4/14/22: STATECRAFT – FILLING THE NEWSHOLE W/ DAVID KNIGHT

There seems to be a glaring ignorance that is being perpetuated by the media and their only repose is to fill the newshole with war coverage. The new conspiracy is how the major networks, apologists, and intelligence operators are working overtime to control your perception with lies and statecraft. Are we really becoming numb to the manipulation that is happening right now? Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with independent investigative journalist and show host, David Knight about STATECRAFT – FILLING THE NEWSHOLE.

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4/14/22: STATECRAFT – FILLING THE NEWSHOLE W/ DAVID KNIGHT

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There was a video that made the rounds online the other day that seems to sum up just how things are going in this country.

President Biden was speaking to farmers in Iowa when a bird took a dump on his shoulder.

The incident was caught live on camera — and the media did not even acknowledge it. However, when a fly landed on the head of Vice-President Mike Pence during the Vice Presidential debates, it was a three-day affair on the nightly news.

It even became a skit on Saturday Night Live.

The White House refused to admit it happened, instead claiming that it was really a flying corn kernel. That splatted on the president’s suit.

The bird made a very important statement for those of us paying too much at the pump and getting frustrated whenever we go shopping.

As I was looking at the news feed last night before I went to bed i saw a headline that wasn’t at all surprising. Apparently, President Biden’s approval rating has cratered to 33%.  According to Quinnipiac University Poll this is the second time Biden has been rated this low in this particular survey, with the first time occurring in January.

Independents are giving him an approval rating of 26 per cent.

Of course, seventy-six per cent of Democrats, on the other hand, approve of the job Biden is doing, while just 12 per cent disapprove.

When the general average is overwhelming and his own party becomes nothing but sycophants to save face — there needs to be an accounting as to why people act so incredulous to what is happening.

We are not doing well in this country.

So please spare me the cheerleading and the whining about how I am so unfair to President Biden and that I should go back and talk about how and it was when Trump was president.

Sorry—Joe Biden is President now – deal with it and move on to what he is doing and not what Trump did.

Trump derangement is like telling a Pee wee Herman joke – I think that we need to understand when it gets tiresome and old and irrelevant.

I get it –the wheels began coming off long before Joe Biden showed up to basically total everything — and yet there seems to be this ignorance that is being perpetuated by the media and their only repose is to fill the Newshole with war coverage.

Are we really becoming numb to the manipulation that is happening right now?

The conspiracy is not theory — the new conspiracy is how the major networks are working overtime to  to control your perception over what is happening — and there are apologists and intelligence operators just standing in line for their moment to fill the Newshole with lies and statecraft.

You thought that COVID-19 was a manipulation enterprise but many people are beginning to trust their gut feelings about being manipulated.  Many people have even switched off their Tv’s as news ratings are plummeting especially for CNN.

If you feel like there’s been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what’s going on in Ukraine– then you are not at all wrong.

The evening news programs of the three dominant U.S. television networks devoted more coverage to the war in Ukraine last month than in any other month during all wars, including those in which the U.S. military was directly engaged, since the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report. The only exception was the last war in which U.S. forces participated in Europe, the 1999 Kosovo campaign.

Combined, the three networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — devoted 562 minutes to the first full month of the war in Ukraine. That was more time than in the first month of the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 (240 mins), its intervention in Somalia in 1992 (423 mins), and even the first month of its invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001 (306 minutes), according to a commentary published Thursday by Andrew Tyndall, who has monitored and coded the three networks’ nightly news each weekday since 1988.

According to Tyndall:

“Astonishingly, the two peak months of coverage of the [2003] Iraq war each saw less saturated coverage than last month in Ukraine (414 minutes in March of 2003 and 455 minutes in April),” he wrote. “…The only three months of war coverage in the last 35 years that have been more intensive than last month were Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 (1,208 minutes) and his subsequent removal in January and February 1991 (1,177 and 1,033 minutes respectively).”

Last month’s coverage of Ukraine even eclipsed by a wide margin the three networks’ coverage of the chaotic end of Washington’s 20-year war in Afghanistan last summer.

On weekday evenings, an average of some 20 million U.S. viewers tune in to national news programs on one or more of the three networks. That’s roughly four times the number of people who rely on the major cable stations — Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN — for their news during prime time. About two million more people watch the network news via the internet, according to Tyndall. The actual news content on each network runs about 22 minutes; in March, the total number of minutes of content for all three weekday evening news shows would have reached around 1500 minutes.

Historically, the amount of news coverage devoted to foreign wars has been positively correlated with the direct involvement of the U.S. military. “Normal expectations are that wars are always more newsworthy in America when American lives are at risk,” according to Tyndall, who noted that the only war in the last several decades to which the networks devoted as much time in one month as last month’s total coverage of Ukraine was in Kosovo in April 1999 (565 minutes) when U.S. aircraft led NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia.

But the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in late February, “has overturned all normal patterns of journalistic response,” according to Tyndall. He gave most of the credit to the leadership and media savvy of President Volodymyr Zelensky who has largely controlled the narrative conveyed to Americans via the networks.

Also what is different is how we have allowed President Zelensky to literally hijack the airwaves, making appearances and interviews even appearing on a closed circuit telescreen during the Grammys.

Something that can be compared to Orwell’s 1984 –where the war effort and the two minutes of hate was broadcast on TV monitors everywhere.

The major networks have sent most of their news anchors to Ukraine setting up remote stations — most are no longer in the United States — this is  sending the message that this is the only news that is worthy of having intelligence ops and state parrots on the ground to push an agenda.

This has extended even to the networks’ treatment of the refugee crisis provoked by the Russian invasion. Normally, refugees are a seen-from-both-sides problem: desperate Syrians, or Haitians, or Central Americans clamoring at a border for humanitarian relief — now Ukrainians get favored refugee status all over the world — even here in the United States.

Yes, Ukrainians are at the southern border of the US  and they have a free pass to walk on through.

The fact that all three networks sent their anchors to Kyiv or Poland to cover the displaced and the refugees underlined both the importance of the story and the side that they were effectively taking.

There is no balance to the reporting — and to even suggest that we check in on Russia to see what they are doing is anathema.. Russia is the villain — Ukraine are the victims — you are the spectator and you must believe what they tell you to.

This is statecraft.

Statecraft is defined as the managing of state affairs– but it can also include the managing of public perception towards the state.

A truly free press keeps puts the state’s feet to the fire — this is no longer the mission of the press.

The media is now obviously the mouthpiece for the state– and propaganda is everywhere and we are doling out more propaganda about the war in Ukraine than Russia or any other country.

This is not healthy for the state– or for the country.

If it seems like a suspicious coincidence that Russia gate manufactured mainstream consent for all the same shady agendas we’re seeing ramped up now like cold war brinkmanship against Moscow, internet censorship, and being constantly lied to by the mass media for the greater good, it’s because– it is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

If it seems weird to you that so many self-styled leftists are responding to this war by fanatically supporting the extremely dangerous unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, and if you don’t see this as bizarre then you are already brainwashed.

The networks’ fixation with Ukraine essentially filled to overflowing the newshole for international news.

The Ukraine coverage in March also crowded out the latest developments in the devastating humanitarian crises caused by Afghanistan’s collapsed economy and the ongoing wars in Yemen and Ethiopia.

People in the United States would hardly but a vein to care because perception is reality and if you don’t hear about it form the mainstream media you can pretend it is not there.

As long as the brainwashing continues, the mass mind control ensues and the people are told not to question –all it takes are a few magic words to fill the newshole and voila the sheep are all prepared to be dinner for the wolves.

There is a word that seems to be overused these days and that is democracy. It is becoming a magic word for the media when they speak about the Biden administration and the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is all about democracy and another magic word that is thrown in for good measure is the word sovereignty.

Apparently the media has to keep telling us that we consider ourselves the leaders in the  democracy department and that it is our responsibility to spread that democracy wherever we go and denounce any and all other forms of so called democracy so that we can bombard you with war rhetoric that many people are now seeing as sterile.

Well, here is a clue — Democracy only exists if it is upheld, and if a citizenry fails to do so, it renders itself defenseless to an ever-creeping tyranny. Democracy has lost its meaning and can be defined as the mob rule and not a diplomatic way of running a government or giving the government to the people.

When you voted during the election- did you vote for what we are in now? Can you honestly with a straight face say that what is happening is exactly what was promised?

For some there is no buyers remorse — but it has to be said that if we did not choose wisely –even in the face of all of the propaganda that told you that our last president was some sort of Russian insider.

At this point it doesn’t really matter anymore because some Americans have fallen for well managed statecraft.
War has always depended on a reliable system to spread its propaganda.

And thus we are bombarded day after day, hour after hour of reminders as to why the “enemy” is not human like us, not compassionate like us, not patient, just and wise like us.

No doubt, war has been a necessary response when tyranny has formed an army to fight for its cause, but I would say that most wars have been rather unnecessary and downright manipulated for the design of a small group of people.

Mass propaganda is the very reason why in this so-called “age of information”, we are more confused and divided from each other than ever…

It had been commonly thought in the past, and not without basis, that tyranny could only exist on the condition that the people were kept illiterate and ignorant of their oppression. To recognize that one was “oppressed” meant they must first have an idea of what was “freedom”, and if one were allowed the “privilege” to learn how to read, this discovery was inevitable.

It is recognized, albeit superficially, that who controls the past, controls the present and thereby the future. George Orwell’s book “1984”, hammers this as the essential feature that allows the Big Brother apparatus to maintain absolute control over fear, perception and loyalty to the Party cause, and yet despite its popularity, there still remains today a lack of interest in actually informing oneself about the past.

What does it matter anyway, if the past is controlled and rewritten to suit the present? As the Big Brother interrogator O’Brien states to Winston, “We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not? [And thus, are free to rewrite it as we choose…]”

Of course, we are not in the same situation as Winston…we are much better off. We can study and learn about the “past” if we so desire, unfortunately, it is a choice that many take for granted. And thus, by our failure to ask the right questions and seek the appropriate answers, we find ourselves increasingly in the unsettling position of a Winston…we are enslaved by the very lack of our own will.

In Orwell’s “1984”, there are three main super states in the world: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia that are in one combination or another constantly at war with each other and have been so for the last 25 years.

And of course, the reason is to keep the people on the verge of starvation to keep them fighting and working for the war effort because they are promised that everything will change if they just do more for Big Brother.

Winston’s experience begs the questions, if one were born into a fascist, totalitarian state would they know it? Of course, the state itself would not describe itself as such. How would you be able to compare your “freedom” with the “oppression” of the enemy, when all you were given was what the state chose to give to you?

How do you know that what has come to shape your convictions, your beliefs, your fears really belong to you, and were not placed there by another?

We are all very sensitive to this unsettling question because ironically, that has also been placed in us. It was what started this whole business of “mind control”, for our protection — younger people post 911 have been born into an America that is not the same as it was –and the only people who see America falling into an abyss are the older people — and they are being silenced and are dying off because of COVID-19.

Those who remember history are destined to be erased from the earth — because what has failed with the cold war generation can easily be resurrected in future generations by the Great reset.

When the older generations were celebrating the fall of the Soviet Union — there were still those who did not trust it and still believed that Russian Communism and Russian aggression never died — well we can also see that we may have won the war against Germany in world war II but the Nazis won the hearts and minds of the intelligence operators and the deep state murderers and manipulators.

From times of Truman until now we have gradually been able to replace journalists with alphabet agency operatives — many who are most definitely the descendants of Nazi collaborators that jumped ship in 1943 when the saw that Hitler was losing the war.

There have been McCarthyesque witch hunts and true investigations that have shown that may communist and nazi operators sit in the very chairs delivering the nightly news –and many knows CIA or former CIA are now contributors to newscasts.

They no longer hide it anymore.

Despite fluffy rhetoric about “protecting Ukraine’s democracy,” the US turned to distinctly undemocratic methods when it decided to back a Ukrainian coup in 2014 . In order to achieve this goal, the US empowered the darkest forces in Ukrainian politics: the neo-Nazis.

But to listen to the true believers in this state crafted façade, it is all Russian Propaganda –even though anyone with a search engine and the right know how can point out that this insinuation is nonsense.

A truly immersive system of propaganda, which necessarily will be full of contradictions to the truth, absolutely requires that its subjects are compliant with “doublethink,” that is, the ability to accept two contradictory thoughts in your mind without acknowledging that they are in fact opposites.

Again in 1984 George Orwell identifies this under two forms of “doublethink”, which are “crimestop” and “blackwhite”. “Crimestop” meaning the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of a dangerous thought.

Orwell further states “It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments…and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short, means protective stupidity.”

“Blackwhite”, is the act of contradiction of plain facts, applied to an opponent. And when applied to the Party, it is the willingness to say black is white when the Party discipline demands it so.

As Orwell describes it

“it means the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past…The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons…The subsidiary reason is that…he must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off… [the precautionary reason] by far the more important reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the Party.”

Orwell continues:

“The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest.”

That is, it is the Inner Party members who are the most indoctrinated, the best at inducing “mind control” or “doublethink” on themselves, and at the same time believe that it is the best and right thing to do.

Orwell describes “doublethink” thus:

“The process has to be conscious , or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence guilt…To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.”

Statecraft can become an exercise in selective cruelty as the tormented become their very own tormentors.. this illustrated by Buff Whitman Bradley he describes what statecraft does and how it applies today:

“In Statecraft the holders of power must master the art of selective cruelty

The art of applying intense pain and suffering for the purposes of punishing those whose policies and practices threaten to undermine the credibility of the hegemonic narrative.

In statecraft the ruler will carefully select his villains striking a pose as a defender of freedom– champion of justice for all.  He claims to be the ally of the oppressed, while simultaneously attacking, undermining, and obliterating, the movements, the governments, The leaders practicing democracy and liberation, to serve as a warning to others not to try the same thing.

In statecraft, the suzerain must enlist the most influential media to reinforce and disseminate a myth of righteousness, of being chosen by God, to the gullible public.

In order to gain support for the use of torture, assassination and asymmetric warfare against those who would expose that pretense of righteousness as a lie.

In statecraft, It is necessary to distinguish your friends who give eager lip-service to your proclaimed ideals and your true enemies who attempt to put those ideals Into practice and to reward the one and eliminate the other.”

It explains everything — because it is evident to me that , rising consumer prices, shortages, fiscal contraction, increased unemployment – all products of lockdowns – are already showing signs of spiraling out of control as the super-rich fatten off war profiteering and the rest of us are lectured about the “sacrifices” expected of us in the fight against the Russian devil.

We will never learn as statecraft has now filled the Newsholes.

SHOW GUEST: DAVID KNIGHT

David Knight is an Electrical Engineer who worked for Texas Instruments & Data General before becoming self-employed in video production and retail.  His involvement in 3rd party/independent politics led him to work as a Media Fellow for The American Tradition Institute on Energy Issues.

David was hired as a reporter at Infowars where he covered the Bundy Ranch standoff, Asymmetric Warfare Training, Bilderberg, and Geospatial Intel Surveillance issues. This led to guest hosting duties and his own weekly morning show for over 3 years.

The David Knight Show has been independent for over a year, both as a video broadcast and audio podcast.

Written by Ron Patton