The piece three paragraphs down was the lead story in the London Times this morning. The Thunderer has had its low points in an otherwise distinguised history going back 235 years, but publishing this piece of half-baked amateur-night drivel has plunged the paper through the bottom of the barrel and well on the way to the Earth’s core.
What makes this fake-news-about-fake-news drama something from the pits of lousy journalism – an example of the old military intelligence whore gone senile – is the untutored use of corny phraseology alongside the ignorant promotion of the impossible.
Phrases like ‘contemptible online ploy’, ‘the potential to damage not just the Oxford programme but the wider global effort to protect against the virus’, ‘This sort of lie fundamentally harms all of us around the world’, ‘passed to The Times by someone involved in the campaign who was concerned at the damage it would do to public health efforts’, ‘a small part of a long-running, undeclared quasi-war against the West’ don’t just ring out in the article…for they don’t so much ring, as hit you over the head with the bell.
It really was Enid Blyton meets Dennis Wheatley circa 1937 – an American comic strip at the height of the Cold War penned by a klunky defector from Izvestya. With every passing para of gung-ho Boys Own Book of Russki Evildoings, I kept expecting to read, “We of the peace-loving Central Praesidium of the pacifist NATO defenders dedicated to Truth and the Flag” as an intro to yet more lowest common denominator claptrap.
But the most glaring flaw in this Janet & John Go Bear Baiting is the reality of what the Russian propaganda was attacking. The Oxford ‘Recovery’ programme is run by Peter Horby – a liar and cheat who has done his best to denigrate the best Covid19 management drug (HCQ cocktail) we have by misusing it in a trial that unnecessarily killed over 20 patients. Some facts:
- The Times ‘splash’ from today mentions Astrazenica as Oxford’s preferred supplier of vaccine. Horby has taken funding from Astrazenica in the past.
- The Astrazenica trials are going nowhere, and have been stopped twice following ‘patient reactions’.
- The Russians are right to say that the Oxford trials are shrouded in secrecy: Horby has been given the go-ahead to conduct trials on humans with unregulated drugs.
The epithet here, my friends, is “People in rice-paper houses shouldn’t throw boulders”.
But Izvestya speak is being inserted into every Western news medium pretty much everywhere. The tone is always a bizarre mélange of naivety and I Am Ever So Holy. Let’s look at how the Washington Post has been ‘handling’ the continuing stories surrounding allegations of Joe Biden “in action”, and corruption (using Daddy’s position) by his devoted son Hunter.
‘what they were saying is actually so ludicrous as to be head-scratching and bordering on mentally ill’
‘dangerous, wildly fantastical conspiracies that could lead to violence’
‘QAnon’s followers believe that Trump is trying to save the world from a cabal of satanic paedophiles that includes Democratic politicians and Hollywood celebrities. It has been linked to several violent acts since 2018 including at least one alleged murder.’
Now let’s take a look at the New York Times, America’s twin of the UK Guardian in its ability to accuse others of using fake news while peddling cart-fulls of the stuff itself:
‘The Biden campaign on Wednesday rejected a New York Post report about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter…the story cited an email Mr. Pozharskyi allegedly sent to Hunter Biden thanking him for “giving me an opportunity to meet your father” and to spend “some time together”’.
Little teensy bit of censorship there: the NYT missed out the part about Hunter serving on the board of a major Ukrainian energy company. And there’s nothing “alleged” about the email.
But that didn’t stop this absolute cracker from the social media goblins about the Post story:
‘Facebook said on Wednesday that it had decided to limit the distribution of the story on its platform so it could fact-check the claims. Twitter said it was blocking the article because it included people’s personal phone numbers and email addresses, which violated their privacy rules‘.
Hahaha, doncha love it, eh? Facebook did not fact-check a single tweet anywhere during 2017 about baseless attacks on Trump alleging his indebtedness to Russian banks. And social media collect for selling on every element of our privacy for the use of everyone and anyone from Walmart via Wells Fargo to the NSA and MI6.
For we are ever so without sin, O Lord. This is why we use syntax like ‘utterly ludicrous suggestion’, ‘nobody sane doubts that’, ‘mad nutjob theories about the Clintons’, ‘bizarre and unsupported theories about’ in everything we write.
Rupert Murdoch bought Times Newspapers in 1981. Within six years, a team of etymologists concluded that he had reduced the reading age level from 25 to 14. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the key stat is now minus 56.
But before closing tovarischi, let me make one thing crystal clear.
I don’t trust the Russian élite, I don’t like Trump as a human being, I think Vladimir Putin is a brilliant tactician and weird, I think NATO is an aggressive tool of the CIA (as is the IMF), I don’t give any credence to anything emanating from the Beijing Politburo, I think the EU to be a democracy inverter and teller of Orwellian lies, and I think Europe is a wonderful place being screwed up by control-freak blinkered bureaucrats and pernicious US Shadow State clodhopping jerks.
I think Boris Johnson is a fat greedy, easily corrupted fibber, Keir Starmer would be perfect in the role of the bureaucrat who won’t tell Mr K that of which he is accused, and the entire UK governing class wants to be part of the upcoming Earthly hegemony struggle.
I don’t.
I want to be a sort of offshore Switzerland divided into direct democracy cantons in which you can say whatTF you like about anything short of criminal libel.
I want to be an unaligned pacifist country. The Swiss have their mountains, we have our seas. We have nuclear capacity and thus the status awarded to those who know people shouldn’t mess with us. Our deterrent is our commitment to peace.
From Day One, The Slog has had this visual on its Home Page:
I like ordinary Americans and Europeans. I nearly married a Chinese girl. I have consorted with Indians, Russians, Irish colleens, Scots, Welsh, Vietnamese, Jewish, Greek Italian and Finnish ladies. I like most people, really. I wish everyone well on this planet who wants to leave me alone in the context of an effective and benign legal system.
By “left alone” I mean not being asked to sign up for somebody else’s plan for domination based on engorged ego.
That’s it, really: that’s me.
My comment tonight is this: if the “Free West” is incapable of defending its alleged beliefs without resorting to playground levels of yah-boo-sucks and total control of the media, then the West is a spent force when it comes to human progress.
My background view of macro events has, for a long time, been one of “a plague on both your houses”.
The 3% are forcing me and millions of others to bring that outlook to the forefront of citizen thinking.
The Slog 