rigorousintuition.ca

smiths » Wed Aug 13, 2014 7:47 pm wrote:i would be especially cautious of Vice, it has shot from being a soft-porn mag that specialised in images of sexualized children in drug dens to being the magazine that gets the world scoop with the most extreme religious fanatical army of the moment ISIS - WTF?

Murdoch is involved with Vice, and anyone who thinks Murdoch wants to help the counter-culture or find out the truth is _ _ _ _

Wombaticus Rex » Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:09 pm wrote:I've never found a reliable / trustworthy "news source" that wasn't a single human being -- a small team, at most. Websites are just brands.

I'd also rather scrutinize individual data points than assess organizations, so perhaps this is a personal heuristics thing.

Per the three you've listed, though, why not contribute my own impressions?

Counterpunch strikes me as pretty typical of old Leftists -- exasperated, cynical, close-minded, factually accurate and willing to admit to mistakes. Every post a jerimiad, the tone is ultimately what keeps me away.

Robert Parry has done excellent work breaking stories and analyzing Big Events -- Consortium has made a lot of shitty calls over the years in the name of clickbait and just plain constant content, but that's inevitable.

Vice News is entertainment. Even when they're covering something that's actually news, it's generally a sexed-up, fast-cuts, youth-friendly photocopy of whatever Frontline was talking about 6 months ago.

American Dream » Sun Aug 17, 2014 7:43 am wrote:VICE I will withhold much comment on, as I only read them sporadically, generally when my searches take me there or someone else links to an article there.

Robert Parry and Consortium News I have a lot of compassion for, even though I have a critique. He really did get canned from the corporate press for revealing too much about Iran Contra and has worked to reinvent himself as a journalist with an independent funding base after he was more or less blacklisted. That said, he seems to rely mostly on recycling his own personal conspiracy revelations from decades ago (Klaus Barbie, Sun Myung Moon, Contra Cocaine, October Surprise etc.). I don't see him breaking new stories that are significant and I know that's hard, but there are certainly more conspiracies afoot!

I know also that he has been criticized for recent coverage of the MH-!7 crash and for repeating Russian-sponsored disinfo memes but I will givee him the benefit of the doubt and say that this may have been the low hanging fruit and he wants/needs to break new stories to keep getting the donations that keep him going. I've seen no evidence to make me think he is on the Russian payroll.

Parry's politics seem liberal/progressive, maybe at most veering toward social democratic.

Counterpunch is a horse of a different color. I've read it for years but always found Cockburn's leadership there to be a mixed bag, reflecting some kind of weird wacko twist on his Stalinist background in terms of bizarre positions held firmly as dogmas. Some have gone as far to characterize his positions as a red/brown fusion, which does carry a small element of truth, I'd say.

Alexander Cockburn has now passed on but unfortunately Counterpunch continues on with the same strengths and weaknesses, including some good writers but also some messed up ones. This is all speculative so perhaps I shouldn't even say it, but I often wondered if Cockburn was a hardcore alcoholic and whether he made the new editor, Jeffrey St. Clair, swear to continue things exactly as before after his death.

Despite my criticisms, I'd read from any/all of the above. I just wouldn't swallow without chewing thoroughly first...

Shouldnt I be fighting against Smiths????

……Of paramount importance here is to imply no judgmental assessment of this definition of ‘knowing’, such as right or wrong, correct or incorrect, good or bad. For example, I might find some wild berries in the woods and decide to eat them. Almost immediately I become violently ill and remain in that state for hours or even days. One might say from that point on that I know those berries to be poisonous and to be avoided. But do I really ‘know’ this to be true and correct based simply upon my experience? The answer is unequivocally NO!

The berries might easily have been quite edible while ripe, only to turn nasty after passing their peak in the same manner cow’s milk is fine for a period of time, but can then make you very sick if ingested after it has turned. We don’t declare spoiled milk poison, so why wouldn’t the same thinking apply to the berries? Or maybe the berries were contaminated by something else in the woods, such as a truly poisonous plant overhead or bird/animal droppings. There are easily half a dozen alternative explanations for getting sick from the berries.

All I truly ‘know’ about those berries is I became very sick after eating them. In reality I ‘know’ very little else based upon my personal experience and observation. In other words my ‘knowing’ does not always imply correctness or truth, nor does it mean my knowledge is necessarily false or not factual.

In our rush to judge in order to satisfy our often imagined need for certainty, sometimes we jump to conclusions and make assumption that don’t really apply. We don’t need to declare with absolutely certainty those berries are poisonous in order for us or others to avoid them. But in a paternal/authoritarian world where to be believed is to be powerful, one must speak with certainty and conviction regardless of information or knowledge to the contrary. This applies directly to our inner dialogue as well. Oftentimes we muster a false sense of certainty in order to bolster personal courage or to push something uncomfortable deep down the denial hole.

Our Thought Boxes

On the other hand ‘information’ is usually purported to consist mostly of ‘facts’ and ‘truth’ and is compiled, sorted, categorized and publicized by others (who it is presumed gathered it themselves, but often do not) as possessing these qualities. Thus many claim to pass on their own ‘true’ knowledge or body of knowing to others for the benefit of mankind and perhaps their personal profit. Because of prior conditioning and cultural norms we/they actually ‘believe’ this information is part of our/their knowing or knowledge. Essentially what we ‘know’ has been twisted to mean what we have been taught.

If someone else ate those berries, got sick and then told you to avoid them, this would be considered information not of your own personal knowing. Regardless of the person’s motive who is informing you of the berries, to those who have not experienced or observed this ‘knowledge’ personally it is just hearsay, though not necessarily true or false. Consider how in the US legal system information deemed hearsay is not admissible as ‘evidence’ because its veracity is questionable and not of speakers own personal knowing. Yet we never consider applying these same rules of evidence to our own personal lives to screen what we believe we know or what we are told or taught.

The true conflation begins when we are given, and accept, information gained from outside our direct experience and observation as both ‘knowledge’, or something we now ‘know’, and as ‘correct’ and ‘true’, a state often referred to as ‘fact’ by those who are promoting their ‘truth’. If that person who ate the berries informed you they became sick and you should be careful around the berries, the information is being passed on to you with no direct bias other than that derived from their personal experience. But if that person tells you the berries are poisonous and you should stay far away from them they are claiming as ‘fact’ something they may or may not actually ‘know’.

Much of what we ‘know’ in this indirect manner (more information than you might think) is often just as suspect as our own body of knowing if not more so. But since the source of the information is often an ‘author-ity’ (someone who authors or creates his or her own veracity, genuineness or authenticity) or the information is ‘taught’ to us by another authority such as a teacher or ‘profess-or’ (someone who orally or in writing professes their ‘knowledge’ as correct and truthful) we accept their information as genuine knowledge of our own knowing rather than information that is, or at least might be, suspect or tainted......

……But when my beliefs are placed upon paper and carefully examined by others, if I am to be honest I must at the very least make a concerted effort to root out the inner deception, corruption and conditioning. Or I may maintain and increase my self-deception by finding other like minded individuals who share my cognitive distortions and preach to the choir a la Paul Krugman and tens of thousands of others.

It is the effective manipulation of our belief systems (there are dozens if not hundreds of minor variations we seamlessly switch between as circumstances and needs dictate) that enslaves us to the present day insanity. And by far the number one manipulator is our ‘self’. While everyone claims they desire the truth, in reality we want only what can be absorbed into our existing worldview framework as smoothly as possible. The ultimate propagandist and manipulator we encounter during our lifetime is our ‘self’ (inflamed by our ego) an ugly self truth we carefully avoid ever personally ‘knowing’, let along examining.

It never ceases to amaze me how outraged we become when presented with propaganda/information/knowledge/belief that clashes with our own personal belief systems, yet we accept with little question or examination similarly distorted information that confirms, conforms with or is easily folded into our beliefs. Hypocrisy begins at home and we are all hypocrites in every sense of the word.