Saudis grow a sense of humour, and a brief look at disinformation: Links 1, April 12, 2022

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1. A quick look at how sanctions and war have affected the Russian Ruble:

2. Saudi TV Openly Mocks Biden’s Senility in Comedy Sketch

(Biden does as good a job of dissolving the dignity of the office of POTUS as a Golden Retriever does, the dignity of a dog when he encounters a deep puddle of mud. On the other hand, he did manage to get the Saudis to engage in humour on TV. So that’s something.)

A comedy sketch that aired on Saudi Arabian TV on Monday takes aim at President Joe Biden’s diminishing cognitive ability and his administration’s feeble efforts to conceal it.

In the skit, actors portraying Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris walk to the center of a stage, and “Biden” greets several familiar faces in the crowd by pointing to them. Thinking his presentation is over, he wanders off only to be pulled back by “Kamala,” who directs him to the podium.

He tells the audience, “Today, we’re gonna talk about the crisis in Spain.”

3. I hope the Governor of Florida continues in that position as long as possible where he is effective, rather than win the US presidency where they will create a “cordon sanitaire” around him like they did Donald Trump.

4. A true weather event, also driven by the sun, is expected on Wednesday

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G2-CLASS): A CME is heading for Earth (see below). NOAA forecasters say that G2-class geomagnetic storms are possible when it arrives on April 14th. During such storms, auroras can seen as far south as, e.g., New York and Idaho (geomagnetic latitude 55 degrees). Aurora alerts: SMS Text

DEAD SUNSPOT EXPLODES, HURLS DEBRIS TOWARD EARTH: The corpse of old sunspot AR2987 exploded yesterday, April 11th, hurling debris directly toward Earth. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the eruption:

The S-shaped magnetic filament at the base of the explosion is a classic “sigmoid structure.” Solar magnetic fields often assume this shape just before they explode. One study shows that sigmoid precursors are present in over 50% of CMEs.

Indeed, shortly after the explosion, a full-halo CME emerged from the blast site. Here it is. The CME is expected to reach Earth on April 14th; a new NOAA model pinpoints its arrival time at 1100 UTC. The impact could spark a G2-class geomagnetic storm. Aurora alerts:SMS Text

Canadians and US residents in the Northern parts of the nation, should watch the night sky over the week. A great show might be on the way.

5. New York lieutenant governor was just arrested…

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, whose seven months in that role has been overshadowed by probes into a previous campaign, was arrested Tuesday in a federal corruption investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s office said Benjamin was arrested on charges of bribery, wire fraud and falsification of records.

Benjamin, formerly a state senator from Harlem, had joined the administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul in September, chosen by her to fill her former job a couple of weeks after she stepped into the governorship.

More recently, reports came out saying subpoenas had been issued to Benjamin regarding the financial issues even before Hochul picked him as lieutenant governor. Despite her saying she didn’t know of the subpoenas at the time, Hochul proclaimed her support for Benjamin, and he said he had told state police as they went though the process of vetting him.

Thank you all for your attention, and kindness in terms of your understanding of the challenges that face this site in these times.

We are all targets of sophisticated and highly funded and intense barrages of disinformation in its most formal sense. This is information warfare. And its increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from pseudo-reality, which is of course, the intention of the disinformation which hits us all like the Solar-wind which is headed for Earth this week. Unlike the solar wind though, there is no beauty as a result. Only if you can discern truth out of the wind can you know beauty and that is not in the aesthetic sense of beauty, but in the ability to make decisions in your own interests kind of beauty.

Formally, we have three concepts: Propaganda, Disinformation and Misinformation. Propaganda is materials that a reasonably awake individual can discern as being state narratives being pushed on state controlled media. This may or may not contain disinformation, which is the deliberate and targeted injection of things which are known to be untrue, and damaging to the target. Misinformation is the dissemination of disinformation by the naive who believe the untruths, and spread them as their own beliefs unwittingly.

In Orwell’s 1984, the character of Winston Smith at one point said: “Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4”. What he meant was that the right to speak actual obvious clear empirical truth which opposed the government pseudo-reality of the day defines freedom. And also in 1984, it was explained to Mr. Smith as he was tortured, that he must not just say what the party determines is truth to avoid torture. He must BELIEVE it, because the party says it is truth.

This is clearly in effect. For example, I would say a man in a dress with lipstick is a man in a dress with lipstick. But if that man tells a lie which is in accordance with the state narrative, in this example if he proclaims himself to be a woman, then you must not only go along with it, you must believe it. And its stunning how many do.

On a related note, we have often been curious on this site how someone like Russel Brand has managed to stay on Youtube when he appears to be so counter-narrative. The answer might be as famously understood in this unsourced saying:

“The Devil will tell you a thousand truths to sell you one lie that will change you forever”. -Anon

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

3 Replies to “Saudis grow a sense of humour, and a brief look at disinformation: Links 1, April 12, 2022”

  2. Unbalanced coverage becomes disinformation even if it’s factual. Russians here see deja vu all over again.

    Soviet media convinced the people that life in the West was an absolute horror. Every shooting, race riot, financial scandal was given saturation coverage. A series of crises, then ridicule of our big shot politicians, hypocrisy on a global scale.

    High production values, sensational stories kept the audience hooked. Body bags with our soldiers returned from Vietnam; violent antiwar protests; kids shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State; priests abusing children with impunity; “free elections” like in Mayor Daley’s Chicago.

    All meticulously curated for homo sovieticus.

    My friends learned to read between the lines on domestic affairs, but they took foreign coverage mostly at face value. They remember the scandals I just mentioned more vividly than most Americans.

    After all, this was real news, taken directly from Western wire services and our own TV. (With generous help from the 5th Column in our 4th Estate.)

  3. RE males in female prisons: yesterday morning, I read a story in Daily Mail about two female prisoners now pregnant. The prison has also a few trans-males as prisoners. These ‘trans’ people have life easy, the best of both convenient worlds. Very strange there aren’t any trans-females in male prisons.