Sometimes they make it waaaaayyyy too easy.
PolitiFact - https://www.politifact.com/ - and its even more evil mothership the Poynter Institute - https://www.poynter.org/ - is hosting the United Facts of America, a virtual event that starts Monday morning.
According to PolitiFact, the UFA will be a “festival is for everyone interested in fact-based expression, civic engagement and facts’ function in a free society.”
Oddly, this is not the only time the very out-of-place word “festival” is used in the story announcing the event:
“The three-day virtual festival of fact-checking, running Nov. 6 to Nov. 8, will cover the Republican presidential field, GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump’s trials, Israel-Hamas war misinformation and Spanish fact-checking.”
If you happen to be a “Star Trek” fan, the word “festival” describing the UFA will have a certain very accidental but very appropriate resonance. That’s because “festival” is what happened every so often on a planet run by a a computer named Landru and was a time when everyone was allowed to indulge in their otherwise-verboten base mayhemal instincts. Take a look (don’t worry, just click “Watch on YouTube” - never seen a Trek video slapped with an age warnign before…sheesh):
Funny thing is, both the mindless drone and the raving lunatic states of the people remind me of the people behind PolitiFact on any given day, so maybe the word was used advisedly.
So what will the festival entail?
Well, it starts with a look at the 2024 presidential race, in which the absolutely unbiased, non-partisan only-the-truth-will-do political director of ABC News gives his take on a variety of related topics.
It then rolls into a dispassionate and politically neutral discussion of the vaccines and the pandemic and the related misinformation with one (CBS News contributor) Dr. Celine Gounder. If the name sounds familiar (though it may not to the UFA folks, as they repeatedly misspell it “Grounder”) that’s because you may have seen her on TV raving about how terrible COVID is or heard her talking in public as a member of Joe Biden’s COVID advisory board (yup – he’s still got one.)
She’s fighting back against the WAR ON SCIENCE, and not just when it comes to COVID. For example, she has taken the position that syphilis is on the rise because the government isn’t spending enough money to tell people to not get syphilis - https://twitter.com/celinegounder/status/1719021350394765448
Back to the pandemic – which has been so very very good to her – she wants everyone to know that they shouldn’t “let their guard down,” should wear a mask in public – especially on the bus – and that people need to get vaccinated a lot. Here she is not too long ago:
https://www.cbs.com/shows/video/Cv_cnqnFNFhS1KWX5kE5UgJXMNiz8ioB/
Considering her past parroting of the proven false “everyone’s gonna die unless we melt society down for two years!!!!” pandemic hype – which she continues to do https://www.nationalreview.com/news/a-mask-can-be-your-best-friend-cable-shows-hand-the-mics-back-to-public-health-experts-to-resume-covid-panic/ - it is highly doubtful Gounder will be a facts first kind of panelist.
Moving on to the Putin that keeps on putting, “Peter Benzoni of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a bipartisan advocacy group countering Russian efforts to undermine democratic institutions in the United States and Europe,” will discuss how bad certain foreigners are.
Where to begin?
The ASD is part of the German Marshall Fund – yup, that thing we did after World War II to rebuild Europe is also still around – which is funded predominantly by the United States government. The ASD was the group behind the “Hamilton 68” Russian disinformation dashboard, a tool used countless times by the media to show how much Russia had warped the American electoral process and how it still does so.
That particular tool – and organization - was utterly discredited by the Twitter Files reporting of Matt Taibbi, et.al https://reason.com/2023/01/27/twitter-files-matt-taibbi-hamilton-68-russian-bots-fake/ .
The “data” that drove much of the Trump/Russia collusion coverage was gathered by the ASD, turned into pretty pictures, and then blerched back at the public. The problem was that it was utterly false – not misinformation, not malinformation, not disinformation, just a bunch of plain ol’ lies - https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105 .
Oh, and the ASD takes pride of place in the Censorship-Industrial Complex top 50 violative oppressors of free speech, along with – hey, whadda you know! – the Poynter Institute and PolitiFact!
And they recently launched Hamilton 2.0 just in case you had any doubt the first one was legit.
In other words, the ASD - https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/ - is a government-funded non-governmental organization/civil society group that tells the people who fund it what speech is appropriate. I’m sure Benzoni will be helpful in ferreting out the truth of the news of the day.
Tuesday, the festival opens with a staffer at The Bulwark - https://www.thebulwark.com/ - a pathetic DC neocon website created specifically to destroy Donald Trump - telling everyone what voters really want.
The Bulwark just this Friday ran a piece called “Taking the Trump Davidians Seriously:”
Pretty sure we can figure out already what facts about voters’ desires will be presented.
Then Wednesday there’s a discussion about the internet featuring the Oxford Internet Observatory, an organization that features prominently in the free speech movement.
Wait. Damn. The check bounced. Oh well, back to reality…
Then Wednesday there’s a discussion about the internet featuring the Oxford Internet Observatory, an organization that, too, features prominently in the censorship industrial complex.
As to that complex, here’s the rundown story of the major players currently stifling free speech around the world, typically using your tax dollars to do so: https://scheerpost.com/2023/05/11/matt-taibbi-report-on-the-censorship-industrial-complex-the-top-50-organizations-to-know/ .
You should read it, but if you’re a bit short of time, here’s a map:
Now, if you want to, you can sign up to “come celebrate the facts” with the folks above here - https://www.poynter.org/event/united-facts-of-america-2023/ . For people who are supposed to know how the internet works, the sing-up is odd and clunky but you can muddle through it if you wish.
One last fun fact: UFA has the same initials as UFA, the massive German film studio known mostly for its work before the war.
One of their most famous movies?
Triumph of the Will.
Go figure.