This House believes that anti-news lies have increased, are increasing, and ought to be exposed more often. And yes, the MSM are implicated bigtime.
As most of you know, there is a steady stream of trolls who turn up at The Slog. They have two approaches when attempting sabotage: One, “the facts are wrong/this data is nonsense”; two, “you make everything up at this site.”
I banned five of them yesterday (they had eleven IP addresses between them) and then an unpleasant email arrived here, from which this is one of the milder extracts:
‘Removing my exceptionally anodyne comment yesterday and supposedly banning me is the measure of you, John. In my time in newspapers, both as a reporter and now a sub, I have come across any number of bullshitters both in public and in the industry, and you tick all the boxes. They say the emptiest barrels make the most noise. You are proof of that….I like to think I’m not a self-important, delusional fantasist. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps I should get myself a few sources.’
The imputation (it never varies) is that because I’m not an MSM journalist, I cannot possibly have any sources or professional standards: I make it all up, and it’s nearly always proved wrong.
OK – I give up, f**k it, he’s right – I make it all up. It keeps me off the streets and within bounds of my ASBO order, and is better than pitch-forking defenceless badger cubs, which is what I used to do. I don’t have any sources in New York, Washington, New Mexico, San Francisco, Madrid, Frankfurt, Berlin, London, the Treasury, Athens, Nicosia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brussels or Singapore. None whatsoever. My recent trip to Greece was a figment of my imagination, I never go on-air on Spanish, American or UK digital radio, I’ve never broken any exclusive news, and I have never once, ever, been ahead of the game about systemic paedophilia, Gordon Brown’s eyesight, Phone-hacking, the dangers of Boris Johnson, the criminality of Newscorp in the US, the demise of DSK in New York, Brussels moves towards FiskalUnion, Angela Merkel’s airbrushed political history, American attempts to fix Grexit, the exaggeration of Assad’s closeness to demise, depositor haircuts worldwide, Moscow going cold on Cyprus rescue, Erdogan’s Islamist fascism and designs on Greek territory, professional use of trolls in the US…and all those other bonkers lunatic fringe posts I’ve put up over time.
I suppose hard-up knackered old hacks reduced to sub-editing in their twilight years have to earn a living somehow, but to get found out by such an ingenious detective as our troll friend above is, I must confess, a bit of a bummer. But for those who still close their eyes to the systematic use of trolls by dark forces – or cannot believe that bitter-and-twisted freelancers hate bloggers so much they have to hurl daily insults at them – it is necessary to point out that trolls fall into two camps: amateur mad folks, and ‘professional’ mad folks.
They’re usually notable by (a) an unwillingness to abide by the rules of the site they try to fill with anti-matter, and (b) pitiful accusations of victimisation when they break the rules and…um, get banned. But they must never be ignored, because they’re getting better and better at what they do. Their bollocks has to be countered with an avalanche of facts and examples at every opportunity. So here’s a couple of recent examples to be going on with…
On April 12th last I posted this during a piece about State theft: ‘I can predict what will happen next, because it’s already been raised by the Troika in Athens. There will be a worldwide raid on insurance/pension provider assets’.
The suggestion caused Finance Minister Stournaras to lose his rag with the Troikanaut who suggested it. As a result, Homo Troikanautus backed off.
This piece appeared yesterday in Keep Talking Greece: ‘Greek self-employed almost suffered mass heart attacks and brain strokes on Tuesday noon, when they heard in the news, the Labor ministry planned to cap pensions of new retirees at 35 percent. Furthermore the ministry was trying to secretly pass this ‘clause’ in a multi-bill on labor issues and thus shortly before the bill was to be submitted to the Parliament for voting.’
They’ve been caught at it. The Troika has since said “We told you so”. Watch out for the next attempt: a direct raid on the providers.
On the day before that original piece, I also posted this under the heading ‘It looks like the inflating cost of the euro project is proving too much for Germany‘: ‘I have a feeling in my water that our friends in Berlin may soon find the Frankfurt pressure to back away irresistible.’
This piece appeared four days later at the Financial Press site: ‘Angela Merkel, addressing the BdB association of German commercial banks in Berlin today, said policy makers haven’t solved how to handle “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions that risk needing government bailouts. Germany couldn’t mount another round of economic stimulus measures and bank bailouts without losing trust internationally, she said.’
Since mid 2011, I have consistently said that Germany would leave the eurozone before Greece does. The Americans did try for a time to get Greece kicked out, but the Greek élite has never seriously considered leaving the gravy train of its own accord…even Tsipras has now backed away from the idea. I predicted this would be a mistake, and so it has proved. The piece I ran last night about Alekos Alavanos brings in a new development: the serious formation of a broadly-based ‘patriotic coalition’ to get Greece out of the eurozone. The opinion is rapidly turning against the EU in Greece.
One can’t write this stuff by ‘making it all up’. I do it based on information received from a massive range of people, almost all of them regular Slog readers, and a dwindling list of others I met and respected during a career holding senior posts in international business and on State publicity accounts. It is this form of ‘democratised’ online journalism that the MSM can’t abide (Leveson showed clearly that, given half a chance, they would be accomplices to our obliteration) and of which our Establishments have a rabid fear. Their main weapon thus far has been the development of troll attacks.
The words to look for from this insect life are ‘rumour, innuendo, conspiracy-theory, bullshit, rubbish, false data, invention, delusional fantasy, left-wing poppycock, right-wing smear’ and a host of others in the same vein.
The biggest weapon unleashed against the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook and online chatter generally was without doubt Lord Alf ‘Poor ickle me’ McAlpine. In the face of the obvious (and quickly revealed) Tsunami of hypocritical media manipulation that culminated in his vomit-inducing Radio 4 ‘interview’ bollocks, two things were instantly notable. First, the MSM sided with the old Machiavellian up to the hilt. And second, the soi-disant ‘hard’ Left deposited a trail of diahorrhea behind them in their haste to run for cover. From the Labour Party itself came there nothing.
This tells you all you need to know about why the anti-matter of Trolls and Establishment plants must be shot down and dead at every opportunity. Call my banning policies censorship if you must, but they are nothing of the kind: I am stifling lies, not punishing other views. At least 50% of Sloggers disagree with at least 30% of my views, but they aren’t banned. The reason is simple: they don’t have an evil agenda.
www.hat4uk.wordpress.com / link to original article
Lucas 2012 Infos 