Censorship is not helpful to democracy–rather, it is the death of democracy. The mainstream media is awash with hyper-active headlines about “fake news.” How can we make sense of this sudden obsession? Perhaps we can start by separating “news” from “analysis” from “commentary.” “News” is “he said this, she did that, this happened.” Analysis tries to make sense of trends that are apparent in the news longer-term–for...
Read More »“Fake News”, Censorship, Darwin and Democracy
Censorship is not helpful to democracy–rather, it is the death of democracy. The mainstream media is awash with hyper-active headlines about “fake news.” How can we make sense of this sudden obsession? Perhaps we can start by separating “news” from “analysis” from “commentary.” “News” is “he said this, she did that, this happened.” Analysis tries to make sense of trends that are apparent in the news longer-term–for...
Read More »From Captive Audience to Open Democracy: Why the Mainstream Media Is Freaking Out
In a democracy, trust must be earned. It cannot be imposed. In its panicky rush to demonize the independent media via baseless accusations of “fake news,” the mainstream press has sunk to spewing “fake news” of its own. Here’s The Washington Post’s criminally false “fake news” article in case you missed it: Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say. So-called “fake news” was...
Read More »From Captive Audience to Open Democracy: Why the Mainstream Media Is Freaking Out
In a democracy, trust must be earned. It cannot be imposed. In its panicky rush to demonize the independent media via baseless accusations of “fake news,” the mainstream press has sunk to spewing “fake news” of its own. Here’s The Washington Post’s criminally false “fake news” article in case you missed it: Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say. So-called “fake news” was...
Read More »A Disintegrative Winter: The Debt and Anti-Status Quo Super-Cycle Has Turned
With this list of manifestations in hand, we can practically write the headlines for 2017-2025 in advance. How would you describe the social mood of the nation and world? Would anti-Establishment, anti-status quo, and anti-globalization be a good start? How about choking on fast-rising debt? Would stagnant growth, stagnant wages be a fair description? Or how about rising wealth/income inequality? Wouldn’t rising...
Read More »A Disintegrative Winter: The Debt and Anti-Status Quo Super-Cycle Has Turned
With this list of manifestations in hand, we can practically write the headlines for 2017-2025 in advance. How would you describe the social mood of the nation and world? Would anti-Establishment, anti-status quo, and anti-globalization be a good start? How about choking on fast-rising debt? Would stagnant growth, stagnant wages be a fair description? Or how about rising wealth/income inequality? Wouldn’t rising...
Read More »Charles Hugh Smith a Russian Propaganda Site?
We highly appreciate the site of Charles Hugh Smith because it integrates good economic graph with critical political comments. A couple of days ago, it appeared on a list of Russian Propaganda Sites that got cited by mainstream media. Washington Post’s reports Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election. The “experts” claims of expertise were not validated or investigated by the Post, and...
Read More »Washington Post: Russian Propaganda Sites
In case you missed it, The Washington Post’s criminally careless publishing of “fake news” about purported “Russian propaganda” created a backlash -and the Post’s attorney-approved bleating to sidestep responsibility for publishing “fake news” failed to calm the waters. Here’s The Washington Post’s “fake news” article in case you missed it: Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts...
Read More »Populism in America: “Follow the Money”
If you want to understand today’s populism, don’t look to the mainstream media’s comically buffoonish propaganda blaming the Russians: look at the four issues listed below. One of the most disturbing failures of the mainstream media in this election cycle was its complete lack of historical context for Trump’s brand of populism.If you consumed the mainstream media’s coverage of the campaign and election, you noted their...
Read More »Our “Gaslight” Economy
If you don’t like what these charts are saying, please notify The Washington Post to add the St. Louis Federal Reserve to its list of Russian propaganda sites. Yesterday I described our gaslight financial system. Today we’ll look at our gaslight economy. Correspondent Jason H. alerted me to the work of author Thomas Sheridan ( Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath), who claims to have coined the...
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