When You Lie, Deceive The People They Search Other Places To Get Their News. Main Stream Media Must Clean Up Their Act Or Lose Out Entirely. It Isn't The Alternatives That Are Wrong, They Are Just Filling The Void.

Zerohedge Included in What NY Magazine Calls ‘Extremely Helpful List of Fake and Misleading News Sites’

Michael Krieger | Posted Wednesday Nov 16, 2016 at 12:24 pm

Before I get into the meat of this article, I want to remind you of a few paragraphs I wrote back in the August post,  Questioning Hillary’s Health is Not Conspiracy Theory:

As I look at the landscape in 2016 to-date, I observe emergent signs that alternative media is finally beginning to take over from the legacy mainstream media when it comes to impact and influence. The mainstream media (unlike with John McCain in 2008), had decided that Hillary Clinton’s health was not an issue and chose not to pursue it. Many in the alternative media world took a different position, and due to mainstream media’s failure to inform the American public for decades, the alternative media drove that issue to the top of the news cycle. That’s power.

This is an incredibly big deal, and the mainstream media intuitively knows what it means. It means a total loss of legitimately, prestige and power. All of which is well deserved of course.

So here’s the bottom line. 2016 represents the true beginning of what I would call the Media Wars. Alternative media is now capable of driving the news cycle. Mainstream media now has no choice but to fight back, and fight back it will. It will fight back dirty. This is going to get very ugly, but by the time the dust has settled, I think much of the mainstream media will be left as a shell of its former self.

With Hillary’s loss, the mainstream media and its distressed and discredited allies are in a panic like we have never seen before. They understand that alternative voices now influence the public as much, if not more so, than the mainstream press, and they are now out to destroy those voices. The way they are going about this is by placing anti-establishment voices under the blanket umbrella of “fake news,” or in the case of Twitter, they just seem to purge people they don’t like from the platform altogether.

The gloves are now completely off following the publication, and wide distribution by legacy media, of a list compiled by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, of “False, misleading, clickbait-y and satirical ‘news’ sources.” What you’ll find, is that some of your favorite websites, including Zerohedge are represented in this ridiculous list.

What do almost all of these sites have in common? They published a lot of anti-Hillary Clinton articles over the course of the election, which collectively helped to swing the contest for Trump. That’s the real transgression committed by these websites.

Interestingly, I didn’t see Slate on this list despite publishing one of the most blatant pieces of fake, pro-Hillary news propaganda of the year just a few days before the election with the following, quickly debunked, monstrosity:

Even Snopes rapidly dismissed the claim, yet Slate is nowhere to be seen on the “fake news” list. If you are pro-Hillary, you apparently cannot be “fake, misleading, or clickbait-y.”

This whole story hits close to home for me. Zerohedge has been publishing my writing since 2010, years before I had my own website. It has been instrumental in providing an outlet for my own voice, as well as countless others, when legacy media never would. As such, I reached out to Zerohedge for a comment. Here is what they said:

It’s funny and sad at the same time – have they done any actual rigorous analysis on what they determine to be “fake” news, or perhaps the assumption is that the public should just take their word again… like when the NYT assured its readers that Hillary Clinton had a 90% chance of winning? When it comes to “fake vs fact” on Zero Hedge, we have a simple solution: we source everything, and all the data can be replicated by anyone. 

Ultimately this push will likely boost traffic to the “fake” websites – something the “credible” legacy media, which just had its worst year ever, desperately needs. 

But what is more troubling is that this sets the framework for “banned media”, especially  when one considers it was the outspoken “liberal” voices within the 4thestate who were in arms that Trump would unleash precisely this kind of media witch hunt. Apparently the objective media does not need a president to prompt it to start its own book burning project.

Moving along, who cares that some assistant professor made a list of sites she doesn’t like and warns people about them? Why should we pay attention?

We should care because it is being promoted heavily by the mainstream media. For example, look at how a writer at New York Magazine promoted the list (seems kinda “clickbait-y” doesn’t it):

This is as close as you can get to a publication totally endorsing the list. Moreover, the story is currently the #1 most read article on New York Magazine’s website today.

Naturally, New York Magazine would never resort to the sort of “clickbait-y” tactics perpetrated by these so-called fake news sites. Perhaps I was hallucinating when I saw its recent cover photo:

Then when you actually click through to the cover story, the following image pops out at you:

This, you see, is what real news looks like.

It’s not just New York Magazine either. The Los Angeles Times today published an article titled, Want to Keep Fake News Out of Your Newsfeed? College Professor Creates List of Sites to Avoid. Here’s how it begins:

During the election, many people fell prey to fake news stories on social media — even the president-elect ended up retweeting fake statistics. A professor of communication has created a list of unreliable news sites to help people do better.

Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, put together a publicly available Google doc cataloging “False, misleading, clickbait-y and satirical ‘news’ sources.” It’s been making the rounds on social media as people seek to cleanse their newsfeeds of misinformation.

The article then ends with the following:

Both Facebook and Google have recently announced they will take steps to block fake news sites from accessing their advertising services.

One has to wonder what sort of criteria Facebook and Google will be using in its determination of “fake news.” If it ends up with anything resembling the above list, we should all be very concerned.

It’s not as if these mainstream media outlets are promoting this list to sow doubts in the sites’ already existing readers; rather, the intent is to keep their own readers away. It’s a nefarious attempt at preventing current readership from being open to alternative information, and we should all hope it backfires spectacularly.

Of course, this is just one battle in the status quo’s attempt to silence alternative voices. Twitter is on its own mission following Hillary Clinton’s election loss. As USA Today reported this morning in its post, Twitter Suspends Alt-Right Accounts:

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter suspended a number of accounts associated with the alt-right movement, the same day the social media service said it would crack down on hate speech.

Among those suspended was Richard Spencer, who runs an alt-right think tank and had a verified account on Twitter.

The alt-right, a loosely organized group that espouses white nationalism, emerged as a counterpoint to mainstream conservatism and has flourished online. Spencer has said he wants blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Jews removed from the U.S.

Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told USA TODAY that the center had asked Twitter to remove more than 100 accounts of white supremacists who violated Twitter’s terms of service. She also pointed to two alt-right accounts that had been verified by Twitter, including Spencer’s.

This Spencer character doesn’t appear to be a particularly nice guy, and Twitter can do whatever it wants, but what concerns me is the overall trend. Namely, how information gatekeepers are suddenly panicking to demonize or ban alternative voices following Trump’s election victory.

The message here is simple: It’s Game On. The legacy media has taken the gloves off entirely and we are now engaged in all out media war.

For prior articles on the topic, see:

Obama Enters the Media Wars – Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical

Hillary Clinton Enters the Media Wars

The Death of Mainstream Media

Canada Sells Its Gold. Does That Mean The Canadian Dollar Is Worthless?

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DO YOU OWN ANY GOLD? IF SO YOU OWN MORE THAN THE BANK OF CANADA

MARCH 4, 2016 / JEFF BERWICK / 7 COMMENTS

Canada’s Financial Ministry has continued to act out its insanity. The Ministry has actually stripped Canada of every last, single ounce of gold.

This at a time when China and Russia are buying whatever they can. China holds over 1,700 tons of gold though it probably holds a lot more than that. Russia holds a huge amount of gold too and is buying more.

The dollar has again moved down hard against gold after moving down nearly US$1,000 over the first decade of the 2000s.

Knowing gold is in demand around the world and that the West’s major adversaries own hundreds and thousands of tons of it, what does Canada do? It sells.

Global News talked to a spokesperson for the Ministry and was told that the sale, “was done in the normal course of business for the government. The decision to sell the gold was not tied to a specific gold price, and sales are being conducted over a long period and in a controlled manner.”

Oh, great. The Ministry’s insanity is not the result of a short-term accident but a long long-term condition. It’s being done out of calculated maliciousness. I’ll explain in a moment.

But let me be clear: The sale is part of a larger pattern of profligacy, mental degeneration and destructiveness.

With wars around the world, the Western banking system again teetering again on the edge of insolvency and rage rising over central bank economies, most people with any common sense are buying real estate, farmland and precious metals.

Not Canada’s bankers. We just wrote about Canadian gold sales in early February after the news came out that Canada’s hyperactive Financial Insanity Ministry (which should be called FINish Canada) sold half of its current reserves, leaving only 1.7 tons.

We wrote this in retrospect:

In 2011, we posted this graphic, which showed then Prime Minister at the time, Stephen Harper, standing beside a to-scale image of the tiny amount of gold Canada held.

Then this past month, after the additional sale we updated the picture again.

And here is how it looks today:

Canada has reached the nadir of financial irresponsibility and Trudeau has scraped the bottom of his treasury, though he probably has no idea what his finance ministers have done. Of course it’s difficult to find pundits to explain it. They have to protect their jobs after all.

ZeroHedge, writing about this latest sell off, reached economist Ian Lee of the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University who explained that the US and thus the world went off the remnant of the gold standard in 1971 when Kissinger invented the petrodollar. “In the modern world,” he pontificated, “the metal is no longer considered a form of currency.”

Tell it to the Chinese who line up around the block to buy gold and silver. Or tell that to Indians who won’t sell their gold to the Indian government even for a fairly considerable interest rate on their non yielding metal assets.

Back in 1965, Canada had 1,023 tons of gold reserves but by 1985 it only held 500 tons. Throughout the 1990s up to 2002, Canada kept selling. And last month it held a laughable 1.7 tons. And this month it holds a hysterical nullity.

Congratulations to the Ministry of Insanity. What impeccable timing they have. Price inflation is climbing in Canada just like in the US. Canadian officials have probably sold close to the bottom just the way England did in 2000.

Such idiocy must be manufactured for a reason. In this case, it seems obvious to us that the West’s central bankers generally are doing all they can to debase currency and generally prepare the West and the world for an even deeper and more agonizing global depression.

Why would central bankers do such a thing? Because they want to create a more global currency and government and they will only get there by destroying the current nation-based system. They want to render Canada effectively insolvent and unable to act.

At TDV, we understand full well what these bastards are doing and its what we write about and analyze from a trading standpoint.

Our trades were up in the first months of this year by hundreds of percentage points because we are built to specialize in this type of environment when everything is falling apart and whatever is left standing won’t remain upright for long.

Central banks are destroying the world out of malice and rage in order to bring in something even worse. To stay up on the details and plot your next moves, you need someone telling the truth rather than relaying more central banking lies. Please subscribe to our TDV newsletter HERE.

Anarcho-Capitalist.  Libertarian.  Freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks.  Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast.  Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world’s freedom, investment and gold conferences including his own, the world's largest anarcho-capitalist conference, Anarchapulco, as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business.

Is Oil Driving A Potential Global Meltdown

CITI STRATEGIST WARNS OF 'OILMAGEDDON'

Global economy trapped in 'death spiral'

Published: 2 hours ago

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 JEROME R. CORSI 

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NEW YORK – The selloff on Wall Street continued Friday, with the Dow closing down 211.75 points, ending at 16,204.83, off 1.29 percent.

A CNBC article posted Friday as the top headline on the Drudge Report warned that the global economy is trapped in a “death spiral” dubbed by Citibank strategist Jonathan Stubb as “Oilmageddon” – referring to the dramatic drop in world oil prices and the possibility of a global economic meltdown, or “Armageddon.”

“The world appears to be trapped in a circular reference death spiral,” Citi strategists led by Jonathan Stubbs said in a report Thursday, as reported by CNBC.

“Stronger U.S. dollar, weaker oil/commodity prices, weaker world trade/petrodollar liquidity, weaker EM (and global growth) … and repeat. Ad infinitum, this would lead to Oilmageddon, a ‘significant and synchronized’ global recession and a proper modern-day equity bear market.”

Stubbs noted crude oil prices have tumbled by about 70 percent since the middle of 2014. The dollar, meanwhile, has risen about 20 percent against an international basket of currencies, with the prospect the world economy will grow sluggishly, increasing only by 2.7 percent in 2016, half the growth Citi projected only last month.

Minimum wage jobs and foreign workers

Meanwhile, popular economic blog ZeroHedge.com took the air out of President Obama’s announcement Friday that unemployment has fallen to 4.9 percent by pointing out that 70 percent of the job gains in January went to minimum-wage workers.

ZeroHedge.com further reported that 1.4 million relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs lost by the U.S. economy since December 2007 have been replaced by 1.6 million relatively low-paying waiter and bartender jobs created in the U.S. economy.

Since December 2007, considered by many to be the start of the current prolonged recession that ZeroHedge.com suggests has the possibility of developing into a second Great Depression, all job gains in the U.S. economy have gone to foreign-born workers.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since December 2007, the U.S. has added just 186,000 native-born workers while adding 2.5 million foreign workers.

Reasons for the 2016 stock market crash

What appears to be shaping up as the “Crash of 2016” is being blamed on a historic drop in oil prices and the fall of Chinese currency.

The price of crude oil has plunged to $26.30 a barrel, its lowest since May 2003. The problem today clearly is a global oil oversupply that has discredited the “peak oil” fears of previous decades that the world was exhausting the supply.

In January, China allowed the biggest fall in the yuan in five months, causing trading in its stock market to be suspended twice. China’s currency has continued to drop since a 2 percent devaluation last August touched off a global stock-market selloff that prefigured what global equity markets are experiencing in January.

On Feb. 2, Bloomberg reported the Chinese government is stepping up efforts to ward off a potential economic crisis in which an estimated $1 trillion in capital outflows left China last year and mounting bad debts threaten to cripple the Chinese banking system.

On Dec. 16, 2015, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee decided to raise rates for the first time since June 29, 2006, increasing the target federal funds rate modestly, from zero to 25 basis points (0.25 points).

WND has reported analysts’ warnings that the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy – under which it printed money to buy U.S. Treasury debt – was an artificial means to contain interest rates at near zero that would backfire in a broad stock-market selloff once the Fed began to raise benchmark interest rates.

As WND reported last month, William White, the Swiss-based chairman of the OECD’s review committee and former chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements, has warned that the global financial system has become dangerously unstable, facing “an avalanche of bankruptcies” worse than 2007 at a time when central banks have run out of “macroeconomic ammunition” to fight downturns.

“Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such levels in every part of the world that they have become a potent cause for mischief,” White said.

“It will become obvious in the next recession that many of these debts will never be serviced or repaid, and this will be uncomfortable for a lot of people who think they own assets that are worth something,” he cautioned.

White noted European banks already have admitted to holding $1 trillion of non-performing loans.

“The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly,” he said. “Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians.”

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