free speech

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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

Best part: the admission comes from a court trial that has recently been concluded, then put a lid on. I discovered this accidentally, while following other leads.

Please contemplate this most spectacular paragraph and then I’ll give you all the background info you need:

Regarding factual material within the document, the court finds that “[t]he CDC does not . . . justify its withholding based on inextricable intertwining of facts and opinions.”  “Rather, it defends the withholding because the facts about COVID-19 were changing frequently, and therefore any facts in the Media Strategy are ‘no more than . . . hypotheses advanced but later revised or rejected altogether.'”  “The CDC states that releasing such ‘seemingly factual statements’ would ’cause damage both to the agency – by contradicting and/or undercutting the more reliable information that it ultimately released – and to the public, by creating confusion and potentially sowing mistrust in the guidance provided by the CDC and other Federal agencies.'”  The court finds that “Defendants cite no law for the validity of such a justification under FOIA . . . and the Court is aware of none.”   Moreover, the deliberative process privilege focuses on whether disclosure would ‘expose an agency’s decisionmaking process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency’s ability to perform its functions.‘”  “The CDC does not argue that disclosure of the facts would chill the CDC’s internal discussion.”  “Therefore, the Court rejects the agency’s justification for withholding the factual portions of the document.”

US DoJ, Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. CDC, No. 20-2761, 2021 WL 4253299 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 17, 2021) (Torres, J.)

So this is part of the court ruling for the following case, filed early 2020, the funniest boomerang throw in a while:

cdc-foia-2020.04.02_ecf-1_complaintDownload

Click to access cdc-foia-2020.04.02_ecf-1_complaint.pdf

The reason I call it a “boomerang throw” is because the case was obviously a politicized attack on Trump admin’s alleged dictatorial oversight on science. They meant to show CDC wants to do better and OrangeManBad is keeping them on a leash, preventing transparency.
But the solution to it blew up in Biden’s lap, exposing more of CDC’s foul plays when they least needed another public image blow.
I mean, could’ve blown up, if anyone made a fuss about this.

Below is how Deep State University aka Harvard presented the case in April 2020:

CDC Sued to Disclose Restrictions on Scientists’ Right to Speak

By Adam Toobin – Edited by Genie Gorbonosov

April 16, 2020

<< Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Knight Institute v. CDC (S.D.N.Y Apr. 2, 2020) (No. 20-2761), complaint hosted by the Knight Institute.

Demanding the Trump Administration make public any restrictions on when employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may speak to the public or the press, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is suing to force compliance with an unanswered Freedom of Information Act request they filed on March 19.

The complaint follows an extended controversy over whether and to what extent governments may restrict public employees from speaking to the press on their personal views. Laden with free speech concerns, the issue demands heightened urgency in the context of a worldwide pandemic that has killed tens of thousands and sparked fierce debate about the role of political leaders and scientists in responding to the crisis.

Motivating the Knight Institute’s concern in this instance is a record of severe restrictions on the rights of government scientists to speak freely to the press. In 2017, Axios published an email from Jeffrey Lancashire, a public affairs officer, to the National Center for Health Statistics, announcing that for every employee of the CDC “any and all correspondence with any member of the news media, regardless of the nature of the inquiry, must be cleared through CDC’s Atlanta Communications Office.”

This policy may exacerbate fears that the White House has politicized the nation’s response to the pandemic and inhibited the voicing of alternate views that could shed light on the extent of the crisis, according to the Knight Institute’s complaint.

“According to recent news stories, scientists and health officials at the CDC must now coordinate with the Office of Vice President Mike Pence before speaking with members of the press or public about the pandemic,” the complaint reads. “These stories have raised concerns that public health experts who know most about the risks to the public are not being permitted to speak candidly and that the information the government is now conveying may be incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading.”

This lawsuit follows recent litigation that has raised questions about the current constitutional status of rights of public employees to speak to the press without official oversight. In 2006, the Supreme Court held in Garcetti v. Ceballos that speech by public employees should only receive First Amendment protection when they are communicating in their capacity as private individuals. However, in the 2014 case of Lane v. Franks, the Court held that “the mere fact that a citizen’s speech concerns information acquired by virtue of his public employment does not transform that speech into employee—rather than citizen—speech.”

Rather than facing doctrinal hurdles in overturning government restrictions on the right of public employees to speak, a recent law review article by Frank LoMonte, head of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, identifies the fact that public employees have had to put their careers and employment relationship in jeopardy in order to bring suit. LoMonte suggests that journalists and news organizations should have standing to challenge overbroad restrictions on the right of public employees to speak.

While still untested, the prospect suggests a new line of attack on the type of rules the CDC may be enforcing against its employees. The Knight Institute’s lawsuit may then be seen as the first step in raising a more fundamental question about the constitutionality of these restrictions.

On the alternative side, public health officials have also emphasized the importance of clear and trustworthy information reaching the public during a period of such acute national and international challenges. The spread of misinformation online has drawn particular concern and forced some social media platforms to take unprecedented steps to control what their users can see and share, including partnering with organizations like the CDC and the World Health Organization to verify the information blitzing around their sites. Multiple conflicting messages from government officials — not bound by tight central controls — could contribute to the public’s confusion.

Ultimately, the Knight Institute’s lawsuit focuses on a much more narrow question: Whether the government should be permitted to keep secret its rules for when government scientists may speak publicly. As the coronavirus pandemic enters a new month, long since having banished facets of everyday life once taken for granted, the issue takes on the weight of all those who worry everyday about the information they receive from the government and the media.>>

Fantastic presentation, Harvard!
Now, you know what’s way more stunning? Let’s have a look at the full court decision on this!

Friday, September 17, 2021

Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. CDC, No. 20-2761, 2021 WL 4253299 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 17, 2021) (Torres, J.)



Re:  Request for certain records concerning coronavirus or Coronavirus Task Force, as well as records concerning communication with news media and public policies

Disposition:  Denying defendants’ motion for summary judgment; granting in part and denying in part plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment

  • Litigation Considerations, Adequacy of Search:  “The Court concludes that the CDC’s search for documents responsive to requests one and two was not reasonably likely to uncover all responsive documents.”  First, the court finds that “the CDC improperly narrowed the scope of [its] search, and shall reconduct it in light of this order.”  “Here, the plain language of the requests indicate that they encompass more than the CDC’s interpretation.”  “Requests one and two seek records ‘relating to’ policies and procedures, and so are broader than merely the policies themselves.”  Responding to plaintiff’s argument, the court finds that “courts have rejected the idea that including a specific request invalidates an overlapping broader request.”  Second, the court finds that “‘FOIA requests are not a game of Battleship.'”  “‘The requester should not have to score a direct hit on the records sought based on the precise phrasing of his request.'”  The court explains that “an agency must search for synonyms or common variants of a term used in the request that are likely to be used in responsive documents, unless it can reasonably justify declining to use them.”  “[T]he agency justifies its limitation of search terms as a means of ‘strik[ing] a balance between fully and completely capturing emails dealing with the subject matter of Plaintiff’s requests and eliminating the large number of nonresponsive emails captured by the first search.'”  “But, an agency’s duty under FOIA is not to strike such a balance; it is to conduct a search reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents, unless such a search would be an undue burden.”  Additionally, the court finds that “Plaintiff correctly observes that the agency’s affidavit does not give sufficient detail about how the search was conducted.”  “[I]t does not specify how Boolean searches were used:  for instance, if it searched for the two-word terms like ‘covid communication’ in quotes (producing only documents containing those two words in sequence), or not (producing documents with either one of those words anywhere in the document).”  “Without such detail, the Court cannot conclude that the agency demonstrated that the search terms were reasonably calculated to uncover responsive documents.”  Finally, the court finds that “CDC has given no reason it did not search the inboxes of the individuals identified by Plaintiff, which Plaintiff reasonably contends may contain responsive documents.”  “Therefore, it was unreasonable of the CDC to omit those individuals likely to have responsive documents from the search.”  Of specific note, the court finds that “Defendants . . . argue that the CDC’s search was reasonable despite the omission of [one individual], because the produced records demonstrate that her supervisor . . . ‘was included in all correspondence to or from [the omitted individual] concerning items 1 and 2 of Plaintiff’s request.'”  “However, this logic does not hold:  [the supervisor’s] inclusion on the emails uncovered by a search of her email inbox does not mean that [the omitted individual] did not send or receive other responsive emails which did not include [her supervisor].”  “Therefore, it is reasonably likely that [the omitted individual] has other, undiscovered responsive documents, and must be included in a reasonable search.”
     
  • Exemption 5, Other Privileges:  The court holds that “Defendants have not met their burden of demonstrating that the presidential communications privilege covers [two documents], given the scope of dissemination of those documents.”  The court relates that the two documents are “a February 25, 2020 email authored by . . . President Donald J. Trump’s then-acting White House Chief of Staff[] and sent to ‘Senior Government Officials,’ described as a ‘[p]roposed coordinated media communication strategy for COVID-19 with designated speakers for various issues/topics,'” and “a February 25 and 27, 2020 email chain involving [the then-acting White House Chief of Staff], described as an ‘[u]pdate and elaboration of proposed coordinated media communication strategy for COVID-19.'”  The court relates that “Plaintiff no longer disputes that these documents were properly authored by a member of the President’s staff.”  “However, Plaintiff disputes whether these documents were kept sufficiently confidential for the privilege to apply.”  The court finds that “[d]isclosure of the documents would not prevent the President from operating effectively.”  “The media strategy of an executive agency is not a quintessential presidential power like the removal power; it is and was performed without presidential input.”  “Nor would disclosing the documents undermine future presidential decision-making; as discussed below, the policies appear to have been forward-looking plans to coordinate strategy.”  “And finally, because the policies were distributed to more than just the President’s closest advisors, his ability to communicate his final decisions privately was not implicated.”  “Moreover, the documents were not treated as confidential for purposes of the privilege.”  “The documents were also distributed throughout the Executive Branch, including to individuals whom Defendants have not established are covered by this privilege.”  “Though Defendants state that the majority of the recipients were in the EOP, not all individuals in the EOP are within the narrow circle of the presidential communications privilege.”  “Finally, the documents appear to have been distributed to some of the recipients for a non-advisory purpose.”
     
  • Exemption 5, Deliberative Process Privilege & Other Considerations: The court denies defendants’ motion for summary judgment regarding “a ’02/25 – 02/26/2020 Division of Global Migration and Quarantine email chain . . .’ and the information withheld within them[,] [specifically,] ‘[d]iscussion of how to apply 02/25/2020 EOP email to Senior Government Officials.'”  The court finds that that material consists of “discussions of how to apply a binding policy, rather than conferring about developing that policy.”  “Therefore, any discussion of its application was post-decisional, and outside the scope of the privilege.”  The court relates that “Defendants . . . argue that [some of that material] was not an operative policy because on [a later date], a new email was sent, erasing the [earlier] framework.”  “However, although the Document 9 policy may have been temporaru, it is still a final decision while in effect.”  “In addition, the CDC has not sufficiently articulated a harm associated with disclosing [that material].”  “Defendants merely assert that disclosure of some of the documents withheld under the deliberative process privilege ‘could cause harm by chilling future free exchange of ideas and opinions by agency leadership on similarly sensitive matters.'”  “[T]his assertion is not specific enough to meet the FOIA requirements.”
     
  • Exemption 5, Deliberative Process Privilege & Litigation Considerations, “Reasonably Segregable” Requrements: Separately, the court considers a “a number of iterations of a document titled ‘CDC Communication and Media Strategy for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Response.'”  The court relates that “the CDC avers that [one of these iterations, the only one plaintiff still challenges,] was ‘revised and circulated to help frame ongoing deliberative discussions within CDC for anticipated consideration by CDC decisionmakers,’ but that no Media Strategy was ultimately decided upon.”  “Plaintiff has identified a number of features of [the document] that suggest it is, at least, the closest to final version of the Media Strategy produced.”  Additionally, the court notes that “[p]roduced documents discussing the Media Strategy also indicate that the goal was ‘to finalize the first iteration of this strategy document,’ . . . which indicates that the CDC intended to create an operative version, even if that version was to be updated.”  Also, the court finds that “[t]he CDC also does not describe, specifically for Document 12, the author, its recipient, or those individuals’ relationships to each other and the decision-making process, details which have been considered ‘critical’ to a court’s analysis under the deliberative process privilege.”  The court also relates that “Plaintiff argues that [the document] should not be withheld because it is a ‘messaging’ document.”  “Though courts in this district are split over how to handle messaging documents, . . . the Court agrees that when considering documents ‘about how the agency should communicate its policies to people outside the agency,’ it must focus on ‘whether the drafts or communications reflect deliberations about what “message” should be delivered to the public about an already-decided policy decision, or whether the communications are of a nature that they would reveal the deliberative process underlying a not-yet-finalized policy decision.'”  “On this record, the Court cannot determine if [the document at issue] is merely articulating how to discuss agency policy, or if it is itself an expression of the CDC’s ‘essential policymaking role.'”  “Accordingly, the Court cannot yet decide whether [this document] falls into the deliberative process privilege.”

    Regarding factual material within the document, the court finds that “[t]he CDC does not . . . justify its withholding based on inextricable intertwining of facts and opinions.”  “Rather, it defends the withholding because the facts about COVID-19 were changing frequently, and therefore any facts in the Media Strategy are ‘no more than . . . hypotheses advanced but later revised or rejected altogether.'”  “The CDC states that releasing such ‘seemingly factual statements’ would ’cause damage both to the agency – by contradicting and/or undercutting the more reliable information that it ultimately released – and to the public, by creating confusion and potentially sowing mistrust in the guidance provided by the CDC and other Federal agencies.'”  The court finds that “Defendants cite no law for the validity of such a justification under FOIA . . . and the Court is aware of none.”   Moreover, the deliberative process privilege focuses on whether disclosure would ‘expose an agency’s decisionmaking process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency’s ability to perform its functions.'”  “The CDC does not argue that disclosure of the facts would chill the CDC’s internal discussion.”  “Therefore, the Court rejects the agency’s justification for withholding the factual portions of the document.”

Updated November 4, 2021

You could start the Comedy Central Roast of CDC with that material.
Hey, Rand Paul, where art thou?


“Science will win”.

To be continued?
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Sometimes my memes are 3D. And you can own them. Or send them to someone.
You can even eat some of them.
CLICK HERE

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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

Now THESE are words I never imagined I would ever write.
And these are the times…

So I am here to praise rapper Pitbull.
Not only for wokeness and having the balls to drop truth bombs, not only for being informed…

But mainly because he struck a major chord, with his plead for freedom.
You see, I am too born and raised in the communist gulag, my Romania and his Cuba were very much alike back then, 30+ years ago…
So after seeing this, I REALLY REALLY WANT TO GIVE A HUG TO THIS MAN, you know, make it physical.
I also feel bad, I lumped him with the Cardi B’s of this world, and that’s his fault for making money with all these sell outs. But then again, if he keeps dropping truth from that height, it’s all better than good.
So watch this and please please spread it around, it has the potential to drive more awareness in the masses! Let’s end this shit!

PS: The part where he says Fidel Castro must be dead jealous on Klaus Schwab… 💥💥💥

Watch the whole show and tell them Silview sent you over, for the woke part (it’s over 2h long) 😉

To be continued?
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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

The testimonies may be only implicit, but they can’t be any more solid and legit.

Let’s play in a paradigm where we and YTFT (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) recognize same figures as authoritative.

What would happen if I made a video claiming no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus, like this Twit above, which is still live on many platforms?
What if I’d be just genuinely naive (like they assume we all are) and I’d bump into this Twit without following up for updates and retractions? And then I’d spread that claim around?
I’d go straight to internet jail, maybe even offline jail. Unlike other people.

Don’t trust us, verify and consider the following facts:

  1. Each and every medical organization on the planet has retracted or adjusted medical information, since 2020 more than ever. Thus, they admitted the initial publications were actually wrong aka “misinformation”. It’s part and parcel of sciencing and that’s not the issue here, that’s the point: errors are scientist’s best teachers.
  2. YTFT has actively promoted this admitted misinformation, its terms and policies did nothing to stop it, proving they can’t arbiter jack shit.
  3. This misinformation has not been retracted from YouTube, persists there to this day. In fact, most of the science believed to be true today has been retracted
  4. Users who argued this misinformation have been deplatformed and their content has been erased, while the misinformation persists on all platforms.
  5. YTFT are not independent from, but massive investors in medical business.
  6. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy that has been abhorred by most science icons ever and only denotes scientific illiteracy.

Therefore, YTFT’s claim that they are in position to arbiter what is medical information is not only a blatant con job and misinformation, as proven by everything they do, it’s utterly insane. Anyone supporting it is accomplice in all their crimes. They can’t do better than the authorities they subject to, which have admitted to failure.
Which makes YTFT a huge threat to the global public health and security, given their immense global reach.

What happened to HCQ supporters on YTFT?

Bonus: Where is risk, there has to be freedom of choice, where is risky speech there has to be freedom of choice for speech (free speech, in short).


And if you needed me to explain such super-basic logic, you’re not intellectually equipped for survival and most likely you don’t have anymore time to catch up because the mental lazies stole the horizon from everyone. You are the virus, in fact. We’re better off if you go get a vaccine!
If you did figure this out by yourself, in your own terms, we need you to put some daily effort into spreading the truth and making our objection more powerful, it’s the only antidote to lies. You know what you have to do, thank you!
Ah, and also this:

To be continued?
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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

Can’t wait for to label this video below as “Censored by Youtube” and cash in on the Streissand effect, which has already given massive headaches to the Silicon Sillies, and they still haven’t learned. But that’s besides the main point below.

ANALYSIS

  1. Censorship is a primitive moronic concept which you can’t materialize against 7+ billion people with man-power alone, you need artificial help, like AI’s
  2. Most BigTech dipshits have inherited their fortunes and merits, and are too stupid to understand AI’s aren’t really intelligent, it’s still just extreme computational power, a deep-fake of intelligence. Which is still stupid AF, despite some advantages, it’s Absent Intelligence. And the few who understand this also sell AI’s to morons like Klaus Schwab, to play their delusional megalomaniac real life Worlds of Warcraft on them. They’ve been duped same way they dupe others. Yeah, they’re great for stealing data and making models, but all AIs can be cancelled by a second of inspiration or brilliance from one living intelligence (this excludes those drones with bones that pass as people today, true).
  3. Censorship is a form of lying through forced omission. Lies are like cancer: they either devour the host and get fucked with it, or they get eliminated. So the cancer approach is primitive and dumb too. The catch is that technology actually makes it harder to hide or enforce a lie, despite the elite’s beliefs. Maintaining a technological advance can’t compensate because that illicit advance also depends on maintaining some lies, not the other way around.
    Whichever way you may look at it, censorship is self-cannibalistic and the age of censorship is not starting, it’s behind, only RTRD DPSHTS like Klaus and Biden are still clinging on it.
When I was on the fence, censorship persuaded me that 9/11 was a hoax

quick DEMONSTRATION that still works
(longer, better version soon, stay tuned)

Between Silview and Susan, she will regret her acts of censorship more, that’s already arranged

Some argue the soundtrack is the best part of this video, I say the info is even better if you pay real attention. Either way, word is out, please help the experiment by sharing this article or the video, thanks!


Also read: WHY CENSORSHIP DOESN’T PROTECT US FROM HATE, JUST BREEDS MORE

To be continued?
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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

I keep telling covidiots their actions speak way louder than their propaganda, it’s still rocket science to them. Not many words to add from my side.

These silly dipshits think they can control me with fear. Fear of channel deletion lol. They’ve already deleted all the joy from my life, you don’t do that to people and then hope to scare them with Youtube deletion!
What if WE delete YOU(tube)?

To be continued?
Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production.
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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

Disclaimer: If something reeks of desperation, it’s definitely not Zucc and the Bidens, the best circus band on the planet

Right out of the flying bat that gave us Corona: It was me the beast who has committed all these unspeakable acts, I’m like Epstein on Viagra!
Below you have all the evidence we collected from Fakebook, probably more to be revealed as elections approach.
Notice that I even pimped Xi. Obey your new Pimp Lord!

AH, ALMOST FORGOT: DID FACEBOOK JUST IMPLY THERE’S SEXUAL ACTIVITY IN THAT PHOTO WITH JOE AND XI?

Click to access KVBJHB.pdf

To be continued?
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by Silviu “Silview” Costinescu

Censorship is what happens when people with greater powers than others go from saying “I hate this speech!” to factually suppressing that speech.
Censorship IS hate speech enacted. Institutionally.
Institutional hate that breeds more hate.
And institutions follow an agenda. So there is a hate agenda.


Censorship has never protected anyone from hate. If only hate was just about speech!
Censorship actually exacerbates hate through frustration. Most ideologically motivated mass shooters were deeply frustrated that their message was suppressed, and they killed people as a way to make themselves heard, among others.

In establishment’s propaganda, “hate speech” has become speech hated by the powers that be. Stalin and all communist dictators were branding any opponent “enemy of the people” and any dissenting speech as “subversive”. Replace that with the more contemporary “conspiracy theorist / terrorist” and “hate speech”, see if it reminds you of anyone.

Censorship means we are paying people to take away our speech and our vision. Collectively, censorship doesn’t happen TO us from an entirely external source. Censorship happens usually when a society abandons itself and the fight for freedom because it’s been bought up with more comfort or, more often, with promises of comfort. And, eventually, that comfort always proves to be less preferable than the comfort of liberty.

So censorship doesn’t really protect the people, but, in almost every instance, it has protected powerful and corrupt people from truth. Even the hate that it breeds fits a control agenda, because it’s divisive and it distracts us from lies, corruption and systemic failures. It robs us of messages of love and help from other people, when they go against the censor’s agenda .
It’s just another typical situation of problem sold as a solution to itself. Logical hocus-pocus. That’s why they don’t properly teach logic in schools.

There is no way in which censorship can be beneficial, neither to the censored OR the censor. The latter always ends up suffering a form of strong backlash, because the energies it tries to suppress always find a way through, energy doesn’t disappear, doesn’t stay locked forever, it always transforms and manifests.

There’s no way censorship works for us, but there’s a million ways it can go against us.

Fight censorship simply by not participating in it and not collaborating with censors!



If you enjoy any of my work, remember that most of what I do is made freely available to the general public and I rely on your support for keeping it that way, so buy me a coffee if you feel like it, thank you!

! My articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them

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by Silviu Costinescu

A version of this article was originally published on my arts and music blog on Synkretic Network, but since the issue and the angle here are much broader than music, reaching into free speech and economy, I think it has a place on this page too.

How many social protest songs have you seen in the charts this last decade? What does that mean?

There’s a new generation now that hasn’t really experienced the great raw energy of a large mass of people united in chanting a chorus that expresses protest and discontent towards the establishment. “F You, I won’t do what you tell me!” has been replaced with “F you, I will do what this other establishment shill tells me!”. I’m an artist and a promoter in my 40’s and I contemplate the strong possibility that I will never again witness something like the early Rage Against The Machine, or even Lenon’s “Imagine”, becoming largely popular. Social lyricism in hip-hop is in a coma too. And this is how we got here:

Streaming services demonetized protesters

Internet and streaming services are being used to take away underground’s income sources and self-sustainability. You keep hearing Spotify or Soundcloud are not profitable and you keep wondering how do they survive then? They’ll always find financing, because they deliver all the music to the audiences without making the artists’ lives self-sustainable. Sales are a joke now. This way, independent artists become starving artists, and it’s legal, unlike piracy.
Only selected (or fabricated) establishment minions are allowed to thrive. That means only establishment’s messages get through. To the people running the show, this is worth much more money than it costs! A perfect assassination of artistic integrity and social protest. If you hear anything, it’s sponsored. The 2019 RATM, if they re-unite as rumored, won’t be anything like the early RATM because now they need Google and Twitter and Vice and corporate festivals on their side to succeed, not the other way around. The tables have been switched under our noses while we were getting high on Facebook likes.

Of course this new paradigm generated some independent success stories, but what do they all have in common? They fall in line with what’s acceptable for the establishment. And when you zoom out and look at the big picture, which includes all artists, what do you see? I see a huge mass of talented yet starving artists and a bunch of lottery winners, a few new happy faces in the media every year keep the scam going. The middle class in music is dead too.

Social media hijacked the audiences

“Bring your fans aboard so we can disconnect them from you and connect them to our establishment-sponsored BS!”. This has been the plan from the beginning for the mainstream social media. They weren’t here to help artists, unsurprisingly. They’ve just used artists and popular figures to attract the masses and fill up their boat, and then they sailed their own course. Only 5% of your Facebook artist page subscribers see your posts now, but I bet they all are exposed to a ton of Coca Cola, CNN or The Guardian posts even without subscribing to those pages. Perfect heist!

How do we bounce back?

I’ll get massive hate from corporate slaves for saying this, but there’s only one way I can think of and I’m already working on what I preach:

More direct contact with more implication and mutual support from both sides: artists and audiences. If we don’t act now, tomorrow might be harder or even too late.

What does that, technically, mean? Cut off the gatekeepers and middlemen as much as possible, stay in touch directly, support each other directly. This is coming from a guy who partly works as a middleman too; but only because there’s still a need for that, I’ll be happy to focus 100% on my own art when I’m not meeting any needs anymore!  It’s not more simple or more complicated than building and maintaining a little dedicated fanbase without letting it get leached and drained out by gatekeepers and middlemen. That means you can’t use their tools, you have to circumvent them. So now’s the best time to get creative, I await your ideas while I work on mine!

It breaks down to:
Artists need to invest more in their direct contact with the fans than in traditional marketing and media plans. Time to get personal, the industry and corporate media are not doing the job of putting us in touch anymore, they only disconnect us. I spent a good bunch of time and money to create a social network just so that artists and fans of all sorts can freely talk and support each other directly, without interference. I’ll create more tools and options for that, but Synkretic Network already offers all the tools you need for this purpose at no cost. Maybe it’s time to populate it. Or start your own.

Fans need to invest more in the artists that make their lives better, and do it more directly. If you buy an $1 song from Apple or Amazon, there’s at least 3-4 entities that will snatch 50-75% of that money before the artist has a chance to see his share. If you see a donation button, chances are that the artist will be able to spend about 80-90% of the sum you send, so drop your dollar there instead of iTunes and such. Avoid rips and leaches. If you don’t have money to spend, please help spread awareness, it’s just as helpful.  Or help the artists get booked in your city. Just re-invest back in the scene some of the good energy you’re getting from your favorite artists and we’ll be cool again! Only if you want and find it necessary to have a healthy artistic life, for yourself and the whole society as well.

As a personal example, the last couple of years I started to make most of my work, past and present, available for free, because art shouldn’t be for sale in the first place, this is how the whole problem started. Art thrives from honest crowd support. Low sales don’t mean people don’t care about artists anymore, it’s just that they’ve been reprogrammed to care differently and they lost the habit of paying; older folks aren’t aware that paying for listening music is a strange concept to most teenagers in 2019.
I know I’ll get even less donations than sales for a while, but I’ll receive double or triple the percentage and they’ll be available instantly, not 5-6 months later, as per usual with the industry. Also fans can’t ever feel cheated as they conveniently donate whatever they can afford, whenever they can afford it, typically after enjoying artist’s work; and their conscience is the only one to arbiter how much they should invest in this. Win-win situation, that’s what alien pimping is about! Use your money and shares wisely, my friends!

Hopefully I’ll also do a good job at persuading people they need to act as soon as yesterday, and dropping a coin in our digital hats when available can make a difference; so can a few good clicks. I’m becoming a digital busker, as I’ve said before, since I don’t have what it takes to be a good street busker. It’s yet way too early to say how it will work, but I doubt there’s any other way out of this swamp.

So here’s my digital busker hat, I’m already working to thank you: DONATE 
I mean, for consistence, besides other projects, I already have my next protest song in the works, it will be available for free download as soon as possible, whether you drop me a coin or not.

UPDATE + CLOSURE:

from Daily Bonnet

It took about half a year for life to deliver a final closure to this case.
“In response to the outrageous ticket prices a new activist group has emerged called Rage Against Rage Against the Machine”, jokes the satirical site Daily Bonnet, after they found out that the ticket prices for the new 2020 RATM tour are soaring from $190 way up.

THE END

To be continued?
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them