Propaganda – Helian Unbound

Der Spiegel and the Relotius Affair

In case you’re reading this on another planet, the Relotius Affair is a particularly egregious instance of Fake News. Claas Relotius was a star reporter for Der Spiegel, the number one German news magazine. On December 19 an article appeared at the Medium website entitled Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town. It documented the fact that a story Relotius had written about a small town in Minnesota by the name of Fergus Falls was actually a pack of lies. An article admitting as much appeared at Der Spiegel’s website the same day.

The lies in question were remarkably crude. For example, according to Relotius, who claimed to have arrived on the bus from Minneapolis,

“After three and a half hours, the bus bends from the highway to a narrow, sloping street, rolling towards a dark forest that looks like dragons live in it. At the entrance, just before the station, there is a sign with the American stars and stripes banner, which reads, ‘Welcome to Fergus Falls, home of damn good folks.'”

In the following quote from an article at Der Spiegel by Chief Editor Ullrich Fichtner, we learn that Relotius embellished this account as follows:

In his story about Fergus Falls, Relotius tailored his report in a harmful and arrogant manner. To get the ball rolling, he told how he saw that a second sign had been set up right next to the welcome sign at the entrance to the town, half as high, but plainly visible. On this sign, made of thick wood driven into the frozen ground, stood in large, painted letters, “Mexicans Keep Out.”

In the first place, it apparently never occurred to the editors at Der Spiegel to ask an actual American how likely it is that an expletive such as “damn” would appear in a welcome sign. I’ve driven hundreds of thousands of miles through all parts of the country, and have never seen anything of the sort. As far as the “Mexicans Keep Out” sign is concerned, the chances that it would be found “driven into the frozen ground” in Minnesota, home of the extreme left-wing Farmer Labor Party, of all places, is vanishingly small. More to the point, did it never occur to their fact checkers to do something as elementary as taking the bus ride into town themselves using Google Street View? According to Der Spiegel,

Any text that appears in the weekly SPIEGEL, whether printed or digital, is read by many colleagues before its publication: by at least one department head and one editor-in-chief, by staff in editing and the legal department. But the heart of quality control is the in-house documentation. The more than 60 colleagues – physicists, historians, biologists or Islamic scholars – ensure that names, dates and facts are correct, they verify every word and every number. Hardly any other news medium makes such an effort to live up to the claim: What we write is true. In the days of Fake News, documentation is something we take very seriously.

I hereby offer my services to Der Spiegel to replace all those “60 colleagues,” and I’ll even work for half of the total that was paid them! Using my extraordinary computer skills, I accessed Street View, something apparently unheard of among the “physicists, historians, biologists, and Islamic scholars” working for them. It took me all of a few minutes to find that on the bus route into town there are no forests and no dragons. As far as I could tell there wasn’t even a welcome sign, not to mention one with a smaller sibling advising Mexicans to keep out. As for the “bus station” it appears to share an address with a local Tesoro gas station. If one exists at all, it would seem to be remarkably unpretentious. It’s more likely that the bus merely makes a pit stop in Fergus Falls.

The real Fergus Falls welcome sign shown in the Medium expose is not even on the bus route into town, unless the bus driver is in the habit of taking the “scenic route.” It sits next the to Applebee’s on Kennedy Park Road just off W. Lincoln. As seen in the accompanying image, it’s not exactly on a par with St. Louis’ Gateway Arch. You’d miss it if you happened to blink at the wrong time. If you squint you’ll see it just to the right of center in the image.

Consider for a moment the above along with all the other lies documented in the Medium expose. The only fact checking it would have taken to debunk any of them would hardly have amounted to more than a few phone calls. Is it even barely credible that a reporter with an international reputation to protect, like Relotius, would have dared to try to get away with even one of these lies if he so much as suspected that anything even remotely worthy of the name of “fact checking” was going on at Der Spiegel? Would he have risked his career in that way if he thought there was even a slim chance that his employer would call him out on his lies? I think not. Indeed, he did get away with it as far as Der Spiegel is concerned. Relotius knew the Spiegel narrative by heart. He knew what the editors wanted to hear, and he delivered. The one thing he forgot is that the media in the US isn’t quite as firmly in the grip of their clones here as it is in Germany. When they realized they were going to lose control of the message, they threw him under the bus with alacrity.

However, in spite of their ruthless reckoning with Relotius, it would seem the Spiegel editors have never heard the good advice to stop digging if you find yourself in a hole. Instead, they have invented a whole new fairy tale according to which a newly anointed Sherlock Holmes by the name of Juan Moreno, who works for them, was the “real” knight in shining armor who exposed Relotius. Evidently this threadbare lie is intended to prop up the myth that their system is “self-correcting.” Unfortunately, a couple of alert citizens of Fergus Falls who happened to notice the hit job on their town, and probably swallowed their gum in the process as they read through all the lies, have published a timeline on Twitter documenting the fact that they brought the matter to Der Spiegel’s attention as far back as April. They were stonewalled until the editors realized that the story was going to come out whether they liked it or not. That’s when their “Sherlock Holmes” appeared on the scene.

Of course, since they are obviously unconcerned with fact checking, this begs the question of what all those department heads, editor’s in chief, lawyers, physicists, historians, biologists, and Islamic scholars at Der Spiegel actually do. The answer is obvious enough. If you’ve read Der Spiegel for any length of time, you should have no trouble seeing that each one of Relotius’ lies supports at least one of the quasi-racist stereotypes of Americans that are a prominent part of the favored narrative there. The imaginary “Mexicans Keep Out” sign emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes actually kills several of those birds with one stone, portraying us as obnoxiously patriotic, racist, and xenophobic all at once. All the other favorite Spiegel stereotypes appear like so many ducks in a row. Americans as gun nuts? Check! Americans as religious fanatics? Check! Americans as prudes? Check! Americans as thoughtless polluters? Check! Americans obsessed with violence? Check. The fact that these bigoted stereotypes have been enduring themes at Der Spiegel for many years is documented in a collage of Spiegel covers that appeared on the Davids Medienkritik website more than a decade ago. In short, it is far more likely that what all these “fact checkers” really do is make doubly sure that nothing slips by that doesn’t fit the narrative. Presumably this also conforms to the definition of “fact checking” favored by the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review, which recently praised Der Spiegel for having the largest “fact checking” apparatus in the world. The CJR describes itself as “the voice of journalism,” which, given the current state of the art, is entirely plausible.

It is hardly true that all Germans hate the United States. There, as here, however, the mainstream media is under the firm control of the “progressive” Left, and scorn for the United States and its people, with the exception of their fellow leftists and a few favored identity groups, forms a prominent plank in the ideological box they live in. It is one of the markers that defines their ingroup, if you will. Indeed, in spite of the German fantasy that they have “one of the most free presses in the world,” the reality isn’t even close. There is no equivalent in Germany of prominent conservatives on talk radio and TV with huge audiences, influential websites that push back against leftist propaganda such as Instapundit and Breitbart, or major news outlet that don’t always play along with the narrative, such as Fox. The Left has almost complete control of the message. No matter where you turn, whether to Spiegel, Focus, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ARD, ZDF, or what have you, the message on such critical international issues as immigration is virtually identical.

The same, of course, is true of the MSM in the United States, but they enjoy nowhere near the hegemony of their German equivalents. However, the leftist narrative is virtually identical whether here or in Europe, and one often finds stories in MSM outlets in the US such as CNN and The New York Times that are as similar to their European equivalents as so many peas in a pod. Indeed, these organizations are as committed to the narrative and as indifferent to the truth as Der Spiegel, as evidenced by their award of prestigious prizes to Relotius for “excellence in journalism.” What Marx said of the proletariat is certainly true of the globalist media; they have no country. Their “country” is their ideology, and that is where their true loyalty lies.

Regardless, it has certainly been amusing to watch Der Spiegel squirm and struggle in a futile attempt to restore its lost journalistic virginity. “Schadenfreude” is the appropriate German expression. Of course, virginity is hard to restore once it’s lost, and no one capable of taking a step outside the leftist ideological box referred to above is likely to believe the now familiar cant about “layers of editors and fact checkers” at this point. At some level, even the editors at Der Spiegel must suspect that the rest of the world sees them for the bold faced liars they so obviously are. A large part of the German population has been aware of the fact for some time. I’m sure many more will swallow the red pill in the aftermath of this affair. For that, perhaps, we should be grateful to Herr Relotius.

UPDATE: Apparently the Spiegel fans have an even bigger problem with the truth than even I imagined. I was locked out of Twitter overnight after posting this story.

On the Grey Lady’s Fractured History of Indian Slavery in New Mexico

Writers of history have been suspect in every age. The ancients used to criticize each other for distorting the facts in favor of some country or political faction. Somewhere in the journals of Boswell, the great biographer of Dr. Johnson, he mentions an acquaintance who refused to read any history, discounting it all as a pack of lies for similar reasons. Things have certainly not improved in this day of political correctness. The stuff that passes for “history” coming out of such bastions of “progressive” thought as academia, the media, and the entertainment industry can lay a fair claim to being more distorted and falsified than anything ever heard of by the likes of Tacitus, Procopius, or Gregory of Tours. Anyone who takes it at face value without inspecting the relevant source material for himself is more likely to become a mule bearing an ideological narrative than a font of truth.

A rather grotesque confirmation of the above recently turned up in the pages of the New York Times. Entitled, Indian Slavery Once Thrived in New Mexico. Latinos Are Finding Family Ties to It, it was a typical example of identity group grievance fobbed off as “history.” The article begins by introducing us to a Mr. Trujillo:

Mr. Trujillo is one of many Latinos who are finding ancestral connections to a flourishing slave trade on the blood-soaked frontier now known as the American Southwest. Their captive forebears were Native Americans — slaves frequently known as Genízaros (pronounced heh-NEE-sah-ros) who were sold to Hispanic families when the region was under Spanish control from the 16th to 19th centuries. Many Indian slaves remained in bondage when Mexico and later the United States governed New Mexico.

There is nothing factually inaccurate about the above, nor, for that matter, about the following paragraph:

The trade then evolved to include not just Hispanic traffickers but horse-mounted Comanche and Ute warriors, who raided the settlements of Apache, Kiowa, Jumano, Pawnee and other peoples. They took captives, many of them children plucked from their homes, and sold them at auctions in village plazas.

Such paragraphs aren’t outright lies. Rather, they are examples of that now familiar practice of modern journalists, cherry-picking the truth to fit a narrative. Reading on, we find more subtle examples of the same, such as,

Seeking to strengthen the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in 1865, Congress passed the Peonage Act of 1867 after learning of propertied New Mexicans owning hundreds and perhaps thousands of Indian slaves, mainly Navajo women and children. But scholars say the measure, which specifically targeted New Mexico, did little for many slaves in the territory.

What this paragraph hides is the fact that the vast majority of slaves own by the “Ricos,” wealthy Mexicans who owned the lion’s share of the land, not only in New Mexico, but in what is now Mexico proper, were not Indians, but other Mexicans. As several contemporary observers have noted, Mexican peons were slaves in all but name. Vast numbers of them were hopelessly in debt to the large land owners and, according to Mexican law, they were forbidden to leave the land until the highly unlikely event that the debts were repaid. In what follows, we leave mere cherry-picking behind, and encounter statements that can be better characterized as outright lies. For example,

Revelations about how Indian enslavement was a defining feature of colonial New Mexico can be unsettling for some in the state, where the authorities have often tried to perpetuate a narrative of relatively peaceful coexistence between Hispanics, Indians and Anglos, as non-Hispanic whites are generally called here.

Of course, this begs the question of exactly which “authorities” have ever made such ludicrous claims. None are named, probably because there never were any. More importantly, however, the claim that “Indian enslavement was a defining feature of colonial New Mexico” is a bald-faced lie on the face of it. You might say that precisely the opposite was true. Mexicans were in terror of the Indians, and had been for many years before the Peonage Act of 1867. By the time of the Mexican War, the Indians had completely cowed the Mexican population, not only of New Mexico, but of Mexico proper extending south at least as far as the city of Zacatecas, hundreds of miles from the current border. In effect, they were enslaved by the Indians more or less as the Helots of old were enslaved by the ancient Spartans. In other words, the Indians didn’t go to the trouble of capturing the Mexicans. Instead, they merely raided them in their villages and haciendas, running off their livestock, stealing their food, and taking whatever else happened to strike their fancy, including a good many scalps. The Mexicans were helpless to stop this onslaught, thanks in part to the enlightened policy of their government which forbade them to “keep and bear arms.” This was actually the “defining feature” of the old Southwest. It is dismissed as a “mere bagatelle” in a brief paragraph of the article as follows:

Pointing to the breadth of the Southwest’s slave trade, some historians have also documented how Hispanic settlers were captured and enslaved by Native American traffickers, and sometimes went on to embrace the cultures of their Comanche, Pueblo or Navajo masters.

To gain an impression of what was really going on, let’s look at some of the source material. Some of the best was penned by a young British officer by the name of George F. Ruxton. Ruxton was definitely one of the most entertaining of the many British travel writers of the 19th century, and packed an amazing amount of adventure into a few years before his tragic death due to illness at the age of 28. His Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains is a classic and a must read for anyone interested in the history of the region. It also happens to be free online at Google Books. Ruxton landed at Vera Cruz in 1846, and traveled the length of Mexico, passing into what is now New Mexico later that year, even as the Mexican War was raging. He actually landed just before the return of Santa Anna through the same port, and his book includes a very unflattering portrait of the Mexican leader.

Ruxton certainly had no high opinion of the Mexicans in general, for that matter, and if they had been “oppressors” of the Indians, he certainly wouldn’t have failed to notice it. A gang of them had attempted to kill him at one point, and at another a Mexican he had hired to help him on the trail tried to shoot him in the back and rob him. Fortunately, he missed. Ruxton began witnessing what was really going on in northern Mexico and New Mexico as he passed through the city of Zacatecas. In his words,

From this point the “novedades” poured upon us daily: “Los Indios, los Indios!” was the theme of every conversation. Thus early (it was a very early Indian season this year and the last) they had made their appearance in the immediate vicinity of Durango, killing the paisanos, and laying waste the haciendas and ranchos; and it was supposed they would penetrate even farther into the interior. What a “cosa de Mejico” is this fact! Five hundred savages depopulating a soi-disant civilized country, and with impunity!

As Ruxton continued north, the devastation and depopulation of the land by the Indians became a constant theme. For example, on leaving the little town of Zaina,

To Sombrerete, distance thirty-four miles. The country wilder, with less fertile soil, and entirely depopulated as much from fear of Indians as from its natural unproductiveness.

Of his journey from the village of El Gallo to the mining town of Mapimi he writes,

I had resolved to pass through this part of the country, although far off the beaten track, in order to visit El Real de Mapimi, a little town, near a sierra which is said to be very rich in ore; and also for the purpose of traveling through a tract of country laid waste by the Comanches, and but little known, and which is designated, par excellence, “los desiertos de la frontera” – the deserts of the frontier; not so much from its sterility, as on its having been abandoned by its inhabitants, from the fear of the perpetual Indian attacks, as it lay in their direct route to the interior.

Here is what Ruxton has to say about “the Mexicans,” the identity group guilty, according to the NYT, of oppressing the poor, downtrodden Indians:

The population is divided into but two classes – the high and the low: there is no intermediate rank to connect the two extremes, and consequently the hiatus between them is deep and strongly marked. The relation subsisting between the peasantry and the wealthy haciendados or landowners is a species of serfdom little better than slavery itself. Money in advance of wages is generally lent to the peon or labourer, who is by law bound to serve the lender, if required, until such time as the debt is repaid; and as care is taken that this shall never happen, the debtor remains a bondsman to the day of his death… Law or justice hardly exists in name even, and the ignorant peasantry, under the priestly thralldom which holds them in physical as well as moral bondage, have neither the energy nor courage to stand up for the amelioration of their condition, or the enjoyment of that liberty, which it is the theoretical boast of republican governments their system so largely deals in, but which, in reality, is a practical falsehood and delusion.

In another passage, Ruxton describes an instance of exploitation of Mexicans by the Indians that is almost a mirror image of the enslavement of the Helots by the Spartans. To his surprise, he noticed a Mexican village, existing far to the north, in territory completely controlled by the Ute tribe of Indians. He was finally enlightened about the situation by one of the Utes:

Rio Colorado is the last and most northern settlement of Mexico, and is distant from Vera Cruz 2000 miles. It contains perhaps fifteen families, or a population of fifty souls, including one or two Yuta Indians, by sufferance of whom the New Mexicans have settled this valley, thus ensuring to the politic savages a supply of corn or cattle without the necessity of undertaking a raid on Taos or Santa Fé whenever they require a remount. This was the reason given me by a Yuta for allowing the encroachment on their territory.

No state of society can be more wretched or degrading than the social and moral condition of the inhabitants of New Mexico, but in this remote settlement anything I had formerly imagined to be the ne plus ultra of misery fell far short of the reality, such is the degradation of the people of the Rio Colorado. Growing a bare sufficiency for their own support, they hold the little land they cultivate and their wretched hovels on sufferance from the barbarous Yutas, who actually tolerate their presence in their country for the sole purpose of having at their command a stock of grain and a herd of mules and horses which they make no scruple of helping themselves to whenever they require a remount or a supply of farinaceous food. Moreover when a war expedition against a hostile tribe has failed and no scalps have been secured to ensure the returning warriors a welcome to their village, the Rio Colorado is a kind of game preserve where the Yutas have a certainty of filling their bag if their other covers draw blank. Here they can always depend upon procuring a few brace of Mexican scalps when such trophies are required for a war dance or other festivity without danger to themselves, and merely for the trouble of fetching them.

There are many other eyewitness accounts that corroborate Ruxton. For example, from Heroes and Incidents of the Mexican War by a Missouri veteran by the name of Isaac George, also available free on Google Books,

Since 1835 the Indians had encroached upon the frontier of Mexico and laid waste many flourishing settlements, waging predatory warfare and leading women and children into captivity. In fact the whole of Mexico was a frontier. An elevated Table Plain extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the foot of the Cordilleras, intersecting by innumerable ranges of mountains, and clustering isolated and conical-shaped peaks, which were infested by bands of savages and still fiercer Mexican banditti. No effort of the Mexican government had been able to suppress and oust these ruthless invaders of the country.

George accompanied the incredible expedition of Alexander William Doniphan, perhaps the greatest hero of their country most Americans have never heard of. Doniphan led 900 Missourians on a march through thousands of miles of hostile country that brings to mind the march of Xenophon’s ten thousand. In the process a portion of Doniphan’s little command beat more than twice their number at Brazito, north of El Paso, and the 900 defeated more than four times their number at the Battle of the Sacramento River just north of Chihuahua. On page 128 of George’s book there is a copy of a letter from the Mexican head of the Department of Parras to Lieutenant John Reed and his men, who served with Doniphan, thanking them for risking their lives to defeat a band of marauding Comanches and rescue 18 Mexican captives who were being led into slavery, recovering much livestock and other property in the process. Josiah Gregg, another soldier who was with the US Army in northern Mexico, also commented on the result of Indian raiding:

…the whole country from New Mexico to the borders of Durango is almost entirely depopulated. The haciendas and ranchos have been mostly abandoned, and the people chiefly confined to the towns and cities.

So much for the New York Times fairy tale about “oppression” of the Indians by the Mexicans. One would think that if the “progressives” who write such yarns really cared as much about “human flourishing” as they claim, they would have elevated President Polk to the status of a folk hero. After all, he led us into the Mexican War. The result of that conflict was an end to the Indian depredations, as had been predicted by Ruxton, the freeing of the Mexican peasants from slavery at the hands of the rich latifundistas, and the rapid advance of the American Southwest to the flourishing condition it enjoys today. Don’t hold your breath, though. Liberation doesn’t count if it comes at the hands of people with white skin. Read any “history” of the old Southwest coming out of academia, or helpfully submitted to Wikipedia, and then consult the source material for yourselves. You’ll find an abundance of similar lies, all served up to vilify some “evil” identity group and mourn the “oppression” of another. If you want to learn anything approaching the truth, you’d better get used to digging through the source material for yourself.

Trump and the “Russian Hackers”

I’ve just read the unclassified version of the U.S. Intelligence community’s report on “Russian hacking,” entitled, “Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution.” A pdf version is available online, and I hope my readers will have a look at it. It is almost unbelievably lame.

The document begins with the assurance that it is an unclassified version of a “highly classified assessment.” This, of course, begs the question of how some of this “highly classified” information was leaked to the press. I personally think this is the most important take-away from the whole “Russian hacking” flap. Our intelligence community in general and the CIA in particular are still infested with leakers who apparently had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they swore to protect this “highly classified information.” Any potential human intelligence source who seriously expects them to protect his or her identity must have a death wish.

As we read on, we learn about the “analytic process” that was used to produce the report, its scope, the sources of information used, etc. Eventually, we come to a section entitled “Key Judgments.” We shudder as we learn that,

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

If the goal of the document was really to inform our political leaders, it’s odd that no attempt was made to put the above in context. By “context” I mean the “clear preferences” of other government leaders. For example, French President Hollande revealed his “clear preference” by announcing that Trump gave him a “retching feeling.” Then British Prime Minister David Cameron publicly announced his opinion that Trump is “divisive, stupid, and wrong.” The British Parliament seriously debated banning Trump from travel to the UK because of his “hate speech.” The President of the EU Parliament, Martin Schulz, declared that “Trump is a problem for the whole world.” Germany’s Economy Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, called Trump a threat, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly praised Hillary Clinton. Mexico’s President Nieto didn’t stick at violating Godwin’s Law, comparing Trump to Hitler. Apparently, these expressions of “clear preferences” by other government leaders are not considered a threat by the people who run our intelligence agencies, because their “clear preferences” were for the correct candidate. In short, then, such a preference was only deemed objectionable if it happened to be for Trump.

As far as actual “hacking” is concerned, the content of the document is of the flimsiest. Basically, it was supposed to have consisted of “intrusions into US state and local electoral boards,” which were apparently conducted for the purpose of collecting information and had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the election. In addition to that, as we all know, the Russians were supposed to have gained access to the DNC emails, and have passed damaging information therein to WikiLeaks. According to the document, “Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.” In other words, the “hacked” information was true, and should have been reported by our own media, but wasn’t, because it didn’t fit the narrative. Apparently the message here is that the U.S. voting public should have been “protected” from the truth, but was “unfairly” subjected to it by those nefarious Russians.

Beyond that we have the assurances of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks that the information involved was so poorly protected that it could have been hacked by a 14-year old; no Russian meddling was necessary. Given Hillary’s adventures with classified State Department information on her personal server, I suspect there’s little reason to doubt the WikiLeaks version. I note in passing that the “progressive Left” considered Assange such a hero that they saw fit to release a movie about his exploits (Underground; The Julian Assange Story – 2012), and another in which he played a major role (The Fifth Estate – 2013). No doubt they’re feeling very ill-used at this point. They never suspected that Assange would be capable of divulging information that didn’t fit the “correct” narrative. In any case, paltry as it is, that’s the extent of the actual “hacking” alluded to in the document.

Reading on, we finally discover the identity of the “real culprit.” It turns out to be none other than RT America, a Russian funded news channel. Much of the document proper and a whole, five page appendix are devoted almost entirely to RT! We shudder to learn that “RT’s coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative.” It devoted extensive coverage to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, that known bastion of right wing conservatives and Trump deplorables. It dared to mention the existence of election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities in the U.S. Even more damning is the document’s assurance that RT ran “anti-fracking programming highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health.” As we all know, Hillary and the “progressive Left” have always been “yuge” supporters of fracking. NOT!!!

No kidding, dear reader, the meat of this “assessment” is nothing but a rant about RT’s vile criminal act of exercising its right to freedom of speech. When I was done reading it I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The entire mainstream media in the U.S. was utterly in the tank for Hillary from the start. I have never come across a single article about Trump therein that couldn’t be characterized as “negative.” The same can be said of another “state-funded news channel,” the BBC. There was a negative article about Trump on the BBC website every single day I happened to look for the last three months before the election. The same can certainly also be said of both the English and German versions of the German media. I follow it daily, and never found anything therein about Trump that could not be characterized as “negative.” What can I say? To outweigh all that, RT America must be a more effective propaganda tool than anything ever heard of since the days of Barnum and Bailey! Hitler himself would have been green with envy!

Apparently this is the sort of drivel we’ve been getting for the $80 billion we invest in our intelligence services every year. It would seem they’ve degenerated into hidebound bureaucracies that are no longer even capable of being embarrassed by the transparent stupidity of such “highly classified” assessments. It could hardly hurt to start over from scratch. We might ask the Russians for help with that. I suggest we take the 1918 Cheka as a model. I’ve heard that their methods were somewhat harsh, but by all accounts they were able to collect intelligence that was actually worthy of the name, and at bargain basement prices. We could use a man like Felix Dzerzhinsky again! Someone should tell Trump.

UPDATE: Mild-mannered Czech physicist Lubos Motl has a similar take at The Reference Frame.

Of Solar Energy and Amateurish Agitprop at Fox News

Reading the “news” can be a painful experience in our time. Most of it consists of a blend of sensationalism, human interest stories, accounts of the lives of various vapid celebrities, and attempts to inspire virtuous indignation based on a half-baked knowledge of some ideologically loaded issue or other. One finds very little that could be accurately described as useful knowledge about things that are likely to have a major impact on our lives. I generally find Fox News less painful to read than what is commonly described as the Mainstream Media because I happen to be emotionally conservative. However, I must admit that Fox can occasionally be more ham-handed than the competition when it comes to dishing out propaganda.

A story that recently turned up on the Fox website is a case in point. It happened to be about the Ivanpah solar generating system that was recently completed in California’s Mojave Desert. The word “solar” should enable most readers to predict the ideological slant on the story one is likely to find at Fox. Sure enough, the title of the story is, “Taxpayer-backed solar plant actually a carbon polluter.” In the article itself we learn that the plant,

…is producing carbon emissions at nearly twice the amount that compels power plants and companies to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program.

In fact, the plant does emit CO2 because it burns natural gas to avoid damage to equipment and to serve as a baseline source of power to meet electricity needs at night or during cloudy days. A bit further on, we learn from a “research fellow at the Heartland Institute” named H. Sterling Burnett that,

…designers also erred in placing Ivanpah between the tallest mountains in the Mojave where there is significant cloud cover and dust which would interfere with the sunlight.

He adds that,

…They say it is green, but that assumes that there is a power source without any environmental impact.

I don’t find anything as egregious as actual lies in the article. Rather, Fox limits itself to “creative” use of the truth. For example, it may be quite true that the plant, “…is producing carbon emissions at nearly twice the amount that compels power plants and companies to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program,” but it’s also true that it produces far less carbon per unit of electricity delivered than a purely fossil fuel fired plant, a fact that is left unsaid in spite of its much greater relevance to the underlying issue of climate change. A researcher at the Heartland Institute is quoted without mentioning that the institute is funded by the fossil fuel industry, and is considered a source of blatant disinformation by environmentalists. That charge may be unfair, but one can hardly claim that it is irrelevant and should be ignored. As for his claim that, “designers also erred in placing Ivanpah between the tallest mountains in the Mojave,” etc., I invite interested readers who may happen to visit Las Vegas to drive out and have a look at the plant. It’s actually quite a spectacular sight. It certainly doesn’t appear to be sitting in the shadow of towering mountains, and the cloud cover is generally minimal, as one can confirm by Googling nearby locations. As for the dust, one surmises that it would have been worse if the plant had been built on the Los Angeles side of the mountains. As for Burnett’s last remark, as far as I am aware not even the most wild-eyed and fanatical environmentalist has ever claimed that the description of a power source as “green” implies the assumption that it has no environmental impact at all.

The reality is that the plant is reasonably sited given the location of the major consumers of the power it produces. Given the current limitations in our ability to store and distribute the excess power produced by renewable energy sources like wind and solar, some form of baseline power is always necessary to insure a steady supply of electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. My own choice for that purpose would be nuclear, but given the regulatory hurdles in the way, that would probably have been impractical for Ivanpah. Natural gas produces significantly less CO2 than, for example, coal, and was probably the best choice.

In short, the article is an example of what I have referred to above as “attempts to inspire virtuous indignation based on a half-baked knowledge of some ideologically loaded issue or other.” If the goal at Fox had been to inform rather than propagandize, they would have provided the reader with “fair and balanced” information about the cost of electricity produced at Ivanpah compared to alternative sources, the amount actually produced in comparison with predictions, the amount of CO2 it produces per unit of electricity in comparison to coal or oil fired plants, the relative advantages of solar and nuclear in limiting greenhouse gas emissions, etc. None of what I write here should be taken to imply a belief that solar should be preferred to any alternative. In fact, my own choice would be to reduce the regulatory burden to rational levels and build next generation nuclear plants instead. However, regardless of the technology involved, I would prefer to see it judged on a level playing field.

I know, I know, the MSM is hardly innocent of slanting the news. Indeed, its hysterical response after the announcement that Sarah Palin would be John McCain’s running mate puts anything I have ever seen at Fox News completely in the shade. Generally, however, it tends to be at least marginally more subtle. For example, instead of attempting to slant important news stories that don’t fit its narrative, it will often simply ignore them. If the story is too big to ignore, it will vilify the messenger instead. Of course, such techniques reflect a greater maturity and experience in handling agitprop than is available to the team at Fox News. However, that doesn’t prevent them from learning by example. Given that we will be subjected to propaganda no matter which “news” source we choose to follow, we should at least be able to demand that it not be crudely done.