From the Cold War to the War on Terror: the harms from authoritarian "solutions" are often greater than the threats they are ostensibly designed to combat.
American democracy is resilient. Trump never represented any real threat - to democracy.
For anyone to actually become a dictator in the US, would require cooperation of the cabinet, military, police - a whole range of people - just for starters, nearly all of whom are far more principled than to let any such thing come close to happening.
The far bigger danger, is to put excessive trust into an establishment-approved President, an establishment whom are totally loyal to the oligarch class, including the incoming cabinet, which contains former executives of the very tech companies who are now normalizing censorship, in the name of protecting against alleged "insurrections", which stand exactly zero chance of success.
The bigger risk by far, is the steady erosion of our civil liberties, in response to overblown "existential threats", whether foreign or domestic, making any legitimate political challenge to the status quo, no longer possible.
And of course, all done opaquely, behind closed doors, with laws and policies written by lobbyists, neocons, and neoliberals. All of whom, who would have no qualms at all about giving a president dictatorial powers - so long as it is the "right" president.
Cancelling, false claims of racism, arbitrary censorship by tech oligarchs, expanding powers against terrorists - combined with the ability to label one a terrorist simply by accusation - these are far more likely to lead to totalitarianism, than a single, incompetent demagogue, who has arrayed against him, the full might of our institutions, oligarchy, big tech, Wall Street, and half of the nations voters - and whom would indeed have nearly the entirety of the nation's voters against him, should he actually do anything remotely dictatorial.
The whole narrative of Trump as potential dictator, was always ridiculous hyperbole, but will continue to be used - likely to further erode our norms and rights, in the name of "protecting" us.
Regarding "existential threats" ---- “Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China….. Almost a century of unimaginable suffering all across the globe. Defund US military terrorism
Although today's Socialism mantra used by my fellow right is just babble, as what they are fighting-Pelosi and Big Tech is not socialism it is however a fallacy to washover the toll of Communism threat to representative Governments in many places throughout the world. Suffering can not be laid at the feet of the US government, but we are experiencing what many innocents around the world since the '60s have had massed against them. El Salvador in particular. The CIA has just decided the same tactics were needed in America to unleash the Krakens of war again. "Trump had to go". "Syria needs to be invaded", "We can't have peace" are all the mantras of the same lot.
"Suffering can not be laid at the feet of the US government"
You live in a cave? ... I guess you don't actually use your internet connection to, you know, learn anything. ...The suffering brought about by the US government, as a tool of the ultra-rich, is so vast it is literally incalculable, and literally spans the globe in it reach.
"...hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China..." your apt descripiton of the GOP is noted, they have been the imperial war party since the Dulles Brothers ruled the country.
He also would need to have engaged in all the tactics they accused him off. No journalists are in jail, no tv stations are off the air, no newspapers have been shuttered. What has been shuttered has been done by the tech oligarchs to stop free speech. And they are cheered on from the left.
Abjectly false; they're cheered by the neo-liberals, who are decidedly NOT left. Conflation of neo-liberalism and "the left" is a substantial error and leads to incorrect conclusions.
I agree there is a difference between the left and neoliberals. But the political leaders of the left (Bernie and Liz), have thrown in with the neoliberals, to defeat the "demon" Trump, and in hopes of getting their way on the issues common to the two groups - globalism, abortion, guns.
I haven't heard any leaders on the left, taking any principled stand on free speech.
Maybe talking about some other leaders on the left? Maybe "thought leaders"?
Without actual political leaders, that doesn't do much.
If talking about the political "left" - actual politicians -calling for free speech - who would that be?
"...the political leaders of the left... have thrown in with the neoliberals, to defeat the "demon" Trump..."
and of course you mistakenly—perhaps deliberately—identify the real need to defeat those who are seeking destroy our Constitutional democratic republic who have been massing in plain sight since Rimbaugh, Gingrich and Ailes created and deployed their BIGLIE campaign.
As one who formerly identified as "Democrat" (for decades), I am well aware Limbaugh, Gingrich, and Fox have done their share of issuing misleading propaganda, which served to divide and misinform the working class, and get them to vote for neoliberal establishment Republicans, against their economic interests.
Since neoliberal Bill Clinton, Democratic pols have played the role of the "good guys", in a two party neoliberal duopoly - kabuki theater.
Re: "...identify the real need to defeat those who are seeking destroy our Constitutional democratic republic":
Not sure who you think needs to be defeated, and by whom?
Those who need to be defeated (IMO), are those (neoliberals) of both parties, who wish to divide the voters, and continue the march towards Authoritarianism.
Abbreviated recent neoliberal history:
Bill Clinton, globalization to impoverish the working class, and import Chinese Authoritarianism via Big Tech - while claiming to do the reverse.
GWB after 9/11 with the ironically named "Patriot Act", to subvert freedom, and create surveillance state. And shift our industrial and economic strength to China.
Obama, to further erode middle class economic security, and turn back free speech to restrictive WWI era standards. (Using the draconian Espionage Act, which had long been out of use). Obamacare written by health insurance industry lobbyists. Cementing idea that any legislation opposed by any major lobby group, is off the table.
Then, Trump - with anti neoliberal economic policies.
Unfortunately, the neoliberals have been quite successful at convincing many leftists, and moderates, that Trump was worse than neoliberals for the working and middle class.
I would like to believe your sanguine analysis but facts on the ground and the fact patterns of the past two decades provides amply empirical evidence that you are promoting subterfuge with a slick new version of the BIGLIE.
"...false claims of racism, arbitrary censorship by tech oligarchs, expanding powers against terrorists - combined with the ability to label one a terrorist simply by accusation..."
I'll go point by point.
Racism and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and Jim Crow are alive today as they have been for 150 years...
the social media platforms are private enterprise and operate in the free market and can do as they will with users who violate their ground rules and these users agree to those ground rules and have not protection from the 1st Amendment...
what occured Wednesday Jan. 6 was a naked act of domestic terrorism directed by President Trump on live TV for the entire world to see.
The DoD's defnition of terrorism—
"The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."
As a classical liberal - a paleoliberal if you will - I have been arguing for a while that the threat of authoritarianism was increasingly not from the GOP but the powerful neoliberals who have coopted classic liberalism as a cover for their corruption and power.
They have become experts in gaslighting and twisting language around so that it’s barely recognizable without even caring about being hypocrites since when you have all the power you don’t have to answer to anyone.
For example, if what an excited, unorganized mob did (along with many who were clearly invited in by the police) is “insurrection”, then what was all the tremendous violence done by Antifa and a minority of BLM protestors including attacking federal courthouses? What about those who went into the Senate chambers to protest/intimidate Senators against voting for Kavanaugh?
The biggest hypocrisy is this: for 4 years, Hilary Clinton refused to accept the results of the 2016 election was fair and accused everyone from the Russians to the FBI to Bernie Sanders for her loss. She instigated “The Resistance” who refused to accept Donald Trump as POTUS. She and the entire Dem leadership encouraged completely baseless conspiracy theories about Trump being a Russian agent. Not just Trump but even Bernie (until he prostrated to the Dem establishment) and Tulsi Gabbard (who being a classic liberal is verboten in the Dem establishment).
None of this was deemed an “insurrection” but a shining example of Democracy. As apparently were the largest riots, violence in decades and intimidation of ordinary citizens going about their lives by Antifa and a minority of BLM supporters.
Meanwhile the senseless death of George Floyd - condemned by all right thinking people - elevated him to Sainthood (ignoring his serious criminal record) but the senseless death of black ex-police officer David Dorn protecting a shop against rioters was ignored. Black Lives Matter became a political project where only certain Black Lives mattered in certain situations.
And that it wasn’t against police brutality or the quick use of deadly weapons by police - a classic liberal theme - was made clear by the killing of Ashli Babbit who was clearly unarmed when shot. Neoliberals cheered her death and stories about her beliefs were splashed all over. Many blacks shot by the police that BLM rioted over had serious criminal records and they were shot after the police arrived after they were called by *other* black people. Breanna Taylor was a drug mule. None of this should matter to the issue of police brutality - which classic liberals would champion but now they do.
Essentially, only the *right* type of victim is to be mourned, elevated to sainthood, their pasts scrubbed. The *wrong* type of victims need to either ignored (eg Dorn) or be further demonized (eg Babbit).
And the last few days have been the darkest yet: using the Capitol Mob violence as an excuse Pelosi has dangerously and unconstitutionally abrogated to herself the powers of a POTUS and even his deputy to talk to the Pentagon about nuclear codes and such. While ostensibly it was about ensuring Trump not use them, there was subtext: she’s - nominally second in line - is in charge now. Is that not an “insurrection”?
And to cap off a crazy week, we have Big Tech monopolies censoring and muzzling speech including a sitting POTUS and thousands of his followers and threatening to cut off all other avenues of communication. So not only can you not post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube but Google and Apple demand apps like Parler censor users as well. Meanwhile a senior Microsoft employee is leading a charge to get Parler removed from using Amazon’s servers. CNN - which pushed various hoaxes most prominently Russiagate - is lobbying with the 6 TV cable providers to deplatform FOX news for “fake news.”
This is the official beginning of Neoliberal Authoritarianism where deeply corrupt politicians, who now control 2 branches of Government, allied with unaccountable corporate media and Big Tech (Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and other ancillary tech like Reddit, PayPal, Shopify etc) and backed by intelligence agencies - note where “retired” CIA officials most appear to call for more censorship of wrongthink and push various conspiracy theories - are going to impact what information the everyday citizen has access to, how to think, who to support, what to do under penalty of not just being deplatformed but losing your livelihood to being hounded.
It’s the end of the American experiment as we know it.
PS: I’d suggest everyone re-read Orwell’s Animal Farm and of course 1984.
Hope you're wrong about it being over, one of the best summaries of these recent situations and the contradictions in how the "sides" are being championed. Heck you can't even have a civil conversation about this stuff anymore. Kudos to you for laying it out nicely.
Don't forget all, or almost all, of the people killed by police [black and white (no mention at all of the white people killed by police)] were violently resisting arrest. That doesn't excuse what Floyd's killer did but it does explain why he was under the knee of that officer.
Of course between the two pieces of video we were shown, where I'm sure Floyd's resistance would be evident, was clipped out and never shown. Surprisingly, the video of Brown very violently resisting arrest was exposed. However, apologist for that "poor murdered victim of police brutality" still claim he did nothing to warrant such treatment. Apparently the apologists believe he should have been run down and wrestled with again until he grabbed a police pistol, instead of just a taser, and killed some of the "racist" police.
You lost me at "Breanna Taylor was a drug mule". Not only is there zero evidence to support that assertion unless you consider the 3rd & 4th hand gossip which inevitably swirls around such cases,to be proof. Even if true which it isn't, the assertion is irrelevant. Police wantonly shooting any unarmed citizens as a by product of their aggressive bad tactics is murder pure & simple.
I live in a country where any such act would result in the police involved being fired and then imprisoned, as do a huge slice of people on this planet. Violence begets violence ,it has been state mandated violence which has caused amerika to be so to be reduced to far right oppression.
That statement tells me that you are far from being an old school liberal. You are an old school fascist in camouflage.
Oh, I and I hate the way that the idjits' decision to fall into the well-laid trap so 'invade' the capitol is being used to suppress dissent. Those types were plainly too stupid to ask themselves "Why is it so easy? The capitol cops deal with protests every second day often much bigger protests that this". But their sense of entitlement combined with a lifetime of indoctrination caused them to believe that they were somehow special.
Even so they shouldn't be de-platformed. But they will be.
Re Breanna Taylor: If you read my post carefully the reality - not gossip - that she was a drug mule (from police documents) is INDEED irrelevant to the manner of her killing. We both agree. That is what I said. And the FACT that George Floyd had an armed robbery conviction, that he almost certainly died from a fentanyl overdose (he was feeling sick even before the cop put his knee on his neck) does NOT excuse the callous nature of the cops putting a knee on him - an act of pure brutality. The FACT that Jacob Blake was assaulting a woman which is why the cops were called, that he tore off the taser hooks the cops fired on him and reached for a knife (read the DAs findings) does not necessarily mean that cops did not have other ways to subdue him. As a classical liberal I have always felt that police use excessive force when less would do.
My point as a classical liberal is that just because a person was or is engaging in criminal activity does not excuse police overreactions. Neoliberals believe that too to a point: unless the person being shot is someone they despise like Ashli Babbit. Then the narrative changes. The sick glee expressed at Babbitt’s death - with Twitter’s full blessing - shows the hollowness of their supposed compassion. When the FBI (after tipping off CNN) arrested Roger Stone as if he was a violent criminal, neoliberals cheered just because he is an asshole instead of being appalled at state brutality. Just because a person is black or white, a criminal or an asshole, despicable or not does not excuse state violence. THAT’s been a credo of classic liberalism.
And you think those who invaded the Capitol were “entitled” folks? These are among the poorest in society. Their grievances are ironically the same as many blacks condemned to ghettos: a feeling of completely being trapped in their status. Neoliberals have made everything about race - the real war that classic liberals have always fought for is class (with the fight against racism being that race condemned some people to exist in a lower class).
Who represents the lower class in the US? The neoliberal leadership? They are all multimillionaires who despise the white lower class and see the black lower class as a means to virtue-signal to get votes. Why do you think black support got Trump *increased* - because many recognized the utter hypocrisy of neoliberals.
You talk of indoctrination and calling me a fascist. Well let me start by saying I think you show all the signs of being a brainwashed neoliberal virtue-signaling hypocrite.
But let me make the bigger point: I fully support your right to call me whatever names you want and impugn me however misguided. But that’s a right neoliberals only want for themselves. And that’s another key difference between classic liberalism and neoliberal authoritarianism.
Police make all sorts of wild accusations for all sorts of reasons, a deceitful informant, corruption (a major in drug cases) and personal animus, so I couldn't give a flying f.... what they 'allege' in documents, put up or shut up, prove it in court or deal with the situation as is, an innocent. The same goes for all the slander you have put at the doors of the other victims of police killings. Citizens have a right to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty.
That did not happen with Ms Taylor or Mr Floyd. Police are not appointed judge jury & executioner no matter what they may think they know, because in my experience any police force is full of chinese whispers. Some copper suggests something may have happened, the next copper says it definitely did happen & the one after that laps that up and then puts it as down a 'lose' for the police which must be remedied.
They are just another gang with all the flaws & foibles of any gang, particularly "my brother is always correct & I will defend him whatever lies I must tell'.
Police murdering any unarmed civilian no matter what is simply wrong and more US police need to have that pointed out to them with big prison time.
I am AGREEING with you that Police should not be murdering unarmed civilians no matter what their past. All I’m pointing out that is that this standard goes out the door when the unarmed civilian is someone who the neoliberal mob hates like Ashli Babbitt. THEN it is apparently legitimate to bring up her past.
Why the double standard? I’m simply pointing out that Breanna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake had pretty unsavory pasts. BUT this does not excuse their killings: the case should be independent.
I’ve maintained this standard for decades: so for example just because a woman may be a prostitute does not mean she cannot sue for rape. Prostitutes were often the victims of the most violent crimes simply because they are easy prey and society would say “you had it coming”. That’s simply wrong.
What you seem to be doing is this: since Floyd’s death was a brutality it means he was a saint and any mention of his past is a lie. That’s ridiculous as well. The two are independent. There could be a brutal killing of a man with an angelic past or a brutal killing of one with a shady past. Both are brutal killings period.
So why did I bring up Taylor/Floyd/Blake’s pasts? Because I wanted to point out the hypocrisy of those who cheer Babbitt death and bring up her past.
For example now the society seems to be going after anyone who attended the rally in DC, most of whom went home after, or those shmucks who wandered into the Capitol as opposed to a hard core group that was intent on mayhem. It’s interesting that neoliberals are asking the FBI to round up all these individuals ignoring that the same hysteria after 9/11 resulted in hundreds of Muslims being rounded up on suspicion. It was a witch hunt then and it’s a witch hunt now.
This is neoliberal hypocrisy in a nut shell which is why I eschew the neoliberal movement as one without principle driven by corrupt high priests manipulating liberal values to benefit their own constituency.
I too am a true (original) liberal (advocate of free markets and individual autonomy), not a progressive or socialist fraudulently stamping that label on their forehead only because they like its look, sound, and feel better than their honest labels.
Although I don't deny too often the existence of police brutality, some of your examples are way off base and appear to come from your prejudices (if I'm interpreting them, and you are explaining them, properly).
I understand Breana was not the "drug mule" the police sought. They were (as in similar cases) at the wrong apartment. Also Floyd's (I'm sure) violent resisting was cut from the video shown. Although that would excuse the knee on Floyd's neck it doesn't excuse ignoring his pleas about not being able to breath.
Your comments about Brown are ridiculous on your part. Are you suggesting he be run down and wrestled with again until he grabbed a police pistol, not a taser, during the second brawl?
You seem reasonable. Are you actually thinking during your writing, not just emoting then rationalizing your emotions as nearly everyone on earth does?
Re Brianna: rather than run with the headlines, I took the time to follow the facts before rushing to judgment. The police were NOT at the wrong apartment. Reports document that a neighbor's phone recorded the police knocking/announcing; when the police entered, Brianna's boyfriend shot an officer, wounding the femoral artery, causing massive bleeding. Brianna was shot when police returned fire. Brianna had a history of working as a drug mule for a former boyfriend, evidence of which was filmed on surveillance tapes and her many calls to drug dealers in prison. Just months before her death, police found a dead body in the back of her abandoned rental car. When Brianna's mother learned of her death, she immediately blamed Brianna's drug dealing boyfriend for having corrupted her daughter. To be clear - I am not expert enough to know whether the police could have acted more cautiously in the circumstances they faced. But I am discerning enough to resist getting sucked into the media truth-distorting hysteria, which seems to get more irresponsible and mob like with each passing month.
Galileo wrote a carefully stated, well-reasoned critique. You shot back with loose conjecture and mockery in apparent eagerness to pass judgment on events you know little about. You call yourself a true liberal, but you write like a SJW, rushing about projecting you own lack of discernment on others. My words seem harsh, but my feedback is well-meant. A bit more reflection and self-reflection would do you no harm.
Oops! Something went wrong. I thought I was responding to Debsisdeb, the one to whom Gelileo responded.
Thanks for the correction about Breana, assuming you did get reliable information about her and not just counter-propaganda. I usually don't buy mainstream propaganda pretending to be news, but since I do know there are too often police mistakes like that (yes there are) I assumed this was another.
I'm a true liberal, whether or not you want to believe that. You can believe what you want. Nearly everyone does whether or not it is true.
I have a high degree of certainty that my info is reliable because I carefully looked at multiple sources and have spent years in work that requires practiced critical thinking. I make a practice of scrutinizing my own perspective in order to get closer to truth, which I value more than acceptance or the desire to be thought in the right. Understanding that we all see through a glass darkly, is foundational to critical thinking .... so despite my best efforts to get at truth, I am very much aware that my understanding is always limited and others know things that I don't.
Your admission speaks well, though I find it hard to understand what made made you think Debsisdeb was a liberal.
Assuming a person committed a wrong because they are part of a group that has a reputation for doing wrong is fundamentally illiberal because it blasts past the presumption of innocence. When we rush to assume all cops are bad actors we are not acting with open-mindedness, but bias.
A final word about police making mistakes. It is a high risk job requiring a measure of bravado and personal risk and can easily harden attitudes due to constant exposure to the seamier side of life. It goes without saying, that bad behaviors and attitudes can develop so (as a society) have to understand these pressures and vulnerabilities in order to counteracts these occupational risks. It is a moral shortcoming and practical mistake to approach analysis as if this group of professionals (law enforcement) uniquely deserve to be despised and scapegoated by the public mob egged on by the self-righteous media.
So when I said I was a classical liberal, I did not mean it in the way you seem to be using it which seems more what’s now called libertarianism. While labels are often prone to misinterpreting and excessive simplification, and few hew to every belief a political label implies, I am in general parlance a “progressive” but not the way it’s conflated today with neoliberalism which I’d call fake progressivism and is more of a moralizing conformist cult similar to the Catholic Church during the Inquisition with penalties encouraged from corrupt high priests for straying from the latest decree deciding what is Right and what is Wrong not amenable to debate only instant judgment.
But enough with that to address the substance of your comment to me. After a condescending “you seem reasonable” you write “Are you actually thinking during your writing” while your last para says “Your comments about Brown are ridiculous on your part.” So I never talked about “Brown” - I assume you meant Michael Brown from Ferguson - but Jacob Blake (I mentioned him by name). You are getting black-people-shot-by-police mixed up.
So I’ll pass on the opportunity to snidely retort “you seem educated but do you actually know how to read”, treat your mixing up black people as a honest mistake (while no doubt a neoliberal would point censoriously at you and shriek “Racist!” etc) and go to the issue of police brutality/overreaction.
In the Blake case, the DA did not find grounds to prosecute as the cops acted within prescribed procedures. I’ll concede that this case is not as clear cut an example as others of police overreaction - in general every case is different and there are different degrees of overreach - but in general shooting a guy 7 times in the back to halt him seems excessive.
In the Floyd case, the police body cams don’t show him violently resisting effort - as you claim - as much as resisting being pushed into a police car as he pleaded he was feeling ill and slumped to the ground refusing or unable to get up. This is around the point back-up arrived and Chauvin got involved. From my point of view, the knee on the neck - outlawed in many jurisdictions though not apparently in Minneapolis - was brutal and excessive in what seemed to be a clearly sick man who was prone on the pavement. It was simply an act of deep callousness and disregard for human life and the only reason nobody could save him was that the police have a state sanctioned monopoly on violence with bystanders unable to do anything but shout and plead to the cops in vain as they watched a man agonizingly die right in front of them. This to me was clear brutality.
In the Breanna Taylor case, the police *were* in the right apartment with a no-knock warrant to search the apartment (not arrest Taylor or any such)- though it’s claimed they did knock and announce themselves before breaking in - as part of a larger operation where Taylor’s apartment was suspected to be a conduit point for drug dealing and money storage/exchange. Taylor’s boyfriend who was there fired a shot at what he later claimed were unknown intruders, hitting a cop and around 30+ bullets were fired back killing Taylor was was next to the boyfriend with some shots penetrating two neighboring apartments (for which a cop was charged for wanton endangerment). This to me was police recklessness.
clever how you virtue signal by allowing the cops are cullpable for the Taylors death and then propose a new and ever more vile lie that the video documenting Floyd's murder was tampered with.
Burn in hell you surley will, do have a blessed day and know I'll say a prayer for you misbegottne soul, though I doubt it will do much good.
Both are blatantly obvious, although they "can't be true" since neither favor what some people want to believe. Even worse, they would support what those people hate to admit. Most police "brutality," although some truly isn't warranted like the officer ignoring Floyd's pleas, comes because very belligerent (often very violently so, like Brown was) suspects are very much resisting arrest.
The video of Floyd being led down the sidewalk beside the car, turned to the curb and was stepping into the street behind the car when the video beyond was clipped out. The only other video clip shown is with Floyd under the officers knee. Where is the clipped out part of the video between the time he is led off the curb and the time he is under the officers knee?
I return your favor of the prayer. I offer the same for all "irrational/arational adherents to dogma," typically hard left dogma, (too often lying) propaganda.
you are lying sack of trump whose soul will burn in hell for all eternity...do have a blessed day and I'll say a prayer for your misbegotten soul...then again you could very well be just another soulless cretin pulling the rubes' strings.
I am here because I value Greenwald's perspective but am dismayed that so many contributors rush to make statements that they seem to know little or nothing about. The "zero" evidence of Breanna being a drug mule is, well, delusional. There are surveillance photos of her at drug deals and recording and transcripts of her calls to boyfriends in prison discussing drug deals. Months before her death police found a dead body in her abandoned rental car .... which she had not reported missing. If that does not strike one as suspect ... consider that her mother, upon hearing of Brianna's death began lamenting that it was all the fault of her drug dealing boyfriend corrupting her. And yes, they had the phones tapped of some of her contacts.
As for the recklessness of shooting any unarmed citizen, try to imagine getting outside of your own biases. There can be instances where an unarmed person gets hit in crossfire due to their being very physically close to one who is actively firing on others. It is very doubtful that the cop thought, "He's the one shooting, but I choose to shoot her instead." More likely the hallway was dark and the return shot was aimed very close to where the shot was fired and Brianna was in close to the action.
I don't know where you live, but few countries have the kinds of gun rights enjoyed by Americans. That means our law enforcement officers face much greater risks going into dangerous, unknown situations. It is their right, even their duty to defend themselves when being shot at. Apparently the mixed grand jury decided the cop that shot Brianna did not deserve to be charged.
This is not to say that the law enforcement should be excused for being lax or careless. Nor is it to say that Brianna's worth or rights are in any way diminished because she was involved in criminal activity. But take note. When the news of this first hit, Brianna was presented as an innocent nurse, shot while sleeping in her bed by out of control cops who did a no knock on the wrong apartment. WRONG on all accounts. As they say, lies get half way around the world while truth is still putting on its shoes. The fact is that Brianna had been living a life of crime, playing with the bad boys, handling money and getting cars used for dirty deeds. That lifestyle takes on a heightened risk of getting hurt and hurting others. Brianna knew it, Even her mom knew it. And yet she threw caution to the wind, for money or lust or adventure. Does that mean she doesn't deserve to live? Of course not. It means we need to buck up and stop looking for a scapegoat for every tragedy.
I have been outraged by unconstitutional "no knock" and "stop and search" since they were instituted (I'm old enough to remember that). I hope you aren't one of the racist types who pretend that Breana's situation had anything at all to do with race when it certainly didn't. The exact same result would have happened if Breana and her boyfriend were white (if so, don't lie, yes it would).
Her boyfriend fired at police first. The police didn't care about race at all then. The fault was on "no knock" and, as I understand, police at the wrong apartment (that's one of the horrors with "no knock"). I believe they were trying to raid a "drug mule" but that wasn't Breana.
The city and its drug enforcement office should be forced to pay anyone dependent on Breana, at least, a handsome compensation and those offices chastised severely. Also, the unconstitutional outrages of "no knock" and "stop and search" never should have been instituted by the protection racketeers in the capitols. It should have been immediately outlawed by the Supreme Court and I still do not understand why they ever allowed it.
Apparently they cooperated with those outrages just to help avoid drug sellers flushing their contraband. That was never worth the horrors created by them, even not considering their certain unconstitutionality.
However, who cares about "dead white mens' " constitutionality (some of them unforgivable slave holders, regardless of that being world-wide then, especially in Africa by black slave holders selling their also black slaves to international traders)? That contract between the federal government and the states, and/or its Bill of [the peoples'] Rights, are also outrageously claimed to be available to summary reinterpreted at whim for the advantage of whatever faction wants it altered.
"Police wantonly shooting any unarmed citizens as a by product of their aggressive bad tactics is murder pure & simple." agreed but in this case it was in response to someone in the apartment shooting at them first. regardless, it was bad and should never have happened. no knock warrants in the case of a simple drug bust is ridiculous
"...de-platformed..." you and yours have "jumped the shark" on creating fictional explanations for the seditious conspiritorial events that unfoded Wed. Jan. 6th.
social media platforms are free market enterprises that allow users access after those users agree to their groudn rules...no 1st amendment rights or protections infered or granted.
?? You’re too far gone in your insanity frothing at the mouth to have a rational conversation with. You don’t even know how to read what I wrote because you assume anyone who criticizes the neoliberal authoritarianism in full swing thus supports Trump or some such. This is precisely the warning that Greenwald is giving.
Anyways, I’ll ignoring your trolling. I think it’s best you go back to Twitter to yell at some random people.
Kamala Harris' office accused him of pimping, including some counts involving minors.
Lacey and Larkin were arrested and charged with "conspiracy to commit pimping." Harris, who at the time was running for the U.S. Senate, called them "despicable"
This was a great piece Glenn. It just rapes my mind that 500,000 dead Iraqis and millions driven from their homes is —at least to liberals —considered a lesser evil than Trump’s mean tweets. It’s amazing that propagandists like David Frum and other Neocons are lauded by liberals who once stood for civil liberties. Think about this. People are outraged by a Trump mean tweet and NOT outraged by George W Bush’s crimes (500,0000 dead Iraqis, millions Iraqis driven from their homes, a country recked and sacked by Gringolandia, etc). Sorry, but Trump is a microscopic insect compared to the Neocon criminal enterprise.
I’ve stopped reading the traditional news outlets and read Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi instead. I don’t always agree but these two are the only journalists and/or commentators that don’t need to take anti-psychotics before I’ll consider reading them again.
I agree with you. I am a longtime Republican, voted for President Trump in 2016 and 2020, but Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi make honest arguments in support of their positions. Even if my views on a topic are different from theirs, what they say is helpful to me. And the comments here generally are very much worth reading.
I'm curious why you voted for him again in 2020? I was appalled at his handling of the pandemic. CDC owns a huge piece of the sour pie of failure but Trump's failure to unify and tow a steadfast Federal approach was a grotesque display of inability to lead.
Thank you for the comment. But in fact President Trump did an excellent job, considering how much the Democrats spoke and did in opposition to his policies. Biden was among the worst, criticizing Trump for stopping travel from China, and Harris was not far behind, promoting anti-vaccine views all summer and fall.
Further President Trump was a unifier and did his best to have the senior medical professionals in the government be heard by the public. He attended their briefings, giving them audiences as much as 10 million persons, a hundred times what they would have had without his presence.
He met with and worked closely with manufacturers of needed supplies for health care workers and got everything that was needed out very quickly through his active leadership. Even Governor Cuomo praised President Trump in mid-April for doing all this (even sending a fully-staffed naval medical ship to New York City!).
President Trump also met with and coordinated work by pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines. He said they would be ready by the end of the year; the Democrats claimed it would take 12 to 18 months (no earlier than April 2021). It happened as he said.
He pointed out medical literature (including from the CDC!) that said hydroxychloroquine was an effective medication if delivered early. The Democrats attacked him for saying this. But he was right. There are now more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers confirming this: https://c19study.com/ Even the AMA has finally endorsed his position.
The U.S. death rate per million population is currently 12th in the world: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries . New Jersey and New York had governors whose policies resulted in many extra deaths. If they were separate countries, the U.S. would be around 20th. And the number of deaths due to COVID in the U.S. is significantly inflated by including deaths in which the person happened to be infected, even auto and motorcycle accidents, falls, multiple dangerous drug levels, ...
So the U.S. has not done so badly as many other developed countries. President Trump's leadership helped significantly. Can you imaging that Hilary Clinton could have done any of these things? Or Joe Biden?
I'll give you Hydroxy though – I can't seem to find a definitive story on whether it's effective or not. But seems that it's good as early intervention.
I pointed to the comprehensive web site that lists ALL the published scientific papers on HCQ: https://c19study.com/ You can click on a paper's listing and get detailed information about the study.
"RESOLVED, That our AMA reassure the patients whose physicians are prescribing
19 hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for their early-stage COVID-19 diagnosis by
20 issuing an updated statement clarifying our support for a physician’s ability to prescribe an FDA21 approved medication for off label use, if it is in her/his best clinical judgement, with specific
22 reference to the use of hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for the treatment of the
23 earliest stage of COVID-19 (Directive to Take Action); (page 18 of the entire document)
Of course they waited until after the election so President Trump would not get any credit.
Masks: That was Dr Fauci who said not to wear masks, not President Trump
Rallies: President Trump's rallies showed no substantial increase in infections. The number of his rallies is of course trivial compared to the many protests and riots which involved no distancing and often no masks (except for the Antifa, who have worn them for years as part of their uniform). Here are some examples of the hypocrisy of Democrats on masks and distancing: https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/11/politicians-covid-hypocrisy-destroys-peoples-faith-in-government/
Criticisms: President Trump got far more criticism from Democrats and their media than he gave to everyone. The governors he criticized were ignoring advice from official institutions.
HCQ: I pointed out the pretty definitive research on its value if used early. Your first link goes to two studies, one showed no benefit and the other was late (which the science has said for years doesn't work). The second link goes to a late study, so is irrelevant.
Rallies and protests can be equally irresponsible. There is a difference when a bunch of activists organize a protest and when the President of the US organizes rallies all the while his top doctor advises against all gatherings. Fauci and WHO mishandled and then later corrected their view on the masks. The problem is that by railing Fauci and health officials publicly, Trump casts himself as the trusted source for how to respond to COVID and clearly he says whatever comes to mind. Why not just state that Dr. Fauci made a mistake on the masks but the situation was chaotic, everyone made mistakes and now we are pulling together to respond the crisis? The very reason Fauci became such a big part of the COVID response was because he had to be the voice of clarity and reason due to Trump's inability to do so. Trump was so wishy-washy that I still don't know if he thinks masks work but I do know he occasionally puts one in his pocket... Great example for the rest of us. Not to mention his horrid flippancy related to the thousands of people that have died in the US during the crisis. He has been interested only in his persona and perception in the media. When was the last time he gave a speech or statement that created a sense of hope and resolve in the face of all this death and calamity? All I can remember is that "the media is unfair to me" and the mental gymnastics of presenting that the US somehow did well during the crisis.
I agree on media hypocrisy on Trump. They're possessed. That's not the argument. He is irresponsible with his conduct and words unbecoming a US President. The buck never stops with him. Why is your bar so low for true leadership? Imagine Dwight Eisenhower saying the things and doing the things that Trump has. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHkzqejFKbM
Kamala Harris' office accused him of pimping, including some counts involving minors.
Lacey and Larkin were arrested and charged with "conspiracy to commit pimping." Harris, who at the time was running for the U.S. Senate, called them "despicable"
Check out Last American Vagabond and Whitney Webb also. Jimmy Dore. There isn't much available and Glenn and Matt are the best, but I can recommend those having critical fact based discussions.
Once again Glenn hits a homerun with this, honestly he is such an amazing writer, amazing how he clearly articulates the flawed logic and makes many on the left look utterly clueless. Thank you Glenn!!! I may not agree with all your political views but absolutely love your ability to write.
Thank you Glenn -- I see this outstanding piece for the 2nd time -- you have probably opened it to all (non-subscribers) as a reason.
If Trump would be prudent in these last few days of his presidency -- he would promptly give pardon to both Julian and Edward. Media's TOTAL silence on persecution of Assange, the most important publisher in a century -- tells it all whom US (and UK) media serves and what is its role.
The incoming administration and its DNC cabal will try to destroy Julian. They are mortally afraid that the scam of the century -- their Russia-gate hoax will be further exposed and will do anything to hide their leading role. The entire Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party/ Kamala Harris (and her sister) are Hillary's protégés..
United States is by now a failed state - a state that is completely failing both its "right" and "left" population. Exhibitionists in Congress (all by now vaccinated (except Tulsi) regardless of their age) are competing in blabbering how to punish Trump in his last days in office. Yet, while 4,000++ people die daily from what should be called "Trump virus" because complete mishandling and resulting human and economic catastrophe he caused (compare four time larger China 5,000 dead versus our 350,000+ so far - now our daily deaths are approaching China's ten month total !?) -- in our immense tragedy -- there is no data available to public: by SPECIFIC county and city
-- How many vaccination sets were distributed
-- How many people are vaccinated by day and by dates
-- How many professionals are deployed giving vaccinations, etc.
Instead, Congress first action was apparently to ban use of words mother and father - "as too gender specific" so - better use word parent.
Let's hope Trump will find focus, wisdom and compassion to pardon Julian and Edward !! A real danger to our democracy is not incompetent Trump and his pathetic tweets -- it is is only coming now. It is very possible that FB and Tweeter will forbid any mention of Russia-gate fraud and/or Hunter's laptops and Biden family or DNC corruption.
He's not going to Pardon Assange. His focus was Blackwater war criminals and Omen boy Kush's felon father. Lol.
It's the saddest thing in the world for people to have false hope in anyone in power right now. I know it's a black pill, but honestly, help isn't coming from these people.
Very same gang initiated the Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” -- the scam was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, .. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their WS and military industry donors. That lying team is now back in power -- Kamala is Hillary's protégé.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm saying the first thing Trump did in office was broker an arms deal with Saudi, who used this weapons in Yemeni children. Thousands starved to death in 2020. Where was the news coverage on that? Trump might be the lesser of 2 evils, but guess what that means? Lesser isn't saintly. Pardoning Assange should be what Trump does, but he hasn't, and he would have done it already. I'm kinda thinking he's got other things prioritized right now. And he'll sit in UK prison, an innocent man fighting for free speech against tyranny of the State. A symbol of current events and ironic considering the man who can pardon him is now being censored.
Of course, you are correct. One bad party with two wings -- imperial War party. For almost a century now. A viable third party is needed -- let's hope it will not be Trump's but a socialist (that is, more humane) party
Strongly agree on pardons. But do you really think China had only 5,000 dead? Seriously? At least Obama wasn't POTUS when the China virus was let loose - we'd be at over 1.5MM dead by now.
I do believe this -- all indications indicate that is correct. Asia had deadly virus several years ago, learned lesson (known for a century) and acted promptly and "severely" (much criticized by "freedom loving" US media).
That is why Covid-19 should enter our history as "Trump virus" - because of avoidable catastrophe and complete mismanagement and immense human and economic cost
Yes, they def contained it better but I still don’t believe the numbers. I don’t believe anything that comes out of China because they don’t have free press. So to your point free Assange or we are no better.
I want to know why the media is so silent, what are your thoughts?
Thank you. There is a collusion between media, Democrat party, and the deep state for now five years. The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication; perhaps the worst scam in US history is neoliberals’ Russia-gate hoax. They lost to a TV host. Instead of reflection, they latched onto a moronic conspiracy theory for now five years. This includes the proven false accusations that Russia gave WikiLeaks Hillary's emails.
The Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors. That team is now back in power -- Kamala Harris (and her sister) is Hillary's protégé.
Just recently, remember, Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
When asked about Hunter's laptops Pelosi stated "All roads lead to Putin"; commenting on Capitol invasion Schumer said - "worst that Pearl Harbor and 9/11"...
Assange must be silenced -- all the players agree; Trump is likely to dumb to realize how important is pardoning Assange now that the full old team is in power again -- instead he pardoned BlackWater criminals who massacred Iraqis in Bagdad.
Thank you for that info, I’ll admit I had no idea it was this corrupt. I agree Trump may not pardon Assange for the right reasons that you have stated above. But his self serving personality might push him to do it just to piss off his enemies which would still be great!
I’d also love to see him pardon every person Kamala convicted for non violent drug crimes. Just based on principle since she is such a hypocrite and it would be nice to let the little guy get a win for once.
With his political future non existent at this point, he might as well go out with a bang!! 🙏🙏
Reading this well-founded little paper published by extremist anti-communist "religious" Falun Gong anti-China cult does great harm.
All its propaganda about e.g., Moslem Uighur's ten million population being in concentration camps comes from a single German source, a delusional anti-Communist propagandist inventing serial falsifications that are multiplied and amplified by Pompeo and his resources.
Falun Gong's "Epoch Times" is just an anti-China propaganda source - no useful information there... :-))
It is untrue that reading Epoch Times "does great harm" unless of course you are referring to the fact that it is critical of the Chinese Communist Party and their systematic violations of basic human rights in furtherance of their totalitarian repression and contro..
The detention and persecution of Uighurs, has been condemned by the British government and the European Union. In 2018 the UN Human Rights committee found credible reports that the Uighur region had confined one million people in a massive internment camp system. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also accused the government of massive imprisonment and torture of these people. Even the CCP has begun admitting to the detention camps, rationalizing that it is necessary to re-educate this population. So the claim that these camps are a fabrication of a single German source is patently false.
The Guardian (a left-leaning British journal) has reported on satellite confirmation of the detention camps. Uighurs are routinely rounded up and sent to these camps where whole families are forced into labor. Sometimes parents are permanently separated from their children. There are reports of forced abortions and sterilizations.
Here is a heartbreaking guided tour of a 600 year old Uighur town, now abandoned due to the forced evacuations. Begin a 5 minutes to hear about the terrible mistreatment of these people:
I do believe this -- all indications indicate that is correct. Asia had deadly virus several years ago, learned lesson (known for a century) and acted promptly and "severely" (much criticized by "freedom loving" US media).
That is why Covid-19 should enter our history as "Trump virus" - because of avoidable catastrophe and complete mismanagement and immense human and economic cost
Yes, I do believe this -- all indications indicate that is correct. Asia had virus severe lesson several years ago and acted promptly and "severely". That is why Covid-19 should enter our history as "Trump virus" - because of catastrophe and complete mismanagement and immense human and economic cost
Also, I read Trump is allegedly trying to declassify all evidence in the Hunter Biden case. If so: could that be behind the rhetoric about 25th amendment and impeachment?
Where did you read that Trump is trying to declassify all the Hunter Biden evidence?
Personally I doubt that's behind the 25th amendment and impeachment issues. Congress felt personally threatened and therefore is taking this far more seriously than they've taken anything else.
We might as well get all the Hunter Biden information out in the open. If we have President Harris sworn in at the inauguration, so be it.
"If Trump would be prudent in these last few days of his presidency -- he would promptly give pardon to both Julian and Edward." I agree and cannot understand why he is not Pompeo seems to be fighting for extradition and execution of Assange, but nothing he put out harmed anyone or was proven false. The media commits sins of falsity against their neighbors daily.
It is not only Pompeo though. Certainly religious extremist and zealot Pompeo is among the most dangerous characters ever (note in Covid relief package - $2B is for replacing Huawei communication equipment -- not for "security" but as an attempt to salvage US technological dominance). But, we should always remember Saint Obama:
“Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against "godless” Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, China…..
"Yesterday’s invasion of the Capitol by a Trump-supporting mob..."
I truly appreciate your journalism, but framing the unfortunate event at the Capitol like this is prejudiced and premature of evidence. There was clearly a small number of angry Trump supporters who will justifiably be prosecuted. There was clearly a small number of infiltrators/agitators who will hopefully be prosecuted along with them. There was clearly a larger number of Trump supporters who were invited in through the front door and weren't sure what was going on. There was a massive number of people who stayed on the steps and some shouted at violent instigators who were breaking windows. And, there were likely near a million folks who decided not to go to the Capitol at all.
Your framing would be more accurate if you'd said, "Yesterday's fiasco at the Capitol involving a mob of Trump supporters...".
I would ague if I was one of them using the picture of police taking selfies that there was an invitation. This was more about Police ineptitude than any meaningful attempt at what really, they were angry and if police did their jobs would have remained outside.
I keep having this recurring thought that if the SCOTUS had any desire to help a nation heal, they would have taken on the topic of possible vote corruption, and issued some wise words that would have helped diffuse the situation before it happened. Maybe I am just dreaming, but I feel if they had done that hey would have been heroes. As of today, I hold them somewhat culpable - and I have little confidence that they will help to reign in any of the excesses that result from an over-reaction to the events that have taken place.
Eh, we just witnessed big tech let us know very clearly, they running the show now. No dissent allowed. And Ashli Trumpster, from the responses I've seen regarding her death, I see now exactly how and why normal people turned Jewish people over to the Gestapo.
I love my country, don't want to abandon it, but this isn't a Democratic Republic world power. It's a Technocratic Fascism State in decline.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are not attainable in this political climate unless you are a psychopath.
There's nowhere to run to either, same people ruining humanity everywhere. Twitter really let China tweet about re-education camps positively, and censored the sitting President after he explicitly told his followers not to riot or fight, claiming he said the exact opposite of what he said. Just, what is going on? Yes, Trump is a clown. Yes, Biden is a creepy uncle. But now unelected robot Zuckerberg and Twatter Jack are cashing the shots? The mainstream mockingbird media just fakes whatever they want, ok viking dude in the capitol. This political theater is incredibly poorly cast, the script is like a 4th grader wrote it. It gets by only on monopolizing the audience and production. 5 stars for Production but the rest is Bollywood fanfic on a budget.
" I see now exactly how and why normal people turned Jewish people over to the Gestapo" as a Jew i am not appalled by this metaphor as many neoliberals would be if they heard it. This is the banality of evil. This is how normal citizens can turn on each other, vilify their neighbors (well, neighboring counties).
Our freedoms are from G-d. When will that be understood?
Your freedom truism is a non-sequitur. The inherency of our freedoms is rooted in the worth of our free will which has been imbued by our Creator. Dancing atoms have no inherent freedoms.
If it's inherent from our existence, and our existence is finite, then our freedoms are finite. If it's from Gd, and Gd is is infinite and cannot be destroyed, then neither can our freedoms be, no matter which finite being tries to take it away. I guess its a matter of what you believe.
Twitter and Facebook have no good option for what to do with Trump. They can block the president or be accused of enabling the next attempt to attack the government. Twitter tells us they already have evidence of the next attack in https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html . Perhaps their analysis is flawed, and it should be examined in detail, but as of now they have made the calculation that performing the former is going to cause less long term damage than the latter. If you have ideas on what is a viable third option, please share.
Generally, social media companies are optimizing for engagement and advertising dollars, and will remove posts or people if they believe doing so will increase their bottom line. There are multiple potential ways to combat this.
One option is to regulate under what conditions posts can be removed. That will be tricky to pull off to enough satisfaction of everyone, but may be possible.
Another option is to form a competing platform which is not motivated by engagement and advertising dollars. The problem with a competing platform is that if you're not able to gain users other than the ones kicked out of the mainstream platforms, you only have the users who have been kicked out of the mainstream platforms. Gaining enough users will be difficult if https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-sues-facebook-illegal-monopolization doesn't succeed.
Idk but censoring political opinions you disagree with is fascism. You can rationalize it, spin it, echo the authoritarian talking points in your little private desensitization chamber all you want. It's just Fascism.
Combine it with constant Propaganda, mix it with a dominant military industrial complex, perfect recipe. Delicious Dictatorship. The Irony, while blue states lock down and oppression reigns. Good ole Saul Alinsky, all day everyday. They just did four years calling Trump a Dictator. A traitor. A theif. The hypocrisy is so invasive. Why was Hunter Biden snorting cocaine with Obama's daughters credit card? Why was his penis plastered all over the Internet? That wasn't hard to find. Trumps tweets are so much worse than lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Trumps tweets are really dangerous! LMAO!! Good thing they censured the Hunter story too. It was Dangerous!
BTW, Florida has the same average death rate as the flu in 2018, every other small business isn't closed. How is the Mom & Pop store in your neighborhood? Just curious.
This is false and reflects an errant understanding of what fascism is:
"Idk but censoring political opinions you disagree with is fascism."
No, fascism is the conflation of state and corporate power. However, censoring political opinions for any reason is heinous.
Your remark about Florida and Covid is false.
The way both Dems and Rs have reacted to the pandemic is atrocious and killing businesses, agreed, but railing falsehoods doesn't help.
What we need to do is get the GD ultra-rich the hell out of our political system and stop controlling us. At the start of the pandemic, instead of giving the already rich some $6T, they should have provided a guaranteed income for everyone, etc.
Given how much time you spent addressing my comment as opposed to making generic statements, I think it's far more likely you're a bot than I am. Let's presume neither of us are.
I stand by my statement that Twitter and Facebook have absolutely no good option for their response. And I agree that if they do not believe there is a credible threat of violence, then what they are doing is problematic. They are now forced to choose between the lesser of evils.
But it was mostly peaceful protest in June right? The calls to kill white people on Twitter are ok? Iran tweeting Trump would be dead in a few days was also not violent I guess? Can you show me a Tweet where Trump came for violence? What about all the others banned today? So, in guessing that's a no because there isn't one. In fact, I think the opposite was tweeted what I saw. Were we seeing different Tweets maybe? I guess good old Rudy could see NYC thru 911 but now can't Tweet because why? He questioned Election integrity? Or he was calling for violence? Tweets about Burning it all down, and all cops are bad are not violent though? I'm so confused! Lol! It's only ok if corporate media says its ok, I gotcha.
Ya, that's fascist censorship Sarah. And it takes less than 2 minutes to text on my phone, so, not that much time.
You're refuting arguments I never made. If you had looked elsewhere in this thread, you would see me condemning the violence around the BLM protests as well.
You could argue that twitter is simply engaging in CYA because them suspending his account is more likely to lead to violence. We could have that discussion. I honestly do not know the answer.
They are not "forced" to do anything. Twitter and Facebook are the bullies trying to whip up a high tech mob to attack, censor and isolate Trump, his political allies and even his supporters. They are censoring the ability of citizen to even talk about their belief that the election was tainted by fraud. They have pressured publishers into dropping publishing contracts with Trump supporters. They are even attempting to "force" competing venues to adopt their draconian censorship practices on the threat of being dropped and de-platformed by the mob. FASCISM
By not acting, that's also an action. My best guess is they're madly flailing right now trying to avoid government regulation, and will risk collateral damage to do so.
What makes you think that Twitter and Facebook should have the power or right to censor a president elected by voting citizen to lead their nation? Do you think the phone company should have the power or right to cut off the president's phone line?
I understand that some, including the tech giants are pushing the narrative that Trump incited his supporters to riot; but that is patently untrue. He urged them to vigorously protest the election certification, and specifically called for them to do so "peacefully". When rioting broke out he called in the National Guard and tweeted for his supporters to behave peacefully, respect law enforcement and return home. Twitter promptly deleted that tweet. Of course, media hysterics, including those in high tech couldn't allow his words of prudence to get out. No, they were determined to seize the opportunity to twist, embellish and flatly misrepresent the situation -to make the president appear culpable for what they hyped as a uniquely dangerous insurrection.
They eagerly used their hyperbole to justify a leaping usurpation of authority over the public discourse via their power to leverage censorship. Of course they convinced the sheeple that they just had to do it - for our own good.
BUT THINK. Citizens, including Trump, have every right to question, suspect or feel certain that fraud affected the outcome of an election. It is basic freedom to think and speak and even rally behind truth as one sees it. When half a million people converge over any big cause, it is no surprise that some rabble rousers (of all stripes including provocateurs) will show up and begin agitating in a way that can encourage mob behaviors. The capitol police should have been prepared for this. One has to wonder why they were dismally unprepared. Perhaps because politicians have been turning a blind eye (but in Kamala's case encouraging) mob and riotous behaviors all summer long - ransacking small businesses, attacking and even killing innocents, burning private and public buildings, attacking police, tearing down monuments and statues even taking over portions of downtown Seattle including the police precinct and declaring it autonomous from government authority - in other words a real, outright, ongoing civil insurrection in which the rioters denied residents basic access to police protection, emergency services and even freedom of movement for weeks resulting in several deaths. The mayor laughed if off as a block party. Ditto in Portland.
Did Twitter, Facebook or Amazon take action? Of course not. The majors didn't even take action. In fact the Portland mayor threatened Trump to not even think about calling in the guard, even after people had been murdered and federal buildings had been breeched.. Ever since about 2013, when Obama began justifying riotous behaviors with causes he felt sympathy for .... officials have been excusing and even condoning civil unrest. Think of the protestors storming the Kavanaugh hearings, storming the capitol and accosting elected officials, attempting to bang their way into the Supreme Court and threaten assignations. No problem for the democrats. "That's democracy in action." said Pelosi. And by the way, Hillary complained and agitated that Trump stole the election for four years, while democrats refused to go to his inauguration and vowed to impeach him on day one of his term. So what, I ask did Twitter, Facebook and Amazon do to control all of that? Not a single thing. When news stories broke about Trump taxes, did Twitter and Facebook block those stories on the grounds that it was private info, illegally obtained. No. But when news broke that Hunter's laptop detailed stunning evidence of international pay for influence schemes involving his father, corruption, money-laundering, drug abuse and sex with underage minors - what did big tech do? They mobilized into lockstep censorship - least public knowledge of this wrongdoing sway our opinions. For our own good, of course.
1) So the Hill reported that Sasse said that a unnamed white house official said that Trump was delighted and confused. The relation between Trump and Sasse has been decidedly contentious for a long time. So this is third hand conjecture on how Trump 'felt' by an adversary who was not there. I prefer to judge a man on what he does rather than how an adversary claims he felt. This kind of gossip would never be admissible in court so why would I allow it to guide my decision making if I want to be judicious?
2) Banning Trump from using Twitter is indeed like banning him from using the phone, because Twitter enjoys special protections from lawsuits based on their claim to be a platform (read conduit like the phone) rather than a publisher (deciding on what is fit to print). If you doubt that, it would do you no harm to read some of Johnathan Turley's editorials (Constitutional scholar, law professor at George Washington University Law School) on that very issue. Turley is a man of keen intellect and integrity. He is also a liberal democrat. He has liken Twitter's actions to cutting the phone line - a brazen "Orwellian" attempt to silence Trump and media they disapprove of (NY Post) from communicating their views to the American people.
3) So how did BLM get into the discussion of capitol hill preparedness? Projection? Acting Sec of Def Miller said Trump had given him the green light to take any steps he deemed necessary to support law enforcement and to secure the capitol and federal buildings w NG. According to Military Times the Guard was deployed to numerous checkpoints around the area. The capitol police "repeatedly declined support" of the national guard at the capitol because they did not believe it necessary. The article goes on to explain why those decisions took time to turn around. Apparently it was Mike Pence who personally authorized emergency deployment of more Guard on behalf of the president. It could be argued that Trump was too slow to call in "military" reinforcements troops, but to pretend that this was a clear "armed insurrection" attempting to "overthrow the government" as the Pelosi mob have attempted to characterize it is absurd hyperbole spun to whip up political hysteria. There was half a million protestors and among them some rabble rouses and agent provocateurs who egged on a bunch of protestors into pushing and even breaking their way into the capitol. There was also a number of roaming enthusiasts getting ushered in by capitol police. Most Trump supporters remained outside and had little idea what was going on. The situation was decidedly confusing. And least you forget, democrats had been chastising and threatening Trump for months regarding perceptions that he might activate NG to quell violent rioting, on the lame excuse that the riotous conduct was an expression of free speech.
4) As for the Kavanaugh Hearing protests - many of the activists were females, prominent among them paid Soros provocateurs. You are correct to point out that they were not outright violent but they did push their way into federal buildings and offices, disrupted hearings and tried to bang their way into the supreme court. From my observation, female protestors gone rogue tend to employ less openly violent tactics than their male counterparts, but nonetheless vicious such as engaging in screaming verbal abuse, public shaming tactics, slandering, and making threats to assassinate, castrate or decapitate. Note that the capitol intruders (most of whom were pushing their way into the building) were overwhelmingly male whereas the Trump supporters outside were not. So perhaps the male dominated CHAD takeover in Seattle would be a more apt comparison. There ARMED RIOTERS actively engaged in a very real insurrection, violently rioting, aggressive destruction of property, seizing and occupying a portion of downtown Seattle for weeks, including the police precinct - robbing residents of their basic freedom to come and go and disenfranchising them of government, police and emergency resources. The armed thugs setting up their own 'thuggish enforcement wolf-packs and justice tribunals' which ended in tragic injuries, loss of property and even lives. The democrat responses ranged from ignoring it to excusing it as a block-party and later, as a justified protest. A well-written comparison of the hypocrisy:
1) I can accept that you don't believe it. I'm curious if you hold all your sources to the same standard of gossip.
2) While I don't think it's pertinent, I'm skeptical that Jonathan Turley would be called a liberal democrat by most democrats these days. But if you want to say twitter is like a phone, then legally designate it a common carrier. If you can't or won't, then it's not like a phone.
Given twitter does not even charge money to its users, and is therefore not for hire, calling it a common carrier seems difficult by the legal definition. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/153
3) I don't think very many people out of the mob were specifically there to overthrow the government, but it's very difficult to argue that none of them were, considering there is evidence that people intended to kill politicians. It doesn't take very many crazy people to cause problems if security is bad.
I'm not saying the CHAZ protest should have happened, but even if you want to count only one of those deaths at the capitol, it's demonstrable that the rate of violence is significantly higher for the capitol event compared to the CHAZ one. I can't say for certain that more people would have died if the capitol protest had continued for longer than 3 1/2 hours, but that certainly seems to have been the intent of a number of attendees.
I note from http://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/crime-dashboard that there were 2 murders in the CHAZ area outside of the time period of CHAZ for 2020, and that there were even more murders elsewhere in Seattle during 2020. It's not clear that the violence during CHAZ was greater than would have happened otherwise, though the police should have been given access to address it.
1) I did not write that I did not believe it. I am agnostic on it because it is so hearsay. I do try to be judicious, even towards those I disagree with. I respect Glenn - for his intellectual honesty and courage, even though I disagree with him on some issues.
2) Turley has always been a liberal democrat. He has not changed much, but his party has changed dramatically. More important than how he identifies, at least for me, is his integrity, commitment to Constitutional principles and clarity of analysis.
3) I am in full agreement that it does not take too many crazies to turn a mob decidedly dangerous - so I am not the least dismissive of the stupidity, recklessness and moral wrong of all who forced their way into the capitol, including those who "just wanted to be heard." As for those who committed violence, they should be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for the disruption, destruction, injury and loss of lives caused by their recklessness. Having said that, characterization of the rally as a Trump-incited armed insurrection mobilized to overthrow the federal government strikes me as partisan, inflammatory and irresponsible.
4) The point about CHAD or CHAZ is that it was a politically enabled insurrection which I happen to track, since it happened our back yard. As you pointed out, the takeover lasted for weeks. Insurgents were armed and advocated open carry. They took a section of downtown hostage through riotous violence and instituted their own "govt", which forcibly denied residents of basic rights including freedom of movement and access to police and emergency services. Without police protection, the area became a magnet for predators. The city govt ordered the police to stand down and paid an ex-pimp to NEGOTIATE with these hooligans, as if they were a legitimate legal entity. BTW the pimp was caught on tape advising the insurgents to hold out for more (taxpayer) bribe money. The insurgent group was not that big, but their boldness in context of a weak, enabling mayor and radicalized city council, kept growing to the horror of law abiding citizen throughout the area. 2killings/xdeaths/1rape in weeks vs 2killings/3deaths in hours speaks to the rate of escalation .... but it does dismiss the point - that CHAD insurrectionists succeeded in holding a community hostage to lawless anarchy for weeks, largely to the tolerance, amusement and even approval of leftist politicians. I am just curious to ask how you would feel if the capitol rioters had driven out the capitol police, taken the area hostage to lawless anarchy in order to party, plunder and pillage for weeks while a bemused president hired a pimp to negotiate. You sound like a thoughtful person, so I assume you would not find it excusable - Denis Prager has made a good point: All sides draw crazies, but its how we react to our crazies that makes the difference.
* Political pressure. While there were Democrats calling for Trump's account to be suspended, I'm pretty sure that's been true for a long time. I can't find any evidence that Twitter is worried about blow-back from the incoming administration if they didn't.
* Legal liability. Before the 6th I don't think anyone could have said for certain that Trump's speech was going to inspire violence. Reading https://prospect.org/justice/violent-speech-right/ I am wondering if the legal definition for what's considered allowed speech will change. If that's an actual possibility, Twitter would be the test case if they don't take action.
Note there doesn't appear to be a right-wing purge from Twitter as of now. At least these accounts are up:
There is another alternative: Twitter decided that they could amass more power by cozying up to an incoming administration. Or, Dorsey has decided, along with a few other oligarchs that now was the time to unleash their goal to world domination. The fun part of that will be watching the Oligarchs tear themselves apart fighting for top dog status.
Why wouldn't Twitter have cozied up to the current administration if more power was their goal? Or if it had to be with the incoming administration, why wouldn't they have manufactured an excuse to suspend Trump much earlier?
As to Dorsey wanting world domination, why do you think that's his goal? How exactly do you think suspending Trump's twitter account
Twitter, like China, realizes that Biden can be bought. Dorsey was emboldened to censor the Hunter Biden scandal out of fear that the news might swing the election toward Trump. When questioned by congress Dorsey dissembled and played the quasi-apologetic fool as if the censorship move was a well-intentioned mistake stemming out of privacy concerns. Once Dorsey realized that most of MSM and high tech were willing to aid and abet his foray into censorship, he became increasingly emboldened, especially after the election was called for Biden. Note that Dorsey has transitioned from apologetic to defiant now that the democrat machine is in power and bracing his back. Unlike Greenwald, he is willing to be unprincipled and unprincipled men always gravitate towards opportunistic power grabs. As Jordan Peterson has remarked, if you think tough men are dangerous, wait till you see what a weak man can do.
I don't know, legally, if it might be or become possible for speech to be legal pre-violence and then for similar speech to become illegal post-violence when it's been demonstrated that the speech led to violence.
The correct thing to happen here is that Facebook must stop all censorship. Instead, they can use their algorithms to then provide a "portal" where prosecutors - and only genuine prosecutors - can review potential that might violate the law, such as the possible incitement to violence, and then not remove any posts unless charges are actually filed.
BTW, a competing platform simply won't work for various reasons regarding how nobody wants to be on the less-well-perceived platform. What COULD work is to break facebook up into a federated model with lots of individual facebooks, but that's not really any better. The only real choice is to force facebook to stop censoring and provide a legal avenue to handle any difficulties.
This is exactly why monopolies need to be broken up. The outrageous, arbitrary biased liberties taken by Twitter and Facebook - not to mentioned their coordinated attempt to freeze out competitors who do not run things in collusion with their controlling tactics, smacks of racketeering. These big tech firms have stepped over the line, putting an unforeseeable damper on free speech that the government has an obligation to protect. High tech has no business trying to censor legal speech of any sort, any more than the phone company sensor phone use.
All speech is constitutionally protected from government interference unless it violates some some basic principles such as inciting violence, lying under oath and so on. The burden of proof that speech incited violence or insurrection is pretty high. If speech does not call for violence or insurrection, it cannot be deemed illegal just because someone thinks it could have set a third party off. Words like "we are not going to let them steal this election" or "we are going to take our government back" are not inherently insurrectional. Such political phrases have been used since the founding of our country .... and indeed were used by the democrats after Trump won in 2016. Indeed, many boycotted his inauguration and vowed to impeach him on day one of his presidency. The problem with what the democrats are doing is not limited to the harm they may do to Trump and Trump supporters. They are undermining the Constitution, the rule of law and damaging our social fabric, in a way that is very likely to snap back on them - but they are too obsessed to see it.
The internet is unprecedented in how it allows people with extremely minority views to come together and reinforce each others beliefs. The internet is also unprecedented in how far the reach of any individual can be - compare the physical "town square" where you might reach a few thousand versus the digital "town square" where you reach tens of millions. If you have a very small percentage of people who are, bluntly, completely crazy, you will statistically reach them on the internet when they wouldn't have been a problem previously. So we get a situation where what is by objective means, legal speech, incites a notable number of people to violence. While the percentage of people incited is very small, we have this very large population, and they have all found and are all encouraging each other, rather than talking to people outside the group who could act as a stabilizing factor.
How do you think this should be dealt with? And whatever this method is, is it something which could have been set up in a week?
Anybody can wear a red baseball hat or carry a confederate flag, etc....ANYBODY. What happened to common sense? There were a zillion cameras on those people who can easily be identified though drivers licenses. All of this is theater.
I'm so ashamed of my country's government.
Why the left is shaking with such fear is another big question...they are losing it completely.
The left isn't shaking in fear - we largely agree with the underlying motivations if not the specific actions - it's the neo-liberals that are. These are two distinct groups and conflating them leads to incorrect conclusions.
Although this overreach due to emotion, fear, and opportunism has a long history... I use the Covington Kids incident as the template of predictable leftist reaction to any and all events in the Trump era. Absolute unhinged histrionics and melodramatics... immediately! The difference here is after 12 to 24 hours...even some of the most bloodshot and spittle TDS people in my feed mildly conceded that they jumped the gun on a teenager. But, the end times prophecies, pearl clutching, and sky is falling lunacy here is close to unparalleled. Intentions of the loudest voices are clear: More power...More surveillance, More speech suppression, and a creepy Soviet/Chinese styled disappearing of any and all dissent. Thank You for being clear eyed and clarion in your calling out of this nonsense...wherever it appears, Glen. You, Matt Taibbi, and Black Conservatives have been making the most sense to me. The outliers are usually on to something....and way more interesting and fun than the groupthinkers.
Excellent piece. Although(and because) I disagree with some of your positions, I have followed your writing and analyses for years. In an effort to keep sane in this crazy time, I needed to hear more from you. Today, I joined Substack. Support for journalists like you at a time like this is critical. I am afraid the cliff is approaching again and the mainstream media, government establishment types and the Tech industry are about to march many people off it one more time. Let's all take a deep breath.
Ditto. Joined today after a few months of reading. The forces aligned to make dissidents out of ordinary people are stronger than they have been in my lifetime. We need journalistic truth and I am happy to support Greenwald's efforts.
A verse from Peter Gabriel's 1980 song " Biko" comes to mind:
"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher"
It is my belief that the political and media response to storming the Capitol will only fan the flames of an awakening by a people who cherish not only their own freedom of speech, but the freedom of others' speech as well.
From our first history lessons in school, we were taught that this country was founded on having a voice, and it was first among all other rights enshrined in our Constitution. We celebrated the violence of farmers rising up against the most powerful army in the world, demanding a voice, or in the alternative, independence. This is the soul of us as a people, and the riots from Portland to DC won't be placated by banning Trump's voice (or hanging him in the public square), caricaturing the rioters, or invoking "terrorism", "hate", and patriotism.
Publishers like twitter, facebook, and google (and yes, if they censor, they are publishers, not platforms) represent a threat to our freedoms and to the republic that is more pernicious than any Congressperson, President, or mob.
So long as one remembers that, as HL Mencken said:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
it is sure far easier to remain calm!
We need to keep in mind that this big old barge of a country is designed to be difficult to steer, hard to speed up or slow down too much and cranky when pushed the wrong way and the whole change of regime thing won't seem so scary. In the end, how much will Trump or Obama have changed anything? Going to be the same way after Biden. Get off social media, quit watching the fake news, enjoy your family and you'll be so much happier!
To what extent was the outcome foreseeable? Every time I’ve been in DC since 9/11, security when any threat was perceived has been highly visible and intimidating, including imposing vehicles and heavily armed guards. Yet, those in charge of security showed no such preparation. One has to ask who was responsible for and who ultimately benefited enormously from this lack of preparation. Such questions are not proof of anything but they are reasonable questions that must nonetheless be asked.
I can't believe what an idiot I was for thinking (way back 4 years ago) that Greenwald was just another scribe of the Marxist aristocracy. He is indeed one of the brightest and most serious minds in journalism today.
Perhaps reconsider your categorizations? 'Marxist aristocracy' is an oxymoron.
Marx wasn't a politician or a ruler and never prescribed any system of government. He analyzed capitalism with economic models, concluded it could only result in a rigged game where the winners only win and win more, and--perhaps his mortal sin---hopefully concluded that the masses being exploited would unite and rise up to throw off their oppressors. The tainting of the ideology came at the directive of threatened oligarchs around the world. This likely happens anyway, but Stalin's truly autocratic regime plus the early intensity of the cold war made this a simple feat here. In the US it was particularly brutal, with post war red scare (McCarthyism) used as a cover to eradicate pro-worker content from the then major platforms of film (see On the Waterfront which is an allegory for the era). Sadly, we will never know what the trajectory of a US labor movement in the first quarter of the century that is scarcely discussed.
Since everyone is quoting Orwell with such superficiality it hurts today, consider the allegory of Animal Farm. It is basically a blow by blow of the Russian revolution. You can take a lot from it, but at the heart is whether the moral of the story is that power always corrupts (absolute absolutely) or that Snowball (Lenin/Trotsky) should have had Boxer (the workers) take Napoleon (Stalin) out the minute he got that 'look in his eye'.
I can see you are spoiling for a fight. I am not your target, brother (or sister be it so). There is an intelligentsia, an elite in all facets of socialism/communism. I refer not to the authors, but their works. There is most certainly head to the snake, my friend. That is where we must strike. I am gladdened that dear author is on the side of justice and righteousness.
American democracy is resilient. Trump never represented any real threat - to democracy.
For anyone to actually become a dictator in the US, would require cooperation of the cabinet, military, police - a whole range of people - just for starters, nearly all of whom are far more principled than to let any such thing come close to happening.
The far bigger danger, is to put excessive trust into an establishment-approved President, an establishment whom are totally loyal to the oligarch class, including the incoming cabinet, which contains former executives of the very tech companies who are now normalizing censorship, in the name of protecting against alleged "insurrections", which stand exactly zero chance of success.
The bigger risk by far, is the steady erosion of our civil liberties, in response to overblown "existential threats", whether foreign or domestic, making any legitimate political challenge to the status quo, no longer possible.
And of course, all done opaquely, behind closed doors, with laws and policies written by lobbyists, neocons, and neoliberals. All of whom, who would have no qualms at all about giving a president dictatorial powers - so long as it is the "right" president.
Cancelling, false claims of racism, arbitrary censorship by tech oligarchs, expanding powers against terrorists - combined with the ability to label one a terrorist simply by accusation - these are far more likely to lead to totalitarianism, than a single, incompetent demagogue, who has arrayed against him, the full might of our institutions, oligarchy, big tech, Wall Street, and half of the nations voters - and whom would indeed have nearly the entirety of the nation's voters against him, should he actually do anything remotely dictatorial.
The whole narrative of Trump as potential dictator, was always ridiculous hyperbole, but will continue to be used - likely to further erode our norms and rights, in the name of "protecting" us.
Regarding "existential threats" ---- “Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China….. Almost a century of unimaginable suffering all across the globe. Defund US military terrorism
Although today's Socialism mantra used by my fellow right is just babble, as what they are fighting-Pelosi and Big Tech is not socialism it is however a fallacy to washover the toll of Communism threat to representative Governments in many places throughout the world. Suffering can not be laid at the feet of the US government, but we are experiencing what many innocents around the world since the '60s have had massed against them. El Salvador in particular. The CIA has just decided the same tactics were needed in America to unleash the Krakens of war again. "Trump had to go". "Syria needs to be invaded", "We can't have peace" are all the mantras of the same lot.
This is knee-slapping laughable:
"Suffering can not be laid at the feet of the US government"
You live in a cave? ... I guess you don't actually use your internet connection to, you know, learn anything. ...The suffering brought about by the US government, as a tool of the ultra-rich, is so vast it is literally incalculable, and literally spans the globe in it reach.
thank you for kicking theses lying jackals in the crotch.
"...hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, Libya, China..." your apt descripiton of the GOP is noted, they have been the imperial war party since the Dulles Brothers ruled the country.
He also would need to have engaged in all the tactics they accused him off. No journalists are in jail, no tv stations are off the air, no newspapers have been shuttered. What has been shuttered has been done by the tech oligarchs to stop free speech. And they are cheered on from the left.
You made a couple of errors:
"No journalists are in jail"
Assange, hello!
"And they are cheered on from the left."
Abjectly false; they're cheered by the neo-liberals, who are decidedly NOT left. Conflation of neo-liberalism and "the left" is a substantial error and leads to incorrect conclusions.
neo-liberals...AKA Third Way Democrats, Clintonians and Rockefeller Republicans all.
I agree there is a difference between the left and neoliberals. But the political leaders of the left (Bernie and Liz), have thrown in with the neoliberals, to defeat the "demon" Trump, and in hopes of getting their way on the issues common to the two groups - globalism, abortion, guns.
I haven't heard any leaders on the left, taking any principled stand on free speech.
Maybe talking about some other leaders on the left? Maybe "thought leaders"?
Without actual political leaders, that doesn't do much.
If talking about the political "left" - actual politicians -calling for free speech - who would that be?
"...the political leaders of the left... have thrown in with the neoliberals, to defeat the "demon" Trump..."
and of course you mistakenly—perhaps deliberately—identify the real need to defeat those who are seeking destroy our Constitutional democratic republic who have been massing in plain sight since Rimbaugh, Gingrich and Ailes created and deployed their BIGLIE campaign.
As one who formerly identified as "Democrat" (for decades), I am well aware Limbaugh, Gingrich, and Fox have done their share of issuing misleading propaganda, which served to divide and misinform the working class, and get them to vote for neoliberal establishment Republicans, against their economic interests.
Since neoliberal Bill Clinton, Democratic pols have played the role of the "good guys", in a two party neoliberal duopoly - kabuki theater.
Re: "...identify the real need to defeat those who are seeking destroy our Constitutional democratic republic":
Not sure who you think needs to be defeated, and by whom?
Those who need to be defeated (IMO), are those (neoliberals) of both parties, who wish to divide the voters, and continue the march towards Authoritarianism.
Abbreviated recent neoliberal history:
Bill Clinton, globalization to impoverish the working class, and import Chinese Authoritarianism via Big Tech - while claiming to do the reverse.
GWB after 9/11 with the ironically named "Patriot Act", to subvert freedom, and create surveillance state. And shift our industrial and economic strength to China.
Obama, to further erode middle class economic security, and turn back free speech to restrictive WWI era standards. (Using the draconian Espionage Act, which had long been out of use). Obamacare written by health insurance industry lobbyists. Cementing idea that any legislation opposed by any major lobby group, is off the table.
Then, Trump - with anti neoliberal economic policies.
Unfortunately, the neoliberals have been quite successful at convincing many leftists, and moderates, that Trump was worse than neoliberals for the working and middle class.
The media has become the mob.
Bingo.
I am not sure why you think that most of the people involved are too principled to allow a dictator. Can you explain that?
I agree we shouldn't put excessive trust into the inbound President. If we do, we enable someone else to take advantage of it later.
I would like to believe your sanguine analysis but facts on the ground and the fact patterns of the past two decades provides amply empirical evidence that you are promoting subterfuge with a slick new version of the BIGLIE.
"...false claims of racism, arbitrary censorship by tech oligarchs, expanding powers against terrorists - combined with the ability to label one a terrorist simply by accusation..."
I'll go point by point.
Racism and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and Jim Crow are alive today as they have been for 150 years...
the social media platforms are private enterprise and operate in the free market and can do as they will with users who violate their ground rules and these users agree to those ground rules and have not protection from the 1st Amendment...
what occured Wednesday Jan. 6 was a naked act of domestic terrorism directed by President Trump on live TV for the entire world to see.
The DoD's defnition of terrorism—
"The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."
As a classical liberal - a paleoliberal if you will - I have been arguing for a while that the threat of authoritarianism was increasingly not from the GOP but the powerful neoliberals who have coopted classic liberalism as a cover for their corruption and power.
They have become experts in gaslighting and twisting language around so that it’s barely recognizable without even caring about being hypocrites since when you have all the power you don’t have to answer to anyone.
For example, if what an excited, unorganized mob did (along with many who were clearly invited in by the police) is “insurrection”, then what was all the tremendous violence done by Antifa and a minority of BLM protestors including attacking federal courthouses? What about those who went into the Senate chambers to protest/intimidate Senators against voting for Kavanaugh?
The biggest hypocrisy is this: for 4 years, Hilary Clinton refused to accept the results of the 2016 election was fair and accused everyone from the Russians to the FBI to Bernie Sanders for her loss. She instigated “The Resistance” who refused to accept Donald Trump as POTUS. She and the entire Dem leadership encouraged completely baseless conspiracy theories about Trump being a Russian agent. Not just Trump but even Bernie (until he prostrated to the Dem establishment) and Tulsi Gabbard (who being a classic liberal is verboten in the Dem establishment).
None of this was deemed an “insurrection” but a shining example of Democracy. As apparently were the largest riots, violence in decades and intimidation of ordinary citizens going about their lives by Antifa and a minority of BLM supporters.
Meanwhile the senseless death of George Floyd - condemned by all right thinking people - elevated him to Sainthood (ignoring his serious criminal record) but the senseless death of black ex-police officer David Dorn protecting a shop against rioters was ignored. Black Lives Matter became a political project where only certain Black Lives mattered in certain situations.
And that it wasn’t against police brutality or the quick use of deadly weapons by police - a classic liberal theme - was made clear by the killing of Ashli Babbit who was clearly unarmed when shot. Neoliberals cheered her death and stories about her beliefs were splashed all over. Many blacks shot by the police that BLM rioted over had serious criminal records and they were shot after the police arrived after they were called by *other* black people. Breanna Taylor was a drug mule. None of this should matter to the issue of police brutality - which classic liberals would champion but now they do.
Essentially, only the *right* type of victim is to be mourned, elevated to sainthood, their pasts scrubbed. The *wrong* type of victims need to either ignored (eg Dorn) or be further demonized (eg Babbit).
And the last few days have been the darkest yet: using the Capitol Mob violence as an excuse Pelosi has dangerously and unconstitutionally abrogated to herself the powers of a POTUS and even his deputy to talk to the Pentagon about nuclear codes and such. While ostensibly it was about ensuring Trump not use them, there was subtext: she’s - nominally second in line - is in charge now. Is that not an “insurrection”?
And to cap off a crazy week, we have Big Tech monopolies censoring and muzzling speech including a sitting POTUS and thousands of his followers and threatening to cut off all other avenues of communication. So not only can you not post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube but Google and Apple demand apps like Parler censor users as well. Meanwhile a senior Microsoft employee is leading a charge to get Parler removed from using Amazon’s servers. CNN - which pushed various hoaxes most prominently Russiagate - is lobbying with the 6 TV cable providers to deplatform FOX news for “fake news.”
This is the official beginning of Neoliberal Authoritarianism where deeply corrupt politicians, who now control 2 branches of Government, allied with unaccountable corporate media and Big Tech (Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and other ancillary tech like Reddit, PayPal, Shopify etc) and backed by intelligence agencies - note where “retired” CIA officials most appear to call for more censorship of wrongthink and push various conspiracy theories - are going to impact what information the everyday citizen has access to, how to think, who to support, what to do under penalty of not just being deplatformed but losing your livelihood to being hounded.
It’s the end of the American experiment as we know it.
PS: I’d suggest everyone re-read Orwell’s Animal Farm and of course 1984.
Hope you're wrong about it being over, one of the best summaries of these recent situations and the contradictions in how the "sides" are being championed. Heck you can't even have a civil conversation about this stuff anymore. Kudos to you for laying it out nicely.
Great post.
Thank you. We are of the same mind.
Don't forget all, or almost all, of the people killed by police [black and white (no mention at all of the white people killed by police)] were violently resisting arrest. That doesn't excuse what Floyd's killer did but it does explain why he was under the knee of that officer.
Of course between the two pieces of video we were shown, where I'm sure Floyd's resistance would be evident, was clipped out and never shown. Surprisingly, the video of Brown very violently resisting arrest was exposed. However, apologist for that "poor murdered victim of police brutality" still claim he did nothing to warrant such treatment. Apparently the apologists believe he should have been run down and wrestled with again until he grabbed a police pistol, instead of just a taser, and killed some of the "racist" police.
You lost me at "Breanna Taylor was a drug mule". Not only is there zero evidence to support that assertion unless you consider the 3rd & 4th hand gossip which inevitably swirls around such cases,to be proof. Even if true which it isn't, the assertion is irrelevant. Police wantonly shooting any unarmed citizens as a by product of their aggressive bad tactics is murder pure & simple.
I live in a country where any such act would result in the police involved being fired and then imprisoned, as do a huge slice of people on this planet. Violence begets violence ,it has been state mandated violence which has caused amerika to be so to be reduced to far right oppression.
That statement tells me that you are far from being an old school liberal. You are an old school fascist in camouflage.
Oh, I and I hate the way that the idjits' decision to fall into the well-laid trap so 'invade' the capitol is being used to suppress dissent. Those types were plainly too stupid to ask themselves "Why is it so easy? The capitol cops deal with protests every second day often much bigger protests that this". But their sense of entitlement combined with a lifetime of indoctrination caused them to believe that they were somehow special.
Even so they shouldn't be de-platformed. But they will be.
Re Breanna Taylor: If you read my post carefully the reality - not gossip - that she was a drug mule (from police documents) is INDEED irrelevant to the manner of her killing. We both agree. That is what I said. And the FACT that George Floyd had an armed robbery conviction, that he almost certainly died from a fentanyl overdose (he was feeling sick even before the cop put his knee on his neck) does NOT excuse the callous nature of the cops putting a knee on him - an act of pure brutality. The FACT that Jacob Blake was assaulting a woman which is why the cops were called, that he tore off the taser hooks the cops fired on him and reached for a knife (read the DAs findings) does not necessarily mean that cops did not have other ways to subdue him. As a classical liberal I have always felt that police use excessive force when less would do.
My point as a classical liberal is that just because a person was or is engaging in criminal activity does not excuse police overreactions. Neoliberals believe that too to a point: unless the person being shot is someone they despise like Ashli Babbit. Then the narrative changes. The sick glee expressed at Babbitt’s death - with Twitter’s full blessing - shows the hollowness of their supposed compassion. When the FBI (after tipping off CNN) arrested Roger Stone as if he was a violent criminal, neoliberals cheered just because he is an asshole instead of being appalled at state brutality. Just because a person is black or white, a criminal or an asshole, despicable or not does not excuse state violence. THAT’s been a credo of classic liberalism.
And you think those who invaded the Capitol were “entitled” folks? These are among the poorest in society. Their grievances are ironically the same as many blacks condemned to ghettos: a feeling of completely being trapped in their status. Neoliberals have made everything about race - the real war that classic liberals have always fought for is class (with the fight against racism being that race condemned some people to exist in a lower class).
Who represents the lower class in the US? The neoliberal leadership? They are all multimillionaires who despise the white lower class and see the black lower class as a means to virtue-signal to get votes. Why do you think black support got Trump *increased* - because many recognized the utter hypocrisy of neoliberals.
You talk of indoctrination and calling me a fascist. Well let me start by saying I think you show all the signs of being a brainwashed neoliberal virtue-signaling hypocrite.
But let me make the bigger point: I fully support your right to call me whatever names you want and impugn me however misguided. But that’s a right neoliberals only want for themselves. And that’s another key difference between classic liberalism and neoliberal authoritarianism.
Police make all sorts of wild accusations for all sorts of reasons, a deceitful informant, corruption (a major in drug cases) and personal animus, so I couldn't give a flying f.... what they 'allege' in documents, put up or shut up, prove it in court or deal with the situation as is, an innocent. The same goes for all the slander you have put at the doors of the other victims of police killings. Citizens have a right to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty.
That did not happen with Ms Taylor or Mr Floyd. Police are not appointed judge jury & executioner no matter what they may think they know, because in my experience any police force is full of chinese whispers. Some copper suggests something may have happened, the next copper says it definitely did happen & the one after that laps that up and then puts it as down a 'lose' for the police which must be remedied.
They are just another gang with all the flaws & foibles of any gang, particularly "my brother is always correct & I will defend him whatever lies I must tell'.
Police murdering any unarmed civilian no matter what is simply wrong and more US police need to have that pointed out to them with big prison time.
I am AGREEING with you that Police should not be murdering unarmed civilians no matter what their past. All I’m pointing out that is that this standard goes out the door when the unarmed civilian is someone who the neoliberal mob hates like Ashli Babbitt. THEN it is apparently legitimate to bring up her past.
Why the double standard? I’m simply pointing out that Breanna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake had pretty unsavory pasts. BUT this does not excuse their killings: the case should be independent.
I’ve maintained this standard for decades: so for example just because a woman may be a prostitute does not mean she cannot sue for rape. Prostitutes were often the victims of the most violent crimes simply because they are easy prey and society would say “you had it coming”. That’s simply wrong.
What you seem to be doing is this: since Floyd’s death was a brutality it means he was a saint and any mention of his past is a lie. That’s ridiculous as well. The two are independent. There could be a brutal killing of a man with an angelic past or a brutal killing of one with a shady past. Both are brutal killings period.
So why did I bring up Taylor/Floyd/Blake’s pasts? Because I wanted to point out the hypocrisy of those who cheer Babbitt death and bring up her past.
For example now the society seems to be going after anyone who attended the rally in DC, most of whom went home after, or those shmucks who wandered into the Capitol as opposed to a hard core group that was intent on mayhem. It’s interesting that neoliberals are asking the FBI to round up all these individuals ignoring that the same hysteria after 9/11 resulted in hundreds of Muslims being rounded up on suspicion. It was a witch hunt then and it’s a witch hunt now.
This is neoliberal hypocrisy in a nut shell which is why I eschew the neoliberal movement as one without principle driven by corrupt high priests manipulating liberal values to benefit their own constituency.
Which was the point in my original post.
you are a soulless cretin who when proven to be just that spin more misdirections, obfuscation and restate your original lie,
Soullessness is no worse than mindlessness, emoting only.
This is why Pope Urban VIII locked you in your house: too much truth-tellin' 😉
I too am a true (original) liberal (advocate of free markets and individual autonomy), not a progressive or socialist fraudulently stamping that label on their forehead only because they like its look, sound, and feel better than their honest labels.
Although I don't deny too often the existence of police brutality, some of your examples are way off base and appear to come from your prejudices (if I'm interpreting them, and you are explaining them, properly).
I understand Breana was not the "drug mule" the police sought. They were (as in similar cases) at the wrong apartment. Also Floyd's (I'm sure) violent resisting was cut from the video shown. Although that would excuse the knee on Floyd's neck it doesn't excuse ignoring his pleas about not being able to breath.
Your comments about Brown are ridiculous on your part. Are you suggesting he be run down and wrestled with again until he grabbed a police pistol, not a taser, during the second brawl?
You seem reasonable. Are you actually thinking during your writing, not just emoting then rationalizing your emotions as nearly everyone on earth does?
Galileo is NOT off base, you are.
Re Brianna: rather than run with the headlines, I took the time to follow the facts before rushing to judgment. The police were NOT at the wrong apartment. Reports document that a neighbor's phone recorded the police knocking/announcing; when the police entered, Brianna's boyfriend shot an officer, wounding the femoral artery, causing massive bleeding. Brianna was shot when police returned fire. Brianna had a history of working as a drug mule for a former boyfriend, evidence of which was filmed on surveillance tapes and her many calls to drug dealers in prison. Just months before her death, police found a dead body in the back of her abandoned rental car. When Brianna's mother learned of her death, she immediately blamed Brianna's drug dealing boyfriend for having corrupted her daughter. To be clear - I am not expert enough to know whether the police could have acted more cautiously in the circumstances they faced. But I am discerning enough to resist getting sucked into the media truth-distorting hysteria, which seems to get more irresponsible and mob like with each passing month.
Galileo wrote a carefully stated, well-reasoned critique. You shot back with loose conjecture and mockery in apparent eagerness to pass judgment on events you know little about. You call yourself a true liberal, but you write like a SJW, rushing about projecting you own lack of discernment on others. My words seem harsh, but my feedback is well-meant. A bit more reflection and self-reflection would do you no harm.
Oops! Something went wrong. I thought I was responding to Debsisdeb, the one to whom Gelileo responded.
Thanks for the correction about Breana, assuming you did get reliable information about her and not just counter-propaganda. I usually don't buy mainstream propaganda pretending to be news, but since I do know there are too often police mistakes like that (yes there are) I assumed this was another.
I'm a true liberal, whether or not you want to believe that. You can believe what you want. Nearly everyone does whether or not it is true.
PS: What's an SJW?
I have a high degree of certainty that my info is reliable because I carefully looked at multiple sources and have spent years in work that requires practiced critical thinking. I make a practice of scrutinizing my own perspective in order to get closer to truth, which I value more than acceptance or the desire to be thought in the right. Understanding that we all see through a glass darkly, is foundational to critical thinking .... so despite my best efforts to get at truth, I am very much aware that my understanding is always limited and others know things that I don't.
Your admission speaks well, though I find it hard to understand what made made you think Debsisdeb was a liberal.
Assuming a person committed a wrong because they are part of a group that has a reputation for doing wrong is fundamentally illiberal because it blasts past the presumption of innocence. When we rush to assume all cops are bad actors we are not acting with open-mindedness, but bias.
A final word about police making mistakes. It is a high risk job requiring a measure of bravado and personal risk and can easily harden attitudes due to constant exposure to the seamier side of life. It goes without saying, that bad behaviors and attitudes can develop so (as a society) have to understand these pressures and vulnerabilities in order to counteracts these occupational risks. It is a moral shortcoming and practical mistake to approach analysis as if this group of professionals (law enforcement) uniquely deserve to be despised and scapegoated by the public mob egged on by the self-righteous media.
So when I said I was a classical liberal, I did not mean it in the way you seem to be using it which seems more what’s now called libertarianism. While labels are often prone to misinterpreting and excessive simplification, and few hew to every belief a political label implies, I am in general parlance a “progressive” but not the way it’s conflated today with neoliberalism which I’d call fake progressivism and is more of a moralizing conformist cult similar to the Catholic Church during the Inquisition with penalties encouraged from corrupt high priests for straying from the latest decree deciding what is Right and what is Wrong not amenable to debate only instant judgment.
But enough with that to address the substance of your comment to me. After a condescending “you seem reasonable” you write “Are you actually thinking during your writing” while your last para says “Your comments about Brown are ridiculous on your part.” So I never talked about “Brown” - I assume you meant Michael Brown from Ferguson - but Jacob Blake (I mentioned him by name). You are getting black-people-shot-by-police mixed up.
So I’ll pass on the opportunity to snidely retort “you seem educated but do you actually know how to read”, treat your mixing up black people as a honest mistake (while no doubt a neoliberal would point censoriously at you and shriek “Racist!” etc) and go to the issue of police brutality/overreaction.
In the Blake case, the DA did not find grounds to prosecute as the cops acted within prescribed procedures. I’ll concede that this case is not as clear cut an example as others of police overreaction - in general every case is different and there are different degrees of overreach - but in general shooting a guy 7 times in the back to halt him seems excessive.
In the Floyd case, the police body cams don’t show him violently resisting effort - as you claim - as much as resisting being pushed into a police car as he pleaded he was feeling ill and slumped to the ground refusing or unable to get up. This is around the point back-up arrived and Chauvin got involved. From my point of view, the knee on the neck - outlawed in many jurisdictions though not apparently in Minneapolis - was brutal and excessive in what seemed to be a clearly sick man who was prone on the pavement. It was simply an act of deep callousness and disregard for human life and the only reason nobody could save him was that the police have a state sanctioned monopoly on violence with bystanders unable to do anything but shout and plead to the cops in vain as they watched a man agonizingly die right in front of them. This to me was clear brutality.
In the Breanna Taylor case, the police *were* in the right apartment with a no-knock warrant to search the apartment (not arrest Taylor or any such)- though it’s claimed they did knock and announce themselves before breaking in - as part of a larger operation where Taylor’s apartment was suspected to be a conduit point for drug dealing and money storage/exchange. Taylor’s boyfriend who was there fired a shot at what he later claimed were unknown intruders, hitting a cop and around 30+ bullets were fired back killing Taylor was was next to the boyfriend with some shots penetrating two neighboring apartments (for which a cop was charged for wanton endangerment). This to me was police recklessness.
clever how you virtue signal by allowing the cops are cullpable for the Taylors death and then propose a new and ever more vile lie that the video documenting Floyd's murder was tampered with.
Burn in hell you surley will, do have a blessed day and know I'll say a prayer for you misbegottne soul, though I doubt it will do much good.
Both are blatantly obvious, although they "can't be true" since neither favor what some people want to believe. Even worse, they would support what those people hate to admit. Most police "brutality," although some truly isn't warranted like the officer ignoring Floyd's pleas, comes because very belligerent (often very violently so, like Brown was) suspects are very much resisting arrest.
The video of Floyd being led down the sidewalk beside the car, turned to the curb and was stepping into the street behind the car when the video beyond was clipped out. The only other video clip shown is with Floyd under the officers knee. Where is the clipped out part of the video between the time he is led off the curb and the time he is under the officers knee?
I return your favor of the prayer. I offer the same for all "irrational/arational adherents to dogma," typically hard left dogma, (too often lying) propaganda.
you are lying sack of trump whose soul will burn in hell for all eternity...do have a blessed day and I'll say a prayer for your misbegotten soul...then again you could very well be just another soulless cretin pulling the rubes' strings.
I am here because I value Greenwald's perspective but am dismayed that so many contributors rush to make statements that they seem to know little or nothing about. The "zero" evidence of Breanna being a drug mule is, well, delusional. There are surveillance photos of her at drug deals and recording and transcripts of her calls to boyfriends in prison discussing drug deals. Months before her death police found a dead body in her abandoned rental car .... which she had not reported missing. If that does not strike one as suspect ... consider that her mother, upon hearing of Brianna's death began lamenting that it was all the fault of her drug dealing boyfriend corrupting her. And yes, they had the phones tapped of some of her contacts.
As for the recklessness of shooting any unarmed citizen, try to imagine getting outside of your own biases. There can be instances where an unarmed person gets hit in crossfire due to their being very physically close to one who is actively firing on others. It is very doubtful that the cop thought, "He's the one shooting, but I choose to shoot her instead." More likely the hallway was dark and the return shot was aimed very close to where the shot was fired and Brianna was in close to the action.
I don't know where you live, but few countries have the kinds of gun rights enjoyed by Americans. That means our law enforcement officers face much greater risks going into dangerous, unknown situations. It is their right, even their duty to defend themselves when being shot at. Apparently the mixed grand jury decided the cop that shot Brianna did not deserve to be charged.
This is not to say that the law enforcement should be excused for being lax or careless. Nor is it to say that Brianna's worth or rights are in any way diminished because she was involved in criminal activity. But take note. When the news of this first hit, Brianna was presented as an innocent nurse, shot while sleeping in her bed by out of control cops who did a no knock on the wrong apartment. WRONG on all accounts. As they say, lies get half way around the world while truth is still putting on its shoes. The fact is that Brianna had been living a life of crime, playing with the bad boys, handling money and getting cars used for dirty deeds. That lifestyle takes on a heightened risk of getting hurt and hurting others. Brianna knew it, Even her mom knew it. And yet she threw caution to the wind, for money or lust or adventure. Does that mean she doesn't deserve to live? Of course not. It means we need to buck up and stop looking for a scapegoat for every tragedy.
I have been outraged by unconstitutional "no knock" and "stop and search" since they were instituted (I'm old enough to remember that). I hope you aren't one of the racist types who pretend that Breana's situation had anything at all to do with race when it certainly didn't. The exact same result would have happened if Breana and her boyfriend were white (if so, don't lie, yes it would).
Her boyfriend fired at police first. The police didn't care about race at all then. The fault was on "no knock" and, as I understand, police at the wrong apartment (that's one of the horrors with "no knock"). I believe they were trying to raid a "drug mule" but that wasn't Breana.
The city and its drug enforcement office should be forced to pay anyone dependent on Breana, at least, a handsome compensation and those offices chastised severely. Also, the unconstitutional outrages of "no knock" and "stop and search" never should have been instituted by the protection racketeers in the capitols. It should have been immediately outlawed by the Supreme Court and I still do not understand why they ever allowed it.
Apparently they cooperated with those outrages just to help avoid drug sellers flushing their contraband. That was never worth the horrors created by them, even not considering their certain unconstitutionality.
However, who cares about "dead white mens' " constitutionality (some of them unforgivable slave holders, regardless of that being world-wide then, especially in Africa by black slave holders selling their also black slaves to international traders)? That contract between the federal government and the states, and/or its Bill of [the peoples'] Rights, are also outrageously claimed to be available to summary reinterpreted at whim for the advantage of whatever faction wants it altered.
"Police wantonly shooting any unarmed citizens as a by product of their aggressive bad tactics is murder pure & simple." agreed but in this case it was in response to someone in the apartment shooting at them first. regardless, it was bad and should never have happened. no knock warrants in the case of a simple drug bust is ridiculous
Not just "ridiculous," outrageous.
"...de-platformed..." you and yours have "jumped the shark" on creating fictional explanations for the seditious conspiritorial events that unfoded Wed. Jan. 6th.
social media platforms are free market enterprises that allow users access after those users agree to their groudn rules...no 1st amendment rights or protections infered or granted.
so you would have us believe the thugs that were directed by Trump to stage a coup d'etat are neoliberals?
paleoliberals...just come out and say it...you are as unreconstructed Monarchist who wants to return the world to the divine right of leaders.
and thanks for playing along at home.
?? You’re too far gone in your insanity frothing at the mouth to have a rational conversation with. You don’t even know how to read what I wrote because you assume anyone who criticizes the neoliberal authoritarianism in full swing thus supports Trump or some such. This is precisely the warning that Greenwald is giving.
Anyways, I’ll ignoring your trolling. I think it’s best you go back to Twitter to yell at some random people.
You sound hysterical.
And more is surely coming -- Kamala is Hillary's protégé and without any scruples in her carrier climbing:
http://reason.com/archives/2018/08/21/backpage-founders-larkin-and-lacey-speak
Kamala Harris' office accused him of pimping, including some counts involving minors.
Lacey and Larkin were arrested and charged with "conspiracy to commit pimping." Harris, who at the time was running for the U.S. Senate, called them "despicable"
This was a great piece Glenn. It just rapes my mind that 500,000 dead Iraqis and millions driven from their homes is —at least to liberals —considered a lesser evil than Trump’s mean tweets. It’s amazing that propagandists like David Frum and other Neocons are lauded by liberals who once stood for civil liberties. Think about this. People are outraged by a Trump mean tweet and NOT outraged by George W Bush’s crimes (500,0000 dead Iraqis, millions Iraqis driven from their homes, a country recked and sacked by Gringolandia, etc). Sorry, but Trump is a microscopic insect compared to the Neocon criminal enterprise.
Yes, it's sick. Desperately ill.
I’ve stopped reading the traditional news outlets and read Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi instead. I don’t always agree but these two are the only journalists and/or commentators that don’t need to take anti-psychotics before I’ll consider reading them again.
I agree with you. I am a longtime Republican, voted for President Trump in 2016 and 2020, but Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi make honest arguments in support of their positions. Even if my views on a topic are different from theirs, what they say is helpful to me. And the comments here generally are very much worth reading.
I'm curious why you voted for him again in 2020? I was appalled at his handling of the pandemic. CDC owns a huge piece of the sour pie of failure but Trump's failure to unify and tow a steadfast Federal approach was a grotesque display of inability to lead.
Thank you for the comment. But in fact President Trump did an excellent job, considering how much the Democrats spoke and did in opposition to his policies. Biden was among the worst, criticizing Trump for stopping travel from China, and Harris was not far behind, promoting anti-vaccine views all summer and fall.
Further President Trump was a unifier and did his best to have the senior medical professionals in the government be heard by the public. He attended their briefings, giving them audiences as much as 10 million persons, a hundred times what they would have had without his presence.
He met with and worked closely with manufacturers of needed supplies for health care workers and got everything that was needed out very quickly through his active leadership. Even Governor Cuomo praised President Trump in mid-April for doing all this (even sending a fully-staffed naval medical ship to New York City!).
President Trump also met with and coordinated work by pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines. He said they would be ready by the end of the year; the Democrats claimed it would take 12 to 18 months (no earlier than April 2021). It happened as he said.
He pointed out medical literature (including from the CDC!) that said hydroxychloroquine was an effective medication if delivered early. The Democrats attacked him for saying this. But he was right. There are now more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers confirming this: https://c19study.com/ Even the AMA has finally endorsed his position.
The U.S. death rate per million population is currently 12th in the world: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries . New Jersey and New York had governors whose policies resulted in many extra deaths. If they were separate countries, the U.S. would be around 20th. And the number of deaths due to COVID in the U.S. is significantly inflated by including deaths in which the person happened to be infected, even auto and motorcycle accidents, falls, multiple dangerous drug levels, ...
For example, an analysis by a prominent doctor in Minnesota Found that 40% of the death certificates did not have COVID as the cause of death: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/coronavirus-death-certificates-minnesota-inflated
Washington State has a similar inflation: https://www.freedomfoundation.com/covid-19/wa-lowers-covid-19-deaths-by-200-investigation-suggests-its-still-too-high/
So the U.S. has not done so badly as many other developed countries. President Trump's leadership helped significantly. Can you imaging that Hilary Clinton could have done any of these things? Or Joe Biden?
I'll give you Hydroxy though – I can't seem to find a definitive story on whether it's effective or not. But seems that it's good as early intervention.
I pointed to the comprehensive web site that lists ALL the published scientific papers on HCQ: https://c19study.com/ You can click on a paper's listing and get detailed information about the study.
Even the AMA officially decided on October 30, 2020, that it was effective: https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2020-10/nov20-handbook-addendum.pdf
"RESOLVED, That our AMA reassure the patients whose physicians are prescribing
19 hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for their early-stage COVID-19 diagnosis by
20 issuing an updated statement clarifying our support for a physician’s ability to prescribe an FDA21 approved medication for off label use, if it is in her/his best clinical judgement, with specific
22 reference to the use of hydroxychloroquine and combination therapies for the treatment of the
23 earliest stage of COVID-19 (Directive to Take Action); (page 18 of the entire document)
Of course they waited until after the election so President Trump would not get any credit.
Color me convinced. I didn't go through the entire list, I admit.
Issuing no clear Federal guidelines and inserting doubt around effectiveness of masks. Setting a horrid example by holding rallies with crowds with no distancing or masking. Randomly talking about ingesting bleach and UV light. Criticizing officials publicly, castigating Fauci and others and inserting ever more doubt. Selective and partisan critique of governors. He did not unify in the least. And Hydroxychloroquine – sorry but no: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/11/studies-find-no-covid-benefit-preventive-hydroxychloroquine-or-convalescent - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/hydroxychloroquine-does-not-benefit-adults-hospitalized-covid-19 – Two definite points I give Trump: closed borders (but this was not particularly logical either, China closed but Europe open) and Warp Speed.
Masks: That was Dr Fauci who said not to wear masks, not President Trump
Rallies: President Trump's rallies showed no substantial increase in infections. The number of his rallies is of course trivial compared to the many protests and riots which involved no distancing and often no masks (except for the Antifa, who have worn them for years as part of their uniform). Here are some examples of the hypocrisy of Democrats on masks and distancing: https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/11/politicians-covid-hypocrisy-destroys-peoples-faith-in-government/
and an earlier, well-researched article: https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/20/your-political-leaders-hate-you-and-think-youre-stupid/
Bleach: President Trump did not say drink bleach; he pointed out that it can be used by doctors in treating infected persons.
UV light: The value of UV light for treating infections has been known for decades. President Trump noted that medical research was ongoing, and in fact a couple of months later the Russian Academy of Physics reported that they are working on it with success: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/02/russia-says-its-developing-uv-light-therapy-to-treat-coronavirus-a70452
Criticisms: President Trump got far more criticism from Democrats and their media than he gave to everyone. The governors he criticized were ignoring advice from official institutions.
HCQ: I pointed out the pretty definitive research on its value if used early. Your first link goes to two studies, one showed no benefit and the other was late (which the science has said for years doesn't work). The second link goes to a late study, so is irrelevant.
I don't want to get into a tit-for-tat but the idea of sticking UV light into your body is hokey at best, a scam at worst – https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/27/healight-covid-19/
Rallies and protests can be equally irresponsible. There is a difference when a bunch of activists organize a protest and when the President of the US organizes rallies all the while his top doctor advises against all gatherings. Fauci and WHO mishandled and then later corrected their view on the masks. The problem is that by railing Fauci and health officials publicly, Trump casts himself as the trusted source for how to respond to COVID and clearly he says whatever comes to mind. Why not just state that Dr. Fauci made a mistake on the masks but the situation was chaotic, everyone made mistakes and now we are pulling together to respond the crisis? The very reason Fauci became such a big part of the COVID response was because he had to be the voice of clarity and reason due to Trump's inability to do so. Trump was so wishy-washy that I still don't know if he thinks masks work but I do know he occasionally puts one in his pocket... Great example for the rest of us. Not to mention his horrid flippancy related to the thousands of people that have died in the US during the crisis. He has been interested only in his persona and perception in the media. When was the last time he gave a speech or statement that created a sense of hope and resolve in the face of all this death and calamity? All I can remember is that "the media is unfair to me" and the mental gymnastics of presenting that the US somehow did well during the crisis.
I agree on media hypocrisy on Trump. They're possessed. That's not the argument. He is irresponsible with his conduct and words unbecoming a US President. The buck never stops with him. Why is your bar so low for true leadership? Imagine Dwight Eisenhower saying the things and doing the things that Trump has. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHkzqejFKbM
This came to me - probably by a mistake. FYI - I never voted for Trump.. (or for Biden ;-))
I reluctantly voted Biden. It was very depressing, as it was my first vote in a presidential election. Just got naturalized.
A suggestion for Matt's TK:
http://reason.com/archives/2018/08/21/backpage-founders-larkin-and-lacey-speak
Kamala Harris' office accused him of pimping, including some counts involving minors.
Lacey and Larkin were arrested and charged with "conspiracy to commit pimping." Harris, who at the time was running for the U.S. Senate, called them "despicable"
Sharyl Atkisson is also a good source.
Check out Last American Vagabond and Whitney Webb also. Jimmy Dore. There isn't much available and Glenn and Matt are the best, but I can recommend those having critical fact based discussions.
Once again Glenn hits a homerun with this, honestly he is such an amazing writer, amazing how he clearly articulates the flawed logic and makes many on the left look utterly clueless. Thank you Glenn!!! I may not agree with all your political views but absolutely love your ability to write.
Thank you Glenn -- I see this outstanding piece for the 2nd time -- you have probably opened it to all (non-subscribers) as a reason.
If Trump would be prudent in these last few days of his presidency -- he would promptly give pardon to both Julian and Edward. Media's TOTAL silence on persecution of Assange, the most important publisher in a century -- tells it all whom US (and UK) media serves and what is its role.
The incoming administration and its DNC cabal will try to destroy Julian. They are mortally afraid that the scam of the century -- their Russia-gate hoax will be further exposed and will do anything to hide their leading role. The entire Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors, i.e., the imperial War party/ Kamala Harris (and her sister) are Hillary's protégés..
United States is by now a failed state - a state that is completely failing both its "right" and "left" population. Exhibitionists in Congress (all by now vaccinated (except Tulsi) regardless of their age) are competing in blabbering how to punish Trump in his last days in office. Yet, while 4,000++ people die daily from what should be called "Trump virus" because complete mishandling and resulting human and economic catastrophe he caused (compare four time larger China 5,000 dead versus our 350,000+ so far - now our daily deaths are approaching China's ten month total !?) -- in our immense tragedy -- there is no data available to public: by SPECIFIC county and city
-- How many vaccination sets were distributed
-- How many people are vaccinated by day and by dates
-- How many professionals are deployed giving vaccinations, etc.
Instead, Congress first action was apparently to ban use of words mother and father - "as too gender specific" so - better use word parent.
Let's hope Trump will find focus, wisdom and compassion to pardon Julian and Edward !! A real danger to our democracy is not incompetent Trump and his pathetic tweets -- it is is only coming now. It is very possible that FB and Tweeter will forbid any mention of Russia-gate fraud and/or Hunter's laptops and Biden family or DNC corruption.
He's not going to Pardon Assange. His focus was Blackwater war criminals and Omen boy Kush's felon father. Lol.
It's the saddest thing in the world for people to have false hope in anyone in power right now. I know it's a black pill, but honestly, help isn't coming from these people.
Why not?
Very same gang initiated the Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” -- the scam was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, .. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their WS and military industry donors. That lying team is now back in power -- Kamala is Hillary's protégé.
I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm saying the first thing Trump did in office was broker an arms deal with Saudi, who used this weapons in Yemeni children. Thousands starved to death in 2020. Where was the news coverage on that? Trump might be the lesser of 2 evils, but guess what that means? Lesser isn't saintly. Pardoning Assange should be what Trump does, but he hasn't, and he would have done it already. I'm kinda thinking he's got other things prioritized right now. And he'll sit in UK prison, an innocent man fighting for free speech against tyranny of the State. A symbol of current events and ironic considering the man who can pardon him is now being censored.
Of course, you are correct. One bad party with two wings -- imperial War party. For almost a century now. A viable third party is needed -- let's hope it will not be Trump's but a socialist (that is, more humane) party
Strongly agree on pardons. But do you really think China had only 5,000 dead? Seriously? At least Obama wasn't POTUS when the China virus was let loose - we'd be at over 1.5MM dead by now.
I was thinking the same thing. Nobody on earth believes chinas numbers are accurate.
I do believe this -- all indications indicate that is correct. Asia had deadly virus several years ago, learned lesson (known for a century) and acted promptly and "severely" (much criticized by "freedom loving" US media).
That is why Covid-19 should enter our history as "Trump virus" - because of avoidable catastrophe and complete mismanagement and immense human and economic cost
Free Assange -- media is silent - ask WHY
Yes, they def contained it better but I still don’t believe the numbers. I don’t believe anything that comes out of China because they don’t have free press. So to your point free Assange or we are no better.
I want to know why the media is so silent, what are your thoughts?
Thank you. There is a collusion between media, Democrat party, and the deep state for now five years. The entire anti-Russian narrative is a deliberate fabrication; perhaps the worst scam in US history is neoliberals’ Russia-gate hoax. They lost to a TV host. Instead of reflection, they latched onto a moronic conspiracy theory for now five years. This includes the proven false accusations that Russia gave WikiLeaks Hillary's emails.
The Russia-gate hoax and Ukraine-impeachment “entertainment” was concocted by Obama/Hillary/Biden/Pelosi, Schumer, etc. and their intelligence and DNC executives on behalf of their Wall Street and military industry donors. That team is now back in power -- Kamala Harris (and her sister) is Hillary's protégé.
Just recently, remember, Clapper, Brennan & Hayden trio were among former 50 intelligence officials stating that Hunter-laptop is classical “Russian disinformation”.
- They were also key promoters of the three-year Russia-gate hoax.
- They were also key intelligence executives in Obama/Biden/Hillary government – the government which hunted Snowden (forcing Bolivian plane with Bolivia’s president to land to search it) and armed Al Qaeda (including “white helmets” hoax) and staged all chemical attacks in Syria to remove its government.
When asked about Hunter's laptops Pelosi stated "All roads lead to Putin"; commenting on Capitol invasion Schumer said - "worst that Pearl Harbor and 9/11"...
Assange must be silenced -- all the players agree; Trump is likely to dumb to realize how important is pardoning Assange now that the full old team is in power again -- instead he pardoned BlackWater criminals who massacred Iraqis in Bagdad.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
Thank you for that info, I’ll admit I had no idea it was this corrupt. I agree Trump may not pardon Assange for the right reasons that you have stated above. But his self serving personality might push him to do it just to piss off his enemies which would still be great!
I’d also love to see him pardon every person Kamala convicted for non violent drug crimes. Just based on principle since she is such a hypocrite and it would be nice to let the little guy get a win for once.
With his political future non existent at this point, he might as well go out with a bang!! 🙏🙏
It would do you no harm to read a little of the Epoch Times - so you could get a better idea of what is going on in China.
Reading this well-founded little paper published by extremist anti-communist "religious" Falun Gong anti-China cult does great harm.
All its propaganda about e.g., Moslem Uighur's ten million population being in concentration camps comes from a single German source, a delusional anti-Communist propagandist inventing serial falsifications that are multiplied and amplified by Pompeo and his resources.
Falun Gong's "Epoch Times" is just an anti-China propaganda source - no useful information there... :-))
It is untrue that reading Epoch Times "does great harm" unless of course you are referring to the fact that it is critical of the Chinese Communist Party and their systematic violations of basic human rights in furtherance of their totalitarian repression and contro..
The detention and persecution of Uighurs, has been condemned by the British government and the European Union. In 2018 the UN Human Rights committee found credible reports that the Uighur region had confined one million people in a massive internment camp system. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also accused the government of massive imprisonment and torture of these people. Even the CCP has begun admitting to the detention camps, rationalizing that it is necessary to re-educate this population. So the claim that these camps are a fabrication of a single German source is patently false.
The Guardian (a left-leaning British journal) has reported on satellite confirmation of the detention camps. Uighurs are routinely rounded up and sent to these camps where whole families are forced into labor. Sometimes parents are permanently separated from their children. There are reports of forced abortions and sterilizations.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/24/china-imprisoning-uighurs-satellite-images-xinjiang
Here is a heartbreaking guided tour of a 600 year old Uighur town, now abandoned due to the forced evacuations. Begin a 5 minutes to hear about the terrible mistreatment of these people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq_x9IgqoFQ
Here is the area 4 years earlier, before the roundup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkeTkd4okQ0
Another video shows Chinese police preventing anyone from entering the abandoned Uighur area.
Time to wake up.
Not to worry, the Trump Vaccine is being rolled out. Multiply China's reported numbers by 1,000 and you may be about right.
I see -- anything China is BAD... Just like anything Russia ;-))
Close - anything from the CCP is BAD.
I do believe this -- all indications indicate that is correct. Asia had deadly virus several years ago, learned lesson (known for a century) and acted promptly and "severely" (much criticized by "freedom loving" US media).
That is why Covid-19 should enter our history as "Trump virus" - because of avoidable catastrophe and complete mismanagement and immense human and economic cost
Free Assange -- media is silent - ask WHY
Yes, I do believe this -- all indications indicate that is correct. Asia had virus severe lesson several years ago and acted promptly and "severely". That is why Covid-19 should enter our history as "Trump virus" - because of catastrophe and complete mismanagement and immense human and economic cost
Agree on the pardons.
Also, I read Trump is allegedly trying to declassify all evidence in the Hunter Biden case. If so: could that be behind the rhetoric about 25th amendment and impeachment?
Where did you read that Trump is trying to declassify all the Hunter Biden evidence?
Personally I doubt that's behind the 25th amendment and impeachment issues. Congress felt personally threatened and therefore is taking this far more seriously than they've taken anything else.
We might as well get all the Hunter Biden information out in the open. If we have President Harris sworn in at the inauguration, so be it.
"If Trump would be prudent in these last few days of his presidency -- he would promptly give pardon to both Julian and Edward." I agree and cannot understand why he is not Pompeo seems to be fighting for extradition and execution of Assange, but nothing he put out harmed anyone or was proven false. The media commits sins of falsity against their neighbors daily.
It is not only Pompeo though. Certainly religious extremist and zealot Pompeo is among the most dangerous characters ever (note in Covid relief package - $2B is for replacing Huawei communication equipment -- not for "security" but as an attempt to salvage US technological dominance). But, we should always remember Saint Obama:
“Venezuela is fundamental threat to USA” -- declared Obama formally initiating regime change.
What he meant is “Socialism is a threat to capitalism”… hence imperial War-party endless wars -- against "godless” Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, China…..
Defund US military terrorism
"Yesterday’s invasion of the Capitol by a Trump-supporting mob..."
I truly appreciate your journalism, but framing the unfortunate event at the Capitol like this is prejudiced and premature of evidence. There was clearly a small number of angry Trump supporters who will justifiably be prosecuted. There was clearly a small number of infiltrators/agitators who will hopefully be prosecuted along with them. There was clearly a larger number of Trump supporters who were invited in through the front door and weren't sure what was going on. There was a massive number of people who stayed on the steps and some shouted at violent instigators who were breaking windows. And, there were likely near a million folks who decided not to go to the Capitol at all.
Your framing would be more accurate if you'd said, "Yesterday's fiasco at the Capitol involving a mob of Trump supporters...".
I would ague if I was one of them using the picture of police taking selfies that there was an invitation. This was more about Police ineptitude than any meaningful attempt at what really, they were angry and if police did their jobs would have remained outside.
Good point. I agree...should have said so. I also don't think it was ineptitude...I think it goes up to the Mayor.
"Yesterday's PsyOp" FTFY
I keep having this recurring thought that if the SCOTUS had any desire to help a nation heal, they would have taken on the topic of possible vote corruption, and issued some wise words that would have helped diffuse the situation before it happened. Maybe I am just dreaming, but I feel if they had done that hey would have been heroes. As of today, I hold them somewhat culpable - and I have little confidence that they will help to reign in any of the excesses that result from an over-reaction to the events that have taken place.
Eh, we just witnessed big tech let us know very clearly, they running the show now. No dissent allowed. And Ashli Trumpster, from the responses I've seen regarding her death, I see now exactly how and why normal people turned Jewish people over to the Gestapo.
I love my country, don't want to abandon it, but this isn't a Democratic Republic world power. It's a Technocratic Fascism State in decline.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are not attainable in this political climate unless you are a psychopath.
There's nowhere to run to either, same people ruining humanity everywhere. Twitter really let China tweet about re-education camps positively, and censored the sitting President after he explicitly told his followers not to riot or fight, claiming he said the exact opposite of what he said. Just, what is going on? Yes, Trump is a clown. Yes, Biden is a creepy uncle. But now unelected robot Zuckerberg and Twatter Jack are cashing the shots? The mainstream mockingbird media just fakes whatever they want, ok viking dude in the capitol. This political theater is incredibly poorly cast, the script is like a 4th grader wrote it. It gets by only on monopolizing the audience and production. 5 stars for Production but the rest is Bollywood fanfic on a budget.
" I see now exactly how and why normal people turned Jewish people over to the Gestapo" as a Jew i am not appalled by this metaphor as many neoliberals would be if they heard it. This is the banality of evil. This is how normal citizens can turn on each other, vilify their neighbors (well, neighboring counties).
Our freedoms are from G-d. When will that be understood?
"Our freedoms are from G-d. When will that be understood?"
Never, because it's not true; our freedoms are inherent from our existence, and god doesn't exist.
Your freedom truism is a non-sequitur. The inherency of our freedoms is rooted in the worth of our free will which has been imbued by our Creator. Dancing atoms have no inherent freedoms.
If it's inherent from our existence, and our existence is finite, then our freedoms are finite. If it's from Gd, and Gd is is infinite and cannot be destroyed, then neither can our freedoms be, no matter which finite being tries to take it away. I guess its a matter of what you believe.
Twitter and Facebook have no good option for what to do with Trump. They can block the president or be accused of enabling the next attempt to attack the government. Twitter tells us they already have evidence of the next attack in https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html . Perhaps their analysis is flawed, and it should be examined in detail, but as of now they have made the calculation that performing the former is going to cause less long term damage than the latter. If you have ideas on what is a viable third option, please share.
Generally, social media companies are optimizing for engagement and advertising dollars, and will remove posts or people if they believe doing so will increase their bottom line. There are multiple potential ways to combat this.
One option is to regulate under what conditions posts can be removed. That will be tricky to pull off to enough satisfaction of everyone, but may be possible.
Another option is to form a competing platform which is not motivated by engagement and advertising dollars. The problem with a competing platform is that if you're not able to gain users other than the ones kicked out of the mainstream platforms, you only have the users who have been kicked out of the mainstream platforms. Gaining enough users will be difficult if https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-sues-facebook-illegal-monopolization doesn't succeed.
Serious question, are you a bot or a human?
Idk but censoring political opinions you disagree with is fascism. You can rationalize it, spin it, echo the authoritarian talking points in your little private desensitization chamber all you want. It's just Fascism.
Combine it with constant Propaganda, mix it with a dominant military industrial complex, perfect recipe. Delicious Dictatorship. The Irony, while blue states lock down and oppression reigns. Good ole Saul Alinsky, all day everyday. They just did four years calling Trump a Dictator. A traitor. A theif. The hypocrisy is so invasive. Why was Hunter Biden snorting cocaine with Obama's daughters credit card? Why was his penis plastered all over the Internet? That wasn't hard to find. Trumps tweets are so much worse than lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Trumps tweets are really dangerous! LMAO!! Good thing they censured the Hunter story too. It was Dangerous!
BTW, Florida has the same average death rate as the flu in 2018, every other small business isn't closed. How is the Mom & Pop store in your neighborhood? Just curious.
This is false and reflects an errant understanding of what fascism is:
"Idk but censoring political opinions you disagree with is fascism."
No, fascism is the conflation of state and corporate power. However, censoring political opinions for any reason is heinous.
Your remark about Florida and Covid is false.
The way both Dems and Rs have reacted to the pandemic is atrocious and killing businesses, agreed, but railing falsehoods doesn't help.
What we need to do is get the GD ultra-rich the hell out of our political system and stop controlling us. At the start of the pandemic, instead of giving the already rich some $6T, they should have provided a guaranteed income for everyone, etc.
Given how much time you spent addressing my comment as opposed to making generic statements, I think it's far more likely you're a bot than I am. Let's presume neither of us are.
I stand by my statement that Twitter and Facebook have absolutely no good option for their response. And I agree that if they do not believe there is a credible threat of violence, then what they are doing is problematic. They are now forced to choose between the lesser of evils.
But it was mostly peaceful protest in June right? The calls to kill white people on Twitter are ok? Iran tweeting Trump would be dead in a few days was also not violent I guess? Can you show me a Tweet where Trump came for violence? What about all the others banned today? So, in guessing that's a no because there isn't one. In fact, I think the opposite was tweeted what I saw. Were we seeing different Tweets maybe? I guess good old Rudy could see NYC thru 911 but now can't Tweet because why? He questioned Election integrity? Or he was calling for violence? Tweets about Burning it all down, and all cops are bad are not violent though? I'm so confused! Lol! It's only ok if corporate media says its ok, I gotcha.
Ya, that's fascist censorship Sarah. And it takes less than 2 minutes to text on my phone, so, not that much time.
You're refuting arguments I never made. If you had looked elsewhere in this thread, you would see me condemning the violence around the BLM protests as well.
I read https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html and given the history of how I understand Trump's tweets to be interpreted per https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-twitter/twitter-boots-prominent-trump-allies-in-qanon-crackdown-idUSKBN29D30A , I agree with them. I very much wish I didn't. If it was literally anyone posting those tweets other than Trump, I would not agree with their assessment.
You could argue that twitter is simply engaging in CYA because them suspending his account is more likely to lead to violence. We could have that discussion. I honestly do not know the answer.
They are not "forced" to do anything. Twitter and Facebook are the bullies trying to whip up a high tech mob to attack, censor and isolate Trump, his political allies and even his supporters. They are censoring the ability of citizen to even talk about their belief that the election was tainted by fraud. They have pressured publishers into dropping publishing contracts with Trump supporters. They are even attempting to "force" competing venues to adopt their draconian censorship practices on the threat of being dropped and de-platformed by the mob. FASCISM
By not acting, that's also an action. My best guess is they're madly flailing right now trying to avoid government regulation, and will risk collateral damage to do so.
JRobie. ((Don't tell her where Anne Frank is hiding.))
What makes you think that Twitter and Facebook should have the power or right to censor a president elected by voting citizen to lead their nation? Do you think the phone company should have the power or right to cut off the president's phone line?
I understand that some, including the tech giants are pushing the narrative that Trump incited his supporters to riot; but that is patently untrue. He urged them to vigorously protest the election certification, and specifically called for them to do so "peacefully". When rioting broke out he called in the National Guard and tweeted for his supporters to behave peacefully, respect law enforcement and return home. Twitter promptly deleted that tweet. Of course, media hysterics, including those in high tech couldn't allow his words of prudence to get out. No, they were determined to seize the opportunity to twist, embellish and flatly misrepresent the situation -to make the president appear culpable for what they hyped as a uniquely dangerous insurrection.
They eagerly used their hyperbole to justify a leaping usurpation of authority over the public discourse via their power to leverage censorship. Of course they convinced the sheeple that they just had to do it - for our own good.
BUT THINK. Citizens, including Trump, have every right to question, suspect or feel certain that fraud affected the outcome of an election. It is basic freedom to think and speak and even rally behind truth as one sees it. When half a million people converge over any big cause, it is no surprise that some rabble rousers (of all stripes including provocateurs) will show up and begin agitating in a way that can encourage mob behaviors. The capitol police should have been prepared for this. One has to wonder why they were dismally unprepared. Perhaps because politicians have been turning a blind eye (but in Kamala's case encouraging) mob and riotous behaviors all summer long - ransacking small businesses, attacking and even killing innocents, burning private and public buildings, attacking police, tearing down monuments and statues even taking over portions of downtown Seattle including the police precinct and declaring it autonomous from government authority - in other words a real, outright, ongoing civil insurrection in which the rioters denied residents basic access to police protection, emergency services and even freedom of movement for weeks resulting in several deaths. The mayor laughed if off as a block party. Ditto in Portland.
Did Twitter, Facebook or Amazon take action? Of course not. The majors didn't even take action. In fact the Portland mayor threatened Trump to not even think about calling in the guard, even after people had been murdered and federal buildings had been breeched.. Ever since about 2013, when Obama began justifying riotous behaviors with causes he felt sympathy for .... officials have been excusing and even condoning civil unrest. Think of the protestors storming the Kavanaugh hearings, storming the capitol and accosting elected officials, attempting to bang their way into the Supreme Court and threaten assignations. No problem for the democrats. "That's democracy in action." said Pelosi. And by the way, Hillary complained and agitated that Trump stole the election for four years, while democrats refused to go to his inauguration and vowed to impeach him on day one of his term. So what, I ask did Twitter, Facebook and Amazon do to control all of that? Not a single thing. When news stories broke about Trump taxes, did Twitter and Facebook block those stories on the grounds that it was private info, illegally obtained. No. But when news broke that Hunter's laptop detailed stunning evidence of international pay for influence schemes involving his father, corruption, money-laundering, drug abuse and sex with underage minors - what did big tech do? They mobilized into lockstep censorship - least public knowledge of this wrongdoing sway our opinions. For our own good, of course.
What do you think of this media story? Does it change your mind at all about Trump's intentions? https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533403-sasse-says-trump-was-delighted-and-excited-by-reports-of-capitol-riot https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-hill-talk/
Banning Trump from Twitter is not comparable to banning him from using phones. He is not silenced by their actions. Trump has a press secretary and has made public statements since he was suspended from twitter: https://apnews.com/article/trump-us-capitol-riot-no-responsibility-03eccd4b09d7acb6f5cce304a0afdf42
As to why the capitol police were unprepared, there's no evidence it has anything to do BLM. I'm not sure why you're drawing that conclusion. It sounds more like the Sergeant at Arms were uncomfortable with making the assertion that the day was likely to turn violent: https://www.foxnews.com/us/capitol-police-chief-sought-dc-national-guard-help-before-riots
You mentioned Kavanough. If anything, they were far more prepared for Kavanough based on the number of arrests made: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kavanaugh-protesters-arrested-at-capitol-after-thousands-march-on-supreme-court Note the lack of violence during that protest.
1) So the Hill reported that Sasse said that a unnamed white house official said that Trump was delighted and confused. The relation between Trump and Sasse has been decidedly contentious for a long time. So this is third hand conjecture on how Trump 'felt' by an adversary who was not there. I prefer to judge a man on what he does rather than how an adversary claims he felt. This kind of gossip would never be admissible in court so why would I allow it to guide my decision making if I want to be judicious?
2) Banning Trump from using Twitter is indeed like banning him from using the phone, because Twitter enjoys special protections from lawsuits based on their claim to be a platform (read conduit like the phone) rather than a publisher (deciding on what is fit to print). If you doubt that, it would do you no harm to read some of Johnathan Turley's editorials (Constitutional scholar, law professor at George Washington University Law School) on that very issue. Turley is a man of keen intellect and integrity. He is also a liberal democrat. He has liken Twitter's actions to cutting the phone line - a brazen "Orwellian" attempt to silence Trump and media they disapprove of (NY Post) from communicating their views to the American people.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/04/twitter-double-downs-on-censorship-with-renewed-warnings-on-trump-tweets/#more-165372
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/521517-censoring-the-biden-story-how-social-media-becomes-state-media
3) So how did BLM get into the discussion of capitol hill preparedness? Projection? Acting Sec of Def Miller said Trump had given him the green light to take any steps he deemed necessary to support law enforcement and to secure the capitol and federal buildings w NG. According to Military Times the Guard was deployed to numerous checkpoints around the area. The capitol police "repeatedly declined support" of the national guard at the capitol because they did not believe it necessary. The article goes on to explain why those decisions took time to turn around. Apparently it was Mike Pence who personally authorized emergency deployment of more Guard on behalf of the president. It could be argued that Trump was too slow to call in "military" reinforcements troops, but to pretend that this was a clear "armed insurrection" attempting to "overthrow the government" as the Pelosi mob have attempted to characterize it is absurd hyperbole spun to whip up political hysteria. There was half a million protestors and among them some rabble rouses and agent provocateurs who egged on a bunch of protestors into pushing and even breaking their way into the capitol. There was also a number of roaming enthusiasts getting ushered in by capitol police. Most Trump supporters remained outside and had little idea what was going on. The situation was decidedly confusing. And least you forget, democrats had been chastising and threatening Trump for months regarding perceptions that he might activate NG to quell violent rioting, on the lame excuse that the riotous conduct was an expression of free speech.
4) As for the Kavanaugh Hearing protests - many of the activists were females, prominent among them paid Soros provocateurs. You are correct to point out that they were not outright violent but they did push their way into federal buildings and offices, disrupted hearings and tried to bang their way into the supreme court. From my observation, female protestors gone rogue tend to employ less openly violent tactics than their male counterparts, but nonetheless vicious such as engaging in screaming verbal abuse, public shaming tactics, slandering, and making threats to assassinate, castrate or decapitate. Note that the capitol intruders (most of whom were pushing their way into the building) were overwhelmingly male whereas the Trump supporters outside were not. So perhaps the male dominated CHAD takeover in Seattle would be a more apt comparison. There ARMED RIOTERS actively engaged in a very real insurrection, violently rioting, aggressive destruction of property, seizing and occupying a portion of downtown Seattle for weeks, including the police precinct - robbing residents of their basic freedom to come and go and disenfranchising them of government, police and emergency resources. The armed thugs setting up their own 'thuggish enforcement wolf-packs and justice tribunals' which ended in tragic injuries, loss of property and even lives. The democrat responses ranged from ignoring it to excusing it as a block-party and later, as a justified protest. A well-written comparison of the hypocrisy:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/darkness-in-america_3651687.html
1) I can accept that you don't believe it. I'm curious if you hold all your sources to the same standard of gossip.
2) While I don't think it's pertinent, I'm skeptical that Jonathan Turley would be called a liberal democrat by most democrats these days. But if you want to say twitter is like a phone, then legally designate it a common carrier. If you can't or won't, then it's not like a phone.
Given twitter does not even charge money to its users, and is therefore not for hire, calling it a common carrier seems difficult by the legal definition. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/153
3) I don't think very many people out of the mob were specifically there to overthrow the government, but it's very difficult to argue that none of them were, considering there is evidence that people intended to kill politicians. It doesn't take very many crazy people to cause problems if security is bad.
4) So for the CHAZ area in Seattle, my understanding is it started on June 8th and ended on July 1st per https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53146258 and https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/2/21310109/chop-chaz-cleared-violence-explained There were two deaths during this 23 day period. During the capitol protest, there were five people who died (look at the title) https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/who-are-the-four-who-died-in-the-dc-protest-at-the-capitol/ and it looks like from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-07/u-s-capitol-timeline-of-how-trump-protests-turned-chaotic and https://www.fox29.com/news/timeline-of-the-pro-trump-riot-at-the-us-capitol-how-the-chaos-unfolded maybe around 2:00pm things started and they ended around 5:30pm. So there was a total of about 3 and a half hours.
I'm not saying the CHAZ protest should have happened, but even if you want to count only one of those deaths at the capitol, it's demonstrable that the rate of violence is significantly higher for the capitol event compared to the CHAZ one. I can't say for certain that more people would have died if the capitol protest had continued for longer than 3 1/2 hours, but that certainly seems to have been the intent of a number of attendees.
I note from http://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data/crime-dashboard that there were 2 murders in the CHAZ area outside of the time period of CHAZ for 2020, and that there were even more murders elsewhere in Seattle during 2020. It's not clear that the violence during CHAZ was greater than would have happened otherwise, though the police should have been given access to address it.
1) I did not write that I did not believe it. I am agnostic on it because it is so hearsay. I do try to be judicious, even towards those I disagree with. I respect Glenn - for his intellectual honesty and courage, even though I disagree with him on some issues.
2) Turley has always been a liberal democrat. He has not changed much, but his party has changed dramatically. More important than how he identifies, at least for me, is his integrity, commitment to Constitutional principles and clarity of analysis.
3) I am in full agreement that it does not take too many crazies to turn a mob decidedly dangerous - so I am not the least dismissive of the stupidity, recklessness and moral wrong of all who forced their way into the capitol, including those who "just wanted to be heard." As for those who committed violence, they should be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for the disruption, destruction, injury and loss of lives caused by their recklessness. Having said that, characterization of the rally as a Trump-incited armed insurrection mobilized to overthrow the federal government strikes me as partisan, inflammatory and irresponsible.
4) The point about CHAD or CHAZ is that it was a politically enabled insurrection which I happen to track, since it happened our back yard. As you pointed out, the takeover lasted for weeks. Insurgents were armed and advocated open carry. They took a section of downtown hostage through riotous violence and instituted their own "govt", which forcibly denied residents of basic rights including freedom of movement and access to police and emergency services. Without police protection, the area became a magnet for predators. The city govt ordered the police to stand down and paid an ex-pimp to NEGOTIATE with these hooligans, as if they were a legitimate legal entity. BTW the pimp was caught on tape advising the insurgents to hold out for more (taxpayer) bribe money. The insurgent group was not that big, but their boldness in context of a weak, enabling mayor and radicalized city council, kept growing to the horror of law abiding citizen throughout the area. 2killings/xdeaths/1rape in weeks vs 2killings/3deaths in hours speaks to the rate of escalation .... but it does dismiss the point - that CHAD insurrectionists succeeded in holding a community hostage to lawless anarchy for weeks, largely to the tolerance, amusement and even approval of leftist politicians. I am just curious to ask how you would feel if the capitol rioters had driven out the capitol police, taken the area hostage to lawless anarchy in order to party, plunder and pillage for weeks while a bemused president hired a pimp to negotiate. You sound like a thoughtful person, so I assume you would not find it excusable - Denis Prager has made a good point: All sides draw crazies, but its how we react to our crazies that makes the difference.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/dennis-prager-capitol-siege-was-vile-but-lefts-suppression-of-free-speech-is-worse_3655365.html
FYI, this seems closer to the CHAZ protest than the capitol event to me: https://www.foxnews.com/us/the-latest-bundy-says-he-tried-lawful-way-before-occupation https://www.foxnews.com/us/oregon-militia-leader-ammon-bundy-7-others-arrested-after-gunfight-kills-1 https://www.opb.org/news/series/burns-oregon-standoff-bundy-militia-news-updates/malheur-occupation-ends/
Ok, so Twitter tells us they are justified in what they decide. Big surprise. And you believe them?
All we know for absolute certain is that Twitter has decided that Trump tweeting is more expensive to them than suspending him.
Trump drove a massive amount of traffic to their site. He was highly profitable. They aren't going to give that up without good reason.
Let's consider some alternate reasons why it may have become too expensive for them:
* Employee pressure. There is some evidence for this: https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/8/22221386/twitter-employees-trump-ban-internal-letter-capitol-attack But, is this new, and is 300 employees enough for twitter to care? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/number-of-employees Apparently that's around 6% of their workforce. I would guess, however, from someone shutting down his account in 2017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump/twitter-employee-briefly-shuts-trump-account-putting-controls-in-question-idUSKBN1D3015 that this sentiment is not new, but rather has been going on for a long time. I doubt that Twitter would suddenly cave to employee demands now, given the cost and very high risk of doing so.
* Political pressure. While there were Democrats calling for Trump's account to be suspended, I'm pretty sure that's been true for a long time. I can't find any evidence that Twitter is worried about blow-back from the incoming administration if they didn't.
* Legal liability. Before the 6th I don't think anyone could have said for certain that Trump's speech was going to inspire violence. Reading https://prospect.org/justice/violent-speech-right/ I am wondering if the legal definition for what's considered allowed speech will change. If that's an actual possibility, Twitter would be the test case if they don't take action.
Note there doesn't appear to be a right-wing purge from Twitter as of now. At least these accounts are up:
https://twitter.com/donaldjtrumpjr
https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump
https://twitter.com/erictrump
https://twitter.com/LaraLeaTrump
I would expect those accounts to be gone already if there was going to be.
There is another alternative: Twitter decided that they could amass more power by cozying up to an incoming administration. Or, Dorsey has decided, along with a few other oligarchs that now was the time to unleash their goal to world domination. The fun part of that will be watching the Oligarchs tear themselves apart fighting for top dog status.
Why wouldn't Twitter have cozied up to the current administration if more power was their goal? Or if it had to be with the incoming administration, why wouldn't they have manufactured an excuse to suspend Trump much earlier?
As to Dorsey wanting world domination, why do you think that's his goal? How exactly do you think suspending Trump's twitter account
helps him in that goal?
Twitter, like China, realizes that Biden can be bought. Dorsey was emboldened to censor the Hunter Biden scandal out of fear that the news might swing the election toward Trump. When questioned by congress Dorsey dissembled and played the quasi-apologetic fool as if the censorship move was a well-intentioned mistake stemming out of privacy concerns. Once Dorsey realized that most of MSM and high tech were willing to aid and abet his foray into censorship, he became increasingly emboldened, especially after the election was called for Biden. Note that Dorsey has transitioned from apologetic to defiant now that the democrat machine is in power and bracing his back. Unlike Greenwald, he is willing to be unprincipled and unprincipled men always gravitate towards opportunistic power grabs. As Jordan Peterson has remarked, if you think tough men are dangerous, wait till you see what a weak man can do.
Just wanted to say I appreciate the research and approach to this post.
I don't know, legally, if it might be or become possible for speech to be legal pre-violence and then for similar speech to become illegal post-violence when it's been demonstrated that the speech led to violence.
The correct thing to happen here is that Facebook must stop all censorship. Instead, they can use their algorithms to then provide a "portal" where prosecutors - and only genuine prosecutors - can review potential that might violate the law, such as the possible incitement to violence, and then not remove any posts unless charges are actually filed.
BTW, a competing platform simply won't work for various reasons regarding how nobody wants to be on the less-well-perceived platform. What COULD work is to break facebook up into a federated model with lots of individual facebooks, but that's not really any better. The only real choice is to force facebook to stop censoring and provide a legal avenue to handle any difficulties.
This is exactly why monopolies need to be broken up. The outrageous, arbitrary biased liberties taken by Twitter and Facebook - not to mentioned their coordinated attempt to freeze out competitors who do not run things in collusion with their controlling tactics, smacks of racketeering. These big tech firms have stepped over the line, putting an unforeseeable damper on free speech that the government has an obligation to protect. High tech has no business trying to censor legal speech of any sort, any more than the phone company sensor phone use.
All speech is constitutionally protected from government interference unless it violates some some basic principles such as inciting violence, lying under oath and so on. The burden of proof that speech incited violence or insurrection is pretty high. If speech does not call for violence or insurrection, it cannot be deemed illegal just because someone thinks it could have set a third party off. Words like "we are not going to let them steal this election" or "we are going to take our government back" are not inherently insurrectional. Such political phrases have been used since the founding of our country .... and indeed were used by the democrats after Trump won in 2016. Indeed, many boycotted his inauguration and vowed to impeach him on day one of his presidency. The problem with what the democrats are doing is not limited to the harm they may do to Trump and Trump supporters. They are undermining the Constitution, the rule of law and damaging our social fabric, in a way that is very likely to snap back on them - but they are too obsessed to see it.
The internet is unprecedented in how it allows people with extremely minority views to come together and reinforce each others beliefs. The internet is also unprecedented in how far the reach of any individual can be - compare the physical "town square" where you might reach a few thousand versus the digital "town square" where you reach tens of millions. If you have a very small percentage of people who are, bluntly, completely crazy, you will statistically reach them on the internet when they wouldn't have been a problem previously. So we get a situation where what is by objective means, legal speech, incites a notable number of people to violence. While the percentage of people incited is very small, we have this very large population, and they have all found and are all encouraging each other, rather than talking to people outside the group who could act as a stabilizing factor.
How do you think this should be dealt with? And whatever this method is, is it something which could have been set up in a week?
Anybody can wear a red baseball hat or carry a confederate flag, etc....ANYBODY. What happened to common sense? There were a zillion cameras on those people who can easily be identified though drivers licenses. All of this is theater.
I'm so ashamed of my country's government.
Why the left is shaking with such fear is another big question...they are losing it completely.
The left isn't shaking in fear - we largely agree with the underlying motivations if not the specific actions - it's the neo-liberals that are. These are two distinct groups and conflating them leads to incorrect conclusions.
Yes...I get it. I'll try to be more specific.
The "left" are the ones that have very high levels of mental dysfunction and are in need of psychiatric treatment.
Both the "left" and "right" are deep into theater.
Although this overreach due to emotion, fear, and opportunism has a long history... I use the Covington Kids incident as the template of predictable leftist reaction to any and all events in the Trump era. Absolute unhinged histrionics and melodramatics... immediately! The difference here is after 12 to 24 hours...even some of the most bloodshot and spittle TDS people in my feed mildly conceded that they jumped the gun on a teenager. But, the end times prophecies, pearl clutching, and sky is falling lunacy here is close to unparalleled. Intentions of the loudest voices are clear: More power...More surveillance, More speech suppression, and a creepy Soviet/Chinese styled disappearing of any and all dissent. Thank You for being clear eyed and clarion in your calling out of this nonsense...wherever it appears, Glen. You, Matt Taibbi, and Black Conservatives have been making the most sense to me. The outliers are usually on to something....and way more interesting and fun than the groupthinkers.
Excellent piece. Although(and because) I disagree with some of your positions, I have followed your writing and analyses for years. In an effort to keep sane in this crazy time, I needed to hear more from you. Today, I joined Substack. Support for journalists like you at a time like this is critical. I am afraid the cliff is approaching again and the mainstream media, government establishment types and the Tech industry are about to march many people off it one more time. Let's all take a deep breath.
Ditto. Joined today after a few months of reading. The forces aligned to make dissidents out of ordinary people are stronger than they have been in my lifetime. We need journalistic truth and I am happy to support Greenwald's efforts.
and so the chickens come home to roost...
A verse from Peter Gabriel's 1980 song " Biko" comes to mind:
"You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher"
It is my belief that the political and media response to storming the Capitol will only fan the flames of an awakening by a people who cherish not only their own freedom of speech, but the freedom of others' speech as well.
From our first history lessons in school, we were taught that this country was founded on having a voice, and it was first among all other rights enshrined in our Constitution. We celebrated the violence of farmers rising up against the most powerful army in the world, demanding a voice, or in the alternative, independence. This is the soul of us as a people, and the riots from Portland to DC won't be placated by banning Trump's voice (or hanging him in the public square), caricaturing the rioters, or invoking "terrorism", "hate", and patriotism.
Publishers like twitter, facebook, and google (and yes, if they censor, they are publishers, not platforms) represent a threat to our freedoms and to the republic that is more pernicious than any Congressperson, President, or mob.
Don't tread on me
They stopped those history lessons a couple of decades ago. Now the first history lesson is "the US is evil in every way possible".
So long as one remembers that, as HL Mencken said:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
it is sure far easier to remain calm!
We need to keep in mind that this big old barge of a country is designed to be difficult to steer, hard to speed up or slow down too much and cranky when pushed the wrong way and the whole change of regime thing won't seem so scary. In the end, how much will Trump or Obama have changed anything? Going to be the same way after Biden. Get off social media, quit watching the fake news, enjoy your family and you'll be so much happier!
To what extent was the outcome foreseeable? Every time I’ve been in DC since 9/11, security when any threat was perceived has been highly visible and intimidating, including imposing vehicles and heavily armed guards. Yet, those in charge of security showed no such preparation. One has to ask who was responsible for and who ultimately benefited enormously from this lack of preparation. Such questions are not proof of anything but they are reasonable questions that must nonetheless be asked.
I can't believe what an idiot I was for thinking (way back 4 years ago) that Greenwald was just another scribe of the Marxist aristocracy. He is indeed one of the brightest and most serious minds in journalism today.
Perhaps reconsider your categorizations? 'Marxist aristocracy' is an oxymoron.
Marx wasn't a politician or a ruler and never prescribed any system of government. He analyzed capitalism with economic models, concluded it could only result in a rigged game where the winners only win and win more, and--perhaps his mortal sin---hopefully concluded that the masses being exploited would unite and rise up to throw off their oppressors. The tainting of the ideology came at the directive of threatened oligarchs around the world. This likely happens anyway, but Stalin's truly autocratic regime plus the early intensity of the cold war made this a simple feat here. In the US it was particularly brutal, with post war red scare (McCarthyism) used as a cover to eradicate pro-worker content from the then major platforms of film (see On the Waterfront which is an allegory for the era). Sadly, we will never know what the trajectory of a US labor movement in the first quarter of the century that is scarcely discussed.
Since everyone is quoting Orwell with such superficiality it hurts today, consider the allegory of Animal Farm. It is basically a blow by blow of the Russian revolution. You can take a lot from it, but at the heart is whether the moral of the story is that power always corrupts (absolute absolutely) or that Snowball (Lenin/Trotsky) should have had Boxer (the workers) take Napoleon (Stalin) out the minute he got that 'look in his eye'.
I can see you are spoiling for a fight. I am not your target, brother (or sister be it so). There is an intelligentsia, an elite in all facets of socialism/communism. I refer not to the authors, but their works. There is most certainly head to the snake, my friend. That is where we must strike. I am gladdened that dear author is on the side of justice and righteousness.
No fight here, we can be sharp without intention to pierce. On Glenn's work we are certainly in agreement. Cheers to that.
I'm curious what made you consider Glenn a Marxist? I never saw that.
I specifically referred to him as one of their scribes. I refer you to the useful idiots of the MSM.
Integrity