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Imagine future election campaigns

One of the first posts in this newsletter’s Shrinking Trust Horizon series was about how “deep fake” technology will make fake images, videos, and audio recordings almost indistinguishable from the real thing. This will kill millions of modeling and acting jobs, while weaponizing audio and video in all kinds of disturbing ways.

That day has apparently arrived:

Baltimore high school teacher arrested over deepfake audio of principal

A Maryland high school teacher has been arrested for allegedly using AI to deepfake a bogus recording of his principal making racist comments.

Dazhon Darien, 31, is accused of creating the hoax audio of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert.

Mr Eiswert was placed on leave and had police outside his home amid death threats he received over the fake clip.

Mr Darien was held at an airport after a security check over a gun in his bag found an arrest warrant against him.

He faces charges of stalking, theft, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness.

Baltimore County Schools Superintendent Myriam Rogers said the school, as well as the Baltimore County Police Department, launched an investigation on 17 January when they were made aware of the voice recording.

Detectives requested a forensic analysis of the audio, which found it was not authentic.

In the recording, Mr Eiswert’s deepfaked voice is heard making disparaging comments about black students’ test scores, black teachers and Jews.

Police believe Mr Darien, the Baltimore-area school’s athletic director, made the recording to retaliate against Mr Eiswert because he was pursuing an investigation into potential mishandling of district funds.

Mr Darien had authorised a payment of nearly $2,000 (£1,600) to his roommate, falsely claiming the roommate was an assistant coach for the Pikesville girls’ soccer team, reports the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

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

Davos, Trust, and the End of “Comfortable Wolves”

January 21, 2024

Davos, Trust, and the End of “Comfortable Wolves”

Last fall I poked the slumbering bear of the #ungovernble set by taking extreme umbrage with calling people “Sheeple.” For the record I absolutely detest that word.

Instead I shot back with a very reflexive, “Bullshit!” There are very few things that trigger me more than consigning 90% of humanity to that of herbivores orders of magnitude more stupid than my goats.

In that frustration I coined the phrase, “comfortable wolves.” Sometimes you just have what alcoholics call “a moment of clarity.”

In most situations, public conversations reveal the truth of who we are. Twitter is a one of the best mirrors of our true personality and state of mind than anything else devised yet, in my opinion. There is such a low barrier to contracting ‘foot-in-mouth disease’ that we all pass it around like 1st graders while generally acting like them in public.

This exchange revealed one person’s nihilism and condescension as defense mechanism while it revealed my stubbornness in believing we’re not all just quadriplegics in canoes headed for Niagara Falls.

This was an idea that quickly set my little corner of Twitter on fire, with two camps emerging quickly. You never know what is going to capture people’s imagination when you do this stuff for a living. But it seemed at the time that people were waiting for someone to stand up to the bullies doomporning it up all over social media and give them a little credit.

I still don’t think this idea is that far out there. Honestly, the more I think about it the more it should inspire people to action. You’re not a bad person, stupid or apathetic, you’re comfortable. You know it. I know it. I know what I am.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXIX–Are We Being Duped Regarding Global Warming?

November 20, 2023

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXIX

August 17, 2021

Are We Being Duped Regarding Global Warming?

Today’s contemplation was prompted by an email my mum sent me. As she closes in on 80, I find that she’s becoming a bit more open-minded about things but remains somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to global warming/anthropogenic climate change. We periodically share thoughts on the state of the world, especially politics, and I think I’ve almost got her convinced to abandon her faith/trust in government…

Anyways, here is the comment about global warming she forwarded to me and my relatively quick response (typed up while I was engaged in replacing a floor/foundation for one of our greenhouses — I never considered a decade ago when I installed the first greenhouse, of three, that the mini-garden ties I was using to terrace our backyard would decay/rot so quickly so I am replacing them with concrete blocks and putting in a patio stone floor so that my eldest daughter who has taken over the greenhouse can have many years of use with it, hopefully). I have added some minor supplemental thoughts (in italics) and supporting links to a few sources (see endnotes).

Comment:

With global warming having become as much a political issue as a scientific inquiry, I went from wondering whether mankind might really be influencing the climate to someone questioning a science I do not understand. I am now worried we are being duped by people with an agenda, like keep the money gravy train running. No one has yet explained to my satisfaction the big ice age followed by warming then a mini-ice age, followed by warming, all before mankind was a significant presence on earth and did nothing but have a few campfires.

Response:

That human activity has an impact on our environment and ecological systems, I have little doubt. How could almost eight billion of us and our resource demands not? Especially the so-called ‘advanced’ economies[i]. There is growing evidence that shows that our industrial civilisation has surpassed several planetary biophysical limits and likely overloaded a number of the planet’s compensatory sinks due to the vast amounts of waste material produced in its quest to procure the minerals and energy that our tools require for their manufacture and pollutants produced through their use.[ii]

The issue with the focus on global warming/climate change/carbon emissions is multi-faceted —such stories are never as simple as we’re led to believe. Geologic history shows pretty clearly that the planet’s climate changes and probably most significantly as a result of the sun’s cycles.[iii]

Is human activity exacerbating natural cycles? Quite possibly[iv]. Is it as catastrophic as painted by some?[v] Only time can truly tell since modelling of complex systems is fraught with difficulties.[vi] One minor variation of one of many variables that are used to create future predictions can shift the eventual outcome significantly.[vii] Of course, humans don’t like uncertainty (which is really all that can be provided about the future — probabilistic scenarios that may or may not occur — no matter how complex one’s predictive model is) so we cling to and tend to believe forecasts that are at their root uncertain; their potential accuracy matters not.[viii]

One of the other complications of the narrative is that our ruling class always leverages crises to their advantage. Always. I have little doubt that the hyper focus on climate and carbon emissions is being used to pursue the ruling class’s primary motivation: control/expansion of the wealth-generating systems that provide their revenue streams.[ix]

The ‘problem’ of climate change is always presented with ‘solutions’ but those ‘solutions’ do not address carbon emissions in the least; in fact, there’s a good argument to be made that they actually increase them.[x] Much as the ruling class manufactures consent for any policy that the masses might question/reject (almost always via significant propaganda campaigns), they have created a narrative that is designed to persuade people to believe something that is increasingly being shown to be completely false and little more than marketing/sloganeering.[xi]

These ‘solutions’ also, conveniently, increase the revenue streams of the ruling class via taxes and complete replacement/overhaul of virtually all important technology (e.g., ‘renewable’ energy, electric vehicles, etc.). Scratch even gently below the surface of the ‘clean/green’ energy story and you discover it’s all basically bullshit.[xii] These technologies not only are not sustainable because of their dependence upon finite resources (including very much on the fossil fuel platform itself), but their production is hugely ecologically destructive. We are being sold a load of crap on various fronts so that the sociopaths that ‘control’ our world can profit. This being said, we do face some significant environmental and resource depletion challenges.

Probably the most dire predicament we face is ecological overshoot — too damn many people (especially living in ‘advanced’ economies) for a planet with finite resources.[xiii] The constant push for growth (which really is just to prolong/support the gargantuan Ponzi that our financial/economic/monetary systems have become) is the exact opposite of what we likely need to be doing; as is the push to ‘electrify’ everything.[xiv] The unfortunate thing for the future is that any species that overshoots its natural carrying capacity has only one way to be rebalanced: a massive die-off.[xv] When that occurs (and how it unfolds) is anybody’s guess…

As much as we tend to believe we understand our world and its complexities, I would contend we do not; at least, not very well. To compensate for this uncertainty we have developed all sorts of psychological mechanisms that lead us to believe particular narratives with some ‘certainty’. The beginning of a recent paper that challenges the mainstream story surrounding ‘renewable’ energy (that has been presented as a panacea for reducing carbon emissions; although I would argue Peak Oil is a more troubling issue in the energy needs of industrial civilisation[xvi]) is pertinent to this idea: “We begin with a reminder that humans are storytellers by nature. We socially construct complex sets of facts, beliefs, and values that guide how we operate in the world. Indeed, humans act out of their socially constructed narratives as if they were real. All political ideologies, religious doctrines, economic paradigms, cultural narratives — even scientific theories — are socially constructed “stories” that may or may not accurately reflect any aspect of reality they purport to represent. Once a particular construct has taken hold, its adherents are likely to treat it more seriously than opposing evidence from an alternate conceptual framework.”[xvii]

[i] https://archive.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-environment/general-analysis-on-the-environment/45393-how-much-of-the-worlds-resource-consumption-occurs-in-rich-countries.html; https://www.livescience.com/20308-greedy-nations-top-resource-users-earth.html

[ii] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800914001323; https://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855.full; https://ideas.ted.com/the-9-limits-of-our-planet-and-how-weve-raced-past-4-of-them/; https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2015-01-15-planetary-boundaries—an-update.html

[iii] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-does-sun-affect-our-climate; https://phys.org/news/2017-03-sun-impact-climate-quantified.html

[iv] https://sciencing.com/what-human-activities-affect-the-carbon-cycle-12083853.html; https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/680; https://phys.org/news/2010-12-human-affect-carbon.html

[v] https://www.populationconnectionaction.org/2021/08/12/ipcc-catastrophic-climate-change-is-coming/; https://www.npr.org/2021/08/09/1025898341/major-report-warns-climate-change-is-accelerating-and-humans-must-cut-emissions-; https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/deepadaptation.pdf

[vi] https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/complexsystems/introduction.html; https://wtf.tw/ref/meadows.pdf

[vii] https://issues.org/climate-change-scenarios-lost-touch-reality-pielke-ritchie/?fbclid=IwAR1dbpSNqPXWr9QyfC-fDzlWrvfswO3LLZKj08szexcCb_7h7uRW2j7Qv54

[viii] https://www.amazon.com/Future-Babble-Pundits-Hedgehogs-Foxes/dp/0452297575

[ix] https://www.counterpunch.org/20 , 15/10/06/yes-there-is-an-imperialist-ruling-class/; https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalelite07.htm

[x] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/jan/09/wind-turbines-increasing-carbon-emissions; https://www.amazon.com/Life-after-Fossil-Fuels-Alternative/dp/3030703347; https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/opinion/mondaycop22-lower-co2-emissions-with-lower-carbon-solar-energy/

[xi] https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499; https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Edward-Bernays/dp/0970312598; https://planetofthehumans.com; https://www.brightgreenlies.com

[xii] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-renewable-energy-technologies; https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme807/node/715’ https://www.nap.edu/read/12619/chapter/7; https://www.altenergymag.com/article/2015/08/the-dark-side-of-renewable-energy-negative-impacts-of-renewables-on-the-environment/20963/; https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Impacts-of-Renewable-Energy/Spellman/p/book/9781482249460; https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

[xiii] https://www.pnas.org/content/99/14/9266; https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319810.Overshoot

[xiv] https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/our-economy-is-a-ponzi-scheme-8fc56b9e594f; https://eand.co/how-the-economy-became-one-giant-ponzi-scheme-4ac84bf18738; https://moneyweek.com/economy/global-economy/601657/why-our-economy-is-a-giant-ponzi-scheme

[xv] https://thesenecaeffect.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/humans-in-ecological-overshoot-collapse-now-to-avoid-a-larger-catastrophe/; https://www.earthovershoot.org/who-we-are/frequent-questions.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot_(population)

[xvi] https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/29458/peak-oil-decline-coronavirus-economy/; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-peak-oil-already-happened/; http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/liegl1/

[xvii] https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4508/htm?fbclid=IwAR2ISt5shfV4wpFEc8jxbQnrrxyllyvZP-xDnoHhWrjGTQRIqUNfk3hOK1g

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXI–Loss of Trust in Government: A Stage of Collapse

October 24, 2023

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXI

June 16, 2021

Loss of Trust in Government: A Stage of Collapse

Today’s contemplation is prompted by an online media article that argues for cancelling Canada Day, our national ‘celebration’ for the day the nation state of Canada was ‘born’ (July 1, 1867). I raise this topic for the growing sense of ‘disappointment’ with our national government and, more generally, of all government/politicians. A feeling that seems to be fairly widespread around the globe and, of course, waxes and wanes depending on media attention and events.

I am thinking of this loss of ‘trust’ within the framework of Dmitry Orlov’s thesis of societal ‘collapse’ that is presented in his book The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivor’s Toolkit.

Orlov argues that “my five stages of collapse…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” (p. 14).

Here are his five stages:
a) Financial collapse where faith in risk assessment and financial guarantees is lost.
b) Commercial collapse that witnesses a breakdown in trade and widespread shortages of necessities.
c) Political collapse through a loss of political class relevance and legitimacy.
d) Social collapse in which social institutions that could provide resources fail.
e) Cultural collapse that is exhibited by the disbanding of families into individuals competing for scarce resources.

The concept of the ‘nation state’ and how the ‘patriotism’ one feels towards it is manipulated by the-powers-that-be/elite/ruling class are interesting sociological/psychological areas to explore and reflect upon. One of the more interesting books/essays I have read about the ‘State’ is Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State. This particular section has stuck with me:

“The State is almost universally considered an institution of social service…[and that] we are the government…[But] the government is not ‘us.’ The government does not in any accurate sense ‘represent’ the majority of the people…Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area…Having used force and violence to obtain its revenue, the State generally goes on to regulate and dictate other actions of its individual subjects…[Moreover, the] State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively ‘peaceful’ the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society…The State has never been created by a ‘social contract’; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation…While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long-run problem is ideological. For in order to continue in office, any government (not simply a ‘democratic’ government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects…[Thus] the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens…For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives…Since most men tend to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its people with the State was a means of making natural patriotism work to the State’s advantage.”

The ‘State’ works hard to legitimise its position and power (their primary motivation being the control/expansion of the wealth-generating systems that provide their revenue streams). For the most part, it ‘controls’ (or, at least, heavily influences) all of those aspects of society that help to do this: legislative powers, military/security, education, money creation/distribution, taxing power, communications/media, etc..

They constantly ‘market’ themselves as representative, transparent, responsive, responsible, accountable, etc. when, in truth, the exact opposite tends to (is always?) the case. When one scratches at the surface, even gently, of the facade of what we are told is true about our governments and ‘representatives’ we find an upside down world of corruption, nepotism, self-serving interests, and manipulation. But question the status quo belief system and you are often characterised as traitorous or a conspiracy theorist because the curtain can never be drawn aside to show the emperor has no clothes. The group think and reduction of cognitive dissonance that maintains the illusion is strong.

Don’t like what the government is doing? Go vote them out of office. Problem is, citizens have zero agency via the ballot box. Nothing ever changes. The system remains. It continues to extract wealth (in terms of labour and resources) and expand ruinous policies (both environmental and social). The rich and powerful continue to pull the strings of, well, virtually everything.

And this is not some new historical phenomenon. The ‘evolution’ of complex societies and the hierarchical power structures/sociopolitical systems that develop in response to the growth of populations has often (always?) been dominated by a certain ‘caste’ of people who find themselves ‘above’ the others. This is particularly true as the society gets larger (both in numbers of citizens and geographic size) and ‘representatives’ lose touch with the ‘average’ person, socialising primarily within an echo chamber of sycophants and like-minded/educated people. As the saying goes: power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I’ve come to the conclusion that government, especially big government, is virtually the last place I am going look to for leadership, virtue, or even just common sense since their motivation is to subjugate the majority of us to serve their interests and that of their close supporters (primarily the rich and influential financiers), not mine, my family’s, or my community’s.

Creating a World of Distrust

July 16, 2023

Creating a World of Distrust

I remember a time when people were left to their own devices when determining what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Remember “Bat Boy?” A strange Weekly World News (sister tabloid to the National Enquirer) creation set to terrorize and dismay. Did anyone really believe this? I doubt if many did. Some did, I’m sure, but what can ‘ya do?

I remember wondering about it. I was still young and impressionable (actually, I still wonder about it, I guess I am old and impressionable now). The operative word here is “wonder.” No government agency told me I was not allowed to wonder if something was “true” or not. I figured that out on my own. Why is this good?

Well, for one thing, you would have to be a nutcase to allow the government, or any authoritative power, to tell you what you were allowed to wonder about. Secondly, wondering is healthy. It hones your senses; you figure stuff out on your own. There is nothing more powerful than having to figure something out on your own. It takes something called “thinking”—which seems to be in low supply these days.

I just saw a meme with two heads speaking to one another. One head is visibly angry and is saying something like, “look at this!!!” holding up a cell phone. The other head says, “oh yeah, let me tell you what I think of that.” The angry head says, “shut up idiot!! You are not an expert!!” There’s more to it than that, but that’s enough to make my point.

Expert? Since when do you have to be an expert to have an opinion?

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Gold And The Shrinking Trust Horizon

January 31, 2023

Gold And The Shrinking Trust Horizon

Last week I posted an article on the implosion of the official vaccine narrative. That’s a controversial topic so not surprisingly it generated some heat on both sides. And a few readers expressed the wish that I’d stay in my lane (precious metals investing) and avoid venturing into unrelated and less well understood territory.

But believe it or not, the public health establishment losing its credibility is related to precious metals, via something called the trust horizon. It works like this: When things are good and the people in charge of big systems seem to be running them well, we’re content to trust the experts. We keep most of our money in banks, brokerage houses, and crypto wallets that exist for us only as websites. We buy produce that’s grown in a different hemisphere and shipped via boats, trains, and trucks to corporate chain grocery stores. We vaccinate ourselves and our kids according to the schedules set by the NIH or the CDC. We pop pills on our doctor’s orders without doing any research. We eat processed foods on the assumption that the FDA keeps them free of dangerous additives. And we believe what we see on cable news.

In other words, our trust horizon, defined as the distance from ourselves at which we’ll believe what we’re told, is global. We assume everything everywhere is working for our benefit and we’re thus willing to put our welfare in those distant hands.

But let some big systems fail to take proper care of us and we pull back, finding people and institutions closer to home that we can see and judge first-hand. We move our money out of distant banks and brokers and into local credit unions whose managers live down the street…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

January 15, 2023

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.

In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19.

They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm).

From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’

“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC

But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?

Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Ministry of Manipulation: No Wonder Trust and Credibility Have Been Lost

September 19, 2021

Ministry of Manipulation: No Wonder Trust and Credibility Have Been Lost

Now that every financial game in America has been rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many, trust and credibility has evaporated like an ice cube on a summer day in Death Valley.

Here is America in a nutshell: we no longer solve problems, we manipulate the narrative and then declare the problem has been solved. Actually solving problems is difficult and generally requires sacrifices that are proportionate to one’s wealth and power. But since America’s elite are no longer willing to sacrifice any of their vast power for the common good, sacrifice is out in America unless it can be dumped on wage earners. But unfortunately for America’s elite, four decades of hidden-by-manipulation sacrifices have stripmined average wage earners, and so they no longer have anything left to sacrifice.

Enter the Ministry of Manipulation, which adjusts the visible bits to align with the narrative that the problem has been fixed and the status quo is godlike in its technocratic powers. All this manipulation doesn’t actually solve the problems, it simply hides the decay behind gamed statistics, financial trickery and glossy PR. The problems fester until they break through the manipulated gloss and the public witnesses the breakdown of all the systems that were presented as rock-solid and forever.

Let’s take three core fields of manipulation: cost of living, Social Security and the stock market bubble. Each is a key signifier of the status quo functioning as advertised, and so manipulating them to fit the narrative is the elite’s prime directive. Goodness knows what would happen if people were exposed to the unmanipulated reality, but it wouldn’t be good for America’s self-serving power elite.

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

After Russiagate, Why WOULDN’T People Be Skeptical About Covid?

August 7, 2021

After Russiagate, Why WOULDN’T People Be Skeptical About Covid?

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

You hardly ever hear about Russiagate anymore. The last time it made a blip in the radar was when disgraced Collusion author Luke Harding published a very thinly-sourced story in The Guardian claiming to have proof that Donald Trump was a Kremlin asset, but other mass media outlets barely touched it and it vanished as quickly as it came.

Looking at mainstream news outlets in 2021, you’d hardly know they’d recently spent years hammering the story into public consciousness that Vladimir Putin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government, day after day after day after day after day.

But they did. Vast fortunes were raked in off the public interest generated by click-friendly stories about the latest BOMBSHELL revelation involving some peripheral member of Trump’s associates perhaps maybe having some kind of contact with a Russian national at some point. Entire careers were built on this.

Then the Mueller investigation invalidated the entire claim by failing to indict a single American for conspiring with the Russian government, and the mass media who’d spent the previous few years bashing everyone in the face with that story just kind of slowly sidled away from it.

And now they act like it never happened.

Now I’m going to ask you to put yourself in the shoes of someone you might not normally be inclined to.

Imagine you’re someone on the political right watching this whole thing unfold. Imagine that from late 2016 to mid-2019 you were watching the mass media aggressively shove this story down everyone’s throat that a US president, whom you support, is secretly working for a hostile foreign government with the goal of subverting the United States of America. ..

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

Wikipedia Co-Founder Urges Public Not to Trust the Website

July 22, 2021

Wikipedia Co-Founder Urges Public Not to Trust the Website

Wikipedia has become one of the most viewed websites in the world, but can it be trusted as a reliable source? Co-founder Larry Sanger is now warning the public not to trust the website he helped to create. “You can trust it to give an establishment view,” Sanger admitted as he explained that the website’s original design has been destroyed.

Wikipedia was originally created as an open online resource that was committed to neutrality. Between 2004-2009, Sanger said Wikipedia was a pioneer in delivering news from a non-biased perspective but that quickly changed. Users had the ability to edit various pages and debate the information from both sides of the platform, but now it is nearly impossible for the average person to participate. “If you make any edit at all you will be sternly warned or kicked out,” Sanger said, noting this often happens on articles that are “unimportant.”

Sanger believes Wikipedia is completely influenced by the establishment who has turned the site into “a battleground for a version of the truth,” as host Freddie Sayers pointed out. One blatant example is President Joe Biden’s Wikipedia page. Biden’s page has very little criticism or anything “remotely resembling the Republican point of view,” the co-founder commented. Instead, Biden’s Wikipedia page “reads like a defense council’s brief” with no mention of the alternative point of view. In stark contrast, Trump’s page was written from a Democratic point of view and harshly criticizes the former president. In fact, the page accuses Trump of crimes that he has not been charged with committing, such as sparking the January 6 Capitol “siege.” In contrast, Biden’s page fails to mention the Ukraine controversy or any other debacle during his time as vice president or president. Sanger flatly states that Wikipedia is “reliable on the establishment viewpoint,” which is ironic considering its Libertarian co-founders were anti-establishment.

Wikipedia is not a trusted source and has become another tool for government propaganda.

You’re Not SUPPOSED To Trust The Government: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

July 18, 2021

You’re Not SUPPOSED To Trust The Government: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

I still can’t get over how brazen the Biden administration is being in just announcing that it’s their place to determine who should be banned from social media platforms and how little backlash there is against this.

Just imagine the outrage if Trump had done this. Seriously, imagine it. The Biden administration instructing the world’s largest social media platform who to censor is the biggest “Imagine if Trump had done that” moment so far.

❖

They said we need internet censorship because of Russia.

They said we need internet censorship because of Covid.

They said we need internet censorship because of election security.

They said we need internet censorship because of the Capitol riot.

They said we need internet censorship because of domestic extremism.

Pretty sure they just want internet censorship.

❖

The US government is without exception the single most corrupt and destructive force on this planet. It is the very last institution on earth who should be in charge of deciding what online content is true or false. Absolute dead last.

I trust the wisdom of the collective to sort out what’s true infinitely more than I trust the wisdom of the US government and Silicon Valley plutocrats to do it for us.

❖

If people think their government is lying to them and trying to hurt them it is entirely the fault of the government and no one else.

❖

You’re not supposed to trust the government, and governments aren’t supposed to act in a way that requires your trust. If you find yourself ruled by a secretive power structure which demands your blind faith in its righteousness, something has gone horribly wrong.

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

The ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Charade

June 25, 2021

The ‘Conspiracy Theory’ Charade

How government and media use the phrase to suppress opposition.by

Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” report last week declared that “enhancing faith in American democracy” requires “finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.” In recent decades, conspiracy theories have multiplied almost as fast as government lies and cover-ups. While many allegations have been ludicrously far-fetched, the political establishment and media routinely attach the “conspiracy theory” label to any challenge to their dominance.

According to Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law professor and Obama’s regulatory czar, a conspiracy theory is “an effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Reasonable citizens are supposed to presume that government creates trillions of pages of new secrets each year for their own good, not to hide anything from the public.

In the early 1960s, conspiracy theories were practically a non-issue because 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government. Such credulity did not survive the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Seven days after Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson created a commission (later known as the Warren Commission) to suppress controversy about the killing. Johnson and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover browbeat the commission members into speedily issuing a report rubberstamping the “crazed lone gunman” version of the assassination. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, a member of the commission, revised the final staff report to change the location of where the bullet entered Kennedy’s body, thereby salvaging Hoover’s so-called “magic bullet” theory. After the Warren Commission findings were ridiculed as a whitewash, Johnson ordered the FBI to conduct wiretaps on the report’s critics. To protect the official story, the commission sealed key records for 75 years. Truth would out only after all the people involved in any coverup had gotten their pensions and died.

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

The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

April 27, 2021

The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust

Listen to this article:

This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.

Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.

The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

And actually it doesn’t ultimately matter what mainstream pundits and reporters believe is the cause of the public’s growing disgust with them, because there’s nothing they can do to fix it anyway. The mass media will never regain the public’s trust.

They’ll never regain the public’s trust for a couple of reasons, the first of which is because they’ll never be able to become trustworthy. At no point will the mass media ever begin wowing the public with its journalistic integrity and causing people to re-evaluate their opinion of mainstream news reporters…

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

The Illusion Is Failing

October 18, 2020

The Illusion Is Failing

Trust in the system is vanishing fast

Sometimes the magic fails.

The secret to the trick is accidentally revealed. The woman was always in the box. The eye is no longer deceived. And there’s no getting the audience’s sense of awe back.

Just like a bungled illusion, once trust is broken, it’s gone.

For many during 2020, the loss of their jobs and businesses — in many cases due to incompetent government management of the pandemic — has been both a blessing and a curse.

Of course nobody likes being laid off or losing a business they’d carefully built up over the years.

But for a significant number of those people, however, they’ve now been given time (against their will, admittedly) to reflect and realize how much they hated their work in the first place. For them, the illusion has been broken.

They won’t go back to pretending their former lives were acceptable or tolerable, and they’re actively looking for employment that better fits their values. Time for something new.

Others have realized how much they really disliked what air travel had devolved into. With its demeaning theater of faux displays of ‘safety’– being groped by TSA agents and having to perform a striptease to get personal items through the security scanners.

I’m one of these folks. I’ll be traveling a lot less in the future, no matter what happens with the SARS-2 virues. I’ll be content to stay local and conduct my business via Zoom calls as much as can possibly be done. I won’t miss the pat-downs, delays, crowded seats, and cancelled flights.

Similarly, social media has now been revealed to be run by petulant sociopaths whose goal is for you to see exactly what content they want you to see, because that fits their profit incentive. But they do so under the guise of “protecting” us from uninteresting or inappropriate material.

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

Can We Trust the Future at All?

September 24, 2020

Can We Trust the Future at All?

QUESTION: What did Martin mean by gold having a 21 year high. I simply can’t see how it is possible for it not to go up from here as sovereign debt collapses and printing presses are on turbo

I’ll be getting the gold report when it’s out but…. I’m about to get my hands on a few million pounds and I just want it to vanish into the ether so they don’t tax it, gold coins seemed the obvious option

Cheers B

REPLY: The major low was 1999. We have to be concerned that this agenda does not seek to also regulate gold once again. They are manipulating the currencies and several countries are starting to buck the trend. The question becomes this assumption that gold will survive simply printing money. They have far more power than people realize.

Look at Andrews in Victoria, Australia. He has turned the place into East Germany. He is leading the way and setting an example of how to crush freedom.

They are trying desperately to retain power using this fake virus to justify suppression. They are moving to digitize all money. They will not tolerate free markets.

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