This is a good example, and the defense he offers is worrisome. Essentially he's saying the responsibility for authentication should be on the makers of genuine content to guarantee that their content is genuine and not on the makers of fake content to flag that their content is fake. The standard we've become accustomed to with satirical work is that they either have a disclaimer somewhere or else signal their satire by far surpassing believability to undermine their own credibility as genuine. In commercial advertisements, they'll include a little subtitle to say this is an actor and not an actual customer, or that this customer was paid for their testimonial. We require politicians to include a statement on their campaign ads in which they expressly endorse its content. We have standards in journalism about what modifications can and cannot be made to photographs and we excoriate publications that don't adhere. When movies are put on television, they add a disclaimer to say the movie has been modified from the original to fit the dimensions of your TV. I think the theme has already been broadly established -- we want content to be genuine or else clearly disclaimed if it is not genuine. Norms are still being set on social media, and this should definitely be one. We don't want to let people off the hook saying "I never said it wasn't fake!"
opening day for the U.S. Sun. "PRESIDENT AND THE 'PIMP' Bill Clinton poses with Epstein’s ‘pimp’ Ghislaine Maxwell and a sex slave on board private jet the ‘Lolita Express’": https://www.the-sun.com/news/us-new...ry-epsteins-ghislaine-maxwell-lolita-express/ more at the link
more https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/yes-obama-helped-fund-the-iranian-regime/ Yes, Obama Helped Fund the Iranian Regime By David Harsanyi January 8, 2020 3:59 PM In his address to the nation this morning, Donald Trump asserted that the ballistic missiles that targeted the al-Assad and Erbil bases in Iraq yesterday were paid for using “funds made available by the last administration.” Few things irritate media fact checkers more than Trump’s accusation that Obama helped fund the Iranian regime and its terror apparatus. Probably because it’s completely true. Now, we don’t really know that Obama’s ransom payments to Iran in 2016 subsidized those specific ballistic missiles, but we do know that money is fungible — especially when you have access to small denominations of European cash — and that the military, IRGC, and Hezbollah were the major beneficiaries of the replenished coffers of the Iranian state. Distinctions over the details of the exact allocation of funds would be completely irrelevant in any conversation not involving Donald Trump. Yet Andrea Mitchell and CNN, and all the usual suspects, immediately rallied to Obama’s defense to also explain that actually Trump is talking about money we owed Iran. We never “owed” the Islamic Republic any money. This is a myth. In 2016, the United States was in the middle of an unresolved dispute in front of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague over cash advanced by the Shah for military equipment we refused to deliver after the 1979 revolution. You might recall, this is when Iran began prosecuting its war against the United States, taking hostages, and killing service members. It is unlikely that U.S. would ultimately have been obligated to hand over a single deutschmark to the mullahs. For one thing, the U.S. had its own counterclaims over Iran’s many violations — which, in total, exceeded the amount supposedly “owed” to it. Obama, in his obsessive goal of placating Iran to procure a deal, unilaterally dismissed a stipulation held by the previous administration that the United States wouldn’t release funds until other court judgments held against Iran for its terrorist acts on American citizens were all resolved. Let’s remember, until the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration had secretly airlifted $400 million in ransom payments for four Americans detained in Tehran — seven months after the fact — we were never informed about the cash transfers. And Obama never offered any legal justification or accounting for the billions he transferred. Nor did Obama ever explain the fiscal calculation of tacking on an extra $1.3 billion in interest payments. The president, in fact, risibly claimed that the agreement had saved “billions of dollars.” Reporters like to point out that “$150 billion,” the amount Trump likes to claim Obama transferred to the Iranians, is almost surely the high-end estimate, or likely an exaggeration. But we don’t know for sure because institutional media didn’t mobilize its considerable resources to find out. If reporters had spent as much time talking about the ransom payments — or the 600 soldiers murdered by Iran — as they do fact checking Trump’s ransom assertions, the public would be a lot better informed.
Yes, the US lifted sanctions and returned Iranian assets with interest because they agreed to freezing their weapons grade uranium enrichment program and allowing international nuclear arms inspectors. That's how deals work. It prevented escalation of war. It gave incentive to the Iranian regime not to directly attack US assets because they wanted to not risk having sanctions re-implemented and having those Western investments run away. The more investments from Western companies in Iran also help the actual Iranian citizens which eventually paves a path for a moderate government eventually. We are never going to completely eliminate a regional superpower from completely eliminating their proxy efforts in neighboring weaker nations. You see this with Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and the US. The Iran will always attempt to have influence in the region by controlling Shia militias in the region. At least the Iran Deal prevented direct attacks on US assets in the region. Now we are in a more escalated hostile truce with Iran while they decided to start back up their nuclear enrichment efforts.
another question for @Sweet Lou 4 2 : what is the difference, if any, between disinformation (propaganda) and spin? need a ruling. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-po...d=36&cx_testVariant=cx_2&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s The Politics of Killing Soleimani Will time reward or punish Democrats for being skeptical of Trump’s triumph? By Karl Rove Jan. 8, 2020 7:05 pm ET The killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani has produced President Trump’s biggest foreign-policy challenge yet. Will Iran be content with Tuesday night’s barrage of missiles, or will there be other attacks on Americans and U.S. allies? So much depends on what former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan called “events, dear boy, events” and the unpredictable reactions they so often provoke. As of Wednesday, both the U.S. and Iran appear to want de-escalation, a good thing. Let’s hope that lasts. No one should shed tears for the wicked Soleimani. During the Iraq war, he gave sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents to kill and maim Americans. Despite a United Nations travel ban imposed in 2007, he traversed the Middle East to create, train, finance and direct a vast network of proxy fighters to attack the U.S. and its allies on behalf of Iran and its extremist Islamic ideology. He played a key role in the Iranian nuclear-weapons and missile programs. He had the blood of tens of thousands of Americans, Muslims, neighbors and fellow Iranians on his hands. If Soleimani was planning new strikes against Americans and U.S. interests—and recent attacks in Iraq, including the attempt to overrun the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, suggest he was—then the justification for removing him is even greater. As for political ramifications, Mr. Trump’s approval rating won’t jump as it did for Ronald Reagan after Grenada, George H.W. Bush after the first Gulf War, George W. Bush after 9/11 or Barack Obama after the death of Osama bin Laden. America is too divided and Democrats too close to voting for their presidential nominee. Mr. Trump may receive a slight bump among that sliver of voters truly up for grabs, but Republicans and Democrats have gone to their corners to cheer or boo, as their tribes require. Among Democrats, former Vice President Joe Biden responded to the attack by defending the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and demanding “a sober-minded explanation” of Mr. Trump’s “decision and its consequences.” This came across as defensive. Mr. Biden’s declaration that “democracy runs on accountability” unfortunately brings to mind the Dunkin’ slogan. Far worse was Sen. Bernie Sanders, who compared Mr. Trump’s strike on Soleimani with Vladimir Putin’s killing Russian dissidents. That he sees a bloodthirsty terrorist as the moral equivalent of peaceful protesters who want liberty, democracy and an end to corruption is grotesque, even for the self-proclaimed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. Suggesting that Mr. Trump wanted a “Wag the Dog” moment, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told reporters, “The question we ought to focus on is why now?” The idea that the president’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is Mr. Trump’s Stanley Motss is far-fetched even for her. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg was less feverish than feeble. “I am interested in the process,” he said, wondering if the president’s action was legal. All this deepens the sense of many voters that Democrats are unwilling to take the hard steps needed to keep Americans safe. This crop of presidential candidates appears more scornful of Mr. Trump than of Soleimani, showing themselves to be the rightful heirs to Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “San Francisco Democrats” who’d rather blame America first. Turning abroad, Soleimani’s death may have helped unify Iranians—for now. The massive crowds for his funeral were partly generated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s pressure. Only a few weeks ago, demonstrators crowded the streets of Iranian cities to protest the regime’s failure to deliver jobs and prosperity, sometimes singling out the wasteful foreign engagements that Soleimani led. Whether they’ll now back the ayatollahs is an open question. The Iraqi Parliament voted Sunday 170-0 for a nonbinding resolution calling on the government “to work towards ending the presence of all foreign troops on Iraqi soil,” but more than 150 legislators abstained, including all the Kurds, many Sunnis and even some Shiites. Many Iraqi leaders and ordinary Iraqis, a great number of whom took to the streets recently to protest Iranian meddling, desperately want America to stay. The alternative—Iraq as a Persian satrapy—is anathema, and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi knows it. We’re still in the early stages of this crisis, and much could change in the coming weeks and months. The politics of the Soleimani strike hang in the balance. If events conspire for or against Donald Trump, neither party’s efforts to create a narrative will make much difference. In the end, reality is more important than spin. Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
LOL... "in a win for trump", facebook announces they will continue to allow disinformation, er, political ads with lies...
How about the Epstein thread? Anyway I see you are desperately looking for attention and I stupidly gave it to you. Good day sir!
