Home » Posts tagged 'mainstream media'

Tag Archives: mainstream media

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

State-ordered Purge of Truth-Tellers in Time of War. Scott Ritter Passport Seized, WaPo Smears Indy Journalists

Truth or Loyalty in Journalism - There is No Choice – Women's eNews

Scott Ritter was pulled off a NY-to-Istanbul flight yesterday by US officials and his passport confiscated in a startling new development in the government’s open drive to censor and silence critics of the Administration’s foreign policies at a time when the United States is supplying billions of dollars in arms to foment wider war in Russia, accelerate the attacks on Gazans and set the stage for war with China over Taiwan.

A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist.  He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg.

Mr. Ritter first came to my attention when he testified at a Capitol hearing I sponsored to inquire into the Bush Administration’s plans to attack Iraq. Ritter warned in August of 2002 that a case had not been made for attacking Iraq.

Had Congress listened to Mr. Ritter, the US would have been spared the loss of thousands of our soldiers and the waste of trillions of tax dollars. Over one million Iraqis died as a result of the US attack on their country. America’s financial and moral debt will never be able to be repaid, but would not exist if we had simply looked at the evidence he presented.

Mr. Ritter’s  passport was confiscated yesterday by U.S. authorities without explanation.

There are several Constitutional issues at stake here:

  1. The taking of his passport was  an illegal seizure, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Ritter asked for, but did not receive a receipt, for the seized passport.

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

CEO Of Russia’s Second-Largest Bank Warns: “US Is Inevitably Headed For A Serious Economic Crisis”

CEO Of Russia’s Second-Largest Bank Warns: “US Is Inevitably Headed For A Serious Economic Crisis”

Last September, we told readers that the US national debt was skyrocketing at a staggering $1 trillion every three months—roughly every 100 days.

Since then, the debt spending has gotten worse.

Out-of-control spending has delayed the US economy’s day of reckoning in this year’s presidential election cycle. But it has become very evident an economic crisis looms in the years ahead.

One River Asset Management CIO, Eric Peters, recently said, “I have a growing conviction that in the coming 2-5 years, we’re going to face a US debt sustainability crisis, sparking a major global market event.”

BofA CIO Michael Hartnett recently noted what we said previously about the unsustainable debt explosion

And now, fresh comments from Andrey Kostin, CEO of Russia’s second-largest bank, have emerged—comments that Western mainstream media dare not share with their audiences. Why is that? … Well, the Washington censorship blob wouldn’t allow it.

Russian state-owned news agency TASS cited Kostin’s interview with the Fontanka publication, who warned if it wasn’t for the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, a sovereign debt crisis would’ve already been underway in the US. No matter what, he warned the US economy is on the verge of an economic crisis.

“I am thoroughly convinced that America is inevitably headed for a serious economic crisis. The amount of debt currently held by the US today has reached inconceivable, astronomical levels. And the dollar’s monopoly on the global stage is the only thing enabling the Americans to maintain such a level of debt. If the Chinese or the Arabs took their money out of the US, a complete collapse would ensue for the financial sector and the government,” he said. 

Kostin added:

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

Managing Chaos: Adventures in Alternative Media. Greg Guma

Managing Chaos: Adventures in Alternative Media. Greg Guma

An eye-witness account that explores the unique, tumultuous history of Pacifica radio and alternative media in America.

After an eclectic career, Greg Guma discusses the evolution of radio and television, the impacts of concentrated media ownership, the rise of the alternative press, his own work in Vermont — before and during a progressive revolution that changed the state’s power structure, and decades later, how he managed the original listener-supported radio network.

Weaving together an intimate chronicle of what he saw as Pacifica Radio’s first post-revolution CEO and episodes from his earlier life as a reporter, editor and activist, Guma explores the challenges of maintaining democratic institutions in a culture of distrust and polarization, of striking the delicate balance between truth and advocacy, observation and participation, and of managing conflicts with persuasion instead of force. 

Managing Chaos is a media saga, a personal story, and a cautionary tale.

…a skilled writer who has immersed himself in Vermont life and politics for decades.  — Sasha Abramsky

…the first executive in Pacifica who has been willing, and able, to share his experiences…. They ought to be required reading for all PNB and LSB members.  —  Nalini Lasiewicz

Excerpts from the Book

“The deeper I looked the more convoluted and intractable the problems appeared: Charges and counter-charges of secrecy, waste, racism, sexism, harassment and violence, turf battles over local fiefdoms, manipulation, and alleged fraud. It seemed like a fratricidal war with no end in sight. 

“It reminded me of how easily reality can be blurred by misinformation. That July, Jeff Ruch, the director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, had issued a relevant assessment of a much larger and even more dysfunctional organization. ‘The federal government,’ he concluded, ‘is suffering from a severe disinformation syndrome.’

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

The battle for control of our minds – and the invaluable role of independent journalism

The battle for control of our minds – and the invaluable role of independent journalism

Journalists like myself were the first to break free of corporate media servitude. Now we face a backlash to disappear us by the very media establishment we threaten

The true costs of the West’s corporate media system have been hidden from view. It entails restricting control over information dissemination to a corporate elite. It depends on an advertising model that makes us the product, not the truth. And it necessarily promotes an economic model of endless consumption that, as should be all too clear, is destroying the planet.

Here is a short extract from a talk I gave about how journalists like myself were the first to break free of corporate media servitude, and how we now face a backlash to disappear us by the very media establishment we threaten:

[see link above to access]

My full talk can be watched here:

UK’s “Online Safety Act” OFFICIALLY grants MSM permission to publish lies

UK’s “Online Safety Act” OFFICIALLY grants MSM permission to publish lies

Welcome to the UK where it’s now official government policy that you CAN’T publish “misinformation”, but The Guardian, the BBC, Disney and Netflix CAN.

Yes, it’s true – the recently signed “Online Safety Act” brands the publication of “false information” a criminal offense punishable by up to a year in prison…

…unless you’re an MSM outlet, when it’s totally fine.

Think even the corrupt & bloated criminal class that rules over us would never dare be that blatant?

Take a look at section 179 making it illegal to publish false information with intent to cause harm:

…and then look at section 180, which exempts all MSM outlets from this new law :

…and that’s without even getting into OfCom’s “select committee”, or how they choose to define “misinformation” (s. 152)

Welcome to the modern definition of “freedom of speech”, where the MSM are directly and explicitly permitted to “knowingly publish false information with intent to cause non-trivial harm”, and you can be sent to jail for a year for calling out their lies.

Oh, and it looks like our friends across the pond might not be far behind. The Big Tech Senate hearings started yesterday, and social media executives are already throwing their support behind the new “Kids Online Safety Act”.

With the EU’s own Digital Services Act coming into force later this month, and all the focus on “misinformation and disinformation” at Davos two weeks ago, we can see the real crackdown on internet free speech is about to kick into gear.

Good times.

For a more in-depth break down of what exactly the “Online Safety Act” is and how it works, you can read our article from last September.

“One Of The Most Brilliant Explanations Of The Modern World”: Russell Brand Sits With Tucker Carlson For Explosive Interview

“One Of The Most Brilliant Explanations Of The Modern World”: Russell Brand Sits With Tucker Carlson For Explosive Interview

Russell Brand flew too close to the sun, it would seem. Just as the popular British comedian was gaining massive attention for confronting global authoritarianism, he was hit with an onslaught of sexual allegations by anonymous accusers, which were amplified throughout the mainstream media.

Brand, known for his left-leaning ideology, articulate critique of the war in Ukraine, and the history of NATO leading up to said war, drew a clandestine ‘shadow campaign’ against him, which according to Tucker Carlson, “began with governments, not private organizations, but governments, their Intel services and their policy makers.” Brand was even attacked “as a Chinese propagandist” for his views on Ukraine.

I’ve never been to China. I don’t purport to understand China, certainly don’t advocate for Chinese policy,” Brand told Carlson, who suggested that the ‘Chinese propagandist’ allegations were nothing more than “the early seeds of a very deceptive plant that flowered more than a year later, in September, when you were accused of these crimes,” referring to the sexual assault allegations.

“You were making kind of a remarkable case against the Ukrainian people and certainly not in favor of Russia,” Carlson noted, to which Brand replied: “All we’ve essentially done is listen to brilliant academics talking about the history of NATO and the coup in 2014, in Ukraine, and Putin’s explicit declaration that he would prefer, let’s put it mildly, that Ukraine were not invited into NATO, the sum of the regional disputes, how they’re escalating tensions. This is information that, because of independent media, is available.

Brand was also attacked after Moderna ‘tracked his content’ during the pandemic, and thinks that we’re at a major inflection point for independent voices.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Disease X and the Corrupt Lancet

Disease X and the Corrupt Lancet

The globalists launch their new weapon to take over the world

It is Davos (World Economic Forum) week and the MSM hysterical propaganda push from the globalists regarding “disease X” is in full swing. Just take a gander at a few of the Corporate Mockingbird Media headlines today.

Almost every major news outlet in the world has run black propaganda pieces about disease X. Why do I write black propaganda – because the “experts” aren’t actually named, the peer-reviewed papers supporting the thesis of “a deadly pathogen causing 20 times more deaths than COVID-19” or “killing 20 times more people than COVID-19” or “killing 50 million people” are non-existent. Yet these narratives are all headline news in main stream media.

This is just another exercise in globalized messaging to support the WHO (World Economic Forum) and WEF pushed narrative that governments must pour $billions into the largest transnational corporations in the world to “cure” a non-existent disease.

What isn’t black propaganda but rather grey propaganda is that this fearporn is being pushed by the WEF and the WHO. WHO officials are most of the featured speakers and panelists on “Disease X” at the Davos meeting this week. From the WEF website:

World leaders are set to discuss preparation for the next pandemic at the World Economic Forum in Davos…

Officials from across the globe will be heading to the annual meeting in Switzerland, with the risk posed by what’s known as Disease X one of the key items on the agenda.

The meeting will address new warnings from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the unidentified disease could kill 20 times more people than the coronavirus pandemic.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

WSJ Editor-in-Chief Admits To Davos Elites ‘We No Longer Own The News’

WSJ Editor-in-Chief Admits To Davos Elites ‘We No Longer Own The News’

Thanks to the internet and (shrinking) press freedoms, legacy media outlets no longer have a monopoly on information and narratives.

Case in point, during a WEF discussion at Davos entitled “Defending Truth,” Wall St. Journal EIC Emma Tucker lamented this loss of control over ‘the facts,’ as Modernity.news reports.

“I think there’s a very specific challenge for the legacy brands, like the New York Times and like the Wall Street Journal,” Tucker said, adding “If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.

“If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, then that was a fact,” she continued, adding “Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying.”

Watch:

Russia, Russia, Russia!

European Commission VP Věra Jourová also piped up during the same discussion, calling the rise of “disinformation” a “security threat,” and suggesting that “It was part of the Russian military doctrine that they will start information war, and we are in it now.”

Like when the Hillary Clinton campaign used a former (?) British spook’s Russian source to fabricate a hoax against Donald Trump, which was peddled through the Wall Street Journal and every single other legacy media outlet? That kind of information war? Or when 51 former US intelligence officials used disinformation to influence the 2020 election, suggesting the NY Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop bombshell was Russian meddling?

Disinformation is a very powerful tool,” Jourová continued, adding that “In the EU we are focusing on improving of the system where the people will get the facts right. We don’t speak about opinions. We are not correcting anyone’s opinions or language. This is about the facts.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh IX–Hear, Speak, See No Evil: Sociopolitical Collapse

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh IX

Chichen Itza, Mexico (1986) photo by author

Hear, Speak, See No Evil: Sociopolitical Collapse

Once more a comment posted in the Tyee in response to ongoing ‘debate’ with others in regard to the 2020 U.S. presidential election and some of the accusations of irregularities surrounding the process. While not obviously related to ‘collapse’ I will add some context to draw it into my ongoing thesis afterwards.

For the sake of argument, let’s say some of these [a list of supposed election irregularities] are fabricated and/or misinterpretation of events (which is what the video of the polling clerk filling out ballots is being explained away as — they were filling out ‘damaged’ ballots). That does not mean they all are and should just be summarily dismissed. They merit further scrutiny and investigation. Conspiracies (that is, an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act) are common in politics (in fact, perhaps far too common).

A few thoughts to share for those that believe otherwise.

The fact that the sources are not mainstream should not lead to their immediate dismissal as many suggest. All one has to do is look at how many mainstream sources are deliberately suppressing the whole Julian Assange debacle or the Hunter Biden laptop evidence that suggests pay-to-play shenanigans involving his father. Or Glenn Greenwald deciding to resign from the media company he founded because fellow editors refused to publish an article unless he removed all criticism of Joe Biden. These examples (and there are many, many more — a pertinent one is how many mainstream media accepted the Bush administration’s declaration that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and then basically ran PR for the government’s invasion) should show that mainstream media is quite biased and often does not perform due diligence in its reporting, suppresses stories, or primarily runs opinion-editorials and passes them off as investigative journalism, especially if one is questioning the dominant narratives that they tend to support quite adamantly. It is often, unfortunately, only those outside of the mainstream that question the stories told by the-powers-that-be and challenge them.

And the supposed importance of elections and sanctity of voting are two of those narratives (the ones that this article goes to great lengths to further). And these are very, very important social narratives for several reasons. First, the political class overseeing society need legitimization. They need the citizens to believe with all their hearts and minds that the ruling class has a ‘right’ to be making the decisions they are making and enacting the policies they are enacting with the support and blessings of the people. Without this legitimization they would not only run into significant difficulty with social ‘order’, they would lose control of the wealth-generating systems that supply their revenue streams (their primary motivation). This right to govern supposedly derives from the choices made via the ballot box; we quite often hear leaders claim they have a mandate from the people to justify (rationalise?) their actions.

Second, people want to believe they actually have agency in the way their society is managed. Believing you have agency in your life is a fundamental need. So, people want to believe they can significantly impact the political process by voting. And we are socialised almost from birth to believe this story. Our public schools initiate us into the dominant narrative, teaching children the importance of our political system and how we need to support it. We are told it is a civic duty to vote. That if you don’t vote, you can’t complain. That major wars have been fought to protect our freedoms and the right to vote. People do not want to confront the possibility that it is all just theatre; that it is a story to keep us mollified, well behaved, and compliant; that the real power may lay well beyond their reach or influence (or as George Carlin opined: it’s a big club and you ain’t in it). The people do not want to face the idea that their leaders do not have the interests of the masses as their primary motivation; that would just create far too much cognitive dissonance.

For these two reasons alone the majority of people and certainly almost all the ruling class (and this includes academics, media, politicians, corporations) will refuse to see or acknowledge the flaws when exposed. Evidence is memory-holed. Whistleblowers are vilified (or worse). The believers and those benefiting from the dominant storyline will fight tooth and nail to defend the system. The narrative must be protected. Just read up on the various inquisitions of the Catholic Church to see how narratives that support the powerful are protected.

PS
I truly do want to thank those who challenge my thinking in a constructive manner. It forces me to rethink and reflect on my own biases and blindspots. For those who fall back on the ad hominem fallacy of attacking me or calling me names, please grow up.

One of the arguments made by Dmitry Orlov in his book The Five Stages of Collapse is that there exist a number of tipping points as it were that indicate a complex society is on the verge of collapse. He states these “Serve as mental milestones…[and each breaches] a specific level of trust or faith in the status quo. Although each stage causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift.”

His five stages are:

  1. Financial collapse where faith in risk assessment and financial guarantees is lost.
  2. Commercial collapse that witnesses a breakdown in trade and widespread shortages of necessities.
  3. Political collapse through a loss of political class relevance and legitimacy.
  4. Social collapse in which social institutions that could provide resources fail.
  5. Cultural collapse that is exhibited by the disbanding of families into individuals competing for scarce resources.

As I suggest in a review and commentary on his book: “all that is needed for political collapse is for more citizens to come to the realization that the status quo is no longer working for the benefit of all but for the benefit of the elite. When the masses finally come to better understand the corruption and malfeasance that percolates throughout the political world, collapse of the political class will occur.”

This is perhaps what we are witnessing with greater frequency in the U.S. and elsewhere, suggesting sociopolitical collapse may not be too far off in the future. And with sociopolitical collapse comes some pretty serious knock-on effects that will upset the complex systems we all rely upon, especially long-distance supply chains and social ‘order’.

As I have argued in other places, when it comes to politics we seem to be chickens arguing over which fox will guard us while the henhouse is burning down in the background.

Chris Hedges: The Trump-Russia Saga and the Death Spiral of American Journalism

Chris Hedges: The Trump-Russia Saga and the Death Spiral of American Journalism

The media caters to a particular demographic, telling that demographic what it already believes — even when it is unverified or false. This pandering defines the coverage of the Trump-Russia saga.
De-Pressed – Mr. Fish

Reporters make mistakes. It is the nature of the trade. There are always a few stories we wish were reported more carefully. Writing on deadline with often only a few hours before publication is an imperfect art. But when mistakes occur, they must be acknowledged and publicized. To cover them up, to pretend they did not happen, destroys our credibility. Once this credibility is gone, the press becomes nothing more than an echo chamber for a selected demographic. This, unfortunately, is the model that now defines the commerical media.

The failure to report accurately on the Trump-Russia saga for the four years of the Trump presidency is bad enough. What is worse, major media organizations, which produced thousands of stories and reports that were false, refuse to engage in a serious postmortem. The systematic failure was so egregious and widespread that it casts a very troubling shadow over the press. How do CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Mother Jones admit that for four years they reported salacious, unverified gossip as fact? How do they level with viewers and readers that the most basic rules of journalism were ignored to participate in a witch hunt, a virulent New McCarthyism? How do they explain to the public that their hatred for Trump led them to accuse him, for years, of activities and crimes he did not commit? How do they justify their current lack of transparency and dishonesty? It is not a pretty confession, which is why it won’t happen…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers

Western Journalists Are Cowardly, Approval-Seeking Losers

Listen to a reading of this article:

Research conducted by New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election has found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

Which is to say that all the years of hysterical shrieking about Russian trolls interfering in US democracy and corrupting the fragile little minds of Americans — a narrative that has been used to drum up support for internet censorship and ever-increasing US government involvement in the regulation of online speech — was false.

And to be clear, this isn’t actually news. It was established years ago that the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency could not possibly have had any meaningful impact on the 2016 election, because the scope of its operations was quite small, its posts were mostly unrelated to the election and many were posted after the election occurred, and its funding was dwarfed by orders of magnitude by domestic campaigns to influence the election outcome.

What’s different this time around, six years after Trump’s inauguration, is that this time the mass media are reporting on these findings.

 

The Washington Post has an article out with the brazenly misleading headline “Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on 2016 voters“. Anyone who reads the article itself will find its author Tim Starks acknowledges that “Russian accounts had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior,” but the insertion of the word “little” means anyone who just reads the headline (the overwhelming majority of people encountering the article) will come away with the impression that Russian trolls still had some influence on 2016 voters.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The World Wants to Be Deceived

The World Wants to Be Deceived

My title comes from a 19th century author whose name does not matter nor would it mean much if I mentioned him.  It’s an old truth that has not changed a bit over the centuries.

I think, however, it would be more linguistically accurate to say that most people want to be deceived, for the world, the earth doesn’t give a damn, as the French poet Jacques Prévert reminds us in “Song in the Blood”:

There are great puddles of blood on the world
where’s it all going all this spilled blood
is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk
funny kind of drunkography then
so wise…so monotonous…
No the earth doesn’t get drunk
the earth doesn’t turn askew
it pushes its little car regularly its four seasons
rain…snow
hail…fair weather
never is it drunk
[…]
It doesn’t give a damn
The earth

But people, the thinking reeds as Pascal called us, we, who through the support of wars and violence of all sorts, care just enough to want to be deceived as to what we are doing by making so much blood that is inside people get to the outside for the earth to drink.

I could, of course, quote liberally from truth-tellers down through history who have said the same thing about self-deception with all its shades and nuances. Those quotations are endless.  Why bother?  At some very deep level in the recesses of their hearts, people know it’s true.

I could make a pretty essay here, be erudite and eloquent, and weave a web of wisdom from all those the world says were the great thinkers because they are now dead and can no longer detect hypocrisy.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Highly-Cited ‘Hamilton 68’ Russiagate Tracker Is Total Hoax: Taibbi

Highly-Cited ‘Hamilton 68’ Russiagate Tracker Is Total Hoax: Taibbi

Out of the caterwaul of cries proclaiming that Russian collusion, and Russian influence operations, were the only reason Donald Trump won the 2016 US election (a hoax funded and promoted by his opponent, Hillary Clinton), a website which claimed to track said Kremlin efforts sprung forth, and was used to justify baseless allegations;

Hamilton 68: a widely-cited, (indirectly) state-sponsored propaganda tool.

The website claims to monitor a secret list of Twitter accounts which they accused of Kremlin control, however it’s impossible to verify their claims as the group has never disclosed their methodology.

Former FBI counterintelligence agent and “disinformation” expert Clint Watts, the spokesman for Hamilton

As Matt Taibbi notes via Racket:

Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation”. It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. –Racket

And now, Taibbi has torn Hamilton 68’s ‘black box’ asunder after reviewing the latest batch of “Twitter Files.”

As Taibbi notes via Racket:

Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68.

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Mainstream Media Admits That We Are Facing “The Worst Food Crisis In Modern History”

The Mainstream Media Admits That We Are Facing “The Worst Food Crisis In Modern History”

People on the other side of the planet are dropping dead from starvation right now, but most people don’t even realize that this is happening.  Unfortunately, most people just assume that everything is fine and dandy.  If you are one of those people that believe that everything is just wonderful, I would encourage you to pay close attention to the details that I am about to share with you.  Global hunger is rapidly spreading, and that is because global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter.  If current trends continue, we could potentially be facing a nightmare scenario before this calendar year is over.

Pakistan is not one of the poorest nations in the world, but the lack of affordable food is starting to cause panic inside that country.  The following comes from Time Magazine

Last Saturday in Mirpur Khas, a city in Pakistan’s Sindh province, hundreds of people lined up for hours outside a park to buy subsidized wheat flour, offered for 65 rupees a kilogram instead of the current, inflated rate of about 140 to 160 rupees.

When a few trucks arrived, the crowd surged forward, leaving several injured. One man, Harsingh Kolhi, who was there to bring a five kg bag of flour home for his wife and children, was crushed and killed in the chaos.

We are seeing similar things happen all over the planet.

Just because you still may have enough food to eat doesn’t mean that everybody else is okay.

In fact, things have already gotten so bad that even CNN is admitting that we are facing “the worst food crisis in modern history”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Sulzberger: Disinformation is the “Most Existential Problem” Facing the Planet Today

Sulzberger: Disinformation is the “Most Existential Problem” Facing the Planet Today

There has been much coverage over the resurfacing of former CNN host Brian Stelter as the host for a panel at the World Economic Forum on alleged disinformation and “hate speech.” Stelter previously called for censorship under a “harm reduction model” and led a panel at a conference where Democrats discussed how to shape the news. He was confronted over his own dissemination for false stories targeting Republicans on CNN. Yet, I was most struck by a statement from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger who described “disinformation” as the “most existential” problem the world is facing today. Sulzberger insisted that disinformation is the reason why there is a loss of “trust” today. He ignores his own history in eroding that trust in the media through flagrantly biased decisions at the New York Times.

Former  NYT editor Jill Abramson also slammed the participation of Sulzberger and the New York Times at Davos, denouncing it as a “corrupt circle-jerk” between media and business. She said that “the coverage was a sweetener to flatter the CEOs by seeing their names in the NYT.”

The panel was titled, “Clear & Present Danger of Disinformation” included panelists: New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, Vice-President of the European Commission Vera Jourová, CEO of Internews Jeanne Bourgault, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. The entire conference was notable in its omission of free speech advocates while inviting long advocates for censorship like Stelter.

Stelter asked his panel, “How does this discussion of disinformation relate to everything else happening today in Davos?”

Sulzberger responded:

“Well, first, thanks for having me is as part of this conversation. As you can imagine, this is something I really care deeply about. So, I think if you look at this question of disinformation, I think it maps basically to every other major challenge that we are grappling with as a society, and particularly the most existential among them…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress