The Luxury of Facts in a World of Lies

December 30, 2014 in Montana
Tags: Eastern Ukraine, government

by lizard

My default reaction to anything our government says or does is one of suspicion, that I readily admit. When all the mainstream sources of our state media say it’s this, I starting wondering if maybe it’s not that. This default reaction has certainly caused some rifts. In July, after flight MH17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine, my suspicion that it was the coup government, not Russia, sparked this reaction from James Conner, who had this to say:

4and20blackbirds has become an alternate reality blog, a realm of conspiracy theories and rants by angry leftists driven by hatred of their nation and soured on humanity. Once an oasis of fact and reason, it’s now a well poisoned by fury and anti-Americanism. I can no longer in good conscience keep it on Flathead Memo’s blogroll.

Two things caused me to reflect on that spat over a controversial issue. The first was a piece of self-congratulation James put up at his blog yesterday. Here’s the first paragraph:

An old verity — when the subject is controversial, the speaker should supply the facts and the audience should supply the indignation — governs my approach to reporting and discussing the issues. Too many adjectives usurp the reader’s prerogative to draw his own conclusions. Insults dishonor the human rights of readers and subjects. Profanity — an occasional hell or damn excepted — offends, and gratuitously; and as my grandfather used to say, is the effort of a weak mind to express itself forcefully. I don’t always abide by those principles perfectly, but I try to.

Getting the facts can be difficult. In the case of MH17, the investigation is incredibly secretive and there’s no telling when, if ever, the results will be made known, considering the non-disclosure agreement the countries involved in the investigation apparently signed. There have been facts that emerged (After James supplied the indignation) that calls into serious question the official narrative. Consortium News has been a great source for those of us “angry leftists”.

The second thing, which reinforces my default reaction, is the pathetic government spin of the Sony hack, which is starting to fall apart. From Zerohedge:

First it was, with “absolute certainly”, North Korea. Then, out of the blue, an even more ridiculous theory emerged about the origin of the Sony hackers: Russia. Now, we finally get the truth, and as it turns out it was neither of the abovementioned sovereign actors who had nothing better to do than to hack movie scripts and racist emails: it was Sony’s own disgruntled worker who was the source of the hack. According to Politico, FBI agents investigating the Sony Pictures hack were briefed Monday by a security firm that says its research points to laid-off Sony staff, not North Korea, as the perpetrator.”

Researchers from the cyber intelligence company Norse have said their own investigation into the data on the Sony attack doesn’t point to North Korea at all and instead indicates some combination of a disgruntled employee and hackers for piracy groups is at fault.

I guess it pays to be suspicious. Facts are a luxury we don’t often get in an information landscape littered with spin and propaganda. James Conner should remember that before swallowing more government whoppers, hook, line and sinker.