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2/08/2024 4:10 pm  #221


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Nancy Pelosi has made some noise recently by accusing the pro-Ceasefire protesters that have been hounding her home and office of being Russian propagandists.  Now, as obnoxious as these protesters can be (they don't seem to care that Pelosi voted against the latest Israeli aid package), these kinds of aspersions are very irresponsible and threaten to devolve the entire discourse into loyalty-baiting, where everyone who disagrees with you must be some kind of plant, bot, useful idiot or, worse, a traitor.  None of this is constructive.

But, honestly, it isn't entirely useless to point out some of the inconvenient facts around the funding behind some of these protest groups either.  After all, it's a well-documented fact that Russia has encouraged, recruited and helped raise funds for a variety of American social unrest protests in recent years for reasons that have very little to do with social justice concerns.  One should be able to call out such efforts without dismissing the underlying motives of the protests themselves.  All the more reason, then, that sincere protesters for these causes have an awareness of whether their cause is being appropriated by those who may not have their best interests at heart.

More recently, the Pelosi camp has more specifically pointed to an NYT report from last August which took a close look at a tech billionaire, Neville Roy Signham, who ironically also happens to be an avowed Maoist, and has forged a history of funding Chinese party propaganda (or, in more colorful language, "innovating the international image of the Chinese Communist Party".  An American now based in Shanghai and a former Huawei consultant, Signham's wife is the founder of Code Pink, Jodie Evans, and Singham contributes a quarter of Code Pink's entire budget.  Code Pink has been at the forefront of many of these post-Oct 7 protests.  Evans, at one time, condemned the Chinese "brutal repression" of dissidents, but since her marriage, and funding from, Singham, she's changed her views to describing China as a "defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war".  Signham has already had a scandal in 2021 for funding Chinese propaganda in India and Brasil, for pushing back against allegations of Uyghur genocide (Evans now refers to Uyghurs as "terrorists"), and for funding campaigns against aid to Kiev in order to push "peace" (Ukrainian surrender).

You may notice that none of the above specifically has anything to do with the current Middle East crisis, and I certainly don't intend any of the above as a rebuke against pro-ceasefire protests (as I am also pro-ceasefire) or to absolve Pelosi of what I think is irresponsible rhetoric.  But, as we saw with the BLM protests throughout 2014-2020, it's still worth noting when the hammer-sickle signs start waving and movement leaderships start taking on more and more explicit Marxist positions, or otherwise positions that many participants of the protest never intended to co-sign.

But since "genocide" is such a buzzword currently, let's look closer at the Uyghur situation:

New Lines wrote:

In 2020, Code Pink initiated a campaign titled “China Is Not Our Enemy” in which the organization advocates for the U.S. to adopt a thoroughly conciliatory approach toward China....

Code Pink’s website also includes an FAQ section on the Uyghurs. “Our concern is that it is being used as a tool to drive the U.S.’s hybrid war on China,” it states, “instead of a human rights issue that needs to be addressed as such.” This page provides links to “helpful resources” on the topic, one of which appears to treat the plight of the Uyghurs as a human rights nonissue: A video featuring [Jodie] Evans and British academic John Ross shows the latter characterizing the Uyghur genocide allegation as “farcical” and a “total lie.”

Elsewhere, Ross...has written, “If the real meaning of the term ‘human rights’ is used, it is evident that China has the best human rights record in the world — and those words are carefully chosen."

One event hosted on Sept. 18, 2021, by The People’s Forum titled “China and the Left: A Socialist Forum,” was co-sponsored by Evans’ Code Pink and jointly keynoted by [Vijay] Prashad and the Qiao Collective, a self-described Marxist group of “ethnic Chinese people living across multiple countries” whose Twitter account routinely promotes the Chinese government narrative on most any topic, including denying the Uyghur genocide.

Housed within The People’s Forum New York office is yet another media organization called Breakthrough News. Also pressing Uyghur genocide denial, this project is spearheaded by Rania Khalek, an apologist for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose previous media ventures, Redfish and Soapbox, were both exposed by journalists as cutouts of Russian state-funded media. Soapbox’s parent group, Maffick, sued Facebook for libel in the U.S. District Court in California after the social media company labeled its subsidiaries “Russia state-controlled media.” But the case was dismissed, because the court agreed that Facebook “tendered a substantial amount of evidence in support of its view that Maffick is linked to the Russian government.”

Regarding the larger umbrella media outlets under the Singham-funded Tricontental Institute for Social Research, start with this collection of Youtube channels called BreakThrough News, fronted by ex-RT America shills:

Daily Beast wrote:

BreakThrough’s earliest productions lambasted America’s presidential system and persistent racial inequality, and attacked the American and Brazilian responses to the COVID-19 outbreak while praising policies in China....

BreakThrough is not officially affiliated with any foreign power—rather, it’s part of the “International People’s Media Network”: a coalition of eight outlets targeting not just the U.S. but Latin America, India, the Middle East, and parts of Africa....But even the International People’s Media Network’s webpage makes it clear its members all work in conjunction with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, a Massachusetts-based think tank whose founder, controversial academic Dr. Vijay Prashad, is both a vociferous defender of China’s repressive policies toward its Uighur minority and a recurring guest on BreakThrough and its international siblings. All Network members share the same preoccupations, and even some of the same personnel—all unanimously depicting the U.S. as oppressive and imperialistic, China as admirable and benevolent, and Russia as blameless for its invasion of Ukraine.And all the International People’s Media Network’s affiliates, including Tricontinental, appear to drink from the same torrent of dark money pouring out of the bank accounts and nonprofits of tech mogul Neville “Roy” Singham....

Across the International People’s Media Network, a similar pattern of overlapping personnel —and links to Singham—emerges. For instance, the chair of the Justice and Education Forum in 2019 was Tings Chak, a Beijing-based “researcher” and art director for Tricontinental. Chak is a regular guest on BreakThrough, where she effuses over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s policies on everything from COVID-19 to tech regulation to international relations...Chak is also the co-founder, along with another China-based Tricontinental researcher, of International People’s Media Network member Dongsheng News, which produces videos in multiple languages promoting China’s diplomatic and scientific successes. Yet another Tricontinental researcher hosts Dongsheng’s podcast ‘The Crane,’ which promotes China as a natural and generous partner for developing African nations.Similarly, two additional International People’s Media Network members, Brasil de Fato and ARGMedios—covering Brazil and Argentina, respectively—are affiliates of the Sao Paulo-based Centro Popular de Midias, which has received funding from yet another Singham-tied nonprofit. Tricontinental’s website reveals that the communications director in the think-tank’s Brazil office served as associate editor of Brasil de Fato, and provided “coordination and political guidance” to the Centro Popular. Both Brasil de Fato and ARGMedios have jointly produced and posted content with Tricontinental, BreakThrough, Peoples Dispatch, and other International People’s Media Network members....

"It coincides with Beijing's interest in enlarging its following in the Global South,” argued [Dr. Ho-fung Hung, an expert on political economy. "It is completely consistent with Xi Jinping's rhetoric about a new world order, and the end of US dominance.”

What’s more, Prashad and representatives from BreakThrough, Peoples Dispatch, Dongsheng, Brasil de Fato, Madaar, ARGMedios, and Pan African Television attended a summit in Shanghai earlier this month that East China Normal University convened for the inauguration of its new International Communication Research Institute. Addressing a roomful of Chinese, Russia, Iranian, and Venezuelan state media organizations, the Singham acolytes revisited a common theme: the necessity of a “progressive media” complex that can challenge the predominance of U.S., Japanese, and European outlets.

There's a reason why the money flow is obscured, as Andres Pertierra explained in the above Daily Beast piece: "Their only option will be to ‘hide the ball’ by not being totally forthright about their views."  And there's a certain rhyme to the kinds of stories being generated by these shady outlets, and our young leftists should take heed to not get duped as they were a decade ago by the RT America apparatus in their opportunistic lunge to capitalize (heh) on then Occupy sentiments.  It's fair game, after all, to uncover the money on the right - the Kochs, the Mercers, the PayPals, etc - pushing their prefered narrative from behind their financial curtain.  Similarly, the money from the left deserves at least equal scrutiny, and arguably more since it's our credibililty on the line.
 


 

2/24/2024 4:08 pm  #222


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Probably not the perfect place to post this, but I’m trying to figure out how much of my hatred of Pierre Poilievre is  because he’s a staunch right wing asshole, or because he reminds me of a particularly obnoxious classmate from university who would never miss an opportunity to spout Conservative Party talking points no matter how unrelated the discussion or lesson was.

Also great that all of Canadian media has been making a news story of the polling more than a year out from the next federal election. I don’t particularly like Trudeau, but FFS.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

2/24/2024 5:43 pm  #223


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Rock wrote:

Also great that all of Canadian media has been making a news story of the polling more than a year out from the next federal election. I don’t particularly like Trudeau, but FFS.

The news media focus on "polls" is one of the more troubling developments.  Of course, we've always had polls and polling, but the overwhelming focus, to the detriment of other aspects of policy coverage, is a more recent trend - emerging from cable news specifically - that treats news coverage like sports coverage.  Suddenly, it's all about the numbers, the scores, the stats, and anything more qualitative is marginalized and ignored.

Polls are more often used to construct and enforce a narrative rather than to reflect genuine public opinion, or even - god forbid - inform anyone of substance.  A good recent example is the disparity between polls about Joe Biden's environmental record.  The numbers showing dissatisfaction with Biden's handling of the environment, in the 60-70% range, is roughly equivalent with the numbers of those who are unfamiliar with Biden's enacted environmental policies and investments.  The media isn't here to inform the public of the substance of these policies, but they are quick to reinforce the narrative of his Biden's poor polling based on this lack of knowledge.  The similar effect is with Biden's economic polling, where the majorities are dissatisfied with Biden's handling of the economy, and meanwhile similar majorities are unaware that inflation, housing costs and interest rates have been due to corporate profits than from any policy Joe Biden is actually responsible for.  There's nothing keeping the news media from explaining these facts to their audiences, but they're clearly more comfortable letting the polling shape perception rather than using facts to inform the public (and potentially pissing off some advertisers).


     Thread Starter
 

2/24/2024 7:57 pm  #224


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Those economic factors are the same driving Trudeau’s poll numbers.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

2/24/2024 8:12 pm  #225


Re: The Fuck Happened?

(I think Trudeau is lousy in plenty of other ways, but I don’t think those are driving his poll numbers.)


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

3/23/2024 5:55 pm  #226


Re: The Fuck Happened?

The Harvard Kennedy School has a new study, under their Misinformation Review project, which tested subjects' ability to differentiate between statements of fact and statements of opinion.  This is media literacy 101.  And the scores were not encouraging news - average for correct answers in 2019 was 59.9, which is down from 69.3 in 2018.

So I took the test, and was surprised that I got one wrong.  To the statement: "The Earth is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old", which I labeled as a statement of opinion.  I was quite taken aback when this test determined it to be a statement of fact.  I was not relieved to read the explaination: It "is a statement of fact that is factually incorrect".  Well, that's special.  It's worth noting that this statement was the only "statement of fact" listed that happened to be factually incorrect.  The study explains further: "Importantly, statements of fact are not inherently true. Factual claims can get the facts wrong. For instance, 2 + 2 = 22 is a statement of fact, but it is factually incorrect. Making errors in statements of fact does not transform those statements of fact into statements of opinion. They are incorrect statements of fact."

So the basis of the distinction is not based on actual factual determination, as in a statement containing a claim which can be empirically proven, but rather purely on the syntax of how the claim is being presented.  I don't find this to be particularly helpful, because part of the problem with readers being able to parse actual facts from opinions is because opinions are so frequently presented as facts.  As in maybe that's the bigger issue with misinformation than the syntax of the claim.  Yes, it is important that people are literate enough to discern this syntax, so as to more readily identify opnion statements, but in terms of misinformation specifically, it's a far bigger problem that opinions are laundered as statements of fact, and that this contributes far more to the confusion of identifying one from the other.  And the study says this elsewhere: "Thinking we have the facts when we do not is a form of misinformation."  Right.  And people tend to think that things are facts when they are presented as statements of facts.  Therefore, to combat misinformation, maybe it's more significant to identify how opinions can be masqueraded as facts rather than relying on trusting the syntax to determine the factuality.  Instead, the study claims that describing the earth being 10000 years old as a statement of opinion "potentially enable misinformation to survive by reclassifying factual error as opinion."  I don' see how it fails to survive by calling it a statement of fact either.  Maybe giving a third option of "statement of factual error" could have solved the issue.
 


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3/24/2024 7:50 am  #227


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Jinnistan wrote:

The Harvard Kennedy School has a new study, under their Misinformation Review project, which tested subjects' ability to differentiate between statements of fact and statements of opinion.  This is media literacy 101.  And the scores were not encouraging news - average for correct answers in 2019 was 59.9, which is down from 69.3 in 2018.

So I took the test, and was surprised that I got one wrong.  To the statement: "The Earth is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old", which I labeled as a statement of opinion.  I was quite taken aback when this test determined it to be a statement of fact.  I was not relieved to read the explaination: It "is a statement of fact that is factually incorrect".  Well, that's special.  It's worth noting that this statement was the only "statement of fact" listed that happened to be factually incorrect.  The study explains further: "Importantly, statements of fact are not inherently true. Factual claims can get the facts wrong. For instance, 2 + 2 = 22 is a statement of fact, but it is factually incorrect. Making errors in statements of fact does not transform those statements of fact into statements of opinion. They are incorrect statements of fact."

So the basis of the distinction is not based on actual factual determination, as in a statement containing a claim which can be empirically proven, but rather purely on the syntax of how the claim is being presented.  I don't find this to be particularly helpful, because part of the problem with readers being able to parse actual facts from opinions is because opinions are so frequently presented as facts.  As in maybe that's the bigger issue with misinformation than the syntax of the claim.  Yes, it is important that people are literate enough to discern this syntax, so as to more readily identify opnion statements, but in terms of misinformation specifically, it's a far bigger problem that opinions are laundered as statements of fact, and that this contributes far more to the confusion of identifying one from the other.  And the study says this elsewhere: "Thinking we have the facts when we do not is a form of misinformation."  Right.  And people tend to think that things are facts when they are presented as statements of facts.  Therefore, to combat misinformation, maybe it's more significant to identify how opinions can be masqueraded as facts rather than relying on trusting the syntax to determine the factuality.  Instead, the study claims that describing the earth being 10000 years old as a statement of opinion "potentially enable misinformation to survive by reclassifying factual error as opinion."  I don' see how it fails to survive by calling it a statement of fact either.  Maybe giving a third option of "statement of factual error" could have solved the issue.
 

This is completely absurd. You have a population that doesn't understand how to parse obvious opinions from facts, something which should be fairly easy most of the time, but then you expect them to understand the nuance of a fact also not having to be true because of syntax? This is just opening the door for these kinds of people to further muddy the waters further about what truth actually is.





 

 

3/25/2024 6:12 pm  #228


Re: The Fuck Happened?

crumbsroom wrote:

This is completely absurd. You have a population that doesn't understand how to parse obvious opinions from facts, something which should be fairly easy most of the time, but then you expect them to understand the nuance of a fact also not having to be true because of syntax? This is just opening the door for these kinds of people to further muddy the waters further about what truth actually is.

I suppose the real usefulness here is to be able to better call out someone for trying to present an opinion as a statement of fact.  But again, maybe this study should have allowed for that option.  It is weird that out of the 6 given statements of fact from the study, that this is the only one which is "factually incorrect".  No doubt intended to be a curveball, which explains why that particular statement must have gotten the very worst score (26%) of people getting it correct.  And on top of that, there really isn't a comparable example for a "statement of opinion" which is a laundered fact.

There's also the possibility that I'm just mad because they blindsided me with a confused expectation of what kind of "statement of fact" I supposed to be identifying.


     Thread Starter
 

4/11/2024 6:28 pm  #229


Re: The Fuck Happened?




I'm not saying that I'm worried about any actual Satanic powers that may be unleashed from crazy Maga lawmakers in Arizona.  I'm more worried about what other kinds of crazy dangerous shit people who believe they have these powers are willing to try to get away with.
 


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4/13/2024 6:04 pm  #230


Re: The Fuck Happened?

So...Iran launching missile and drone strikes against Israel has to be some particularly terrifying news.

 

4/14/2024 9:30 pm  #231


Re: The Fuck Happened?

crumbsroom wrote:

So...Iran launching missile and drone strikes against Israel has to be some particularly terrifying news.

Knocking on all the wood, hopefully this will simmer down.  Iran's attack was mostly deterred with minimal damage and Israel avoiding doing something really stupid like lobbing one of their nukes at Tehran.  Of course now you have all of these Republicans blaming Biden for not immediately declaring war on Iran but that's all bark.  (Funny how many of these same Republicans refuse to support Ukraine for fear of starting WWIII.)

It's probably up to Iran now whether this attack suffices as a face-saving response to Israel taking out Iran's two highest ranking officers commanding their proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon last week.  That was potentially touchy, because Israel hit a consulate that was part of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, and it's technically against international law to target embassies, but then Iran would have to explain why these officers were leading the militias who have been attacking the US embassy in Baghdad (not to mention Iranian attacks on embassies in Tehran '79, Beruit '83, etc etc).  Whatever the case, it's apparent that Israel hit the right targets, and proves that their intelligence is still excellent (which conversely makes it all the more ridiculous that they would unintentionally misidentify seven world kitchen aid workers).


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4/19/2024 1:12 am  #232


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Or the other possibility.....Israel can't take the 'W' of rendering Iran's offences moot and leave well enough alone.


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4/20/2024 8:24 am  #233


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Jinnistan wrote:

Or the other possibility.....Israel can't take the 'W' of rendering Iran's offences moot and leave well enough alone.

Maybe that's enough for now, with a strike that Israel is calling "ineffective" and Iran describing the missile as a "toy" not worth responding to.  So just striking right in the middle of Iran's nuclear facilities in Isfahan, but without touching any of the facilities, without being shot down by Iran's anti-air defenses, is enough of a message for now.


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4/20/2024 9:50 am  #234


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Just in time for 4/20, we received the gift of Quality Crazy in the form of some guy who decided to set himself on fire outside of the NY courthouse yesterday where Trump's ongoing hush money trial is underway.  But even self-immolation in itself hardly qualifies anymore as a suitable demonstration of insanity, even if done to protest what is basically a business fraud or election financing case.  Nope, in fact, this apparently had nothing to do with the trial itself, except that the publicity outside the venue provided an opportune spotlight to raise far more interesting conspiratorial concerns.  And like the most beautiful and tremendous conspiracies, it actually has some fairly chewy takes on some things, like cryptocurrency, while being glossed in the sugary candy shell of nutty pop culture prophesizing.  Naturally (or not) this involves an imminent "apocalyptic fascist world coup".  Word.

What caught my eye is how terribly the media is covering this dude, Max Azzarello, for concocting a conspiracy which isn't a waste of time.  I suppose the attitude these days is to counter some kind of contagion effect, as if by even detailing this guy's rambles will somehow inspire others to pick up the ball, because mainstream media still hasn't figured out that crazy people already see balls everywhere, and that this type of suppression is actually more likely to spead the word: "What they don't want you to know!"  So, I don't give a shit, I have no problem whatsoever in diving nose-first into the vat of madness and simply sharing both the good, bad and the ugly of this particular individual's sacrifice.  Trigger warnings for any reader who might currently be under heavy sedation.

So the good stuff - as in the parts of his theory which actually makes sense to the degree that I would be more surprised if it weren't true - is hardly a revelation as such.  But it is timely,  I've been waiting for a really good crypto conspiracy theory.  Here's some excerpts I find fairly rational:

Cryptocurrency is our first planetary multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. It was expressly created for this purpose...

The March 2023 bank failures were all intentional: the banks were used to move out stolen Ponzi money.

When the Ponzi scheme goes insolvent, it will take down half the stock market with it.

Ponzi schemes are vicious beasts, and cryptocurrency is history’s largest Ponzi by orders of magnitude. It could best be described as an economic doomsday device, intentionally made to shatter the world economy

I'm not saying that's all true, of course.  Just that I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be.  That's the classic hook of a good conspiracy theory.

Mr. Azzarello, a Millennial, is not unaware of the many cultural factors which are leading to our society's demise.  He simply believes that these things are all being deliberately engineered for the purposes of demoralization.  Again, taken aside from the assigned motives, these factors are not controversial:

Social media, owned by crypto criminals like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, is flooded with nonsense conspiracy theories and memes reminding us that we are hopeless, helpless, anxious, depressed, ironic, scared, apathetic, escapist, lonely, misguided, and jaded, telling us we can’t do anything but have a laugh at our circumstances.

Liberals mock the hypocrisy of conservatives; conservatives mock the hypocrisy of liberals, and our collective circumstances erode. The left shouts “All Cops Are Bastards,” which ensures they’ll be hated by the police and the public (and flies in the face of leftist theory). The public’s distrust of the government is at an all-time high, but so is the belief that we are helpless to do anything about it.  And with all this, a sharp rise in apocalyptic messaging: Climate change will kill us all; COVID will kill us all; vaccines will kill us all; AI will kill us all – no matter the bubbles we ascribe to, we’re bombarded with existential crises with no solutions. We’ve seen a surge in apocalyptic film, literature, and video games that tell us there is no way out of our poor circumstances but total societal breakdown. Zombies tell us that the public is our enemy. If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called “Liquid Death.”

This is our rotten farce: For our entire lives, we have been flooded with media designed to slowly steer us into a world where the American Dream was dead, where the public was fully divided against itself, where everybody believed we were powerless to do anything about our worsening circumstances. It is all so they can organize an unprecedented, apocalyptic rug pull on the entire populace as they pivot to fascism, which is perhaps best understood as kleptocracy at the barrel of a gun.

When we piece it all together, we understand the truth: We are in a totalitarian doomsday cult.

...

As for the bad.....As I say, Mr. Azzarello is a Millennial, and so takes a somewhat solipsistic perception that all of these problems have been confined to his lifetime, specifically citing 1988 and the rise of George HW Bush and Bill Clinton.  There's some circumstantial sense here - these last 35 years have seen the massive media shift caused by the internet, smartphones and social media, as well as the toxic emergence of cable news and reality entertainment.  Mr. Azzarello has spent most of his post-pubescence in the post-9/11 era of disaster-porn, trauma-porn, revenge-porn and the inundation of the "zombie apocalypse=social decay" metaphors.

No, what's worse is his notion that Bill Clinton was blackmailing Mike Dukakis somehow, because Clinton and GHW Bush were secretly on the same team, and going so far as to orchestrating the Rob Lowe child sex tape scandal (because Lowe was campaigning for Dukakis at the time - which is true) with the aid of child sex tape expert (and buddy) Jeffery Epstein.  To be clear, I think this is all fabulous theorizing, but it's clearly off the reservation.  Much more convincing is the idea that Epstein was running his own Ponzi scheme through his Harvard grant fund "Program For Evolutionary Dynamics" as a front for his eugenically-minded tech-bro allies.

On one rare occasion where I did read some some slight description of Azzarello's theories in mainstream media (Yahoo, I think), they managed to misquote him (which can only arouse more suspicion) when they said that he had likened Covid to an "economic doomsday device".  You may have noticed from the above quote that Azzarello actually said that cryptocurrency was an economic doomsday device.  But according to Azzarello, Covid was merely used as a mask, to explain the stock market disparity caused by all of this crypto-Ponzi money being funneled out of the market.  Suffice it to say, that should be disqualifying enough, as Covid, and the stock market flucuation that it caused, happened three years before this cryptocurrency run which brought down several Silicon Valley banks.  That's also bad theorizing.

Now for the ugly.... Mr. Azzarello sees more than zombies being responsible for our pop culture conditioning us into a passive acceptance of our nascent apocalyptic fascism.  Singularly, he calles out The Simpsons, pointing out that many of their writers hail from Harvard, same as Epstein and many other presumed masters of the universe, as evidence that the show carries a special mission to inoculate the American people into apathetic obedience:

...it offers a dysfunctional family suffering from moral decay, a community incapable of solving its problems, a worker drone who slaves away for an evil billionaire, and cathartic laughs for our poor collective circumstances...

In "Lisa the Iconoclast", Lisa discovers that town founder Jebediah Springeld was a secret criminal con artist, and that the townsfolk’s lives are a lie. Realizing this is an important discovery, she desperately tries to get the townsfolk to listen to her. But they meet her with hostility, apathy, disbelief, and partisanship and she fails to get through to them. Ultimately, she realizes the town is so far gone that perhaps it’s better for them to be lied to by con artists, and she keeps the secret to herself.

And so, we realize the criminal truth of The Simpsons: Our elites are telling us that our eroding collective circumstances are our own fault, and we can’t do anything about it, while they steal the American Dream from us. It is, for lack of a more elegant word, brainwashing.

And, again, for a Millennial, I suppose something like The Simpsons is more culturally defining to one's life than I can relate to.  But why stop there?

Why is Stanley Kubrick’s comedy about mutually assured destruction called Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb?  Because he was a cocky secret fascist who was getting us to stop worrying and love the bomb.  Why did he make A Clockwork Orange?  So we’d rejoice at ultra-violence designed to desensitize us to the horrors of the world.

Why were the Manson Family murders crawling with cover-ups and intelligence agents?  Because our government wanted to make us fear for our lives and believe that hippies are deranged psychopaths.

Why did Walt Disney produce a fraudulent documentary that told us Lemmings follow each other off cliffs? So we would believe it.

Why did The Beatles tell us to fear the taxman, to scoff at revolution, chase nonsense conspiracy theories, and that happiness is a warm gun? So we would believe it.

Why did Easy Rider tell us that the hippie movement was dead? So we would believe it.

Why did Chinatown end with defeatism in the face of massive corruption? So we would believe it.

Why did George Orwell tell us of a hellish future of totalitarian control that we are powerless to stop? So we would believe it.

Why did Wall Street tell us “greed is good”? So we would believe it.

Why did Do The Right Thing tell us we’re all racially tribalized? So we would believe it.

Why did Simpsons creator Matt Groening make a comic strip called Life in Hell? So we would believe it.

To be fair, conspiracy theorists, of all calibers, tend to be really shitty critics.
 


     Thread Starter
 

4/20/2024 11:04 am  #235


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I don't mean to have a one-track mind about this guy.  It's just that I'm about 80% sure that someone will be scrubbing his Substack by Monday.  Not to hide the truth, mind you, but for this bullshit contagion effect which leads to erasing anything that might inspire a copycat.  Personally, I think it's helpful to get an understanding on the psychology of the individual.

And it looks like my "ugly" suspicions are well-founded.  You can always tell, when someone really goes off the rails on pop culture or media stuff, it tends to outweigh whatever, um, common sense paranoia (like the crypto market being a money laundering Ponzi scheme) which might prove useful.

The references above to The Beatles, Kubrick and Manson were already a pretty good indicator of such issues, and lo and behold, this Azzarello is indeed well read on some of the worst MK-Ultra conspiracy theories about the '60s.  Some of it is pretty funny, if typical.  The Grateful Dead, for example, were obviously MK-Ultra CIA assets, "we recognize that the name 'Grateful Dead' is a perfect name for a cult leader band", especially if it's a "doomsday" cult, and their skull logo "evokes death and brainwashing", just like Jim Morrison and the entire LA rock scene was as much a CIA psy-op as Haight-Ashbury.  His mention of the Manson Family murders was hyperlinked to the sensational book (popular with Joe Rogan) which posited that Manson was a coordinated part of the CIA 'Operation CHAOS' scheme.  The Beatles are clearly apocalyptic subversives, with their silver hammers and butcher covers, and Azzarello seems convinced that the "Paul Is Dead" thing was a deliberate misinformation psy-op (which I suppose is better than actually believing the theory?).  Oh, and Devo, obviously promoting de-evolution, automatons and brainwashing.  Rage Against the Machine has "members out of Harvard", so clearly they're controlled dissent.  And Kubrick again, so cocky a fascist he even laid out the plan for misonformation A.I. in 2001.

And here's the bottom line.  Another optimal indicator of one's lack of cognitive credibility is a complete lack of sense of humor, and Azzarello also places The Onion alongside The Simpsons, and presumably the Daily Show and Colbert Report and George Orwell and I guess literally all political satire ever, for an identical reason: "They tell us how bad our circumstances are, but that we should just sit back and laugh at the problems we are powerless to stop."
 


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5/01/2024 1:14 pm  #236


Re: The Fuck Happened?

I don't think Global Intifada is the best idea, kids.


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5/27/2024 7:01 am  #237


Re: The Fuck Happened?

You may have heard about the series of stabblings in Massachusetts over the weekend, where some crazy guy stabbed two McDonalds employees before going to a theater and stabbing four young girls.

Well there's all kinds of crazy people stabbing, right?  This guy however is really some particular shade of strange.  Not some homeless schizo, this guy, Jared Ravizza, got a write-up in no less than Beverly Hills Magazine last year, who claimed to be "honored to have the opportunity to sit down with him and learn more about his journey to success", and where he was described as everything from a "beautiful soul", "a jack of all trades and a master of all", "a serial entrepreneur and a media mogul", a "marketing mogul", "an American professional model and skier", with a "visionary and philanthropic nature", "a visionary leader". 

He is a man with an innate desire to bring out the best in other humans in the most beautiful way....

Presently, he manages marketing deals for the firm in the US and internationally, notably in Paris, London, Mumbai, and Milan....

They have company training initiatives in today’s digital environment, offering above-market returns. Plus, the company works directly with business owners, sales teams, and executives as brand developers, mentors, sales coaches, and management....

Firstly, the global initiative began as a single man’s goal to make a difference. He wants to provide hope to the nations and communities who need it. As a result, the organization’s objective is to bring restoration, truth, and hope to those communities and nations. Also, the Ravizza Group is committed to increasing the impact of hope worldwide....

To bring hope to the hungry, homeless, trafficked, and sick people worldwide, the Ravizza Group has partnered with several organizations. Even more, this worldwide mission project collaborates with organizations to offer restoration and healing to communities in need. Additionally, the global initiative project exists for the abandoned to spread light, hope, and healing around the world. Furthermore, it aims to assist in establishing the framework for potential future developments. A noble endeavor if we must say!

You don't say!  But I think I'd be remiss if I didn't mention...




Some thoughts directly from the inspirational soul himself:

As you grow & evolve in life as a human being, you have to be okay with letting go of people. Sometimes as you evolve, the people who were in your life, are not going to match the new you.

"You can't match the standards of my fish fillet?  Got to stab you, bro.  And I'm OK with that."

We are all divine beings, when we tap into our own divinity we can save ourselves, and a sacred world exists within this deeper state of consciousness....

My body is the core of all I do, and it is a temple of deep sacred beauty and ancient strength. My spiritual self, my highest self, is with me in everything I do, in every land I travel to, in every divine experience I have.

Success to me is being in your divine genetic code, being healthy, living freely, setting your spirit free.

I do wake up every day with the intention to grow and evolve deeper into my genetics through health and wellness, & to extend my hand when needed to help others in their journey. That’s the beauty, when we extend our insights & guidance to one another.

You can connect with me on my instagram

It's OK to be scared of these douchebag life couches when you meet them in real life, is what I'm saying.  The four female victims, age 9 to 17, described Ravizza as laughing while he stabbed them, and described him as wearing a blond wig.  Authorities have clarified that, in fact, the hair?  Is all too real.
'




 


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6/11/2024 5:42 pm  #238


Re: The Fuck Happened?

The kids sure are having fun.  But we've definitely  turned the corner where "pro-peace" and "pro-ceasefire" are not really applicable labels for the last remaining college protests.  Last week's attenpted occupation of the Stanford University's president's office got a lot less press attention than last month's similar occupation at Columbia.  Normally, I've been irked by attempts ot define these protests as "anti-Israel", but for at least the contigent responsible for these more aggressive and violent acts the description is unfortunately accurate.  The calls to Stanford to "divest" from Israel are not limited to any funds which aid that country's military or occupation of Palestine.  Increasingly, in the rhetoric of some protesters, it's being made clear that the very existence of Israel in genocidal in itself, and not merely any actual extremist elements currently in the Israeli government which surely has expressed genocidal intent.  For these protesters, nothing short of the restoration of the pre-Nakba Palestine, necessitating the complete eradication of the Israeli state, is the only sufficient solution to ending the genocide. 

And if this wasn't clear enough, these protesters left behind graffiti to push that narrative to the fore: "Death 2 Isr@Hell", as well as a few other unrelated fashionable grievences like "Death 2 US", "Kill Cops", "Smash Capitalism", "Burn This Shit Down".  "Death" and "Kill" are strange sentiments from a pro-peace, pro-ceasefire community.  What they indicate is calling for a rather severe escalation of violence rather than a cessation.  The growing intolerance among protesters towards anyone unwilling to go so far as to deny the right of Israel to exist as a state has moved the goalposts to an extreme for hopefully more reasonable defenders of Palestinian life and liberty, but these louder voices are threatening to dominate the discourse, and of course allowing the least generous framing of the debate. 

Yesterday saw another protest descend into violence.  Of course all sides blame the others for the escalation.  But what we can determine is that quite a bit of violence was directed, by protesters, at citizen journalists, or those who were attempting to document the protests on camera.  One rabbi was physically assaulted and called a "pedophile".  Another person with a cell phone was "was also surrounded and dragged by a group of protesters, shoving him into a trash can and then hitting him on the face while screaming ‘Fascist pig go home'."  More graffiti of "Intifada", etc.

Above in post #221, I laid out the case involving tech billionaire Neville Roy Singham, and how his money has been linked to exploiting these accelerationist strains on the American Left, undermining faith in "Western" politics and liberal democracy while running interference for more autocratic regimes (presumably "Eastern") like Russia and China.  And pointing out Singham's wife as one of the co-founders of Code Pink, it didn't escape my notice to see that Code Pink has been quite involved at recent disruptions such as this past weekend's White House protests or the heckling of Kamala Harris on a recent Jimmy Kimmel appearance.  Note how they never seem to disrupt Republican public events, despite that their party is far more supportive of Israel's hardline offensives.  The obvious ploy is to inextricably tie Israel's war crimes as Joe Biden's personal crimes.  To wit: accelerationists prefer Trump because they see him as a more opportune instrument in corrupting this Western liberal democratic experiment.

A poll from early on in this protest cycle from Stanford showed alarmingly: "More than one third of Stanford University students say using physical violence to stop a speech is acceptable".  This correlates with a national, bipartisan poll which shows "One in 5 U.S. adults believe Americans may have to resort to violence to get their own country back on track".  An optimist may point out that these represent minorities, but it's a strong enough showing to allow for an awful lot of violence.  And, from a left/liberal perspective, it's a sober reminder that many on the left have lost any semblence of moral authority.


     Thread Starter
 

6/12/2024 1:57 pm  #239


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Not much to add from me. I think it’s unfortunate that people are using this situation to act like jackasses. I don’t think it’s helping the cause they purportedly support, and I’m unconvinced by the defenses that argue that protesters in the ‘60s were as ill behaved.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

6/12/2024 2:51 pm  #240


Re: The Fuck Happened?

Rock wrote:

Not much to add from me. I think it’s unfortunate that people are using this situation to act like jackasses. I don’t think it’s helping the cause they purportedly support, and I’m unconvinced by the defenses that argue that protesters in the ‘60s were as ill behaved.

Which 60s protesters?  The non-violent peace protesters putting flowers in the barrels of the National Guard troops?  Or the Weather Underground sending out mail-bombs?  The 60s also had their accelerationists, and they only managed to undermine the larger peace movement as well.  Maybe the problem is that too many young activists define 60s activism around assholes like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.


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