Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Sock Puppeteer


Sock puppeteers are people who comment on blogs and elsewhere using more than one assumed name. Alternative identities are usually assumed names too. Their comments are self-complimentary. They indulge in smarmy sycophantic agreement with other socks the same puppeteer uses. While this is totally dishonest it can also be debilitating for other users. Sock puppeteers, like trolls, target individuals, usually individuals who make valid and intelligent contributions to the blog, to try and destroy their self-confidence with a plethora of insults and derogatory attacks. This can be relentless and I have personally witnessed at least one genuine contributor constantly harassed and harangued by these mindless morons until she ceased, at least for a while, to comment on Craig Murray's blog. I too get targeted myself by sock puppeteers and trolls and look on this as a compliment to my own comments being good argument. Like trolls, sock puppeteers are there to disrupt the blog.

From my experience sock-puppeteers support government propaganda and try to reinforce a false image presented through the mainstream media. They live a lie in changing an identity in order to pretend to support other socks who contribute to the blog. Their existence in the blogosphere therefore survives on a diet of lies. You have to ask yourself if somebody who uses deceit in pretending to be something he or she is not can ever be relied upon to tell the truth in their comments. This is unfortunate for other pseudonymous contributors who share similar views to the sock puppeteer because they fall under suspicion too. The sarcastic cartoon above illustrates sock puppetry on Craig Murray's blog but obviously not all these contributors are dishonest and not all are socks or puppeteers.

Honest people are prepared to write under their own names and these people can generally be trusted. That is not to say that a person writing under his or her own name cannot resort to sock-puppetry. A good example of this is the novelist E J Ellory, who assumed several identities to write extremely positive, in fact first-rate reviews, of his own book. Not only that but these same puppets Ellory created commented adversely on the novels of other novelists writing in the same genre. His crime was exposed by fellow-crime novelist Jeremy Duns.

Because sock puppeteers are fakes themselves, with their false identities, comments they make, however reasonable in appearance, can never really be trusted. As with trolls they have a purpose. Sock-puppets and trolls follow a line supportive of the status quo. If anyone makes a statement not in line with MSM propaganda he or she is accused of being a conspiracy theorist. Whether they are doing this from genuine support for the status quo, or whether they are paid by some pressure-group intent on maintaining the status quo, is difficult to gauge. Though we know paid trolling goes on. Nevertheless, as well as being disruptive, rude and inconsiderate these false people have created a hole in the blogosphere that needs to be fixed. So put a sock in it!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Pension revolution - or not!

George Osborne's latest budget allows pensioners with private annuities to take all their pension in a lump sum. We have been here before. What it amounts to is another attack on our social security system. They know what they are doing. Margaret Thatcher started this by bribing people with £200 (quite a lot of money then) out of the national pension pot to take out private schemes. Private schemes are there to make money for insurance companies (of which many Tory ministers are stakeholders) and not for the benefits of pensioners. Many took this bribe, and many private companies, after having taken huge profits and bonuses, declared themselves bankrupt.

What happened to those left in the lurch through these bankruptcies? They were incorporated back into the national pension scheme. What will happen to people who take a lump sum and squander it rather than take out an annuity? The same. We, quite rightly, do not want our old people to have no income and die in the streets. So they will be incorporated back into the state pension scheme, thus diluting its payout potential. It is a Tory policy. They think because they earn unimaginably high incomes, and will never be in need of a pension themselves, that small savers, small businesses and small investors are in the same position. This foolhardiness is encouraging debt. I fear for society, if it continues to exist in its current state, twenty years from now.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

What they are not telling you

My latest article concentrates on what the mainstream media is not telling us about Ukraine. It began a few weeks back with a leak featuring Victoria Nuland who had declared the US hand by backing the fascist government that has taken over in Kiev. In a recording on which the press concentrated on Nuland's choice phrase "Fuck the EU" but missed out on a lot more important debate about what was proposed in another leaked call. That, and more, is covered in this video which I came across this morning from Storm Clouds Gathering. It shows that the US think Klitschko is too stupid to have a deputy prime-minister role, while the Svoboda fascist, anti-semitic and xenophobic godfather, Oleh Tyannybok, has also got to keep a low profile according to Nuland, the voice of America, whereas Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whose charity pages are no longer available on the web, can be the front man of the new fascist Ukraine. The analysis is spot on.

People have got to start asking themselves why they have not seen any of this on mainstream television or in the press. The truth is the media, including the press, are owned by Neocon/Zionists who have an agenda. You may think you are getting balanced news but you're not. If you care for future generations and planet earth the time has come to wake up and take action. Spread the word.