OK, I confess. I’m now an EX-news-junky. Well, maybe not, it is just that there isn’t any actual just news program anymore. I’ve got the national advocacy programs from folks like RT or Franc24, or the DNC Buddies CNN ABC NBC CBS (owned and run by corporate cronies for Their Side), The We’re Not Them! naysayers of them where you get “here’s what they said and why it is wrong” Fox, Newsmax. Then there’s the headline aggregators who mostly have the same stuff as CNN ABC NBC CBS but in snips from a talking person-bot (Newsy etc.) It is all essentially the same old same old with minor differences in political spin.
Watch any one now, I can pretty much tell you what the other one will be saying (“me too” or “did not”…) So I’ve found myself watching YouTube videos. Far more variety and far more interesting and, well, it has actual content.
So along the way I ran into another New-to-Me person doing individual journalism. From the Timcast channel where he was interviewed, I ended up watching his stuff. About 1/2 hour per episode and he tells you all the stuff that the “news” ought to be saying, but isn’t.
Take the Berkeley Riots by Antifa. Anyone point out they were using a strategy called “Black Bloc”? Anyone explain what flags they were flying and what that said about their political bent? What their motivations and goals were (beyond just “stop conservative speech”? Why they wear black hoodies? Well he does.
Here’s one that gives a bit of history on Black Bloc and explains what you ought to know about the various groups and their flags:
Sidebar On Historical Sargon of Akkad:
No, not the Sargon of Star Trek… This one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad
This article is about the Akkadian king. For the Assyrian kings, see Sargon I and Sargon II. For the YouTuber, see Carl Benjamin.
Sargon of Akkad (Akkadian Šarru-ukīn or Šarru-kēn, also known as Sargon the Great) was the first ruler of the Semitic-speaking Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC.
He was the founder of the “Sargonic” or “Old Akkadian” dynasty, which ruled for about a century after his death, until the Gutian conquest of Sumer. The Sumerian king list makes him the cup-bearer to king Ur-Zababa of Kish. His empire is thought to have included most of Mesopotamia, parts of the Levant, besides incursions into Hurrite and Elamite territory, ruling from his (archaeologically as yet unidentified) capital, Akkad (also Agade).
So you need a historical perspective to give yourself such a handle. But that wiki also points to who he really is. I’d take it with a pound of salt, though, as I suspect he will be under some amount of pressure from Left Wing Nuts… who love coloring outside the lines on Wikis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benjamin
Carl Benjamin (born c. 1979) is a British YouTuber, better known by the online alias Sargon of Akkad. The alias, which is also the name of his main YouTube channel, is taken from the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, Sargon of Akkad. Benjamin grew to prominence through the Gamergate controversy and early videos supporting antifeminism. Since then he has covered topics such as identity politics and the alt-right.
It goes on from there to list “controversial” things he’s done… So I’d not be surprised to find his stuff suddenly taken down on YouTube / Twitter etc. as they go bat-shit-crazy-Book-N-Video-burning.
This next one is 39 minutes of Tucker Carlson vs a, IMHO, fruity “Professor” who is an Antifa promoter; plus commentary about it. Looking at the “professor”, I can see our schools are in great danger of becoming worthless time wasters. Places to warn your children to avoid. It may be necessary to organize Home Schooling for Universities… Yes, that bad.
On the plus side, Tucker does a pretty good job (though “Sargon” does better – but with the advantage of a pause button)
Fair Warning: Contains some F-bombs and similar harsh language.
.
Bonus Round
Along the way, I’ve run into Black Pigeon Speaks a few times. Here’s one on Hungary vs The EU. 10 minutes on why the EU is exploding at Hungary for saying maybe Hungary is for Hungarians…
.
With stuff with that depth on YouTube, why on earth would I watch CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, pMSNBC, etc. etc. just spouting the DNC Talking Points and doing “We hate Trump!” hit pieces? I already now they hate Trump. That’s NOT news. To anyone on the planet with a pulse at this point.
Musings from the Chiefio 
I discovered recently a YouTube channel called Computing Forever, which is a mix of technical stuff, movie reviews and some politics. He did a video about some “report” by Rebecca Lewis, which claims all of these conservative YouTube channels are part of some vast right-wing conspiracy, and all interconnected. In the video he shows a spider-web diagram from the report, of all of these channels. It’s ludicrous, but I saw the diagram as a useful list of possibly interesting channels, such as Sargon of Akkad.
A big thanks EM.
Very good videos especially the Sargon of Akkad one.
Soros the shapeshifter is still likely to cause more wealth destruction in Europe, as the social and political stresses from mass immigration build. Maybe the EU will see the logic of Putin and India in trying to keep Soros (or should that be Sárkány the Hungarian dragon) out of their political arenas.
I probably ought to have linked in the video where Timcast interviewed Sargon of Akkad…
It was interesting as both are more “libertarian” than “conservative” (common in the computer folks space). They spend a while talking about the Loony Side of Left attacking folks who are actually on side on the left leaning issues, because of stupid things (like “I just interviewed a {right wing guy}, that doesn’t mean I agreed with him – I don’t”)
I’ll see if I can find it again, perhaps after church. It was just amusing to watch a couple of fellow Geekdom Libertarians coping with the accusation of being “Right Wing”. (Been there, doing that).
The Alt-Left has clearly adopted a stance that if you don’t strongly AND ONLY agree with their (constantly shifting further communist) platform, you are a fair target. The old “With us or against us” problem taken to an extreme. The good news is it is alienating middle-left and middle-of-the-road folks like me and Sargon and Timcast…
Yes Sargon is really fun and informative to watch. I love his sarcastic delivery of commentary on some of the patently absurd contrasts in the various protest groups like claiming to be confirmed anarchists and then whining to the police when they do something stupid and get punched out for attacking someone who is just going about his business.
Although I agree with his assessment of the current status of blackbloc anarcho-communists being mostly delusional students, he is missing the fact that over time there will be a maturing of that sort of movement, as truly violent street wise brawlers begin to infiltrate the groups. If the time comes that they can establish a connection with and get an influx of the sort of folks that really do advocate hard core violence like the weathermen groups of the 1960’s or the 1960’s Black Panthers there will be a transition from destructive mobs of fools to a mob of fools providing cover for some very dangerous uninhibited and violent extremists. We have seen hints of that transformation already with the riots in Berkeley where some of the black bloc activists were running around smacking people in the head with 3.5 pound bike locks like this.
They were also mobbing people and kicking them when they were down, including kicks to the ribs and head. They are going to start killing people if they keep this up. Under the caveat of “know your enemy” – Not all of them are soft middle class students there are a few among them (and their number will grow) of folks who really like being violent and have no social restraints especially when given cover by the blackbloc tactics.
This progression is more advanced in Europe and in time natural selection will bring more of those people into the fray.
Notice the tactics here, mob of folks with road flares running down the street breaking car windows and tossing in a burning road flare to torch the car.
Immediately after the Obama Administration took power a classified advertisement went out in major newspapers “help wanted” section, “Hooligans” wanted. Employment and benefits. This ran for about a month. The Administration had just got their hands on the $680 billion of extra funds that were to go into “shovel ready jobs” immediately,
. A couple of years later there was a demand for a reckoning by congress. at the end of this reckoning Obama said there was $40 billion that “I can not tell you where it went” as in I don’t know where it went or I’m not allowed to tell where it went.
The Antifa is a private army, actually 5 armies They go into uniform and sign up for action on that day and get paid by the hour, they are on the clock until they get back in “civies” and are signed out by their paymaster.If they get jailed they are on the clock, all legal is provided, any injuries while on the clock are covered. It’s a job, mercenaries, that pays well. During the period between wars in Europe the Black Antifa was the communist war making faction and the Brown shirts the Nazi faction. They both made war on the Republicans as well as each other. As they practice they will get more violent and bloody. They will turn to crime against the Capitalists as a way to fund themselves as their other funding dries up. They depend on joining the civilian population to hide between operations, So only civilians can out them., In the case of Europe the government turned on the civilians first as the Socialists took over. the government. We seem to have experienced the same thing over the last few years as Antifa Socialists flex their muscle…pg.
I’m ahead of the game. Avoided regular news for a couple yrs — better for mental health & sustaining IQ. But I have found all the conservative radio talk-show guys on the web as either live, live recordings or podcasts. That way, all (or most of) the irrelevant junk is avoided. But even then the hourly/half-hourly standard “newscasts” STILL have all the crap — gotta turn that down.
@Beng135:
One of the things I like about the Roku news is that most of them have not gone to a listing of stories that it steps through one by one… AND you can skip by the junk ones. Were it not for that, I’d not be looking at any of the YSM (ABC CBS NBC pMSNBC Reuters etc.) With that, when they start a “dump on Trump”, I just hit “skip” (rt arrow). As a side effect it gets me through 1/2 hour of “news” in about 5 minutes ;-)
I absolutely hate the recent trend to do pod casts or present everything in video clips. They don’t put descriptive titles on the videos and the podcasts are just rambling discussions, where you end up watch or listening to a 30 presentation to get 2 minutes of the info you were looking for that could have been presented in 3 lines of text.
Just give me head lines like Drudge and links to content “IFF” I am interested, most of the time you have to suffer through 5 minutes of intro just to find out what they are talking about, or even what state or city the head line applies to.
@Larry:
On the Roku, the stories have a headline and a presenter and often a date. It’s pretty clear when to skip and when to sample and when to watch.
with that said, you “Bob’s Podcast for Today” with a 10 minute ramble at the front is kinda dumb.
I don’t watch any news on the YSM. I read drudge, and have a few favorite YouTubers / Periscopers. The trick with YouTube is to listen at at least 1.5x – and don’t be afraid to skip forward. You don’t have that on live shows (or saved Periscopes), so I limit that to only a couple – Brenden Dilley and some Scott Adams.
@llanfar:
There’s a speed control on Youtube? I need to go hunting!
Damn – I just checked YouTube.com in Safarion my iPad. No speed control in the “gear” icon. I use the YouTube app – which has playback speed from 0.25x up to 2x. Checking it in Firefox on my MBP…that has the speed setting available.
Found it in FireFox on the Mac. You have now saved me thousands of hours “going forward” ;-)