MODERN MANIPULATING TACTICS .....

I will borrow a thought from J. Bisnoff's insightful book "Fake Politics", In these turbulent times, two of the great threats to our democracy are money in politics and a certain weakening of the power of truth. At it's very essence a democratic system is reliant on the will of the people being the catalyzing force for the direction of the republic, so when there is a price tag on creating a "will of the people" that foundation requirement is eroded.

The fake news machine throughout the world, and more so in the U.S. is becoming a very serious hand, playing several sides of business, politics, elections, even enhancing personal and small town's images for a multitude of benefits and reasons. These are combined networks of 30 or 40 sites that publish fake-news stories. WTOE 5, news in America is a good example.

Some are smaller some are very large like Facebook, but they all share the same tactics for their own profits from two sources, either they get paid from direct ads, or get paid directly from from PR agencies serving big interests, like the tobacco industries, the Canadian oil-pipe line, the oil industries, armament manufacturers coal industries, political sides and big and smaller names ranging from presidents to congress members. Even state local politicians.

Some of these schemes, and even one time stories register over 100.000 comments, and some other did reach the 1 million mark, i.e. The Pope endorsement of D.Trump, or other similar stories on Facebook. More interference with fake-news during election campaigns paid by supporters or the candidates themselves, and or rich big interests and lobbies. That's when these sites peak in numbers while still being connected by shared bank accounts, or owned by one operator. Would we believe that some of these sites including Facebook reached a 16 billion hits !!! 

Before Donald Trump embraced the term "Fake news", it was used to describe downright false stories, from actually fake websites, like the Pope endorsement of Trump for president, but now it's definitely taking new proportions in election interference whereby some big and very big players are in the game.Those shady websites are alive and well, and mushrooming locally and across the world.  They continue to spread total garbage across Facebook and others, to the unsuspecting public.

When we see a Mark Zuckerberg owner of Facebook, several times in private visits to Mr. Trump within the last few months, we suspect something of the sort, or the story targeting Nancy Pelosy diverting 2.4 million $ from social security to cover impeachment costs, Again on Facebook. It received a staggering 24.6 million views on Facebook. Most of these stories are disguised as news, but they're false. It's counterfeit news.

Everywhere in the world, and America as well, people used to live by a shared set of facts, people may disagree on certain policies or their prescriptions, but the facts they could at least agree on. Now in the social media age, disinformation campaigns are specializing in distorting the facts that a society accepts as truth. Russian interference with disinformation campaign in the 2016 presidential election giving a big boost to candidate Trump, was clearly identified and condemned .

The Middle-East nowadays is using lots of these tactics, Lebanon is a very fertile spot to all different sites producing and manipulating fake-news to further divide the population and stop the popular uprising. Israel's Netanyahu several attempts to cling to power, Turkey's Erdogan and British Brexit and lately the election of not too funny B. Johnson, are all well expressed examples of these tactics.

Not one spot in the world will have a fair election or an honest uprising, or fight selfish enrichment by politicians and greedy business conglomerates and the merchants of wars, if these sites big and small are not regulated and better monitored, they are misleading posts period. Using any version suiting their clients and fooling the electoral body by any means possible.We used to call them cheap  rumors, but now it's a serious scientific business, aiming to push rumors on the internet, and make it sound like truth and reality.
                           My usual thanks to all my readers and followers of the blog.