03/2/23

Words Matter––so Do Accurate Posting Dates!

By: Linda Goudsmit | Pundicity

Since the 2020 election, a great deal has been written about information, disinformation, and misinformation. Very little attention is being paid to the newest threat in the information wars––omission of the year in online posting dates. We live in the 21st-century age of digitized, computerized information technology. In the beginning, articles posted online followed established journalistic practices, and journalism’s classic 5W + H formula. Articles answered six questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Today, online journalism is eliminating the When. I began asking the question, Why?

For print journalism, the When has two components––the dateline and the actual events described in the article. The dateline refers to when the story was filed or written, not necessarily the dates of events described in the article. Datelines followed the month/day/year date convention and appeared on the first line of an article before the text.

In online reporting, especially blogs and websites, the dateline often refers to the posting date. In the summer of 2022, I began noticing the year was MISSING in the dateline. Sometimes the date was presented as an equally useless and ridiculous “3 hours ago” or “3 days ago.” At first, I assumed it was a typo but soon realized there was a change to the default date convention. As a writer, researcher, and political analyst, the change was so egregious, I assumed the new date conventions had to be a form over content esthetic decision, made by the same foolish designers who decided hard-to-read gray font was superior to easy-to-read black font! I was wrong.

I lodged my first complaint directly with WordPress, on June 4, 2022. WordPress is a free and open-source content management system used by 42.8% of the top 10 million websites as of October 2021. The message read:

I am a researcher, author, and political analyst. It is absolutely maddening that articles are being published with a date that does not include the YEAR. Every event happens in its historical context. “3 hours ago” or “3 days ago” or “3 months ago” is meaningless without the year. Equally meaningless is “April 10” if the article has been saved and used for reference two years after publication. Information is rendered useless without an accurate posting/publishing date that MUST include the YEAR. Please address this extremely exasperating error on all the platforms you service – the problem is becoming ubiquitous.

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02/15/23

We Are in a State of War

By: Cliff Kincaid

Washington talking heads would rather talk about flying objects than the enemies behind most of them, China and Russia. We are in a state of war. Meanwhile, despite trillions of dollars spent on infrastructure, our roads, bridges, and railways continue to deteriorate. At the same time, federal programs that millions depend on are going broke.

Ukraine, on the front lines of a war we need to win, is begging for weapons.  And yet former Reps. Tulsi Gabbard and Ron Paul are participating in a loony left “Rage Against the War Machine” rally in D.C. on February 19 demanding a Russian victory by starving the people of Ukraine of the weapons they need for self-defense.

First, however, a personal note about the financial crisis and national bankruptcy. Having passed the age which gives me access to Social Security and Medicare, I have learned more about how these federal programs work – or don’t work.

Medicare is going broke and forcing seniors to search, sometimes in vain, for doctors willing to take Medicare patients. This is because the payment system is on “an unsustainable path that is jeopardizing patient access to physicians,” according to the American Medical Association.

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02/14/23

Meet Zhe Wu and His Low Orbit Balloon Program

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

It went with almost zero attention that our US Commerce Department added a handful of companies to a so-called Entity List last week, restricting them from obtaining US technologies in a move blasted by Beijing on Monday as “illegal unilateral sanctions,” almost as soon as the first balloon was shot out of the sky off the coast of South Carolina. Now, just exactly how did our officials know to do that so fast? Now we have to wonder why Treasury has not done the same.

At least someone was paying attention and knew of Zhe Wu and his work… yet no other part of any federal agency or any part of the military was on their game for the last several years?

Okay… sounds about right.

Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology

Established in 2015, Beijing Nanjiang is controlled by a subsidiary of Shanghai-listed real estate company Deluxe Family Co Ltd, which also invests in materials and robotics projects.

The state-run Science and Technology Daily in 2015 hailed the firm’s development of a large silver helium airship as the country’s first “new near-space platform with capabilities for both military and surveillance use”.

State media said the company’s steerable, reusable and continuously powered airship was equipped with broadband communications and “high-definition observation” gear.

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02/10/23

Communists Target Conservatives with Disinformation

By: Cliff Kincaid

There are several major themes of communist disinformation which permeate parts of the “conservative” movement. One is that because former President Trump was falsely accused of being a Russian agent, all allegations of Russian influence in the American political system are without merit. The second is that a U.S. alliance with Russia is possible and that American support for Ukraine is driving Russia into the arms of the Communist Chinese.  A subsidiary is that the Jewish president of Ukraine is a Nazi.

In the first place, the Russians originated the idea that Trump was a Russian agent. The Steele dossier which drove the FBI investigation contained Russian disinformation from Russian sources about Trump. All of this has been firmly established.

It’s a fact that the Democratic Party utilized that disinformation for the purpose of destroying Trump. But the Russians were behind it from the beginning.

What this tells us about the current Russian regime, led by former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin, is that not much has changed from the days when Russia was Soviet Russia. Russia is as anti-American as the old Soviet Union. The invasion of Ukraine, first under Obama and then under Biden, reflects the old Soviet ambition of expanding territory and in fact conquering the world. It is noteworthy that Putin, who wants to re-establish the old Soviet Union, didn’t launch his second invasion of Ukraine under Trump. Putin feared Trump’s response. For his part, Trump had consistently advised the Europeans to do more for their own energy needs and defense through NATO.

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02/4/23

The Biden Doctrine of Demoralization and Defeat

By: Cliff Kincaid

While advocating more weapons for Ukraine, former Obama official Michael McFaul says in a Foreign Affairs article “In return for receiving these weapons, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could sign a legally binding agreement to not use these weapons to strike targets inside Russia.” There you have it, in clear precise terms: Ukraine is not being permitted to win.

This is another no-win war that the American foreign policy establishment wants fought in such a way as to guarantee defeat for those whose country was invaded.

If the experts at the Council on Foreign Relations have their way, Ukraine will have to settle for a bombed-out country and the corporate and financial elites will resume business-as-usual with a KGB regime in Moscow determined to resurrect the Soviet empire.

Not surprisingly, supporters of Ukraine are coming to the conclusion that, under Joe Biden, Ukraine isn’t supposed to win but to bleed and then negotiate and certify Russia’s capture of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. That means Russia wins, and it can set its sights on other countries, such as anti-communist Poland.

Joe Biden, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

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01/29/23

The World War is Already Here

By: Cliff Kincaid

“Tanks To Ukraine” is a headline on the Breitbart news site that is portrayed as possibly provoking World War III. A Drudge Report headline about “a fierce new step by the West” took me to CNN. “War in Ukraine pushes Doomsday Clock forward” is how Axios described it. This is scare-mongering propaganda designed to frighten the West into backing down, when a united front against Russian imperialism is now taking shape.

The first communist nation on the face of the earth, Russia is today run by the morally bankrupt remnants of the old Soviet KGB in alliance with billionaire oligarchs that currently uses the Russian Orthodox Church as a spiritual front for justifying Russian imperialism. The regime is so corrupt that it got caught doping its athletes.

Today, Russia uses its left-over nuclear weapons from the Soviet days to scare the West into backing down in support of a former Soviet republic fighting for its national independence.  In terms of conventional weapons, the United States and its allies have the capability to make sure Ukraine prevails, if only the U.S. has the win to win. That is an open question with Biden, long committed to a New World Order, in charge.

Meanwhile, Mexican cartels working with Communist China pour drugs in, killing about 100,000 Americans a year.  The China virus continues to kill and maim Americans, with hundreds dying every day.

Worldwide, more than 6.7 million people have died, with 1.1 million deaths in the U.S.

The China-Russia alliance against America and the West is on full display.

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