Tag: media

Liars Protest Truth

The BBC and the British government are offended by Twitter accurately describing the British Broadcasting Corporation as “government-funded media”:

Elon Musk has risked a row with the BBC by labelling it as ‘government-funded media’ on Twitter.

The Corporation is mainly funded by British taxpayers, who pay a £159-a-year licence fee.

Although the government sets how much the licence fee is, not everyone has to pay it, and households pay directly.

When someone clicks on the BBC’s new label, it brings them to a page about government accounts and state-affiliated media accounts. Twitter described state-affiliated media accounts as: ‘Outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.’

The page does not include a definition for its ‘government-funded media’ label.

A BBC spokesperson said: ‘We are speaking to Twitter to resolve this issue as soon as possible. The BBC is, and always has been, independent. We are funded by the British public through the licence fee.’

There is nothing “independent” about the BBC. If a British person does not pay his licence fee, it is a criminal act with a penalty that averages £176 with a legal maximum of £1,000. The fact that the tax is paid directly to the corporation rather than going through the government does not change the fact that the funding for the BBC is imposed on the British public by His Majesty’s Government with the power of the law.

In summary, Twitter is entirely correct to describe the BBC as “government-funded media”, because without the threat of government force, the funding would not be provided to the corporation.

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They Do Hire Liars

Peter King is outraged – outraged – by a reader’s assertion that anyone who works for the saintly organization known as The Washington Post should not be blindly trusted at all times.

The Washington Post, one of the most trusted news sources in the world, doesn’t hire liars with a history of lying on their resumes, and it does not send liars to cover the Minnesota riots, and it does not send liars to cover the war in Ukraine, and it does not appoint a liar as national criminal justice reporter. It’s fashionable in 2023 America for people who don’t like the news that is being reported to do what you do here—denigrate excellent reporting by simply saying it is a lie, or to say that the reporter is a liar. What Klemko wrote about Memphis is the rock-solid, and disturbing, truth.

Yeah, so, about that… Literally the next day, The Washington Post’s “star fact-checker” was caught in a blatant lie in an attempt to claim George Soros had not funded a district attorney to whom he donated more than one million dollars.

Twitter users corrected the Washington Post’s star fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, when he attempted to write off the claim that liberal financier George Soros had funded the Manhattan district attorney who indicted former US President Donald Trump as ‘misleading’.

Kessler, who rated the ‘incendiary claim’ that Soros funded Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg ‘three Pinocchios’ in a Saturday fact-check, accused the Trump campaign and other Republicans who echoed the factoid of “being slippery” and conjuring “stereotypes of rich Jewish financiers secretly controlling events.”

However, his fact-check also admitted the claim was “technically correct,” a caveat he appeared to discount in his final decision to award it the triple-Pinocchio rating. Twitter users pounced, appending a community note adding context to Kessler’s own admission of truth.

Clowns protect clowns in Clown World. And they’re all lying. So stick to sports, big guy.

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The Persecution of Ricky Vaughn

The US federal government is shattering the Constitution and inadvertently revealing the existence of the surveillance state in its persecution of a memelord.

Last month, Revolver profiled the Biden Administration’s persecution of former Twitter anon Doug Mackey, who was a famous pro-Trump voice back in 2016 under the moniker of Ricky Vaughn…

In its latest filings, the DOJ reveals that one of the group chats it is currently using as evidence against Mackey contained a person who is now working with the FBI as a federal informant. According to the government, the “Confidential Witness” (or CW) was a pro-Trump, “alt right” leader who pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy to deprive civil rights charges that Mackey faces, and is now collaborating with the government.

In its filings, the government declines to say what CW’s current role with the government is, except that he is “presently engaged in proactive investigations, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and may engage in additional investigations in the future.” Based on that statement, the government is asking that CW’s identity be kept secret, and that Mackey’s defense team be barred from asking any questions about CW’s current work.

This is a much bolder request than it might seem to the legally uninitiated. The Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees the right of any criminal defendant to “be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Like most constitutional rights, this law is not absolute, but limitations to it have historically been very limited. Courts have long disallowed anonymous witnesses due to the Sixth Amendment, except in extreme circumstances involving violent, organized criminal organizations with the capacity to retaliate against witnesses and their families. And even then, courts have restricted the right to testify anonymously. For instance, in 2014, the U.S. 10th Circuit said this, about the possible danger of retaliation from the ruthless Salvadoran street gang MS-13.

“…a generalized statement about danger — such as anyone who testifies against one of [MS 13’s] members faces danger from [MS-13] — would be insufficient to show that a threat against a witness was actual and not a result of conjecture.” [United States v. Gutierrez de Lopez, 761 F.3d 1123, 1140 (10th Cir. 2014)]

But now, in the Mackey case, the Biden DOJ asserts that its witness’s identity must be hidden, because if not, he might face, wait for it… harassment on the Internet!

CW through the CW’s internet moniker(s) occupied a prominent position within the online, alt-right community. In that capacity, the CW participated in, among other things, the online harassment of individuals with whom the CW maintained political disagreements, including by encouraging the CW’s followers on Twitter and other social media to amplify the harassment. In this case, the government anticipates that the CW will provide inculpatory evidence against the defendant and other individuals who, like the CW, had engaged in such harassing behavior. As such, the government anticipates that, if the CW’s true identity were to become known, then those with whom the CW associated online would likely engage in such behavior towards the CW. Revealing the CW’s true identity would also likely lead to the public exposure of the CW’s physical whereabouts. This could in turn subject the CW to more than simply online harassment and could very easily jeopardize the CW’s safety.

Mackey has never been convicted or even accused of a single violent crime, or of threatening violence online. There is no evidence at all of any kind of organized or predictable effort by the online “alt right” to physically target witnesses. Yet now, the government claims that Mackey’s Sixth Amendment rights can be nullified because of the vague possibility a witness against him might face “harassing behavior.”

This particular federal informant is widely rumored to be none other than “Baked Alaska”. But that’s not what is interesting, at least to me. What I believe to be more significant is this observation from AC:

Notice, Ricky had an informant before he had any hint of anything prosecutors might try to charge him with, going on around him. He was just a a squeaky clean, preppy guy, posting funny memes on Twitter. With an informant sent in. Which means an FBI/intelligence agent assigned to him.

So one guy posting on Twitter had an informant sent in and an intelligence operation dedicated to him on nothing more than the basis of his rhetorically-effective memes. What this means is that literally everyone with more than 200+ followers on any social media platform is being targeted, tracked, and infiltrated.

Given my family background and my national press syndication dating back to 1994, I’ve been aware of being on the radar for at least three decades, if not four. It comes with the territory and it’s understandable; no society will tolerate its iconoclastic outliers going too far astray. But it is nevertheless a little startling to see confirmation that the surveillance state in the USA is at least as prevalent and comprehensive as it was in East Germany during the Soviet years.

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Know Your E-Whores

The Republican establishment is working with the DeSantis campaign to create a fake groundswell of popular support for the Florida governor by putting together what is described as “a network of conservative social media influencers”:

According to five Republicans familiar with the discussions, the governor’s top lieutenants have quietly recruited a network of conservative social media influencers as part of a broader attempt to circumvent the mainstream press and appeal directly to GOP primary voters nationwide.

And who are, according to the three Republicans who received the initial pitch, among the ranks in DeSantis’ digital army?

Jack Murphy, a podcast host and self-described “alpha-male giga chad” involved in a quasi-professional cuckolding porn scandal. John Cardillo, a former Newsmax TV host and unregistered arms dealer who allegedly stiffed the Ukrainian government for $200,000 worth of body armor plates. Christian Walker, Herschel Walker’s right-wing influencer son who helped tank his father’s Senate campaign. David Reaboi, a Hungary-loving and Qatar-hating bodybuilder with longstanding ties to John Bolton. And Caleb Hull, an ex-Trump digital strategist who has said some very, very racist things.

This is the DeSantis A-team, and they’re fighting a battle for a presidential campaign that hasn’t even started yet—with plenty of DeSantis face time, dinners, and photo ops.

Of course, this “secret Twitter army” is about as far right as Mitt Romney. But keep these names, and the names of the usual suspects, in mind when you start hearing them talk up the establishment’s choice as “the real deal” and the only choice to defeat Biden in 2024. Because all of it – and them – are fake and gay.

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Darker than the Dark Lord

Scott Adams actually accomplished something I never achieved in two separate national syndications: he was cancelled by Universal Press Syndicate.

Dilbert has been cancelled from all newspapers, websites, calendars, and books because I gave some advice everyone agreed with. (My syndication partner canceled me.) Dilbert (and more) will only be available on the subscription site.

— Scott Adams

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The Media Loses Narrative Control

The Foreign Ministry of China calls out the US media for failing to cover the expose on the US military’s destruction of the Nordstream pipelines and demands that Washington account for its actions concerning the attack on European energy supplies.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday urged the US to make “a responsible explanation” to the world, after veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in a latest article, accused the US of being the culprit behind the Nord Stream gas pipelines blasts in September 2022.

Hersh, an 85-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner, published the article on his personal website on Wednesday, stating that the US military was involved in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines after senior White House officials plotted for nine months within the national security community.

“If Hersh’s investigative report is true, this is unacceptable behavior and must be held accountable,” said Mao Ning, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “The US should give a responsible explanation to the world,” Mao said at a routine press briefing on Friday when asked to comment on Hersh’s article.

Mao said that the Nord Stream gas pipelines are a major piece of transnational infrastructure, and the explosions have had a significant negative impact on the global energy market and the global ecological environment. When asked to comment on US mainstream media’s silence over Hersh’s investigation, Mao stated that “it’s not the first time” that US media has done so.

“It proves that some US media outlets do not care what the truth is. They are deaf to the truth that really matters, and what is loudly hyped by them is often not the truth, but a false narrative,” Mao said.

Even as the mainstream media attempts to clamp down on alternative US-based news sources that falsify its false narratives using the patently absurd excuse of stopping “disinformation”, the reach and influence of the Chinese media is expanding.

Consider this: a single episode of the newly-launched Midnight’s War in Chinese already has 260,000 views. To put it in perspective, that would make it the #2 independent comic on Webtoons, as the most popular series there averages 263,043 views.

The spread of technology around the world has evened the playing field, which is why it is no longer possible for five media companies controlling a relatively small market of 330 million to dictate a global narrative for 8 billion people.

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Why the Answer is Always No

James O’Keefe appears to be going the way of Milo Yiannopoulos, as the Project Veritas board is actively working toward ejecting the organization’s founder.

James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, has taken a paid leave from the conservative nonprofit media organization as its board considers whether to remove him from his leadership position, according to current and former employees of the organization.

An internal message sent to Project Veritas employees by the organization’s executive director, Daniel Strack, said that O’Keefe would be taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO.” An image of the message was shared by a source familiar with the organization’s internal operations, and its authenticity was confirmed by a current employee. When reached for comment on his personal cell phone, O’Keefe said nothing in response and did not respond to follow-up calls and text messages. Through a Project Veritas spokesman, Strack later released a statement on behalf of the organization. “Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and Management are constantly evaluating what the best path forward is for the organization,” the statement read in part…

A meeting of the Project Veritas board is scheduled for Friday, when O’Keefe’s potential removal is set to be discussed, according to one source familiar with the matter. The source said that Project Veritas was currently divided between a group of employees who are perceived to be loyal to O’Keefe, including his communications adviser, R.C. Maxwell, and the board, which has been dissatisfied with what it perceives as O’Keefe’s mismanagement.

We’ve had people contacting us out of the blue about “investing” in Castalia and pretty much every other project since 2014. In the early days, when I would answer their emails or take their calls, they would talk about how much we would be able to accomplish if only we had more resources at our disposal and so forth. And, for the most part, what they were saying was more or less credible. But I grew up in tech, the son of a very successful entrepreneur, and I personally witnessed how pretty much every single founder who accepted investment or got acquired by a larger company, was ejected, sooner or later, regardless of how successful he was. So I don’t even respond to anyone anymore.

And it’s only worse for organizations that touch on the media and political worlds. Milo’s “investors” had a clause buried in the fine print that gave them the ability to convert their “investment” into a loan that he had to repay any time they decided to pull out and cut his legs out from under him. Which, of course, is exactly what they did. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Project Veritas board was stacked with directors whose primary objective has always been to remove O’Keefe from the organization as soon as the investors deemed it to be the right time to take control.

AC explains how it works, as well as how the free content from the subsidized gatekeepers tends to strangle independent operations.

In comes the angelic benefactor who hates the libs too, and wants to help and make it a job and pay his bills. And now he has a board, and people who can fire him from his own organization, and he probably has to hire the people donors ask them to hire. It is tough. That money they can throw at so many frauds like Shapiro to give all that free bullshit is why our side has so few who are really honest. There is so much free, there is no reason to pay anything.

That’s why the cult of free is a game of attrition where he who has the access to the most free money always wins. And that’s why, whether you’re an angelic benefactor or a perfectly honest capitalist who sees an intriguing vision, a smart team, and a strong track record of delivering success, the answer will always be no, absolutely not.

UPDATE: I’m told that much the same thing happened with Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept.

UPDATE: There is no room for reasonable doubt that the attempt to unseat O’Keefe is a premeditated corporate hit. The guy who is leading the charge only came on board four months ago, but O’Keefe appears to have quickly identified him as a bad actor

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The Inorganic Critic

Atavisionary lists seven traits of the disinformation artist. Here are the three I found most important for distinguishing between the organic critic and the professional social media agent tasked with discrediting a target:

  • They never actually discuss issues head on or provide constructive input, generally avoiding citation of references or credentials. Rather, they merely imply this, that, and the other. Virtually everything about their presentation implies their authority and expert knowledge in the matter without any further justification for credibility.
  • An odd kind of “artificial” emotionalism and an unusually thick skin — an ability to persevere and persist even in the face of overwhelming criticism and unacceptance. This likely stems from intelligence community training that, no matter how condemning the evidence, deny everything, and never become emotionally involved or reactive. The net result for a disinfo artist is that emotions can seem artificial. Most people, if responding in anger, for instance, will express their animosity throughout their presentation. But disinfo types usually have trouble maintaining the “image” and are hot and cold with respect to emotions they pretend to have and the more calm or normal communications which are not emotional. It’s just a job, and they often seem unable to “act their role in type” as well in a communications medium as they might be able in a real face-to-face conversation/confrontation. You might have outright rage and indignation one moment, ho-hum the next, and more anger later — an emotional yo-yo. With respect to being thick-skinned, no amount of criticism will deter them from doing their job, and they will generally continue their old disinfo patterns without any adjustments to criticisms of how obvious it is that they play that game — where a more rational individual who truly cares what others think might seek to improve their communications style, substance, and so forth.
  • I have noted that often, they will simply cite contradictory information which neutralizes itself and the author. For instance, one such player claimed to be a Navy pilot, but blamed his poor communicating skills (spelling, grammar, incoherent style) on having only a grade-school education.

Another observable trait is that the hasbaran will usually take on the role of shepherd for the organic community even if he isn’t responsible for creating the platform in the first place. He’ll guide them back to the target again and again when they get sidetracked or become interested more in tangential topics. And despite his leadership position, he’s usually the person who reveals the least personal information about himself despite being one of the most frequent posters.

The “artificial emotionalism” observation is important, because the paid disinfo agent usually has a very calm demeanor that is entirely at odds with his professed motivation of outrage. He also gets extremely evasive whenever the community’s attention is directed at him, in stark contrast to organic leaders, who relish every opportunity to talk about themselves and love to make themselves the primary topic of discussion.

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Ben Shapiro Backtracks

The narrative has definitely shifted. Now the public champions of the vaxx are trying to claim that they weren’t really pushing the vaxx on anyone. They just “broadly recommended” it because people lied to them. They were really the good guys all along!

No one, and I mean NO ONE, should ever listen to these deceitful morons ever again. The harm they have done is literally incalculable, but it is material and it is significant. If anyone deserves to experience cases of Suddenly, it is these outspoken vaxx pushers.

Even if they were terrified of Covid and decided to get vaxxed themselves, they never had to say one single word about it or utilize their influence on others for evil. And yet they did, and they did so repeatedly, and they did so with open contempt for those who were speaking the truth and were correct all along.

If Ben Shapiro ever hosted a single vaxx skeptic on his show and permitted them to raise any of the obvious doubts about the vaxx, I am unaware of it. At least Scott Adams openly entertained and discussed the vaxx skeptic case, although, much to his regret, he ultimately rejected it for unique personal reasons.

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Clown World Conservatives

It kind of makes you start wondering about space and dinosaurs, doesn’t it? The Big Bear was right again, as Steven Crowder comes out of the closet.

Steven Crowder admits to “bisexual phase” and fears it will come back, also fears having children. He cites these fears as potential marital problems. This just after slandering Ye and Nick Fuentes as “gay for Hitler”

And isn’t it a surprise that this two-year-old revelation goes viral right after Crowder’s very public spat with Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire?

Once more, we observe that the so-called, self-styled conservatives assigned to play the roles of thought leaders for the Right are little more than puppets and parrots. They’re quite literally fake and gay, just like the rest of Clown World.

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