RE: https://mastodon.social/@hadon/115406977473453181

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Person at NoKings 2 holding sign that says, "First they came for the media then ... we don't know what happened after that"

#alttext #PressFreedom #FifthEstate

#NoKings #ICEout #NazisRaus

Wow, big surprise. You're saying that the #media giants in the #US, all bought up by the #EpsteinClass, are colluding to prevent the obvious link between #mossad and #Epstein?

I'm shocked at such a turn of events - flabbergasted, even - that the #FifthEstate being centrally controlled by #oligarchs would result in them burying the lead.

Opinion | The #Mainstream Media Still Won't Follow Up on the Epstein-#Israel Connection | Common Dreams
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-epstein-israel

#Democrat #TX politician Jasmine Crockett is now making #headlines for her attempts to avoid bad press by throwing #media orgs out of her events, and having reporters removed by law enforcement.

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/24/2026/texas-senate-candidate-jasmine-crockett-escalates-her-war-on-the-press #TXpolitics #FifthEstate

I never get tired of tooting #GregJericho ‘s articles, because what he says, most of the time, is not just informative, it’s a booster shot against the #FakeNews and #EconomicMisInformation the #msm spews out — unfortunately with that much misinformation being the main narrative of all but a few news outlets and the #FifthEstate, a lot of it is bound to be believed as truth: like the furphy about increasing wages driving up inflation — everyone should know by now the inflationary dragon is #GreedFlation.

“There hasn’t been a wage breakout since I was in primary school but do not worry – the RBA is still on the watch, ever on alert to raise interest rates in an effort to increase unemployment and lower wage growth.”
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2026/feb/18/real-wages-fall-australia-workers-economy

But the RBA is not about to let a debuked economic theory go to waste. So Greg is warning us of another rate rise likely to come if the RBA stays true to form — and why shouldn’t it?

Read more:
https://thepoint.com.au/opinions/260220-dont-panic-rba-low-unemployment-is-a-good-thing

#RBA #NeoClassicalEconomics #NeoLiberalEconomics #AusPol #CashRate #Inflation #WageGrowth

https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/417-winter-2025/alternatives-to-lives-of-misery/

#fifthestate #generalstrike #nokings

Ken Henry wants Australia’s media to do a better job

Ken Henry, a former treasury secretary, wants the media to do a better job. He says the media…
#NewsBeep #News #Headlines #Anti-semitism #AU #Australia #Climatechange #FederalCourtofAustralia #FifthEstate #FourthEstate #KenHenry #Media #NationalPressClub
https://www.newsbeep.com/8221/

Kony Lingers

Most people in the West had never heard of Joseph Kony.

Head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Christian insurgent militia operating out of Uganda and elsewhere since 1987, Kony met all international definitions of a terrorist warlord. Cutting a swathe through the region, the LRA soon became notorious for mass atrocities, kidnapping, and the deployment of child soldiers – mostly to the ambivalence of the “First World.”

In March 2012, the charity Invisible Children dropped a documentary on YouTube. Directed by Californian Jason Russell with intent to make the warlord famous, KONY 2012 was expertly crafted to provoke action across the Internet. Exposing the brutal consequences of Kony’s campaign while demanding shares, retweets and easily digestible hashtags-du-jour to amplify its reach.

Framed as a “Social Experiment”, a phrase beloved of demagogues and charlatans alike, the viral video was a ploy to recruit a youth army of its own. Appealing to the burgeoning Fifth Estate of independent bloggers and online activists, SocMed’s nascent influence was exploited to “raise awareness” against the perceived complicity of traditional journalism’s Fourth Estate.

Well-meaning campaigners eagerly stood up to be counted, declaring support for the cause and holding their representatives to account. Proudly proclaiming the power and privilege of the Internet to tame a land barely connected. Denying agency to those most affected, by demanding something, anything, be done to internationally intervene against this terrible injustice.

Except Kony had been driven out of Uganda six years prior.

Although it can be argued that the video was successful in its aim, given it is literally still being discussed, such success was ultimately for the wrong reasons. It faced widespread rebuke from across Africa for focusing on the filmmakers, while reducing those actively impacted by the violence to little more than narrative props. Their suffering a stage for the morality play of the modern age.

Nigerian author Teju Cole dubbed this technocratic conclusion to Kipling’s burden the White Saviour Industrial Complex: a banality of sentiment as insincere as it is self-aggrandising.

As with most performative advocacy, the cause was never the concern. The horrors of the world an ever-churning backdrop for hysterical hubris. Pearls clutched and frenzy stoked in a praxis of pretence, coerced and consumed by the next most-terrible thing in the ceaseless cycle of clickbait.

And yet, all remain helpless. Judging one another for not caring enough, damning those who fail to perform and conform to the herd-instinct of passionate intensity. Keeping up the appearance of objective good, despite having no quantifiable impact or influence beyond the spite directed at those they deem less informed.

In every epoch of technology, the novelty of new media outpaces our capacity to reason and reflect. The printing press bore propaganda, and film empowered fascism. From grim experience, we learn to distrust the old as yesterday’s clumsy manipulation – yet the bright new stars of today are assumed to only shine true. We accept without question, and condense the complexities of the world into the feel-good scintilla of SocMed slacktivism.

Without hard, ugly, genuine action to break the inertia of online outrage; and a will to listen to and empower those most affected, merely sharing the latest injustice for clicks and likes does not serve a greater purpose.

It just desensitises everyone to the next.

A short while after the video’s release, Russell was allegedly found naked. Wandering his San Diego neighbourhood in a frenzy of his own, vandalising vehicles while fervently palpating his turgid member. He was placed under care for a psychotic break, and Invisible Children eventually handed their work over to local organisations in 2014.

Joseph Kony remains at large.

https://heathenstorm.com/2025/06/05/kony-lingers/

#DigitalManifesto #africa #fifthestate #invisiblechildren #jasonrussell #josephkony #kony2012 #praxis #slacktivism #socialmedia #technology #tejucole #uganda #whitesaviourindustrialcomplex