A recent post by u/brain_dead (New Hampshire the 2nd state to ban Chem Trail (www.eutimes.net)) provided an opportunity to do a little digging into some interesting sauces, both Bogus (aka clickbait, propaganda or disinfo) and Legit (aka based, patriotic, good practices).
I post the results of the dig here for my favorite frogs, ideally to provide some useful info and also some helpful hints for newbies on digging and tracking sauces.
Note: H/T to u/winn for the tip and inspiration to dig a little deeper. Upon digging into the article/sauce, a few things become immediately apparent.
The Good News
Firstly, the good news is that this content itself appears to be legitimate, even though the clickbait publishers fail in typical manner to give credit to the original source.
However, if one tracks: EU Times (100% copy/paste) >>> The People's Voice (86% copy/paste) >>> Granite Grok (Original - Steve MacDonald) one finds the original source and author, Steve MacDonald
Granite Grok is apparently an alt-media operation focused squarely on New Hampshire:
"Dominating the political bandwidth in New Hampshire"
Steve himself appears to be the key honcho at Granite Grok:
Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, blogger, and a member of the Board of directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the Managing Editor and co-owner of GraniteGrok.com, a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.
An initial perusal through the website suggest they are every bit as legit as they present themselves to be.
They do not use ads (hence clickbait is not a likely driver) and rely on donations and support (emphasizing that they are interested in quality journalism that readers will wish to support).
Their Monday Memes feature sheds an indication of their tone and focus.
https://granitegrok.com/blog/2024/04/monday-memes-108
They seem pretty based to me. Even a reference to an X tweet by Jon Harold (Patel Patriot) - author of the Devolution theory series. https://substack.com/@patelpatriot
If you are a US, East Coast or New Hampshire anon, they might be a good site to bookmark.
The Bad News #1
Firstly, the European Union Times. These guys do not come off as anywhere even near legit as Granite Grok. Not by a mile.
Strike one: 100% copy/pasting an 'article' by The People's Voice, one of the most disreputable sheister disinfo operations this side of the Pecos.
Note that EU Times doesn't give actual credit to their source, merely adds a completely non-descriptive link [Source] at the bottom of the Copy/Pasta, which immediately obscures the fact that the sauce they are using is TPV. (Something OP appears to have deigned to investigate or research, and no doubt EU Times reason for disguising their source)
Strike two: They love the Ukraine (note flag colors) and come across as very anti-Russian, anti-Putin.
After Fooling the People to Reelect Putin, Russia now announces More Cannon Fodder Mobilizations
- heavily slanted headline + derogatory terms
I don't think people need to necessarily be pro-Putin to be fully based. There is room for some diveristy of opinion in that area. But only the blind fail to recognize that the Globalists are using Ukraine as a proxy state and that the Russian initiatives are justified even from a self-defense posture, let alone from a humanitarian angle (to terminate the genocide happening to ethnic Russians in the Donbas, etc.) Not to mention denazification.
Strike three: Whiney McWhiney whine whine.
EU Times are shutting down. (no great loss, I suspect.) But read their article about the how and why. It's a riot.
https://www.eutimes.net/2024/03/goodbye-world-we-are-shutting-down-eu-times-soon/
We are shutting it down because of various reasons but the primary reason is the financial one. This small but yet grandiose project was ran by a small team which was very underfunded. Lack of funds. We don’t generate enough revenue from advertising anymore, people aren’t donating, they would donate to literally anything and anyone but except to keep their favorite news outlet alive…
I suspect that EU Times isn't anyone's "favorite news outlet".
People think that money come from the sky and that here on this website we don’t need their money because we somehow magically get money from the sky..... $5 a month through Patreon for lifetime… I dont think any of you would have become impoverished by subscribing to our Patreon with $5 a month! 100 such people and we would have received a mere minuscule $500 a month funding! You think that’s enough to keep a website alive? What’s $5 a month? If you are a smoker, you pay more than that on a pack of cigarettes every day, yet sponsoring your favorite news outlet is somehow excluded. We barely got any sponsorship, we all have lives and families to take care of. We can’t live without jobs, dedicating our time to this project while this project doesn’t put bread on the table.
Complaining to your readers that they aren't supporting you seems pretty narcissistic. I mean, if you created good content, people would support you.
Read through the whole article, if you dare, but even a cursory glance shows the myopic mentality of this operation. They think the European Union is a great idea, for Pete's sake.
They may not exactly be clickbait artists, despite their copy/pasting someone as disreputable as TPV, but at best they appear to be seriously ill-informed and functioning very much in the Matrix, aka useful idiots, for lack of a better term.
if they are indeed shutting down, then all they really do here is provide an example of Useful Idiocy thinking that they are somehow advancing Christianity and Peace in the world.
The Bad News #2
The other bad news here is The People's Voice (TPV). I mean, anywhere this operation rears its ugly head is bad news. See my other posts on TPV aka NewsPunch aka YourNewsWire (most of them easily found with a "clickbait" search in the GAW 'search community' box) if you need more info.
But as an update on TPV and Sean Adl-Tabatabai, TPV have now upgraded their [Fact Checked] designation that they put on EVERY article they post to [Fact checked by The People's Voice Community].
Sure, that community is going to be totally legit. /sarc/
Also, Mr. Adl-Tabatabai has now listed an intro blurb at the end of his articles, and cites 17674 Articles.
My, that's a few articles, isn't it, Sean? Let's break that down.
Your News Wire (which became NewsPunch which became The People's Voice) started full fledged operations around 2015. So let's give Mr TPV 9 years. 17674 articles in 9 years equals 1963 articles per year. 1963 divided by 52 weeks = 37 articles per week.
So on average, and assuming that Mr. Adl-Tabatabai works 7 days a week, 12 months a year, he's churning out 37 articles per week. If that doesn't tell you about the quality of his work, it should. No serious writer or journalist can produce that many articles unless he is copy/pasting and just churning out low quality tabloid content.
Ok, it's not a massive finding, but I thought it was interesting enough to note.
It's curious that in the case of the current article, the actual content is legitimate enough that TPV didn't have to fabricate sensationalist or disinfo headlines. Nonetheless, any deep dive in to TPV/NP/YNW suggests strongly that they are dubiously funded disinfo operation designed to exploit people beginning to wake up and inject garbage info in to the truth sphere in order to poison the well. At least, to me it does.
Silver Lining
The silver linings in this dig into EU Times / TPV include a) finding Granite Grok, which seems a very legitimate based patriotic alt-media operation, but also
b) final confirmation that Michael Baxter is in fact Baxter Dmitry from TPV, by him publishing a 100% copy paste version of the TPV article under his own name:
https://dainikbidyaloy.com/2024/01/04/new-hampshire-becomes-second-u-s-state-to-ban-chemtrails/
I tracked this down using a simple technique of taking a sample section of text (chosen for relevance and to an appropriate length i.e. between 7 and 20 words long) then searching for it in Google bookended by quote marks: e.g.
"One of the sponsors is a friend, so I’d expect them to offer some follow-up, but if I’m honest"
This forces the search Engine to seek that text strong as a whole unit.
The result can show many instances of where the source text has been copy/pasted or published across the net. In this case, it turned up both legitimate sources (those quoting Granite Grok and which are genuinely journalistic efforts) as well as scum sources (i.e. clickbait, disinfo, tabloid alt-media, etc)
Seeing the parallels and connections between Dmitry Baxter and Michael Baxter over the years (first observed in 2018), I have long held the view that they are one and the same person. This publication of the TPV article under the M. Baxter name all but clinches it.
And that's a nice find.
Conclusion
I suspect that if OP had taken the time to dig a little into the EU Times, he might have thought twice about posting them (and thereby promoting them as a legitimate source) instead of tracking the content to the actual source, which would have been a good find (Steve MacDonald at Grantie Grok). The connection with TPV should have been an instant red flag, but again, this was missed.
All this simply goes to prove the old adage:
All good dishes come with saucy sauce
But note: Saucy sauce is sauce that has been checked, identified, verified and simmered over a low flame for at least 3 or 4 levels of dig.
Carry on.
Edit:
q3616
THE GREAT AWAKENING. You are the news now. Handle w/ care.
When people say that they'd support a Russian incursion to stamp out the deep state, I always look at my screen with a squint because that's just not acceptable. One way or another this has to be resolved internally.
I only trust Putin to have his own (country's) interests in mind, I would absolutely not trust Russian soldiers on our soil.