"Deep State"

    Just a thread to try to figure out what's going on with the newest most popular conspiracies, to post items over time. Because I recently saw these things that blew my mind:

    A DC lawmaker has apologized for saying Jewish people control the weather

    DC Councilmember Trayon White has apologized for sharing a
    conspiracy theory linking the Jewish bankers to climate control.
     Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

    By P.R. Lockhart @ Vox.com, March 19, 2018

    [....] Trayon White, who is currently in his first term on the council, posted a video to his Facebook account on Friday of a snowy sky. White can be heard narrating in the background about the cold weather.

    “It just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” White says in the video, which was first reported on by the Washington Post on March 18. “That’s a model based off the Rothschilds, controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.” [....]

     

    At first I thought maybe he was doing a terrible anti-Semitic joke, but no, if ones goes to the March 18 Washington Post article by Peter Jamison and Valerie Straus, it doesn't sound like that:

    [....] White did not return calls for comment. In a series of text messages, he confirmed the voice in the video is his but expressed surprise that his remarks might be construed as anti-Semitic. Asked to clarify what he meant, he wrote, “The video says what it says.”

    However, about four hours after The Washington Post published this story online Sunday, White sent a statement of apology via text message.

    “I work hard everyday to combat racism and prejudices of all kinds. I want to apologize to the Jewish Community and anyone I have offended,” he said. “The Jewish community have been allies with me in my journey to help people. I did not intend to be anti-Semitic, and I see I should not have said that after learning from my colleagues.” [....]

    White’s video statements appear to echo beliefs, found lurking in corners of the Internet, that the Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient Cities initiative — which provides grants to cities, including the District, to address environmental and economic problems — is actually part of a secret scheme to control and reduce the population of North America. 

    Some conspiracy theorists also think the Rothschilds, acting in conjunction with the Rockefeller family, have technology to manipulate the weather — for example, by causing freak storms that wreak havoc on people, farms and livestock.

    In a video posted to YouTube this year titled “Kill Cities — Designed by Rothschild and Rockefeller: Resilient Cities Are Human Death Zones,” Internet commentator Deborah Tavares — a Northern California resident who argues, among other things, that climate change and wireless electricity meters are tools in a plot of global domination — calls the Resilient Cities program a “diabolical” effort to manipulate people.

    “This a genocide program,” she says. “We are being moved now into what they call ‘resilient cities.’ And it’s important to get this word out, start looking it up: Resilient cities. Understand what this is: This is a plan brought in by Rothschild and Rockefeller.”

    She adds, “We’re being categorized as lunatics, but we know that the weather is massively and completely, artificially controlled.” [....]

    Well, okay, another handful of conspiracy nuts. Who will always be with us.

    BUT THEN, I just read this, my underlining:

    Americans skeptical of government, more politically engaged, poll finds

    By David Wright @ CNN.com, March 19

    Majorities of Americans expressed concern about government surveillance and the influence of unelected officials on government policy in a new poll released Monday by Monmouth University [....]

    Monmouth found that 23% of Americans are very worried and 30% are somewhat worried about government monitoring and invasion of privacy, and that concern cuts across partisan lines. Majorities of independents (57%), Republicans (51%) and Democrats (50%) expressed some level of worry. Overall, 46% said they weren't too worried or weren't worried at all.

    Regardless of concern, a vast majority -- 8 in 10 -- believe that the US government does currently monitor the activities of American citizens, with 53% saying it's widespread and 29% saying that it happens but is not widespread. Just 14% of Americans believe the US government is not spying on citizens at all.

      Asked about the influence of unelected officials on government policy, 6 in 10 said they have too much influence, while just 26% said there was an appropriate balance with elected leaders.

      Monmouth also surveyed opinions on the "deep state" specifically, referred to in the poll as "a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy." Most Americans said they were unfamiliar with the term (63%), while about a quarter (24%) said they were somewhat familiar and just 13% said they were very familiar.

      When given the above description of the "deep state" and asked whether such a group exists, 27% said definitely, 47% said probably and the remainder were unsure or skeptical.

      In a curious example of cross-partisanship, the Monmouth poll found that belief in the existence of the "deep state" was highest among nonwhites and National Rifle Association members [....]

       

      Comments

      "23% of Americans are very worried and 30% are somewhat worried about government monitoring and invasion of privacy"........."worried about government monitoring"???

      Meanwhile they are not worried about Facebook.

      Facebook’s chief executive, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer — have struggled to address a growing set of problems, including Russian interference on the platform, the rise of false news and the disclosure over the weekend that 50 million of its user profiles had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.

      Facebook logs everything that you do, like or buy and sells to to Russia or anyone with $$, with no controls, and one buyer can sell it to another.

      Facebook, which with $18 billion in revenue/year, and 1.6 billion monthly users, could charge $1 a month to users and not need to collect any information as they would no longer need ads.

      Oh and on conspiracies, George Soros ran the Holocaust from Hungary. A false flag op to besmirch noble Nazis. And Eisenhower was a Commie stooge, back before it was OK with the right wing, he had Patton assassinated by the Russians.

       


      That minorities might be buying into the whole Soros thing really disturbs me. I'm glad it's you commenting because I know you're one that will understand what I am going to say next. It's like there is this linkage or cross-fertilization going on between the old white trash/Jim Crow beliefs that included anti-Semitic anti-urban, anti-Yankee and the government conspiracy to the many "keep blacks down" government conspiracy theories. What a nightmare "populist" coalition that would be! You could throw in evangelicals of all colors real easy. Geez. My mind gets racing, trying to think like someone like that is thinking and then I think: uh oh the FBI is al these white guys, etc.

      I calmed down a little because the poll said  Most Americans said they were unfamiliar with the term (63%).

      But I think it's time to start watching more carefully who's buying into this age-old crap. Especially with Russians pushing it, after decades (centuries, actually) of isolated totalitarianism, they learn conspiracizing from the cradle.


      You skipped right over the most important response in this poll that 60% responded negatively to too many unelected officials having too much influence on policy. This describes the deep state very well but people reject that naming because snowflakes such as Art have tainted that name with constant associating it with some conspiracy theory distraction. It seems that people have gotten around the snowflake manipulation and diflection to show they are aware of this threat to the republic. Many people are celebrating the removal of the swamp creatures such as McCabe while those who loved their corrupt institutions and players are sandbagging and spitting like disturbed snakes.

      Are you paid by the flake?


      Oh yeah, I'm sure the right wingers are so sensitive to liberal's feelings that they found ways to placate them by choosing euphemisms instead of out right speaking their mind. You're the anomaly on the right in that you relish insulting the left. In fact it's all you do here.


      Spot on NCD. What  people don't seem to realize is that if there's a site that's making money and they get all sorts of free services from it then they are the product the site is selling. They need to seriously consider if how they are being sold is worth the free stuff. But they almost never do.


      We got gen-u-ine conspiracy material right heeya: Zuckerberg saved tens of millions of dollars by selling Facebook stock ahead of Monday’s decline @ Marketwarch Mar 19, 2018 6:59 p.m. ET. (Still: Facebook CEO saw net worth drop by $5 billion as stock sinks after data controversy)

      Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth decline by about $5 billion Monday, but it could have been worse.

      Ahead of Facebook’s worst one-day decline since 2012, prompted by news that data affecting 51.3 million members was improperly shared with a political consulting firm, Zuckerberg had been busy selling stock. So far this year, he has sold nearly 5 million shares [....]


      On the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica thing, a challenge op-ed on "how was the Obama campaign different?" from Ben Shapiro @ The Hill, What’s genius for Obama is scandal when it comes to Trump:

      [....] Facebook had no problem with such activity then. They do now. There’s a reason for that. The former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

      Not so with Trump. As soon as Facebook realized that Cambridge Analytica had pursued a similar strategy, they suspended the firm [....]


      Good one to throw at anyone you run across flogging Clinton Foundation conspiracy theories:

       

      Well let's not forget that Trump donated $100k to the Clinton Foundation in 2009..and donated another $10k in 2010.
      Ivanka Trump is listed as a donor between $5k and $10k.

      Charlie Kushner, Jared's dad, gave between $250k- $500k. https://t.co/WNVmvZu698

      — Yashar Ali ?? (@yashar) March 19, 2018

       


      AA, I would add that trump never donated to anything; but I am sure that he used other people's money in order to bribe whatever in order to get his zoning issues resolved. hahahah

      I do believe that there is a deep state.

      And thank Almighty God, there is a deep state or Mussolini would rock!


      I would suggest that if the payment went through, it was probably deductible for a Trump corporate entity that needed a write off to avoid a tax payment of nearly the same amount. cheeky (Also, FWIW: not a conspiracy, just standard modus operandi!)


      Trayvon White won his election via an uncontested seat. I think he will face an opponent next time around. He is nuts. Sir Evelyn de Rothschild talks about a weather app “My Weather” in interviews. The app gives preside local weather reports. Perhaps the conspiracy theory began with that fact.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0tk7rVBFfRY

      White follows a long history of conspiracy theories involving the Rothschild’s dating back to Waterloo 

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/19/the-rothschilds-a-pamphlet-by-satan-and-conspiracy-theories-tied-to-a-battle-200-years-ago/?utm_term=.42652cb3c504

      ​I’m not sure how many blacks are aware of the Rothschild weather conspiracy.

      Tavares has appeared on Alex Jones which should sum up her credentials.


      I thought Soros was a good guy because he bussed in black people from Mississippi to vote for Doug Jones in Alabama

      https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alabama-election-conspiracy-theory_us_5a321692e4b01bdd7659f2ce


      I don't respond to polls. I wonder if anyone else here does?


      Not me.
      I get enough loaded questions at work.


      The alt-right embrace of the "deep state" idea is is more than a little bit of cultural appropriation of the theme developed on the Left that our governance favors those who have the financial power to influence it. From that point of view, it is important to distinguish bat shit crazy conspiracy theories from reasonable questions about who benefits most from a particular policy becoming effective.

      The alt-right versions do not look any further back than the last administration to classify who is working for what. The Lefty versions they model themselves upon go back to investment decisions made in the early 1900's.

      Event horizons.


       Bannon identified and tested the power of anti-establishment messages that later would emerge as central themes in President Trump’s campaign speeches, according to Chris Wylie, who left the company at the end of that year.

      Among the messages tested were “drain the swamp” and “deep state,” he said.

      from Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data, according to former employee by Craig Timberg, Karla Adam & Michael Kranish @ WashingtonPost.com, March 20 at 7:53 PM 


      Also interesting from that article is this on the work they did for 2014 midterms:

      “Trump wasn’t in our consciousness at that moment; this was well before he became a thing,” Wylie said. “He wasn’t a client or anything.”

      The year before Trump announced his presidential bid, the data firm already had found a high level of alienation among young, white Americans with a conservative bent.

      In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intended the “drain the swamp” of Washington’s entrenched political community and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called “race realism,” he recounted.

      The firm also tested views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

      “The only foreign thing we tested was Putin,” he said. “It turns out, there’s a lot of Americans who really like this idea of a really strong authoritarian leader and people were quite defensive in focus groups of Putin’s invasion of Crimea.”


      It is interesting to see that backstory in the context of Briebart presently waning and Fox waxing among the alt-right. 
      The life cycle of Astroturf is short and unpleasant.
       


      If there's not an unelected deep state secretly influencing policy, then how do we still have Daylight Savings Time?  I've never met anybody who likes it.

      I joke, but the existence and longevity of unpopular laws and policies does kind of imply that something's up...


      Does anyone like the Electoral College?  Except Republicans?


      I doubt that many people thought either way about the EC before this election, it was a relic. That relic came out of obscurity and reaffirmed that we have a republic of states and saved us from afate worse than death, Clintonism and mob rule.

      Yes no one has thought about the electoral college for an interminably long obscurity of 16 years since Gore won the election in 2000 and had it stolen from him by this archaic undemocratic provision. I don't expect you to remember something that happened that long ago.


      Maybe you are a young person who did not experience the election of 2000 where the loser of the popular vote also won. The topic of the Electoral College came up after the Supreme Court picked the winner.

      What is "Clintonism"? Both Bill and Hillary supported prevailing ideas. They certainly did not come up with these ideas by themselves. I have no idea about what you might be referring to. Or are you complaining that they were puppets of the status quo while also complaining that they ruled the world? Those claims cancel each other out. To think both of them at the same time is called cognitive dissonance.

      As for mob rule, do you mean mobs in the street with pitchforks or gangs like the Russian Mobs who launder money in U.S. real estate? Do you mean "Populists" who carry tiki torches to intimidate minorities? Perhaps you are referring to Corporations who acquire market share by manipulating the government.

      Who can tell?


      Peter never used "mobs" until months back I noted Trumps Adoration Rallies are mobs of cultists cheering stuff like "lets execute drug dealers" etc

      There are talking parrots that would make more sense posting here.


      I like Daylight Savings Time. Maybe just because everyone else hates it.


      It's a slippery slope from clock control  to gun control....yes.....taking your guns away.

      If they wanted to save daylight they'd do it in winter when we need more of it.


      Anything they do at 2/3am has to be sneaky, no?


      You'll never make it as a conspiracy theorizer, too logical.


      Thanks AA. I would ask you to join my Reddit group, Glocks or Clocks, it was a small subgroup of a branch of a thread from an offshoot (no pun) of a Jade Helm Awareness subgroup that was under the main Reddit NRA action section and was deleted, and I haven't restarted it. 


      best part: (no pun) laugh

      I totally understand: You guys need your privacy. Sophisticated memes quite different from that Loesch crap for mass consumption. A no brainer to go off line, really, no G-men and SPLC lurkers.


      Most of the daylight savings are in the hands of the boomers who plan to spend it for their personal use when they retire. You can expect to see a backlash from millennials when that happens. The young are already forced to spend half or more of the day without any sunlight most months of the year.


      Can we save our Daylight in cryptocurrency, or is it already optically encoded?


      The lack of daylight in the winter months is caused by the tilt in the axis by both the extremist far right and far left. We need a more centrist approach to the axis tilt then sunlight would be more fairly distributed throughout the year. Americans are looking for bipartisan solutions to the winter daylight problem as well as other problems that we face.


      David Brooks can lead that centrist Party, perhaps call it the Party of "no tilt".


      Precisely! Boy you have us boomer liberals with some centrist views pegged! My goal for old age is moving close to the equator to steal as much daylight as I can! You should apply at Cambridge Analytica... devil


      I'm still wondering if it's true that most men are left hung, or that's just more leftist myth-making. And incredibly worried about who'll do the research to debunk. Another case of "let's not go there..."


      For those who have a New York Times subscription, check out what the cosmpolitan elites were dealing with November 22, 1885:

      A DREAD OF EVIL SPIRITS

      PERSONS IN EVERY COUNTRY DISTURBED BY "BOGIES".

      A CHINESE EMPEROR VISITED BY A BLUEDEVIL--GREEN FAIRIES AND WHITEBANSHEES IN IRELAND.

      So faint is the realization of the existence of spirits, devils, and demons among the educated classes of the West of Europe and of America that it is hard to recall the fact that only a minority of human beings may be said to be free from constant fear of the attacks of supernatural beings [....]

      The balance is in this PDF scan of the original newsprint 

      Next column after that on page 6:

      A MORMON EXCOMMUNICATED.

      ONE OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES DRIVEN FROM THE CHURCH.

      Nothing that has occurred in the career of the Mormon Church during late years has created more of a sensation both in and out of this community than will follow last evening's aunouncement that the quorum of Apostles had excommunicated from the church one of their number, Albert Carrington, for the offenses of "lewd and lascivious conduct and adultery." [,,,,,]

      And shortly after that:

      SOME HIT AND MISS CHAT

      STRAY BITS OF GOSSIP FROM AN OBSERVER'S NOTE BOOK.

      STORIES TOLD IN WALL-STREET OF CHARLES J. OSBORN, HIS DARING SPECULATIONS AND HIS GENEROUS DEEDS.

      Shoulder to shoulder beside the coffin of Charles J. Osborn a few days ago stood two men who not so long ago were mortal enemies. One was Jay Gould; the other was Major Selover, who once upon a time tossed Jay Gould down a Wall-street area [.....]

       


      So we were once superstitious, and now we're just stitious?


      The Trayon White story that I started this thread with (regarding the Jews controlling the weather conspiracy) is back big time in the news. This new WaPo article summarizes what's been going on the last few days:

      Under fire for Farrakhan donation, D.C. lawmaker Trayon White says he’s ‘not backing down’

      By Fenit Nirappil and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel April 21 at 8:02 PM

      A defiant D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) on Saturday took to Facebook Live to tell his followers that he was “under attack” by the media and vowed to push back against any effort to reprimand him as criticism mounted over allegations of anti-Semitism and a donation he made to the Nation of Islam.

      For the past month, White has been trying to survive a national uproar and local political fallout after he spread conspiracy theories that the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family, controlled the climate and government.

      His efforts to make amends began unraveling this week after The Washington Post reported that he abruptly left a guided tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and that he donated $500 to a Nation of Islam convention where the group’s leader, Louis Farrakhan, bashed Jews — spending that has drawn the scrutiny of campaign finance officials.

      Three fellow council members — Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) — have called for him to be formally reprimanded over the donation. And several Jewish groups that have previously urged forgiveness for White said his financial support for Farrakhan was unacceptable [....]

       

      Farrakhan survives in the black community because he focuses on issues of black self-help. Most politicians keep their distance. The Million Man March drew a million  crowd. His influence now is probably in the thousands. Still, he  may be the leader of the largest anti-Semitic group in the country. The Nation of Islam is anti-Semitic, but it doesn’t march to synagogues with Tiki torches. The leadership of the Women’s March is under fire for attending Farrakhan speeches. The Women’s March organization issued an “apology”. The March may have reached it’s sell by date as the focus is going to really be getting out the vote. Electing more women to office might make the March unnecessary. The women linked to Farrakhan will have a hard time removing the stench. Farrakhan is 84.

      Trayon White thinks the Rothschild’s control the weather and apparently thought that he would burst into flame when exposed to the Holocaust Museum. The more he talks, the more irrational he will become. 


      Not always "deep state" but most certainly about conspiracy mongering:

      Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match

      home page lede: Where Face Rumors Fuel a Thirst for Revenge./For months, Times reporters tracked riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook.

      By Amanda Taub & Max Fisher @ NYTimes. com, April 21

      MEDAMAHANUWARA, Sri Lanka — Past the end of a remote mountain road, down a rutted dirt track, in a concrete house that lacked running water but bristled with smartphones, 13 members of an extended family were glued to Facebook. And they were furious.

      A family member, a truck driver, had died after a beating the month before. It was a traffic dispute that had turned violent, the authorities said. But on Facebook, rumors swirled that his assailants were part of a Muslim plot to wipe out the country’s Buddhist majority.

      “We don’t want to look at it because it’s so painful,” H.M. Lal, a cousin of the victim, said as family members nodded. “But in our hearts there is a desire for revenge that has built.”

      The rumors, they believed, were true. Still, the family, which is Buddhist, did not join in when Sinhalese-language Facebook groups, goaded on by extremists with wide followings on the platform, planned attacks on Muslims, burning a man to death.

      But they had shared and could recite the viral Facebook memes constructing an alternate reality of nefarious Muslim plots. Mr. Lal called them “the embers beneath the ashes” of Sinhalese anger.

      We came to this house to try to understand the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions [.....]


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