The same corporate outlets that most vocally profess concern over disinformation are the ones spreading it most casually. NBC's Assange report is the perfect case study.
“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
[Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs (also attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]
This is the original quote. Solzhenitsyn did NOT accept the lying and neither should we.
“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” – Attributed to Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
I am a Trump Republican. I subscribed to annual $50 subscription a few minutes ago.
In 2008, I believed there were WMD and Saddam Hussein was a threat to the US. In 2010 I thought Edward Snowden was a traitor for telling the US public that NSA was spying on us and Julian Assange had conspired to undermine US security and then....it became evident that the CIA-FBI-DoJ would an did conspired with the Clintons, the DNC and Corporates Media, broadcast, cable and print. including the NYTimes and WaPo to fabricate a crime of treason against the elected President with a totally fabricated "dossier".
I don't quite recall when I became aware of Glenn Groenewald, probably sometime in 2018 and i do recall Rush Limbaugh citing him with approval . I was surprised. Mr. Greenwald comes across as a decent and honest man as well as smart and well-informed.
Mr. Greenwald has been described as a "Leftist" although as I read him, I find there may be more common ground than I originally expected.. The US needs an honest policeman and Mr. Greenwald may be that providential policeman.
In any event, it does seem that Julian Assange is a political prisoner and the more that CNN and the Democrats lie about him, the more I am convinced that they fear what he knows and need to discredit and silence him.
All good to Glenn Greenwald and his family and we fear for the safety of Julian Assange.
Welcome aboard from a fellow conservative. I share your view of Glenn Greenwald. No doubt his ideology is much more liberal than my own, but that's rarely the focus of his writing here. He's more of the "speak truth to power" journalist, which unfortunately are way too few and far between these days.
Glenn Greenwald has been described as a "Leftist". I am not sure what that means. His defense of the Corbyn anti-mandate tells me he thinks workers are exploited. Some of this kind of thinking is found at The Conservative Tree House which is interested in workers and middle class.
The piece on Corbyn really illustrates how ideological labels, while convenient shorthand, sometimes don't really mean much. I agree with Corbyn on almost nothing, but I am totally in agreement with him concerning vaccine mandates.
I'm not a Trump Republican but fear the campaign to falsely discredit him as more dangerous than his bombastic rude behavior. I like much of Trumps policies but love his understanding of the corrupt bureaucracy. I don't like to use terms like Deep State or Swamp because they distract from the accuracy of our language by obscuring the actual role bureaucrats are playing in their campaign to exert ever increasing influence over our rights and obscuring their own failures and refusal to accept responsibility for their dismal results. The bureaucracy always acts in its own self interest, always! We got Trump because enough people recognized Hillary was a lier and demostrated her hatred for the middle class, we got Joe because the media hounded on Trumps erratic and offensive behavior while ignoring his accomplishment. I'm not suggesting other factors did not play a part in both elections but two offensive personalities played a big part in people voting for someone they didn't like much better.
I remember when the same Democrats and the same Media disparaged the charming and very nice Ronald Reagan as an "amiable dunce" and GWBush as stupid so...l don't think personality was a major factor. Trump was no different in 2020 than 2016 when he won. Hillary is a liar and a shameless opportunist.
As a Libertarian I can say my own feelings about Reagan and Bush were not positive in terms of honesty and also in Bush’s case results. Trump is an extreme case of not just inflated ego but offensive and rude behavior even greater than Hillary’s. I find it hard to believe personality is not a major factor in credulous voters decisions. You are correct Trumps behavior did not change which is why I believe so many voters find him repulsive. I can give it and take it so Trumps behavior did not affect my support nearly as much as the dangerous media criminal behavior.
I did not and do not find Trump's manners and behavior offensive in the least. The issue is honesty and a sense the person cares about me and others. Trump is empathetic and Hillary is cold and heartless.
I agree to a point. As an example when Trump responded to Debbie Dingles comment about her husband looking down and suggested he might be looking up was uncalled for and unnecessarily rude. You can be honestly rude. Overall I agree with you but Trump goes too far too often for many to overlook and many in the media to exploit
We are all rude and insensitive from time to time. Ms. Dingell is quite rude herself. If rudeness were a disqualifier, no one could qualify. I would hope we would apply a single standard to all. Unfortunately, there is a Democratic Double Standard; what is acceptable for a Democrat to say or do is NOT acceptable for a Republican. I don't recall the Media saying it was rude when Pres. Obama "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In fact these derogatory remarks were quite insulting, more than rude, they were condescending and dismissive. "Rudeness" did not become an issue until Media made it one in order to attack Pres. Trump. It would be more credible if there were NOT a Double Standard; one for Democrats and one for Pres. Trump. I would add that Candidate Clinton's basket of deplorables" comment was equally insulting and "rude'. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
She said the other half of Trump’s supporters “feel that the government has let them down” and are “desperate for change.”
“Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well,” she said.
Trump dished it back, and the progs and media found that to be beyond the pale.
Regular people all over the country cheered, because here was someone, a crude and loud outsider, who finally wasn't enabling the fake politicians and their fake "gravitas".
Who finally called their oh-so-evolved, oh- so-superior unassailability on the mat.
He exposed their corruption and their contempt for Americans.
He exposed their hubris.
He played and continues to play offense, and the elites can't stand that.
To them he is a prole and all proles must defer to the elites.
I love that he clapped back.
He opened my eyes to the corruption of our gov't when no other lifer politician with all their "gravitas" did.
The only thing that separated Trump from the establishment hacks was a pile of war crimes in a rolling horrorscape across the globe. If he had more time and some cooperation he'd be just as bad, I'm sure.
I am like you. It can be hard to admit that we were wrong in the past, but admitting our mistakes is liberating, there is no shame in making mistakes; we usually make them because we had incomplete information, inaccurate information, or we were blinded by our prejudices and biases.
A republic with a written Constitution setting up a government of limited and enumerated powers, strong federation of autonomous states, a balance of powers is brilliantly designed to control power. Since Woodrow Wilson, the Constitutional view of limited government of enumerated powers has been discredited in favor a very powerful Administrative Bureaucracy independent of the electorate.
Unfortunately, it seems clear that the U.S. government (along with the Brits) don't just want to discredit and silence Julian Assange - they want to kill him, and they are likely to succeed.
If Assange ends up in a federal lockup awaiting trial, what are the chances that he will pull an Epstein and die from an apparent suicide before trial?
I avoid defining myself in terms of label, team or tribe, as this is a sure way to outsource one's critical thinking.
Best thing I ever did, in terms of intellectual honesty, was to stop being a conservative. Because I no longer felt duty-bound to defend the indefensible, because my team. If I had been a leftist, a liberal, whatever you want to call it, it would have been the same, except I would have been defending a different set of indefensible things.
That's because Glenn points out hypocrisy and corruption,and right now, that implicates people that they don't like. The people they do like can't be corrupt or hypocritical, because they do not have power.
Were Glenn to skewer their sacred cows, he'd have a different set of fans.
It really is stunning how Democratic establishmentarians readily engage in the very behavior they claim motivates their outrage:
- Spreading fake news
- Ignoring science and the scientific method
- Blindly accepting authoritarian talking points
- Backing authoritarians and authoritarianism
- Dividing the population through rancid judgment and assumption
- Advocating for extremely harsh responses to basic human behavior
The list goes on.
The good news is that I think the number of dedicated partisans in the US has probably dropped to under 30%. Unfortunately, we'll never know that because...well...see above.
And this is what the kids and others demanding censorship simply do not grok. Once the mechanisms of censorship are in place, the day will come when it is not "Jack" deciding if their post will stand. It will be !TRUMP! LOL
I remember warning about the Patriot Act that the Establishment rushed upon us after 9/11. I am sure it had been sitting there all along, waiting for the moment. Far too many so-called civil libertarians jumped on the bandwagon and now we are stuck with it.
I write now not just because of this article but because of Glenn's overall body of journalism. So that everyone knows, I am a 76 year old retired, conservative trial lawyer from Missisissipi, who first learned of Glenn while he worked for The Guardian revealing the Edward Snowden revealations. Since then, I followed him, subscribed to The Intercept, now to his substack. It is my belief that when I go to my grave Glenn Greenwald will be the best investigative journalist in my lifetime. It is my sincerest belief that Glenn only reports true facts and not the BS we get from mass media. I am eternally grateful to him for reporting the truth and nothing but the truth
I share Mack B's assessment of Glenn and have grown to trust Glenn more than 99% of so called journalists today. More importantly I trust that if he is wrong he will not hide from it but apologize and correct his mistake.
More often than not, the real motivation behind "we gotta censor because National Security, because Muh Democracy, whatever" is because the truth would prove highly embarrassing to people and institutions of influence and authority.
I should also have mentioned that censorship is a sure sign of an oligarchy, a society in decline.
For how can we hold The Great And Good to account, if they are not to be criticized and the evidence of their incompetence is safely buried? The Soviet Union provides a prime example of this.
Or, for that matter, the Fall of Kabul. Anyone who was even sort of paying attention over the last ten years should have known that the puppet regime was corrupt, brutal and grossly incompetent, that the people of Afghanistan by and large hated it, that the regime would surely collapse the minute it was not propped up with thousands of American bayonets and constant infusions of hundreds of millions of dollars per day.
Yet, to believe the MSM, the Taliban just dropped out of the sky, that nobody could have seen what was coming, that the puppet we installed was a wise and incorruptible technocrat, that the warlords were on our side, that the corner had turned so many times that you'd think we were watching NASCAR.
Sadly, change was happening there. Propping up corruption, if affordable, awaiting the change seemed to be policy - until it wasn't. Someday we need a deep drive into that reality.
A bit of honesty from government like Assange was creating would have been helpful. Those in charge knew quite well the ground reality yet told us it was well managed.
The people Glenn is criticizing are not “the left.”
They’re aristocrats and authoritarians whose idea of heaven is a Dick Cheney spy state with unlimited censorship and a press corps of obedient snitches
Yeah, when they get finished with the COVID war, after the color revolutions and lockdowns they'll probably start rounding up dissidents.
I have a friend whose parents are first generation immigrants from cambodia and who escaped the Kmher Rouge who are deeply troubled by what they're seeing in the last five years. "We just got here 15 years ago and it's all happening the same way as in Cambodia! Why did we come here?"
People like "JDFree" have still tough time grasping the reality... -- still living in murderous fog of Allen and John Dulles brothers' hate of anything that can be remotely progressive
That you have somehow become convinced that it is "the left" that is in favor of prosecuting Assange shows how easily you yourself are fooled by your "team" of propagandists. What does the ACLU think about this? The EFF? The DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)?
You have been fooled into thinking that the mainstream media behemoths of the Washington Post, New York Times, Joe Biden and the CIA represent "the left." Who led you to believe this?
Interesting I've been fooled by a media apparatus that I'm not really exposed to. I do run in leftist circles of various types, and many have been duped by russiagate, Assange, covid issues, etc. The left is mostly dead.
Wikipedia defines Left-Wing politics like this: It was first used during the French Revolution in 1789. Left stands for equal society and wants government to drive it; it wants increased regulation on businesses and higher taxes on the rich.
Except for the fact that Democrats demand "equity" and have no interest in equality, it certainly sounds like the left is alive in California, Washington, DC, and NYC.
You either didn’t read the Wikipedia entry or didn’t understand it.
Left-libertarians, libertarian socialists and anarchists believe in a decentralized economy run by trade unions, workers' councils, cooperatives, municipalities and communes, opposing both state and private control of the economy, preferring social ownership and local control in which a nation of decentralized regions is united in a confederation.
Actually, I posted the Wikipedia entry. Please explain why the Democraps don't want increased regulation on businesses and higher taxes on the rich. Your statement is so removed from reality as to be laughable. Have you ever heard of the National Socialist German Workers' Party or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
Here comes a little more education for you. This is a definition of what an anarchist is:
anarchist
[ˈanərkəst]
NOUN
a person who advocates or promotes anarchism or anarchy.
My quote is literally from the wikipedia entry. Obviously, you didn't read it. Or maybe you aren't capable of understanding it, which is pretty possibly given the level of brainwashing you exhibit on other topics.
Somehow in your muddled brain you have decided that "Leftism" "The Democratic Party" "Nazism" and "The USSR" occupy the same space. And you accept unquestionably the mainstream media definition of these things, along with your spoon fed pro-capitalist definition of "anarchism." Good luck learning to think for yourself! I don't know how you stumbled onto Greenwald, at least its a start.
I'm hard pressed to think of a more useless, vapid moment than when someone says something like, "This is a definition of what an anarchist is..." and then appear to quote from the fucking dictionary.
Whatever you think of the philosophy, at least have the self awareness to know your audience even a little bit if you intend to seriously engage with them. Because when you don't, this is what it sounds like in our heads:
You: "This is what an authority says about you. Checkmate!"
I don't consider liberal Democrats "leftists" and this might be where we differ. I took a political poll recently and it said I was part of the disaffected left, which is about 7-8% of the population. I don't think that is too far off.
We do sort of lack leadership at the moment, though I personally like Tliab and Omar, mostly for being willing to stick it to Israel. Substack gives me hope. I don't think the left is dead, but slumbering.
Most Canadians that I know actually and fervently believe all the lies about Assange, that he is a rapist, that he works for the Russians, and of course, he abuses cats.
CBC, our national broadcaster has gone from supporting Assange, to lying about him, to where they are today, completely ignoring his plight.
Before I was banned from Twitter I would ask them several times a week on Twitter, for years, "Why do you not report fairly on Julian Assange? ", and on like that. Of course they never replied to me.
Brainwashing is not too strong a word to describe what the media can do to most people.
You were not alone - literally dozens of "news" outlets ran with that story simply because it was a negative trump story. So in fact, it's a great illustration of not just how fake our news is, but how incompetent many so called journalists are.
Emails Expose Fauci, Collins Collusion To 'Smear' Anti-Lockdown Scientists
Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,
From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the Covid-19 lockdowns. Just four days later, Dr. Francis Collins, the retiring Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), would call the three of the scientists in attendance “fringe epidemiologists,” in a directive he sent to Anthony Fauci and other senior staff of his agency.
They were “fringe epidemiologists” because they had the temerity to ask whether the lockdowns of 2020 were effective. Those three, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford were simply doing what any good scientist would do: They were following the evidence.
They wrote the Great Barrington Declaration [GBD] as they parted company at AIER, posting it for all to see.
So why was Dr. Collins so intent on impugning these three scientists? It’s hard to know exactly, mostly because any scientist worth his salt should have been happy to see further research being done. That is, after all, how ignorance is replaced by knowledge. But Collins was clearly in no mood to replace his own possible ignorance with any kind of knowledge. He was pretty sure he knew all he had to know; and this is one of the most dangerous positions a scientist can take.
In an email obtained by AIER through a Freedom of Information Act request, Collins told Anthony Fauci, CCing Lawrence Tabak, Deputy Ethics Counselor at NIH, that he wanted “a quick and devastating published take down” of the Great Barrington Declaration’s premises.
Yeah, I couldn't watch either. Joe Scarborough and some two-time-asshole bleating the Pentagon's fake stories to incite fear and more war crimes to happen.
The grand absurdity of all this is that while those in the media like Scarborough claim Assange has blood on his hands, and has put the interest of America, and it's military personnel in danger, the military industrial complex, as Ike defined them, are the ones who have the blood of millions of lives on their souls, and not for any honorable cause. They have engaged in illegal wars based on lies to further the interests of the US with no concern for the loss of lives which number in the millions and millions, or the destruction of whole countries. The CIA from it's inception after WWII until the turn of the 21st century toppled governments corrupted governments and their death toll is over six million. Assange is just their scapegoat. Joe Scarborough once referred to Trump as a ‘Fat Bastard’, a ‘Demagogue,’ ‘Mussolini-like’, well Scar... isn't fat, but he is a demagogue and will lie his way into millions, and popularity, by inciting people's emotions and prejudices with claims, but never factual information.
Sterling, per usual. Why I subscribe. One observation on the end commentary: MSNBC lies about Assange because that’s what its audience wants to hear, that’s true. But it also lies about Assange, and in the way that it lies about him, because its a lickspittle and is doing its part to prevent actual journalism from existing lest it comprise a threat to the corporate and government power it serves. It has a political agenda, too, in other words, whereas if one only attributes its motives to crowd-pleasing impulses (and by extension, financial interests), this hugely important propaganda function is missed even though it is more fundamental. Remember, MSNBC removed Donahue from the air when he became
critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, despite the fact that his ratings were high.
I can see what they are doing. Joe Biden said in order to convict Julian Assange they would have to prove he worked with Chelsea Manning to crack a code of a password of a government computer. It was already established that Manning had security clearance to download all the classified documents. Assange was trying to help her hide her identity, which is routinely done by journalists to protect their sources. Joe and Claire are appealing to the court of public opinion to bolster the false allegation Joe Biden claims he needs to prosecute Julian Assange successfully. False charges, false and misleading information fed to the public to cheerlead a false trial with a falsely decided conviction. False False False! Lies Lies Lies!
Excellent work by Glen Greenwald. Share this with everyone.
Could you get all the Substackers to make the Assange case the # 1 concern until he is freed?? If it is illegal to write about illegal government actions then everything else is pointless. Like worrying about the type-face on the Captain's Table menu while the ship hits an iceberg.
“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
[Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs (also attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]
What a clear statement of our willingness to accept dangerous threats to our long term liberty in order to avoid short term conflict.
This is the original quote. Solzhenitsyn did NOT accept the lying and neither should we.
“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” – Attributed to Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
How do we know Solzhenitsyn wasn't lying?
I am a Trump Republican. I subscribed to annual $50 subscription a few minutes ago.
In 2008, I believed there were WMD and Saddam Hussein was a threat to the US. In 2010 I thought Edward Snowden was a traitor for telling the US public that NSA was spying on us and Julian Assange had conspired to undermine US security and then....it became evident that the CIA-FBI-DoJ would an did conspired with the Clintons, the DNC and Corporates Media, broadcast, cable and print. including the NYTimes and WaPo to fabricate a crime of treason against the elected President with a totally fabricated "dossier".
I don't quite recall when I became aware of Glenn Groenewald, probably sometime in 2018 and i do recall Rush Limbaugh citing him with approval . I was surprised. Mr. Greenwald comes across as a decent and honest man as well as smart and well-informed.
Mr. Greenwald has been described as a "Leftist" although as I read him, I find there may be more common ground than I originally expected.. The US needs an honest policeman and Mr. Greenwald may be that providential policeman.
In any event, it does seem that Julian Assange is a political prisoner and the more that CNN and the Democrats lie about him, the more I am convinced that they fear what he knows and need to discredit and silence him.
All good to Glenn Greenwald and his family and we fear for the safety of Julian Assange.
Welcome aboard from a fellow conservative. I share your view of Glenn Greenwald. No doubt his ideology is much more liberal than my own, but that's rarely the focus of his writing here. He's more of the "speak truth to power" journalist, which unfortunately are way too few and far between these days.
Glenn Greenwald has been described as a "Leftist". I am not sure what that means. His defense of the Corbyn anti-mandate tells me he thinks workers are exploited. Some of this kind of thinking is found at The Conservative Tree House which is interested in workers and middle class.
The piece on Corbyn really illustrates how ideological labels, while convenient shorthand, sometimes don't really mean much. I agree with Corbyn on almost nothing, but I am totally in agreement with him concerning vaccine mandates.
I'm not a Trump Republican but fear the campaign to falsely discredit him as more dangerous than his bombastic rude behavior. I like much of Trumps policies but love his understanding of the corrupt bureaucracy. I don't like to use terms like Deep State or Swamp because they distract from the accuracy of our language by obscuring the actual role bureaucrats are playing in their campaign to exert ever increasing influence over our rights and obscuring their own failures and refusal to accept responsibility for their dismal results. The bureaucracy always acts in its own self interest, always! We got Trump because enough people recognized Hillary was a lier and demostrated her hatred for the middle class, we got Joe because the media hounded on Trumps erratic and offensive behavior while ignoring his accomplishment. I'm not suggesting other factors did not play a part in both elections but two offensive personalities played a big part in people voting for someone they didn't like much better.
I remember when the same Democrats and the same Media disparaged the charming and very nice Ronald Reagan as an "amiable dunce" and GWBush as stupid so...l don't think personality was a major factor. Trump was no different in 2020 than 2016 when he won. Hillary is a liar and a shameless opportunist.
As a Libertarian I can say my own feelings about Reagan and Bush were not positive in terms of honesty and also in Bush’s case results. Trump is an extreme case of not just inflated ego but offensive and rude behavior even greater than Hillary’s. I find it hard to believe personality is not a major factor in credulous voters decisions. You are correct Trumps behavior did not change which is why I believe so many voters find him repulsive. I can give it and take it so Trumps behavior did not affect my support nearly as much as the dangerous media criminal behavior.
I did not and do not find Trump's manners and behavior offensive in the least. The issue is honesty and a sense the person cares about me and others. Trump is empathetic and Hillary is cold and heartless.
I agree to a point. As an example when Trump responded to Debbie Dingles comment about her husband looking down and suggested he might be looking up was uncalled for and unnecessarily rude. You can be honestly rude. Overall I agree with you but Trump goes too far too often for many to overlook and many in the media to exploit
We are all rude and insensitive from time to time. Ms. Dingell is quite rude herself. If rudeness were a disqualifier, no one could qualify. I would hope we would apply a single standard to all. Unfortunately, there is a Democratic Double Standard; what is acceptable for a Democrat to say or do is NOT acceptable for a Republican. I don't recall the Media saying it was rude when Pres. Obama "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." In fact these derogatory remarks were quite insulting, more than rude, they were condescending and dismissive. "Rudeness" did not become an issue until Media made it one in order to attack Pres. Trump. It would be more credible if there were NOT a Double Standard; one for Democrats and one for Pres. Trump. I would add that Candidate Clinton's basket of deplorables" comment was equally insulting and "rude'. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
She said the other half of Trump’s supporters “feel that the government has let them down” and are “desperate for change.”
“Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well,” she said.
There is a law of the universe:
"Don't dish it out too if you can't take it."
Trump dished it back, and the progs and media found that to be beyond the pale.
Regular people all over the country cheered, because here was someone, a crude and loud outsider, who finally wasn't enabling the fake politicians and their fake "gravitas".
Who finally called their oh-so-evolved, oh- so-superior unassailability on the mat.
He exposed their corruption and their contempt for Americans.
He exposed their hubris.
He played and continues to play offense, and the elites can't stand that.
To them he is a prole and all proles must defer to the elites.
I love that he clapped back.
He opened my eyes to the corruption of our gov't when no other lifer politician with all their "gravitas" did.
He played offense when no one else would.
I wish more had the balls to do that.
Relentlessly.
Mercilessly.
The only thing that separated Trump from the establishment hacks was a pile of war crimes in a rolling horrorscape across the globe. If he had more time and some cooperation he'd be just as bad, I'm sure.
Cunts, the lot of them.
Pff. Trump is a cunt, the Republican establishment are cunts and the DNC are soppy cunts, too.
Who'd give any of them the time of day?
I use the term “administrative state” for now, but I may need to find a less distracting term. I don’t want my words to distract from my arguments.
I am like you. It can be hard to admit that we were wrong in the past, but admitting our mistakes is liberating, there is no shame in making mistakes; we usually make them because we had incomplete information, inaccurate information, or we were blinded by our prejudices and biases.
Good that you got wise.
Welcome here from the anti-authoritarian left. We should work together in these dark times for Liberty.
A republic with a written Constitution setting up a government of limited and enumerated powers, strong federation of autonomous states, a balance of powers is brilliantly designed to control power. Since Woodrow Wilson, the Constitutional view of limited government of enumerated powers has been discredited in favor a very powerful Administrative Bureaucracy independent of the electorate.
Unfortunately, it seems clear that the U.S. government (along with the Brits) don't just want to discredit and silence Julian Assange - they want to kill him, and they are likely to succeed.
If Assange ends up in a federal lockup awaiting trial, what are the chances that he will pull an Epstein and die from an apparent suicide before trial?
I avoid defining myself in terms of label, team or tribe, as this is a sure way to outsource one's critical thinking.
Best thing I ever did, in terms of intellectual honesty, was to stop being a conservative. Because I no longer felt duty-bound to defend the indefensible, because my team. If I had been a leftist, a liberal, whatever you want to call it, it would have been the same, except I would have been defending a different set of indefensible things.
"I am a Trump Republican" - Yeah, like 90% of Glenn's followers now, unfortunately.
Oh, so you find the idea of people meeting and getting things to change across party and ideological lines to be repugnant?
How about you pull your head out of Nancy Pelosi's old clam and have a look around you?
The place is going to shit and you're busying yourself reinforcing tribal cunt-sockery.
It's time to stop.
Jesus, Glenn's comment section is a cesspool
So is your head.
That's because Glenn points out hypocrisy and corruption,and right now, that implicates people that they don't like. The people they do like can't be corrupt or hypocritical, because they do not have power.
Were Glenn to skewer their sacred cows, he'd have a different set of fans.
It really is stunning how Democratic establishmentarians readily engage in the very behavior they claim motivates their outrage:
- Spreading fake news
- Ignoring science and the scientific method
- Blindly accepting authoritarian talking points
- Backing authoritarians and authoritarianism
- Dividing the population through rancid judgment and assumption
- Advocating for extremely harsh responses to basic human behavior
The list goes on.
The good news is that I think the number of dedicated partisans in the US has probably dropped to under 30%. Unfortunately, we'll never know that because...well...see above.
Let's not kids ourselves. The Team R establishment would do much the same thing, except that they do not have the whip hand.
And this is what the kids and others demanding censorship simply do not grok. Once the mechanisms of censorship are in place, the day will come when it is not "Jack" deciding if their post will stand. It will be !TRUMP! LOL
They literally demanded a ban on hate speech WHILE TRUMP WOULD DECIDE WHAT HATE SPEECH WAS!
Forward thinking is not common on the left.
Sooo…Saint Donald was going to decide?
The Trump administration would decide. And if you think Trump would pass on a chance to ban the speech of his opponents.........
I remember warning about the Patriot Act that the Establishment rushed upon us after 9/11. I am sure it had been sitting there all along, waiting for the moment. Far too many so-called civil libertarians jumped on the bandwagon and now we are stuck with it.
Note how hard Obama fought to ensure that the so-called "Patriot Act" was renewed and expanded. Obama in fact fought hard for things he really wanted.
And yet, still the Obama Cult defends him.
They are all part of the systemic corruption of American political and bureaucratic power
Leftists project. They always, only, ever project.
Whenever they start complaining about something new, what they are actually saying is that they just did that thing.
I write now not just because of this article but because of Glenn's overall body of journalism. So that everyone knows, I am a 76 year old retired, conservative trial lawyer from Missisissipi, who first learned of Glenn while he worked for The Guardian revealing the Edward Snowden revealations. Since then, I followed him, subscribed to The Intercept, now to his substack. It is my belief that when I go to my grave Glenn Greenwald will be the best investigative journalist in my lifetime. It is my sincerest belief that Glenn only reports true facts and not the BS we get from mass media. I am eternally grateful to him for reporting the truth and nothing but the truth
I share Mack B's assessment of Glenn and have grown to trust Glenn more than 99% of so called journalists today. More importantly I trust that if he is wrong he will not hide from it but apologize and correct his mistake.
I surely appreciate your comment...Have a wonderful Christmas
More often than not, the real motivation behind "we gotta censor because National Security, because Muh Democracy, whatever" is because the truth would prove highly embarrassing to people and institutions of influence and authority.
I should also have mentioned that censorship is a sure sign of an oligarchy, a society in decline.
For how can we hold The Great And Good to account, if they are not to be criticized and the evidence of their incompetence is safely buried? The Soviet Union provides a prime example of this.
Or, for that matter, the Fall of Kabul. Anyone who was even sort of paying attention over the last ten years should have known that the puppet regime was corrupt, brutal and grossly incompetent, that the people of Afghanistan by and large hated it, that the regime would surely collapse the minute it was not propped up with thousands of American bayonets and constant infusions of hundreds of millions of dollars per day.
Yet, to believe the MSM, the Taliban just dropped out of the sky, that nobody could have seen what was coming, that the puppet we installed was a wise and incorruptible technocrat, that the warlords were on our side, that the corner had turned so many times that you'd think we were watching NASCAR.
Sadly, change was happening there. Propping up corruption, if affordable, awaiting the change seemed to be policy - until it wasn't. Someday we need a deep drive into that reality.
A bit of honesty from government like Assange was creating would have been helpful. Those in charge knew quite well the ground reality yet told us it was well managed.
Punishing embarrassment is their religion
The Assange case provides one of the most lucid examples of how morally bereft the so-called left has become. Pathetic.
The people Glenn is criticizing are not “the left.”
They’re aristocrats and authoritarians whose idea of heaven is a Dick Cheney spy state with unlimited censorship and a press corps of obedient snitches
Yes, they're more "far-right" than W Bush's fanbois.
They are the only thing the Left has ever been or ever will be.
Poor JDFree - you are still sooo lost....
Both DNC and GOP oligarchs make identical right-wing War parties -- happily grunting together while feeding at the same arms industry troughs.
Lose all hope you who still try to idealize Biden administration; DNC-CIA War party oligarchs might even find a pretext to postpone 2024 elections.
Yeah, when they get finished with the COVID war, after the color revolutions and lockdowns they'll probably start rounding up dissidents.
I have a friend whose parents are first generation immigrants from cambodia and who escaped the Kmher Rouge who are deeply troubled by what they're seeing in the last five years. "We just got here 15 years ago and it's all happening the same way as in Cambodia! Why did we come here?"
People like "JDFree" have still tough time grasping the reality... -- still living in murderous fog of Allen and John Dulles brothers' hate of anything that can be remotely progressive
Aren't anarchists part of the Left?
Not necessarily. Anarchocapitalists are (maybe?) on the right. See the book 8 Ways to Run the Country.
Trump could have pardoned both Assang and Edward Snowden, and owned the Democrats for a generation. He pardoned right wing thugs and crooks instead.
That you have somehow become convinced that it is "the left" that is in favor of prosecuting Assange shows how easily you yourself are fooled by your "team" of propagandists. What does the ACLU think about this? The EFF? The DSA (Democratic Socialists of America)?
You have been fooled into thinking that the mainstream media behemoths of the Washington Post, New York Times, Joe Biden and the CIA represent "the left." Who led you to believe this?
Interesting I've been fooled by a media apparatus that I'm not really exposed to. I do run in leftist circles of various types, and many have been duped by russiagate, Assange, covid issues, etc. The left is mostly dead.
Russia was certainly trying to influence American politics and probably has for at least 70 years. But that’s probably not what you are talking about.
Wikipedia defines Left-Wing politics like this: It was first used during the French Revolution in 1789. Left stands for equal society and wants government to drive it; it wants increased regulation on businesses and higher taxes on the rich.
Except for the fact that Democrats demand "equity" and have no interest in equality, it certainly sounds like the left is alive in California, Washington, DC, and NYC.
You either didn’t read the Wikipedia entry or didn’t understand it.
Left-libertarians, libertarian socialists and anarchists believe in a decentralized economy run by trade unions, workers' councils, cooperatives, municipalities and communes, opposing both state and private control of the economy, preferring social ownership and local control in which a nation of decentralized regions is united in a confederation.
Actually, I posted the Wikipedia entry. Please explain why the Democraps don't want increased regulation on businesses and higher taxes on the rich. Your statement is so removed from reality as to be laughable. Have you ever heard of the National Socialist German Workers' Party or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
Here comes a little more education for you. This is a definition of what an anarchist is:
anarchist
[ˈanərkəst]
NOUN
a person who advocates or promotes anarchism or anarchy.
synonyms:
nihilist · insurgent · agitator · subversive · guerrilla · terrorist · [more]
My quote is literally from the wikipedia entry. Obviously, you didn't read it. Or maybe you aren't capable of understanding it, which is pretty possibly given the level of brainwashing you exhibit on other topics.
Somehow in your muddled brain you have decided that "Leftism" "The Democratic Party" "Nazism" and "The USSR" occupy the same space. And you accept unquestionably the mainstream media definition of these things, along with your spoon fed pro-capitalist definition of "anarchism." Good luck learning to think for yourself! I don't know how you stumbled onto Greenwald, at least its a start.
I'm hard pressed to think of a more useless, vapid moment than when someone says something like, "This is a definition of what an anarchist is..." and then appear to quote from the fucking dictionary.
Whatever you think of the philosophy, at least have the self awareness to know your audience even a little bit if you intend to seriously engage with them. Because when you don't, this is what it sounds like in our heads:
You: "This is what an authority says about you. Checkmate!"
Me: "OK, retard."
Just... c'mon, man.
I don't consider liberal Democrats "leftists" and this might be where we differ. I took a political poll recently and it said I was part of the disaffected left, which is about 7-8% of the population. I don't think that is too far off.
We do sort of lack leadership at the moment, though I personally like Tliab and Omar, mostly for being willing to stick it to Israel. Substack gives me hope. I don't think the left is dead, but slumbering.
https://international.dsausa.org/statements/dsa-ic-opposes-extradition-of-julian-assange-condemns-cia-plots-against-the-australian-journalist/
Most Canadians that I know actually and fervently believe all the lies about Assange, that he is a rapist, that he works for the Russians, and of course, he abuses cats.
CBC, our national broadcaster has gone from supporting Assange, to lying about him, to where they are today, completely ignoring his plight.
Before I was banned from Twitter I would ask them several times a week on Twitter, for years, "Why do you not report fairly on Julian Assange? ", and on like that. Of course they never replied to me.
Brainwashing is not too strong a word to describe what the media can do to most people.
When Barack Obama openly endorsed Justin Trudeau…https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/obama-endorses-trudeau-canadian-election-80060902, and Trump endorsed Scheer: https://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/trump-scheer-endorsement/
The difference? Scheer has actually criticized Trump, whereas our Liberals still fawn over American Democrats.
Of course Obama loves his boy! (How's that for "interference"?)
Your other link is from a satire outlet. Sorry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burrard_Street_Journal
Oh…HELL! Didn’t look deep enough. However… https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trumps-middle-east-envoy-welcomes-scheers-plan-to-move-canadian/
You were not alone - literally dozens of "news" outlets ran with that story simply because it was a negative trump story. So in fact, it's a great illustration of not just how fake our news is, but how incompetent many so called journalists are.
Emails Expose Fauci, Collins Collusion To 'Smear' Anti-Lockdown Scientists
Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,
From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the Covid-19 lockdowns. Just four days later, Dr. Francis Collins, the retiring Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), would call the three of the scientists in attendance “fringe epidemiologists,” in a directive he sent to Anthony Fauci and other senior staff of his agency.
They were “fringe epidemiologists” because they had the temerity to ask whether the lockdowns of 2020 were effective. Those three, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford were simply doing what any good scientist would do: They were following the evidence.
They wrote the Great Barrington Declaration [GBD] as they parted company at AIER, posting it for all to see.
So why was Dr. Collins so intent on impugning these three scientists? It’s hard to know exactly, mostly because any scientist worth his salt should have been happy to see further research being done. That is, after all, how ignorance is replaced by knowledge. But Collins was clearly in no mood to replace his own possible ignorance with any kind of knowledge. He was pretty sure he knew all he had to know; and this is one of the most dangerous positions a scientist can take.
In an email obtained by AIER through a Freedom of Information Act request, Collins told Anthony Fauci, CCing Lawrence Tabak, Deputy Ethics Counselor at NIH, that he wanted “a quick and devastating published take down” of the Great Barrington Declaration’s premises.
Entire article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/emails-expose-fauci-collins-collusion-smear-anti-lockdown-scientists
\\][//
Seven minutes into the video and I'm already at, "Fuck these fucking cunts."
Yeah, I couldn't watch either. Joe Scarborough and some two-time-asshole bleating the Pentagon's fake stories to incite fear and more war crimes to happen.
The grand absurdity of all this is that while those in the media like Scarborough claim Assange has blood on his hands, and has put the interest of America, and it's military personnel in danger, the military industrial complex, as Ike defined them, are the ones who have the blood of millions of lives on their souls, and not for any honorable cause. They have engaged in illegal wars based on lies to further the interests of the US with no concern for the loss of lives which number in the millions and millions, or the destruction of whole countries. The CIA from it's inception after WWII until the turn of the 21st century toppled governments corrupted governments and their death toll is over six million. Assange is just their scapegoat. Joe Scarborough once referred to Trump as a ‘Fat Bastard’, a ‘Demagogue,’ ‘Mussolini-like’, well Scar... isn't fat, but he is a demagogue and will lie his way into millions, and popularity, by inciting people's emotions and prejudices with claims, but never factual information.
Scarborough doesn't give a goddamn fuck about anyone in uniform. Their sanctimony was pathetic.
Next time there's a war, send both of these fucks via drone. They can ride the missile.
Amen to that.
On "Disinformation": Nobody can speak truth to power if power decides the truth.
Of course media wants to censor the internet.
If my ass was getting ripped apart across virtually its entire breadth, I'd be irritated too.
Sterling, per usual. Why I subscribe. One observation on the end commentary: MSNBC lies about Assange because that’s what its audience wants to hear, that’s true. But it also lies about Assange, and in the way that it lies about him, because its a lickspittle and is doing its part to prevent actual journalism from existing lest it comprise a threat to the corporate and government power it serves. It has a political agenda, too, in other words, whereas if one only attributes its motives to crowd-pleasing impulses (and by extension, financial interests), this hugely important propaganda function is missed even though it is more fundamental. Remember, MSNBC removed Donahue from the air when he became
critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, despite the fact that his ratings were high.
I can see what they are doing. Joe Biden said in order to convict Julian Assange they would have to prove he worked with Chelsea Manning to crack a code of a password of a government computer. It was already established that Manning had security clearance to download all the classified documents. Assange was trying to help her hide her identity, which is routinely done by journalists to protect their sources. Joe and Claire are appealing to the court of public opinion to bolster the false allegation Joe Biden claims he needs to prosecute Julian Assange successfully. False charges, false and misleading information fed to the public to cheerlead a false trial with a falsely decided conviction. False False False! Lies Lies Lies!
Excellent work by Glen Greenwald. Share this with everyone.
Fake news has always been the norm.
You know what I am tonkin a boat.
There was a previous boat, named the "Maine", do you remember :?>
Could you get all the Substackers to make the Assange case the # 1 concern until he is freed?? If it is illegal to write about illegal government actions then everything else is pointless. Like worrying about the type-face on the Captain's Table menu while the ship hits an iceberg.
how about supporting James o'Keefe of Project Veritas as well.