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Posts Tagged ‘mainstream media’

MSM EXPOSED: Independent People Uncover COVID-19 Lies

Posted by M. C. on May 24, 2020

“The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/msm-exposed-independent-people-uncover-covid-19-lies_05232020

Mac Slavo
May 23rd, 2020
SHTFplan.com

You cannot trust the mainstream media, but this isn’t news.  Every day, regular people are using their own cameras and cell phones to document the lies we are being told about COVID-19 designed to manufacture your consent to enslavement. Here are just a few of the lies that have been uncovered.

Jeff Berwick of the Dollar Vigilant YouTube channel questioned the authenticity of a Sky News report claiming the crematoriums in Mexico City “never stop burning.”  Berwick took his camera around to the few open crematoriums and discover that was not just a lie, it was a completely fabricated hoax designed to make the scamdemic appear far more severe than it ever will be.

Additionally, 600 doctors have written a letter to President Donald Trump stating that he’s been given bad advice, and the lockdowns are going to kill many other people in numbers that will far surpass those of this coronavirus.

After David Icke was banned from YouTube for speaking out against the tyranny and power grabs of the elitists and politicians using the scamdemic as an excuse, he did a long interview with London Real on the “Freedom Platform” designed to never be censored.

As those in power continue to lie and attempt to keep us in a constant state of fear, people all over the planet are waking up to what’s actually going on.  This has never been about health.  It’s been a gigantic propagated lie from the beginning and designed that way.

As more and more regular people come out showing proof that the mainstream media is only doling out fear at the commands of the government, more and more people will begin to realize that this is an ongoing attempt to enslave the mind of the public, so a few can rule the many.

The Science of Fear: How The Elitists Use it to Control Us & How to Break Free

Tyrants throughout history have used the same tactics to manufacture consent from the public for their enslavement to the ruling class elitists. This time, it’s not working though. All over the planet, humans are realizing that they don’t have to ruled and enslaved “for their own good.”  All over the planet, humans are figuring out that it’s wrong to have some people control everyone else. It will reach a tipping point, and the elitists pull out all the stops, people are still pushing back.

After Brainwashing People For Decades, MSM and Governments Are Losing Control of People

It’s only a matter of time before people realize a life lived in fear is a waste. It’s only a matter of time before people realize that going to another country and killing for tyrants in suits on command so those tyrants can be wealthy is morally reprehensible. It’s only a matter of time before people realize who politicians, the mainstream media, and the elitists who pull the strings are.  It’s only a matter of time before people realize that they were born free, and no one else has the right to steal the fruits of their labor (even if it’s called “taxation”) and no one else has the right to rule and enslave them (even if it’s called “government”).

“The most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

 

Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to http://www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

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Climate Change at Fox News – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 25, 2020

Drowning in the swamp. Holding hands with Trump on the way down.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/climate-change-at-fox-news/

By Steve Hall

There has been a drastic change in the climate at Fox News.  We used to think of them as a counter-balance to the “mainstream media”; an alternative perspective, with “balance” and yes, with a healthy dose of skepticism about all things government.  Then suddenly, inexplicably, Fox News jumped on the hysteria bandwagon.

– – – – –

Imagine this:  an old white guy is elected President, with AOC as his running mate.  The old guy can no longer do the job, perhaps perishes, and AOC becomes President.  She immediately sounds the alarm:  the threat from climate change, the destruction of the earth, is imminent.  She shows the models and presents the science.  The media shouts “armageddon” day after after day, incessantly, with a parade of experts who agree.

AOC says that we knew this was coming and yet we did not prepare.  That we had ten years, but now there is no time left.  The public is whipped into fear and mass hysteria.  AOC declares a national emergency and a “War on Climate Change” and the people acquiesce.  She orders temporary measures to cut the use of carbon-based fuel: shuts down oil production; shuts down cruise ships; restricts airline flights; orders people not to drive unless it is essential; and shuts down all frivolous activities.  But the two-week “temporary” shutdown quickly turns into another month, and then another, with no end in sight.

People comply voluntarily.  “Everyone agrees” that this must be done.  But voluntary soon turns to mandatory.  Guidelines, when administered by bureaucrats, become arbitrary laws.  Because the economy is so interconnected, because all workers are essential, the economic impact begins to grow and spread.  Hundreds of thousands of workers are unemployed.  Businesses are bankrupted.  The effects ripple through the entire economy and cause a deep recession.  AOC promises to make everyone whole and initiates massive Federal spending, with Congress happily agreeing (it buys them votes, and would be so politically incorrect to question, let alone dissent).

The Federal government has no money except which it first takes from the people; the shutdown drastically reduces the money coming in.  The Federal government has no savings; they were already deep in debt.  The “Fed” was out of “ammunition”; interest rates had been held artificially low for years and they had already been doing bailouts and QE to keep the economy propped up.  So all of the AOC stimulus and Federal aid has to come from additional, excessive debt, or from what amounts to printing money out of thin air.  America wobbles on the verge of an unprecedented depression, perhaps total economic collapse.

– – – – –

Now try to imagine Fox News jumping on board with AOC in that scenario.  Not questioning the models.  Not presenting other perspectives and alternative views.  Not considering the consequences.  In fact, doing just the opposite – sounding the alarm and promoting the panic, actually encouraging the shut downs!   Unimaginable?  Many of us thought so.  Yet that is exactly what they did with this virus!

Tucker Carlson was one of the very first, sensationalizing how dangerous this could be, urging Federal action.  Within weeks, every Fox News anchor was on board, not only agreeing with the unprecedented step of shutting down the nation, but also with the dangerous, dictator-like experiment of quarantining people who were not sick!

That was, in fact, pretty much what communist China did.  Except in America it was to be  “guidelines”?  Voluntary?  Temporary?  No, it’s turning out to be mandatory.  And once that hysteria was in place, the momentum is to remain shutdown, especially from those who have acquired new powers.  “Flatten the curve” we did, but now the new goal seems to be “no new cases” (an impossible goal in any realistic time frame) or “until there is a vaccine.”  A vaccine, by the way, is no silver bullet; we have had seasonal flu vaccines for years and people still die.

Today at Fox, they repeat, “We all know that we had to do it” while at the same time scrambling to address how we avoid the inevitable economic consequences (which would have been so obvious to anyone who bothered to think about that before taking the leap).  But just like the AOC story, we have shut down oil production; shut down cruise ships; and restricted air travel and driving.  But we went even further, locking down a majority of the population, shuttering most businesses.  Now we have the unemployment and the bankruptcies.  And the politicians are making the ludicrous promise that no one will suffer financially.

So now Fox News folks are resorting to the CNN approach – attacking – complaining about a Governor who makes arbitrary rules, how awful that is.  Do you really expect any different when you make such a leap toward authoritarianism?  That’s what always happens when you replace the Rule of Law with the Laws of Rulers.  Why has Fox News not been interviewing Rush Limbaugh and Judge Napolitano and Lieutenant Dan Patrick and Doctor Ron Paul from the very outset?  Why are they arguing that some are “taking it too far” when they never should have been allowed to “take it” in the first place?

It was a mistake to shut down the country.  Because of economic repercussions, of course.  But also in our loss of liberties, another huge step toward an authoritarian America.  Not to mention that the deaths that result long-term are very likely to far exceed the death toll from the virus.  Especially if our economy collapses.  Or if we experience hyperinflation.  Or we we engage in a huge new hot war to “pull us out of the depression”.

What is so sad and disheartening now is the refusal of Fox News to admit that the shutdown was a mistake, or to even entertain the idea that it might have been.  I guess they are in CYA mode, just like so many politicians.  Instead, they continue to straddle the fence – “we all agree that we had to do it, but now we need to decide how best to open up.”  They continue to promote the theory that “if we hadn’t done it, it would have been much worse” – – when there is no valid data to support that (we’ll likely, eventually, prove that theory to be false).

Where are the models and the what-ifs and the projections about what might have happened if we had not shut down?  If we had Instead just issued the guidelines and encouraged people to act responsibly?  Even on Fox, that discussion seems to be off limits.

We were never going to stop this virus, because it is so contagious; they told us that from the beginning.  The bottom line is this:  if someone is afraid, has underlying health issues – in fact for for any reason at all – they have the option of self-isolating.  If they do, and if they sanitize incoming, wash their hands, and don’t touch their face, then they will not get the virus!  (Or at least the chances are so slim as to be statistically negligible.)  No one is stopping them!

But many people are willing to take the small risk.  After contact, there’s maybe a 50/50 chance of contracting the virus.  Of those that do get infected, only 4% will get seriously ill.  In other words 96% – ninety-six percent – will experience mild symptoms, or none at all.  The risk of dying from Covid-19 looks to be about the same as from the flu just a few years ago.  Less total deaths than from driving automobiles.

It is pure irony to see the “awful mainstream media” and Fox News on the same page!  Promoting mass hysteria, crazy models, and un-vetted “science”.  Let alone supporting a national lock down and lock up.  Ironic, too, that it is the Washington Post, of all people, now questioning these trillions of dollars of spending and debt.  Maybe their objectives really are no different?  This pandemic, and our response, is revealing the crumbling infrastructure of the American experiment and our Constitutional Republic.  Perhaps we were unprepared do defend against this latest virus (it is, after all, one of about 200), but neither was Fox News prepared to defend our liberty.

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Half Of Americans Don’t Trust Mainstream Media’s COVID-19 Coverage | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on March 22, 2020

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/half-americans-dont-trust-mainstream-medias-covid-19-coverage

Americans are split on whether to trust news media with information regarding the coronavirus outbreak, according to a new poll.

As Statista’s Willem Roper notes, a joint poll conducted by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist, shows that 47 percent of U.S. adults responded by saying “not very much” or “not at all” when asked how much they trusted news media with coronavirus information.

This poll also included questions asking how much Americans trusted President Donald Trump, with 60 percent saying they didn’t trust him with coronavirus information, and on public health experts, with 13 percent saying they had little to no trust.

Unsurprisingly, Americans views on the news media were split along partisan lines. For Democrats, only 33 percent said they had little to no trust in the news media. Republicans, however, responded at a substantial 60 percent on their lack of confidence in the news media handling coronavirus information. Independents were equally high in their skepticism at 47 percent

Infographic: Polarizing Views on Coronavirus Information from News Media | Statista
You will find more infographics at Statista
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PoliticalCartoons.com Cartoon

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Mass Dementia in the Western Establishment, by Diana Johnstone – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on January 12, 2020

“Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world” Trump declared “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

Ooops. What happened. Love of big boys toys and the deep state happened.

https://www.unz.com/article/mass-dementia-in-the-western-establishment/

• July 20, 2018

Where to begin to analyze the madness of mainstream media in reaction to the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki? By focusing on the individual, psychology has neglected the problem of mass insanity, which has now overwhelmed the United States establishment, its mass media and most of its copycat European subsidiaries. The individuals may be sane, but as a herd they are ready to leap off the cliff.

For the past two years, a particular power group has sought to explain away its loss of power – or rather, its loss of the Presidency, as it still holds a predominance of institutional power – by creation of a myth. Mainstream media is known for its herd behavior, and in this case the editors, commentators, journalists have talked themselves into a story that initially they themselves could hardly take seriously.

Donald Trump was elected by Russia?

On the face of it, this is preposterous. Okay, the United States can manage to rig elections in Honduras, or Serbia, or even Ukraine, but the United States is a bit too big and complex to leave the choice of the Presidency to a barrage of electronic messages totally unread by most voters. If this were so, Russia wouldn’t need to try to “undermine our democracy”. It would mean that our democracy was already undermined, in tatters, dead. A standing corpse ready to be knocked over by a tweet.

Even if, as is alleged without evidence, an army of Russian bots (even bigger than the notorious Israeli army of bots) was besieging social media with its nefarious slanders against poor innocent Hillary Clinton, this could determine an election only in a vacuum, with no other influences in the field. But there was a lot of other stuff going on in the 2016 election, some for Trump and some for Hillary, and Hillary herself scored a crucial own goal by denigrating millions of Americans as “deplorables” because they didn’t fit into her identity politics constituencies.

The Russians could do nothing to build support for Trump, and there is not a hint of evidence that they tried. They might have done something to harm Hillary, because there was so much there: the private server emails, the Clinton foundation, the murder of Moammer Gaddafi, the call for a no-fly zone in Syria … they didn’t have to invent it. It was there. So was the hanky panky at the Democratic National Committee, on which the Clintonite accusations focus, perhaps to cause everyone to forget much worse things.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Ten insane, completely irrational things millions of Americans believe as we enter the 2020s – NaturalNews.com

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2020

https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-12-31-ten-insane-completely-irrational-things-millions-of-americans-believe-2020.html

…So here’s a list of 10 totally insane things that millions of Americans believe right now as we enter this decade of insanity. Hint: Given all the 5G radiation, brain damaging fluoride in the water, heavy metals in the food and hormones in food packaging, it’s certain that the insanity is only going to get worse, so buckle up and prepare for life in a mad, mad world.

Insane belief #1: Men can become women by wishing it so

Nearly all Leftists literally believe there are more than two genders and that a person of one gender can magically transform into a completely different gender just by wishing. (See Gender.news for many examples.)

Yes, Leftists now believe that men can get pregnant and have babies, and children are being taught that there are an infinite number of genders when, in reality, there are only two. By the same token, children are also being taught that getting the right answer on a test question isn’t important anymore… it’s how you feel about your answer that’s the new “reality.”

Insane belief #2: Stock market crashes are a thing of the past

This belief afflicts nearly all the masses, the oblivious retail investors who stupidly think their pension funds and mutual fund investments will keep growing forever, with no retractions, corrections or crashes.

So they buy and buy even as we are in such overbought territory that all the professional investors are selling everything and heading to their cabins in the woods with bars of gold.

In 2020, the typical American is now in “full FOMO” mode (Fear Of Missing Out) and is almost fanatically plunging all assets into the stock market in a desperate effort to chase the irrational exuberance to its final, disastrous end.

When the day of reckoning comes for these markets, the masses will be destroyed. But if the Fed plays along with more money creation and spontaneous liquidity, that day may yet be delayed until perhaps 2021 (or not).

Insane Belief #3: The Earth will be destroyed in 10 years if we don’t stop using fossil fuels

AOC reminds us that we now have a clinically retarded lunatic as a member of Congress, and she quite literally believes the entire planet will cease to exist in just ten years if we don’t immediately stop burning fossil fuels. But she’s not alone: The incessant fearmongering of the journo-terrorism media has managed to transform all sorts of previously rational people into raving climate lunatics who, when they speak, sound dumber than dirt.

If we were to halt the use of fossil fuels, of course, the global food supply would almost immediately collapse, leading to mass starvation, disease and a population implosion. Perhaps this is what the globalists really want, it seems, since they keep demanding it at every turn.

What’s new in all this is the fact that climate lunatics are now terrorizing children, then holding them up as “warriors” to fight for “climate justice” when, in reality, they’re just terrorized, abused young people who will one day come to harshly resent how they were exploited and psychologically terrorized by left-wing lunatics for political gain.

Insane Belief #4: A human baby that’s born alive isn’t really “alive” until the mother decides she wants to keep it

According to the same lunatic Leftists who have decided that men can somehow become women by wishing for a sex change, human babies that are born alive and healthy aren’t really “alive” until the mother decides she wants to keep that baby. Until that moment comes, the mother, the doctor and apparently anyone in the room with a baseball bat can legally murder that child in the name of “progressivism,” Leftists insist.

This is the new culture of the mainstream Left: Infanticide and violence against human babies. Celebrated and applauded by all Democrats.

And they justify it all by claiming that Trump is bad, therefore murdering babies makes it all even, somehow. Yes, it’s insane, but this is how the Left thinks. And it brings up the question: If these people are willing to murder their own children, do you really think they will hesitate to murder their political opponents if given the opportunity?

Keep that in mind the next time some baby-killing Governor (Northam, anyone?) announces he’s coming for your guns. Heck, they probably need your guns to help them execute all the children they plan to kill in the hospitals, while Michelle Wolf celebrates how killing babies makes her feel “like God.”

Insane Belief #5: Flat Earth

Yes, in the year 2020, we still have millions of Americans who quite literally believe the Earth is flat… like a disc floating in space. They also believe the sun and moon are discs, and that satellites don’t exist, and that gravity isn’t real.

And they are rather fanatical about these beliefs, convincing themselves that there is a global conspiracy to silence the truth about the “flat Earth” in order to prevent humans from discovering the edges where you can step off into outer space… or something.

I recently posted a detailed science article explaining what Flat Earthers get wrong about gravity and elliptical orbits, but it doesn’t matter what you say to them: They’re happy to redefine Kepler’s laws of motion, or Newton’s laws, or Einstein’s equations, or whatever it takes to pretend the Earth is a flat disc and all space flight was faked on a green screen stage in Hollywood.

At least the Flat Earthers aren’t fascists who demand we give up combustion engines or something, like AOC. Mostly, the Flat Earth movement is all about a “thought experiment,” but they aren’t dangerous like Leftists who want to murder children and collapse entire economies. If we had Flat Earthers in congress instead of climate lunatics, we’d actually be better off, come to think of it. And elections would be far more entertaining.

Insane Belief #6: All vaccines are safe, because somebody on the news said so

It’s amazing how many people still believe vaccines are safe, even when the federal government itself publishes vaccine damage statistics and details of the billions of dollars in payouts that have been made to the families of vaccine-damaged children. You can download the data yourself at VAERS.HHS.GOV.

Yes, vaccines kill children and adults, too. Vaccines use toxic ingredients, and they contain the genetically modified DNA of aborted humans who were altered to activate cancer genes.

Yes, the CDC openly admits vaccines contain neurotoxic substances such as formaldehyde, mercury, squalene and aluminum. There is no debate that vaccines carry risk of harm and manage to harm a great number of children each year, yet many American adults who consider themselves to be “informed” have no clue of this reality.

That’s because anyone who talks about vaccine safety is immediately de-platformed from all the major tech platforms. And that’s happening because the vaccine deep state is run by the same CIA that runs the tech giants, and they’re using vaccines as a depopulation bioweapon against humanity, right now at this very moment. If you’re curious to see the overwhelming evidence that proves this assertion, check out this article and video.

Insane Belief #7: The mainstream media tells the truth, or at least tries to

Of all the really stupid beliefs held by modern Americans, the belief that the mainstream media is even attempting to tell the truth is among the most insane. It’s not just that CNN, the NYT, the WashPost, MSNBC, etc., get every major story wrong, it’s the fact that they intend to lie to their audiences.

For years, they’ve peddled false conspiracies about Russia and election meddling, always running cover for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and the deep state, while knowingly publishing damned lies about Trump and his supporters.

The corporate media in America is, plainly stated, openly engaged in criminal treason against the United States of America, yet there are still a (shrinking number of) morons who can somehow watch CNN’s Brian Stelter and not laugh out loud or puke all over themselves.

I’m not sure which is shrinking faster: CNN’s audience, or the brains of the remaining few who somehow still watch CNN.

Insane Belief #8: Food isn’t medicine, and “real” medicine can only be acquired from pharmacies

Despite all the remarkable research about healing foods, nutrients, disease prevention, superfoods and “miraculous” food cures, there are still people — many of them are doctors — who think the only “real” medicine comes from a pharmacy.

Somehow, we are entering the decade of 2020 while millions of people still carry a belief system from the 1950s, when it was widely believed there were just four vitamins, and food was thought to be useless in promoting good health.

Now, of course, we know the truth: Pharmaceuticals are fake medicine, and food is the real medicine. If you’re not preventing disease and healing yourself through food, you’re not really up to speed on what modern science has documented about food as medicine.

In fact, we cover these breakthroughs every day at sites like FoodScience.news or SuperfoodsNews.com. Check them out to stay informed and prevent disease on a daily basis.

Insane Belief #9: All white people are evil, and the only “experts” in the world are children

This is a two-fer: The insane, delusional Left has now convinced millions of people that all white people are evil, but also that children are the new “experts” on things like gun control and climate change.

Yep, adults are stupid and children have all the answers. Is this a freaking Disney movie? Nope, it’s the new narrative of the retarded Left, which thinks a 16-year-old girl whose mother claims she can literally see carbon dioxide — an invisible gas — is now a more credible “expert” than a 30-year scientist and expert in atmospheric chemistry.

And if you put up a poster that says, “It’s okay to be white,” you are immediately accused of hate crimes. Yes, it’s okay to be black, and it’s okay to be brown, but it’s never okay to be white in today’s insane “progressive” society defined by left-wing bigotry, racism and hate.

And if you’re Asian, the entire left-wing university system will brazenly discriminate against you for being too smart, making sure they can usher in a bunch of unqualified minorities who can’t compete with Asians when it comes to cognitive tests, so they’re given bonus points for “social justice,” whatever that means.

As we enter the 2020s, I do want to welcome all the Asians to the club, where we are all called “racists” by the very libtard lunatics whose policies are, by definition, the most racist of all. Just remember, if you don’t agree with everything a Leftist says, you are engaged in hate speech.

Insane Belief #10: The world as you know it is sustainable and normal, and nothing will collapse because that’s unimaginable

Finally, the really big false belief is summarized by the phrase, “normalcy bias.” People think the world will always operate as it does now because that’s all they know. They are incapable of imagining anything else, such as a grid down collapse, an economic collapse, World War III, a civil war on the streets of America, a food collapse followed by mass starvation, visitation by aliens and so on.

So they lead their pointless lives as sheeple living out some sort of mad experiment in shared insanity, oblivious to the reality that almost everything they think is permanent is actually headed for collapse.

Much of what currently functions in the world is entirely unsustainable, and that means it must come to an end.

Endless money creation must come to an end. Government debt spending must come to an end. The loss of fossil water to irrigate food crops must come to an end. The ecological destruction of the planet will eventually collapse the food supply on which we depend. The pensions will collapse once the market corrects. The dollar will eventually be abandoned as a failed fiat currency. The nuclear power plants will eventually fail and melt down, perhaps following a severe earthquake that already places multiple nuke plants in California in the direct line of fire.

You get the point. The history of our world has rarely seen as long a run of peace and prosperity as the one we are currently experiencing. Most of human history has been punctuated by genocide, democide, world wars and economic collapse. The fool thinks that’s all “history” now, and modern humans finally have it all figured out, but the wise person knows that history repeats itself.

The Fourth Turning isn’t a myth, it’s a cycle…

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Congress is Trump’s Co-Conspirator Against Liberty

Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2019

This hypocrisy extends beyond foreign policy. Many Democrats who claim that President Trump is both a fascist and mentally unhinged are eager to ensure President Trump can continue to conduct warrantless surveillance on every American by reauthorizing Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/december/09/congress-is-trump-s-co-conspirator-against-liberty/

Written by Ron Paul

Imagine that President Trump spent his phone call with the Ukrainian president threatening to withhold military aid unless the Ukrainian government agreed to use the money to purchase weapons from a US manufacturer. Does anyone seriously think that foreign service professionals and deep state operatives would be so shocked and offended by Trump’s request that they would launch efforts to impeach him? Would Congress view this as “high crimes and misdemeanors” or applaud Trump for carrying out one of modern presidents’ supposedly most important jobs — acting as salesmen for the American military-industrial complex?

This hypothetical shows that impeachment is not about President Trump’s abuse of power. Instead, it is an attempt to make sure President Trump, and all future presidents, confine their abuses of power to items that advance the agenda of the political establishment.

President Trump’s most consequential abuses of power have been met with the full approval of the majority in Congress, the mainstream media, and the deep state. For example, when President Trump launched military action in Syria without obtaining a congressional declaration of war there were no calls for his impeachment. Instead, most members of Congress were perfectly happy to let stand unchallenged President Trump’s claim that the 2001 authorization for use of military force —a limited grant of authority to act against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks — gave him the authority to launch military action against a government that had nothing to do with the September 11th attacks. The only times Congress rebukes President Trump’s foreign policy is when he speaks favorably about pursuing peaceful relations with Russia or ending US involvement in no-win military conflicts.

This hypocrisy extends beyond foreign policy. Many Democrats who claim that President Trump is both a fascist and mentally unhinged are eager to ensure President Trump can continue to conduct warrantless surveillance on every American by reauthorizing Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

Trump-opposing progressives in Congress are also eager to give President Trump new authority to violate the Second Amendment. Even those progressives who say they believe Trump is a deranged fascist did not object when he endorsed “red flag” laws that give the government power to, as President Trump put it, “take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Perhaps the most sickening example of Trump’s congressional opponents’ hypocrisy is how many of those fretting about the safety of the Urkrainegate ”whistleblower” are silent about, or supportive of, the Trump administration’s complicity in the inhumane treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. They are also silent about the US government throwing Chelsea Manning back into jail because she refuses to help the US prosecution of Mr. Assange.

All modern presidents have exceeded constitutional limitations on their power and thus could have, and maybe should have, been impeached. The reason they were not impeached is that a majority of Congress members support allowing presidents to wage war abroad and destroy liberty at home without being “hamstrung” by Congress. The only real dispute among the political class is which party should wield the levers of power.

Restoring constitutional limits on government power and thus protecting liberty depend on spreading ideas and building a movement. Our lost freedom will only be restored when presidents and members of Congress fear being “impeached” at the ballot box for committing high crimes and misdemeanors against peace, prosperity, and liberty.

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Misuse and Abuse of Power in Alton - Girard At Large

 

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Ex CBS Investigative Journalist Explains How Mainstream Media Brainwashes The Masses – Collective Evolution

Posted by M. C. on November 29, 2019

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/11/25/ex-cbs-investigative-journalist-explains-how-mainstream-media-brainwashes-the-masses/

In Brief

  • The Facts:Award winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson shows how “astroturf,” or fake grassroots movements, funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort mainstream media messages.
  • Reflect On:The printing press and mainstream media in general is quite young. We are living in an interesting time where the majority of people are starting to see through many lies, and it has paradigm shifting implications.

Ever since Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program to infiltrate mainstream media and spread disinformation and propaganda for the purposes of controlling the perception of the masses on several different topics, people have been waking up. That was decades ago, and today, it’s easy to see how mainstream media has been completely compromised by governments, intelligence agencies and corporations. We know this from several documents and several whistleblowers, as well as multiple mainstream media journalists. For example, a declassified document from the CIA archives in the form of a letter from a CIA task force addressed to the Director of the CIA details the close relationship that exists between the CIA and mainstream media and academia. The document states that the CIA task force “now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation,” and that “this has helped us turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success” stories,’ and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others.”

This is often why in the west, when it comes to the topic of war and terrorism, for example, we see a completely different narrative that goes against the narrative of multiple independent media outlets. Mainstream media has been used to justify the infiltration of other countries, like Syria, with ‘fake news.’ There are even whistleblowers from mainstream media in that realm as well, for example, Riam Dalati, a well known BBC Syria correspondent is one of many who created awareness about the fact that the supposed gas attacks in Douma were “staged.” You can read more about that here

Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, who was a top German journalist and editor and has been for more than two decades, went on the record stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also mentioning that noncompliance would result in him losing his job. (source)

Again, there multiple examples, as well as several examples of fake footage.

In the below eyeopening talk, veteran investigative journalist (and Former CBS NEWS investigative reporter) Sharyl Attkisson shows how “astroturf,” or fake grassroots movements, funded by political, corporate, or other special interests very effectively manipulate and distort media messages.

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The Takeaway

Edward Bernays, known as the father of public relations, sums it up best:

 

he conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. (Propaganda)

Be seeing you

Index of /2/2m0cku/my own and funny pics

 

 

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NPR Poll: More Americans trust Trump administration than Congress or mainstream media

Posted by M. C. on November 24, 2019

When asked the same question regarding trust about the media, 69 percent said they trusted our news “not very much/not at all.”

https://www.thedailysheeple.com/npr-poll-more-americans-trust-trump-administration-than-congress-or-mainstream-media/

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll released Thursday shows that more Americans trust the Trump administration than the media and Congress as a whole.

“The poll of 1,123 Americans was conducted with live telephone Oct. 3 through Oct. 8, 2019,” according to NPR and asked a series of questions related to President Donald J. Trump’s presidency. When asked, “How much do you trust Congress: A great deal, a good amount, not very much, not at all?” 66 percent of Americans said they trust Congress “not very much/not at all.” 31 percent said they trusted Congress a “great deal/a good amount.”

When asked the same question regarding trust about the media, 69 percent said they trusted our news “not very much/not at all.” 29 percent of Americans said they trusted the media.

For the Trump administration, these numbers faired better. 40 percent of Americans said they trusted the 45th president’s executive branch. 59 percent said they distrusted the administration.

 

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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Now That We’ve Incentivized Sociopaths–Guess What Happens Next

Posted by M. C. on November 13, 2019

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/11/now-that-weve-incentivized-sociopaths.html

Charles Hugh Smith

As long as central banks create and distribute trillions in conscience-free credit to conscience-free financiers and corporations, the incentives for sociopathy only increase.
“Sociopath” is a word we now encounter regularly in the mainstream media, but what does it mean? Here is a list of 16 traits, many of which are visible in lionized corporate and political leaders and entrepreneurs.
One key trait is a lack of moral responsibility or conscience; the sociopath feels no remorse if he/she takes advantage of people or exploits them.
Sociopaths are masters of superficial charm, intelligence and confidence, and adept at massaging or misrepresenting reality up to and including outright lying to persuade others or get their way.
Like all psychological syndromes (manic depression, autism, bipolar disorder, etc.), there is a wide spectrum of sociopathological traits, some of which may offer some adaptive benefits (and hence their continued presence in the human genome). In other words, an individual can have a few of the traits in greater or lesser proportions.
Thus the modern BBC Sherlock Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) describes himself as a “high-functioning sociopath” (though many contest this diagnosis of the original Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories).
Anyone who has read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs can readily see manifestations of sociopathy in Jobs: his famous “reality distortion field,” his refusal to accept that he’d fathered a daughter, his lack of empathy, his wild emotional swings (from verbal abuse to weeping), his dietary extremes, his charm, so quickly turned on or off, his uneven parenting, and so on. His obsessive-compulsive behavior was also on full display. Yet Jobs is lauded and even worshiped as a genius and unparalleled entrepreneur. Was this the result of his sociopathological traits, or something that arose despite them?
The ledger of costs and benefits of Jobs’ output is weighted by the global benefits of the products he shepherded to market and the hundreds of billions of dollars in sales and net worth he generated for investors while the head of Apple. Though narcissistic in many ways (with the resulting negative effects on many of his intimates), Jobs was clearly focused on creating “insanely great” products that would benefit customers and users. Despite his sociopathological traits, there is no evidence he set out to deceive anyone with the objective of exploiting their good will or belief in his vision to skim billions of dollars from unwary investors.
But the ledgers of others manifesting sociopathy are far less beneficial, as the billions of dollars they generated were in essence a form of fraud.
The rise and fall of WeWork is a recent textbook example of sociopathy reaping enormous financial gains for the sociopaths without creating any actual value. There are plenty of media accounts of the founders’ excesses (including the goal of becoming the world’s first trillionaire), some of which we might have expected to raise flags in venture capitalists, board members, etc., but these traits were overlooked in the rush for all involved to garner billions of dollars in fees and net worth when WeWork went public.
This example (among many) illustrates that sociopathy is incentivized in our socio-political-economic system, and sociopathic “winners” are lionized as epitomes of ambitious success. (The entire charade of the stock market rising due to Federal Reserve-enabled stock buybacks is an institutionalized example of sociopathy.)
Correspondent Tom D. recently summarized the core dynamic and consequence of this systemic incentivization of sociopathy:
I’ve been a successful business owner, but I’m not a sociopath–I deliver value to my customers, my investors, and I don’t move forward if I see anyone being substantially hurt by my actions.
My peers and I look at organizations such as WeWorks, see the rewards reaped by the sociopathic leaders, and realize we are at a constitutional disadvantage working within such a system.
I could never conceive of taking a $700-900m payday at the expense of investors for whom I’ve generated no value whatsoever.
I simply could not do it.
If ‘out-sociopathing’ the sociopaths is what it takes to ‘succeed’ in todays business climate– I’ll fail.
So I don’t try.
From the sociopath’s standpoint, that’s probably a feature not a bug–one that helps keep effective competition out of the marketplace.
I wonder how much of civilizational decline is simply due to good people accepting their lot and opting out.
If the system incentivizes conscience-free sociopaths more than it incentivizes those creating real value, the system will eventually fall into the equivalent of Gresham’s law (“bad money drives out good money”): the con-men and fraudsters will drive out entrepreneurs with a conscience who create real value for customers, investors and society at large.
If we look at recent IPOs and compare them to the Apple IPO, it seems we’ve already reached that point. Apple went public as a highly profitable company. Uber, Lyft, Beyond Meat and WeWork (if their IPO fraud hadn’t been revealed) are all unprofitable, in some cases losing billions of dollars with little prospect for eventual profits.
Venture capital folks explain this by noting that the flood of central bank credit-money-creation has generated trillions of dollars of liquid capital seeking “the next big thing” that will “disrupt” existing models and therefore generate billions in profits.
This pinpoints one key source of the incentivization of sociopaths: central banks’ creation of trillions of dollars of conscience-free capital seeking a quick profit anywhere on the planet, by any means available.
Conscience-free capital is an easy mark for a conscience-free sociopath. It’s a marriage made in heaven, a perfect match.
Those with a conscience are essentially squeezed out of the system. The choice is binary: either play and lose or opt out.
I’ve written about “opting out” since 2009, since it was one of the few options available to commoners in the final decline of the Western Roman Empire. If we feel we’re at a systemic disadvantage, i.e. the system is rigged against us, opting out makes much more sense than sacrificing oneself in a fruitless battle to stay alive in a system that incentivizes amoral sociopaths.
If we consider what generates outsized success in our rapidly changing economy, we find a variety of factors supporting “winner take most” asymmetric gains. As economist Michael Spence has observed, those who develop new business models earn outsized gains because new forms of capital and labor that are scarce create the most value.
Many of these new business models disintermediate existing models, obsoleting entire layers of middlemen and management.
Netflix is a good example: the move from mailing CDs to streaming content obsoleted cable companies. Now Disney is disrupting Netflix by launching its own streaming service at $6.99 a month, offering content that cable subscribers had to pay $60+ a month to access via a “premium” cable add-on, most of which they didn’t even use.
In contrast, WeWork sold itself as a “tech innovator” when in fact it was simply a commercial real estate packager, leasing large spaces and chopping them up into small spaces with common areas and a few services.
How does our system incentivize sociopathy? By focusing exclusively on short-term gains reaped from IPOs (initial public offerings) and by blindly seeking “the next disruptor that will generate billions,” the system is easy prey for charming sociopaths who can tell a good (if not quite truthful) story.
The amoral sociopath with the story attracts amoral sociopaths in venture capital, banking and politics, as these fields are all focused on short-term, outsized, quickly skimmed gains, regardless of the consequences to investors or society at large.
What would change this incentivization of sociopathy? Ending the Federal Reserve’s delivery of trillions of dollars in conscience-free capital to sociopaths and limiting the VC-IPO flim-flam machine would be a start, but given Wall Street’s dependence on these profits and the millions the Street gives to political campaigns, this is politically unfeasible. Any such regulation that reaches Congress will be watered down or larded with loopholes.
There may be no way to excise the incentives for sociopathy, because the incentives all favor the sociopaths’ most fertile ground: the Federal Reserve’s money spigot of nearly free money for the most sociopathological financiers and corporations; amoral, conscience-free greed; the worship of short-term gains, regardless of consequences, and the extreme profitability of rigged games and The Big Con PR (“we’re only evil when it’s profitable, which is, well, all the time”.)
As long as central banks create and distribute trillions in conscience-free credit to conscience-free financiers and corporations, the incentives for sociopathy only increase, and the incentives for everyone else to opt out increase proportionately.
What happens next? The dead wood of sociopathy is ignited by a random lightning strike, and the entire financial system (and the economy it feeds) burns to the ground in an uncontrollable conflagration of blowback, consequence and karma.
Be seeing you
Fox Guest Apologizes For Comparing Hillary To Herpes. Why? – Def-Con News

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51% of Americans Want to END Free Speech – The Organic Prepper

Posted by M. C. on October 28, 2019

57% of those surveyed wanted to see the government crackdown on newspapers and TV stations that published “biased, inflammatory or false” content. 54% wanted journalists punished with a fine or a ticket, while 46% felt they should face jail time.

They differentiated between the mainstream media, who they felt “check facts, even if they are occasionally wrong or slanted” and alternative media, whom they opined “allow anyone to say anything.” 36% wanted to see a government agency reviewing alternative media content and 47% did not want to see that happen.

How can anyone with functioning brain cells believe government can fix anything?

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/americans-give-up-freedom-of-speech/

by Daisy Luther

Of all the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution, the First Amendment is arguably the most important. And despite the fact that we are country built on glorious dissent, a poll undertaken by the Campaign for Free Speech found that more than 51% of Americans are ready to give up the rights guaranteed by that amendment, deeming it “outdated.”

A Quick Primer on the First Amendment

First things first (pun intended), most folks don’t even know what the First Amendment protects.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The basis of freedom lies within that small paragraph. If you want to be able to access information other than that which is provided by the government, or be able to speak out when you believe that the government is in the wrong without fear of governmental prosecution, then you should be utterly horrified that more than half of Americans are ready to just get rid of it.

But that might be because a whopping majority of Americans don’t understand the First Amendment. CFS reports:

80% don’t actually know what the First Amendment really protects. Those polled believed this statement is true: “The First Amendment allows anyone to say their opinion no matter what, and they are protected by law from any consequences of saying those thoughts or opinions.”

It’s actually not true. The First Amendment prevents the government from punishing you for your speech (with exceptions such as yelling “fire” in a crowded area to induce panic).

But more broadly, freedom of speech does not mean you are protected from social consequences for your speech. You may have the right to say something extreme or hateful and not get thrown in jail, but others in society have the right to shun you. (source)

This is something we’ve mentioned repeatedly here: just because you have the “right” to say something, it doesn’t mean that others don’t have the “right” to think you’re a terrible person and no longer do business with you. The freedom to say something doesn’t free you from the repercussions of what you say. It just means you can’t be prosecuted for it.

Here’s what the Campaign for Free Speech’s survey found.

Despite (or maybe because of) not understanding the First Amendment, 51% believed that the First Amendment is outdated and needs to be rewritten to “reflect the cultural norms of today.” Nearly half of those surveyed (48%) believed that “hate speech” should be illegal, with half of those people considering jail time a reasonable punishment. The poll did not define “hate speech,” leaving it up to the respondent.

Bob Lystad, the executive director of the Campaign for Free Speech (CFS) told the Washington Beacon that “free speech is under more threat than previously believed.”

“The findings are frankly extraordinary…Our free speech rights and our free press rights have evolved well over 200 years, and people now seem to be rethinking them.” (source)

More than 60% of those surveyed wanted to see free speech curbed in some way.

Of the 1,004 respondents, young people were the most likely to support curbing free expression and punishing those who engage in “hate speech.” Nearly 60 percent of Millennials—respondents between the ages of 21 and 38—agreed that the Constitution “goes too far in allowing hate speech in modern America” and should be rewritten, compared to 48 percent of Gen Xers and 47 percent of Baby Boomers. A majority of Millennials also supported laws that would make “hate speech” a crime—of those supporters, 54 percent said violators should face jail time.  (source)

And since “hate speech” is such an arbitrary term dependent upon the whims of popular culture in many cases, that’s some pretty alarming stuff.

More alarming still are opinions on the free press.

Here at OP, we point out the shortcomings, biases, and inflammatory reporting of the mainstream media all the time. But that doesn’t mean we want to see them silenced.

That’s not the case for many of the respondents of CFS’s poll.

57% of those surveyed wanted to see the government crackdown on newspapers and TV stations that published “biased, inflammatory or false” content. 54% wanted journalists punished with a fine or a ticket, while 46% felt they should face jail time.

They differentiated between the mainstream media, who they felt “check facts, even if they are occasionally wrong or slanted” and alternative media, whom they opined “allow anyone to say anything.” 36% wanted to see a government agency reviewing alternative media content and 47% did not want to see that happen.

We believe that the alternative media is an important balance in this day and age of constant propaganda and that the attacks on alternative media support the fact that this type of independent journalism threatens the establishment. I’ve gone so far as to say that the destruction of alternative media and unpopular opinions can be likened to virtual book burning, a terrifying comparison for those who are familiar with the history of censorship.

68% of those polled wanted to see restrictions placed on social media speech.

Facebook was a particular topic of contention. (Beginning on page 13 of the survey.)

38% of respondents believed all speech should be allowed on the platform while 49% felt that “Facebook should monitor and restrict offensive speech and views.”

There are specific topics that rose to the top of the list of things that people wanted to see restricted on social media:

  • Racist content: 52%
  • Neo-Nazi content: 50%
  • Radical Islamic content: 46%
  • Holocaust denial content: 35%
  • Anti-vaccination content: 20%
  • Climate change denial content: 18%

Facebook and other social media outlets have taken great strides toward making the internet an echo chamber with the purge of alternative media accounts, the demonetization of alternative media, and widespread censorship.

Social media itself may be to blame for the shift against the First Amendment.

Lystad cites an incident in which some college students recorded themselves shouting racial slurs at people of color and the video went viral.

Lystad said such incidents and the rise of social media may be behind the increased willingness of Americans to curb speech rights.

“I think [our findings] are fueled in large part because of a rise of hate speech, but traditionally, hate speech is protected in the First Amendment,” Lystad said. “The Supreme Court has upheld that principle time and time again.”

“Hate speech should be condemned, but legally, the answer to speech we don’t like is more speech, not censorship,” he said. “Our primary focus is education, and to help people better understand the First Amendment, free speech, free press, and why it’s so vital to our democracy.” (source)

When there is no free press, there is no free thought.

If people can only access one government-approved point of view, freedom is dead. The free press, the freedom to speak our minds and not be prosecuted, and the freedom to peacefully dissent are all the very foundation on which liberty is built.

We’re far more restricted than we were decades ago and the trend seems to be taking us downhill into complete censorship faster and faster. But the answer isn’t more legislation because as we learned by the Patriot Act (anything but patriotic) and the Affordable Care Act (far from affordable for most Americans) when the government gets involved, the results are generally to the benefit of the government and its cronies, and quite the opposite of how they’re portrayed.

What’s the answer?

It’s simple. Learn to scroll past things with which you disagree or even engage in a productive discussion. Stop tattling on one another over words. Quit being a crybaby because somebody said a mean thing on the internet.

You can choose not to engage in circles with which you disagree, but trying to shut them down only leads to censorship.

Free speech and free press are the only antidotes to propaganda. You may not like hateful people or anti-vaxxers or voters of a different ilk, but when you silence them, you have to know that you’re opening the door to be silenced yourself when your line of thinking becomes unpopular.

Then you’re looking at a world with only one point of view – the approved point of view of the government. Selco has warned us what happens when that world occurs and we need to look no further than China to see that world in action today.

What do you think?

What do you think about this? Are you surprised or is it what you expected? I think that the end of free speech and free press would be the end of our country as we know it. I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments.​​

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