6 ms·

Can you give some of the other examples? The only ones I can think of are COVID related and even then there were also plenty of COVID conspiracies that were "fa

by Loocid 4y ago

Can you give some of the other examples? The only ones I can think of are COVID related and even then there were also plenty of COVID conspiracies that were "facts" and not facts.

doublepg23 4y ago
A politically charged example would be the Hunter Biden laptop story. Supposedly it was a conspiracy theory too dangerous to even share … when in actuality it was legitimately his laptop. It was an unprecedented use of censorship that failed spectacularly.
- mc32 4y ago
  This one is a real oddity-- in some context he said it wasn't his laptop, on the other hand he is suing the the guy for violating his privacy --which is plausible if say someone hacked into his actual laptop and stole his emails and photos and stored them on this laptop... but then people were claiming the emails were fake --and we had like 100 ex-intel saying it was Russian disinfo... and of course they now are backpedaling.
  - tehwebguy 4y ago
    Normal people don’t care about the laptop story. They don’t care if he goes to prison or not. It’s not relevant to almost anyone. Then Joe candidly spoke about his fucked up son — everyone cares about that. Eventually we all know or knew someone that can’t seem to get it together, often someone we love. I doubt US presidents are capable of love, that was probably as close as we’ll get. Meanwhile, anyone talking about the story after that starts to look like a monster. Charge the guy, don’t charge him, who cares? I’m sure if there are solid charges a US Attorney will prosecute. There are 94 of them and Biden has only nominated 70, plenty left over from last admin to pursue it if they want (plus the 2 years they’ve had since the election). Normal people don’t care, they are busy trying to survive and a brand new marker would run out of ink before you could draw a line from “president’s quiet failson” back to their life.
    - mc32 4y ago
      If normal people don’t care then why did 100 ex-intel guys bother to write an article claiming it was Russian disinformation at the risk of influencing a national election and ironically then actually influencing said election which they claimed was trying to be influenced by the Russkies?
      - tehwebguy 4y ago
        Probably to become make money and/or become famous?
    - doublepg23 4y ago
      I used this politically inflammatory story because it was an example of the platforms literally censoring news. How is that not relevant to the discussion at hand? I didn’t mention “normal people” or if they should care about it, that’s orthogonal to the topic. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-led-us-house-panel-probes-twitter-block-hunter-biden-story-2023-02-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-led-us-house-pan...
EGreg 4y ago
Certainly! When it comes to war, the default assumption of citizens of ANY country is that their government is withholding vital information which would make them not support the war. Either they are outright lying (WMDs in Iraq) or hiding information (Secret War in Laos, the Iran-Contra Affair, the US placing nuclear missiles against USSR in Turkey, or secret operations designed to draw another country into a war). Years later they will declassify it and be proud of their choices, not even regretting the millions of people who died as a result. Often if there is a proxy war somewhere, it was because the KGB or CIA was involved in instigating it. Examples: 1) https://www.mnvietnam.org/story/the-cia-the-hmong-and-the-secret-war/ https://www.mnvietnam.org/story/the-cia-the-hmong-and-the-se... 2) https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/213722 https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-... 3) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9... 4) https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-traces-the-militarization-of-the-cia https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-tra... 5) https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-10-30/nuclear-weapons-turkey-1959 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-1... So when we are told that we are simply “arming moderate rebels in Syria”, that is not much different than Russia saying they are “supporting the separatists in Donetsk” since 2014. They empower mostly terrorists and exacerbate conflicts that would have otherwise been resolved if US or Russian weapons weren’t used by the separatists / terrorists. Same with Saudi and Iranian government in the Yemen civil war. A popular revolution (Arab spring) to overthrow some hated government sounds like a great achievement until larger powers get involved and arm the counterrevolutionaries against the revolutionaries leading to a bloody civil war. In Russia this happened after the Bolsheviks took power - with 20 million dead. So when you read about the war in Ukraine, say, your default assumption can be that you are being told only enough to support the war as the current administration wants you to, and all dissent would be forcefully suppressed. In 8 years expect to finally learn what the CIA has done, because at that point they could declassify the full extent of it: https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/exclusive-secret-cia-training-program-in-ukraine-helped-kyiv-prepare-for-russian-invasion-090052743.html https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/exclusive-secret-cia-training... Ukraine, like Syria, was a theater for a proxy war between USA (wanting to fully surround and tame Russia) and Russia (wanting to maintain its influence in its own neighbors just as China and USA want to do). I would not be surprised at all if it involved covert arming and training of “not so moderate” people on all sides. Very likely the uprisings in Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2021 had elements of spy agencies fomenting revolutions to do regime change there and see what can happen. The Russians do it far less stealthily (Strelkov and Motorola) than the CIA. But they have gotten better at it … just in the last few months the resignations of governments in Slovakia and Moldova (that get hardly reported in the West) have me suspecting strongly that Russian saboteurs have tried to foment revolution there to overthrow pro-Western governments, just as USA did the other way in Ukraine.

by Loocid 4y ago

Can you give some of the other examples? The only ones I can think of are COVID related and even then there were also plenty of COVID conspiracies that were "facts" and not facts.

doublepg23 4y ago

A politically charged example would be the Hunter Biden laptop story. Supposedly it was a conspiracy theory too dangerous to even share … when in actuality it was legitimately his laptop. It was an unprecedented use of censorship that failed spectacularly.

mc32 4y ago
This one is a real oddity-- in some context he said it wasn't his laptop, on the other hand he is suing the the guy for violating his privacy --which is plausible if say someone hacked into his actual laptop and stole his emails and photos and stored them on this laptop... but then people were claiming the emails were fake --and we had like 100 ex-intel saying it was Russian disinfo... and of course they now are backpedaling.
- tehwebguy 4y ago
  Normal people don’t care about the laptop story. They don’t care if he goes to prison or not. It’s not relevant to almost anyone. Then Joe candidly spoke about his fucked up son — everyone cares about that. Eventually we all know or knew someone that can’t seem to get it together, often someone we love. I doubt US presidents are capable of love, that was probably as close as we’ll get. Meanwhile, anyone talking about the story after that starts to look like a monster. Charge the guy, don’t charge him, who cares? I’m sure if there are solid charges a US Attorney will prosecute. There are 94 of them and Biden has only nominated 70, plenty left over from last admin to pursue it if they want (plus the 2 years they’ve had since the election). Normal people don’t care, they are busy trying to survive and a brand new marker would run out of ink before you could draw a line from “president’s quiet failson” back to their life.
  - mc32 4y ago
    If normal people don’t care then why did 100 ex-intel guys bother to write an article claiming it was Russian disinformation at the risk of influencing a national election and ironically then actually influencing said election which they claimed was trying to be influenced by the Russkies?
    - tehwebguy 4y ago
      Probably to become make money and/or become famous?
  - doublepg23 4y ago
    I used this politically inflammatory story because it was an example of the platforms literally censoring news. How is that not relevant to the discussion at hand? I didn’t mention “normal people” or if they should care about it, that’s orthogonal to the topic. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-led-us-house-panel-probes-twitter-block-hunter-biden-story-2023-02-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-led-us-house-pan...

EGreg 4y ago

Certainly! When it comes to war, the default assumption of citizens of ANY country is that their government is withholding vital information which would make them not support the war. Either they are outright lying (WMDs in Iraq) or hiding information (Secret War in Laos, the Iran-Contra Affair, the US placing nuclear missiles against USSR in Turkey, or secret operations designed to draw another country into a war). Years later they will declassify it and be proud of their choices, not even regretting the millions of people who died as a result. Often if there is a proxy war somewhere, it was because the KGB or CIA was involved in instigating it. Examples: 1) https://www.mnvietnam.org/story/the-cia-the-hmong-and-the-secret-war/ https://www.mnvietnam.org/story/the-cia-the-hmong-and-the-se... 2) https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/213722 https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-... 3) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9... 4) https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-traces-the-militarization-of-the-cia https://www.npr.org/2017/01/23/511185078/america-in-laos-tra... 5) https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-10-30/nuclear-weapons-turkey-1959 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-1... So when we are told that we are simply “arming moderate rebels in Syria”, that is not much different than Russia saying they are “supporting the separatists in Donetsk” since 2014. They empower mostly terrorists and exacerbate conflicts that would have otherwise been resolved if US or Russian weapons weren’t used by the separatists / terrorists. Same with Saudi and Iranian government in the Yemen civil war. A popular revolution (Arab spring) to overthrow some hated government sounds like a great achievement until larger powers get involved and arm the counterrevolutionaries against the revolutionaries leading to a bloody civil war. In Russia this happened after the Bolsheviks took power - with 20 million dead. So when you read about the war in Ukraine, say, your default assumption can be that you are being told only enough to support the war as the current administration wants you to, and all dissent would be forcefully suppressed. In 8 years expect to finally learn what the CIA has done, because at that point they could declassify the full extent of it: https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/exclusive-secret-cia-training-program-in-ukraine-helped-kyiv-prepare-for-russian-invasion-090052743.html https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/exclusive-secret-cia-training... Ukraine, like Syria, was a theater for a proxy war between USA (wanting to fully surround and tame Russia) and Russia (wanting to maintain its influence in its own neighbors just as China and USA want to do). I would not be surprised at all if it involved covert arming and training of “not so moderate” people on all sides. Very likely the uprisings in Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2021 had elements of spy agencies fomenting revolutions to do regime change there and see what can happen. The Russians do it far less stealthily (Strelkov and Motorola) than the CIA. But they have gotten better at it … just in the last few months the resignations of governments in Slovakia and Moldova (that get hardly reported in the West) have me suspecting strongly that Russian saboteurs have tried to foment revolution there to overthrow pro-Western governments, just as USA did the other way in Ukraine.