Newsweek pushes "FBI corruption" conspiracy theory

We know FBI corruption is a conspiracy theory because no less an authority than the FBI has told us so. So why is Newsweek promoting such egregious misinformation? Check it out; "FBI Gaslights America Over Twitter Files." What’s more, since when does mainstream media use expressions like “wrongthink?” That term is a clear signal that the writer is up to no good. If the media gatekeepers were on their toes, this article would have been “pre-bunked” before it saw the light of day. What’s going on here? We obviously need much more regulation of not only the internet, but media more generally. Otherwise all sorts of nonsense is likely to be spread by the likes of Newsweek. If we can’t even trust the FBI, what’s next? The CIA killed JFK? Putin and Trump not secret lovers after all? The mind boggles…

Chainsaws and conspiracy theories

You'd have to be some pathetic excuse of a shmuck to find solace in chainsaws, but I'm there.

I've hit the proverbial rock-bottom, as they say.

It was always clear to me that a Stihl was the superior tool, but now, long past the age of uncertainty, I'm not so sure anymore.

It's a conundrum, to be sure. It's paralyzed me for weeks, if not months...

But here's the good news! All that paralysis left me free to do some of those free-association mind exercises they teach you at mindfulness camp.

Think about where you'd like to be. Then, think about what's blocking your path.

I'd like to be in a place where I can pick up a newspaper or click on a news site and read news, instead of being force-fed the most dreadful goop imaginable. Just as an example, look how far down the toilet that once-esteemed title, The Globe and Mail, has gone.

In hindsight, I think the rot began when Thomson got his hands on it, and that was forty years ago. The rot intensified exponentially when Reuters joined the nest. One of the most influential media empires in the world was now in the hands of a dude who has a hereditary title in the British House of Lords.

That's why The Globe and Mail is compelled to constantly spew the most jingoistic drivel against any possible adversaries of the Anglo-American Empire.

Good theory, eh?

Baseless conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence

As a life-long news junkie, I've noticed that there has been a recent trend in many supposed news stories to include some version of this heading embedded either in the title or the body of the story. This is particularly noticeable in coverage of Team Trump's various challenges to the November election and also in reportage of competing pandemic narratives. In both cases there is an official narrative, and any deviation therefrom is inevitably "baseless conspiracy theory without a shred of evidence."

This marks an evolution in how news is presented. Where were the "without a shred of evidence" disclaimers when our "legitimate" news outlets were regaling us with yarns about Saddam's nukes or Qaddafi's rape squads? Perhaps a note of caution injected into those scary stories could have slowed the march to war on those countries.

Likewise, our truth-tellers in the mainstream media never asterisked four years of Russiagate hysteria with that disclaimer. Any anonymous leak from the "intelligence community" that served to obstruct Trump was presented as gospel, when in reality they actually were baseless conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence.

I ran into the phrase this morning in this CBC story about billionaire and Clinton crony Frank Giustra, one of the biggest donors to various Clinton "philanthropies." Unpaid intern Jason Proctor lays it out in his opening sentence;

West Vancouver billionaire Frank Giustra has been given the go-ahead to sue Twitter in a B.C. courtroom over the social media giant's publication of a series of tweets tying him to baseless conspiracy theories involving pedophile rings and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Hmm... "...tying him to baseless conspiracy theories involving pedophile rings..."

Sorry, what ties Giustra to those baseless conspiracy theories are stories like this one from The Guardian, and this from CNBC. 

Seems there was this sociopathic pedophile named Jeffrey Epstein. He was an actual convicted pedophile who cultivated the who's who of America's political elite. He is believed to have continued both his diddling and his cultivating until ending it all in a spasm of remorse in a NYC prison last year.

There's an old folk maxim we're all familiar with; you are judged by the company you keep. That Giustra kept company with folks who ran with Epstein doesn't prove him guilty of anything, of course.

But the "pedos in high places" story would seem a long way from "baseless conspiracy theory."

Best conspiracy theory of the day

Everybody knows Trump was early in with the World Wrestling Federation, which morphed into the WWE. The name may have changed a little but their staple remains the same; scripted wrestling dramas with fake heroes and fake villians.

Fakery abounds!

So here's the scoop. When Donald Trump (aka Mafia Don, Donny J, Trumpenstein, etc...) moved into the White House, he moved a whole lotta former WWE script-writers into the basement.

No shit!

It's obviously true.


Pretty much every headline you see proves it.

Canada's great pump-and-dump legal marijuana scam

That's my conspiracy theory for the day.

Think about it.

In my many years building ships for the Royal Canadian Navy, building transformers for General Electric, fabbing the structural steel for 7 World Trade Center at Frankel Steel, or doing maintenance work in sawmills on Vancouver Island, I didn't meet many folks who couldn't find themselves a bag of weed if they wanted one.

When I wasn't on the welding gig, I was taking university courses or working in education. Just like on the shop floor, I didn't meet many folks who couldn't have found a baggie if they wanted one.

Weed was actually a fairly stable market. Barriers to entry into the business were virtually non-existent. Those who worked hard and networked effectively survived and even thrived. The only downside was that your lifestyle, and sometimes your life, was at constant risk, simply because the stuff was illegal.

It's been more than obvious for decades that this idiocy needs to end. Everybody knew it. The career political operators behind Justin Trudeau certainly knew it. They made legalized weed the centrepiece of their election run.

When they won, they immediately threw the entire industry to Bay Street. The Globe and Mail was fully complicit in this, and continue to milk this rapidly shrivelling teat as hard as they can. It's shrivelling because the vast majority of the populace are in no hurry to pay more for an inferior product.

Meanwhile, multiple former high-level police officials, after spending their careers ruining the lives of anyone affiliated with the formerly illegal pot biz, were suddenly in demand as movers and shakers in the burgeoning legal Bay Street pot scene.

Bay Street sharpies walked away with millions, in some cases hundreds of millions, convincing a gullible Globe-reading public that legal pot stocks were the next Amazon or Apple.

As those investors are finding out, that wasn't the case.


Sounds like a classic pump-and-dump to me.

How does Dr. Paul Craig Roberts come up with his crazy conspiracy theories?

Hey, just because the dude was once an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal doesn't mean he knows anything.

Roberts has been running amok all over the internet lately insinuating that the Charlie Hebdo operation may not have been what we have been led to believe it was.

For Roberts and others of his ilk, this excerpt from a 12.1.15 CNN International story provides all sorts of fodder for speculative innuendo;

Authorities have released few details on why they've zeroed in on the Kouachi brothers. But they have pointed to one key clue found inside a getaway car the gunmen apparently used: Said Kouachi's identification card. It was discovered by investigators as they combed the vehicle for clues after impounding it.

"It was their only mistake," said Dominique Rizet, BFMTV's police and justice consultant, reporting that discovering the ID had helped French investigators

Damn! Of all the things that could fall out of one's pocket in the midst of a terror op, why does it always have to be the ID card!

Not a set of house keys, not a crumpled receipt from the deli, not a condom packet, not some loose change, not a bag of weed, but the goddam ID card for fucks sakes!

Here's a Guardian story from 2002 about the happy coincidences that abound when the Nations of Virtue are investigating terror attacks. Not least among the happy coincidences post 9/11 was the fortuitous coincidence of Mohamed Atta's passport fluttering safely and unsinged to earth, there to be picked up in the midst of all those mountains of 9/11 rubble by a particularly sharp-eyed investigator!

Folks, this can not be mere coincidence. Nor is it evidence of "conspiracy." 

This is the hand of God at work in our world!

Real News, Fake News, and Conspiracy Theories

For months on end the lead news story on the CBC was some report or another about how our Syrian Rebels were faring out.

At every juncture it was made clear that our Syrian Rebels were not like our Libyan Rebels and that in any event Syria was not Libya.

All of this could be categorized under the label of Real Fake News.

It's real in the sense that there is in fact a rise-up of some sort against Syrian President al-Assad.

It's fake whenever you extrapolate away from that to some sort of big-picture fantasy about Arab Spring.

But overall it loosely qualifies as news.

Lately CBC has cut away from Syria to cover the latest developments in Tori's Trial.

Tori was a little girl abducted a year ago in Woodstock. Her body was found a month later. One of the perpetrators is set to go to trial soon. That's why a national news program will devote its top shelf to a story about how Tori's parents feel about this.

They feel really bad, and have for over a year.

That is undoubtedly true, but is it news?

Has there ever been a parent of a murdered child who wasn't devastated by their loss? But is their suffering "news"?

Is their suffering newsworthy enough to pre-empt the story of a revolution in the most volatile part of the planet?

And on the pre-emption continuum, once we pass fake news we get to the land of the conspiracy theory.

When there is a real news story that can't be shuffled aside by fake news, we give it the label of "conspiracy theory."

That's the news we ignore but for whatever reason it doesn't go away.

Maybe it doesn't go away because it should have been real news.

I wrote a post six months ago about Seven World Trade Center, a project I worked on. It continues to be the most viewed post on this blog. It hints at an abiding mystery; how do ten ton steel beams give way after having been exposed to a minor fire for a few hours?

That blog post has been relegated to the realm of the conspiracy theory.

Serious media never have to address such a question because it's not real news, not fake news, it's a conspiracy theory.

Just like how a terrorist's passport floats safely to earth while a black box can never be found is a question that will never have to be answered because it has been relegated to the realm of the conspiracy theory.

What I'd like to see on the news is less about people's feelings and more answers to hard questions.