Tag: media

Deep State, Deeply Fake

deep fake, Donald Trump, Young Frankenstein,

Is there a good, presumptive reason to believe what the government tells us?

Not when it comes from the “intelligence” agencies.

One of the more breathtaking developments of recent years has been the transformation of Democratic Party politicians and activists from skeptics of alphabet soup intelligence agencies — CIA, NSA, FBI and many more — to becoming enthusiastic cheerleaders.

On the bright side, Republicans are drifting in the other direction, from their old-fashioned lockstep support of “intelligence agencies” to a new realism — the relentless Deep State “coup” attempts against the Trump Administration having proved … instructive.

While we might wish to think that, whew!, these agencies are comprised of loyal Americans, consider what Senator Chuck Schumer said earlier this year, almost approvingly: “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

But more important than all this is the developing techniques the Deep State can marshal. I refer to Deepfake tech, where anything video can be faked, convincingly and completely. If not now, then very soon, technicians within the Deep State — and outside, too — will be able to videofake anything, from Trump cavorting with Moscow hookers to an Iranian “attack” to … UFO landings.

We shouldn’t have trusted intelligence agencies in the run-up to the Iraq conquest, now we have good reason to doubt anything and everything they tell us.

Which means Congress should take very tight control of them, rein these agencies in — for Congress is indeed worried about deepfake tech.

How?

Well, de-classifying old secrets might be a good start. The last bit of the JFK assassination files? Maybe. UFOs? Maybe. But it’s what’s not on our radar that may be the most important.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags deep fake, Donald Trump, face recognition technology, Frankenstein, media, technology

media and media people

It’s Aliens!

Why does corporate media report what it reports?

And neglect what it neglects?

From an article, yesterday, by Caitlin Johnstone, “Julian Assange is Reportedly Gravely Ill, and Hardly Anyone’s Talking About It,” we learn that Mr. Assange is too ill to speak. Since the U.S. Government has indicted him for espionage, you might think that this would be big news in America.

From major sources: crickets.

A few days earlier, friends noted that the Martin Luther King story, brewing in Great Britain, has received little notice on this side of the pond. New revelations about FBI spying on the much-honored civil rights leader, and also about the information gleaned from that spying, that is Reverend King’s alleged profligate sexual misconduct, sure seem like big stories.

But you know what is being seriously covered?

UFOs.

Yes, the subject that was pooh-poohed and pilloried by major media sources for decades has recently been getting major coverage from the likes of the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN and Fox News.

In the Post we are instructed that a “UFO is not necessarily an alien from another planet,” but by the end of that same Tuesday think piece, we read that we might have to consider that very bizarre possibility.

So, why is mainstream media mum about Assange and MLK but now so enthusiastic about UFOs?

Could it be because the Assange and King stories do not make our government look good, while the UFO story is part of a major plan* of “controlled disclosure”?

Of course, it might be just another round of disinformation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Dr. Hal Puthoff, in a lecture available on Vimeo, explains the plan in the course of discussing his work for the Department of Defense’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, as well as the more recent work of the To the Stars Academy, which has apparently organized the current media blitz.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags alien, Assange, King, media, news

Accountability media and media people

Fair Share Unpaid

The CNN onscreen contributor who snuck debate questions to the Hillary Clinton campaign in advance of the 2016 presidential debates is now a talking head on Fox News.

“I am excited by the opportunity to share my perspective and views with the Fox News audience and to help shape the dialogue at this important juncture in our history,” wrote Donna Brazile last month. “More importantly, I’m eager to learn from the experience.”

Not a big Fox News fan, me; I don’t keep up with personnel changes. Her head just appeared — as a surprise! — onscreen in a Fox News video in my YouTube feed, covering a Bernie Sanders event. She was apparently hired for her campaign expertise — not for her journalism or ethics.

“Everything we believe in as Americans will be examined and, in essence, ratified by our votes,” she explained. “But it concerns me, as it does the majority of good Americans, that our national debate has become hostile and disrespectful. We no longer simply agree to disagree. Too often we demonize the intentions of others. Our lines of communication are frayed, if not broken.”

Well, one reason for these frayed lines of communication has been all the political and media corruption.

As Brazile demonstrated at CNN in 2016.

She cops, obliquely, to her “fair share of mistakes” in her past career as an activist. “Some would argue I’ve made more than my fair share,” she confessed.

Interesting how insiders in Washington never pay for their mistakes.

Their unfair share.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Donna Brazile, Fox, media

education and schooling government transparency national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

A Faulty Gun Report

While statistics are generally unreliable, data about gun crimes often qualify as “anti-data.”

“This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015 – 2016 school year, ‘nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting,’” National Public Radio told us yesterday. Like previous stats we’ve seen cited on social media, that seems unbelievably high.

And yes, it is — “far higher than most other estimates,” reporter Anya Kamenetz noted. “NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened.”

Were they fibbing? Well, never underestimate the power of incompetence.

Even that’s harsh: remember that reporting requirements are a burden. And filing bureaucratically-designed forms with the Education Department may be no easier than filing tax returns with the IRS. One of the biggest errors in one school district report resulted from a simple data entry error.

That is not a sophisticated statistical problem, but a simple typo.

Not that there aren’t some difficulties of a not-so-easy-to-understand nature in the story. For one, the degree to which the report was off is said to lie within “the margin of error.”

So, how big was the error, exactly? What’s the number? Well, of the 240 supposed “shootings,” NPR claimed to be “able to confirm just 11 reported incidents.”

Yet the Education Department bureaucrats will only affix an erratum note to their ridiculous report.

Nor will it be withdrawn or replaced, as it should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Tags 2nd Amendment, bias, gun control, hysteria, media, NPR, retraction, school shootings

Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Taking a (Lemonade) Stand

lemonade, freedom, regulation, FDA, free market, law, authoritarian, media

When life hands you lemons.…

Once upon a time, putting up a summertime lemonade stand was the American way for kids to learn about hard work, good will, and entrepreneurship. Almost every kid had one, making some spendable profit selling the nectar.*

Some of the youngsters grew up to become Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and, well, lemonade’s one heck of a gateway drink.

But then, along came “progress” — that is, mandates and regulations slapped upon businesses. And the hordes of regulators required to enforce the morass of rules — “swarms of Officers.”

Soon lemonade stands were vanquished from our neighborhoods.

And America was made safe (at long last!) for … inane bureaucracy.

“Reports of kids’ lemonade stands being shut down for breaking local health or permitting laws have long left grown-ups feeling sour,” today’s Wall Street Journal informs. But the story also details how “a growing movement of adults is fighting back.”

So, when government policies hand you lemons, what do you do?

Make a map of all the lemonade stand clampdowns.

“I think the Constitution covers [lemonade stands] as written,” Dave Roland told the Journal, explaining the map he and his wife Jenifer have produced. “But if there’s any doubt about that, let’s get it fixed.” The Rolands run the Freedom Center in Missouri, but theirs is a regrettably national map.

Last month, the popular lemonade maker Country Time started “Legal-Ade,” pledging to come to the defense of any kid “busted” for trafficking in lemonade.

Seriously.

“When life gives you arcane laws,” the company’s video says, “make lemonade.”

Taste the Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The profit was made possible largely by pushing their costs off onto their parents. But isn’t that sorta what parents are for? And good lessons were still learned.

PDF for printing

Tags authoritarian, FDA, free market, freedom, law, lemonade, media, regulation

crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard too much government

Governments Gone Wilding

South Africa, land, expropriation, reform, genocide, refuges, media, racism

I was late to the story, and had a hard time finding information on the anti-white violence in South Africa — farm families raped, pillaged, slaughtered, beheaded.

And I wasn’t at all aware of the “land reform” that South Africa’s Congress is voting on, the explicit aim of which is to expropriate white farmers without compensation.

Every day, I read through The Washington Post but noticed no articles there. Or elsewhere — until a fleeting Facebook post sent me to Lauren Southern’s video documentary, “Farmlands.”

The Wall Street Journal did cover the farm expropriation story — on its editorial pages. “No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.”

Zimbabwe on repeat.

Worse yet, it is being argued for on racial grounds, and some of its proponents are notoriously … genocidal?

Quartz takes a different approach, in an article charmingly titled “South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant.” The Leftwing publication appears to be gearing up to defend mass theft as “land reform,” heedless of its long, violent, destructive history.

Meanwhile, Ms. Southern, the “gonzo journalist” who detailed the ongoing race-based murder spree in South Africa* that Quartz failed to mention, found herself detained in Calais, France, prevented from entering Britain. Why? In part for “being racist.”

Southern had once engaged in a stunt pitching the provocation that “Allah is a gay god” — to seek reactions from people after a major news source produced an article claiming Jesus was gay.

Islam is a religion, not a race, of course, but it’s racial collectivism that still unhinges minds.

To what extent? Socialist expropriation, at least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “According to the best available statistics,” the BBC relates, “farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-11.”

PDF for printing