Fake News

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The Comb Over must be reading a chapter of Mein Kampf every night before he goes to bed.  Actually I don’t think the Comb Over ever read a book in his life.  He’s probably got the abridged Audible version which he pirated so he doesn’t have to give Jeff Bezos a nickel.  Nix that, he probably doesn’t even realise that Audible is owned by Amazon unless he saw it on the State Media Fox & Freunde.

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Oberfuhrer Heinrich Hannity

Anyway the reason I say this is he seems to add a new facet to his already revolting personality each day in order to make him look even more like Adolf Hitler, or his alter ego and uck buddy Party Secretary Josef Stalin, sorry I mean “President” dictator Vladimir Putin.  Today’s Comb Over Twitter rant involves targeting the Media (whatever that means, I guess it would include me too) as the “enemy of the state.”  Is he just cutting and pasting these Tweets straight out of Mein Kampf or is he thinking about it at all?  Strike that, he never had an original thought in his life.

The Comb Over apparently asked for an “off the record” meeting with the editor of the New York Times on July 20th about the hostility of the Times to the Fourth Reich which the orange-lidded lying weasel subsequently put on the record by referring to the meeting in a Twitter rant about the “fake news enemy of the state dying newspaper media.”  The Times was left with no recourse except to rebut the lies the Comb Over spread about the meeting and state its own view that it would continue reporting the truth as it sees it and welcomed the Comb Over to attack the Times in any way he felt inclined short of censorship.  The editor of the Times apparently stressed in the meeting that the Comb Over’s vitriol (he’ll have to look that one up) towards the media was possibly whipping up a hateful and dangerous frenzy among the gun toting brown shirted confederate flag wavers, bigots, gay baiters, knuckle draggers, ignoramuses, and racists that form the base of the Nazi Party, er, Republican, I mean Comb Over’s support (my paraphrase, not the Times).

One final note, a sort of aside.  I’ve got some fake news, the confederate flag is now the new swastika.

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The Big Lie

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Propaganda Ministers

Josef Goebbels was actually the mastermind behind selling the Final Solution to the world.  After WWII started for real Hitler rarely appeared in public.  He didn’t want to take any questions.  He didn’t want the media attention.  He was so popular, he didn’t want to get his head blown off.  He didn’t like “fake news” about Germany.

“All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”  – Mein Kampf

Basically, ignorant people will believe the big lie because it is so outrageous they couldn’t imagine themselves telling the same, or another equivalently outrageous, big lie.  Goebbels thought that he could not only sucker his own people with the Big Lie, but also the British and they would come around to the Nazi way of thinking about the Jews.  But the Brits didn’t buy the Big Lie, well they actually did once, but fool me twice, I don’t think so.

Now add fifty pounds, lose the hat, add a string of pearls, lipstick, and a dress to Goebbels and we have the current Propaganda Minister Sarah Sanders Huckabee.   Huckabee.  Ring a bell?  Former Propaganda Minister Sean Spicer (SS) couldn’t keep telling the big lies with a straight face, or admitting that he didn’t have a clue about what to say, so we got SSH.  SS, remember that.  Oh wait, that was HH, Heinrich Himmler.  Never mind….  There are so many parallels it is uncanny.   These people claim to be good Christians and they lie, lie lie.  What about those Ten Commandments?

Anyway, apparently certain reporters aren’t going to be allowed in the Rose Garden anymore because they ask the Comb Over questions he doesn’t want to answer, or can’t answer, or he can’t sell the Big Lie effectively anymore.  So, Propaganda Minister SS Huckabee is now going to be more the face of the Reich since she can regurgitate the Big Lie effectively with a straight face, argue with reporters, expel the media, stomp on the First Amendment, etc.  Today the Comb Over supposedly took the limo instead of Marine One to Air Force One because of the weather.  Fog.  No reports of fog in DC today.  Remember when I told you about helicopters and the Comb Over  way back in 2013?  The Big Lie.

Anarchy in the Ukraine

ukraine-protests-reutersv1 Russian Backed Ukraine Crackdown

Update:  Well now the former (yeah, right) Soviet Republic of Russia has invaded the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine.  If people didn’t think that the former Soviet Republic of Georgia wasn’t just a Russian warm-up to imperialistically invading, occupying, and ultimately reabsorbing parts that were formerly the USSR, well then you’re just plain stupid.  This is going to make American imperialism look naive by comparison and the Yugoslavian breakup look like a day in the park.  Too bad nobody but the poor Ukranians on the ground are going to fight against it.  

If this had happened to say West Germany in 1972 would we be sitting around on our asses and just wringing our hands?  What do we have all these nuclear weapons for?  If the enemy doesn’t credibly think you will use them, then we might as well throw them all away.

Oh, and why does the media keep calling it an invasion of the Crimea?  If somebody invaded California they wouldn’t say California was invaded, they’d say the United States of America had been invaded.  Let’s call a spade a spade:  the Ukraine has been invaded.

What happens when they start invading places that weren’t even part of the USSR?  I believe we in the West will eventually look on the USSR as “the good ol’ days.”

vladimir-putin-time-magazine Ras-Putin “former” KGB agent and present General Secretary of the Communist Party and International Public Enemy #1

While the Soviet Union, er, I mean the former Soviet Republic of Russia hosts the the Wintercon, in Sochi their puppet government in the Ukraine continues to violently oppose the will of their own people to have closer ties to the EU in the hopes of someday joining this confederation of peaceful autonomous states.

Crimean Welcoming Committee

This just proves once again that thetyrannical country of the Soviet Union, er, I mean Russia never

deserved the choice of being the Olympic host.  Politics of the IOC swindle awarded these games to a communist, er, I mean country run by a violent dictator.  In fact the entire winter games have been ruled by corruption.  It is clear that the people of Sochi, except for the corrupt government stooges, hate that they were even picked for the venue.  The Olympic village itself, especially athlete accommodations are a shambles, and outside the village itself is a dangerous host city run by the Soviet, er, I mean Russian mob.  This city is also one of the worst areas in the country for ethnic and gender hatred and violence.

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The entire mess shows how corrupt the IOC is itself, full of kickbacks and kiss up politicians.  The current games are a disgrace and just should have never been held at all.

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I told you so!

How the NSA Steals Your Liberty

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National Security Agency Complex in San Antonio, Texas

Der Spiegel called it again and I’d never thought I’d thank the Germans for anything but the German press has done a better job of protecting the US citizens’ liberty and privacy than anyone in our own sorry press or government.  Anyway, here are two links, the first to the Der Spiegel article on how the NSA both steals your privacy and builds inherent flaws into your digital security so they can exploit your resources for whatever they want and also leave you vulnerable to attack.  The second link is to a talk by Jacob Appelbaum about why you should be very scared by this.

Der Spiegel Article

Jacob Appelbaum Presentation

Oh and you suckers that still use Yahoo, you deserve everything you get.

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On-Topic

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The Great Amazon Swindle prepackaged for your pleasure. Admittedly only presents one side of the story of how multinational corporations stifle and eliminate dissenting voices. Written as a poke in the eye, daring badreads or Amazon to delete it; the desperate voices of literary freedom that cried out when a corporation chose to turn a thriving social network into a mere catalog.

One negative is that this collection of dissenting voices doesn’t do enough to identify the remoras that are so eager to neck-suck Jeff Bezos and the ultimate flim-flam man Otis Chandler. We want to know who besides the coddled goodreads authors are laughing all the way to the bank.

GoodReads

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GoodReads

Bad Reads

Well Amazon finally screwed the pooch with GoodReads.  I said this would happen as soon as Amazon acquired GR.  Blow hards like David Gaughran who were probably already getting kickbacks from Amazon provided Amazon apologetics but I could see through the hypocrisy.

What happened?  Well last Friday, as most of the GR staff were probably hitting the freeway, GR announced a new censorship policy.  They would now delete reviews completely, without warning or notice, that were prejudicial towards authors when they felt the author comments from the reviewer were not relevant to the book review at hand or just plain hostile to the author.  At the same time they said they would start deleting user book shelves where they deemed the shelf title or shelf contents also violated this policy, say if I had a shelf which was called “worthless authors who’s books I will never buy or read.”  They will delete these completely without notice.  Oh, and if you admit you couldn’t finish the book because it was so bad, they’ll delete that review too.  You have to finish the book now to post a review that won’t get “removed.”

They provided all this information strictly through a group thread, no real announcement to anyone and had already started deleting content without warning.  The Friday “bad news” drop is a typical ploy used by government and corporations so nobody has to deal with it, it in theory has no effect or a dampened effect by Monday.  Amazon, er, I mean GoodReads employed the same sleazy tactic.

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When Evil Corporations Take Over

This entire fiasco comes out of the fact that instead of being an independent entity like GR used to be it is now essentially a division of Amazon a bookseller.  Smell something fishy in Denmark?  Do I see a conflict of interest?

Another factor was the whiny GR authors, many of whom never published anything worthwhile (GR is flooded with mainly worthless self-published authors as well as a few good ones).  These authors whined about being attacked and unfairly treated.  The fact that GR is now a division of a bookseller leads them to try to protect authors, delete negative reviews, negative book shelves, etc.  I assume the next shoe will be deleting one-star reviews from the ratings.  Who is unfairly treated now?

What can you do?  Well there are already fledgling sites like BookLikes that offer a level of competition.  In addition there is still LibraryThing.   You can export all your GR content (including all the reviews) to a .csv file that can be read into MS-Excel and usually transferred to the alternate biblio-social networks like BL and LT.

No AmazonBoycott GoodReads and Amazon.  There are alternatives to buy books from, even a lot of Kindle content can be purchased directly from publishers.  Go to an independent bookseller.  Barnes and Noble needs the money anyway if you want to see a viable alternative to Amazon in the future.

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