Fred Burks: On discernment

I’m glad that Fred Burks put out this message to his wanttoknow.info email list. And to his identification of the Sorcha Faal/David Booth/EU Times/whatdoesitmean.com set of barnacles, I’d like to add a new one that I identified in the past several months: Turner Radio Network. I do not trust this source either, automatically.

I think it’s true that lots of sites are full of disinfo, lots of posts from any site might have some percentage of disinfo, and that all or most sites tend to one side or the other of the “left/right” distinction, thus coloring all that is produced there. And then, of course, there are the sites originating in particular countries that tend towards state propaganda. My own solution is to pay attention to all sorts of sources, and notice when my focus hones in on anything in particular. I might skim the titles of 50 pieces before my soul points me to one that it knows will intrigue me.

In short, all we can do is keep our wits about us, stay centered, and proceed!

Dear friends,

It is quite easy for a shadow government disinformation agent to spin a rich disinformation tale and then craft several different versions of the tale with new “facts” to support the story in each one. These tales are usually a good mix of real, verifiable facts and cleverly designed lies, so that people who check the facts and find them true then tend to believe the lies mixed in.

The disinformation agent has only to feed these differing versions of his tale to several of the many conspiracy oriented websites out there and voila! It’s all over the Internet, but not on any what I would call reliable websites. I have no doubt they actually have fun doing this. These same disinformation agents will often even use pseudonyms to join in on the discussions generated by their “news” so that they can manipulate the direction that comments take.

Because of this, I am skeptical of any new conspiracy-oriented news that comes out until I see it on a website that doesn’t benefit from reporting controversial news. As an example, when ABC or the Wall Street Journal orNew York Times report news about a 9/11 or other major cover-up, it holds a lot of credibility for me, because they are going against what some of their advertisers would want.

When a conspiracy website reports on some incredibly revealing new conspiracy story without anything solid to back it up, I am always skeptical initially. Many times on doing a little research, I’ve found the “news” was first reported by someone like Sorcha Faal aka David Booth, who is known to promote vast amounts of sophisticated disinformation through his WhatDoesItMean.com website and other websites like the EU Times, another frequent propagator of disinformation stories. Yet stories like this often spread like wildfire on conspiracy sites.

As a good example of this, take a look at the eye-popping article from February of 2013 on beforeitsnews.comat this link. The article is titled “Shocking Alien Fears Force Pope From Office.” beforeitsnews.com is a very popular website which sometimes reports good, verifiable news, but other times carries an unsubstantiated article like this, which I have no doubt is disinformation.

If you look at the article, you’ll see the source is EU Times, or the European Union Times, which sounds like a legitimate news website of the European Union. Yet a little research shows it has no association with the European Union at all. And if you follow the link in the article where it states, “In our 22 January report, Russia Orders Obama: Tell World About Aliens, Or We Will…” you’ll see it leads back to an article on thewhatdoesitmean.com website, which on the home page states it is run by Sorcha Faal, who has been shown to be disinformation agent David Booth. Yet gullible conspiracy websites will cite both the EU Times andbeforeitsnews.com to “prove” the news is true.

So particularly when I hear any “amazing” new conspiracy news, I do a careful search to make sure there is some reliable, non-biased support of the key claims. With a little research, I can almost always find something on a reliable, non-conspiracy website which either supports or disproves the news. I invite all who follow major conspiracies to use discernment when examining new reports. The disinformation agents love it when we spread their fear mongering.

With best wishes for keen discernment,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Former language interpreter for Presidents Bush and Clinton

Note: To better hone your Internet research skills, check out the great tips at this link.