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Media Wars
"There is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms." - Hunter S. Thompson
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Jessamine recoiled from the paper as if it were a snake. “A lady does not read the newspaper. The society pages, perhaps, or the theater news. Not this filth.’
"But you are not a lady, Jessamine---," Charlotte began.
"Dear me," said Will. "Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for the digestion.” — Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
If you are reading this early in the morning, you are a brave soul. I hope your digestion can handle it. Because I write these essays, and yeah, I guess you could say I’m a gonzo journalist because anything else would just be too boring for me to keep churning out, every morning I must look over the latest news from the mainstream media.
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Here are a few examples:
Fact check: Post falsely claims doctor tweeted she does not regret vaccine, even if it kills her.
At a Pivotal Moment in Ukraine, U.S. and Allies Will Decide on Sending Arms.
Election-fraud conspiracies behind plot to shoot at New Mexico Democrats’ homes.
Biden White House faces transparency questions as document drama continues.
I also must wade through the masses of emails I get from various alternative media sources. Talk about digestion troubles! It used to just be CNN, NBC, CBS, FOX, and the like. We knew they told lies, so we were prepared for them. Then, COVID came along, and a force took shape to fight the lies called “Alternative Media”. Obviously, they would tell us the truth since they were telling us the opposite of the MSM lies.
I just bought World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks. It was published in 2006 but makes for powerful reading today:
“Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
We now have armies of experts on both sides, left and right, which means we have to wade through even bigger piles of doo-doo. More isn’t necessarily better.
“The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe." That blew me away. "Turn on the TV," he'd say. "What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products." Fuckin' A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.” - World War Z
These thoughts came to me as I began to notice certain buzz words being used over and over by those who have risen up as journalists in the alternative media.
Out of curiosity, I searched one of those words, “bombshell”, and came up with hundreds of headlines. I won’t bother saying where they all are from. You can do your own search and see what I mean.
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Here are a few examples:
BOMBSHELL Docs Reveal COVID-19 COVER-UP Goes Straight to the Top
Germans Unleash Spike Protein Bombshell
Bombshell: Template to Export Lockdowns Existed by 2014
Vax Adverse Events Bombshell, a Stunning Statistic
CIA Bombshell: The Sussmann data was “user created”
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How about “URGENT.” I couldn’t resist tying this word to “Alex Berenson” in my search. There were simply too many emails to count. Here’s a few:
URGENT: Deaths are soaring in one of the world's most highly mRNA vaccinated areas
URGENT: Two new studies show mRNA-jabbed people have a much higher risk of getting Covid than unvaccinated people
VERY URGENT: Do Covid mRNA vaccines damage our ability to control the coronavirus after a booster shot?
This is kind of amusing since Berenson just wrote a tweet admonishing unjabbed people to stop scaremongering:
I get why unjabbed people want to score-settle after being demonized but please don’t. The mRNAs have failed and should be pulled; we need to work to understand their long-run risks, which are unclear. That’s what we know. It’s ALL we know. Scaring people is counterproductive.
Yes, a new disaster will certainly come along, and then another and another. It isn’t scaremongering to state the obvious.
We are being told ad nauseum to expect another pandemic, even worse than the last. Will it be used by the elite to gain more power? Duh. None of this should be a surprise. It’s always been the way of humanity. Conquering your enemy. Taking their land. Oppressing, imprisoning, killing the rebels. And then the rebels rise up, gain power, and do the exact same thing all over again.
With free access of information, thanks to the internet, the propaganda mill can now bombard us with so much conflicting information that we either accept living in a constant state of confusion and fear or we choose a side and become religiously attached to it. Most people choose to avoid insanity.
Meanwhile, the jostling for wealth and power continues unhindered behind the scenes, having nothing to do with left or right. This involves all sorts of battles.
Like battles over the Arctic.
Like what’s going on with the competition between Google’s DeepMind and ChatGPT?
Why is Microsoft’s struggle with the FTC to buy Activision Blizzard so important?
What are Elon Musk’s deeper goals with SpaceX and Starlink?
Why isn’t rocket emission’s effect on the atmosphere one of the most important concerns of climate change activists?
Martin Ross, a senior project engineer at the Aerospace Corporation who studies the effects of rockets on the atmosphere, told The Verge.
Small pieces of soot and a chemical called alumina are created in the wakes of rocket launches. They then get injected into the stratosphere…. Research shows that this material may build up in the stratosphere over time and slowly lead to the depletion of a layer of oxygen known as the ozone…. However, the magnitude of this ozone depletion isn’t totally known.
“Isn’t totally known”. How many times do we hear that refrain?
It’s just been announced that oil executive Sultan al-Jaber will lead the next round of U.N. climate talks in November.
Of course, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says that al-Jaber was a “terrific choice” for the role as he “understands the need to transition to clean energy.”
Wait! The guy’s an oil executive!
African activists are protesting but who’s listening? Fossil fuels investments in Africa continue to outstrip renewables and jumped from $3.4 billion in 2020 to $5.1 billion in 2022.
What about all those doctors and scientists who promoted the vaccine while it was popular to do so and then realized, thanks to the newfound power of alternative media, that they could keep their pundit status and make a lot of money, just by shifting their audience?
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Doctors and scientists are supposed to be a lot smarter than the rest of us. So, how is it that we saw through the scam so quickly while they kept on feeding us the propaganda lies? Some of them changed their tunes eventually and did well because of it. Others weren’t so lucky.
Dr. Daniel Neides, director and chief operating officer of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, was one of the brave ones. He dared to write a column questioning vaccines. This was interpreted by the media as him “spouting a widely discredited theory that vaccines are linked to autism.”
What he actually said was:
Does the vaccine burden — as has been debated for years — cause autism? I don’t know and will not debate that here. What I will stand up and scream is that newborns without intact immune systems and detoxification systems are being over-burdened with PRESERVATIVES AND ADJUVANTS IN THE VACCINES.
Some of the vaccines have helped reduce the incidence of childhood communicable diseases, like meningitis and pneumonia. That is great news. But not at the expense of neurologic diseases like autism and ADHD increasing at alarming rates.”
I would call these fair questions and observations. Yet, he was attacked and vilified. Mainstream scientists and doctors were “horrified about the misinformation contained in the article” and said it was “one of the most vile, false things…ever read by a doctor.”
Rather than lose his job and his reputation (although he will probably never get it back entirely), Dr. Neides bowed to the pressure:
“I apologize and regret publishing a blog that has caused so much concern and confusion for the public and medical community. I fully support vaccinations and my concern was meant to be positive around the safety of them.”
Contrast this to Dr Aseem Malhotra’s rise to fame in the alternative media world when he called for all Covid vaccine mandates to end.
Dr. Malhotra is a leading consultant cardiologist and was one of the first people in the UK to take two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine and promote them on television. Malhotra caused a sensation by reversing his position on the Covid vaccine.
It took courage for Malhotra to do such a drastic about-face. But not as much courage as it took Neides. Malhotra has been embraced by alternative media. He has 445K followers on Elon Musk’s “free speech” Twitter. He is not suffering for his choice.
There was a moment in 2017 when President Trump toyed with the idea of appointing “noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr” to lead a committee on vaccines safety.
After Kennedy met with Trump, he told reporters:
"He asked me to chair a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity,"
"I said I would."
At the same time that Trump was considering this commission, The Atlantic came out with an article, The Shadow Network of Anti-Vax Doctors, making it very clear that:
“Anti-vaccine beliefs track closely with lack of confidence in the government.” And “We’re in the middle of the perfect situation for [anti-vaccine beliefs] to rise.”
It’s not surprising that Trump’s commission never happened. He already had enough enemies threatening his presidency. He didn’t need more.
Kennedy went on to become a leader in the campaign against Covid-19 vaccines and published The Real Anthony Fauci, a fact-filled book that I use in my research.
As I point out in my recent essays and articles, no matter how often alternative media pundits like Kennedy claim that their exposes of the mRNA “clot shots” will bring a halt to their production, factories are being built around the world to produce billions of mRNA vaccines for an ever-expanding list of illnesses. And far from the producers, funders and distributors of these medications being imprisoned, they are being heralded as lifesavers and are being awarded new contracts worth billions upon billions of dollars with no end in sight.
The World Economic Forum conference is feeling a little old and tired these days.
Once again, they have gathered this week in Davos, just as they have been doing for over fifty years. Yet it’s only since the rise of the new alternative media that the conference has gained such interest with the public. And with only one kind of public—those who read and listen to alternative media. I wrote about the WEF and Klaus Schwab back in April 2022 in The Ringmaster, The Mercenary & the Fortune Teller. I made an observation that is especially prescient today:
For many, the WEF seems like the most absurd farce and not be taken seriously. That’s fine. They do not care whether you believe it or not. The important thing is that it is in your consciousness.
This is really what the WEF is about. It’s a propaganda extravaganza on top of a money-making scam. A place where the wealthy can be exploited by the Uber wealthy. Where they brazenly display their hypocrisy on topics such as “clean energy,” and say the most outrageous things like “you will own nothing and be happy.”
Surely no one takes this seriously. But the more it is repeated, the more real it becomes. And who is repeating these outrageous claims by the WEF more than anyone else?
THE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA.
We are being told that the trend is moving away from globalization toward deglobalization.
More buzz words. The media can say one thing one day and the opposite the next. It doesn’t change the fact that the state and corporate power are moving ever closer to becoming one entity.
“So much for Objective Journalism,” said Hunter S. Thompson. “Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”
Perhaps I’m shooting myself in the foot be asking people to take a break from the news, but then, I’m a gonzo journalist, so…. remember this:
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“When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with truth.”
― Seno Gumira Ajidarma, Ketika Jurnalisme Dibungkam Sastra Harus Bicara
I’m reading World War Z, and I can tell you, it makes a whole lot more sense than the facts I’m being fed by the media. What’s on your reading list?
Source: Break Free with Karen Hunt
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