Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby elfismiles » Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:15 pm

should go without saying but ... posting does not equal endorsement:

Student Anti-Gun Activist Featured In CBS News Story – Six Months Ago
Questions swirling around teen activist as odd videos surface
Dan Lyman | Infowars.com - February 20, 2018
https://www.infowars.com/student-anti-g ... onths-ago/
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:40 pm

elfismiles » Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:15 am wrote:should go without saying but ... posting does not equal endorsement:

Student Anti-Gun Activist Featured In CBS News Story – Six Months Ago
Questions swirling around teen activist as odd videos surface
Dan Lyman | Infowars.com - February 20, 2018
https://www.infowars.com/student-anti-g ... onths-ago/


Hm. For days this kid has been pushed at me in headlines with the odd phrase, "Teen torches Trump...." (the new word for "flames"?).

The most curious part is the video of the kid seemingly reciting from a memorized script and possibly being fed lines (embedded below).

Does anyone know who took that video? No station logos or other attribution. In the Comments someone says that it's his father interviewing him.

His father is apparently in the FBI or ex-FBI. Hm.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:05 pm

An Alt-Right Troll Is Trying To Dupe Media With A Fake Craigslist Ad Offering Payments For Gun Violence Protesters

By Jared Holt | February 20, 2018 4:55 pm

As part of an ongoing attempt to influence mainstream media reporting surrounding last week’s mass shooting at Florida high school, alt-right trolls appear to have forged a Craigslist ad that purportedly offers to pay gun reform protesters for participating in protests.

But the trolls behind the fake ad made one glaring oversight: They attributed the ad to an organization that doesn’t exist.

The alleged Craigslist ad (which has since been removed) offered between $75 and $100 for participants to “stand for 17 minutes and hold a lightweight cardboard sign” on March 14, when Women’s March organizers are planning a national student protest against gun violence.

The ad claimed to have been posted by a group called “One Common Culture” which does not appear in registry searches of businesses and nonprofits. The address listed on the ad belongs to a California high school.

The ad was first circulated by an alt-right troll known online as “Microchip” who operates a massive bot farm. The user behind “Microchip” has spent all weekend peddling conspiracy theories and attacks on shooting survivors who have publicly spoken out against the Trump administration’s failure to react to gun violence in schools.


Continues at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/an-a ... rotesters/
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:10 pm

Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:40 pm wrote:
elfismiles » Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:15 am wrote:should go without saying but ... posting does not equal endorsement:

Student Anti-Gun Activist Featured In CBS News Story – Six Months Ago
Questions swirling around teen activist as odd videos surface
Dan Lyman | Infowars.com - February 20, 2018
https://www.infowars.com/student-anti-g ... onths-ago/


Hm. For days this kid has been pushed at me in headlines with the odd phrase, "Teen torches Trump...." (the new word for "flames"?).

The most curious part is the video of the kid seemingly reciting from a memorized script and possibly being fed lines (embedded below).

Does anyone know who took that video? No station logos or other attribution. In the Comments someone says that it's his father interviewing him.

His father is apparently in the FBI or ex-FBI. Hm.


The second IW video has been pulled and is no longer available.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby American Dream » Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:30 pm

How rightwing media is already attacking Florida teens speaking out

As students rise up to demand gun control the right aims to take them down, along with anyone who offers them support

Image
Emma González, 18, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, gave an impassioned speech at an anti-gun rally in Fort Lauderdale.


So what is a rightwing media apparatus dedicated to the maintenance of unrestricted access to powerful assault weapons to do?

By and large, the answer has been to attack the students, along with anyone who offers them a platform or any other form of support. The nature of such attack has varied with the self-perceived seriousness of the outlet, but almost the entirety of the right has joined in. Unremitting support for the current interpretation of the second amendment and the advocacy of the NRA is one of the signal issues that unites them.

The sleaziest and most direct attacks on individual students have come from the right’s more conspiratorial fringe. On Jim Hoft’s pro-Trump, conspiracy-minded website, Gateway Pundit, Lucian Wintrich performed a hatchet job on David Hogg, suggesting that he was “heavily coached on lines and is merely reciting a script”. Wintrich once told the Guardian that he learned about the perfidy of the left while attending Bard College. In his new piece, he claimed that because Hogg’s father works for the FBI, he may well be part of a broader anti-Trump conspiracy.

Gateway Pundit has been retweeted by Donald Trump senior and junior in the past, and they were trying their best last year to get White House Press Corps accreditation.

Conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones, who once told Piers Morgan that “1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms,” published a similar attack on his Infowars website. His minions trawled through Hogg’s past, unrelated media appearances, saying that they “raised questions”. The piece then quoted one of their bevy of retired military “experts” who had appeared on Infowars, who repeated the FBI conspiracy theory, claiming that the bureau “has been hiring Social Justice Warriors for years”.

Image
Tyra Heman, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, holds a sign that reads ‘Enough’.

It’s not that Jones doesn’t want to hear from students at all. The site, and Jones show, has highlighted commentary from a witness who claimed that there was a second shooter, and gave a lot of airtime to another who bolstered Jones’s now-reflexive “false flag” take on any given massacre. They just don’t want to hear from any who think that others should be spared the trauma they have endured through some measure of gun control.


More at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... eaking-out
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:19 pm

Iamwhomiam wrote:The second IW video has been pulled and is no longer available.


Whoa! I should have downloaded it. I forgot to embed the video, and came back to do that, but...poof!

YouTube says, "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on harassment and bullying."

I thought YouTube has a backlog of videos to check, they were really 'on the job' with this one.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:28 pm

Here's another randomly selected YT post of the same footage (this time I downloaded it):


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHv7kS3Mgzo

He really appears to be trying to remember lines and being coached...what say the RI lens of discernment?
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:49 pm

Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:28 pm wrote:Here's another randomly selected YT post of the same footage (this time I downloaded it):


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHv7kS3Mgzo

He really appears to be trying to remember lines and being coached...what say the RI lens of discernment?


First impression, with the sudden cuts in that clip, it is hard to discern any context at all.

Nor with the origins in question. If his father is interviewing him, that might make it more interesting. If it's a TV news anchor coaching/coaxing the story out of him for use-able footage, it is less so.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:50 pm

His eye roll tells me it might have been his dad who was overheard "coaching" him. What we don't know is whether he wanted to be reminded if he had forgotten to mention all he had intended to say that he reviewed with his dad on the ride to or just before the interview.

Having the ear of the world on such a weighty subject can be unsettling to anyone trying their best to remember to say all they had intended, especially after such a traumatic event as that he experienced. I don't buy his being an actor playing a role for purposes meant to deceive.I have a more negative view of the other young fellow leading the group of students they formed, as he seems to me to be the one more aspiring to hold some future pubic office. Just my opinion, of course, and I allow my fantasy may be just that and nothing more.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Jerky » Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:50 pm

What is this supposed to be "bombshell evidence" of? That someone was helping Hogg keep his composure and express himself clearly on camera?

I am NOT saying that YOU are doing this, Elvis, but I think accusing this kid of being "in on" some alleged false flag is pretty fucking despicable, and all too predictable from the likes of Alex Jones and "Urban Movers", who never met a mass shooting that wasn't a false flag.

Jerky

Elvis » 21 Feb 2018 02:28 wrote:Here's another randomly selected YT post of the same footage (this time I downloaded it):


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHv7kS3Mgzo

He really appears to be trying to remember lines and being coached...what say the RI lens of discernment?
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Jerky » Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:06 pm

Elvis » 21 Feb 2018 02:19 wrote:
Iamwhomiam wrote:The second IW video has been pulled and is no longer available.


YouTube says, "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on harassment and bullying."

I thought YouTube has a backlog of videos to check, they were really 'on the job' with this one.


How that usually works with Youtube and such complaints (of bullying, of copyright infringement, etc) is that they'll remove the video and then take their time on the REVIEW process.

That's been my experience at least. Just FYI.

J.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby SonicG » Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:34 pm

You would think that it would have been much easier to grab the guns (and impose Sharia, natch) when the Deep State was uncontested in their power a few years ago...Then, the former crisis actors could be given cushy jobs at the FEMA camps...
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:54 pm

All of the videos suggesting that Hogg is a shill of some kind are like the one I posted above—"bombshell proof!" I made sure to say that I chose it randomly because I probably don't want to promote any of those YT channels. The video itself is interesting.

Somewhere someone said it's raw footage from a CNN interview, which sounds more likely than the interviewer/videographer being Bogg's father.

Another factor is that Bogg is a student journalist, so he's probably seeing things from the producer's standpoint... "let me try that again so you have good footage (and when it airs, I'll look smarter)."

In his statement to/about Trump and gun control, he obviously and unabashedly reads from cue-cards, which is entirely expected in that situation, but his on-camera style isn't polished.


In general: most "crisis actor" claims, and especially the "hoax!" claims where every mass shooting is "fake," are pretty obviously cuckoo to even normally skeptical observers. But I think it would be a mistake to declare that no form of "deep state" psyops would ever employ tactics using actors to go on camera with bogus eyewitness reports and the like. Given the acknowledged existence of ordinary psyops such as the scripted Jessica Lynch "rescue" video (to name only one example), I think we should always be alert to the possibility.

In regards to issues like this, factional/partisan biases, on all sides, do as much damage to the truth as any spook psyops—and not to ignore the big overlap there.
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby SonicG » Wed Feb 21, 2018 12:20 am

Totally agree with the last part. It is very telling how serious and critical analysis (anybody remember Covert action information bulletin ?) of psyops such as Jessica Lynch, as well as the great Kuwaiti baby incubator massacre, fake CNN missile attack, etc. was entirely performed by the anti-war left but now has been almost fully subverted by the loony tunes right. Things like CAIB and Manufacturing Consent were sacred texts to me in the 80s, so it is from that point of view that I would caution folks like Ms. Johnstone and Jimmy Dore to be careful of their bedfellows and clearly mark their ideological grounds while critiquing mainstream media...
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Re: Security Theater ("Crisis Actors")

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:20 am

Elvis » Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:54 pm wrote:All of the videos suggesting that Hogg is a shill of some kind are like the one I posted above—"bombshell proof!" I made sure to say that I chose it randomly because I probably don't want to promote any of those YT channels. The video itself is interesting.

Somewhere someone said it's raw footage from a CNN interview, which sounds more likely than the interviewer/videographer being Bogg's father.

Another factor is that Bogg is a student journalist, so he's probably seeing things from the producer's standpoint... "let me try that again so you have good footage (and when it airs, I'll look smarter)."

In his statement to/about Trump and gun control, he obviously and unabashedly reads from cue-cards, which is entirely expected in that situation, but his on-camera style isn't polished.


In general: most "crisis actor" claims, and especially the "hoax!" claims where every mass shooting is "fake," are pretty obviously cuckoo to even normally skeptical observers. But I think it would be a mistake to declare that no form of "deep state" psyops would ever employ tactics using actors to go on camera with bogus eyewitness reports and the like. Given the acknowledged existence of ordinary psyops such as the scripted Jessica Lynch "rescue" video (to name only one example), I think we should always be alert to the possibility.

In regards to issues like this, factional/partisan biases, on all sides, do as much damage to the truth as any spook psyops—and not to ignore the big overlap there.


Is there any evidence this kid is the same who appeared in a random news report in California about a lifeguard? If it is the same kid, does it mean anything? (I would venture a solid NO to the 2nd question, but we should probably address the ideas gaining currency in the right wing media)

The biggest problem with crisis actor assertions, among many problems, is that they are the kind that can never be disproven satisfactorily to anyone who believes them.

Let's ask some questions as a thought experiment, and imagine the response:

Why was this kid on the news in California, and now in Florida as an anti-gun leader? It's impossible for anyone who lives in Florida to appear on the news in another state unless he/she is an agent.
A: Because he was visiting Cali, and his friend's bullshit made the news. He lives in Florida, where some mass murder shit went down.
Crisis Actor believer response: No way. It's too much of a coincidence that someone could actually travel across the country and wind up on the news for some bullshit story that no one ever heard of before today and then one of the biggest stories of early 2018. That has never happened ever. (ignores likely times that exact thing has actually happened).

But his Dad works for the FBI, and the FBI is secretly tryiing to take down Trump and outlaw guns as part of the Deep State conspiracy?
A: Well, that's a lot of shit in one question, Let's leave aside the Trump stuff for a moment, and point out that lots of people's parents work for the FBI because it's a damn big organization, and it doesn't really mean anything on its own to have a spook parent. Do you do everything your Dad or Mum does? Are you just a tool of your parents?
Crisis actor believer response: Naw man, FBI Dad + my pet issue = undercover teen agent. Clearly well groomed.
A: that's ridiculous.
Crisis actor believer response: But what about the Trump Stuff? The Deep State FBI is trying to get him along with all the other alphabet agencies!
A: You mean the agencies he is technically in charge of, to which he's made all the appointments allowed by law, except for the ones he hasn't bothered to fill, because he either hates work, hates government, or just doesn't care. The agencies that Obama was magically allowed to stack against him, using the same authority that Trump now technically holds?


Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Or behind. Imperials will do that do ya, 9 percent and above.

Point being, again, nothing can be said to dissuade believers. If someone had actual even-close-to-admissble-in-court evidence, I would consider. But when the only evidence is Alex Jones pulling up videos of a kid in an unrelated news story, whom I'm not even sure is the same kid but am still giving the benefit of the doubt to that being accurate despite Infowars penchant for complete fabrication, well, they don't have much at all, and certainly no fucking bombshells.

A bombshell requires convincing evidence from someone who actually takes the time, and intellectual honesty, to investigate something.

Infowars dosen't have it, and RawStory doesn't have it. All they have is clickbait horseshit to feed into pre-existing beliefs for the stories they run that cite twitter feeds and 4chan posts. The fact that this horseshit even gets placed alongside the occasional story by actual reporters at real publications when it is aggregated by google news literally sickens me.

We are living in an age where Truth with a capital T is dead. Not because people are suddenly "woke," "red-pilled," or whatever you want to call it, suddenly able to see propaganda when it rears it's head as it so often does, but because these people can no longer discern questions and innuendo from verifiable facts and are less capable of telling the difference than ever before.

There has always been some overlap of fact, questions, and innuendo in true investigative reporting, but never in my lifetime (born in the early 80s) have the leaps of logic been so great and the ideology so stubborn as to deny everything you dislike (that does not conform) and accept everything you do like (that does conform) as it is today.

When people I otherwise respect text me stories only found on sites whose agenda is clearly based on supporting one ideological lie or the other, I sigh sadly, knowing there is nothing I can say to convince them otherwise.

This is the great tragedy of our time. Once upon a time, people were at least willing to frame their ideas as opinion, and acknowledge them as such. Not anymore. Belief becomes fact for such folks. When opinion becomes truth, Truth is dead.
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