12/8/16

Where “Fake News” Meets Real News

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

With the media in disarray, even in meltdown, over their failure to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency last month, the issue of “fake news” has become an urgent concern. What is really of greater concern? Fake websites that are established to make money and discredit their political opponents? Or is it the establishment media that are pushing a political agenda, while claiming to adhere to high standards of journalism?

An armed man recently traveled from North Carolina to search for sexually exploited minors at a pizza shop in Washington, DC—he had been taken in by a phony Internet conspiracy theory known as PizzaGate. This incident has fed the so-called mainstream media with additional reasons to publish stories highlighting the dangers of fake news and online conspiracies.

However, as the creators of fake news are exposed, it becomes clear that these sites are often motivated by making money—while mainstream media organizations use fake news as a means of furthering the Obama administration and the “progressive” agenda.

Georgian citizen Beqa Latsabidze “was savvy enough to change course when he realized what did drive traffic: laudatory stories about Donald J. Trump that mixed real—and completely fake—news in a stew of anti-Clinton fervor,” reported The New York Times on November 25. “Mr. Latsabidze said his only incentive was to make money from Google ads by luring people off Facebook pages and onto his websites,” it reported. Ironically, Latsabidze found that he wasn’t able to make any money publishing “gushing” stories about Hillary Clinton.

Another fake news writer, Jestin Coler, met with MSNBC News to detail his exploits.

“And lately there’s been a lot of coverage in the real news about the growing and booming business of creating fake news,” said Brian Williams on his December 5 show, “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams.” Coler helped organize the dissemination of a fake news story on the “Denver Guardian” about an FBI agent murder-suicide: “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide.”

“This is one that I would probably take back,” Coler told MSNBC. “And even, to kind of add to that, Google closed all the accounts that were running on the site, so even that money is gone.” Coler, the fake news propagator, admitted to MSNBC that he’s a Hillary Clinton supporter, and in fact voted for her.

In an interview with NPR, Coler wouldn’t cite exact numbers, but said that his fake news grossed similarly to others making $10,000 to $30,000 a month.

Yet, despite the lucrative business, Coler claims that he created these stories to undermine the so-called alt-right and Trump supporters. “The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly false or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction,” he told NPR. As for Trump, “His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters…He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.” It should be noted that Coler started working on this back in 2013.

The mainstream media’s fascination with exposing fake news writers such as Coler revolves around the desire to prove that their own reporting is above reproach, and should be trusted. A Gallup poll shows that current trust in the media is hovering at 32 percent, and bottoming out at 14 percent among Republicans.

It’s not as if readers don’t have reasons to distrust the media. Brian Williams’ broadcast regarding the fake news industry was an exercise in irony, and just shows what’s wrong with mainstream reporting today. He is, in effect, the recent “godfather” of fake news, having spread false tales for years about his alleged adventure in Iraq in a Chinook helicopter under fire. Actually, Breitbart has documented more than 30 examples of Williams telling lies or disputed stories. So when he is introducing a story about fake news, do he and his producers think we’ve all forgotten what got him suspended last year?

As we recently reported, the media continue to provide false and misleading reports about Obama’s Iran deal, which is not an actual deal but merely a set of political commitments. Yet most major newspapers and TV networks continue to report that the Iran deal is “signed,” which it isn’t.

We’ve also documented how fake news has allowed President Obama to claim success in everything from fixing the economy, to improving healthcare, to making the world a more peaceful place, to having a scandal-free eight years as president. His actual record, in each case, is quite different.

The reason that the media continue to obsess over fake news stories is that when viewed in contrast, they appear more credible at a time when their public credibility is in short supply. Generally, the fake news stories they are now reporting about are easy to detect. But if the news media continue to publish stories that mislead the public, then they are no better than the online peddlers of fake news, and more of a threat to the marketplace of ideas.

David Harsanyi of The Federalist explained why the left is pushing this issue of fake news so hard. He wrote, “Now that Democrats have sort of moved on from blaming the Electoral College and James Comey and the Russians, they’re absolutely convinced that ‘fake news’ turned the election against Hillary Clinton (although it’s still a mystery why they lost more than 1,000 other seats since Obamacare was passed).”

Pamela Geller, the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), writing for Breitbart, has an even harsher assessment of what the left is up to: “I always understood that the objective was to taint the conservative news-sphere. Sites were created to spread disinformation and shame the right-wingers who jumped on it. This is classic disinformation. It’s always games, games, games…from the people who brought you Soros’ rent-a-mob—rioting, looting and destruction in cities, etc. even going so far as to risk a few deaths all for the cause. But what I didn’t see coming is their ultimate goal: the shut-down of free speech. The left wants to crush free speech, which has been in their cross-hairs for some time now.”

Geller asks, “If a blogger or news writer gets a story wrong, does that designate him or her, or his or her site, as ‘fake news’? If that’s the case, they’ll have to shut down the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, etc. They get things wrong all the time.”

Indeed they do.


Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Roger Aronoff.

12/8/16

Trump Could Fuel A Nuclear Energy Boom In 2017

With Trump at the helm, sentiment gives way to practicality in the energy industry. For the vast untapped potential of the nuclear energy industry and the uranium that feeds it, this could contribute to a market-disrupting revival that no longer bows to fear and the politics of economy.

While there have been some oversupply issues keeping uranium prices down, the bigger problem has been negative sentiment rather than real fundamentals, but the Trump presidency will see through that.

Trump’s take on nuclear energy is quite simple. As he noted after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan: “If a plane goes down, people keep flying. If you get into an auto crash, people keep driving.

Now more than ever, demand for uranium appears to be assured. But more than that, it’s about to truly explode as a number of situations combine to form the new era of nuclear power.

If you are going to acquire uranium assets, now is the right time,” IsoEnergy Ltd. CEO and President Craig Parry told Oilprice.com. “If it’s not the bottom yet, you can certainly see it. And on that front we see the market at the early stage of what will become a roaring bull market.”

Parry might be onto something, and IsoEnergy is indeed in high acquisition mode, targeting the discovery and development of high-grade uranium deposits in and around the Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan—home to some of the world’s biggest high-grade deposits.

Getting Ready for Uranium to Become an Irresistibly Hot Commodity

While Trump might inject a major boost of energy into the U.S. nuclear industry and the uranium market through deregulation, there are other factors coalescing around the world to make this a stellar new beginning for uranium and nuclear energy.

We’re already seeing the biggest uranium producers stocks reacting, including Cameco Corporation (NYSE:CCJ), AREVA (EPA:AREVA), BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP), and Uranium One (TSE:UUU). Canadian Cameco’s stock was up 25 percent in November, and while the spot prices are low and set to rise, Parry points out that spot prices are all but irrelevant in this market, as almost all uranium is sold at long-term contract prices, which are presently coming in upwards of US$40 per pound, significantly higher than the current spot prices.

The outlook for uranium looks even more bullish when you consider that these contracts are now coming to a close, and uranium is poised to become a very hot commodity once again. Major American and European nuclear reactors are coming off supply in 2017 and 2018, and will be looking for long-term contracts once again.

The biggest uranium producer in the world, Canadian Cameco, said earlier this month that some 500 million pounds of uranium will be needed for nuclear reactors in the next ten years, and it hasn’t been contracted out yet. Buyers of this uranium will have to hit the market sooner rather than later.

Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald recently predicted that there would be a “violent increase” in uranium prices at some point, theorizing that as much as 80 percent of the uranium market might be uncovered in terms of supply by 2025, and that demand would by then outstrip supply.

The low-price environment has choked off exploration activity for uranium and we are at the point where there are not enough uranium projects in the pipeline that can adequately meet the coming demand,” the London Telegraph quoted Cantor as saying.

All of this coincides with a phenomenal number of new nuclear reactors being built, which will also enter the market at the same time.

(Click to enlarge)

The end result? We’re looking at the biggest deficit ever in the uranium market by 2018.

So we have over 20 Chinese nuclear reactors already under construction, plans from India to significantly increase its nuclear demand, and plans to restart over 20 Japanese reactors. These three things are major demand drivers that will wake the sleeping giant that is uranium.

And as demand soars, North America is sure to play a key role in the future of uranium supply.

In North America—and even from a global standpoint—there is no better place to explore for uranium than Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin, which is to uranium what Saudi Arabia is to oil.

(Click to enlarge)

Two of the largest producing uranium mines in the world—McArthur River and Cigar Lake–are in the Athabasca Basin. In and around this area, where Canada’s Cameco is the key player, junior IsoEnergy is focusing on new exploration and development at Thorburn Lake, Radio, North Thorburn and Madison.

Now that Trump is president-elect, the speculation is that Trump will make good on promises to reform the licensing and permitting processes for nuclear power plants. What this means is that we could be sitting right on the edge of a revolution in next generation nuclear technology.

This means a major push for next-generation nuclear projects such as PRISM, the brainchild of General Electric and Hitachi.

So not only does demand for uranium across the next two decades seem assured, it is poised to paint an attractively tight supply picture in the coming decades.

As the New Year is ushered in, falsely negative sentiment on uranium is likely to be ushered out the door and the real fundamentals will become more visible.

The bottom line is this: While uranium prices have been on a very long and gradual decline for some 13 years, analysts agree that they’ve reached their bottom and the climb back up is poised to be a lot faster than the decline.

Trump is all about harnessing untapped potential, and as atomic energy advocates are quick to point out: Nothing has more untapped potential on multiple fronts than nuclear energy, and right now is the time to buy into quality assets while uranium is at a multi-year low but at the early stage of a bull market.

Link to original article: http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Trump-Could-Fuel-A-Nuclear-Energy-Boom-In-2017.html

By James Stafford of Oilprice.com