Post by auntym on Jul 17, 2014 14:03:40 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14677/um-please-lock-the-door/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Um, please lock the door
By Billy Cox, Herald-Tribune
Thursday, July 17, 2014
De Void was surprised to read a May 15 Newsweek cover story about conspiracy theories that didn’t mention UFOs. Actually, De Void was surprised to learn Newsweek still existed. De Void was a big fan of Tina Brown’s efforts to inject some energy into that venerable moribund weekly in 2010 before it conceded defeat and collapsed its print platform at the end of 2012.
Do we dare believe an MSM report on conspiracies and paranoia that doesn't include UFOs?/CREDIT: worldbulletin.net
Anyhow, “The Plots to Destroy America” piece was a lengthy meditation on how the “ravings of the tin-foil-hat crowd has in recent years crossed a threshold, experts say, with delusions, fictions and lunacy now strangling government policies and creating health risks.” It explored the subculture of truthers, birthers, suppressed cancer cures, New World Order plans to confiscate Americans’ private property, etc. ad nauseum, plugged into the adrenalin of social media, and exacerbated by its ability to enlist “national political leaders who advance tales of secret schemes and treachery without a scintilla of evidence.”
Some of the points were pretty startling. It mentioned, for instance, how there were no cases of measles in the U.S. in 2008, and 13,278 instances of whooping cough. Five years later, 276 Americans were measles-infected, and instances of whooping cough had nearly doubled. Medical experts blamed declining immunizations on growing suspicions that pharmaceutical companies were covering up myriad side-effects horrors.
“People who more strongly believed in conspiracy theories,” the piece went on, “were significantly less likely to use sunscreen or have an annual medical checkup.” Some of the findings were downright loopy. “One study showed that a person who believes Britain’s Princess Diana was murdered in 1997 is also more likely to think she is still alive. Those who think that Osama bin Laden was dead before an American SEAL team raided his compound in 2011 are also more likely to be convinced he escaped.” Some believe “the denial is proof of the truth of the theory.” Some think the mind-bending remedy might have to involve the “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups” online. (This was before the drapes were ripped off Facebook's clandestine mass-psychology experiments.)
The kicker: “Psychological research has shown that the only trait that consistently indicates the probability someone will believe in a conspiracy theory is that if that person believes in other conspiracy theories.” :-( At least they didn't toss The Great Taboo into the mix.
But then, just days later -- whoa, hello! From the May-June issue of Mother Jones, this headline: “Who’s Behind Newsweek? The Magazine’s Owners Are Anxious To Hide Their Ties to an Enigmatic Religious Figure. Why?”
Looks like something called the International Business Times purchased Newsweek in 2013. De Void began noticing IBT’s UFO stories several years ago, when they started to cluster at the top of Google News feeds. They seemed kind of sterile and half-assed, but I didn’t realize what polyps they were until the Mother Jones followed the trail. Among other things, MJ laid out the results of an investigation from Tokyo’s biggest newspaper. “Yomiuri Shimbuns,” MJ stated, “reported that of the 432 articles IBT’s Japan edition published between July 1 and August 19 [2010], 302 were created by copying sentences from Japanese newspapers, wire services, and broadcasters and combining them, collage-style, to create seemingly new stories. The company’s Japanese CEO apologized for the incident, blaming it on a contract employee.”
The MJ profile of IBT's "news" operation was that of a coolie-wage sausage factory, and IBT is evidently pulling the same crap with its English-language editions. One day after Leslie Kean broke the story about the Chilean government’s photo analysis of a UFO for Huffington Post, IBT banged out its own version without bothering to cite the original source. Instead, its "reporter" made fleeting reference to yet another copycat parasite, from which it clearly cut ‘n’ pasted.
The bigger picture, of course, is the extensive paper trail Mother Jones established in connecting IBT to David Jang, a former Moonie and now head of his own denomination called the Community. Jang’s people insist he has no editorial designs on Newsweek, and you can read the article to decide whether or not Jang -- as some rumors have it -- is the incarnation of the Second Coming, or something else.
Nothing wrong there, of course, even if Jang wanted Newsweek to parrot his politics. The late Rev. Sun Myung Moon owned The Washington Times and still didn't convert the world, and Mother Jones makes it clear that Newsweek’s top editor “and the rest of the staff are accomplished career journalists with no ties to the Community’s religious endeavors.” But still -- what can you believe these days? Hm? When Newsweek writes a conspiracy story that doesn’t include UFOs, can we trust it? What are they really up to? And why
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/14677/um-please-lock-the-door/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Um, please lock the door
By Billy Cox, Herald-Tribune
Thursday, July 17, 2014
De Void was surprised to read a May 15 Newsweek cover story about conspiracy theories that didn’t mention UFOs. Actually, De Void was surprised to learn Newsweek still existed. De Void was a big fan of Tina Brown’s efforts to inject some energy into that venerable moribund weekly in 2010 before it conceded defeat and collapsed its print platform at the end of 2012.
Do we dare believe an MSM report on conspiracies and paranoia that doesn't include UFOs?/CREDIT: worldbulletin.net
Anyhow, “The Plots to Destroy America” piece was a lengthy meditation on how the “ravings of the tin-foil-hat crowd has in recent years crossed a threshold, experts say, with delusions, fictions and lunacy now strangling government policies and creating health risks.” It explored the subculture of truthers, birthers, suppressed cancer cures, New World Order plans to confiscate Americans’ private property, etc. ad nauseum, plugged into the adrenalin of social media, and exacerbated by its ability to enlist “national political leaders who advance tales of secret schemes and treachery without a scintilla of evidence.”
Some of the points were pretty startling. It mentioned, for instance, how there were no cases of measles in the U.S. in 2008, and 13,278 instances of whooping cough. Five years later, 276 Americans were measles-infected, and instances of whooping cough had nearly doubled. Medical experts blamed declining immunizations on growing suspicions that pharmaceutical companies were covering up myriad side-effects horrors.
“People who more strongly believed in conspiracy theories,” the piece went on, “were significantly less likely to use sunscreen or have an annual medical checkup.” Some of the findings were downright loopy. “One study showed that a person who believes Britain’s Princess Diana was murdered in 1997 is also more likely to think she is still alive. Those who think that Osama bin Laden was dead before an American SEAL team raided his compound in 2011 are also more likely to be convinced he escaped.” Some believe “the denial is proof of the truth of the theory.” Some think the mind-bending remedy might have to involve the “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups” online. (This was before the drapes were ripped off Facebook's clandestine mass-psychology experiments.)
The kicker: “Psychological research has shown that the only trait that consistently indicates the probability someone will believe in a conspiracy theory is that if that person believes in other conspiracy theories.” :-( At least they didn't toss The Great Taboo into the mix.
But then, just days later -- whoa, hello! From the May-June issue of Mother Jones, this headline: “Who’s Behind Newsweek? The Magazine’s Owners Are Anxious To Hide Their Ties to an Enigmatic Religious Figure. Why?”
Looks like something called the International Business Times purchased Newsweek in 2013. De Void began noticing IBT’s UFO stories several years ago, when they started to cluster at the top of Google News feeds. They seemed kind of sterile and half-assed, but I didn’t realize what polyps they were until the Mother Jones followed the trail. Among other things, MJ laid out the results of an investigation from Tokyo’s biggest newspaper. “Yomiuri Shimbuns,” MJ stated, “reported that of the 432 articles IBT’s Japan edition published between July 1 and August 19 [2010], 302 were created by copying sentences from Japanese newspapers, wire services, and broadcasters and combining them, collage-style, to create seemingly new stories. The company’s Japanese CEO apologized for the incident, blaming it on a contract employee.”
The MJ profile of IBT's "news" operation was that of a coolie-wage sausage factory, and IBT is evidently pulling the same crap with its English-language editions. One day after Leslie Kean broke the story about the Chilean government’s photo analysis of a UFO for Huffington Post, IBT banged out its own version without bothering to cite the original source. Instead, its "reporter" made fleeting reference to yet another copycat parasite, from which it clearly cut ‘n’ pasted.
The bigger picture, of course, is the extensive paper trail Mother Jones established in connecting IBT to David Jang, a former Moonie and now head of his own denomination called the Community. Jang’s people insist he has no editorial designs on Newsweek, and you can read the article to decide whether or not Jang -- as some rumors have it -- is the incarnation of the Second Coming, or something else.
Nothing wrong there, of course, even if Jang wanted Newsweek to parrot his politics. The late Rev. Sun Myung Moon owned The Washington Times and still didn't convert the world, and Mother Jones makes it clear that Newsweek’s top editor “and the rest of the staff are accomplished career journalists with no ties to the Community’s religious endeavors.” But still -- what can you believe these days? Hm? When Newsweek writes a conspiracy story that doesn’t include UFOs, can we trust it? What are they really up to? And why
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