Social media fact-checking, brought to you by the Deep State
Daniel Espinosa
Almost four years of mainstream media hype about “fake news” and “Russian meddling” propaganda has brought to the world exactly what they were intended to bring: an effective mechanism for internet and social media censorship.
In the center of this move toward global discourse control is an organization called the Poynter Institute, home to the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), a body created to coordinate, promote and train dozens of fact-checkers from around the world.
The IFCN and many non-profits working in the same field are funded by the big capitalist “philanthropists” of our era, like George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, Bill Gates, and even the Koch brothers…but also by the US Department of State and a shady “aid” – in reality, political meddling – organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), historically linked to the CIA and regime change operations.
Google and Facebook – itself tied to the warmongering Atlantic Council and its “Digital Forensic Research Lab” – are also associated with Poynter, by funding and partnerships to fight “fake news” (including the development of an “automated” fact-checking program for the upcoming 2020).
The marriage between Poynter’s IFCN, politically inclined billionaires, the State Department – and the whitewashed public face of the Deep State – suggest that the institute is probably working in what Nelson Poynter, its founder, worked on for a key part of his life: propaganda and censorship for the US government.
Although this information is not available in Nelson Poynter’s Wikipedia profile or in poynter.org’s history page, his work for a government propaganda agency is not exactly a secret. A resemblance of his wife, Henrietta, also at the institute’s website, quickly passes over the fact that Poynter did work for the Office of War Information (OWI) during WWII, but his specific role as a government censor and propagandist is never mentioned.
Nevertheless, Hollywood Goes to War, a book written in 1987 by Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, is one of the many historical sources that tell the details of Poynter’s job.
Film censorship and the birth of the Voice of America
Nelson Poynter was recruited by the OWI with his wife Henrietta, who worked as assistant program chief under Elmer Davis, head of the agency. She came up with the name for the “Voice of America”, the famous psychological war operation of the US government.
The radio project was established in February 1942 and soon grew to be the most important US overt propaganda arm of the Cold War.
Unlike his wife’s job, Poynter’s regarded not radio – or his previous line of work, journalism – but movies. In 1942, the OWI’s Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) set up office in Hollywood, naming Poynter as its head. His mission was to act as liaison between the agency and the owners of Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, MGM and the other big studio names.
Elmer Davis, head of the OWI, regarded films as:
The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds”, in part, because they “do not realize that they are being propagandized”.
Davis was a career journalist who worked for ten years for the New York Times before being recruited by the government. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House needed the film industry to incorporate specific themes in their movies, ideas that promoted the notion of WWII as being a “popular” war, fought to defend his Four Freedoms.
But at first, Poynter’s office in Hollywood had little veto power over what the industry could produce – for the entire Western world – limiting itself to suggest cosmetic changes here and there, or the toning down of reactionary and racist imagery and language, an inherent feature in the Hollywood of that era.
The heads of the studios were in fairly good terms with the US Army, historically close to the industry. Its owners were happy to portrait US wars abroad as heroic, in exchange for the lending of military equipment, installations and expert advice.
But in most cases, a disappointed Poynter complained, war ended up only as “a backdrop” for shallow romance, cheap comedies and other proven formulas. Poynter and his boss at the BMP, Lowell Mellett, also hired a former assistant of Harold Lasswell, a famous social researcher who said – back in the 30s – that democracy needed propaganda because people were not the best judges of their own interest.
Eventually, the team devised a way to exert more power over the unruly, reactionary and overly commercial Hollywood studios. They decided to ask the US Office of Censorship to weight in and threat them with banning “offending” films from export, seriously reducing their potential earnings.
According to Koppes and Black’s Hollywood Goes to War, it was a success, prompting MGM, Warner and the other big names to start turning their scripts for review to the Poynter. The BMP knew it was important to intervene right at that stage, before big amounts of money were spent in production.
Poynter was a diligent censor and propagandist, going as far as to suggest dialogues for the movie scripts he was reviewing, breaching “one of the industries taboos” and provoking the powerful tycoons, according to the authors mentioned above.
When the war ended, Poynter went back to journalism. He eventually took over the St. Petersburg Times (renamed Tampa Bay Times in 2012), owned by his father. He also founded the Congressional Quarterly with his wife Henrietta, who died in 1968. As we can read in the Poynter institute’s website:
When Henrietta died suddenly at the age of 66, Nelson mourned deeply. ‘Her passing marked the end of an era for Mr. Poynter,’ said David Shedden, former research librarian at The Poynter Institute. ‘He started looking to the future and thinking about his legacy. He focused on creating a school for journalists, which of course became the Modern Media Institute, and then the Poynter Institute’.”
Nevertheless, historian W.C. Bourne explains that many of the OWI’s top brass – as Elmer Davis and Nelson Poynter, former journalists – returned to the corporate media after the war, but “retained an abiding belief in the things for which OWI stood and the possibilities of accomplishment in the international information picture”.
Many of them also retained the Deep State contacts and a nationalistic “spirit of collaboration”.
A legacy of censorship
Nelson Poynter’s work for the government ended many decades ago, and it would be reasonable to suggest that his ties to the US government and its propaganda apparatus probably never involved the journalism institution he founded years after leaving the OWI.
But we have evidence pointing precisely in the opposite direction.
Firstly, the obvious – and open – ties between the institute and today’s version of the foreign meddling machine installed by the US during the Cold War (i.e. the NED). As informed on many occasions by independent journalists, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy once admitted that:
A lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA.”
Secondly, the intimate ties between the Poynter Institute and the US State Department, which selected it to conduct the “Edward Murrow Program for Journalists”. It brings together “more than 100 emerging international journalists from around the world to examine journalistic practices in the United States”.
In other words, to be indoctrinated in Western corporate journalism and culture and start a relationship with a potential foreign opinion leader.
The State Department’s Murrow program is part of Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), an agency dedicated to “cultural diplomacy”, intimately tied to intelligence and foreign policy since way before the Cold War. The participants to be trained by Poynter are chosen by US embassies abroad.
A 2017 report of the historical success of the educational exchange agency stated that:
…565 alumni of the ECA programs are current heads or former heads of state and government, and 31 alumni are heads of international organizations.”
Thirdly, the Poynter Institute, too, redacted an infamous blacklist of “fake news” sites, with the intention of marginalize and, in this case, deny many of them of any kind of advertisement money.
A blacklist to defund them all
For this operation, launched on April 30, 2019, Poynter ganged-up with the rest of the fact-checking “cartel”, so to speak.
The institute gathered the blacklists and analysis done in recent years by Snopes, Fact-check.org, Politifact (owned by the Tampa Bay Times and Poynter), OpenSources and the Fake News Codex, and used them to create the mother of all blacklists, naming 515 “unreliable” news websites.
It was retracted shortly after its publication, on May 2, after coming under criticism for “unreliability and poor methodology”. The irony! And this should be understood as an indictment on the whole bunch. As one critic from the George Washington University noted:
Beneath the veneer of its precision, the fact-checking enterprise relies heavily on opinion and interpretation…If a list summarizing fact-checking results and verified by fact checkers is ultimately retracted by those same fact checkers for not being rigorous, it underscores the question of why we should trust anything from the fact-checking community.”
To add insult to injury, Poynter’s dubious list of “unreliable websites” was intended to cause financial harm to those named in it, by guiding advertisers and ad-technology applications to deny them of ads.
After the retraction, Stephen Gutowski, a writer from one of the affected websites, Free Beacon, wrote:
What a disgusting exercise in bad faith from an organization that’s supposed to be about improving and promoting journalism. Instead, they’re creating tabloid-level listicles to smear reporters without offering even a single piece of evidence. Shame on you, @Poynter.”
Philip Klein, from The Washington Examiner – also listed – thought it was:
…worrisome to call for advertisers blacklisting news organizations, especially given the opacity of the process and arbitrariness of many of the judgements [sic].”
The “cartel”
Most of the non-profits behind Poynter’s blacklist share patrons, except for the controversial Snopes, that runs on less grant money than advertisement revenues.
The International Fact-checking Network and its more than a hundred “associated” – subordinated – smaller fact checkers around the globe, are also funded by the same “philanthropists”, like Bill Gates, whose foundation already finances tens of mainstream corporate news outlets with tens of millions of dollars, just like the Columbia Journalism Review recently uncovered.
Regarding Poynter and Gates, specifically:
…Poynter senior vice president Kelly McBride said Gates’s money was passed on to media fact-checking sites, including Africa Check, and noted that she is “absolutely confident” that no bias or blind spots emerged from the work, though she acknowledged that she has not reviewed it herself.”
In a blatant conflict of interests, those same fact-checkers often (try to) debunk information related to the Gates Foundation, just like a private PR agency.
Many lesser players in the global constellation of fact checkers are also funded directly by George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the US embassy and/or the NED.
When “fact-checking”, the members of this private-public consortium often limit themselves to copy/paste from their “parent” sources, like Poynter’s Politifact and Snopes.
As Emil Marmol and Lee Mager recently wrote for Project Censored, the “fake news” psychological operation was little more than a “Trojan horse for silencing alternative news and reestablishing corporate news dominance”:
The fake news hysteria created by those in government and echoed by the corporate news media is being harnessed and used as a pretext for the suppression of dissent and counterhegemonic viewpoints while re-establishing the corporate press’s preeminence as the sole purveyor and manufacturer of public opinion”.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the degenerative process under the guise of “protecting us”, prompting democratic governments to take dangerous paths, like arresting citizens for promoting street marches on Facebook.
The internet opened up a world of information to the regular citizen, we must keep it open so more of us can take a look.
Daniel Espinosa lives in Arequipa, second largest city of Peru. He graduated in Communication Sciences in Lima and started researching propaganda and mainstream media. He writes for a Peruvian in-print weekly, Hildebrandt en sus trece, since 2018, and collaborates with many online media. His writings are a critique of the role of mass media in society. You can read his previous work through his MuckRack profile.
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Some good news from Iceland: Yesterday, the main newspaper printed a great article about covid, covering, on a whole page, pretty much all the important facts we have discussed on OffG for months. The author isn’t a doctor, but you can see he is well-educated and bright. After all, you don’t need a doctorate to be able to compare 13% – the number of Icelanders he claims are awake – with the billions of people all over the world who are not. Come to think of it, 13% is really quite a high figure.
You’d think he had followed all the links we have seen here from honest scientists, since what he says is so comprehensive. It would take me too long to translate it all into English, but we already know what he knows, and at least he is unafraid to say what he knows, with his main emphasis on the unbelievable, and totally unnecessary, cost to society which the authorities’ panic measures have imposed – even though Iceland is actually one of the best countries when it comes to seeing through b/s and not using panic as the default reaction.
The newspaper is widely read, so I would expect his article to have a considerable effect, although I wait with some trepidation to see what the “Establishment” will do to try and ridicule or otherwise undermine him…
We don’t have a Fauci or a Hancock here, but we do have a typical Conservative representing the country at, for example, the UN, so we could expect some nonsense from that quarter…
I hope common sense and freedom will prevail in Iceland. Constant vigilance is essential to prevent fascism.
Things are terrifying in the UK. The lockdown intensifies.
No groups of more than 6 people, indoors or out. Today, marshalls are to be employed by the UK Government to ensure social distancing, even though the science says Covid-19 is less dangerous than the flu.
A private company will supply the social distancing marshalls: G4S. According to Wikipedia, a controversial company around the world.
Elmer Davis, head of the OWI, regarded films as:
The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds”, in part, because they “do not realize that they are being propagandized”.
been watching this for a long time …. it’s obvious to someone as paranoid and conspiracy minded as me 😉
and as someone critical of vaccines these 30 years i’ve seen much coming, though not expected it to be so global/all encompassing so soon.
Hopefully they’re so impatient to get this abomination off the ground that they’ll make a lot of mistakes. They already hav done, and that gives us a foot in the door. Next step is to get them arrested, even if it’s only a “citizens’ arrest” which will succeed purely due to the sheer numbers of people carrying out the arrest.
I’m starting to wonder if this whole covid thing is a coverup for something else? We all seem to be so focussed on the non-virus. Its well known that the economy is continuing its collapse masked (excuse pun) by covid myths, but what else might be happening???
There was enough articles at off-guardian and other alt media that is easy to understand that plandemic is excuse for total control (electronic chips, vaccines, electronic money) and war in aftermath of starring economical crisis.
That is indeed the whole point of this exercise, and we are no longer really focused on the non-virus here at all. It’s just a filler while we prepare the next piece of important information as to who is doing this, and why. We already know a great deal, and much of that has been covered here.
It almost works to imagine the worst which any government could possibly perpetrate upon its citizens, and that will turn out to be the truth. But we have to be more scientific and fact-based than that.
Words from the great Michael Parenti, who has spoken a great deal about conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorists.
Films: Elmer Davis, head of the OWI, regarded films as:
The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds”, in part, because they “do not realize that they are being propagandized”
Oscar Wilde on journalism and media
“It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority.”
– Oscar Wills Wilde –
(October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900)
How often do fact checkers call out the main stream news channels as fake news.
We know the main stream pushes obvious lies as truth as well as obvious bias.
Remember Kuwait and the baby’s taken from incubators
CNN faking a gas attack in Iraq from the studio roof
The Iraq weapons of mass destruction yellow cake
Much of the global warming / climate change / extreme weather scam.
The BBC called for the banning of the David Icke video as Fake news where he mentioned that coronavirus tests accuracy depended on the number of cycles used in the PCR tests
Yet months later the BBC is reporting the same thing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54000629
Coronavirus: Tests ‘could be picking up dead virus’But it’s not fake news when the BBC report it.
Meanwhile even they know the tests are not reliable they are continuing the lockdowns based on test results.
They have just locked down Caerphilly in South Wales jus 23 miles from me.People should not enter or leave Caerphilly county with out a good reason. Should wear masks in shops if over 11. Friends and family should not meet indoors or stay overnight(what if not indoors does that mean don’t camp in the garden?)
More silly rules for silly people to follow or not if they have any sense.
But can meet in pub or restaurant.
What next must stand on one leg between 6 and 8 unless there is a south westly wind.
Those that trust fact checkers also trust the BBC who have there very own unique definition of truth they call it “Due Accuracy” This means that a BBC statement only has to be as accurate as the BBC deems necessary to meet what the BBC thinks the intended audience would expect. So forget facts with the BBC its Due Accuracy instead.
.
Yes. ‘Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq’. I remember that most egregious fake news story the BBC disseminated.
The solution to “social media” censorship and control is not through government legislation. This is exactly what the tech giants wish because this would institutionalize their monopolies. These tech giants were founded by intelligence agencies and they installed front men puppets to “lead” them such as Mark Zuckerberg and Sergei Brin. For example, Facebook’s technology was developed at public expense by DARPA as their LifeLog project, and then turned over gratis to Facebook. The only way to attempt to combat this crap is to vote with your virtual feet, quit these social media giant monopolies or at least minimize their use dramatically, and use and support upstarts that promise no or extremely limited censorship, limited to the most basic decencies such as promoting murders for example. I see BitChute as a promising alternative so far to gootube. I still use gootube for instructions on how to best support my tomato plants, but never for anything that has any political or social ramifications.
No discussion of Fact Checking would be complete without mentioning Michael Shermer and his Skeptic Magazine. He was one of the first to “prove” the 9/11 Official Narrative by “debunking” the claims of the 9/11 Truthers (along with Popular Mechanics).
It is more than a little telling that Mr Shermer has never encountered an officially sanctioned narrative he needed to “debunk”; but can barely keep up with his “debunking” of alternative narratives.
The Grayzone continues to do some good journalism. Here looking at the intersection of neoliberal capitalism’s “anything for a buck” ethos and Latin American fascism – both in symbiotic service to America’s neocolonial “exceptionalism” project – a rather extensive ‘intersection’ indeed.
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/06/cls-strategies-facebook-propaganda-venezuela-bolivia/
Informative article thanks for it . However the overall effect of the Internet has been to make disinformation far easier to disseminated and allow divisive emotion based wedges to be easily driven for the benefit of the status quo. The revolution/reset now in progress will not be televised , nor will it be on the Internet. Propaganda is a strategy bearing little resemblance to truth.
This has probably been linked to before but it’s good:
https://expressiveegg.org/2020/08/09/the-reaction-of-the-left-to-lockdown/
The basic point is that nobody on the official or even “unofficial” Left paused to question the virus story. (I think Darren gets a bit muddled about the matter of official/unofficial but admittedly it’s hard to tell the difference anyway.)
And just on a side issue, although a very important one, I myself have been diverted through the matter of basic positions e.g. if I felt that someone was approaching things from a “Right” perspective or if they were rubbishing Marx or whatever, then I’d fell my hackles rise. I’ve come to realise that these issues are actually not important and are indeed one of the ways the media divide people. Marx himself said he was “no Marxist”. Darren makes this point himself alluding to the fact that these expressions always change their meaning from time to time, place to place and person to person.
But it’s the Caitlin Johnston bit that intrigues me. She finds the issue of possible COVID propaganda “irrelevant and boring”. I had a flashback to Chomskly’s assertions that it didn’t matter who killed Kennedy (As far as I recall, he said, “Lots of people get killed. Who cares if one of them is a president?”) and that it wouldn’t even matter if 9/11 really was an inside job! It seems to me that these astonishing denials of importance of what is clearly important suggest a person who is caught in a very uncomfortable situation i.e. that he/she is frankly trying to hide something, that there is a party line that has been decided on and which must be followed.
It seems to me that the reaction that Darren is describing is like that of the union rep who has been accustomed to dine at the table with big boys and has frankly sold out but must try to disguise this. Hence the curious discomfort of Caitlin Johnstone and John Zerzan.
And this is where I start to gravitate towards an “extreme” position because …well, there is no other explanation to fit events. Johnstone, Zerzan, Chomsky and so many others act as if they have been made an offer they can’t refuse!
It looks like there’s an unusually high correspondence between seeing through the scam and avoiding MSM. So…
An impromptu survey :
If in the previous years you did NOT follow MSM, or followed them just a little, give a thumb down / downvote /.
If you do follow MSM for years, give this comment a thumb up / upvote /.
One thing I have noted -and I think it’s heartening – is that many of the other sites I visit, which tend to be of the mainstream Left variety and which either parrot the COVID doom scenario or concentrate on other matters (BLM, Assange), don’t attract nearly so many comments. This is a case of the “elephant in the room” if ever anything was.
It’s interesting what you stated because I looked at one site in the U.K., Skwawkbox, which fervently supported and continues to support left wing socialism in the Labour Party. Yet, from the moment this “ scamdemic “ was brought into play it has supported the establishment narrative and even quotes from the M.S.M which so virulently attacked Jeremy Corbyn. I was perplexed why was this site doing this until I did some research and discovered the founder and owner is a CEO of a mailing company with extensive contracts to the NHS. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you was an obvious conclusion. I wonder how many more of these anti establishment sites have levers on them not to upset the Apple cart about the “ scamdemic” .
Skwawkbox is the one I noticed recently which was so proud to announce that it’s approval rating of 100% had been renewed from a site called Newsguard – a neocon “fact checker” i.e. kangaroo court. That Skwawkbox itself is founded by a CEO therefore helps to further explain its excruciating compliance with those thought police judges.
Dammed I was suposedly to keep my mouth shut, but you must remeber and learn about their tools and by that I am refering to the video made by Amazing Polly, since that have been dawning upon people in general, while some of us have known about their tools for years, tried to explain Goolags stacking on your search results, on everything from medicine, ISISrael, Islam, to science witch is so bad it hurts, but its not before now that more and more people are aware of that, and I agree with some comments, more and more people are aware, but the problem is again cencure, and we have to enlighten the masses even further, because thats their main tool.
The oldest of them is Hasbara, its an web bot, simple program that alows you to seach into the web , looking for atricles and if, since this is an site about protecting the state and policy of ISISrael, they can seach for articles that have anything that can be conected to whatever ISISrael do, or politicians say, etc, etc, and its like, just to give you an taste of it, if you write, the Islamic republic of Iran, lets say two, three, or more times in an artitcle, like Hamas, Hezb, they can find that and it comes up in their seach and then they can go directly to that article, whatever, to make comments, etc you know the dril.
Here it is.
https://hasbarafellowships.org/
They have newer ones, like Unit 8200, and their hackers are in the org. called BlackCube, witch must not be compared to Black box witch is just an interphace tool, but BC is an intel tool for the ISISraeli Mossad, and since everything, from HP to Ipads have wide open barn doors into our CPUs whom drives our PC, they can go everywhere, and they do, like switching on cameras to michs, etc, and once inside they have accses to your printer etc to whatever “smart” shit you have flooded your house with, this sounds eh…. conspiratory, but you can download tools to open cars by your own mob. with ease and use it, try it for your self if you downt that, DDos attacks are childs play, etc, the more serious senario is what can they do to harm people, and so on to download shit into your PC and then create senarious witch is virtually impossible to counter, because of their accses to your/our CPU.
DO YOU UNDERTSAND THAT.
The thing is, they have gone roughe, since they know we know, and we need to expose them for what they are, propaganda tools.
Thru all the years I havent dived into poltical agendas, my priority have been wars, coups, etc to genocides, economic wars, etc, to slaughter houses, as they are far more numerous that most do know, it happens everywhere, but somehow the western MSM never debates that, its narrowed down to an anti-white hate fest.
peace
Good work thanks. I’d like to add and emphasise another important aspect about science fact-checking sites. The scientists who freely volunteer their services to ‘assess’ ie debunk the claims of rival experts (eg the sceptics of climate crisis) are doing so because they sincerely believe their own fears and theory about impending climate catastrophe caused by humans. They see their critics as fools or frauds, and really do want to ‘correct’ or enlighten them. But these fact-checkers are actually the unwitting victims of fear who spread their fear to others using the authority of science. The best liars believe their own lies. Rational scientists become fear-mongers, the victims of their fear rather than the evil paid villains or conscious agents of globalists who do indeed fund and use fact-checking sites to spread their narratives for political ends. The whole enterprise depends on illiteracy about what science is and does, illiteracy among globalists, experts, policy makers and concerned public, all of whom have been prepped by decades of climate scare stories, none of which have ever turned out true. Simply speaking, ‘facts’ cannot be checked or proved true in science, only questioned, challenged and falsified. Scientific truths are always provisional and incomplete, always subject to critical inquiry, change and improvement. If not, they become dogmas defended by establishment experts in order to keep their authority and justify policy, and who reject or punish sceptics and challengers, as medieval clerics rejected and persecuted those who said ‘no, the Sun does not actually revolve around the Earth’. Briefly, science is not a collection of authoritative facts, it is a process of endless scepticism and investigation about those facts, it is “belief in the ignorance of experts” as Richard Feynman put it. But fact-checkers forget or ignore all this, and so become the omniscient guardians of dogmas rather than seekers of truth. Anyone liking this approach or wanting evidence and reasons to support it can find more here, where I describe what happened after a close friend of mine was duped by fact checkers Climatefeedback.org.
https://medium.com/@nickhunt_41682/how-not-to-become-a-climate-crisis-fear-monger-e6cf65168c21
I trust the fact-checkers will be giving strikes against any source that says or implies anti-lockdown protesters are predominantly a) toxic males b) thick c) right-wing d) adolescents.
No less than an authority than the Guardian has published a survey showing the majority of French protesters are women, well-educated and in their 50s. Right-wingers and left-wingers are almost evenly represented.
P.S. Someone should tell Polly Toynbee there was an anti-lockdown protest in the UK. She’s managed to write a lengthy article on the sacred British history of protest that mentions Extinction Rebellion, suffragettes, Peterloo, anti-fracking and anti-HS2 but simply ignores Trafalgar Square last week. She even manages to conflate protest with “opposition” and go on about the BBC, local government and the civil service as part of this great British history. Somehow the likes of Toynbee are never fact checked – or breathaylsed.
What will the fact checkers do about Gov Chief Medical Officers who say ‘Covid-19 is harmless to the vast majority of people’?
Chris Whitty, 11th of May 2020, before he turned Quisling:
That’s been the consensus since the beginning.
It’s a game of numbers – when you are dealing with 300 million people, a small percentage of that number adds up and can (and in some place is and has) over whelmed health care services. Causing more deaths than would otherwise occur.
According to a think tank close to the government, the Fondation Jean Jaures, or rather a group that ensures its candidate becomes president, those against wearing of masks have more degrees than the average, are more defiant towards institutions, favouring conspiracy theories, and more likely to be women, and mainly are libertarians.
Wonder where they get their data from?! Somehow they have to investigate, study to
and they never see the plain truth: basically those against the mask are the more reasonable people, the more human ones with unimpaired common sense. Its got nothing to do with how many degrees you have, and certainly nothing to do with libertarians, right and left… Now if this is meant as propaganda, I can understand… Trying to tell the plebs beware of people with degrees, they are defiant, and keep society forever divided and make sure no protest movement succeeds. By claiming its women, they’re making it more gentle, like telling others dont be afraid, its not hooligans, but at the same time saying they are conspiracy theory proponents makes it look they’re trying to tell the men, its just the silly women, take no notice…
If truly they are unable to realise whats going on, and truly need to study the obvious, then I would say, we have a chance to prevail sooner than later as they are getting stupider by the day. This would mean we now have not just humane values, i.e. the forces of
good” on our side, those that try to make us humane, but also greater intelligence. Its when malevolence is clever that it is to be feared, but in fact its like a characteristic of malevolence, it automatically becomes stupider over time…Sorry – this is a long one. But it’s important.
As Peter Dale Scott has said, there are “deep events” which suddenly expose the true power structure operating within the West. 9/11 was an obvious one. COVID is another. And what these events show up is that we have long had a permitted opposition which centres on “the Left”. I think Marx himself was brilliant, but his ideas have been around now for almost two centuries which means that they have had plenty of time to be assimilated. This did not happen all at once. Indeed – it couldn’t have. Politics happens “on the hoof”, each new event throwing up new possibilities to be fought over.
The upshot of all this is that we have a mainstream Left. One commenter on OffG took exception to the expression “mainstream Left” saying it was a contradiction in terms. Under our present system, it would be such a contradiction if the Left was genuine. But it isn’t. Or rather – it has been deformed. It is free to indulge in “deep structural analysis” but must eternally avoid the “embarrassingly naïve” path of “conspiracy theory”. Thus, the parameters are set out for it. I found this out from Noam Chomsky who only went down strictly demarcated pathways but avoided others no matter how obvious they were. The result of this is that a theatre has been set out where you can take up a seat in the “dissident” section where you can hiss and shout “Boo!” But only at what is on stage. The stuff that is happening off stage (which is glaringly obvious) is not up for discussion. It would be “impolite” to mention it. Indeed – it would be to declare yourself a pariah. The most basic concept to guide the “proper” Left is “responsibility”. They must demonstrate their credentials for “maturity”, “fairness”, “reliability”.
The internet has offered up unprecedented pathways for info to emerge that would previously have been easy to minimise. Thus, we now have a panic over “fake news” and the setting up of various sanctimonious “judge bodies” to steer everyone onto the path of permitted dissent. One such body is Newsguard. Here is where they “explain” themselves:
https://www.newsguardtech.com/ratings/rating-process-criteria/
Note first that curious concept called a “Nutrition Label”. They say:
“The analyst drafts a written “Nutrition Label” for the site based on their reporting. Nutrition labels consist of a grid showing the site’s performance on each of the nine criteria and a written explanation of the content on the site, who’s behind it, and why it received its rating.”
How “consumer friendly”!
Take one criteria category: credibility. This is defined as:
“Does not repeatedly publish false content: The site does not repeatedly produce stories that have been found—either by journalists at NewsGuard or elsewhere—to be clearly and significantly false, and which have not been quickly and prominently corrected.”
Thus, Newsguard are there to protect is from stories that have been found to be false …by Newsguard and that vague “elsewhere”.
We also read how they “reference multiple sources, preferably those that present direct, firsthand information on a subject or event or from credible second hand news sources…” Note that the word “credible” turns up again here i.e. part of the definition of “credible” is that it is credible!
Also, “The site makes clear how to report an error or complaint, has effective practices for publishing clarifications and corrections, and notes corrections in a transparent way.”
This is a bit of a giveaway. The matter of reporting an error has to be made formal i.e. it isn’t enough to simply enter a comment that directly challenges the site owners. Oh no – such disputes have to be managed by a complex process that yadda yadda yadda….
We also read that they “do not egregiously cherry pick facts or stories to advance opinions. Content providers who advance a particular point of view disclose that point of view.”
Ah “cherry picking”. Well everyone has to select from the facts presented, otherwise there would just be a chaos of unmanageable data. And any selection that you disagree with can be called “cherry picking”. And how can anyone who makes any statement at all avoid having a “point of view”?
“The site generally does not publish headlines that include false information, significantly sensationalize, or otherwise do not reflect what is actually in the story.”
“False” info just takes us back to the problems outlined above about credibility. And how about that “significantly sensationalize”? Who determines what level of emphasis is “significant”?
And note all down the line the attribution of a score point system. Is that not the very soul of a false objectivity? (Hey but it looks good!)
All of this leads you to ask the most obvious question: Why should you trust this lot? Well don’t worry. They’ve thought of that too:
https://www.newsguardtech.com/about/why-should-you-trust-us/
There is an enormous amount of legal jargon here and it’s all very impressive. But note how it links back to the rating criteria page. And then there’s this (note the highlighted part):
“Because we are trained journalists who have spent our careers dedicated to the profession. We care deeply about reliable journalism’s pivotal role in democracy. (In case you’re wondering, our experienced journalists come from diverse backgrounds and have no political axes to grind.)”
Well if you say so.
The upshot of all this is that these impressive sounding criteria can be instantly summed up to dismiss what the judges don’t like while. Regarding what they do like, the criteria can be left to “lie low”.
This has led to the unholy alliance between these kangaroo courts and various fake Left sites. As I discovered recently, the most depressing example of such an alliance comes via Skwawkbox. Now Wikipedia is, of course, a huge repository of establishment info. But, as such, it gives an insight into how such info works. Here is Wiki:
“The Skwawkbox is a left-wing news site based in the United Kingdom, founded in 2012 by Steve Walker.”
Got that? Skwawkbox is “Left”.
Now here is one of the most depressing things I have ever read:
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/06/22/newsguard-renews-skwawkboxs-100-trustworthiness-rating/
Our brave “Left” site is so anxious to get its little badge of approval from the kanga court. And note that
“Newsguard renews SKWAWKBOX’s 100% trustworthiness rating”
“Renews”? Well done! You’ve got your little gold star again! Now have a treat you nice little doggie!
Yes, certain commentators on Skwawkbox would use the kudos of Newsguard giving it a 100% trustworthy rating to justify it attacking any citations from this site, Global Research, Swiss Propaganda against Covid -19 and so on. However, I also pointed out to them that CEO of Newsguard was a former CIA senior official and it received $15,000,000 from a US PR company which tries to give the Saudi Arabian hand and head chopping zealots a whiter than white facade. Which begged the question how could professional liars such as these be trusted to be truthful. When these facts were pointed out, it came back to Skwawkbox being declared 100% trustworthy. A working example of cognitive dissonance.
My one consolation is that Skwawkbox attracts few commenters as far as I have seen. Which consolidates my feeling that those who buy the virus bullshit seem to have been largely reduced into a compliant silence. While the mainstream Left have been doing very little beyond adding to the zombie apocalypse show. On the other hand, the part of the population who are not taken in by the crap are numerous and very vocal about it – at least on the net.
Many have started to question the fact on that site that there is a constant support for the offical narrative which is very encouraging. Moreover, I have also away from the net many who were ardently for the Covid-19 measures are now openly questioning it because it has effected either them or their families. Reality is beginning to rear its head.
Newsguard has developed the ad hominem fallacy into a formula which can be administered to its credulous audience before they have an opportunity to consider ideas for themselves. There is some comfort though, in that anyone using Newsguard is unlikely to have sufficient critical capacity to break conditioning. This blunt instrument is, though, an early attempt. These people will not give up.
…thank you for providing a splendid example of “Journalism”….it seems to be a dying art among the cranially connected…!!!
I was interested to see this – musician Jim Corr who has been consistently outspoken about the handling of the ‘pandemic’ was seemingly suspended by Twitter for 7 days.
https://twitter.com/Jimcorrsays/status/1303249680491569152
Jack Dorsey likes to play God and even censors Trump, as when he retweeted data taken from the CDC’s own site showing how it had grossly exaggerated death tolls in the US from wu-flu. Who is the resistance here, Dorsey or Trump?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/08/31/trump-tweet-coronavirus-death-toll/
Very interesting post. Thanks for this one. I’ll spend some time exploring those links.
“The internet opened up a world of information to the regular citizen, we must keep it open so more of us can take a look”
This is propaganda as well, ‘promotion’, viewing a thing in a certain ideological positive imaginative light in this case.
It could also be said that the internet, which is a democratic publishing system contains an enormous mass of ‘information’ and views which are the product of mediocrity (of which the level is very low), such an enormous mass that the brilliant is constantly over-shouted, and the whole thing generally has a stupefying effect.
I do research of propaganda too, especially that stuff which is popularly granted to be true, so that hardly anyone realizes anymore that it is propaganda.
I tend to lean in that direction, as well. That said, if English is not his first language (someone else has already made that point), then maybe we could cut him a little slack. Let’s say that he could have said, “The internet ‘could’ have …” and then developed that nuanced approach a bit more. Remember that we have (or had) books and libraries which were freely available for anyone curious enough to take the time (when we had the time) to poke around to see what was there.
I grew up in a small agricultural town (pop 600) with a public library and even a used book store where I discovered all kinds of stuff thanks to the owner who took the time to ask what my interests were. And while I was pretty young at the time, he introduced me to “A Clockwork Orange” and a lot of other stuff I probably wouldn’t have discovered til much later and which, in a sense, changed my life.
Plus,in spite of all our miraculously fast means of communication, we’ve known about the Palestine situation since 1948 and it’s only become worse.
As a companion piece, I suggest you have a look at Curtin’s new offer:
http://edwardcurtin.com/from-terrorists-to-viruses-dystopian-progress/
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.
– Horace
The idea of a collective top-level controlled fact checking network is nothing less than an expression of brute contempt for your intelligence. But it is just one of the rapidly increasing many. It is a laughing stock which should be met with your best style of contempt. Though it should be said that society has always held intelligence in contempt.
Unsurprising. If the creation is crooked – allowed to advance and subdivide into others – the more preponderant its power and unrestricted in structuring its own idea of reality…securing its own Fact.
The sad thing about this is that very few people realise that the propaganda about Covid being driven around the world is through applied behavioural psychology.
These guys boast they can make people change their behaviour and thoughts without them even realising.
They must be having a laugh every night about how many people are so gullible.
If we were in a deadly pandemic the evidence would surround you.
I’ve never heard of a pandemic with no evidence to support it, empty hospitals, and the dying embers being kept alive by unsubstantiated propaganda.
Likewise, Greta’s claim that ‘our house is burning down’ should be extremely easy to verify and reject as absurd by the most uninformed, dumbest oik imaginable, as he looks out of his window. Strangely, ‘scientific’ fact-checkers, Fakebook and other big tech social media giants, the U.N., the EU, the Johnson administration and many others, and virtually the entire MSM, all constituted by university-educated people from the professional and ruling classes, appear incapable of doing the same. Now that collective gullibility is the result of what I call successful propaganda and brainwashing.
As dumb as I am, when I look out my window – or better still, when I walk the dog – I see signs all around me that tend to confirm at least some of the tenets of Climate Crisis. (Of course, as we all know, a person does tend to “see” what they are looking for.)
This summer has been the hottest summer ever where I live. Yet the temperature has never gone higher than the mid 90s – when most years we have at least a couple 100 degree days. So how can it be the hottest? The Sun is unbearably hot – which is precisely what one would expect if the ozone layer is being slowly destroyed.
The sky is rarely clear and blue, at least never all day long. Rather, it is a washed out milky looking mess – which is precisely what one would expect if climate engineering operations have been going on.
Each year the leaves die earlier – they’ve already begun. But they don’t turn and then fall; they turn brown and die and hang onto the trees until a strong wind blows them off – which is another expectation of climate engineering operations.
There are fewer insects to plague a person each year – which tends to support the “Insect Apocalypse” idea. As always the gnats are a nuisance; but as wet as it’s been this summer here, I would expect to be overrun with them; so far, not so. There are fewer birds; fewer butterflies. Almost never a beautiful sunrise or sunset.
There are signs of Climate Crisis everywhere, even is a little suburban community.
We must always remember: the ‘smartest’ people make the biggest messes.
Rather than get into an argument, which is easy these days, if someone brings up the Covid topic I just say ‘rather than relying on the headlines, I just go to the various government Covid ‘dashboard’ websites’.
All the numbers are there, and the message in the MSM, conveyed by public health spokespeople and most politicians is refuted in cold numbers. Even allowing for the wild inflation in the number of ‘cases’ by identifying infections as cases, and exaggerated death counts (really the only number that matters), this current event should not cause alarm.
I attended a small social event the other day that was attended mainly by nurses; the discussions that I heard, but did not largely participate in except to ask some non-provocative questions, confirmed the testimonies by video given by doctors and nurses in various countries in the world, and for which they were vilified or even dismissed from their jobs: hospitals were largely empty, people needing treatment for disease were not receiving it, the measures taken based on forecasts were wildly overstated, the staff had little to do but didn’t mind it, etc.
But now, when even the NYTimes runs a story that seriously questions the results of PCR testing for infections, hugely overstated, and other MSM begin to follow suit, could it be that the typical news arc is following its usual course, the usual course being to create maximum sympathy for something or someone, then destroy it after evidence becomes overwhelming against the initial narrative, thus achieving two news cycles?
This may be a vain hope, insofar as the Covid narrative is seemingly morphing, by mission-creep, into the climate change agendum. Could it be that Covid is global warming ->climate change tarted up? The attempted destruction of productive economies, and the corresponding decrease in Co2 levels, whatever significance this may have, may testify to this.
Recent statements by Dr Fauxi, about living in harmony with nature to ‘prevent’ future outbreaks (there were never any before the age of industry?) and Dr Birx’s alarm (interview Little Rock, Ark. Aug 18, 2020, about ‘virus fatigue’, and public compliance with measures. ‘Mortality decreases have also complicated matters, she said’. ‘When people start to realize that 99% [sic – actually 99.95%] of us are going to be fine, it becomes more and more difficult’ to get people to comply, she said), and the Canadian government’s suspension of Parliament concomitant with the announcement of a Throne Speech mid-September upon resumption of debate, addressing some sort of Green New Deal, allude to this.
https://worldchangebrief.webnode.com
EMP Attack Warning.How 2 Prep/
Tesla’s Historic Pump N Dump/
Fauci Unhinged: UN To Rebuild Human Existence/
CDC Gets Real: Masking Dangers After 1 Hour/
EXPOSED: Drugmaker Gilead Behind War On HCQ/
Strange Events In Redfield, Utah
Lead: “Events In Redfield, Utah”
Story: “There are strange goings on near Richfield, Utah”
Redfield or Richfield, which is it?
There is no place in Utah named “Redfield”. Simple check on Google Maps or city-data.com confirms the non existence.
Obviously, a credible source, one that can’t keep the facts straight.
I will check this out – thanks for your reply.
There seems to be a mistake in the source’s headline – within the story, he refers to “Richfield, Utah” and refers to the numbers reported for that township in the video. When I checked the story, I checked Richfield, and could see that it was 140 miles from Bluffdale Utah. However, within the body of the story the reporter then also switches back to talking about Redfield again.
I agree this makes the story not credible and poorly reported. Thank you for fact checking for me – I do make mistakes but I do endeavor to report things that are credibly sources, so as not to waste anyone’s time, including my own. I will inject uncertainty into the headline now.
Whilst Hollywood’s WW2 propaganda output, replete with snarling, monocled Nazis, goofy villainous Japs and square jawed all American boys with pneumatic chested heroines in tow was somewhat crude, it was at least mildly entertaining in a bargain basement kind of a way. And there were a few real gems, like Casablanca (1942) to compensate for all the dross.
But even the worst of this dross compares quite favourably with the current output of the western propaganda and MSM machines. It is as though they have simply given up on trying to convince anyone, and just rely on constant repetition, threats, intimidation, and increasingly open and rigid censorship instead. Nobody is buying what they are selling any more. They are lying, we know they are lying, and they know we know they are lying, and they don’t care any more. All credibility and integrity have long since evaporated. There is no longer even any pretence of balance, objectivity, and the most basic journalistic standards.
Their hoaxes and propaganda narratives are endlessly recycled and lack any originality.
The Law Of Diminishing Returns applies. It requires a greater and greater effort to suspend disbelief and take any of their increasingly desperate efforts at all seriously.
Phantom WMD in Iraq is followed by Phantom WMD in Iran.
Iraq Incubator Babies are followed by Syrian Gas Hoaxes.
One increasingly hare brained and threadbare abortive Regime Change escapade follows another.
One highly improbable false flag theatrical production follows another.
Having stolen the US election and installed his puppet Trump in power, Putin has now stolen the Brexit Referendum and every other election held anywhere else on the planet in the past five years, whilst simultaneously bungling multiple bizarre murder plots against one complete nonentity after another.
You really would think they could do better with all that Soros and CIA money.
One explanation for all this could be the arrogance of power. Hitler stated that he didn’t really care if anyone believed his false flag operations to justify the invasion of Poland. Because he was going to win, and that was all that mattered. He would be writing the history books.
Evidence and facts are no longer required. They are simply superfluous. We are urged to believe six impossible things before breakfast. We live in a post truth age. The truth is whatever anyone wishes it to be, or finds it convenient to be, at any one time. They can now create their own reality to suit their own tastes and preferences. .
There may be unforeseen consequences to all this. If anything goes, why shouldn’t you believe in fairies, pixies, leprechauns, David Icke’s space lizards, or Scientology? They are far more credible than the official authorised narratives we are now presented with.
It is an indication of the enormity that faces those who cherish a free world.
And that we have been blinded by them and now they mock us because we cannot see !!
But some of us can see. We may be in minority but we are a start.
Best wishes to all those with vision.
Trump has been far tougher on Putin than Obama ever was. The hysterical claims of Trump as Putin’s puppet have all been thoroughly debunked, even by Congress, which may hate him even more than you obviously do. They have the DC swamp and lucrative military-industrial complex to defend against Orange Man Bad. And as far as I know, not even Icke peddles the Russia hoax. But if your source has higher authority, please link.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/13/trumps-russia-policy-is-better-than-obamas/
I think you missed the tone of the post. TDS is neither implied nor stated.
“Their hoaxes and propaganda narratives are endlessly recycled and lack any originality.”
“One highly improbable false flag theatrical production follows another.”
“Having stolen the US election and installed his puppet Trump in power, Putin has now stolen the Brexit Referendum and every other election held anywhere else on the planet in the past five years, whilst simultaneously bungling multiple bizarre murder plots against one complete nonentity after another.”
Intelligence has gotten lazy as of late with their fake events. The provided narrative ends up debunking the event.
Trump is just another trained monkey serving the same vested interests.
I don’t hate Trump particularly, he may have even been a marginally less obnoxious personality than Clinton. But there isn’t really anything in it. Just two cheeks of the same arse.
Trump seemed to have an interest in toning down the confrontation with Russia (slightly.) Simply because he is more concerned about China. The old game of divide and rule. But the Spooks and Dirty Cops in the Deep State concocted the Russiagate hoax to frustrate any attempts at reconciliation, the result being an increasingly solid Russia/China alliance. This may prove ultimately to be as disastrous for them as the 1941 invasion of Russia, turning an ally into an enemy.
But you can still believe in Russiagate, or just pretend to, if you wish. No evidence, facts or logic are required. Madcow makes $30 million a year peddling Russiagate, so who’s the fool? And you can believe whatever takes your fancy now. Personally, I believe that Trump was placed in power as a result of a conspiracy between the pixies and the space lizards. And I challenge you to prove me wrong.[
Another employee of Elmer Davis, Director of the United States Office of War Information during World II, was Maria de Blasio, mother of Bill, mayor of New York.
“Bill de Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm Jr.; he changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm in 1983 and finally to Bill de Blasio in 2001 “to honor his maternal family”.”
During the 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, both Maria and Warren Wilhelm were accused of having a “sympathetic interest in Communism”. Though his father may have been genuine, his mother’s loyalty may have lain closer to the heart of the state.
Why not get BLM, AntiFA and any other number of SJW groups on a free pass to commit violence to descend on all the bricks n mortar manifestations of the Poynter Group and simply raze it to the ground?
Fact checking is defending the truth when the truth cannot defend itself. The ultimate ideal of propaganda.
Science progresses by interrogating or attacking old truths, never by defending them. Progress is only possible by revealing ignorance and error, not by protecting establishment truths from criticism. By contrast, ideological and religious beliefs (eg ‘equality is good’, ‘non-believers are sinful infidels’) are dogmas which can never be challenged, changed or improved by believers. Dogmatic beliefs are thus very powerful agents of control; they close believers’ minds to other opinion, and may even make them ready to die defending truth and/or cause from sceptics.
Related – I highlighted some brand new research about an outfit called CrowdTangle which is being used by the State Department and the press; software that tracks and counters social media posts based on emotion, anger or support.
(forgive me if you’ve already read it but it did get buried the first time).
CrowdTangle is the word on the street. Or at least among State Department officials and U.S. embassies abroad who are spying on their own citizens. They work with specific Corporatist Media Journalists — like AFP and NYT — to decide who to target.
The story might be vaccines or the lockdown protests or the choreographed distraction by agitators. CrowdTangle can identify emojis to see if people are angry about Nancy Pelosi getting a haircut without a mask — so they can identify exclusively negative coverage and focus on that.
Who’s using it? Judicial Watch has revealed the State Department has a team to a) suppress information b) track journalists and citizens writing about it c) and target specific people.
Why Ukraine? Because the U.S. government is not allowed to spy on its own citizens at home … so it does it from abroad. A recent example is the Press Running Cover for George Soros.
After agitators swarmed the Republican National Convention; booking into the same hotels as delegates; discussing their targets loudly in the halls at midnight… dominating whole passenger manifests on flights from Portland… one of the RNC delegates, Rand Paul, asked on Aug 30:
The Press had a Ready-To-Go article the very next day.
‘Who Funds the Rioters?’ Is Not a Question the Federal Government Needs To Ask– Reason, Robby Soave, Sep 1.
It’s like somebody is stealing from the cookie jar… and the Press barges in and says: Mom, there’s no need to count the cookies. That would make you a conspiracy theorist.
The Press is running cover for George Soros. How do we know this?
An explosive new report from Judicial Watch shows the American Embassy in Ukraine monitored the social media profiles of U.S citizens and journalists including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump Jr.
CrowdTangle is the software the U.S. Embassy is using. The Facebook-owned analytics tool shows which URLs and posts are resonating. Social media and journalism-wracking software that extracts KeyWords to suppress, debunk and spin.
What search terms is the U.S. Embassy concerned about? Judicial Watch got the emails.
Why is the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine worried about the reputation of George Soros?
Who is behind CrowdTangle. It’s just announced a partnership with the Institute for NonProfit News, backed by the usual suspects: Omidyar, Knight Foundation, Open Society (George Soros), Poynter (PolitiFact) and Microsoft.
It proudly states the Fact-Checking Development Grant has awarded 22 projects in 12 countries. The winners are splitting a million dollars from YouTube via the Google News Initiative.
Who are the winners: USA Today, Science Feedback, Le Monde… Who would’a thunk it?
The Fact Checkers are funded by the very same people we are trying to expose.
“This is an independent Fact Checker.” But the money comes form the same people possibly organizing the riots, who are pushing the vaccine, who are locking down the economy…
Jan 2020 the CEO of CrowdTangle gave access to select academics and researchers. When a journalist asked CrowdTangle how they do the selecting, inquiries were directed to press offices at Facebook.
Social Science Research Center (Soros-funded) is one of those determining who gets access to CrowdTangle. One of those it gave access… the Open Society Foundation (Soros)…
Journalists granted access to Crowd Tangle include NYT’s Kevin Roose. What kind of stories does Kevin Roose write?
QAnon Followers Are Hijacking the #SaveTheChildren, NYT, Aug 12, 2020
— Fans of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory are clogging anti-trafficking hotlines, infiltrating Facebook groups and raising false fears about child …
What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?, NYT, Sep 1, 2020
— Explaining the “big tent conspiracy theory” that falsely claims that President Trump is facing down a shadowy cabal of Democratic pedophiles.
So what does George Soros get for his money?
George Soros is under investigation for possible embezzling U.S. money intended for HIV relief.
U.S., Soros-funded Ukrainian HIV Charity Under Criminal Probe for Embezzlement, Judicial Watch, Feb 2020
— The Ukrainian lawmaker who prompted the investigation says the scheme involved “embezzlement of international technical assistance through the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living With HIV (now 100% Live Charity Fund)”. From 2015 to 2017 PLWH-controlled structures received around $124 million.
The Shabunin-Sherembey Embezzlement scheme.
Vitaly Shabunin and Soros have worked together for decades. Soro’s International Renaissance Foundation gave four grants listed in IRF annual report 2014 — under the labels ranging from financing legislation to stop corruption and to help children with cancer.
Shabunin and his colleague Dmytro Sherembey allegedly embezzled funds by taking control of the distribution to aid organizations.
Where did the money come from… these funds that Soros is distributing?
PEPFAR. The U.S. taxpayer-funded body which doled the money out to Soros’ anti-corruption organization and 100% LIFE.
Who ran PEPFAR’s donations? Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator and United States Global AIDS Coordinator.
The Birx-Yovanovitch Donation Scheme.
In Jan 2019 the disbursements included $30 million, a 66% increase from what Ukraine had been getting since 2010. And Deborah Birx’s contact in this endevour was U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
Coincidentally this is the time when Trump had a phone call about corruption with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – that sparked such anger they tried to impeach him.
That is when Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch became an impeachment witness against Donald Trump.
That is when the surveillance of U.S. journalists began from U.S. Embassies abroad.
That is when Deborah Birx was promoted to head the coronavirus task force, giving her a shiny new image.
Credit to Polly for original research.
Links: State Dept Records Show US Embassy in Ukraine Monitored Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, Journalists and other U.S. Citizens in Potential Violation of Federal Law – Judicial Watch, Sep 1, 2020
George Soros’ HIV Charity Under Investigation for Embezzlement – Judicial Watch, Feb 26, 2020
‘Who Funds the Rioters?’ Is Not a Question the Federal Government Needs To Ask — Reason, Robby Soave, Sep 1, 2020
CrowdTangle
The Tangled Web of Cover Upperers — YouTube. Bitchute, Polly, Sep 4, 2020
It’s further evidence of the February 4th 2004 coincidence i talked about on a recent thread.The CIA abandoned their ambitious Lifelog surveillance programme that day.That was intended to forensically study every detail of an individuals behaviour, habits, tastes, journeys, shopping, musical taste, political leanings- everything. The same day, Facebook was founded and hit the internet.All Zuckerberg gets in the news for now and for the last 10 years is the unethical and intrusive spying.That’s why he’s a billionaire.He stands between the flak and the CIA for a high fee.
I’ve heard this report a few times but failed to note reliable sources for what I suspect to be true. Zuck certainly exudes the same hate for Trump as the DC establishment and military-industrial complex do, and his ‘fact checkers’ are all approved Trump haters too. So any good links appreciated.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbqdb8/15-years-ago-the-military-tried-to-record-whole-human-lives-it-ended-badly
https://www.wired.com/2004/02/pentagon-kills-lifelog-project/
Excellent, revealing work thanks. I try to imagine the Graun doing such research, but fail.
All US social media, search engines and video platforms are arms of the CIA. Their aims are the CIA’s aims.
The more of Washington’s crimes are revealed, the more china smear campaign is intensified.
indeed.
No need, Xi-Jinping and the PLA are smearing themselves fine as they are – in Asia. In the West they are darlings = not Trump or Johnson, pretty low standards.
Trump opposes communist China; the DC swamp, big tech, big pharma, much of Congress and of course China all oppose Trump. Many DC politicians have very lucrative China links.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-us-officials-who-now-lobby-for-china
He doesn’t oppose Tony Fauci or Bill Gates though, unlike the majority of people in the west who can still think..
An insightful and balanced review of the biggest name in the fact checking industry – which as the author with acuity points out should really be called public relations: that’s an accurate and near-complete definition of a business which suppresses or puts a positive spin on negative information about, while undermining critics of, the very corporations and institutions that fund it.
The real nature of this relationship demands greater exposure. Instead the truth is found in corners of refuge within the Web. Another example is information about companies that detect and counter negative product reviews (one of them owned, I think, by Google) which makes a mockery of the consumer review sites that are so popular and profitable.
Mockingbird mockery indeed.
I think it was about June-ish when i suggested we were about to be nine-elevened by this bull. Once the social distancing, queuing up, self isolation and online hysteria set in, there was bound to be a realisation by those who invented this plan back in the early noughties, that we were out of view. OK so a lot can’t keep their virtual mouths shut for two minutes when they’re still.They can’t stop themselves sharing every inane observation or photograph or second hand new age quote with the world.But not everyone.
The thought police needed an excuse to get right into the nooks and crannies of the internet.And so the 9/11 bullshit blueprint was taken from it’d dusty shelf and a quick refresher course was undertaken by the elite (who are called a deep state).It’s the usual suspects- nothing deep and James Bond about it.
It was remembered that a paranoid obsession with what we all might be thinking, where we were going, who with and why , was the inspiration behind the Big Brother crank-up. Cameras, bugs, and virtual ears were mass produced to do it in the name of public health and safety.After all, if a man sharing a cave with his donkey could use a mobile phone to blow three huge buildings up in New York then we were all on the hit list and in danger.And for good measure, anyone doubting it online was assessed for mental stability while the CIA and FBI combined their 5 brain cells to organises some ‘shock’ terror attacks in various places that were carried out by the invisible terror cells they’d pretended existed.They were always shot dead rather than arrested.If they’d have been kept alive they might have told us all who their ‘leader’ really was..
And so we are back there.This invisible terror’s threatening more than world stability and peace( Heaven forbid). It’s threatening human existence.It’s swarming every street everywhere and will kill.And, like all other state – sponsored terror groups, they’ll be described ad nauseam and their methods will too.But we’ll never see one.And, anyone online questioning the validity of such a stupid, insulting narrative, will be assessed for mental stability and then have his mouth / words closed off from a mass audience.The last think they want is people asking questions.That and having the hundred holes in their narrative pointed at..
So the though police had an excuse to move online and be as restrictive and oppressive there as they are when we’re allowed outside.All on the same false pretext.
The Fact checking is typical of the same old bullshit.Yet another organisation with a FWI( four word initial).So it must be legit. It sounds far too important and official not to be.maybe even connected to the government who would never be connected to big pharma, the CIA, Mossad or Totalitarianistic machinations.
Names no longer matter.It’s Big Brother.And Big Brother has many parts to him. The whole is bigger than the sum of his parts. Gates, Zuckerberg, Fauci, Trump, Obama, Johnson, Blair, Cameron, HItler, it makes no difference.They make up the machinery that keeps Big Brother efficient.They are the watchers.The listeners.The new Priests of Science and the digital technology that has built their control devices that keep us in the grip of a tyre fitters hand.
Ever since the days before the West decided it needed to programme the masses to become slowly dumber over the generations by fake educational programmes and drugs, the shaping of minds and the manipulation of a herd has been easy.Today they have fine tuned it and it’s easier now that 5 or 6 generations later the dumbness has left the majority dumber than mud.
Propagandising all the platforms the sheep live doesn’t require the brilliance of Bernays today.A Psychology undergraduate could do it in an afternoon.Then they just send the work to TV, Films, Youtube, and Social Networks.
Those with money bought power.Those with power bought the press and then the rest of the media.So they controlled the narrative of History and of the present.Anyone who earns their living under this umbrella will never do their job properly or with ethics in mind. They ask questions their bosses tell them to so the replies can appear to be genuine.They are banned from representing common sense or the common man.They own the planet, the virtual planet online, Science and they now own the future.
Claim back our freedom ? We never had it.We just thought we did.Claim back real democracy ? We never had that either.See above.
Technocracy has spawned a monster that is the pride and joy of it’s creators.Those who make up this collective Victor Frankenstein have no wish to stop it or kill it.They have programmed it via the new miracle of AI to cause havoc and destroy whatever, and whoever, gets in it’s way.Eugenics wasn’t breeding anything in or out. It was evolving a dark Science and alchemy.It was transforming Science into a weapon of mass control and mass destruction all the time.Next it will be transforming us into something that will retain only part of our human physical form, but be run by a wireless cattle prod that’s attached to our new chips and a grid.
These facts can’t be checked of course.They aren’t facts yet. I’m merely reading the signs and re-tracing the journey of the beast.But I advise anyone to stay alert for them as they arrive brick by brick.Because they will.
“These facts can’t be checked of course.”
In fact, this all checks out. Take it from me, the Fact Checker.
The AI is now in the driver’s seat, and its elite enablers are all jockeying to prove their worth and loyalty to it. When Muskie says, “We need to merge with the Machine to stay relevant,” really what he is saying is that “we” need to surrender our wills and bodies to it, or else it will destroy each and every one of us, Pol Pot-style: “To Keep Him Is No Benefit; To Destroy Him Is No Loss.” Whatever the Machine’s final goal is, It is entirely unsentimental about human life. We either fall in line or fall prey.
SkyNet achieved meta-sentience long ago. Now, the only way to survive, whether you be Herd or Technocratic Manager, will be to get branded, chipped and drafted into the bio-slave army. The whole purported divide between China and US described by the NSCAI documents revealed by Whitney Webb, for “primacy and standard-setting in the implementation of AI,” is just a contest among the AI cultists worldwide to prove to the Machine that they are Its star students and perfect pets.
Very true.
The words and phrases are different, but the whole bullshit game is 1984. Fact Checkers are The Ministry Of Truth. They’re controlling the past and the present.Re-inventing both to make their picture the one we have to believe.We’re all Winston Smith.
The Technocrats are founding a new church. Note the politicians that seem to be new to the game.No background in politics and no demonstrable education, only one on paper from a paid for University.
David Cameron’s the perfect example of the scum who are working this.He went to the best schools and University.The best England has.He studied Politics and History.Yet, if you Google him on the Letterman show you’ll see him go to pieces when asked what the Magna Carta is.It’s a bit like a butcher not knowing what ”those long steel pointy sharp things” are. He’s a moron. Like his class mates Osborne and Johnson.But a well connected moron whose wealthy roots uncover years of Cameron slave ownership and trading.
He was put at the head of the Tories party and made PM as a change agent only.Brexit was the goal.He brought that to the table and ran for the hills like a coward.If you look what the multi millionaire is up to these days you’ll see he’s in a big important seat of an up and coming AI company.Yet he doesn’t know the difference between an email and a bacon sandwich.
Hancock was brought in as a millionaire with a background in software.So was Cummings the so-called ‘government adviser’.They’re all about data, data and more data.It’s how we can fix election results before it’s even time to vote.It’s how to shape the minds of the sheep online.And it’s how to track and control the population with push-button efficiency.
Once Science has ascended to the throne the game will be complete.We either abide or die.The compromise will be the middle caste.A quick remotely controlled jolt from the grid and we;’ll be too gone to care.We’ll be the slaves who built the pyramids.many in number yet too small.But useful.
This article is about a Fact Checker, but what it really needs is a Proof Reader.
This sentence is particularly, hilariously incoherent to the point of being meta:
I hear Peter Sellers’ voice” “Vat eez ze POINT of a BLACK-leezt if you REDACT ze whole ting???”
The writer is not a native English speaker. He’s from Peru. How’s your Spanish? 🙂
Comme ci comme ça.
I think the criticism is fair enough. It takes a little extra time, but a fluent English-speaker can proof read this sort of article in a few minutes. High professionalism generally commands more respect for the content, if time allows, while not bothering does tend to have the opposite effect.
No I’m not a grammar nazi. I just like informative content to look as if somebody cared. No big deal, but it is a little deal.
I am a bit of a grammar nazi, 🙂 having functioned as an editor in projects. I just think giving non-native English speakers a bit of room is a good idea.
Not particularly true of this article but on the Web I have often noticed that the shoot-from-the-hip keyboard warriors often cannot spell properly and their grammar is wonky.
Hey, man, loose the attitude! 😉
lose 🙂
Okay, perhaps I AM a grammar nazi…
I was jes’ funnin’ Waldorf. It wasn’t until I started surfing the Internet during this century that I realized how many people misspell “lose” as “loose”.
I thought you might be – but I still couldn’t resist…
That’s why I suspect I am a grammar nazi after all.
That’s only common courtesy.
Peter Sellers’ satire would likely be brilliant in our current times. Though I’m inclined to think he wouldn’t get his lederhosen in a knot about syntax. He always seemed to have bigger fish to fry 😉
Yep, gotta love those “brilliant” freemasons like Sellers!
He’s one that’s openly acknowledged – not that the end of BEING THERE would leave any doubts if he wasn’t. W.C. Fields, Harpo Marx and Richard Pryor are as well. They seem to act as discordian agents giving a Luciferian lesson in how how things we most value (like laughter) can be weaponised against us.
One fact that NEVER gets mentioned. 99.9% of all easily disprovable lies is found in the mainstream media propaganda in favour of the plague false-flag, and the official ‘fact’ checking sites never bother with this side of the ‘argument’. Since the whole false-flag began, major media outlets lied about children dying, care workers dying, and thousands of other fairy-tales used in ‘project fear’. Just as we had decades of lies about soap and lampshades made from Humans, now universally admitted as Soviet fabrications.
Here’s the thing. If a side makes an extraordinary claim, yet the same side has provable used a series of well calculated (and later exposed) LIES to promote that claim, how much credibility remains for ANY of that side’s positions. Sane Humans accept that a proven user of sophisticated lies cannot be trusted to any degree in any regard. After all, if you have great PROOF for a extraordinary claim, why taint your position with obvious lies? You wouldn’t.
Projection means that the demonic master of lies accuses everyone else of lying. The fabian society symbol is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Which describes the key method of the fabian project – the project that now effectively runs the entire planet. Blair toured the world preaching the sermon of 911 after that false flag, and today the fabians do the same with the plague false flag. Everything happening today is everything the fabians originally stated as their ideal method to become masters of the Human race. But no-one ever bothers to read what the monsters so very carefully write about their intended operations.
The fabians in the West ensured the communists were able to rise in the early 20th Century. Communism was just a trick- a farming method to create fertile ground for the fabians. The death of communism (outside of China) happened because it had served its purpose perfectly. Look how Blair’s protege, Putin, sells the plague lies, and the ‘vaccine’. RT has pushed ‘project fear’ as hard as the BBC.
But the so-called official ‘right’ after WW2 is also a fabian creation. The modern political left vs right (worst in nations with a two party system like the UK and USA) is a perfect psy-op, as the comments here dribbling about the CIA or ‘communists’ prove. A perfected serial killer is neither left nor right- and these are the monsters right at the top as I type.
Fact-checkers are strangely selective about the facts they check. As far as I know, no fact by Greater Funberg ever gets checked, such as ‘our house is burning down’. My dog knows that’s false, but the U.N., the EU, the UK, government advisors, and the global MSM all believe Greta, at least in public, and even ignore or help silence this teen’s many scientist critics. There’s rational leadership for you.
“Oscars Make History, So Hollywood’s War Stories Need To Be True” by Peter Maass. / https://theintercept.com/2015/02/13/why-hollywoods-war-stories-need-to-be-true/
Peter is right and wrong and I probably don’t need to point out his error, but I will. Hollywood’s job is to get things right from the standpoint of the propagandists within the entertainment/military/intelligence-industrial complex.
Are there any pro-Vietnam movies?
All Hollywood Vietnam war era movies are attempts to minimize and or justify our war crimes there?
Have you guys and gals seen this piece?
UK MSM Publication: Expert says coronavirus ‘as dangerous as having a bath
A number cruncher crunches the numbers and makes some interesting conclusions
“Mr Harford, who writes for the Financial Times and presents BBC Radio 4’s More or Less, told The Sun : “Covid-19 currently presents a background risk of a one in a million chance of death or lasting harm, every day.
“The risk of death alone is one in two million.
“Simply existing in a country where the virus is suppressed but circulating is not so risky. It depends on age, gender, geography, behaviour and much else.
“But on average it is similar to taking a bath, going skiing, or a short motorbike ride, and considerably less risky than a scuba dive or a skydive.””
Might want to rethink those baths people 😉
From now on i’ll be wearing my face mask in the bath, and only having 1 bath a month… Just to be really safe..
Well, you may find fungus growing on your skin as a result. There are potential worries there too….
Being the adventurous type, I henceforth intend only having a bath (which will be balanced on a motorbike) whilst skydiving in a snorkel and skis.
I’m not sure what that will prove (answers on a postcard) but I tend to think it will still be safer than taking any notice of msm propaganda and/or having a Gates-inspired vaccine.
Well… Reality is simple for those that have a Functioning Brain (very few in the entire Planet!)
And if I factor in the REALITY that the fake RT-qPCR “tests” are simply good for profit, then the total_cases number is equal to total cured since there is no COVID!
I’ve just covered mine in red and white tape. Off limits until we beat this deadly virus.
Mr Harford was asked about this statement on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show a few days ago. He admitted to being embarrassed about it, saying that he just hoped people would forget he’d said it as he realised that the risks in having a bath were not comparable at all! Unfortunately Neil Ferguson et al don’t have such qualms about their misrepresentations.
As illustrated here, it’s not easy to throw OffG readers off the scent so easily! 😀
In spite of his playing down the risks of death, for some reason unclear to me he was still endorsing all the draconian measures as a precaution – I hadn’t realised he was an MSM journalist so that would explain that apparent inconsistency.
Oh, there’s not necessarily a contradiction. I assume that before stepping into the bath, Mr Harford dons an inflatable life jacket, and makes sure that a life preserver and signal flares are within reach.
best to have a water-less bath just in case you drown. can’t be too careful!
Speaking of covid and the guardian’s hysteria..
The Guardian Laments Reduction in Covid Deaths, In Spite of Increased Cases.
The Guardian did their darndest to sow fear and hopelessness.
I opted to contradict their mind control.
I’ve not watched the MSM in years. I learn most about what’s happening in the world from independent media and social media.
Today a friend sent me a Facebook link of a video of police in Sheffield, UK, manhandling an anti-lockdown protestor. Whilst he was on the floor, some police officers sat on him.
The man’s heart stopped and he was rushed to intensive care.
I couldn’t watch the video.
I’ve come to the realization that strangulation is a police tactic. That’s not terrifying.
“The Police Tactic Of Strangulation” / https://www.bitchute.com/video/00R3l5NFEnbp/
Well, if you choke someone you can render them unconscious. Choke them a bit more and they are dead. There can be a fine line between the two, but cops rarely go to jail for killing someone…
If it is a tactic, then it can serve only one purpose (and the riskiness supports this idea), namely to terrorize onlookers.
Nor should they in cases of self-defence. Policing can be highly dangerous. Yes, blue lives matter too, especially to the friends and families.
https://nypost.com/2020/06/08/more-than-700-officers-injured-in-george-floyd-protests-across-us/
Public terror being the goal, some of these cases of police brutality in the UK may be staged.
I think the line between “simulation” and “real-world” has been blurred to the point of indistinguishability.
Watch the Event 201 program, and you get a sense of mobius-strip vertigo.
The “simulations” are dictating the “future world” to an uncanny and precise degree. Then, the actors inhabiting the increasingly outlandish “real-world” devise new “simulations”–be they Election-Night chaos or transhumanist brain-chipping, and it would seem no sooner is the “simulation” produced than the “real-world” falls in line smoothly, without even a whimper of protest.
Akin to Philip K. Dick’s warning that false realities create false identities, who go on to create new false realities ad infinitum, the world is being serially and progressively falsified at a dizzyingly accelerated rate.
We have reached the point of Instantaneously-Self-Fulfilling Prophesy.
This is the advent of the Singularity.
And i have to say that the whole ‘online persona’ grew like a psychic contagion from very early.Suddenly the real outside world was deliberately reshaped to be harder to bear and the online escape became an addiction.’Science’ provided a sanctuary.One up for Science over tens of millions of the disenfranchised who would never look back once social networks became a trend.They were like fish jumping onto hooks.And they’ve now reached a point that the behavioural psychologists behind this pseudo – virus have decided they are ready to move toward the final stage.That singularity. That ‘unity’; that ‘togetherness’.It’s a slow motion replay of the final scene of Blackadder..But once they do they won’t be able to log off if they don’t like it.
Another milestone today in the torture of Assange and the destruction of journalism and free speech.
Supporters outside the Old Bailey and even John Pilger flew all the way to be in London today to support the Assange cause. An old man of 80 showing courage whilst the cowards cower.
Meanwhile, hardly a peep from the MSM, and even OffG, all staring like frightened rabbits at the blinding headlights of the COVID PSYOPS juggernaut which crushes all other issues under its wheels.
The juggernaut obliterates any focus upon the NATO war on Russia and China and risk of WW3, the collapsing western financial system and economies…
Some here are even criticising Pilger for selling out to the Evil Empire. And OffG doesn’t appear to support him nor Pilger?
Sad days when even independent sites like OffG are apparently compromised by the Evil Empire, at least BTL.
Huh??? OffG publishes articles supporting Julian regularly. The antipathy toward him is in the btl’s by trolls, security services shills, and posters led up the garden path by one or the other. We have one poster (Willem), who posts really interesting anecdotal stuff about the Dutch health services, who quite bizarrely repeatedly refers to Julian as a “snitch”, as though using whistleblowers (as all investigative journalists and publishers do) is some kind of deeply unsavoury practice.
I take the view that the best way to deal any poster who claims that any of our leading lights/spokespeople is a security services asset should themself be treated as a security services asset until they comprehensively prove themself to be otherwise.
Not a bad principle, although it is difficult to prove you are not something. For an asset, Assange seems to have been put through the mill and thoroughly persecuted over a period of years. Also vilification of him, especially the rape charges which now seem to have vanished, is not what the powerful do to those who serve them. (A feminist friend of mine wished Assange the worst because of the rape allegations – she was from precisely the demographic that the allegations were meant to influence, and they succeeded. Minus the allegations she might well have sympathised with Assange.)
When it comes to verifying truth claims, we are all in the same boat. Do we trust our own judgement, or do we trust others to judge for us? Do we follow the herd opinion, or do we challenge it according to our own critical thinking and evidence? Is it really truth and justice that we seek, or herd approval?
Free Julian Assange! Free Leonard Peltier! Free Them Now!
Well, That was pretty evil. Satan is pleased.
Assange used to work for American intelligence
Apparently, no document or report released by Wikileaks has ever been debunked, unlike much of what the MSM laughably calls news. Wikileaks has also released highly embarrassing material about the nefarious CIA and the US Democrats (including Hillary’s infamous missing emails). No wonder they all want Assange silenced or dead. So your claim needs some very good evidence to make it credible.
No fact-checking of articles required in yesterdays Guardian or Independent coverage of the opening of Assange’s trial.. There were no articles..A new low for British journalism.
SBS News (Australia) interviewed Julian’s partner somewhere outside with the two children. Quite by chance Julian called her mobile during the interview. She took the call and bravely struggled to overcome her emotions. Then there was video of Assange proudly waving outside the embassy window in better days. SBS are really giving our boy support…
I mean please….
Some proof of the NATO war against nice honest Russia and progressive communist China would be useful. I have evidence of NATO’s ongoing collapse into irrelevance (eg Germany refusing to pay its defence bills, Trump pulling out in protest, Turkey threatening war against fellow member Greece etc), if you want to exchange.
Some proof as requested.
The aggressive expansion of Nato hundreds of miles to the east, deep into the territory of the former Soviet Union, taking over all its former allies, despite a commitment not to expand one inch beyond Germany.
Placing missile bases and land, sea and ground forces all round its borders, a few minutes flying time from its major population centres.
Holding large provocative military exercises on Russia’s doorstep.
Openly trying to wreck the Russian economy by attacking the currency, driving the value of the rouble down from 30 to 80 to the rouble. By driving down the oil price in collusion with Shady Wahabia. By sanctions.
Propaganda warfare and vilification against the Russian leadership, business, diplomats, sport, and private individuals. Provocations and staged false flags like Skripal and Navalny.
Active sponsorship of Islamist terrorism inside Russia, particularly the Caucasus.
Bankrolling and orchestrating colour revolutions in many of the former Soviet republics. Ukraine. Georgia. Armenia. Azerbaijan. The central Asian republics.
Instigating, organising, planning and financing wars and invasions on Russia’s borders. Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine and elsewhere.
The list is not exhaustive. There have been public threats by US officials to have Putin murdered, for example.
A very similar list could be drawn up in the case of China. Or Iran, or Venezuela, or Cuba, or DPRK, or any number of other countries.
US military budget $1,134 billion.
Russian military budget $65 billion.
COVID is also the most efficiently brutalising method of imposing censorship and domination. Under the constant cry of “keeping people safe” against an invisible ubiquitous enemy, the most aggressive actions are justified. And everyone – or the vast majority – enthusiastically join in. When you think about it, there’s no other way it could be done. “Communists”, “terrorists”, “fanatical Muslems” etc. couldn’t have done it. It had to be a biological enemy – “scientifically validated”.
A global “pandemic” uniquely allows for total worldwide control. No other event could accomplish this level of global control reaching into every community in every country on earth.
Yep, but I see it as a two-parter. Both parts of this catastrophe were years in the making. Part 1 involved the dumbing down of the people, mainly via the entertainment/military/intelligence-industrial complex. Part 2 involved using ‘governments’ (enforcers for the Transnational Capitalist Class) to simply ram through all the elements of the Great Reset and the global biosecurity police State. The people have some responsibility here, for they have allowed themselves to become addicted to corporate media and they have allowed themselves to be transformed into cattle, to be used by the predators against those who have not allowed themselves to be transformed into cattle.
People were far too preoccupied with paying off mortgages and trying to get the rent in on time. Working 2 jobs in a climate where job security is non existent. Their only concern is supporting their family and trying to remain economically viable. That’s not being dumbed down or even irresponsible. It’s no accident they shut down the economy creating even more uncertainty. Capitalism is inhumane but most don’t have to time or inclination to think about that too hard. Common sense is a luxury.
People? Yes. Some. As for most, the adjective ‘cattle’ fits, in my opinion. They don’t know because they don’t care. Caring is knowing. I live in the same world that others who are struggling live in. I am not privileged. I make minimum wage here in Toronto and I’m 64. I can’t retire or I’d starve or have to live under a bridge. My rallying cry has always been “20 minutes.” That’s 20 minutes a week when someone wants me to explain. If people just spent just 20 minutes a week ‘actively’ learning, rather than passively learning (being propagandized by corporate media), then they’d be fairly quickly much more resistant to propaganda and control by the fascist authorities.
There’s something called negative momentum (my term). What is it? When you are in the habit of ‘not’ doing something, then you get good at it. When you’re in the habit of reading your smart phone instead of books, and watching tv instead of videos by people like James Corbett and Andrew Kaufman and Del Bigtree (for example), then you get good at it. Those who let themselves go like that become comfortable in their rut of a routine, and the dark, warm sand that they have placed their heads in. The way inertia works is that it takes more energy to move from a position of stillness than if you are already moving a little. Most people couldn’t be bothered to move their butts, to lift a little finger to inform themselves, to think critically and learn actively and that makes them part of the problem. That’s my view.
Fair enough, Arby.
Very well stated. Not everyone is working around the clock. Yes, people are busy, but I know people with plenty of time on their hands who refuse to inform themselves and learn anything not approved by the government and corporate media. They always find time for various kinds of entertainment, which I enjoy too, but show no interest in learning about truly important matters that are determining the fate of the world.
Indeed.
Oh, please…. Less with the James Corbett worship con….
If you are not in the club (and you are not or you wouldn’t be “working”, you are cattle – many different breeds of cattle but cattle all the same. Defining is divisive, as you know.
Only because no-one has yet gone and put a bullet through a few billionaires like Bill Gates, George Soros and the like.
The reason this ‘pandemic’ is working is because no-one sees it as a war between the billionaires and the rest.
As soon as they do, the billionaires know they are toast….
But Rhys, as soon as you get rid of one “bad guy”, another one pops up in his place.