General / Off-Topic It's Not a Conspiracy

[AluminumAlloy]

Alt news sites are doing fine, mostly. It is the alt-news accounts on social media that are currently being shut down. (Keywords: Twittergate, Redditgate, and even Youtubegate. Luckily G+ is not good at this sort of thing. We have plenty of open groups keeping discussions going forward, though I hope Mewe starts livening up.) Of course, the more they censor it the more people will believe it is real, and why not? Censorship has always been and always will be the tool of guilt and no less an admission of guilt on part of those doing the censoring.

And i'll tell you what, ABC News's war against "fake news" seems to be moving forward well...really "well":

Now iv'e got you folks triggered for sure.

 

[Ian Skippy]

And i'll tell you what, ABC News's war against "fake news" seems to be moving forward well...really "well":

http://i.imgur.com/IdHHraa.jpg

Now iv'e got you folks triggered for sure.

You're not triggering anyone, we're just telling you you make no sense. Why not just say what tour point is, plain and simpele?

 

[Sunleader]

What on Earth is he rambling about?

I think he is Talking about the Hype which has lately Come down regarding Fake News.
I noticed it a few times Today as well.

The Media is really bringing up Heavy Cannons against News Spread in Social Media and Comments as well as on Alternative News Blogs etc.
All the Day when Checking the News I keep hearing about how Faked News became a Spreading Fire that Distorted Truth and Riled Up People. And how this might be Russias doing or just a Bad Joke of Someone turning into a Chaos.

It seems there is also other Measures Taken against such "Fake" News.

Liberals Fear that these Measures might not only Target Fake News. But in General News and Comments which the Governments dont want to See Shared.
This Effectively Restricting Free Speech in the Internet and Putting Tabs onto it. So that Websites can be Forced to Remove Comments and Providers can be Forced to Block Websites.


However. Nothing of that has been Enacted yet as far as I know.
I wonder if he read something and Jumped the Gun there.

Its true that the Media is running an Information Campaign to try and have People Avoid such Alternative News and consider Comments etc less Trustworthy.
But in the Laws Department nothing has been Forwarded Yet. Its still in the Suggestions State.

 

[AluminumAlloy]

You're not triggering anyone, we're just telling you you make no sense. Why not just say what tour point is, plain and simpele?

You asked me for a more longer explanation of my point and now you're asking for a more simple explanation. Please don't be offended, but that's something I don't understand.

For simplicity's sake, the point is that i'm really peed-off to see censorship skyrocketing through the roof as it has been doing so in the past week(s) or so. Alt news sites aren't just shut down yet, but for sure you can't view most of them through links on major social media sites easily anymore.

For short, "Free Speech" is being attacked aggressively like never before in the past several decades and is having itself re-named as "Fake News", "Russian Propaganda" and/or "Hate Speech".

If that doesn't at least explain what point i'm trying to imply, then nothing else will likely work.

 

[AJW]

No. Fake news is being attacked as 'fake news'. Because it is fake. And because social media websites are under no obligation to host moron-fodder.

 

[AluminumAlloy]

No. Fake news is being attacked as 'fake news'. Because it is fake. And because social media websites are under no obligation to host moron-fodder.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

 

[Ian Skippy]

You asked me for a more longer explanation of my point and now you're asking for a more simple explanation. Please don't be offended, but that's something I don't understand.

For simplicity's sake, the point is that i'm really peed-off to see censorship skyrocketing through the roof as it has been doing so in the past week(s) or so. Alt news sites aren't just shut down yet, but for sure you can't view most of them through links on major social media sites easily anymore.

For short, "Free Speech" is being attacked aggressively like never before in the past several decades and is having itself re-named as "Fake News", "Russian Propaganda" and/or "Hate Speech".

If that doesn't at least explain what point i'm trying to imply, then nothing else will likely work.

That is a coherent post, thanks. Retort:

1) 'Simple' and 'longer' arent contradictory. 'Simple' doesn't mean 'short'. Grab a dictionary and see for yourself.
2) A privately owned website deciding not to host content isn't censorship in any reasonable sense, just like you refusing to put giant photos of my reproductive organs on your lawn isnt censorship in a reasonable sense.
3) News that is objectively not true is fake news. You may want to believe it, you have the right to believe whatever you want, but other people have the right to point out that Hillary Clinton factually does not run a large-scale child abuse network. Or that, believe it or not, Sharia law has not been implemented in European countries. Or any of such obvious stories. You may make them up, you may put them on a website, you may believe them, but noone has the legal or moral obligation to spread such nonsense.

Come back to me when free speech is actually under attack.

 

[AluminumAlloy]

Come back to me when free speech is actually under attack.

Didn't you hear about Reddit shadow-banning links to infowars.com for being a source of "fake news"? France cracking down on pro-life websites? Reddit deleting non-racial posts supporting Trump? WeChat automatically censoring "sensitive content" without the chatters even knowing?

 

[Ian Skippy]

Didn't you hear about Reddit shadow-banning links to infowars.com for being a source of "fake news"? France cracking down on pro-life websites? Reddit deleting non-racial posts supporting Trump? WeChat automatically censoring "sensitive content" without the chatters even knowing?

Maybe you have been misinformed, let me correct that: Reddit is not actually a branch of government. Its a website run by, you know, people. Reddit can link to whatever the heck they want. If you disagree, start your own website and link exclusively to pro-life websites and infowars.com. Free speech is under attack when you no longer can speak your mind. Free speech is not under attack when people refuse to be your mouth. See the difference?

I cant help but think you would be much happier if you'd spend your holidays learning basic words like 'simple', 'short' and 'freedom'.

 

[AJW]

Privately-run websites are free to determine what content they do or do not include. And yes, infowars.com is a fake 'news' website, run by a man who has made a highly profitable career out of making up nonsensical drivel for the pathologically credulous. A nice little earner, if ever there was one...

 

[verminstar]

Games within games...I blame the lizardmen who evolved from survivors of the extinction of the dinosaurs, and survived deep underground fer millions of years. Their day will come again...yer all dooooomed!

Is this the same theory as the vatican theory that did the rounds last year? As much as I hate the establishment, I dont buy about 99% of the total bollox out there. Sure there are secrets and genuine conspiracies on national levels, but most of the genuine stuff cant be found on the likes of fakebook and twitclub anyway...most of what can be found there is sensationalist nonsense written by morons and religious nuts with an axe to grind.

The truth is out there...knowing where to find it...yeah thats the tricky one...its a shakedown, a flexing of muscles, a public relations kneejerk reaction to the shock of recent events...consequences not wholly unexpected.

 

[AluminumAlloy]

snip

I took that comment personally about spending my Christmas holidays by re-thinking myself instead of enjoying it.

Anyways, censorship doesn't always have to do with the government; as there's biased censorship and corporate censorship. Mr. Obama knows he's going to be out of office pretty soon, so right now he's enforcing plenty of power and contacting his foreign goon friends to help out as a comeback to make Trump's transition and plans more difficult, just like when Stephen Harper was no longer going to be the prime minister of Canada. Is it not obvious? Trump's going to have a long list of executive orders to remove once his name has a different title than president-elect. [haha]

Not surprising how Obama is still on a frenzy of signing executive orders despite the Congress telling him to not sign any more of them.

- - - Updated - - -

Games within games...I blame the lizardmen who evolved from survivors of the extinction of the dinosaurs, and survived deep underground fer millions of years. Their day will come again...yer all dooooomed!

Is this the same theory as the vatican theory that did the rounds last year? As much as I hate the establishment, I dont buy about 99% of the total bollox out there. Sure there are secrets and genuine conspiracies on national levels, but most of the genuine stuff cant be found on the likes of fakebook and twitclub anyway...most of what can be found there is sensationalist nonsense written by morons and religious nuts with an axe to grind.

The truth is out there...knowing where to find it...yeah thats the tricky one...its a shakedown, a flexing of muscles, a public relations kneejerk reaction to the shock of recent events...consequences not wholly unexpected.

Pfffft, a conspiracy theory doesn't always have to do with reptilian overlord nonsense. For example, "Russia planting evidence on WikiLeaks" is a conspiracy theory supported by the US administration itself.

 

[verminstar]

Those two been sniping at each other fer decades...both sides as bad as each other. And as fer seeing wikileaks, american administration and conspiracy in the same line just gives one a feeling of having been here a few times before. Did ye realy expect the US administration to debunk that theory? You jest, surely? They probably thought that one up on the backs of napkins in between donut and coffee breaks...that ones as old as the hills ^

 

[Cydramech]

That is a coherent post, thanks. Retort:

2) A privately owned website deciding not to host content isn't censorship in any reasonable sense, just like you refusing to put giant photos of my reproductive organs on your lawn isnt censorship in a reasonable sense.
3) News that is objectively not true is fake news. You may want to believe it, you have the right to believe whatever you want, but other people have the right to point out that Hillary Clinton factually does not run a large-scale child abuse network. Or that, believe it or not, Sharia law has not been implemented in European countries. Or any of such obvious stories. You may make them up, you may put them on a website, you may believe them, but noone has the legal or moral obligation to spread such nonsense.

Come back to me when free speech is actually under attack.

1. A privately-owned organization deciding to remove content, however, is censorship. It does not take a government to perform the act of censorship. But even from the viewpoint that it may be okay to remove content, the fact remains that censorship is an admission of guilt (and/or the admission of a lack of confidence in truth).

2. The Podesta emails are objectively true. They're out in the open and the media's efforts at-large have only been, not so much to discredit them directly but to keep prying eyes away (for example, at no point does John Podesta or any of the Clinton staff denounce them as being fake, instead we see them only condemning Wikileaks for "hacking"). What is objectively not true is that anyone has accused Clinton, the Clinton family, or others involved of running any sort of pedophilia ring, only that they're connected to one.

3. Here are real examples of fake news, provided by FTP:

1. George W. Bush’s Weapons of Mass Destruction

Spoiler

President George W. Bush decided to unleash the full force of the U.S. military upon the world in a new policy of war writ large disguised as a war on terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. First arbitrarily designating Afghanistan as its primary victim due to the supposed identities of the attackers, Bush then chose Iraq to feel the wrath, and set out to invade the country following dubious claims Saddam Hussein harbored destructive chemical and biological weapons and was actively seeking far stronger munitions.

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” the president asserted in a public address on March 17, 2003. “This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”
Bush’s assertions were questioned by not only human rights experts, but by U.N. weapons inspectors and countless others — so shortly after the U.S. invaded the sovereign nation, the New York Times took up the slack to fill in the appropriate casus belli.

Judith Miller notoriously reported on a source she described only as an Iraqi scientist who had seen several extensive caches of such weapons stored somewhere in the country. American weapons experts, she claimed, “said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein’s government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990’s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq’s giant weapons plants.”
In hindsight, Miller’s problematic report turned out to be horrendously flawed, and the Times spent months attempting to backtrack, but the damage — fomenting widescale public support for a war no one wanted the military to undertake — had been done. Years later in 2014, the Times — after much internal strife — again took up Miller’s case, in a series reporting catastrophic injuries U.S. military personnel suffered in handling chemical weapons in Iraq. But that report, and the parroting of it by multiple other mainstream mainstays, failed to fully disclose Hussein had been oblivious to the stockpiles presence — something the CIA had clearly stated in a report.

2. Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Spoiler

Often, the American mainstream media becomes a de facto government employee, taking the claims of U.S. officials and reporting them as proven fact — and nothing exemplifies this penchant better than reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin incident — perhaps one of most flagrant lies ever dreamed up as a justification for war.
On August 5, 1964, the New York Times reported “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.” Additional outlets, such as the Washington Post, echoed this claim.
But it wasn’t true. At all. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as it became known, turned out to be a fictitious creation courtesy of the government to escalate war in Vietnam — leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese, fomenting the largest anti-war movement in American history, and tarnishing the reputation of a nation once considered at least somewhat noble in the eyes of the world.

In 2010, more than 1,100 transcripts from the Vietnam era were released, proving Congress and officials raised serious doubts about the information fed to them by the Pentagon and White House. But while this internal grumbling took place, mainstream media dutifully reported official statements as if the veracity of the information couldn’t be disputed.

Tom Wells, author of the exhaustive exposé “The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam,” explained the media egregiously erred in “almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information” and “reluctance to question official pronouncements on ‘national security issues.’”

If due diligence had been performed, and reporters had raised appropriate doubts about the Gulf of Tonkin false flag, it’s arguable whether support for the contentious war would have lasted as long as it did.

3. Suppression of brutality perpetrated in Bahrain during the Arab Spring

Spoiler

CNN sent reporter Amber Lyon and a crew to U.S. ally Bahrain for a documentary about technology’s role in the 2011 people’s uprising known as the Arab Spring, ultimately titled “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring” — but what they encountered instead bore the hallmarks of a repressive and violent regime, and its attempt to filter and censor the truth. Lyon and the other CNN reporters went to great lengths to speak with sources participating in the massive uprising — one the Bahraini government wished to quash at all costs.

“By the time the CNN crew arrived,” the Guardian reported, “many of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Regime opponents whom they interviewed suffered recriminations, as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers. Leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was charged with crimes shortly after speaking to the CNN team. A doctor who gave the crew a tour of his village and arranged meetings with government opponents, Saeed Ayyad, had his house burned to the ground shortly after. Their local fixer was fired ten days after working with them.”

Even the CNN crew experienced the wrath of the regime, upon showing up to interview one source, the Guardian continued, “‘20 heavily-armed men’, whose faces were ‘covered with black ski masks’, ‘jumped from military vehicles’, and then ‘pointed machine guns at’ the journalists, forcing them to the ground. The regime’s security forces seized their cameras and deleted their photos and video footage, and then detained and interrogated them for the next six hours.”

After returning to the U.S., Lyon felt it her duty to expose the abuse being perpetrated by the government of an ally nation — but CNN International didn’t agree. CNN U.S. eventually aired the one-hour documentary. Once. CNN International never did — worse, the organization gave Lyon the cold shoulder, ignoring her repeated requests to return to Bahrain, which would have put CNN ahead of the game in reporting government brutality. Its failure to air the documentary and refusal to provide justification for doing so angered seasoned CNN and other mainstream established journalists across the board.

Lyon met with CNN International president Tony Maddox twice — he first promised to investigate why the documentary wasn’t aired, and then turned against her, warning the journalist not to discuss the matter publicly. Bahraini officials contacted CNN International repeatedly complaining about Lyon’s continued reporting on what she’d witnessed. Intimidation continued until she was eventually laid off, putatively for an unrelated matter.

Attempting to save face, CNN International rebuffed the Guardian’s account and interview with Lyon — but the effort was an impotent justification for the obvious failure of integrity.

But threats for Lyon to remain silent followed her off the job, and when she persisted in exposing the Bahraini regime, as well as the suppression by CNN, the outlet sent a stern warning to halt. Lyon, however, said she had never signed a non-disclosure agreement and would not be pressured into their lies — ultimately walking away reputation in hand — something that could not be said for CNN.

4. That time Fox News hired a CIA operative who wasn’t a CIA operative

Spoiler

Wayne Shelby Simmons made guest appearances on Fox News as a security expert with insider expertise from his work as a CIA operative — for over a decade. However, Simmons had never been employed by the agency — in fact, the imposter’s lies eventually caught up with him and he was arrested and sentenced to 33 months in prison.

“Instead of verifying whether Simmons had actually worked for the CIA, Fox News and the Agency allowed him to make fools out of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Andrew Napolitano, Neil Cavuto, and everyone at Fox & Friends for over the last twelve years. After building a false reputation as a CIA agent on Fox News, Simmons obtained an interim security clearance when an unnamed government contractor hired him in 2008. Simmons also falsely claimed on national security forms that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA, and that he had previously held a top secret security clearance from 1973 to 2000,” The Free Thought Project’s Andrew Emett explained.

In other words, mainstream Fox News didn’t bother with journalism at all — proffering fake expertise as the real deal — because the outlet failed the most basic of tasks any hourly wage employer would perform.

image: http://pixel.watch/qut7

Simmons’ commentaries weren’t harmless stabs in the dark, either — relentlessly parroting baseless Islamophobic rhetoric to drum up support for the government’s insidious war on terror likely poisoned the minds of thousands of viewers, furthering the already divisive atmosphere in the U.S.

5. Vapid anti-marijuana propaganda and the furtherance of the war on drugs

Spoiler

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, over $51 billion is spent fighting the war on drugs in the United States — each year. In 2015, a striking 38.6 percent of all arrests for drug possession were for cannabis — 643,121 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses.

What those figures don’t show are the millions of lives ruined by criminal conviction for the government’s unjustifiable quest to eradicate, demonize, and vilify this beneficial plant. It would be an impossible task to tally the number of families whose homes have been destroyed by SWAT teams searching for marijuana — whether or not police bothered to verify an address. An untold number of others have been slain by police for the same reason.

But worst of all, the mainstream media propagates nonsensical, false propaganda about cannabis to convince the gullible and ignorant among us to equate it with heroin, cocaine, and other ‘illicit’ substances. And while a majority of the populace has seen through such lies, some outlets have obstinately continued the drug war — seemingly of their own volition.

One stunning example occurred in March last year, when Dr. David Samadi made a guest appearance on Fox News to fearmonger the horrors of marijuana and scare the bejeezus out of the viewing audience.

“It actually causes heart attacks. It increases your heart rate. And on and on,” Samadi claimed, lessly distorting statistics. “We’re seeing in Colorado that we had 13 kids that came to the emergency [room] and ended up in the ICU as a result of overdose from marijuana. Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.”

Fortunately, the Internet has provided the public with alternatives to these corporate media lies — and as of two years ago, despite these and other claims about pot being a dangerous substance, Pew Research Center found fully 69 percent of the population felt alcohol was more harmful than cannabis.

5 Times Corporate Media Got Caught Publishing Fake News Causing the Death & Suffering of Millions

 

[AluminumAlloy]

Those two been sniping at each other fer decades...both sides as bad as each other. And as fer seeing wikileaks, american administration and conspiracy in the same line just gives one a feeling of having been here a few times before. Did ye realy expect the US administration to debunk that theory? You jest, surely? They probably thought that one up on the backs of napkins in between donut and coffee breaks...that ones as old as the hills ^

..

What..? Can you please rephrase that with a little more effort?

 

[Don Alvarez]

It's 1938 all over again.

 

[AJW]

My clock says it's 1102.

 

[Don Alvarez]

Your clock is therefore spreading fake news.

I'm referring of course to the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 that scared the pants of either a few people or half the country, depending which news source you happen to have read. The aftermath flooded the fledgling FCC with hundreds of letters to pass legislation to prevent networks from framing fiction as a news broadcast in the future.

Fast forward to today. Conceivably, it might not be long before a movement starts to censor the thousands (or handful) of fake news or satire news sources that pass off their content in a familiar news format that looks a little too much like a real news story.

 

[PigKiller]

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
- Gen Jack D. Ripper "Dr Strangelove"

 

[AJW]

I don't think anyone has advocated 'censoring' them (and no, a privately-run website choosing what content it carries isn't censorship, any more than someone not letting me tattoo 'imbecile' on their forehead is). What people seem to want is accurate labelling. If someone sells you a tin labelled 'baked beans', you have every right to expect the content to be baked beans. Not rusty nails in sump-oil. If Heinz tried that, they would have the pants sued off them. I can't see why perpetrators of the fake-news-clickbait scam should expect to be treated any differently.