Fake news

There was a time when the BBC was respected around the world for its reliable reporting of events. As it happens, the ploy was to tell the truth most of the time so that the fake news could slip in under the radar. This was exposed during the British Coal Miners' Strike of 1984-5, when the broadcaster showed film footage of the police (including soldiers posing as police) coming under attack from miners picketing the coal depot at Orgreave, followed by the heroic counter-attack by mounted police wielding batons. The film was spliced. The police attack came first, the miners' reaction followed. Other examples are available.

So, which news is real and which fake?

Current debate has embattled mainstream providers of propaganda labelling citizen journalism on social media as fake news, whilst an amusing compilation of various mainstream television stations in the U.S.A caught out using identical catch phrase, clearly centrally co-ordinated, citing citizen journalists as a threat to freedom and democracy ... American citizens having been programmed over decades to conflate freedom, democracy and the "American Way of Life", without much evidence ... indeed the plutocracy running the show over there is a long way from freedom or democracy ...

In pursuit of non-fake news and encouraged by local friend and sometime Fleet Street journalist, a copy of the Sunday Telegraph is purchased, which is a first ... currently owned by the mysterious Barclay Brothers, the Torygraph as it is often called, offers another perspective of what may or may not be going on in the mundane world. Front page has a colourful character, convicted criminal, commercially successful author of awful dross and once Tory M.P. Jeffrey Archer, pictured, his description skipping the first two options and citing his opinion that a second referendum on UK is EU is undemocratic, though he favours staying in the bloc ... amusingly he says if he lived in Northern England he would probably vote for Jeremy Corbyn,  hardly helpful to JC's cause ...

Meanwhile, the messiah JC's crucifixion continues, aptly enough instigated by the Zionists of the State of Israel and their supporters, older anti-semitism having been promoted by the Catholic characterisation of Jews as Christ killers, raising another fake news question and worrying example of Big Lie psychology, where the reliably anti-fascist, anti-racist rabble rouser is accused of anti-semitism ... well placed and well paid Labour Party MPs gleefully collude in the slander ... orthodox rabbis denounce the scurrillous campaign ... otherwise assimilated British Jews take one side or the other ... Jewishness being rather a mystery here, since it may describe a race and/or a religion ... many modern folks decline to identify by either, yet somehow the myth or fact of the Chosen Race lingers ...

... setting up an interesting political pantomime as previous abstainers from the fraud that is our parliamentary democracy join the fray, from left, right and so-called centre ... where lurks the charismatic war criminal and previous Prime Minister, Bliar, hoping to head up a motley crew from all parties with the main aim of derailing the chaotic exit from the EU ... such polarisation leading voters into holding their noses and hoping their vote might prevent the alternative ... as happened in France, when the dodgy Macron gathered reluctant votes from opponents of the fascist alternative, Le Pen ...

... and since our disunited Kingdom is no longer important enough to go it alone, abandoning the European alliance would take us even closer to our cousins across the Atlantic ... scary times!

Of course, at geo-political level, EU and US are linked in a military alliance, whilst Russia and China vie for succession to the decadent empire of the USA.

Dear reader, please do not be concerned at this descent into the mundane, mainstream, consensus reality ... early morning talk from HHDL raises the tone with his effortless assumption of role of World Spiritual Leader ... kindness as always the message, along with an admonition to take nothing in Blind Faith, but to check it out for yourself ... and as for political shenanigans, short memories serve the system ... tracing cause and effect chains takes longer ....

And in the only news guaranteed not fake, direct sense perception reliably reports scaffolding in place outside no.5 Railway Terrace ready for a mini-power station on the roof ... in the village kindness abounds, shared surplus fruit, smiles ... a busy week with minibus trips, a visit from daughters, on top of the routine pre-breakfast walks leaves little space for reading and writing ... this week more open so far ... not very interesting and unlikely to sell newspapers, but at least it's not fake ... perhaps authentic is the opposite of fake?

Anyway, authenticity here means peace and quiet, plenty of time to think and not think, with short bursts of community engagement ...