Fake News

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 hours ago, merjet said:

Evidence?

Merlin,

I would have to look it up, but I think I first heard about this on Tucker Carlson.

He said at the time that the US division runs completely at a loss. This deficit is compensated by overseas, including ad hikes from CNN's airport monopoly.

That didn't make any sense to me at the time, how can airport viewing prop up ad prices? But I have seen other people in the news talk about this. I smell a smokescreen.

Comments in the news about CNN running at a deficit come up in the sporadic news stories that AT&T is thinking of spinning it off due to losses. This was discussed more during the recent AT&T and Time Warner merger, but it still comes up. On the Wikipedia page for CNN, you even get this comment:

Quote

In late May 2019, CNN International announced it was reducing its programming and staff based in London to reduce costs, citing losses of $10 million per-year.

That is sourced to The Guardian. I'm surprised the hack political Wikipedia trolls let that one alone because there is certainly a lot more about CNN's losses that could be mentioned and sourced but isn't (meaning the trolls have been busy).

For more details, I would have to do some digging if I ever get around to it. But the minutia of CNN's financials is not high on my priority list right now. I'm more interested in things like why and how a whole string of disgraced and/or retired intelligence officers keep getting pundit positions over at CNN and what kind of payoffs this entails. It seems like the ties between CNN and the CIA in particular are quite deep.

So for now, just treat all this as my opinion. You'll probably sleep better at night.

 

And add this. CNN is a cancer in our society.

Michael

[merjet]

59 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I would have to look it up, but I think I first heard about this on Tucker Carlson.

He said at the time that the US division runs completely at a loss.

That's hard to independently verify, at least for me. CNN is a subsidiary of WarnerMedia, which is a subsidiary of AT&T. Neither sub has publicly-traded stock and hence does not publish separate financial reports. I looked at AT&T's 2019 financial report here. There are some numbers for segments of WarnerMedia. Turner is one. I assume CNN is part of Turner. Turner's 2019 revenues were 88% higher than 2018 revenues; its operating contribution (net income) was 67% higher. Of course, that tells me nothing about CNN.

CNN Airport

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

And add this. CNN is a cancer in our society.

Let me further add MSNBC.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Boy, the Bill Kristol crowd (meaning The Bulwark, which is nothing but leftovers from The Weekly Standard that Krystol ran into the ground) is not amused at Rush Limbaugh, especially for his influence in stopping the power grab of the elitists during this coronavirus thing.

These idiots need to scare the shit out of everyone so the population will clamor for a savior (which will be supplied by their old-boys network, or so they plan).

Rush is helping his audience, which is huge, to keep from being scared shitless, at least that's what these inept bad guys think, so they are going hard after him right now.

The Malicious Irresponsibility of Rush Limbaugh
This vile, foolish man has blood on his hands.
by Jonathan V. Last
The Bulwark
April 2, 2020

Quote

This New York Times piece does a nice job trying to hold to account some of the people from Conservatism Inc. who worked to prevent Americans from taking COVID-19 seriously. But honestly, it’s not enough. When this is all over, there should be a reckoning—a very real, very thorough reckoning—for all of the people who made this pandemic worse by pushing disinformation and lies in the service of making it harder for the country to quickly respond to the crisis.

But why wait? Let’s talk about Rush Limbaugh, because what this man has said over the last month ought to mark him for the rest of his life.

I don't accept the premise of elitist time-travel. I don't believe Last, Krystol or any of those cronies in the present can transport themselves back in time and make an entire civilization do something different about a medical emergency by warning them of specific conservative voices. And then time-travel back to the present, claim that outcome as fact, then berate specific people for not allowing it to come to pass.

To be clear, the premise of Last's article is that the coronavirus pandemic is going to be really really really awful right now and in the near future because, a few months ago, certain conservatives (like Rush Limbaugh) lulled Americans into not thinking the threat was serious. To quote Jonathan Last about Rush: he has, "... blood on his hands."

But supposing I were to accept that premise, that Americans were so distracted by certain conservatives a few months ago, they let a pandemic into America and, because of that, people will die!!!!! If I were to accept that, I would say that their constant bombardment of President Trump and his supporters--to the exclusion of practically anything else--during the impeachment flop was such a distraction. I don't recall Last or Krystol talking about the coronavirus at the time they are now claiming Rush hypnotized America. I do recall them yapping nonstop about impeaching President Trump. But the virus was there. So, using the premise Last used to judge Rush, that would mean Last himself has blood on his hands.

But I don't accept that premise. What is really going on is that Rush has a loyal audience just like President Trump has a loyal support base. And these bases are growing. The bond between these men and their followers is made of human nature stuff, the hearts and the minds of independent individuals who see themselves reflected in these men, not the covert manipulation the Last and Krystol crowd constantly prefer. What's more, that whole gang that can't shoot straight has been leaking audience like a sieve, not to mention the power and influence they once held.

Rush thinks bad guys (the elitist establishment, especially the Democrats) are using everything in their power to gin up this coronavirus situation for a power grab, then use it to destroy Trump, the free market and the American way of life (to replace it all with globalism).

Ironically, Last's article is a perfect example that validates Rush's premise. This article is one more effort to influence people to ignore their strengths and, thus, destroy their way of life.  

Now here's what's going to happen, or so I predict. Jonathan Last, Bill Krystol & Co. will have the same result going after Rush Limbaugh they did going after Donald Trump. That is, they are going to fall flat on their faces. And they will lose even more audience and influence than they imagine possible.

They are the essence of fake news on the conservative side. And people see it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

They just don't stop no matter how many times they get busted.

Cuomo has more enthusiasm for lying about President Trump than he does for getting healed.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 4/8/2020 at 9:30 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

They just don't stop no matter how many times they get busted.

They don't even care they get busted. They just keep doing it.

The photo isn't clear from the embed, so here it is by itself:

More information here:

Man Calls Out CNN, Claims They Used Footage of Him During HURRICANE For Coronavirus Segment

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This is important history happening and we get to see it unfold from the inside, that is, from the view of those who are living it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This has to be repeated over and over and over.

And...

The only reason the legacy new media still has audience is that people don't believe this. They know it rationally. How could they not since the news media keeps getting busted over and over for fake reports? But in their hearts, people they don't believe it.

The problem is that it's true.

Here's a quote from Atlas Shrugged that gives a great metaphor for the legacy mainstream news. Eddie Willers is a stand in for the people.

Quote

The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot of the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside – just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.

The legacy mainstream news media needs to be destroyed.

The creative destruction of the market works just fine, but I don't mind some lawsuits and online persecution thrown in, and maybe even some criminal investigations by the DOJ for everything from fraud to treason for colluding with the enemies of the US to destroy it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This meme perfectly sums up the modern legacy news media for me.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This one is extremely important. There is more than the coronavirus these days. The pandemic news virus of anonymous sources has infected Tucker.

First, look at the video below. Notice that endorsement from Donald Trump Jr. That's one hell of an endorsement (and it is deserved for the most part).

I fully agree with Donald Trump Jr. about the severity of the issue Tucker talks about. To make sure this is available to those who only like to read and not watch videos, here is the transcript:

Quote

We spent much of the day speaking to highly informed officials in the US government as well as seasoned specialists on China. Here's the picture that emerged from those conversations. 

First, many in the intelligence world with experience in China suspected right away that the story the Chinese government was telling about this virus was almost certainly a lie. The first indication of that was the torrent of obvious nonsense coming from official sources in Beijing. 

Now initially, Chinese sources, you may remember this, claimed the virus had jumped from an obscure scaly animal called a pangolin which was sold in the Wuhan wet market. But that explanation didn't make any sense. Wet markets are seafood markets. Pangolins are mammals. So for that matter are bats.

So in the face of skepticism at this explanation, the Chinese then blamed Italian armed forces personnel, who, it turns out, had been near Wuhan a few months before for the military world games. That's an international sporting event. 

"The Italians must have brought the virus to China," the Chinese said. 

When the Italian government complained about that, the Chinese shifted the blame to the US military. 

"The American armed services and Western tourists must have infected Wuhan," the Chinese said. 

Meanwhile, as they were saying this, behind-the-scenes, Chinese officials were working frantically to destroy relevant evidence of where it actually came from. Doctors and journalists in Wuhan who raised uncomfortable questions about the virus disappeared. Some of them may have been murdered.

At one point in January scientists in Shanghai succeeded in sequencing the DNA from the virus. The information they gathered from that could have been crucial to researchers around the world who were trying to understand the virus and develop vaccines against it. In other words, the rest of us. But the Chinese government ordered that viral sample destroyed in the lab notes from that shredded. 

The scientists themselves were disciplined for daring to conduct this research and their lab was shut down. The Chinese government then quarantined the entire city of Wuhan. Up to five million people fled. But, apparently, relatively few of them were allowed to travel to Beijing, the Chinese capital. Instead they flew to Western cities around the world. 

Now, to most in the United States, reactions to a crisis like this seem grotesque--really unimaginable. But to Mandarin speakers who follow China carefully and have for a long time, these were highly familiar moves. The first reflex of the Chinese government is always to lie in order to hide failure and avoid embarrassment. 

In 2003, for example, the Chinese government lied about the initial outbreak of SARS, another caronavirus. 

In July of 2011, two passenger trains traveling in opposite directions smashed into each other at high speed outside the Chinese city of Wenzhou. The trains collided on a railroad bridge. Four cars derailed and tumbled to the ground below. Within hours authorities arrived with backhoes. They pushed the passenger cars into a pit and began covering them with dirt. By some accounts, there were still survivors inside at the time--inside the passenger cars. 

In their initial statements, Chinese officials claimed that a lightning strike had caused that crash. They later conceded under pressure that it was sloppiness and shoddy construction that were to blame. Chinese media, meanwhile, were ordered to ignore the crash entirely except, "for positive news," or that news issued by authorities. 

This was the template for China's official response to the Wuhan virus. 

From the early days of the outbreak, Chinese diplomats around the world insisted there was no chance whatsoever the virus had come from a lab. They sometimes insisted this even when no one had asked them as if they were reading from a script. It soon became very obvious what was going on. 

English language academic journals had raised, for years, questions about the safety standards in Wuhan bio-research labs. An article in Nature, for example, from 2017 noted that: "Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping from the facility." Classified State Department cables a year later voiced the same concerns. Chinese scientists themselves publicly discussed working with extremely dangerous pathogens in Wuhan. 

As of today, says someone in a position to know, there is "almost unanimous agreement in the American intelligence gathering agencies that the virus currently destroying much of the world emerged from a lab in Wuhan."

Almost unanimous--that's a phrase almost never used to describe any conclusion coming out of the intel community. 

Government officials in this country have believed that for some time now. They have been unable to interest our media or our epidemiologists in writing about it. In recent weeks analysts from the CIA the NSA and others have briefed staff at the New York Times about the origins of this virus, but the newspaper has still not reported their findings. 

At the same time, and this may be directly related, China has been waging an unremitting propaganda war on the subject. Chinese officials have tried to squelch all conversations about who might be responsible for this pandemic by inflaming the political sensitivities and race guilt of American elites. Watch this clip from early last month as the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry tries to dictate how American press outlets describe the virus. 

[CHINESE SPOKESMAN (translated)]: "Certain media say this coronavirus is such kind of virus. This is extremely irresponsible and we firmly oppose that." 

[TUCKER]: Among the many ironies in what you just heard, even now, even today, the disease is widely referred to in China as the Wuhan virus. 

Our news outlets, meanwhile, almost always call it COVID-19. That term does not translate to Chinese. COVID-19 is the name devised by the World Health Organization back in January under influence from Chinese leaders who were anxious to deflect responsibility for it. Once they succeeded in removing any hint of origin from the name of the virus, the Chinese government launched a campaign to tar anyone who mentioned Wuhan as a dangerous racist. 

"Racism is not the right tool to cover your own incompetence," lectured Chinese state media when President Trump referred to the Wuhan virus. American media parroted that line almost precisely, as no doubt the Chinese expected they would. 

[CNN-ACOSTA]: "The president referred to the coronavirus as a "foreign virus"... and I think it's going to smack... it's going to come across to a lot of Americans as smacking of xenophobia."

[MSNBC-ANCHOR]: "Xenophobic wartime Trump. Where he thinks the only path now is to basically declare the virus Public Enemy Number One painted in somewhat racist terms."

[MSNBC-MARINE JEAN-PIERRE]: "The xenophobia and the racism and outbreak is such a common thing... and it is incredibly dangerous. It is problematic. And it is scary. And I just really want to call that out..."

[FEMALE REPORTER]: "Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus?... Why do you keep using this? A lot of people are saying it's racist." 

[PRESIDENT TRUMP]: It's not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That's why." 

[TUCKER]: Fools. 

But not a major victory for the Chinese government. Media outlets are relatively easy to corrupt given the low level of sophistication of the people who work there. The Chinese government had bolder aims than that. 

The Chinese instructed their employees and assets in the United States to exert influence on elected officials. For example, according to an informed US government official, "Beijing has instructed diplomats in their consulate in San Francisco to work with American state and local officials, and members of Congress, to push back against anyone who gets too far out on blaming China for this."

That's what they're doing. 

Apparently it's working. Here's Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy on CNN earlier this week. 

[MURPHY]: "The reason that we're in the crisis that we are today is not because of anything that China did, is not because of anything the WHO did, it's because of what this president did."

[TUCKER]: It's not because anything... China did... 

Other members of Congress voiced similar views often in eerily similar language. Barbara Lee of California, long considered a strongly pro-China voice, tweeted this to the president: "Diseases don't have nationalities. China isn't to blame for you fumbling this crisis." 

On March 12th congresswoman Judy Chu of Los Angeles wrote this: "China didn't unleash anything. A virus spread, as viruses do. Blaming China and insisting and calling this the Wuhan virus even though every medical expert said not to, is putting people's lives in danger. Stop politicizing this and put people first." 

Just the week before Chu wrote that, on March 6th a man called Zhang Ping, who runs the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, met with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti about the American response to coronavirus. And he tweeted about it that day. He said this: "Looking forward to working closely with the city of Los Angeles to address this common public health challenge and develop closer ties between our cities and peoples." 

Now, we have no idea what Ping and Garcetti talked about in that meeting that day. It would be interesting to know. 

We reached out today to number of California lawmakers with a history of closeness to China--that includes senior Senator Dianne Feinstein who once employed Chinese spy--to see if they have spoken to Chinese officials recently. None of them responded to our calls. 

But it's not just happening in California. According to a study and a story reported by National Review, the head of the State Senate in Wisconsin recently received multiple emails from the wife of the Chinese Consul General in Chicago. She asked him to propose a resolution praising China for its handling of the Wuhan virus outbreak. 

The entire story of how the government of China has successfully shaped our understanding of this pandemic of the virus, as well as our response to it, may take years to tell. And in fact it may never fully be told at all, although we promise to do our best on this show. But it is clear how China sees this pandemic. 

China doesn't see this simply or even primarily as a public health disaster in which thousands are dying. China sees this as part of a larger geopolitical struggle for control of the world. 

Most Americans still don't perceive that or understand the profound gravity of the stakes involved. But how could they? Our leaders have lied to us about it for years.

Now here is the rub.

Look at the following phrases in Tucker's report (and these are not the only ones, just the most glaring):

Quote

We spent much of the day speaking to highly informed officials in the US government as well as seasoned specialists on China. 

... says someone in a position to know... 

... according to an informed US government official...

Who the hell are these people? 

Tucker's report rocks, so much so that President Trump's oldest son claims: "Its likely the most important couple minutes of TV to ever effect you." And he asks people to retweet it. For him to post that, we all know President Trump is going to see it.

So why does Tucker do this crap?

It mars his report and does not bode well for the future, meaning I hope to hell Tucker does not develop this into a habit. If he does, his credibility will go the way of CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo and the like, i.e., into the toilet.

President Trump sporadically complains about using anonymous sources. Just yesterday he tweeted:

I fully agree with him.

As for Tucker, I mostly agree with what he presented. I could fully agree with him--I really like him, but he's now fudging. So I can only "mostly agree" with him. But the China issue is too important for "mostly," and it's definitely too important to fudge with bullshit fake news practices. So I wish Tucker would use the higher journalistic standards of President Trump.

Michael

[anthony]

Michael, I like Tucker for what I've seen of what he does and the values he stands for, it is just that openness and transparency is exclusively suited to a climate of integrity, decency and candor by the media and politicians. That's not what you have in the USA today. One can't name names when a contact has insisted on confidentiality, knowing that exposure and the witch hunt by the vengeful opposition could be the end of their careers and reputations. I am strongly reminded of the reporters I knew on liberal newspapers here during apartheid, who would not and didn't reveal their sources to the Security Branch, when brought in and grilled. First they'd never get future information and any more stories as they'd never be trusted by their informants again, AND also would cause the arrest of the informants. Sorry to make that comparison, but that illustrates how depraved, and at least, unprofessional, the USA's MSM is now.

Instead of "unnamed sources" etc. being the cover for a 'quotation'' that has been entirely fabricated, most often nowadays by a Leftist journalist, I believe Tucker. The Left have turned deceit and innuendo and manipulation into an art form, but I don't believe Carlson stoops so low.

[Brant Gaede]

The blowback against China is irreversible and concerns the totalitarian structure of its government. Coverups like this start with local officials who don't want to be responsible for bad news. It's like the old USSR wherein the top officials got phoney economic data from those lower down. Everybody in official positions is totally invested in lying and CYA. It's life or death to them.

Regardless, the counter virus is the damage coming to China and Chinese interests through the rise of nationalism at the expense of globalism.

 Trump should run against China and those championing it's interests--the Democrats and the MSN. Hang China on them.

--Brant

 

[Brant Gaede]

33 minutes ago, anthony said:

Michael, I like Tucker for what I've seen of what he does and the values he stands for, it is just that openness and transparency is exclusively suited to a climate of integrity, decency and candor by the media and politicians. That's not what you have in the USA today. One can't name names when a contact has insisted on confidentiality, knowing that exposure and the witch hunt by the vengeful opposition could be the end of their careers and reputations. I am strongly reminded of the reporters I knew on liberal newspapers here during apartheid, who would not and didn't reveal their sources to the Security Branch, when brought in and grilled. First they'd never get future information and any more stories as they'd never be trusted by their informants again, AND also would cause the arrest of the informants. Sorry to make that comparison, but that illustrates how depraved, and at least, unprofessional, the USA's MSM is now.

Instead of "unnamed sources" etc. being the cover for a 'quotation'' that has been entirely fabricated, most often nowadays by a Leftist journalist, I believe Tucker. The Left have turned deceit and innuendo and manipulation into an art form, but I don't believe Carlson stoops so low.

Unnamed sources that may not exist are countered by unnamed sources that may as the greater fascism we live under creates the counter necessity.

If the Dems win in November it will get so bad and likely irreversible that they will in turn be displaced by a real strong man, an American Franco, who will utterly crush them. That may or may not be better than a generalized and true civil war.

--Brant

so Tucker gets down and dirty (if he did)--there's no such thing as a clean war--or what have you; for feeble attempts at purity by the King, remember, made room for The Terror which made room for Napoleon

[Ellen Stuttle]

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

To make sure this is available to those who only like to read and not watch videos, here is the transcript.

Thanks for the transcript.  The issue of the Chinese government's lying is so important, I probably would have watched the video, but I'm grateful to have it in print.

The "anonymous sources" problem is awkward, especially with Trump's railing against MSM use of those, but I expect that the sources are real in this case - and that they could be in trouble if their names were given.

I have sources myself, ones which must remain anonymous (some of them might end up dead if they were named), so I've been being careful in what I've said about the virus' origin.

One minor detail (technical precision and all that):  It's an RNA virus, not a DNA one.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

The "anonymous sources" problem is awkward, especially with Trump's railing against MSM use of those, but I expect that the sources are real in this case - and that they could be in trouble if their names were given.

I have sources myself, ones which must remain anonymous (some of them might end up dead if they were named), so I've been being careful in what I've said about the virus' origin.

Ellen,

Protection of sources is the argument always given by the fabricators to deflect from dealing with the issue of deception. (I'm not saying you are deceiving. I'm using this as a prompt to shed light on the propaganda technique.) 

Do you remember Rand's notion of floating abstraction? This is an abstraction without any tangible referent, but presented as if it has referents. It looks like a concept and mimics a concept in how people talk to each other, but it doesn't have the substance of a concept, that is, something in reality or, at least, reality-based. The biggest example of a floating abstraction she gave is the concept of God. 

(I don't want to get into a theological discussion about the existence of God. Let's just say for this post that for those who have had deep religious experiences, their referent for God comes from their memories of those experiences. Thus their idea of God is not a floating abstraction. They have something real they can point to, even if it's only something in their head left over from something they witnessed or experienced. For someone who has had no personal religious experience, the idea of God is a floating abstraction.)

If you want to see how a concept of something real turns into a floating abstraction and gets injected into the mainstream, the way the anonymous sources argument is always framed is how. Notice what is missing: an actual source people can perceive. They get this source second hand, not first hand. 

After that, notice the bait and switch.

Let me argue by example for a minute. Suppose I'm a bad guy in the mainstream press who wants to get lies accepted by the public. I start by having actual sources with names and everything for the facts I present. After a while, I get a reputation for credibility. But life is complicated, so once in a while, I have sources who could be in peril if their identity becomes known. They told me something important I want to transmit to the public and I want people to know I am not making up anything. So I let people know I have sources I am protecting for that specific information.

Up to here, it's all good. The majority of my sources are real people to the public and there are a few I can't disclose, but the audience takes my word for it they are real

As time goes on, in my reporting I start to rely more and more on unnamed sources and less and less on actual sources. And I start ramping up the adjectives and qualifiers when I refer to unnamed sources to goose up an image in the minds of the audience. Instead of saying an insider told me something, I begin to laud my unnamed people as experts, officials, technicians, whistleblowers and so on. I claim they were at a meeting the audience knows took place, or on the phone line of a call audience knows happened, etc. And I increase their number so that, eventually, there are several groups of them I use per report. I even get cohorts to co-author my articles with me to increase the "thud" factor. 

(A thick book always looks more credible than a thin one. And "thud" is the sound a thick book makes when it lands on a table.  )

Also, sin of all sins, I give out word-for-word quotes from my unnamed sources as if the audience knows who I am referring to. At that point I am simply making shit up.

My audience thinks a real person gave a real quote when I fabricated both the person and the quote. And who is the audience to say otherwise? They have swallowed my anonymous source as a floating abstraction--an image they take just as seriously as something in reality they can point to.

Based on that mentality, I can go whole hog and say, like Al Gore did, that 100% of the scientists agree about manmade climate change. "The scientists" is not a referent, it's an abstraction. If I can get enough juice and emotional load on how that term is used, it doesn't matter if a real scientist later pops up and says he doesn't agree. In the public mind, he may be a scientist, but he's not part of that 100% of scientists.

If that sounds like a contradiction, that's because it is. And that's the way it is intended. Once I can get people to accept a floating abstraction, i.e., a word or phrase cut off from reality, as an existent, as something tangible, in the public mind, I can lead the people who swallowed it anywhere I wish after that.

That's how the propaganda process unfolds in removing reality from a concept and this is pure poison.

To be clear, I have no problem with a reporter keeping a source anonymous. But the way to report that is not to quote actual words from an anonymous source in a tone of factual certainty. A big honking qualifier has to be attached. Anonymity is a context, not an existent.

I agree with you that Tucker's anonymous sources probably exist.

But there is no excuse for him writing something like this:

Quote

As of today, says someone in a position to know, there is "almost unanimous agreement in the American intelligence gathering agencies that the virus currently destroying much of the world emerged from a lab in Wuhan."

Now that Tucker has established a ghost as his source, he lets the ghost talk. And then he accepts the ghost's words as fact. Look at what he said right after.

Quote

Almost unanimous--that's a phrase almost never used to describe any conclusion coming out of the intel community. 

Epistemologically, this is smack dab in the middle of Gore's "100% or all scientists" territory.

Here is a different way to put it, one that is far more responsible truth-wise.

The people behind the scenes we talked to said the American intelligence gathering agencies almost unanimously agree that COVID-19 emerged from a lab in Wuhan. Almost unanimous. If our sources are correct and we believe they are, that's a phrase almost never used to describe any conclusion coming out of the intel community.

Notice that "we believe" is not presented as a metaphysical fact, but the tone of certainty remains.

Also, there is no direct quote doing it that way. Nor is there any hyperbole loaded onto the source to deflect from the fact that the audience can't determine who is talking.

In short, there is no ghost being passed off as a talking head. There is no Mr. or  Ms. Someone in a Position to Know.

Widespread deception never comes in a statement or gotcha. It is set up, carried forward and built incrementally--like a product on a factory assembly line--until The Big Lie comes out the end.

Here's a rule of thumb for fake news. The more direct quotes from anonymous sources are used, the more you can be sure that the author is making shit up.

This is why I'm pissed Tucker is starting to do this. It's like watching a friend take a hit off a crack pipe. I know what comes later.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Caught red-handed in Virginia.

Staged nurse protest against the big bad evil Trump supporter.

This kind of crap goes on every day, all day, all over.

The coronavirus thing is a dry run for the reemergence of manmade climate change propaganda and social control by elitist media and organizations.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Caught red-handed in Virginia.

Staged nurse protest against the big bad evil Trump supporter.

This kind of crap goes on every day, all day, all over.

The coronavirus thing is a dry run for the reemergence of manmade climate change propaganda and social control by elitist media and organizations.

Michael

Sorry, but nobody's going to care about CC any longer except its champions. The environmental/environmentalist movement is destroyed.

--Brant

there is both good and bad about this; ironically, mostly bad

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

10 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Sorry, but nobody's going to care about CC any longer except its champions. The environmental/environmentalist movement is destroyed.

Brant,

I'm not so sure. I'm right now reading The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein (which is a surprisingly good book coming from the ARI orbit) and came across this beauty of a quote by a guy named David M. Graber:

Quote

We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil-energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

This was written in the Los Angeles Times in 1989 as a book review by Graber. See here: Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower: The End of Nature by Bill McKibben.

Environmentalists have been longing for a virus or other catastrophe for decades to teach humans a lesson they will never forget. I think these fruitcakes will see the coronavirus as a warm-up once the coronaviurs mess passes. They want full social control. They will learn from the conronavirus failure to severely damage mankind and their ensuing failure to establish an authoritarian world order as protection.

They live for this. So they won't stop.

Will the public go along? Not at first. But I believe the bombardment of pro-environmentalist storytelling in the mainstream culture will start up again and will eventually make people lower their guards as they focus on getting the economy going again and rebuilding their lives.

This time around, I've got the number (as in I've got your number) of the environmentalists, you have, and so have many, many people. But I think it's still going to be a long and nasty slog keeping them from getting and consolidating power.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Bye, scum.

 

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Environmentalists have been longing for a virus or other catastrophe for decades to teach humans a lesson they will never forget.

Some folks have been doing more than longing.  They've worked out blueprints (and more).

For instance:

https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-disease-x-next-deadly-global-epidemic-who-warns-virus-pathogen

Quote

 

Mysterious 'Disease X' Could Be The Next Deadly Epidenic, WHO Warns

PETER DOCKRILL 12 MARCH 2018 
It's a contagion so deadly and mysterious, we know nothing about it – except that it could be the next global epidemic, according to experts at the World Health Organisation (WHO).

 

Code-named 'Disease X', this mystery pathogen hasn't even been discovered yet, but the looming threat of its almost certain inevitability has secured it a place on the WHO's 'most dangerous' list: a catalogue of potential future epidemics for which countermeasures are insufficient – or don't exist at all.

But how can a disease that hasn't even been identified be considered such a serious threat to public health?

The best way of thinking about it is that 'Disease X' is a placeholder for a contagious hazard we haven't encountered yet, but which is virtually certain. It's a so-called 'known unknown' that the WHO says we need to be prepared for, which is why the mystery malady is now on the agency's R&D Blueprint of priority diseases.

Ellen

[Mark]

The first modern pandemic 

by Bill Gates.  Two snippets:

Quote

This is like a world war, except in this case, we’re all on the same side.

Quote

... the COVID-19 pandemic—the first modern pandemic—will define this era. No one who lives through Pandemic I will ever forget it. And it is impossible to overstate the pain that people are feeling now and will continue to feel for years to come.

It is so false he must want it to be true.

[tmj]

I read through the article on Gatesnotes and then looked at his question and answer session on Reddit linked to under the article and dated March 19.

On a question of finding therapeutic strategies he talks about the many possibilities being introduced and the need to find the best “chance” metrics and apply best candidates to patient trials. He mentions that China is no longer a real possible venue for such testing because they have so few new cases.

So the viral infections just ended “themselves”? Or did they develop a treatment /strategy? Or the data coming out China is not sufficient or reliable ? Wtf?

[Jules Troy]

It probably means that anyone caught not wearing a mask or balking at stay at home measures have already been murdered by the state.  They don’t count as covid 19 deaths.  They probably don’t count the ones that suicide or starve to death either...

[tmj]

No doubt the regime in China would incorporate brutal tactics , but an 'expert' while discussing ways to curb infections or mitigate resulting disease barely glosses over, in fact flat ignores , the supposed disappearance of the virus in the country of origin ?

 

[Peter]

51 minutes ago, tmj said:

No doubt the regime in China would incorporate brutal tactics , but an 'expert' while discussing ways to curb infections or mitigate resulting disease barely glosses over, in fact flat ignores , the supposed disappearance of the virus in the country of origin ?

 

Liars all. I wish we could diminish or stop trade with China. The "Secret" Chinese Manifesto for the next century is an interesting read. They want to do away with America. If it does turn out that getting the virus and surviving does not give one immunity from catching it again, and each time you catch it more damage is done until you are dead, well, that does sound like genetic engineering from real wild life cases. Now where were they doing the manipulation? Was it China?