On the fifth of April, 2017, CNN staged a fake, scripted interview featuring a seven year-old Syrian girl sounding out pro-regime change talking points syllable-by-syllable using concepts that she could not possibly understand. CNN host Alisyn Camerota was asking the child questions throughout the performance, which means that Camerota necessarily had the other half of the script.
CNN has never offered an explanation for this event, and nobody has ever been able to provide me with a plausible defense of it.
This is not some tinfoil hat fantasy I made up in my imagination. This happened. CNN knowingly staged a fake, scripted interview and deceitfully passed it off to its audience as a real one, exploiting a small child for interventionist propaganda in an inexcusably fraudulent way.
And yet CNN has the gall to get huffy and indignant when it's suggested that they tried to use scripted questions in a town hall about the Florida school shooting.
I rarely pay much attention to the false flag theories which emerge after every hotly publicized mass shooting in America. They're very convoluted and consist mostly of pointing out inconsistencies and plot holes in the official story being advanced, without offering any clear substantial narrative about what did happen and why. It's not that I doubt for one second that the US power establishment would butcher American citizens if it significantly benefitted them, I just see no clearly laid-out evidence that that's what happened in these cases.
That said, the fact that the same mass media machine which brazenly staged a war psyop using a seven year-old girl is loudly condemning people who question the official narrative about the Florida school shooting is obscene.
Google the words 'shooting conspiracy' and you'll come up with a deluge of articles from mainstream outlets who helped sell the "weapons of mass destruction" lie to the world, including CNN. Do a Twitter search for the same words and you'll find employees of mass media outlets doing the same thing; the same mass media outlets which blacked out Bernie Sanders during the presidential primary, which bolster the illusion of freedom and democracy and legitimize the two-headed one-party system day after day, which back every single military action of the US government without exception, which go full attack dog on third parties and government transparency advocates, which helped the US power establishment lie about Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, and Syria in order to manufacture support for interventionism in those countries.
The mass media created conspiracy theories. By lying to the public day after day after day in the most grotesque and brazen ways imaginable, they created an environment where people will necessarily question the ways in which reality differs from what they've been told. How could they not? And yet these depraved manipulators still dedicate massive amounts of resources toward putting immense public pressure on anyone who still has unanswered questions, because Seth Rich's family wants you to shut up and some guy shot a hole in a pizza shop floor.
And it works. I've seen people being attacked in the most vicious and disgusting ways on social media for publicly asking questions about the Florida shooting, in ways that cannot possibly be psychologically comfortable. Twitter cliques organize around tearing down individuals who have made tweets expressing skepticism about the authorized shooting narrative, tagging high-follower accounts to come in and help beat up the latest person who isn't confident that all the facts add up in this particular case. It's an environment which most certainly facilitates fear of speaking and self-censorship.
But it is always okay to ask questions. Always. It is always okay to express skepticism of mainstream narratives. Always. It is always okay to share information on social media as we try to figure out what's happening in the absence of trustworthy news media. Always.
Your own educated best guess is always superior to placing blind faith in a mass media machine which you know for a fact will lie to you whenever it is in the interests of its plutocratic owners. Trying to find your own way is better than asking directions from a malicious compulsive liar.
And yeah, your best guess will be wrong sometimes. In an environment that is saturated in propaganda designed to manipulate the way you think and vote, it can be hard to know which way is up all the time, let alone bat a perfect thousand. But what choice have these pricks left us? We can't trust them, so we've got to use alternative media, communication with trusted peers, education and critical thinking to supplement the information they refuse to give us, and we can only do our honest best.
Give yourself permission to take your best guess at what's going on in the world without the permission of either the establishment propaganda machine or its rank-and-file groupthink minions. Give yourself permission to try your most sincerely to figure out what's happening with compassion for yourself and the rest of the population that is being psychologically brutalized by mass media psyops on a daily basis, and if you find out something you believed is wrong, course correct and keep doing your best.
Until we live in a healthy world where mass media psyops are illegal, where it would be unthinkable for a major media outlet to exploit a small child for the purpose of deceiving its audience into supporting military violence, this is going to have to be how we operate. Nobody is ever in any position to bully you into silence for doubting the official narratives about what is happening in a world ruled by a power establishment with a known history of using lies, false flags and propaganda to manipulate the public into supporting its agendas.
Think free and be unapologetic about it. That is your sovereign right, and anyone who tries to stop you from exercising it is your enemy. Never abdicate your authority over your own understanding of the world to anyone. It is yours. Own it.
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Now this is not only painfully true but also incredibly important.
CNN and BBC are, no matter what anybody wants to imagine or claim otherwise, absolutely and demonstrably pro-war propaganda outlets.
They've been shown by world famous journalists (such as John Pilger and others) as well as by fantastic analysts and simply pro common sense individuals with a critical mind that they are willing to lie, exaggerate or distort the truth if it suits them, whereas other times when the truth suits them and is inconvenient for the public, they will blast it over and over again...
That's why we just have to know that these organizations do have an agenda and that just because they say something never means we need to accept their reasoning...
Whether the facts they present are correct is one debate, but whether we agree with their interpretation of those facts, whether true or false, is an entirely different, and much more important debate...
These guys would have us believe our mother is a terrorist and that we should be against her, when we actually know her and they don't!
So let us not be fooled by these large corporate institutions... They are no more the masters or arbiters of reality than the stray dog on the pavement is.
Free our minds, judge-not, make-up our minds not, unless we are absolutely certain of our own personal truth, in which case, make up our minds and do something with conviction and and purpose!
You saw the CNN piece where a producer tries to shame a woman that ran a Trump Facebook group?
That was so embarrassing for them, but it will not get enough views.
You just gained a follower! Well put!
Upvoted and followed! Thanks for getting the truth out!
Very well written. Followed and gave you an upvote :)
Basically, what these fake news casters are saying is that they are for censorship. They don't want thinks they claim are "untrue" to not be able to be shown online. They want to control the information. This is why net neutrality is a big deal, because that will make money talk much more on the internet.
They don't want to just control information. They want to control what you think. See:
I agree with your sentiments, but unfortunately the same system that lies to us repeatedly has also psychologically traumatized us and failed to educate us in the ability to think critically. The end result is a warranted distrust in the power structure, but in the mess of daily information, a lot of nonsense that people are unable to differentiate from the truth, and will cling to for emotional reasons. Another problem is that it takes time to understand problems, but the pace of social media and new developments makes it hard to keep up. Part of this search for truth will have to involve some degree of walking away from the system in a practical sense to build something we can live directly...so the truth becomes the reality that we define as a lived experience and can thus know more directly with the actions we take. We have to play a more active roll in setting the context.
One weapon in the battle for the truth against the liars is the blockchain. When data can be safe from being disappeared like inconvenient dissidents, timestamped to prove it's primacy, and publicly audited, as it can be on Steemit, the lies trying to conceal it are rendered obvious.
Post the truth on Steemit, and let folks see reality so they can compare the lies to it.
Nobody is ever in any position to bully you into silence for doubting the official narratives about what is happening in a world ruled by a power establishment with a known history of using lies, false flags and propaganda to manipulate the public into supporting its agendas except Facebook and YouTube
...or violent thugs, like cops and deathsquads.
Manuel Noriega remained held without access to media, despite his ability to testify as to the drugs and money laundering schemes executed by Bush43, until he died last year. Indeed, because of his ability to testify as to the facts, names, dates, etc.
Do not underestimate that nefarious power that can jail for life without media contact the head of a sovereign nation to conceal drug dealers undermining our own.
that guy is still alive and in prison? It's funny we hear all this gun control shit and not a peep about Obama allowing Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, to traffic the cocaine into America that fuels the slaughter in our inner cities that kills more kids every day than that school shooting and more every couple of weeks than all rifles, legal and not, "assault" and not, all year.
I checked, and he died last year. Not that we could verify that. You're right about Hezbollah, although I reckon the CIA does what it wants, and President's either go along to get along, or go down and get done in.
No one ever had to ask Barry twice to go down!
XD
DED
DED is an internet term I am not familiar with.
It's always right to question... Absolutely imperative to question. But as a journalist, I'm seeing a TON of backlash from people calling me "biased" and "paid for" when I point out the clear facts that David Hogg was NOT a crisis actor. I wrote a detailed story about it that clearly lays out the facts, point by point. It hit a nerve. Was shared 55,000 times and viewed more than 500,000 times.
It is completely understandable to question the narrative. Heck, I was the only reporter pointing out that the Nevada DNC chair story was fake for awhile. I was the reporter who first helped The Young Turks learn about the election fraud questions that were coming up during the DNC primary. I'm ALL FOR questioning the narrative.
But there's also a problem when a person gets to the point of almost wanting a narrative to be true. Or ignoring clear evidence just because it might back up something a mainstream source said. People start losing credibility if they cling to any narrative despite evidence to the contrary. And credibility and an honest, objective searching for the truth is paramount these days, in a world where there is so much truth hidden from us.
So yes, it's good to question the narrative, and we should. But just plugging our ears and saying "your fault MSM!" and not engaging in critical thinking (or excusing others who don't) won't help us, in my opinion. (I'm not saying that you're doing that -- I really enjoy your writing and your work. You engage these topics far more than I have the time or ability to do. This is more about comments that I'm getting.)
I've gotten a lot of hate comments from people who declare that I'm biased and "paid for" because I'm not pushing a narrative about crisis actors in Florida that they almost seem to want to be true. That is a sign of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction. In my opinion, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that.
There are layers of disinformation and psyops at play, and I have noted that this particular event seems to have become the starting point for a certain class of disinfo, such as calling the Parkland shooting a hoax, or involving whether Hogg and some of the students are crisis actors. When people begin seeing through the first layer of psyop 'Iraq has WMDs', and then know the enemedia are just liars trying to fool them, they automatically assume opposition stories are true. Many people aren't capable for multiple reasons to independently verify facts. Astroturfing is a thing, and people are lured into trusting Q for example, by releases of information that was true.
This causes them to loyally remain convinced of the source, despite evidence contrary.
Then a second layer of psyop becomes useful,and that's happening now. Deliberate false opposition that is provably false is disseminated to those populations, and then proved false, discrediting them.
I'm not familiar with your work, but look forward to having a look asap.
Thanks!
Edit: I've read that article now, and am convinced that more folks should see it. I made a post that points folks to it. Hope it helps!
Thank you for the response and for sharing my story in a post! Very, very good points. I agree. When one thing is proven inaccurate, like Iraq WMDs, it's easier for some to just assume everything is inaccurate instead of independently verifying facts. (And like you said, not everyone is capable of doing that, for a variety of reasons.)
The deliberate false opposition is a great point too. I found a fascinating book detailing corporate "hacking" tactics, and it included disseminating provably false information that might tempt a competitor to use, and then pointing to that as proof that the competitor's information couldn't be trusted. I'm going to have to dig up that book and share it on Steemit sometime.
I hadda give you a follow, so I can see what you come up with next. I deeply admire both your intention to examine the context and sources of stories, and the hide requisite to suffering the slings and arrows of popping the bubbles of the deluded, yet well-intentioned.
That's a tough row to hoe, and it's an admirable trait.
Thanks!
Great post Caitlin. Got to love how the Propaganda Machine is visibly frustrated that more and more people are refusing the gaslighting campaign.
It never hurts to ask reasonable questions and wonder who benefits from any given scenario. Great article.
I think you are right about always questioning. I've known some pretty smart people (Sott.net writers such as Joe Quinn - they carry some of your work and is how I started following you) that have said for a number of years that take what the US gov't and mainstream media says, think of the opposite and you are more likely to arrive at the truth of things from there. Damned if it hasn't worked out that way after following along with what is happening in Syria and Ukraine and the whole Russia and Russiagate narrative. Questioning things opens the door to finding the truth in all things and IMO work and research and even more questions with an equally skeptical mind to peel back the onion gets you through the door to the truth.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
So, the kids that eat Tide pods are telling us how to live? That's rich.
I realize that isn't the point of the article, but still a facepalm worthy note.
So now they are using this as their impetus for a more extreme version of censorship on social media. The ministry of truth has spoken, so switch on your TV and be amazed and hypnotised by the fake news network. What could go right?
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It is always there for those who seek (truth). And like they say - it is hidden in plain sight for those who have eyes to see. The question is - how long can they keep doing this now that we've woken up to the deception?
Anyway, thanks for sharing!
This is an extremely clear, concise, balanced and well written article. I hope it opens eyes and minds. Thanks for sharing.
Im sure people who appreciated this article will appreciate this too - https://t.co/QXsfEgF2GM?amp=1
I would argue that it's not only okay, but necessary. I always thought questioning establishment narratives was supposed to be mass media's main reason for being. Someone's got to do it if they won't.
Man, I just read some crazy shit about this.
But it also can be explained as simply as Drama students, one of which has an father in the FBI.
But, man, the dots available to connect sure are pretty crazy.
You might want to mention your Steem account on Medium Caitlin.
I actually found your article on Twitter via SgtReport and I had to look for you to upvote and it took me quite some time!
Such an empowering reminder Caitlin!
Many years ago a personal trauma caused me to seriously doubt myself. Most dangerous were that I felt I could no longer trust my intuition or my judgement.
Today’s political/media quagmire has given me a jumpstart, forcing me reach deep and reconnect with those parts of myself again and give them a good workout!
Reading this was like listening to a friend standing along side a marathon route cheering me on as I run.
Thank you!
When you say the people poking holes in the official shooting narrative don't say what DID happen and WHY, is not correct. Debbie Lusignan has gone in depth about it. And honestly, for those of us that live here and are very aware of what these psycho's are capable of, we wait for the dust to settle to see what they want out of this.
Vegas it was body scanners and for Florida it is wanting to detain people who, uneducated police officers, deem mentally ill for 72 hours due to social media postings. While they make it seem like they want to disarm the population, they are behind the scenes passing laws.
They got lazy with Florida. While I generally agree with your articles, I feel if you really look into these events you will know exactly what DID happen and WHY. It really is quite obvious. In a country where psyops are legal and we have companies for the sole purpose of crisis events, it really isn't over the top.
Very good
Great writing! thank you! <3 <3 <3 :)
Thanks for this post! Upvoted & resteemed.
Just wanted to point out the difference between a false flag & a psy-op, seems to me that you are using these terms synonymously, which they are not.
A false flag is an event where you blame some scapegoat / boogeyman / country that has nothing to do with the actual or alleged attack (most famous example would prolly be Pearl Harbour).
In a false flag it might be the case that the government / military sacrifices "pawns" to achieve their cause.
Fake truthers like Alex Jones would point out that the Las Vegas shooting was perpetrated by ISIS, which is 1. laughable (since ISIS doesn't exist) & 2. "politically correct" (because it destracts people from the real truth).
Whereas in a psy-op nobody cries, nobody dies. A psy-op is only a drill passed off as real. There are no real victims. In these phoney fake shows, there was never actually the danger of a "lone shooter" or "terrorist" on the loose. You will spot crisis actors that are playing the parts of the survivors, next of kin, etc.
To expose this fakery is "politically incorrect" because it unveils the truth. That's why this needs to be censored at all costs, and that's what has been going on since LV & the Stoneman shooting hoax.
Keep up the good work! And join the anti-media:
When we self-mediate--seize the means of perception--Faith in the Fake gives way to Knowledge of the Real.
WE ARE THE ANTI-MEDIA
*****EXPOSING THE PSYOPS.
*PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS.
*RADICAL SKEPTICISM.****
FLATEARTHNETWORK.COM
Join our FEN MEMBERS DISCORD channel.
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Discuss these things REAL TIME. Help us BREAK through their wall of lies.
It can't be better stated. We are blinded by lies, that we've been fed every day of our lives, and we will make mistakes fumbling towards the light of truth. We need to know that in advance, and to adopt a standard means of correcting our course, while not feeling we have done something wrong.
These experts at lying are our enemies, and the enemies of free people everywhere, profiting from the myriad deaths they have caused with their lies.
Thanks!