention is operating – a bit like the reversing noises of delivery trucks?
What is called for is not the reinforcement of conflicted division (and sacrifice) but the resolving of conflicted purpose. It is not humankind that is afflicting the Earth but false thinking given power of belief by being acted from as true.
Falsely predicated thinking is the doublespeak of self-conflict packaged into terms or instruments that seem meaningful and have appeal to the wish to hide in or hide from true.
I respect your right to choose the means to your chosen destination – but once you get in the man’s car, the free sweets run out and the doors lock. The only destination worthy of setting is the one that aligns means and ends as one.
Any appeal to justify any means to achieve the goal is the anti-life principle. It literally reverses cause and effect. and ‘creates’ a world where “Everything is BACKWARDS;
everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”. ~Michael Ellner
The belief that scientific institutions stand above the pervasive corruption is naive or wishful thinking.
The very terms “scientific consensus” or “settled science” are oxymorons or self-contradictory.
But that is what is required to tune in to the signal that tunes out what you are as yet unwilling to own and therefore un-free to change.
“Pseudoscience”: a term much used and abused by the sciency absolutists, who would GMO, fluoridate and compulsory vaccinate the planetary herd. Oh, and they’re allergic to freedom of speech and association; their authoritarian streak’s showing.
“I can only echo mog: there is no ‘scientific’ debate”
There is total uncertainty in this topic; anyone that claims otherwise is deluded or a liar. There is a hypothesis related to CO2. The global warming crowd seek to shut down discussion of the topic by denying there is a topic.
Don’t ask me: Go to Judith Curry, one of the world’s finest climate scientists for confirmation. All else is just piss and bluster.
Utter, utter, lunatic, garbage-but that’s denialism for you. When a theory is supported by 99% of actively publishing climate scientists, and ALL ie very Academy of Science and scientific society on the planet, there is NO debate. To call that ‘total uncertainty’ is insanity. Moral insanity, the worst type.
“To call that ‘total uncertainty’ is insanity. Moral insanity, the worst type”.
OK, quiz time, and I expect precise answers, no uncertainty allowed.
It is said that the Earth has warmed about about 1° C (1.8° F) since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, around 1750. How much of this is due to human activity, and now much is recovery from the Little Ice Age? Be precise in your answer.
If the world warms by 1.5°C, will it be cloudier or sunnier on average? What will be the net effect of this increased or decreased cloudiness on average global temperatures?
If the world warms by 1.5°C, how much energy will be lost to the system by increased evaporation?
If the world warms by 1.5°C, will sea surface temperatures, one of the main drivers of surface atmospheric temperatures, go up accordingly or go down due to increased storminess and churn? Or stay about the same?
What are the mechanisms that drive ENSO, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation?
Precise, specific answers, please. If you cannot give precise, specific answers, we will know that climate science is in its infancy.
Emily: OK, you are right. I concede to your POV. Only, it is not the only POV. It is a legacy way of doing science that is the problem. That Cartesian legacy is to create a reductio ad absurdum POV.
That ecologically and evolutionary redundant POV has produced:
a) an isolated and wholly distorted conceptual view of Man (and it is a patriarchal quasi-divine POV) as isolated and alone among the unknowable Other
b) an wholly dysfunctional mathematicised exploitative economic calculus that is isolated from the environment, a statistical function of labour and capital, that is not dissipative (reliant on a throughput of energy and creating waste), and is, in short, a perpetual motion engine of infinite growth
c) a wholly distorted view of the environment as being an instrumental resource, whose self-regenerating capacities and waste sinks are infinitely responsive externalities, whose resources we can mine, extract, slash and burn forever…
…because:
a) environment is an instrumental Other and externality to mind
b) environment is an instrumental Other and externality to economy
c) they are mutually exclusive discursive sets with their own discordant praxis and incommunicable specialisation.
Cartesian instrumental reason and reductive nihilism produced this evolutionary crisis that threatens our existence. The very least that is threatened is Cartesian capitalism, Cartesian thinking, and Cartesian ecology. They are all pulling in different directions, essentially disrupting mind, economy, and environment to the point of metabolic rift.
Do you suppose Cartesian analysis will produce a different outcome, a suture or healing, or will the same analysis and praxis of death lead to, what is by now an apparent logical conclusion? Should we try holistic systemic analysis; or should we carry on our path to mereological annihilation?
[Sorry, but the holistic POV is a bit more subjectively biased. You see, you can’t isolate reason from emotion: so my answer is imprecise …and human. Meta-ontological precision produces machine-hood, not person-hood …so I can’t answer objectively. Did I mention that objectivity (and pure subjectivity) are also nihilistic?]
This is to ‘Emily’, below. All the answers to your denialist disinformation are contained in the 200 years of climate research, by tens of thousands of scientists, particularly in recent years thanks to scientific advance. They are the basis of the TOTAL concurrence of all the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth, and 99% of actively researching and publishing climate scientists, with the anthropogenic climate destabilisation theory. The peculiar arrogance of the hard-core denialist claque that they, or the TINY handful of denialist scientists with ANY credibility (many openly on the fossil fuel or Rightwing pay-roll, and some graduates of the tobacco harm denial industry), possess more scientific knowledge or credibility than the global scientific community, is contemptible, and even far worse, given that this arrogance is being used to prevent humanity from facing the facts of its terminal predicament. The facts that are supported, day after day by rapidly increasing climate and weather disasters, that apparently bother your type not at all, as you have not, yet, been a victim of one or more of them.
There is no other ‘side’ to the science of anthropogenic climate destabilisation. To state that there is, in regard to the greatest ever threat to human existence, and with the lives of billions at risk, is morally Evil.
“All the answers to your denialist disinformation are contained in the 200 years of climate research”
I note that you haven’t tried to answer any of the questions, Mumblebrain. Just attacked as usual because somebody looks up and sees the Emporer has no clothes. Interesting.
By the way, I think I would rather fry in an AGW-induced-1.5 °C-above-pre-industrial-levels sauna than live in a world where people like you told everyone what to think.
By the way no. 2, much of what you are claiming, especially the 99% stuff, is utter garbage. Not even Mann and Nuccitelli would exaggerate so outrageously.
Nuff said.
“By the way, I think I would rather fry in an AGW-induced-1.5 °C-above-pre-industrial-levels sauna than live in a world where people like you told everyone what to think.”
Even as a rhetorical device, and not an actual declaration of intent, that is incredibly revealing. It is not all about you Emily. At even 1.5 degrees, millions, if not billions would die …that is across all classes of biotic life. We are all in this together. If only we could think like that, and not so exceptionally individually, we might have a chance.
That is my POV in a nutshell. AGW is defunct and negated by the systemic view of interbeing. Whatever happens; happens to you. There is no ‘I’ in evolve. Supposing the science of AGW was wrong: and reports of a 6th Mass Extinction exaggerated, and we transcended the ‘I’-concept quasi-divine centre of the known universe POV to develop a community in balance, and beneficial for, the web of life? What would be our loss? An ‘I’-concept our science and philosophy already knows not to exist. Instead of an individual world, isolated from life, we could be part of it for the benefit of all.
There is no downside to change. We have to decarbonise anyway due to an increasing cost of recovering the carbon to burn (EROI: incredibly sound science derived from the 2nd Law). Were we to change to create a better future for all humanity, not just the Few entitled ‘I ams’ who consume the future now [10% of population burn 50% of carbon: 70% burnt by 20% – so it is an inequality and access issue even now, irrespective of AGW – Source: Kevin Anderson]. Suppose AGW was a hoax …its win win. For all: biotic or abiotic (the two are interdependent).
The only option that prevents this is the right to express your own view. Just think what that might cost?
Theories of inter being are all very well as pointers to direct experience but ‘being’ already Is All That it is – and it is theories rising from self-concept and self image, believed and acted as real, that operate the filtering and distortion of the awareness of ‘being’ – which is direct knowing rather than imaged thoughts and associations that map out in mutually agreed definitions.
The A in the AGW or ACG is a key factor because without the A – there would not be the basis of a guilt-induced crusade to atonement by self-denials and sacrifice – and of course the figurative (or not!) burning at the stake of heretics that deny their guilt.
CC or in fact Change, is in itself challenging our existing limits or predicates as the necessity to change with it – whether to grow in self-awareness or further limit in attempts to control the change in terms of an unchanged mind, an old adaptation, or refusal to change. Such limitation includes insanity, pain and death as expressions of War with Is. Not that Reality takes any ‘side’ but that denying our Reality is a way of paining and killing our self. Death may of course not be all that it is cracked up to be – but that is another issue. Death is also Change, but the narrative overlay of meanings given power and then lived out as real is not the same as a direct yielding up into That which knows.
Self-centred (egocentric substitution for a true self extension) – thinking is likely what you are seeking to indicate as a divisive self-delusion. No one can TELL another they are an illusion. But there are ways to invite people to consider that they may be identifying falsely, resulting in unwanted outcomes. From an awakened knowing of being, we see that we had identified in the partial as whole or the false as if true.
The awake perspective is of nothing outside You – but the use of the pronoun ‘You’ relates not to the personality construct of a ‘self-in-image and concept’ – to which everything is Outside – (excepting the illusory power of control as a lens of misinterpretation of the Whole in fragmented and conflicting parts). For in taking in a false power we denied ourself the true and interpreted that as rejection and abandonment from a sense of something greater than ourselves that we now fear and hide from.
In this sense the true of you is never actually IN the image and model or construct of self and world – but all that is experienced is embraced within You. This of course makes no sense to the physically defined consciousness but that is because the physically defined ‘self’ as a separate bodied private mind is the device or means by which to separate or segregate off from the Field of Relation in the wish and intent of power over it.
Experiencing life AS IF we are the doer is a makeover in which the present is rendered into narrative in terms of a past that is not here, extending the past into the future as a continuity of the past in narrative-identity. In this mode the present is a brief point of transition for the ‘survival’ or persistence into a future like the past.
Aligning in Life as being, or wholeness of being is release of past to a true present that extends or unfold the future.
The true appreciation and extension of Presence is the expansion of Now to the re-cognition of timelessness.
A past made in anger set fear and guilt into self-fulfilling re-enactment. Such a state of self-division effects both the chaos and the need to limit chaos as seemingly two poles of mutually exclusive and mutually denying facets of a hidden unity. The Individual is thus identified in the body, the personality and its achievements or failings, instead of its relations within the natural order AS relational being.
The release of the polarised identifiction to the embracing wholeness is the restorative to a perspective of embracing the whole and feeling the balance points within wholeness – rather than asserting the split off sense of self as a whole, that by turns imposes or suffers subjection
Theories of inter being are all very well as pointers to direct experience but ‘being’ already Is All That it is – and it is theories rising from self-concept and self image, believed and acted as real, that operate the filtering and distortion of the awareness of ‘being’ – which is direct knowing rather than imaged thoughts and associations that map out in mutually agreed definitions.
The A in the AGW or ACG is a key factor because without the A – there would not be the basis of a guilt-induced crusade to atonement by self-denials and sacrifice – and of course the figurative (or not!) burning at the stake of heretics that deny their guilt.
CC or in fact Change, is in itself challenging our existing limits or predicates as the necessity to change with it – whether to grow in self-awareness or further limit in attempts to control the change in terms of an unchanged mind, an old adaptation, or refusal to change. Such limitation includes insanity, pain and death as expressions of War with Is. Not that Reality takes any ‘side’ but that denying our Reality is a way of paining and killing our self. Death may of course not be all that it is cracked up to be – but that is another issue. Death is also Change, but the narrative overlay of meanings given power and then lived out as real is not the same as a direct yielding up into That which knows.
Self-centred (egocentric substitution for a true self extension) – thinking is likely what you are seeking to indicate as a divisive self-delusion. No one can TELL another they are an illusion. But there are ways to invite people to consider that they may be identifying falsely, resulting in unwanted outcomes. From an awakened knowing of being, we see that we had identified in the partial as whole or the false as if true.
The awake perspective is of nothing outside You – but the use of the pronoun ‘You’ relates not to the personality construct of a ‘self-in-image and concept’ – to which everything is Outside – (excepting the illusory power of control as a lens of misinterpretation of the Whole in fragmented and conflicting parts). For in taking in a false power we denied ourself the true and interpreted that as rejection and abandonment from a sense of something greater than ourselves that we now fear and hide from.
In this sense the true of you is never actually IN the image and model or construct of self and world – but all that is experienced is embraced within You. This of course makes no sense to the physically defined consciousness but that is because the physically defined ‘self’ as a separate bodied private mind is the device or means by which to separate or segregate off from the Field of Relation in the wish and intent of power over it.
Experiencing life AS IF we are the doer is a makeover in which the present is rendered into narrative in terms of a past that is not here, extending the past into the future as a continuity of the past in narrative-identity. In this mode the present is a brief point of transition for the ‘survival’ or persistence into a future like the past.
Aligning in Life as being, or wholeness of being is release of past to a true present that extends or unfold the future.
The true appreciation and extension of Presence is the expansion of Now to the re-cognition of timelessness.
A past made in anger set fear and guilt into self-fulfilling re-enactment. Such a state of self-division effects both the chaos and the need to limit chaos as seemingly two poles of mutually exclusive and mutually denying facets of a hidden unity. The Individual is thus identified in the body, the personality and its achievements or failings, instead of its relations within the natural order AS relational being.
The release of the polarised identifiction to the embracing wholeness is the restorative as a perspective that feels or discerns the balance points within wholeness – rather than asserting the split off sense of self as a whole, that by turns imposes or suffers subjection as a coercive intent or sense of victimhood.
There is NO ‘debate’ or ‘two sides’ in regard to anthropogenic climate destabilisation. The US National Academy of Sciences, speaking on behalf of ALL the Academies of Science and scientific societies of the planet, has declared the theory to be based on ‘settled science’. The denialist industry, like the tobacco harm denial industry before it, or the Roundup harm denial industry, or scores of other ‘astroturf’ operations, is a creation of the fossil fuel industry and the ideological Right. Just why OffGuardian has chosen to join this pernicious operation, and thereby run the risk of thoroughly discrediting itself, is beyond my understanding.
Yes you have been already agreed with – debate has been effectively killed, censored, denied.
“No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance.” ~ Alan Bullock, in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives.
I live the freedom to associate freely in the ideas that resonate as worthy and significant within me regardless its ‘market value’ in attracting status, money or ‘impact’. I’m riding the wave of ‘primate change’. Because EVERYTHING is changing in ways that go far beyond pissing in the wind, and everything is coming out that was kept hidden. Including the devices by which we hide from ourselves and enlist social reinforcement.
In ‘post truth’ politics, the masses are fed a ‘noble lie’ – in this case of saving the Planet. Of course noble lies being nothing new, the idea of truth in politics is itself a story. But it holds a spark within it that serves an awakening simply because a point of reference is opened from which delusions can be undone.
Insofar as we are talking of communication and relationship, we remain capable of relating in peace. However, investment in narrative identity demands reality (including others) conform to its rules. Reality is what it is and unfolds regardless of such ‘rules’ which structure our thought and experience. Filtered or censored bubbles of reality distortion or ‘denialism’ are called ‘minds’ – but that does not mean they are not valid thought experiment or ‘learning opportunity’.
The reptilian ‘brain’ operates a fight or flight reflex that effectively shuts out (filters out) all other inputs than core physical processes required for fight or flight. Locking our mind into a persistent fear-response as a result of collective ‘PTSD’, or ‘separation trauma’ has generated and developed a self and world experience of endless re-enactment of the core archetypal patterns – regardless our increasing sophistication of the capacity to ‘outsource’ or redistribute psychic energies of negative or conflicted reaction through highly complex instruments of concealed toxic debt. When energies in an unbalanced system reach critical thresholds they force a realignment through discharge, explosion or violence. Those that feed on energy imbalance (guilt, fear, rage or powerlessness) seed such ‘crashes, crisis, and the fears that generate them. Why would they feed on destruction? Because they have become alien to themselves and live the fear of disconnection and death at a level that drives ‘getting’ as the necessary power struggle of ‘survival’ under the threat they are heavily bolstered to ‘prevail over’ and yet of course assert and impose on others.
We – under influence unowned or hidden fear – are the ‘aliens’. The imaging (perceiving) of reality is also symbolic. ET can simply mean ‘pushed outside’ our sphere of influence. The denial of all other facets of our being in the contraction to the ‘physical’ result from the mind ‘split’ under terror. No one walks the Earth in form but has terror striking at his heart – and driving the ‘survival mind chemistry’ that subjugates all else to its driven or tyrannical agenda.
Now our forebears have survived through extremities the like of which we who are communicating via computers perhaps cannot conceive in our largely managed and insulated lives. Does risk aversion and conflict avoidance induce us to be susceptible to completely disproportionate fear responses and inhibitions?
Bringing ourselves fully present is natural under emergency, but can emerge naturally from the recognition that only this is life! Tomorrow never comes – but how we live this day unfolds and grows the consciousness with which we meet each day anew.
Why would I ‘argue’ with a wilful ignorance?
The very nature of any campaign of ‘settled scientific consensus’ REEKS!
It stinks of deceitful manipulation!
I understand you want to save the world?
Save yourself first or you’ll be saving the problem from the answer.
The manipulation of the Media REEKS!
But only if you stick your head in its framing.
Instead of playing the polarised identity – look at the way it is set up.
Ironically I do see catastrophic outcomes unfolding through a broad spectrum of – but not the manipulated sideshow of diversion and mind-capture in subjection to toxic thinking.
Once a subject of discussion has become polarized, it becomes a no-go area, and effectively walled off. The walling off from corporate funding, media support or political credibility has ‘settled’ the political power move. The playing out of a controlled ‘resistance’ is a substitution and cover for the freedom from deceit.
Freedom from deceit is not a personal infallibility, status or achievement, but an awakened responsibility in giving and receiving truly instead of engaging the deceit of personal claims backed by ‘authorities’ passing off as a personal achievement. But as Orwell unpacked the doublespeak; “Slavery is freedom!”
Such a mad world, mulga!
Have you ever thought of changing it for a better one?
A terminal predicament sound like where one might start a new journey.
Alight here!
No one anywhere has changed another’s mind who is not themselves willing to change.
When the baited hooks of temptation to be phished – (and give up my freedom or power to choose) – are dangled to my own targeted profile of triggered reaction, I say “thanks but no thanks’ or disregard entirely because I am listening to truth now. And so the lie fades from my own mind as a meaningful basis for attention or action, I I withdraw my ‘vote’ for its currency as reality.
The generation of outrage is part OF the hidden intent to use it as an energy source and proxy force for the further disempowerment of the capacity to recognize and align in true willing desire.
Is vengeance of ‘self-vindicating’ violence anyone’s true desire?
Of course it operates the shadow power of a sense of self, denied and deprived.
of course it is ugly in its operation because it is a fixation in ugliness or hate as a source of power.
We become the thing we hate.
I have a better use for the term, denial.
It relates to what we are not aware of because it has been mapped out of mind to effectively shape and frame our perception and experience. And while we persist in and on such terms, we protect the denial from our own awareness – even if we perceive it operating the minds of others – and attack it there or seek to force others to ‘see’ what we ‘see’.
The nature of hosting parasitical thinking is of the rewiring of the brain/biology to serve the parasite’s agenda while the host believes it is following self-interest.
In human psychic-emotional terms, a death wish operates under many guises as the expression of a deeply hidden self-hate – as toxic and murderous rage that is masked over and the masks masked over to a point of unconsciousness in dissociation and diversion.
But it leaks out, breaks through, and ‘shatters the dream’ of a self ‘escaped’.
But if we could ‘escape’ who and what we are, would we want to?
And can any such ‘escape’ not be some form of self-illusion running as a ‘denial’ of the true need while sacrificing to a false?
Owning the hatred in our heart and mind is a self-honesty from which a greater perspective can unfold.
How much of the human predicament is simply resulting from a fear driven need to mask over what we fear to disclose or be exposed in?
For some, the term ‘inevitable’ is associated with death, but is it really ‘truth’ that is inevitable – because all else is a temporary ‘escape’ in a freedom to focus in what we chose to accept instead while insisting it just happened, or was done to us. The mind in its own story forgets the maker of the script.
A fixation in disgust without joining the dots to then evacuate or release the disgusting, must be the result of getting something from it that seems meaningful or necessary. The important term in that sentence was ‘seems’.
The ‘seeming’ real can operate as if real – and we can WANT it so!
Until we are willing to change our mind for a better outlook.
Hate must work the denial of love in order to seem worthy and necessary.
But love is the capacity to be with what is unfolding to our awareness as the desire to recognize what is Real here – or indeed truly here.
Fighting our own shadows is a full time engagement. It is also exhausting and dispiriting.
There has to be another way – but of course I cannot think that FOR you or anyone else. But of course I can open to the willingness to find it with you and everyone else – whenever such willingness finds expression instead of being denied.
@mog: !Wot? Just a one off?
Correct, it takes thousands of years before some things become “obvious”. I have been listening to a History of Mathematics (on Librivox) and was astonished at the number of times someone measured the circumferendce of Earth, or the relative distances of Sun and Moon. Someone worked on the Ellipticity of Planetary Orbits centuries before Kepler; and even when Kepler came along, Mainstream Science in person (the great Galileo) ridiculed this truth which is so obvious, even to TV viewers, in our day.
Part of the trouble with Flat Earth is that reality “is not only stranger than we imagined — it is stranger than we humans are capable of imagining”. Which does definitely not leave us free to fantasize that we can “create our own reality”. Quite the contrary. Science is our best training for that wrestling match where the apelike human brain attempts to pin down reality. Science is nothing but organized honesty.
“Science is nothing but organized honesty.”
Let me just say Vexarb that is among the best summations I’ve come across to date of what science is (or is supposed to be).
How about “Organised crime in a ‘white coat’?
Was science used from the outset as the trojan horse of our being hacked from within to fall prey to every kind of attack from without? Corporate cartel monopoly running State monopoly ‘collectivism’?
Idols must fall because they have no life but what is given them in worship and sacrifice. But no matter the humiliation, a true ground reveals itself in the willingness to disinvest of ‘taking offence’. Let there be no shame in nakedness.
Love of truth aligns true and the uncovering of the already true is the true business of scientific enquiry.
But for the coverings of the self-illusion, truth stands Self-evident as the Obvious.
Fear of truth dictates the drive to ‘discover it!’ in a form that feeds and sustains a non-native ‘intelligence’.
That then asserts and imposes ‘discovered and settled consensus truth’ upon anything that lives and moves.
It’s a death wish running as a saviour.
I see science – as with all other human corruptions, as in need of ‘redemption’ or ‘correction’ – which is another way of saying restored to true function.
You speak of an ideal science.
I see a collective ‘consensus’ of “what we are thinking now”.
If honesty uncovers something that is not part of “what we are thinking now” it is ignored,denied, subverted or attacked. This is regardless of nobel prizes or distinguished service or qualifications. Narrative control sets the framing of where funding and attention are directed.
That our reality experience (of being) is each a unique interpretive perspective is simply obvious. But agreeing to make the focus of reality OUTSIDE operates
The attempt to judge, define or fix down exactly what is “Real” is already under the presumption that Reality is OUTSIDE and separate from being. Already the presumption that being is a physical entity inside a physical World, as a separate consciousness of adaptation to interaction with such a World.
If you believe that, you experience it as ‘real’ – regardless that science reveals physicality as energy patterns in which ‘thing-in-itself’ does not ‘really’ apply outside the virtual interface of a subjective consciousness.
Insofar as science is the uncovering of the already true, it aligns with the love of the true – or recognition of Self (in All). There is no other way to have experience than to extend a focus of awareness through Idea.
But insofar as the purpose of ‘define, predict and control’ operates a private or personal agenda – (no matter how ‘consensual’), so will the the bias to possess and gain power operate behind all seeming masks of ‘self-justification’.
While flat-earth may be a psyop, it may also be a symptom of a profound breakdown of trust in the scientifically masked realm of organised crime. We are being lied to and – truth said – we are in the same game in ways we may have some awareness of, and in ways we have none.
Self-honesty uncovers our own self-illusion, but self-illusion is ingeniously capable of masking in forms that pass as self honesty.
Truth is stranger to us because we made a stranger of ourself. The ‘stranger in a strange land’ is a result of a capacity to forget who we are under a belief we are something we are not. Garbage in; garbage out.
Binra
The discoveries of materialist science do not stand opposed to idealism as a fundamental philosophical viewpoint, they are included in it.
Read some Kastrup:
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/
I hold no division between science and philosophy or indeed religion – but see all differences arising from organised or institutionalised identity.
So my assertions are not anti science but calling out the blocks and distortions to honest and transparent endeavour.
Anyone can suggest that anyone else ‘read’ anyone. It merely calls on presumed ‘authority’.
The dependency on ‘authorities’ is an alignment in trust that easily becomes blind or captive to its ‘establishment’ as the order of things.
It was just a suggestion binra,
a link to a thinker,
a broadening of discussion.
Kastrup is not considered ‘an authority’ by anyone that I am aware of.
Accepted Mog. But in terms of your premise – that I did not identify, and a dropped author that I have heard of, but nothing more, led me to feel a miscommunication and perhaps a sense of being patronised in terms of go and educate yourself.
I prefer to follow a suggested link in terms of more of a contextual sense of why or what for.
I accept you wrote in good faith.
Brian/binra
“Propaganda is fragile as it is a manipulation of the narrative to hide/obscure the facts. So propaganda needs protection and support, it needs feeding.”
A false witness demands sacrifice of the true, in order to pass off as true or in place of true.
It is only willing or open to receive confirmation and support of its ‘self’ and so when it believes itself ‘attacked’ by truth it will only see or hear that which it can take in and use against truth. Because it is by nature blind to anything true, being a substitution for You.
A false witness works the hiding of guilt in the ‘other’, and so the ‘other’ becomes the guilt or sin in the world over and against which relative innocence is claimed as righteousness asserted. Fantasy given power works the false idol or indeed ideal or idea.
Stepping forward in purpose is never sitting on the fence, but only unified purpose is unifying. To purpose ourself under hate no matter how we justify our self is divisive and blinding. The old adage of “hate the sin, not the sinner” is better in that it allows the addressing of issues beneath the persona, but the willingness to truly engage in communication where there is a willingness for communication, is FOR everyone concerned, because we ALL suffer the effects of miscommunications, errors and attempts to hide or protect them from change under fear of pain and loss.
Moral judgements of self, projected onto others, operates the defence against self-disclosure.
When a pack of cards falls as a result of its own instabilities, the key is to be already in the embodiment of a deeper stability of being – rather than a mob that thinks itself powerful in overthrowing a hated system of tyranny. The idea that one can operate ‘regime change’ and everything else will simply align well is the illusion that the problem is ‘out there’ in the symptom, and the collective unconsciousness of humankind WANTS that illusion as a protection against a deeper fear. But only within the framing of a false use OF the mind.
Persuasion or manipulative intent is a bias of distortion upon communication. This is our ‘mind’ or rather the use of mind as if a power unto itself OVER creation – because the unfolding experience of our existence is a creation. As we give, so shall we receive – but our giving is the measure of our receipt, and if we choose to take offence, then we give it.
I hold it self-evident that we do not create our self, life or being, and that the receipt of being is covered by the conditioned learnings of the world of a ‘life apart and set against’.
Giving witness of reinforcement to a self and world set in conflict, works to cover over and deny the rising within it of a unified and unifying purpose and perspective.
“You see, under the OLD definition of “impartial journalism”, a representative from each side of a political issue would be given equal air-time to make their case and present their evidence to the public. The people watching at home, being informed, would then make their own decision as to who was more likely correct.”
Neither approach works well in these times. To take the above, one ends up with extremist groups like Henry Jackson Society or Tax Payers Alliance or UKIP being given disproportionate exposure on the BBC, relative to their support base, on the premise they represent the opposing side of an argument which is often non-existent/indefensible/extremist.
If there was mutual agreement to moderation such that the dark arts were not acceptable forms of communication, then communication can occur. Otherwise polarised faced off positions work the denial of the chalice of listening. (in ref to the well known illusion of two faces OR chalice).
Schopenhauer’s list of 38 stratagems to win an argument by trickery or guile are a good enough introduction to the dark arts.
Bringing communication into truly present terms is owning only what is ours. Every kind of self deceit operates the human mind. Until we recognise this, we are subject to them and their consequences.
The art of listening and speaking is inherent to our being, but in having learned the masking of a manipulative mind we are obliged to re-learn what would otherwise have come naturally.
True listening develops the capacity to discern what is unspoken or is actually being said beneath the forms of presentation. True listening is also a transformative and integrative event.
In the fields of psychology as the study and healing of trauma are many pertinent insights as to the development of psychological blocks to awareness that work as psychic – emotional defences relative to fear of reliving past experience. But the field of applied psychology tends to identify such defences as leverage for manipulation of Hidden guilt and hidden fear.
The purpose that aligns and informs our cultural development is defaulted to a false or private sense of self interest, at expense of wholeness. Attacking the symptoms or agencies of such purpose remains within such purpose. The re-alignment under truly integrative purpose has to be a conscious willingness. It will not happen from the “default” mind. The bias of a falsely or mistakenly identified sense of self operates with the all power given or natural to self. ‘Lies’ are justified under the belief they save us from a greater evil. ‘Lies’ generate the ‘evils’ they then ‘protect’ us from.
How would you communicate to a lost humanity that its predicament is an ‘inside job’?
Deception by omission, is standard fare in UK media.
it’s certainly the stock in trade of our esteemed state propaganda outlet, the BBC; other pubs just lie, blatantly, and then point and shout “conspiracy theorist” loudly when questioned (or just block you on Twatter, like Bellendcat)
It’s not like Mission Impossible being the opposite of Mission Possible.
It aint a Partial <=> Impartial biwhatsit.
The verb is TO IMPART.
Now you see why they seem to be pushing a point of view.
The ‘news’ is nothing but opinion presented as fact. Journalists are reporters but for decades have presented themselves as ‘experts’. I even heard a BBC newsreader – a reader of news – recently talking about her ‘humanitarian work’ in Africa. I imagine what passes for humanitarian work is shoving a microphone at a starving African. Shameless. Journalists present unnamed ‘sources’ as some sort of virtue and indication of their status. When I was a cadet journalist we were told to respond to anyone who wanted to go off the record: ‘our newspaper is a journal of record, if you won’t put your name to it, I cannot quote you so don’t bother telling me.’ Lol that was last century! I don’t read newspapers and watch only RT and CGTN for news. The mainstream news media embarrasses me. I no longer tell people i am a journalist (I escaped to the trade press years ago). People are turning away from traditional news sources in their droves. That is why establishments hacks luke Peston and others in the thrall if Project Mockingbird are so scared. Russian trolls! Russian trolls! How pathetic they are, resurrecting Mccarthyism and hoping no one notices.
Have to ask – are you actually Mulga’s sister? 🙂
“Impartial journalism is not giving equal airtime to two people one of whom says Assad gassed his own people the other who says the white helmets might not be quite as squeaky clean as the neocons say they are. That is not balanced, impartial journalism.” – no, its state propaganda Mr Preston, because for a media outlet to be fearless and impartial it has to maintain a fair degree of independence from the powers controlling it, conditions which simply do not apply to the likes of the BBC or ITV and certainly every MSM newspaper.
The fact that you employ a useless analogy (flat earth advocacy) to illustrate your point when in fact there are numerous pertinent exemplars like the antisemitism trope orchestrated to discredit Corbyn, the (lack of) reporting of US black-ops in Venezuela, or of course uncritical acceptance of the novichok débâcle tells us that you are no better than a later day Sqealer.
“By radically simplifying language—as when he teaches the sheep to bleat “Four legs good, two legs better!”—he limits the terms of debate. By complicating language unnecessarily, he confuses and intimidates the uneducated, as when he explains that pigs, who are the “brainworkers” of the farm, consume milk and apples not for pleasure, but for the good of their comrades. In this latter strategy, he also employs jargon as well as a baffling vocabulary of false and impenetrable statistics, engendering in the other animals both self-doubt and a sense of hopelessness about ever accessing the truth without the pigs’ mediation. Squealer’s lack of conscience and unwavering loyalty to his leader, alongside his rhetorical skills, make him the perfect propagandist for any tyranny.”
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/animalfarm/character/squealer/
Are you saying you don’t believe the earth is flat?
Not if Preston says so!
I’m looking out of the window right now. It looks pretty flat to me. I can see all of the way to the end of the road.
I think I might re-evaluate my position on this hotly contested subject.due to this newly discovered evidence
The earth must be flat otherwise they wouldn’t be able to print it in books or newspapers!!
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
In terms of everyday experience my impression is that the mass of people are fully aware that the system they live under is a racket. It is a sort of collective (dare I say ”class” consciousness). Racketism is no respecter of social, economic or political systems, you’ll find it everywhere regardless of regime. This is the wisdom of the man in the street. Firstly we had racket communism which collapsed due to its internal contradictions and generalised corruption, now we have the same process occuring within the sacred environments of capitalism. Human imperfectibilty and propensity to sin is a given: ”Of such a crooked wood as man is made, no carpenter will every fashion anything completely straight.” (Immanuel Kant)
The man in the street knows more than is commonly thought especially by the ruling strata. And the inevitable dual consciousness deepens with the ongoing process of moral and social disintegration, until the eventual explosion. The dissolution of corporate hegemony when it does occur will happen because of the inability to maintain the system indefinitely. This type of breakdown, which is a recurrent historical phenomenon, is a long term process and intrinsic to the system. Whether the press is impartial or not is irrelevant in this sense. Impartial propaganda (there’s a choice oxymoron) and everyday experience can last for a given period, but in the final analysis everyday experience will win.
Propaganda is fragile as it is a manipulation of the narrative to hide/obscure the facts. So propaganda needs protection and support, it needs feeding.
Truth lies buried you have to dig to find it.
There can be two sides to an argument and there can be more. Peston’s argument is a manipulation to help hide the truth to support and protect the propaganda, it is clearly a corruption.
The truth can be painful the truth can be hard. Letting someone sugar the pill will not lead to enlightenment, Robert.
William Blake put it well:
“What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song,
Or Wisdom for a dance in the street? No! it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath—his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither’d field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain…
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity—
Thus would I sing and thus rejoice; but it is not so with me.”
I imagine Peston will not be providing any helpful details on the bacground to the Manchester bombing for example:
http://markcurtis.info/2017/06/03/the-manchester-bombing-as-blowback-the-latest-evidence/
But he will, no doubt, be singing and dancing in the tents of prosperity.
AN excellent article, Kit, thank you.
My two new pence worth:
The earth may or may not be flat, depending on what one means by “the earth”, “may”, “not”, “be”, and “flat”. But Journalistic Impartiality is the official religion that the masses are expected to genuflect to on pain of being declared possessed by devils.
Reporters are the clerics who handle the religion’s clerical tasks of recording the the facts properly in order to set the goal posts of respectability and moderation, and ensure a level playing field in the arena of acceptable debate. Journalists are the scribes who scribble down their opinions fist of all on the clerics’ output, and secondly on what other scribes have scribbled down. Senior journalists may rise to the level of the pundits, imams, or parish priests of Journalistic Impartiality, delivering sermons and even pontificating from their pulpits, which include opinion columns, editorials and appearances on orthodox TV news and chat shows.
The hole purpose of the new official religion of Journalistic Impartiality is just the same as that of the old official religions—to create a make-believe world to control the perceptions, opinions and emotions of the sheep to prevent them straying to the point where they become a burden on their shepherds.
Alex Jones, love him or loath him, is not an orthodox preacher. One thing he deserves great credit for is in pioneering a new form of journalism that largely cuts out the hierarchy of the legacy media. He has shown the way and served as a role model for thousands of other opinionated individuals, many of whom do a far better job of opining on the news than either Alex or the legacy media do. Yes, technology enabled this revolution, just as earlier the printing press took book an a pamphlet making out of the hands of the controllers. And Alex was one of the first to use the advances in telecommunication technology as a lever big enough to impact a significant segment of the general public. He may well be somebody’s controlled media, albeit on a long leash, but his has put the fear of extinction into the hearts of the people at ABCNBCCBSCNNBBCITV… as well as at the Guardian. And from where I stand, that can’t be a bad thing.
Well the way Tubularsock see it:
Impartial is just the space one stands until all the information is presented.
Then one becomes Partial.
EVEN if they are WRONG!
The proof of the pudding is readers’ trust. According to the American Press Institute, “Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions”.
According to Edelman, 80% of Chinese trust their media, lower than their trust in government, but significantly higher than even Singaporeans’ trust in their media.
The low trust scores can be explained by the fact that the general public wants to seem more smart than it actually is. This involves putting on a show of how one is “too smart” to believe the “mainstream media”. Bashing the MSM has become the modern-day counter culture. Few want to defend the media, for fear of being “sheeple”. So they attack it and smugly pat thsemveles on the back for being such geniuses. Even politicians have picked up on the game, portraying themselves as being “against the corrupt MSM”. I’m sure you’ve seen election ads of various alt-right politicians, for example.
Sometimes, the MSM is criticized for the most mundane things. On Twitter, for example, you’ll find Leftists complaining about how CNN or the NYT didn’t use the “right words” in the titles of their articles when describing Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Or take the recent article published here by the extremely dishonest Eric Zuesse, where he tried taking CNN to task for not mentioning that the U.S. bears responsibility for Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen. He cherry-picked a single article and whined about how it didn’t mention anything about the weapons used being American-made. Except, if you look at various other articles about the same topic, many do mention exactly this. A red herring if there ever was one.
The truth of the matter is that the mainstream media is generally honest. Note I said “generally”, not “always”. Yes, they have biases, but they are not that bad.
You are correct if you condone mass murder.
The stench of Zionazi hasbara surrounding this troll is rising.
Matt, every independent content analysis of BBC News has revealed its political and economic coverage to have a glaring rigjtwing/ establishment bias. Little wonder when its output is filtered through a host of well-known Tories, both on and off screen. Were there anything even approaching balance you would be able to name at least one high-profile left winger at the BBC among all the Tories. Do yourself a favour and check out Media Lens’ new book Propaganda Blitz. You will recognize all the tactics that are deployed.
‘Moshe'(Matt)has that hasbarist’s talent for chutzpah. The bigger the Big Lie the more sacramental it becomes.
Is ‘Matt’ a loony, or a paid hasbarollockser team in Tel Aviv? Not, of course, that it has to be an either/or proposition. You could just as well say ‘loony AND hasbarollockser’.
Zionist editing is one of the pastimes of the Neo-Con Press Room then to be broadcast via the bullhorns of the State Department
Matt, I disagree fundamentally. You ignore the reality of news provision underwritten and hence constrained by market forces. See my recent OffGuardian review of the new Media Lens book or, better, read that book itself then say where in your opinion its authors go wrong.
Inadvertently, however, you do stumble on a truth. I agree that polls of audience trust overstate scepticism re the media. I think the reason is not that those polled want to sound savvy’. There’s not a shred of evidence for that. There’s plenty of evidence though for the proposition that humans fail to recognise the importance of unconscious processing – the arena where commercial, political and other propaganda forms operate – in drawing the conclusions we do about the world. As with advertising. None of us believe ourselves swayed by it and yet, oddly enough, these foolish capitalists continue to part with huge sums in their attempts to up our consumption of their products. Funny that, innit?
Nice piece Kit.
Matt wrote:
“The low trust scores can be explained by the fact that the general public wants to seem more smart than it actually is. ”
no, they can be explained by the fact that the media is lying
The experience of realizing one is ‘being lied to’ does not necessarily result in a re-education in awakened curiosity as to what then IS true, but plays into polarised and hateful reaction – that bases itself on the ‘truth’ of the sins of the other.
It may well be that people are ‘lied to’ or worked and managed by the lie because those who work such a manipulative intent base their sense of truth on the sin of unworthiness or incapacity to be trusted with power or a real voice, and so are managed under false narratives.
Impartiality is not already within the framework of mutually polarised positions and so is able to discern the underlying nature of such conflicts. Conflicts of interest are better to be owned and out front – otherwise they work the ‘hidden or masked agenda – whether consciously as a deceit of as bias kept hidden or unconscious in the self-deceived purveyor of false witness.
The willingness to honour a view that is different from the generally or officially accepted consensus reality is a measure of the strength of our own convictions. Truth has nothing to fear from honest and open question or discussion. The attempt to USE truths as weapons of a personal conflict is the way to ‘KILL” truth – not in truth, but in the mind of such active intent.
Noticing our active intent is watching our mind (and emotional and physical response). This is opening freedom at the level where real choice operates. Only a willingness of desire for truth will allow such trust in what otherwise operates as a pre-emptive defence AGAINST ‘threat’ which is equally assigned to demonic projections of fear as to the transcendent embrace of a higher or more inclusive perspective – AND COnFUSES them as the same.
The backwards or inverted view of a fragmentation calling on power to restore or unify is expressed well enough in Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
The reintegrative or unifying movement of being is not a top-down dictate – nor a top down manipulation or ‘astro-turf’ mimicry of bottom up. But rising from a true foundation that ‘all the king’s shenanigans’ operate to deny or hide from our re-cognition.
When a true movement rises, the ‘principalities’ of the world seek to kill it or subvert it to support and extend the ‘power’ they take for their own. But a prince is a prince by virtue of inheritance from the Father – and not as a stolen power taken upon the absence or death of the Father. To steal a truth from its true context is to invest in a derivative substitution – and defend it against true until the investment is withdrawn to realign in true.
Painful to read. If you have a point to make, just state it plainly and succinctly.
Vengeance operates the blinding mind of its own judgement by assignment or ‘false flagging’ to others.
That I offer many significant points to the theme does not mean they are acceptable within your current bias. But nor are they any demand upon you to read or engage with.
1.’This involves putting on a show of how one is “too smart” to believe the “mainstream media”.’
Errm, you don’t have to be very smart to disbelieve the mainstream media.
”’you’ll find Leftists complaining about how CNN or the NYT didn’t use the “right words” in the titles of their articles.”
Yes, that’s because words and language are crucial. For example the IMF uses phrase, ‘Structtural Adjustment Policies’ which serves to conceal what they really mean, – which is to say, Austerity, which in turns means making the mass of people poorer whilst a tiny clique at the top of the social hierarchy garners all the wealth.
”The truth of the matter is that the mainstream media is generally honest.”
Really! This sounds more like an assertion than a statement of fact. How exactly do you quantify the veracity or otherwise of the mass media? And, in addition, this veracity also depends on what is being covered (or not covered). There is not just lies about something reported, but also the crime of omission where any embarrassment cause to the establishment which might be caused by an issue which challenges their narrative, is simply not mentioned. In Harold Pinter’s famous words ‘it doesn’t exist, it never happened, even whlist it was happening it wasn’t happening.’ We might add Yevtushenko’s adroit observation. ‘When truth is met by silence, silence is a lie.’
But please keep it up, we need all the target practice we can get.
Dissonance does not show up within a shared – or rather – a mutually aligned bias – for the bias operates the projection of the dissonance to OTHER or OUTSIDE. Only the true can be truly shared and recognized as such WITHIN being.
Who in this world does not in some way present themselves as they want to seem rather than as they are? Who that identifies in self-lack does not take a perverse joy in pointing or targeting those ‘worse’ then themselves – so as to seem ‘more than’ or ‘better’?
To pick out the sins and failings of others, must be through the knowledge of your own – yet if you had truly resolved or been undone of your own errors, you would have a compassionate rather than judgemental perception of others – as yourself.
‘Cherry picking’ is of course seeking and finding only the witnesses in support of a predetermined outcome or result. If provocation serves to help you find the sins you cherish seeing in others, then you have your reward in your seeming superiority or specialness – and find reinforcement for ‘be-living it’ from attacks on your person.
Whether you are are aware of and operating bias or not, it colours and informs your experience of existence as ‘self and world’ for you. But coercive intent always generates a conflicted and futile outcome – no matter how persistently applied.
If you want to accept the ‘Media’ as a trustworthy source of information then you live under the consequences and by the gifts of your choice. The bias to self-survival runs as deep as the investment in denial and projection of threat as an unworthy or invalid ‘other’.
The mind that pauses not of its own thinking to listen and align in knowing of a true recognition is never a trustworthy source of guidance. The covering and usurping of knowing life by a mind-model or mapping of its image and form runs like an automaton to a blind programmer – for such it is.
Yeah, like Brutish “impartiality” was ever a thing. Ask those of us whose countries were under “impartial” Brutish colonialism.
Alex Jones is controlled opposition. Anyone that thinks he is credible needs to see a doctor. Did i mention that he says that the Woolwich hoax was real. He constantly puts out the racist anti Muslim BS.
“Alex Jones is controlled opposition. Anyone that thinks he is credible needs to see a doctor.”
You may very well be right. The same night be said of numerous bloggers and websites.
What I don’t understand is why people, such as myself, should not be allowed to discover these things for ourselves? Is there something that you did or some quality that you were born with that justifies your censoring anything or anyone?
If, as you say, whatever occurred in Woolwich was a hoax then I’m sure that those interested will discover it for themselves, without being forced into psychiatric treatment.
Leaving aside Christ’s bowels for the moment, does it ever occur to you that you might be mistaken?
By the way I suspect that if Alex Jones was controlled opposition, his powerful patrons would have protected him from the inconveniences he is currently facing.
Bevin. So you you still have not decided that woolwich was a hoax. An event where a corpse moves at least twice. Where there is no blood from the violent hacking to death.
http://sonarz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Amateur.png
Are you still on the fence about the demonstrable hoax at woolwich?
I remember you trolling me about terrorism before.
sorry all terrorism is real, and the government tells us the truth. GGladio is just a tin fiol hat theory.
Bevin. Go on.
I’ve always found it fascinating how alternative media connoisseurs distance themselves from the more wacko outlets by referring to them as “controlled opossition”. It speaks volumes as to how irresponsible they are. Alex Jones is a classic conspiracy theorist who profits off of guillible people – his annual income from his business (yes, it’s a business) is $20 million. Rather than face the truth that someone of their own could be so dishonest, readers of the alternative media call such people “controlled oppositon”, implying that there is no way someone could be so naturally stupid. It’s a convenient way to blame the “establishment” for a self-created problem.
Someone of my own?
By their effect,who has caused more death and destruction. Alex Jones or the MSM? Who’s lies have cost the tax payers trillions to fund wars of aggression slaughtering millions of innocent people? If the scales of justice and truth were brought to bear, the “establishment” would be facing the gallows.What exactly is the crime of Alex Jones?
Being racist is one.
“Being racist is one”.
Being racist is a crime? Jesus, the thought police are alive and active. Being racist may be unpleasant, and morally repugnant, but I would hate to live in your world. What would you do if your grandfather said something (that to you seemed) racist over Sunday lunch one day? Send him to jail? Re-education camp?
Morally, you lot are way out there.
Second Skripal Poisoning Suspect Identified as Dr. Alexander Mishkin
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/10/08/second-skripal-poisoning-suspect-identified-as-dr-alexander-mishkin/
I hope “Kit” will examine the upcoming reveal, Tuesday at 13:00 in the U.K. parliament, with a certain degree of impartiality. You see, impartiality goes both ways – on the reporters, and those reading the news.
There’s been an avalanche of information about Chepiga released over the last few days. And, of course, the Dutch revelations of the 4 Russian GRU hackers. But it gets better: the news about the identities of 350 GRU agents being revealed because they registered their vehicles to a GRU building, with their real identities! The database of these registrations has been available online freely for a while now, I just finished downloading it. Good stuff.
Oh, by the way, here’s the Dutch report, replete with photos, of those pathetic hackers being caught red-handed:
https://english.defensie.nl/binaries/defence/documents/publications/2018/10/04/gru-close-access-cyber-operation-against-opcw/ppt+pressconference+ENGLISH+DEF.pdf
We were told that GRU agents “couldn’t be” so incompetent as to stage the Skirpal poisoning in the manner that they did. But the recent revelations about these GRU agents registering their vehicles with their real identities to the GRU building, and being caught trying to hack the Hague with tens of euros of cash, specialized hacking equipment, along with trying to destroy the phones upon being caught, etc. should hopefully debunk this red herring.
I wonder how the “alternative media” will react to this? Maybe they’ll ignore it. After all, ignorance is bliss. Or maybe they’ll make up a conspiracy theory to sooth their minds. Oh, I have a good one!
“The dastardly CIA sent its agents to the Netherlands to pretend to be Russian hackers. Then, NATO agents in the Netherlands photoshopped all those photos to make poor Russia look bad!”
How’d I do? ;]
Why put “Kit” in quotes? His name is Christopher. Kit is a short form for that name.
Shall we call you “Matt”? Is that even your real name? Should we care?
And there are numerous Skripal threads still open – it might be better to take discussion of the latest Bellingcat claims to there.
Admin.
I assumed that “Kit” was a pseudonym. I didn’t know that it is shorthand for Christopher. Here in Canada it’s ether “Chris” or (more rarely) “Topher”. But I didn’t mean to demean the author.
Regarding myself, I’ve said before that Matt is not my real name. Regarding your question, “Catte” has referred to me as “Matt” before, but I didn’t mind.
It’s true that the other Skirpal thread is still open, but hardly anyone reads it anymore. I posted some comments there a few days ago, but got no replies.
no, your real name is not matt. it’s elliot, isn’t it.
BTW, admin, a brief note that people can no longer log in with their Google+ account, but WordPress or other methods. Google wiped out everyone’s account after reports that it exposed 500,000 account holders personal data.
@Matt Your analytical tools appear to consist of checking the masthead of the site you’re reading and if it’s neoliberal mass media conglomerate-owned you believe every single word they tell you, and if it’s indy or alternative or owned by a state that our state doesn’t get on with you decide it’s propaganda.
That’s fine son if it works for you,but don’t for God’s sake start telling other people how to think if this is the extent of your own exploration in that department. You don’t think. You copy and paste. Not the same. Different skill set.
Thank you! Matt’s patronising condescension is all the more infuriating when combined with such obvious limitations of understanding and experience. I always feel like Blackadder in that ep of season 3 and just want to say “Oh shut up you nauseating adolescent”
“masthead”
“neoliberal”
“you believe every single word they tell you”
” if it’s indy or alternative or owned by a state that our state doesn’t get on with you decide it’s propaganda”
“You don’t think. You copy and paste.”
Lots of claims, but nothing of substance. Your ad hominem about Bellingcat, brought on by your refusal to accept that Russia can do Bad Things, is irrelevant to the matter. As is your holier than thou attitude.
Address the claims made by Bellingcat. Criticize them.
It’s not hard. Well, except it is if you can’t find any major issues. In that case, it becomes important to smear the media outlet, as you’ve done.
MH17, hacking the DNC, and now the Skirpal saga. The alternative media has been wrong on each and every one of these events, falling into the familiar pattern of concocting multiple, contradictory conspiracy theories while the evidence is being compiled by relevant authorities. By the time such evidence is released, the alternative media connoisseurs have already been drugged up with various “alternative” scenarios. Oh but you were Just Asking Questions. Right.
You are the one who doesn’t think. You are the one who copy pastes random stuff from the internet. Don’t project onto me.
“Address the claims made by Bellingcat. Criticize them”
They have been.
They have been shown to be dubious at best.
Really? How so?
Because the early criticisms people had of the articles have been exposed as being false.
Bellingcat, rather than respond to reports their anti-Russian propaganda was sourced by Fancy Bear, preferred to block Twitter accounts that said so 🙂
Follow the money. Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by the US government. He is also bankrolled by Soros via his Open Society Foundations. If he didn’t live off the largesse of regime change monsters, he, Eliot Higgins, might have to go back to his old job as an underwear salesman.
exactly which criticisms, and how were they “exposed” to be false, and by whom?
And, sourced by various intelligence agency fronts.
Max Blumenthal has the last word on Bellingcat: https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1049524168021209088
hacking the DNC
I’m sure that little item provoked much laughter among the readership here.
Did the DNC ever get around to letting the FBI examine their servers in order to uncover such “hacking”?
If so, when is the investigative report being made public?
If it’s good enough for Justice Kavanaugh, it’s good enough for Deborah Wasserman Schultz!
God you’re boring, Moshe.
It really does not matter who the real identities of the 2 guys are. Or what their jobs are. Until proper evidence is presented that shows they smeared the door knob with some sort of would be lethal chemical agent with the intent to murder Skripal then they shouild be treated as innocent, and why not on a weekend break to London/Salisbury to smoke dope, pick up prostitutes and check out Salisbury cathedral and stonehenge.
Matt wrote:
“Address the claims made by Bellingcat. Criticize them.”
There’s no evidence backing up the claims. what more is there to say?
Matt,
The DNC wasn’t “hacked”. If you really knew your stuff you’d know this.
There were two “breaches”; The first was an email phishing exercise, whereby the paedophile John Podesta replied to an email asking him to enter his password into a webpage (his password was password – actual lol);
The second, and I think the “hack” you are speaking of, was, according to the ex-Technical Director of the NSA, William Binney, a guy whose expertise I’d trust 1 million times more than Eliiot Dickhead Bellendcat (yes, an ad hominem for somebody who actually deserves it) carried out by an internal operative, who copied the files onto a USB stick. This person was likely Seth Rich, who was then murdered during a “robbery” where nothing was robbed.
There is plenty of evidence to support these claims., I guess you’ve missed it. Oh, what’s that? Bellendcat didn’t publish any of it? I wonder why not. Could it be that it isn’t impartial?
“How’d I do?”
For parroting nonsense. Really well.
For any kind of critical thinking. No cigar.
You’ll be telling us the Zioniov letter was genuine next. Or that our long term asset Saddam really did have WMD’s; the Gulf of Tonkin never happened; there was no cover up over Hillsborough and the analysis which proved conclusively (using science) that the DNC server could not have hacked and that it was in fact a leak is fake news. All, incidently bullshit fake news sold to us by a corporate media bubble singing from the same hymn sheet which inadvertently trumpeted the truth of Upton Sinclair’s well known observation.
But, seeing as I like you today, because I might not like you tomorrow I’ll explain, in Janet and John terms ( seeing as it’s you), why you are foolish to die in a ditch over the Salisbury issue.
The story does not stack up because quite simply it goes against scientific reality. It is claimed that a particular nerve agent was used on two individuals, smeared on a doorknob and found in pure form in a populated environment. A nerve agent which, we are again told, is many orders of magnitude more toxic than traditional/ conventional nerve agents.
Now, those of us who have actually had forces NBC training and have spent time at Porton Down as a test subject during our military service know from official State instructions that these traditional/conventional deadly (hang onto that word) nerve agents take seven seconds of exposure to the skin or through inhalation to kill you. It’s why standard and well known protocol in the field is for everyone to have in their possession an autojet injector for their buddy to use on them if they become exposed. It gives you a fighting chance.
There is no way, unless you want to publicly claim to believe in magic rather than science (and that’s your call sunshine), that a nerve agent more deadly than Sarin et al could have been used as we have been told by both the State and the corporate media without the two claimed ‘targets’ being killed. Yet they are still alive. A fact which a senior medic at the hospital to which they we’re admitted was moved to point out in a letter to the media at the time that they were not treated for exposure to a nerve agent.
Moreover, no one else has died as a result of the claimed deployment of this super deadly nerve agent into the populated environment. A fact totally at odds with known science. There would most certainly be multiple deaths from such a wide exposure of a populated area from a nerve agent apparently found in pure form in the environment. But don’t just take the word of someone whose only been through and experienced the training in the protocols, look them up the web.
Which, in the light of all the other known bullshit we have been fed over decades which finally emerge, calls into question all the other elements and aspects of the current narrative (because that narrative will change over time to meet the evidence which calls it into question as it always has in the past with all those other issues until decades later the truth of officially sanctioned).
Very comprehensive rebuttal, Dave. I suspect “Matt” will come back with an equally comprehensive cheeky one-liner telling you you’re a conspiracy theorist