Notes from the edge of civilization: Sep. 10, 2023
A BBC disinformation reporter is caught lying. Only stupid people avoid COVID jabs, studies suggest. More government isn't going to lead us to utopia. And, a ban on guns in the name of public health.
Your weekly roundup of collapse news and perspectives from around the web.
“What are the obstacles that stand between journalists and the truth?” BBC reporter Marianna Spring asked in a July 2023 episode of her podcast 'Marianna in Conspiracyland’.
The true irony of Spring’s question was laid bare this week when it was revealed that many things, in fact, stand between this particular journalist and the truth.
Five years ago it was her “desperation to report out in Moscow, and thinking that it wouldn’t be a big deal” that led the BBC’s Disinformation & Social Media Correspondent to lie on her CV.
Disinformation, you will recall, is defined as “false information which is intended to mislead,” which is pretty similar to the definition of a lie: “an intentionally false statement.” So the disinformation reporter shared disinformation in the hopes of getting a job? Check. She is obviously qualified under the ‘takes-one-to-know-one’ clause.
Question: If she was willing, at the tender age of 22, to tell a small lie just to get a job she really wanted and thought she deserved, what lie will she be willing to tell now, or in the future, to get what she wants or what she thinks she deserves? Or worse, to push an agenda she deems important? And naturally, why should we believe anything she has said or will say? The BBC has so far declined to comment.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."
— Sir Walter Scott (1808)
It’s tempting to pile on this young zealot (whom The Guardian describes as “screen-ready – her earrings match her necklace, which matches her trousers, which match her shoes – but seems completely without vanity, the way athletes do”), but others have done that work neatly already. Just type her name into Twitter to bask in the schadenfreude.
(Although can we take a second to really ask whether this is a person completely without vanity?)
Schadenfreude aside, the real point here is that journalism is very much dead. And if you’re someone who still believes what you read in the mainstream press, it’s time to switch off CNN, remove the Guardian and BBC from your trusted news list, and line the bottom of your birdcage with the hollowed-out newspaper corpse that somehow soldiers on as The New York Times.
The silver lining is that some very quality alternative media sources have filled the vacuum once occupied by actual decent journalism. To wit,
, which covers “all things corona and geo-politics with a mix of psychology, philosophy, law and ancient mysteries.”This week, The Naked Emperor (TNE) wrote about some new studies that aim to show how people with higher cognitive abilities are more likely to take the COVID-19 vaccine. TNE issued a quick and devastating takedown, pointing to 2021 research that showed quite the opposite.
TNE also highlighted the fact that the study in question did not seem to include unvaccinated people! But more importantly, TNE predicts we’ll soon be hearing pundits and talking heads telling us that only unintelligent people don’t get vaccinated.
Basically a new spin on an old refrain, but… we’re smarter than that, right?
Just. Say. No.
While we’re on the subject of tangled webs and the people who weave them, let’s take a look at Zeynep Tufekci, the New York Times opinion columnist and sociologist who last week suggested politics and institutions are the reason we commit atrocities against each other. We’re all essentially good by nature, she says, we just need politics and institutions to ensure we can have a good society.
… the double-speak in Ms. Tufekci’s opinion is an interesting exercise in circular logic: individuals are inherently good, but they’re not good if they’re free, they’re only good with the “help” of laws and institutions of the state.
Let’s be clear. Politics and institutions got us into this mess, they’re not going to get us out of it.
READ MORE: https://collapselife.substack.com/p/there-is-no-utopia-that-comes-after
Governments seeking ever more power and control will never let a good crisis go to waste. During a Friday afternoon press conference, New Mexico’s Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, declared an emergency and along with it, a 30-day suspension of open and concealed carry laws in Albuquerque and throughout Bernalillo County. By declaring gun violence a ‘public health emergency’ in the wake of the tragic shooting of an 11-year old boy, the governor enacted what some are calling an unconstitutional gun order.
Sheriff John Allen of Bernalillo County issued a statement saying:
This move has been positioned as a response to the alarming and tragic rise in gun violence, particularly the heart-wrenching death of an 11-year-old boy this past week.
First and foremost, every lost life is a tragedy, and the well-being of our community is of paramount concern to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. We share in the collective grief and urgency to address this issue.
However, as the elected Sheriff, I have reservations regarding this order. While I understand and appreciate the urgency, the temporary ban challenges the foundation of our Constitution, which I swore an oath to uphold. I am wary of placing my deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts, as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense.
Reporters at the press conference asked Lujan Grisham about the oath she swore to uphold the Constitution.
Her response: “No Constitutional right in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute."
WATCH NOW:
Kudos to those reporters who pressed her on some clearly deranged responses. Maybe there is still hope for journalism?
It’s worth noting that the Governor is a lawyer. If a lawyer cannot understand something as basic as the rights enshrined in the Constitution, we have problems on a scale far bigger than we imagined.
Her order is clearly an example of weaponized compassion and conflating gun control of law-abiding citizens with some miraculous reduction in crime. We can only hope New Mexicans strongly reject the incremental introduction of gun control using public health as a Trojan horse.