Welcome to my Substack. I want to introduce myself and share my goals.
I have a 4-year degree in Biological Sciences, with a minor in Marine Biology.
I was inspired while in high school by the televised Jacques Cousteau series, which fascinated me. I headed off to college in Florida, with the hope of finding an exciting career. After graduating and not finding work in Florida, I had an opportunity to go to California, where I began looking for work, hoping to find something that was connected to the ocean, and felt lucky when I was able to volunteer at a fisheries lab near San Francisco. Sometimes life leads us in a direction we have never considered, and I found myself working for a newly opened brewery, half way between Sacramento and San Francisco, as a lab technician. Unfortunately, I had no time to continue volunteering at the fisheries lab, and without knowing it, my future was set. 28 years later, I retired. I didn’t know back in 1976 that this new job would end up being my career. I can’t complain, it was a good job, I was able to buy a home and raise a family, the company treated us well and I was able to earn a good retirement.
A few short years after retiring, I ended up going back to work at our local hardware store to cover my ever-increasing health insurance cost. I can’t complain about that job either, work that I enjoyed, a job which gave me the opportunity to meet people in my community that otherwise I would never have gotten to know. After 10 years, my wife and I decided to move, so I retired for the second time, and a few years later I’m still retired. Maybe there will be no 3rd retirement.
I started writing articles for our local newspaper during the pandemic, when at the time, because of my college biology background, I felt the desire to point out what I thought was misinformation concerning issues about the Covid virus and the pandemic. I believe this is how perceived misinformation should be handled, discussion and not censorship. If you have read some of the Twitter Files you know this is not how the government decided to deal with what they considered misinformation, they made the effort to contact Twitter and other social media platforms and requested that certain issues, topics and even individuals be censored. Initially I was shocked that the media didn’t jump on this story and run with it. The more I learned, I started to form the opinion that since some of the censorship had to do with Donald Trump, for example, the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story, that the reason main stream media downplayed the Twitter Files and government censorship in general, was because of Trump, and those who didn’t want him back in the White House. Now that’s just my opinion, but as I learned more about the Russia Gate story, it was becoming clearer to me that main stream media had it out for Trump and they kept pushing this story. When I listened to John Durham testify before Congress, the special council who investigated the Russian collusion allegations by the FBI, Durham said the FBI bypassed long held policy of being confident of success in court, and on appeal, before officially opening a case,and by using hearsay evidence early on to validate opening the case against Trump and members of his campaign, this long held policy was bypassed. I specifically remember Durham mentioning a conversation in an Australian bar where it was mentioned by one party that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton and it will be coming out soon, and within a couple of days, the investigation was launched. Starting an investigation against a newly elected President of the United States based mostly on hearsay evidence leads me to conclude that certain high-ranking individuals within our federal government were willing to violate long held norms in order to make it difficult for Trump to remain in the White House for a second term. Over time I came to realize that mainstream, legacy media supported this investigation and apparently shared the desire to keep Trump out of the White House.
My confidence in mainstream media took a hard hit when I learned about the Hunter Biden laptop story, first published by the New York Post. A group of former members of the intelligence community signed a letter that was given to the media, saying that the Hunter Biden laptop story had all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. I later learned that the FBI had Hunter’s laptop in their possession in the fall of 2019, almost a full year before the story broke in Oct. 2020, about a month before the election. For me, it was becoming a matter of, who do you trust? It turns out that the former intelligence community members who signed that letter were wrong, and mainstream media, who pushed this story that it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, were wrong.
There are some independent journalists who claim that members of mainstream media accept information given to them by the federal government without fact checking the story, sometimes sighting “anonymous sources.” This especially seems to be true regarding stories that paint Donald Trump in a bad light. Ideally, our government and the media should be unbiased, the truth being all important. Sadly, I have been coming to the conclusion that this is not the case. This is why I have been relying more and more on independent journalists and podcasters to learn the truth about issues and events.
There is a story that supports my view of MSM, where a long time editor at NPR public radio resigned after 20 some years, over how NPR had pushed the Russia Gate story hard and long, but when the fact came out that there was no evidence of Russian collusion, and the allegations relied mainly on hear-say information, the editor, Uri Berliner, decided to resign, stating that NPR never acknowledged to their listeners that they had been wrong about the Russian collusion story, and similarly didn’t acknowledge that NPR had been wrong in calling the Hunter Biden laptop story a Russian disinformation campaign.
Here's a quote from Berliner’s article:
“Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.
Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”
Here’s another quote that refers to the Hunter Biden laptop story:
“The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.”
Here's a link to his full article that was published in The Free Press, April 9. 2024.
I’m not criticizing the Russian collusion story because I support Trump. In fact, I’m a registered Independent and did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. I’m trying to show why I turned to independent media more and more as time went by, as my trust in mainstream media diminished over the last few years. By mainstream media, MSM, I’m referring to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and popular newspapers such as The New York Times and the Washington Post. I think it’s important to note that over 90% of U.S. media is owned by 5 or 6 corporations, which is why some independent journalists call it “corporate media”. Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post are all owned by Rupert Murdoch, an individual and not a corporation. This fact may sometimes explain what news issues they cover compared to mainstream media. For example, the Hunter Biden laptop story originally ran in the New York Post. I guess the bottom line for me is, there is bias in the MSM and to get the full story on some issues, I turn to independent journalists and podcasters. That’s where the name of my Substack comes from, INIT, Independent News for Independent Thinkers.
During the 2024 presidential campaign I heard over and over that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. Now that he will be back in the White House, it wouldn’t surprise me if he does a thing or two that raises eyebrows, but I think democracy will survive. In my opinion, the greater threat is government censorship. If the 1rst Amendment is destroyed, what kind of nation would we be? We are one step removed from the world George Orwell described in his book ‘1984’. We know from the Snowden files released in 2013 that the government spies on U.S. citizens, a violation of the 4th Amendment. They have the ability to access our cell phone and internet activity, and can even spy on us through our smart TVs that are connected to the internet, which includes most new TVs. The second step towards 1984 is the ability of the government to censor us, specifically censor our social media posts. The Twitter Files show that the government has already been moving in this direction, where they had some success in censoring certain topics and individuals. Fortunately, they have only had some limited success, and there are those who are fighting back and resisting further government censorship.
I hope my Substack is a place where people can find news worthy articles and podcasts in a timely manner. I will publish my own writings, hopefully one per week, and also refer you to podcasts and articles that I think will be of interest. I may throw in a book review on occasion. I have a few in mind already, including a couple that have changed my view of the federal government and how our foreign policy developed over the last several decades.
So welcome to INIT, Jim’s Substack.