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‘Fake News’ and the Death of the Original Dream of the Web

There has been a lot of talk in recent months about the ‘fake news’ epidemic, mostly in relation to the recent U.S. election. It’s been an ongoing problem for some time though – I eventually gave up correcting friend’s Facebook posts (usually about the threat of immigrants), because they actually didn’t seem to care. “Sure it might be a fake story, but it doesn’t matter because it kind of gets at the truth.”

The trouble is, these things do matter. When a Muslim kid gets bullied in a Western country, it’s because of a mass of fake news has pushed public sentiment in a certain direction. This shit has consequences.

But I find myself in an unusual position, because I run a website devoted to speculative theories ranging from the paranormal, through conspiracy, to rewriting history. If there is to be any purge of ‘fake news’, surely the Grail should be one of the first against the wall?

I think the difference (perhaps I’m mistaken) is that we are always careful here to be clear that we are “exploring the fringes of science and history”, and that things we post are often speculation or early, preliminary evidence (for some time now, our logo has also featured the phrase caveat lector – ‘let the reader beware’). We also often urge readers to not “believe” anything, most especially things that confirm your own biases.

This is important. All of us involved in exploring the edges of knowledge – and especially those of us ‘broadcasting’ this information – have an ethical responsibility to urge caution, rather than to convince. Because, as I said above, this shit can have consequences.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current wave of conspiracy-related stories. I love reading about conspiracies, following the trail of links to uncover hidden truths, and I think there are definitely more conspiracies happening at any time than skeptics would have us believe. But investigating conspiracies can sometimes take you deep, down a rabbit-hole…so deep it’s hard to find the way out.

If you’re going to walk into a family pizza store with an assault rifle, even when the ‘intel’ isn’t 100% (more like about 3%), you’re doing it wrong. Really, really wrong.

If you’re going to tell someone whose child was murdered that they are an actor and should be ashamed of themselves (or even make death threats against them), you better be beyond sure that you’re correct. I mean, 30-foot-thick iron clad sure. Because if you’re wrong, I really can’t think of too many lower acts than attacking the parent of a murdered child. And guess what: you are wrong, because I’ve seen nothing even close to solid evidence that Sandy Hook was anything other than a horrible mass homicide.

The danger of allowing the idea of conspiracy to occupy your brain is that soon enough it will pull up a chair in the executive office and start issuing orders to purge itself of dissenting co-workers. Evidence that pulls down your favourite conspiracy theory is suddenly planted, or a false flag, or some other Machiavellian maneuver of the grand plan to pull the wool over your eyes.

Sadly, the truth of the matter is that, in many cases, the real conspiracy is simply that of lying hucksters who are trying to make a dollar off of you. Yeah, you know who I’m talking about.

The web of 2016 is an entirely different place to the web of 1998, when I started this site. Back then there was a real spirit of people creating websites to help share knowledge, linking up with other similar websites (remember ‘web-rings’?). I’m old enough to still feel the vestigial frisson that came just from hearing the words ‘Netscape Navigator’, a signifier for a portal to a whole new world of hyperlinked knowledge.

Fast forward 18 years, and the internet paradigm has turned from knowledge-sharing to money-making. It’s a goldrush, but instead of gold the prospectors are digging for eyeballs. Your eyeballs. But there’s a lot of prospectors out there, and only so many eyeballs to go around, so how do you get rich? By appealing to people’s lizard brain. Appeal to fear, appeal to belief confirmation, appeal to base instincts ranging from sex drive to curiosity. Fake news is just one part of this greater phenomenon, known as ‘click-bait’.

18 years ago, we just found something interesting and shared it. Now, most of the content you see on the web is finely tuned to appeal to these ‘base-level emotions’ (the only exception perhaps being fine-tuning for search-engine optimisation).

That news story with Muslim youth burning cars talking about immigrants? Tailored by the marketing department of a British tabloid to push just the right fear/outrage buttons in white western people that they want to learn more (to justify their fear-based beliefs).

That Facebook link saying “You won’t believe what *minor celebrity* looks like now”, with the image cut-off just so you can’t see the person’s face? That went through meetings, discussing exactly what dimensions the image should be to pique your curiosity and maximise ‘reader click-through’.

Those headlines reading “You won’t believe what happened next”, and similar. The winner of comprehensive A/B testing to identify exactly which headline gets your finger twitchy.

I could go on and on – nearly everything out there these days is tailored for monetisation. And perhaps more importantly, monetisation strategies are based on manipulating you, the reader, both emotionally and psychologically. As someone with a long history of being involved in the web, I see and note new strategies all the time. The difficulty, for ‘the good people’ out there still doing websites, is that nearly all strategies for keeping your head above water, financially speaking, are off-limits due to their shady ethics. And so, the ‘bad people’ succeed and proliferate, continually weakening the original, wonderful web on a daily basis.

Author Charlie Stross summed the current situation up quite well in a Twitter thread last week, condensed below:

If your business model relies on ads for income, you require eyeballs. Easiest way to get them is to generate outrage/emotional kick. Hence clickbait news sites. Hence internet rumours. Hence paranoia. Outrage draws eyeballs to ads, it’s as simple as that.

The ad networks don’t care about truth, honesty, accuracy in reporting, public discourse, or democracy. Just eyeballs and CPM. Trying to build a business on ad revenue is like building on quicksand. FB and Twitter are huge; have to keep growing or die. So FB/Twitter are driven to escalate, become more addictive, push the dopamine reward button harder all the time, to keep selling ads.

Traditional TV/newspaper news didn’t continually escalate emotional engagement because ad space was a rivalrous resource; barriers to entry were steep. New media know they can be killed and eaten in months by upstarts. So the competition to be the most addictive is fierce.

Stross notes that this downward spiral is now seemingly out of control, and “it may be too late to re-engineer the web so that it doesn’t destroy democracy and promote politics of hate on a global scale.”

The way forward, as I see it, is for the citizens of the web to take individual responsibility, and aim – as best each of us can – to ‘consume’ ethically. Just as people buying free-range eggs as an ethical decision has changed that industry, so with the web we can re-engineer the web by rewarding those that are doing good, and ignoring, or challenging, those who are not.

When you come across a link, before clicking think to yourself “why am I clicking this” and make the right decision – because as soon as you do click through to some shit site just fishing for your eyeballs, even if you don’t read a thing there, their marketing strategy just got validated and money went into their account. Those headlines range from “too good to be true” to “validating your fears and desires”, so it’s going to take some work.

Alternately, if you see a website doing good work? Take the time to throw a little bit of cash in their tip jar or Patreon, or at the very least take it upon yourself to promote their work to your friends and on social media. From experience, I can tell you that ‘doing the right thing’ does not offer much financial reward at all, while people making stuff up are earning $10,000 a month.

It’s worth noting though: even while I count myself as one of the “good ones”, I also try to make money off what I do (justifiably, in my opinion, to try and cover the expense and time I invest in the site) and have a Patreon account to help support the site – so you should be just as skeptical of what I’m saying.

As a person with long-time involvement in the web though, I do fear for what the web has become, and will continue to evolve into, if we don’t start taking individual responsibility.

Editor
  1. Infowars
    My local PBS tv station runs several hours a day of european and asian news shows. Tonight, RT (Russia Today) interviewed Alex Jones of Infowars.

    Nature recently posted an article titled Researchers baffled by nationalist surge. Read what they didn’t say about the internet, social media, and fake news.

    A commenter under The Tainted Election pointed out:

    On November 14th, a week after the election, the NYT published a piece entitled “Stephen Bannon and Breitbart News, in Their Words” by Daniel Victor and Liam Stack. Of Bannon’s quotes, one particularly stays in mind:

    “I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

    The plan of the incoming administration’s chief strategist at the White House, so far, is working. …

    So it looks like we’re going to have a Firesale — in the cyber-meaning of that term. Anyone unfamiliar with the concept can watch Live Free or Die Hard while mentally adjusting the plot to include environmental rape for the sole benefit of the top 1/10th of one percebters.

  2. Greenwald on the Fake “Fake News” Op
    https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactured-fake-news-that-msnbc-personalities-spread-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs/

    “But the problem here goes way beyond mere hypocrisy. Complaints about Fake News are typically accompanied by calls for “solutions” that involve censorship and suppression, either by the government or tech giants such as Facebook. But until there is a clear definition of “Fake News,” and until it’s recognized that Fake News is being aggressively spread by the very people most loudly complaining about it, the dangers posed by these solutions will be at least as great as the problem itself.”

  3. mechanics
    The mechanics of this are fairly obvious. People watch accidents. Dogs bark when something is wrong, but more often when other dogs bark.

    So what do you do if there is no accident to watch? You make one up, and voila, people watch that.

    What to do? It seems that fake news gets “shared” more often if it is (1) scary enough to warrant attention, and (2) it supports your views and fears.

    So if it is seems to bad to be true, don’t believe it?

  4. State of the Internet Union
    We’ve gone from a “small town” to a “big city” mentality on the web. People don’t “greet each other on the street” any more. I’ll still take the Internet for what it is and what it isn’t (and is no more).

    Although the typical Internet surfer has developed considerable “sales resistance”, I’m not sure they have any more discernment. They can’t tell the fake from the real and possibly don’t even care to. If the recent election has taught us anything it is that people want to be biased and irrational. Enough political correctness, already! More denial and escapism please!!

    By the way, I’m sure every one knows that the major websites are designed to make the viewer accidentally click on ads. They don’t care how you click, just so you click. I’m aware of the game and it still happens to me all the time.

  5. Fake news also has nothing to
    Fake news also has nothing to do with intellect, education, age, race…it is purely the result of hour own human faults – our need for fame, recognition, feeling important or right, our insecurities, fears, our appetites, all the things that debase any higher selfless purpose we may have, any humbleness or grace or patience we should have for our fellow person, any openmindedness we should have… Fake news is enjoyed to reinforce our preconceived views, our fears, hostilities, to titillate or enrage. It is used and exploited for greed or propaganda the full spectrum from the layperson to high-powered elites, from individuals to established media and governments. There is no solution except censorship, just as there is no solution to bigotry except a police state thought police ala Big Brother Orwellian nightmare. So long as the internet and mass media exists the proliferation of fake news for all purposes will also. It is sad and depressing, but every time I become discouraged about our future, individuals around me, their selfless deeds inspire new hope. Just a shame so many of us are so close-minded and hateful…

    1. “Fake news” has been a a part
      “Fake news” has been a a part of the human condition ever since we started to gossip amongst ourselves. To all of sudden find this alarming and to pretend it is somehow a novel thing now I find to be highly disingenuous.

      The very opening photo of this article betrays what is really going here – it’s an attempt to lump Hillary’s by now well known crimes with a category of story such as “Hillary has an alien baby.” It’s classic “association fallacy” stuff and most thinking people I know personally see through the ploy.

      https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactured-fake-news-that-msnbc-personalities-spread-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs/
      “That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked — and thus should be disregarded — was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, The Atlantic, and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake.”

      I gotta say too that these crocodile tears for “the original dream of the web” which posits a silly idea that an internet peopled by every sort of person imaginable was somehow going to be a pristine playground of well behaved little troopers is just about the most laughable idea I have ever seen bandied about on TDG. It is calculated naivete serving an agenda of journalistic obfuscation.

      1. The virus of viral
        [quote=emlong]”Fake news” has been a a part of the human condition ever since we started to gossip amongst ourselves. To all of sudden find this alarming and to pretend it is somehow a novel thing now I find to be highly disingenuous. [/quote]

        I agree that fake news has been around forever. I think it is disingenuous however to say that what is happening is nothing new. The internet – in particular the advent of social media like Facebook – has allowed clickbait/fake news to proliferate on a scale previously unseen. I know many good people who on Facebook have shared propaganda by White Nationalists…I look at the likes and shares on these posts and they are in the hundreds of thousands. This constant drip of propaganda being constantly shared is a virus that is currently out of control.

        [quote]The very opening photo of this article betrays what is really going here – it’s an attempt to lump Hillary’s by now well known crimes with a category of story such as “Hillary has an alien baby.” It’s classic “association fallacy” stuff and most thinking people I know personally see through the ploy.[/quote]

        If you must know, it’s actually 30 minutes of wasted time trying to find an image that sums up fake news succinctly (not easy!), while knowing it was eating into time supposed to be devoted to doing something with my kids, before finally settling on this one – unhappily – because it had some relevance (as a callback to the current political fake news) while at the same time obviously being a ridiculous, slightly humorous example. But you know, if you want to be all conspiratorial about it…

    2. Nice
      [quote=Greg H.]Fake news also has nothing to do with intellect, education, age, race…it is purely the result of hour own human faults – our need for fame, recognition, feeling important or right, our insecurities, fears, our appetites, all the things that debase any higher selfless purpose we may have, any humbleness or grace or patience we should have for our fellow person, any openmindedness we should have… [/quote]

      Thanks, this nailed what I was thinking better than I did I think. 🙂

  6. And the difference between a lie and ‘Fake News’ is?
    Humans are humans, people have always lied and manipulated one another. As the pic in the blog notes, we’ve had tabloids since the days of broadsheets spinning tales about Bat-Boy right next to ‘real’ news about politicians hiding their love-child (and being denied the Pulitzer they deserved becasue they weren’t ‘real journalists’).

    It’s pretty obvious this is just the ‘bitter clinger’ portion of the left, who having failed at labeling anything they don’t like as “hate speech”, have crafted this new front in the attempt to control people where ‘Fake News’ is anyone who doesn’t report the ‘approved’ lies from establishment/legacy media. If the NYT catches Clinton in a lie, she made an honest mistake, if the same story appears on Breitbart, it the WEBSITE must be to blame. It MUST be hate. They’ve spent the last few years so escalating the rhetoric wars, that their cries of ‘wolf!’ and labeling everyone some sort of -phobe or -ist who has a different opinion has had the result that even the old stand-by nuclear option of smearing someone by lumping them in with the KKK falls on deaf ears. People are literally saying ‘so what?’ now. I’m reminded of that line from MiB, “You ever pull the wings off a fly? You care to see the fly get even?” That’s where we’re at IMO.

    I forget who it was, might have been Dan Rather when he was retired for his own fake news episode, but he made the comment that TV news had fundamentally changed from the view of their role in the 50/60’s as something the networks knew was going to lose them money but was a necessary public service and just the cost of doing business, to a model where the majors NEEDED to make money from their news programs, thus they sell and market it like any other infomercial now. This is nothing new, and it started WITHIN the establishment.

  7. Hmmm
    You do realize that the links posted here are often to the very types of sites you’re lambasting?

    I used to look at your site every day, but no more. The paranormal/anomalies/conspiracy world has become way too dysfunctional for me. I rarely ever click on links anymore because I know where they’re going to lead (the Web address displays when the cursor is put on a link), and I’d rather not go to the lion’s share of the sites (no revenue clicks from me).

    I now take news only from major sources and will consider something could be true if it’s reported by all or the vast majority of them. If it comes from anywhere else online, I assume it’s likely a lie, a hoax, what if, wishful thinking, or somebody’s insane ravings (there’s a lot of that, sigh).

    I doubt the Web has ever uncovered any verifiable, prosecutable conspiracies of magnitude. Instead, it’s just propped up the wobbly egos of people who desperately need to show others they’re “in the know” in order to feel special or important, made some very slimy people famous and rich (hello, Alex Jones), and more unfortunately, fed the lunatic imaginings of very unstable people, some of them quite dangerous.

    I quit Twitter and greatly curtailed Facebook (now it’s just for recipes and knitting patterns). I’d rather text the people I actually know than connect on social media.

    This is likely my last visit here (keep the applause down, please) as I continue editing my Internet use further. It was fun for awhile, but not anymore.

    Sayonara.

  8. Hmmm
    You do realize that the links posted here are often to the very types of sites you’re lambasting?

    I used to look at your site every day, but no more. The paranormal/anomalies/conspiracy world has become way too dysfunctional for me. I rarely ever click on links anymore because I know where they’re going to lead (the Web address displays when the cursor is put on a link), and I’d rather not go to the lion’s share of the sites (no revenue clicks from me).

    I now take news only from major sources and will consider something could be true if it’s reported by all or the vast majority of them. If it comes from anywhere else online, I assume it’s likely a lie, a hoax, what if, wishful thinking, or somebody’s insane ravings (there’s a lot of that, sigh).

    I doubt the Web has ever uncovered any verifiable, prosecutable conspiracies of magnitude. Instead, it’s just propped up the wobbly egos of people who desperately need to show others they’re “in the know” in order to feel special or important, made some very slimy people famous and rich (hello, Alex Jones), and more unfortunately, fed the lunatic imaginings of very unstable people, some of them quite dangerous.

    I quit Twitter and greatly curtailed Facebook (now it’s just for recipes and knitting patterns). I’d rather text the people I actually know than connect on social media.

    This is likely my last visit here (keep the applause down, please) as I continue editing my Internet use further. It was fun for awhile, but not anymore.

    1. Oblivious?
      [quote=purrlgurrl]You do realize that the links posted here are often to the very types of sites you’re lambasting?[/quote]

      Ummm….that would probably be the third paragraph of the article?

      “But I find myself in an unusual position, because I run a website devoted to speculative theories ranging from the paranormal, through conspiracy, to rewriting history. If there is to be any purge of ‘fake news’, surely the Grail should be one of the first against the wall?”

  9. >If you’re going to walk into
    >If you’re going to walk into a family pizza store with an assault rifle,

    Tuned out there. If anything is true about Pizzagate, it’s that Comet Ping Pong is anything but a “family pizza store.” It’s a haven for weirdos and hipster degenerates. Why do you want to manipulate people with bald face lies, Greg?

    >That news story with Muslim youth burning cars talking about immigrants? Tailored by the marketing department of a British tabloid to push just the right fear/outrage buttons in white western people that they want to learn more (to justify their fear-based beliefs).

    What about that news story with Muslim men raping thousands of white adolescents in Rotherham and it being swept under the rug by the authorities? If you think fear based beliefs don’t save lives, I encourage you to take a stroll through Malmo while eating a BLT sandwich.

      1. Facts?
        [quote=emlong]Majestic Ape performing on Comet Pizza stage. Must not have been family night, huh?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQPy6dz3w5g%5B/quote%5D

        Here’s exactly the problem I’m talking about. Innuendo, rather than facts.

        Fill us in on the facts. Is this video actually at Comet Pizza? What time is this happening (like many other restaurants/clubs, they regularly have bands playing after 10pm at night)? What is the context for the comments? What is the relationship of the band to the restaurant – good friends, or just another hired gig?

        Without all of the information, it’s just more pitchforks and angry mob stuff.

        1. here are some facts
          he is referring to the claim that it is a “family pizza store” although I agree that this alone is not great evidence in spite of the fact that in one of these videos this guy admits to having a “preference for little boys” but I digress.

          There is a mountain of evidence for pizzagate, none of it reported in mainstream news who instead make false claims about it (hillary Clinton running child traffiking in basement of pizza shop) while simultaneously calling the phenomenon “fake news”. Hows that for fake news?

          How is this for facts:

          John Podesta mentions “cheese pizza” over 150 times in his wikileaked emails.

          In these emails the references to “cheese pizza” are incongruent with actual pizza and is clearly code.

          Cheese pizza is a term for pedophilia and child pornography for years. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cheese+pizza

          thats just the tip of the iceberg and everyone should do their research, look at the actual evidence before making claims that it’s all fake or that there is no evidence or that it’s “only circumstantial evidence” as if that never got anyone thrown in jail let alone investigated for raping and killing children.

          1. Evidence
            [quote=plus_ultra]How is this for facts:

            John Podesta mentions “cheese pizza” over 150 times in his wikileaked emails.

            In these emails the references to “cheese pizza” are incongruent with actual pizza and is clearly code.
            [/quote]

            Really? I just searched the Podesta emails at wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/ for the term “cheese pizza” and got exactly 0 hits. Zero. Can you point out where I should be looking to find emails where John Podesta says “cheese pizza”? More than happy to investigate anything I’ve overlooked. If not, then I guess this is not actually a “fact”?

            [quote]thats just the tip of the iceberg and everyone should do their research, look at the actual evidence before making claims that it’s all fake or that there is no evidence or that it’s “only circumstantial evidence” as if that never got anyone thrown in jail let alone investigated for raping and killing children.[/quote]

            I have looked at the actual evidence. Have you? Because anyone who actually reads through those emails will be underwhelmed by the ‘evidence’ for secret code-words.

            For instance, an important thing to consider is that Wikileaks have released over 50,000+ emails hacked from John Podesta’s account, going back over almost a decade (earliest emails are 2007 I believe). I can find no mention of the phrase “cheese pizza” in any of those 50,000+. 0/50,000+

            But, just as a thought experiment, going with the generic “pizza” I get 149 emails. Now, simply at face value, that works out at around 15 emails per year (of around 5000 emails per year) mentioning pizza. But if you look at those emails:

            * there is a lot of duplication, where the mention of “pizza” comes from one email in the thread and then gets requoted in replies.

            * many of the emails are quite clearly talking about actual pizza, and are not personal emails (e.g. many campaign funding emails listing out expenses, just one of which is sometimes pizza being bought for volunteers).

            * there are many generic emails (semi-spam) being sent *to* Podesta, not by him, which mention pizza in passing (e.g. a university advertising a lunch for alumni)

            So overall, the amount of emails mentioning (just) “pizza”, in a way that might arouse any genuine conspiratorial thinking, is miniscule. OVER A TEN YEAR PERIOD, IN A TOTAL OF 50,000+ EMAILS.

            Furthermore, given that Podesta is (a) Italian, and (b) a keen consumer of Italian dishes (e.g. “I almost always cook Italian” http://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a-running-conversation-with-john-podesta ), if anything it seems to me it might be some sort of conspiracy that the word pizza is mentioned so *little* in his emails…

          2. If you don’t look at the
            If you don’t look at the whole picture you are not doing due diligence. According to the FBI playbook on pedophilia investigations there are more than enough red flags to start an investigation. the video below is one of the clearest “primers” on the whole thing including a detailed look at the spate of suspicious Podesta emails, and Podesta’s social milieu.

            https://youtu.be/Z4OP–ZXOjc

    1. Tuning out
      [quote=candycore]>Tuned out there. If anything is true about Pizzagate, it’s that Comet Ping Pong is anything but a “family pizza store.” It’s a haven for weirdos and hipster degenerates. Why do you want to manipulate people with bald face lies, Greg?[/quote]

      Why do you want to “tune out” as soon as you read something you disagree with, but consider yourself informed?

      1. I was assuming that you had
        I was assuming that you had done some legwork already on the fundamental story. There are certainly enough “dots” to warrant an investigation – more than enough dots. The symbolism used on the advertising media alone is the same type that the FBI zeros in on in trying to suss out pedophile rings. That is what is really at issue at this point – is there enough evidence circumstantial or otherwise to open a formal investigation.

        Yes, Majestic Ape was playing at Comet Pizza. On the longer version of their performance you can see the infamous murals with the woman holding a severed child’s head aloft. The murals in the place alone should have given you pause before calling it a “family restaurant.” Yeah, it was likely a private party, but I mean c’mon – do you think that Chuck E. Cheese would have hosted a party like this at one of its stores?
        Mind you, I am not accusing anyone of anything definitive yet – just suggesting that this could be an avenue into yet another tentacle of the global pedophilia market. It is important beyond just prosecuting pedophiles – it is as Katherine Fitts has observed one of the main “control files” used to entrap and blackmail politicians and decision makers. That is probably why there been such a shrill and intense reaction to it by the globalist-centric MSM – it threatens to expose on a grander stage one of the main levers by which politicians are controlled. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump has some sort of related control file hanging over his head too.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rktUsWY-5ck

        ******************************************
        Katherine Fitts on the uses of pedophilia:

        https://solari.com/blog/control-files/

        “If you have pictures of family men having sex with a child, they are yours for life. Such people can and will help you engineer the theft of trillions for modest compensation. You control them. They are slaves who are all the more effective as their slavery is invisible. It is secret. No one – not even their closest friends and family – can see who their real bosses are and where their true loyalties lie. No one can fathom that a bank CEO or a senator is, in fact, a slave.”

        ***************************************
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0-QGu8lOO4

        Hutsebaut’s gives examples of how “useful” people are profiled, lured, and entrapped by blackmailing pedophile rings. Hutsebaut has 30 years of direct experience treating ritually abused children and investigating organized pedocriminal networks. What she sees in the pizzagate revelations and the coordinated media reaction is seen time and time again elsewhere on the planet.

      2. For the same reason I tune
        For the same reason I tune out when someone conspiratorially mentions crisis actors and Sandy Hook in the same sentence. I’m savvy enough to see when an argument is BS and feel no need to pay further attention. You obviously know nothing about Pizzagate except to parrot what the MSM is telling you with their “fake news” forced meme. Maybe the stories about killing rooms where children are butchered are based on imagination, exaggeration and hearsay, but Comet Ping Pong is demonstrably a sketchy place full of sketchy people that senior political operatives have no good reason to hang out at.

        It is amusing to see so many conspiracy fans suddenly embrace the MSM and CIA as truthful and well intentioned sources when the conspiracy zeitgeist shifted from the bad guys being the military, spooks and financiers to being the political establishment.

  10. With Osama at the Diner
    I remember the early days of the web — I even remember a time before spam. All things change, even if greed, the lust for power, and the spreading of lies, propaganda, and general BS have been with us for thousands of years.

    Not too long ago, I came across Osama. He was hungry, homeless, and in poor health; most passers by ignored him and his large cardboard sign, but I recognized him, so I took him to the diner for burgers and fries.

    Between bites and chatting up the waitress, we discussed fake news, including news about the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, weapons of mass destruction, and even WTC 7, among other such items.

    (It turns out that Osama is much more scholarly and well read than you might think from the various news items put out about him over the years; although he’s died many times, according to various sources, that’s obviously bunkum. He did receive a decent-sized payout, at one point, but that was lost, and now neither his own very wealthy family nor any member of the Bush family will help him out; he’s been very effectively marooned in the U.S., too.)

    Anyway, he suggested I look up the Church Committee hearings of 1975. This I did, later. These took place just after Watergate, when congress was in a mood to tear the CIA apart (additional facts about the agency’s involvement in that particular scandal didn’t materialize until many years later, with the release of declassified documents).

    During these hearings, William Colby — then the CIA director — was grilled. He’d decided that the only way to save the agency was to “fess up” — to some things — and did so. Henry Kissinger had advised him to “stonewall,” but Colby ignored that advice. Later, Kissinger agreed that Colby’s approach was effective.

    In that testimony, Colby acknowledged that the CIA had penetrated a very high % of U.S. printed media, beginning in the 1950s. It had inserted false stories and suppressed or altered others. (At no point during or after the hearings did any agency or government spokesperson suggest that these activities had ceased.)

    Right after Colby’s testimony, President Ford (a member of the Warren Commission), fired Colby. His replacement? George H.W. Bush, who claimed at the time that he had had no previous involvement with the agency. Later, as Vice President, he committed impeachable offenses for his part in the Iran Contra scandal. For whatever reason, the Dukakis campaign didn’t focus on this and Bush was elected president.

    Colby died in 1996. Obituaries in places like the New York Times ascribe his death to “natural causes.” You can still read these, today; you can also read his biography _Shadow Warrior_, by Randall Woods. Woods has a very different take on this.

    Before returning Osama to his roadside hangout, I let him peruse the web a bit on one of my home computers. I showed him The Daily Grail site, too; he liked, it, thought it looked like an excellent respite from so many of today’s websites. (He has no FB account and no way to access the Internet beyond occasional visits to a public library, and likes it that way.)

  11. 3%?
    I am a long time and regular fan of this site and have just now created an account just to comment on this article.

    I find it astonishing that you would write this article parroting the contrived and obviously false narrative of mainstream media regarding this issue alluding that pizzagate has a “3% chance of being real” while totally failing to touch upon the actual evidence and not ONCE mentioning the word “censorship”.

    I, like many of us, have been around since the early days of the internet and do miss the “wild west” feel of openess and possibilities. I have never seen such a dramatic and frankly draconian response to what is allegedly a “made up fake conspiracy theory” not even 9/11 or the UFO flaps.

    Youtube, reddit, twitter and others have all banned members and deleted or edited content regarding this subject. Mainstream news media like WSJ and NY times have deleted their own stories that corroborate pizzagate and have all put out hit pieces, touting the rather Orwellian “fake news” narrative while ignoring the most pertinent evidence, much of it is really quite damning.

    If you don’t find that chilling in regards to your own website I think you have some serious reflecting to do.

    To all:

    Pizzagate is real. It wont be going away and will only continue to snowball.

    Investigate for yourself and don’t listen to anyone who tells you what to think without directing you to the sources. It’s not about a basement in some pizza joint. It’s about wikileaks and corruption in the clinton administration. These do tie into comet pizza and various flicker/instagram/twitter accounts but that is all tangental.

    Silence is complicity and standing in the way of investigating hideous crimes of CHILDREN is a moral and perhaps even legal crime. see: Moral turpitude

    See also:
    Socially aquired psychopathy & Inattentional blindness

  12. I’ll admit that when I first
    I’ll admit that when I first began reading Greg’s post, I recoiled slightly – I’m fiscally conservative/socially libertarian and though I think Trump is awful, Hillary is far worse IMO, so lesser of two evils…that said I don’t like politics here and my alarms began to sound…BUT that is what FAKE NEWS relies on — EMOTIONAL, non-intellectual non-open-minded reaction. So I shoved those initial feelings under the rug and continued reading to the end, then started my comment…then deleted it and left the site to allow my subconscious to digest the post for a more reasoned response. I returned hours later to write my comment, which Greg generously stated, better summarized his thoughts then his own post, he thinks…

    My point is – all of us who come here do so I believe for open-minded non-judgmental sources of alternative news that we all take with a grain of salt, but occasionally find gems that prove out to be innovative, valuable and true later…and also for hopefully open discussions that give us new leads or insights into our own beliefs/conclusions, but preferably in a non-malevolent and non-combative discourse, unlike the vitriol spewed most everywhere else. We’re all searching for answers seeking knowledge here, as opposed to the trolls on other sites who choose to suppress and deny knowledge to push their own beliefs.

    My opinion is Greg attempted to address the current fake news issue, and he has balls for taking it on, as people’s opinions are so easily offended and there’s bound to be backlash for each and every misspeak, or correctly spoken opinion that differs from the reader’s opinions. So don’t tune out, but do what so many have done, provide polite informed replies with supporting evidence, but keep it all positive so Daily Grail continues to be our “safe space” :-p from the lunacy around the rest of the web.

  13. Solution, anyone?
    I’m very irritated by the sudden explosion of the “fake news” meme. There is obviously nothing that can be done to rectify the situation, so why is it being paid such credence? What are we supposed to do, place our faith in some authority to tell us what is real news and what is fake news? Clearly we cannot do this. It is unacceptable. So what do we do, allow people to just be stupid or smart, allow them to decide for themselves what is and isn’t real, as we always have done and people always will do regardless?

    Trying to cut down on fake news is an exercise in futility. Rumors will spread. Rumors don’t even have to be under the guise of news, and then what do we do? Tell people what they’re allowed to theorize on the internet? Or just label every hair-brained theory someone comes up with as “news” and have some arbitrary authority decide if it’s real news or fake news? I doubt everyone who comes up with a theory considers themselves a newscaster, and if a lot of people think a theory is legitimate that doesn’t automatically make the theory news. Reports on the existence of the theory and the theory gaining momentum would be news, but not the theory itself.

    So are we talking about “fake news” or are we talking about false beliefs? The line isn’t going to be drawn in such a way that we’re going to get rid of stories that cause lunatics to lose it. Your picture for this story is a tabloid, which technically would fall under the heading “fake news,” though I’m sure you mean it ironically. And a story about Hillary giving birth to a lizard child could cause someone to take up arms against her. The story of a virgin giving birth could cause someone to become fanatical to the point of murdering unbelievers. There is no way to draw the line such that only ideas that are disseminated to the public at large are one hundred percent factual and safe.

    Laws against fake news will be passed in the dark and regulated in the dark to some extent, I’m sure. But, as much as we might like to, there’s no way to regulate a story like pizzagate, for instance. It’s simply an idea being disseminated to the public, and people are allowed to report their take on it. It’s not fake news just because others find it highly unlikely to be founded upon facts. “The news” itself has never been “the dissemination of stories that are all inherently true.” Newspapers and magazines have to correct the record all of the time. The have controversial editorials all of the time. That doesn’t make them fake news or fake journalists. The people reporting on pizzagate consider themselves to be real journalists reporting their angle on a real story, and I think we have to respect that.

    1. The Reformation
      Reminds me very much of the dire predictions of the Catholic Church and the upper classes when the first printing presses were invented thus making the spread of knowledge available to many more people – it was thought that people would have too much information and not be able to handle it all with the proper discrimination. What they really meant was that the unwashed might start thinking their own thoughts and be able to coordinate better. They were right.

      *****************************************************
      The Internet Reformation

      http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/anthony-wile-defining-the-moment-the-internet-reformation/

      It is NOT an “Internet Revolution.” The Internet Revolution is a standard “pat” phrase of the powers-that-be about the so-called empowering effects of technology. The Internet Reformation is a much more deeply disruptive concept. It is truly a revolutionary one, affecting every aspect of human society and human relationships with modern elites. It is focused around the insights generated by the Internet itself.

      This concept is based on what happened during the era of the Gutenberg press. Almost from the beginning, the Gutenberg press was a revolutionary technology. As soon as people used the press to print Bibles, readers began to discover that the Holy Word differed considerably from what they’d been taught by the Catholic Church.

      **************************************************
      Manufacturing Normality

      http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/06/manufacturing-normality/

      “As I suggested in these pages previously, what we are experiencing is the pathologization (or the “abnormalization”) of political dissent, i.e., the systematic stigmatization of any and all forms of non-compliance with neoliberal consensus reality. Political distinctions like “left” and “right” are disappearing, and are being replaced by imponderable distinctions like “normal” and “abnormal,” “true” and “false,” and “real” and “fake.” Such distinctions do not lend themselves to argument. They are proffered to us as axiomatic truths, empirical facts which no normal person would ever dream of contradicting.”

      1. indeed
        An interesting comparison, and I think comparing the internet to the printing press if quite fitting and valuable.

        Much most than the printing press, the internet provides a voice to common people. Some of these common people are more common than others. Recall George Carlin: thinks of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of them are even stupider.

        Having said that, what makes anyone believe that jorunalists are intelligent or well informed? They are supposed to be, but most of them are pretty biased.
        Practially none of them are scientists, yet all of them tell us what science says about this topic of that topic. Then they are accused of lying, when in fact they just don’t know what they are talking about. They give you their best guess, but that’s all they can do.

        We have the main stream politicians. They define who is not mainstream, so all those other types are “populists” or some other extremists. I’m not defending Trump here. I happen to think he is pretty stupid. He has just been in a position to make successful real estate deals. And that is his approach to everything: don’t negotiate about principles, instead make deals.

        Back to the bible printing business – some of the ideas created back then were really out there. Some of those ideas are still with us. Not all of them were good.

        So we suffer from a Chinese curse – we live in interesting times. Problems yes. But personally I prefer it to boredom.

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