The Pound is taking a dive, and we keep on being told it’s based on fears about Brexit. But why now, when all the data say Britain is doing better – far better – than these same “experts” expected?
Here are some contemporary media realities chosen at random:
On Bloomberg, there is a long-running commercial for interactivebrokers.co.uk, in the opening scene of which one of the actors says the line, “Say, did you see that Russia shot down that NATO airplane?”
That question remains open: I’m fairly sure the Russians didn’t shoot it down, but either way you have to ask yourself, ‘How did a line like that get into a commercial?’ I don’t know, but I can tell you why it’s there: to render an accusation so as to make it appear like a fact.
Since yesterday, several sites have been running a story about Bell Pottinger based on an insider’s testimony. The story involves a half-billion Dollar assignment Bell is alleged to have with the US Government (in various guises) involving false videos about ISIS beheadings, tampering with search engine results, and the agency’s stock-in-trade: providing doctored information to Wikipedia in order to show its clients in the best possible light.
Nothing would surprise me about Tim Bell, a man I wrote off as an uncontrolled sociopath decades ago. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m not.
Since last Friday, The Slog and others have been writing well-documented stories showing beyond any reasonable doubt that both Deutsche Bank – and at least one news source – lied about the readiness of the US Justice Department to do a deal on a huge fine faced by the Bank.
Today Bloomberg interviewed a European analyst about Deutsche, and the guy said “The likely size of the fine has been way overplayed”. By whom? Not by the Justice Department.
Yesterday, the Hungarian people voted 98% against the EU’s migrant policy. The site EUObserver has yet to make mention of the event. The charges against DB in Italy are also absent from the site.
Twice during 2015, The Daily Telegraph was caught offering to plant favourable editorial in its columns on behalf of two advertisers, one of whom was HSBC….a former director of which cloud-covered bank now chairs the BBC trustees – or whatever they’re call them this week.
Nobody – not one single business commentator – has posted to ask why on Earth a British economy doing well deserves a Forex rate that has fallen from €1.40 to €1.14 – during ten months of a eurozone economy flatlining, with a currency whose fiscal problems are insoluble, and a banking system on the verge of utter collapse.
For nearly six years, I have been asking followers of geopolitics and global investment to be very careful when it comes to the provenance of what they see, hear and read in the mass media.
My advice from here on is far simpler: believe absolutely nothing. The PR and corporate/sovereign/fiscal spin dickheads have morphed into a secondary system bending reality as it happens…..which is why the Newscorps and Verizons of this world would so dearly love to have a two-tier internet news availability.
In the vast majority of circumstances, journalists have become either redundant, or Hard Left/corporate Right bumboys….look at the Independent for the clearest evidence of this. In fact better still, stop reading newspapers or watching television: there are better things to do than soak up braindead lies.
The Slog 