Did you hear?
Mark Carney and Jeffery Epstein were close personal friends.
No, really. I saw a picture of it on the internet, so it must be true. Also, that picture of Joe Biden break dancing at his State of the Union address? One hundred percent totally and completely factual.
A couple months ago, the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions released its final report.
One of the most things the report pointed out is that our large scale institutions have done well in rooting out foreign intrusions into elections. “Thus far – and this is one of my most important observations – Canada’s democratic institutions have held up well and remained robust in the face of attempted foreign interference,” said Commissioner Hogue. “That said, foreign interference will never be completely eradicated, and it will always be necessary to be vigilant and fight against it. Democracies around the world are under attack from all sides, and the technological resources available to malicious actors are multiplying. All of us who live in Canada must confront these challenges, together.”
But more worrying is the fact that this robustness starts to fall apart the further down the food chain you go. According to The Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), an open source organization studying “disinformation, connective technologies, democracy, and the future of digital rights,” the localized impacts of disinformation are “deeply concerning.
“The report indicates that foreign interference had a small impact on previous federal electoral outcomes but may have affected outcomes in smaller ridings. While not sufficient to alter national election outcomes, the overall effect of disinformation is a gradual degradation of the public’s confidence in Canada’s democratic system, so while the impact may be minimal, it should be taken seriously.”
Which brings us back to that image, which is of Carney and Epstein in the hot tub.
The image is very on the nose. It’s the sort of thing that could ruin a candidate’s political reputation, if true.
Of course, it’s not true. There are pictures of Carney back in his Bank of England days hanging out at a festival with Ghislaine Maxwell, but the photographs of Carney and Epstein, while fairly photorealistic, are fake.
For those of you who don’t know, Epstein was a financier and grifter whose first job was as a teacher, though he had no teaching degree. (Don’t worry, this statement will get even more disturbing as we get further into who he was.)
Epstein claimed to be, at turns, a bounty hunter, a government consultant or an intelligence agent who somehow managed to succeed, becoming a financier who collected a Rolodex full of the names of the rich and powerful and famous.
But Epstein is also one of the—if not the— world’s best known pedophiles. In 2005, he was accused of unlawful sexual conduct with minors. Though he was charged with two counts, further investigations revealed that number to be closer to 80.
He was also accused of sex trafficking, and of procuring the services of underage girls for rich and powerful friends, often on a private island in the American Virgin Islands.
Oh, and he had secret cameras in all the rooms.
It is easily the most salacious, most depraved story of the last…what? 30 years? 50? And the name Jeffery Epstein is nearly as poisonous as Hitler’s. Want to cast someone in a negative light? You can call them a Nazi, or accuse them of being a friend with Epstein.
So you can see how people with an agenda are trying to link Carney to Epstein. Photos of Carney and Maxwell (who was Epstein’s girlfriend and who was found guilty of child sex trafficking for Epstein) aren’t good enough. So let’s find a picture of Carney and Epstein together.
But there aren’t any. No worries. We live in an age where we can speak any image we want into being. So let’s go to one of those AI machines and ask it to give us a picture of Carney and Epstein together.
Okay, okay, but let’s also make sure the background looks tropical, so it looks like we’re on Epstein’s island.
And, while we’re at it, let’s put them in a pool together. Yeah. That’s it. Now toss in a few buxom, bikini clad women behind them. And then let’s release it into the wild.
And that’s how I came across it. In the wild, with one of my more conservative leaning friends sharing the image with a comment of how evil attracts evil.
So I did what I do. Research. No, Carney never hung out with Epstein. He did meet Maxwell as discussed, but no connection to Epstein. So I mentioned this to him, pointing out that it wasn’t that hard to verify (or disprove) the image, and that by sharing fake stories he wasn’t doing himself or his political leanings any good. When I pointed this out to him, he said he didn’t care, arguing, somehow, that the image revealed a deeper truth about Carney’s character.
“I don’t care, either,” I replied. “It’s factually inaccurate. It’s false. It’s untrue, and by claiming that it is true, all you have done is reveal yourself to be an unreliable source of information. You are now operating on the same level as Russian troll farms. You’re doing the work of the bots!”
I say the same thing to my left-leaning friends who share absolute crap, too. Do better.
Because a lot of that crap? Is coming out of Russia, or China. Instead of trying to get us to favour one candidate over another, they are simply trying to sow the seeds of division, or perhaps support for themselves. The government report says China’s interference is “party agnostic”, going so far as to apparently target Chrystia Freeland’s election campaign, or to blacklist NDP MP Jenny Kwan for her positions against China.
Left or right, liberal or conservatives, chances are your strings are being pulled. Your job now? Is to find a way to cut those strings.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
So Mark Carney is friends with the convicted pedophile wife and not the pedophile husband. And this is saving his character how?
You’re right. This has absolutely nothing to do with Carney’s character. Has to do with people who share lies as the truth and the people who accept them as such. It’s about trying to find a way back—if not to civil discourse, because it has never been thus—at least to honest discourse. But, let’s be honest, it’s never been that, either. Just walking down the political beach, trying to toss one venemous star fish spit out by some disinformation bot back into the sea.
Left or right, liberal or conservative, chances are your strings are being pulled. Your job now? Is to find a way to cut those strings.