I wish more people were more afraid of the Empire than Trump. Why is Trump on his way out? Because he messed up the corporate empire. He cut off their slave labor, he messed up their cushy trade deals, he exposed their phony Russiagate nonsense, and he messed up their income stream by bringing boys home from endless wars and created peace in the middle east. Biden is a puppet of the corporate empire, so be afraid of the future.
Exactly, Trump is gone now and unlikely to come back so what now? The same jackwads who gave us the Iraq war and the Drone war and slavery in Libya are back in charge (and arguably never lost power)! Sweet. Now we get them with the added power of full blown mainstream media and tech censorship/cancel culture to back them up. Awesome. I can't wait to upload my social credit score and medical history on my global passport. The future is going to suck.
Does anyone really think that the incoming Biden administration is going to magically restore civil liberties and usher in a new golden era of real journalism? The military industrial complex/deep state/Uniparty monster that grew exponentially after 9/11, right through the Obama/Biden administration, is firmly entrenched and overflowing with power and money. The last feeble possible check on this swamp, the fatally flawed Donald Trump, has finally been neutered. You may not want to admit that. You are about to see the State, at the behest of its true masters, unleash a final devastating attack on what remains of our civil liberties and an independent press, all in the name of our safety and security, against what they label to be insurrectionists and seditionists. Why they will even come after you Matt; Glenn, and any other remaining actual journalists. Watch your back.
Why feed into the ongoing character assassination of a person by saying things like “you don’t have to like him”? Assange is the contemporary Gramsci. Jailed in order to “stop that brain from working for 20 years” as the fascist prosecutor Ingrò said. And that’s precisely what they’re doing to Julian.
Of course, it's not just about punishing Assange (or Manning or Snowden or Winner). It's about intimidating all potential whistleblowers and anyone who seeks to practice true confrontational and critical journalism. The US and UK governments are sending a message: air our dirty laundry and we promise to put you in prison and keep you there, no matter how trumped up the charges may be.
"Now Trump is on his way out, but the lockdown era is just beginning. You’ll forgive me if I’m more scared of that than the other thing."
Exactly. While the left (I'm not referring to "traditional" liberals, but the socialism-infatuated wackjobs of the present) have been running around in circles with their hair on fire screaming and pointing "Russia! Racist! Orange Man bad!" for the last four years, their handlers in the deep state have quietly been setting the stage for an authoritarian medical-industrial-tech dystopian nightmare far worse than anything Trump could imagine. For all of his failings, and they are many, at least Trump didn't give in to the authoritarian impulse that seduced so many former Presidents, including Clinton and Obama -- starting a new war. Wars abroad lead to civil liberties being curtailed at home, for the sake of "safety" and "the homeland." Any sane person (right, left, or in the middle) who looks at Biden's proposed cabinet members should be quite nervous.
The screws are tightening second by second, but the grand distraction of American political theatre means that heads are turned the other way, as the networks of power splay their adversaries through the grinder - memo to all those who were espousing MBAs and business/computer technical educations as far back as the 80s --- this is what happens we an entire generation fails to read history. It starts with a lack of imagination, and constipated leadership but then quickly evolves into a vacuum of bloviation not seen since the universe was created ---- distraction, hyper-capitalistic paternalism and in the end YOYO (you're on your own) neoliberal dogma erodes the fibers of community/family so much so that anger/fear take over our collective brain stem.
Special thanks to those like Matt, Julian for not bending the knee to American power networks.
It is quite amazing that an australian journalist publishing in Sweden can be accused of breaking an american law on american government secrecy, and regarded as a traitor and a terrorist.
But there are plenty of scared oldies who got theirs and are terrified of any potential disturbance to their tranquility, and don't much care about brown people in far away places or foreign journalists either, and who write with their votes blank cheques to the government as long as their real estate and share prices go up. "Better safer than sorry", "absolute safety at any cost to someone else", "Security is well worth sacrificing somebody else's life", etc.
Trump should pardon Assange and Snowden before he leaves. We need whistle blowers. If not for those two we would not have known that all Americans are constantly surveilled, and we would not have known about the misasventures of Hillary and Democrats.
They want to close that loophole and keep it closed forever. And make it clear to any journalist who wants to expose another Gitmo or MiLai massacre that their days as a citizen with Constitutional rights is over. Intimidation by example.
What’s really amazing is the treatment our government is giving an autistic hacker vs. Jonathan Pollard who actually SPIED for Israel AGAINST THE USA and is now being greeted in Israel by Netanyahu himself as a national hero..... We are dupes guys! Where’s the national outrage?
"This was a death penalty offense, the Brookings Institution noted, not worrying at the oddness of charging a foreigner with such a crime."
This continues to drive me bananas. How does the US government assert the legal right to charge an Australian national under US law? Where is the Australian government here? Does it care about its citizens and their rights or is it out to brunch?
I need a smart lawyer, preferably Australian, to explain it to me.
another great piece Matt...very balanced and your point re: focusing on institutions and broad policy rather than personalities/individuals is very apt. I have mixed feelings about Assange and do not feel all of his actions even regarding Wikileaks dumps are defensible...but your points about the implications of the legal actions against him and the underpinning laws and regulations are crucial. As always people need to look beyond their desired outcome in specific cases to broader implications of policy actions. A great example of that is when Harry Reid got rid of the Senate rule that required a super-majority for judicial confirmations.... for the expedient reason that he wanted Obama nominees to be confirmed over Republican obstruction... a few years later that lowered confirmation threshold resulted in the confirmation of, for instance, Brett Kavanagh ..similarly those who cheer FB and Twitter suspended Trump's account are not thinking of the implications of tech corp algorithms or functionaries making decisions on what is false or true and there can be available in the public square....
The empire's mask has already dropped. Patriot Act, round 2, is going to be dazzling in its aggression against citizens, who are now openly recruited to spy on neighbors for infractions of pandemic "policy" and just over the past two days openly recruited to help the corporate press hunt down protesters--not because LE needs help but so people become further accustomed to snitching on each other and to taking pleasure in fellow citizens' social death. It's a short path from gleeful doxxing to Stasi-level surveillance.
The "something" in the War on Terror's "see something, say something"slogan has been greatly expanded and one is tacitly expected to view fellow citizens as sacks of pathogens and terrorists. Citizens number well over 300M, why is this tolerated?
I wish more people were more afraid of the Empire than Trump. Why is Trump on his way out? Because he messed up the corporate empire. He cut off their slave labor, he messed up their cushy trade deals, he exposed their phony Russiagate nonsense, and he messed up their income stream by bringing boys home from endless wars and created peace in the middle east. Biden is a puppet of the corporate empire, so be afraid of the future.
Exactly, Trump is gone now and unlikely to come back so what now? The same jackwads who gave us the Iraq war and the Drone war and slavery in Libya are back in charge (and arguably never lost power)! Sweet. Now we get them with the added power of full blown mainstream media and tech censorship/cancel culture to back them up. Awesome. I can't wait to upload my social credit score and medical history on my global passport. The future is going to suck.
Does anyone really think that the incoming Biden administration is going to magically restore civil liberties and usher in a new golden era of real journalism? The military industrial complex/deep state/Uniparty monster that grew exponentially after 9/11, right through the Obama/Biden administration, is firmly entrenched and overflowing with power and money. The last feeble possible check on this swamp, the fatally flawed Donald Trump, has finally been neutered. You may not want to admit that. You are about to see the State, at the behest of its true masters, unleash a final devastating attack on what remains of our civil liberties and an independent press, all in the name of our safety and security, against what they label to be insurrectionists and seditionists. Why they will even come after you Matt; Glenn, and any other remaining actual journalists. Watch your back.
Why feed into the ongoing character assassination of a person by saying things like “you don’t have to like him”? Assange is the contemporary Gramsci. Jailed in order to “stop that brain from working for 20 years” as the fascist prosecutor Ingrò said. And that’s precisely what they’re doing to Julian.
Of course, it's not just about punishing Assange (or Manning or Snowden or Winner). It's about intimidating all potential whistleblowers and anyone who seeks to practice true confrontational and critical journalism. The US and UK governments are sending a message: air our dirty laundry and we promise to put you in prison and keep you there, no matter how trumped up the charges may be.
"Now Trump is on his way out, but the lockdown era is just beginning. You’ll forgive me if I’m more scared of that than the other thing."
Exactly. While the left (I'm not referring to "traditional" liberals, but the socialism-infatuated wackjobs of the present) have been running around in circles with their hair on fire screaming and pointing "Russia! Racist! Orange Man bad!" for the last four years, their handlers in the deep state have quietly been setting the stage for an authoritarian medical-industrial-tech dystopian nightmare far worse than anything Trump could imagine. For all of his failings, and they are many, at least Trump didn't give in to the authoritarian impulse that seduced so many former Presidents, including Clinton and Obama -- starting a new war. Wars abroad lead to civil liberties being curtailed at home, for the sake of "safety" and "the homeland." Any sane person (right, left, or in the middle) who looks at Biden's proposed cabinet members should be quite nervous.
The screws are tightening second by second, but the grand distraction of American political theatre means that heads are turned the other way, as the networks of power splay their adversaries through the grinder - memo to all those who were espousing MBAs and business/computer technical educations as far back as the 80s --- this is what happens we an entire generation fails to read history. It starts with a lack of imagination, and constipated leadership but then quickly evolves into a vacuum of bloviation not seen since the universe was created ---- distraction, hyper-capitalistic paternalism and in the end YOYO (you're on your own) neoliberal dogma erodes the fibers of community/family so much so that anger/fear take over our collective brain stem.
Special thanks to those like Matt, Julian for not bending the knee to American power networks.
It is quite amazing that an australian journalist publishing in Sweden can be accused of breaking an american law on american government secrecy, and regarded as a traitor and a terrorist.
But there are plenty of scared oldies who got theirs and are terrified of any potential disturbance to their tranquility, and don't much care about brown people in far away places or foreign journalists either, and who write with their votes blank cheques to the government as long as their real estate and share prices go up. "Better safer than sorry", "absolute safety at any cost to someone else", "Security is well worth sacrificing somebody else's life", etc.
Trump should pardon Assange and Snowden before he leaves. We need whistle blowers. If not for those two we would not have known that all Americans are constantly surveilled, and we would not have known about the misasventures of Hillary and Democrats.
They want to close that loophole and keep it closed forever. And make it clear to any journalist who wants to expose another Gitmo or MiLai massacre that their days as a citizen with Constitutional rights is over. Intimidation by example.
What’s really amazing is the treatment our government is giving an autistic hacker vs. Jonathan Pollard who actually SPIED for Israel AGAINST THE USA and is now being greeted in Israel by Netanyahu himself as a national hero..... We are dupes guys! Where’s the national outrage?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/30/middleeast/jonathan-pollard-israel-arrival-intl/index.html
Matt, thanks for this piece.
"This was a death penalty offense, the Brookings Institution noted, not worrying at the oddness of charging a foreigner with such a crime."
This continues to drive me bananas. How does the US government assert the legal right to charge an Australian national under US law? Where is the Australian government here? Does it care about its citizens and their rights or is it out to brunch?
I need a smart lawyer, preferably Australian, to explain it to me.
another great piece Matt...very balanced and your point re: focusing on institutions and broad policy rather than personalities/individuals is very apt. I have mixed feelings about Assange and do not feel all of his actions even regarding Wikileaks dumps are defensible...but your points about the implications of the legal actions against him and the underpinning laws and regulations are crucial. As always people need to look beyond their desired outcome in specific cases to broader implications of policy actions. A great example of that is when Harry Reid got rid of the Senate rule that required a super-majority for judicial confirmations.... for the expedient reason that he wanted Obama nominees to be confirmed over Republican obstruction... a few years later that lowered confirmation threshold resulted in the confirmation of, for instance, Brett Kavanagh ..similarly those who cheer FB and Twitter suspended Trump's account are not thinking of the implications of tech corp algorithms or functionaries making decisions on what is false or true and there can be available in the public square....
Julian Assange is a hero, and his persecution by the US, UK, et al, is a disgrace.
I'm not a fan of the current or next President. However, I think the "State" will be more punitive under Biden, by a long shot.
The empire's mask has already dropped. Patriot Act, round 2, is going to be dazzling in its aggression against citizens, who are now openly recruited to spy on neighbors for infractions of pandemic "policy" and just over the past two days openly recruited to help the corporate press hunt down protesters--not because LE needs help but so people become further accustomed to snitching on each other and to taking pleasure in fellow citizens' social death. It's a short path from gleeful doxxing to Stasi-level surveillance.
The "something" in the War on Terror's "see something, say something"slogan has been greatly expanded and one is tacitly expected to view fellow citizens as sacks of pathogens and terrorists. Citizens number well over 300M, why is this tolerated?