Category Archives: The Media

July 25, 2022 · 10:16 am

Breaking news! Breaking news!

Guess what, I don’t have any news to share in this blog post, breaking or otherwise. Yesterday I read this piece, Reading the news is the new smoking: I quit. I feel great. You can too, by Adam Mastroianni, courtesy of a link JK provided and this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time. This article felt like a breath of fresh air, dispelling all sorts of beliefs about how important following the news is to “being informed.” Mastroianni tackles all the common arguments I’ve made to justify wasting so much time following all the ins and outs of the spin information war blazing across American media every single day and he refutes them quite thoughtfully. This piece might prod you to rethink your news consumption habits, if you’re spending a lot of time trying to keep up with all the latest news flashing across your screen every day.

I’ve scaled back my news consumption for weeks at a time, but then I start drifting back to wasting too much time following the news. And yes, most of that time is wasted and does not lead to improving my life in any way or really informing me about much of anything. Before delving into the benefits this writer reports from quitting his news consumption, I’m going to explain my news habit.

I grew up with the news being just something that took up a very small part of most people’s daily lives. Radio news was a few minutes, while TV news was short broadcasts, spaced throughout the day. I read our local newspaper daily, starting in my early teens. I was married and my oldest daughter was a baby when we first saw CNN in 1981, after returning to the States from Germany. I was quickly hooked on 24/7 news.

I was in my late 30s when we bought our first PC in 1997. We were late to that trend, because I kept telling my husband a PC would just be a more expensive gaming system for our sons and I couldn’t understand why anyone would need a computer in their home. I thought of computers as tools for scientists, engineers, etc., not as a tool useful to ordinary people in their homes. My husband finally went and bought a PC and brought it home. Once the kids started using it and showing me how to use it, I quickly was hooked on cruising through search engines and clicking on links and more links. I began to spend a lot of time online reading – especially news.

Of course, cell phones came along and once most people were using their phones to access the internet and social media rather than as a phone, cell phone usage exploded too. I think most people actually read less news articles through now than in the old days and I suspect the vast majority of people who are posting content on social media about news-related information base their hot takes on headlines, what some pundit said in a short video or what other content creators posted. Few people, even professional journalists seem to really do deep dive researching events and background for stories they write or broadcast. Too many of them seem to be more invested in promulgating partisan political agenda and ideological viewpoints… and sharing their outrage, largely via virtue-signaling, rather than getting the facts right.

Even more problematic, I think, is that most of the news industry drives on fear-mongering and sensationalism, not on presenting balanced reporting. In other words, inciting people keeps them coming back for more outrage theater.

So, now on to this article about quitting news consumption and it being a positive choice. Most of the people I see on social media who get outraged or worked up daily about the hot take news events insist they’re not fearmongering and they speak like they believe how they view the events reported in the news are unbiased, fact-based, are that their reactions are perfectly rational. A whole lot of it is often fear-based reactions to news, often biased, it’s not fact-based and their reactions aren’t perfectly rational. Trust me, I’ve done this myself too, only later realizing that I overreacted or that some news I reacted to wasn’t even true. The news is designed to sensationalize events, create drama and focus on negative news, so we’re all being played by the news media – it’s all infotainment.

The author explains how he used to react to the news and while he was consuming liberal news media and you might be consuming right-leaning news media – it’s all the same animal. The news industry wants to grab your attention, stir your emotions, and create plenty of drama to keep you tuned in. They aren’t going to get many viewers if they say everything is going smoothly and all’s peaceful.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the article, https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/reading-the-news-is-the-new-smoking:

“One of my major pastimes used to be reading the news and being mad. I’d wake up, grab my phone, and get a quick primer on all the day’s outrages. “They raised tariffs on soybeans!” I would cry, unsure if the tariffs were bad, or if it was bad that they had waited so long to tariff them, but very sure that something about soybeans and tariffs was definitely outrageous.” 

“During the Trump administration, I would devour news of the president’s latest impropriety and imagine myself throttling one of his supporters. “WHY DID YOU DO THIS??” I would shout, squeezing the life out of them.”

“I started to feel like maybe this was a bad thing.”

“So in the summer of 2020, I stopped. I swore to only read the news on Saturday mornings. Since then, I’ve given it up almost entirely.” 

“And I feel better. Way, way better. It feels like a war that used to be fought in my backyard is now being fought on Neptune instead. I feel relieved of my duty to keep track of the whole world, and I now realize I never had that duty in the first place. My brain got quieter and I started hearing myself think instead of hearing myself worry. And I stopped imagining myself choking people to death, which was a big improvement.”

The article goes on to explain research the author has done into news consumption and includes a lot of links, which, me being me, clicked on. He raises the important point that being informed, which is why most of us say we follow the news, largely does not happen when you consume news all the time. Mostly, what we get, I believe is sound bites, partisan messaging, that’s repeated non-stop, and a whole lot of negativity.

This writer isn’t alone in writing about quitting the news habit and reporting what a positive change it made in their lives. I started googling and looking around on the internet and found several videos and articles by other people who quit the news too and reported feeling much better and talking about how much time it freed up to pursue other interests.

Reading the news is not the same thing as being informed, because to understand many things being reported in the news today, you need to understand a lot of things that led to today’s news. And that requires reading more than tweets, headlines or repeating sound bites.

Mastroianni has a section in his piece, titled, “How to garden a mind,” which struck a chord with me. He describes gardening as being about keeping bad things, like pests, out and good things, like water, fertilizer and sunlight in. He uses that analogy to explain, “Cultivating a human mind works the same way. You have to keep some stuff out (lies, noise, fear) and some stuff in (knowledge, experience, love). You can’t grow your mind directly; you don’t get smarter by yanking on your frontal lobe. All you can do is create the right environment and hope your brain-folds get deeper.”

While googling other articles on quitting the news, I came across this one, Why I Stopped Reading The News, by Ryan Kane, which offers some different arguments, including one I’ve made often – focus on what you can control, not on things you have no control over.

I’ve been working on moving back to reading more books and following less news for quite a while, but I haven’t had the willpower to quit cold turkey yet. Oddly enough, I smoked when I was younger, quit cold turkey in 1993 and stuck with it. I’ve never regretted quitting smoking and I suspect if I make the leap and quit the news, I’ll feel much better for it.

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Filed under General Interest, The Media

September 26, 2021 · 8:59 pm

Life in a liberal-controlled rabbit hole

This past week the liberal media and Democrats finally decided to focus on the illegal immigration crisis at the US southern border, which has been growing since President Biden rolled back the Trump era border control policies earlier this year. Back in March, President Biden tapped Vice President Harris to deal with the escalating border problem:

“WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he has appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead efforts to stem migration across the U.S.-Mexico border, as the administration faces growing political pressure to address a surge in undocumented migrant children unaccompanied by parents.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-taps-harris-lead-coordination-efforts-southern-border-n1261952

This latest border crisis involved mostly illegal immigrants from Central American countries, but in recent weeks it’s now, reportedly, Haitian illegal immigrants flooding the US southern border with Mexico. It’s not politically correct to question how on earth these tens of thousands of poor Haitian illegal immigrants are getting from the Caribbean island of Haiti to Mexico or to inquire if there are any political or NGO groups funding this mass illegal immigration movement.

For reference, I recall reading a sympathetic refugee Washington Post report years ago on the Syrian refugee crisis, which deluged European countries with refugees, not just from war-torn Syria, but from many other countries. I wrote a blog post, Adding it up, back in 2015, and in 2018 I wrote, The smell of a manufactured crisis, about how these refugee crises seem manufactured and well-funded.

This past week a new story, which I’m not sure whether to believe emerged. This new storyline claims most Haitian illegal immigrants trying to enter the US have been living in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and other Latin American countries for years and not coming directly from Haiti:

“Nearly all Haitians reach the U.S. border on a well-worn route: Fly to Brazil, Chile or elsewhere in South America. If jobs dry up, slowly move through Central America and Mexico by bus and on foot to wait — perhaps years — in northern border cities like Tijuana for the right time to enter the United States and claim asylum.”

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/haitian-journey-texas-border-starts-south-america-80139590

The liberal (mainstream) media and the Biden administration downplayed the flood of Haitian illegal immigrants, as the situation at Del Rio, TX escalated into a serious crisis with an estimated 15,000 illegal immigrants massed in a makeshift camp. As the numbers of illegal immigrants swelled FOX News continued its coverage of the border crisis and was using drone footage, which they’d been doing for months. Rather than address the crisis the FAA issued a temporary ban on Fox News drones around Del Rio, which seemed very similar to the liberal efforts to silence Trump’s social media presence and bury the Hunter Biden laptop story, except with the FAA, the Biden administration was overtly abusing government power rather than relying on liberal media and big tech cronies to corruptly silence stories Dems wanted buried. The FAA lifted the suspension, but that the Biden administration was willing to abuse power like this, to try to impede FOX News’ coverage, speaks volumes. Interestingly, during the temporary FAA ban FOX News was able to continue their coverage via being invited to fly on a law enforcement helicopter to film the illegal immigration chaos at the Del Rio bridge.

The Biden administration studiously avoided talking about or dealing with this border crisis for months, but finally a totally fabricated, hot news story this past week galvanized the Biden administration to launch an all-hands-on-deck spin effort response to the crisis. Instead of the illegal immigration being their concern, the Biden administration embraced and amplified a false news story, alleging horse-mounted US border control agents used whips to attack Haitians trying to enter the US.

Quickly, the “horrific” scene turned out to be not “whips,” but just border control agents on horseback holding their reins. Border agents did not whip illegal immigrants, only twirled their reins, as they’re trained to do. They were doing a thankless job trying to stop illegal immigrants from entering the US, while Dems, from the White House on down, ratcheted up their spin hysteria with WH press secretary, Jen Psaki, leaping on this incorrect reporting:

It’s been several days since the initial reporting about “whips” broke and despite the liberal media and many Dems (including the Biden WH) knowing the initial reporting was incorrect, this false narrative of border control agents “whipping” Haitian refugees fits too perfectly with popular anti-law enforcement politics among the left, so many liberal journalists and Dem politicians continue to play dishonest semantical spin games.

Watching the spin word games with this fabricated “whip” story highlighted again that the liberal (mainstream) news media main purpose is to advance the liberal political agenda and preferred narratives, not to accurately report the news. The preferred liberal political narrative will prevail here, no matter how many Republicans or right-wing pundits debunk the false narrative.

Even more disturbing is the Biden White House has double-downed on this false spin narrative too. The border control agents in the photos and video that ignited this liberal spin narrative have been suspended, the Biden WH announced border control agents will no longer be allowed to use horses, and an investigation of the border control agents has been launched.

President Biden, who couldn’t be bothered with the border crisis for months, has now become energized about the situation at the border – by selling a false narrative, attacking his own border control agents:

It’s easy to warn about threats to America, like hostile foreign adversaries or radicalized domestic groups, but this corrupt alliance of partisan political operatives and large swaths of news media and social media giants in America poses a serious threat to American free speech and to our democratic institutions too.

Many Democrats and liberal news media organizations spend hours daily warning about the dangers of FOX News spreading Trump lies. It’s true, some of the Trump/Fox spin games are corrupt and spread many lies, but their reach is very small compared to the vast Dem/liberal media/social media corrupt spin information war operations. Neither Trump nor right-wing media possess the reach of the Dem and liberal media spin information war operations, yet.

The news media that aids and abets both the Dem/liberal and Trump spin efforts can regurgitate line for line every deceptive and dishonest spin messaging effort the other side spewed, but pretends their side’s news reporting is dedicated to reporting facts and giving Americans the news straight. Unfortunately, our entire news media environment has little to do with reporting news and everything to do with partisan politics and aggressive spin information warfare operations – which equals clicks online and ratings on TV. The corruption is obvious when you see liberal media just stop reporting on the Afghanistan withdrawal or do everything possible to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story weeks before the 2020 election or watch Fox’s entire primetime line-up pay lip service to Trump’s stolen election lies.

Last weekend the estimated number of illegal immigrants at Del Rio reached 15,000 and still the Biden administration and the liberal media tried to ignore the story, until this border agent “whip” video emerged this past week. This false “whip” narrative became the major news story on liberal media, feeding all the preferred BLM race narratives and it was a narrative liberals want to be true. This “whip” story will fade away, but the false narrative’s already served its purpose by being believed by most people who trust those liberal news organizations and by many liberals, who are fully-invested in the BLM racial politics.

Today Fox News Sunday interviewed DHS secretary Mayorkas, who in response to questioning on the what happened to the 15.000+ illegal immigrants by the bridge at Del Rio, admitted 12,000+ of them had been released inside the US:

The Haitian illegal immigration crisis at the border was solved by the Biden administration releasing most of the 15,000+ illegals into the US and the topper is that despite the Biden administration’s Covid hysteria and mandates, none of these illegal immigrants were tested for Covid or subject to any vaccination requirements – they are exempt from the restrictions placed on law-abiding American citizens.

This is the surreal state of the Dem/liberal media spin information war – a false story that perfectly fit the Dem racial politics has been repeated, all the way up to the POTUS. The liberal media fact-checkers have been silent and the liberal media hasn’t gone full-blown hysterical like they do about Trump lies. Instead, the liberal media has aided and abetted bolstering the false “whips” story.

We’re all now Alice in Wonderland, stuck living in a liberal-controlled rabbit hole. Liberal media and social media owned and operated by liberals vastly outnumber conservative media venues. Corporate America also seems anxious to promote the liberal culture war and to embrace the establishment of the liberal Covid regulatory state

The border control agents on horseback, who were doing a thankless job, have been suspended and the POTUS is threatening that he will make them pay… just let that sink in.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics, The Media

August 29, 2020 · 9:34 pm

Interesting take on the Kenosha killings

One of the most frustrating parts of trying to piece together facts in news stories, that end up being more fuel for the raging spin war, isn’t a lack of media reporting; it’s that the deluge of reporting ends up panning out as more propaganda pushing a political agenda than actual carefully verified information.  The mainstream media push spin narratives that advance the  Left’s political objectives, while Trump-friendly and conservative media outlets push the Right’s political objectives.  Usually each side leaps to conclusions quickly and clings to those rushed talking points, ignoring or dismissing new information that does work to advance their original narrative. This is how the false Mike Brown, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” framing still is widely believed by many on the Left and it’s how the equally false Obama birther narrative is still widely believed by many on the Right.

And that brings us to not only the events concerning the police officer shooting Jacob Blake situation in Kenosha, WI, how the media reported that event, the resulting protesting, violent rioting and looting, and finally to the armed teen, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two men.  There are so many threads to the Kyle Rittenhouse situation and while the partisans in politics, political punditry circles and the news media pick and choose facts and spin narratives to bolster political positions, here’s a piece that puts forth the most comprehensive sequence of events and information I’ve seen. Guy Benson retweeted this piece.  I don’t know anything about this site or author, but I recommend reading this and thinking about the multiple systems failures he lays out:

Anatomy of a Catastrophe

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Filed under General Interest, The Media

August 14, 2019 · 2:07 pm

Our era of living dangerously… with news reporting

Last Saturday morning news broke that Jeffrey Epstein, accused sex trafficker, had apparently committed suicide while being held in a federal prison, awaiting trial.  Investigations, we’re told, have commenced to get to the bottom of what happened.  Just a few weeks ago, it was reported that Epstein had received medical care for a failed suicide attempt.

Trusting the American news media to accurately report any story with political overtones proves more difficult  in the era where most of the news media live dangerously on social media, where they tweet and retweet each other’s “reporting” with little, to no independent fact-checking.  Our news editing gets done, in real time, on Twitter, the place America’s journalists live 24/7 to gab (and fight the #Resist spin war).

All of the careful editing and filtering through information, before reporting news to the public now gets done – in public.  Mountains of incorrect information gets tossed onto Twitter, retweeted thousands of times (meaning the journalists lost control of the information) daily and the only accountability for tweeting incorrect, or even maliciously false information, is, “Oops, I removed that tweet.”  And on their previous false information continues to circulate.  There is zero accountability for spreading false or totally unverified information among America’s news media.

Adding to America’s widening information crisis, President Trump and many elected public officials recklessly spread false information on Twitter too.

Of course, social media erupted in conspiracy theories accusing the Clintons of having Epstein murdered, accusing Trump of having Epstein murdered and Joe Scarborough, former Republican Congressman, former Trump friend,  and now one of MSNBC’s biggest spinners of the Trump/Russia Collusion spin narrative tweeted:

Joe Scarborough
@JoeNBC

A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian.

9:41 AM · Aug 10, 2019

This was par for the course with the conspiracy theories, even though there were very few facts asserted in the reporting.

President Trump, “great” leader that he is, rather than trying to calm the spin hysteria, tossed in more spin fuel by retweeting a tweet alleging that the Clintons had Epstein murdered.

Of course, there’s a possibility Epstein was murdered and assuredly many rich and powerful men probably desire that Epstein never be allowed to spill all of their secrets. On Friday, the news broke that the judge in the Epstein case had unsealed over 2,000 documents, leading to reports that one of the women accusing Epstein of sex trafficking alleged that Epstein flew her to have sex with former New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, former Democratic senator, George Mitchell, and Prince Andrew of Great Britain, among others.

And then there’s the likely possibility that Epstein really did commit suicide.

The social media eruption about the Epstein news and Trump jumping into the fray, fanning the flames of conspiracy theories, seems par for the course with our media and politics subsumed into being just reactionary spin troops trying to own another spin cycle.

Trump’s retweeting Clinton conspiracy theories assured that the mainstream media and Dems would immediately switch to attacking Trump and Trump could wallow as king of the spin sewer for another day in this Trump vs. Dems/mainstream media scorched earth mass media spin information war, both sides slither in the sleaze… just bottom-feeder reactionaries, not noble seekers of the truth and assuredly not dedicated public servants working hard to do what’s best for America.

The truth is that Epstein’s death while in federal custody, whether by his own hands or by others, is another glaring system failure in America.  Conspiracy theories will gain more ground, because more and more Americans totally distrust the media and our elected officials.   The less people trust in our governmental and civic institutions, the easier it becomes for people to believe the worst of the people entrusted to run these institutions.

With Trump the Spinmaster-In-Chief, America truly lacks any principled leadership in the executive branch, with Congress in constant gridlock and immersed in the scorched earth spin efforts, we lack a functioning legislative body and the Epstein death casts more doubts on our justice system.  Pew Research Center in a July 22,2019 article states:

Trust is an essential elixir for public life and neighborly relations, and when Americans think about trust these days, they worry. Two-thirds of adults think other Americans have little or no confidence in the federal government. Majorities believe the public’s confidence in the U.S. government and in each other is shrinking, and most believe a shortage of trust in government and in other citizens makes it harder to solve some of the nation’s key problems.

Trust in Congress resides at rock bottom for many years now.

Trust in the media, likewise, is grinding down, where more and more people only listen and believe news reporting that fits their hyper-partisan views.

Without trust in our American justice system, our entire political system rests on very shaky ground

The instant conspiracy theories when Epstein’s death broke, speaks to total distrust in our government.  That many of the wildest conspiracy theories came from the blue checkmark crowd of news pundits, journalists and of course, the many other celebrities Twitter has deemed important voices worthy of a blue checkmark, speaks to the caliber of people whom are deemed social media influencers.

The President of the United States rushing to get in on the Twitter conspiracy tweetfest speaks volumes about, not only to Trump’s disrespect of the office he holds, it speaks to how our news media Twitterocracy, where Trump understands that the news media manufactures news, in real-time, tweet-retweet storm, by tweet-retweet storm.  The TV cable news and print media report follow where the Twitter spin storms blow.

The damage from these constant spin uproars will continue to corrode American culture long after they are forgotten… which will be within a few days…  The El Paso and Dayton mass shootings happened a little over a week ago, the media has already dunked the Dayton mass shooting down the spin memory hole, because it doesn’t feed the anti-Trump and liberal anti-gun spin narratives.

In our age of social media distraction, this Epstein spin hysteria will dissipate quickly, because the frenetic pace of the news media spin cycles reflect the collapse of the American people’s attention span.  Epstein’s death will fade quickly from the social media top trending topics too,  but assuredly it will be recycled often as bits of new names and conspiracy theories trickle out.  That said, our elite journalist class reflects the rest of America’s social media dwellers.  Most seem to have the attention-span of gnats and the critical-thinking depth of a dry well… except when it comes to clinging to their partisan spin narratives.

Despite all of us having access to more information than ever before known to mankind, it sure seems to be getting harder and harder to latch onto facts as media, especially social media,  spin swirls up ever-expanding dust devils of incorrect, inaccurate and oft-times deliberate, politically-motivated disinformation.  Before we can even clear the spin dirt from our eyes as one spin cycle blows through the echo chambers of our our news media, pundits and social media, we’re blasted with another, “News Alert!”

The story of Eptain’s death will assuredly fuel many more spin dust devils, but as for me, I’m a start-at-the-beginning-of-the-story kind of person, so what I want to know, more than how he died, was how he really lived.  How did Epstein even become an international jet-setter, hobnobbing with the rich and powerful all over the world?  What was Epstein’s real business, because assuredly the sex trafficking, while the most salacious bit isn’t the full picture?

I strongly suspect all these rich and famous people, like President Trump, former President Bill Clinton and L Brands CEO, Les Wexner all know what Epstein’s real business was and it wasn’t just the sex part.  Epstein’s lawyers made a claim that Epstein helped Bill Clinton set-up his Clinton Global Initiative.  What the help involved led to Bill Clinton taking dozens of flights with Epstein on Epstein’s private jet:

“Much of Epstein’s access to Clinton’s world also flowed through Maxwell. “The Clintons were relatively intimate with her,” a Maxwell friend said.

In 2002 and 2003, flight logs reportedly show that Bill Clinton flew on 26 flight legs on Epstein’s private jet.

“President Clinton knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York,” Clinton spokesman Angel Urena said in a statement. Urena said the flight legs comprised four trips in 2002 and 2003 and that staff and Secret Service were present on all flights. Urena said Epstein visited Clinton at his Harlem office once in 2002 and that he briefly visited Epstein’s apartment one time.

Maxwell’s ties to Clintonworld, meanwhile, would last another decade.

One friend of Maxwell’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described their surprise upon showing up at a dinner party at her Upper East Side apartment around 2005 to find Doug Band, then a top adviser to Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, among the 8 to 10 guests. In 2006, a charity run by Epstein, C.O.U.Q. Foundation, gave $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the Daily Beast reported.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/21/jeffrey-epstein-trump-clinton-1424120

The media also reported Epstein had business dealings with former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barack:

“While the Israeli politician has tried to play down his ties to Jeffrey Epstein since the billionaire’s indictment on charges of child sex trafficking, Barak became a fixture of the Epstein story after Israeli outlets reported he had received more than $3 million in payments from Epstein-connected institutions since 2004.

The former prime minister was also photographed leaving Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion in 2016 and has acknowledged visiting the billionaire’s private Caribbean island, where Epstein is accused of hosting orgies with underage girls.

Barak has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes and maintains he never so much as talked to the financier in the presence of underage women. In a previous interview with The Daily Beast, Barak said he was first introduced to the financier by Israeli leader Shimon Peres in 2002, and saw Epstein only “on occasion” after that.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-israeli-politician-ehud-barak-often-crashed-at-his-manhattan-apartment-neighbors-say

Other media reports link the Saudi heir to the throne to Epstein, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and so the Epstein list of “friends” goes.

How about the media begin at the beginning of this Epstein saga and figure out exactly what Epstein’s business dealings were and get to the full scope of Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to the rich and famous, because assuredly in death, all of these people who had business dealings with Epstein will claim, “Jeffrey Epstein?  Hardly knew that guy.”

END OF STORY.

 

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media

April 20, 2019 · 1:27 pm

Gloomy spin forecast ahead…

Friendly warning: This post is another warning about our scorched earth spin information war. In light of the Mueller report, not saving America from the spin war, I just felt like repeating my warning.

The endless semantical musical chairs word game has frustrated me about American presidential politics since the advent of sophisticated spin operations began in the 90s.  This same word game still frustrates me today.  Perhaps my frustration stems from a childhood spent struggling not to stutter, struggling to spit out words, but most of  all, devoting hours  upon hours, reading the dictionary.  I practiced trying to learn how to pronounce words and I practiced trying to remember what words mean.  Of course, many words have multiple meanings, but with the spin word games, most of the effort is to redefine the truth, using slippery language to manipulate people into believing bold-faced lies.

Spin is mostly bold-faced lies, deliberately used to dupe the American people. 

That’s the truth.

Sure, we all know politicians aren’t noted for their candor and truthfulness, but spin operations are mass media driven efforts to drive and control public opinion in America.   Mass media serves as the battlefield for the cultural war in America.  It’s doubtful that most politicians and the media, who serve as the foot soldiers battling forth in the spin war, even really realize they are fighting in an information war to control public opinion in America.  The entire spin war runs counter to American free speech principles and assures corruption of all who engage in it.  When you begin to go along with using “spin” to win, you’ve bought into deliberately manipulating Americans, deliberately spreading carefully crafted political messaging and deliberately working to confuse the meaning of words (mass media propaganda brainwashing operations). You’ve bought into deliberately spreading lies.

If you embrace spin information warfare, you are embracing a march toward authoritarianism.

Winning the spin war is to control public opinion in America via sophisticated control of mass media messaging (winning the spin cycles).

The Left has owned the spin cycles in America since the 90s.

The Right relied on Fox News, talk radio, online forums and formats, but the Left controlled all of the mainstream media avenues in America.

I feel like a broken record repeating this, but American liberty depends on Americans, especially our leaders, understanding the dangers posed to American liberty by this endless spin information war.  America is not only politically divided, but due to the effects of non-stop, scorched earth spin information warfare blazing across American media 24/7, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep track of the spin, keep track of the corrections, keep track of which parts of reports were true, which parts were debunked and frankly, the amounts of spin starts destroying our ability to figure out the truth.

If you watch MSNBC and CNN, you live in one hermetically sealed spin bubble.  If you watch FOX, you live in a different hermetically sealed spin bubble.  Much of what is reported, as objective news, inside either spin bubble is obviously biased, but the real insidiousness of spin comes with the pundits in these bubbles, who tirelessly spew out carefully crafted spin messaging, to herd and corral their viewers into remaining loyal, rabid partisans.

Before Trump, the Left was winning the larger cultural war, and had owned the spin war for decades, afterall, they have dibs of being referred to as “the mainstream media”, while Fox news was dismissed as “Faux news” and talk radio was cast as the home of “dangerous, right-wing militia types, who should be regulated by the government”.

Trump broke through the Left’s control of the spin in America and he did it by learning how to emulate the Clinton spin messaging tactics.  He doesn’t have as sophisticated of a spin messaging strategy as Bill Clinton and his spin gurus, but Trump operates as a spin guerilla.  He mastered rapid spin attacks that disrupt the Left’s carefully crafted spin attacks and his guerilla spin attacks often win the spin cycle (OODA loops).

Trump followers are just like Clinton followers and Obama followers.  They buy into the spin of the leader.  They repeat the leader’s spin.  They become emotionally invested in the leader’s spin messaging.  Trump just like the Clintons and Obama relies on spin messaging to keep his following.  They are all dedicated to deliberately lying to the American people to advance, first themselves, and second their political agenda.

None of them has any respect and reverence for speaking the truth.

None of them will save America from the reckoning that will come at the end of our scorched earth spin war.

All three camps – Trump, the Clintons and Obama were engaged in corrupt activities to win the spin in 2016

That’s the truth.

All three camps, with their media spin operators, are still engaged in corrupt spin messaging operations to cover-up their corrupt activities to win the spin in 2016.

That’s the truth, too.

With American partisans entrenched in spin operations, it’s paramount for America’s leaders to recognize that SPIN info war is more of a threat to America than any one political leader or political party.  Spin information war leaves America wide open to hostile foreign information warfare attacks.  We have no means to protect ourselves from insidious foreign mass media efforts to fuel divides in America, when our American media is engaged running domestic partisan spin war operations.

At the end of a scorched earth spin information war, America will be a totally balkanized country, easily defeated by hostile foreign organized sophisticated information warfare operations, and we could fall sway to abandoning large chunks of our liberty, out of mass panics incited by spin operations (both domestic or hostile foreign ops).

Stopping this scorched earth spin information war, that is tearing the soul of America apart, remains vital to American liberty and to America’s future as a constitutional republic.

Quite a gloomy prediction, here, but never fear, everyone in America can fight against spin info war – just stop buying into the politicians and media spin messaging efforts, start thinking for yourself and look for the truth.  Sure, for some partisans, who have become mind-numbed spin robots repeating their side’s spin for many years, the spin detox might take a bit longer… almost like leaving a cult, but for most Americans, it shouldn’t be that hard to break free of the spin.

Start thinking for yourself, instead of relying on other people to think for you.

Be a rebel against spin…

Have a good day, lol.

 

 

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February 7, 2019 · 12:21 am

A different take on the Tulsi Gabbard/Russia media report

I don’t have trust in much that the media reports anymore and I do think the mainstream media  displays a penchant to push certain media narratives that feed Democrat political spin messaging, but I decided it’s only fair to point out the other side to the Tulsi Gabbard/Russian media darling take.

Ben Popken, author of the NBC story on Tulsi Gabbard being promoted by Russian media, mentioned in my previous blog post, pushes back on criticism that his story relied on New Knowledge data for his report.  He has a tweet thread laying out how he went about his research:

More

NBC News doesn’t mention New Knowledge until the…let’s see…33rd paragraph, and then only as part of a group of experts weighing in. Hm, is that how you place a source that you’re basing your entire story on?

11:04 PM – 3 Feb 2019
On January 2, 2019, the CEO of New Knowledge, Jonathon Martin, posted a detailed piece, Social Media and the Alabama Special Election, where he explains:
“There has since been a document described in the media from AET — the full version of which I have not been allowed to see — that does not mention me or my firm, but seems to conflate my research project with some broad, grandiose political claims that are unrelated to anything I worked on. I acknowledge working with AET, but I don’t recognize the claims they’re making now.

We did not write the leaked report and we could not have because it didn’t reflect our research. The leaked version of the report made a number of claims that did not originate with us.

  • We do not recognize the mention of an effort to move 50,000 votes by suppressing unpersuadable Republicans. We didn’t suppress votes — we provided links to news stories that might be relevant to voters.
  • We do not recognize the report’s mention of an effort to “manufacture approximately 45k Twitter followers, 350k Retweets, 370k Tweet Favorites, 6k Facebook Comments, 10k Facebook reactions, 300k Imgur upvotes and 10k Reddit upvotes.” Any effort to connect us to such activities is a lie. New Knowledge did not engage in the use of Twitter at all in the Alabama election — and we did not “manufacture” followers against Roy Moore.

What I’ve read or been told of the AET report sounds like marketing material written for political donors. It does not describe the intent or outcomes of our research project. So let me set the record straight about my research in Alabama:

  • We created a Facebook news source, “Alabama Conservative Politics,” that linked to credible news organizations like The Washington Post and Fox News.
  • We used our real names as page administrators.
  • Typical posts only attracted dozens to hundreds of “reactions” (typically “likes”).
  • When we made a small purchase of Facebook’s built-in advertising tools, we received reactions in the low thousands (again, typically “likes”).
  • Less than 2% of users clicked through to read any of the articles we posted.
  • In total we spent approximately $30,000 on Facebook advertising (for context, a reported $51 million was spent during the Alabama special election).

During the race, many researchers, myself included, noticed that the Roy Moore campaign had attracted bot followers on Twitter, whose account usernames were nonsense words in the Cyrillic alphabet. I assumed at the time that this was the work of internet trolls — because genuine state sponsors of disinformation are adept at appearing to be domestic commentators.

At no time did New Knowledge get involved in any use of Twitter bots (or bots on any other platform) in the Alabama election. To this day, we have no knowledge of who did this or why.

Again, we only conducted a small, limited research project on Facebook.”

https://medium.com/@jonathonmorgan/social-media-and-the-alabama-special-election-c83350324529

AET referenced in Martin’s statement is American Engagement Technologies, run by Mickey Dickerson, a former Obama official, who was charged with creating and leading the U.S. Digital Service.

 

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February 6, 2019 · 12:43 am

Another Dem. Red Scare spin effort underway

Almost two weeks  have passed since the last mainstream media report on the mysterious Twitter account, @2020fight, identified as the main amplifier of the Covington/Phillips video.

Twitter and the mainstream media have obviously moved on from this story, but I still have plenty of unanswered questions about what Twitter investigators found out about that account holder(s).  I still want to know more about Molly McKew’s statement in the CNN Business report:  “she later realized that a network of anonymous accounts were working to amplify the video.”… after she retweeted to help amplify it…

Was there a network of anonymous accounts working to amplify the video and how did McKew know this?  What is her source for this information?

McKew, besides claiming to be an information warfare expert and a narrative architect, launched  a social media intelligence firm, New Media Frontier.  McKew is also on the board of Stand Up Ideas, a non-profit started by Evan McMullin, failed independent 2016 presidential contender.   Stand Up Ideas mission is:

“At its core, Stand Up Ideas is a leadership and education organization. SUI engages people across the political spectrum who all share a commitment to the principles of individual rights, Constitutional checks and balances, rule of law, informed dialogue and demand honest and wise leadership.

Stand Up Ideas was founded in 2017 by Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn to address the growing acceptance of autocratic rule in America.”

https://standupideas.com/about-us

No answers on whether it was one lone account or a network of anonymous accounts,  as McKew, was quoted as saying in the CNN Business report,  but unsurprisingly more questions keep popping up about the Dem/media Red Scare spin narrative, that’s now being rolled out again.  That Dem. Red Scare narrative was used against Trump since 2016, it was used against Roy Moore in his senatorial campaign in 2017, and lo’ and behold it’s now being rolled out against Dem. presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard.

Here’s the February 2nd headline NBC blared:

“Russia’s propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard”

Not surprisingly, the “experts”, NBC quotes are, you guessed it, New Knowledge, again:

“Experts who track inauthentic social media accounts, however, have already found some extolling Gabbard’s positions since she declared.

Within a few days of Gabbard announcing her presidential bid, DisInfo 2018, part of the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge, found that three of the top 15 URLs shared by the 800 social media accounts affiliated with known and suspected Russian propaganda operationsdirected at U.S. citizens were about Gabbard.

Analysts at New Knowledge, the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election, told NBC News they’ve spotted “chatter” related to Gabbard in anonymous online message boards, including those known for fomenting right-wing troll campaigns. The chatter discussed Gabbard’s usefulness.

“A few of our analysts saw some chatter on 8chan saying she was a good ‘divider’ candidate to amplify,” said Renee DiResta, director of research at New Knowledge.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/russia-s-propaganda-machine-discovers-2020-democratic-candidate-tulsi-gabbard-n964261

The company, whose chief executive was implicated in the 2017 Dem. digital smear effort used against Roy Moore, with the Dem. fake Russian bot, false flag operation, it’s amazing how NBC touts New Knowledge as the company the Senate Intelligence Committee used to track Russian activities in the 2016 election…  Has anyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee read the news about the Dems’  false flag op in AL and wondered if New Knowledge should be the “experts” they’re entrusting to report accurately on “Russian social media influence activities”?

The links between these Dem. cyber hijinks seem to completely fly by the mainstream media.  Since that December 2018 NY Times report about the Dems cyber dirty trick in the Moore campaign, the mainstream media hasn’t reported anything new there and it’s assuredly going to be another one of those Dem. “nothing to see here” efforts, where the mainstream media buries that in the “old news” file.

There’s also an Evan McMullin- big Dem. money connection to the Moore campaign in 2017 too – December 8, 2017 Washington Post article:

“MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Stand Up Republic, a 501(c)4 group co-founded by former independent anti-Trump presidential candidate Evan McMullin, is spending $500,000 on digital and TV ads that ask Alabama conservatives to reject Republican nominee Roy Moore’s Senate bid.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/08/anti-trump-conservatives-fund-ads-against-moore/

A few days later, The Daily Caller, reported:

“McMullin’s recently founded non-profit organization, Stand Up Republic, jumped into the Alabama Senate race this week with a $500,000 ad buy against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. One of the ads features a man saying Roy Moore “makes Republicans and us Christians look bad.”

The massive ad buy “may end up being one of the largest third-party interventions in the state,” according to the Washington Post.”

The story continues:

“Groups like Stand Up Republic are allowed to spend money in elections — which they are doing in Alabama — as long as their “primary” purpose isn’t overtly political. This generally requires spending less than half of the organization’s resources on political activities, although that rule can be difficult to enforce.

McMullin revealed in a tweet last August that his group had “about 4,000 donors across the country from both sides of the political spectrum and larger donors from Silicon Valley.”

One of McMullin’s large Silicon Valley donors is billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who funded an anti-Trump super PAC during the presidential campaign.

Omidyar announced a $250,000 donation to Stand Up Republic in May through his organization, Democracy Fund. (Democracy Fund publicizes all its grants in the interest of transparency.)

Democracy Fund said the donation to Stand Up Republic was to support the group in “confronting and engaging in important work to protect the norms of our democracy and to push back against dangerous demagoguery in our politics.”

The identities of McMullin’s other “larger donors from Silicon Valley” remain a secret and he intends to keep it that way.”

https://dailycaller.com/2017/12/10/evan-mcmullins-secret-silicon-valley-donors/

Lest you worry Evan McMullin just announced a new media effort… Defusing Dininfo.  He wants to protect democracy from dangerous disinformation… just don’t ask him who is funding his efforts.

In light of the emerging financial trails with these big money Silicon Valley progressive connections, to being both the gatekeepers of technical expertise on Russian digital influence operations and participants in funding and orchestrating some very underhanded Dem. digital operations, like the Moore fake Russian bot false flag operation,  it seems like the mainstream media should be chasing down the big money Silicon Valley money trails… but don’t hold your breath on it.

No matter how much high-tech lingo and fancy titles these big Dem. political operatives and their media spinners invent to throw up smokescreens to mask the truth about their shady SPIN info war operations, the surest route to the truth is to follow their big money trails…

 

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January 28, 2019 · 1:06 am

No Intelligent Life Left Here

This post is just some random thoughts on the SPIN info war mess.

Lots of people dismiss social media as trivial, but Twitter is where the American journalists and pundits hang-out and where most of the Dem SPIN attacks and Trump’s counter-attacks launch. It’s the current epicenter of the scorched earth SPIN information war.

I know I mentioned this repeatedly, on my blog, during the 2015-2016 GOP Insurgency primary phase, that I encountered gang-up attacks on Disqus comment sections, at several right-wing sites, when I posted comments explaining why I thought Trump was a faux Republican and unfit to be president. I kept saying these gang-up attacks were eerily reminiscent of what happened in 1998 on the Excite message boards, where groups of new commenters descended on the Clinton impeachment boards at Excite, to bully and try to harass the Republican and conservative posters into silence.

About the time this happened on Disqus, the hoopla started about Russian bot trolling activities on social media. I spent a good bit of time trying to, in my amateurish way, sift through follower and following lists of the groups that showed up attacking any person who posted an anti-Trump post. I know I mentioned a lot of details .

As the election moved on, the hoopla started in the media about the dangerous “alt-right” and then it was “Russian collusion”. This alt-right hysteria propelled by the Left and mainstream media seemed to me, again, eerily reminiscent of the 90s, with the Clinton/Dem/media hysteria about “right-wing militias” after Ruby Ridge in ’92, Waco in ’93 and then OKC in ’95.

On those Excite message boards, there were some posters, who expressed some opinions that sounded like the stuff spouted by some militia groups I’d seen in news reports on TV and read about in the news.  I engaged in conversation a few times with a few of the less radical ones, expressing that everyone needs to follow the law.  I tried to engage in friendly debate with far-left peeps too on those Excite message boards. There was never anything remotely like friendly political debate in online political forums, that I saw.  Even on those Excite message boards, I suspect many of the commenters were professional political pundits, activists and people involved in the news media – similar to the current Twitter crowd of flamethrowers and spinners.

In December 2018, the NY Times ran a story exposing an internal report they obtained, about Dem operatives created fake Russian bots during the Moore campaign.

Well, the Dems SPIN ops in the 90s were imitating Russian tactics too.  SPIN info war operates in a way that strikes me as antithetical to American free speech principles – repetitive messaging to control the news media messaging.  The SPIN effort includes  hyping (spinning) polling which is manufactured information cascades, which result from the flooding of repetitive political messaging attacks.  The spinning of polling is intended to marginalize dissenting views and casting them as being “out of the mainstream”.  And of course there are the aggressive orchestrated high-tech media lynch mobs, engaged in vicious character assassinations.

About this Dem op in the Moore campaign:

“The secret project, which had a budget of just $100,000 and was carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was revealed after the New York Times obtained an internal report detailing the efforts.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the internal report said. It also took credit for “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal” after experimenting “with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.””

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

Here’s the most amazing part of this report, it states Dem political operatives were launching bots that looked like Russian bots, so they could spin it (amplify to use McKew’s fav phrase) that Russians were helping the Moore campaign:

“One participant in the project reportedly was Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

And this:

“The Alabama project was funded by liberal billionaire and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman who gave $100,000 to the cause, according to the Times. Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley’s top donors to the Democrats, donating $7 million to various groups and campaigns in the last election cycle.

The money trickled down through American Engagement Technologies, a firm run by Mikey Dickerson who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to lead the newly-created United States Digital Service.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

Sorry for relying on this FOX report, but I do not have a NY Times subscription and have read my free articles for the month.

Here’s more:

“Billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding a group linked to a “highly disturbing” effort that spread disinformation during last year’s Alabama special election for U.S. Senate, but he said he was not aware that his money was being used for this purpose.”

“Hoffman’s statement is his first acknowledgement of his ties to a campaign that adopted tactics similar to those deployed by Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, the Hoffman-funded group allegedly used Facebook and Twitter to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones, who narrowly won the race. Hoffman, an early Facebook investor and the co-founder of LinkedIn, expressed support for a federal investigation into what happened, echoing Jones’ position from last week.”

and

“But the statement left key facts unaddressed, including a full accounting of everyone who crafted and executed the campaign. The effort was the subject of a presentation in September to a group of progressive technology experts who met in downtown Washington to discuss electoral tactics, according to documents from that meeting obtained by The Washington Post and one of the attendees.”

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/26/billionaire-apologizes-for-funding-disinformation-in-alamaba/

Bold-face highlights are mine

Seems like some of the  “experts” the Dems and mainstream news media put forth to report on SPIN information warfare (computational propaganda is the term the experts use) have a lot of disturbing connections to Dem operatives engaged in, umm, aggressive, Dem computational propaganda efforts …

Computational propaganda is the same SPIN info war the Dems have been waging in the media since the 1990s. PERIOD.  The Republicans, until 2016, were light years behind the Dem political SPIN operations.  Silicon Valley is liberal Dem territory in America, so the tech “experts” in that industry, whom our government and media rely on for expertise on the problem,  are um, liberal Dems with a lot of connections to big Dem political operatives.

There needs to be a thorough investigation into the entire “computational propaganda” business run by both Dems and Republicans, but I am pretty sure investigating the Dems vast, high-tech smear operations and decades old lock on SPIN information war in America, would require a massive crawl through the corrupt big money peeps in the Democratic upper-echelon and high-level Dem political figures – a vast RICO type investigation, for sure.

We have Dem foxes guarding our digital chicken coop and then when anyone catches them devouring a chicken, the Dem foxes are entrusted to “investigate” and provide the “experts” to explain it in the news media… “nothing to see here”…”dangerous,  right-wing extremists”… “Russian bots everywhere”…”ack.. Trump the Authoritarian”…

Beam me up Scottie, there’s no intelligent life left here…

Added Thought, January 28, 2019:

The crawl through the “computational propaganda” business, especially with Dems, would have to encompass delving into illegal leaking of classified information to the media, especially by former Obama administration officials… paging John Brennan, Comey, and Clapper, anyone…

Adam Schiff, where are you???

Added Thought, January 28, 2019: Googled this New Knowledge company quoted above: : Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

New Knowledge claims to be an “information integrity company”… I quote from their site:

“Founded In 2015
Headquartered in Austin, TX. We were the first organization outside the U.S. intelligence community to identify Russia’s campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election. Our leadership has testified before Congress, advised the State Department and the NSA, and worked in counter-terrorism. As the information war escalates, we believe more than ever that our responsibility is to provide an advanced, reliable disinformation solution to national security agencies, responsible leaders, and trusted brands.”

https://www.newknowledge.com/about-us/

What the heck, the chief executive of the company the Senate Intelligence Committee entrusted to write a report on Russian social media operations in 2016, is involved in a domestic disinformation social media operation, launching fake Russian bots promoting Moore and then a media campaign claiming Russian bots are trying to help Moore’s campaign… That’s the truth, folks.

Added Thought, January 29, 2019:

Since 1999, I have been trying to unravel the Dem political operative SPIN networks (computational propaganda).  I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying their spin messaging and when new spin messaging or one of their new smear campaigns is launching, but I have never had any means to unravel the networks back to the top – who are the political operatives behind it – the politicians, big money Dems and operatives running  the show.

What happened to me in 1998, had to come from the highest levels of the Clinton administration, because there is no way on earth that retired general, who hates me, would have been involved in an attack like that, unless he believed he was receiving legitimate intelligence that I had done something wrong.  I don’t have so much as a speeding ticket and I was (and still am) a law-abiding homemaker, Army wife.  I never belonged to any political organizations, have never owned a firearm and my group affiliations have been things like being a Red Cross volunteer and belonging to my local quilt guild.  There’s likely never going to be a way to prove what happened to me in 1998.

Trust me, I can empathize with Brett Kavanaugh finding himself in the middle of an orchestrated smear campaign and helpless to defend against the Dem’s media spinners, who aid and abet the Dem’s computational propaganda efforts constantly.  The media won’t even admit they display “bias”, so unless these networks are exposed, they assuredly would deny corrupt media collusion participating in vicious smear campaigns.

There was reporting during the Moore smear campaign, meant to bolster the smear campaign’s credibility, that the Washington Post sent over 30 reporters to Alabama to search for “victims” and to trash Moore as a chasing after young teen girls perv.  Those reporters were digging for anyone who would trash Moore, to add to their SPIN smear ammo.  Gloria Allred, longtime Dem. insider and feminist activist lawyer, descended on Alabama too… to represent “victims”  (this was the same scenario used after the Access Hollywood leak orchestrated Dem/media smear campaign).  #Resist is an orchestrated smear campaign to take down Trump, by any means necessary – that’s the truth.

The Moore/Dem fakeRussian bots case and especially this Covington/Phillips case are recent and unraveling  the Dem’s computational propaganda (SPIN) networks involved in these two cases could be a way to start dismantling the wholesale public corruption within the Dem’s SPIN info war network – their vast computational propaganda operation, that has been operating since the 1990s.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War, Politics, The Media

January 26, 2019 · 11:08 am

More questions about the Covington/Phillips video

Last night JK, a frequent commenter on my blog, and I tossed a bunch of ideas back and forth about the Covington boy/Phillips video situation. I woke up this morning thinking more about all of these loose threads.  Our comment exchange is located on my previous blog post. Twitter cover-up?

A few random thoughts here, first is that with the internet & computer technology, the professionals have many computer programming languages & technology specific terminology, which leaves non-tech people (like me and most other people) not only clueless, but also defenseless against the tech industry, in general. We are hooked on their products, but we rely completely on them or on the one or two techie people we know, or on our equally clueless non-tech family members and friends – to navigate and understand just about everything having to do with computer technology and systems.

We are at the mercy of the tech professionals to understand their tech world.  The tech experts & the industry as a whole can tell the non-tech public just about anything wrapped up in some computer terms and it’s like Sanskrit to most of us, non-tech morons (like me),… all rather complicated and alien.

The one thing I have gleaned is the technology medium of exchange is data, making acquiring data, storing data, and exchanging data top priority.  CNN Business  & NBC put out the reports quoting Twitter, basically putting a “nothing to see here” end to this viral story.  I suspect Twitter has that account info cached.  I suspect Twitter knows who was responsible for that account.

I suspect the data of that account is cached by numerous sites that deal in broad sweep data collection and analysis. Finding it is the challenge, because I don’t believe, Twitter,  who displays bias against right-wingers frequently in their rule enforcement and is run by liberals, would ever admit they gave a free pass to a professional, sophisticated, Dem SPIN repetitive messaging operation that resulted in kids receiving death threats.

That account stuck out because its messaging was indicative of a hostile foreign misinformation campaign with “highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging”, so if that type of messaging wasn’t a foreign operator and Twitter says its “appears to be” a schoolteacher in CA, well, that messaging was still “highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging”.

This made me think of the recent news reports of the Dems social media operations during the Moore campaign.

Both NBC and CNN Business report that anonymous account had a lot of other online activity on other sites.  This Twitter video was reported to have been originally posted on Instagram by someone who was at the event.  This account, @2020fight,  pulled that video from Instagram,  “but it was @2020fight’s caption that helped frame the news cycle”. 

So, the account holder(s), @2020fight,  added a provocative caption and launched it on Twitter.

I still have plenty of questions about these  Twitter investigators and their investigation, that’s for sure.

In the CNN Business report, information warfare researcher, Molly McKew, mentions, “she later realized that a network of anonymous accounts were working to amplify the video.”… after she retweeted to help amplify it…

In the comments on my previous post, JK, offered the opinion”

“Sorry LB I’ve been, as I mentioned in a “rabbithole” – Anyway, without “assets” it would have been impossible for her to “realize a network.”

I suppose Miss McKew may have a side job with the NSA and is especially “screwed in” but, given our nation’s AG situation, it’s simply too incredible (dictionary meaning) that she managed to get it cleared for public dissemination.”

https://libertybellediaries.com/2019/01/24/twitter-cover-up/

I’ve been wondering how on earth she realized there was a network of anonymous accounts working to amplify that video,  from her personal PC or cellphone?  Does she have access to some sophisticated content monitoring capability?   Does she work for someone or is she involved in monitoring or running networks of anonymous accounts, who engage in political messaging to be disbursed through amplification (anonymous accounts launching SPIN attacks) on social media  How on earth did she realize it was a network of anonymous accounts?

She should be asked how she knew there was a network and how on earth she identified that network of anonymous accounts from her Twitter feed. I can see when the pool of liberal media guppies and pundits engage in a Dem retweet feeding frenzy , but I have no way to scan Twitter and identify a network of anonymous accounts who initiated an orchestrated  (network, as McKew described it) SPIN messaging attack.

SPIN is information warfare, whether it’s foreign or domestic – it is an attack to flood media with political messaging to incite people (agitation propaganda).  SPIN information warfare has several components, but the SPIN messaging component is repetitive messaging operations across all media platforms in America, particularly the news media venues.  Since 1998, when I mentioned this on The Excite message boards, I believe SPIN repetitive messaging operates using the military tactic of swarming.  Information warfare employs military strategy and tactics, while disguising it in benign PR terminology. It is ruthless mass media brainwashing operations more at home in totalitarian countries, designed to control public opinion in America and drown out and marginalize dissenting viewpoints.

Two different hives swarm on social media – the professional info operators waging orchestrated spin attacks and the pond of partisans – retweeting whatever the professional info operators feed them. Dems/media are used to being the Dem SPIN guppies for the Left’s professional SPIN political operatives. They have decades of experience dutifully reciting their talking points, sent from on high – no questions asked.

On my Twitter feed, I assume my feed is based on some algorithm Twitter has to fill my feed with content, based on my tweeting and who I follow.  I follow 900+ journalists and pundit peeps, so I can follow the swarming Dem SPIN attacks launching by the Dem SPIN guppies.  I have no way to identify the Dem SPIN professional operators manufacturing the Dem SPIN ammo or orchestrating the Dem SPIN swarming “networks of anonymous accounts”.  McKew apparently has access to information on the professional operations, who orchestrate these Dem SPIN swarming attacks on social media.

I’ve got a lot of questions in my mind about this anonymous account holder(s),@2020fight, in the Covington/Phillips video. @2020fight had tweeted on average 130 times per day since the beginning of this year (per CNN) story.  The NBC article refers to @2020fight’s activity as being an online influencer.  Was @2020fight working with a political group or organization as an “influencer”?

There’s a difference between political free speech and waging orchestrated mass media smear campaigns, particularly using a photo of kids and smearing them based on a facial expression and a red hat.  That video was propelled onto Twitter to incite an online rage mob against some kids.  We need to know if this was just one “influencer” or a network, as McKew explained it.  If it was orchestrated by a group of political operatives, it recklessly endangered children, all to incite hate against President Trump and a group of kids.   That is different than one “influencer” unintentionally posted a video that went viral, imo.  Was there a network of anonymous accounts, launched to amplify that video?  If so, was that network of anonymous accounts manufactured by political operatives?  I hope many concerned citizens continue to search for answers and investigate this attack on innocent kids.

Added Thought, January 26, 2019:

In my mind one online “influencer” schoolteacher very actively promoting her political views is very different than political operatives orchestrating an online mob action, deploying numerous anonymous accounts, to amplify  “highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging”.

The targets of this messaging were a bunch of kids on a school trip waiting for their bus.

Another Added Thought, January 26,2019, 8:06 pm:

Last night, bouncing ideas back and forth with JK, in comments on my previous post,  I wrote:

“JK, this Rob McDonagh works for Storyful – one google search – Storyful is headquartered in Ireland, parent organization is News. Corp, (Murdoch). So, following the CNN & NBC stories, Storyful alerted Twitter, headquarters in San Francisco, about the suspicious account.

Assuredly, if this suspicious account is in the San Francisco Bay area, their investigators wouldn’t have had to travel far to talk to this account holder, who claims to be a school teacher. It isn’t like an account in a foreign country, for crying out loud. And if it was an innocent school teacher in the bay area, seems like she might have been calling Twitter in her hometown or going there to talk to someone quickly to resolve the matter. Something just seems so sketchy about all of it.”

JK offered some very interesting thoughts too.  I might be incorrect about Storyful contacting Twitter.  The CNN report says, McDonagh, at Storyful was, “was monitoring Twitter activity on Saturday morning”.  Rereading the NBC report, it says:

“Questions soon emerged about the account. Following an inquiry by CNN about the fake profile photo, Twitter suspended @2020fight on Monday for violating its policy on fake accounts.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/twitter-account-amplified-covington-catholic-d-c-march-video-appears-n961981

My  main issue is what does Twitter know about this anonymous account holder(s) and any other anonymous accounts involved in suspicious, high volume retweets of this video?   Have Twitter investigators been in communication, online or in person, with the account holder(s)?   In the NBC report, the 2nd paragraph, bothered me and it still bothers me:

“But it appears that the account, @2020fight, was run not by a foreign operative trying to fan America’s political divisions but rather by a woman who described herself as a San Francisco Bay Area teacher and advocated liberal causes — and, to all appearances, did not expect to find herself at the center of a media firestorm.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/twitter-account-amplified-covington-catholic-d-c-march-video-appears-n961981

Why was NBC framing this account holder as  a victim:

“to all appearances, did not expect to find herself at the center of a media firestorm.”

Huh??? She was using a photo pulled from a Brazilian blogger, high rate of tweets and  and she was engaged in behavior that was ““highly polarized and yet inconsistent political messaging”,”

She assuredly was at the center of an aggressive political messaging operation though, whether for her own political motive or as part of a network, is not clear.  It would be very interesting to know who she followed and who was following her and who her large crowd of retweets were.  This could be important to know if it’s an orchestrated network .. along with knowing if there was a network of other anonymous accounts amplifying this video.

If it is a network, It would help lead back the big fish Dem SPIN political operatives, running this operation and it would help flesh out some of the Dem SPIN guppies on Twitter (although anyone following politics on Twitter can give you a lonnnnng list, lol of the Dem SPIN guppies).  All networks have various links, so unraveling the links might lead higher up the Dem SPIN orchestrated smear campaign food chain.

Twitter’s own rules ban malicious conduct, so assuredly an orchestrated smear campaign targeting children should be against the rules. PERIOD.  Why isn’t Twitter releasing more details? And why did the NBC report try to paint this account holder(s) as the victim???

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Filed under General Interest, Information War, Politics, The Media

October 11, 2018 · 10:45 am

A child of the TV age awakens.

thumbnail_Sue-1968

My first  grade picture from the mid 1960s.   Note the chunk I took out of my bangs trying to cut my own hair and the dorky pin, part of a collection of costume jewelry my grandmother showered on my sisters and me  (pssst, I still have some of those pins).  At least the dress was in my all-time favorite color – pink.  Yes, I have always loved PINK… Oh, as a historical note, back then girls had to wear skirts and dresses to public school in PA.

The past few weeks of the Kavanaugh drama got me thinking a lot about my feelings about the genesis of America TV and especially TV news in my lifetime (I’ll be 58 yrs old later this month).

My mother liked to tell this story about my internal clock as a very young child.  She told me that I would go outside to play, often happily swinging on our swing set.  Lacking anything remotely akin to a daring spirit, I do remember swinging for hours on end as a child.  Swinging made me feel free of fear,  almost like I could touch the sky.  My mother liked to repeat this story that before I could tell time, I would always come inside from playing exactly on time to watch the TV shows and cartoons I liked.  She said I would tell her that it was time for my show to start and she never figured out how I could be right on time, because I hadn’t even learned to tell time yet.  Sadly, my adult life has never been one where I am right on time, because all too often I’ve been running late, a point of frequent conflict with my husband, who always liked to be early.

In recent years, with too much else on my mind, too many other things to do and most of all a total disgust for most TV offerings, I rarely turn the TV on.  With the Kavanaugh drama, I did turn on cable TV a few times and then switched to C-Span coverage of the Senate happenings, which felt like old times for me.  I used to be a dedicated C-Span viewer and a dedicated History Channel viewer… back when the History Channel actually ran programming on history.

And that brings me to the point, what in the heck happened to American TV???

Growing up in the era where we had three major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, the shows of my childhood reflected traditional American values.  Who could find fault with Lassie or Bonanza?  My father also had, what I think was called a UHF antenna, before cable TV, and we picked up some country music shows, the Grand Ol Opry and some cartoons.

The TV news was in small segments throughout the day, not 24/7 and yet we still felt adequately informed, because along with TV news, newspapers were still considered a prime source of news for most Americans.

In the 70s and 80s American TV completely changed.  The Phil Donahue type talk shows, with guests brought on to air their most intimate secrets or sensational topics,  began to replace the old entertainment-focused interview shows.  Donahue’s format was hailed as breaking new ground to get Americans to talk about controversial or uncomfortable personal topics.  Oprah Winfrey expanded the Donahue model of tabloid talk TV shows in the 80s.

Since the late 90s, I’ve been on a soapbox about the damage to our culture the Oprahization of America has wrought. I remember a soapbox comment I posted on the Excite message boards in ’98 on this very topic, sadly being new to the internet, I didn’t even know how to save my posts back then, but suffice it to say, my opinion on tabloid TV has not changed at all.  It’s a completely destructive force to encourage people to air their most personal problems, especially family problems on national TV.  The tabloid TV craze encouraged people to go on national TV and BETRAY those closest to them, discussing personal and family problems in public, thus lighting a match to any vestiges of TRUST in their relationship.  It is the most corrosive form of entertainment in America.  Millions of Americans bought into it, wallow in, believe in it though, so the craze continued and advanced.

Reality TV formats grew from the tabloid TV shows, further plummeting American culture into a cesspool of trash TV.  There has never been anything aspirational or positive about either tabloid TV or Reality TV.

With American news reporting,  I got married in 1980 and my husband and I were both serving in the Army in Germany at the time.  We didn’t even own a TV set in that first apartment in Germany.  I listened to music on the radio or my cassette tapes.  We came back to the States in 1981 and I became a homemaker, caring for our infant daughter, living in Fayetteville, NC, where my husband, served in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Times had changed in America and we had cable TV.  For an avid TV watcher like me, it was like my prayers had been answered – 24 hour TV news with CNN, HBO, plus MTV, a channel dedicated to music delivered via highly creative videos.  I could not praise Ted Turner enough for his ingenuity for CNN and 24 hour news.  The only downside to so much more news was when some crisis happened, I became a non-stop channel-flipper, hoping that I might find more “breaking news” somewhere.

Grenada proved the most difficult, heart-wrenching few news days when President Reagan blocked media from the invasion and my husband was  deployed there.  My parents were on St. Thomas at the time and my mother kept calling me with the news she was getting there.  Oddly enough, the only other truly anxious news void for me happened the day the OJ verdict came in and my sister was stationed in Turkey.  There had been a news report of a major earthquake in Turkey and then it was 24/7 OJ coverage.  Those were some long hours until my sister called and let us know she was safe.

Where TV is at now in 2018, after such promise in the 1980s, still shocks me.  Sure Hollywood still manages to churn out a few excellent TV shows here or there, but the overall quality of TV offerings has declined, as has tabloid and reality TV formats, which only coarsen and sensationalize the worst aspects of American culture.

Sadly, beyond aggressively advancing the leftist social justice agenda, American TV offers little in the way of educational or quality historical information.  It offers little in the way of promoting our literary and fine arts heritage. And it glaringly fails to offer even a glimmer of aspirational or unifying patriotic messages.

In recent years, I watch less and less TV, to the point that now I rarely even turn the TV on.  My husband watches FOX News in the sun room, all day long, so I see small bits here and there (mostly ones I wish I had avoided since it’s blatant Trumpathon garbage).

I’ve awakened to the reality that American media, almost exclusively, dedicatedly promotes and works to mainstream the Left’s social justice dogma and indoctrinate Americans into Leftist groupthink and use of the American Left’s newspeak lingo – SPIN messaging.

I’ve also awakened to the reality that having American cable news reporting starkly divided along partisan political lines means none of us are getting straight, unbiased news reporting anymore.

And that should alarm every American.

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, The Media