There’s so much whining about “fake news” being propagated on “social media.” Corporate media is all a-bleat about social media because their viewership is plummeting. No sensible, rational person bothers tuning into the tripe they’re spewing. As if the corporate media has ever been about “real news,” instead of being massive corporate-funded propaganda organs pumping out the “official narrative.” But social media, with all its programmable algorithm bots, is a much more insidious propagator of the “official narrative” than even its corporate media counterparts. A conscientious activist might attempt to communicate anything that contradicts “official narrative,” and the tireless algorithm bots immediately sniff out any verboten trigger words and “Voila! that person’s readership is throttled back to zero.
I finally quit Facebook a few months ago on account of its utterly blatant censorship. Facebook especially will not tolerate communications which contradict the “official narrative” on COVID, 9/11, Palestine, the Ukraine, NATO aggression, nuclear brinkmanship and numerous other issues. Even photos of the naked Eve Babitz playing chess don’t pass muster with Facebooks message-meisters. As soon as the word “COVID” or any other of these subjects shows up in a post and the bots start crawling all over it, and in addition to throttling back a person’s readership, they will add a link to the post, steering those suffering from “vaccine hesitancy” and other sceptics to the “official narrative.” Repeated contradictions of the narrative will land you in “Facebook jail,” and ultimately, expulsion.
For example, I posted a piece concerning some recent State of Apartheid Israel atrocity in Gaza, and was surprised to see no comment whatsoever, -or even a diabolical “like-” from any of my carefully-vetted 3000-some-odd “friends.” Any “friend request” I received over the years, I would browse their page, and see if they had even the slightest proclivity towards ecological literacy, human rights, Peace etc and if so, I’d toggle them on. I could see my post sitting right there on my page, directly below my penultimate cat post which had received a lot of likes. So I posted “Friends, did any of you see my recent post concerning the Latest Atrocities committed by the State of Ap___th__d Is___l on the Innocent and Defenceless People of G—a?” Amazingly, this ruse actually got past Facebooks censor-bots, and I got a big response from my friends. No, they had not seen the post, although they had all seen the cat post. And my friends did sympathize with the long-suffering people of Palestine and are appalled by the dreadful genocidal violence being visited on them.
The degree of “official narrative” management throughout the corporate media, its social media counterparts, Google and basically the whole internet is truly staggering. The discussion around COVID is especially, strictly controlled. Any post which casts doubt is immediately crushed out by a deluge of complex pharmaceutical scientific publications, put out by “think tanks” like, for example, the Oxford University-based “Our World in Data” (OWID) which headlines its site with the banner statement: “Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.” Below this banner, OWID boasts that it is “Trusted in Research and Media” by the Journal Science, nature, PNAS, Royal Statistical Society, and all of those bastions of free speech, the BBC, New York Times, CNN, Financial Times, Guardian, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Washington Post, and VOX.
Anyone lacking a pharmaceutical Phd better just STFU. Nevermind that OWID is funded by the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, Elon Musk and the illustrious WHO, -which is all-but owned by Gates, who personally contributed $531,000,000 in 2019, vs the entire USA contribution of $893,000,000. It’s difficult to imagine the planet’s most obscenely wealthy individuals do not give with significant strings attached and have substantial investment portfolios with Big Pharma..It’s all very well posting fancy graphs, charts and statistics produced by the scientists and medical professionals who backstop the pharmaceutical-industrial complex and its “official narrative,” and that anyone questioning this narrative who is not a highly trained pharmaceutical scientist doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Nevertheless, there are numerous aspects to the COVID story and its many hypocrisies that do not require a PhD in medicine to examine, and are equally off-limits to discussion.
There is simply too much Bullshit that passes for science and bolsters the “official narrative” which makes thoughtful people sceptical whenever we see the corporate, and its social media counterparts slavishly propagating the “science” dogma. Just look at what passes for “forestry” in British Columbia and the science that backstops this outrageous atrocity for example. Take a flight across BC and glance out the window anywhere and it doesn’t take a Phd in forestry to see the dreadful devastations being wrought by unchecked industrial logging. Clearly, the science is for sale that proves that black is white. I say beware and question the “Fanaticism of Scientism,” that just like every religion, purports to have All, and the Only answers.
! used to be a Vancouver Island primaeval forest defender, but the island has now been entirely destroyed by voracious industrial logging. I then moved onto fighting the American ATB petroleum tankers which ply the entire BC coast, delivering fuels from Washington State refineries to SE Ak’s coastal communities. Meanwhile, the “Justin Trudeau Pipeline” assault on BC is snaking its way over the mountains from the Alberta dirty-oil Tar Sands. (Trudeau used billions upon billions of tax-payer dollars to buy the pipeline from Kinder Morgan.) On every one of these issues which I have discussed in this screed, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is THE most shameless corporate-lackey “official narrative” propagator on the planet. I think climate catastrophe has climbed down a notch on the threats we face. Nowadays, I’m sad to say that I’m leaning towards the impending nuclear holocaust, -whether deliberate or accidental which will take us all out.
Some people buy into the “official narrative” that some jungly folks were eating bat soup in the Wuhan Market one day, and suddenly started getting the sniffles, which then blew up into an hideous contagion that ripped around the world killing off millions. Meanwhile, bunyuks down at Big Pharma, duly adhering to the purest non-partisan scientific principles, then miraculously concocted the magic potion that has saved the day. How wonderful that Bill Gates and Big Pharma are working so diligently to make sure all 8,000,000,000 of us will survive the onslaught of dreadful pestilences emerging from the planet’s tattered wilds, so that us humans may all live happily, consuming everything in sight for 100 years each, and counting…
As far as I can tell, all of my education boiled down to 2 simple take-aways, -1) question everything and 2) follow the money. Particularly, when ALL of the transnational corporations and their corporate media -and especially capitalist government-controlled propaganda organs like the CBC- are shouting the “official narrative” in UNISON, then observe the WAVING RED FLAGS, wake the fuck up and question everything and follow the money. If there’s a massive, global pandemic that’s killing off millions and somebody has developed the magic formula, then Hallelujah, -but I’d be a less sceptical if those bunyuks weren’t raking in TRILLIONS out of this global tragedy, and telling everybody they require an all-but mandatory booster every 2 months so we can all keep on living to be 100.
If people could freely speak their minds, then we might raise quite credible, reasonable questions about these enormous global events that are transforming the world. Questions like, why shouldn’t the magic formula simply be expropriated, -nay, outright confiscated- away from the trillions-makers and manufactured in a public facility to be freely distributed for the public good? When the government wants to punch a highway through your house, you are required to move out by the specified date, -and here’s a little stipend for your contribution to the public good. Credible, reasonable questions like, perhaps this pandemic wasn’t the result of eating bat soup, but maybe designed by diabolical American scientists at their gain-of-function bio-weapons laboratory who are bent on total, utter global domination? If the military/industrial complex has no ethical qualms about producing reams of planet-killing nuclear weapons, why wouldn’t the pharmaceutical/industrial complex be comfortable developing -and unleashing- gruesome pestilences like COVID?
Some folks with total confidence in the “official narrative” still believe that 9/11 was masterminded by some dude living out in the wilds of Afghanistan who directed a bunch of Saudi bunyuks armed with box cutters to crash airplanes into New York skyscrapers. Even though nearby office towers that didn’t have airplanes flown into them suddenly collapsed in their own footprint 8 hours later. The corporate media said it was so, and so be it, apparently.. Anyone who has carefully examined the evidence being painstakingly laid out by the “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” for example, and compares that with the outrageous “official narrative” on that atrocity will take heed of the numerous waving red propaganda flags swirling around COVID as well.
Some folks even believe the UNITED corporate media chorus that the “war” in Ukraine is simply an unprovoked belligerent invasion by some grotesque megalomaniac dictator, and meanwhile, the NATO war-machine and the gargantuan American weapon industry that’s raking in TRILLIONS as a result is an altruistic conscientious effort working for the benefit of humanity. Conflict Resolution 101 states that in order to negotiate Peace, you have to understand each perspective. Try listening to Putin’s numerous speeches on the subject of NATO aggression, the persecution of the Russian people of Donbass and the Ukraine’s blatant NAZI battalions that he delivered PRIOR to his invasion. Very difficult to find, anywhere on the internet. Methinks resolving those concerns at that time would have been straightforward. Now we’re faced with all-out nuclear war as a result of that pigheaded stupidity.
One way or another, something’s gonna start weeding out the 8,000,000,000 of us hunks of all-consuming meat walking around that are destroying the planet. If we all expect to be able to live to be 100, that’s a recipe for disaster just as much as climate, or nuclear catastrophe is. Perhaps there’s Huge Bucks out there to be made fighting off the bugs, and to be made manufacturing massive weaponry of mass destruction, but I still think we should be questioning everything, and following the money.
And thankfully, there’s still Counterpunch!
Ingmar Lee is grateful to the Heiltsuk Nation for being able to live here and raise his family in their territory, in the heart of this planet’s largest final contiguous tract of primaeval wilderness which they have so carefully stewarded for millenia.