With bombs falling all around, embattled videographer Jon Farina visited with the abandoned poor and elderly at ground zero of the Russia-Ukraine war. An exclusive mini-documentary
All the REAL footage of Jan.6 (not the NYT made for TV theatre) shows peaceful patriots who got there WELL after this supposed footage was shot with (Antifa activists dressed as "Patriots"). And it shows them getting beaten savagely in the tunnels.
I think you will see different perspectives from honest journalists. I remember Max Blumenthal's take on the Capitol riot (he was there too), which fit in with yours ("mostly peaceful"). thegrayzone was more interested in the Instigators who, as far as I know, were never charged and were likely FEDs (following on the FBI's "kidnapping" scheme in Michigan.) While some were violent, most are now just Political Prisoners (where are the interviews with them?)
All journalists have their biases of course, which are shaped consciously or unconsiously by State Media, which since the "modernization" of Smith Mundt, our anti domestic propaganda law, is controlled by State/CIA LEGALLY. And they excel at brainwashing.
It is difficult to be a Sy Hersh, Sydney Schanberg, Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Luria, Margaret Kimberley and many more, and being any anti-Establishment investigators into OFFICIAL NARRATIVE lies, and corruption by the Powerful is essentially putting a big target on your back these days. Much better for a journalist's career not to challenge the Establishment. Matt Taibbi (and Krystal Ball, a more irritating example) talk the talk, which is engaging AND GOOD IF THEY GIVE BOTH SIDES, but they don't "Comfort the Afflicted, and Afflict the Comfortable" which is a big part of what journalism used to be.
Fawning over the Establishment cannot be good for the soul.
What about a very significant part of the so called left that lost all sense of journalistic standards during the Trump years and weren't able to write an article without expressing their contempt for the man? The Intercept that Greenwald worked for was in that category, so was Common Dreams, and the Alternet. I no longer reference those sites. There were quite a few who published on Consortium News that entertained that same bias and in doing so were as destructive as the democrats is pushing lies. The democrats made them up and many, too many on the so called left helped them reach their audience. I love Max Blumenthal, he's a rare one. He's now getting flack because of is position on reporting on the war in Ukraine, or on Ukraine. He has real courage. Too many are, well sissy's.
Yes, Michael thank you for the calmer version of essentially my sentiment.
Matt teetered on the edge; where would I be without his article about Greenwald leaving The Intercept over the Huner laptop? I shudder to think of it.
But this is straight up propaganda- Even the Ukraine stuff. I think this videographer is a regime plant, based on his 100% on script language. Life is too short, and there is a tton of election integrity work to be done if we are ever to escape the grip of this illegitimate "Liberal World Order" global-player coup.
I respect your opinion and thank you for your civility here. But this article did not offer a shred of what I would be looking for in language around these topics.
As I’ve watched , hoping and praying for the scales to fall from people’s eyes, I now see Matt going in exactly the opposite direction on two topics that are live or die for our formerly great, now captured, Republic.
Yes some of his articles are excellent and balanced and even brave. But whether one will be so is a complete crap-shoot when it comes to certain “liberal left” political lines that he is UNWILLING to honestly investigate.
There are FAR FAR more important things for my time, now that we have all been shown, in state after state, the sorry compromised state of our election infrastructures. I don’t have the time to spend reading and commenting on his line-toeing of certain regime propaganda. There’s a board of elections to be called out in my state and ultimately, lawsuits to be filed.
We cannot lose this battle to the “liberal world order”. We were blessed to be given a democratic republic, and I’m not going to accept having to explain to my grandchildren how we were too complacent and distracted to hold onto it.
Not all battles can be won-I give up on Taibbi helping our cause- in the long run, that will be his own regret to live with. I’ll spend my time on battles that are more important to win, to advance our ‘war’ efforts towards the goal of keeping America an independent, constitutional, sovereign nation committed to personal liberty, and unbeholden to the Davos world order.
Janine thanks for your thoughtful reply. You sound like someone who is fully committed to this struggle, and I salute you for that.
Matt may go a little wobbly at times, but I still see his mostly unafraid reporting as a refreshing change from what passes for journalism these days. I do think that Matt, on balance, is an ally in the struggle to resist the looming globalist totalitarian takeover. But I respect your point of view on this.
Janine, I understand where you are coming from-- this Ukraine video pulls on the heart strings like propaganda. But do you seriously expect for Matt's articles to be 100% aligned with your beliefs?
Janine, the real propagandist were the mainstream media that used the clip to define what happened and to vilify Trump and his followers. Maybe some photographers are as bad as journalist who take a side and go out and try to prove it. His first clip was nice, old people, poor people left behind and of course young men couldn't leave but they helped those left behind and tried to make like normal for those who were.
You left out John Parry, and before he died he ran his sight with a lot of objectivity in terms of people's responses, in terms of articles and he didn't adopt an anti-Trump stance which Lauria did, and now it's more controlled. The articles are fine for the most part but Joe Lauria doesn't run the site the way Parry did where there was a whole lot of freedom to express one's point of view. I referenced the violence in the city during BLM and even Floyd's brother told the crowd to go in peace because of the previous violence that occurred in the preceding days, and they blocked the comment and I couldn't get back on.
Don’t give up so quickly. Matt is interested in the Truth.
The writer was surprised that there was so little security. That’s a key phrase because the question then becomes “why was there no security?”. Although he may not believe it himself, that substantiates the viewpoint that the incident was encouraged by the Government, as collated by Revolver and the subsequent FBI memory-holing of Ray Epps. This man’s description and subsequent experience reinforces the fact that the Government doesn’t want you to know the truth about why and what happened on Jan 6.
Mark Levin on FOX claimed. and I believe him, the whole commission looking into January 6, is unconstitutional. Maybe BB should have confronted her with that assessment of what is going on. I was glad he said because it makes no sense to me that it would be. By the way, spawn of Cheney reminds me of a phrase that comes out of a horror movie. Right on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also he can't be everywhere at once. On mainstream news they do this all the time, take a video clip which shows only one perspective that went on and the media uses it to define the whole story.
Also you can't be everywhere at once, as a reporter or photographer and no one video clip can give you the entire picture although the media will use the clips that substantiate their political perspective. Just look at who used it to define what happened on the Capital that day. In today's world it's what happens all the time.
Actually they weren't Antifa activists; they were Proud Boys. The Proud Boys did the rioting.
I have as much evidence for the above assertion as you do for your claim that the rioters were all secretly Antifa activists. I therefore adopt your position that anything that contradicts me is clearly a fabrication, and any piece of writing or video documentary that disagrees is shit.
There is nothing remotely problematic about this method of reasoning. Nothing.
Fran, the malicious media is guilty of filming and broadcasted staged and orchestrated fiction. And I have seen the same women in the same scene reported/broadcast as a natural gas explosion victim in Bali, and a woman who supposedly dropped from COVID. Same floral shirt, same painted curb, same people standing near her, same color light. It’s ridiculous.
They get away with it because trusting people would never DREAM that their trusted media would do such a thing. Everything out of any “videographer/reporter”’s mouth that questions my claims reeks of regime narrative. I’ll have none of it. And shame on you.
Shame on me? For what? I don't reference mainstream media, ever. If I want the truth, I read books, or articles I know to be written by independent journalists, and there are not too many of them around after the Trump years, since many jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon. As to the photographers last video clip of the riot on January 6th. It was just a part of what happened that day, and his clip should be evaluated since things were none to clear, but of course that is not how our media works with there daily need for stories, or money really.
Are you referring to the video clip of the Capital assault? Well, the photographer can't be everywhere, and his focus was on the the rioters who seemed to be engaged in a rather violent assault on the Capital and it's unclear as to what, or who provoked it. As you saw it was used by anti-Trumpers, like CNN, MSNBC etc, to substantiate their perspective on what happened that day, to attack Trump, and to attack those half basket of deplorables that Hilary Clinton called them. I saw clips of huge numbers of people, rather peaceful, let in through the Capital's front door. Maybe it just goes to show video clips sometimes, or perhaps too often give a distorted, or too narrow a perspective of what happened and too often today those clips are used by the media to push a certain perspective on things, so you never really get the whole truth.
Fran, the malicious media is guilty of filming and broadcasted staged and orchestrated fiction. And I have seen the same women in the same scene reported/broadcast as a natural gas explosion victim in Bali, and a woman who supposedly dropped from COVID. Same floral shirt, same painted curb, same people standing near her, same color light. It’s ridiculous.
They get away with it because trusting people would never DREAM that their trusted media would do such a thing. Everything out of this “videographer/reporter”’s mouth reeks of regime narrative. I’ll have none of it. And shame on Matt.
I never thought I’d agree with e. pierce on anything, but, uh, you’re out of your fucking mind. Did it ever occur to you that Matt (and a lot of other people) showed that clip from January 6 because it’s kind of a big deal? It’s news, whether you like it or not.
Janine I don't trust the media, otherwise I wouldn't be on stubstack. I don't know what Taibbi's intent was in showing these clips, other then to show how the media will use it to further their own political take on things. You can't read a chapter in a book and know the story, but that's what they do. Trust me, I don't trust the media, that's why I'm here and hoping for more objectivity. The first clip he did, was nice, young guys who can't go anywhere, can't leave the country, but are trying to keep life kind of normal for the old folk. More of a humanistic story. The second clip was disturbing and it was very informative as to how all those TV anti-Trumpers picked it up. They pick and choose the news that supports their side of things.
This title reminds me of Michael Herr's "Dispatches," a great account of the Vietnam War in which he discusses the motivations of war correspondents, war-lovers all, who use the cover of reporting to get their death kicks vicariously and imagine themselves to be Ernie Pyle writing by candlelight in a Normandy farmhouse while the widow of a French Resistance fighter (played by Leslie Caron) brings him wine from the cellar and makes him potage parmentier in the kitchen.
Right. "Embedded" as in bed with the administration and the Pentagon. The sheer adolescent glee of these creeps in their combat gear and the talking heads back home all but rubbing their hands in excitement over rocket fire in the first Gulf War is enough to make a man spew.
I'm not sure if the pro-war corporate media is that way because of political expedience or self-aggrandizement or ratings/readership. Probably all the above.
Iraq was a big change in War coverage. But think back..the Crimean War was the first one where there were telegraphs....the British public learned about that war from reporters...there was censorship in subsequent wars as the govt didn't want the "on the ground" stories to come out. Then the War Correspondent era where journalists circumvented govt censorship right up through Vietnam. But fast forward to Iraq--embedding solved the "problem" of actual reporting. That is why this coverage by Jon Farina is so important--and why the YouTube censorship falls right in line with government authorized War reporting. as all govt's try to do. I remember that glee of reporters in combat gear. They were like kids at a dress-up party.
Great comment, particularly your reference to the Crimean War and the role of journalists there. Orlando Figes touches on the subject in his excellent book, The Crimean War: A History.
The government learned its lesson from Vietnam. Even by the time of the Grenada invasion in '82 the government had journalists on a tight leash in order to control the narrative. This was particularly evident in Panama seven years later.
Interesting piece. Amazing to me that the true journalism is being done outside of the traditional corporate model. The corporate model is so corrupt it is anti-journalism. Bravo to this brave photo journalist!! As usual the poor and marginalized will pay for the elites misguided actions. So sad.
But you can't say that his video clips define what is happening in Ukraine, or that a single story written about a particular event in Ukraine can ever really tell the truth about what is happening, only a part of it. That also applies to what happened on January 6. Today the news tells a fragmented story, and too few are willing to follow through and get a total picture.
Sometimes it's possible, and knowing our previous history offers up lots of clues, and that the neocons are back in the White House is a big one when it comes to what is happening in Ukraine, since their agenda pushed our wars in the middle east as well. What is going on in terms of January 6 is just plain unconstitutional.
I agree, their agenda suits some, the chosen, as opposed to the many, but no doubt they are sick enough to think they are operating in the best interests of all Americans. I have despised them through all our middle eastern wars. To think Dick Cheney, a primary signatory on the Project for a New American Century, and responsible for kicking off the neocon's agenda in Iraq war visited the Capitol for Jan 6, and was strutted about. Pelosi was thrilled to have him back she said. This is a woman who was on the intel comm during the build up to the war in Iraq and there is a video clip of her saying that being on that committee she knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, so she didn't vote for that war, but she did nothing, said nothing to stop it. She is accountable for letting a half million Iraqi's die, with a couple of million displaced and a country destroyed, and she gets to sit in judgement of Trump, on what happened on January 6th? The hypocrisy of it all is mind boggling.
That was my takeaway from the Ukraine video. It seemed a bit unfavorable to the Russian side only because of a couple remarks made by the mutual aid group.
Otherwise, just photo-journalism that was well done, and shows that as with war anywhere, the poor, very young, and old suffer the most.
I also am glad to see the "shock and awe" method of complete destruction of all infrastructure was not inflicted by the Russians, who according to what I have seen and read are showing great restraint.
The Russians have tried to spare the ethnic Russian Ukrainians, whom the UkroNAZIs were shelling and killing for 8 years in the Donbas (14,000 or so died according to the UN observers, many civilians). The Ukrainian army was dug in there, yet for the most part the Russians treated them with kid gloves. As they will along the south coast cities dominated by ethnic Russian Ukrainians. Odessa is the prize.
There are few ethnic Russian Ukrainians in West Ukraine, and at some point if the Ukrainians refuse to negotiate the loss of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and the South coast through Transnistra, expect to see Russian's version of shock and awe from Kiev to L'viv and throughout Ukrainian Galicia.
Russia doesn't want Russian Ukraine, they want a controlling buffer against NATO and Black Sea navies. Russian speaking Ukranians voted in Yanukovych under UN monitoring in 2010, but was overthrown by the US (CIA/State and UkroNAZIs) in 2014. They were disenfranchised, but (nice parallels with Kosovo) will become independent republics eventually.
This is the most important bit about Farina's take on the riot: "I was shocked at how there was very little law enforcement, very few police officers. I knew within the first five minutes that it was going to be bad because there were no cops in riot gear. It was Capitol police with little cans of pepper spray. I knew they weren’t going to hold up."
A recently released news item that is, of course, being ignored by the usual media suspects, discloses that a "memo was detailed and published by the Pentagon inspector general. It details a meeting on January 3rd, 2021 in which then President Trump met with military advisors. While the topic primarily focused on national security matters, Trump also discussed ensuring enough National Guard troops were present to ensure a safe event.
“'Mr. Miller and GEN Milley met with the President at the White House at 5:30 p.m.,' the memo reported. 'The primary topic they discussed was unrelated to the scheduled rally. GEN Milley told us that at the end of the meeting, the President told Mr. Miller that there would be a large number of protestors on January 6, 2021, and Mr. Miller should ensure sufficient National Guard or Soldiers would be there to make sure it was a safe event. Gen Milley told us that Mr. Miller responded, ‘We’ve got a plan and we’ve got it covered.'”
"However, several Democrat and military leaders were concerned about the perception that a strong military presence might invoke. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said 'he did not want to create the perception that the military was involved in the electoral process.'"
That Trump egged on or somehow incited the riot is a LIE, and most reasonable people have recognized from the jump that the show trial is based on nothing but an insane desire to bury Trump, the greatest political enemy Curtis Yarvin's so-called "Cathedral," the "media-academic complex" has ever known.
I appreciate your contribution, Mr Hubbard. There is clear, convincing circumstantial evidence, that no "insurrection" was intended by the Trump Administration. It remains the case that unsourced claims are unpersuasive.
For someone who constantly calls others derogatory names, I am certain a lot of people could think of some doozies for someone who doesn’t even know who Miller is.
Surprising that the Senate Sgt at Arms (retired) died the day before updating the Show Trial on Ray Epps, John Sullivan and other instigators working with the FEDs, who seem to have disappeared? With apologies to Freud, I guess there are coincidences?
Most comments are about Jan 6 and only a few about Ukraine. The few Ukraine comments are not showing any outrage. Strange no? Maybe this is because there is something incongruous and unconvincing about the Ukraine video. For starters, those who have followed the war closely know there have been virtually no Russian attacks in Kharkiv. So why should we just accept that all the bombing must be Russian, and not Ukrainian false flags used for propaganda videos? Of course many have fled and many spend the nights in the subways and cellars to be safe. But how do you explain that cornucopia of food! Good grief. This is not what you would expect in a war. Plus the electricity and phones are all working. If the Russians are so nefarious why would they allow such infrastructure to be in service? Sure the few remaining residents have to be taken care of. But these teams of do-gooders may have hidden motives. And of course no person accepting this aid is going to protest or speak against the providers. Nor can the documentary maker raise these questions.
I didn't check exact geography, but it if it was far eastern Ukraine or the Donbass region, I'm pretty sure that most of that stuff has been bombed out long before Russian forces entered the country or any artillery fire from that direction started. Situation has probably been VERY miserable in that area for a long time now and I'm betting that difficulty of access to food is more of a relative problem, i.e., while it was relatively hard to get food before, it's harder now.
I too wish the bomb and missile sites were documented, but he did say there were explosions all around when he was there, so might've been too dangerous to do so and a little outside the scope of what he was trying to document? Just a guess.
Patrick Lancaster has been interviewing people living in the Donbas for 8 years. You'll get quite a different perspective from those videos. This one is from Lysychansk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP3kt9fxXCs
"Farina’s January 6th footage was used by everyone from ABC to The Guardian to CBS and Stephen Colbert to the Wall Street Journal to NBC and MSNBC to CNN, and countless other major news organizations." So Farina's work has the dubious distinction of being used by what many consider the MSM propaganda arm of the Democrats, and surely counts as a negative, almost the definition of manufactured propaganda.
Additionally, the "Not Calm Hearts" narrative sounds like a rerun of the "White Helmets" manufactured propaganda campaign.
This intrepid and brave reporting should be commended. But in every war there are decent and compassionate people on both sides helping those in need. It’s hard to aggregate these anecdotes into convincing “data” and even more so to divine from them what is true.
Just like January 6. A photographer takes photos that become icons of a moment. “Trump supporters in violent mayhem?”. Well do those few hundred stand as icons of 70+ million people who voted for him? No. Not even close. But “Trump supporters” get smeared and demonized.
We see here people helping, cooking, tending to those in need, supporting their side in a war. What does that say about “the war”? What does it say about “the human condition”? What does it say about what’s true?
Well, that’s not the videographers job perhaps to answer those questions. Maybe that’s our job, as viewers. And maybe we’d all disagree on those questions just as much after seeing this as before.
This isn’t my war. I have no family ties to Russia or Ukraine. No ancestry there. Almost no knowledge of this history - except what I’ve picked up since February. I have a distant friend, Ukrainian-American, who I last communicated with by email in late February when he was in Kyiv. He may now be dead.
Beyond that. Matt notes, as if it’s significant, an old woman who speaks Russian and wants Ukraine to win. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe she’s afraid of being killed by Ukrainians if she says she wants Russia to win.
I’m glad this isn’t my war. It’s a civil war. A tribal war. Just like all the others like it since the dawn of time. What else is there to say? I hope that kind of war doesn’t come here — to the USA. But it might if people look at the anecdotes and spectacles that cameras and journalists provide, and don’t construct in their own minds fully truthful stories about them.
Reality is too important to leave to journalists. Many lie. Others tell a slice of the truth, sometimes because that in itself is a hard accomplishment. But these slivers of the world are only the beginning of knowing what is real.
Whether you like it or not, this is your war because it is the first shoe to drop in the eventual collapse of the American Empire that has been in charge since 1945.
That's a geopolitical opinion I don't disagree with -- although the path by which it will play out is highly uncertain. But compared to the people in the video, it's not my war.
$30Tr in Debt, 15% Inflation, defenestrated Military, degenerate Ruling Class and 30 years-long breaking of its own rules with consequent surrender of the moral high ground can accelerate this thing very quickly.
The real food shortages in the US are about to start and Europe will have no heat this coming Winter.
The US has always made its own rules, and broken them when it needed to. To the extent that America became the global hegemon after WWI, we've been consistently making up our own rules and breaking them when convenient ever since.
That's what hegemons do, honestly.
What is required for the collapse of the American empire is the ascension of an alternative to the dollar. Inflation, debt, military incompetence, degeneracy amongst the elite--we had all that and more in the 70s, and our stranglehold on global hegemony actually INCREASED. Why? Because Bretton Woods fell apart and no one knows what to replace the dollar with.
Minsky, it is true that US policy has had a since WW II has had a large element of "heads, we win, tails you lose" to it, but your seeming welcoming of the imminent demise of the American Empire seems odd. An objective historian of that Empire would see the numerous hypocrisies and atrocities of US policy, but they would also observe that between 1945 and today, global populations and the global standard of living have risen to a degree without precedent in world history, also due, in no small part, to US hegemony. They would also note that US share of global wealth trended downward for much of that period, as did the standard of living of the American middle class--not seemingly very hegemonic, but maybe the meaning of that word is more complicated than we think.
Guess my main point is, be careful of what you wish for, the next global hegemon may quickly have us longing for the days of the American Empire, notwithstanding its many flaws.
I would not disagree, actually—as hegemons go, you could do worse than the US. I’d say the British and the Americans could be argued to be history’s two ‘best’ hegemons in terms of outcomes, at least when considered relative to the alternatives. And as an American I am *not* looking forward to the end of the empire, because the end is rarely pleasant for imperial natives.
But I can say all that and still recognize that America does what hegemons usually do, and that generally includes causing suffering and turmoil in non-allied or neutral states, and generally does *not* include following the rules set either by itself or other states. One can acknowledge the corruption and venality and hypocrisy of a king, and still hold that other kings would be worse, because reality is politically and ethically complex, not some simple moral fable.
Ok, so you say it isn’t “your war” but at what point does it become “your war?” When US troops are on the ground in forward areas?

Well, that’s already happening. The US deployed “military advisors” to Ukraine quite awhile back. Someone remind me, didn’t our adventure in Vietnam start in much the same fashion?
Yes but the USA has “military advisors” in, I don’t know, 60 nations or more? There are conflicts in many of those. Are those all “my war” or “our war”?
Perhaps as citizens, yes they are.
I was speaking in the context above far more personally. There are Ukrainians and Russians whose war this is, right there, like in the video here, there on the ground. Or who have deep ancestral ties to either side or both sides. Not my situation.
They perhaps can’t intellectualize this war through geopolitical analysis. But because it isn’t my war, I can do that without the emotion I’d otherwise feel if I was one of those in the video here.
This war started in 2014 if not the 1940s. But most reporting of it makes it seem like it started in February.
I worked with John in Cairo; subsequently he went to Ukraine. When (or perhaps before) war broke out, he wound up in Romania, where he rented a house for two exiled families. Now, as you can see, he's ferrying medical supplies to a friend there. Like the rest of us, John is just some average guy - but he happened to be in a place where he could do some good, so he did.
I know this post is about journalism, but it's important to understand that it's not only journalists who are heroes - in the US, Ukraine and around the world. Journalists are important, of course, since they usually let the rest of us know what's going on. And those who break through the corporate filters are often the most courageous - and influential. But there are many witnesses to this carnage; of course the tricky part is to recognize and filter out the charlatans so we can get a clear picture of what is really going on.
As we can see from the video of John & Julia, apart from the politics (or because of it) there is human suffering, and where there is human suffering, there are genuine efforts to alleviate that suffering. Kudos to John & Julia and all those who are doing so in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Human interest stories of civilians dying and suffering mightily as pawns in yet another geopolitical chess game are inevitable.
It's not like nobody is aware of civilian suffering during war, but there does seem to be a bit more sympathy on the part of the chattering classes for European civilian dead and maimed than Middle Eastern civilian dead and maimed, probably because it's closer to home in every sense of the phrase.
The people at YouTube are very liberal-progressive overall (including the leadership), so I feel pretty sure that they had no political motivation to cover up a Trump-inspired riot at the Capitol. They were just mindlessly applying their content policies, not considering that there is a difference between promoting violence and providing news coverage. It's stupid, but that's what you get when someone gets to be CEO (of YouTube, not Google/Alphabet) just because she was Sergey Brin's sister-in-law.
Haha Google is not progressive. I know people who work there. One said that their corporate overlords are nicer than most, but they’re still corporate overlords. Like most companies in the US today, they pay lip service to ‘progressive values”, while simultaneously funding Republicans and corporate Democrats alike.
I’m often frustrated that so many liberals, which I consider myself to be, can’t see that centrist Democrats and Republicans are working together to achieve corporate goals, at the public’s expense.
It’s even more frustrating to hear Republicans call companies like Google “progressive” or Biden a “socialist”. You’re falling for the schtick.
And how did Republicans become so barking mad as to think Matt Taibbi is not bucking the system?
I did dislike his cryptocrash article, because it was too damning of crypto, in general. I don’t see how a crypto like stable coin compares at all to bitcoin. The point of bitcoin is a decentralized currency that can’t be controlled by central bankers and their fascist governments. Pegging the price to a centrally controlled currency makes no sense. Volatility is inherent in a decentralized currency in a financial environment that is heavily regulated as far as individuals, but deregulated for banks.
I did expect Taibbi to know better, especially after his spectacular take down piece of the vampire squid in Rollingstone. That doesn’t mean, however, that his reporting in general has been conciliatory to the political establishment. Have you noticed he doesn’t have a Rollingstone column any longer, nor a spot on CNN?
Not everyone who criticizes Trump is antifa or far left, or even generally left. And antifa is likely primarily government stooges (which is primarily neoliberal, ie neoconservative, not liberal) fomenting violence. Neoliberals and neoconservatives hijack the social aspects of liberal and conservative discourse and hitch them to aggressively fascist foreign and domestic policies. This pits liberals and conservatives against each other on social issues, while they funnel money to pharma and the military and now also, big tech. Take your head out of your ass and quit defending Trump against ‘liberals’. The people running these hearings are fake liberals.
Trump is a game show host and a charlatan. He’s not coming to save you, or anyone else, not anymore than Elon Musk is gonna save free speech. They’re both helping waltz us down the garden path to fascism every bit as much as Biden and his military-media-pharmaceutical complex cronies.
Like button isn’t working, so “like” for zeroing in on the fundamental issue -
“ Neoliberals and neoconservatives hijack the social aspects of liberal and conservative discourse and hitch them to aggressively fascist foreign and domestic policies. This pits liberals and conservatives against each other on social issues, while they funnel money to pharma and the military and now also, big tech”
I think the most chilling part of this entire article were these two disconnected sentences; "YouTube had shut Farina down" and "Farina went on to leave media for a bit". It clearly shows the direct impact of big tech censorship on independent (and presumably less? biased) media sources. Fortunately Farina decided to get back in the game. Many others don't and I seriously doubt we may ever get back to a point of "what journalism used to be".
Are you struggling to stave off a lawsuit or something? Why are you adding to the January 6th hysteria and clearly promoting it as hypnotized people acting on Trump’s volition to create an insurrection, which is completely false. This was a riot that got out of hand.
I was processing that when I realized you were doing a “poor sweet Ukraine versus horrible Russia” propaganda piece. Why? When you clearly know the CIA and the Pentagon pushed for this proxy war to destabilize Putin. And we WANT Ukrainians to die and create a failed state on Russia’s border.
Very interesting way to draw your lines - you know first which “narrative” you like, because it fits your “Truth”, then you accept or reject facts depending on how they fit your pre-determined choices. That’s EXACTLY what the woke do, just that you do it in reverse. So Matt was good as long as he fed your prejudice, but he has turned to “denier” now that he’s referring to actual filmed material. Two camps, one madness.
I see nothing in the article that indicates any "shilling" for anything except maybe Farina's work. Farina is surprised there was so little security at the inauguration. Although neither Taibbi nor Farina mention it, we know from a recently released memo from the Pentagon Inspector General that inauguration security was lax because the Pentagon assured Trump order would be maintained, while the Capitol Police Chief and some Democratic congresspeople opposed deployment of the National Guard. Of course, ultimately, the NG was not sent to provide security for the inauguration, presumably because it would "look bad."
were you born prone to joining cults, or was it the years of whiskey and prozac? groomed early on by jebus luvin opus dei pedos? or just the angst of decades of self loathing?
And there it is....the regime attack artists (and he'll have a back-up commenter to take his side) attacking anyone who says anything remotely pro-Patriot.
A bit strong. I follow Taibbi for his insights and humor. He spent six years(?) in the Soviet Union in the 1990s and, like seemingly half of our State/CIA, he came out of the Soviet Union with a permanent take on how former Soviet countries operate (has the US changed any in the last 20 years?) I was surprised that Taibbi was surprised that Russia invaded (with strong support from the Russian people, unlike most of America's invasions-- most just don't care.)
I don't remember if Taibbi covered the Orange Revolution when the CIA installed Yushchenko (married to an American, a probable CIA agent) and made Ukraine a Puppet State in 2005. Or if he covered the overthrow of Yanukovych in the Maidan Coup (obviously under Nuland/ Biden's direction, to get rid of "unsatisfactory" Puppet, at least elected under UN surveillance; CIA Puppey Yushchenko got only 5% of the vote) in 2014? Maybe coups are okay to Taibbi (I'm sure he has read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", where in American Foreign Policy bribes are first, coups are second and invasions last).
I've been recommending the recent Renaud Beauchard article on N.S. Lyons/THE UPHEAVAL site because I was struck, not only with the political activism in France, but also the authors understanding of the political and financial forces, both within and outside France that are assaulting the French people, Europeans in general and ourselves. Attendance at SUBSTACK affirms our hunger for a new American national dialogue. This everyday "crisis is our daily bread" life Americans are forced to live runs cover for the machinations of the WWIII Globalist class war. Events and discussion of incidents like those in your comments and their connection to the wider narrative are immediately lost in whatever new political shock and awe shit storm the shadow boys send our way. There is no history, only the "party line". It is a kind of weaponized Tower of Babel screaming silence. You can speak anything but the truth.
The peoples of the world and the nation states they've created are being looted and their populations diluted for the benefit of totalitarian finance. The new American dialogue and the change this new age is demanding must come from "..we the people.." Know your enemy.
Get your facts straight: there was NO support for a war against Ukraine inside Russia when the war started - that’s why virtually all observers there were SURE Putin is just bluffing, and they called the warnings from US lies (“plants”). Once the Russian propaganda machine switched from “war is a US lie” to “war was necessary and unavoidable”, that’s when the Russians joined the brainwashing. The question is why does criminal Russian propaganda has so much effect on weak Western brains?
I'm wondering if the peoples of the world, Western and otherwise are so weak brained because they've been so propagandized and psyoped by totalitarian finance it is impossible to know what the truth is. The American psyche is beaten numb, the lines of daily survival stretched to breaking and the crumbling infrastructure, crime, and deaths head chaos in the streets make it is obvious that "capital" has abandoned any pretense of interest in the American future. The CCP/WEF is redefining the term American as we speak.
“ there was NO support for a war against Ukraine inside Russia…”
Thought you were going to say in the US. The US suckers didn’t support the war ( per poll) until POTUS and the media started their heavy propaganda against Russia and FOR the corrupt Ukraine.
They never want to talk about the reason Russia attacked.
When a country with fascist imperial ambitions and internal repression like Russia attacks without any provocation another country, claiming the latter doesn’t “have the right to exist”, you would hope that citizens of democratic countries would support the attacked country fighting back. Unless of course some of those citizens really admire authoritarian regimes and let themselves be brainwashed by the vilest Putin propaganda. Plenty of such wannabe fascists around.
Clinging to the last straw before accepting the idea that maybe actual evidence (five months of Russian murder) actually changed Matt’s opinion? Obviously, evolution of ideas is beyond the strengths of many…
You must be related to pierce, whose comments, like your own, add nothing but insults to the.conversation. Does it just make you feel you are a big better person, or is there some deep seeded need to put others down to make yourself feel valuable?
tbh, Ive been debating people on the internet for 20+ years. I can attest, not one mind was ever changed by debates on the internet. maybe in time, some one might consider a debate, then do some reading, and eventually change their mind, but its entirely organic to that person.
you can search my post history, and see where Ive added a great deal of information. when I feel like it.
but after multiple decades, I have a zero tolerance for idiots. there is no excuse to cling to being stupid, to idol worship plain and obvious grifters and scam artists, like trump. to cling to childish stories about invisible man in the sky and messiahs in blood (the whole jebus narrative is just a rip off of mayan blood sacrifice, its crazy people still buy into that stupid shit) and I tell them so, every chance I get. when some jackass shows their ass, I like to hold a mirror up to them, so they can see the ass they are showing us.
and no, I have no need to bolster my self image. Ive done years of work on that , and am very comfortable with who I am, what ive done, and how I show up. but thanks!
Someone earlier in this thread pointed out that "being of the left politically, they couldn't understand why Trump supporters and the faux left couldn't see through the red/blue shtick "
I agree and to proclaim that Trump is/was fighting fake news is ridiculous.
Does "I love WikiLeaks " ring any bells?
It was one of Trumps mantras throughout his campaign after the WikiLeaks release of the crooked ass DNCs e-mails. All accurate , no inconsisties , no retraction. And yet Trumps administration is the one who grabbed Assange and is trying to A. Kill him -or B. Imprison him for life on phony charges of espionage in a U.S.. fisa kangaroo court, in which no one is afforded a jury of their peers, or allowed to defend themselves.
Biden is carrying the torch forward on the destruction of that key freedom of speech, and a free press in the first amendment. Persecution of journalists and whistleblowers is rampant in both partys and shows that these administrations are playing the same tune.
Wise up, and give Matt some latitude to do journalism with nuance , and decide for yourselves. It is useless to cast either , or any of these corrupted institutions as champions of truth or justice. The are in regulatory capture
I have no idea why Trump didn't pardon Assange or Snowden--here he proves himself to be a typical politician since his decision is probably intended to appease the RP as a whole. It certainly discredits his overall (and, in my opinion, justified) condemnation of the press.
The corporate press is a gaggle of mercenary yuppies with the collective ethics of WR Hearst. Luckily, there's a growing number of independent journos doing the work justifying the First Amendment, including Taibbi, who's one of the best.
Frank you have reset the bar in a post that is simultaneously so right, and so completely wrong at the same time.
1. Who told you Trump was trying to have Assange killed? Not Trump. So that would leave the fake news. If Assange was not in custody, he would be K-illary’d within six months. Assange is a white hat and is being protected, anything else you hear about him is a Psy-op of one side or the other.
2. How on EARTH, at this late stage of the game, could you be conflating Trump with the establishment GOP. Trump is MAGA. Trump America First. The GOP and Dems are corporate globalist and Marxists attempting to roll our country into the “Liberal (new) World Order”, leaving behind our national sovereignty and our constitution.
Matt just flat footed gave a platform to a characterization of the Jan 6 protesters that was promoted by the fake news Patriot-haters and amply debunked (Revolver News if you’re still in the dark).
And he gave the same inverted-truth perspective on what happening in the Ukraine- the epicenter of the bio-weapons lab and human trafficking universe. Oh and don’t forget- the epicenter of Neo-naziism. Stop listening to ANY MEDIA that used to be considered legitimate. If you knew the name 6 years ago, it’s captured fake news media.
Janine, whose administration grabbed Assange from the embassy, filmed his entire small apartment in the embassy, and pressured Sweden and U.K. to hand him over? Who on the campaign trail repeatedly stated, to the applause of thousands of supporters, "I love Wikileaks"?
Then when asked if he would support Julian and Wikileaks after his election replied - "I really don't know anything about Wikileaks." ?
I am not a Trump hater. I am definitely not supportive of the madness that has ensued with his replacement administration. I am just calling attention to the fact that here was real news, never one retraction required, and he had a chance to speak up and pardon the journalist and publisher delivering the most fact based news in the world, and instead he pardoned Joe Arpaio the Sherriff in an Arizona jurisdiction who was a sadistic murderer.
I don't understand the white hat business, but if you're saying the alphabet agencies wouldn't let him for fear of his life, I might agree.
As to Hillary, I'm with you. I don't trust any of the people in this government who do not incur the wrath of oligarchs by standing up for truth.
I suppose a handful have tried to differing degrees, and my trust goes only that far.
I have a hard time letting it go that he didn't do the right to protect the first amendment, freedom of speech and the press, no matter the cost. "The buck is suppose to stop there".
It is the most important fight of all because as Julian Assange said,
"If lies can start wars, then truth can start peace."
I mostly agree with you. But the Assange situation has to be viewed in light of the fact that what Assange did, helped Trump. That made him the enemy of ALL the same people who were working night and day to take down Trump. Yes, Trump was president, but he was at war with an administrative state that had him, and everyone who supported him, in their crosshairs.
Read the Sussman Trial transcript and you'll begin to see how many agencies and entities were complicit in the attempts to take Trump down, and how far up the chain it went (yes, Obama). The Danchenko trial will be round two, of the unravelling. More and more will be exposed.
I think Snowden was working for the bad guys, and what he exposed was actually an operation that was being used to take down the deep-state. I don't expect him to ever be pardoned.
There really is a battle going on right now between forces that want to end American Sovereignty in favor of One World Government and those who want to defend the only country on the planet in which the citizen is the true sovereign with God given rights.
In the case of Julian Assange truth and freedom of speech, and a free press is what we are talking about here, the first amendment.
Snowden tells us how pervasive their illegal domestic surveillance is, that is the fourth amendment.
These should "trump" politics always. They are the very soveriegnty you are referring to.
I realize they are fighting for a globalist government, and I am opposed to that agenda. What does killing the most accurate publisher in the world do to help stop a globalist agenda? I would argue that it hurts the cause of an informed population, which only helps criminal globalist agendas to be more obfuscated.
Surveillance without warrant can fill a globalist detention center in a hurry, so how does punishing the person who exposed this crime help stop a totalitarian globalist agenda?
I did not watch the second video and will now that I've been questioned about it.
My feeling is we don't know the truth about that whole topic for sure, and that it is being used as false flag bullshit politically. So we are not so far apart on these topics. These are the conversations we need to be having as free human beings regardless of what differences we have, and I for one appreciate it very much.
Good to have propagandists on both sides. Although US Puppet Ukraine is at war with Russia, supposedly the US is not, we DO have a dog (or a money laudering machine) in this fight.
The fact that we're being robbed of billions to pad the offshore accounts of Ukrainian oligarchs and Zelensky himself, and that our "leaders" refuse to negotiate a cease-fire (never mind a peace agreement), is pretty good circumstantial evidence that it's a US proxy war against Russia--Hillary Clinton must be creaming her Guccis.
Yes. I was 11 years old when I learned what a Military Advisor was.
The same war criminals who designed the murderous Bush-Cheney regime policies are now in the Forever-Obama regime designing similar murderous policies.
Whether you voted for Donald Trump or didn’t in 2020, no one voted for this.
Fascinating. This is what journalism used to be.
It's shit.
All the REAL footage of Jan.6 (not the NYT made for TV theatre) shows peaceful patriots who got there WELL after this supposed footage was shot with (Antifa activists dressed as "Patriots"). And it shows them getting beaten savagely in the tunnels.
Taibbi is dead to me.
I think you will see different perspectives from honest journalists. I remember Max Blumenthal's take on the Capitol riot (he was there too), which fit in with yours ("mostly peaceful"). thegrayzone was more interested in the Instigators who, as far as I know, were never charged and were likely FEDs (following on the FBI's "kidnapping" scheme in Michigan.) While some were violent, most are now just Political Prisoners (where are the interviews with them?)
All journalists have their biases of course, which are shaped consciously or unconsiously by State Media, which since the "modernization" of Smith Mundt, our anti domestic propaganda law, is controlled by State/CIA LEGALLY. And they excel at brainwashing.
It is difficult to be a Sy Hersh, Sydney Schanberg, Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Luria, Margaret Kimberley and many more, and being any anti-Establishment investigators into OFFICIAL NARRATIVE lies, and corruption by the Powerful is essentially putting a big target on your back these days. Much better for a journalist's career not to challenge the Establishment. Matt Taibbi (and Krystal Ball, a more irritating example) talk the talk, which is engaging AND GOOD IF THEY GIVE BOTH SIDES, but they don't "Comfort the Afflicted, and Afflict the Comfortable" which is a big part of what journalism used to be.
Fawning over the Establishment cannot be good for the soul.
What about a very significant part of the so called left that lost all sense of journalistic standards during the Trump years and weren't able to write an article without expressing their contempt for the man? The Intercept that Greenwald worked for was in that category, so was Common Dreams, and the Alternet. I no longer reference those sites. There were quite a few who published on Consortium News that entertained that same bias and in doing so were as destructive as the democrats is pushing lies. The democrats made them up and many, too many on the so called left helped them reach their audience. I love Max Blumenthal, he's a rare one. He's now getting flack because of is position on reporting on the war in Ukraine, or on Ukraine. He has real courage. Too many are, well sissy's.
Yes, Michael thank you for the calmer version of essentially my sentiment.
Matt teetered on the edge; where would I be without his article about Greenwald leaving The Intercept over the Huner laptop? I shudder to think of it.
But this is straight up propaganda- Even the Ukraine stuff. I think this videographer is a regime plant, based on his 100% on script language. Life is too short, and there is a tton of election integrity work to be done if we are ever to escape the grip of this illegitimate "Liberal World Order" global-player coup.
So he's lost my funding as of immediately.
Janine, the overall quality of Matt's work argues that he deserves the benefit of the doubt and a bit more patience from us, his readers.
I respect your opinion and thank you for your civility here. But this article did not offer a shred of what I would be looking for in language around these topics.
As I’ve watched , hoping and praying for the scales to fall from people’s eyes, I now see Matt going in exactly the opposite direction on two topics that are live or die for our formerly great, now captured, Republic.
Yes some of his articles are excellent and balanced and even brave. But whether one will be so is a complete crap-shoot when it comes to certain “liberal left” political lines that he is UNWILLING to honestly investigate.
There are FAR FAR more important things for my time, now that we have all been shown, in state after state, the sorry compromised state of our election infrastructures. I don’t have the time to spend reading and commenting on his line-toeing of certain regime propaganda. There’s a board of elections to be called out in my state and ultimately, lawsuits to be filed.
We cannot lose this battle to the “liberal world order”. We were blessed to be given a democratic republic, and I’m not going to accept having to explain to my grandchildren how we were too complacent and distracted to hold onto it.
Not all battles can be won-I give up on Taibbi helping our cause- in the long run, that will be his own regret to live with. I’ll spend my time on battles that are more important to win, to advance our ‘war’ efforts towards the goal of keeping America an independent, constitutional, sovereign nation committed to personal liberty, and unbeholden to the Davos world order.
Janine thanks for your thoughtful reply. You sound like someone who is fully committed to this struggle, and I salute you for that.
Matt may go a little wobbly at times, but I still see his mostly unafraid reporting as a refreshing change from what passes for journalism these days. I do think that Matt, on balance, is an ally in the struggle to resist the looming globalist totalitarian takeover. But I respect your point of view on this.
Janine, I understand where you are coming from-- this Ukraine video pulls on the heart strings like propaganda. But do you seriously expect for Matt's articles to be 100% aligned with your beliefs?
Janine, the real propagandist were the mainstream media that used the clip to define what happened and to vilify Trump and his followers. Maybe some photographers are as bad as journalist who take a side and go out and try to prove it. His first clip was nice, old people, poor people left behind and of course young men couldn't leave but they helped those left behind and tried to make like normal for those who were.
I thought you left already? :-)
So strange that you care, “Bill”.
I am no longer supporting.
Why would I not reply to repliers?!
Nobody is forcing you to read my comments. Just skip the comments with the cat and run along. ta-ta!
You left out John Parry, and before he died he ran his sight with a lot of objectivity in terms of people's responses, in terms of articles and he didn't adopt an anti-Trump stance which Lauria did, and now it's more controlled. The articles are fine for the most part but Joe Lauria doesn't run the site the way Parry did where there was a whole lot of freedom to express one's point of view. I referenced the violence in the city during BLM and even Floyd's brother told the crowd to go in peace because of the previous violence that occurred in the preceding days, and they blocked the comment and I couldn't get back on.
"Fawning over the Establishment cannot be good for the soul."
Yes, but it pays the rent and keeps you out of jail.
Don’t give up so quickly. Matt is interested in the Truth.
The writer was surprised that there was so little security. That’s a key phrase because the question then becomes “why was there no security?”. Although he may not believe it himself, that substantiates the viewpoint that the incident was encouraged by the Government, as collated by Revolver and the subsequent FBI memory-holing of Ray Epps. This man’s description and subsequent experience reinforces the fact that the Government doesn’t want you to know the truth about why and what happened on Jan 6.
Last night Brett Baier interviewed Liz Cheney (she actually appeared on his show). Seriously, this was the exchange, paraphrasing:
BB: President Trump claims that he authorized extra Natl Guard (or something) for DC. Does The Committee have evidence of that?
Liz: We have no evidence Trump ordered troops to protect the Capitol.
See what Spawn of Cheney did there? The Speaker protects the Capitol. The DC Mayor protects DC. They were offered --- and declined.
If Trump had "ordered" troops to move to the Capitol. Wow. These people are something else.
Mark Levin on FOX claimed. and I believe him, the whole commission looking into January 6, is unconstitutional. Maybe BB should have confronted her with that assessment of what is going on. I was glad he said because it makes no sense to me that it would be. By the way, spawn of Cheney reminds me of a phrase that comes out of a horror movie. Right on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This^^
Also he can't be everywhere at once. On mainstream news they do this all the time, take a video clip which shows only one perspective that went on and the media uses it to define the whole story.
Also you can't be everywhere at once, as a reporter or photographer and no one video clip can give you the entire picture although the media will use the clips that substantiate their political perspective. Just look at who used it to define what happened on the Capital that day. In today's world it's what happens all the time.
"Antifa activists dressed as 'Patriots'"
Actually they weren't Antifa activists; they were Proud Boys. The Proud Boys did the rioting.
I have as much evidence for the above assertion as you do for your claim that the rioters were all secretly Antifa activists. I therefore adopt your position that anything that contradicts me is clearly a fabrication, and any piece of writing or video documentary that disagrees is shit.
There is nothing remotely problematic about this method of reasoning. Nothing.
How do you know? What proof do you have, and if you do where did you get your evidence?
Fran, the malicious media is guilty of filming and broadcasted staged and orchestrated fiction. And I have seen the same women in the same scene reported/broadcast as a natural gas explosion victim in Bali, and a woman who supposedly dropped from COVID. Same floral shirt, same painted curb, same people standing near her, same color light. It’s ridiculous.
They get away with it because trusting people would never DREAM that their trusted media would do such a thing. Everything out of any “videographer/reporter”’s mouth that questions my claims reeks of regime narrative. I’ll have none of it. And shame on you.
Shame on me? For what? I don't reference mainstream media, ever. If I want the truth, I read books, or articles I know to be written by independent journalists, and there are not too many of them around after the Trump years, since many jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon. As to the photographers last video clip of the riot on January 6th. It was just a part of what happened that day, and his clip should be evaluated since things were none to clear, but of course that is not how our media works with there daily need for stories, or money really.
Are you referring to the video clip of the Capital assault? Well, the photographer can't be everywhere, and his focus was on the the rioters who seemed to be engaged in a rather violent assault on the Capital and it's unclear as to what, or who provoked it. As you saw it was used by anti-Trumpers, like CNN, MSNBC etc, to substantiate their perspective on what happened that day, to attack Trump, and to attack those half basket of deplorables that Hilary Clinton called them. I saw clips of huge numbers of people, rather peaceful, let in through the Capital's front door. Maybe it just goes to show video clips sometimes, or perhaps too often give a distorted, or too narrow a perspective of what happened and too often today those clips are used by the media to push a certain perspective on things, so you never really get the whole truth.
Fran, the malicious media is guilty of filming and broadcasted staged and orchestrated fiction. And I have seen the same women in the same scene reported/broadcast as a natural gas explosion victim in Bali, and a woman who supposedly dropped from COVID. Same floral shirt, same painted curb, same people standing near her, same color light. It’s ridiculous.
They get away with it because trusting people would never DREAM that their trusted media would do such a thing. Everything out of this “videographer/reporter”’s mouth reeks of regime narrative. I’ll have none of it. And shame on Matt.
I never thought I’d agree with e. pierce on anything, but, uh, you’re out of your fucking mind. Did it ever occur to you that Matt (and a lot of other people) showed that clip from January 6 because it’s kind of a big deal? It’s news, whether you like it or not.
Janine I don't trust the media, otherwise I wouldn't be on stubstack. I don't know what Taibbi's intent was in showing these clips, other then to show how the media will use it to further their own political take on things. You can't read a chapter in a book and know the story, but that's what they do. Trust me, I don't trust the media, that's why I'm here and hoping for more objectivity. The first clip he did, was nice, young guys who can't go anywhere, can't leave the country, but are trying to keep life kind of normal for the old folk. More of a humanistic story. The second clip was disturbing and it was very informative as to how all those TV anti-Trumpers picked it up. They pick and choose the news that supports their side of things.
Oops. Someone forgot to switch accounts.
meaningless
Whatever you say, Minsky. How many other accounts do you post under?
Yawn.
Matt misses being at the "cool kids" table. Watch him steer towards woke.
Why do you think that will be the case?
Why?
You’re too far gone. Lol
Great point
ANTIFA? how could you tell? 🤣😂
Cut-and-paste commentary from Taibbi’s full time regime-narrative-support troll. Looks like he knows his efforts are futile.
That’s how to make yourself a tool of the false-narrative shapers.
well said and a nice ending
THE FIRST CASUALITY- The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Mythmaker.(1973) by
Phillip Knightley.
This title reminds me of Michael Herr's "Dispatches," a great account of the Vietnam War in which he discusses the motivations of war correspondents, war-lovers all, who use the cover of reporting to get their death kicks vicariously and imagine themselves to be Ernie Pyle writing by candlelight in a Normandy farmhouse while the widow of a French Resistance fighter (played by Leslie Caron) brings him wine from the cellar and makes him potage parmentier in the kitchen.
I also think Knightley understands that the embedded journalist mode instituted during Iraq changed everything.
Right. "Embedded" as in bed with the administration and the Pentagon. The sheer adolescent glee of these creeps in their combat gear and the talking heads back home all but rubbing their hands in excitement over rocket fire in the first Gulf War is enough to make a man spew.
I'm not sure if the pro-war corporate media is that way because of political expedience or self-aggrandizement or ratings/readership. Probably all the above.
Iraq was a big change in War coverage. But think back..the Crimean War was the first one where there were telegraphs....the British public learned about that war from reporters...there was censorship in subsequent wars as the govt didn't want the "on the ground" stories to come out. Then the War Correspondent era where journalists circumvented govt censorship right up through Vietnam. But fast forward to Iraq--embedding solved the "problem" of actual reporting. That is why this coverage by Jon Farina is so important--and why the YouTube censorship falls right in line with government authorized War reporting. as all govt's try to do. I remember that glee of reporters in combat gear. They were like kids at a dress-up party.
Great comment, particularly your reference to the Crimean War and the role of journalists there. Orlando Figes touches on the subject in his excellent book, The Crimean War: A History.
The government learned its lesson from Vietnam. Even by the time of the Grenada invasion in '82 the government had journalists on a tight leash in order to control the narrative. This was particularly evident in Panama seven years later.
Wait, was this a written account or a documentary?
https://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Michael-Herr/dp/0679735259
Nicely written, and funny
Yes it's great
Thx Kathleen
Great stuff!
Interesting piece. Amazing to me that the true journalism is being done outside of the traditional corporate model. The corporate model is so corrupt it is anti-journalism. Bravo to this brave photo journalist!! As usual the poor and marginalized will pay for the elites misguided actions. So sad.
But you can't say that his video clips define what is happening in Ukraine, or that a single story written about a particular event in Ukraine can ever really tell the truth about what is happening, only a part of it. That also applies to what happened on January 6. Today the news tells a fragmented story, and too few are willing to follow through and get a total picture.
That is a great point. Thanks
Sometimes it's possible, and knowing our previous history offers up lots of clues, and that the neocons are back in the White House is a big one when it comes to what is happening in Ukraine, since their agenda pushed our wars in the middle east as well. What is going on in terms of January 6 is just plain unconstitutional.
I agree, their agenda suits some, the chosen, as opposed to the many, but no doubt they are sick enough to think they are operating in the best interests of all Americans. I have despised them through all our middle eastern wars. To think Dick Cheney, a primary signatory on the Project for a New American Century, and responsible for kicking off the neocon's agenda in Iraq war visited the Capitol for Jan 6, and was strutted about. Pelosi was thrilled to have him back she said. This is a woman who was on the intel comm during the build up to the war in Iraq and there is a video clip of her saying that being on that committee she knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, so she didn't vote for that war, but she did nothing, said nothing to stop it. She is accountable for letting a half million Iraqi's die, with a couple of million displaced and a country destroyed, and she gets to sit in judgement of Trump, on what happened on January 6th? The hypocrisy of it all is mind boggling.
Don’t say it’s an elephant
That was my takeaway from the Ukraine video. It seemed a bit unfavorable to the Russian side only because of a couple remarks made by the mutual aid group.
Otherwise, just photo-journalism that was well done, and shows that as with war anywhere, the poor, very young, and old suffer the most.
I also am glad to see the "shock and awe" method of complete destruction of all infrastructure was not inflicted by the Russians, who according to what I have seen and read are showing great restraint.
The Russians have tried to spare the ethnic Russian Ukrainians, whom the UkroNAZIs were shelling and killing for 8 years in the Donbas (14,000 or so died according to the UN observers, many civilians). The Ukrainian army was dug in there, yet for the most part the Russians treated them with kid gloves. As they will along the south coast cities dominated by ethnic Russian Ukrainians. Odessa is the prize.
There are few ethnic Russian Ukrainians in West Ukraine, and at some point if the Ukrainians refuse to negotiate the loss of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and the South coast through Transnistra, expect to see Russian's version of shock and awe from Kiev to L'viv and throughout Ukrainian Galicia.
Russia doesn't want Russian Ukraine, they want a controlling buffer against NATO and Black Sea navies. Russian speaking Ukranians voted in Yanukovych under UN monitoring in 2010, but was overthrown by the US (CIA/State and UkroNAZIs) in 2014. They were disenfranchised, but (nice parallels with Kosovo) will become independent republics eventually.
This is the most important bit about Farina's take on the riot: "I was shocked at how there was very little law enforcement, very few police officers. I knew within the first five minutes that it was going to be bad because there were no cops in riot gear. It was Capitol police with little cans of pepper spray. I knew they weren’t going to hold up."
A recently released news item that is, of course, being ignored by the usual media suspects, discloses that a "memo was detailed and published by the Pentagon inspector general. It details a meeting on January 3rd, 2021 in which then President Trump met with military advisors. While the topic primarily focused on national security matters, Trump also discussed ensuring enough National Guard troops were present to ensure a safe event.
“'Mr. Miller and GEN Milley met with the President at the White House at 5:30 p.m.,' the memo reported. 'The primary topic they discussed was unrelated to the scheduled rally. GEN Milley told us that at the end of the meeting, the President told Mr. Miller that there would be a large number of protestors on January 6, 2021, and Mr. Miller should ensure sufficient National Guard or Soldiers would be there to make sure it was a safe event. Gen Milley told us that Mr. Miller responded, ‘We’ve got a plan and we’ve got it covered.'”
"However, several Democrat and military leaders were concerned about the perception that a strong military presence might invoke. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said 'he did not want to create the perception that the military was involved in the electoral process.'"
That Trump egged on or somehow incited the riot is a LIE, and most reasonable people have recognized from the jump that the show trial is based on nothing but an insane desire to bury Trump, the greatest political enemy Curtis Yarvin's so-called "Cathedral," the "media-academic complex" has ever known.
It sure would be nice to have the source of this "news item", so that the reader can evaluate it validity.
https://headlineusa.com/pentagon-memo-proves-trump-gave-order-to-ensure-jan-6-safety/
There are several more outlets carrying the story, including NBC and Esquire. Use a search engine.
I appreciate your contribution, Mr Hubbard. There is clear, convincing circumstantial evidence, that no "insurrection" was intended by the Trump Administration. It remains the case that unsourced claims are unpersuasive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Miller
For someone who constantly calls others derogatory names, I am certain a lot of people could think of some doozies for someone who doesn’t even know who Miller is.
Stephen Miller maybe?
Surprising that the Senate Sgt at Arms (retired) died the day before updating the Show Trial on Ray Epps, John Sullivan and other instigators working with the FEDs, who seem to have disappeared? With apologies to Freud, I guess there are coincidences?
Most comments are about Jan 6 and only a few about Ukraine. The few Ukraine comments are not showing any outrage. Strange no? Maybe this is because there is something incongruous and unconvincing about the Ukraine video. For starters, those who have followed the war closely know there have been virtually no Russian attacks in Kharkiv. So why should we just accept that all the bombing must be Russian, and not Ukrainian false flags used for propaganda videos? Of course many have fled and many spend the nights in the subways and cellars to be safe. But how do you explain that cornucopia of food! Good grief. This is not what you would expect in a war. Plus the electricity and phones are all working. If the Russians are so nefarious why would they allow such infrastructure to be in service? Sure the few remaining residents have to be taken care of. But these teams of do-gooders may have hidden motives. And of course no person accepting this aid is going to protest or speak against the providers. Nor can the documentary maker raise these questions.
I wondered last week how the first lady of Ukraine was able to depart Ukraine to speak the the American Congress and presumably return to Ukraine.
You beat me to it. My take exactly.
I didn't check exact geography, but it if it was far eastern Ukraine or the Donbass region, I'm pretty sure that most of that stuff has been bombed out long before Russian forces entered the country or any artillery fire from that direction started. Situation has probably been VERY miserable in that area for a long time now and I'm betting that difficulty of access to food is more of a relative problem, i.e., while it was relatively hard to get food before, it's harder now.
I too wish the bomb and missile sites were documented, but he did say there were explosions all around when he was there, so might've been too dangerous to do so and a little outside the scope of what he was trying to document? Just a guess.
Patrick Lancaster has been interviewing people living in the Donbas for 8 years. You'll get quite a different perspective from those videos. This one is from Lysychansk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP3kt9fxXCs
"Farina’s January 6th footage was used by everyone from ABC to The Guardian to CBS and Stephen Colbert to the Wall Street Journal to NBC and MSNBC to CNN, and countless other major news organizations." So Farina's work has the dubious distinction of being used by what many consider the MSM propaganda arm of the Democrats, and surely counts as a negative, almost the definition of manufactured propaganda.
Additionally, the "Not Calm Hearts" narrative sounds like a rerun of the "White Helmets" manufactured propaganda campaign.
This intrepid and brave reporting should be commended. But in every war there are decent and compassionate people on both sides helping those in need. It’s hard to aggregate these anecdotes into convincing “data” and even more so to divine from them what is true.
Just like January 6. A photographer takes photos that become icons of a moment. “Trump supporters in violent mayhem?”. Well do those few hundred stand as icons of 70+ million people who voted for him? No. Not even close. But “Trump supporters” get smeared and demonized.
We see here people helping, cooking, tending to those in need, supporting their side in a war. What does that say about “the war”? What does it say about “the human condition”? What does it say about what’s true?
Well, that’s not the videographers job perhaps to answer those questions. Maybe that’s our job, as viewers. And maybe we’d all disagree on those questions just as much after seeing this as before.
This isn’t my war. I have no family ties to Russia or Ukraine. No ancestry there. Almost no knowledge of this history - except what I’ve picked up since February. I have a distant friend, Ukrainian-American, who I last communicated with by email in late February when he was in Kyiv. He may now be dead.
Beyond that. Matt notes, as if it’s significant, an old woman who speaks Russian and wants Ukraine to win. Maybe that’s true. Or maybe she’s afraid of being killed by Ukrainians if she says she wants Russia to win.
I’m glad this isn’t my war. It’s a civil war. A tribal war. Just like all the others like it since the dawn of time. What else is there to say? I hope that kind of war doesn’t come here — to the USA. But it might if people look at the anecdotes and spectacles that cameras and journalists provide, and don’t construct in their own minds fully truthful stories about them.
Reality is too important to leave to journalists. Many lie. Others tell a slice of the truth, sometimes because that in itself is a hard accomplishment. But these slivers of the world are only the beginning of knowing what is real.
Whether you like it or not, this is your war because it is the first shoe to drop in the eventual collapse of the American Empire that has been in charge since 1945.
That's a geopolitical opinion I don't disagree with -- although the path by which it will play out is highly uncertain. But compared to the people in the video, it's not my war.
909, yes, the American Empire (like all that preceded it) is due for an eventual collapse, but what's the time frame on that collapse?
$30Tr in Debt, 15% Inflation, defenestrated Military, degenerate Ruling Class and 30 years-long breaking of its own rules with consequent surrender of the moral high ground can accelerate this thing very quickly.
The real food shortages in the US are about to start and Europe will have no heat this coming Winter.
30 years?
The US has always made its own rules, and broken them when it needed to. To the extent that America became the global hegemon after WWI, we've been consistently making up our own rules and breaking them when convenient ever since.
That's what hegemons do, honestly.
What is required for the collapse of the American empire is the ascension of an alternative to the dollar. Inflation, debt, military incompetence, degeneracy amongst the elite--we had all that and more in the 70s, and our stranglehold on global hegemony actually INCREASED. Why? Because Bretton Woods fell apart and no one knows what to replace the dollar with.
Minsky, it is true that US policy has had a since WW II has had a large element of "heads, we win, tails you lose" to it, but your seeming welcoming of the imminent demise of the American Empire seems odd. An objective historian of that Empire would see the numerous hypocrisies and atrocities of US policy, but they would also observe that between 1945 and today, global populations and the global standard of living have risen to a degree without precedent in world history, also due, in no small part, to US hegemony. They would also note that US share of global wealth trended downward for much of that period, as did the standard of living of the American middle class--not seemingly very hegemonic, but maybe the meaning of that word is more complicated than we think.
Guess my main point is, be careful of what you wish for, the next global hegemon may quickly have us longing for the days of the American Empire, notwithstanding its many flaws.
I would not disagree, actually—as hegemons go, you could do worse than the US. I’d say the British and the Americans could be argued to be history’s two ‘best’ hegemons in terms of outcomes, at least when considered relative to the alternatives. And as an American I am *not* looking forward to the end of the empire, because the end is rarely pleasant for imperial natives.
But I can say all that and still recognize that America does what hegemons usually do, and that generally includes causing suffering and turmoil in non-allied or neutral states, and generally does *not* include following the rules set either by itself or other states. One can acknowledge the corruption and venality and hypocrisy of a king, and still hold that other kings would be worse, because reality is politically and ethically complex, not some simple moral fable.
The Petrodollar is under assault and everyone's life savings will be reduced to pennies on the dollar when it is replaced.
As a fiat-currency, the only thing backing it is Trust.
Well, THAT ship has sailed.
909, you could be right.
I hope not.
But that's how it appears.
Ok, so you say it isn’t “your war” but at what point does it become “your war?” When US troops are on the ground in forward areas?

Well, that’s already happening. The US deployed “military advisors” to Ukraine quite awhile back. Someone remind me, didn’t our adventure in Vietnam start in much the same fashion?
Yes but the USA has “military advisors” in, I don’t know, 60 nations or more? There are conflicts in many of those. Are those all “my war” or “our war”?
Perhaps as citizens, yes they are.
I was speaking in the context above far more personally. There are Ukrainians and Russians whose war this is, right there, like in the video here, there on the ground. Or who have deep ancestral ties to either side or both sides. Not my situation.
They perhaps can’t intellectualize this war through geopolitical analysis. But because it isn’t my war, I can do that without the emotion I’d otherwise feel if I was one of those in the video here.
This war started in 2014 if not the 1940s. But most reporting of it makes it seem like it started in February.
You want to help people in Ukraine? Go here: https://gofund.me/c9e4510a
I worked with John in Cairo; subsequently he went to Ukraine. When (or perhaps before) war broke out, he wound up in Romania, where he rented a house for two exiled families. Now, as you can see, he's ferrying medical supplies to a friend there. Like the rest of us, John is just some average guy - but he happened to be in a place where he could do some good, so he did.
I know this post is about journalism, but it's important to understand that it's not only journalists who are heroes - in the US, Ukraine and around the world. Journalists are important, of course, since they usually let the rest of us know what's going on. And those who break through the corporate filters are often the most courageous - and influential. But there are many witnesses to this carnage; of course the tricky part is to recognize and filter out the charlatans so we can get a clear picture of what is really going on.
As we can see from the video of John & Julia, apart from the politics (or because of it) there is human suffering, and where there is human suffering, there are genuine efforts to alleviate that suffering. Kudos to John & Julia and all those who are doing so in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Human interest stories of civilians dying and suffering mightily as pawns in yet another geopolitical chess game are inevitable.
It's not like nobody is aware of civilian suffering during war, but there does seem to be a bit more sympathy on the part of the chattering classes for European civilian dead and maimed than Middle Eastern civilian dead and maimed, probably because it's closer to home in every sense of the phrase.
The people at YouTube are very liberal-progressive overall (including the leadership), so I feel pretty sure that they had no political motivation to cover up a Trump-inspired riot at the Capitol. They were just mindlessly applying their content policies, not considering that there is a difference between promoting violence and providing news coverage. It's stupid, but that's what you get when someone gets to be CEO (of YouTube, not Google/Alphabet) just because she was Sergey Brin's sister-in-law.
Haha Google is not progressive. I know people who work there. One said that their corporate overlords are nicer than most, but they’re still corporate overlords. Like most companies in the US today, they pay lip service to ‘progressive values”, while simultaneously funding Republicans and corporate Democrats alike.
I’m often frustrated that so many liberals, which I consider myself to be, can’t see that centrist Democrats and Republicans are working together to achieve corporate goals, at the public’s expense.
It’s even more frustrating to hear Republicans call companies like Google “progressive” or Biden a “socialist”. You’re falling for the schtick.
And how did Republicans become so barking mad as to think Matt Taibbi is not bucking the system?
I did dislike his cryptocrash article, because it was too damning of crypto, in general. I don’t see how a crypto like stable coin compares at all to bitcoin. The point of bitcoin is a decentralized currency that can’t be controlled by central bankers and their fascist governments. Pegging the price to a centrally controlled currency makes no sense. Volatility is inherent in a decentralized currency in a financial environment that is heavily regulated as far as individuals, but deregulated for banks.
I did expect Taibbi to know better, especially after his spectacular take down piece of the vampire squid in Rollingstone. That doesn’t mean, however, that his reporting in general has been conciliatory to the political establishment. Have you noticed he doesn’t have a Rollingstone column any longer, nor a spot on CNN?
Not everyone who criticizes Trump is antifa or far left, or even generally left. And antifa is likely primarily government stooges (which is primarily neoliberal, ie neoconservative, not liberal) fomenting violence. Neoliberals and neoconservatives hijack the social aspects of liberal and conservative discourse and hitch them to aggressively fascist foreign and domestic policies. This pits liberals and conservatives against each other on social issues, while they funnel money to pharma and the military and now also, big tech. Take your head out of your ass and quit defending Trump against ‘liberals’. The people running these hearings are fake liberals.
Trump is a game show host and a charlatan. He’s not coming to save you, or anyone else, not anymore than Elon Musk is gonna save free speech. They’re both helping waltz us down the garden path to fascism every bit as much as Biden and his military-media-pharmaceutical complex cronies.
Like button isn’t working, so “like” for zeroing in on the fundamental issue -
“ Neoliberals and neoconservatives hijack the social aspects of liberal and conservative discourse and hitch them to aggressively fascist foreign and domestic policies. This pits liberals and conservatives against each other on social issues, while they funnel money to pharma and the military and now also, big tech”
That's ridiculous. I've done acid, but not the type you are taking.
I think the most chilling part of this entire article were these two disconnected sentences; "YouTube had shut Farina down" and "Farina went on to leave media for a bit". It clearly shows the direct impact of big tech censorship on independent (and presumably less? biased) media sources. Fortunately Farina decided to get back in the game. Many others don't and I seriously doubt we may ever get back to a point of "what journalism used to be".
W. T. F.? Matt! Have “they” threatened you and your family?
Are you struggling to stave off a lawsuit or something? Why are you adding to the January 6th hysteria and clearly promoting it as hypnotized people acting on Trump’s volition to create an insurrection, which is completely false. This was a riot that got out of hand.
I was processing that when I realized you were doing a “poor sweet Ukraine versus horrible Russia” propaganda piece. Why? When you clearly know the CIA and the Pentagon pushed for this proxy war to destabilize Putin. And we WANT Ukrainians to die and create a failed state on Russia’s border.
Did CNN get pictures of you with a goat?
I do not respond to idiot trolls. Have a nice day.
Only to tell you you are an idiot troll and I am not going to substantively engage with a total imbecile like you.
This is the last time I am answering you…. You are the most moronic commenter I have seen on here. Have a nice day.
Um, I don't think you understand who Zelensky's "very powerful benefactor" really is.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/07/22/servant-of-the-corrupt/
heavy.
so sick of arm chair ass clowns, pontificating, either side, like myself.
everybody "knows" the "truth", and nobody knows anything.
what a freaking mess, humanity is. most cruel, to each other.
where are you, giant meteor?
Oh, cheer up, for Pete's sake!
So, what exactly is an "ass clown?" I see the term used often, what does it mean to you?
Well, there you have it. Matt TaiBbi shilling anti-Trump supporter propaganda and Regime narrative regarding Ukraine.
No more benefit of the doubt for you Matt.
Good-bye.
Very interesting way to draw your lines - you know first which “narrative” you like, because it fits your “Truth”, then you accept or reject facts depending on how they fit your pre-determined choices. That’s EXACTLY what the woke do, just that you do it in reverse. So Matt was good as long as he fed your prejudice, but he has turned to “denier” now that he’s referring to actual filmed material. Two camps, one madness.
I see nothing in the article that indicates any "shilling" for anything except maybe Farina's work. Farina is surprised there was so little security at the inauguration. Although neither Taibbi nor Farina mention it, we know from a recently released memo from the Pentagon Inspector General that inauguration security was lax because the Pentagon assured Trump order would be maintained, while the Capitol Police Chief and some Democratic congresspeople opposed deployment of the National Guard. Of course, ultimately, the NG was not sent to provide security for the inauguration, presumably because it would "look bad."
were you born prone to joining cults, or was it the years of whiskey and prozac? groomed early on by jebus luvin opus dei pedos? or just the angst of decades of self loathing?
At least Janine gave her views "Matt TaiBbi shilling anti-Trump supporter propaganda and Regime narrative regarding Ukraine."
So of course rather than respond to her argument, you ad hominem attack!
She has no argument.
And there it is....the regime attack artists (and he'll have a back-up commenter to take his side) attacking anyone who says anything remotely pro-Patriot.
Rot in hell for the back-stab Taibbi.
A bit strong. I follow Taibbi for his insights and humor. He spent six years(?) in the Soviet Union in the 1990s and, like seemingly half of our State/CIA, he came out of the Soviet Union with a permanent take on how former Soviet countries operate (has the US changed any in the last 20 years?) I was surprised that Taibbi was surprised that Russia invaded (with strong support from the Russian people, unlike most of America's invasions-- most just don't care.)
I don't remember if Taibbi covered the Orange Revolution when the CIA installed Yushchenko (married to an American, a probable CIA agent) and made Ukraine a Puppet State in 2005. Or if he covered the overthrow of Yanukovych in the Maidan Coup (obviously under Nuland/ Biden's direction, to get rid of "unsatisfactory" Puppet, at least elected under UN surveillance; CIA Puppey Yushchenko got only 5% of the vote) in 2014? Maybe coups are okay to Taibbi (I'm sure he has read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", where in American Foreign Policy bribes are first, coups are second and invasions last).
I've been recommending the recent Renaud Beauchard article on N.S. Lyons/THE UPHEAVAL site because I was struck, not only with the political activism in France, but also the authors understanding of the political and financial forces, both within and outside France that are assaulting the French people, Europeans in general and ourselves. Attendance at SUBSTACK affirms our hunger for a new American national dialogue. This everyday "crisis is our daily bread" life Americans are forced to live runs cover for the machinations of the WWIII Globalist class war. Events and discussion of incidents like those in your comments and their connection to the wider narrative are immediately lost in whatever new political shock and awe shit storm the shadow boys send our way. There is no history, only the "party line". It is a kind of weaponized Tower of Babel screaming silence. You can speak anything but the truth.
The peoples of the world and the nation states they've created are being looted and their populations diluted for the benefit of totalitarian finance. The new American dialogue and the change this new age is demanding must come from "..we the people.." Know your enemy.
Get your facts straight: there was NO support for a war against Ukraine inside Russia when the war started - that’s why virtually all observers there were SURE Putin is just bluffing, and they called the warnings from US lies (“plants”). Once the Russian propaganda machine switched from “war is a US lie” to “war was necessary and unavoidable”, that’s when the Russians joined the brainwashing. The question is why does criminal Russian propaganda has so much effect on weak Western brains?
I'm wondering if the peoples of the world, Western and otherwise are so weak brained because they've been so propagandized and psyoped by totalitarian finance it is impossible to know what the truth is. The American psyche is beaten numb, the lines of daily survival stretched to breaking and the crumbling infrastructure, crime, and deaths head chaos in the streets make it is obvious that "capital" has abandoned any pretense of interest in the American future. The CCP/WEF is redefining the term American as we speak.
“ there was NO support for a war against Ukraine inside Russia…”
Thought you were going to say in the US. The US suckers didn’t support the war ( per poll) until POTUS and the media started their heavy propaganda against Russia and FOR the corrupt Ukraine.
They never want to talk about the reason Russia attacked.
When a country with fascist imperial ambitions and internal repression like Russia attacks without any provocation another country, claiming the latter doesn’t “have the right to exist”, you would hope that citizens of democratic countries would support the attacked country fighting back. Unless of course some of those citizens really admire authoritarian regimes and let themselves be brainwashed by the vilest Putin propaganda. Plenty of such wannabe fascists around.
"...he came out of the Soviet Union with a permanent take on how former Soviet countries operate (has the US changed any in the last 20 years?)"
My impression too.
Matt's not back-stabbing us...he's just afraid, and understandably so.
Clinging to the last straw before accepting the idea that maybe actual evidence (five months of Russian murder) actually changed Matt’s opinion? Obviously, evolution of ideas is beyond the strengths of many…
e.pierce, you’ve been regime-narrative-support trolling on Taibbi’s substack for how long now?
Are you starting to pick up on the fact that you are in a sinking ship yet?
Better get that resume polished up.
You must be related to pierce, whose comments, like your own, add nothing but insults to the.conversation. Does it just make you feel you are a big better person, or is there some deep seeded need to put others down to make yourself feel valuable?
tbh, Ive been debating people on the internet for 20+ years. I can attest, not one mind was ever changed by debates on the internet. maybe in time, some one might consider a debate, then do some reading, and eventually change their mind, but its entirely organic to that person.
you can search my post history, and see where Ive added a great deal of information. when I feel like it.
but after multiple decades, I have a zero tolerance for idiots. there is no excuse to cling to being stupid, to idol worship plain and obvious grifters and scam artists, like trump. to cling to childish stories about invisible man in the sky and messiahs in blood (the whole jebus narrative is just a rip off of mayan blood sacrifice, its crazy people still buy into that stupid shit) and I tell them so, every chance I get. when some jackass shows their ass, I like to hold a mirror up to them, so they can see the ass they are showing us.
and no, I have no need to bolster my self image. Ive done years of work on that , and am very comfortable with who I am, what ive done, and how I show up. but thanks!
Someone earlier in this thread pointed out that "being of the left politically, they couldn't understand why Trump supporters and the faux left couldn't see through the red/blue shtick "
I agree and to proclaim that Trump is/was fighting fake news is ridiculous.
Does "I love WikiLeaks " ring any bells?
It was one of Trumps mantras throughout his campaign after the WikiLeaks release of the crooked ass DNCs e-mails. All accurate , no inconsisties , no retraction. And yet Trumps administration is the one who grabbed Assange and is trying to A. Kill him -or B. Imprison him for life on phony charges of espionage in a U.S.. fisa kangaroo court, in which no one is afforded a jury of their peers, or allowed to defend themselves.
Biden is carrying the torch forward on the destruction of that key freedom of speech, and a free press in the first amendment. Persecution of journalists and whistleblowers is rampant in both partys and shows that these administrations are playing the same tune.
Wise up, and give Matt some latitude to do journalism with nuance , and decide for yourselves. It is useless to cast either , or any of these corrupted institutions as champions of truth or justice. The are in regulatory capture
I have no idea why Trump didn't pardon Assange or Snowden--here he proves himself to be a typical politician since his decision is probably intended to appease the RP as a whole. It certainly discredits his overall (and, in my opinion, justified) condemnation of the press.
The corporate press is a gaggle of mercenary yuppies with the collective ethics of WR Hearst. Luckily, there's a growing number of independent journos doing the work justifying the First Amendment, including Taibbi, who's one of the best.
Frank you have reset the bar in a post that is simultaneously so right, and so completely wrong at the same time.
1. Who told you Trump was trying to have Assange killed? Not Trump. So that would leave the fake news. If Assange was not in custody, he would be K-illary’d within six months. Assange is a white hat and is being protected, anything else you hear about him is a Psy-op of one side or the other.
2. How on EARTH, at this late stage of the game, could you be conflating Trump with the establishment GOP. Trump is MAGA. Trump America First. The GOP and Dems are corporate globalist and Marxists attempting to roll our country into the “Liberal (new) World Order”, leaving behind our national sovereignty and our constitution.
Matt just flat footed gave a platform to a characterization of the Jan 6 protesters that was promoted by the fake news Patriot-haters and amply debunked (Revolver News if you’re still in the dark).
And he gave the same inverted-truth perspective on what happening in the Ukraine- the epicenter of the bio-weapons lab and human trafficking universe. Oh and don’t forget- the epicenter of Neo-naziism. Stop listening to ANY MEDIA that used to be considered legitimate. If you knew the name 6 years ago, it’s captured fake news media.
Janine, whose administration grabbed Assange from the embassy, filmed his entire small apartment in the embassy, and pressured Sweden and U.K. to hand him over? Who on the campaign trail repeatedly stated, to the applause of thousands of supporters, "I love Wikileaks"?
Then when asked if he would support Julian and Wikileaks after his election replied - "I really don't know anything about Wikileaks." ?
I am not a Trump hater. I am definitely not supportive of the madness that has ensued with his replacement administration. I am just calling attention to the fact that here was real news, never one retraction required, and he had a chance to speak up and pardon the journalist and publisher delivering the most fact based news in the world, and instead he pardoned Joe Arpaio the Sherriff in an Arizona jurisdiction who was a sadistic murderer.
I don't understand the white hat business, but if you're saying the alphabet agencies wouldn't let him for fear of his life, I might agree.
As to Hillary, I'm with you. I don't trust any of the people in this government who do not incur the wrath of oligarchs by standing up for truth.
I suppose a handful have tried to differing degrees, and my trust goes only that far.
I have a hard time letting it go that he didn't do the right to protect the first amendment, freedom of speech and the press, no matter the cost. "The buck is suppose to stop there".
It is the most important fight of all because as Julian Assange said,
"If lies can start wars, then truth can start peace."
I mostly agree with you. But the Assange situation has to be viewed in light of the fact that what Assange did, helped Trump. That made him the enemy of ALL the same people who were working night and day to take down Trump. Yes, Trump was president, but he was at war with an administrative state that had him, and everyone who supported him, in their crosshairs.
Read the Sussman Trial transcript and you'll begin to see how many agencies and entities were complicit in the attempts to take Trump down, and how far up the chain it went (yes, Obama). The Danchenko trial will be round two, of the unravelling. More and more will be exposed.
I think Snowden was working for the bad guys, and what he exposed was actually an operation that was being used to take down the deep-state. I don't expect him to ever be pardoned.
There really is a battle going on right now between forces that want to end American Sovereignty in favor of One World Government and those who want to defend the only country on the planet in which the citizen is the true sovereign with God given rights.
It seems you are talking politics of empire.
In the case of Julian Assange truth and freedom of speech, and a free press is what we are talking about here, the first amendment.
Snowden tells us how pervasive their illegal domestic surveillance is, that is the fourth amendment.
These should "trump" politics always. They are the very soveriegnty you are referring to.
I realize they are fighting for a globalist government, and I am opposed to that agenda. What does killing the most accurate publisher in the world do to help stop a globalist agenda? I would argue that it hurts the cause of an informed population, which only helps criminal globalist agendas to be more obfuscated.
Surveillance without warrant can fill a globalist detention center in a hurry, so how does punishing the person who exposed this crime help stop a totalitarian globalist agenda?
Again I would argue the opposite is true.
I did not watch the second video and will now that I've been questioned about it.
My feeling is we don't know the truth about that whole topic for sure, and that it is being used as false flag bullshit politically. So we are not so far apart on these topics. These are the conversations we need to be having as free human beings regardless of what differences we have, and I for one appreciate it very much.
Thanks for responding.
Cut-and-paste commentary from Taibbi’s full time regime-narrative-support troll. Looks like he knows his efforts are futile.
Have you not heard of Patrick Lancaster?
Good to have propagandists on both sides. Although US Puppet Ukraine is at war with Russia, supposedly the US is not, we DO have a dog (or a money laudering machine) in this fight.
The fact that we're being robbed of billions to pad the offshore accounts of Ukrainian oligarchs and Zelensky himself, and that our "leaders" refuse to negotiate a cease-fire (never mind a peace agreement), is pretty good circumstantial evidence that it's a US proxy war against Russia--Hillary Clinton must be creaming her Guccis.
Yes. I was 11 years old when I learned what a Military Advisor was.
The same war criminals who designed the murderous Bush-Cheney regime policies are now in the Forever-Obama regime designing similar murderous policies.
Whether you voted for Donald Trump or didn’t in 2020, no one voted for this.