Red White & Blind

It’s been a blast appearing on podcasts and independent media shows in the weeks since I finished the manuscript. If you’d like to get a sneak peek into the revelations of Red, White & Blind before it’s published, listen today to one of my podcast appearances listed below.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how I did and your advice on how I could improve. I was nervous on the first podcast, probably too casual on the second, and failed to stand up for myself on the third. But since those first few, I believe I’ve improved at dropping in when touchy topics arise and proclaiming without fear the key points of the book.

As for the book itself, I can’t wait to get it into your hands. The publication date will be announced very soon. Consider these podcasts a teaser of what five years of research into the history of media distortion and propaganda have taught me. Our media system is deceptive, and it’s a huge problem as we live through elections, pandemics, and wars, but we’re also living in a time with a New Enlightenment dawning around us. We can know more of the truth about world events than any humans living before us—if we build the media consciousness to navigate the news and penetrate the censorship plaguing social media.

The diverse range of shows that have hosted me means you probably get to choose an interview hosted by someone with whom you agree (although I always recommend a Balanced Media Diet). I’ve been interviewed by left-leaning hosts (Tarabuster, Dig on America), right-leaning hosts (Deprogram, Grimerica), hosts seeking concealed truths (Unbridled Minds, Forbidden Knowledge News) and hosts just wanting to interview interesting people (Ripple Effect).

I’ve listed each show below with a snippet of its self-description and a brief summary of how I think it went, so you can choose your own adventure. I find each one listed here to be worthwhile, but if you want to listen to just one, I’d recommend Unbridled Minds or The Ripple Effect.

I’ve been writing here lately all about the covid treatments and the covid injections. Did you maybe, perhaps, sort of discover that you read something here that you hadn’t read elsewhere? 

My guess is that if you don’t get your news from a broad variety of sources, you’ve likely received some unfamiliar information from me.

But is it the truth? Wouldn’t it be nice to find a true news source, a media outlet that simply reported the unbiased truth about each day’s events? 

Yes, that would be nice. 

It would also be nice if Santa Claus were real. The problem is, every news source has biases — this is a focus of a whole chapter in my book. There is no one single source that can be trusted on everything. Even if I could write emails like this on a daily basis, getting only my perspective wouldn’t be ideal either. 

And there isn’t only bias to consider. As I mentioned at the top, there is now censorship too, that demon of every repressive government and power structure. 

We have pundits on CNN openly advocating censorship of independent media. We have Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez, for whom I had so much respect as recently as a year ago, directing  supporters to censor friends on social media. Would you like to live in a world where an email like this one is deleted by Google prior to arriving in your inbox? If we listen to corporate media today, it’s closer than you think. As in that CNN clip, it will be discussed in corporate media as a way to “protect people” from “violent extremism,” and just like that our ability to communicate freely will be gone. That’s the trend, a return to the Dark Ages where only anointed clerics of business and high priests of government can speak on matters of “science.” The crucial drive of the Enlightenment was leaving the Dark Ages behind by taking science and the search for truth out of the hands of the powerful; we should never tolerate regression on this.

It’s an enormous issue, this so-called “vaccine.” It’s also an obvious place to notice the diverging media worlds that exist today almost like parallel universes. In independent media, you’ll often hear dozens of reasons to be hesitant if not downright suspicious about this rushed billion-dollar pharmaceutical that isn’t FDA approved, uses brand-new technology, and skipped normal phases of safety trials. In the corporate media world, on the other hand, this injection is clearly the best thing since sliced bread and the tiny fringe of weirdos who even question jabbing this miracle cocktail deep into their muscles tomorrow need not be taken seriously.

Let’s dig in.

An Experimental Therapeutic Injection

First, I will be referring to the shots developed so far as “experimental injections.” We could also call them “experimental gene therapy injections” or “experimental chemotherapy.” The word “experimental” is necessary as this product has received only an emergency authorization, isn’t formally approved, and hasn’t undergone normal testing. It fits only the FDA’s description of “investigational” or “experimental.” I don’t find the word “vaccine” to be merited since none of these injections prevents infection or transmission. Thus none of them fits the legal, public health, or common-sense definition of a vaccine. A “vaccine” is something that provides a public health benefit, immunity, rather than just making an individual feel better, and this injection doesn’t even claim to prevent infection or stop transmission. That’s the first and biggest thing here: the corporate media barely mentions that this experimental injection does not stop you from getting the virus. If they actually mentioned this, it would make some of their suggestions around requiring the injection ridiculous. 

Nor does the therapeutic injection contain the virus; rather it uses genetic information to instruct the body’s cells to themselves manufacture virus proteins, and it attempts to reduce symptoms caused by those proteins (not the virus itself). It’s a synthetic new cocktail that is injected into the body — thus bypassing the body’s normal exterior defenses to foreign pathogens — to deliver genetic information to your cells. It has no long term trials, and drugmakers have no liability for death or disease it causes. Imagine a new experimental chemotherapy regimen and you’re in the right ballpark. It’s synthetic, so there will be side effects, we just don’t know what all of them will be yet.

So what’s going to happen?

For the drugmakers it’s a giant roulette wheel with no losing spaces. Their stock is up; they’re all in on seeing how far this goes.

Welcome to the era of fake news.

The number of media sources available to Americans has exploded over the past two decades with the growth of the internet. These myriad sources present the very same event in often dramatically different ways, which can be fascinating. The problem is, each source often labels all other sources as deceptive or even malicious by denouncing them as “fake news.”

This creates a dilemma: Either accept one news source as the arbiter of truth and let it distinguish the fake from the genuine and thereby filter the news for you, or read broadly despite the warnings and trust your own intelligence to determine the veracity of the news you read.

Choosing the first path — which many do — is creating increasingly distinct news bubbles in this country which in turn lead to social media “echo chambers” where a small and dwindling range of perspectives is available.

This guide is for those choosing the second path.

(more…)

This is not what you’re expecting. In other years at this time I’ve sent you extensive breakdowns of every important race, measure, and proposition Northern Californians are voting on.

This year is different. Politics have turned topsy-turvy, I haven’t had time to research more than a handful of races, and I’m spending what little free time I have writing a book about media distortion, propaganda, and fake news. It’s a fascinating topic. But a number of you have reached out recently and asked for my take on current events and the election. Rather than one long post, I’m covering the election in this post, and my thoughts on the craziness in the media in another post.

This 2020 Election

PRESIDENT

Yes there is this race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and some never-mentioned third-party candidates. I watched the debates, and I’ve been watching American presidential politics closely for over 20 years, and I can honestly say I’ve never been less excited about the candidates. This must be rock bottom. Even the Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, isn’t particularly good. The Libertarian, Jo Jorgensen, might just be the best of the bunch, which is saying very little. But you’re probably not reading this far to learn about my weak preference for Jo Jorgensen. Perhaps you’ve already voted anyway. Or perhaps you believe in QAnon or Russiagate and your mind is already made up. Our brutally rigged political process means only Trump and Biden have a chance of winning. We all know that. And they’re both very, very bad candidates to lead this country, so bad that the infuriating and surprising truth is…  I don’t have a strong preference between them. That’s right. Maybe this isn’t what you expected, maybe this even enrages you; this country is so divided right now that both sides see the other side as an existential threat to everything sacred about life. So, before you shame me or others who don’t see it the way you do, before I lay out the nearly infinite reasons each man is unfit to lead, I’ll let you know I do see reasons for supporting both Biden and Trump, and I’ll list them so that maybe, just maybe, we can all understand each other a bit more and rage and fear a little less. I hope you’ll consider that there are reasons to support that other old, white, corrupt, racist, rapist — the one that you don’t support.

I’m spending what little free time I have writing a book about media distortion, propaganda, and fake news. It’s a fascinating topic. But a number of you have reached out recently and asked for my take on current events and this upcoming election. Rather than one giant post, I’m putting my thoughts on the election in another post so that this can stay slightly smaller.

The election is crucial, but it’s even more important is to see that today our great nation is suffering from media distortion run amok. The mainstream corporate media has been an utter nightmare this year. There’s so little honest reporting it’s as if every type of distortion I’m writing about in my book is happening this year right right before our eyes. Or maybe I just see it more clearly because I’m looking.

So, the most important thing to do in 2020: Broaden and balance your media diet! I get specific on how to do that below.

In my forthcoming book, I document the levels of distortion used to sell the Iraq War in 2003, the perspectives suppressed, the journalists silenced and fired. This distortion today in 2020 about this virus and these crippling lockdowns has already blown that era out of the water. I have been astounded at the level of censorship and bias in the mainstream media.