Tony Brasunas

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.

It’s overwhelming, isn’t it, this sudden change in American life? It’s been a month now, and it’s utterly thrown me off balance. I’ve been unable to put my thoughts together, and when I’ve tried to write I’ve often found my ideas out of date by the next day.

But as the number of cases in the United States has swelled to somewhere around 0.1% of the population, approximately the remaining 99.9% of us are suffering from hypochondria, fear, and panic about our health, our job security, or our family. This is partly because the corporate media has been on full-scale freak-out mode for the entire month, and while it is important to be informed, it isn’t healthy to be in the constant state of anxiety and fear the mainstream media channels apparently cannot resist instilling in us. So today I’m finally writing, from the perspective of the 99.9%.

There’s actually some very good news to discuss, as well as some bad news to more thoroughly understand, and there’s some other news, some troubling developments I’m calling “ugly.”

So here’s what I’m calling the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about this whole pandemic, trying to put the good news and the bad news into perspective. Think of it as a summary of where we are today in this bizarre and hopefully short chapter in American history.

THE GOOD

Well, to start off, some really good news about this virus has emerged recently, if there can ever be “good news” about a virus. I’ve been tracking several streams of data for weeks, from a variety of sources, including raw numbers, projections about new cases and deaths, and news about transmission, treatments, and cures. All of it took a turn for the better this week.

(more…)

There are thousands, perhaps millions, of voters who are still undecided in this Democratic Primary, voters who support the changes Bernie Sanders proposes to make for our country but have concerns about him as well.

Let’s look at the two biggest concerns that I hear about Bernie’s campaign:

1. That he won’t work well with others in government.
2. That he’ll hurt down-ballot races in the general election.

Does Bernie Collaborate?

How does Bernie Sanders work with others in government when he’s in power? One of the easiest and most obvious things to examine is the eight years he was Mayor of Burlington, when he was in fact head of a government. It was a while ago, but there are some real parallels with today. He narrowly defeated an entrenched establishment to become Mayor, and there were Republicans (and some Democrats) in the city council determined to stop him at every turn.

What transpired during his administration was in fact quite remarkable. He articulated grand plans for revitalizing areas of the waterfront, increasing participation in government, and improving the city— so that everyone knew what he wanted. The power of a repeatedly-articulated grand vision shouldn’t be underestimated when attempting to make structural change, but what was equally important was that he then compromised and collaborated with Republicans and developers repeatedly to get 75% or 85% or 90% of what he wanted accomplished. Vermont was largely a Republican state at the time, but he won over working class conservatives as well as liberals and progressives, and Sanders is a major reason the state has become reliably Democratic over the past two decades. In some instances, when he couldn’t change a city policy that he believed needed to change, he went directly to the people and through organizing and rallies, convinced lawmakers to do the right thing.

(more…)