Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/integrity-in-reporting/
As an information scout, I have to balance the need to be early with the need to be accurate. Those often exist in tension with each other.
Being early means people have extra time to react to the news, make adjustments, and sometimes it means forcing the ‘other side’ to have to contend with your information. This was my aim with the Citizens’ Trump Assassination Investigation. By getting established facts out on the ground, early, the FBI and others would have to contend with them and not be able to overlook or sweep them under the rug.
But it’s increasingly difficult to be certain of accuracy these days. Sure there’s the usual noise from attention-seeking trolls. and AI-generated fictions (which are getting harder and harder to detect, sadly).
Those are known hazards of the landscape.
But increasingly I’ve detected another attack vector and these seem to be intentionally planted fictions that act like landmines for the unwary.
I believe I fell for one recently.
Before we explore that, here’s the game I think is being played. I recall the time when Dick Cheney got on TV and pointed to a NYTimes article that relayed that their ‘unnamed sources’ had indicated that Iraq had aluminum tubes which were the sort that could be used to build uranium-235 purification centrifuges.
He said there “very clear evidence” that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons and pointed to the Judith Miller authored NYTimes article as supporting that assertion. Later it was revealed that the ‘source’ Judith Miller used was none other than Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff at the time.
So here’s a version of that model: Provide a confidential leak to the press –> the press writes it up –> you point to the article as proof that your monstrous actions are justified.
But here’s another version of the model: Plant a credible but BS story online –> the story gets amplified by social media users –> the press writes up an article about how social media cannot be trusted.
In both cases the point is to leverage the power of information to achieve a set of aims. Almost invariably those aims are to elevate one’s own position while diminishing one’s opponents.
In these times, it’s quite obvious that the governments of many Western nations view their own citizens with a mixture of loathing and contempt.
So, often, the thing being targeted is public opinion and/or people who represent some sort of barrier to the acceptance of government (or other official) proclamations.
Hey, all’s fair in love and war, as they say.
But we should be cognizant of what’s actually happening lately.
On a daily basis I am mainly rejecting crap that I sift through because either I cannot verify it, or because it’s obviously seeded crap. Whether by legitimate trolls if there’s such a category) or because I suspect it’s part of the information war dynamic being conducted in the orange text model above.
So here’s the exchange (copied in its entirety from my Tweet that day) that I believe may have been part of a seeding campaign:
🚨This needs to go far and wide to put pressure on the government to do the right thing and save lives. 🚨
This evening, from a Peak Prosperity member to me via PM at my site:
Them: I can’t post this online because it’s not quite public yet, but government officials had a town meeting with all of the residents of chimney rock and basically told them the town was being bulldozed, bodies and all and the land was being seized by the federal government they would not be able to move back and basically their homes the ones that were standing were no longer theirs and the federal government owned it all. I don’t know what crazy play for land this is, but there’s a lot of conspiracy about lithium mines and let me just tell you, as someone who lives in Charlotte and has friends who live in the area of Western North Carolina, they are not being helped and this is actually being a stand down operation by federal government
Me: What the heck…? That’s quite disturbing. Is this first-hand, second-hand, or more distant info?
Them: Our friend owns an Airbnb in Chimney Rock. They had a town meeting yesterday and someone from the federal government told them all of those things in the town meeting, but doesn’t want the information getting out. Also, they are not picking up the bodies. The stench of the bodies everywhere is insane and for some reason, the government does not want to pick up the bodies. One pastor of a local church was going to order to door delivering water and they changed their delivery request to body bags because so many of the homes that they’ve gone to have needed body bags, we’re trying to keep the body count. They’re not picking up the bodies. They don’t wanna identify the bodies and they’re just leaving them to rot in the streets.
Me: I…can’t…even. I’m stunned. This is beyond anything I could have imagined even very recently. You always pick up and bury the dead. It’s what humans do. They are violating every possible custom … on purpose. Thank you for keeping me informed. People need to know about this. Let me know when you’d be comfortable with me posting to our forums in an anonymized fashion, of course.
Them: You can post it the message needs to get out. Something evil is going on in the NC mountains. I just didn’t want to be identified. Just today we filled up a trailer for a shelter in Hendersonville NC that had no food for tons of moms and babies. All the stores round are empty or locked. In Chandler NC 2000 people haven’t eaten anything or drank in 6 days and just got an SOS message out for help. I’m trying to tag the Cajun navy and operation airdrop but people are dying by the minute.
Multiple tuckers have reported having tires slashed. Our friends from Chimney Rock said they have heard multiple stories of people being robbed at gunpoint making supply runs. Two people that drove down to Charlotte yesterday and today one that we helped said bodies in trees, all over ditches in major roads back. Something weird is going on here in NC.
Me: God bless you. Let me know if I can help.
Them: Someone with a large national megaphone needs to amplify how bad it is. People are now starting to die trapped. My town is Operation Air Drop NC central command. They need pilots with planes and now are asking just for trucks. People with big equipment are needed but more than anything the nation needs to put pressure on Washington to deploy the National Guard asap. The 82nd was begging to go since Saturday but has been told to stand down. Every fucking Apache we have should be flying rescue missions. Please amplify the message!!!
8:26 PM · Oct 2, 2024 ·3.2M Views
I don’t doubt, at all, that this person was earnest and trying to help. But I’m now of the belief that they were misled by their friend, or their friend was misled by someone else.
Because it was a dire report, I put the entire exchange out to the Twitter and Peak communities, with nothing held back, so people could make up their own minds and either refute or expand on the report.
Over the next few days and weeks a number of things indicated that the reports of bodies in trees and just lying about ungathered in the streets of Chimney Rock was overblown. I’ve not yet seen any pictures or videos that would certainly exist to confirm those claims and I’m 100% positive I would have by now had they existed.
However, it’s also true that the federal government has not shown any particular urgency in locating and recovering bodies. The vast bulk of cadaver dog and other search and recovery efforts I’ve seen posted have been conducted by private citizens and local search and rescue. In fact, I’ve
And, of course, the Governor of NC later went on TV to state that it’s likely that many areas simply won’t be rebuilt.
Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina: “We’ve spent a lot of time on the way we approach rebuilding… in some areas, you just SHOULDN’T Build Back. And we’ve been able to convince certain communities and people that BUYOTS are better…”
Source: https://x.com/MsFitPatriot/status/1848832519464267922
So, it’s entirely possible that someone from Chimney Rock heard something similar, or interpreted it that way, from a town or state official and the rumor spread from there. Or maybe it was entirely made up by some group that gains its funding lifeblood from combating misinformation.
As a betting man, I’d place my money on “intentional disinformation spread so that it could be debunked later on by the feckless press.”
“Show me The Incentive…And I’ll Show You The Outcome”
Their business model would be the same as a firefighter that’s also the town arsonist, or a victim-identified group that creates its own hate crimes (which is all-too common, sadly).
They create misinformation as proof that their services are needed or stage a hate-crime to validate their victimhood identity. Jusse Smollett comes to mind, as do the numerous Swastika incidents eventually traced back to Jewish people.
Editorially, these racial and religious hate-hoaxes, along with fake rape accusations, really ought to be prosecuted with the same intensity as if they were the crime itself being committed. That might put a dent in such behaviors. I judge these attempts to leverage victim status to be extremely harmful to actual victims because they create a lot of doubt in the minds of reasonable people about who or what to believe.
For the entities that spread disinformation so they can fight disinformation at a minimum there’s funding involved. They make their daily bread by fighting disinformation so if there’s not enough real disinformation then they have to make some up.
But, there’s probably also an ideological component where they see themselves as fighting against enemies.
That is, people who don’t see the world exactly the same way they do. Which is an odd thing because most of the ‘mis/dis/mal information’ fighters have highly fluid belief systems that are best understood as central-seeking conformity litmus tests that themselves depend on whatever narratives the media and politicians are signaling that day.
In other words, the divide is between those who live in a shadow world of ill-defined abstractions and those who dwell in reality. So, at a maximum, the people working at these disinformation entities are seeking to destroy other people for daring to think differently, or hold different beliefs or ideas, than they do.
My Response
Given this tension between being early and being right, I still favor using my best ability to discern between real and fake to lean on the side of providing rapid, actionable intelligence.
However, I’ve become a lot more cautious, and routinely pass on one or more potentially juicy items every single day. Last week I passed on reporting about the claim that Gov. Walz had sexually abused a student when he was a high school teacher. Yesterday I passed on reporting the claim by former (disgraced, exposed as a pathological liar) Congressman Santos that there’s some career and campaign ending video about Kamala coming out.
I judge that these stand a very high risk of falling into this model:
The power of 5th generation warfare is now fully in view for anybody who wishes to see it.
This poor woman, who probably drives either a Prius or a Subaru with Harris/Walz bumper stickers and rainbow decals, has been mind-destroyed by the powerful new tools being wielded by the power elites:
Yikes!
That’s pretty bad.
As we head into the election in just a few short days, one thing is certain; one way or the other a whole lot of people are going to be really upset. I’m pretty sure the woman above is going to have a mental crisis if Trump wins. So will about 30% of the population.
If things go the other way, about 30% (including myself) are going to be certain that the election had entirely too much cheating to be legitimate.
Which means the architects of our Rats In A Cage model win! They’ve got us right where they want us. Fighting each other.
Which means we’re not noticing that the national debt is exploding, or that our liberties are being stripped away, or that our real enemies – those at the top – seem to secure more money and power for themselves with every election cycle and we always seem to lose out.
The problem is, I am not sure how to get each of those 30% blocks speaking to each other productively so we can finally share a common reality. Which brings us to Part II (for subscribers).
It’s Time To Let Them Go – They’re Lost
and we can still work together on other things.
