The Media is Propaganda

[BeBMan]

The media is propaganda and your response is whatabout them?

"The media is propaganda" is propagandistic nonsense to begin with. You may find propaganda in media, but declaring "media" propaganda in general isn't demonstrated by posting an article you label propaganda. Whether a specific article actually is propaganda or not is irrelevant for such a broadsweeping verdict.

Beyond that it's nice to see you still relying on media (whether its tweets, or just above stuff on youtube) when it suits you.

[JohnT]

No, the media is propaganda because of how they spun that low confidence - those evil Republicans have polarized the country.

Well, when you kill a million of your fellow citizens because of a hissy-fit regarding mask wearing, and all Republicans do is sit and whine about Anthony Fauci on Facebook, then yes, evil republicans have polarized the country.

COVID was the great moral test of our age and one side decidedly, and aggressively, failed. They will twist and writhe in the pure poetry of pain as they shriek in Hell.

Congratulations, I'm glad you now understand this.

[JohnT]

Imagine belonging to a religion where you truly believe that:

1. Your God came to Earth and expressed his Divinity via healing,
2. That this God will judge you after you pass away and either give you everlasting peace or eternal torment based upon your belief and actions

... and then you act like a Republican during COVID, going against not only your God's teachings but also rejecting the living example of His life.

Well, one of two things will happen:

1. Christian eschatology will be proven to be bull****,

or

2. 74 million people consigned their own souls to Hell

Pretty sure it's # 1 but the Pascalian bettor in me thinks # 2 is a good possibility as well.

The media didn't polarize me against Republicans, Berz. Republicans polarized me against Republicans.

You can read more here:

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewaythingsought2b/p/the-journey

[Berzerker]

Does that mean you're in the 11% of Americans who trust the TV news?

[Geronimo]

Well, when you kill a million of your fellow citizens because of a hissy-fit regarding mask wearing, and all Republicans do is sit and whine about Anthony Fauci on Facebook, then yes, evil republicans have polarized the country.

COVID was the great moral test of our age and one side decidedly, and aggressively, failed. They will twist and writhe in the pure poetry of pain as they shriek in Hell.

Congratulations, I'm glad you now understand this.

Granted that proper mask wearing slows covid transmission. But by what possible logic do you attribute one million covid deaths to a ”a hissy-fit regarding mask wearing"? Where did you come up with one million surplus deaths associated with mask reticence?

Also are you aware that the increased mortality associated with lockdowns may have greatly exceeded any potential decrease associated with slower covid transmission during those lockdowns? Would that in turn mean that everyone who advocated lockdowns "killed" a number of people equal to the surplus mortality?

[Bereta_Eder]

US is so weak it doens't even cimpute


I'd rather team with the US

but is its too weak

[JohnT]

Granted that proper mask wearing slows covid transmission. But by what possible logic do you attribute one million covid deaths to a ”a hissy-fit regarding mask wearing"? Where did you come up with one million surplus deaths associated with mask reticence?

Also are you aware that the increased mortality associated with lockdowns may have greatly exceeded any potential decrease associated with slower covid transmission during those lockdowns? Would that in turn mean that everyone who advocated lockdowns "killed" a number of people equal to the surplus mortality?

To be fair, the anti-vaxxers did their share of damage too. But COVID could have been contained had the Right behaved rationally and ethically... and they refused to. One minor example was when the Texas Attorney General said that it was OK for old people to die to save the economy. And that was in *March*.

Let us not forget how the Republican leadership downplayed COVID during February, 2020, just so they could unload their stock positions:

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned a small group of well-connected constituents three weeks ago to prepare for dire economic and societal effects of the coronavirus, according to a secret recording obtained by NPR.

The remarks from U.S. Sen. Richard Burr were more stark than any he had delivered in more public forums.

On Feb. 27, when the United States had 15 confirmed cases of COVID-19, President Trump was tamping down fears and suggesting that the virus could be seasonal. “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear,” the president said then, before adding, “it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens.”

On that same day, Burr attended a luncheon held at a social club called the Capitol Hill Club. And he delivered a much more alarming message. “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said, according to a secret recording of the remarks obtained by NPR. “It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

February 27th, 2020. And what was Burr doing two weeks prior?

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/03/burr-unloaded-stocks-before-coronavirus/

As the coronavirus outbreak began to spread across the U.S. in mid-February, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) unloaded his holdings in dozens of stocks that would lose much of their market value over the coming weeks.

Burr and his wife Brooke sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks on Feb. 13 and didn’t buy any new positions, according to a recent financial disclosure filed with the Senate.

Around the time that Burr sold his shares of major corporations, including several hard hit hotel companies, he publicly expressed confidence about the U.S. government’s ability to fight the virus. However in late February, Burr privately warned that the virus is “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” according to a recording obtained by NPR.

Between the Burrs’ two accounts, they sold up to $150,000 worth of stock in Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which lost almost two-thirds of its market value since Feb. 13. They sold up to $150,000 in Extended Stay America, another hotel company that lost half its value over the last month. Burr also sold up to $65,000 of stock in Park Hotels & Resorts, which saw its stock price drop from nearly $24 to under $5. The hotel industry is asking President Donald Trump for a bailout as Americans increasingly avoid travel.

Republicans did what Republicans do: they profited from human misery and American deaths. USA! USA! USA!

By March 11th, when things really went to sh1t, it was probably already too late. Because the Republicans refused to do anything other than profit from the situation.

So I have no problem putting the blame squarely on their shoulders. It’s the Calvinist in me.

[Berzerker]

Yup, it was late Feb 2020 when a maskless Pelosi was standing in a maskless crowd inviting people to Chinatown. That was shortly after Fauci was on TV telling people not to wear masks. A few months later he was asked about that advice and he said he didn't want people buying up masks needed by health care workers. Starting to see a narrative?

[Dauphin]

Those journalistic standards you mentioned include protecting whistle blowers, not helping the FBI arrest them. Are you saying journalists have a duty to protect whistle blowers except when they choose a different publisher? I remember the media protecting Col Alexander Vindman and they had no whistle blower informant relationship with him. This guy is a whistle blower and they outed him, thats what I mean.

1) Do you believe that someone posting stuff on a game server to impress their friends with their inside scoop is sufficient to garner a whistleblower status within the definition of law?
2) Remind me (I genuinely forget), did Vindman get accused of a crime, or was he complying with enquiries. Generally was he afforded whistleblower status by the law?

I am making a distinction here, because to be a whistleblower with the protections of the law and ethical standards of professions such as journalism, you need to meet certain criteria.

[PLATO]

Once the media figured out that it was a "for profit" enterprise instead of a "public service" entity, we all should have expected this. I blame Rupert....

[Berzerker]

Most of One belt, one road was not infrastructure in the classical sense. Also it has pretty much been a disaster for Communist China as more then half of the projects were dudes and the lender just defaulted

Google china invests in Africa, they bought S America first and now they're peace brokers in the Middle East. They're making friends with the victims of the Monroe Doctrine and the cold war - hot war for many of them. One would hope our leaders will read the room instead of pissing everyone off but the people in charge live for US hegemony and they dont care if millions of people die. So China uses the $$$ it makes from us to help the victims and win their friendship.

[Berzerker]

"The media is propaganda" is propagandistic nonsense to begin with. You may find propaganda in media, but declaring "media" propaganda in general isn't demonstrated by posting an article you label propaganda. Whether a specific article actually is propaganda or not is irrelevant for such a broadsweeping verdict.

Beyond that it's nice to see you still relying on media (whether its tweets, or just above stuff on youtube) when it suits you.

I'm not talking about every source of information, this is about the corporate/big tech, government controlled media and their constant lying to push narratives. The poll reflects a lack of confidence in that media, not the handful of people exposing their narratives. Why do you think just about every government wants to censor the internet? Ours did it to a cheering tribe.

[Berzerker]

Well, when you kill a million of your fellow citizens because of a hissy-fit regarding mask wearing, and all Republicans do is sit and whine about Anthony Fauci on Facebook, then yes, evil republicans have polarized the country.

COVID was the great moral test of our age and one side decidedly, and aggressively, failed. They will twist and writhe in the pure poetry of pain as they shriek in Hell.

Congratulations, I'm glad you now understand this.

"Man who has been propagandized to hate his own country is complaining"

Fauci was funding the research that unleashed this plague on the world. He told people not to wear masks because he didn't want a run on quality masks (yeah, he lied) and shortly afterward Pelosi was standing in Chinatown SF in a crowd with no masks inviting people to come visit. Its already a crowded part of the city and she's not worried about covid. Fauci has said Trump did everything he wanted done. But why are you blaming Trump for deaths under Biden?

Fauci (and the narrative since this is about propaganda) told us we wouldn't get covid if we got vaxxed. That wasn't true and they kept repeating it anyway, at first dismissing the evidence as "breakthrough" rarities. As a result of that lie people got covid from vaxxed people who relaxed on social distancing while the narrative blamed the unvaxxed. We got to see what panic can do, rebels like Howard Stern and Noam Chomsky were rabid about people who didn't want the vax. It was a pandemic of the unvaccinated, that was the narrative. But the evidence repeatedly showed covid spiked as the vaccinated resumed 'normal life'. They demonized people who didn't want the vax while pushing it on their kids. Yeah, inject it into newborns because its a pandemic of the babies. I think these people are nuts.

And on top of all that they mandated the vax for people who already got covid and pretended natural immunity was sketchy science. You should see what Fauci said in the past about the superior effectiveness of natural immunity from prior exposure to earlier bugs with his mealy-mouthed response to an Israeli study showing natural immunity from covid was effective. He lied about funding the research that gave us covid and he conspired with his friends to take down critics and censor Americans. I probably wouldn't have gotten 2 shots if it wasn't for their lying so maybe now you understand. Instead of telling people to lose weight, get sun and exercise and eat well with a few vitamin supplements we were arresting people for going to the beach. People lost their jobs, many who had natural immunity.

[Berzerker]

1) Do you believe that someone posting stuff on a game server to impress their friends with their inside scoop is sufficient to garner a whistleblower status within the definition of law?
2) Remind me (I genuinely forget), did Vindman get accused of a crime, or was he complying with enquiries. Generally was he afforded whistleblower status by the law?

I am making a distinction here, because to be a whistleblower with the protections of the law and ethical standards of professions such as journalism, you need to meet certain criteria.

The state is irrelevant, this is about 'journalistic standards'. Daniel Ellsburg did not act within the law when he blew the whistle on Vietnam, neither did Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden when they exposed government malfeasance. Julian Assange is still in jail for publishing evidence of war crimes. You're conflating the state's legal standard with the standards of people who depend on whistle blowers for the news. Vindmann was the source about Trump's phone call using weapons as barter to investigate Biden for using a billion to fire a prosecutor bothering a business employing his son.

Did you know before that phone call the Democrats pressured Ukraine to investigate Trump over the Russiagate nonsense? Ukraine brought down Manafort before the election so Democrats complain about Russian election interference lol. The Ukrainians were quite active opponents of Trump over their fear he'd support a peace deal. The powers that be - neocons and their allies - have been planning this a while. They knew war was coming to Ukraine long ago, certainly before the coup. But Ukraine needed time to arm and train and a low level war in the Donbas not only served that purpose but prevented peace from breaking out.

I dont know if leaking the call was legal, I do know journalists are supposed to protect whistle blowers, even go to jail for them. And they dont wait for the state to define the source as a legal whistle blower. The NYT or Wapo would have turned Ellsburg over to the FBI based on that logic.

[Dauphin]

https://www.whistleblowers.org/what-journalists-need-to-know-about-whistleblowers/

Have a read.

[Berzerker]

I cant, can you quote it?

[-Jrabbit]

LOL Berz, master of the "just watch this hour of Jimmy Dore on YouTube and you'll understand" link, asking for a quote on an inconvenient citation.
Ironic.

[BeBMan]

Real satire once again.

[Berzerker]

I cant watch it, my connection is slow for some reason. I haven't been able to watch any videos for a few days.

[BeBMan]

I'm not talking about every source of information, this is about the corporate/big tech, government controlled media and their constant lying to push narratives. The poll reflects a lack of confidence in that media, not the handful of people exposing their narratives. Why do you think just about every government wants to censor the internet? Ours did it to a cheering tribe.

Backtracking can still be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts