Saturday, February 25, 2017

Anonymous sources



At his CPAC speech, Donald Trump insisted that no-one in the media should write stories relying on anonymous sources. In other words, neither All the President's Men nor The Final Days should exist -- a prescription which no doubt would please Roger Stone, Donnie's best friend.

But what about the times Trump himself has cited anonymous sources, as documented in the above video? And what about the notorious story about Trump's sex life which appeared in the New York Post while Donald Trump was still married to Ivana? The anonymous source for this report is presumed to be none other than Donald Trump himself.

I'm sure that Donald's pal Alex Jones will now start to rant about anonymous sources; these days, AJ thinks whatever Donnie tells him to think. In the past, however, Awful Alex has had no problem with anonymous sourcing.

For example, ten days ago Alex Jones published this:
Investigative journalist Ed Klein has an anonymous source claiming Hillary Clinton is planning to have her own TV Show in preparation for a 2020 Presidential bid.
And then there's this Infowars piece publish last July, during the election...
The Clinton Foundation is a “massive spider web of connections and money laundering implicating hundreds of high-level people,” according to an anonymous insider who revealed why the FBI stopped short of indicting Hillary Clinton.
The anonymous source behind this claim spoke to the world via 4chan, the world's most trustworthy site. If you read it on 4chan, it's solid.

Alex Jones has also featured the comedy stylings of one Jim Garrow, a far right paranoia-peddler:
He claims to have been an alphabet agency operative (more on that below), and frequently cites inside sources at the highest levels of American intelligence. They're all anonymous sources, of course, but they're such loyal patriots that they're allowing Garrow to release information you won't get anywhere else on this planet. Here are just a few of the astonishing things Garrow has revealed to the public in just the past four months:

* Obama ordered the assassination of Andrew Breitbart.

* Obama ordered the assassination of Tom Clancy.

* A military coup is imminent in the U.S. A cabal of military leaders is going to rise up against tyranny and unseat Obama.

* Obama was planning to use an EMP pulse weapon against his own country, but was foiled by a small group of military leaders. Now, in retaliation, Obama is assassinating those men.

* Several of Garrow's CIA colleagues have been murdered because they got in Obama's way, and Garrow himself narrowly escaped an apparent assassination attempt in January.
Side note 1: Seems to me that the one who immediately profited from the death of Andrew Breitbart was a guy named Steve. (Not that I think there was anything unnatural in Breitbart's passing. I'm just sayin'.)

Side note 2: I first heard the "cabal of military leaders" meme more than a quarter century ago from a now-forgotten conspiracy guru named Sherman Skolnick, who claimed to have a stable of anonymous sources. Throughout 1991 and 1992, Skolnick continually told his listeners that a group of generals was "on their way to Washington" to arrest George Bush the elder for treason, a word which Shermie always pronounced "TREEEEEE-zun!" Those generals were en route for nearly two years. I knew they shouldn't have made that left turn at Albuquerque.

End side notes; let's get back to AJ.

I could probably cite many, many, many more examples of Alex Jones relaying information gleaned from anonymous sources. My favorite instance, of course, is the time Alex Jones built an entire show around a rather notorious article about Aleister Crowley and the Bush family. That article -- written by yours truly -- first appeared in this very blog on April 1, 2006.

And what was the basis for that article's key claim..?
A sixth-level initiate within the OTO (the Ordo Templi Orientis, the mystical society that Crowely came to head in the 1920s) first set me down this research path by revealing that...
As it happens, I did once know a member of the OTO, although she may have been on the fifth level, not the sixth. She was a brilliant, troubled lady who died some years ago. Since I never have and never will divulge her name (not even her weirdly inappropriate "magickal name" within the order), she remains an anonymous source.

Yes, you can get screwed by an anonymous source. And if you're lucky, you'll have a lifetime of happy memories.

5 comments:

Alessandro Machi said...

your 2006 article link mentioned in this article has 116 comments.

Joseph Cannon said...

It still gets roughly 200 hits a day. The links all come from right wing sites.

Anonymous said...

Still one of my faves.

--tle

Anonymous said...

I always used to read Sherman Skolnick for entertainment value. I guess I missed whatever audio he put out during those times.

And it was a great inoculation against the many other confident predictions from 'inside sources' that something was imminent, but has been, woops, slightly delayed this week. But next week for sure!

The Nesara claims of an imminent Jubilee kind of world financial system re-set, and one Benjamin Fulford, with his Asian 'sources,' are the current avatars of the type. Plus Sorcha Faal, of course. Incredible claims? Yes, literally.

XI

Gus said...

Your Crowley/Bush article is a perfect example of just how gullible right wing conspiracy buffs can be. The fact that is STILL gets that many hits just confirms that it would be literally child's play for the Russians (or anyone else really) to plant false information and stories in right wing media, blogs, and even facebook, and have it totally believed and internalized by many thousands of right winger types (and even left winger types, in the case of the Hillary hate).