Author: Shawn Witzemann

SINGAPORE (ACTJ) — As misinformation regarding the origin of COVID-19 continues to spread across social media, Facebook has announced plans to contain dangerous and completely unsubstantiated claims. Facebook fact checker Dr. Danielle Anderson will be working hard to ensure theories propagated by fringe scientists such as Dr. Luc Montagnier, will be completely eradicated from the public forum.

Dr. Montagnier is a senile old man who who claims to have discovered HIV IN 1983, as well as winning a Nobel Prize in 2008, but has recently put forward the dangerous and obviously false idea that coronavirus was created in a lab.

This ridiculous conspiracy has continued to gain traction on social media, despite Dr. Montagnier’s complete lack of credentials. All of his scientist friends point and laugh at him. Dr. Anderson, on the other hand, spent years working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where she was involved in numerous experiments with bat coronaviruses. Her work obviously qualifies her opinion as the final, definitive word on whether or not the virus was created there. She currently works at the NUS Medical School lab at Duke University, Singapore, while also contributing to Facebook, in order to seek out, identify, and destroy with extreme prejudice, any and all articles claiming that COVID-19 may have originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Dr. Anderson says she’s 90% confident that the virus came from bats in the wet market, prompting ACTJ officials to issue an emergency accreditation.

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The Armenian Council for Truth in Journalism Adjourns When Brock Willett and I started this show in March of 2020, I don’t think we had any idea what we wanted it to be, or what it would eventually become. The title was born from a random joke that my dad would use when I was a kid. Anytime he was frustrated with opening a bag of plumbing parts or anything else that was tough to get into, he would say that it had been “hermetically sealed by the Armenian Medical Association”.

Some of you boomers might make the connection to The Firesign Theatre, a surreal comedy troupe which did wild radio broadcasts throughout the late ‘60s, but when I co-opted the phrase, and turned it into a smart-ass response to Facebook commenters, who called out my satirical stories on Farmington Tribune for being fake news, my only frame of reference was my father.

After a year and a half of lampooning the media, and making the public spin with our ACTJ verified bull crap, I felt it would only be right for our team to make an honest effort at understanding the country which had become so integral to what we were doing. I filed the paperwork and started Tribune Media International LLC with an ambitious goal of creating a satirical documentary in Armenia. The basic idea was a bit of a reverse Borat approach, where we would lampoon the stupidity of Americans whilst highlighting Armenian culture.

With this goal in mind, Mr. Willett, Vladimir Koshevoy and I went to Armenia in October 2019. We went to “seek the Council”. That trip turned into everything it should have been, and nothing we expected. Perhaps I’ll give a detailed account one of these days, but for now I will just say it was both terrifying and beautiful. The few of you who already know the details, are fully aware. The rest of you will have to wait for the book. But I digress.

We were asked often what we were doing in Armenia. As I would begin to explain how our fake news stories were “independently verified by the Armenian Council for Truth in Journalism, I was consistently unsure of how the joke would be received. Time and again, those in the Caucasus region immediately understood the humor. It was then that I realized the joke was much older than my father’s quips, born from The Firesign Theatre.

“Radio Yerevan” jokes had been used in the USSR as a way of speaking truth, in an atmosphere of extreme censorship, and totalitarian thought policing. If you’ve never heard one, I highly recommend that you Google it. The point here is that in going to the other side of the world, the joke had come full circle. We had truly found The Armenian Council for Truth in Journalism.

This new found understanding inspired Brock and I to push harder at the idea of documenting the realities of places that remain misunderstood in America. 3 months later, we went to England, Ireland, and Scotland to further perfect our abilities as satirical documentarians. We were preparing for a trip to Ukraine, but life had other plans, and the world was shut down for coronavirus.

With little other option, I somewhat begrudgingly allowed Brock to push me into starting a podcast. I will forever be thankful for his insistence. As the year went on, and the BLM protests began, it seemed only proper for us to take a more concerted approach to being “proper journalists”. We recognized the world was changing, and it was obvious that we would need to change with it. Between June and August, the number of guests we had was unreal. The workload consumed me, as we moved from 3 shows per week to broadcasting every day. We were blessed with regular contributors, such as Blake Heckler, Travis Thorpe, Brian Battle, and Dan “The Manager” Sledzinski.

With Jae Shin killing it as our producer, the show began to find it’s sea legs. In between our inebriated rants, and our rapidly changing understanding of the world, some amazing discussions were had. We broke down racial division, coronavirus lies, and the political propaganda. This absurd pace was kept until Brock went to Ireland in August, intent on immigration to the Emerald Isle.

No longer in the same time zone, his ability to co-host was essentially gone.

The show would have surely died, were it not for Thaddeus Preston. His intelligence and analytical perspective of the world was the perfect counter to my anarchist nihilism. He hopped right into the firing line, and has remained dedicated and steadfast for the last 9 months. As we approached the November election, we were all excited to to temporarily wrap, and take a vacation from daily broadcasting. The election special was an absolute mess of old contributors, random miscreants, intelligent debate, and drunken bullshit. When we ended the broadcast, Trump had won the election, and we were all ready to take a break, but much like how the pandemic had derailed my plans to go to Ukraine, the universe had other plans.

The next three months compelled me to travel to various places around the country, documenting the movement to “Stop The Steal”. I’ve never been comfortable around those who would worship a political figure, but as I found myself imbedded in the heart of MAGA, I found a new understanding of these cultish Trumpers for which I had always had disdain. These were normal, hardworking Americans. They weren’t the racist mouth breathers of mainstream media lore. They were the heart and soul of the American dream, and they were distraught at the notion that their republic was dying. They were willing to speak out, regardless of the derision. The movement was not what I had been told. As I followed the story, I found myself in the streets of DC, live-streaming and documenting the Proud Boys. Once again I was reminded of the lies of the mainstream media, who worked tirelessly to characterize the group as some sort of bastion of fascism and racist hatred. Once again, the reality was much different than the snake oil lies of the establishment press. Nearly every ethnicity was represented by this self-proclaimed “drinking club with a patriotism problem”, and I often wondered if they were the last bastion of free men, in a rapidly deteriorating American empire.

As I attempted to highlight reality for my politically diverse following, it became apparent to me that the propagandists were in full control. I watched as some long-time friends turned against me, calling me a fascist, and spewing vitriol for reporting a narrative which didn’t align with their biases. To say it was disturbing is an understatement. It broke my heart to realize that the perspective and consensus I had tried so hard to foster in the previous months, was quickly breaking down in the face of reality. The fallout from January 6 only solidified my understanding that the establishment media, at the whims of the power hungry oligarchs who pull their purse strings, was realizing their ultimate goal of dividing America, and plunging us into civil war. Psychological warfare is a bitch.

So now, nearly 6 months after the events at the Capitol, with press credentials in hand, I can look into the past and see so much for what it truly is. Like taking a hike, through the San Juan Mountains, I can look back at each peak and valley that brought me to this point, fully aware of how painful, or enjoyable each step has been. I can reminisce on those who’ve walked with me along the way. I can mourn for those who took a different path, perhaps never to be seen again.

It has sometimes been said that life is a series of mistakes, ultimately leading to our death, but when I think about this experiment; this ACTJ, I can’t help but think that a certain amount of divine intervention has been an intimate part of each and every ill-conceived decision. I’ve walked the path which was laid out before me. Regret is not an option.

As we move this Council into the next iteration, I’m reminded of the writings of J.R.R Tolkien. We’ve long compared our struggle to bring truth to a wider audience to the fool’s hope that the ring could be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. Though the odds may be against us, I take heart in the fact the Lou Starski has been there with me since the journey began. He probably thought I’d forgotten about him, but this hobbit would be nowhere without my own Samwise Gamgee. Good luck finding someone with a better heart.

There is no map for the quest for truth. All we can do is keep moving forward. Determination is required, and the daily destinations are completely unknown.

Like Gandalf once said: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

The Armenian Council for Truth in Journalism adjourns on May 20, 2021 at 10pm EST

As Americans prepare to celebrate our most sacred holiday, by keeping our masks firmly affixed to our fat faces and not gathering together to watch a football game, a seemingly underreported story about pedophilia and child rape in Washington, DC should probably be discussed. I know you’d all prefer to responsibly and intermittently remove your muzzles, in order to stuff your mouth hole with genetically modified chicken wings, but if you think that’s more important than the systematic exploitation, rape, and torture of children by those in places of power, I have to tell you: you’re an asshole. I don’t mean to sound as though I’m speaking from a place of exception or pomposity. I know I’m an asshole. I ate my chicken wings last night. We all need a distraction from time to time, yet here I am; writing again. A former Republican Senate staffer was arrested on Friday on federal charges of child pornography. Law enforcement claims that Ruben Verastigui was part of an online group which had traded large numbers of illicit files and videos over the course of the last few months. According to chat logs obtained by investigators, Verastigui expressed his penchant for watching babies being raped. “Well like I said babies are some of my biggest turn-ons,” he allegedly wrote. “I have been wanting to see videos of guys hardcore raping a baby…when a baby screams it’s my favorite.”I know we would all like to think that the Q conspiracy claims of a secret cabal who ritualistically tortures children in order to extract adrenochrome are false. As someone who has followed the Q psy-op fairly closely for the last few months, it does seem that some of the claims are exaggerated and even fabricated, but isn’t that the very point of a well executed disinformation campaign? It’s easy to discredit reality when an alternative conspiracy is presented as the problem. Nobody wants to believe that the global power structure trades children as currency. Nobody wants to think that the very authorities, tasked with our general welfare, are responsible for such atrocities. I’m sure those peasants who lived in terror as their children were abducted during the rule of Countess Elizabeth Báthory felt the same way. Maybe if they would’ve had a football game to watch, while getting shit-faced and cheering with vaccinated healthcare workers, cardboard cutouts, and other fantastic distractions, they would’ve been less upset about the situation. Perhaps the Countess might have been able to avoid her eventual imprisonment in December 1610, but let’s face facts: the only reason she was imprisoned was because she had murdered so many peasants that there was a shortage of available workers needed to harvest crops and perform other tasks for the Hungarian nobility. Nobility hates it when unrestrained bloodlust inhibits productivity. In his last tweet before being arrested, Verastigui congratulated House Democrats and Republicans for removing freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from several congressional committees for spreading Q Anon “conspiracy theories”. https://twitter.com/rubenve…/status/1357578918040137730…As I move on from conspiratorial nonsense, in order to fully enjoy the corporate sponsored festivities on Super Bowl Sunday, I rest easy knowing that Verastigui’s sentiments are perfectly in line with the congressional majority in our nation’s Capitol. The bread is plentiful, and the circus hasn’t skipped a beat.

WASHINGTON, DC (ACTJ) — On January 20, dozens of Americans will descend on Washington, DC to celebrate the installation of President-elect Kamala Harris and Vice President-elect Joe Biden. The pair will take their oaths of ascension before an altar to Baphomet that was nearly destroyed by a mob of mouth breathing white supremacists, who burned the Capitol building to the ground on January 6th, on what will be remembered as the bloodiest day in US history. Construction of cages around the National Mall has been completed, and the bridges across the Potomac river will be closed once the sacrificial immigrant children are delivered to those cages, from temporary holding facilities along the US/Mexico border. Harris, Biden maybe, will officially become the 46th president with law enforcement on the highest alert possible, making sure BLM/Antifa activists can meet inauguration violence quotas, amidst a pandemic that killed nearly 90% of the US population.“I know two or three people in D.C. are interested in knowing where they can go to attend,” says Matilda Hill, senior spokesperson for Harris’ Presidential Installation Committee. “But we have to do our best to communicate that we want them really to stay home. If we were to invite a bunch of peasants, everyone would die from Covid, and people would wonder why the turnout was so small. It’s really about optics for us. Speaker Pelosi has made that abundantly clear.”With a mix of martial law and virtual events planned, here’s what we know about the 69th presidential inauguration so far.Who can attend this year?In a typical year, Congress would receive more than 200,000 tickets to distribute among its constituents, and non-ticketed folks would be encouraged to watch the events from the National Mall. But with this year’s restrictions in place, the inauguration will be reserved to members of Congress and a single child slave each. Commemorative vials of adrenochrome, mRNA vaccines, and photos from Hunter Biden’s laptop will be given to congressmembers to distribute instead. The expected audience of just over 1,000 guests will be similar to those seen at the Cremation of Care at Bohemian Grove, according to organizers. Approximately 25-30,000 military and law enforcement personnel will also be attending out of unprecedented support for the incoming regime. After running these numbers through dominion estimation software, CNN reports that over 80 million Americans will be in attendance. What are the scheduled events?First things first, “Amtrak Joe” has scrapped plans to take a train to Washington for his inauguration because it just doesn’t smell right this time, CNN reports. He will be flown in on a refurbished chinook helicopter, nicknamed the Lolita Presidential Express. The Joint Congressional Committee on Regime Change is hosting a memorial to remember and honor the bravery of Congress in remembering those lost to COVID-19 on Jan. 19, at 5:30 p.m. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool will be filled with the blood of hundreds of aborted fetuses, and Harris’, I mean Biden’s team is encouraging cities and towns across the U.S. to burn local businesses and ring church bells during the memorial.On January 20, the installation ceremony will go on at the steps in front of the west side of the charred remains of the Capitol building.While faking his second dose of the vaccine, Biden told reporters that he is “not afraid” to watch Harris take the oath of office outside.The theme for the swearing in is “Our People’s Republic: Forging the Decline of the Union,” and the event will be televised and livestreamed on the committee’s website, YouTube, and Netflix. Marina Abramović will deliver the invocation, Christine Fang will recite the pledge of allegiance and Lady Gaga will sing the National Anthem of the People’s Republic of China. That’s followed by a poetry reading by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, a strip tease by Jennifer Lopez, and Rev. Dr. Silvester Beaman will sacrifice a 4 year old child.Following the installation ceremony, Biden and Harris, along with First Lady Jill Biden and First Gentleman Doug Emhoff, will dine on the remains of the child on the east front of the Capitol. Biden and Harris will then head to a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Stupid Bastard at Arlington National Cemetery. Barack and Michael Obama, George W. and Laura Bush, and Bill and Hillary Clinton will attend the event, one of Biden’s first acts as commander-in-chief.Forgoing the traditional inaugural parade, the military will provide a presidential escort as disgraced former president Trump is ritualistically flogged and beaten along 15th Street to the White House. Organizers said in a statement that the event will provide “the American people and world with historic images of the President-elect proceeding to the White House as if he were in North Korea”A “Virtual Parade Across America” will be televised and live-streamed to highlight voices from people across the country, similar to the Democratic National Convention programming. Tom Hanks will host the 90-minute program live from his sex dungeon in Greece, with performances by artists including Ian David Karslake Watkins, Justin Timberlake, and Jon Bon Jovi.Harris’, I mean Biden’s team, I mean ActBlue, is also installing a field of more than 191,000 Chinese flags and 56 pillars of light across the National Mall from 3rd to 13th Street NW. The field of flags symbolizes the people who made the ceremonies possible and the PRC’s “commitment to an inclusive and safe transition.”