America's ‘Ministry of Truth’ wasn't removed, just rebranded | RT
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As you know, I started quoting the first source, an article from the New York Post. I see that you've responded to the claims that I quoted from that article in post #317, I'll respond in turn when I get to responding to that post.
I've posted some in post #312, which I see that you've responded to in post #317, will get to it soon enough.
I'm glad we can agree on that much at least.
We'll see.
Gary Krasner wrote an article a little over 20 years ago that is still my go to article when it comes to the history of vaccines. While its title suggests that it focuses soley on the first vaccine, the one for smallpox, it in fact covers vaccines in general. I wish it had links to articles instead of just references to books and publications, but in fairness, it was written over 20 years ago. I'll quote the introduction to his article:
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The public is now getting lot’s of medical propaganda about the eradication of smallpox through vaccination. But in fact, the consensus among leading medical historians that have studied the question have concluded that the eradication of the zymotic, or “filth” diseases, like cholera, dysentary, typhus, plague, in the past that are popularly attributed to mass vaccination campaigns, had actually been due to improvements in diet, hygiene, sanitary measures, non-medical public health laws, and to a host of new non-medical technologies, like refrigeration, faster transportation, and the like (McKinlay, 1977; McKeown, 1979; Moberg & Cohen, 1991; Oppenheimer, 1992; Dubos, 1959).
The CDC reported (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, July 30, 1999, 48:621-628) that improvements in sanitation, water quality, hygiene, had been the most important factors in control of infectious diseases in the past century. Although vaccines were mentioned, they were not included among the major factors.
One of the conclusions in Thomas McKeown’s seminal work, “The Modern Rise Of Populations” (1976, also endorsed by a Lancet editorial, 2/1/75), was that the decline in mortality in the 18th and 19th centuries was essentially due to the reduction in deaths from infectious diseases, and that it was not the result of immunizations. Similar studies by scholars John & Sonia McKinlay (1977) shows that almost all the increase in human lifespan since the year 1900 is due to reductions in infectious disease, with medical intervention (of all kinds) accounting for only about 3 per cent of that reduction. According to World Health Statistics Annual, 1973-76, vol.2, “there has been a steady decline of infectious diseases in most developing countries regardless of the percentage of immunizations administered in these countries.”
Before health agencies and schools of public health were completely taken over by allopathic medicine, the great legacy of the sanitary reformers—Max von Penttenkofer, James T. Briggs, Dr. John Snow, Edwin Chadwick, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Southwood Smith—was that they were able to eradicate cholera, yellow fever, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, scarlet fever, diptheria, whooping cough, measles and the bubonic plague long before vaccinations were developed or routinely used.
Not only had poor sanitation and nutrition lay the foundation for disease, it was also compulsory smallpox vaccination campaigns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that played a major role in decimating the populations of Japan (48,000 deaths), England & Wales (44,840 deaths, after 97 per cent of the population had been vaccinated), Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, India (3 million—all vaccinated), Australia, Germany (124,000 deaths), Prussia (69,000 deaths—all revaccinated), and the Philippines. The epidemics ended in cities where smallpox vaccinations were either discontinued or never begun, and also after sanitary reforms were instituted (Most notably in Munich-1880, Leicester-1878, Barcelona-1804, Alicante-1827, India-1906, etc.).
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Full article:
Smallpox – A Historical Perspective | vaccinechoicecanada.com
Some books on vaccines that I thought were quite informative:
How Vaccines Wreck Human Immunity: A Forbidden Doctor Publication | amazon.com
The Vaccine Illusion | amazon.com
I know a lot of people share your view, but as you say, Argumentum ad populum is not strong enough by itself to be a valid argument.
I suggest reading the article I linked to above from Off Guardian. If you're like my father, you may point out that he's not a doctor- I'd counter that -because- he's not a doctor, he's easier to understand, following a path of discovery that anyone can make. However, there are certainly doctors that don't believe in the Covid virus (or any virus for that matter).
A group of people, mainly doctors, outlined how the virus debate could be settled:
The “Settling The Virus Debate” Statement | drsambailey.com
I find it kind of dense though.
Dr. Samantha Bailey wrote an article recently that you may find easier to get through:
Dr. Peter McCullough Says He Has Seen A Picture Of A Virus Up Close | drsambailey.com
I also like the following article from Jon Rappoport that explains alternative causes for alleged Covid virus deaths:
Big one: Origin story of China epidemic falls apart completely | nomorefakenews.com
That would appear to be the case (source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-per-year ), but have you considered the possibility that the cause is actually due to the reaction to the alleged Covid pandemic rather than the alleged covid virus? The case has certainly been made that this is the case, including from the vaccines that were supposed to prevent or at least reduce Covid symptoms:
Government reports prove COVID Vaccination may have killed Millions & Confidential Pfizer Documents confirm your Government knew it would happen | expose-news.com
Jon Rappoport also makes a good case for what really caused the alleged first deaths in Wuhan in the article I linked to from him earlier in this post.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
Nothing can be done with ignorant cowards.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
so you never saw the Bad News Bears?
The people I have been living with have disappointed me the entire 60 years have been here, I am not expecting anything to change in my last few years.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
maybe you smell funny?
ROFLMAO. You didn't read the entire article.
I'm guessing you don't read any entire articles but only enough to confirm your bias and then think it is true because it agrees with your bias.
I actually read a fair amount of articles to completion, especially if it's from an author that I already know and like. In this case, I didn't think it was worth the time to read the entire article. There are a lot of articles out there and only so much time in the day for reading them.
For starters, the article is not labelled an opinion piece. Secondly, it links to sources from mainstream news articles.
Now that you bring it up, I actually remember looking into the firing of this investigator in the past myself and I believe I came to the same conclusion you did on this one. So let's move on to the other claims in the excerpt from the New York Post article, namely Burisma using Hunter Biden's son to curry favour with Joe Biden. The excerpt, once more:
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Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.
An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.
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Source:
Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad | New York Post
Interesting. Where have you heard this? For the CBC, I got this article which I definitely found interesting:
Speaking Freely : Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | https://tarahenley.substack.com/
For the BBC:
Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal | thegrayzone.com
Also interesting. I think a lot of the mainstream media has been heading that way. It reminds me of a clip from the 1976 film Network, this one:
The first link starts out with the debunked claim that the Mueller report found no evidence collusion. At that point I stopped reading because if they can't get basic facts right can we trust their conclusions?
Sauter's critique of the news media was essentially that any negative reporting about President Trump was bad for the country. Isn't the purpose of the media to criticize the government?
Your statement was not that you don't pay close attention but that you don't read it much. Is someone that doesn't read much well informed? Is that the argument you are trying to make? When someone argues about a topic they admit they don't study, do you consider them well informed on that topic?
Did I say the arguments were not logical? I don't recall saying that. An opinion piece by definition is an opinion. It may use perfect logic but the logic may rely on a biased selection of the facts used as the basis for it's conclusions. You just posted another piece that highlights that perfectly in the Julian Almaza piece where the author starts with the "fact" that the Mueller report found no evidence of collusion. That is a misrepresentation of what the Mueller report actually said.
But the actual thing I told you to use your brain to do was to be able to tell the difference between an opinion piece and a news article. It is something that is quite evident to most thinking persons but you seem to be incapable of doing. One quick tell is to see what pronouns are used in the article. "You" and "I" used by the author and not from quotes from other people would quickly point to it being an opinion piece. Of your 2 links, the first is clearly an opinion. The second could be considered a news article. But it was a news article reporting the opinions of others.
Relying on Russian sources is the same as relying on Ukrainian sources. They are both biased. US Media is quite clear in their reporting when the source is Ukrainian officials. Are you incapable of viewing that with skepticism when they state where it came from? US Media also reports what Russian officials are saying. US Media also reports when they are unable to confirm anything for themselves. What you seem to be arguing is we should be skeptical of everything Ukrainians say but rely on RT to be accurate when it is merely reporting the Russian side of the war. That shows a distinct Russian bias on your part.
You have the power to be disingenuous and to spread falsehoods. You have the power to lie about who you are and who you work for. You have a lot of powers while posting here that the publishers of mainstream media work hard to eliminate.
10 years.
Did you not agree that some of the points I made were true? I didn't ask you to do my homework. I asked you to be honest about your own statements.
Your push to have us accept RT has an unbiased source while you claim we should mistrust everything that the mainstream media reports from Ukrainian officials and sources would be rather strong evidence.
Define sparingly. To me sparingly would be once a month. What does it mean to you?
What are the beliefs of the mainstream media based on what I have said? Can you tell the difference between the opinions of people that read news stories and the news stories themselves? Once again we are back to questioning your ability to tell the difference between opinion and reporting. People that read an article often take away from that story based on their own bias. As an example, we can take your first link which I went back and read more of. I see it as an opinion piece based on faulty data. You appear to see it as a factual news article. Perhaps we should discuss your reasons for not recognizing it as opinion.
If only you would respond to the criticisms leveled at RT then we might be having a valid discussion that isn't russocentric.
Very good. So when you find truth in RT we should definitely doubt you.
Please cite one news story with examples of how it is biased. I gave multiple reasons to doubt the RT story in the OP. You even agreed that many of my points were accurate. See post 95.
Do you have a double standard then? You don't like mainstream media because of what you claim are inaccuracies but you like RT in spite of their inaccuracies. This points to you not having an objective standard but instead having a very biased subjective standard.
When they get something from the Ukrainian government they point out exactly where it came from. You are free to think for yourself and decide whether it has value as factual or is likely Ukrainian propaganda. Have you ever seen RT point out where their use of the phrase "special military operation" comes from and how they are required to use that phrase? I would say the abysmal reporting is when media fails to tell the reader the source of what they are printing.
All live TV in Britain is produced by the BBC. If you watch BBC you need a license. You are arguing that some people should be able to steal their product without consequences. You haven't provided evidence of them being deeply involved in propaganda in the broadcasts in Britain. You have used innuendo and 50 year old stories to try to claim they are.
You do like to read a lot of conspiracy bullshit.
Let's look at your first source. It cites 3 papers and none of those papers support the theory that smallpox vaccines don't work. Instead they point out that many other diseases were controlled by improving hygiene. The author provides no source for his claims. His arguments are ridiculous since it completely ignores how viruses spread. If the virus is not present in an area then there will be no deaths. That doesn't prove anything about the vaccines. It only proves the author's stupidity. Smallpox has a mortality rate of 30%. That means 3 out of 10 unvaccinated people that contract it die. If the Phillipines had not been vaccinated the number of deaths would have likely been in the millions since 10 million lived there and only 47,368 vaccinated people died. Disease is controlled by eliminating the way the disease can spread. Vaccines help do that. Do you know what the R0 factor is in disease spread? https://www.healthline.com/health/r-naught-reproduction-number
I am not arguing I am right because many people share my view. I am arguing that actual science shows my view to be correct.
Complete bullshit that deserves to be called bullshit. The virus has been sequenced by multiple different labs. Why do you think they know and name variants? The literature is out there that even shows where the RNA changes have occurred in the virus. Then this supposed Dr will only believe viruses exist if people are purposely infected with deadly viruses which is in violation of the ethics of medicine and science.
The idiot is actually going to claim that no viruses exist? That you actually believe this bullshit shows you to be gullible and completely uninformed as to science. Simply google virus electron microscope images and you will find thousands of images and good ole dr sam"I'm reallly stupid"bailey claims no such images exist.
After liking an article that claims no viruses exist and they have never existed you now like an article that claims this virus has existed in humans for a long time? Do you not see the problem with your 2 mutually exclusive beliefs?
Your gullibility is beyond belief. Do you understand the difference between causation and correlation? Do you understand that the idiot writing this failed to include the excess deaths from 2020 which was prior to the vaccines being introduced. If he had included the excess deaths from 2020 then we would have seen the number of excess deaths going down as the vaccines were introduced and more and more people were vaccinated. We certainly see the drop in excess deaths from 2021 to 2022. His entire argument is destroyed when we look at more data than the cherry picked numbers he does. We go from approx 3,000,000 excess deaths in 2020, to 1,000,000 in 2021 to 750,000 in 2022 which clearly shows that as the vaccines come into use and are more widespread the excess deaths decrease.
After all of this from you, you deserve to be called stupid because you clearly are stupid.
Hint - don't present articles as evidence if you haven't read them. If you aren't going to take the time to read it then it isn't worth mentioning as evidence of anything other than your own laziness.
I'll bet you can't find a single article from the NYTimes or BBC that is labelled "propaganda" by the author. And yet without that label you are able to come to the conclusion it is propaganda.
Just because an article is not labelled as something doesn't mean it isn't. Use objective criteria that you can apply equally.
OK. let's do that.
We both agree that the claim that the prosecutor was not investigating Burisma. When the very first sentence contains a factual untruth it shows the author is trying to set a tone that is false. The second thing untrue in this is that it wasn't Biden alone trying to fire the prosecutor. It was the Obama administration, the IMC, and the EU all in favor of his firing. What is likely true is that Hunter introduced his father to an executive of the company. The story is that Biden stopped by when they were having lunch, was introduced and had his picture taken. There is no evidence that anything more than this happened.
That is a loaded sentence. It doesn't just provide facts but instead includes things to paint a picture that may not be true. "Never-before-revealed" is a loaded phrase that would seem to imply the meeting was purposely hidden. Including Hunter's salary in the same sentence is also a loaded attempt to paint the payment as nefarious. The salary could be important but I can think of multiple ways to get all that information out in a non biased way. Pozharskyi doesn't appear to even work for Burisma in 2015 since they list him as an advisor to the board.
The email is unclear whether the author spent time with Hunter or spent time with his father because the grammar is fractured. It is likely it was thanks for Hunter spending time with him and then introducing him to his father. The email certainly isn't evidence of any nefarious activity since Hunter and the author of the email are in business together. Was it an honor and a pleasure to meet Joe or an honor and a pleasure to spend time together? Unclear. Even if it was an honor and a pleasure to meet Joe it again isn't evidence of any nefarious activity. People often say it is an honor and a pleasure to meet someone when they only spoke briefly.
Is the only influence Hunter has his father? Or is Hunter a US lawyer with many contacts? The vagueness of the statement is not evidence that the influence is his father. This email is from almost a year earlier. What is there to tie it into the meeting almost a year later? Not really anything from an evidence standpoint.
There is nothing blockbuster about the correspondence since there is no smoking gun. All there is is an attempt to create something that isn't in the evidence. There is certainly no evidence in those 2 emails that Joe Biden talked business when he stopped by the table as his son was having lunch. The fact that the email thanking Hunter doesn't mention talking business would seem to point to it not happening. There is nothing to tie the two emails almost a year apart together as some plot to get to the VP.
Finally, a good reporter and editor would not have made such allegations without asking for comment from the person they were alleging had done wrong. Then they would have included that response near the allegations in the story so that the reader would see both sides. The fact that this was not done points to this being bad journalism. No wonder the journalist that wrote most of this refused to put his name on it if what the NYTimes reported about this is true. The journalist knew it wasn't up to journalistic standards.
Jordan Peterson and Rex Murphy are two.
I haven't seen it debunked. Furthermore, the article backs up its claim by linking to a BBC article, a publication which you seem to admire. Feel free to take a look:
As it happened: Mueller report: No evidence of collusion | BBC
Sure, but I'm not sure how you arrived at the above conclusion regarding Sauter's stance. Could you quote Sauter saying what you allege he said above? Here's some quotes from Sauter that I personally found revealing:
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“The media seems uninterested in … issues of bias.… The news media seems very comfortable with its product and [its] ability to sell it.”
[snip]
To many journalists, objectivity, balance and fairness — once the gold standard of reporting — are not mandatory in a divided political era and in a country they believe to be severely flawed.
That assumption folds neatly into their assessment of the president. To the journalists, including more than a few Republicans, he is a blatant vulgarian, an incessant prevaricator, and a dangerous leader who should be ousted next January, if not sooner.
Much of journalism has become the clarion voice of the “resistance,” dedicated to ousting the president, even though he was legally elected and, according to the polls, enjoys the support of about 44% of likely 2020 voters.
**
Source:
Former CBS Head Admits: Yes, Mainstream Media Is Biased | thenewamerican.com
You seem to be confusing not reading much of the mainstream media press with not reading much. I assure you, I read quite a bit on the subjects that I'm interested in. This frequently includes detailed critiques of mainstream media articles. Here's one that I think could teach you a thing or two:
Patrick Lawrence: Why is the New York Times still hyping 'Russiagate'? | Scheerpost
No, you didn't, but if you have no objections to the logic of the article, I can't see what your issue is.
You haven't even shown that the article in question was an opinion piece.
Any article can do that and go well beyond just messing up on the facts as well. I recommend you take a look at Patrick Lawrence's article on the New York Times article on Russiagate for a good dose of such prose.
What I care about is evidence, not the label of an article. If I believe an article has good evidence, I'll use it.
I agree that they're both biased, but from what I've seen, Ukrainian sources that are controlled by the Ukrainian government are vastly more biased than their Russian sources. Also, my previous point stands- I get more than enough of the western narrative, essentially that Russia started an "unprovoked" war in Ukraine. Reading Russian news sources is an antidote to the west's frequently singular negative viewpoint on Russia's actions in Ukraine.
What they are -not- clear in is how much trust they place in Ukrainian officials despite the lack of evidence that they are in fact trustworthy. Patrick Lawrence gets into this as well in another article. Quoting a bit from it:
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“Ukrainian authorities have found a mass grave of more than 400 bodies in the eastern city of Izium that was recaptured from Russian forces, a regional police official said on Thursday…” This was what Reuters reported last Friday morning. In its third paragraph. A police investigator is quoted thus: “I can say it is one of the largest burial sites in a big town in liberated [areas]…440 bodies were buried in one place.”
This is atrocity porn, and it is getting monotonous. So are a couple of other things.
“Ukrainian officials say,” “according to Ukrainian officials,” “senior Ukrainian officers said,” “Ukrainian troops reported,” “the Ukrainian mayor said in an interview,” “police officers say.” This is getting monotonous, too, given whatever these sources say or report or assert is played back to readers and viewers as factually so.
The absence of evidence supporting Ukrainian accounts of Russia’s responsibility for these events: This is also getting monotonous, So are vigorous assertions that there must be and will be full and impartial investigations into these matters, except that there is never any effort to conduct such investigations. The investigations of Ukrainians are treated as full and impartial.
There is one other thing that grows monotonous as we read the work of Western correspondents working in Ukraine, most of whom cover the conflict on guided tours the Kyiv regime conducts and by quoting Ukrainian sources as if they are objective and reliable. This is Western media’s habit of appointing themselves judges in war-crimes tribunals and convicting Russian forces on all charges. This practice does not rise even to the level of the old show trials.
**
Source:
Patrick Lawrence: Atrocity Porn | Scheerpost
You have these same "powers". I think we can agree that the audience for our discussions here is rather small when compared to the audience for the mass media.
Care to elaborate on what you mean here?
Yes, but was there significant difference in -how- they were financed between those 2 time periods?
Some, but not the point we're arguing about here. Here is what you said, bolding the important part:
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Actually, you agreed with the majority of the points I made about why it is propaganda. You then were willing to say that in spite of all the things I said being true and all the parts of the article that were incomplete or false, you still believed the article.
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Source:
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/s...moved-just-rebranded-RT&p=5392506#post5392506
I never agreed with you that RT article I quote in the OP was propaganda.
I asked you to provide evidence for the claim you made in post 293, quoted above. It's your claim- if anyone should be providing evidence for it, it's you.
I never claimed that RT was an unbiased source. I also think there's plenty of evidence that Ukrainian officials and the mainstream media shouldn't be trusted. If you like, I can cite articles providing evidence for both of these claims of mine.
If we count the New York Post as a mainstream source, much more often than that recently. I also read bits and pieces of other mainstream publications a fair amount.
I don't understand what you mean here.
You certainly like this "opinion" word. I focus on the evidence, regardless of how one labels a story.
I believe that Andre Gide's line is certainly a good general rule to follow. Which means that I believe we should strive to be open minded as to what the truth is. I generally have no problem with people who doubt just about any claim. What I have much more of a problem with is when people are certain that x or y source isn't good without providing evidence for their assertion(s).
Already gave one in this article: Patrick Lawrence's critique of a New York Times article on Russiagate.
The issue is quantity, repetition and size of innacuracies. The western mainstream media's parroting of Russia's attack being "unprovoked" is so patently untrue that I generally stop reading any story that contains such a line.
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Paradoxical
New member
It is amazing to me to see the apologetics used for the Buirisma situation, where the lefty simply says "There's nothing to see HERE, folks" as buildings are burning in the background, cop cars are being blown up, planes crashing". Apologetics is the business of explaining things away and claiming that contradictions really aren't by using hypotheticals, maybes and "coulds". It amounts to people still believing that Trump colluded with Russia even though a two-year-long investigation found no evidence but did find that the high-powered attorney firm set it all up for Hillary Clinton. IOW, apologetics uses excuses that strain credulity. The left always wants "p[roof' when it is their guy and when it is Trump or a conservative, a mere wild claim is more than enough to convict.
Someone with zero experience making $50-80K a month on the board of a company whose business he knew nothing about? For what exactly? His dad claiming he knew nothing about it in spite of evidence of meetings and photos of him with the heads of Burisma? A company that KNEW they were under investigation and the prosecutor was closing in. Lo and behold, Hunter's dad somehow is able to deny Ukraine a billion in aid all on his own without consulting Obama or Congress if Zelensky himself doesn't take care of the prosecutor? This amounts to a mafia "hit' on a rival to kill an investigation.