Following the release of today’s article about news organizations junking the “Pentagon Papers Principle,” reader Ben O’Neill made a good observation that should have been in the piece. In the newly-found summary emailed by an Aspen Institute figure in September 2020, “Partnership for a Healthy Digital Public Sphere,” the section about “hack-and-dump” exercises asks [emphasis mine]: “What happens when fabricated documents are released alongside genuine (stolen) content? How can social feeds avoid serving as promoters of foreign or other adversarial entities?”
First of all, this notion that there may be fabrications mixed in with real content is a suggestion that pops up somewhere in nearly every one of these leak stories, even if all the material proves to be real (old friend Malcolm Nance did the job in 2016 in suggesting the Podesta leaks were “riddled with forgeries”). More importantly however, that last line is a great example of what former cybersecurity official and Foundation for Freedom Online head Mike Benz calls the “foreign-domestic switcheroo.”
It’s the basic rhetorical trick of the censorship age: raise a fuss about a foreign threat, using it as a battering ram to get everyone from congress to the tech companies to submit to increased regulation and surveillance. Then, slowly, adjust your aim to domestic targets. You can see the subtlety: the original Stanford piece tries to stick to railing against “disinformation” and information from “foreign adversaries,” but the later paper circulated by Aspen slips in, ever so slightly, a new category of dubious source: “foreign or other adversarial entities.”
These rhetorical devices are essential. It would be preposterous to form (as Stanford did) an “Information Warfare Working Group” if readers knew the “war” being contemplated was against domestic voices. It would likewise seem outrageous to suggest, as Stanford did, that journalists respond to a domestic threat by taking a step as drastic as eliminating intra-title competition, and “forming partnerships with other organizations to pool resources.” But if you start by focusing on Russians and only later mention as an afterthought “other adversarial entities,” you can frame things however you want, from espionage to warfare. As reader O’Neill correctly pointed out, “they are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.”
One other small note I left out for space reasons. The “Information Warfare Working Group” that produced the original paper by Janine Zacharia proposing the end of the “Pentagon Papers Principle” includes such anti-disinformation luminaries as Renee DiResta and Michael McFaul. In that summer of 2019, the working group also put out a paper by Dr. Amy Zegart, titled, “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms.” Her co-author? Michael Morell.
This story stinks, folks. There are almost too many angles to count. In any case, thanks to one of this site’s many attentive readers for a key observation.
This is exactly what 'crazy people' like Ron Paul said would happen with the Global War on Terror in general and with the USA PATRIOT Act in particular.
The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. ...February 27, 2010, Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend, for one year, three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire: 1)Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.; 2)Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.3)Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf (a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group). February 8, 2011, the House of Representatives considered a further extension of the Act through the end of 2011.Without an extension, the Act was set to expire on February 28, 2011. However, it eventually passed, 275–144.
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France.
We are told he was a community organizer, whatever that means.
Then he wrote a book, and served a term where Joe Lieberman was his mentor, and then BOOM, there he was, President of the World, the candidate from Langley.
The significance of difference is relative. Given that the subtopic here is the PATRIOT Act and who is responsible for it, your separation between fools and statists strikes me as more trivial than huge. This is because they did the deed and the damage was done (do we really care about their motives long after the fact?).
My view is that our political system needs more pluralism and less 'two wings of the same grisly gang' (h/t Bill). And the tendency to lump the opposition into a homogenous group is likely a bad call... on multiple levels that makes a huge difference in your ability to make accurate calls, plus differentiate yourself from the fools.
To me, the most appropriate response is often *both* substantive and mocking.
Given the rapidity that this Act of 300 pages was enacted, it is obvious to me that it was pre-written and pre-planned. All that was required was proper crisis.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
Or, my personal opposite-day favorite, 'Citizens United', which should have been called "Citizen-Crushing Cabal Empowerment Act", or "The 'Citizens, Get Fucked!' Act"
Citizens United is and was correct, imo, because all it says is that you and I, individual and private citizens, may pool our resources toward mutual and freely decided upon political ends, completely and utterly, did I say *necessarily*? yes I did, independent of any group, especially and most importantly that most dangerous of all groups, Society, and its mindless, vicious, anti-human pit bull, the State.
Biden's new rule on Title IX to allow guys to rape girls in school bathrooms. Without any consequences written in. How in the world did the President of the United States allow this and put these previous young girls in harms way?
What's astonishing for me is that 'biden' is proven liar who actually had to abandon his campaign for the presidency. Yet, somehow, it's all forgotten.
The system works.
As former Vice President Joe Biden prepares to take the Democratic debate stage on Wednesday, the pressure is on the front runner for the party’s 2020 nomination for the presidency — especially after the June debate, after which he admitted he was unprepared for fellow candidate Sen. Kamala Harris to call him out on his past positions on busing.
But for at least one veteran political reporter, that moment is just part of a decades-long history that goes all the way back to the first time Biden made an official run for the White House — and to the scandal that ended that campaign.
I do know the generalities regarding the lies and plagiarism surrounding our “ high hallowed” president but this article brings to light many of his specific deeds ,that as you point out have been “ forgotten “ by many……
Forty years ago I was sitting cross-legged on a dirty Oriental rug getting drunk on Gallo jug wine and listening to Murray Rothbard talk about Ron Paul, among other things (the other things being a tour de force of the history of the Great Depression, the perfidy of Ayn Rand, a history of metal currency, and complaints about the then-current management of the Cato Institute). His opinion was that "Ron is as good as it gets, he just doesn't go far enough."
40 years ago I was probably still in my Randroid phase. When I learned of Rand’s loyalty to the Republican Party, it started to open my eyes. I still voted Libertarian for a long time, but now I think the party was always a kind of controlled opposition--a term I didn't know at the time. I should have been wary of rebranding the pejorativized “A-word”, anarchy, with the dressed up and watered-down “libertarian” moniker. Now that libertarianism is almost entirely captured by the Republican Party, I wonder what Rothbard would say.
In addition to the numerous philosophical issues Rothbard had with Objectivism, he also had a very personal gripe with Rand dating from the early 1960s when he was briefly part of her inner circle. She was a famously belligerent atheist, who believed that any religious belief, which she named "mysticism," was incompatible with the use of reason. Rothbard himself was a completely secularized Jew, but his wife was a believing Christian. Rand gave him an ultimatum -- divorce your wife or be cast out. To his everlasting credit he chose Joey.
I would suggest it's the other way 'round, as the GOP was essentially purchased by the Koch network via the Tea Party movement it paid to provide broad coverage for, and the Kochs were lifelong Libertarians. David ran for VP on the Libertarian ticket.
I am as libertarian (political system of the founding, another word for Capitalism, true not crony) as anyone on the planet.
I am just as anti-Libertarian, and you all should stop living in the last century.
Just like the Greens on the left, the Libertarian Party, and its myopic supporters/enablers (like the Statist neo-liberal psuedo-free-marketer Koch-cons), allow the Fascist Democrat Party to operate *with crippled political opposition* in their almost-completed take-over of a free People.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" : Matter = Murray Rothbard : Antimatter. I did not know him at all well (I only met him a few times, very late in his life) but we had a mutual friend to whom we were both very close, and I heard *plenty.* I'm sure Ayn Rand was a gigantic pain in the ass, but Murray managed to alienate almost everyone at one time or another too. The obituary National Review ran when he died was a monument to pettiness.
Thanks, M. Gathering. I read about all this so long ago that you make me realize I must go research to learn it all again!
Edit: Really, I should have added to this indent long before that my strong opinion is that this old and ageless Objectivist/Libertarian feud is moot, pointless, beside the point, non-substantive, self-destructive....you know, all the things we *knew* then, eh?
The government counts on stupid and apathetic people to allow them total control over all citizens. And AI will be used in a similar manner if it's not being used already.
I would like to humbly suggest that we subscribers here to Matt's Racket be officially christened as Other Adversarial Entities. I bet it would even look good stitched on the back of a bowling shirt or velvet jacket.
OK...in the folk music community there is a well known song (not old...it was written by Stan Rogers in 1976, but it's in the style of an 18th C sea shanty) called "Barrett's Privateers." I propose we re-purpose it as "Taibbi's Racketters." Anyone with me?
I grew up in socialist former East Germany and know exactly what a state controlled media is and what it does. I’m familiar with the tools to keep the populous uneducated, dived and spying on each other for government handouts. It’s all about domestic control and nothing else. I came to the US almost 30 years ago and it’s shocking to see such familiar tactics used today in the so called Land of the Free.
And Renee DiResta worked with American Engagement Technologies, which, the Washington Free Beacon reported, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.” Yet she's a "disinformation" expert despite having engaged in an actual disinformation campaign.
She worked for the CIA, then for New Knowledge (now called Yonder), an "election integrity company" which claimed it was running a "secret experiment" by pretending to be Russians backing Judge Roy Moore (R) against Doug Jones (D). Jones won. As far as I know, there were no repercussions for New Knowledge; possibly that led indirectly to the Aspen Institute exercises?
No, no consequences. And in the campaign against Moore they literally “imitated Russian tactics”—this, despite DiResta and her team working with Democrats in the U.S. Senate to pen a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. If Russia interferes with an election, it’s Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy™; but when Democratic disinformation experts do it to defeat Republicans, it’s totally cool.
Yes, no scare quotes. She really is an expert at disseminating falsehoods disguised as truth, having spent a career perfecting the "art," a perversion of art.
Now they get to investigate "human trafficking" by getting handjobs for a month while "gathering evidence" -- then they save the "victims" by charging them with prostitution.
The hawks are both Republican and Democrat, with the later being more united than the former. There are cracks in the hawkish GOP, but unity for Democrats. Democrats are united to keep the US southern border open while spending billions to protect Ukraine's.
Great post script, Matt! “ There are almost too many angles to count. “... however many years ago, the now over used expression “ into the weeds” appeared in political lingo... almost always inferring a “ heads up folks, this might be above your IQ level”... from the first time I heard that expression, I immediately thought... “and that is completely intentional and their goal”...make the sequence of events so crazy and convoluted that connecting the dots takes way too much effort and attention. Well played and shame on all of you willing participants! And kudos to your reader who did indeed go into the weeds!
I’ve always ‘heard’ about the book but thought I should actually read it. Need to order that and 1984 together from Amazon. That’ll mess up their algorithm
The method is "con(fidence) game." Gain the confidence of enough foolish Peoples, use the rest as scapegoat, and shazzam! The left endpoint (100% State control, 0% individual freedom) is within reach.
Alinsky channels Machiavelli, of course. Same purpose, same game, different target, same result.
10th grade, World History… the best history teacher ever! And to this day, I remember the spirited ethics debate about “does the end justify the means.” Imo, far too many people condone amoral/unethical actions to get their way “whatever” it takes. Sen Harry Reid lying on the Senate Floor about Romney not paying taxes “ he lost didn’t he? “ with a broad grin.
"Imo, far too many people condone amoral/unethical actions to get their way “whatever” it takes."
Imo, they are called Democrats, and the utopia they promise as *end* is anything but, which means they possess never-ending "justified" *means*, fixing problems they create.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the Republican Party, once back in power, will allow their own cancer (the empiring/warmongering neo-cons) to begin anew its ever present growth.
But, gee whiz, as far as today's Statism activists/players are concerned, the Republicans are pikers and the Democrats seem to me to be naturals.
For example, if not for the advent of "with-holding" (another terrible euphamism, as if all wealth belongs to the State), massive income tax non-compliance would work, dooming that "takings."
Massive voting for (hold yer noses) Republicans (today's, not yesterday's), the Statist Dems will continue their inherent Fascism.
Stella - I liked your comment ( not because Canada is even more tyrannical but because I was unaware! Yes even after the trucker’s strike) and thanks for bringing it to our attention!
It’s despicable and as always who will be the arbiter’s of truth?
Who fact checks the fact checkers?
I’ve loved every visit to Canada. The vibes were great the people splendid and open except maybe when health care discussions came up ? ……
Though the scenarios were different imo from Montreal to Vancouver, it’s hard to believe that the folks we communicated with would vote for such totalitarianism ,But on the other hand,it’s hard to believe anyone voted for biden and his war on fossil fuels and censorship policies 🤷♂️
Sadness across both nations and likely the world…….
It will take at least a couple years to hump it thru meetings and committees at the crtc before we see any action....I hope. No doubt they'll find a way to move faster although government isn't very good at that.
The entire Government should be dismantled & smaller. This just keeps happening & “we the people “ are being highjacked by frauds. Both sides of the aisle
I had an epiphany (maybe I'm slow and naive) listening to the latest podcast with Walter in which he said many (most?) "journalists" now are just political operatives masquerading as such. As in - what a brilliant strategy for Dems (is it just them?) to manoeuvre their people into that space so they can simply control and dictate the narrative instead of having those damn pesky regular journalists keep poking their nose where it shouldn't be. They will truly stop at NOTHING to win and stay in power.
I feel like we need to capture one of these high level people (aliens?) and waterboard them until they sufficiently explain their motive (joke... well, partially).
I have been ping-ponging around all the information sharing places where the left species hang out. For example, I finally got banned from Robert Reich's substack... not for personal attacks, but for challenging their "logic" and asking them questions that made them uncomforable. I live in a blue state in a hard-blue college town and so I live among them and have gotten to know them like the back of my hand. So I know of their views and behavior... but nothing about their motives... other than to feel like their politics are winning and that is very important to them. However, it does not seem like enough... enough to support the end of free speech and to support a censorship regime... which most of my liberal progressive friends and neighbors seem to support tacitly.
I need to know why and it is driving me crazy that there are no good answers. Why the hell are so many people on the left of politics involved in, or supportive of, this really bad and clearly destructive censorship behavior?
I know there are liberal Democrats out there that claim they are on the side of opposition to these attacks on our First Amendment rights. Matt and Michael are examples, but frankly... I find very few examples. Either there are motives we are not talking about... not understanding... or there is some mass psychosis going on causing people to just be destructive and bad.
I'm absolutely nobody, but i might be able to give you a couple of clues. I'm pretty old school left, former card-carrying ACLU member, anti-war, and i'm appalled by all of this assault on civil liberties. I'm also not a Democrat. In fact, i've never hated the party more. And i think that it's Democrats, who are no longer liberal left, who are the ones on board with all of this. They're basically old school Republicans with an identity politics smokescreen.
They got on board with this stuff along with the Republicans in the Bush years, and carried through by Obama that rolled back a lot of our privacy and civil liberties laws under the pretense of national security. They looked the other way when it was done under Obama, and ditto his kill list Tuesday kind of stuff too. Trump getting elected and beating the candidate they pissed away a generation trying to get elected potus blindsided them. Now it's just a desperate attempt to control the narratives and the information in a desperate attempt to hold onto power and keep the money flowing in.
I think it's probably old school left of us who remember the Bush years and earlier, who maybe voted for Nader and Bernie who still care. I suspect the younger kids who grew up in the digital age aren't as bothered, they're probably used to being spied on and don't get their news from the NYT or Wapo or MSNBC. And the old Democratic farts just keep guzzling the koolaid, they're invested in thinking they're the good guys.
most repressive regimes have a good amount of popular support. If you aren't doing anything wrong why worry. Most of my prog/liberal friends and familiy do no mind being spied on. They think their safe. FTR - they never use the subway either.
Because they can't win on merit, and never could. Not in 100 years could the progressive ( regressive) people put together anything remotely resembling good policy that 70% of Americans wouldn't hate. That's where the cheating, the changing of rules,supporting any speech they disagree with. So how does one go about shoving shit down another's throat? Lie, a lot. Cheat, more. Steal,elections. Go back tothe 2018 midterms to locate all the " close calls" they had, but won every one of them. It's how they stole 2020. It was pretty obvious actually.
The divide is between the haves and havenots. The lot of the havenots has grown steadily worse for forty years. They are rebelling. The haves had a choice : they could either change policy to help the havenots, or they could repress the havenots. They chose door number two.
The repression takes the form of depriving them of the means of communication they need to organize, and punishing them severely when they pursue other means of protest.
Oppression angers the havenots thus making them more to be feared. So once you start down the road of oppression there is no turning back. As the anger grows, so must grow the effort to keep the havenots down, the anger grows more, the oppression more severe, and so forth.
That is the image that always occurs to me! When I run into past acquaintances in public I feel apprehensive now---maybe they will open their mouths and make that alien sound.
Have a brother who was "converted" to being a socialist in the mid-sixties. Spent his whole adult life hating capitalism and the people who support it. And it's a very deep hatred of both. I gave up trying to determine his reason for change, however, I know there's no converting him or the majority of the others.
Censorship is just one of the tools in their quiver. They analyzed our elections and developed the mess we are facing with voter registration and mail-in balloting. And if they "win" this war (yes, it's a war in their minds) there will be no quarter offered.
"However, it does not seem like enough... enough to support the end of free speech and to support a censorship regime... which most of my liberal progressive friends and neighbors seem to support tacitly."
This is one of the creepier aspects of the woke takeover. My friends are "formerly radical activists" who still consider themselves at least liberal Dems, others to the left of Bernie. Up to a couple of years ago I assumed without question that all of them were still as "vigilant" about government surveillance and free speech as they always had been (some would have said "paranoid"). Now, all of them sneer about anything I say in defense of "free speech." One person immediately brought up Trump's advocacy and exercise of free speech, and made an argument that "words are actions" in reference to Jan 6. I have to agree with this person's observation that Donald Trump has shown strong leadership in his focus on threats from the left to freedom of speech. I am amazed, however, that my old leftists friends (and we are old) now identify protection of the Bill of Rights as a "right wing talking point." This transformation has come to pass rather suddenly and definitely without debate among anyone I know. The one obvious explanation is that my Democratic friends all follow Democratic cable "news" from CNN, NPR, and MSNBC. I am really surprised at how gullible and naive so many Americans are with regard to what they hear on cable TV, and that obviously includes people who in the Sixties and Seventies suspected everything said by the government and the MSM.
I think one galvanizing impulse of all those on the Left who have gone through captured institutions is “oikophobia” hatred of ones home. They simply have been taught from all the sources they look up to their whole life that USA is evil and bad and must be changed at least, destroyed at worst. There may be some optimistic lefties out there who believe in conservation, labor unions etc. Thats great and no beef with them. But hatred of the United States (and the values of ‘real americans’) is what drives so much of their attitude of vindictiveness, and indifference to authoritarianism if it will take down the US regime they think is the worlds great satan.
In related news, Biden said to roaring applause at the correspondents dinner, the “free press” is not “the enemy.” My thought was, well, yeah, obviously, the mainstream press is not YOUR enemy. To the contrary, they’re your private PR agency. The mainstream press is the enemy of independent journalists, civil libertarians, Trump and his supporters, anti-war voices, medical freedom advocates, ordinary people trying to figure out what is happening in the world, etc.
Similarly, the phrase “adversarial entities” begs the question of adversarial to who? The fact that everyone at the correspondents dinner instinctively knows who the press (meaning the segment of the press that gets in invited to these sorts of events) is not “the enemy” OF and everyone at the tabletop exercise knows who the “adversarial entities” are adversarial TO tells you all you need to know about the world we’re living in. There is an Establishment, a Deep State, a Uniparty. When people in the Establishment use words like “enemy” and “adversary,” they do not use them in relation to anything like the USA or We the People writ large. They use them in relation to their club, the Establishment. If you are anti-establishment of any flavor, you are the “adversarial entity.”
From the beginning the policy intent was to censor domestic opponents and control narratives. Obama knew how important controlling social/digital media is and was alarmed at Trump’s successful use of it. Congress got fooled by all of the Russia stole the election nonsense (which we now know was deliberately overblown by Brennan and the Obama administration) to pass a law that funded censorship and speech control.
One of Trump's first transgressions was his use of Twitter to bypass the censorial media and reach people directly. They were absolutely shocked by the success of it and didn't see it coming, but for sure that set off their subsequent rabid obsession with figuring out how to censor everything they didn't like.
I was rather shocked when he got banned. It was the first time I ever thought that this was a good thing, this Twitter. Didn't take long to realize what a great weapon it is in the wrong hands. Worse than tv news,weaponized since Korea.
I remain mystified by the notion that it's acceptable to censor what Americans view or read, provided that the source of the censored information is non-American. I can't think of a redder herring. The issue is whether officials have the right to circumscribe the information world one inhabits. What possible bearing could the internal geography of that world have on this issue? To enter into a foreign-vs.-native debate is to be seduced into an irrelevant side excursion that doesn't intersect with freedom of access arguments and principles at any point.
My concerns are the relative completeness and coherence of my information world. I couldn't care less what percentage of contributors to it are Americans, Canadians, Germans, French, Russians, men, women, etc.; but I do care if, unknown to me, someone is systemically intercepting contributions. Inevitably, there are natural barriers to information flow; we don't need anyone increasing the distortion by deliberately erecting artificial ones.
"I remain mystified by the notion that it's acceptable to censor what Americans view or read, provided that the source of the censored information is non-American."
Domestic sources of undesired information are more easily punished than are foreign sources. Therefore foreign sources are more dangerous.
(?) In the second place, one of logic's most basic and intuitively obvious rules is that the concern of a syllogism's conclusion is limited to what's already implicit in the syllogism's premises (duh!); so from premises that concern themselves with relative ease of punishment we can draw no conclusions whatsoever about danger. (More economically, Patrick, you've simply misused the word "therefore.") And in the first place, returning to the relevant issue, there's zero guarantee that information "undesired" by would-be censors is also undesired by the people prevented from reading or hearing it. Does anybody here truly want self-appointed gatekeepers arrogating to themselves the responsibility of making desirability decisions for them? Do you?
Both elected and unelected officials have various responsibilities, and in order to meet those responsibilities they have to be in charge of certain things. No official is or could ever be responsible for deciding what I want and need to know, though, or for assembling information in my cranium. Like everybody else, 'officials' of all stripes included, I'm in charge of providing my personal decision-making with whatever it requires to function effectively. This responsibility can't be delegated, even if I were so confused and foolish as to want to delegate it, and anyone who tries to expropriate it from me is seizing a freedom that's both rightfully mine and essential to my ability to navigate life as an autonomous human agent.
This isn't a claim to be all-wise and all-knowing. On the contrary, it's a simple acknowledgment that, whatever my limitations, at the end of the day I'm responsible for informing and exercising my own judgment. There's no one else to do it. In effect, we're all condemned to be in charge of ourselves and can't outsource this in-chargeness.
Except that fifty percent of the country at least are slack jawed mofos that swallow every little tidbit fed to them, and repeat it without so much as a thought. So when one of our founders said this government is for a moral and educated populace and will not survive any other,he was right.
Yes, this is something I've thought about. The Enlightenment heritage that bequeathed us our notions of democracy and individual liberties in the first place (along with public libraries, public education, and the supposition that each person, if left free of tyrannical interference, would naturally make the most rational decisions on behalf of his or her own best interest, which would then sum to create the most rational and happy of societies) was, after all, the product of Enlightenment thinkers; and perhaps if everyone were an Enlightenment philosopher this model would have worked as intended.
Alas, as my father was fond of repeating, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." Regardless of how adroitly societies are structured, if the people operating the structures lack competence the results are going to be disappointing.
Yes. The Detroit Lions got Jamyrr Gibbs with the 12th pick in the draft, and the team hasn't taken a knee during the national anthem for over two years. Sorry, that's all I got
The elite laptop class are all but openly saying they're going weaponize the news against the working class and populist population, with the explicit purpose of suppressing them to keep and maintain their money and power. It's the aristocrats crushing the plebs for demanding a seat at the table.
i say this because when i read the "foreign or other adversaries" line i laughed out loud. We are connected by the internet but we read in our rooms by ourselves, alone (mostly). In other words, we are not reading and commenting like say, watching a ball game at a stadium, where we can gauge other people's reaction to what we are reading. More so than tgis just being a bleak "reality" about the limitations of the internet, it hopefully becomes an opportunity for Substack or other to transform what "reading the news" is today.
Just a quick question. I listened to your podcast with Walter Kirn discussing Morell getting the prompt from Blinken to put the letter together regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop. And now we have Blinken categorically denying he was the starting point for the letter. Is Blinken engaging misinformation or disinformation? Asking for a friend...
War-speak is now being firmly left in the control of the litigious minds of lawyers and their legalese word salads. They seem to be in every aspect of the war machine now.
we need to make an argument that mere document dumps are a kind of passive journalism. passive, but legitimate, journalism in its own right. or else not writing a word is a problem.
sorting what is released can be part (this is off topic, but important.) then the argument that motives do not matr if thr is a public interest defense can be made. & why does it 'feel' more ok if someone wrote a graph, or 1k words, summarizing the information as well. is it that qualitatively different? what if you breached national security to drop documents to your pre teen discord pals: does the 'motives do not matr' apply? what about the no writing. _JC
It seems like a lot of really disturbing and politically dangerous stuff comes out of Stanford University and especially the Institute. Something smells really bad about how that place seems to be connected with so really frightening ideas and people. Thoughts?
The whole idea of labeling any idea or position 'foreign' is an insult to the public.
If the same idea was proposed by a local, does it make it a different idea?
It's a ploy by sore losers and those who want to control others to claim some ideas are harmfil without actually arguing or explaining what the harm is.
Do they have an industry organization they network through? Linked in must be rife with their sanctimony. They must convince themselves that censorship and their jobs are saving the world. Maybe we should start one for them and call it SACS. Sanctimonious Asshole Sensors Society.
USA education isn’t what it once was and that includes Med school. If you follow the money Pharma funds half of FDA and has a crony relationship with NIH and CDC. Medicine in this era is mostly just about prescribing the recommended mostly on patent drugs some of which bring NIH royalties but all of them fund FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world. The establishment needs docs to follow their direction not to think critically or ask pertinent questions and as always when authoritarians reign the mail that stands up gets hammered down.
Interesting that the democrats hated the Covid vax when it was associated with Trump but spun 180 degrees to co-opt it , then mandated it. Problem is it didn’t work, and wasn’t/ isn’t safe. They just lied and keep on lying. The courageous scientists and docs who spoke up are the only heroes of the Covid era along with those honest journalists and “influencers” who gave them a platform from which they could inform rather than misinform.
What we must do is make sure honest, thoughtful informers are heard. Those who scream disinformation the loudest can’t be trusted because it is they who lie.
I heard some one on GB News last week use the term “conspiracy factualists”. We need all of those people we can get!
Matt these are excellent contributions being made to advance our understanding of the predicament within which we presently find ourselves. The degree of advanced psychological warfare tactics being deployed against Americans by individuals who we are told are Americans, is mind-boggling. The obvious question arises: to what end are they coordinating and orchestrating these attacks on the public Mind? Who are they, really? Are these individuals ideologues merely sharing some common set of beliefs and principals they think they MUST impose on the rest of us using an ends-justify-the-means philosophy that includes not only ignoring the US Constitution and Rule of Law but also basic human ethics and morality? I do not believe what we are seeing is merely “Deep State” and its puppet-masters & minions running amok. Do people like Renee DiResta think they are Gods (or working for “gods”) in EDEN that they can “go down amongst them and confuse their language, lest they become as us!” This thing is going Biblical! The level of moral depravity, emotional deficit, contempt for human beings and pure malevolence powering these activities designed to confuse and mislead people involves destruction of not only trust between humans necessary for civilization to survive, but destruction of language and communication itself is EVIL.
These psychopathic amoral creatures are purposefully coordinating & pushing a Tower of Babbel moment. The question is: to what end? It cannot be that they are only “mistaken.” This activity is detailed, purposeful and deliberate. Calculating. Is it merely destruction for destruction’s sake? Is it some kind of weird quasi-religious sect of zealots united in some strange diabolical belief system? The intention obviously is to destroy the civilization we have based on trust and language and replace it with WHAT, exactly?
Who ARE these “people” really? What are the up to? What are they? What, exactly do they intend to replace us and our civilization with?
Based on documentable remorselessness and ruthlessness, total belief that they are special and can operate without fear of punishment outside Law, ethics and morality, based on their documented complete lack of empathy for those they are harming and killing in large numbers these creatures collectively accurately can be called “psychopaths.” But are they merely mentally and emotionally defective beings that are simply naturally coalescing together with like-minded beings “doing their thing” due to similar psychologies and natural affinity? What, exactly are these things up to?
I think we need to recognize the common thread between all the individuals and their activities is psychopathy. They all are psychopaths bent on mounting a civilization based on psychopathy hostile to at least 96% of biological humanity, culture, history and civilizations. This commonality cuts across all political, ideological, religious, ethnic, cultural or racial differences and unites them against the rest of us. They disdain us, have no problem weaponizing even our best human qualities against us.
The question is: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Way back in 2001 when the Patriot Act was introduced, my natural skepticism wondered why an axe was being used when a scalpel was all that was necessary. Our enemy was Osama Bin Laden. Kill or capture him should have been the sole mission. Thanks to the war profiteers Cheney, Rumsfeld and the likes of Halliburton, a global war was fought against people who were not our enemies but became our enemies.
Also at the same time, people in the Bay Area where I worked were now saying "Thank You For Your Service" when 25 years before they would treat me like crap when I wore my uniform. The War Mongers ramped up the propaganda to get support for their wars. Libya? Really?, Syria? The people in those call the USA the Great Satan. I can hardly blame them. Big surprise, they want revenge. I hate that the war mongers send the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen to fight these bogus wars.
Sorry-back to the surveillance state aka the Patriot Act. It wasn't patriotic, it was a repudiation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Another example of how Congress loves to name Bills whose effects are opposite of the title.
Walter Kirn (from Lost In The Meritocracy) speaking about Admiral Uncle :
"He'd shown me the world and where I stood in it and how it related to where others stood. He'd taught me to love learning for it's own sake, as a way to feel less lost.... Knowledge is a reckoning, he taught me, a way to assess your location, your true position, not a strategy for improving your position."
It brings a tear to my eye how far we've fallen short....
Great piece, great catch! From the commencement of the “ Russia, Russia, Russia” idiocy, I was curious as to when Russia became such an obsessive focus. The last I remember Russia as the greatest danger and tyrannical enemy of the free world was during the Cold War.Trump’s campaign platform suggesting a decent relationship with Putin could be a positive was a factor in gaining my support. Flynn had been negotiating a deal that would pull Putin from Iran and Syria in exchange for guaranteeing an end to NATO build up and encroachment A normalization of relations minus our meddling, false flags , Color Revolutions and provocations. Putin was considering it. He had no Islamist leanings.He had a good relationship with Israel and there was a sub Rosa agreement with Syria to help rid Syria of terrorist extremists , ie Al Qaeda an ISIS.
Putin thrice warned US Intel about the Tsarnaeavs planning a terror attack. Brennan, Comey,Panetta,Mueller did NOTHING! Isn’t it ironic how quickly the FBI identified the Tsarnaevs after the Boston Marathon bombing? The agencies that missed all the signals of 9/11 , Parkland. San Bernardino,the New Mexico cell with the dead child, the Strawberry Festiival, Anthrax, Pulse Nightlub,Sandy Hook, Gabby Giffords, the Atlanta planned bombing at Olympic Park,Oklahoma City, the Wisconsin Christmas Festival, the Buffalo massacre, the Tree Of Life synagogue , the California synagogue hostage situation… what did each major event have in common? The FBI had been forewarned and did NOTHING! Or in the cases of the Pulse Nightclub and Boston Marathon bombing, there were family members who were “ protected” foreign nationals.
Meanwhile, we don’t protect Americans . We persecute and prosecute or “ disappear” them.
The most influential and corrupt “ Think Tanks”, NGOs , charities, civil rights orgs and “ philanthropies” are Aspen, Atlantic Council, Cato Institute, Brookings, all things Soros, ACLU, SPLC, NAACP, ADL Catholic Charities, CAIR, Red Cross. Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Institute, Clinton Foundation , Sedona Foundation ( McCain) USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies,,Greenpeace,Media Matters, Confucius Society, Penn Biden Center, Bilderberg,NABU, WEF,,BLM, Lawfare and all things UN… nearly forgot! The DNC and RNC
Ironically, one of the best ways to guard against random hack-and-dumpers is to have a reliable repository that we know vets content, like, say WikiLeaks, where people can release material knowing it will be checked out and cleaned up before release.
Which is, of course, one of the reasons they hated it. They pretend we should rely on "respectable" sources like The New York Times which is far less reliable, then complain that if something like WikiLeaks is around, there's no one there to be a "gatekeeper".
In the old blogging days they used to try to undermine Atrios by talking about how he was using a pseudonym and therefore couldn't be held to account. But since he was only commenting on the public discourse and not pretending to be a news source, that was obvious nonsense. And Atrios' popularity was based on his consistent performance, not his credentials - which is more than you can say for credentialed reporters like Matt Bai or most of the other political reporters and commentators in the New York Times or on cable news. As it turned out, he's been a lot more accountable in the long run.
All i can think of with this line of investigation is that if Clinton and her slimeballs had actually found something when they tried to hack Trump's server Re: the Alfa bank thing, it would have been breathlessly published all over the place and those exercises would have never happened.
I actually think Trump is corrupt af. But they never went after him for any corruption as i recall, they went after him for bogus stuff like Russian collusion and pee tapes. My theory on this is that if they went after him for corruption, they were all going to be fair game at some point. And they're all corrupt.
You could be right. They did impeach him the first time for investigating Biden's corruption. That was a big no no.
It does seem to me that in the 21st century there is a gentleman's agreement tof don't mess with our grift and we turn a blind eye to yours. The press will always look the other way. The Clarence Thomas thang is quite unusual, but surely nothing will be done.
The pursuit of Information Age narrative control is like any other compulsive habit. The abusers inevitably succumb to the addiction- no matter how much control they achieve, it will never be enough to satisfy their cravings.
Thanks for pointing this out. It echoes exactly my reaction to the words (which you rightly place in bold letters) "or other adversarial entities" - yea, those "adversaries" who oppose the candidate who has been anointed as the "rightful winner" by the establishment. I am a long time progressive (not to be confused with a "liberal" pledged to vote for whatever terrible candidate the right wing Democratic Party puts on the ballot) who despises Trump. However, anyone who supports the politicization of the intelligence agencies and their interference in domestic politics is opposed to democracy. Not that we have a democracy anyway, but let us continue to pretend that we do.
Does anyone doubt that if, say, Democrat operatives were caught tomorrow breaking into Republican Party headquarters located in an office building - let’s just say an office building called Watergate - and Biden was then caught on tape plotting how to cover it all up, that today’s “media” would proclaim it all “Russian disinformation” and screech about “right wing conspiracy theories”?
" As reader O’Neill correctly pointed out, “they are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.”"
I think they have already past that. As noted in the original piece:
"Again, none of the media or academic figures involved with this story commented for the record, but one tabletop attendee who asked not to be named did defend the decision, saying: “It was just arguing for discretion over whatever sells,” adding, “The race to the bottom is what got us 2016.”"
The issue with 2016 of course is that the wrong candidate won. It's not about misinformation, hacking or any of the other justifications being offered. It's solely to stop the wrong person from winning the election.
Don't forget the concept of mission creep. The turn towards domestic enemies was necessary to preserve and justify expanded budgets. In the current climate, attention would naturally be focused on political enemies of the Deep State, liberal or conservative.
I think both the Covid origins and the Hunter Biden laptop approaches the media took have shown a very real, human problem in the aftermath - an unwillingness to acknowledge that they were wrong in any way. I wonder if, even in sidebars, etc., any of these people showed any concern for that as they went through this training. Or, were they just certain they would never be wrong. I'm guessing they acknowledged that they may screw something up - but they assured themselves that they would not fall in to that trap. They were above that human failing.
They were many people involved, but certainly at least some of them know it's all BS. Heck, the Carlson texts proved that. So there's nothing to apologize about.
The really interesting question is how many in the audience know its all fake. I'd say not many. It's mostly dupes.
This is exactly what 'crazy people' like Ron Paul said would happen with the Global War on Terror in general and with the USA PATRIOT Act in particular.
And here we are.
Any legislation in this country with the word Patriot in its title is always the diametric opposite of patriotic.
Always remember!
The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. ...February 27, 2010, Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend, for one year, three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire: 1)Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.; 2)Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.3)Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf (a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group). February 8, 2011, the House of Representatives considered a further extension of the Act through the end of 2011.Without an extension, the Act was set to expire on February 28, 2011. However, it eventually passed, 275–144.
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign the PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act of 2011, a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France.
I had no idea and every Democrat blames Bush for this but Obama extended it. Wow
The autopen--from FRANCE.
NPR thought it was very cool:
Obama Wields His ... Autopen?
https://www.npr.org/2011/05/27/136717719/obama-wields-his-autopen
Obama came literally from nowhere.
We are told he was a community organizer, whatever that means.
Then he wrote a book, and served a term where Joe Lieberman was his mentor, and then BOOM, there he was, President of the World, the candidate from Langley.
Kathleen- nice find !
I actually never heard of this though I have toured Monticello 🤷♂️
PS - NPR would have found constitutional problems and the use of it not so cool had the president been Trump ! Very sad state of double standards…….
They are still raising $$ to build it but if you are ever in Medora, ND check it out.
Its funny anyone thinks there's a difference.
Two wings of the same grisly gang.
There is still a huge difference:
At least *some* of the Republicans supporting the extensions were *not* neo-cons and neo-libs. (Fools, yes, but *not* Statists *using* the issue.)
*All* of the Democrats were and are.
The significance of difference is relative. Given that the subtopic here is the PATRIOT Act and who is responsible for it, your separation between fools and statists strikes me as more trivial than huge. This is because they did the deed and the damage was done (do we really care about their motives long after the fact?).
My view is that our political system needs more pluralism and less 'two wings of the same grisly gang' (h/t Bill). And the tendency to lump the opposition into a homogenous group is likely a bad call... on multiple levels that makes a huge difference in your ability to make accurate calls, plus differentiate yourself from the fools.
To me, the most appropriate response is often *both* substantive and mocking.
It takes a village.
Given the rapidity that this Act of 300 pages was enacted, it is obvious to me that it was pre-written and pre-planned. All that was required was proper crisis.
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
― Rahm Emanuel
Obama? Scourge!!
Yep. Because there's no crisis so big the government can't come up with a catchy acronym for the bill.
Who runs the department of clever acronyms in this country?
The Iron Law of Bill Names! (See: Inflation Reduction Act, which has very very little to do with reducing inflation.)
Or, my personal opposite-day favorite, 'Citizens United', which should have been called "Citizen-Crushing Cabal Empowerment Act", or "The 'Citizens, Get Fucked!' Act"
Wrong. 180 degrees.
you're going to need to do better than that. This is a tough crowd.
Oh, very well...
Citizens United is and was correct, imo, because all it says is that you and I, individual and private citizens, may pool our resources toward mutual and freely decided upon political ends, completely and utterly, did I say *necessarily*? yes I did, independent of any group, especially and most importantly that most dangerous of all groups, Society, and its mindless, vicious, anti-human pit bull, the State.
No doubt!
But in my defense, I only claim to exercise my First Amendment right to utter pure opinion, free of charge no less!
The crowd is getting a bargain, says I.
“See Civil Rights Act “ she said in a low voice... LBJ, not a nice person...
Biden's new rule on Title IX to allow guys to rape girls in school bathrooms. Without any consequences written in. How in the world did the President of the United States allow this and put these previous young girls in harms way?
Symbolic wish fulfillment.
It’s so much fun to sniff hair --why not more?
CARES Act - largest single upward transfer of wealth in human history
Yes in fact I just learned that the IRA is another ploy just to privatize more public infrastructure.
Guys, don't lump the PELOSI Act into this. Though maybe it's the exception that proves the rule.
Also Kirk's Law:
"Any law named after a victim, or whose title forms a cutesy acronym, is certain to be a bad law."
Biden proudly proclaims that he wrote the Patriot Act (but it took 9/11 to go into effect).
But Biden also proudly proclaimed that he is Neil Kinnock.
And he graduated top of his class
What's astonishing for me is that 'biden' is proven liar who actually had to abandon his campaign for the presidency. Yet, somehow, it's all forgotten.
The system works.
As former Vice President Joe Biden prepares to take the Democratic debate stage on Wednesday, the pressure is on the front runner for the party’s 2020 nomination for the presidency — especially after the June debate, after which he admitted he was unprepared for fellow candidate Sen. Kamala Harris to call him out on his past positions on busing.
But for at least one veteran political reporter, that moment is just part of a decades-long history that goes all the way back to the first time Biden made an official run for the White House — and to the scandal that ended that campaign.
https://time.com/5636715/biden-1988-presidential-campaign/
Excellent find Bill !
I do know the generalities regarding the lies and plagiarism surrounding our “ high hallowed” president but this article brings to light many of his specific deeds ,that as you point out have been “ forgotten “ by many……
Nutz!
'biden' pees hisself most days.
Forty years ago I was sitting cross-legged on a dirty Oriental rug getting drunk on Gallo jug wine and listening to Murray Rothbard talk about Ron Paul, among other things (the other things being a tour de force of the history of the Great Depression, the perfidy of Ayn Rand, a history of metal currency, and complaints about the then-current management of the Cato Institute). His opinion was that "Ron is as good as it gets, he just doesn't go far enough."
40 years ago I was probably still in my Randroid phase. When I learned of Rand’s loyalty to the Republican Party, it started to open my eyes. I still voted Libertarian for a long time, but now I think the party was always a kind of controlled opposition--a term I didn't know at the time. I should have been wary of rebranding the pejorativized “A-word”, anarchy, with the dressed up and watered-down “libertarian” moniker. Now that libertarianism is almost entirely captured by the Republican Party, I wonder what Rothbard would say.
In addition to the numerous philosophical issues Rothbard had with Objectivism, he also had a very personal gripe with Rand dating from the early 1960s when he was briefly part of her inner circle. She was a famously belligerent atheist, who believed that any religious belief, which she named "mysticism," was incompatible with the use of reason. Rothbard himself was a completely secularized Jew, but his wife was a believing Christian. Rand gave him an ultimatum -- divorce your wife or be cast out. To his everlasting credit he chose Joey.
Yes. Ayn Rand was wrong, too.
"Now that libertarianism is almost entirely captured by the Republican Party, I wonder what Rothbard would say."
He would say, "Hmm...I was wrong."
I would suggest it's the other way 'round, as the GOP was essentially purchased by the Koch network via the Tea Party movement it paid to provide broad coverage for, and the Kochs were lifelong Libertarians. David ran for VP on the Libertarian ticket.
Nope.
I am as libertarian (political system of the founding, another word for Capitalism, true not crony) as anyone on the planet.
I am just as anti-Libertarian, and you all should stop living in the last century.
Just like the Greens on the left, the Libertarian Party, and its myopic supporters/enablers (like the Statist neo-liberal psuedo-free-marketer Koch-cons), allow the Fascist Democrat Party to operate *with crippled political opposition* in their almost-completed take-over of a free People.
You are at best a fool, M. Liz Burton.
Hmmm not MD2020
A little Thunderbird with a Boones Farm chaser.
I had one swallow of that crap 20 yrs ago and can still taste it!
Rothbard always did have it in for Rand, unreasonably so imo.
"How to Win Friends and Influence People" : Matter = Murray Rothbard : Antimatter. I did not know him at all well (I only met him a few times, very late in his life) but we had a mutual friend to whom we were both very close, and I heard *plenty.* I'm sure Ayn Rand was a gigantic pain in the ass, but Murray managed to alienate almost everyone at one time or another too. The obituary National Review ran when he died was a monument to pettiness.
Thanks, M. Gathering. I read about all this so long ago that you make me realize I must go research to learn it all again!
Edit: Really, I should have added to this indent long before that my strong opinion is that this old and ageless Objectivist/Libertarian feud is moot, pointless, beside the point, non-substantive, self-destructive....you know, all the things we *knew* then, eh?
The government counts on stupid and apathetic people to allow them total control over all citizens. And AI will be used in a similar manner if it's not being used already.
Ron Paul is suffering without a verb to his name... I think you forgot "said."
They have gone way past the patriot act
I would like to humbly suggest that we subscribers here to Matt's Racket be officially christened as Other Adversarial Entities. I bet it would even look good stitched on the back of a bowling shirt or velvet jacket.
I'll say we're definitely all in this together---paraphrasing Ben Franklin's "hang together, or hang separately."
How about this septuagenarian needlepoint it?!?! 😂
I'm getting a patch for my Harley vest!
yes! i want one
Other Adversarial Entities...RIDE OR DIE!
Username checks
lol thx
Or, if you prefer. A T-shirt with this on the back. "If you can read this the other adversarial bitch fell off"
I thought we were already Racketeers, isn't that deplorable enough?
OK...in the folk music community there is a well known song (not old...it was written by Stan Rogers in 1976, but it's in the style of an 18th C sea shanty) called "Barrett's Privateers." I propose we re-purpose it as "Taibbi's Racketters." Anyone with me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV34CwNMY0
Goddamn them all!
Free Julian Assange in the front, UltraMAGA on the back. Though vice versa works too
I want that shirt!
we need to get some enterprising etsy crafter involved
is it me or is Matt resembling the guy screaming on his way to his execution "but I was for the revolution!" Or "Someone tell stalin!"
I grew up in socialist former East Germany and know exactly what a state controlled media is and what it does. I’m familiar with the tools to keep the populous uneducated, dived and spying on each other for government handouts. It’s all about domestic control and nothing else. I came to the US almost 30 years ago and it’s shocking to see such familiar tactics used today in the so called Land of the Free.
And Renee DiResta worked with American Engagement Technologies, which, the Washington Free Beacon reported, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.” Yet she's a "disinformation" expert despite having engaged in an actual disinformation campaign.
She worked for the CIA, then for New Knowledge (now called Yonder), an "election integrity company" which claimed it was running a "secret experiment" by pretending to be Russians backing Judge Roy Moore (R) against Doug Jones (D). Jones won. As far as I know, there were no repercussions for New Knowledge; possibly that led indirectly to the Aspen Institute exercises?
No, no consequences. And in the campaign against Moore they literally “imitated Russian tactics”—this, despite DiResta and her team working with Democrats in the U.S. Senate to pen a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. If Russia interferes with an election, it’s Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy™; but when Democratic disinformation experts do it to defeat Republicans, it’s totally cool.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/big-disinfo
These subhumans are pure evil. Especially types like this traitor.
Sounds like an expert to me......
Yes, no scare quotes. She really is an expert at disseminating falsehoods disguised as truth, having spent a career perfecting the "art," a perversion of art.
Practice makes perfect.
She's a "disinformation" expert **as proved by** having engaged in an actual disinformation campaign.
By hyping imaginary threats, hawks create real threats. Since hawks need threats (or else they'd have to get real jobs), this is treated as a win-win.
Now they get to investigate "human trafficking" by getting handjobs for a month while "gathering evidence" -- then they save the "victims" by charging them with prostitution.
AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!
https://reason.com/2016/09/09/the-truth-about-us-sex-trafficking/
And on that note, Jeffrey Toobin re emerged today.....
Re emerging, eh? Sort of like this?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWo_kWMihs
🤣🤣. I can’t look at a drying puddle now without wondering who will emerge eventually to croak some sort of garbage. No disrespect to the noble frog 🐸
Wanker in hand?
Like a turtle out of his shell?
The hawks are both Republican and Democrat, with the later being more united than the former. There are cracks in the hawkish GOP, but unity for Democrats. Democrats are united to keep the US southern border open while spending billions to protect Ukraine's.
Great post script, Matt! “ There are almost too many angles to count. “... however many years ago, the now over used expression “ into the weeds” appeared in political lingo... almost always inferring a “ heads up folks, this might be above your IQ level”... from the first time I heard that expression, I immediately thought... “and that is completely intentional and their goal”...make the sequence of events so crazy and convoluted that connecting the dots takes way too much effort and attention. Well played and shame on all of you willing participants! And kudos to your reader who did indeed go into the weeds!
Like "Inside Baseball."
Sounds like you've been doing your own research?
The sky gods know all, remember that they learn the Latin so you don't have to....
Lucky us!
Absolutely the Nazi playbook on display here.
Tell the the people we're under attack. Attack anyone who criticizes as working with the enemy. Keep the people in line from all sides.
Saul Alinsky- RULES FOR RADICALS? The politicians handbook.
lol - I tried to read that once. Got through the intro and was so disgusted I literally shredded the book with my bare hands.
Alinsky was a fucking prick.
Alinsky was Obama's bible when he was a "community organizer." He learned it all and hasn't forgotten a word.
There is a pic of him while Senator boarding a plane holding a copy.
Alinsky *is* "community organizing." What a successful euphamism!
I’ve always ‘heard’ about the book but thought I should actually read it. Need to order that and 1984 together from Amazon. That’ll mess up their algorithm
And The Prince by Machiavelli... I think Hillary has it under her pillow!
Machiavelli. The modern version of his motto now is “ just whatever “.
Well, to be accurate not *just* "just whatever."
The purpose *is* public power.
The method is "con(fidence) game." Gain the confidence of enough foolish Peoples, use the rest as scapegoat, and shazzam! The left endpoint (100% State control, 0% individual freedom) is within reach.
Alinsky channels Machiavelli, of course. Same purpose, same game, different target, same result.
10th grade, World History… the best history teacher ever! And to this day, I remember the spirited ethics debate about “does the end justify the means.” Imo, far too many people condone amoral/unethical actions to get their way “whatever” it takes. Sen Harry Reid lying on the Senate Floor about Romney not paying taxes “ he lost didn’t he? “ with a broad grin.
"Imo, far too many people condone amoral/unethical actions to get their way “whatever” it takes."
Imo, they are called Democrats, and the utopia they promise as *end* is anything but, which means they possess never-ending "justified" *means*, fixing problems they create.
Sadly, I agree. Republicans are not “ Boy Scouts” ( probably not PC) but they don’t seem as premeditated devious.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the Republican Party, once back in power, will allow their own cancer (the empiring/warmongering neo-cons) to begin anew its ever present growth.
But, gee whiz, as far as today's Statism activists/players are concerned, the Republicans are pikers and the Democrats seem to me to be naturals.
Hey, give them a break. It's the *only* way Fascism can take root.
*racks “weed killer”*
Indeed.
Ha! That's the next "break" we give them.
I'm so grateful to be part of this group... It's one part of the internet that's still free.
Tell taibbi to take a closer look at Rumble...
It's what's available that doesn't have this particular stink of authoritarianism yet.
Yet.....
Don't think we're not being logged and noted though.
The answer is numbers.
For example, if not for the advent of "with-holding" (another terrible euphamism, as if all wealth belongs to the State), massive income tax non-compliance would work, dooming that "takings."
Massive voting for (hold yer noses) Republicans (today's, not yesterday's), the Statist Dems will continue their inherent Fascism.
Unfortunately. Remember Trudeau and his father are/were members of the Club of Rome.
Stella - I liked your comment ( not because Canada is even more tyrannical but because I was unaware! Yes even after the trucker’s strike) and thanks for bringing it to our attention!
It’s despicable and as always who will be the arbiter’s of truth?
Who fact checks the fact checkers?
I’ve loved every visit to Canada. The vibes were great the people splendid and open except maybe when health care discussions came up ? ……
Though the scenarios were different imo from Montreal to Vancouver, it’s hard to believe that the folks we communicated with would vote for such totalitarianism ,But on the other hand,it’s hard to believe anyone voted for biden and his war on fossil fuels and censorship policies 🤷♂️
Sadness across both nations and likely the world…….
It will take at least a couple years to hump it thru meetings and committees at the crtc before we see any action....I hope. No doubt they'll find a way to move faster although government isn't very good at that.
The entire Government should be dismantled & smaller. This just keeps happening & “we the people “ are being highjacked by frauds. Both sides of the aisle
I had an epiphany (maybe I'm slow and naive) listening to the latest podcast with Walter in which he said many (most?) "journalists" now are just political operatives masquerading as such. As in - what a brilliant strategy for Dems (is it just them?) to manoeuvre their people into that space so they can simply control and dictate the narrative instead of having those damn pesky regular journalists keep poking their nose where it shouldn't be. They will truly stop at NOTHING to win and stay in power.
I feel like we need to capture one of these high level people (aliens?) and waterboard them until they sufficiently explain their motive (joke... well, partially).
I have been ping-ponging around all the information sharing places where the left species hang out. For example, I finally got banned from Robert Reich's substack... not for personal attacks, but for challenging their "logic" and asking them questions that made them uncomforable. I live in a blue state in a hard-blue college town and so I live among them and have gotten to know them like the back of my hand. So I know of their views and behavior... but nothing about their motives... other than to feel like their politics are winning and that is very important to them. However, it does not seem like enough... enough to support the end of free speech and to support a censorship regime... which most of my liberal progressive friends and neighbors seem to support tacitly.
I need to know why and it is driving me crazy that there are no good answers. Why the hell are so many people on the left of politics involved in, or supportive of, this really bad and clearly destructive censorship behavior?
I know there are liberal Democrats out there that claim they are on the side of opposition to these attacks on our First Amendment rights. Matt and Michael are examples, but frankly... I find very few examples. Either there are motives we are not talking about... not understanding... or there is some mass psychosis going on causing people to just be destructive and bad.
I'm absolutely nobody, but i might be able to give you a couple of clues. I'm pretty old school left, former card-carrying ACLU member, anti-war, and i'm appalled by all of this assault on civil liberties. I'm also not a Democrat. In fact, i've never hated the party more. And i think that it's Democrats, who are no longer liberal left, who are the ones on board with all of this. They're basically old school Republicans with an identity politics smokescreen.
They got on board with this stuff along with the Republicans in the Bush years, and carried through by Obama that rolled back a lot of our privacy and civil liberties laws under the pretense of national security. They looked the other way when it was done under Obama, and ditto his kill list Tuesday kind of stuff too. Trump getting elected and beating the candidate they pissed away a generation trying to get elected potus blindsided them. Now it's just a desperate attempt to control the narratives and the information in a desperate attempt to hold onto power and keep the money flowing in.
I think it's probably old school left of us who remember the Bush years and earlier, who maybe voted for Nader and Bernie who still care. I suspect the younger kids who grew up in the digital age aren't as bothered, they're probably used to being spied on and don't get their news from the NYT or Wapo or MSNBC. And the old Democratic farts just keep guzzling the koolaid, they're invested in thinking they're the good guys.
Interesting theories and observations.
most repressive regimes have a good amount of popular support. If you aren't doing anything wrong why worry. Most of my prog/liberal friends and familiy do no mind being spied on. They think their safe. FTR - they never use the subway either.
Because they can't win on merit, and never could. Not in 100 years could the progressive ( regressive) people put together anything remotely resembling good policy that 70% of Americans wouldn't hate. That's where the cheating, the changing of rules,supporting any speech they disagree with. So how does one go about shoving shit down another's throat? Lie, a lot. Cheat, more. Steal,elections. Go back tothe 2018 midterms to locate all the " close calls" they had, but won every one of them. It's how they stole 2020. It was pretty obvious actually.
It’s why Marc Elias petitioned the Court in 6 states only.
The divide is between the haves and havenots. The lot of the havenots has grown steadily worse for forty years. They are rebelling. The haves had a choice : they could either change policy to help the havenots, or they could repress the havenots. They chose door number two.
The repression takes the form of depriving them of the means of communication they need to organize, and punishing them severely when they pursue other means of protest.
Oppression angers the havenots thus making them more to be feared. So once you start down the road of oppression there is no turning back. As the anger grows, so must grow the effort to keep the havenots down, the anger grows more, the oppression more severe, and so forth.
Yea it is frustrating to get to a motive. Pod people?
That is the image that always occurs to me! When I run into past acquaintances in public I feel apprehensive now---maybe they will open their mouths and make that alien sound.
Have a brother who was "converted" to being a socialist in the mid-sixties. Spent his whole adult life hating capitalism and the people who support it. And it's a very deep hatred of both. I gave up trying to determine his reason for change, however, I know there's no converting him or the majority of the others.
Censorship is just one of the tools in their quiver. They analyzed our elections and developed the mess we are facing with voter registration and mail-in balloting. And if they "win" this war (yes, it's a war in their minds) there will be no quarter offered.
"However, it does not seem like enough... enough to support the end of free speech and to support a censorship regime... which most of my liberal progressive friends and neighbors seem to support tacitly."
This is one of the creepier aspects of the woke takeover. My friends are "formerly radical activists" who still consider themselves at least liberal Dems, others to the left of Bernie. Up to a couple of years ago I assumed without question that all of them were still as "vigilant" about government surveillance and free speech as they always had been (some would have said "paranoid"). Now, all of them sneer about anything I say in defense of "free speech." One person immediately brought up Trump's advocacy and exercise of free speech, and made an argument that "words are actions" in reference to Jan 6. I have to agree with this person's observation that Donald Trump has shown strong leadership in his focus on threats from the left to freedom of speech. I am amazed, however, that my old leftists friends (and we are old) now identify protection of the Bill of Rights as a "right wing talking point." This transformation has come to pass rather suddenly and definitely without debate among anyone I know. The one obvious explanation is that my Democratic friends all follow Democratic cable "news" from CNN, NPR, and MSNBC. I am really surprised at how gullible and naive so many Americans are with regard to what they hear on cable TV, and that obviously includes people who in the Sixties and Seventies suspected everything said by the government and the MSM.
I think one galvanizing impulse of all those on the Left who have gone through captured institutions is “oikophobia” hatred of ones home. They simply have been taught from all the sources they look up to their whole life that USA is evil and bad and must be changed at least, destroyed at worst. There may be some optimistic lefties out there who believe in conservation, labor unions etc. Thats great and no beef with them. But hatred of the United States (and the values of ‘real americans’) is what drives so much of their attitude of vindictiveness, and indifference to authoritarianism if it will take down the US regime they think is the worlds great satan.
Authoritarianism taking down the US regime? I don't understand how that could be. Both parties are 100% in bed with the Great Satan.
In related news, Biden said to roaring applause at the correspondents dinner, the “free press” is not “the enemy.” My thought was, well, yeah, obviously, the mainstream press is not YOUR enemy. To the contrary, they’re your private PR agency. The mainstream press is the enemy of independent journalists, civil libertarians, Trump and his supporters, anti-war voices, medical freedom advocates, ordinary people trying to figure out what is happening in the world, etc.
Similarly, the phrase “adversarial entities” begs the question of adversarial to who? The fact that everyone at the correspondents dinner instinctively knows who the press (meaning the segment of the press that gets in invited to these sorts of events) is not “the enemy” OF and everyone at the tabletop exercise knows who the “adversarial entities” are adversarial TO tells you all you need to know about the world we’re living in. There is an Establishment, a Deep State, a Uniparty. When people in the Establishment use words like “enemy” and “adversary,” they do not use them in relation to anything like the USA or We the People writ large. They use them in relation to their club, the Establishment. If you are anti-establishment of any flavor, you are the “adversarial entity.”
From the beginning the policy intent was to censor domestic opponents and control narratives. Obama knew how important controlling social/digital media is and was alarmed at Trump’s successful use of it. Congress got fooled by all of the Russia stole the election nonsense (which we now know was deliberately overblown by Brennan and the Obama administration) to pass a law that funded censorship and speech control.
One of Trump's first transgressions was his use of Twitter to bypass the censorial media and reach people directly. They were absolutely shocked by the success of it and didn't see it coming, but for sure that set off their subsequent rabid obsession with figuring out how to censor everything they didn't like.
I was rather shocked when he got banned. It was the first time I ever thought that this was a good thing, this Twitter. Didn't take long to realize what a great weapon it is in the wrong hands. Worse than tv news,weaponized since Korea.
I remain mystified by the notion that it's acceptable to censor what Americans view or read, provided that the source of the censored information is non-American. I can't think of a redder herring. The issue is whether officials have the right to circumscribe the information world one inhabits. What possible bearing could the internal geography of that world have on this issue? To enter into a foreign-vs.-native debate is to be seduced into an irrelevant side excursion that doesn't intersect with freedom of access arguments and principles at any point.
My concerns are the relative completeness and coherence of my information world. I couldn't care less what percentage of contributors to it are Americans, Canadians, Germans, French, Russians, men, women, etc.; but I do care if, unknown to me, someone is systemically intercepting contributions. Inevitably, there are natural barriers to information flow; we don't need anyone increasing the distortion by deliberately erecting artificial ones.
"I remain mystified by the notion that it's acceptable to censor what Americans view or read, provided that the source of the censored information is non-American."
Domestic sources of undesired information are more easily punished than are foreign sources. Therefore foreign sources are more dangerous.
(?) In the second place, one of logic's most basic and intuitively obvious rules is that the concern of a syllogism's conclusion is limited to what's already implicit in the syllogism's premises (duh!); so from premises that concern themselves with relative ease of punishment we can draw no conclusions whatsoever about danger. (More economically, Patrick, you've simply misused the word "therefore.") And in the first place, returning to the relevant issue, there's zero guarantee that information "undesired" by would-be censors is also undesired by the people prevented from reading or hearing it. Does anybody here truly want self-appointed gatekeepers arrogating to themselves the responsibility of making desirability decisions for them? Do you?
Undesired by those in charge.
Both elected and unelected officials have various responsibilities, and in order to meet those responsibilities they have to be in charge of certain things. No official is or could ever be responsible for deciding what I want and need to know, though, or for assembling information in my cranium. Like everybody else, 'officials' of all stripes included, I'm in charge of providing my personal decision-making with whatever it requires to function effectively. This responsibility can't be delegated, even if I were so confused and foolish as to want to delegate it, and anyone who tries to expropriate it from me is seizing a freedom that's both rightfully mine and essential to my ability to navigate life as an autonomous human agent.
This isn't a claim to be all-wise and all-knowing. On the contrary, it's a simple acknowledgment that, whatever my limitations, at the end of the day I'm responsible for informing and exercising my own judgment. There's no one else to do it. In effect, we're all condemned to be in charge of ourselves and can't outsource this in-chargeness.
Except that fifty percent of the country at least are slack jawed mofos that swallow every little tidbit fed to them, and repeat it without so much as a thought. So when one of our founders said this government is for a moral and educated populace and will not survive any other,he was right.
Yes, this is something I've thought about. The Enlightenment heritage that bequeathed us our notions of democracy and individual liberties in the first place (along with public libraries, public education, and the supposition that each person, if left free of tyrannical interference, would naturally make the most rational decisions on behalf of his or her own best interest, which would then sum to create the most rational and happy of societies) was, after all, the product of Enlightenment thinkers; and perhaps if everyone were an Enlightenment philosopher this model would have worked as intended.
Alas, as my father was fond of repeating, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." Regardless of how adroitly societies are structured, if the people operating the structures lack competence the results are going to be disappointing.
They no longer even pretend to uphold these ideals. No wonder the viewership for government-dominated media is plunging drastically.
But is it really? Patrick
Great catch and insight. Heads up to all, including Matt, for the acknowledgement.
Is there any non-depressing news out there?
Yes. The Detroit Lions got Jamyrr Gibbs with the 12th pick in the draft, and the team hasn't taken a knee during the national anthem for over two years. Sorry, that's all I got
Really? Is there a story as to why the Lions never bent the knee?
Oh, they did. They just haven't done it for the last few years.
we are talking before the games, not during....correct?
Thank you, Matt and Ben!
The elite laptop class are all but openly saying they're going weaponize the news against the working class and populist population, with the explicit purpose of suppressing them to keep and maintain their money and power. It's the aristocrats crushing the plebs for demanding a seat at the table.
Good old fashioned...or, should I say, well fashioned cluster fuck.
Exactly!! FUBAR!!!
it would be great if substack app could allow users to highlight article text to add comments directly.
i say this because when i read the "foreign or other adversaries" line i laughed out loud. We are connected by the internet but we read in our rooms by ourselves, alone (mostly). In other words, we are not reading and commenting like say, watching a ball game at a stadium, where we can gauge other people's reaction to what we are reading. More so than tgis just being a bleak "reality" about the limitations of the internet, it hopefully becomes an opportunity for Substack or other to transform what "reading the news" is today.
¡Presente! Ben O'Neill
Just a quick question. I listened to your podcast with Walter Kirn discussing Morell getting the prompt from Blinken to put the letter together regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop. And now we have Blinken categorically denying he was the starting point for the letter. Is Blinken engaging misinformation or disinformation? Asking for a friend...
Liar seems to be appropriate which would encompass both mis and dis.
These people are so busy destroying America - busy, busy bees.
War-speak is now being firmly left in the control of the litigious minds of lawyers and their legalese word salads. They seem to be in every aspect of the war machine now.
in 2001 russ feingold , democrat , opposed the patriot act. where would he be on this today?
Like former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, he'd be gerrymandered out of his seat.
we need to make an argument that mere document dumps are a kind of passive journalism. passive, but legitimate, journalism in its own right. or else not writing a word is a problem.
sorting what is released can be part (this is off topic, but important.) then the argument that motives do not matr if thr is a public interest defense can be made. & why does it 'feel' more ok if someone wrote a graph, or 1k words, summarizing the information as well. is it that qualitatively different? what if you breached national security to drop documents to your pre teen discord pals: does the 'motives do not matr' apply? what about the no writing. _JC
Matt,
It seems like a lot of really disturbing and politically dangerous stuff comes out of Stanford University and especially the Institute. Something smells really bad about how that place seems to be connected with so really frightening ideas and people. Thoughts?
The whole idea of labeling any idea or position 'foreign' is an insult to the public.
If the same idea was proposed by a local, does it make it a different idea?
It's a ploy by sore losers and those who want to control others to claim some ideas are harmfil without actually arguing or explaining what the harm is.
I wonder what's the next war-gamed tabletop exercise these sociopathic elites are cooking up for us?
Do they have an industry organization they network through? Linked in must be rife with their sanctimony. They must convince themselves that censorship and their jobs are saving the world. Maybe we should start one for them and call it SACS. Sanctimonious Asshole Sensors Society.
.
Just Think …
The Vaxxed Doctors
That Graduated Medical School
Are What The Average Call
- Above Average.
.
USA education isn’t what it once was and that includes Med school. If you follow the money Pharma funds half of FDA and has a crony relationship with NIH and CDC. Medicine in this era is mostly just about prescribing the recommended mostly on patent drugs some of which bring NIH royalties but all of them fund FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world. The establishment needs docs to follow their direction not to think critically or ask pertinent questions and as always when authoritarians reign the mail that stands up gets hammered down.
Interesting that the democrats hated the Covid vax when it was associated with Trump but spun 180 degrees to co-opt it , then mandated it. Problem is it didn’t work, and wasn’t/ isn’t safe. They just lied and keep on lying. The courageous scientists and docs who spoke up are the only heroes of the Covid era along with those honest journalists and “influencers” who gave them a platform from which they could inform rather than misinform.
What we must do is make sure honest, thoughtful informers are heard. Those who scream disinformation the loudest can’t be trusted because it is they who lie.
I heard some one on GB News last week use the term “conspiracy factualists”. We need all of those people we can get!
Just follow the Pegasus project, it will telll you everything if it doen't get you killed.
Matt these are excellent contributions being made to advance our understanding of the predicament within which we presently find ourselves. The degree of advanced psychological warfare tactics being deployed against Americans by individuals who we are told are Americans, is mind-boggling. The obvious question arises: to what end are they coordinating and orchestrating these attacks on the public Mind? Who are they, really? Are these individuals ideologues merely sharing some common set of beliefs and principals they think they MUST impose on the rest of us using an ends-justify-the-means philosophy that includes not only ignoring the US Constitution and Rule of Law but also basic human ethics and morality? I do not believe what we are seeing is merely “Deep State” and its puppet-masters & minions running amok. Do people like Renee DiResta think they are Gods (or working for “gods”) in EDEN that they can “go down amongst them and confuse their language, lest they become as us!” This thing is going Biblical! The level of moral depravity, emotional deficit, contempt for human beings and pure malevolence powering these activities designed to confuse and mislead people involves destruction of not only trust between humans necessary for civilization to survive, but destruction of language and communication itself is EVIL.
These psychopathic amoral creatures are purposefully coordinating & pushing a Tower of Babbel moment. The question is: to what end? It cannot be that they are only “mistaken.” This activity is detailed, purposeful and deliberate. Calculating. Is it merely destruction for destruction’s sake? Is it some kind of weird quasi-religious sect of zealots united in some strange diabolical belief system? The intention obviously is to destroy the civilization we have based on trust and language and replace it with WHAT, exactly?
Who ARE these “people” really? What are the up to? What are they? What, exactly do they intend to replace us and our civilization with?
Based on documentable remorselessness and ruthlessness, total belief that they are special and can operate without fear of punishment outside Law, ethics and morality, based on their documented complete lack of empathy for those they are harming and killing in large numbers these creatures collectively accurately can be called “psychopaths.” But are they merely mentally and emotionally defective beings that are simply naturally coalescing together with like-minded beings “doing their thing” due to similar psychologies and natural affinity? What, exactly are these things up to?
I think we need to recognize the common thread between all the individuals and their activities is psychopathy. They all are psychopaths bent on mounting a civilization based on psychopathy hostile to at least 96% of biological humanity, culture, history and civilizations. This commonality cuts across all political, ideological, religious, ethnic, cultural or racial differences and unites them against the rest of us. They disdain us, have no problem weaponizing even our best human qualities against us.
The question is: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
" to what end are they coordinating and orchestrating these attacks on the public Mind?"
Maximization of cash flow.
"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?"
Noam Chomsky observed that impoverished uneducated Haitians know what to do. It's just a matter of doing it.
Way back in 2001 when the Patriot Act was introduced, my natural skepticism wondered why an axe was being used when a scalpel was all that was necessary. Our enemy was Osama Bin Laden. Kill or capture him should have been the sole mission. Thanks to the war profiteers Cheney, Rumsfeld and the likes of Halliburton, a global war was fought against people who were not our enemies but became our enemies.
Also at the same time, people in the Bay Area where I worked were now saying "Thank You For Your Service" when 25 years before they would treat me like crap when I wore my uniform. The War Mongers ramped up the propaganda to get support for their wars. Libya? Really?, Syria? The people in those call the USA the Great Satan. I can hardly blame them. Big surprise, they want revenge. I hate that the war mongers send the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen to fight these bogus wars.
Sorry-back to the surveillance state aka the Patriot Act. It wasn't patriotic, it was a repudiation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Another example of how Congress loves to name Bills whose effects are opposite of the title.
Walter Kirn (from Lost In The Meritocracy) speaking about Admiral Uncle :
"He'd shown me the world and where I stood in it and how it related to where others stood. He'd taught me to love learning for it's own sake, as a way to feel less lost.... Knowledge is a reckoning, he taught me, a way to assess your location, your true position, not a strategy for improving your position."
It brings a tear to my eye how far we've fallen short....
Great piece, great catch! From the commencement of the “ Russia, Russia, Russia” idiocy, I was curious as to when Russia became such an obsessive focus. The last I remember Russia as the greatest danger and tyrannical enemy of the free world was during the Cold War.Trump’s campaign platform suggesting a decent relationship with Putin could be a positive was a factor in gaining my support. Flynn had been negotiating a deal that would pull Putin from Iran and Syria in exchange for guaranteeing an end to NATO build up and encroachment A normalization of relations minus our meddling, false flags , Color Revolutions and provocations. Putin was considering it. He had no Islamist leanings.He had a good relationship with Israel and there was a sub Rosa agreement with Syria to help rid Syria of terrorist extremists , ie Al Qaeda an ISIS.
Putin thrice warned US Intel about the Tsarnaeavs planning a terror attack. Brennan, Comey,Panetta,Mueller did NOTHING! Isn’t it ironic how quickly the FBI identified the Tsarnaevs after the Boston Marathon bombing? The agencies that missed all the signals of 9/11 , Parkland. San Bernardino,the New Mexico cell with the dead child, the Strawberry Festiival, Anthrax, Pulse Nightlub,Sandy Hook, Gabby Giffords, the Atlanta planned bombing at Olympic Park,Oklahoma City, the Wisconsin Christmas Festival, the Buffalo massacre, the Tree Of Life synagogue , the California synagogue hostage situation… what did each major event have in common? The FBI had been forewarned and did NOTHING! Or in the cases of the Pulse Nightclub and Boston Marathon bombing, there were family members who were “ protected” foreign nationals.
Meanwhile, we don’t protect Americans . We persecute and prosecute or “ disappear” them.
The most influential and corrupt “ Think Tanks”, NGOs , charities, civil rights orgs and “ philanthropies” are Aspen, Atlantic Council, Cato Institute, Brookings, all things Soros, ACLU, SPLC, NAACP, ADL Catholic Charities, CAIR, Red Cross. Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Institute, Clinton Foundation , Sedona Foundation ( McCain) USAID, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies,,Greenpeace,Media Matters, Confucius Society, Penn Biden Center, Bilderberg,NABU, WEF,,BLM, Lawfare and all things UN… nearly forgot! The DNC and RNC
Nailed it!
Ironically, one of the best ways to guard against random hack-and-dumpers is to have a reliable repository that we know vets content, like, say WikiLeaks, where people can release material knowing it will be checked out and cleaned up before release.
The credibility of Wikileaks added greatly to its threat to the system.
Which is, of course, one of the reasons they hated it. They pretend we should rely on "respectable" sources like The New York Times which is far less reliable, then complain that if something like WikiLeaks is around, there's no one there to be a "gatekeeper".
In the old blogging days they used to try to undermine Atrios by talking about how he was using a pseudonym and therefore couldn't be held to account. But since he was only commenting on the public discourse and not pretending to be a news source, that was obvious nonsense. And Atrios' popularity was based on his consistent performance, not his credentials - which is more than you can say for credentialed reporters like Matt Bai or most of the other political reporters and commentators in the New York Times or on cable news. As it turned out, he's been a lot more accountable in the long run.
All i can think of with this line of investigation is that if Clinton and her slimeballs had actually found something when they tried to hack Trump's server Re: the Alfa bank thing, it would have been breathlessly published all over the place and those exercises would have never happened.
Trump has been very thoroughly investigated with little result. I concluded that he may have been the most honest man in DC.
I actually think Trump is corrupt af. But they never went after him for any corruption as i recall, they went after him for bogus stuff like Russian collusion and pee tapes. My theory on this is that if they went after him for corruption, they were all going to be fair game at some point. And they're all corrupt.
You could be right. They did impeach him the first time for investigating Biden's corruption. That was a big no no.
It does seem to me that in the 21st century there is a gentleman's agreement tof don't mess with our grift and we turn a blind eye to yours. The press will always look the other way. The Clarence Thomas thang is quite unusual, but surely nothing will be done.
20 years of Trump's tax returns were leaked all over MSM in September, 2020 and the self-proclaimed hall monitors had no problems with hack and leak.
Good point.
And what did it prove? If anything, it proved he has great accountants,and maybe he didn't cheat. Hmm. Who in politics doesn't?
The pursuit of Information Age narrative control is like any other compulsive habit. The abusers inevitably succumb to the addiction- no matter how much control they achieve, it will never be enough to satisfy their cravings.
Thanks for pointing this out. It echoes exactly my reaction to the words (which you rightly place in bold letters) "or other adversarial entities" - yea, those "adversaries" who oppose the candidate who has been anointed as the "rightful winner" by the establishment. I am a long time progressive (not to be confused with a "liberal" pledged to vote for whatever terrible candidate the right wing Democratic Party puts on the ballot) who despises Trump. However, anyone who supports the politicization of the intelligence agencies and their interference in domestic politics is opposed to democracy. Not that we have a democracy anyway, but let us continue to pretend that we do.
Great addition to the article. The weaponization of “rhetorical devices” have done so much damage to our civil society.
Brilliant, as always.
Thanks for the keen eye, Ben O’Neill. This is a great additional insight.
Oh nooooo! Not Mike Morrell. He’s like a mushroom. Grows in the dark.
Does anyone doubt that if, say, Democrat operatives were caught tomorrow breaking into Republican Party headquarters located in an office building - let’s just say an office building called Watergate - and Biden was then caught on tape plotting how to cover it all up, that today’s “media” would proclaim it all “Russian disinformation” and screech about “right wing conspiracy theories”?
Looking back, Richard Nixon seems almost saintly in comparison with what is going on now.
" As reader O’Neill correctly pointed out, “they are now getting close to being explicit about the fact that their motivation for suppressing news is to fight domestic political adversaries.”"
I think they have already past that. As noted in the original piece:
"Again, none of the media or academic figures involved with this story commented for the record, but one tabletop attendee who asked not to be named did defend the decision, saying: “It was just arguing for discretion over whatever sells,” adding, “The race to the bottom is what got us 2016.”"
The issue with 2016 of course is that the wrong candidate won. It's not about misinformation, hacking or any of the other justifications being offered. It's solely to stop the wrong person from winning the election.
Don't forget the concept of mission creep. The turn towards domestic enemies was necessary to preserve and justify expanded budgets. In the current climate, attention would naturally be focused on political enemies of the Deep State, liberal or conservative.
Amid the uproar, a moment of silence for Gordon Lightfoot. Thank you. Please resume your regular programming.
All I can say is keep writing
I think both the Covid origins and the Hunter Biden laptop approaches the media took have shown a very real, human problem in the aftermath - an unwillingness to acknowledge that they were wrong in any way. I wonder if, even in sidebars, etc., any of these people showed any concern for that as they went through this training. Or, were they just certain they would never be wrong. I'm guessing they acknowledged that they may screw something up - but they assured themselves that they would not fall in to that trap. They were above that human failing.
They were many people involved, but certainly at least some of them know it's all BS. Heck, the Carlson texts proved that. So there's nothing to apologize about.
The really interesting question is how many in the audience know its all fake. I'd say not many. It's mostly dupes.