Social media is a critical domain of ‘information warfare’, where states seek to advance their interests by shaping the views of their own citizens or those of other nations. A new study tracks activity in this domain at the start of Russia’s invasion.
Bridget Smart and colleagues obtained all tweets sent between February 23rd and March 8th containing the following hashtags: #(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)SupportRussia, #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy and #(I)SupportUkraine.
These hashtags were chosen as they were the most commonly trending hashtags that could be reliably identified with one or other side. If a particular tweet contained a pro-Russian hashtag and a pro-Ukrainian one, it was labelled ‘balanced’. Only English-language tweets were included.
The authors’ main finding is shown in the chart below. In short, the overwhelming majority of tweets (90%) were pro-Ukrainian, whereas only a small percentage were pro-Russian (6.8%).
Now, you might say this is not surprising, as most people in the West support Ukraine and very few support Russia. However, it provides evidence against the commonly heard claim that Russian troll farms exert large sway over public opinion.
An important caveat is that over 100 pro-Russian accounts were banned on March 4th, which partly explains the lack of pro-Russian tweets. However, it’s clear that even before these accounts were banned, the overwhelming majority of tweets were pro-Ukrainian.
Smart and colleagues used the Botometer tool to identify bots, and concluded that about 70% of tweets in their dataset were sent by bots (with the percentage being similar for pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian tweets).
However, as Mike Hearn noted in an article for Daily Sceptic last year, the Botometer tool has a massive false positive rate, making it almost useless. (In other words, it massively overestimates the number of bots.) So I wouldn’t trust the authors’ conclusions in this regard.
On the other hand, their finding that 90% of English-language tweets were pro-Ukrainian strikes me as highly plausible. Indeed, one notable feature of Twitter activity since the start of the war is the ubiquity of certain large, pro-Ukrainian accounts. One of these has attracted particular attention: The Kyiv Independent.
This is the account of a Kiev-based newspaper, founded in November of 2021. (Note: I use ‘Kiev’ because it is the English exonym for Ukraine’s capital.) The Kyiv Independent was the successor to the Kyiv Post, which became defunct last year after a dispute between staff and ownership.
What’s remarkable about The Kyiv Independent, as several observers have noted, is how quickly it rose to become one of the most influential accounts on the war in Ukraine.
Checking the internet archive, the account had just 731 followers on November 22nd. By February 13th, it was up to 11.4K. By February 24th, the date of Russia’s invasion, it was up to 37.2K. And by 28 March, it was up to 2 million. This is an extraordinary rate of growth, which must be partly explained by algorithmic amplification.
Indeed, The Kyiv Independent – which no one had even heard of before February – has more followers than the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror or The Times (which all joined Twitter more than a decade ago). Not only that, but it doesn’t produce any content in Ukrainian, so almost all its readers are in the West.
Another point worth noting is that calling itself ‘independent’ is a stretch, as the newspaper received a $200,000 grant from the Canadian government.
Evidence suggests that pro-Ukrainian accounts are much more influential on English-language Twitter than pro-Russian accounts. This is in part because the latter are frequently banned. Yet the unprecedented rise of The Kyiv Independent suggests that Twitter is also shaping the discourse via artificial boosting – not just banning.
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global solutions need global problems
An astute observation!
A brilliant article! Thank you.
‘Freedom, then, means nothing if it does not mean telling people what they do not want to hear…..’
And you have done that, admirably.
‘….the struggle to enumerate the failings of policies, politics and institutional science must amount to more than mirroring their excesses. Excesses such as a defensive hostility to challenges’
I would just add to your list of ‘ ideas that are less than helpful’ the notion that Putin can be admired ‘as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia’ with no mention of the totalitarian fascist repression, extrajudicial killings and serial invasions of neighbouring countries leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the displacement of millions.
I would like the down votes to clarify please.
I would also like to know how you could have received minus one upvotes:
The appearance of negative upvotes has been puzzling me for some weeks too.
This isn’t indicative of anything nefarious. Http services involve loosely coupled data comms and sometimes data update requests fail. Vote counts are incremented and decremented without page refresh. Which means some kind of AJAX (two way) update mechanism is being used. People sometime increment votes accidentally and then decrement them. It is easy to encounter a situation where for some users, the incrementation signal failed, but then the decrement signal is received. Just refresh the page to see where the total is really currently at. I assure you then, every time, you will find it isn’t negative.
The response to this anomaly does actually relate to this article! Having said that I do tend to believe there is some weather modification going on.
I would like the down votes to clarify please.
Although I haven’t downvoted Monro’s post, I’ll give clarification a go.
Putin is neither fascist* or totalitarian – he’s an authoritarian conservative nationalist. In domestic policy he’s a successful Machiavellian prince; in foreign policy he’s a Bismarckian rationalist. He’s also highly intelligent, and he’s well-versed in the history of his own country. For example, given that Russia is a country with no natural borders, Putin understands the long-tern Russian impulse to control what goes on beyond those borders. Another foreign policy example: his analysis of the West’s lunatic policy in Syria was that, had it been successful in getting rid of Assad, it would have enabled and strengthened the violent jihadists. Lastly, Putin is not engaged in Great Replacing his own people, or appeasing and supporting the internal enemies of his country.
*Fascist is now just a heresy accusation.
Assad opened the prisons in Syria and let out all the Jihadists and especially those that formed Daesh. Putin told the west to back off Syria, which they did and he also said Democracy is not for everyone, which he would, wouldn’t he?
Arranged across the other side of the Med have been/are Soviet/Russian backed totalitarian states – look at the aircraft in their Air Forces and the prevalence of the AK47. It doesn’t matter what description of Putin is used he is a collectivist, or more traditionally a War Lord. Putin is also pushing migrants into Europe as this is another way to bring down capitalism and the West. He is mates with China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Belorussia and unfortunately India.
None of that contradicts what I’ve written. If he pushes immigrants our way it may be because he understands that diversity is our weakness. Also, Putin is obviously not responsible for our decadent rulers’ mad addiction to endless and unlimited immigration.
‘The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.’
Mussolini 1932
‘Defining whether a regime qualifies as fascist is no easy matter. Indeed, as far back as 1944, George Orwell was complaining that the word “fascism” had become “almost entirely meaningless” and was simply used as a synonym for “bully.” Nevertheless, most definitions of fascism would indicate a dictatorial system of government marked by nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, revisionism and expansionism. Putin’s Russia unquestionably ticks all of these boxes.
Russia completed its transition from authoritarianism to dictatorship following constitutional changes adopted in 2020 via a sham referendum that allowed Putin to remain in power until 2036. This confirmed his status as president for life and extinguished any lingering hopes regarding the possibility of Russia’s future democratic evolution. Since 2020, political opposition, independent media, and all forms of public protest have been subjected to new levels of suppression in Russia and ruthlessly crushed.
Putin’s speeches to justify the invasion have increasingly echoed the rhetoric of twentieth century fascist regimes. This has included calls for the purification of the nation and vicious denunciations of national traitors.’
Russian far-right groups have also contributed to the strangling of Russia’s left. Russia’s neo-Nazis are heavily linked with the Kremlin. In 2009, neo-Nazis shot anti-fascist journalist Anastasia Baburova together with human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov.
In 2017, the FSB, Russia’s feared security agency, used a neo-Nazi agent provocateur in one of the most recent and well-known crackdowns on Russian anti-fascists, arresting eleven activists for belonging to an anti-government organization, “Network,” that most likely has never even existed. In 2020, the men were condemned to sentences of three to eighteen years. The jailed activists repeatedly said that the FSB agents tortured them and forced confessions.
If anything, the repression is ramping up, as the Kremlin is fearful of unrest brought about by the invasion. Mikhail Lobanov, an academic and a union activist, has been pressured into exile. Boris Kagarlitsky, a Marxist intellectual, has been arrested. Azat Miftakhov was rearrested minutes after release. All these cases are a part of the Kremlin’s war on Russia’s civil society, especially its progressive part.’
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/23/russian-neo-nazis-participate-in-denazifying-ukraine-der-spiegel-a77762
Russian interest rates were lifted by two percentage points to 21%, a record high, last week.
“There is no 20 percent profitability anywhere. Maybe in the drug trade, but even the sale of weapons does not bring such a profit…….It is simply not profitable for enterprises to use borrowed funds, as I have already said many times. It is just that if we continue to work like this, then practically the majority of enterprises will go bankrupt.”
Sergey Chemezov, CEO of state-owned Rostec, the biggest producer of Russian arms
The Russian army has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties and is running out of stocks of Soviet era equipment.
I don’t believe that was quite what Machiavelli would have had in mind and certainly not Bismark.
You’ve omitted the revolutionary socialist element – which Mussolini had, but which Putin doesn’t. Putin’s dictatorship is closer to Alexander III’s police state, i.e. it makes use of specifically Russian elements – for example the integration of the Church into the state, or the use of nationalist gangs to silence opposition.
Nope. The doctrine of fascism is clear on ‘revolutionary socialism’:
‘No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State. Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon.’
Fascism is also a doctrine of imperialist expansionism:
‘The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical.’
‘Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand — a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or re-arise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow…..is now reasserting itself in the world.’
And a doctrine of totalitarian repression:
‘But imperialism implies discipline, the coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit of self-sacrifice. This explains many aspects of the practical activity of the regime, and the direction taken by many of the forces of the State, as also the severity which has to be exercised towards those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of 20th century Italy by agitating outgrown ideologies of the 19th century, ideologies rejected wherever great experiments in political and social transformations are being dared.’
Putin’s state has its own fascist organisations:
‘Some Rusich members are actually on the payroll of the Russian Defense Ministry. According to documents left behind by the G.R.U. Battalion ‘Wolves’ in Kharkiv which were subsequently recovered by the Ukrainian military in October 2023, Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate has been in charge of an illicit military recruitment scheme.
According to the mercenaries, they entered Ukraine through the Trigulyay training ground in the Tambov region, which is part of the training center of the 16th separate guards special forces brigade (GRU).
The connection between the “Wolves” and the GRU is also indicated by other internal documents of the detachment, which journalists have become familiar with. Often in the documents the detachment is directly called “DRO GRU “Wolves”.
Thanks to the unit’s internal documents, the authors of the investigation were able to identify 98 of the several hundred “Wolves” who fought.
Of these, 38 are mentioned in the “Peacemaker” database as participants in the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2014. About one in six previously served in the Wagner PMC, and one in ten in Syria.
At least four of the identified “Wolves” served or are still serving in the GRU, according to leaked personal data bases.’
Haven’t you worked out how downvoting works. A downvoter clearly doesn’t agree with what has been said and often is a response to soneone who they have engaged with in the past, quite pointlessly, and do not want to waste further time on them.
Perhaps, but all those we avoided arguing with now seem to be in power.
Excellent question, followed (interestingly and also tellingly with one honourable exception, a non downvoter) by the sound of wind whistling and a great deal of tumbleweed.
But the answer is clear to me, stated in the article and, in my opinion, bears repetition.
‘Freedom, then, means nothing if it does not mean telling people what they do not want to hear’.
Maybe we have Russian bots on here already !
Three thoughts:
1. Yes, it’s a problem, but what to do about it? In order to resist technocracy running amok, you need numbers, so friendly fire just leads to tiresome claims of ‘controlled opposition’, etc. It causes division. I’ve seen it in the GC ‘movement’ – first it was division between GC leftists and GC rightists, now a schism between women and gays is brewing.
2. Harari is doing the rounds at the moment, promoting his new book, and is on a mission of distinguishing truth from information, and defending Plato’s ‘Noble Lie’. He’s right, but, of course, he wants the existing elites to regain control of what is true. Rory Stewart is banging on about the same.
3. The clutter in the information space, growing exponentially with AI, is in my view not entirely organic. Yuri Beremzov and all that.
Good article. I have become a bit tires of once excellent sceptics, like TCW, becoming enthralled by mad ideas such as Chemtrails.
I would love them to explain what tanks they put these chemicals into on the airliners. I suppose they secretly put it in with the fuel?
Somw good and interesting people have become captured by this such Richard Vobes
You don’t think chemtrails exist? Maybe raise your head out of your little screen and look at the sky. They are so fake that 2 US states have banned them.
Mainstream news articles have been written about geo engineering. The U.K. government has published a paper about its regulation in its airspace. It’s easy to deny the existence of something one deliberately does not want to look for.
A thought provoking article. I certainly agree that one should choose ones battles, and how to fight them. But it seems to me that the author is simply wanting to pick and choose what others ought to believe or campaign about based on his own views. Chemtrails sound a bit far fetched to me, but I don’t have the time to find out about them as they are not a priority issue for me, but doubting “oncology” seems a fair bit more rational, especially given what we have seen since 2020.
I would add this: I know people online who think that 9/11 was faked (in so far as the planes didn’t actually fly into those buildings) which seems utterly implausible to me (while still a bit implausible I think it’s possible that it was a false flag operation or the deep state turned a blind eye to it). But I would rather be surrounded by people like that than the idiots who swallowed the covid scam whole.
I also am fairly sure planes flew into towers one and two. That’s about the only thing I am sure about, though. I consider it a strong possibility that they were remotely controlled.
Doubtless the technology exists though not sure who exactly has access to it other than major military powers – and they’d need to have hacked into something (unless they had help). One plan didn’t reach its intended target – or so we are told – because of passenger action – not sure they could done that if that particular plane was remote controlled.
Some people think the planes could not have collapsed the towers like that and it must have been blown up from the bottom. I don’t know enough to comment.
But here I am, a sceptic being “problematic” and going off message…
Is this guy serious or just a troll?
So chemtrails is a consp-theory is it?
Remove your fat face from the small screen and have a look at the sky sometime. I have videos near Gatwick of wild chem trail patterns outside of normal flight patterns. The gov’t can’t explain them or won’t.
So Rona was fake a plandemic but I am supposed to believe in evthg else? Quackcines are healthy are they? How about microplastics?
Delusional.
Biden ‘won’ 81 million votes did he? How dumb is anyone to believe that?
Climate Change? The endless wars? Algae become not only you but ‘fossil fuels’? Relativity and ‘time dilation’?
Jesus Christ.
Yeah keep your heads firmly up your rectums. Chew hard.
Did you notice the point about wind speeds up to 200 mph at altitude?
Of course there are trails outside of normal flight patterns.
What would be the point of spraying chemicals at 30,000 feet?
How would the secret be kept if the chemicals were being routinely mixed with aviation fuel?
There are no aircraft jet engines designed to expel chemicals, especially as the temperatures can be over 3,000C in the combustion chambers. Chem Trail conspiracists point at photos of jet vapor trails from the engines, as if this is technically possible. In addition, there are no airliners with additional tanks for holding anything other than Kerosene and with the amount of so called spraying required to change a country’s weather would require a very large fleet of aircraft with specially adapted spray points, holding tanks for the chemicals, along with infrastructure and people to prepare.
The largest formation of aircraft that did affect the weather was an allied 1,000 bomber raid that left persistent vapor trails that expanded to create high cloud cover that lasted a day or so. There are no such formations taking place. Any weather modification there is has been going on since the end of WW2 and to assist farmers with cloud seeding. This can only be done upwind of where the rain is needed and the aircraft are specially modified in an obvious way and they have to fly through the target cloud. Other types of spraying, such as crop spraying is done just above ground level to ensure the spray goes onto the intended crops. If a crop sprayer tried to spray somewhere from even just a 100ft above, let alone 30,000 ft, he would lose his/her/they job.
It is possible to track all aircraft flying in UK airspace using a number of online sources. As I misspent my youth plane spotting and have continued my interest in aviation I can tell you there are no unusual flight patterns in UK airspace, or US airspace. I have flown in both and know how it all works. All information is freely available and does not require a University degree to understand. My fellow teenage plane spotters seemed to figure it all out just be watching and listening.
Ok – but both Gov. UK & US are collaborating and coordinating it.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/221/221.pdf
Did you read this? They are not doing anything but discussing what can be done. All pretty mad stuff such as CO2 capture or the usual Net-Zero aims, all of which will not do much to change the ‘climate’. It does mention that China uses cloud seeding extensively.
“China’s cloud seeding program is the largest in the world, using it to make rain, prevent hailstorms, contribute to firefighting, and to counteract dust storms. On New Year’s Day in 1997, cloud seeding made snow in Beijing, for probably no other reason than popular enjoyment. During the 2008 Olympics, China extensively used cloud seeding to improve air quality. China sees cloud seeding as part of a larger strategy to lower summer temperatures and save energy.”
Yes, it’s old but also mentions aerosol spraying with aircraft amongst the other topics you mentioned. This is not intended to be a smoking gun, but rather the intent by UKgov to co-ordinate and regulate geo-engineering alongside USgov.
I don’t doubt the trails are there, but I very much doubt your claims as to their composition and the intent behind them. I think sskinner has made a very plausible rebuttal, which I accept.
Just the same, I know the climate is changing (always has, always will). Saying that this change is not proven as man made does not make me ‘a denier’, it makes me someone who doesn’t trust the motives and the ‘science’ of those who are preaching the AGW catastrophes for their own ends.
Denier claims are clever. The phenomenon exists, but you mistrust the interpretation and the imperative call to action. It’s the latter I deny, but it’s the former they claim you’re attacking.
I think it stems from the ‘holocaust denial’ of the 20th century; those who held that view were clearly unhinged as it was irrefutable. But the loopiness of this denial accusation jumps to people’s minds when the term is thrown about on less clear-cut topics.
There’s a fine line between what I know (and can make a good argument for), what I consider possible, and what simply seems plausible but has no substance.
I stick with making assertions I consider to be in the first category, although I have certainly read stuff in the second two categories, and have scared myself silly on occasion, I try to discriminate carefully.
I’m imperfect however and despite my care I may have one or two misapprehensions in my own world view, so I try to be open to evidence that contradicts me. But I’m much less likely to accept this evidence from those who royally screwed us over in 2020. They called ‘wolf’ and now everything they say is suspect.
A great article. Not only have we got sceptics that seem to have gone down some pretty weird and far reaching rabbit holes, but we now have nutters who truly believe scepticism ends at their ‘truth’, which of course shouldn’t be scrutinised in any way, shape or form.
One further thought – by far the most pressing problem with “scepticism” “post-covid” is not the specifics of what some sceptics think about certain things that the author happens to disagree with, but that the world is run by mad and/or evil people who are everywhere, and the billions are still asleep. Being generous, one could interpret the author as saying we should choose carefully which battles to fight, and how. Being less generous, one could say the author is just (doubtless inadvertently) sowing division and distraction.
“I did not believe that men in caves with AK47s could undermine Western civilisation”…the most weird aspect of the “war on terror” is that muslim immigration into Western democracies speeded up, and Saudi-trained clerics were allowed to go on preaching jihad in every Western city. So then we find hundreds of thousands of hamas supporters taking over the streets every weekend.
One of the difficulties we have in trying to distinguish truth from lies are the obvious attempts to “poison the well” – that is say attempts to defeat truthful exposures of conspiracies by adding Establishment-supporting nonsense, exaggerations, and lies to the mix. For example, we can all see that at 9/11 Building 7 collapsed because it was subject to a controlled demolition which had to have been prepared in advance. So the nonsense-lie became “there was a nuclear explosion”.
We, as adults, have to accept that our beloved and infinitely wise governments are engaged in deliberate lying – with the intention not merely of deceiving us but of confusing us. That obliges us to keep in mind Thomas Sowell’s theory of the social distribution of knowledge – the idea that the amount of knowledge available in society at large is always hugely greater than that used by governments, and that governments can never ever be all-knowing.
Building 7 collapse was not a controlled demolition. Why would any organisation deliberately do that spreading it’s paperwork all over Manhattan? The preparation required to demolish even one of the buildings at the WTC would have taken some months and been very noticeable. When WTC 1 & 2 collapsed this severely damaged the surrounding buildings and in the case of WTC7 it’s foundations. The falling girders punched right through the ground and down into the subway.
Building 7 – a building of steel and concrete – was slightly damaged by fire on one side, yet it collapsed within its own footprint.
All tall and very large structures will collapse within their own footprint because the downward weight of the building is an immensely greater force than the structures ability to act like a leaver. You can see in both WTC1 & 2 that when they start to collapse one in particular starts to lean out but then falls straight down. The internal structures of all skyscrapers are designed to hold the building vertical. Also, WTC7 was severely damaged at it’s foundations.
There are plenty of credible websites presenting information that does not fit the US government narrative of what happened on that day, e.g. https://www.ae911truth.org/.
It is difficult to imagine the numbers of people necessarily keeping quiet who would need to have been involved if the towers had been destroyed intentionally, but there are numerous matters (including WTC7) which are difficult to explain otherwise.
Certainly undeniable is the fact that the “War on Terror” resulted from 9/11, a convenient excuse to invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and anywhere else where oil can be found!
I remain not completely convinced either way on 9/11 but I can sadly believe the US government (and the UK government) to be capable of any atrocity.
I don’t need a government narrative as this was the most filmed event almost ever. It took a while to figure out what was happening as I watched the first building collapse live. All the ATC talk is available including mobile phone chat as well as the details of the aircraft involved.
Ten minutes spent watching any of the programmes on explosive demolition would show the conspiracy nutters – if they were capable of learning – just how long it takes to prep a building and show all the cabling required to carry out a detonation that people could hardly miss if they had managed not to notice all the drilling for charge placements and strategic cutting of rebar to ensure collapse.
conspiracy nutters
Yet oddly enough the Establishment’s position on 9/11 is that it was the result of a CONSPIRACY by Muslims. Remember the passport that just happen to flutter down into the street intact?
It is estimated by various intelligence services around the world that of the 1.2 billion Muslims there are between 15% and 25% that are radical. That means there are between 180,000,000 to 250,000,000 radical Islamists. The WTC was attacked with a truck before 9/11
while Islamic Fundamentalists along with Bin-Laden were already butchering their way through Algeria and Iran. There have since been a long list of atrocities in almost every major western country. Is it not possible that there is a Muslim conspiracy against the US and the West?
Also, why shouldn’t a passport ‘flutter’ down into the street intact.
The flying school where the hijackers took lessons informed the FBI because their behaviour stuck out like a sore thumb as not consistent with someone wanting to learn to fly. The most obvious red flag was their disinterest in wanting to learn how to land. The FBI failed to check with the CIA who seemed to know these guys but didn’t tell the FBI, or something like that. That kind of incompetence is very believable and all the more obvious with hindsight.
“And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Regarding Sri Lanka and Vandana Shiva’s proposals. You cannot expect depleted soils to bring forth crops without synthetic fertilisers overnight! Of course it would take time and the addition of natural fertilisers such as animal manures and green manures, rotation of crops etc. And ultimately this is going to have to happen, because the world’s capacity to grow nourishing food with artificial fertilisers and chemicals is becoming more and more unviable.
Modern farming methods also serve to empower our slave masters, and depleted soils cannot absorb carbon dioxide, as rich natural soils would. But the green blob apparently has no interest in this healthy, low tech method of recycling carbon dioxide.
And yet we are feeding more and more people with these ‘depleted’ soils. Better crops, better fertilizers, better use of water all mean that an acre can produce more food, and this is bad? Also, it is Flora that absorbs, but also expels CO2. As a consequence of a small increase in the proportion of CO2 the Earth is measurably greener. The James Web Telescope is able to identify the markers for life in distant planets and they are CO2 and Methane, the same gases that are considered pollution on Earth.
Apparently yield was never the problem with feeding the world, but rather, the fact that the poorest cannot afford to buy food.
I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t expect a glyphosate raised crop to compare nutritionally with what people now call ‘nutrient dense’ organic food raised regeneratively.
Hunger has been decreasing as well as poverty, globally (Where there are still issues is usually where there is either Marxist or Islamist) insurgency. The lowest life expectancy today is at least 15 years above the highest life expectancy 200 years ago. Almost 90% of the planet has access to electricity. These are good things. Have you heard of Trofim Lysenko?
As a “sceptic” the challenge is to decide which of the “conspiracy theories” are plausible and which ones are not.
To dismiss them all is letting people off the hook.
Of course, there is a conspiracy when the global elite meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos, The Club of Rome, The Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg etc. etc. etc. to discuss how they are going to rule the world and own all means of production with true minutes of the meetings hardly ever made public.
They facilitate politicians of their choice to promote their views who are “here today and gone tomorrow”. When they leave politics, they take up lucrative posts in the private sector.
The media is also beholden to them directly and indirectly via advertising revenue and access to briefings.
The global elite also control Big Pharma and the health of the whole population.
The end game is most likely a vastly reduced population and a few globalists owning everything.
Individual conspiracies should be disseminated and those that do not hold water should be discarded.
If new information comes to light don’t be afraid to change your mind.
I’ve been branded a so-called “conspiracy theorist” for over 20 years but you have to pick the right fight which stands up to scrutiny.
Another skeptic here…….. perhaps I’m a bit simplistic but I am immediately skeptical when discussion on a subject is verboten!
In the words of Inspector Morse, ‘When somebody doesn’t want to discuss something I want to know why’
Exactly the same here – if it’s all so simple and straightforward, let’s discuss it openly
If chemtrails don’t exist then just what are these planes (or whatever they are) doing flying lattice patterns over areas where there are no flight paths. Believe whatever you want but before dismissing the chemtrail theory, please give me some plausible reason for this, because it happens a lot and has done for years.
We have family living in France who are asking the very same question. They say they are not seeing condensation trails from aircraft which are quite different in character and ‘life span’.
“Vandana Shiva, an Indian organic agriculture activist, celebrated by Greenpeace and George Monbiot, is cited approvingly on the pages of the Conservative Woman (now TCW – Defending Freedom)” Russell Brand is also a fan of hers and she’s been exposing the mendacity of Bill Gates in India.
I found this a strange article.
“Do lockdown sceptics free us from the proven excesses of medical tyranny by advocating naturopathy?”
I have met many lockdown sceptics but not one has been an advocate of naturopathy. I have met (sadly) for greater numbers of lockdown believers, many of whom I either know or believe to be susceptible of belief in‘alternative’ medicine.
Come to think of it, one of the maddest aspects of Covidism is that large numbers of people who until 2020 were staunch followers of woowoo medicine turned overnight into hysterical and authoritarian slaves to “the science “. Are you sure you’ve got this the right way round?
More comments than usual , cages rattled I see , Chem Trails are a thing , Convid is what it was but a germ was released from Wuhan lab because I had it in August 21 ! The Jabs are deadly , JFK was an inside job as was 9/11 & the Moon Landings seem more far fetched when the physics are delved into !
You can’t find freedom in a Zoo. First you need to be aware of the cage.
It is meaningfulness that has been lost, and meaning is not to be found informatively, because information is only a system of representational meaning that pursues efficiency. Proportionality is the.awareness of the hierarchy of importance, and proportionality can show us the very beginning of efficiency.
Thank you. Because the covid vaccines were a disaster, giving up measles vaccines is not the proper response.
As Auberon Waugh might have said: I am a skeptic. You are an alarmist!
Skepticism for respectability, rather than the curmudgeon’s naughty-step, demands proper inquiry into such facts as may be available. That is the manifestation of the “fine line” you refer to.
So, to take one example, when you characterise those who find the systematic and admitted tinkering with our weather systems, Including quantities of Aluminium Oxide that are widely detectable in our environment where it was not before, as simply ” social media influencers” (as if you are not part of that species yourself) rather than those who are aware of the toxic nature of this, and of the very systematic way in which such tinkering is being effected by persons without a shred of public agreement, it is time for a skeptic to become skeptical.
How would you differentiate a skeptical with a scientific approach? One would not wish, I think, for find the Fauci approach in this honourable subset!
I don’t believe anything has gone wrong.
In relation to the jihadis and the war on terror, it is blackly amusing to note that those same jihadis were regarded as heroes just a few years earlier, when it was the Russians waging the war on terror.
See the movie The Living Daylights, for example, where James Bond works with the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Russians.
It seems that the “terrorists” are always the people on the other side, that we are told to hate.
Also Rambo 3
While I broadly agree, it needs to be said that “chem trails” and weather manipulation are two quite different things. One is dubious, the other is very well documented (even being triumphantly announced by President Lyndon Johnson) and has over 150 associated.patents.