RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/15/attention-conservatives-theyre-coming-for-your-podcasts-next/

So many on the increasingly fascistic left are eager to censor talk they don’t like.

Conservatives have found a way to communicate that is free from Big Tech censors. But how long will it last?

Over the weekend, the liberal Brookings Institution released what it calls “a tool to monitor political broadcasts” on increasingly popular podcasts. Why? To combat “misinformation.”

Brookings treats the growth of podcasts the way Count Floyd would describe one of his movies on the classic Monster Chiller Horror Theater sketch on SCTV. “Ooh, that’s scary, kids, scary!”

Podcasts, it warns, “played a central role in disseminating election fraud narratives in the lead up to January 6.” Scary, kids!

Podcasts “also offered a prime avenue for the spread of pandemic-related misinformation.” Very scary, kids!

What’s really got the left scared is that nobody is controlling what gets said on podcasts. Valerie Wirtschafter at Brookings laments that “despite the real-world harms caused by this misinformation and the medium’s growing reach and influence,” podcasters “can say whatever you want.”

“The nature of the RSS feed, which is open-sourced and accessible by design, represents a significant hurdle for content moderation. Although Apple can remove the RSS feed from its platform, some smaller platforms allow any content on an RSS feed to be played through their services, making it easy for listeners to access a removed podcast elsewhere.”

The horror!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-robert-mueller-shredded-the-fbis-credibility-centralization-intelligence-investigation-crossfire-hurricane-bush-911-clinton-email-sussmann-11663173014?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Mr. Baker is a retired FBI special agent and legal attaché and author of “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy,” forthcoming in December.

Four days after 9/11, Robert Mueller was summoned to the presidential retreat at Camp David. It was little more than a week since he’d become director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That Saturday morning, Mr. Mueller gave President George W. Bush the FBI’s initial report on the attacks. The Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing Investigation, or Penttbom, would become the largest ever conducted by the FBI. It had already identified the 19 hijackers as well as their roles, nationalities, travel documents and histories. The focus had turned to establishing links between the hijackers and al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush, wearing a leather bomber jacket, sat at the head of a big square conference table in the rustic oak cabin. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, was at the president’s right. Mr. Mueller, as he later acknowledged, was confident in the report. The FBI had done what it does best—investigate.

Expecting praise or thanks, Mr. Mueller was taken aback when the president interrupted him. “Bob, I expect the FBI to determine who was responsible for the attacks and to help bring them to justice,” he said. “What I want to know from you—today—is what the FBI is doing to prevent the next attack.” That same morning Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet presented a proposed plan of action. At the conclusion of Mr. Tenet’s presentation, Mr. Bush exclaimed, “That’s great.” He turned toward Mr. Mueller and said, “That’s what I want to hear.” Mr. Mueller told me later that he felt humiliated.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/delayed-repairs-shrink-the-submarine-fleet-taiwan-china-navy-amphibious-assault-aircraft-private-shipyards-deployable-boats-materials-11663162266?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet, America’s essential war-fighting instrument in the Indo-Pacific, is about three-fifths the size it should be, chiefly because of maintenance and production delays. This comes amid stepped-up threats to Taiwan by China.

Contesting such an assault would require a submarine force at maximum strength. Congress and the White House should act swiftly to integrate private shipyards that repair submarines into the Navy’s maintenance plans.

American strategists rarely concern themselves with the material issues that determine victory or defeat. They tend to regard international strategy as a question of will, not means. This takes for granted the traditional and outsize U.S. economic-material advantage.

America’s objective in a struggle over Taiwan would be to deny China a rapid victory. The war must become a slog, one that China labors to sustain in a geographically limited form. Generating this situation requires contesting China’s ability to stage an amphibious assault on Taiwan. Submarines would be crucial in such a contest.

The U.S. military today lacks the air forces, air defenses, and surface combatants with sufficient range to contest Chinese air control over Taiwan indefinitely, absent an interdiction campaign against the Chinese mainland that the U.S. has signaled it doesn’t wish to wage. Chinese anti-ship and ground-attack missiles, moreover, would cause damage. Recent war games suggest that in defending Taiwan, the U.S. would lose half its active air force and at least one carrier strike group—a collection of warships defending the aircraft carrier and its air wing. In such a scenario, China would lose 150 to 200 warships and tens of thousands of men.

https://www.newsmax.com/john-gizzi/joe-biden-vladimir-putin-propaganda/2022/09/12/id/1087015/

Nearly 20 months after Joe Biden became president, the area of public diplomacy — that is, using television, radio, digital venues, and other means of communication on the international front — is almost completely unused, grossly underfunded, and neglected.

This is happening at a turbulent time in the world. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin increased the state media budget to 211 billion rubles (roughly $2.8 billion) — a 34 billion-ruble ($460 million) increase from earlier years — to spend on propaganda to win and enhance support at home for his war on Ukraine.

It is difficult to gauge the overall amount China is spending on propaganda. It has been estimated that $6.6 billion has come out of Beijing since 2009 to accentuate the Chinese media presence worldwide and to sculpt, as Raksha Kumar wrote for Thomson Reuters, “a sophisticated strategy to portray the country’s leadership in a good light.”

Further, Chinese foreign agent spending has skyrocketed from just over $10 million in 2016 to nearly $64 million last year, according to the Center for Responsible Politics.

In the U.S., public diplomacy, funded at $701 million, is funded at a microcosm of the overall State Department budget — just 1.16% of $60.4 billion, according to the budget for the Fiscal Year 2023.

But while the $701 million figure may sound impressive, the 1995 budget for the U.S. Information Agency (which then had exclusive oversight over public diplomacy) was $1.4 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that figure today would be $2.72 billion.

When USIA disappeared in 1999, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and their sister media became free-standing. All the rest of Public Diplomacy disappeared into the State Department.