Reading military secrets in Italian newspapers.
There is a particular thrill that you can only enjoy in some Italian newspapers, and I am referring to Repubblica, and that is that of being able to read very secret and strategic plans that the newspaper cannot have the means to look for. This week, Repubblica seems to know about Carrot's top secret plan to put an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine. The Carrot is the carrot-colored aspiring US president, in fact.
The "news" I'm referring to is this:
The first question we ask ourselves is: does the thing exist? That is, does the Republic really know what it says it knows? Nobody forces journalists to show their sources, but at least they should, so to speak, exist.
Here the republicans got clever: since it is obvious that no one will ever risk being the new Snowden for De Benedetti, or for Elkann, then they expect someone else to know. The someone else and poof!
.
And if the same nonsense is written in English, then it will be true.
But no.
Let's see who the source of this news is. It's the usual unnamed, “government official” or “source close to the administration”. Since it is obvious that such a source would be classified and that it certainly would not end up in the newspapers, then I want to present to you the source of this news:
a guy who's a bit like Voldemort, but spills the beans.
So let's go and read the article in question .
And let's look, precisely, at what should make us think that the Washington Post KNOWS something. Let's start.
Ultimately, Carrot would have spoken about it in private. Interesting. Let's assume that the WP reporter would have been present, or that the source would have been present, or that there is a microphone/camera listening to the presidential hopeful's private words. Interesting, but I would like to understand HOW. Because if there's one thing I don't expect to read in the newspapers it's Carota's private thoughts.
But the rant continues:
This is the most absurd NDA I have ever read, and I have signed many over the course of my career. Basically, the NDAs you make with the US government allow you to participate in national security meetings anonymously.
Imagine Carrot sitting at a table with 5 other people, one of whom is hooded. Why'? Because you participate anonymously. Or "he participates anonymously" is a way of saying that he cannot reveal his personal details to the newspapers. Since there are five people in the meeting, it is obviously impossible to trace the source. Who would ever be able to find the culprit, if there are five suspects? The first that comes to mind is Mrs. Fletcher, this is to say that it's not that difficult if you have the CIA in your hands. When has a government ever captured the spy, when he was hiding among five suspects? Since Silla's time, I would say, but let's not worry the readers.
So far, that is, we have read about an unnamed character whose existence we can doubt. But then why are we sure that this person exists? How do we know the news exists? Well, obviously, for no reason, but with the supercock.
the main evidence, it seems, is that a guy spent 100% of his time (I imagine, what Carrot dedicates to talking to this guy), telling him not to do it. And since someone tells him not to do it (but he has his first and last name) then he is the anonymous source of the plan.
Attention. I note that this person does NOT explicitly say that he spends his time telling Carrot that he shouldn't implement that specific plan. He's saying he's trying to get the presidential hopeful to make Putin pay a price. Which isn't exactly the same thing, to be honest.
I mean, I'm in a meeting where national security secrets are discussed. Having received the news, I beg the president not to do so, and therefore I am aware of what he wants to do. And now I'm going to say it, with my first and last name. Because it's sensitive news.
I mean, I don't tell the newspaper that "the butler is Aldo's murderer". I tell him "every time I see him, I reproach him for killing Aldo". But let's be clear, I'm not the anonymous source who knows who Aldo's killer is.
And therefore Lindsay Graham is a "highly anonymous" person who could not reveal Trump's secret plan to us, but tells the newspapers that he begged the President to implement that very plan.
Here we are no longer at Idiocracy, here we are at the next level.
But what do the official sources say?
They say there is no plan, and that only Carrot made this promise, so if you want to know it's Carrot.
That said, it's obvious that the plan exists and the Washington Post knows it.
I could go on with snippets, but if you can read the article, you will find NOTHING that is evidence of:
- the plan exists
- there is no way to think that the WP knows this.
- there is no way to think that someone other than Carrot said something about it.
none of the three things are clear. There is no evidence not only that the news refers to anything, but that the WP is capable of knowing about it.
Continuing the article, we enter into the usual worthless soup, which tells us about what happened in the past, without adding anything pertinent to the title of the article.
Now, my problem isn't the news itself. My problem is the effects. I can understand that Repubblica confuses a video from May 1st on police trousers for a true fact. The fact that almost every police car in Bavaria is a BMW should suggest that the state of Bavaria has money for policemen's trousers.
German is not widely spoken in the De Benedetti area. Or maybe not, since he lives in Switzerland. But I admit, it depends on the canton.
The trouble is that this habit of inventing news by inventing the sources, and then taking advantage of linguistic illiteracy, gives the Repubblica article a veneer of truth: the Repubblica reported an article published in a newspaper whose name It smacks of Anglo-Saxon journalism, for God's sake. It might be true.
Instead, the article doesn't even exist in its supposed "source", and you only need to understand English to realize that it is a Clickbait title. It helps you click so they pay for the advertising. There are no sources and it is quite surreal to think that they actually exist.
Now, I'm not saying anything new: we knew that the Italian press is a very expensive and not too soft form of toilet paper. The fact that today we can read the news online doesn't change things: try wiping your ass with your tablet, or your mobile phone, and you'll have confirmation: even the online edition doesn't work as well as toilet paper.
And I wouldn't even be perplexed, if it weren't for the fact that by using this dialectic, European public opinion is being oriented towards buying a bunch of weapons, in order to equip itself for a war that will never come.
I don't know if you noticed the way they "constructed" the news: they talked AROUND the news, without writing anything that IS news, simply because they can't be aware of it. And neither newspaper writes anything that makes us think they ARE aware of what they say they know. They talk around us.
This technique works like this:
the white triangle does not exist. The whole sheet is blank. The artist didn't draw a white triangle either. No part of the white triangle (I leave aside the discussion on boundary sets) has ever been drawn. The white triangle appears because someone drew AROUND the white triangle, as if it existed.
This is the specific cognitive trick that journalists are inventing to tell you about Carrot's imaginative strategy. They have no news yet. But they write around nothing, until they create a triangle.
This problem is SERIOUS: because the point is no longer "don't believe what you read in the newspapers": the trick works anyway, because it creates the thing by talking around it, that is, you will see the thing ONLY BECAUSE YOU HAVE READ THAT NEWSPAPER: by talking about it, in short, you create it.
We have gone from "to protect yourself against fake news you must not BELIEVE the articles", to "to protect yourself against fake news you must not READ the articles".
If you think this is harmless, all you have to do is remember that time when IRAQ was bombed and invaded, since there was so much talk about its atomic weapons that everyone believed it. But the incredible thing was that there was no proof of this fact, and no source either: the atomic bombs were in the ice cream vans, period. Not because we had sources, but because we talked about it. We talked about these Iraqi vans that we almost went and asked them for a straciatella cone. And we talked about it to the point of convincing everyone that yes, ice cream vans in Iraq transport weapons of mass destruction.
These methods are literally BUILDING a war in Europe.
The newspapers are showing things that don't exist, to lead the population and governments to do senseless things.
The war we are talking about in Ukraine is a regional war, and as such confined to a specific space. Compared to the previous situation, Russia has conquered very little, because the "conquered" areas were already de facto under the control of pro-Russian militias. Not much has really changed, except on site.
The way in which the whole of Europe, including Western Europe, feels under the crosshairs of a coming Russian aggression, is simply establishing why there is no good evidence that Russia is rushing to attack us.
Rheinmetall has quadrupled its sales, ditto H&K, ditto the war industry of any European country.
And we feel like we're at war.
Uriel Fanelli
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