"… but probably because it is a bad look for an American law enforcement bureau to be funding an international investigative reporting operation …"
Hell of a footnote. Some might call that election interference. Highly recommend listening to the Mike Benz interview on Rogan - he spends hours untangling the subversive propaganda GAE blob which includes USAID, Atlantic Council, etc.
According to his LinkedIn, Sullivan "lives in Sarajevo where he has appeared in four Bosnian films always playing the evil foreigner and is lead singer in the only authentic Irish traditional music band in the Balkans." Reality is stranger than fiction.
Mike Benz is required reading & watching, I was surprised to not see his name in the article. None of this is surprising if you watched a few of his videos.
The recent Mike Benz interview on Joe Rogan is a must see.
Per Benz, the USAIDE has a $50,000,000,000.00 budget, is only one of several State Dept. / CIA / DOD NGO-like interconnected entities that manipulates international news, information, & perception.
In the interests of Journalistic Accuracy, I should note that immediately off the top of my head Orthodox Celts is an authentic Irish traditional music band in the Balkans, and last I checked Drew Sullivan is not the lead singer or any singer. Their rendition of "Rocky Road to Dublin" is my preferred.
So, in short, man can't even write his own LinkedIn without petty journalistic distortions.
I'm not sure which possibility is more amusing, that Sullivan is unaware of Orthodox Celts in spite of claiming to be a Balkan Irish Music buff, or that he is aware and deliberately pretends they don't exist (or, ahem, don't count as authentic) on his personal LinkedIn in scrupulous adherence to some geopolitical policy regarding Serbia.
I haven't even *found* Drew Sullivan's band yet. It doesn't help his music career that he seems to be on the privileged list of "people who are officially too uninteresting to be on Wikipedia". Being documented on Wikipedia is an indignity reserved for plebs, of course.
On the OCCRP website it mentions... "Drew Sullivan is a social entrepreneur and co-founder and publisher of OCCRP."
"Before becoming a journalist, he was a structural dynamicist on the space shuttle project for Rockwell Space Systems. He has a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. He has also been a professional standup comedian, acted in four films, and plays bodhran in the only authentic Irish/Celtic band in the Balkans."
Social entrepreneur, rocket scientist, standup comedian, actor, and musician. In is "spare tine" he founds an international network of investigative journalists.
I was about to comment on how this article by Eugyppius appeared at the same time the Joe Rogan interviewed Mike Benz. It made me wonder if these revelations themselves were coordinated, which would be funny since the subject is coordination of reporting by legacy media companies. I now see, though, that other commenters have already referenced this Joe Rogan podcast.
This would be an interesting article if 51 US national security experts had not went on the record to say it has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.
You ever notice how when there's an inconvenient narrative, they may call it 'Russian Disinformation', they might call it a "pro-Putin narrative", but they rarely come out and call it 'Factually Untrue"?
ISTG nobody actually cares about truth anymore, only "The Narrative"
Yes. It's a strategy; when these talking points (narrative) "spontaneously" emerge from thin air, and is immediately everywhere at the same time, you can bet its orchestrated. It's not a coincidence; it's planned and exist to simply manufacture consent.
They are simply there to tell The Left and our overlords what is acceptable to think. Trust is immaterial because the elite and those benefited from government largesse, corporate interests and higher educational system- are still getting the messages (narrative) from the media.
For what other reason would they not be concerned about the lowest historical levels of trust with the public? Perhaps it's because this actually reinforces the message to the elites and power brokers in D.C. that the FAR- FAR-FAR Right is a threat to democracy? Maybe it's just to keep them all in alignment, ergo "consensus" - if not they may be excommunicated from the tribe....which overrides curiosity or the desire to seek The Truth.
To do otherwise they risk careers and sinecures. The ventriloquist (MSM) are simply telling "the blob" (sprawling government/bureaucrats) and other decision makers (corporate influence/lobbyists) what is safe to think in order for all these robber barons to take bed with the government, at the expense of our individual sovereignty, penalty free, for the mutual benefit of those three parties to feast on a middle class carcass
Nah. I have been advised that I'm a "far right white supremacist". Which is apparently how moderate conservatives with libertarian leanings are labeled today.
And, as such, everything I write is, by definition, evil, and potentially damaging to the psyches of the left.
I am convinced that a large majority of the accounts posting those talking points are literal CIA bot farms. I have never met an actual, real life person in the real world, with a Ukrainian flag in their username, unless they were actual Ukrainians, from Ukraine, who live here now
I have met a couple IRL. Conspicuous Ukraine flag and NATO stickers, bring up the war unprompted then talk in the approved phrases, convinced their side will win any day now. None of them have personal connections to Ukraine.
I'm a big fan of X -- I probably spend too much time there following various issues and people -- but I have noticed SINCE the election, that there seems to be MORE propaganda and MORE directed posts and memes, but this time coming from the Right!
A lot of the individual posters are gone and a rolling sheet of "things to believe" has replaced them. I am wondering if it isn't coming from Elon Musk, who is now in some kind of weird "semi-government-employed" position and using his AI to direct the thoughts of followers.
It is quite disconcerting and a bit terrifying -- out of the frying pan and into the fire...
Strange that now eugyppius is admitting a coordinated media/manipulation against the population but few months ago he was vehemently arguing that scamdemic policies were managerial 'mistakes' and there was most likely no 'conspiracy'/coordination behind.
eugyppius, I don't know how much influence this OCCRP may or may not have in journalism globally, but in my view there is a more fundamental phenomenon taking place. Because of its potential to affect the course of society, journalism attracts people who want to "make a difference in the world." Considering that people with libertarian or conservative worldviews take more-or-less "live and let live" or "leave it alone" attitudes respectively, the field of journalism is left wide open for leftists to pick their stories and spin narratives in their direction. Hence the 90+% self-identification of professionals in media as "liberals" (quotation marks sorely needed around that label).
Doubtless this is not the only factor -- herd mentality and careerism also play a role. But it's that fundamental "change the world" activist attitude that accounts for the content and direction of that herd mentality.
I disagree. Leftist bias in the media has been going on for a lot longer than Twitter or the authoritarians who pressured it have been around. When Lyndon Johnson ordered J. Edgar Hoover to spy on the Goldwater campaign and issued press releases responding to Goldwater speeches even before he gave the speech, the media ate it up. A few years later, Nixon's people tried to spy on the McGovern campaign and only THEN did the media get all high and mighty about the spying.
I said that the info on the Twitter Files is "adequate"; your further remarks are simply redundent. We could go on and on to "COINTELPRO" or reach back to 1948 and CIA's Operation Mockingbird. Or even reach back to Biblical Times for encounters with Demons.
When you can print as much money as you want, and that money is globally accepted, you can buy an unlimited number of people. The US debt is > 30 trillion. That money bought and is still buying politicians, journalists, CEOs, intelligence operations, NGOs, satellites, weapons, military bases, etc.. The risk to such an operation is that one day, not everybody accepts your money. This is why Trump just threatened all the BRICs nations.
That website was created on March 18th, 2020, and as far as I'm concerned, that is _the day_ that all of our current economic misery was locked in.
People now seem to think that the massive inflation, loss of jobs, and general impoverishment of the west are due to Biden's mismanagement. It certainly didn't help, but no, it's not. ALL OF THIS is a predictable consequence of shutting down the economy for several months and then printing trillions of fake dollars and giving them to people. ALL OF THIS was locked in the second the federal government started implementing their covid policies.
And, SIRI, who was the president on March 18th, 2020? I have forgotten
One's friends and colleagues are much more disturbed by one's independence and non-compliance with whatever the approved viewpoint may be than one's enemies and this is true everywhere for everyone. Always. It is the people who claim to--or do, to whatever extent--like you who will work hardest to undermine the least signs of resistance to the norm.
I had, twice, more than 20 years apart, the experience which proves this, and it happened over the most insignificant sort of protest. Two different people forged my signature on greeting cards because they could not tolerate my refusal to participate in a group congratulatory exercise because I despised both of the people being congratulated and I dislike hypocrisy for form's sake.
The first time happened when I was 13 and it may surprise no one that my FFFFG undermined me. But it was a very nice colleague at an office job who was the forger the second time, on a card for our boss, and she later regretted it when I was fired not long afterwards, and she had the grace to apologize to me.
Anyway--we see here in SubstackLand how disconcerted loyal subscribers and friendly-to-one-another commenters get when any party line is transgressed, no matter the line, and why. Here in the free air of free speech, freely-expressed differing opinions bring the chill of rage.
"Yeah? Yeah! But Putin!" Is the 100% predictable reply from EU-ropean media.
And "Gosh dang darn EU trying to curb our freedumb of speech bitching about Xwitter" from US "conservative" (i.e. 90's liberal) media.
So about criticising Russia, China, Iran, DPRK, Saudi, et cetera about freedom of speech, spying on citizens, trying to manipulate other nations, and so on, EU and USUK media, pundits and politicians can F*ck off, off the planet and keep going.
Next time I read or hear one of those scrape-offs going off on "media from nation X are untrustworthy". . . SGT is the feeling, is all I'm saying.
A real subtle form of censorship, right here, right now. FB won't give me the 'post' button when I try to share this directly. You hit a nerve, happy to help you hit more nerves. I posted it indirectly.
Thank you for this (and all your work - been enjoying you for years now).
An old friend of mine used to draw the distinction this way - "In a dictatorship, you simply control information with threat and force. In a society where people are allowed free speech, you have to control WHAT THEY WANT TO say."
Two models of tyranny the whole time - just one which is much softer-feeling.
I have gone back and forth over the years, thinking him a bit dramatic or quite realistic, but this century (and the last five years especially) has been all about the state finally 'dropping trousers' on all its worst motives and methods.
Depressingly huge numbers of 'consumerists' (as sharply distinct from ethically and intellectually active 'citizens') now yawn and go back to scrolling, instead of screaming "NO - those are RIGHTS, not case specific favours granted by the beneficence of the state!" Which make it feel even more as if what we all thought we had, in terms of established liberty, was illusory all along.
Robert Bly's idea of "The Sibling Society" comes to mind - the proportion of adults - people even interested in responsible thinking (which always requires reality calibration, and destroys ego-theories wholesale) is lower with every cohort, and now the very idea that we even are citizens and are supposed to think and speak about the direction and shape of our societies is being actively disdained and suppressed, in favour of "Expert" and "Authorized" state power.
I've been fixing electronic gear since I was a kid (so much awesome audiophile stuff in the garbage in the 1970s). I still remember my great pleasure, just after graduating as a technician, when I first encountered the warning "NO USER SERVICEABLE PART INSIDE - AUTHORIZED PROFESSIONALS ONLY" and realized "hey cool, I'm finally authorized." But I would never have been anywhere near as good a tech, had I never dared to learn, until 'official'.
It feels to me (apologies for vagueness here) as if this waiting to be given permission/not feeling authorized thing, is a big part of the mindset of that same kind of clean-fingernails elite disconnection which also responds to mythic (emotive, not rational) prompts, for the 'what they want to say' part of our vaunted western (degraded and pathetic) "free and open" discourse.
BTW - Your wonderful piece on "The Hysterical Style" for organizing and aligning the thinking of disparate bureaucrats and functionaries not only made me laugh, for fitting so well with my old friend's signature line. It also greatly impressed a friend of mine who did a few tours with the world bank (he may actually still be laughing). Danke - and a big tip of the hat, for that!
Also - apologies if you've already gone there - but I bet a review of Bellingcat would give you much matter about which to write and fulminate. Think the Dropsite guys have done some on it already (and Taibbi, if memory serves). Said to be the most overtly CIA of all the media orgs (that I know of, anyhow).
Cheers for what you do - much appreciated by idiot-besieged Canucks, also!
"Which make it feel even more as if what we all thought we had, in terms of established liberty, was illusory all along."
There is no stupider plan than to construct a list of rights that people have against government oppression, then to put the interpretation and enforcement of those rights in the hands of that very same government.
In the end, you have only the rights you can successfully defend.
The first step is exercising them at every opportunity, or else they become vestigial.
Quite so! Why I am now convinced the conversion of citizens into consumers (Eloi) really was deliberate (tons of evidence anyhow, but one must also be willing to credit the sheer scope and scale of malice). They don't like us even thinking we have rights, let alone a duty to protect and exercise them, constantly!
> An old friend of mine used to draw the distinction this way - "In a dictatorship, you simply control information with threat and force. In a society where people are allowed free speech, you have to control WHAT THEY WANT TO say."
I referenced Moldbug's old writings in another comment and you have hit his nail on the head.
One of Moldbug's other big ideas is that, the way US political power is structured, you have to win elections. And elections are decided by free votes. And votes are cast on the basis of informed decisions. Which means, if you control the information, you can reliably get voters to vote however you want.
Which means that whoever controls the news media, controls the government.
My lawyer has advised me not to continue this line of reasoning on a German blog (although in this case, that's purely a joke. I think "The DNC controls the media" is a better model than "[redacted] controls the media". For that matter, I'm starting to be turned on to the idea that Pfizer et al. control the media through threatening to withhold ad money)
Imagine if the next, and greatly feared, "government shutdown" were made permanent. Please remind me again what our federal government is good for? Is it nothing more than a vast moneylaundering system?
I am so f'n tired of smug Canucks (And smug anti-American Americans) finding out I'm Canadian and making a joke about "you know you guys burned down the whitehouse"
Canadians didn't do that. British regulars from Britain did that. Canadians just love stolen valour, since they don't have any valour of their own
We are so far away from what The Founders intended I'm not sure that assertion holds up under scrutiny.
The unaccountable 4th branch must be DESTROYED, precisely because it's not even mentioned in the constitution. In fact, they represent the very top-down, authoritarian ruling elite our forefathers rejected in 1776 and replaced in the triumph of the American Revolution.
I am a pacifist by nature, and I agree to an extent...but please make the argument that our forefathers wouldn't have blown everything up long ago.
"By a very conservative estimate, a hundred million people have died at the hands of their own governments in this [20th] century. Given that record, how bad could anarchy be?"
Because realising and accepting that the USA isn't our friend is quite the terrifying realisation.
Not American citizenry, you (the collective you) often seem to dislike your leadership caste even more than we loathe ours.
But Empires do not have friends. They have fiefdoms, satrapies, conquered territories - and enemies. And it is very easy to move from one to the other, just by saying "No, we are not letting you take our[ insert natural resource here], it's ours to do with as we please".
Far safer to tell yourself the reason there are US soldiers in your nation is for your protection.
You know, the other day I was struck with a random fascinating thought.
When I was a kid, in elementary school, every year around Halloween / Christmas (I forget exactly when), my school would do some UNESCO charity drive and get us all to raise money for starving kids in Africa or whatever.
And it just hit me, like, last week, that that entire process is _literally_ a psyop from globalists to get 8 year olds to raise unaccountable money for them. Once we raised the money, where did it go? Did it actually feed anyone? Did any of us even know wtf UNESCO was?
God, if the government was financially supporting drug dealers, at least I'd get something out of it. Some of us have to pay for our own drugs, out of pocket!
> The man can literally email hundreds of leading journalists around the world with specific instructions about how they should answer questions. And this is only one NGO, amid a vast sea of them – one node in a massive, hopelessly complex system working to coordinate Western media.
Referencing back to one fo the other comments I left ten minutes ago.
Even if such a man exists who can email hundreds of leading journalists with specific instructions, how is that implemented and how is that enforced?
What mechanism exists to ensure that all of these journalists do what they're told?
What mechanism exists to ensure that all of these journalists do that _correctly_?
Because, again, even Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia couldn't perfectly solve this problem. So, how did we solve it? Or did we not solve it, but do a just-good-enough job that it appears solved enough?
The main difference now being that the press in USSR et al consisted mainly of people who /knew/ they were peddling lies and propaganda at least half of the time.
Today's journalist believe what they are selling, and believe that they report the truth, because the truth is what they report, because they report truth, because . . .
That's why it works so much better today.
You could say we solved this, thanks to 70 years of refining the techniques used in the 1840s and earlier.
Or to use a different image: all priests preach from the same book, despite not picking the same passages. But they all preach the same basic tenets.
I heard a story once, I forget if it was a real story, or like, a soviet-era joke, probably the latter. The gist of it is that a Russian comes to America and starts talking to a local about politics and after a few minutes he just says "so y'all really haven't yet figured out that the news is lying, have you?"
I can believe that, having had colleagues and friends from within the East Bloc. Quote one colleague, a Romanian woman, about political correctness in the Swedish school system (i.e. don't mention that 99% of all problems are related to non-white migrants and their spawn):
"It's just like home was when I grew up. Everybody knows what's wrong and no-one is allowed to say"
"… but probably because it is a bad look for an American law enforcement bureau to be funding an international investigative reporting operation …"
Hell of a footnote. Some might call that election interference. Highly recommend listening to the Mike Benz interview on Rogan - he spends hours untangling the subversive propaganda GAE blob which includes USAID, Atlantic Council, etc.
According to his LinkedIn, Sullivan "lives in Sarajevo where he has appeared in four Bosnian films always playing the evil foreigner and is lead singer in the only authentic Irish traditional music band in the Balkans." Reality is stranger than fiction.
Mike Benz is required reading & watching, I was surprised to not see his name in the article. None of this is surprising if you watched a few of his videos.
The recent Mike Benz interview on Joe Rogan is a must see.
Per Benz, the USAIDE has a $50,000,000,000.00 budget, is only one of several State Dept. / CIA / DOD NGO-like interconnected entities that manipulates international news, information, & perception.
All that and they blow it all with a shitty little genocide on an irrelevant desert beach. Gaza is that one city in France, the US is Henry VIII
In the interests of Journalistic Accuracy, I should note that immediately off the top of my head Orthodox Celts is an authentic Irish traditional music band in the Balkans, and last I checked Drew Sullivan is not the lead singer or any singer. Their rendition of "Rocky Road to Dublin" is my preferred.
So, in short, man can't even write his own LinkedIn without petty journalistic distortions.
Few creatures are more dangerous than lonely losers with a bit of intelligence.
How about midwits that hold onto a dead position?
They're pretty dangerous too.
They're annoying as hell, for sure.
Maybe they're not the *only* Irish traditional music band in the Balkans. As for authenticity, that's probably in the eye of the beholder ;)
I'm not sure which possibility is more amusing, that Sullivan is unaware of Orthodox Celts in spite of claiming to be a Balkan Irish Music buff, or that he is aware and deliberately pretends they don't exist (or, ahem, don't count as authentic) on his personal LinkedIn in scrupulous adherence to some geopolitical policy regarding Serbia.
I haven't even *found* Drew Sullivan's band yet. It doesn't help his music career that he seems to be on the privileged list of "people who are officially too uninteresting to be on Wikipedia". Being documented on Wikipedia is an indignity reserved for plebs, of course.
On the OCCRP website it mentions... "Drew Sullivan is a social entrepreneur and co-founder and publisher of OCCRP."
"Before becoming a journalist, he was a structural dynamicist on the space shuttle project for Rockwell Space Systems. He has a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. He has also been a professional standup comedian, acted in four films, and plays bodhran in the only authentic Irish/Celtic band in the Balkans."
Social entrepreneur, rocket scientist, standup comedian, actor, and musician. In is "spare tine" he founds an international network of investigative journalists.
In other words, the talent is spread pretty thinly.
It's almost like he's Elon Musk's evil twin!
I am surprised no one posted this superb compilation that nails it - https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo?si=EeYDZeD6sWcgnnAz
Brilliant and "extremely dangerous to our democracy™". Matt Orfalea also does killer mashups like this.
Superb. "This is extremely dangerous to 'our' M-S-M".
I was about to comment on how this article by Eugyppius appeared at the same time the Joe Rogan interviewed Mike Benz. It made me wonder if these revelations themselves were coordinated, which would be funny since the subject is coordination of reporting by legacy media companies. I now see, though, that other commenters have already referenced this Joe Rogan podcast.
This would be an interesting article if 51 US national security experts had not went on the record to say it has all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.
Easy, if the Russians repeat it in any form, they get to call it “ Russian propaganda “ regardless of the original source.
Sadly, even Russian propaganda is US propaganda. You'd think the one thing other than energy that they could export successfully would be propaganda.
You ever notice how when there's an inconvenient narrative, they may call it 'Russian Disinformation', they might call it a "pro-Putin narrative", but they rarely come out and call it 'Factually Untrue"?
ISTG nobody actually cares about truth anymore, only "The Narrative"
That's a very good point.
Sorta works like using labeling as a tool. Either labeling like with "Denier" or "Anti" this and that.
Or just by simply not labeling one side and insinuating by virtue of labeling the other side as true.
Ah. Of course, that event, the signed document, the press lobbying, the shadowy NGOs - all a thing of the past. Nothing to see. Please do move along.
Pardon? Certainly.
How about 1st January 2014 to 1st December 2024. Why? Well - here's the deal - anyway....choo-choo.....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
JOE PARDONED JOE
Yesireee.
:gone on the record..."
Thx. Def need help with grammar.
Wasn't my best subject...that's for sure....;)
We saw it during COVID, all our idiotic politicians in the western world posted the same crap word for word. It is all globally coordinated.
Yes. It's a strategy; when these talking points (narrative) "spontaneously" emerge from thin air, and is immediately everywhere at the same time, you can bet its orchestrated. It's not a coincidence; it's planned and exist to simply manufacture consent.
They are simply there to tell The Left and our overlords what is acceptable to think. Trust is immaterial because the elite and those benefited from government largesse, corporate interests and higher educational system- are still getting the messages (narrative) from the media.
For what other reason would they not be concerned about the lowest historical levels of trust with the public? Perhaps it's because this actually reinforces the message to the elites and power brokers in D.C. that the FAR- FAR-FAR Right is a threat to democracy? Maybe it's just to keep them all in alignment, ergo "consensus" - if not they may be excommunicated from the tribe....which overrides curiosity or the desire to seek The Truth.
To do otherwise they risk careers and sinecures. The ventriloquist (MSM) are simply telling "the blob" (sprawling government/bureaucrats) and other decision makers (corporate influence/lobbyists) what is safe to think in order for all these robber barons to take bed with the government, at the expense of our individual sovereignty, penalty free, for the mutual benefit of those three parties to feast on a middle class carcass
I don't know how much time you spend on X, but it's VERY obvious when the 'talking points' go out, because suddenly they are everywhere.
Sort of weird how that's not really happening now that the election is over, though. Why, you might think those people were just being paid to post!
"people were just being paid to post"
I tried to figure out how get get on to that gravy train, but for some strange reason no one wanted to pay for my posts.
Too much testosterone, maybe?
Nah. I have been advised that I'm a "far right white supremacist". Which is apparently how moderate conservatives with libertarian leanings are labeled today.
And, as such, everything I write is, by definition, evil, and potentially damaging to the psyches of the left.
And yeah, I wear a Stetson and boots.
you might consider other careers than journalism...doesn't sound like you'll fit in.
Me too!
Were you saying the right things?
I am convinced that a large majority of the accounts posting those talking points are literal CIA bot farms. I have never met an actual, real life person in the real world, with a Ukrainian flag in their username, unless they were actual Ukrainians, from Ukraine, who live here now
I have met a couple IRL. Conspicuous Ukraine flag and NATO stickers, bring up the war unprompted then talk in the approved phrases, convinced their side will win any day now. None of them have personal connections to Ukraine.
Exactly.
Im not on X but all of it seems so obvious.
I'm a big fan of X -- I probably spend too much time there following various issues and people -- but I have noticed SINCE the election, that there seems to be MORE propaganda and MORE directed posts and memes, but this time coming from the Right!
A lot of the individual posters are gone and a rolling sheet of "things to believe" has replaced them. I am wondering if it isn't coming from Elon Musk, who is now in some kind of weird "semi-government-employed" position and using his AI to direct the thoughts of followers.
It is quite disconcerting and a bit terrifying -- out of the frying pan and into the fire...
And we have receipts......
https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/JW-v-HHS-COVID-Community-Corps-September-2021-02315.pdf
Yep!
Strange that now eugyppius is admitting a coordinated media/manipulation against the population but few months ago he was vehemently arguing that scamdemic policies were managerial 'mistakes' and there was most likely no 'conspiracy'/coordination behind.
eugyppius, I don't know how much influence this OCCRP may or may not have in journalism globally, but in my view there is a more fundamental phenomenon taking place. Because of its potential to affect the course of society, journalism attracts people who want to "make a difference in the world." Considering that people with libertarian or conservative worldviews take more-or-less "live and let live" or "leave it alone" attitudes respectively, the field of journalism is left wide open for leftists to pick their stories and spin narratives in their direction. Hence the 90+% self-identification of professionals in media as "liberals" (quotation marks sorely needed around that label).
Doubtless this is not the only factor -- herd mentality and careerism also play a role. But it's that fundamental "change the world" activist attitude that accounts for the content and direction of that herd mentality.
Good call!
Lord save us from people who want to "make a difference in the world"!
This exactly. 1000 likes.
User,
I think the revelations brought forth in the Twitter Files is adequate to dismiss this "Herd" proposition you and a few others are putting forward.
\\][//
I disagree. Leftist bias in the media has been going on for a lot longer than Twitter or the authoritarians who pressured it have been around. When Lyndon Johnson ordered J. Edgar Hoover to spy on the Goldwater campaign and issued press releases responding to Goldwater speeches even before he gave the speech, the media ate it up. A few years later, Nixon's people tried to spy on the McGovern campaign and only THEN did the media get all high and mighty about the spying.
I said that the info on the Twitter Files is "adequate"; your further remarks are simply redundent. We could go on and on to "COINTELPRO" or reach back to 1948 and CIA's Operation Mockingbird. Or even reach back to Biblical Times for encounters with Demons.
\\][//
”The OCCRP “is an army of ‘clean hands’ investigating outside the US,” he added... “
Gotta love clean hands theory!
The Biden’s call it “plausible deniability”.
Lolol Pamela. Not sure why that's so damn funny...but it is!
It's funny because it's true plausible deniability in a different wrapper! *smirk*
Its the best laugh I've had in awhile
I suspect this is false. The actual number is probably in the trillions of dollars, not millions.
When you can print as much money as you want, and that money is globally accepted, you can buy an unlimited number of people. The US debt is > 30 trillion. That money bought and is still buying politicians, journalists, CEOs, intelligence operations, NGOs, satellites, weapons, military bases, etc.. The risk to such an operation is that one day, not everybody accepts your money. This is why Trump just threatened all the BRICs nations.
Wait until people figure out fiat is not money, rather a financial weapon.
Those same printers that go whirrrrrrr in printing fake money will spit out deeds reclaiming assets people thought they owned.
It'll be the biggest "tax" in the history of mankind.
excuse me, I believe they go "brrr". https://brrr.money"
Now that's some funny shit!
But also terrifying.
That website was created on March 18th, 2020, and as far as I'm concerned, that is _the day_ that all of our current economic misery was locked in.
People now seem to think that the massive inflation, loss of jobs, and general impoverishment of the west are due to Biden's mismanagement. It certainly didn't help, but no, it's not. ALL OF THIS is a predictable consequence of shutting down the economy for several months and then printing trillions of fake dollars and giving them to people. ALL OF THIS was locked in the second the federal government started implementing their covid policies.
And, SIRI, who was the president on March 18th, 2020? I have forgotten
Yep. When the money is fake, the rest of the economy is doomed to follow.
One's friends and colleagues are much more disturbed by one's independence and non-compliance with whatever the approved viewpoint may be than one's enemies and this is true everywhere for everyone. Always. It is the people who claim to--or do, to whatever extent--like you who will work hardest to undermine the least signs of resistance to the norm.
I had, twice, more than 20 years apart, the experience which proves this, and it happened over the most insignificant sort of protest. Two different people forged my signature on greeting cards because they could not tolerate my refusal to participate in a group congratulatory exercise because I despised both of the people being congratulated and I dislike hypocrisy for form's sake.
The first time happened when I was 13 and it may surprise no one that my FFFFG undermined me. But it was a very nice colleague at an office job who was the forger the second time, on a card for our boss, and she later regretted it when I was fired not long afterwards, and she had the grace to apologize to me.
Anyway--we see here in SubstackLand how disconcerted loyal subscribers and friendly-to-one-another commenters get when any party line is transgressed, no matter the line, and why. Here in the free air of free speech, freely-expressed differing opinions bring the chill of rage.
And if a man's salary etc. etc. etc.--
[edited for spelling]
In "SubstackLand" (Thank you for that!), one may find many commenters with whom one agrees. Or disagrees. Sometimes in the same post.
But, as Evelyn Beatrice Hall put it, "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
Ain't it amazing how we all got the attribution of that one wrong! Wait--yet again, it wuz the media what misled us.
A cynical person might suggest that misle-ing is what the media DOES.
A cynical person might suspect that's why writing was invented.
"Yeah? Yeah! But Putin!" Is the 100% predictable reply from EU-ropean media.
And "Gosh dang darn EU trying to curb our freedumb of speech bitching about Xwitter" from US "conservative" (i.e. 90's liberal) media.
So about criticising Russia, China, Iran, DPRK, Saudi, et cetera about freedom of speech, spying on citizens, trying to manipulate other nations, and so on, EU and USUK media, pundits and politicians can F*ck off, off the planet and keep going.
Next time I read or hear one of those scrape-offs going off on "media from nation X are untrustworthy". . . SGT is the feeling, is all I'm saying.
A real subtle form of censorship, right here, right now. FB won't give me the 'post' button when I try to share this directly. You hit a nerve, happy to help you hit more nerves. I posted it indirectly.
All around the world, they want to subsidize the paid-for liars and, in doing so, prevent the rest of us from gaining any traction into the field.
I mean....it worked for Gates and Bezos, right?
Your article about the interview with Rogan and Benz lays it all out.
Everyone should read that article and watch that interview. It's astounding
Link if people are interested: (Full episode at the end)
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/benz-batters-the-blob
Thank you for this (and all your work - been enjoying you for years now).
An old friend of mine used to draw the distinction this way - "In a dictatorship, you simply control information with threat and force. In a society where people are allowed free speech, you have to control WHAT THEY WANT TO say."
Two models of tyranny the whole time - just one which is much softer-feeling.
I have gone back and forth over the years, thinking him a bit dramatic or quite realistic, but this century (and the last five years especially) has been all about the state finally 'dropping trousers' on all its worst motives and methods.
Depressingly huge numbers of 'consumerists' (as sharply distinct from ethically and intellectually active 'citizens') now yawn and go back to scrolling, instead of screaming "NO - those are RIGHTS, not case specific favours granted by the beneficence of the state!" Which make it feel even more as if what we all thought we had, in terms of established liberty, was illusory all along.
Robert Bly's idea of "The Sibling Society" comes to mind - the proportion of adults - people even interested in responsible thinking (which always requires reality calibration, and destroys ego-theories wholesale) is lower with every cohort, and now the very idea that we even are citizens and are supposed to think and speak about the direction and shape of our societies is being actively disdained and suppressed, in favour of "Expert" and "Authorized" state power.
I've been fixing electronic gear since I was a kid (so much awesome audiophile stuff in the garbage in the 1970s). I still remember my great pleasure, just after graduating as a technician, when I first encountered the warning "NO USER SERVICEABLE PART INSIDE - AUTHORIZED PROFESSIONALS ONLY" and realized "hey cool, I'm finally authorized." But I would never have been anywhere near as good a tech, had I never dared to learn, until 'official'.
It feels to me (apologies for vagueness here) as if this waiting to be given permission/not feeling authorized thing, is a big part of the mindset of that same kind of clean-fingernails elite disconnection which also responds to mythic (emotive, not rational) prompts, for the 'what they want to say' part of our vaunted western (degraded and pathetic) "free and open" discourse.
BTW - Your wonderful piece on "The Hysterical Style" for organizing and aligning the thinking of disparate bureaucrats and functionaries not only made me laugh, for fitting so well with my old friend's signature line. It also greatly impressed a friend of mine who did a few tours with the world bank (he may actually still be laughing). Danke - and a big tip of the hat, for that!
Also - apologies if you've already gone there - but I bet a review of Bellingcat would give you much matter about which to write and fulminate. Think the Dropsite guys have done some on it already (and Taibbi, if memory serves). Said to be the most overtly CIA of all the media orgs (that I know of, anyhow).
Cheers for what you do - much appreciated by idiot-besieged Canucks, also!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Which make it feel even more as if what we all thought we had, in terms of established liberty, was illusory all along."
There is no stupider plan than to construct a list of rights that people have against government oppression, then to put the interpretation and enforcement of those rights in the hands of that very same government.
In the end, you have only the rights you can successfully defend.
The first step is exercising them at every opportunity, or else they become vestigial.
Quite so! Why I am now convinced the conversion of citizens into consumers (Eloi) really was deliberate (tons of evidence anyhow, but one must also be willing to credit the sheer scope and scale of malice). They don't like us even thinking we have rights, let alone a duty to protect and exercise them, constantly!
> "Which make it feel even more as if what we all thought we had, in terms of established liberty, was illusory all along."
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
> An old friend of mine used to draw the distinction this way - "In a dictatorship, you simply control information with threat and force. In a society where people are allowed free speech, you have to control WHAT THEY WANT TO say."
I referenced Moldbug's old writings in another comment and you have hit his nail on the head.
One of Moldbug's other big ideas is that, the way US political power is structured, you have to win elections. And elections are decided by free votes. And votes are cast on the basis of informed decisions. Which means, if you control the information, you can reliably get voters to vote however you want.
Which means that whoever controls the news media, controls the government.
My lawyer has advised me not to continue this line of reasoning on a German blog (although in this case, that's purely a joke. I think "The DNC controls the media" is a better model than "[redacted] controls the media". For that matter, I'm starting to be turned on to the idea that Pfizer et al. control the media through threatening to withhold ad money)
I hope that someone inside of DOGE is a subscriber of yours. Hmmmm, where to cut? Oh, I don't know...
All the institutions are going to play "DOGE ball". Fine, let them, but let them know up front its really The Department of Elimination.
Imagine if the next, and greatly feared, "government shutdown" were made permanent. Please remind me again what our federal government is good for? Is it nothing more than a vast moneylaundering system?
exactly
words you will never hear from anyone in the government:
"We came in under budget, while accomplishing our objectives ahead of schedule, and we're returning the money to the citizens"
Locust. The lot of them.
The British burned Washington to the ground in 1814. Should we invite them back?
British government at the moment is far too busy burning their own entire country down.
Oh come now. A few decades back they took back the Falklands. But not without our help, 'tis true.
YES! and I'll be first in line to help.
Burn and salt the fields and leave not a single seed for them to regrow their fields of grift and lies!
No, no and no again!!!
Anarchy is far more dangerous than limited government. The course should be limiting the government not eliminating the government.
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THANK YOU.
I am so f'n tired of smug Canucks (And smug anti-American Americans) finding out I'm Canadian and making a joke about "you know you guys burned down the whitehouse"
Canadians didn't do that. British regulars from Britain did that. Canadians just love stolen valour, since they don't have any valour of their own
We lost the original 13th amendment. What on their return; Privacy Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, and Freedom of Information Act?
Anarchy is far more dangerous than limited government. The course should be limiting the government not eliminating the government.
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Not in its current form.
We are so far away from what The Founders intended I'm not sure that assertion holds up under scrutiny.
The unaccountable 4th branch must be DESTROYED, precisely because it's not even mentioned in the constitution. In fact, they represent the very top-down, authoritarian ruling elite our forefathers rejected in 1776 and replaced in the triumph of the American Revolution.
I am a pacifist by nature, and I agree to an extent...but please make the argument that our forefathers wouldn't have blown everything up long ago.
"By a very conservative estimate, a hundred million people have died at the hands of their own governments in this [20th] century. Given that record, how bad could anarchy be?"
--JOSEPH SOBRAN
DOGE ball!
Smattering applause! So when do we get to see you on Gutfeld! as one of his invited comedians?
Because the last weeks, you've been on a roll when it comes to puns, gags, humourous acronyms and whatnot!
Im on vacation and I must admit I've been posting a little tipsy....;)
Hmmm. So the lesson learned - self medicate prior to posting.
Got it!
Oh c'mon, Andy, only on vacation!
You're retired, right? Isn't that like perma-vacation?!
Almost - except I don't have to worry about 80 hour weeks of catch-up when I go back to work.
There ARE benefits to gettin' old!
Indeed. That's all I kept thinking while reading this article...DOGE can't some soon enough!
Your pieces should have 1000x more likes. I try to spread the word.
Really excellent writing style and content.
Someone pointed out that there is no Aid in USAID—all propaganda.
And it's not even very good. For the life of me i can't figure out why, by in large, most EU citizens swallow it whole.
Because realising and accepting that the USA isn't our friend is quite the terrifying realisation.
Not American citizenry, you (the collective you) often seem to dislike your leadership caste even more than we loathe ours.
But Empires do not have friends. They have fiefdoms, satrapies, conquered territories - and enemies. And it is very easy to move from one to the other, just by saying "No, we are not letting you take our[ insert natural resource here], it's ours to do with as we please".
Far safer to tell yourself the reason there are US soldiers in your nation is for your protection.
Sort of like how The Mafia used to "protect" small Italian businessmen in Old New York?
"Used to"? Didn't they just rebrand to become part of the uniparty?
But yeah, sort of like that.
"Wouldn't want those oh so very important Swedish export industries start having trouble selling to Big Brother USA, now would we?"
Makes sense
You know, the other day I was struck with a random fascinating thought.
When I was a kid, in elementary school, every year around Halloween / Christmas (I forget exactly when), my school would do some UNESCO charity drive and get us all to raise money for starving kids in Africa or whatever.
And it just hit me, like, last week, that that entire process is _literally_ a psyop from globalists to get 8 year olds to raise unaccountable money for them. Once we raised the money, where did it go? Did it actually feed anyone? Did any of us even know wtf UNESCO was?
It's nefarious
Be fair it's not just propaganda USAID supports legions of drug kingpins too!
God, if the government was financially supporting drug dealers, at least I'd get something out of it. Some of us have to pay for our own drugs, out of pocket!
> The man can literally email hundreds of leading journalists around the world with specific instructions about how they should answer questions. And this is only one NGO, amid a vast sea of them – one node in a massive, hopelessly complex system working to coordinate Western media.
Referencing back to one fo the other comments I left ten minutes ago.
Even if such a man exists who can email hundreds of leading journalists with specific instructions, how is that implemented and how is that enforced?
What mechanism exists to ensure that all of these journalists do what they're told?
What mechanism exists to ensure that all of these journalists do that _correctly_?
Because, again, even Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia couldn't perfectly solve this problem. So, how did we solve it? Or did we not solve it, but do a just-good-enough job that it appears solved enough?
The main difference now being that the press in USSR et al consisted mainly of people who /knew/ they were peddling lies and propaganda at least half of the time.
Today's journalist believe what they are selling, and believe that they report the truth, because the truth is what they report, because they report truth, because . . .
That's why it works so much better today.
You could say we solved this, thanks to 70 years of refining the techniques used in the 1840s and earlier.
Or to use a different image: all priests preach from the same book, despite not picking the same passages. But they all preach the same basic tenets.
I heard a story once, I forget if it was a real story, or like, a soviet-era joke, probably the latter. The gist of it is that a Russian comes to America and starts talking to a local about politics and after a few minutes he just says "so y'all really haven't yet figured out that the news is lying, have you?"
I can believe that, having had colleagues and friends from within the East Bloc. Quote one colleague, a Romanian woman, about political correctness in the Swedish school system (i.e. don't mention that 99% of all problems are related to non-white migrants and their spawn):
"It's just like home was when I grew up. Everybody knows what's wrong and no-one is allowed to say"