O/T:- Trump Presidency 2.0 [hic sunt dracones]

[Jampie]

Andy, who is Matt Orfalea? Are you saying we shouldn't trust him? Ok.

I don't trust Jeffrey Sachs either.

Regarding the pipeline explosion: You are convinced it was a US job and see everything through that lens. It probably wasn't a US job (what did they get out of it? The pipleline was already shut down) and so your view on it is heavily distorted by your belief (without evidence).

Regarding news sources, no source is 100% trust for me. Australia's ABC and the BBC are pretty high tho - when they report a fact they generally get it right, and if you email them a correction they generally correct the article. Reuters and AP are generally pretty high too but not infallible.

ABC and BBC will sometimes avoid reporting a fact if the fact counteracts one of their pet narratives, and that knocks off more than a few points on the trustometer for me.

On the other end of the scale is any murdoch press outlet - they almost all operate as propaganda.

Somewhere in the middle but still low trust are the other US commercial news services - CNN, MSNBC etc. During the Biden presidency it seemed like 80% or more of their content was about Trump still.

[andy6025]

Andy, who is Matt Orfalea? Are you saying we shouldn't trust him? Ok.

I don't trust Jeffrey Sachs either.

Regarding the pipeline explosion: You are convinced it was a US job and see everything through that lens. It probably wasn't a US job (what did they get out of it? The pipleline was already shut down) and so your view on it is heavily distorted by your belief (without evidence).

Regarding news sources, no source is 100% trust for me. Australia's ABC and the BBC are pretty high tho - when they report a fact they generally get it right, and if you email them a correction they generally correct the article. Reuters and AP are generally pretty high too but not infallible.

ABC and BBC will sometimes avoid reporting a fact if the fact counteracts one of their pet narratives, and that knocks off more than a few points on the trustometer for me.

On the other end of the scale is any murdoch press outlet - they almost all operate as propaganda.

Somewhere in the middle but still low trust are the other US commercial news services - CNN, MSNBC etc. During the Biden presidency it seemed like 80% or more of their content was about Trump still.

Andy, who is Matt Orfalea? Are you saying we shouldn't trust him? Ok.

Matt Orfalea is the name of the YouTube channel that produced the video I posted in my last clip. And of course we shouldn?t trust him. Don?t waste my time with such obvious deductions. It really makes you such a third rate debater.

[QUOTE=Jampie;40710182
Regarding the pipeline explosion: You are convinced it was a US job and see everything through that lens. It probably wasn't a US job (what did they get out of it? The pipleline was already shut down) and so your view on it is heavily distorted by your belief (without evidence).[/QUOTE]

Debating the pipeline sabotage with you would be for entertainment purposes, and right now that wouldn?t much entertain me. See comment above for further clarification.

Regarding news sources, no source is 100% trust for me. Australia's ABC and the BBC are pretty high tho - when they report a fact they generally get it right, and if you email them a correction they generally correct the article. Reuters and AP are generally pretty high too but not infallible.

I?ll tell you a little story about the BBC and how it really opened my eyes to how deep and thick the bullsht in the MSM is. Of course most of us claim to perceive news corporations, public and/or private, to be biased or slanted, to favour certain partisan narratives over others, etc., but this really spoke to me as to how far they are willing to unashamedly and completely manipulate their audiences by knowingly spewing lies.

It was around noon or 1 oclock in the fall of 2001. I was in my mid 20s living in London. The twin towers had already been brought down, Osama Bin Laden had been fingered as the culprit, and the US were ready to exact their revenge on the Taliban with support from most of the world, including in no small part from Russia.

However, tensions were high and given a few factors such as its highly mountainous terrain and a long history of having successfully repelled infallible invaders, it was by no means 100% certain that the coalition led by our yankee friends would succeed. As we know, it ultimately did not.

Anyways, the bombing campaign that our western powers are so well known for was well underway but it was soon time for the ground invasion. Everyone was nervous as to how easy or difficult it would be, and how many American lives would be lost in the endeavour. It goes without saying that Afghani lives don?t ever count.

Introducing The Northern Alliance - a group of anti-Taliban rebels left over from the Soviet-Afghan war, who had deep ties and support from Russia. Putin offered them up as useful tools to aid the Americans in their mission. Led by Hamid Karzai, who would go on to become the first president after the invasion, they were to spearhead ground operations on Americas behalf.

And so this brings us to the BBC with a team of reporters embedded among the Northern Alliance on the eve of ground operations, witnessing and doing a piece on a final training operation they are conducting, only several days before going to war. The BBC captured and played footage of their tanks and other equipment, soldiers running up a hill with AKs popping off, as well as them running through the stereotypical jungle gym obstacle course that we typically think of when imagining eastern training camps, terrorist or otherwise.

The BBC narrator, however, told a very bleak account. I am paraphrasing here, of course, but my memory of it is vivid. This is how it went:

(Quote) Here we are with the Northern Alliance, a ragtag outfit of Afghani rebels upon whom the Americans and their partners are hinging their hopes to spearhead the ground invasion to topple the Taliban. Today we witnessed a live fire training exercise on the eve of battle and what we witnessed does not bode well for them. They are poorly experienced, poorly organized, poorly led, poorly trained, and their moral is very low. Their equipment consists of a few old tanks left over from the Soviet-Afghan war, half of which does not work. Their live fire training exercise was a fiasco in which they even managed to accidentally shoot one of their own. It will be a wonder if they are able to achieve their objectives, and an even greater wonder as to how the Americans and their partners are relying on them to accomplish anything. (End Quote).

I was quite surprised to hear this report. It certainly painted a bleak picture of Americas new found Afghani allies. When 6 oclock rolled around on the same day I tuned back into the BBC to watch the report again, as they would surely replay it for their dinner audience. And so they did. The video footage was exactly the same, but what is this? The narration over top was the exact same voice, but what he reported was entirely different. Paraphrasing once again, it went something like this:

(Quote) Here we are with the battle hardened Northern Alliance - Americas new found Afghani allies who have been carefully selected to spearhead the ground invasion to topple the Taliban. We are fortunate to witness a live fire training exercise as they prepare to receive the order to begin operations. They are an experienced group of well trained fighters who are chomping at the bit to reclaim their country. They even have tanks! While there was a brief mishap during their live fire training exercise in which a soldier was wounded, they are eager to get operations underway and are pouring over maps and carefully laying plans to make their dreams a reality. Etc. (end quote).

It was a complete Annalena Baerbock 360! I was stunned. Only a few hours before they had told a completely different story. This is scandalous and will undoubtedly be exposed! Over the next several days I kept checking other news outlets to see if any of them caught on to the blatant change in narrative coming from the BBC. Surely this would be an opportunity for them to discredit the BBC and pump out their own chests to show how they are more reliable. But no? not a peep from them. They all pedalled the same optimistic narrative on their newfound heroes, with no mention of the BBCs about face.

While of course this particular new item is no big deal in the grand scheme of anything, it really impacted my views on the media, not just as a dogmatic abstraction where we proudly pronounce that we do not really trust the news, but as a lived experience as if we witnessed our own pocket being picked, we know the culprit and caught him red handed, but had absolutely no recourse to justice. As George Bush famously butchered the phrase; fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well, you are not going to fool me again.

Unless it is a local story about a cat up a tree, or it is a rare occasion when they appear to contradict their own masters then I do not trust any of them. They get a big fat 0% from me.

Since then I have seen other similar occurrences. My next favourite is when I watched an old video of Donald Trump musing that if he ever did run for president then he would do so as as Republican because Republicans are the dumbest group of voters because you could tell them anything you want and they would believe it.

Once he announced his candidacy to be the GOP nomination for President, the video was scrubbed from the internet and replaced with supposed fact checking website such as snopes and others claiming that no such quote ever came from him because People Magazine never existed in 1988. I did manage to track down the link the YouTube video in which I saw it, which obviously has nothing to do with People Magazine, but it came up This Video No Longer Exists.

We really do live in a Matrix.

[SwalePie]

......

We really do live in a Matrix.

There's literally zero point to debating you now as you're so far down the rabbit hole you've selected. Obviously I respect your right to believe whatever you want to believe Andy, so good luck with it all.

[Jampie]

Andy... from what debate about the pipeline are we abstaining, exactly? Our "Debate" consistently runs like this:

Andy: The Americans did it.
Jampie: What evidence of that is there? And why would they do it? The pipeline was shut down
Andy: *3-6 months of silence*
Andy: The Americans did it.
*sequence repeats*

Regarding your BBC story: entirely plausible and believable to me. Sounds like a case of government interference in BBC's editorial "independence", such as it exists. Personally I don't get the 0% though. Should that knock it down a peg and make you skeptical of BBC articles whenever they contradict convenient UK government narratives? Sure. But by golly, it doesn't put them below random youtubers or the bloody Kremlin, does it? Yikes.

I just don't think you can conclude, based on a handful of instances where the BBC did some BS, that the entire factual edifice they present is fabricated. That doesn't even make sense.

[andy6025]

Andy... from what debate about the pipeline are we abstaining, exactly? Our "Debate" consistently runs like this:

Andy: The Americans did it.
Jampie: What evidence of that is there? And why would they do it? The pipeline was shut down
Andy: *3-6 months of silence*
Andy: The Americans did it.
*sequence repeats*

Regarding your BBC story: entirely plausible and believable to me. Sounds like a case of government interference in BBC's editorial "independence", such as it exists. Personally I don't get the 0% though. Should that knock it down a peg and make you skeptical of BBC articles whenever they contradict convenient UK government narratives? Sure. But by golly, it doesn't put them below random youtubers or the bloody Kremlin, does it? Yikes.

I just don't think you can conclude, based on a handful of instances where the BBC did some BS, that the entire factual edifice they present is fabricated. That doesn't even make sense.

The video I posted shows claims by many American politicians, including Joe Biden, saying they wanted to put an end to the pipeline. I will leave you to decipher for yourself the obvious motivations behind their own claims. Seymour Hersh also wrote an article detailing how it was done that I am sure you have read.

And I did not say everything the BBC say is fabricated. I said that I do not trust any of it at face value, with the exceptions I already noted. When someone is proven to be a contemptuous liar, as you have admitted you believe the media and politicians are, then even if you claim to trust them to tell the truth roughly 80% of the time, how can you know which of their claims fall under the 80% and which fall under the 20%? It is only logical to be sceptical of 100% of it. That does not mean that 100% is fabricated, it means that 100% is subject to possible doubt.

Or, like Swale, you can throw logic out the window and believe whatever narratives your masters tell you in full confidence that you could never be fooled. As Samuel Clemens famously said, it is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled!

[SwalePie]

Or, like Swale, you can throw logic out the window and believe whatever narratives your masters tell you in full confidence that you could never be fooled. As Samuel Clemens famously said, it is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled!

Or, like Andy, you can throw logic out of the window and believe whatever narratives your masters tell you in full confidence that you could never be fooled. Andy chooses to believe the Kremlin's version of reality. I prefer others. Don't forget that your Clemens quote regarding fooling people also works both ways Andy.

I don't believe everything any particular medium or source tells me, that would make me a fool. I do, however, carefully select which media are deemed most trustworthy by the most informed people on such matters. Interestingly, the BBC tends to feature at, or near, the top of those lists and research results, particularly on a global basis.

It's a very sensible idea to question sources' validity and verity. It isn't a good idea to automatically believe or disbelieve them. That applies to the BBC, The Grauniad, The Telegraph and, obviously, to The Kremlin and it's networks.

[HeroPie1862]

The best way to get news is to read reuters or AP, then make your own choice.

Branded news will always have an agenda, and biased thinking will then lead itself to confirmation bias so you either read news from both sides of the spectrum or read neutral news.

Edit: This requires you to have critical thinking skills and not wanting to be spoon fed.

[Jampie]

The video I posted shows claims by many American politicians, including Joe Biden, saying they wanted to put an end to the pipeline. I will leave you to decipher for yourself the obvious motivations behind their own claims. Seymour Hersh also wrote an article detailing how it was done that I am sure you have read.

Nope, haven't read the article by Freegore Slarsh or whoever. Is there evidence in it?

The pipeline was shut down. What would the US gain from destroying a shut down pipeline? You have never answered this rather fundamental question.

You want me to believe... politicians now? No, wait, down below you say I shouldn't... so only when they agree with the kremlin narrative?

These statements the pollies made about the pipeline, what was the context? Were they made before the war? Was it about worrying that germany was too reliant on Russian gas? Those concerns were borne out weren't they...

And I did not say everything the BBC say is fabricated. I said that I do not trust any of it at face value, with the exceptions I already noted. When someone is proven to be a contemptuous liar, as you have admitted you believe the media and politicians are, then even if you claim to trust them to tell the truth roughly 80% of the time, how can you know which of their claims fall under the 80% and which fall under the 20%? It is only logical to be sceptical of 100% of it. That does not mean that 100% is fabricated, it means that 100% is subject to possible doubt.

That's a relief, you sound marginally saner to me when you say that. A minute ago we were living in a matrix though. That was disconcerting.

To answer your question, like you (paragraph above you, not Neo-Andy), I read an article and compare it with my knowledge of the world, other sources, the context, and the possible motivations of the authors, editors etc. Like most adults I guess. An article, no matter who writes it, is just a datapoint to me. More datapoints means a clearer picture. But yeah, generally a BBC datapoint is a hell of a lot stronger than a murdoch press one or a corpo-owned news one or some random video by some random guy. But no source is infallible.

Or, like Swale, you can throw logic out the window and believe whatever narratives your masters tell you in full confidence that you could never be fooled. As Samuel Clemens famously said, it is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled!

Who are my masters? What are you talking about? Are we back in the matrix now?

[MarcusCole]

The best way to get news is to read reuters or AP, then make your own choice.

Branded news will always have an agenda, and biased thinking will then lead itself to confirmation bias so you either read news from both sides of the spectrum or read neutral news.

Edit: This requires you to have critical thinking skills and not wanting to be spoon fed.

Agree with this but even those two have slipped up on occasion but they are far better than most. The left wing media lie about things just as does the right.

[andy6025]

Or, like Andy, you can throw logic out of the window and believe whatever narratives your masters tell you in full confidence that you could never be fooled. Andy chooses to believe the Kremlin's version of reality. I prefer others. Don't forget that your Clemens quote regarding fooling people also works both ways Andy.

Except that you have failed to show that I take the Kremlin version of reality at face value. I do not think I have ever posted a link to the Kremlin on this website. Can you show that I have?

It goes without saying that we are all susceptible to deception, and of course that includes me. But thank you nevertheless for arriving at that obvious conclusion.

I don't believe everything any particular medium or source tells me, that would make me a fool. I do, however, carefully select which media are deemed most trustworthy by the most informed people on such matters.

Who, pray tell, are these most informed people? Is it the supposed expert guests on news programs such as the ones assembled in the clip I posted above? As shown, they certainly are not adverse to telling either bald faced porkies or being so stupid that they cannot tell their absurd claims from reality. Are they the experts you trust? If not, then whom?

It's a very sensible idea to question sources' validity and verity. It isn't a good idea to automatically believe or disbelieve them. That applies to the BBC, The Grauniad, The Telegraph and, obviously, to The Kremlin and it's networks.

That is indeed a great principle to follow. But when have you ever read or watched a Kremlin source? I would bet my bottom dollar that you have not tuned into or read a single one in the past 6 months. And yet here you are automatically dismissing them in violation of your own claimed principle. It is as I said above - people tend to believe in abstract theory that they are fairly critical of sources, and yet they consistently violate their own principles. Me thinks thou doth protest too much!