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I’ve been putting off writing this article all year, but readers keep asking for it, and since I’ve been writing about mass enlightenment a lot lately I figure I might as well slip it in now.

It is a well-documented fact that it is possible for the human organism to move into a far more healthy relationship with thought than the one which most people experience. This shift has been written about for as long as there has been written language, and scientists have been confirming its existence using modern studies now. Spiritual enlightenment is real, and it is possible. It is possible for thought to take on a role as a useful tool that one can pick up and use in a wholesome way when it’s needed and put down when it isn’t, rather than being the writer, director and star of the entire show as is typical in human experience. If this is possible for the individual, it is possible for the collective.

Our species is at an evolve-or-die crossroads. We will cease destroying our ecosystem and flirting with nuclear armageddon in the very near future, or we will go the way of the dinosaur. The reason we continue on our current trajectory is because a few sociopathic plutocrats have seized control of the dominant narratives we tell ourselves about what’s going on in the world by buying up the news media people use to keep themselves informed. The plutocrat-controlled media manipulate the ways we think and vote to ensure that we will continue supporting the ecocidal, omnicidal, Orwellian status quo upon which the oligarchs have built their empire, instead of rising up and demanding a system that prioritizes human thriving and peaceful coexistence with each other and our environment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facebook’s Secret “User-Reputation Score” Exposed

August 21, 2018

Facebook’s Secret “User-Reputation Score” Exposed

In a hideous reflection of China’s already-prevalent ‘Social Credit’ system – which is a rating assigned to each citizen based on government data regarding their economic and social status – The Washington Post reports that Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to one.

Under the guise of its effort to combat ‘fake news’, WaPo notes (citing an interview with Tessa Lyons, the product manager who is in charge of fighting misinformation) that the previously unreported ratings system, which Facebook has developed over the last year, has evolved to include measuring the credibility of users to help identify malicious actors.

Users’ trustworthiness score between zero and one isn’t meant to be an absolute indicator of a person’s credibility, Lyons told the publication, nor is there is a single unified reputation score that users are assigned.

“One of the signals we use is how people interact with articles,” Lyons said in a follow-up email.

“For example, if someone previously gave us feedback that an article was false and the article was confirmed false by a fact-checker, then we might weight that person’s future false news feedback more than someone who indiscriminately provides false news feedback on lots of articles, including ones that end up being rated as true.”

The score is one measurement among thousands of behavioral clues that Facebook now takes into account as it seeks to understand risk.

“I like to make the joke that, if people only reported things that were [actually] false, this job would be so easy!” said Lyons in the interview. “People often report things that they just disagree with.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Private Meeting, Facebook Exec Warns News Outlets to Cooperate or End Up Dying in ‘Hospice’

August 14, 2018

In Private Meeting, Facebook Exec Warns News Outlets to Cooperate or End Up Dying in ‘Hospice’

“Anyone who does care about news needs to understand Facebook as a fundamental threat.”

Facebook admitted Wednesday that “most” of its 2 million users likely had their personal information collected by “malicious actors.” (Photo: Legal Loop)

During a closed-door and off-the-record meeting last week, top Facebook executive Campbell Brown reportedly warned news publishers that refusal to cooperate with the tech behemoth’s efforts to “revitalize journalism” will leave media outlets dying “like in a hospice.”

“We desperately need to develop alternative delivery mechanisms to Facebook.”
—Judd Legum, ThinkProgress

Reported first by The Australian under a headline which read “Work With Facebook or Die: Zuckerberg,” the social media giant has insisted the comments were taken out of context, even as five individuals who attended the four-hour meeting corroborated what Brown had stated.

“Mark doesn’t care about publishers but is giving me a lot of leeway and concessions to make these changes,” Brown reportedly said, referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We will help you revitalize journalism… in a few years the reverse looks like I’ll be holding hands with your dying business like in a hospice.”

As The Guardian reported on Monday, Facebook is “vehemently” denying the veracity of the comments as reported by The Australian, referring to its own transcript of the meeting. However, Facebook is refusing to release its transcript and tape of the gathering.

View image on Twitter

✔

Facebook is saying these comments didn’t happen but The Australian has an explosive story on the company’s position with publishers. Five people at the meeting confirmed these comments and the company has tape of the conversation that it will not release.

12:14 AM – Aug 13, 2018

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why the Media is Desperate to Reclaim its “Gatekeeper” Status for News

July 16, 2018

Why the Media is Desperate to Reclaim its “Gatekeeper” Status for News

No one knows what to believe anymore in the age of the internet. Don’t you miss the good old days when you could believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the media reported it?

Everything is fake news, except perhaps the scores of last week’s high school basketball game. And maybe the local stuff is what we should be focusing on because that at least we can confirm to some extent.

Okay, maybe the high school sports scores aren’t an important focus. But what about holding local politicians and police accountable? Seems like paying attention to local news could do more to improve our surroundings than following the latest Trump news.

Yet even in the age of information, local papers are disappearing. As a direct result, the efficiency of local governments is suffering. A study found that a lack of local newspapers correlates with worse local government.

But has an influx of national news made national government more efficient?

No. It has only thrown more power behind collectivist trends. It has added ranks to the mobs of special interests that continue to expand federal expenditures and debt. National news is basically used as advertising to get the masses to line up behind a particular cause. It is activist journalism, directing the mob rule.

Local news differs because it is mixed with first-hand experience, as well as second-hand reports from witnesses–neighbors and friends. Gossip is one way of regulating this local flow of information. It provides details about who can be believed, and who might embellish.

Locally, there is an organic structure of information flow. This alone doesn’t make it accurate, but it gets closer by triangulating from where you get your information.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Foundation of the West is Rocked as Tribalism Becomes Normality

July 11, 2018

The Foundation of the West is Rocked as Tribalism Becomes Normality

In our modern digital age, news comes at you fast. Never before has the spread of information traveled so quickly or social media been so influential. And never before have problems been exacerbated so rapidly.

The West is in turmoil, as chaos seeps into the very fibers of the institutions built up by global elites over the last century—institutions now finding themselves under assault.

Anyone paying attention, or reading my series of articles, knows there is a massive shift occurring in the zeitgeist of the West. It’s a shift that only occurs once in a lifetime, if at all.

We truly do live in interesting times, but they are dangerous too. The risk of structural collapse in many of our political systems is at all-time highs, with citizens all across the West demanding change from their leaders.

People are rapidly descending into “tribes”, consumed with self-reassuring, confirmation bias-assuaging articles written by their fellow “tribe” members.

Whether this comes from the “radical left” or the “alt right” doesn’t matter. What does is the damage it is doing to our systems and the risk they now pose to the dwindling minority of sane centralists.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We see this change unfolding in front of our eyes, as scarcely a day goes by without reading about another “crisis” that threatens the very fabric of our society.

Within the past week alone, depending on which “tribe” you belong to, there have been numerous victories or catastrophes develop in rapid succession.

Last night, President Trump scored another major victory in the name of conservatives within the United States when he announced the nomination of his second Supreme Court pick, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. This came after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement a few weeks ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Diseased, Lying, Condition of America’s ‘News’Media

June 21, 2018

The Diseased, Lying, Condition of America’s ‘News’Media

Both President Trump and former President Obama are commonly said in America’s ‘news’ media to be or to have been “ceding Syria to Russia” or “ceding Syria to Russia and Iran,” or similar allegations. They imply that ‘we’ own (or have some right to control) Syria. That’s not only a lie; it is a very evil and harmful one, dangerously goading the US President to go even more against Russia (and Iran) (and, of course, against Syria) than has yet been done — but the ‘news’media don’t care about that evil, and that falsehood, and that dangerousness — they do it anyway, and none of them attacks the others for perpetrating this vicious war-mongering lie, that lying provocation to yet more and worse war than already exists there. And the fact that none is exposing the fraudulence of the others on this important matter, is a yet-bigger additional scandal, beyond and amplifying the media’s common lying itself. Because they all function here like a mob, goading to more and worse invasions, and doing it on the the basis of dangerous lies — that America, and not the Syrians themselves, own Syria.

These lies simply assume that America (probably referring to the US Government, but whatever) somehow “has” or else “had” Syria (so that America can now ‘cede’ it, to anyone); and this assumption (that the US somehow owns Syria) is not only an imperialistic one (which is bad, and wrong, in itself), but it reduces to nothingness the rights (in the minds of the American public) of the Syrian people, to control their own land. That lie is what America’s ‘news’media won’t expose, but instead they all cooperate with it, when they’re not actually participating, themselves, in spreading these lies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

More Lies from the Presstitutes

March 28, 2018

More Lies from the Presstitutes

The shameless liars that comprise the US media intentionally exaggerated the marchers against “gun violance” by four times the acutal number.

Why?

Why are the media presstitutes involved in advocacy of agendas and not in reporting factual news?

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans believe that gun ownership makes people safer. Americans do not believe that people should be denied safety because of an occasional nutcase or a staged shooting to advance the gun control agenda. Indeed, they wonder who is behind the gun control agenda. They wonder about the dumbshits who are protesting the Second Amendment instead of Washington’s rush into conflict with Russia.

I have no doubt that gun control groups are organized by agents of the police state. The United States is falling apart. All of the increase in income and wealth is going to the One Percent. Everyone else is hurting more each day. See Chris Hedges, for example: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49082.htm

The vast majority of Americans are being ground into the dirt by government at all levels. There is no democracy. There is only looting. The One Percent fear that sooner or later even insouciant Americans might rise up. But they can’t if they are disarmed. That is all gun control is about.

Deaths from what the propagandistic “gun violance” shills for the police state hype as a massive problem are such a small percentage of US deaths that they do not even show up statistically. Yet we have all this protest over an infintestimal number of deaths, and no protests at all by opponents of “gun violence” over police killings, which are larger that “gun violence” deaths or over America’s massive murders on a world scale. Where are the “gun violence” protests over the millions of deaths and millions of displaced peoples in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan? Where are the “gun violence” protests against Trumpt’s chosen national security adviser John Bolton’s plan to bomb Iran and North Korea into the stone age?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.

March 10, 2018

For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.

I tried to skip digital news for a while. My old-school experiment led to three main conclusions

I first got news of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, via an alert on my watch. Even though I had turned off news notifications months ago, the biggest news still somehow finds a way to slip through.

But for much of the next 24 hours after that alert, I heard almost nothing about the shooting.

There was a lot I was glad to miss. For instance, I didn’t see the false claims — possibly amplified by propaganda bots — that the killer was a leftist, an anarchist, a member of ISIS and perhaps just one of multiple shooters. I missed the Fox News report tying him to Syrian resistance groups even before his name had been released. I also didn’t see the claim circulated by many news outlets (including The New York Times) as well as by Sen. Bernie Sanders and other liberals on Twitter that the massacre had been the 18th school shooting of the year, which wasn’t true.

Instead, the day after the shooting, a friendly person I’ve never met dropped off three newspapers at my front door. That morning, I spent maybe 40 minutes poring over the horror of the shooting and a million other things the newspapers had to tell me.

Not only had I spent less time with the story than if I had followed along as it unfolded online, I was better informed, too. Because I had avoided the innocent mistakes — and the more malicious misdirection — that had pervaded the first hours after the shooting, my first experience of the news was an accurate account of the actual events of the day.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Most of what you’re going to read today is pointless.

March 5, 2018

Most of what you’re going to read today is pointless.

We spend hours consuming news because we want to be well informed. But is that time well spent? News is by definition something that doesn’t last. And as news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased.

Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about what we consume: Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time — say, in a week or in a year? Is the person writing this someone who is well informed on the issue?

“[W]e’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the never-ending pressure of trying to keep up with it all.”
— Nicolas Carr

There are several problems with the way we consume news today:

First, the speed of news delivery has increased. We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get our news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, news find us almost the minute it’s published.

Second, the costs to produce news have dropped significantly. Some people write 10 or more blog posts a day for major newspapers. It’s nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 10. Over the course of a year, this works out to writing 2400 articles (assuming four weeks of vacation). The fluency of the person you’re getting your news from in the subject they’re covering is near zero. As a result, you’re filling your head with surface opinions on isolated topics. Because the costs have dropped to near zero, there is a lot of competition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How WaPo, BuzzFeed, And Soros-Backed Group Pushed The Phrase “Fake News” Until It Backfired

February 16, 2018

How WaPo, BuzzFeed, And Soros-Backed Group Pushed The Phrase “Fake News” Until It Backfired

In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida, several major news outlets published a report that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was a member of a white supremacist organization. In fact, the MSM was hoodwinked by 4chan users into publishing fake news.

In fact, the stories are still up despite the Broward County Sherriff’s department declaring that there are “no known ties” between the shooter and the hate group.

Jordan said Thursday that his office has arrested militia leader Jordan Jereb at least four times since January 2014 and has been monitoring the group’s membership.

He says his office has “very solid” information on the group and “there’s no known ties that we have that we can connect” 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz with the group. –TampaBay.com

And while the MSM’s enormous mistake was simply a case of terrible journalism, those very outlets participated in a seemingly coordinated effort to brand any media with a divergent opinion as “fake news,” with a little help from their friends.

In a recent Tedx talk at the University of Nevada, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed some of the earliest efforts to seed the phrase “fake news” into the public lexicon by a little nonprofit group funded in part by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and Google.

The group, “First Draft,” announced a partnership on September 13, 2016 “to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports,” said Attkisson. “The goal was supposedly to separate wheat from chaff, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today’s version of the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Are European Governments So Terrified of ‘Fake News’?

February 12, 2018

Why Are European Governments So Terrified of ‘Fake News’?

When Swedish authorities representing a Swedish left-wing government and media announce a project to prevent “fake news” from “decisively influencing” the 2018 elections, this ought to set off loud alarm bells among Swedes. Who determines what constitutes “fake news” anyway? Is it not the very essence of “fake news” when a media outlet refuses to report mass sexual assaults, because the perpetrators happen to be foreigners from third world countries?
A British Cabinet Office spokesperson told Sky News: “The Government is committed to tackling false information and the Government Communications Service plays a crucial role in this”. Perhaps their “rapid response fake news unit” should begin with Theresa May herself, who falsely and against all factual evidence continues to claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that ISIS is not Islamic.
Meanwhile, European citizens continue to face costly legal prosecution for refusing to accept the fake news about Islam propagated by people such as Theresa May.
“I also thought that Islam was just a normal religion, but then I read the Koran and became shocked by the hatred that exists there, the misogyny… The more Islam takes over, the more we compromise. Islam is a totalitarian ideology, which means dictatorship. So, I believe that our democratic system is in danger… I hate no people. What I hate is ideology, Islam. One can criticize fascism or Nazism, but why not Islam? Why should Islam have any protection status?” — Denny, on trial in Sweden for “incitement to hatred” for calling Islam “a fascist ideology” on Facebook. If found guilty, he faces up to two years in prison.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Scandal of The West’s News-Suppression, to ‘Justify’ U.S.-v.-Russia War

February 2, 2018

A Scandal of The West’s News-Suppression, to ‘Justify’ U.S.-v.-Russia War

An accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, was employed by a wealthy American investor, William Browder, and died in a Russian prison on 16 November 2006. How did it happen; who was to blame for it? The Russian Government was blamed for it, and this blame produced in 2012 the first set of economic sanctions to squeeze Vladimir Putin out of power.

Magnitsky’s death in prison thus provided the factual basis for the first of the economic-sanctions regimens that were imposed by The West against the Russian Government, the 2012 Magnitsky Act — sanctions that preceded the 2014 sanctions which were imposed on account of Russia’s response to America’s February 2014 coup in Ukraine. However, that account of the Magnitsky incident is full of lies, according to a 2016 documentary investigation into the matter. But publication of this video investigation — at youtube or anywhere — is effectively banned in The West.

Here’s how Gilbert Doctorow, who is one of the extremely few people in The West who managed to see this totally-suppressed-in-The-West investigative news-documentary that was done (and which he said proved to him that the basis of the Magnitsky Act is lies) expressed his shock, at what he saw and learned from it:

——

Nekrasov [the investigator] largely allows William Browder to self-destruct under the weight of his own lies.

——

The case against Browder that Nekrasov unintentionally stumbled upon when making the film is clearly so persuasive and so massive that even some leading members of the anti-Putin coalition in Europe feel strongly that the truth must out, whatever the consequences. … [But] lynch law necessarily operates. Human rights watchers everywhere, beware! … Nekrasov has not been a friend, still less a “stooge” of the Putin regime. Indeed, as he explained at the start of his brief speech, before taking the assignment to do a film about Magnitsky. … Nekrasov had friendly relations with Bill Browder [the U.S. oligarch who was behind Magnitsky].

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facebook Cracks Down On Independent Media, Under Guise Of ‘Enhancing Relationships’

January 30, 2018

January 30, 2018

Nothing could have more perfectly exemplified the establishment’s use of Orwellian Newspeak than Facebook’s latest move to censor independent thought under the pretense of caring about the emotional wellbeing of the masses. The media giant has been documented live-streaming murders, suicides, rapes, and abuse. Despite this, The New York Post reported that Facebook officially stated they were ‘unable to stop live-streaming suicides.’ But, trust them, they care about your mental health, and that’s why they don’t want you to read certain news stories.

A recent press report on the matter stated: “Facebook said it’s changing the formula that determines users’ news feeds by decreasing business and media posts and focusing more on personal connections.” However, in reality, the changes seem to have been used to specifically target anti-establishment news sources.

Though Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enthused regarding the changes, the company’s shareholders appeared less impressed with the news. According to CNBC, Facebook shares fell by four percent at market the morning after Zuckerberg’s announcement of the new policy. Stocks fell during the first day by following the announcement by 6.1% which was reported to have amounted to a $3.3 billion loss.

Despite this, Zuckerberg appeared totally unfazed by the stock price drop, and openly admitted that the changes would lead to an overall decline in user engagement.

The Guardian’s coverage of the news not only chided Zuckerberg for not having made the move earlier, while also directly identifying the core of the real impetus behind the changes, which had nothing to do with bringing you closer to your family. The Guardian’s writing on the issue reveals that the real reason for the changes is in order to actively censor what the legacy press outlet deems to be “fake news” that “interfered” in the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is “Fake News” Really Fake?

January 24, 2018

Is “Fake News” Really Fake?

The more complicated a situation, the more open to interpretation it is.

The term “fake news” has been much in the news since the 2016 election. Unfortunately, it is not usually defined in any clear fashion. The implication is that the media engages in deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of the news. Not just any media, but most of the media, commonly referred to as the “mainstream media,” have been accused of distributing “fake news.”

Recently, I read an extended critique of the media that put everything in quite a different light. It is something I believe every working journalist should read. Sixty short pages that explain that not only is there a distinct bias in the mainstream media, but why this is the case. What is of most importance to note is that this bias is not deliberate. It exists on a subconscious level and influences everything the media does. And it does not matter whether the particular media outlet has a left or a right slant.

The author, Robin Koerner, has a masters degree in the philosophy of science and physics from Cambridge. The information is in the first chapter of his book If You Can Keep It: Why We Nearly Lost It & How We Get It Back, a chapter he calls “Mediography.”

Bias Exists Within All of Us

A paradigm is a framework within which someone observes and comments on the world.

The best way to explain the points he makes is to start with an example. Here is a headline from the Drudge Report dated November 2006: “Iran Fires Missile That Can Reach Israel.” The headline is factually accurate. It is not deliberately biased. But, Koerner argues, it is misleading. It could be considered fake news (though Koerner does not use those terms)….click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nobody Cares About ‘the News’

January 23, 2018

Nobody Cares About ‘the News’

In his mordant novel Scoop, Evelyn Waugh has one of his characters explain what “The News” is:

News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.

There is a great deal of wisdom in this little remark that I will attempt to unpack. It also, in my opinion, succinctly explains why we, who believe ourselves to be so brilliantly analytical and persuasive on sites like this one, have so little success in changing the opinions of our friends and neighbours (or awakening them as we might prefer to say).

First let us consider the “chap who doesn’t care much about anything”. There are, to be sure, two kinds of these but we’re only interested in the second. The person who really doesn’t care about anything doesn’t pay any attention to “The News”. No newspaper ritual for him, no dutiful watching “The News” at night; maybe he wants the sports news but he doesn’t care about “The News”. There are plenty of people like this. Some never were interested, others have given up pretending; as one has often said to me about political news: “What’s the point? There’s nothing I can do. It’s just depressing”. That’s a perfectly understandable point of view and it can be held by someone who, like the individual I’m thinking of, is generally aware that most of “The News” is propaganda or worse.

I’m not talking about people who don’t care much and don’t even pretend to care. What I am interested in are those people who do read newspapers, who do sit down at the TV: those who do devote a portion of their day to “The News”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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