Is the NY Times is a Right Wing Front Organization?

The NY Times is running a partisan campaign to attack Joe Biden and destroy the Democrats by creating the fiction that Joe Biden is too old to run.  Aside from being ageist, who gave the NY Times the right to decide who the Democrats will nominate to run for election?  They run their front page articles every damn day, an editorial masquerading as a news article.   

They run this same article, with small variations, every day.  

And of course the NY Times could not care less about reporting on Trump's 34 felony convictions, about how he is unqualified and dangerous as president, about how he will murder Ukraine, about how he has always been corrupt all these years in NY, about his racism, his sexism, his abuse of women.  No.  None of these things matter to the NY Times.  Nor does the NY Times care to report on the illegitimacy of the legal system which is failing to try Donald Trump for his crimes during the January 6 attack on our government.  Nor does the NY Times care one bit about the delays of the case in Florida.  Nor does the NY Times care about women bleeding out from miscarriages that the doctors and hospitals will not treat in a Red State.

I remember when SCOTUS threw the 2000 election to their right wing nut, W. Bush, which caused a trillion dollar war in Iraq and put Alito and Roberts on the Supreme Court.   Not one word of protest from this right-wing rag.  From the day the SCOTUS pissed on the constitution in public, not one word was said about the illegitimacy of the W. Bush administration, its wars, or its judiciary.

There are several mysteries here.  Why do people continue to think and to say that the NY Times is in some way a bastion of progressive thought, the primary outlet for the so called "liberal media"?  That is as obviously false as saying that the Jews control the media, a joke if I ever heard one.  The second mystery is why are they doing this?  Who is telling them to do this?  Well one obvious suspect is that it is the elites of Wall Street and possibly just the elites who run our government, or think they do.  I have heard that Wall Street is all in support of Trump, just like Silicon Valley hates Biden for daring to talk about regulating AI.  

I dont think I know why the NY Times wants to destroy Biden.  I am certainly cancelling my subscription and I am sure the NY Times will not care that I do so, not even a little bit.

A Midjourney impression of unused newspaper printing machinery

Why Does Our Media Keep Calling Manchin/Sinema Moderates?

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Dear REDACTED,

The press keeps calling Manchin and Sinema "moderate". Am I supposed to believe that our press is so stupid as to believe that? Or are they being paid to be stupid? I dont understand what is going on here. Manchin is a right wing Republican who for historical reasons (coal mining?) is in the Democratic party and Sinema is just a REDACTED who pulled the wool over the Democrats eyes, got elected, and serves her Republican masters who pay her well.  Our press is clearly useless, but are they really that stupid?

 

Sincerely.

Excellent Ranting Websites

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Many people think I spend too much time reading web sites that make me upset.  They are right of course.  Here is a list of such web sites for your benefit.

1. Pure rant

https://www.rawstory.com/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/

2. Often Ranting

https://slate.com/

https://www.salon.com/

3. Rarely Ranting

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/

https://www.vox.com/

This is a good list.  Please check them out!

Error Checking Is Now Mandatory

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It is a fact of our lives here in the USA that we all, right or left, have to be more careful about our news sources if we care about truth and reality.  There are a variety of reasons why this has become critical but a few of them are:

1. Deliberate manipulation on the part of the right has destroyed the few mechanisms in place to keep the press honest.

2. Important elements of the press are deliberately and explicitly dishonest (Fox News, the WSJ, etc).

3. The internet makes it very easy to create false news and spread it.  It may be impossible to remove deliberate errors.

4. Foreign actors and their intelligence services are manipulating the news to their advantage.

5. Various political leaders, particularly on the right, are colluding with these foreign actors for their own political purposes.

But whether you agree with this or not, and no matter where you stand on the political divide, if you want to know what is going on and perhaps set some limits on any discussion, there are some straightforward if sometimes annoying things you can do.

Here is one suggested list.

1. When you are making an argument about something, try to keep a particular source for your point at your fingertips.  This source should be as much as possible a credible and undeniable point that can be verified.  For example, whether or not you agree or disagree with Trump's immigration policy, the NPR reported

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump administration challenge of a lower court decision finding that the government failed to offer detained minors safe and sanitary conditions as required by the 1997 Flores settlement.

 In 2017, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee found that the government was violating that settlement by not providing safe and sanitary conditions when it held minors in conditions that deprived them of sleep — cold and over-crowded cells – and denied them access to food, water and basic hygiene.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/15/751634918/appeals-court-rules-detained-migrant-children-should-get-soap-sleep-clean-water

At this point, its not too relevant whether this is their (the Trump Administration's) policy.  What we are discussing is what a court ruled.

2. Beyond keeping objective sources at your disposal, you can check yourself if that is what the 9th US Circuit Court ruled.  You can do so by looking up their ruling online, or by using one of the fact checking services (more of these below).

3. If you feel that you do not have the skill or resources to check whether a story is true, you can use one of the two fact checking services.  These two services are politifact.com and snopes.com.  Use them.

4. If something remarkable has been printed, or is circulating on the Internet, you should be able to get corroboration from another source.  If it is only on rawstory.com or breitbart.com, and none of the other major services are carrying it, then wait a bit before you assume its true.

5. If you read something that is too good to be true (or the reverse), then be sure to check the sources even harder.  Likely it is too good to be true.

6. It is no longer enough to report something you heard that you believe is true, you have to have a source for it, a specific reference somewhere, that you can point to and can be refuted or confirmed.

7. Finally, it is not enough to point to a single piece of data without taking into account history and context.

This is just the start of what we have to do.  If someone is trying to make an argument and they dont have a source, and they dont understand the context, then you should tell them that you dont believe them as it is currently stated.  They wont like that but that doesnt matter anymore.

Qatar, Arms Deals, #45 Tweets and Reality

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We can count on our news media to superficially discuss any issue so that the ordinary reader, that is, someone who does not waste their time trying to figure out what is going on, will have no way of understanding a news event.

In this case, there are two events. First #45 tweets that Qatar is a bad country that sponors terrorism, bigly, or something. Second, the SECDEF announces that we are selling US $12 billion of Boeing F15Q air superiority fighters to Qatar.

Of course that doesnt make any sense but here are a few things most articles fail to mention.

First, at 36 F-15s one is no where near the price of $12 B, so I presume that this price includes the total cost of ownership over many years, training, parts, supplies, bribes, and other equipment and services not mentioned (e.g. intelligence related), etc. Second, our largest base in the area is in Qatar and it is out of there that the Central command operates. Third, this is the command that had to be moved out of Saudi Arabia because of course all Americans are infidels and Jews, and so Qatar "taking us in" was something of a favor, depending on how you look at it. Fourth, I would not be surprised to hear that Qatar does sponsor terrorism. Of course, so does Saudi Arabia. The hair's being split here may have something to do with whether it is official govt policy to sponsor "terrorism" or whether it is merely important wealthy individuals from these countries that do. Fifth, there has been for many years a defacto trade going on between us and many middle eastern countries which generally involves us sending them dollars for oil, but they then purchase from us a variety of expensive things, and of course what they mostly want is high tech military equipment. Sixth, I suspect that this issue of terrorism is code for a variety of other things such as the efforts of Iran to dominate the region and to destabilize the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Seventh, I think it is a weak argument to say that if we do not sell them these fighters that other nations will, but it is also true.

It would not surprise me if this deal is the result of promises made years ago. Qatar agrees to let us build an important regional base on their territory and in return they get to buy a variety of things from us. So whether we like it or not, this is likely to be a follow through on deals made in the Bush and Obama administration. Or at least that is my speculation.

Just a reminder that while the F-15 is an incredible airplane which when upgraded is still relevant, it is one thing to buy such a plane, it is another to use it well.

The point of this overly short post (many more things could be said) is that looking at the Tweet from #45 and then looking at a press release on an arms deal that happens a few days later tells us very little about what is going on beyond the already very apparent reality that we have as president someone who is not qualified for the post and has no idea what he is tweeting or what the implications or context really is. And why should he? He is just an overrated rich kid, real estate developer, and bully. What do you expect?

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/politics/qatar-f35-trump-pentagon/index.html

Behold.... This is Trump's America

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From someone named Egriff commenting on an article in the Guardian about a discovery in Egypt.

I met a traveller from a Western land,

Who said—“A vast and broken wall of stone

Stands in the desert. . . . Near it, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

Behold – this is Trump’s America;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Trump being hauled out of the desert

You can find the article in The Guardian at the link below and Egriff in the comments.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/look-on-my-works-ye-mighty-ozymandias-statue-found-in-mud

Michael Morell on Ed Snowden's Motives

I am not trying to convince anybody.  Everyone I know has already made up their mind about Ed Snowden and related matters.  This post is only for those who are probably cynical or worse about Mr. Snowden's motives.  If you are not, if you believe he is a saint, then move on, this is not for you.

The first comments I have found on the probable damage of the Snowden disclosures, what it will cost now and in the future, how he did it and why he did it are in an excerpt from a book by Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA and a member of the President's commission to analyze what happened and make recommendations.

I highly recommend that anyone interested in this topic should read the entire excerpt as it will go over some background concerning the recommendations made.

http://cryptome.org/2015/05/snowden-morell.pdf

I further think we should all read the entire report which was made public, and whose link can be found here. I have not read it yet.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf

Michael Morell's book on Amazon.com is at

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-War-Time-Terrorism-From/dp/1455585661

I also found interesting the discussion on the responsibility of the media in interpreting the releases, and their cavalier, irresponsible and simply wrong presentation of the facts. None of this is too surprising, the media is famously stupid about intelligence matters. I thought it was entertaining that he would include Glenn Greenwald in the list of journalists, because Mr. Greenwald is anything but a disinterested journalist.

I also appreciated his discussion of the theory that Ed Snowden thinks very highly of himself and felt that his genius had not been acknowledged by the CIA and NSA. I sympathize with that as I also feel very highly of myself and feel that my genius has not been acknowledged by the CIA and NSA as well. I hope that they come to their senses and acknowledge my genius before it is too late. Anything might happen and this time it will be all their fault.

This is the discussion about Ed Snowden's motives. If you are a Snowden lover, so convinced of your righteous indignation and of Saint Snowden's innocence, it will make hard reading and I recommend not reading it.  What would the point be of just annoying people?

Ok so I will hopefully avoid this topic as much as possible in the future.  Its no fun having strong opinions that cut you off from your friends, but that is what we have here.

Introducing Siberian Times and News of Massive Musk Oxen Baby Boom

When I despair of reading news of interest in our provincial and boring news media, I remember that often the most important news is local, and through the events in the lives of people in these fascinating and foreign venues the real humanity of the world is revealed.

Furthermore, when our major news outlets are so humorless except for especially selected “humor providers”, some of the people of the world recognize the odd situation they are in and play on it, usually with a straight face.

Such is the case with the very interesting and somewhat remote Siberian Times (www.siberiantimes.com).

Whenever I have visited the Siberian Times over the last few years, perhaps every six months or so, I have been rewarded with a series of articles and topics that are interesting and often well photographed.

Musk Oxen in a circle

In the current instantiation, we have articles about a baby boom among Musk Oxen, the secret mating rituals of rare Siberian leopards, an analysis about whether a recent meteor was shot down by a helpful UFO (with excellent comments), an excellent pictorial about a Siberian coal mine and an alarming article about out-of-control pond scum on Lake Baikal.

Comment about the Space Brothers

I have added the Siberian Times to the list of selected news media.

Musk Oxen

http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0225-baby-boom-within-worlds-biggest-collection-of-captive-musk-oxen/

Secret Mating Rituals of Siberian Leopards

http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0149-wonderful-footage-of-rare-big-cats-in-mating-ritual-captured-in-siberia/

UFO / Meteor Discussion (see comments at end)

http://siberiantimes.com/weird-and-wonderful/news-and-features/news/so-did-a-ufo-shoot-down-the-famous-chelyabinsk-meteorite-last-month/

Secrets of the Universe to be Sought from Lake Baikal

http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0228-secrets-of-the-universe-to-be-sought-from-deep-under-lake-baikal/

Down in the Siberian coal mine

Politics and Friendship

So I have a great friend in NY or I used to. We have known each other for decades but just in the last 5 years or so starting talking almost daily. A talented outsider artist, IMHO, we would discuss all sorts of important matters such as the stupidity of modern computer graphics and the failure of that movement, the importance of the Hollow Earth, Lovecraft, the Illuminati's role in modern society, Keats, Blake, Bulwer-Lytton and so forth.

My friend is well known for helping other people who are down. No one can figure out how he supports himself but among other things he is very frugal (but that is not enough). He has had some adversity in life but does not seem to notice. Like all my artist friends who are successful in some sense of that word, he works extremely hard, and is very productive. He has stood by friends in need on several different occasions that I am aware of even when it was not convenient (a test of character, in Southern terminology). Since I am impoverished because of my work and commitment to computer animation he helped me find a place to stay in NYC so that I could visit, which otherwise I could not afford. He spent a billion hours with me when I visited NY and really helped to make that trip great. His daily chats and emails would often cheer me up, and since I am currently ostracized and living in abject poverty, I enjoyed hearing from him. It helped to break the near total isolation.

And he is a die hard Republican.

Loved Romney, thought he would make a great president. Hates Obama more than he would hate Hitler. Benghazi this and Hillary that. Obamacare blah blah blah. Jews controlling the media, how much the Jews are hated, etc. I would hear this stuff daily, more or less, in chats on Google mail and by email. It was occasionally annoying but I enjoyed talking to him, he had high entertainment value. I presumed he was being occasionally sincere but often just provocative.

But he kept assuming he knew what I thought and that I was a typical lefty liberal, whatever that may mean. I kept telling him that he did not know what I thought, really. He did not realize that my third generation elitist Virginian reform Jewish atheist roots and the history of Orthodox and Hasidic rabbis in my family in the Eighteenth century or so, as well as my time at the RAND Corporation left me with somewhat eccentric and non-mainstream beliefs.

So one day, after reading about an hour of rants about Democratic villainy from his point of view I told him .0001 percent of what I believe. Just one time, after hearing this stuff from him literally every other day (if not every day) for years.

I told him what I believed on just one issue just one time.

That the Supreme Court pissed on the constitution in public in November 2000 when they installed their goon, Bush Jr, as president in a classic coup d'etat. That the NY Times was just a right-wing rag when it rolled over and did not even slightly object to this gross injustice thus revealing its true colors. That everything Bush did was therefore illegal. That every decision that the Supreme Court made since that black day needed to be reevaluated in light of this crime to see which of their decisions were legal and which needed to be overturned.

And he never talked to me again.

So what is the moral of our little story? I guess the moral is that you should never tell someone what you believe unless you are perfectly ok with them never talking to you again. It doesn't have to be fair, and it doesn't have to be reciprocal, that is the way it is.   We might also conclude something about how Republicans relate to opinions outside their cult, but we already knew that.

(Deprecated) News Providers, Exploding Batteries and the Subtle Nuance

[2-8-2013 Since I wrote this post, I have not read the information cited below anywhere else, so I am becoming more and more doubtful that it is true.  Thus this post is being deprecated]

As always when we at Global Wahrman come across examples of incompetence or stupidity, we have to ask if it is really incompetence or stupidity, or whether it is in fact incompetence AND stupidity or even worse, whether it is an example of how the Space Aliens are using hypnotic mind control as many suspect?

Take for example the latest problem with the Boeing 787 involving the exploding lithium-ion batteries. Second only to Islam for the bad-marketing-award of the last 20 years, lithium-ion batteries have been famously exploding in people's laptops (and laps) for years. So when one exploded on a 787, fortunately on the ground, a picture of the battery exploded, so to speak, across the internet.

Oh, there is one little detail about this picture that I forgot to mention ... 

But there was actually a little detail about that picture of the exploded battery, a subtle nuance one might say, really barely worth mentioning: most of the news articles, well all of them but one actually, failed to tell you was that this is a picture of a battery that had been hit by an ax when the firemen came into the plane. I hope it wasn't a metal ax because that could have had a shocking result, ha ha, but maybe that is the real reason firemen wear rubber work gloves.

Well, yes, it turns out, this is just a technical detail, that if you hit a battery that is distressed for some reason with an ax, hard, it doesn't surprise me that the battery might explode. In general, we recommend to not hit a distressed battery, or any battery at all actually, with an ax: that would be the recommended procedure. The battery is much less likely to explode under those circumstances.

So whatever is going on about the Boeing 787 and their extensively tested lithium-battery (no sarcasm here, it was extensively tested), its not about them just going off and exploding.

Unless you hit it with an ax, of course.

One might wonder if the news organizations thought about the issue that they might have something to do with the fate of the many, many American jobs that lie hanging in the balance on the perception of the 787 in the marketplace?

The answer is no, of course not, they don't give a fuck. They just want to make a buck like the National Inquirer and with all the integrity and relentless attention to detail that the National Inquirer applies to their articles ("Did Space Aliens Steal My Baby and Turn It Into Tom Cruise?"), but with less honesty (the National Inquirer is clear and upfront about their motivations).  Like everything else in America, its not about doing good work, its about lying and stealing the money.