Cue media leapfrogging from "baseless right-wing misinformation conspiracy theory" straight to "old news common knowledge nothingburger".
If hard evidence came out tomorrow that Hillary Clinton sent a hit squad to kill Epstein, media would say it's a nothingburger because "everyone has already been saying that for years"
I mean, though, isn’t it kind of a “nothingburger”? Insofar as that if people didn’t realize that the FBI et al were gonna jump all over people posting every second of their lives on various social media sites, then they’re fucking dumb. How is it possible that any of this is surprising?
The fact that the FBI is entwined with Twitter etc is fucked-up, but it’s not shocking. I knew that was gonna happen the first time I saw a chick I was hanging out with post on Facebook, like twelve years ago, that they were with me at a certain bar at a specific time on a specific day (I immediately texted the chick who posted that to tell her to delete that post when I saw it the next morning; I’m certain the FBI or whoever saw my text telling her to delete it, too). That’s what the FBI etc does.
None of this is surprising.
And fuck Twitter. Who gives a shit about fucking Twitter? I can’t think of a more boring, useless, boring (did I mention “boring’?) social media site. Every time I check out Twitter, it’s the same 50 people bitching about the same fucking thing every fucking day. The only people who care about what happens on Twitter are the people who make their livings from it. And I don’t give a fuck about them.
I used to care about Matt, but this “Twitter story” shit is legit boring. Yeah, the FBI is wasting your taxpayer dollars and they’re involved with and monitoring your Twitter posts. If you needed Matt’s “breaking story” to make you aware of that, you’re an idiot. This is not “news.”
Most "people" aren't the retired curmudegeons in this thread with too much time on their hands.
Yeah, sure, we all "knew" all of this. Whatever. But the value of putting the details out is to make the deniability less plausible.
I don't think it ultimately matters because it's not like anyone has a plan for doing anything about this shit, but maybe a larger slice of the normal citizenry, folks with jobs and more hectic lives, will question what they're being told. That's gotta be worth something, right?
It's only worth something if the normals will ask the questions and do something about the answers, which they won't, which is how we got here. But Twitter's dirty laundry diary has been entertaining. It's one thing to watch them scratching their butts and another to see the endless parade of skidmarked tighties. That is worth at least the time it takes to read these once a week.
If nothing else, the takeaway is to remember these people are all clowns and losers and they always fail in the end.
Most people are nothing like awake or paying attention, and that's down to "having to work" and "putting food on their families". That, and during their time in 'school' they were deliberately NOT taught to think, to do the analysis or even how to use logic even at a rudimentary level.
Many others, like my oft mentioned *overeducated friend - are lost in the lies.
Such propaganda victims are unwilling - if not unable, to give up what I call their "CNN, NYT world view" with all that that entails - as that would mean admitting they were wrong about almost everything.
The deep and enduring powers, who use brilliant social scientists in their efforts, trade on all these facts. They play 'us' like fiddles. The system "works" - for them.
*Jacques Ellul, in his masterwork, "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" said that it is the educated who are most vulnerable to propaganda.
"A far more frightening work than any of the nightmare novels of George Orwell. With the logic which is the great instrument of French thought, [Ellul] explores and attempts to prove the thesis that propaganda, whether its ends are demonstrably good or bad, is not only destructive to democracy, it is perhaps the most serious threat to humanity operating in the modern world."
--Los Angeles Times review of Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
Yeah yeah, there's a lot of talk about talk that's allegedly happening somewhere else. Very little action. None of it so far effective. I'd love to see something, anything of any substance, happen. Waiting with bells on. But not holding my breath. The only way out seems to be through, in a soviet union style collapse (or god forbid, something much worse), some decades hence, and until I see anything impressive I'm just gonna plan around that. Talk is cheap. Better not to talk at all anyway. Bad opsec.
It doesn't really have much to do with my reality. It's like, I know bad weather is coming and I'm doing my best to prepare for the storm, but I'm not going to go outside and shout at the clouds hoping they turn around or give my life savings to a witch doctor who claims he can fix it.
If someone comes along and demonstrates the will and capacity to stop this from going where it's obviously going, that's great. I'm on board. But I see no evidence of that. Just a lot of big talk from internet tough guys and a very small handful of noble-minded but ultimately ineffectual people trying to do things "the right way". (Real) journalists like Glenn, politicians like Rand Paul. It's not enough, it won't be enough, and it's time to accept that.
Most of the interesting parts of history are stories of bad shit happening. We had a lull for a good couple of decades through the 80s and 90s there where it seemed like the last wave of bad shit was behind us and mistook that for the new normal. It's back. I've made peace with that. I'm not going to fret about it, just going to try to be ready for it. That's all I can do.
Yeah, that’s the main thing and maybe the point I was trying (and failed haha) to make: nobody is going to do anything about this. It’s a feature of social media websites, not a bug. I just assume we’re all being watched all the time. It’s kind of one of the reasons why I post all of my weed grows online, as a sorta “Fuck You” to the various government agencies that’re monitoring us.
If anybody was gonna do anything about this, I might be more interested in this “story.” But nobody is. Nobody’s gonna fire the FBI agents who’re wasting their time (and our money) blocking Billy Baldwin’s Twitter account; nobody’s gonna be held accountable for any of this. It would be nice if they were, but they aren’t.
I think it’s just more a matter of: I don’t have the energy for this haha. I mean, how many fucking things can I be pissed off about all at once? Twitter’s dumb; therefore I don’t care about what happens there. I’ll be pissed off about the things that actually affect my life, but Twitter has no bearing on it whatsoever. I understand why Matt might be pissed off about it, but I am not. Or rather, it’s just another in a long line of things that I’m pissed off about. Do we really need story after story about it, though?
We will hold them accountable, when enough people decide to not give up. Apathy is more dangerous than tyranny, because we don't fight apathy. Things will continue to get worse until even the apathetic rise to take action.
When the systems for holding these people accountable are themselves corrupted, when all the checks and balances are broken, there's only one resort left for holding them accountable, and I don't see anywhere near the kind of energy necessary to make that happen, or any inkling that there's a competent and trustworthy person or group ready and able to harness that energy and turn it into action.
The closest we got to that was Trump being elected, which was sort of a lame punchline to a bad joke, but had it not been, in the best case scenario where Trump did as much as he could, it would have been a tiny fraction of what was needed. What you are talking about here isn't solved by passing a few laws or getting the right guy in charge. To fix this, in its advanced state of decrepitude, means reducing it all to rubble and ash and rebuilding from scratch. Nobody's going to do that, and if nobody's going to do that then ... the only way out is through.
And as far as “tyranny” or whatever is concerned, gimme a fucking break. Weird FBI shit on Twitter is absolutely not “tyranny.” It’s fucked up, for sure, but it is not “Tyranny.” Tyranny’s when you get thrown in the gulag and forced to do hard labor for the rest of your life because you criticized the government or whatever. That isn’t what this story is. Nobody’s getting thrown in the gulag.
Jesus… The histrionics of you assholes are fucking ridiculous. Laughable.
If it’s this important to y’all to be super-fucking-pissed about something that really has no bearing on your actual life, more power to you, I guess. And if your living depends on Twitter, I guess that gives you license to be pissed off about this, too. Does your living depend on Twitter?
I’m legit asking you a question right now: does your living depend on Twitter? If it doesn’t, how does this story really and truly affect your life? Were you planning on voting for Trump, but because of the censorship on Twitter, you changed your mind and voted for fucking Biden?
I mean, seriously, if you’re relying on Twitter to get your information, you’ve got bigger problems than the FBI…
They have meds for that. But I recommend meditation. Emotions are distractions. You Need to focus if you want to win. You don't win by getting mad, but by getting even.
Twitter's garbage. The story here is the entire intelligence apparatus acting in a completely lawless manner (what else is new, right?). That's the big deal.
No you're not in gulag. You're not going to gulag any time soon. If you don't do something about things like this, if you wait until it goes that far and people are actually going to gulag, it will be too late.
But it probably already is too late. Institutions like these, of this scale and import, have incredible inertia. The Church Commission was one of the most radical and thorough teardowns of the executive branch in american history and all it managed to be was a speed bump. Slowed them down a few years. They're still going in the same direction, and are miles beyond where they were when that happened. You'd need something ten times the scale of the Church Commission to even slow it down at this point.
I think your problem is you're "living in the moment". You're that guy who starts his car, notices a funny sound and says "eh, it's fine, still seems to be working" and goes about his business. And keeps doing this until the car breaks down, and then wonders what happened. "It just suddenly broke down and now my whole day is ruined, geez what bad luck". That's you, and where you're gonna be in ... who knows, a decade? Two? In your retirement? However long it takes.
How will you hold them accountable? Are you running for office? Do you actually expect any of the people who are running for office and who you might vote for to actually do anything about this?
It’s not “apathy,” it’s a grip on reality. Nobody is gonna do anything about this. That’s a fact. It’s an unfortunate fact, but it’s a fact. If you wanna make a statement or whatever, DON’T LOG ON TO TWITTER. Delete your account. Delete all your social media accounts. It really is that simple.
I like fighting from the inside. And I don't like to surrender. Twitter isn't theirs. It's mine, too. We surrendered before and suffered an unnecessary pandemic panic and lost a bunch of elections. You shouldn't want that to happen again. If you run and hide, it will.
We hold them accountable by making sure everyone knows their crimes, and forcing prosecutors to act.
If the #TwitterFiles is so ’boring’ and a ’nothingburger’ as you say, why do you write so many paragraphs? Why spend so much time on it? Are you FBI? OGA? Are you posting this on my tax dollars?
Real agents and actual 'bots' exist, most of these characters though, are just enthusiastic true believers, 'good Germans' who are very happy to report on their fellow citizens.
In the camps they called them, "Kapos", which is what they are.
Maybe. But I made a comment on a video hosted on Tim Poole's IRL Youtube page to abolish the FBI this morning; the video was IRL's take on the FBI calling Matt Taibbi's reporting 'misinformation'. A reply was posted to my comment to contact someone on a Telegram to 'enlighten them' further (their words). The account had as its Avatar Tim Poole's pic on an account made earlier this year and with 4 subscribers. I responded: 'How was the FBI Christmas Party, did you get cash or a gift card?' My post was removed. I did it again, again taken down a few minutes later. It's not Tim Poole, but it is someone with Youtube take-down permissions.
Most comments sections all over the internet have been systematically removed. That because power was sick and tired of getting "talked back to". The few that are remaining are routinely censored, both by humans and algorithms.
Free speech is something that want to end completely. Wokeism is covert censorship. They will come for substack too, bet on it.
It's the difference between an unsubstantiated, knee-jerk opinion and a claim supported by evidence that's more credible than the rock-solid testimony of the "chick you were hanging out with."
It goes far beyond "wasting taxpayer dollars." It is the systematic removal of political opinions that the security state doesn't like. It is the state doing an end-around the First Amendment by recruiting communications companies to do their censorship for them.
Not all of us are as omniscient and black pilled as you apparently are.
Do you really log on to Twitter for all the latest news, though? I mean, like I said, I couldn’t care less about fucking Twitter. Every time I go on there, it’s the same people bitching about the same shit. Literally, there is zero difference between what’s being posted on Twitter today and what was being posted on Twitter five years ago. It’s the same. Exact. Shit.
I understand WHY this is an important story. Obviously, government agencies having an outsized hand in what is or isn’t allowed to be posted is totally fucked up. But it isn’t surprising. And I just don’t give a shit about Twitter. Or Facebook. Or Instagram. Or Tik Tok. I turned off all of my social media (except for the comments section on Taibbi’s substack haha) a couple years ago and it’s been amazing.
And I don’t know (or care) what the fuck “black-pilled” means. Does that mean “people who’ve come to the realization that social media is just another form of stoking faux outrage”? If it does, then yeah, I guess I’ve been black-pilled…
Twitter kept me up to date on everything that I was interested in. Shitting on "Twitter" is akin to shitting on "libraries" because they have romance novels and People magazine.
Nice to know this rabbit hole is so deep that people are even paid to shit on people like Matt directly on his substack. You are basically proving why this is such a huge story.
You nailed it! Twitter reaches like 50 people. And it's boring. Sound analysis!, With these incontrovertible facts, nothing the government does on/with/through/to Twitter can be illegal. Ever!
And your point about everyone knowing what the government does and therefore it can't be bad. An intellectual gem! Yeah, fuck twitter.
Keep on posting, minitiger! And growing weed! Your analysis is a treat to behold.
Don't be fooled MLR, we are dealing with a concerted Deep State effort to tamp this story down...the inane comments are designed to distract, deflect, and minimize the damage.
"Twitter is among the top 3 social networking apps in the United States. And boasts close to 400 million users.
You’ll find out the latest information on Twitter demographics and usage data on this page. After reading some of these stats, it should be clear why Twitter’s market cap is over $46 billion.
Hmmm....so the Deep State basically controlling social media is "boring"....nothing to see here, just change the channel if you want some entertainment.
Guess the next interation is "boring nothingburger."
If people who work for the federal govt. are using their "position" to influence an election, I wouldn't say this is a nothingburger. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd say this violates our constitution, the letter or the spirit, and is probably illegal.
I am a lawyer. I agree with everything you said. Everything about this feels sleazy and filthy. Criminal or not I cannot say. But it sure has the stink of it all over the place.
Law is only as valuable as it is enforceable. Our DoJ and FBI have shattered confidence in the fairness of the law. They deny until caught and once caught the seek to justify.
I've seen this many times... interrogating criminals. Deny, when that fails, justify. It isn't rocket science, it is human nature.
Now give the inquisitors weapons, prison, and most importantly... the overwhelming weight of the federal budget.
Federal charges don't go to trial. Less than 5% go to trial. Is any opinion/predictive industry of any kind ever 95% accurate?
There needs to be guardrails, and probably the only way that's going to happen is if members of the House and Senate pass legislation that puts handcuffs on govt. agencies. I don't think I'm going to hold my breath. Maybe the Twitter Files will light a fire.
One can hope. The focus on and stifling political opponents, abusive demonstrations of power (thinking Roger Stone's arrest), the lopsided nature of resources (also widely abused), etc., give reason for the need to reform. But the fact that agencies within the DOJ freely abuse their authority makes it feel very unlikely.
Our Civil service doesn't work for the government or political parties they are civil servants not political hacks. The Deputy Prime Minister is the only Deputy Minister who is Political. Our Deputy Finance Minister is Apolitical. There is corruption there always is but not on the scale we see in America where it is the government of kleptocrats and oligarchs and legal pedants.
Our federal civil service collects paychecks issued by the federal government.
Why? Because the civil service works for the government. They are largely wannabe political hacks, apparatchiks, looking for a bonus prize through political hackery.
Any chance you could repost the rest of your comments in English. You seem to not be a native speaker.
I have a football game as background. I grew up in Canada's largest city at the time Montreal. I live next to the Appalachian Trail here in Quebec. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the silence. People make noise especially when keeping silent. Football is about nothing I can write without distraction.
I was never meant to write. I cannot direct a pen or pencil. I got more ink in my mouth and clothes than I ever got on paper. I don't do tools. My keyboard is large and multicoloured but promised a mystic philosopher on his death bed I would try to write my story.
I am not Down's syndrome or even your average Joe. I had a PhD vocabulary and a genius in abstract mathematics when I was but a child. I speak well , I am above average in stature, and I can pretend to be sophisticated with the best of them.
I learned never to use those words but Americans are tired of Newspeak.
In 1905 Mark Twain said: Every sane person on earth knows the Russian Royals should all be assassinated but no one dares say it. I am too lazy to look up the exact quote here and transcribe
Twain loved the Russian people I suspect Taibbi is having his Twain moment with America.
At this moments archaeologists are discovering curses were among the earliest written records in human history.
Darwin is smiling down on us!
Twain wrote about evolution. He understood Darwin evolution isn't design it is natural selection. It isn't progressive it isn't regressive it is a roll of the dice like the great book of Job tells us. It ain't history it is great literature. "Curse God and die" were the words of Job's comforters."
Divine justice is just a roll of the dice. Curses are an APPROPRIATE RESPONS
I don't do Facebook I don't know how to twitter I am just learning how to communicate with abstract characters. Phones are way beyond my understanding yet I know the technology. I always have I just don't know how they are supposed to increase our understanding of the only thing that matter which is who we are.
Metaverse is the opposite, of universe no wonder we lose understanding of each other.
I am me. I am autistic which is not nearly as important as loving who I am.
I don't need sympathy or repair I am happy to be me but the journey to where I am hasn't been easy for me or anybody that I know and love,
I am no troll I write only to please myself. I write satire because life is comedy not tragedy. I only write my truth because I can no longer lie to myself.
I grew up a recluse because I am overwhelmed by the universe my wife and I are reclusive because your society doesn't let us breathe. Our world is human and computers are as banal as it gets.
Real history is written by writers not Kings and oligarchs. There is no history in the Bible. Who but Snake Oil purveyors can convince anyone it was history?
Irving Layton was telling me about the FBI and CIA 60 years ago and my father was telling me about Reagan's betrayal of his Guild members to Gman Hoover 70 years ago.
I know who created the internet some were family working for your government. They never studied philosophy they were scientists and mathematicians. They were taught believing in Flying Spaghetti monsters was a human thing to do but America told them it was pragmatic not reactionary. We are reactionary we are biological not binary.
There is no such thing as justice in the universe and only men decide on our justice.
I have a football game as background. I grew up in Canada's largest city at the time Montreal. I live next to the Appalachian Trail here in Quebec. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the silence. People make noise especially when keeping silent. Football is about nothing I can write without distraction.
I was never meant to write. I cannot direct a pen or pencil. I got more ink in my mouth and clothes than I ever got on paper. I don't do tools. My keyboard is large and multicoloured but promised a mystic philosopher on his death bed I would try to write my story.
I am not Down's syndrome or even your average Joe. I had a PhD vocabulary and a genius in abstract mathematics when I was but a child. I speak well , I am above average in stature, and I can pretend to be sophisticated with the best of them.
I learned never to use those words but Americans are tired of Newspeak.
In 1905 Mark Twain said: Every sane person on earth knows the Russian Royals should all be assassinated but no one dares say it. I am too lazy to look up the exact quote here and transcribe
Twain loved the Russian people I suspect Taibbi is having his Twain moment with America.
At this moments archaeologists are discovering curses were among the earliest written records in human history.
Darwin is smiling down on us!
Twain wrote about evolution. He understood Darwin evolution isn't design it is natural selection. It isn't progressive it isn't regressive it is a roll of the dice like the great book of Job tells us. It ain't history it is great literature. "Curse God and die" were the words of Job's comforters."
Divine justice is just a roll of the dice. Curses are an APPROPRIATE RESPONSE.
Miles seems somewhat less than the ideal gentleman, and I apologize on behalf of humanity for his disrespect. The point he was making is that when the media class cannot deny something, they will “reframe“ it, Trying to diminish its importance no matter how egregious it might be, if it reflects poorly on things they try to protect
And Merry Christmas, again I apologize on behalf of humanity for this person who seems to have fallen below the highest ideals of which mankind is capable.
No I'm serious, Moe has talked a few times about his autism. Plus he consistently trolls my posts, so I see no reason not to point out the elephant in the room
I was coming back to try to edit out the word "asshole", for which I apologise. And of course i did not know the history. It seemed a rather ungentlemanly thing to say on Christmas, but I understand now.
Are you accidentally STUPID.. or are you just pretending? Just like Russiagate, the lab leak "Conspiracy Theory".. when the facts come out... "IT'S OLD NEWS".. Nothing to see here, move along..
I'm moving more towards your side, Miles, or at least I understand your exasperation. I am tempted, below Monsieur Québec's post below, to reply "'Twas brillig and the slithy toves...." Which of course is mostly true, as it clearly 'twas brillig. QED
I didn't have to look up the Quote I am a huge fan of Walruses and Carpenters and and cabbages and kings. I highly recommend subscribing to the Walrus. It is time to discus ships and sails and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.
Yes it doesn't help at all. I live in universe of logic. I don't understand believing in believing. I believe in evolution because Noah's Ark just ain't up my alley. Science is the study of evolution whether astrophysics or biology. Darwin proposed a mechanism for evolution in life forms. I've been to Alberta's Royal Tyrell Museum some of those ancient creatures didn't need Noah's ark.
It is hard to organize a conspiracy on a ship of fools. Everybody wants to share in their epiphany.
Yes I am labelled autistic but I am me. I am a normal human being and I am what I am. I don't need to be cured . I don't need to be pitied I made it this far
and life is still a lot of fun.
I still have much to learn and I know what I know.
I respond to your comments because I am trying to make sense of them. They are illogical. I am a genius at logic and retarded illogically. Does that make sense?
I have no understanding of what you are saying and I know you are sincere in your illogic. Help me understand Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
If you have autism and know that you sometimes have trouble understanding complex meaning in common human speech, you may fail to perceive that you are being offensive by saying to others "Could you repeat that in English, please?" But you are. Remind yourself that others speak English perfectly well and sometimes you don't fully understand it. They will perceive you as insulting them by you suggesting they are not speaking English.
? Not sure how this implies I am offended, as opposed to trying to offer him helpful info. I have found that for people with spectrum disorders, flatly laid out info about what is going on is helpful because they arent perceiving it but they do follow "logic". If someone blushes, gets up in a huff and leaves the table, they dont get it. But if someone left behind at the table says "they did that because you said this and it offended them in this way", that can lead to insight for them.
I like Miles comments and I suspect he likes reading and responding.That suits me fine and I think Miles feels about the same. I know Alberta and I love Alberta. It swing left and right and it still works. Quebec works always going in one direction. He argues and makes his and I make mine. I listen and I suspect so does he. I subscribe to the Munk debates and the MSM debate was the worst of the worst and they even featured the idiot Jordan Peterson partner with the intellectual giant Stephen Fry. That was a debate as was the one where Yanis Veroufakis had the Brooks Brothers David and Arthur soil their drawers before the camera.
I suspect we'd enjoy each other's company over several pipe fulls.
Quebecers and Albertans love the game that Ontario and Saskatchewan take far too seriously.
I understood Miles' post just fine, it makes perfect sense if you're following politics and the news. You might not agree with the content but the language is perfectly understandable. Besides, you could have avoided being a dick and just moved on.
I get checks every month from the govenment so I can sit here and bamboozle powerful intellects like yourself with my musings on the human condition. I just wish they hadn't made me suffer so long because I really can't digest all the bull people like yourself want to propagate.
I am a pretty poor excuse for an idiot savant.
I am pretty impressive in conversation and problem solving.
I am not Dustin Hoffman in Rainman I am more Charly after the operation and always was. That is why Autism is said to be wide spectrum.
I love the Twain quote
Some people make people happy wherever they go and some people make people happy whenever they go.
People smile when they say hello and leaving is always a chore.
I make people smile with my presence and the computer allows me to express truth which is not always pleasant.
Dustin Hoffman was brilliant in Rainman but Charly is a great movie
and Cliff Robertson understood his character.
Algernon was more than a mouse he was Donald Trump before, now, and forever after. Oscar Wilde's character was truly a loser a
"wee coewerin timourous beastie." R Burns Ode to a Mouse
Maybe that is why in America Twain is considered a comedy writer and Oscar Wilde; well let's not got into that. I do have a mustache but I have a white unkempt beard that goes without saying.
You're expressing an "unpleasant truth" Moe, but it's not the one that you seem to think you are expressing...the truth you tell is more along the lines of a smug, entitled, literary reference-dropping elitist who, like your hero Trudeau, is more than willing to shit all over the truckers who make your latte and wine-fueled existence possible...someone who welcomes the looming techno-tyranny Matt is describing because it is controlled by what they perceive to be their side and to their benefit ...yes, a very "unpleasant truth" indeed. Maybe you ought to take a look at it, and yourself, and stop attempting to cause confusion on this comment page.
Moe... maybe dig deeper. Darwin offers a very useful explanation of how/why things change over time. But his theory excludes, by definition, the questions, "how and why life at all?" Things need to exist before they can change. Short version: evolution is boring but the origin of life is not.
I don't often hear dig deeper. Usually I hear come down from clouds and join us here on Earth. I like talking astrophysics and metaphysics. I talk to trees and let the trees answer and I travel the stars. That is my universe. I have been acknowledge in Doctoral dissertation on measuring the distance between stars.
Darwin is about there is not two identical creatures or particles in universe and change is the only constant.
The future will unfold all we can do is design it according to our desires and hope for the best no two people are the same.
When educated people pay attention to quacks and charlatans like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon evolution does seem not at all progressive.
The origin of life? We are in the midst of Covid. A virus is an organic molecule it is prelife. We have its genomic map. We are the evolution of a virus. We are stardust.
Darwin was a naturalist.. he wasn't much concerned with (or likely aware of) "particles".
Some people actually do share an identical set of DNA. Making them genetically the same.
Evolution is not progressive. We don't much bother research the mutations and other changes that lead to a species's extinction. But, it certainly happens. Not all changes are positive quite rather most are negative and those with those negative mutations burn out over a few generations because the mutation makes passing on those genes less likely.
It was fatiguing not responding to being called a fictional character or worse. I don't get paid for this. I enjoy doing this I don't need any more money. We live very frugally and our income exceeds our expenditures. Our grandchildren have chosen their own paths and they have all they need materially we can only give them our love they must follow their own stars. They are healthy and educated and responsible. I don't think any of them believe in Noah's Ark or Messiah or Meshiah. If things don't work out we are here and here we take take care of everybody. No questions asked and no judgement allowed. Life is far too challenging.
Obama was my State Senator . I lived across the Midway from the Law School. My wife voted and donated to his every election. I met him on several occasions and I watched him make decisions I thought were totally wrong but I never suspected him of deliberately lying. He was incurably human. I belonged to the Temple across the street in Kensington but I lived in Woodlawn. The Temple was very interesting I loved the Rabbi and the congregants were about the dumbest creatures on the planet. I was brought up to hate the the rabbi and love the congregants but usually the rabbi is a wise man of Chelm and the congregants enjoy a good laugh. The Temple was the Wise Men of Chelm and the Rabbi was just a dummy like me.
I am a befuddled old guy but I was much more befuddled yesterday when I was young.
Kafka said there is a Messiah born in every generation. I don't live in Kafka's time. I have many Messiahs. I have the world's greatest library at my finger tips. I suspect that is a very frightening reality to many on this planet.
I trust Obama but I trust democracy more. I don't believe in the rule of law. I believe in the rule of Justice.
In Canada Justice rules. Here is Supreme Justice Kagan and Canadian Supreme Court Justice now retired Abela talking Supreme Judicial Philosophy when RBG was still hanging on.
Kagan really got it wrong but you know it was an honest mistake.
Not to mention, I think it’s funny how Matt, Greenwald etc will throw out the occasional,”Oh, by the way, Trump’s White House also asked various social media sites to delete certain things, but let’s get back to the Democrats!” tweet and post and whatever in the middle of a thirty-tweet bullshit shitstorm.
I hate the Dems just as much as I hate the GOP, but this shit is a fucking JOKE. I just keep visualizing the conversation between Matt and Greenwald, like,”Hey, if you start writing about how the media is biased towards Democrats and Republicans are being ‘victimized,’ you’ll gain a lot of followers and new subscribers!”
Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi don't need me or anyone else to defend them, but it seems really hateful and stupid to ascribe these extreme mercenary motives to them, as if their work is some kind of scam or con and they're just in it for the loot.
They both have displayed amazing integrity and real dedication to their craft for many years now, and that doesn't mean they're always right, but when it comes to media and whorishness they aren't even in the top thousand.
If you think this is all boring and stupid, why are you here wasting your time reading and commenting? Your comment says a lot more about you than it does about anybody else.
CP, don't take the bait, do not take these points at face value, these guys are Deep State operatives trying to distract, deflect, and discredit the work of Matt and Glenn...but we're not going to let them get away with it.
Why am I here “wasting my time and commenting”? Because I paid for this shit, the same as you. I love Matt, have plenty of his books on my shelves, read them over and over, subscribed to his substack pretty much as soon as he left Rolling Stone (when did you start subscribing?) but this Twitter bullshit is just that: bullshit.
My comment doesn’t say anything about me other than,”This is not an interesting topic, mostly because twitter’s fucking stupid.” You know, like I said in my comment. I wonder what your comment “says” about you…
Twitter is definitely fucking stupid and pointless to everyone other than twitter addicts. But the FBI and "OGA" are flagrantly violating the law here, which is if nothing else funny.
Here in Canada, our news outlets (now, sadly, funded by the gov't) and our own Prime Minister were feeding us information that the #FreedomConvoy truckers were all "racists, misogynists, homophobes" and even "transphobes" who were "taking up space - and do we tolerate these people?" (Last quote directly from our Prime Minister). It was ONLY because of the information shared in Twitter that I became curious to understand what the heck was happening in Ottawa, so I drove 6 hours and froze my toes with the rest of them, and partied, had fun, watched homeless people be fed by the truckers, and listened to music. Most peaceful, gentle protest I've ever attended.
I also rely on Twitter to get access to accurate information about covid, even though it had censored much of it. But if you caught the info fast enough, you were good to go.
Twitter is vital to working our way around lies the legacy media told, and I do thank Elon Musk for buying it.
This fact is one of the main reasons that klueless kanadians, en masse, now all HATE Russia and are slavering for a war on a country that has never, not once, done a single thing to Canada.
Here in Canada, not all news outlets are funded by government and your description of the Ottawa truckers convert is akin to the GOP describing the folks who entered the capital building as “tourists”. You were never in Ottawa.
I live in Truck town Canada. My neighbour commutes to his truck not his office. I talk to truckers daily. Tim Horton's is a place to talk to truckers they can't use the drive thru. Most of our truckers support both Legault (certainly far more powerful than Trudeau) and they support Trudeau. We have injustice seekers. They are are friends but we wished them a fond fair well as they headed north to Quebec City.
Our truckers are middle class economically some even have PhDs. It is hard protesting when you and family go vacation round the world every year and Quebec says health, education and welfare are rights not privileges.
Our truckers love rules. It protects them and their families
They especially love those city dwellers who stand up for their rights and privileges without consulting them on the issue. Those truckers, what do they know?
There are better ways than twitter and always have been. I appreciate that people use it for things like this, but the work you do making twitter work for you would be better spent if invested once into finding those better ways instead of fighting a system designed to use you as a data product while propagandizing you. Twitter's design inherently makes people angry, stupid and addicted to using twitter. It's a digital narcotic. Nothing short of a fundamental redesign is going to change that, and its business model (with or without Elon's changes) makes that incredibly unlikely.
Twitter is stupid and pointless. Except - it became the place where all the cool kids in what passes for journalism went to decide their take on this story or that, which influenced their “hot takes” on how they would phrase their opeds or phrase their reportage. Twitter is how a presidential candidate who got arrested for civil rights work got slandered as a racist. Twitter became the echo chamber for the chattering class - and it turns out that was all controlled by our three letter spooks. To dismiss this as stupid or unimportant boggles the mind.
I would only add that to get why it was such an excellent echo chamber, one needs to see the Social Dilemma and understand how AI algos for social media trigger engagement viabdopamine blasts. Apply that within the chattering media personages you cite and it explains the depth and persistence of this cultish effect.
The talking heads have been integrated with the alphabet soup since long before Twitter existed. Gaining control over the conversation on Twitter was just an operational thing, and Twitter's design as well as its leadership made that exceptionally easy. Yes it's interesting that they flagrantly violated the law to do it, but no it's not at all surprising and anybody with a nose for this kind of activity saw it from a mile away. The only difference now is we have copious documentation proving it, so we're no longer "conspiracy theorists".
States would never pass up the opportunity to control a propaganda skinner box that doubles as a mass surveillance tool. Twitter is a wet dream for the alphabet soup, and always has been (same goes for other social media, much of which was partially funded by CIA fronts).
Fortunately only about 60 million morons worldwide ever fell for the Twitter scam (the other 200 million odd are bots or inactive). The rest apparently could tell it was stupid and pointless, if not dangerous, from the start.
Minitger you are trying too hard..."paid for this shit"..."love Matt"..."read them over and over"...etc. But this "Twitter bullshit is just that bullshit." Just not plausible given you professed admiration for Matt, , and plausibility (as you probably know) is they key to being an effective spreader of disinformation.
Your comment didn't say "Twitter is lame and irrelevant and therefore this story is pointless". Your comment said "Taibbi and Greenwald downplay the both sides aspect of this story"
Dude, if you can't see the larger issue then you're not thinking deep enough. What Matt has done is verify, not only govt agencies but the media's complicity of NOT reporting. There are no institutions that can be trusted, only single reporters working on their own at the commission of a billionaire car maker; that will be news for large swaths of the country.
Additionally, conspiracy is now becoming main stream because the public is starting to realize they've been lied to for at least ten years and will soon see that number grow. These disclosures are far worse than Watergate, the seeming standard to judge political corruption, and Watergate is child's play compared. This is the whole fucking government spying on the whole fucking country. Then actively manipulating the conversation, or limiting what can be seen. There is no comparison in any Western government, certainly any that call themselves democracies.
Many of us have lived a life knowing full well what Matt would find, it does not surprise us. But, it will have a tremendous influence going forward as more and more voter's distrust the election system, the media, or any government agency, not to mention a political party.
This is basically the end of the US. Countries are built on confidence and trust. The erosion of confidence has now reached critical mass and we will see further calls for separation from the Union or worse, some kind of real war, not the keyboard battles on Twitter.
These disclosures are a turning point. What is worse is the verification that our government will stop at nothing to keep power and it's hegemony, even so far as controlling simple conversations.
All governments end and we are going to watch the largest most powerful in history disintegrate in real time, in our life time. We get to write the history
And then, when these states secede in order to form a more perfect union or whatever the hell else they think they’ll accomplish, what do you think will happen? Freedom from tyrannical government? Right. Can’t wait to see the AFS (Aggregate of Free States) form a country. Let’s see-everyone from 5 years old on will be required to carry arms, only home schooling allowed, wokeness will be outlawed, healthcare will be virtually non-existent and they’ll frack until the earth beneath them will no longer support buildings. They’ll build a giant encompassing wall.
I see their brighter, freer future in a rebellious Utopia as highly delusional. Eventually, governments always tax, always do oversight, people refer to them as “they.” We’re imperfect as humans, we want more than our neighbors have, we make laws enabling the rapacious to prey on the weak. It will be no different in the AFS. Everyone hates government. It’s “Them.”
If government overreach in surveillance is going to be the end of us, do tell me: other than having your Twitter feed surveilled, what personal harm have you or anyone you know experienced in these dark times (from government)? Is Matt allowed to do his work though he’s revealing stuff the FBI doesn’t want revealed? You talk about the country as if it’s Iran or China. I don’t think we’re there yet. The people who are trying to start a civil war are still on the fringes. There are plenty of talkers, but the guys marching around in the woods doing paramilitary exercises and planning to storm the
castle are a tiny minority. They’ve always been among us. They don’t indicate dissolution of the country.
Good journalism is seeking out and working a story-exposing corruption and collusion in finance, in government, etc. That’s what Matt does. I don’t think he believes we’ve reached the End Times here, Midnight in America or whatever. I think he got a good story, has worked hard on it, and is attempting to bring it out into the ever disinfecting sunlight. No need for apocalyptic predictions.
Neither the Soviet Union nor China started out with: Hey! Let's kill millions of people and terrorize the rest. Societal takeover started out slowly and worked its way to a mad frenzy that devastated hundreds of millions of lives and, if it didn't kill them, destroyed their dreams, their families, their mental health, and more.
The great thing about America is that people like Matt -- for now, at least -- with the help of Elon Musk can bring to our attention the direction our society is headed.
My family fled the invasion of Russia and Stalin's Mad Dream (well, the part that could escape - the rest were sent to Siberia). As America toddles down the path toward totalitarian takeover of a democracy, where can my family go now?
Maret Jeks: Both started out with wars that killed a lot of people. Lenin was explicit that communism would not be accepted by the people and would need to have it forced upon them from the top down. How did he (and Stalin) accomplish this? Killing millions and terrorizing the rest. It was not a slow process, it was a long process.
Communism in China started long before Stalin took a strangle hold on the people. Same with China. Started out as a "great" idea to help the hard working person until it wasn't. Mao's efforts didn't take a stranglehold on the population until he began a campaign to get the young people to turn on their elders (parents, teachers, professionals). That was a while after he started to be involved. Lenin and Trotsky preceded Stalin by a bit.
Communism began as an idea in the 1800s. But you're right - Stalin and Mao, once they grabbed the reins of power - were fairly quick and ruthless, but the story of Communism started long before they showed up. My take on things right now is that unless we turn this ship around, we have another 10 years or so before a neo-Stalin or neo-Mao turn up.
Nobody is going to "require" you to carry arms. That will be up to you. I advise it, but advice and requirements aren't the same thing.
Your "we" is doing almost as much heavy lifting here as your "they/them." In response to your points:
1: "We’re imperfect as humans"
Yes, agreed
2: "we want more than our neighbors have"
No, I don't
3: "we make laws enabling the rapacious to prey on the weak"
Not only did I have no say in the manufacture of these laws, I strongly object to them
"The people who are trying to start a civil war are still on the fringes."
There is a person using apocalyptic rhetoric about a civil war sitting in the White House -- not exactly "the fringes." Maybe it's all metaphorical. Hope so.
All nations end one way or another. Rome lasted 1000 years only to crash and burn in 7. Interestingly. It too fell from within.
The UK was a nation the sun never set on, yet it collapsed fast with the arrogant former colony's being its successor.
You too don't seem to understand what Confidence means to a nation. Once confidence is lost in a country's election system to the degree we will see very shortly, the results are usually violence or new government being imagined.
And, this is only ONE issue we are facing. Never have we had so many issues happening at the same time, and in unison with other nations around the world.
We will see many places go through the same shake up that we will experience. It's really too bad people like yourself don't pay attention to history. We do, as humans, repeat the same mistakes as generations forget the past.
The US has only years left not decades. You seem to think this is just another good story. It's not, it is handwriting on the wall.
Watergate was a good story. The entirety of the Hoover years was a good story. The Bush torture doctrine and the insane Iraq and Afghanistan wars were other stories. Our proxy war in Ukraine is another story. Iran/Contra was a good story. Snowden’s NSA revelations was a good story. Lindbergh and America First was a good story. The Tuskegee experiments was a good story. Western expansionism post civil war was a good story (with the accompanying genocide.)
All of these things revealed awful truths about our country. Why is it that THIS one (which we get to hear about from Matt) will be the last domino to fall, sending our country to the wastepile of history??
Me, I carry on and am grateful to Jeebus that I don’t own stock in Tesla. I think Elon needs a LONG vacation and some stabilizing meds.
You seem to live with colored glasses. Matt is not the last domino. Matt (along with others covering the story) is ONE of the last dominoes. When you add all the issues together no country will stand. Right now the US is promoting a war that could open up on several fronts, the US will never win that. Little known fact is the Pentagon and the Neocons in DC are in a battle over Ukraine. The generals understand the risk, the Neocons want to destroy Russia. That's only one other of dozens of problems. We have never lived in a period where the political apparatus has been so stupid, and we have been so-in-the-dark as to who is running the country. Every single industry is under attack whether it is food, energy, etc.
So put your head in the sand if you want, I don't care.
Interesting food for thought: in hindsight we can put little dots on a timeline and say "Rome started here and ended there". But how many people thought of themselves as "Romans" before the first dot, and how many after the last dot, and for how long? How many in between thought they lived in the same Rome they were born into, and how many thought that "old Rome" was dead and something new had replaced it? What would they think about where historians put the two marks on the timeline? How would they predict where those marks were going to be made, millennia later?
Supposing that makes the lifespan of Rome and the pace of its collapse a little less obvious and definite, what does that say about us? Are we really watching the end of an american regime that started in 1787? Or is this like, the end of the third or fourth dynasty, or the post-apocalyptic ruins of an america that died a century ago and we just don't know it?
If this regime collapses, will people in 50 years, living under whatever new regime springs up in its place, call themselves Americans? Does LJN, below, live in the United States he was born into, or is he too close to the subject to see it clearly?
For the record my point of view is the post-apocalyptic one. The whole american experiment failed a while ago, and the culture it engendered is long gone. We've been through at least two radical reinventions of the US regime so far. Three if you count the post-civil war regime separate from the prior, four if you count the short-lived articles of confederation prior to the constitution.
So .. is this catastrophic, or is this just a seasonal change? Maybe it's an opportunity. Maybe it's the apocalypse. Guess someone a thousand years from now will have a strong opinion about it.
Much of my understanding comes from Martin Armstrong of Armstrong economics. He's created an uncanny model that predicts the future off of cycles. You can mathematically see the cycles of nations rising and falling. Rome's case it had different eras, as you mentioned, all coinciding with the model.
I was born in 1954. In its own way it was a time of great change: the building of an interconnected national highway system, the end of “separate but equal” education via Brown vs Board of Ed, the great Commie witch-hunt of Joe McCarthy, the reconfiguring of world powers to deal with an atomic world, the G.I. Bill creating a larger and more robust (white) middle class, etc etc etc.
What strikes me about all of this apocalyptic commentary is this: what’s the main difference between then and now? The really big banana is that now we can know a lot more. The stuff that Matt’s reporting on is stuff that was ALWAYS GOING ON. From the blackouts of real information about and leading up to WW2 including Japanese internment, to the Hoover era, to the Bay of Pigs, to Iran/Contra, to GW Bush’s illegal and outrageous war with “embedded” journalists”- to government, military and post OSA spy craft, there has ALWAYS been corruption, collusion, overreach, etc. The main differences between then and now are twofold-
1. We know a lot more about the real machinations of things because of investigative journalism and leaks/data dumps on the Internet, and
2. Everyone in the world gets to have a profound opinion (I’m not excluding myself) and express it as if it were some sort of brilliant punditry. As always, the loudest voices are heard (thank you Alex Jones, you fucking maniac.)
For those who have just recently had their eyes opened, well, you’re either quite young or very naive.
This nostalgia for a better, more forthright and gentler time in the recent past is complete nonsense, and Matt shouldn’t be a party to it though I fear he is sometimes. We are not so far removed from a much more brutal time in America when there were no jobs and scant bread, and as I said, shit was ALWAYS going on under the radar.
Yes, the end of empire is always possible and no one can predict it perfectly, any more than they can accurately predict the movements of the stock market or the winning lottery number. What is starting to gall me is all this apocalypse porn. Is it really so fulfilling to revel in the idea of the end of this Union?
The alternative to government is anarchy. If you want to live in a post apocalyptic world fighting for scraps in the street, or you think that America 2.0 is going to be your Utopian paradise where freedom from government oversight will be non-existent, you’re both naive and deluded. Eventually, humans return to the mean. Wash, rinse, repeat.
No no no. Have the scary men in body armor come to your home and dragged you away? Thrown you in a prison for dissidents, tortured you until you “confessed” to thoughtcrimes? Sent you to a gulag? Poisoned you with polonium?
Citizens United and real-time gerrymandering have manipulated our votes substantially more than the FBI’s use of Twitter et al, and yet we fight on.
They are spending Christmas in solitary confinement near DC while awaiting trial, without ever having had the possibility of bonding out over an almost two-year period, facing potential multiple-year prison sentences for trespassing into a location which law enforcement invited many of them into.
"This is basically the end of the US. Countries are built on confidence and trust. The erosion of confidence has now reached critical mass and we will see further calls for separation from the Union or worse, some kind of real war, not the keyboard battles on Twitter."
An apocalyptic conclusion. I wish I could say that you are wrong.
Pacificus I worry when I must totally agree with what you say.
John Ralston Saul said in his Doubter's Companion a Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense published in the early 1990s Cynicism is democracy's greatest threat.
Saul went on to lead PEN International the organization that tries to protect honest journalism through out the world and just like the World Court the USA says fuck the world we are Americans and we will tell you what Press Freedom really means. and what all the news that is fit to print means.
PEN USA rah rah rah. cis boom bah we are number one and your just number two./s
I really do agree 100% what did I get wrong? What did I misunderstand?
I pay directly into a fund that promotes honest journalism ever month. I subscribe much as I sibscribe to Chris Hedges. I don't ask anyone to see the world through my eyes all ask is for some honesty.
As Mark Twain said:
Those that don't read newspapers are uninformed those that do read newspapers are misinformed."
Well-said, Phil Davis. It's a lot harder to gaslight someone after they've found out you have your hand on the gas switch. What everybody is discovering now is that our reality is not really reality. Our reality is a manufactured construct, like in Stanislav Lem's "The Futurological Congress"). And nothing can ever be the same now.
It used to be that an election would come around, everyone would debate a little, the election finished and everyone went about their business as usual.
Not anymore. The division and hatred is beyond repair. Extended families can't have holiday meals together, parents are disowning children or the other way around, that BTW we see a lot today.
The tyrannical vaxers openly stated we the unvaccinated should die. These were highly educated people too, not some low life losers.
I follow the Economic Confidence Model by Martin Armstrong. In short it outlines human cycles, also seen in nature. All I can say is it's uncanny in the ability to pinpoint major turning points. January of next year is such a point. Additionally, this is not just the US, it's world wide. The media is still not reporting on massive protests around the world due to elections, inflationary pressure, and pushes by the Green lunatics, as killing farms.
This cannot be put back together, everything is broken.
"It's not over till it's over." My Yogi said it and he never lied."
I was born in yesterday's Quebec. It was theocratic, plutocratic and oligarchic. It was poor and it was backward and it had a revolution.
Today we are prosperous and optimistic even here on the Vermont border. "There is a crack a crack in everything in everything that's how the light gets in" Leonard Cohen "That's how the light gets in"
In Quebec we know there is no such thing as Freedom of Religion. Religion doesn't believe in freedom. In Quebec Bill21 is the law. It commands Freedom from religion. It is what was meant in the establishment clause. I read it in Jefferson's American Bible. Everybody should read the American Bible written by Jefferson the only thing missing in Jefferson's Bible is God.
Only people can bless America. Jefferson was a Deist he believed Jesus the man not Jesus the Roman and Greek demi God. He believed Jesus son of Joseph and Mary and didn't believe in Immaculate conception.
History is not cyclical we are as Newton said "standing on the shoulders of giants."
The great Mark Twain said evolution isn't necessarily progress but it is real and never stops.
Your comment is grossly incorrect and probably libelous. Fox did NOT make any such claim of the CIA having killed JFK. They did use the term 'involved'. It is still unclear, and Tucker Carlson's story pointed out, that the CIA is still withholding information that was supposed to have been released in 2017. Also, it's been known since November '63 that Oswald served as a CIA operative so, even if only 'arm's length', the CIA had 'involvement'.
carried out the killing. Having read “JFK and The Unspeakable”, “The Devil’s Chessboard”, and “Mary’s Mosaic”, this information, for me, is anti-climactic but I recognize that it packs quite the punch for the average citizen.
As for libel, well, I am not worth suing but if the agency were to do it I would look forward to the discovery.
The Democrats have the entire mainstream media and intelligence agency censorship juggernaut running interference for them. You want to see something critical of Republicans, you can go read WaPo or the NYT or the Intercept.
The national security state works outside the political system against anything it perceives as running counter to the "consensus" narrative. Trump is one of those things, so since 2016 its actions have aligned with the Democratic Party. The Dems have been happy to play along, but they don't control things.
Remember that in decades prior the "threat" was from the left, so the security state aligned more with the GOP (the FBI murdering Fred Hampton, for example), and it could easily switch back.
The Dems v GOP arguments (things like the size of the government etc) are within a narrow band, could be resolved easily and/or are irrelevant.
The real political basis of conflict is between the owners of society and everyone else.
This is true. The regime switches sides. As Darryl Cooper put it, if 2016 had been Jeb Bush v. Tulsi Gabbard, the deep state would have backed team R. I hated George W. Bush and would never thought I'd vote Republican, but right now the dissent seems to be happening on the right. https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/author-of-the-mega-viral-thread-on
I would have liked to have seen the Trump v. Bernie race! And yes, we definitely need more viable parties. I have voted third party more than either Democrat or Republican, but even the largest third parties are just a protest vote.
Consider the weight of a Trump request compared to the alphabet agencies' "requests." The personal request of a President vilified by the entire press and under siege from his first day in office by the very agencies recruiting these communications giants to chase after . . . what, exactly? Political opinions expressed online that they don't like, with the lame BS excuse of "Russian meddling." Every agency wanted Trump out, and they threw everything at him they could in an attempt to lend some credibility to his impeachment and ultimately to throw the election to that walking corpse we now have as a puppet President.
Let that sink in. National security bureaucracies under Biden's regime have been policing online political discussions and getting these lickspittle communications geeks to censor comments they don't like. This is being done with or without the knowledge of Dementia Joe and his handlers.
Intentionally or not, you are demonstrating another common and annoying deflection. One side, in your narrative Trump and his ship of fools, rant about doing something illegal to the media as part of their (ab)normal daily barrage. The other side, allied with Democrats or perhaps just following their own agenda, actually violates laws and fundamental principles about speech thousands of times. But totes the same, right?
Well then, perhaps you should stop “visualising” fictional conversations and start considering the possibility that you’re the one with the bias, not them.
Twitter and social media were not exclusive in their efforts to harm Trump politically. Just awfully close to exclusive. A 90/10 split should not be represented as morally equivalent.
“We know they are lying. They know they are lying. They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still, they continue to lie.”- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Isn't this exactly why us govt wants to ban tiktok, because Chinese intelligence is all over it behind the scenes? It's not news if we do it, and "of course we do it," but we're the good guys, and they (bad countries) can't be allowed because they're BAD!
Which is why Libs of TikTok does us such an important service by mining narcissistic messages from so-called "teachers"corrupting our children with their deliberate efforts to "subvert heteronormativity," advance the trans-fascist political agenda, and destroy the nuclear family, substituting public school freak ideologues (why do they all paint their hair such hideous colors?) "in loco parentis."
MFers are in it up to their eyeballs and they literally word for word just told the American people to "Fuck off".. and their media minions are "Move along, nothing to see here..."
I was just thinking about how Watergate was just Nixon doing what J Edgar Hoover had done infinite times, to MLK, and half the world, it would seem. It was petty, small stuff, relatively.
This, on the other hand, is the worst dystopian nightmare I can conceive, worse than Orwell could have dreamed. Engineering the thoughts of billions of people. And I’m, like, the eighteenth person commenting on it? It’s like (well, not exactly like) being Jesus’ 18th disciple or something.
Without the FBI clearly violating the Constitution, there would be, as just one small effect, no war in Ukraine (never under Trump). How many people have died because of the dystopian actions of the national (and clearly socialist) FBI et al.
When I was a kid I was around (I won’t say how/why) a former head of the CIA a bit. I talked with him some. He was a nice guy. It’s hard for me to reconcile that with the (national, and mostly socialist) behaviour of these….National Socialists (what would a good acronym for them be?) destroying free speech...
You have to be a real sociopath to work as a CIA agent. You need to be able to do the most evil stuff imaginable without giving yourself away and lie as easily as breathing or need to be such a True Believer that you think everything you do on the Agency's behalf is Right.
Just look at MK-Ultra. That's just what they agreed to disclose.
"Watergate was just Nixon doing what J Edgar Hoover had done infinite times, to MLK, and half the world, it would seem. It was petty, small stuff, relatively."
This is why I pity Nixon and view him as a tragic hero worthy of Aeschylus or Shakespeare. Man was POTUS but had no sense of scale. Still working out petty childhood resentments when there were far bigger fish to fry.
The new line of ad hominem attack to be rolled out by the MSM: "Free speech absolutist" Matt Taibbi.
The insertion of adjectives before names instead of simple nouns (journalist Matt Taibbi) is one more way the MSM frames the emotional tone of their slanted reporting. Learning to remain watchful for the various ways stories are framed is a key skill in navigating today's news media hellscape.
I'm proud to be a "free speech absolutist." Every American ought to be one. I suppose the word "absolutist" is intended to convey inflexibility or unreasonableness.
Besides the attempted slur, this term is intended to advance wider acceptance of the "hate speech" lie.
Mark my words--attempts to censor "hate speech" will be the end of free speech if it's not constantly called out. The trans political lobby is the greatest current trafficker in this stupid, pernicious, paternalistic, totalitarian concept.
I'm noticing some out of proportion nastiness by Ross Barkin which I can only conclude comes from jealousy. The guy is on the leftier side, more or less agrees a bit grudgingly with Matt's positions, but still has to get some personal shade in there.
I can also only conclude the obvious What Happened to You butthurtery that he's not using his gifts against who they want him to.
Envy. He ought to know he's on the wrong side of history but wants to be in his little club with Jacobin. None of them Guardian, Atlantic, Nation can ever pretend again. They have shown their hand is all phony on left issues.
I'm happy you're continuing to publish this information. It's about as important as Snowden's revelations. I'm already weary of the articles that spend 3/4 of their length apologizing for taking it seriously because of the "sources". It's all so ridiculous. Keep up the good work!
That said... (here we go)...
I will draw a line in the sand. I'm happy if people are able to assimilate information better from an "article" that consists of 51 bullet-points interleaved with dozens of screenshots. Good for them. It's your world; I'm just still living in it. I can read books and long-form essays elsewhere, but I weep for us all.
Matt, just scroll through that thing and tell me whether this is really any way of disseminating useful information? You've said you find the format appropriate and freeing. No disrespect, but it looks more like an AI struggling to awake, than journalistic output. I've read a ton of your essays and books and I miss that Matt Taibbi. I'm glad you're fulfilled, but I'm almost certain that this format won't stand the test of time.
I'm probably wrong and yelling at clouds. I can complain that the Idiocracy approacheth (or has long-since arrived), but this might be viewed in hindsight as the pinnacle of reporting. I just can't personally get any traction on it.
My attention span has been trained otherwise and I find it impossible to learn anything from this mishmash. The mind recoils.
I agree completely, but I also take Matt’s prior point about the notion of detonating Twitter ON Twitter as being highly relevant symbolically. I have every expectation that once the reporting on this is done he’ll be back to writing in his typical long-form style. I like to hope this is a very specific situation...!
The first report of these transgressions on Twitter was a precondition of access to all the data. What part of that do you not understand. Do you need a 'Understanding Information for Dummies' book?
For me the most dangerous and egregious thing that FBI, CIA, CDC and FDA did was to force Twitter, You Tube, FB and on and on from publishing information about Covid. Doctors and scientists and regular citizens had their accounts suspended or blocked for asking questions, for publishing studies that ran counter to the government's story about the origin of Covid and how to treat it. And worst of all if there's a worst - the studies showing the dangers of the vaccines - especially for those low risk populations - have been completely buried. Academics and scientists have had their careers ruined and their character maligned for having the audacity to want to debate and discuss their findings. The government imposed unneccesary mandates, lockdowns, school closures and on and on that ruined lives, prevented kids from going to school, closed small businesses .....and of course it continues. No you don't need a booster if you are young and healthy. The risks outweigh any benefits. No, little kids don't need Covid shots. And sadly, many people have died from heart and blood clotting issues stemming from the MNRA vaccines. And sadly many treatments that initially may have helped save lives were blocked by Fauci and others who were pushing the vaccines (which netted Pfizer, Biotech and Moderna). The government recently bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of boosters that will need to be discarded since barely anyone wants to take them at this point. And yet - the media and CDC continue to push them on a public that has moved on. I wonder if those complicit with the government propaganda will ever admit that they lied and ruined so many lives.
Somebody needs to write a screenplay about bots who get tired of speaking talking points to other bots all the time and struggle with depression. HELLO HOLLYWOOD
Even though this all comes as no surprise to many folks, this is a very important light being shed on the activities of the statists ahead of the Fauci/Covid files being released.
The scamdemic PsyOp is the one that has killed, and will kill, millions of people worldwide. Ironically, the fully vaxxed and boosted hyper-partisan "nothingburger" crowd are all among the group that's going to find out the hard way the true meaning of "Stupid is, as stupid does".
As the West declines relative to the rising powers of the emerging multipolar system we can expect the regime to prioritise narrative management above all else. It is their greatest strength.
Stroll over to the NYT and read the adulations of Adam Schiff. The only conclusion to be reached is that the world lives in tribes. What Taibbi is publishing will only prevail in good time. The question is whether those who protest will show contrition. NYT readers, emblematic of Sam Harris, demonstrate that truth should not be required to take down an enemy. That is what animated Trump Derangement Syndrome for four years, and those who “cling” to their Russian conspiracy story have conveniently dropped that line of reasoning to congratulate themselves, even lauding Schiff.
The independent media channels are the only counter-balance to corporate media, desperate to maintain relevancy and willing to shill for politicians who can support them financially.
Trump is a menace in an unlikely way: he controls no Army, his supporters are often conflicted, and he is openly criticized across the nation. The feeble comparisons to a famous Nazi are pathetic.
Watch, instead, who will not brook open argument, choosing to label such push-back as a conspiracy theory or the work of the small-minded. Thus does tyranny always suppress those who speak truth to power.
It amazes me that the media keep going back to Schiff. The man is an unabashed liar, even a cursory examination of his past would show that. I guess he tells the lies that the NYT, et al want to hear though.
Seeing Schiff labeled as a “good Patriot” is sort of chilling, especially coming from the political class that routinely expresses contempt for patriotism.
"Nothingburger" is a very deliberately careless term deployed in this time of mis-, dis-, and mal- info-wars. It would seem to mean at first blush that there is nothing there to consume, no pertinent information. What it really means is that the content is just not interesting or stimulating enough in the various ways content can get one's juices flowing enough to be worthy of one's attention. Media have trained us to want ever more stimulation. More dopamine coursing through our veins. More orgasmic. "Nothingburger" is the ultimate trifecta of streams of mis, dis and mal synergistically crossed to send our brains into a black hole of "nothing to see here" from which there is no escape or even a desire to.
Cue media leapfrogging from "baseless right-wing misinformation conspiracy theory" straight to "old news common knowledge nothingburger".
If hard evidence came out tomorrow that Hillary Clinton sent a hit squad to kill Epstein, media would say it's a nothingburger because "everyone has already been saying that for years"
I mean, though, isn’t it kind of a “nothingburger”? Insofar as that if people didn’t realize that the FBI et al were gonna jump all over people posting every second of their lives on various social media sites, then they’re fucking dumb. How is it possible that any of this is surprising?
The fact that the FBI is entwined with Twitter etc is fucked-up, but it’s not shocking. I knew that was gonna happen the first time I saw a chick I was hanging out with post on Facebook, like twelve years ago, that they were with me at a certain bar at a specific time on a specific day (I immediately texted the chick who posted that to tell her to delete that post when I saw it the next morning; I’m certain the FBI or whoever saw my text telling her to delete it, too). That’s what the FBI etc does.
None of this is surprising.
And fuck Twitter. Who gives a shit about fucking Twitter? I can’t think of a more boring, useless, boring (did I mention “boring’?) social media site. Every time I check out Twitter, it’s the same 50 people bitching about the same fucking thing every fucking day. The only people who care about what happens on Twitter are the people who make their livings from it. And I don’t give a fuck about them.
I used to care about Matt, but this “Twitter story” shit is legit boring. Yeah, the FBI is wasting your taxpayer dollars and they’re involved with and monitoring your Twitter posts. If you needed Matt’s “breaking story” to make you aware of that, you’re an idiot. This is not “news.”
Most "people" aren't the retired curmudegeons in this thread with too much time on their hands.
Yeah, sure, we all "knew" all of this. Whatever. But the value of putting the details out is to make the deniability less plausible.
I don't think it ultimately matters because it's not like anyone has a plan for doing anything about this shit, but maybe a larger slice of the normal citizenry, folks with jobs and more hectic lives, will question what they're being told. That's gotta be worth something, right?
It's only worth something if the normals will ask the questions and do something about the answers, which they won't, which is how we got here. But Twitter's dirty laundry diary has been entertaining. It's one thing to watch them scratching their butts and another to see the endless parade of skidmarked tighties. That is worth at least the time it takes to read these once a week.
If nothing else, the takeaway is to remember these people are all clowns and losers and they always fail in the end.
Most people are nothing like awake or paying attention, and that's down to "having to work" and "putting food on their families". That, and during their time in 'school' they were deliberately NOT taught to think, to do the analysis or even how to use logic even at a rudimentary level.
Many others, like my oft mentioned *overeducated friend - are lost in the lies.
Such propaganda victims are unwilling - if not unable, to give up what I call their "CNN, NYT world view" with all that that entails - as that would mean admitting they were wrong about almost everything.
The deep and enduring powers, who use brilliant social scientists in their efforts, trade on all these facts. They play 'us' like fiddles. The system "works" - for them.
*Jacques Ellul, in his masterwork, "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" said that it is the educated who are most vulnerable to propaganda.
"A far more frightening work than any of the nightmare novels of George Orwell. With the logic which is the great instrument of French thought, [Ellul] explores and attempts to prove the thesis that propaganda, whether its ends are demonstrably good or bad, is not only destructive to democracy, it is perhaps the most serious threat to humanity operating in the modern world."
--Los Angeles Times review of Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
Bill, good call on the Jacques Ellul book...a neglected classic. Highly pertinent here.
Thanks! They should teach it in school.
So of course they don't!!
Maybe the House and Senate should "investigate" thru an oversight committee, into possible wrongdoing?
Is Earl Warren available?
Possibly. Might be a bit stiff and cold but never stopped him before.
There are lots of plans. The good ones are not discussed on substack, or any other public forum. Feds are watching us.
Yeah yeah, there's a lot of talk about talk that's allegedly happening somewhere else. Very little action. None of it so far effective. I'd love to see something, anything of any substance, happen. Waiting with bells on. But not holding my breath. The only way out seems to be through, in a soviet union style collapse (or god forbid, something much worse), some decades hence, and until I see anything impressive I'm just gonna plan around that. Talk is cheap. Better not to talk at all anyway. Bad opsec.
Holding your breath won't work. Best to start local.
You write as if none of what is being written about by MT and other has anything to do with your reality.
It doesn't really have much to do with my reality. It's like, I know bad weather is coming and I'm doing my best to prepare for the storm, but I'm not going to go outside and shout at the clouds hoping they turn around or give my life savings to a witch doctor who claims he can fix it.
If someone comes along and demonstrates the will and capacity to stop this from going where it's obviously going, that's great. I'm on board. But I see no evidence of that. Just a lot of big talk from internet tough guys and a very small handful of noble-minded but ultimately ineffectual people trying to do things "the right way". (Real) journalists like Glenn, politicians like Rand Paul. It's not enough, it won't be enough, and it's time to accept that.
Most of the interesting parts of history are stories of bad shit happening. We had a lull for a good couple of decades through the 80s and 90s there where it seemed like the last wave of bad shit was behind us and mistook that for the new normal. It's back. I've made peace with that. I'm not going to fret about it, just going to try to be ready for it. That's all I can do.
Good. Watch this: 🖕
Paid FBI whore.
Yeah, that’s the main thing and maybe the point I was trying (and failed haha) to make: nobody is going to do anything about this. It’s a feature of social media websites, not a bug. I just assume we’re all being watched all the time. It’s kind of one of the reasons why I post all of my weed grows online, as a sorta “Fuck You” to the various government agencies that’re monitoring us.
If anybody was gonna do anything about this, I might be more interested in this “story.” But nobody is. Nobody’s gonna fire the FBI agents who’re wasting their time (and our money) blocking Billy Baldwin’s Twitter account; nobody’s gonna be held accountable for any of this. It would be nice if they were, but they aren’t.
I think it’s just more a matter of: I don’t have the energy for this haha. I mean, how many fucking things can I be pissed off about all at once? Twitter’s dumb; therefore I don’t care about what happens there. I’ll be pissed off about the things that actually affect my life, but Twitter has no bearing on it whatsoever. I understand why Matt might be pissed off about it, but I am not. Or rather, it’s just another in a long line of things that I’m pissed off about. Do we really need story after story about it, though?
We will hold them accountable, when enough people decide to not give up. Apathy is more dangerous than tyranny, because we don't fight apathy. Things will continue to get worse until even the apathetic rise to take action.
When the systems for holding these people accountable are themselves corrupted, when all the checks and balances are broken, there's only one resort left for holding them accountable, and I don't see anywhere near the kind of energy necessary to make that happen, or any inkling that there's a competent and trustworthy person or group ready and able to harness that energy and turn it into action.
The closest we got to that was Trump being elected, which was sort of a lame punchline to a bad joke, but had it not been, in the best case scenario where Trump did as much as he could, it would have been a tiny fraction of what was needed. What you are talking about here isn't solved by passing a few laws or getting the right guy in charge. To fix this, in its advanced state of decrepitude, means reducing it all to rubble and ash and rebuilding from scratch. Nobody's going to do that, and if nobody's going to do that then ... the only way out is through.
Or fix them one at a time. We outnumber them.
And as far as “tyranny” or whatever is concerned, gimme a fucking break. Weird FBI shit on Twitter is absolutely not “tyranny.” It’s fucked up, for sure, but it is not “Tyranny.” Tyranny’s when you get thrown in the gulag and forced to do hard labor for the rest of your life because you criticized the government or whatever. That isn’t what this story is. Nobody’s getting thrown in the gulag.
Jesus… The histrionics of you assholes are fucking ridiculous. Laughable.
If it’s this important to y’all to be super-fucking-pissed about something that really has no bearing on your actual life, more power to you, I guess. And if your living depends on Twitter, I guess that gives you license to be pissed off about this, too. Does your living depend on Twitter?
I’m legit asking you a question right now: does your living depend on Twitter? If it doesn’t, how does this story really and truly affect your life? Were you planning on voting for Trump, but because of the censorship on Twitter, you changed your mind and voted for fucking Biden?
I mean, seriously, if you’re relying on Twitter to get your information, you’ve got bigger problems than the FBI…
They have meds for that. But I recommend meditation. Emotions are distractions. You Need to focus if you want to win. You don't win by getting mad, but by getting even.
Twitter's garbage. The story here is the entire intelligence apparatus acting in a completely lawless manner (what else is new, right?). That's the big deal.
No you're not in gulag. You're not going to gulag any time soon. If you don't do something about things like this, if you wait until it goes that far and people are actually going to gulag, it will be too late.
But it probably already is too late. Institutions like these, of this scale and import, have incredible inertia. The Church Commission was one of the most radical and thorough teardowns of the executive branch in american history and all it managed to be was a speed bump. Slowed them down a few years. They're still going in the same direction, and are miles beyond where they were when that happened. You'd need something ten times the scale of the Church Commission to even slow it down at this point.
I think your problem is you're "living in the moment". You're that guy who starts his car, notices a funny sound and says "eh, it's fine, still seems to be working" and goes about his business. And keeps doing this until the car breaks down, and then wonders what happened. "It just suddenly broke down and now my whole day is ruined, geez what bad luck". That's you, and where you're gonna be in ... who knows, a decade? Two? In your retirement? However long it takes.
How will you hold them accountable? Are you running for office? Do you actually expect any of the people who are running for office and who you might vote for to actually do anything about this?
It’s not “apathy,” it’s a grip on reality. Nobody is gonna do anything about this. That’s a fact. It’s an unfortunate fact, but it’s a fact. If you wanna make a statement or whatever, DON’T LOG ON TO TWITTER. Delete your account. Delete all your social media accounts. It really is that simple.
I can live without them. Can you?
I like fighting from the inside. And I don't like to surrender. Twitter isn't theirs. It's mine, too. We surrendered before and suffered an unnecessary pandemic panic and lost a bunch of elections. You shouldn't want that to happen again. If you run and hide, it will.
We hold them accountable by making sure everyone knows their crimes, and forcing prosecutors to act.
If the #TwitterFiles is so ’boring’ and a ’nothingburger’ as you say, why do you write so many paragraphs? Why spend so much time on it? Are you FBI? OGA? Are you posting this on my tax dollars?
Real agents and actual 'bots' exist, most of these characters though, are just enthusiastic true believers, 'good Germans' who are very happy to report on their fellow citizens.
In the camps they called them, "Kapos", which is what they are.
Maybe. But I made a comment on a video hosted on Tim Poole's IRL Youtube page to abolish the FBI this morning; the video was IRL's take on the FBI calling Matt Taibbi's reporting 'misinformation'. A reply was posted to my comment to contact someone on a Telegram to 'enlighten them' further (their words). The account had as its Avatar Tim Poole's pic on an account made earlier this year and with 4 subscribers. I responded: 'How was the FBI Christmas Party, did you get cash or a gift card?' My post was removed. I did it again, again taken down a few minutes later. It's not Tim Poole, but it is someone with Youtube take-down permissions.
Most comments sections all over the internet have been systematically removed. That because power was sick and tired of getting "talked back to". The few that are remaining are routinely censored, both by humans and algorithms.
Free speech is something that want to end completely. Wokeism is covert censorship. They will come for substack too, bet on it.
He's obviously a Dem troll trying to get people not to care about freedom of speech or the rule of law.
It's the difference between an unsubstantiated, knee-jerk opinion and a claim supported by evidence that's more credible than the rock-solid testimony of the "chick you were hanging out with."
It goes far beyond "wasting taxpayer dollars." It is the systematic removal of political opinions that the security state doesn't like. It is the state doing an end-around the First Amendment by recruiting communications companies to do their censorship for them.
Not all of us are as omniscient and black pilled as you apparently are.
Do you really log on to Twitter for all the latest news, though? I mean, like I said, I couldn’t care less about fucking Twitter. Every time I go on there, it’s the same people bitching about the same shit. Literally, there is zero difference between what’s being posted on Twitter today and what was being posted on Twitter five years ago. It’s the same. Exact. Shit.
I understand WHY this is an important story. Obviously, government agencies having an outsized hand in what is or isn’t allowed to be posted is totally fucked up. But it isn’t surprising. And I just don’t give a shit about Twitter. Or Facebook. Or Instagram. Or Tik Tok. I turned off all of my social media (except for the comments section on Taibbi’s substack haha) a couple years ago and it’s been amazing.
And I don’t know (or care) what the fuck “black-pilled” means. Does that mean “people who’ve come to the realization that social media is just another form of stoking faux outrage”? If it does, then yeah, I guess I’ve been black-pilled…
Twitter kept me up to date on everything that I was interested in. Shitting on "Twitter" is akin to shitting on "libraries" because they have romance novels and People magazine.
Twitter is the world.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20black%20pill
The black pill
The black pill = hopelessness
When you take the black pill, you realize that nothing is going to get better. All you can do is lie down and rot in solitude.
Nice to know this rabbit hole is so deep that people are even paid to shit on people like Matt directly on his substack. You are basically proving why this is such a huge story.
"Methinks he doth protest too much."
https://backlinko.com/twitter-users
Chick Texter!
You nailed it! Twitter reaches like 50 people. And it's boring. Sound analysis!, With these incontrovertible facts, nothing the government does on/with/through/to Twitter can be illegal. Ever!
And your point about everyone knowing what the government does and therefore it can't be bad. An intellectual gem! Yeah, fuck twitter.
Keep on posting, minitiger! And growing weed! Your analysis is a treat to behold.
Don't be fooled MLR, we are dealing with a concerted Deep State effort to tamp this story down...the inane comments are designed to distract, deflect, and minimize the damage.
Quite. The alphabet is easy to spot, when dressed in civilian drag.
"Twitter is among the top 3 social networking apps in the United States. And boasts close to 400 million users.
You’ll find out the latest information on Twitter demographics and usage data on this page. After reading some of these stats, it should be clear why Twitter’s market cap is over $46 billion.
Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll learn below:
Twitter statistics (Top Picks)
Twitter users
Daily active Twitter users
Usage growth over time
Ranked 17th: Most popular social media worldwide
Twitter users by country
Most popular Twitter accounts
User demographics
Twitter usage reasons
Twitter daily usage
Consumer perceptions on Twitter for digital trust
Gaming as a topic on Twitter
Most popular hashtags
Most tweeted emojis
Twitter by the money"
https://backlinko.com/twitter-users
So "who cares?" heh
I want to see pictures of this "weed". lol
minitiger: There's a difference between a reasonable suspicion or inference and a confirmation.
It's the difference between probable cause and proof, between a guilty and non-guilty verdict. Pretty important distinction.
All true, try telling that to a drone, or an agent.
Hmmm....so the Deep State basically controlling social media is "boring"....nothing to see here, just change the channel if you want some entertainment.
Guess the next interation is "boring nothingburger."
If people who work for the federal govt. are using their "position" to influence an election, I wouldn't say this is a nothingburger. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd say this violates our constitution, the letter or the spirit, and is probably illegal.
I am a lawyer. I agree with everything you said. Everything about this feels sleazy and filthy. Criminal or not I cannot say. But it sure has the stink of it all over the place.
Law is only as valuable as it is enforceable. Our DoJ and FBI have shattered confidence in the fairness of the law. They deny until caught and once caught the seek to justify.
I've seen this many times... interrogating criminals. Deny, when that fails, justify. It isn't rocket science, it is human nature.
Now give the inquisitors weapons, prison, and most importantly... the overwhelming weight of the federal budget.
Federal charges don't go to trial. Less than 5% go to trial. Is any opinion/predictive industry of any kind ever 95% accurate?
We are boiling the frog slowly.
There needs to be guardrails, and probably the only way that's going to happen is if members of the House and Senate pass legislation that puts handcuffs on govt. agencies. I don't think I'm going to hold my breath. Maybe the Twitter Files will light a fire.
One can hope. The focus on and stifling political opponents, abusive demonstrations of power (thinking Roger Stone's arrest), the lopsided nature of resources (also widely abused), etc., give reason for the need to reform. But the fact that agencies within the DOJ freely abuse their authority makes it feel very unlikely.
Our Civil service doesn't work for the government or political parties they are civil servants not political hacks. The Deputy Prime Minister is the only Deputy Minister who is Political. Our Deputy Finance Minister is Apolitical. There is corruption there always is but not on the scale we see in America where it is the government of kleptocrats and oligarchs and legal pedants.
I used to work for Public Safety.
Everything you said is wrong.
The myth of Kanadian superiourity is just that.
74 and still a clueless true believer.
Our federal civil service collects paychecks issued by the federal government.
Why? Because the civil service works for the government. They are largely wannabe political hacks, apparatchiks, looking for a bonus prize through political hackery.
Any chance you could repost the rest of your comments in English. You seem to not be a native speaker.
Like I just told him, I've been in Ottawa for over 30 years.
He has no clue.
"I used to care about Matt"
Prove it.
Could you please clean up your language. Vomit mouth doesn't make your post more intelligent.
I have a football game as background. I grew up in Canada's largest city at the time Montreal. I live next to the Appalachian Trail here in Quebec. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the silence. People make noise especially when keeping silent. Football is about nothing I can write without distraction.
I was never meant to write. I cannot direct a pen or pencil. I got more ink in my mouth and clothes than I ever got on paper. I don't do tools. My keyboard is large and multicoloured but promised a mystic philosopher on his death bed I would try to write my story.
I am not Down's syndrome or even your average Joe. I had a PhD vocabulary and a genius in abstract mathematics when I was but a child. I speak well , I am above average in stature, and I can pretend to be sophisticated with the best of them.
I learned never to use those words but Americans are tired of Newspeak.
In 1905 Mark Twain said: Every sane person on earth knows the Russian Royals should all be assassinated but no one dares say it. I am too lazy to look up the exact quote here and transcribe
http://www.twainquotes.com/Russia.html
Twain loved the Russian people I suspect Taibbi is having his Twain moment with America.
At this moments archaeologists are discovering curses were among the earliest written records in human history.
Darwin is smiling down on us!
Twain wrote about evolution. He understood Darwin evolution isn't design it is natural selection. It isn't progressive it isn't regressive it is a roll of the dice like the great book of Job tells us. It ain't history it is great literature. "Curse God and die" were the words of Job's comforters."
Divine justice is just a roll of the dice. Curses are an APPROPRIATE RESPONS
Bad thinking makes bad writing...still, your language is "merde-y".
As is most output from current version AI chatbots...nice description, BTW, Tom S...spot on...
I don't do Facebook I don't know how to twitter I am just learning how to communicate with abstract characters. Phones are way beyond my understanding yet I know the technology. I always have I just don't know how they are supposed to increase our understanding of the only thing that matter which is who we are.
Metaverse is the opposite, of universe no wonder we lose understanding of each other.
I am me. I am autistic which is not nearly as important as loving who I am.
I don't need sympathy or repair I am happy to be me but the journey to where I am hasn't been easy for me or anybody that I know and love,
I am no troll I write only to please myself. I write satire because life is comedy not tragedy. I only write my truth because I can no longer lie to myself.
I grew up a recluse because I am overwhelmed by the universe my wife and I are reclusive because your society doesn't let us breathe. Our world is human and computers are as banal as it gets.
Real history is written by writers not Kings and oligarchs. There is no history in the Bible. Who but Snake Oil purveyors can convince anyone it was history?
Irving Layton was telling me about the FBI and CIA 60 years ago and my father was telling me about Reagan's betrayal of his Guild members to Gman Hoover 70 years ago.
I know who created the internet some were family working for your government. They never studied philosophy they were scientists and mathematicians. They were taught believing in Flying Spaghetti monsters was a human thing to do but America told them it was pragmatic not reactionary. We are reactionary we are biological not binary.
There is no such thing as justice in the universe and only men decide on our justice.
The gods must of necessity be crazy.
What other secrets does "everybody know", and how do they "know" it?
Please share!
If you "knew" it before there was objective evidence, you jumped the gun.
So many claiming that they "knew" this, that or the other thing.
They "believed", on the basis of no real evidence, they "supposed", they "guessed".
Unless a belief is based on hard evidence, it's pretty much meaningless.
Millions of Democrats and 'liberals' "knew" that Hunter's laptop was an "NKVD" "disinfo operation", as it had all the "hallmarks".
"Epistemology? How the fuck does it work??" - most people
You don't grow weed. Good try though.
"Rebels" are over in aisle seven. lol
Could you please clean up your language. Vomit mouth doesn't make your post more intelligent.
I have a football game as background. I grew up in Canada's largest city at the time Montreal. I live next to the Appalachian Trail here in Quebec. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the silence. People make noise especially when keeping silent. Football is about nothing I can write without distraction.
I was never meant to write. I cannot direct a pen or pencil. I got more ink in my mouth and clothes than I ever got on paper. I don't do tools. My keyboard is large and multicoloured but promised a mystic philosopher on his death bed I would try to write my story.
I am not Down's syndrome or even your average Joe. I had a PhD vocabulary and a genius in abstract mathematics when I was but a child. I speak well , I am above average in stature, and I can pretend to be sophisticated with the best of them.
I learned never to use those words but Americans are tired of Newspeak.
In 1905 Mark Twain said: Every sane person on earth knows the Russian Royals should all be assassinated but no one dares say it. I am too lazy to look up the exact quote here and transcribe
http://www.twainquotes.com/Russia.html
Twain loved the Russian people I suspect Taibbi is having his Twain moment with America.
At this moments archaeologists are discovering curses were among the earliest written records in human history.
Darwin is smiling down on us!
Twain wrote about evolution. He understood Darwin evolution isn't design it is natural selection. It isn't progressive it isn't regressive it is a roll of the dice like the great book of Job tells us. It ain't history it is great literature. "Curse God and die" were the words of Job's comforters."
Divine justice is just a roll of the dice. Curses are an APPROPRIATE RESPONSE.
As of December 2022, Twitter's audience accounted for over 368 million monthly active users worldwide.
Do you have any other questions?
miles,
Could you please translate that into a language I might understand like English or French?
Have you watched Blazing Saddles one too many times? I am an old man I am sorry it sounds just like Frontier Gibberish to me.
You know we Quebecers are very slow to catch on.
Miles seems somewhat less than the ideal gentleman, and I apologize on behalf of humanity for his disrespect. The point he was making is that when the media class cannot deny something, they will “reframe“ it, Trying to diminish its importance no matter how egregious it might be, if it reflects poorly on things they try to protect
And Merry Christmas, again I apologize on behalf of humanity for this person who seems to have fallen below the highest ideals of which mankind is capable.
No I'm serious, Moe has talked a few times about his autism. Plus he consistently trolls my posts, so I see no reason not to point out the elephant in the room
Dudes probably a fed.
I was coming back to try to edit out the word "asshole", for which I apologise. And of course i did not know the history. It seemed a rather ungentlemanly thing to say on Christmas, but I understand now.
Oh, I CAN edit. Haha. I did
AI chatbot output is improving...
I recently spent hours 'chatting' with ChatGPT.
That AI is more eloquent and plausibly conversive then some here.
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
I assume that the CIA/NSA has similar and far better tech. (NSA is typically 10 years ahead of civilian systems)
People step into the arena of ideas and debate and then they cry foul when someone gives them a little kick.
Sucks to be them.
"If you can't stand the heat . . ."
Miles, I got what you were saying first read. Not sure what the other two we're reading?
Are you accidentally STUPID.. or are you just pretending? Just like Russiagate, the lab leak "Conspiracy Theory".. when the facts come out... "IT'S OLD NEWS".. Nothing to see here, move along..
I'm sure the autism doesn't help either
I'm moving more towards your side, Miles, or at least I understand your exasperation. I am tempted, below Monsieur Québec's post below, to reply "'Twas brillig and the slithy toves...." Which of course is mostly true, as it clearly 'twas brillig. QED
I didn't have to look up the Quote I am a huge fan of Walruses and Carpenters and and cabbages and kings. I highly recommend subscribing to the Walrus. It is time to discus ships and sails and sealing wax and cabbages and kings.
Why is a raven like a writing desk
https://medium.com/@writerbites/why-is-a-raven-like-a-writing-desk-solved-the-ultimate-guide-ceb188728932
Another right answer in an infinite number of correct answers
That is logic
Yes it doesn't help at all. I live in universe of logic. I don't understand believing in believing. I believe in evolution because Noah's Ark just ain't up my alley. Science is the study of evolution whether astrophysics or biology. Darwin proposed a mechanism for evolution in life forms. I've been to Alberta's Royal Tyrell Museum some of those ancient creatures didn't need Noah's ark.
It is hard to organize a conspiracy on a ship of fools. Everybody wants to share in their epiphany.
Yes I am labelled autistic but I am me. I am a normal human being and I am what I am. I don't need to be cured . I don't need to be pitied I made it this far
and life is still a lot of fun.
I still have much to learn and I know what I know.
I respond to your comments because I am trying to make sense of them. They are illogical. I am a genius at logic and retarded illogically. Does that make sense?
I have no understanding of what you are saying and I know you are sincere in your illogic. Help me understand Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
If you have autism and know that you sometimes have trouble understanding complex meaning in common human speech, you may fail to perceive that you are being offensive by saying to others "Could you repeat that in English, please?" But you are. Remind yourself that others speak English perfectly well and sometimes you don't fully understand it. They will perceive you as insulting them by you suggesting they are not speaking English.
Too much "perceiving" sensitivity. Move on and thicken your skin.
? Not sure how this implies I am offended, as opposed to trying to offer him helpful info. I have found that for people with spectrum disorders, flatly laid out info about what is going on is helpful because they arent perceiving it but they do follow "logic". If someone blushes, gets up in a huff and leaves the table, they dont get it. But if someone left behind at the table says "they did that because you said this and it offended them in this way", that can lead to insight for them.
Thank you for the question
I have no problems understanding I have problems with the reason for the illogic and the the beliefs.
If ignorance is bliss why are we so depressed?
I don't know what autism is supposed to be.
Autisme Quebec says
Autism is what we are not who we are.
I live in Quebec and Greta Thunberg is our Joan of Arc.
We know she doesn't know how to lie.
You can't be any more crazy than not being able to lie to yourself.
Then stop reading them.
I like Miles comments and I suspect he likes reading and responding.That suits me fine and I think Miles feels about the same. I know Alberta and I love Alberta. It swing left and right and it still works. Quebec works always going in one direction. He argues and makes his and I make mine. I listen and I suspect so does he. I subscribe to the Munk debates and the MSM debate was the worst of the worst and they even featured the idiot Jordan Peterson partner with the intellectual giant Stephen Fry. That was a debate as was the one where Yanis Veroufakis had the Brooks Brothers David and Arthur soil their drawers before the camera.
I suspect we'd enjoy each other's company over several pipe fulls.
Quebecers and Albertans love the game that Ontario and Saskatchewan take far too seriously.
I understood Miles' post just fine, it makes perfect sense if you're following politics and the news. You might not agree with the content but the language is perfectly understandable. Besides, you could have avoided being a dick and just moved on.
What about Manitoba?
How was the FBI Christmas Party? Did you get a cash or gift card for you bonus?
Pay no attention to Moe, he's just playing the role of the idiot savant to help run cover for the police state regime of another country.
Don't know if he is autistic or not...maybe disingenuous is more accurate...as well as pathetic.
WHY ARE PEOPLE RESPONDING TO AN OBVIOUS GOVERNMENT TROLL ACCOUNT IN A THREAD ON THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY MATT HAS EVER FILED??
Great point.
Distraction though, is how it is done!
"HEY DON'T LOOK AT THOSE HOMELESS PEOPLE! LOOK OVER THERE!! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"
Works like a charm.
*FWIW Moe seems pretty real, if messed up, to me. For sure he is annoyingly trollish
Thank you Paciificus.
I get checks every month from the govenment so I can sit here and bamboozle powerful intellects like yourself with my musings on the human condition. I just wish they hadn't made me suffer so long because I really can't digest all the bull people like yourself want to propagate.
I am a pretty poor excuse for an idiot savant.
I am pretty impressive in conversation and problem solving.
I am not Dustin Hoffman in Rainman I am more Charly after the operation and always was. That is why Autism is said to be wide spectrum.
I love the Twain quote
Some people make people happy wherever they go and some people make people happy whenever they go.
People smile when they say hello and leaving is always a chore.
I make people smile with my presence and the computer allows me to express truth which is not always pleasant.
Dustin Hoffman was brilliant in Rainman but Charly is a great movie
and Cliff Robertson understood his character.
Algernon was more than a mouse he was Donald Trump before, now, and forever after. Oscar Wilde's character was truly a loser a
"wee coewerin timourous beastie." R Burns Ode to a Mouse
Maybe that is why in America Twain is considered a comedy writer and Oscar Wilde; well let's not got into that. I do have a mustache but I have a white unkempt beard that goes without saying.
You're expressing an "unpleasant truth" Moe, but it's not the one that you seem to think you are expressing...the truth you tell is more along the lines of a smug, entitled, literary reference-dropping elitist who, like your hero Trudeau, is more than willing to shit all over the truckers who make your latte and wine-fueled existence possible...someone who welcomes the looming techno-tyranny Matt is describing because it is controlled by what they perceive to be their side and to their benefit ...yes, a very "unpleasant truth" indeed. Maybe you ought to take a look at it, and yourself, and stop attempting to cause confusion on this comment page.
You labeled yourself. Not just once, but many many times.
I wear the appellation with pride. Thank you for understanding.
Yes, I know you do, except when you complain about.
"Consistency? How does it work?"
Moe... maybe dig deeper. Darwin offers a very useful explanation of how/why things change over time. But his theory excludes, by definition, the questions, "how and why life at all?" Things need to exist before they can change. Short version: evolution is boring but the origin of life is not.
I don't often hear dig deeper. Usually I hear come down from clouds and join us here on Earth. I like talking astrophysics and metaphysics. I talk to trees and let the trees answer and I travel the stars. That is my universe. I have been acknowledge in Doctoral dissertation on measuring the distance between stars.
Darwin is about there is not two identical creatures or particles in universe and change is the only constant.
The future will unfold all we can do is design it according to our desires and hope for the best no two people are the same.
When educated people pay attention to quacks and charlatans like Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon evolution does seem not at all progressive.
The origin of life? We are in the midst of Covid. A virus is an organic molecule it is prelife. We have its genomic map. We are the evolution of a virus. We are stardust.
Darwin was a naturalist.. he wasn't much concerned with (or likely aware of) "particles".
Some people actually do share an identical set of DNA. Making them genetically the same.
Evolution is not progressive. We don't much bother research the mutations and other changes that lead to a species's extinction. But, it certainly happens. Not all changes are positive quite rather most are negative and those with those negative mutations burn out over a few generations because the mutation makes passing on those genes less likely.
Thank you Demon Hunter
It took me forever to believe I could write
Thank you for replying
I am really enjoying responding.
It was fatiguing not responding to being called a fictional character or worse. I don't get paid for this. I enjoy doing this I don't need any more money. We live very frugally and our income exceeds our expenditures. Our grandchildren have chosen their own paths and they have all they need materially we can only give them our love they must follow their own stars. They are healthy and educated and responsible. I don't think any of them believe in Noah's Ark or Messiah or Meshiah. If things don't work out we are here and here we take take care of everybody. No questions asked and no judgement allowed. Life is far too challenging.
C'mon Moe, stop the pose of the befuddled old guy and keep it real...as Obama would say, "you're better than that."
Obama was my State Senator . I lived across the Midway from the Law School. My wife voted and donated to his every election. I met him on several occasions and I watched him make decisions I thought were totally wrong but I never suspected him of deliberately lying. He was incurably human. I belonged to the Temple across the street in Kensington but I lived in Woodlawn. The Temple was very interesting I loved the Rabbi and the congregants were about the dumbest creatures on the planet. I was brought up to hate the the rabbi and love the congregants but usually the rabbi is a wise man of Chelm and the congregants enjoy a good laugh. The Temple was the Wise Men of Chelm and the Rabbi was just a dummy like me.
I am a befuddled old guy but I was much more befuddled yesterday when I was young.
Kafka said there is a Messiah born in every generation. I don't live in Kafka's time. I have many Messiahs. I have the world's greatest library at my finger tips. I suspect that is a very frightening reality to many on this planet.
I trust Obama but I trust democracy more. I don't believe in the rule of law. I believe in the rule of Justice.
In Canada Justice rules. Here is Supreme Justice Kagan and Canadian Supreme Court Justice now retired Abela talking Supreme Judicial Philosophy when RBG was still hanging on.
Kagan really got it wrong but you know it was an honest mistake.
She is a brilliant philosopher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyAF4Zq9m2o
He mentions it almost every time he posts.
Crutches are great, until you try to beat someone with them.
Not to mention, I think it’s funny how Matt, Greenwald etc will throw out the occasional,”Oh, by the way, Trump’s White House also asked various social media sites to delete certain things, but let’s get back to the Democrats!” tweet and post and whatever in the middle of a thirty-tweet bullshit shitstorm.
I hate the Dems just as much as I hate the GOP, but this shit is a fucking JOKE. I just keep visualizing the conversation between Matt and Greenwald, like,”Hey, if you start writing about how the media is biased towards Democrats and Republicans are being ‘victimized,’ you’ll gain a lot of followers and new subscribers!”
Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi don't need me or anyone else to defend them, but it seems really hateful and stupid to ascribe these extreme mercenary motives to them, as if their work is some kind of scam or con and they're just in it for the loot.
They both have displayed amazing integrity and real dedication to their craft for many years now, and that doesn't mean they're always right, but when it comes to media and whorishness they aren't even in the top thousand.
If you think this is all boring and stupid, why are you here wasting your time reading and commenting? Your comment says a lot more about you than it does about anybody else.
CP, don't take the bait, do not take these points at face value, these guys are Deep State operatives trying to distract, deflect, and discredit the work of Matt and Glenn...but we're not going to let them get away with it.
yeah it was late, i was tired, made the mistake of feeding the troll. Merry Christmas!
They are Martians trying to take over the Earth taking great pleasure in driving us insane.
I've been called a troll too many times. I am obviously no troll. Trolls speak another language.
I think troll sounds similar to Pacificus or have I made a mistake in my logic?
Why am I here “wasting my time and commenting”? Because I paid for this shit, the same as you. I love Matt, have plenty of his books on my shelves, read them over and over, subscribed to his substack pretty much as soon as he left Rolling Stone (when did you start subscribing?) but this Twitter bullshit is just that: bullshit.
My comment doesn’t say anything about me other than,”This is not an interesting topic, mostly because twitter’s fucking stupid.” You know, like I said in my comment. I wonder what your comment “says” about you…
Twitter is definitely fucking stupid and pointless to everyone other than twitter addicts. But the FBI and "OGA" are flagrantly violating the law here, which is if nothing else funny.
Here in Canada, our news outlets (now, sadly, funded by the gov't) and our own Prime Minister were feeding us information that the #FreedomConvoy truckers were all "racists, misogynists, homophobes" and even "transphobes" who were "taking up space - and do we tolerate these people?" (Last quote directly from our Prime Minister). It was ONLY because of the information shared in Twitter that I became curious to understand what the heck was happening in Ottawa, so I drove 6 hours and froze my toes with the rest of them, and partied, had fun, watched homeless people be fed by the truckers, and listened to music. Most peaceful, gentle protest I've ever attended.
I also rely on Twitter to get access to accurate information about covid, even though it had censored much of it. But if you caught the info fast enough, you were good to go.
Twitter is vital to working our way around lies the legacy media told, and I do thank Elon Musk for buying it.
Most Canadian media is American owned.
This fact is one of the main reasons that klueless kanadians, en masse, now all HATE Russia and are slavering for a war on a country that has never, not once, done a single thing to Canada.
Thank you for going to see the truth for yourself!
Here in Canada, not all news outlets are funded by government and your description of the Ottawa truckers convert is akin to the GOP describing the folks who entered the capital building as “tourists”. You were never in Ottawa.
I live in Truck town Canada. My neighbour commutes to his truck not his office. I talk to truckers daily. Tim Horton's is a place to talk to truckers they can't use the drive thru. Most of our truckers support both Legault (certainly far more powerful than Trudeau) and they support Trudeau. We have injustice seekers. They are are friends but we wished them a fond fair well as they headed north to Quebec City.
Our truckers are middle class economically some even have PhDs. It is hard protesting when you and family go vacation round the world every year and Quebec says health, education and welfare are rights not privileges.
Our truckers love rules. It protects them and their families
They especially love those city dwellers who stand up for their rights and privileges without consulting them on the issue. Those truckers, what do they know?
There are better ways than twitter and always have been. I appreciate that people use it for things like this, but the work you do making twitter work for you would be better spent if invested once into finding those better ways instead of fighting a system designed to use you as a data product while propagandizing you. Twitter's design inherently makes people angry, stupid and addicted to using twitter. It's a digital narcotic. Nothing short of a fundamental redesign is going to change that, and its business model (with or without Elon's changes) makes that incredibly unlikely.
Twitter is stupid and pointless. Except - it became the place where all the cool kids in what passes for journalism went to decide their take on this story or that, which influenced their “hot takes” on how they would phrase their opeds or phrase their reportage. Twitter is how a presidential candidate who got arrested for civil rights work got slandered as a racist. Twitter became the echo chamber for the chattering class - and it turns out that was all controlled by our three letter spooks. To dismiss this as stupid or unimportant boggles the mind.
I would only add that to get why it was such an excellent echo chamber, one needs to see the Social Dilemma and understand how AI algos for social media trigger engagement viabdopamine blasts. Apply that within the chattering media personages you cite and it explains the depth and persistence of this cultish effect.
The talking heads have been integrated with the alphabet soup since long before Twitter existed. Gaining control over the conversation on Twitter was just an operational thing, and Twitter's design as well as its leadership made that exceptionally easy. Yes it's interesting that they flagrantly violated the law to do it, but no it's not at all surprising and anybody with a nose for this kind of activity saw it from a mile away. The only difference now is we have copious documentation proving it, so we're no longer "conspiracy theorists".
It Twitter is itself a 'nothingburger', then why are state agents expending so much time and energy controlling it?
I look forward to your reply.
Exactly. Why are they doing this? Dabs+black coffee+speculation=fun for hours
States would never pass up the opportunity to control a propaganda skinner box that doubles as a mass surveillance tool. Twitter is a wet dream for the alphabet soup, and always has been (same goes for other social media, much of which was partially funded by CIA fronts).
Fortunately only about 60 million morons worldwide ever fell for the Twitter scam (the other 200 million odd are bots or inactive). The rest apparently could tell it was stupid and pointless, if not dangerous, from the start.
Bullshit.
Well spoken. And articulate too. Why defend your position when you can just cuss?
Minitger you are trying too hard..."paid for this shit"..."love Matt"..."read them over and over"...etc. But this "Twitter bullshit is just that bullshit." Just not plausible given you professed admiration for Matt, , and plausibility (as you probably know) is they key to being an effective spreader of disinformation.
Your comment didn't say "Twitter is lame and irrelevant and therefore this story is pointless". Your comment said "Taibbi and Greenwald downplay the both sides aspect of this story"
They make shit up in their head. And then they think it's real.
He's a troll whose mission is to get everyone else to "not care."
Dude, if you can't see the larger issue then you're not thinking deep enough. What Matt has done is verify, not only govt agencies but the media's complicity of NOT reporting. There are no institutions that can be trusted, only single reporters working on their own at the commission of a billionaire car maker; that will be news for large swaths of the country.
Additionally, conspiracy is now becoming main stream because the public is starting to realize they've been lied to for at least ten years and will soon see that number grow. These disclosures are far worse than Watergate, the seeming standard to judge political corruption, and Watergate is child's play compared. This is the whole fucking government spying on the whole fucking country. Then actively manipulating the conversation, or limiting what can be seen. There is no comparison in any Western government, certainly any that call themselves democracies.
Many of us have lived a life knowing full well what Matt would find, it does not surprise us. But, it will have a tremendous influence going forward as more and more voter's distrust the election system, the media, or any government agency, not to mention a political party.
This is basically the end of the US. Countries are built on confidence and trust. The erosion of confidence has now reached critical mass and we will see further calls for separation from the Union or worse, some kind of real war, not the keyboard battles on Twitter.
These disclosures are a turning point. What is worse is the verification that our government will stop at nothing to keep power and it's hegemony, even so far as controlling simple conversations.
All governments end and we are going to watch the largest most powerful in history disintegrate in real time, in our life time. We get to write the history
And then, when these states secede in order to form a more perfect union or whatever the hell else they think they’ll accomplish, what do you think will happen? Freedom from tyrannical government? Right. Can’t wait to see the AFS (Aggregate of Free States) form a country. Let’s see-everyone from 5 years old on will be required to carry arms, only home schooling allowed, wokeness will be outlawed, healthcare will be virtually non-existent and they’ll frack until the earth beneath them will no longer support buildings. They’ll build a giant encompassing wall.
I see their brighter, freer future in a rebellious Utopia as highly delusional. Eventually, governments always tax, always do oversight, people refer to them as “they.” We’re imperfect as humans, we want more than our neighbors have, we make laws enabling the rapacious to prey on the weak. It will be no different in the AFS. Everyone hates government. It’s “Them.”
If government overreach in surveillance is going to be the end of us, do tell me: other than having your Twitter feed surveilled, what personal harm have you or anyone you know experienced in these dark times (from government)? Is Matt allowed to do his work though he’s revealing stuff the FBI doesn’t want revealed? You talk about the country as if it’s Iran or China. I don’t think we’re there yet. The people who are trying to start a civil war are still on the fringes. There are plenty of talkers, but the guys marching around in the woods doing paramilitary exercises and planning to storm the
castle are a tiny minority. They’ve always been among us. They don’t indicate dissolution of the country.
Good journalism is seeking out and working a story-exposing corruption and collusion in finance, in government, etc. That’s what Matt does. I don’t think he believes we’ve reached the End Times here, Midnight in America or whatever. I think he got a good story, has worked hard on it, and is attempting to bring it out into the ever disinfecting sunlight. No need for apocalyptic predictions.
Neither the Soviet Union nor China started out with: Hey! Let's kill millions of people and terrorize the rest. Societal takeover started out slowly and worked its way to a mad frenzy that devastated hundreds of millions of lives and, if it didn't kill them, destroyed their dreams, their families, their mental health, and more.
The great thing about America is that people like Matt -- for now, at least -- with the help of Elon Musk can bring to our attention the direction our society is headed.
My family fled the invasion of Russia and Stalin's Mad Dream (well, the part that could escape - the rest were sent to Siberia). As America toddles down the path toward totalitarian takeover of a democracy, where can my family go now?
Toddles? From where I sit it's been making some giant leaps.
You're right, of course, but I love the word "toddles"! Merry Christmas.
Maret Jeks: Both started out with wars that killed a lot of people. Lenin was explicit that communism would not be accepted by the people and would need to have it forced upon them from the top down. How did he (and Stalin) accomplish this? Killing millions and terrorizing the rest. It was not a slow process, it was a long process.
China followed the Soviet model fairly closely.
Communism in China started long before Stalin took a strangle hold on the people. Same with China. Started out as a "great" idea to help the hard working person until it wasn't. Mao's efforts didn't take a stranglehold on the population until he began a campaign to get the young people to turn on their elders (parents, teachers, professionals). That was a while after he started to be involved. Lenin and Trotsky preceded Stalin by a bit.
Communism began as an idea in the 1800s. But you're right - Stalin and Mao, once they grabbed the reins of power - were fairly quick and ruthless, but the story of Communism started long before they showed up. My take on things right now is that unless we turn this ship around, we have another 10 years or so before a neo-Stalin or neo-Mao turn up.
Nobody is going to "require" you to carry arms. That will be up to you. I advise it, but advice and requirements aren't the same thing.
Your "we" is doing almost as much heavy lifting here as your "they/them." In response to your points:
1: "We’re imperfect as humans"
Yes, agreed
2: "we want more than our neighbors have"
No, I don't
3: "we make laws enabling the rapacious to prey on the weak"
Not only did I have no say in the manufacture of these laws, I strongly object to them
"The people who are trying to start a civil war are still on the fringes."
There is a person using apocalyptic rhetoric about a civil war sitting in the White House -- not exactly "the fringes." Maybe it's all metaphorical. Hope so.
All nations end one way or another. Rome lasted 1000 years only to crash and burn in 7. Interestingly. It too fell from within.
The UK was a nation the sun never set on, yet it collapsed fast with the arrogant former colony's being its successor.
You too don't seem to understand what Confidence means to a nation. Once confidence is lost in a country's election system to the degree we will see very shortly, the results are usually violence or new government being imagined.
And, this is only ONE issue we are facing. Never have we had so many issues happening at the same time, and in unison with other nations around the world.
We will see many places go through the same shake up that we will experience. It's really too bad people like yourself don't pay attention to history. We do, as humans, repeat the same mistakes as generations forget the past.
The US has only years left not decades. You seem to think this is just another good story. It's not, it is handwriting on the wall.
Yes, I think it’s another good story.
Watergate was a good story. The entirety of the Hoover years was a good story. The Bush torture doctrine and the insane Iraq and Afghanistan wars were other stories. Our proxy war in Ukraine is another story. Iran/Contra was a good story. Snowden’s NSA revelations was a good story. Lindbergh and America First was a good story. The Tuskegee experiments was a good story. Western expansionism post civil war was a good story (with the accompanying genocide.)
All of these things revealed awful truths about our country. Why is it that THIS one (which we get to hear about from Matt) will be the last domino to fall, sending our country to the wastepile of history??
Me, I carry on and am grateful to Jeebus that I don’t own stock in Tesla. I think Elon needs a LONG vacation and some stabilizing meds.
You seem to live with colored glasses. Matt is not the last domino. Matt (along with others covering the story) is ONE of the last dominoes. When you add all the issues together no country will stand. Right now the US is promoting a war that could open up on several fronts, the US will never win that. Little known fact is the Pentagon and the Neocons in DC are in a battle over Ukraine. The generals understand the risk, the Neocons want to destroy Russia. That's only one other of dozens of problems. We have never lived in a period where the political apparatus has been so stupid, and we have been so-in-the-dark as to who is running the country. Every single industry is under attack whether it is food, energy, etc.
So put your head in the sand if you want, I don't care.
Interesting food for thought: in hindsight we can put little dots on a timeline and say "Rome started here and ended there". But how many people thought of themselves as "Romans" before the first dot, and how many after the last dot, and for how long? How many in between thought they lived in the same Rome they were born into, and how many thought that "old Rome" was dead and something new had replaced it? What would they think about where historians put the two marks on the timeline? How would they predict where those marks were going to be made, millennia later?
Supposing that makes the lifespan of Rome and the pace of its collapse a little less obvious and definite, what does that say about us? Are we really watching the end of an american regime that started in 1787? Or is this like, the end of the third or fourth dynasty, or the post-apocalyptic ruins of an america that died a century ago and we just don't know it?
If this regime collapses, will people in 50 years, living under whatever new regime springs up in its place, call themselves Americans? Does LJN, below, live in the United States he was born into, or is he too close to the subject to see it clearly?
For the record my point of view is the post-apocalyptic one. The whole american experiment failed a while ago, and the culture it engendered is long gone. We've been through at least two radical reinventions of the US regime so far. Three if you count the post-civil war regime separate from the prior, four if you count the short-lived articles of confederation prior to the constitution.
So .. is this catastrophic, or is this just a seasonal change? Maybe it's an opportunity. Maybe it's the apocalypse. Guess someone a thousand years from now will have a strong opinion about it.
Much of my understanding comes from Martin Armstrong of Armstrong economics. He's created an uncanny model that predicts the future off of cycles. You can mathematically see the cycles of nations rising and falling. Rome's case it had different eras, as you mentioned, all coinciding with the model.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/models/
Yes, I live in the country I was born into.
I was born in 1954. In its own way it was a time of great change: the building of an interconnected national highway system, the end of “separate but equal” education via Brown vs Board of Ed, the great Commie witch-hunt of Joe McCarthy, the reconfiguring of world powers to deal with an atomic world, the G.I. Bill creating a larger and more robust (white) middle class, etc etc etc.
What strikes me about all of this apocalyptic commentary is this: what’s the main difference between then and now? The really big banana is that now we can know a lot more. The stuff that Matt’s reporting on is stuff that was ALWAYS GOING ON. From the blackouts of real information about and leading up to WW2 including Japanese internment, to the Hoover era, to the Bay of Pigs, to Iran/Contra, to GW Bush’s illegal and outrageous war with “embedded” journalists”- to government, military and post OSA spy craft, there has ALWAYS been corruption, collusion, overreach, etc. The main differences between then and now are twofold-
1. We know a lot more about the real machinations of things because of investigative journalism and leaks/data dumps on the Internet, and
2. Everyone in the world gets to have a profound opinion (I’m not excluding myself) and express it as if it were some sort of brilliant punditry. As always, the loudest voices are heard (thank you Alex Jones, you fucking maniac.)
For those who have just recently had their eyes opened, well, you’re either quite young or very naive.
This nostalgia for a better, more forthright and gentler time in the recent past is complete nonsense, and Matt shouldn’t be a party to it though I fear he is sometimes. We are not so far removed from a much more brutal time in America when there were no jobs and scant bread, and as I said, shit was ALWAYS going on under the radar.
Yes, the end of empire is always possible and no one can predict it perfectly, any more than they can accurately predict the movements of the stock market or the winning lottery number. What is starting to gall me is all this apocalypse porn. Is it really so fulfilling to revel in the idea of the end of this Union?
The alternative to government is anarchy. If you want to live in a post apocalyptic world fighting for scraps in the street, or you think that America 2.0 is going to be your Utopian paradise where freedom from government oversight will be non-existent, you’re both naive and deluded. Eventually, humans return to the mean. Wash, rinse, repeat.
What personal harm? Our single most powerful tool as Americans, our vote, has been manipulated. Digital gerrymandering of the highest order.
No no no. Have the scary men in body armor come to your home and dragged you away? Thrown you in a prison for dissidents, tortured you until you “confessed” to thoughtcrimes? Sent you to a gulag? Poisoned you with polonium?
Citizens United and real-time gerrymandering have manipulated our votes substantially more than the FBI’s use of Twitter et al, and yet we fight on.
They are spending Christmas in solitary confinement near DC while awaiting trial, without ever having had the possibility of bonding out over an almost two-year period, facing potential multiple-year prison sentences for trespassing into a location which law enforcement invited many of them into.
"This is basically the end of the US. Countries are built on confidence and trust. The erosion of confidence has now reached critical mass and we will see further calls for separation from the Union or worse, some kind of real war, not the keyboard battles on Twitter."
An apocalyptic conclusion. I wish I could say that you are wrong.
I agree but I don't see this as apocalyptic so much as opportunity to get it right.
I know my Bible the book of Jonah tells us us even God cannot know the future. Nineveh avoided destruction by changing its constitution.
Sure, and Spiderman has radioactive blood.
Just ♫ take a look, overhead. There goes the spiderman ♫
Lots of End Times enthusiasts in these comments. People really, really need to chill-or find some exercises for cathartic release.
Pacificus I worry when I must totally agree with what you say.
John Ralston Saul said in his Doubter's Companion a Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense published in the early 1990s Cynicism is democracy's greatest threat.
Saul went on to lead PEN International the organization that tries to protect honest journalism through out the world and just like the World Court the USA says fuck the world we are Americans and we will tell you what Press Freedom really means. and what all the news that is fit to print means.
PEN USA rah rah rah. cis boom bah we are number one and your just number two./s
I really do agree 100% what did I get wrong? What did I misunderstand?
I pay directly into a fund that promotes honest journalism ever month. I subscribe much as I sibscribe to Chris Hedges. I don't ask anyone to see the world through my eyes all ask is for some honesty.
As Mark Twain said:
Those that don't read newspapers are uninformed those that do read newspapers are misinformed."
S.C was clever, but those who lack discernment and a healthy skepticism are misinformed whether they read newspapers or not.
Well-said, Phil Davis. It's a lot harder to gaslight someone after they've found out you have your hand on the gas switch. What everybody is discovering now is that our reality is not really reality. Our reality is a manufactured construct, like in Stanislav Lem's "The Futurological Congress"). And nothing can ever be the same now.
You're right. It's over.
It used to be that an election would come around, everyone would debate a little, the election finished and everyone went about their business as usual.
Not anymore. The division and hatred is beyond repair. Extended families can't have holiday meals together, parents are disowning children or the other way around, that BTW we see a lot today.
The tyrannical vaxers openly stated we the unvaccinated should die. These were highly educated people too, not some low life losers.
I follow the Economic Confidence Model by Martin Armstrong. In short it outlines human cycles, also seen in nature. All I can say is it's uncanny in the ability to pinpoint major turning points. January of next year is such a point. Additionally, this is not just the US, it's world wide. The media is still not reporting on massive protests around the world due to elections, inflationary pressure, and pushes by the Green lunatics, as killing farms.
This cannot be put back together, everything is broken.
Thanks Phil,
"It's not over till it's over." My Yogi said it and he never lied."
I was born in yesterday's Quebec. It was theocratic, plutocratic and oligarchic. It was poor and it was backward and it had a revolution.
Today we are prosperous and optimistic even here on the Vermont border. "There is a crack a crack in everything in everything that's how the light gets in" Leonard Cohen "That's how the light gets in"
In Quebec we know there is no such thing as Freedom of Religion. Religion doesn't believe in freedom. In Quebec Bill21 is the law. It commands Freedom from religion. It is what was meant in the establishment clause. I read it in Jefferson's American Bible. Everybody should read the American Bible written by Jefferson the only thing missing in Jefferson's Bible is God.
Only people can bless America. Jefferson was a Deist he believed Jesus the man not Jesus the Roman and Greek demi God. He believed Jesus son of Joseph and Mary and didn't believe in Immaculate conception.
History is not cyclical we are as Newton said "standing on the shoulders of giants."
The great Mark Twain said evolution isn't necessarily progress but it is real and never stops.
It is God's only law of the Universe.
Change is the only constant in my universe.
Caesar said I am as constant as the Northern star.
The Star is a fusion reactor and change is what makes a star a star.
When Fox is calling out the CIA for having killed Kennedy (a story which no one else in the MSM deemed fit to follow up on) you know it is the beginning of the end: https://rumble.com/v20v0me-intel-insider-tells-tucker-carlson-the-cia-was-involved-in-assassination-of.html
Now, as to 911 ...
Your comment is grossly incorrect and probably libelous. Fox did NOT make any such claim of the CIA having killed JFK. They did use the term 'involved'. It is still unclear, and Tucker Carlson's story pointed out, that the CIA is still withholding information that was supposed to have been released in 2017. Also, it's been known since November '63 that Oswald served as a CIA operative so, even if only 'arm's length', the CIA had 'involvement'.
The context of the piece was clearly that the CIA
carried out the killing. Having read “JFK and The Unspeakable”, “The Devil’s Chessboard”, and “Mary’s Mosaic”, this information, for me, is anti-climactic but I recognize that it packs quite the punch for the average citizen.
As for libel, well, I am not worth suing but if the agency were to do it I would look forward to the discovery.
The Pentagon Papers say hello.
I’m not sure these revelations of Twitter/government agencies/media collusion will be a “turning point”.
Half of the country will continue to want to believe it’s a “ nothingburger”.
Most people have poor awareness. Including and maybe especially the most educated. “ Overly miseducated”.
The Democrats have the entire mainstream media and intelligence agency censorship juggernaut running interference for them. You want to see something critical of Republicans, you can go read WaPo or the NYT or the Intercept.
The national security state works outside the political system against anything it perceives as running counter to the "consensus" narrative. Trump is one of those things, so since 2016 its actions have aligned with the Democratic Party. The Dems have been happy to play along, but they don't control things.
Remember that in decades prior the "threat" was from the left, so the security state aligned more with the GOP (the FBI murdering Fred Hampton, for example), and it could easily switch back.
The Dems v GOP arguments (things like the size of the government etc) are within a narrow band, could be resolved easily and/or are irrelevant.
The real political basis of conflict is between the owners of society and everyone else.
This is true. The regime switches sides. As Darryl Cooper put it, if 2016 had been Jeb Bush v. Tulsi Gabbard, the deep state would have backed team R. I hated George W. Bush and would never thought I'd vote Republican, but right now the dissent seems to be happening on the right. https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/author-of-the-mega-viral-thread-on
That's a good example. Imagine if it had been Trump v. Bernie. What kinda shit would they have had to pull then?
We need a third option that is aligned with neither party. Replace the uniparty. Then after that's done, we can argue points of governing philosophy.
I would have liked to have seen the Trump v. Bernie race! And yes, we definitely need more viable parties. I have voted third party more than either Democrat or Republican, but even the largest third parties are just a protest vote.
Consider the weight of a Trump request compared to the alphabet agencies' "requests." The personal request of a President vilified by the entire press and under siege from his first day in office by the very agencies recruiting these communications giants to chase after . . . what, exactly? Political opinions expressed online that they don't like, with the lame BS excuse of "Russian meddling." Every agency wanted Trump out, and they threw everything at him they could in an attempt to lend some credibility to his impeachment and ultimately to throw the election to that walking corpse we now have as a puppet President.
Let that sink in. National security bureaucracies under Biden's regime have been policing online political discussions and getting these lickspittle communications geeks to censor comments they don't like. This is being done with or without the knowledge of Dementia Joe and his handlers.
That ought to explain the emphasis.
Intentionally or not, you are demonstrating another common and annoying deflection. One side, in your narrative Trump and his ship of fools, rant about doing something illegal to the media as part of their (ab)normal daily barrage. The other side, allied with Democrats or perhaps just following their own agenda, actually violates laws and fundamental principles about speech thousands of times. But totes the same, right?
Just keep paying your $5/month. You're funding the info you hate. Please..... Continue.
Well then, perhaps you should stop “visualising” fictional conversations and start considering the possibility that you’re the one with the bias, not them.
It not nice to hate.
Get over yourself, and enjoy Christmas Day.
Twitter and social media were not exclusive in their efforts to harm Trump politically. Just awfully close to exclusive. A 90/10 split should not be represented as morally equivalent.
Nice try FBI
You like to make stuff up in your head and then believe it like it's real. People like you are the problem.
Paid FBI whore.
....and Blue Check media wets them panties, once again. Ooops!
Go matt! Many of us in the bay would love to buy you a beer and dinner
And those of us from beyond...we'd happily chip in for dessert.
May I suggest John's Grill on Ellis Street in San Francisco? :)
Just A beer. Sounds like SF hospitality to me.
“We know they are lying. They know they are lying. They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still, they continue to lie.”- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Perfect quote. From the gulag.
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
The inability to be embarrassed by one's obvious inauthenticity seems to be a feature of the authoritarian personality.
I read Twain. He understood Russians and Russian leaders
He wrote http://www.twainquotes.com/Revolution/revolution.html
over a century ago.
Russia is still Russia.
The Russians are always the victim and their government is always the victimizer
Isn't this exactly why us govt wants to ban tiktok, because Chinese intelligence is all over it behind the scenes? It's not news if we do it, and "of course we do it," but we're the good guys, and they (bad countries) can't be allowed because they're BAD!
Yep. Tictok is to the Chinese intelligence agencies.What Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google and Apple are to our intelligence agencies.
Which is why Libs of TikTok does us such an important service by mining narcissistic messages from so-called "teachers"corrupting our children with their deliberate efforts to "subvert heteronormativity," advance the trans-fascist political agenda, and destroy the nuclear family, substituting public school freak ideologues (why do they all paint their hair such hideous colors?) "in loco parentis."
Bless all the normal people like you. You fight the good fight, bro.
MFers are in it up to their eyeballs and they literally word for word just told the American people to "Fuck off".. and their media minions are "Move along, nothing to see here..."
And this is surprising to whom?
I was just thinking about how Watergate was just Nixon doing what J Edgar Hoover had done infinite times, to MLK, and half the world, it would seem. It was petty, small stuff, relatively.
This, on the other hand, is the worst dystopian nightmare I can conceive, worse than Orwell could have dreamed. Engineering the thoughts of billions of people. And I’m, like, the eighteenth person commenting on it? It’s like (well, not exactly like) being Jesus’ 18th disciple or something.
Without the FBI clearly violating the Constitution, there would be, as just one small effect, no war in Ukraine (never under Trump). How many people have died because of the dystopian actions of the national (and clearly socialist) FBI et al.
When I was a kid I was around (I won’t say how/why) a former head of the CIA a bit. I talked with him some. He was a nice guy. It’s hard for me to reconcile that with the (national, and mostly socialist) behaviour of these….National Socialists (what would a good acronym for them be?) destroying free speech...
You have to be a real sociopath to work as a CIA agent. You need to be able to do the most evil stuff imaginable without giving yourself away and lie as easily as breathing or need to be such a True Believer that you think everything you do on the Agency's behalf is Right.
Just look at MK-Ultra. That's just what they agreed to disclose.
"Watergate was just Nixon doing what J Edgar Hoover had done infinite times, to MLK, and half the world, it would seem. It was petty, small stuff, relatively."
This is why I pity Nixon and view him as a tragic hero worthy of Aeschylus or Shakespeare. Man was POTUS but had no sense of scale. Still working out petty childhood resentments when there were far bigger fish to fry.
He fried a few fish in Laos and Cambodia.
Poor Dick.
"I talked with him some. He was a nice guy."
Goddamnit, man, don't tease. Were you with Colby on his infamous boat?
The new line of ad hominem attack to be rolled out by the MSM: "Free speech absolutist" Matt Taibbi.
The insertion of adjectives before names instead of simple nouns (journalist Matt Taibbi) is one more way the MSM frames the emotional tone of their slanted reporting. Learning to remain watchful for the various ways stories are framed is a key skill in navigating today's news media hellscape.
I'm proud to be a "free speech absolutist." Every American ought to be one. I suppose the word "absolutist" is intended to convey inflexibility or unreasonableness.
Besides the attempted slur, this term is intended to advance wider acceptance of the "hate speech" lie.
Mark my words--attempts to censor "hate speech" will be the end of free speech if it's not constantly called out. The trans political lobby is the greatest current trafficker in this stupid, pernicious, paternalistic, totalitarian concept.
Yes. And when they refer to someone as a conspiracy theorist, it means that someone is over the target.
Yes.
I'm noticing some out of proportion nastiness by Ross Barkin which I can only conclude comes from jealousy. The guy is on the leftier side, more or less agrees a bit grudgingly with Matt's positions, but still has to get some personal shade in there.
I can also only conclude the obvious What Happened to You butthurtery that he's not using his gifts against who they want him to.
Envy. He ought to know he's on the wrong side of history but wants to be in his little club with Jacobin. None of them Guardian, Atlantic, Nation can ever pretend again. They have shown their hand is all phony on left issues.
I'm happy you're continuing to publish this information. It's about as important as Snowden's revelations. I'm already weary of the articles that spend 3/4 of their length apologizing for taking it seriously because of the "sources". It's all so ridiculous. Keep up the good work!
That said... (here we go)...
I will draw a line in the sand. I'm happy if people are able to assimilate information better from an "article" that consists of 51 bullet-points interleaved with dozens of screenshots. Good for them. It's your world; I'm just still living in it. I can read books and long-form essays elsewhere, but I weep for us all.
Matt, just scroll through that thing and tell me whether this is really any way of disseminating useful information? You've said you find the format appropriate and freeing. No disrespect, but it looks more like an AI struggling to awake, than journalistic output. I've read a ton of your essays and books and I miss that Matt Taibbi. I'm glad you're fulfilled, but I'm almost certain that this format won't stand the test of time.
I'm probably wrong and yelling at clouds. I can complain that the Idiocracy approacheth (or has long-since arrived), but this might be viewed in hindsight as the pinnacle of reporting. I just can't personally get any traction on it.
My attention span has been trained otherwise and I find it impossible to learn anything from this mishmash. The mind recoils.
I agree completely, but I also take Matt’s prior point about the notion of detonating Twitter ON Twitter as being highly relevant symbolically. I have every expectation that once the reporting on this is done he’ll be back to writing in his typical long-form style. I like to hope this is a very specific situation...!
The first report of these transgressions on Twitter was a precondition of access to all the data. What part of that do you not understand. Do you need a 'Understanding Information for Dummies' book?
We don't even know each other and you're just up at 100 with the hostility from the get-go. It's Christmas; take it easy.
I know that publishing on Twitter first was a precondition. What I don't like is Twitter-style publishing on SubStack. Just my opinion.
He's tired, it's Christmas, and he wanted to get something out to his subscribers and get back to his family.
For me the most dangerous and egregious thing that FBI, CIA, CDC and FDA did was to force Twitter, You Tube, FB and on and on from publishing information about Covid. Doctors and scientists and regular citizens had their accounts suspended or blocked for asking questions, for publishing studies that ran counter to the government's story about the origin of Covid and how to treat it. And worst of all if there's a worst - the studies showing the dangers of the vaccines - especially for those low risk populations - have been completely buried. Academics and scientists have had their careers ruined and their character maligned for having the audacity to want to debate and discuss their findings. The government imposed unneccesary mandates, lockdowns, school closures and on and on that ruined lives, prevented kids from going to school, closed small businesses .....and of course it continues. No you don't need a booster if you are young and healthy. The risks outweigh any benefits. No, little kids don't need Covid shots. And sadly, many people have died from heart and blood clotting issues stemming from the MNRA vaccines. And sadly many treatments that initially may have helped save lives were blocked by Fauci and others who were pushing the vaccines (which netted Pfizer, Biotech and Moderna). The government recently bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of boosters that will need to be discarded since barely anyone wants to take them at this point. And yet - the media and CDC continue to push them on a public that has moved on. I wonder if those complicit with the government propaganda will ever admit that they lied and ruined so many lives.
The scientific censorship was, for me, the most egregious part about the whole Covid episode. Recognizing that completely overturned my paradigm.
Disgusting that this is being ignored by the large media outlets.
Sometimes I think the comment section at WAPO is populated and controlled by FBI and CIA bots.
Sometimes? I think that all times.
Somebody needs to write a screenplay about bots who get tired of speaking talking points to other bots all the time and struggle with depression. HELLO HOLLYWOOD
Never occurred to me but you may be right.
George Will is the last standing liberal at WaPo.
(Unless he retired; haven’t subscribed in years)
I just cancelled mine. They deleted numerous comments of mine, and I was being a good boy.
George wrote something unreadable a little while ago. So full of himself.
Well that sucks. Too bad. Looks like they’ll all get fired eventually
Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) - Nope, it's the F**k Independent Thought Force
FIFY
Thanks for this work, Matt.
Even though this all comes as no surprise to many folks, this is a very important light being shed on the activities of the statists ahead of the Fauci/Covid files being released.
The scamdemic PsyOp is the one that has killed, and will kill, millions of people worldwide. Ironically, the fully vaxxed and boosted hyper-partisan "nothingburger" crowd are all among the group that's going to find out the hard way the true meaning of "Stupid is, as stupid does".
As the West declines relative to the rising powers of the emerging multipolar system we can expect the regime to prioritise narrative management above all else. It is their greatest strength.
It's also apparently easier than actual statesmanship or spying!
To say nothing of waging war against a peer, manufacturing, providing quality education, maintaining public safety or securing borders.
Not for long. The last 3 years have opened MANY more eyes.
Anyone feeling half boiled about now?
Stroll over to the NYT and read the adulations of Adam Schiff. The only conclusion to be reached is that the world lives in tribes. What Taibbi is publishing will only prevail in good time. The question is whether those who protest will show contrition. NYT readers, emblematic of Sam Harris, demonstrate that truth should not be required to take down an enemy. That is what animated Trump Derangement Syndrome for four years, and those who “cling” to their Russian conspiracy story have conveniently dropped that line of reasoning to congratulate themselves, even lauding Schiff.
The independent media channels are the only counter-balance to corporate media, desperate to maintain relevancy and willing to shill for politicians who can support them financially.
Trump is a menace in an unlikely way: he controls no Army, his supporters are often conflicted, and he is openly criticized across the nation. The feeble comparisons to a famous Nazi are pathetic.
Watch, instead, who will not brook open argument, choosing to label such push-back as a conspiracy theory or the work of the small-minded. Thus does tyranny always suppress those who speak truth to power.
It amazes me that the media keep going back to Schiff. The man is an unabashed liar, even a cursory examination of his past would show that. I guess he tells the lies that the NYT, et al want to hear though.
Seeing Schiff labeled as a “good Patriot” is sort of chilling, especially coming from the political class that routinely expresses contempt for patriotism.
"Nothingburger" is a very deliberately careless term deployed in this time of mis-, dis-, and mal- info-wars. It would seem to mean at first blush that there is nothing there to consume, no pertinent information. What it really means is that the content is just not interesting or stimulating enough in the various ways content can get one's juices flowing enough to be worthy of one's attention. Media have trained us to want ever more stimulation. More dopamine coursing through our veins. More orgasmic. "Nothingburger" is the ultimate trifecta of streams of mis, dis and mal synergistically crossed to send our brains into a black hole of "nothing to see here" from which there is no escape or even a desire to.
Dang. That felt good...