I'm confused. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has not failed a fact check in five years but rates 87% because Qatari-funded Al Jazeera doesn't like it? That's just marginally better than Code Pink, which is a Maoist organization dedicated to dismantling the west.
This was good in concept, but I'm not finding it useful. Racket is publishing more content, but I'm reading less of it.
Was confused as well, so looked up the intro to this series. Shill-o-meter is "the percentage chance that the “expert opinion” is a politically predetermined conclusion." I like the idea; it covers both commission and omission; is what is being presented simply to back up a pre determined conclusion or not?
As I've learned thanks to "news" media over the past decades, the best liars are subtle bastards who's facts (the ones they include of course) all check out as they create an utterly false narrative.
When Matt introduced the changes to Racket, he said "We Care If It's True. We Don't Care Why." In this case, they don't seem to care if what an organization is saying is true.
These ratings are useless if they can't differentiate between a scholarly organization with an opinion based on facts and a group of activists who manufacture propaganda for the CCP.
The "subtle bastards" are also the ones who lie by omission. Like, they're give you a lot of the facts that check out and spin their narrative. But they leave out the inconvenient facts that would change their narrative from the take that they spun. NYT was the poster child for this during the Biden years. For that matter, Hillary's 2016 campaign as well. Probably Obama too, but i didn't read them much then.
Thanks for explaining, I was struggling to understand the Shill-O-Meter myself.
The other thing I'm wondering is what "'Experts' Yes/No" really means - in hindsight, the quotation marks seem to imply that it has more to do with how they're treated by others than what they've worked to earn, is that right?
I think the objection was not so much the rating but the justification with a citation to Al Fucking Jazeera counterposed to a no failed fact check ion 5 years. Seems odd. I had the same reaction.
Ahh, there lies the first line of mirrors in the Wilderness of Mirrors!
One shill's fact check is another's "shill check". Each story or journalist's report is different and every reader must exercise cynicism in each line of text.
For example, the UK Daily Mail just moments ago stated: "STAGGERING number of US Troops Wounded in TRUMP'S WAR!" is as biased a "covert" propaganda statement posing as journalistic reporting as you'll ever see. First, the number was unconfirmed, second, how does that compare with previous actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and how many were actual combat WIA.
"Staggering" is an politically weaponizing adjective that cannot be quantified too.
I had no idea that codepink was upgraded to a think tank whose diatribe actually ended up as analysis in the likes of the "New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, and Bloomberg as subject matter experts on the Iran War".
I rant a bit more below but I'm looking at Racket 2.0 as a work-in-progress.
On that, I for one think the comment section has become even better! Loads of extra perspective and angles...er, should I say "takes"?!? :-)
But looking under all the stones embedded in the muddy soil that is Washington and "The Media" takes a lot of work. I am grateful of that as there is digging involved. Critiquing the analysis comes out in the comments. Which is great.
I do hope that some kind of ATW-like feature might be in the works. Even if it's sporadic and not a (bi-) weekly show.
I think the "Swamp Log" is intended as an ATW substitute, or something like Nellie Bowles TGIF feature on the Free Press. Alas, Nellie has a much sharper wit than whoever is writing the Swamp Log so far. It has been boring me to tears, sad to say.
I certainly hope you're right here. I'm not in the "unsub" crowd but so far I'm somewhat disappointed. And J Sac for fuck's sakes? Not a good sign. Follow the money. Oh sweet irony!
Been here since before it was "Racket". Hopefully the sub will find its footing. MT is brilliant especially when doing his deep investigative journalism. That's why we OG Racketeers are here in the first place.
As for an ATW style feature, that will need more charisma and say, gravitas for lack of a better descriptor than last week's offerings for me to make it through an entire episode...
The short story ( later novel ) feature was the best part of the sub and that's dead and buried unfortunately. What a loss. In all seriousness I do truly hope my instincts are wrong here and the second coming of Racket is spectacular. 🤷♂️
Ignore the naysayers! Even if the science is imperfect, Racket’s opening all our eyes to the biases of our expert class and forcing us to ask whose agenda’s being pushed and ox is being gored. I wish we had a service like this here in Corrupticut.
"Ignore the naysayers!" False. The naysayers seem to give a shit about accuracy, something Taibbi promised in Racket 2.0. The voices are important. Last thing Racket needs is a bunch of suck up bobble heads.
Per Running Burning Man, I might quibble and not say "nay" to the naysayers but keep everything in perspective.
Some of the somewhat critical comments have been very useful for me (disclaimer: I am sooooooo swamped with a regular job and several would-be startup ideas in the works that I simply don't have the time to go over things in detail -- so I really appreciate people who do and supply the nitpicking, even if that subsequently gets nitpicked).
This is a big change for Racket. I think a lot of people (myself included) have sensed Matt's sentimental attachment to the-politics-that-used-to-be-called-liberalism (with all due respect to TAFKAP aka Prince); I can dig there's at least a mild "passive filter" on some of his reporting but I think he does a very good job keeping things "above board".
Over all, while I do miss ATW...arrgh!...the Racket 2.0 focus has been good. Room for improvement but as noted below, I'm considering it a work-in-progress.
All the breathless hyperventilating coverage of Operation Epic Fury is 1-sided partisan trash. The Trumpers and the Deep Staters are both hard to tolerate.
Normal for all things DC, over the last 11+ years, of the Trump saga.
Think tanks, NGOs, non-profits, and so many Fed Gov "experts" are in a panic. Their entire adult life work histories are based on historically poor policies and results abroad and domestically.
Even the Financial Press has become laughably childish in their fearful & outrageous claims of doom & gloom.
Thank you Racket News and thank you Jillian for bringing a little bit of clarity on the sources.
100%! This new Racket feature is another perspective on the influence of "the Groups" as Ruy Texerira (Liberal Patriot) puts it. Activists-Donors-NGOs are well represented in our democracy...the demos --not so much. We are seeing the full flowering of Sheldon Wolin's analysis in Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.
Yes, poor Ruy! He keeps "writing the same article every week" per some of his commenters, but alas, the targets of his articles never seem to pay much attention. I would vote for a Democrat if he were a good representation of them. The "Groups" definitely need to take a hike, forever.
I like to think most readers and viewers have a pretty good intuitive sense of where the 'experts' they encounter on screen and in print are coming from, but it's great to have hard evidence about their institutional indebtedness. Who funds the organization that employs you, and what kind of people is it likely to hire? How many of your colleagues disagree with you politically, and how often do you appear in forums where the consensus on major issues diverges from the one that seems written in stone where you're opining now? There are many such questions that could be asked, but we're never going to get anything like this level of transparency from legacy media. So you're performing an important public service by offering some here.
The response rate to your invitation to the organizations in question to chime in is disappointing, but speaks volumes about their own level of enthusiasm for information transparency.
The Combating Terrorism Center - West Point is essentially a propaganda channel for the Uniparty. All of its studies will be of course vetted by the Pentagon (as long as Hegseth/Gabbard can't control it), the American Intelligence Community and the GOP RINOs in the legislative branch. IMHO they may not be shills as you have defined it, but they are certainly misleading readers to a Uniparty policy line. They are certainly not friendly towards the Trump White House strategy, subtly undermining it when it does not match the Uniparty strategy.
An excellent and important question. Sadly, many so-called investigative journalists ascribe the Uniparty to a “conspiracy theory” possibly intentionally to hide it or due to just plain ignorance.
IMHO, the Uniparty Strategy, in its apex and purest form from an American legislative perspective, is essentially MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO AT ANY COST. In other words, if nothing changes, the Uniparty has won. The narrative, the propaganda, all diverging ideologies, economic and social concepts are derived from this single precept. Everything flows from a single power base, a centralized tyranny that triggers everything else. The old saying “Money is the root of all evil” is more than a mere meme. The Banksters of the Cartel, once controlled by the Rothschilds and the British Crown are the status quo worldwide.
In today's world, the only individual who has up to now successfully challenged and survived, despite all his flaws, the banking tyranny is Donald J Trump and the populist MAGA movement. I have no idea why he's doing it or if he's a puppet for others. However, I know that if he or his team succeeds, the centuries of tyranny by Central Banks would come to an end worldwide, not just in the US. IMHO, that's why he is so widely hated and his people are so prosecuted more than any others at any other time in our history. At this time, I believe he is the only hope on the horizon that could really change history and give my peers and I a chance at true freedom and change. Will the change be for the better? I don't know, but if the status quo continues the average Joe and Jane's future in America and the rest of the world is already lost. That's why I am for the change and the defeat of the Uniparty, Trump or no Trump.
We have nothing to lose, just like in 1776.
The 1776 Revolution, with the exception of our Constitution, was begun to be overturned in the late 1700’s by the British Banking and Insurance cartels and we completely lost our freedom in 1913 with the adoption of the Federal Reserve, their third attempt at a central bank in the United States. The 1971 treachery of Nixon and the severing of the US Dollar from gold was the beginning of the slide of the fiat dollar and of our country into the economic, financial and social maelstrom. We have become mere peasants to be taxed and told what to do by arrogant elites and a criminal class in power in this country. We are brainwashed by very subtle yet extremely effective journalism, especially covert propaganda posing as investigative journalism.
I believe we are once again approaching the final battle for the independence of the American people from the banking elites and those they have controlled and/or corrupted. Unbeknownst to the cartel, the introduction of the digitizing of all information gave us a view which was totally unexpected that allowed the peasants to see what was really happening.
So why is the complete intertia and maintenance of the status quo so vital to the Uniparty? What is the centralized tyranny from which everything flows and is derived from?
The Private Central Bank. In the US, it is specifically the Federal Reserve Bank. Once that is gone, the tyranny of taxes will come an end. Then everything else, powered by corruption, blackmail, money and perversion ideologies will eventually fail. Through its exclusive use of fiat money, the Central Bank controls everything. Bolshevism, Nazism, Communism, Capitalism and all other political, social, cultural, educational and even scientific elements of our lives are derived, corrupted, controlled and manipulated by the Central Bank Cartel.
The American Revolution has not been completed, because the Cartel of Private Central banks and fiat currencies still control the world and the US today.
Change is our potential salvation, with the help of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers knew this day would come again.
Don’t just believe me. Study every piece of news and try to place it on a mosaic with the Central Bank at its center, guiding everything to maintain its supremacy and tyrannical control.
If Central Bank Digital Currency happens, the dark ages will return again for several centuries.
Good Luck, DaveL. If you don't agree with me then that's fine. We will just agree to disagree. All I ask of all is to pause, reflect and think.
Free yourselves with cynicism from the mindset of the "experts", the journalists and content creators, because they are as flawed as we are, if not more.
Just be cynical about everything. Continuous cynicsm may be the one survival tool for the average peasant in this information war.
I disagree that Code Pink does not have "experts." Medea Benjamin and her colleague Nicholas J.S. Davies have frequently written informative, well researched articles exposing U.S. foreign policy machinations, documenting war crimes, etc., for outlets such as Consortium News. How are you defining "experts"? And if they are "shills," who are they shilling for?
I don't always agree with Code Pink's perspective, and it has sometimes fallen for propaganda circulated by U.S.-backed NGOs, as when it infuriatingly supported the White Helmets in Syria (speaking of shills). But that is no reason to dismiss the organization as a bunch of "shills" or castigate it as lacking any expertise on the harmful impacts of U.S. foreign policy. In general, it has done good work in better informing the American people on that topic and is a mainstay of what passes for a peace movement in this country.
Fidelity, as your link demonstrates, is an apolitical donor advised fund (DAF) and the largest of its kind on Earth. If anyone bothered with the huculean task of trying to assign a bias to its enormous cast of eclectic donors, the slant would likely be slightly left. But in any case the analysis would be misleading because Fidelity is literally anyone with money to give away. The bias is Americans with savings.
You should tweak that sentence that implies a right bias. Google me. I know what I'm talking about.
Heard of CodePink but never really knew what they were about, I assumed that it was some sort of feminist pink pussy hat thing. Although i'm not a fan of their methods or grandstanding, and I'm not "pro" any country except for my own (ie this one), i can't quibble with their anti-foreign intervention stance.
As mentioned, they predate "pussy-hats" by a very long time. Despite their Baby-Boomers-with-Sundown-Syndrome aesthetic, I actually think pretty highly of them; they have a good track-record where it matters most, have never allowed "Feminism"™ to hijack or get in the way of their anti-war mission, and (like Matt) they've earned my trust by my seeing them repeatedly choose integrity over political expedience in contrast with outwardly-similar groups/individuals who made the other choice.
That “Iranian missile” photo keeps showing up in the news. It looks like welded steel. Aren’t missiles typically made from aluminum? Reminds me of before the Iraq war and we kept getting shown pictures of phony WMD train cars. Any metal or missile experts out there who can verify if that is a genuine missile or a fake?
I have to wonder what all these "think tank" employees have lined up for their next hustle. It would seem that they would be some of the first affected by the AI encroachment.
Maybe he got free trips like Sen Mark Kelly. Kelly met Giffords at an all-expense paid five-day retreat co-hosted by Young Leaders Forum and the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2003. Mark also participated in the 2004 & 2005 Young Leaders Forum conferences. He took a 2003 Forum banner with him on a 2006 space mission. He did considerable business in China after leaving the military in 2012. This tidbit along with others can be found in Trevor Loudon’s book Security Risk Senators Part 1, pub 2022.
Hmmm. We never hear this back story when that mouth is yapping on Legacy media channels. His status merely as a former astronaut seems his entire qualification. Well, that and his wife's unfortunate4 brain injury from having been shot. By a disgruntled Democrat - itself part of the story you never get.
The reporting should be much deeper on Code Pink. These are the people you see every time there's a "protest" and they are holding signs made 10 minutes before. They will be out for everything anti-American and are a propaganda arm of the CCP. When we bombed IRAN and there were small pop-up groups, those groups are there so that China can air to their people that America is in dysfunction and make them afraid of becoming like that. They fear protests like the ones in Iran. Check to see if those small protests were aired on Chinese State Media. They were.
I've usually found that the entities that have "Center" in their name are the most dangerous for the nation. They usually contend that they are non-partisan, but a cursory reading of their positions will prove otherwise.
I'm confused. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has not failed a fact check in five years but rates 87% because Qatari-funded Al Jazeera doesn't like it? That's just marginally better than Code Pink, which is a Maoist organization dedicated to dismantling the west.
This was good in concept, but I'm not finding it useful. Racket is publishing more content, but I'm reading less of it.
Was confused as well, so looked up the intro to this series. Shill-o-meter is "the percentage chance that the “expert opinion” is a politically predetermined conclusion." I like the idea; it covers both commission and omission; is what is being presented simply to back up a pre determined conclusion or not?
As I've learned thanks to "news" media over the past decades, the best liars are subtle bastards who's facts (the ones they include of course) all check out as they create an utterly false narrative.
When Matt introduced the changes to Racket, he said "We Care If It's True. We Don't Care Why." In this case, they don't seem to care if what an organization is saying is true.
These ratings are useless if they can't differentiate between a scholarly organization with an opinion based on facts and a group of activists who manufacture propaganda for the CCP.
The "subtle bastards" are also the ones who lie by omission. Like, they're give you a lot of the facts that check out and spin their narrative. But they leave out the inconvenient facts that would change their narrative from the take that they spun. NYT was the poster child for this during the Biden years. For that matter, Hillary's 2016 campaign as well. Probably Obama too, but i didn't read them much then.
Thanks for explaining, I was struggling to understand the Shill-O-Meter myself.
The other thing I'm wondering is what "'Experts' Yes/No" really means - in hindsight, the quotation marks seem to imply that it has more to do with how they're treated by others than what they've worked to earn, is that right?
I think the objection was not so much the rating but the justification with a citation to Al Fucking Jazeera counterposed to a no failed fact check ion 5 years. Seems odd. I had the same reaction.
"Fact check" by whom?
Ahh, there lies the first line of mirrors in the Wilderness of Mirrors!
One shill's fact check is another's "shill check". Each story or journalist's report is different and every reader must exercise cynicism in each line of text.
For example, the UK Daily Mail just moments ago stated: "STAGGERING number of US Troops Wounded in TRUMP'S WAR!" is as biased a "covert" propaganda statement posing as journalistic reporting as you'll ever see. First, the number was unconfirmed, second, how does that compare with previous actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and how many were actual combat WIA.
"Staggering" is an politically weaponizing adjective that cannot be quantified too.
I had no idea that codepink was upgraded to a think tank whose diatribe actually ended up as analysis in the likes of the "New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, and Bloomberg as subject matter experts on the Iran War".
Word to your final sentence.
I rant a bit more below but I'm looking at Racket 2.0 as a work-in-progress.
On that, I for one think the comment section has become even better! Loads of extra perspective and angles...er, should I say "takes"?!? :-)
But looking under all the stones embedded in the muddy soil that is Washington and "The Media" takes a lot of work. I am grateful of that as there is digging involved. Critiquing the analysis comes out in the comments. Which is great.
I do hope that some kind of ATW-like feature might be in the works. Even if it's sporadic and not a (bi-) weekly show.
I think the "Swamp Log" is intended as an ATW substitute, or something like Nellie Bowles TGIF feature on the Free Press. Alas, Nellie has a much sharper wit than whoever is writing the Swamp Log so far. It has been boring me to tears, sad to say.
I certainly hope you're right here. I'm not in the "unsub" crowd but so far I'm somewhat disappointed. And J Sac for fuck's sakes? Not a good sign. Follow the money. Oh sweet irony!
Been here since before it was "Racket". Hopefully the sub will find its footing. MT is brilliant especially when doing his deep investigative journalism. That's why we OG Racketeers are here in the first place.
As for an ATW style feature, that will need more charisma and say, gravitas for lack of a better descriptor than last week's offerings for me to make it through an entire episode...
The short story ( later novel ) feature was the best part of the sub and that's dead and buried unfortunately. What a loss. In all seriousness I do truly hope my instincts are wrong here and the second coming of Racket is spectacular. 🤷♂️
Ignore the naysayers! Even if the science is imperfect, Racket’s opening all our eyes to the biases of our expert class and forcing us to ask whose agenda’s being pushed and ox is being gored. I wish we had a service like this here in Corrupticut.
"Ignore the naysayers!" False. The naysayers seem to give a shit about accuracy, something Taibbi promised in Racket 2.0. The voices are important. Last thing Racket needs is a bunch of suck up bobble heads.
I'm inclined to give a "work in progress" vote on matters.
This is a big change for Racket and there are no doubt going to be bumps in the road.
The comments here are a GREAT addition to the article itself.
Per Running Burning Man, I might quibble and not say "nay" to the naysayers but keep everything in perspective.
Some of the somewhat critical comments have been very useful for me (disclaimer: I am sooooooo swamped with a regular job and several would-be startup ideas in the works that I simply don't have the time to go over things in detail -- so I really appreciate people who do and supply the nitpicking, even if that subsequently gets nitpicked).
This is a big change for Racket. I think a lot of people (myself included) have sensed Matt's sentimental attachment to the-politics-that-used-to-be-called-liberalism (with all due respect to TAFKAP aka Prince); I can dig there's at least a mild "passive filter" on some of his reporting but I think he does a very good job keeping things "above board".
Over all, while I do miss ATW...arrgh!...the Racket 2.0 focus has been good. Room for improvement but as noted below, I'm considering it a work-in-progress.
All the breathless hyperventilating coverage of Operation Epic Fury is 1-sided partisan trash. The Trumpers and the Deep Staters are both hard to tolerate.
Normal for all things DC, over the last 11+ years, of the Trump saga.
Think tanks, NGOs, non-profits, and so many Fed Gov "experts" are in a panic. Their entire adult life work histories are based on historically poor policies and results abroad and domestically.
Even the Financial Press has become laughably childish in their fearful & outrageous claims of doom & gloom.
Thank you Racket News and thank you Jillian for bringing a little bit of clarity on the sources.
100%! This new Racket feature is another perspective on the influence of "the Groups" as Ruy Texerira (Liberal Patriot) puts it. Activists-Donors-NGOs are well represented in our democracy...the demos --not so much. We are seeing the full flowering of Sheldon Wolin's analysis in Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.
Yes, poor Ruy! He keeps "writing the same article every week" per some of his commenters, but alas, the targets of his articles never seem to pay much attention. I would vote for a Democrat if he were a good representation of them. The "Groups" definitely need to take a hike, forever.
I like to think most readers and viewers have a pretty good intuitive sense of where the 'experts' they encounter on screen and in print are coming from, but it's great to have hard evidence about their institutional indebtedness. Who funds the organization that employs you, and what kind of people is it likely to hire? How many of your colleagues disagree with you politically, and how often do you appear in forums where the consensus on major issues diverges from the one that seems written in stone where you're opining now? There are many such questions that could be asked, but we're never going to get anything like this level of transparency from legacy media. So you're performing an important public service by offering some here.
The response rate to your invitation to the organizations in question to chime in is disappointing, but speaks volumes about their own level of enthusiasm for information transparency.
Matt - still missing Walter.
The Combating Terrorism Center - West Point is essentially a propaganda channel for the Uniparty. All of its studies will be of course vetted by the Pentagon (as long as Hegseth/Gabbard can't control it), the American Intelligence Community and the GOP RINOs in the legislative branch. IMHO they may not be shills as you have defined it, but they are certainly misleading readers to a Uniparty policy line. They are certainly not friendly towards the Trump White House strategy, subtly undermining it when it does not match the Uniparty strategy.
What is the “Uniparty Strategy”?
“What is the Uniparty Strategy?”
An excellent and important question. Sadly, many so-called investigative journalists ascribe the Uniparty to a “conspiracy theory” possibly intentionally to hide it or due to just plain ignorance.
IMHO, the Uniparty Strategy, in its apex and purest form from an American legislative perspective, is essentially MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO AT ANY COST. In other words, if nothing changes, the Uniparty has won. The narrative, the propaganda, all diverging ideologies, economic and social concepts are derived from this single precept. Everything flows from a single power base, a centralized tyranny that triggers everything else. The old saying “Money is the root of all evil” is more than a mere meme. The Banksters of the Cartel, once controlled by the Rothschilds and the British Crown are the status quo worldwide.
In today's world, the only individual who has up to now successfully challenged and survived, despite all his flaws, the banking tyranny is Donald J Trump and the populist MAGA movement. I have no idea why he's doing it or if he's a puppet for others. However, I know that if he or his team succeeds, the centuries of tyranny by Central Banks would come to an end worldwide, not just in the US. IMHO, that's why he is so widely hated and his people are so prosecuted more than any others at any other time in our history. At this time, I believe he is the only hope on the horizon that could really change history and give my peers and I a chance at true freedom and change. Will the change be for the better? I don't know, but if the status quo continues the average Joe and Jane's future in America and the rest of the world is already lost. That's why I am for the change and the defeat of the Uniparty, Trump or no Trump.
We have nothing to lose, just like in 1776.
The 1776 Revolution, with the exception of our Constitution, was begun to be overturned in the late 1700’s by the British Banking and Insurance cartels and we completely lost our freedom in 1913 with the adoption of the Federal Reserve, their third attempt at a central bank in the United States. The 1971 treachery of Nixon and the severing of the US Dollar from gold was the beginning of the slide of the fiat dollar and of our country into the economic, financial and social maelstrom. We have become mere peasants to be taxed and told what to do by arrogant elites and a criminal class in power in this country. We are brainwashed by very subtle yet extremely effective journalism, especially covert propaganda posing as investigative journalism.
I believe we are once again approaching the final battle for the independence of the American people from the banking elites and those they have controlled and/or corrupted. Unbeknownst to the cartel, the introduction of the digitizing of all information gave us a view which was totally unexpected that allowed the peasants to see what was really happening.
So why is the complete intertia and maintenance of the status quo so vital to the Uniparty? What is the centralized tyranny from which everything flows and is derived from?
The Private Central Bank. In the US, it is specifically the Federal Reserve Bank. Once that is gone, the tyranny of taxes will come an end. Then everything else, powered by corruption, blackmail, money and perversion ideologies will eventually fail. Through its exclusive use of fiat money, the Central Bank controls everything. Bolshevism, Nazism, Communism, Capitalism and all other political, social, cultural, educational and even scientific elements of our lives are derived, corrupted, controlled and manipulated by the Central Bank Cartel.
The American Revolution has not been completed, because the Cartel of Private Central banks and fiat currencies still control the world and the US today.
Change is our potential salvation, with the help of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers knew this day would come again.
Don’t just believe me. Study every piece of news and try to place it on a mosaic with the Central Bank at its center, guiding everything to maintain its supremacy and tyrannical control.
If Central Bank Digital Currency happens, the dark ages will return again for several centuries.
Good Luck, DaveL. If you don't agree with me then that's fine. We will just agree to disagree. All I ask of all is to pause, reflect and think.
Free yourselves with cynicism from the mindset of the "experts", the journalists and content creators, because they are as flawed as we are, if not more.
Just be cynical about everything. Continuous cynicsm may be the one survival tool for the average peasant in this information war.
I disagree that Code Pink does not have "experts." Medea Benjamin and her colleague Nicholas J.S. Davies have frequently written informative, well researched articles exposing U.S. foreign policy machinations, documenting war crimes, etc., for outlets such as Consortium News. How are you defining "experts"? And if they are "shills," who are they shilling for?
I don't always agree with Code Pink's perspective, and it has sometimes fallen for propaganda circulated by U.S.-backed NGOs, as when it infuriatingly supported the White Helmets in Syria (speaking of shills). But that is no reason to dismiss the organization as a bunch of "shills" or castigate it as lacking any expertise on the harmful impacts of U.S. foreign policy. In general, it has done good work in better informing the American people on that topic and is a mainstay of what passes for a peace movement in this country.
Code Pink is a Marxist dedicated and supported group that hates America. Other than that it’s ok, huh?
Fidelity, as your link demonstrates, is an apolitical donor advised fund (DAF) and the largest of its kind on Earth. If anyone bothered with the huculean task of trying to assign a bias to its enormous cast of eclectic donors, the slant would likely be slightly left. But in any case the analysis would be misleading because Fidelity is literally anyone with money to give away. The bias is Americans with savings.
You should tweak that sentence that implies a right bias. Google me. I know what I'm talking about.
But that requires two-step thinking…
Thanks, Jillian!
Heard of CodePink but never really knew what they were about, I assumed that it was some sort of feminist pink pussy hat thing. Although i'm not a fan of their methods or grandstanding, and I'm not "pro" any country except for my own (ie this one), i can't quibble with their anti-foreign intervention stance.
As mentioned, they predate "pussy-hats" by a very long time. Despite their Baby-Boomers-with-Sundown-Syndrome aesthetic, I actually think pretty highly of them; they have a good track-record where it matters most, have never allowed "Feminism"™ to hijack or get in the way of their anti-war mission, and (like Matt) they've earned my trust by my seeing them repeatedly choose integrity over political expedience in contrast with outwardly-similar groups/individuals who made the other choice.
You could contrast them with what's described here: https://fair.org/home/support-the-tropes/
That “Iranian missile” photo keeps showing up in the news. It looks like welded steel. Aren’t missiles typically made from aluminum? Reminds me of before the Iraq war and we kept getting shown pictures of phony WMD train cars. Any metal or missile experts out there who can verify if that is a genuine missile or a fake?
My first thought was similar, in that it looks like a VERY OLD and rusting rocket.
Do ACLU and Fire, please!
I have to wonder what all these "think tank" employees have lined up for their next hustle. It would seem that they would be some of the first affected by the AI encroachment.
This is great stuff. Did codepink pay for any of Tim waltz trips to China?
Btw, this is a joke on my part but it is a serious question on who paid for all his trips
Maybe he got free trips like Sen Mark Kelly. Kelly met Giffords at an all-expense paid five-day retreat co-hosted by Young Leaders Forum and the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2003. Mark also participated in the 2004 & 2005 Young Leaders Forum conferences. He took a 2003 Forum banner with him on a 2006 space mission. He did considerable business in China after leaving the military in 2012. This tidbit along with others can be found in Trevor Loudon’s book Security Risk Senators Part 1, pub 2022.
Hmmm. We never hear this back story when that mouth is yapping on Legacy media channels. His status merely as a former astronaut seems his entire qualification. Well, that and his wife's unfortunate4 brain injury from having been shot. By a disgruntled Democrat - itself part of the story you never get.
The reporting should be much deeper on Code Pink. These are the people you see every time there's a "protest" and they are holding signs made 10 minutes before. They will be out for everything anti-American and are a propaganda arm of the CCP. When we bombed IRAN and there were small pop-up groups, those groups are there so that China can air to their people that America is in dysfunction and make them afraid of becoming like that. They fear protests like the ones in Iran. Check to see if those small protests were aired on Chinese State Media. They were.
Editors, how credible are guys like Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, basically the regulars on Judge Napolitano’s YouTube channel?
And that Chinese professor who’s gotten famous for predicting the war. What’s his deal?
I've usually found that the entities that have "Center" in their name are the most dangerous for the nation. They usually contend that they are non-partisan, but a cursory reading of their positions will prove otherwise.