Tag: Fake News

Tet Offensive and the Emergence of Fake News

George Noga

More Americans believe Elvis is alive (8%) than trust the media (6%).
Tet Offensive and the Emergence of Fake News
By: George Noga – January 26, 2020

        We begin with the facts which, with 52 years perspective, are now clear to all. January 25, 2020 was Tet, the beginning of the Vietnamese lunar new year. In 1968 Tet was on January 30 and brought a shock wave to Vietnam as the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong began a coordinated surprise assault unprecedented in scale and ferocity. More than 100,000 strong, they attacked over 100 towns across South Vietnam.

        Enemy goals were to inflict massive US casualties, collapse the South Vietnamese army and overthrow its government. Although Tet surprised the US, it regrouped, fought back and by late March had achieved total victory. Enemy casualties were 60,000-70,000 (mostly KIA) while US losses were 2,000-3,000. Enemy losses were so severe they were unable to mount an offensive again until 1972. The NV/VC achieved none of their military or civil goals and suffered a complete and crushing defeat.

     But in living rooms throughout America, nightly television news reported an overwhelming American defeat. Most reporters never ventured outside of Saigon and then media stars descended on the scene from New York and Washington with their ideological baggage. The most prominent was Walter Cronkite who peered into the camera and said the war couldn’t be won, whereupon President Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.” Today, one of the highest journalism awards is The Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.

        To be clear, the Vietnam War was an unmitigated American disaster; over 58,000 brave Americans died. It was predicated on the ersatz domino theory; our objectives never were clearly articulated; we hamstrung our military and did not try to win; and our military and political leaders were inept, dishonest and bereft of credibility. Given this miasma, we probably would have lost even if Tet had been honestly reported. Nonetheless, the Tet reporting was the modern advent (or revival) of fake news.

       The media always were scurrilous. Joseph Pulitzer was a muckraking publisher best known for fake news promoting the Spanish-American War. It is an indictment of journalism that its most prestigious awards are named after Pulitzer and Cronkite, purveyors of fake news. We now have fake reporters, reporting fake news, receiving fake journalism awards named after fake journalists famous for fake reporting.

An Antidote for Fake News: Fair Witnesses and Mentats

         Americans want the plain truth even if it shatters cherished shibboleths. So-called fact checkers (Facebook, PolitiFact, Snopes) are dishonest and unprincipled. America needs unimpeachable sources for determining facts, i.e. Fair Witnesses and Mentats.

       Fair Witness is a product of Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land). In a future dystopia, citizens counter despotic government with Fair Witnesses, recognized as so truthful and objective as to be unimpeachable. They have an eidetic memory and receive deferential treatment. Fair Witnesses are only a small part of one of Heinlein’s books published in 1961; nonetheless, there are 125 million internet entries, the same as for Pope Francis. The idea clearly resonates. Mentats, created by Frank Herbert (Dune), are similar. Like all great science fiction, it speaks to us in our own time.

      Such a concept is needed today and it would work! Fair Witnesses would transform debate about any issue lending itself to logic or proof. Imagine the possibilities for politics, business and advertising. Above all, the media would no longer decide which truth Americans are allowed to know and which truth they are not allowed to know. It would spell the end of progressivism which is based entirely on lies. Finally, Fair Witnesses would put to rest the Elvis myth and end the plague of fake news.

Next on February 2, we demonstrate the advantages of the Electoral College.
More Liberty Less Government  –  mllg@mllg.us  –  www.mllg.us

Political Principles and Fake Media Honors

George Noga
Americans prefer to vote for the fool they know rather than for the devil they don’t.
Political Principles and Fake Media Honors
By: George Noga – April 11, 2019

          Previously, we blogged about some key non-partisan principles of American politics ; (1) there are no permanent majorities; (2) the longer any party is in power, the greater the chance it will lose; and (3) the role of money. Now, another principle, i.e. the power of incumbency.  We will identify more principles in future postings.

Principle: The Power of Incumbency

           In the 126 years since 1893 there have been only two elected presidents who lost reelection in a head-to-head race. Hoover lost because of the Great Depression and Carter lost due to economic disaster and fecklessness. Throughout history, Americans strongly prefer to vote for the fool they know rather than for the devil they don’t.

       And yes, this bedrock principle of American politics applies to our current president. According to econometric models with sterling track records for picking presidential winners, Trump would be a heavy favorite if the election were held today. Donald Luskin of TrendMacrolytics, which tracks GDP growth, gas prices, income, inflation, tax burden and payrolls, has Trump with 294 electoral votes in a blowout. Yale/Fair asserts Trump will win 54% to 46% even with just a mediocre economy. Politico says Trump has a strong shot at winning reelection in a landslide.

           Anything can – and likely will – happen between now and November 2020, but it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the power of incumbency. By the way, you won’t see anything like this (see infra) in the New York Times or on CNN.

Democrat Party 2020 Platform

          Based on their own proclamations, democrats stand for: reparations for slavery, a new wealth tax, impeachment, late-term abortion and infanticide, 70% top income tax rate, giving felons and 16-year-olds the vote, refusal to repudiate anti-semitism, free college tuition, Medicare for all, abolition of the electoral college, amnesty for illegal aliens, packing the Supreme Court, federal jobs guarantee for all, $15 minimum wage, green new deal (no air travel or cows and one car per family), abolishing ICE, major cuts to defense, abolishing filibusters, single-payer (government) health care, federal licensing and control of large corporations, gun control, nationalizing voter registration, abolishing or changing the Senate, imposing democratic socialism, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico and tearing down the existing walls on our southern border. With popular ideas like these, how can democrats possibly lose?

Journalistic Honors: The Pulitzer Prize and The Cronkite Award

          Recently, my wife and I spent a few weeks in a remote venue with access only to the New York Times and CNN. I had forgotten how truly horrid they are. There was no line demarcating news and opinion; they covered only stories fitting their narrative; and much of it was fake. They persisted in ballyhooing Trump-Russia collusion long after it was dead obvious to most regular people that it was mighty thin gruel.

         It is therefore fitting that the most prestigious journalistic honors are named after purveyors of fake news. Joseph Pulitzer was a scurrilous, muck-raking yellow dog publisher, best known for his fake news promoting the Spanish-American War. Walter Cronkite achieved his acclaim based on fake reporting of the Tet offensive. Moreover, these awards are given only to progressive journalists who toe the party line.

Fake reporters reporting fake news receive fake journalism

awards named for fake journalists famous for fake reporting.

       These journalism awards are so fake they inspired us to come up with similar awards for other professions such as: the Kevorkian/Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Medicine, the Bernie Madoff Award for Distinction in Finance or the John Gotti Prize for Accomplishment in Law Enforcement. We could go on, but you get the drift.

Next on April 14th – Did HRC really win the 2016 popular vote?

My Alar Epiphany Thanks to Meryl Streep

George Noga
Junk science flourishes because progressive dogma is antithetical to objective reality.
My Alar Epiphany Thanks to Meryl Streep
By: George Noga – February 4, 2018
       The zeitgeist of 21st century America (and the world) is the increasing inability to distinguish fantasy from reality, junk science from genuine science, witch doctors from authentic doctors and fake news from real news. Like most Americans, I once trusted science and the media; however, I had an epiphany during the 1989 Alar hysteria. I will share my personal journey with you; but first, bear with me as I remind you about some of the more notable examples of junk science during my lifetime.
       Laetrile, pesticides, fluoridation, overpopulation, BPA, organic food, EMFs, global cooling, acid rain, ozone hole, Alar, silicon breast implants, falling sperm counts, killer bees, GMOs, vaccines and autism, global warming, swordfish overfishing, mad cow, SARS, landfill shortage, avian flu, thiomersal, swine flu, dioxin, satanic day care child abuse, PCBs, pink slime, campus rape crisis and artificial sweeteners.
      The list goes on: paper consumption, cell phones and brain cancer, gender wage gap, Superbowl spousal abuse, anti-packaging paranoia, fracking, plastics, acrylamide, ethanol, bio energy, infant mortality worse than Cuba, Keystone XL Pipeline, Arctic sea ice, antibiotics in animals, caffeine, Dakota Access Pipeline, baby powder and cancer, E-cigarettes, electric blankets, X-ray scanners, sodium and ad infinitum.
      I still trusted science and the media in the mid-1980s when a neighbor, whose children attended the same day care as ours, contacted me about EMF (electromagnetic field) risks from high voltage transmission lines – then being hyped by the media as the panic du jour. Our children’s day care facility was located directly under such lines. I researched the issue and concluded there was nothing to worry about; nevertheless, we both withdrew our children. The EMF scare turned out to be 100% junk science.
       Although chastened by my EMF experience, I continued to drink the kool-aid until 1989 when mass hysteria erupted over Alar, a chemical sprayed on apples to prevent rotting. I was in agriculture and knew people who used Alar. After much research, I concluded Alar was harmless; my conclusion soon was ratified by, inter alia, the UN, AMA, Surgeon General, FDA, WHO and the National Academy of Sciences.
      The Alar panic began when 60 Minutes ran a segment claiming 6,000 preschoolers may get cancer caused by Alar-treated apples. CBS showed an image of an apple with a skull and crossbones. Phil Donahue said, “We’re poisoning our kids“. Meryl Streep, a NRDC stooge, testified in Congress and raised the panic to a new crescendo. People worldwide quit buying apples and apple juice; both disappeared from grocery stores. The industry lost $2 billion. Hysterical parents called state troopers, who dutifully stopped school buses to confiscate apples from students’ lunch boxes.
      The Alar episode was a media-fueled hoax based on junk science perpetrated by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an extremist environmental group backed by Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Alar never posed any risk whatsoever to health. Despite the Alar panic being a total fraud, extreme environmental groups today regard it as a success story. Neither 60 Minutes, Redford nor Streep has ever recanted.
     Since my Alar epiphany, I am uber-cynical about science and media. All the science scares listed supra proved to be either totally or mostly junk science. We are in a new age of unreason because progressivism is antithetical to objective reality; it much prefers dogma, mythology and political correctness. Progressives have transmogrified into 21st century witch doctors, corrupting science, the media and now sports. I learned to distrust science and the media in 1989 – thanks to Alar and Meryl Streep.
Our February 11th post takes on the cosmic issues facing government.

All the News is Fake News

George Noga
The mainstream media are purveyors of propaganda; all their news is fake news!
All the News is Fake News
By: George Noga – September 17, 2017
     The above headline is a slight exaggeration; only 90% of the news is fake. Although Fox, talk radio, Drudge and some print media disseminate real news, the mainstream media (“MSM”) have 10 times the consumers. But it’s far worse than that.
     It’s not just an occasional news story, reporter or organization that is fake or even many that are fake; the MSM all are fake. They knowingly with malice aforethought purvey pure propaganda, which is classically defined as: non objective information used to influence, manipulate and to further an agenda by presenting data selectively to produce a desired response. They no longer even aspire to verisimilitude.
      It begins in journalism schools which draw naif students from the bottom deciles and employ faculty from the farthest left. They are anti-business, pro-government and guzzle progressive kool-aid. Everyone in their bi-coastal world is in lock step. It continues on the job where media employees band together to form caucuses. There are caucuses for women, LGBTQ+, blacks, latinos and many others. These caucuses control how any story involving their group is covered and reported. Following are the principal methods the MSM uses to create fake news – along with examples.
1. They selectively decide which stories to cover and which to ignore. They go into a frenzy over any perceived alt-right scandal while ignoring those on the left. They will cover the fake Trump-Russia story while ignoring the real Clinton email scandal.
2. The caucuses assure all stories conform to predetermined dogma. The best example is the pedophile–priest scandal. It really was all about homosexual priests preying on teenage boys; pedophilia was involved in only 3% of the cases. This mortified the gay caucuses who then misdirected the story to blame virtually non-existent pedophiles.
3. The MSM slant stories to fit their narrative. They bash guns in the wake of mass shootings while ignoring stories where guns stopped crimes. The most egregious example is Appalachian State where 204 of 208 papers covering the story knew but failed to report that legal firearms were responsible for stopping the tragedy.
4.  Stories about right wing extremism (which are rare) are featured and repeated ad nauseum. Extremism on the left (which is plentiful) is ignored. The peaceful Tea Party is bashed while violent Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and Antifa get passes.
5. Whenever a story (even an isolated one) confirms a liberal prejudice, it is treated as being typical. A story that contradicts a liberal bias is treated as an isolated incident. A white cop shooting a black suspect is treated as an example of (very rare) police racism while a story about Muslim terrorism (very common) is regarded as Islamophobia.
6. If something untoward happens on the right, it is a scandal; if it happens on the left, they focus on extraneous factors. They used leaked information to enflame the (fake) Trump-Russia story while condemning leaks involving the (real) Obama unmaskings.
     It is madness to expect honest reporting from journalists who, even today, revere Walter Cronkite as an icon, hero and saint. Cronkite achieved his legendary status by an act of gross journalistic malpractice via his misreporting on the Tet offensive. In any field of human endeavor other than journalism Cronkite would be held in disrepute.
      Finally, recall the editor of Newsweek who defended his unconscionable reporting of the Duke lacrosse rape story by saying: “The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.” The MSM purveys propaganda – not news; all their news is fake news!
The next post takes a fearless, but way too early, look at the 2020 election.

Antidote for Fake News: Fair Witnesses and Mentats

George Noga
Journalism is dead. Fake news proliferates. Fact checkers are corrupt. Most people
want the truth but don’t know where to find it. This post offers a possible solution. 
Antidote for Fake News: Fair Witnesses and Mentats
By: George Noga – February 5, 2017
    More Americans believe Elvis is alive (8%) than trust the media (6%). Their distrust is not misplaced. Journalism schools are hothouses of progressive argle-bargle; they draw their students, who cling to illusions of adequacy, from the bottom deciles. The media have abandoned even the veneer of objectivity; they are irredeemably corrupt.
    Most Americans want to know the plain truth even if it shatters long and deeply held shibboleths. I exclude from that group the 24% who self-identify as progressives because their beliefs are based on religion and are thus impervious to facts or logic. Fortunately, there are solutions for the remaining 76% of Americans who want truth.
     All the main fact checking sources including Facebook, PolitiFact, and Snopes are debauched and unprincipled. We need an unimpeachable, competent and nonpolitical source for checking facts and determining truth. We need Fair Witnesses and Mentats.
     The Fair Witness concept is a creation of science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his book, Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein’s book takes place in the milieu of an overbearing government (familiar?). One way citizens could counter the overweening power of government was to hire a Fair Witness, a specially trained and recognized person who was so truthful and objective as to be unimpeachable. Anything observed or reported by a Fair Witness was universally accepted by government and the courts.
    Heinlein’s Fair Witnesses are professionals with an eidetic memory trained to make no extrapolations or assumptions; they wear distinctive white robes and are accorded deferential treatment by society. When a Fair Witness is asked the color of a house, he/she replies, “It is white on this side.” Heinlein’s book was published 55 years ago and the Fair Witness concept was only a small, obscure part of the book. However, if you search the internet for Fair Witness, there are 80 million entries – more than for the Kardashians, Pope Francis and Vladimir Putin. Obviously, it resonated with readers.
     Mentats, created by sci-fi writer Frank Herbert (Dune series), were specially trained to develop their cognitive and analytic capacities to unimaginable heights. They were the embodiment of logic and reason and only a few could qualify. It is thus a recurring sci-fi theme that society needs accurate, impartial arbiters of ascertainable facts.
    Clearly, the public, or at least 76% of it, is hungry (make that desperate) for a reliable way to separate fact from fiction. The potential is unlimited and there is no reason the Fair Witness/Mentat  concept could not be modified to work today. In fact, I have a blueprint for such a program but it is too lengthy to include herein. If someone successfully introduced such a concept (website) today, he/she could be the next internet billionaire. I would be tempted to try it if I were fifteen years younger.
     Imagine the possibilities! Fair Witnesses would transform public debate about any matter that lends itself to proof. It would be the death knell of progressivism – which is based on lies. Being untruthful would become unproductive. The thought of a news story being promptly rendered untrue might even make the media more circumspect. There are obvious applications for business and advertising. Note: I  plan to write a future post about what a Fair Witness might have to say about climate change.
     We have much to learn from obscure sci-fi tracts published long ago. Like all great science fiction, Stranger in a Strange Land and Dune speak to us today. Fair Witnesses or Mentats would shatter the Elvis myth but they also would bring about a renaissance in the media – currently trusted by only 6% of the most gullible Americans.
Next up from MLLG on February 12th – The Democrats’ War on Blacks