Hua Guofang

One of the best parody accounts out there. I think my fav is God. Some of the shit that comes out of that account is just gold.

We use it here.

Figure some of you might get a corona-chub for this section of an article on Indonesia's response to CV19: https://www.newmandala.org/from-the-field-covid-19-responses-in-central-java/ On a final note, while commentators from afar highlight the slow and weak response by the Central Indonesian government, this is in stark contrast to the expectations of many Indonesian people. Their lack of expectations, let alone reliance on, central government to provide effective strategies to respond to the COVID-19 crisis is not surprising. Indonesia has several ongoing chronic and acute health crises: for example, where tuberculosis and dengue fever are endemic. Mitigation and eradication of these diseases are achievable goals, as tuberculosis is curable and dengue can be significantly reduced through public health campaigns. Yet 67,000 people die of tuberculosis every year in Indonesia. For many Indonesian citizens, their expectations of elected officials extend only as far as village, municipal or district government while for many, they have no expectations that even local government will act in their interests. Rather, they rely on self-organised local groups to provide moral, physical and sometimes financial support. There are many unknown variables as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds but we can be sure that social solidarity at local and regional levels have and will continue to play a big part in the ability of communities to keep themselves healthy and secure.

#1 - Ratings and selling advertising is part of it but not all of it. You don't think that Murdoch, Turner, Briedbart, et al have/had ideological and political goals in what goes to edit and what slant is taken with reporting? You also don't think that one of the way to gaining ad revenue is by breaking important stories, access to quality information, etc? I find your perspective here to be a little too superficial. Yes, ad revenue is part of it, not all of it and selling bullshit isn't the only way to revenue. I also think that people on this forum that carry on about MSM all the time have a very limited view of what MSM is. There is a lot of quality journalism out there - I just posted some up the page - that comes from MSM. If you cats don't ever look at MSM then you don't actually know what's there. #2 - that's part of what I'm saying - select your news sources based on the reporting, now who the owner of the channel/news site is. Also, read more than one article on it to see where people are getting their news from - if they're all citing the same source or using the same sentences, you can assume there's likely a circle jerk going. If they are citing different sources saying the same thing and the journo in questions doesn't have a shit reputation, then you can assume a likelihood of corroboration. #3 - I'm not arguing that one uses it to stay informed, that would be a failure. I'm saying don't discount it off hand and don't have a narrow view as to what makes up the MSM. I say read widely. #4 - Yeah, well, that's not a bad start. Quite often it's the largest news orgs that have the most stringers and that get a lot of the news first (which doesnt mean they get it right, and that goes back to varying your sources and reading deep/wide). And I'm not really advocating for a hell of a lot more than that. However, for some, it's also useful to know what the general public are being fed, that's not useless information and I would have expected that folk like @misteravenwould appreciate the situational awareness in terms of his business and his desire for security #5 - No one is advocating to subject yourself to an onslaught, only to not dismiss MSM off hand as entirely useless and to not have such as narrow view of what makes up the MSM. I understand the work you're referring to about having multiple signals but I don't think that refers to having a systematic and educated approach to understanding news sources and how to read with a critical approach. I just feel the biases here against MSM lead y'all to have a narrow view of what MSM is, to have a very American approach (you live in a country that is the lead of a global empire, please don't tell me about Americans minding their own business as a standard!) to what MSM is - as in there is MSM outside of American cable and broadsheet news. And I think your collective tendency to dismiss it in its entirety is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and reduces your ability to have adequate situational awareness in a globalised and heavily interdependent world. I Also understand that I have biases because of my career and it leads me to place an over-emphasis on awareness of what's happening in the world. As usual, the sweet spot here is probably somewhere in the middle.

REgards WaPo, as I said, there is still value in there, alongside the shit and the educated and informed reader should easily be able to spot that, rather than falsely believing all content is equal. Regards your position on what you can influence, it has a lot of merit but it, again, is very simplistic. Major issues that are brewing on the other side of the world can impact you directly. Knowing what they are and how to understand them at the earliest interval allows you to best prepare for them. Hiding out in the wilderness and being largely self-sufficient gives you a good buffer from a lot of what occurs in the world, but by no means all. MAjor shortages, big price spikes and changes to articles and the economies you rely on will have serious impact on your life that you want to be prepared for. Secondly, the level of awareness for some one like yourself and some one who lives in an urban or city environment is hugely different. There are many things in this world that you cannot influence that can influence you. Ignoring the world is a great way to be caught out, not to mention, just being insular and narrow.

A perfect example of how you can find serious and valuable content within MSM media. This rag is one of Australia's broadsheets and it owned by one of the largest media companies in the country: The word that explains why the US is pushing a discredited Wuhan lab conspiracy theory Chris Zappone Digital Foreign Editor https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/the-word-that-explains-why-the-us-is-pushing-discredited-wuhan-lab-conspiracy-theory-20200505-p54psu.html For all the challenges social media poses for democracy, one term in particular stands out: vbrosy. The Russian word means essentially "throwing in" or "introduction" or "placement" and is used for information “thrown into” a discussion to stymie or confuse it. This explains the recent exchange between Mike Pompeo and a US journalist over the origins of the coronavirus: Reporter: Do you believe it was man-made or genetically modified? Pompeo: The best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point. In an interview, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo agrees fully with two contradictory statements about whether or not the coronavirus was man-made or has occurred naturally. Footage: ABC America. Reporter: Your office of the [director of national intelligence] says the scientific consensus was not "man-made" or genetically modified. Pompeo: That's right. I agree with that. Yeah. I've seen their analysis. I've seen the summary that you saw that was released publicly. I have no reason to doubt that this is accurate at this point. In the exchange it's clear that Pompeo is not so much informing the public, but seeding the global discussion with an untruth that puts pressure on China. It comes as the Republicans make no secret of plans to convert American dismay for a coronavirus death toll that may well reach past 100,000 into a distilled loathing for an enemy abroad: China. Yet even taking issue with a conspiracy theory around Wuhan absorbs attention and importantly, precious coverage in a chaotic media environment. In the age of social media, multiple realities can be served up for multiple audiences. The purpose of vbrosy isn't to convince the public but amplify sensationalist counter-claims, to distract an audience and put a targeted figure or institution on the defensive. But spreading disinformation in this way brings us no closer to holding the CCP accountable. Rather it embraces the party's disregard for honesty. Notice, too, that leaders don't need to command armies of bots or trolls committed to disinformation to deploy vbrosy, either. They just need to be able to cut through the noise online, and often the regular news cycle does the rest of the work. The mere structure of social media, optimised for outrage, ensures that the most sensational content gets shared most widely. "Did the Chinese create the disease in a lab and unleash it on the world?" ... Now, discuss. In the process, vbrosy clogs up space that could be used in democratic discussion. The concept of vbrosy comes to mind watching the tactical nonsense US President Donald Trump and his administration has verbalised to shift attention for years. Four years ago, nearly to this day, Trump “celebrated” the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo with a plate of nachos. Clearly, this trivialisation of Mexican culture was meant to offend – and of course, to go viral and crowd out a fact-based discussion. At the time, Trump was running for office on the sensational lie that Mexican immigrants were "rapists and murderers". Before the 2016 election, Trump insisted, for years and without evidence, that President Barack Obama was not born in the US. The need for deflection is a central part of the Trump media strategy. Whether by accident or by plan, Trump has helped introduce Russian-style methods of political manipulation, what’s called “political technology”, into American politics. “Political technology” came from Russia in the 1990s as a sort of euphemism for a style of political culture in which dirty tricks are central tools for achieving and maintaining power. It creates a hollow "democracy" in which a ruler maintains power even as the window dressing of leaders, parties and issues changes. Just have a look at the reign of Vladimir Putin. But political technology need not produce an autocrat to corrode a country's politics. The rules of political technology are shaped by the law of the jungle adapted to our new communications environment. The ability to manipulate and co-opt public opinion are paramount in its use. A question more pressing than vbrosy’s history is its use today. In a US election year with the coronavirus pandemic spreading, are reporters, disinformation experts, and the public itself aware of this deceptive use of information? In 2017, University College London professor Andrew Wilson wrote: "The overall effect of Russian political technology is to strangle democracy." Even as coronavirus challenges economies and forces draconian government lockdowns, the rise of such wilful disinformation represents a challenge to the integrity of democracy everywhere. By hitting “share” on these obviously curated outrages, good people may be helping to suffocate their own democracy, even as they feed the beast of social media engagement. Are people aware of how their reaction online can amplify the very disinformation that weakens the system? In a crippled democracy, truths aren't shared but perpetually divided, and sub-divided again, pitting all against all. Yet in a vital democracy, the belief that truth is discoverable is fundamental and necessary. A new communication reality calls for novel strategies to protect democratic rule. That begins with protecting sensible democratic discussion. To do so, there is a need for tactics to counter vbrosy. Chris Zappone is digital foreign editor for The Age.

This is an over-reaction. The mainstream media is not at all monolithic and you have a very American-centric view of the world but are pushing these ideas out onto an international platform. Cable news in the US is not a great place to get your news, but other elements of MSM are nowhere near as bad as Fox/MSNBC/CNN/Murdoch press/etc. There is still a lot of valuable journalism done in rags like WaPo, NYT, LAT, CT, FT, Economist, even some Murdoch press does good investigative journalism and has valuable opeds (even as that seems to be receding these days). IT sits beside a lot of BS, no doubt, but you tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater by treating such a large and complex reality as a single, simple absolute. A much more mature approach is to educate yourself, read widely and view every source critically. Sometimes, even just knowing what approach the more biased news sources are taking are important.

Yeah, half my fam are in Wuhan. They're in the outskirts of the capital city, in an area that urbanised over the last 10 years. Some of the cousins are in the inner urban area. Don't mean to be a dick but I'd rather not spend my time watching that. I'd prefer to put that effort into reading more reliable sources (all sources should be viewed critically, from MSM to experts as we all have our biases and we are all human) and posting them up here. Happy to try and address any specific questions you have, just don't want to sit through that 'investigation'!

Ah ,sorry, this isn't the full clip. The person who has made this has edited it so that you don't see the guy up the footpath ripping on the line to get the monkey to fly along on the bike and you miss seeing him pull the monkey back after it grabs the kid. It's been cropped out.

Look closer, the guy at the very top of the clip has a line attached to the collar that the monkey has around its neck, he is pulling the monkey so that it rides the bike. The line reaches it's length as it nears the child. The Monkey likely knows that it's about to get a painful yank on its neck and reaches out to grab onto the kid. The owner then pulls the monkey back away from the kid, but it's too late, the moneky has a hold. The guy that gets up and responds, pointing in anger isn't pointing at the monkey but pointing at the guy up the path that is holding the line. Getting monkeys riding bikes and doing tricks like this actually has a name in Bahasa Indonesia, which I forget at the moment and is now banned in that country because its a cunt of a way to treat an animal and I hope the arsehole with the line gets his head stomped and the monkey escapes.

What a fucking idiot. Baby should come out and headbutt that bitch.

Whilst I don't want to see her sili-tits or hear her say another goddamned word, I still feel for her. Unemployment is unemployment.

Be as critical as you can of anything that comes from this organisation. Whilst I share their dislike of the CCP, their goal is not to seek truth but to seek the downfall of the CCP, and that may lead them to disinform to achieve that goal.

She's a living caricature.

@Schnitzelyou're saying you have no canvas? How long do they usually spend in that spot when they turn up?

Wow, fuck

lol

I'm seeing so many things in this thread that I just assumed were Australian but seem to have been international at least, if not American in design.

The name Had to be changed to Fads in the 80s

Fuck, way to wrench the heart. Prefer to watch hijab bitches kick out the jams

My nickname was Johnny for a long time, for obvious reasons.

For the Aussies:

In Australia house breakins have bottomed out, for obvious reasons, but break ins of commercial premises have increased, again, for obvious reasons. Don't think it has anything to do with economic impacts, more opportunity following trends.