Listen to a reading of this article: I feel like we haven't been talking enough about the fact that US government agencies were just caught intimately collaborating with massive online platforms to censor content in the name of regulating the "cognitive infrastructure" of society. The only way you could be okay with the US government appointing itself this authority would be if you believed the US government is an honest and beneficent entity that works toward the benefit of the common man. Which would of course be an unacceptable thing for a grown adult to believe.
I have been engaging that opinion -- very politely -- where it crops up, referencing our supposed rights of free speech and free expression. In one case I asked them if we were done with "free speech" now, or if not, where it applies. I think it's an interesting question, not just a piece of polemic. What _do_ people want?
I think it's really basic what they want: there are things they hate or fear (either with good reason or just because propaganda everywhere is telling them to feel that way) and they want those things censored.
When and if they change their minds about censorship will depend on whether or not it happens to somebody they don't hate or fear and whom they feel doesn't deserve it. Possibly when it happens to them.
The United States has done a hell of a lot that's morally wrong during its existence whereas Canada has a less shitty record (although it seems to be closing the gap; stuff like freezing people's bank accounts was sure a big step in the wrong direction!), but I've always felt that the United States had done one thing absolutely right that Canada did absolutely wrong, just like so many other countries that did the same as Canada were absolutely wrong.
Here it is: the United States has the First Amendment, and no laws against hate speech at this time. Canada has nothing like the First Amendment, and that's bad for Canadians. There's a fuckton of censorship happening in both countries, but at least in the US they seem to have to go to a little more trouble so that they can censor within the confines of the First Amendment. Like how instead of just declaring certain speech verboten, the government has to call Big Tech heads before Congress and coerce them into doing the censorship on the government's behalf. I think here in Canada, they could just make a law where saying X was punishable by being fined or jailed for a certain amount of money or time respectively.
I want free speech, like every other person who wants to be fully human. No free speech = no freedom of conscience = no freedom of religion = no freedom of assembly = no freedom to have a gun to defend people = no freedom to pursue health and avoid Pharma's poisons = no freedom to leave an oppressive society.
We must create parallel institutions like alternative schools and businesses so we don't have to participate in evil schools, businesses, banks, etc. This is why people leave corrupt states like CA and NY and move elsewhere.
It is always the same response with them. They feel that they are always on the side of truth, and that therefore anyone who does not believe what they believe is spreading untruth, and therefore must be censored. They cannot believe that they could be wrong, or that eventually someone in power might find their opinions to be misinformation. They also cannot wrap their heads around the fact that science is never "settled" or a matter of "consensus." Even so-called scientists will often use the "consensus" argument. No matter how many examples you give them of scientific consensus being wrong, they still don't believe it could be wrong now, because now we are enlightened, whereas in the past people were ignorant. This is their logic.
Most people think their opinions are on the side of truth. And yes, they do have the tendency to believe what they think is the consensus of the majority of the professionals. The problem is they do not see the corruption and are taken in by propaganda and egos. So what is your take on the uniparty as servants of the oligarchy which is capitalist and right-wing? What do you think about all of the brutal right-wing dictatorships installed over the years by republicans and democrats? (More Republicans than Democrats I think.)
I consider myself a libertarian socialist (probably more like an anarchist at this point). What that means is that civil liberties are my first value, the basis of classic liberalism. It is a huge irony that Democrats in this last decade have completely abandoned civil liberties, and can now be found actively advocating for authoritarian governments and arguing arcanely against basic human rights whenever they feel uncomfortable or unsafe for any reason. They cannot conceive of interacting with and coming to have common ground with what they conceive as "the enemy." Their solution is to shut them up. As they pull up into their tribal mindset, their criteria for citizenship in their tribe becomes more and more hysterical and unhinged, so that now, for example, anyone who questions the science of Pfizer is "far right," or who questions permanently mutilating child bodies as "hating trans people." I challenge the notion that more Republicans than Democrats have installed "right-wing dictatorships" here at home and around the world--both parties are equal opportunity offenders, since both are completely owned by American corporations who actually run the government in association with our security agencies. Since corporations tend to thrive under totalitarian governments that can be bought, those are the governments we install, no matter who is president or in Congress, whether it is Eisenhower, Truman, Reagan, Kennedy, Carter, Bush, Trump or Obama. We have even overturned the governments of our allies to make sure they were more amenable to our corporate control. The party makes no difference, because the party is not the one running the country, nor is the president. The character, personality and intelligence of the president makes not the slightest difference--those are only distractions from the machine operating in the background.
Human rights, freedom and equality are at the top of my list also. I agree both parties are corporate servants. Divide and conquer still seems to be a predominant strategy. If one side supports one thing it's almost automatic the other side will oppose it, except for war. I wonder if they switched sides on some issues to see if their propaganda would work.
Thanks for this! I absolutely love this guy! He is our only hope and I wish him complete success. There is a very dangerous road ahead as the Criminal Elite will not go peacefully!
I sent the speech on to a (tech data nut type) friend I thought might be interested. He showed me how Microsoft transferred my email and the post to him with a large red banner over it saying they know inteldrop was dangerous and horrible things would happen to him if he tried to open and read this wicked thing. But it's AOK for Microsoft to do nothing to stop the flow of scam offers forever cluttering the email which could do real damage to any innocent who fell for them. Just sayin.
I love Caitlin's work when she discusses the US proxy war against Russia, and when she discusses how propaganda works. Actually, I even love her work when I disagree completely because I enjoy her bold, vivid prose.
But these statements were factually incorrect:
There's no such thing as an objective journalist. (CLOSE. There are people who strive for objectivity, as she later acknowledges.)
There's no such thing as a moral billionaire. (Well, no one's perfect, but some are a lot more moral than others.)
There's no such thing as a humanitarian intervention. (When did she become a libertarian? I thought she was a Marxist who got annoyed when people "babble about Stalin and Mao" and other socialist mass murderers, suppressors of free speech, institutors of gun control, and creators of societies where you are not allowed to leave.)
There's no such thing as an honest war. (What about a defensive war? Look up "Just War criteria." Many people have formulated sincere doctrines that involve self-defense. If Anne Frank had been able to fight back, that would have been a just war.)
Even though sometimes she overgeneralizes, I know she does it to get us to think, because if she is actually this rigid and ideological, I am sure circumstances will make her more flexible. Example: she sided with Elon Musk recently in his attempts to open up Twitter to free speech, if that is what he is doing, because the regime needs to be exposed as using Twitter as a psy-opp.
I see your point, but all it takes is one example to the contrary of a statement to disprove it. That's what they call reductio ad absurdem in mathematics or logic. For example, if I say all dogs are vicious, that might come across as an opinion if someone hates dogs, but all one needs to find is a friendly dog, and the statement collapses.
I don't mean to be nitpicky with you, Flipshod. I simply wanted to say that I think overgeneralizing is a fallacy of reasoning. I still enjoy Caitlin's work, and I appreciate your remark.
I likewise am not trying to be nitpicky, but now you are applying rules of logic to words like "vicious" and "friendly".
Before we get into formal logic or "fallacies of reason", we need to understand the difference between a statement of fact (true/false) and an opinion or characterization.
(Because this goes to the heart of the whole post--how opinions sneak into our discourse dressed up as facts.)
I'm glad we share the good opinion about Caitlin's writing.
Some of these things can exist, I agree, but with most of them it's all theoretical as far as I know.
Like can there be somebody out there with at least one billion dollars who's an overall moral person? Sure, I think so. Can I give an example? Er, that's the tricky part...like even if we take as fact that Musk is genuinely troubled by the restrictions on speech Twitter had in place and wants to change those, that would be a mark in his favor. But he'd still be the same guy who has a lot of government contracts just like his rival Jeff Bezos does, and the same guy who once tweeted about Bolivia "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!" (Lots of lithium in Bolivia--try saying that three times fast--and Musk's company needs lithium.)
"...a platform banning the way people talk about a war or a virus because government agencies told them to." Exactly.
I can't stand:
* Censorship of what's really happening in Ukraine and Russia, and why. I want this US proxy war over with.
* All of the communist lockdowns and restrictions that broke the world in 2020-21. Alcoholism shot way up. Starvation worldwide shot way up. Deaths due to lockdowns far exceeded deaths from a virus.
If you take out the incorrect usage of the word communist I agree with your comments. There is nothing communist about the oligarchy, and the uniparty (neocons/neolibs) is right-wing.
"Deaths due to lockdowns far exceeded deaths from a virus."
Although that's claimed a lot to date I have never seen any actual evidence of this.
Know what COVID19 really pointed out? That the world in general, and the US in particular, is woefully unprepared for a bio-terror attack. If everything else were equal but just the fatality rate were doubled (not a hard thing to design) the medical system worldwide would have collapsed.
Every so often someone goes on substack to post a thread consisting of nothing but racial or antisemitic slurs, seemingly to prove the point that censorship is necessary. You're right that the powerful conflate hate speech and political speech and they do it on purpose, to get people to support censorship. I am a free speech absolutist, I'd rather put up with the one than give up the other. Like a former professor put it back in the 90s when Larry Flynt was pretending to be a free speech champion, "Porn is the price we pay for free speech, not the reason for it."
You see the same thing on SlashDot, although in that case I think they're just assholes testing the site's claim that they never delete posts (they don't).
Caitlin, that last paragraph sums up why I love you & always will. I knew it anyway, long before you said it, but it's good you remind the poor in spirit & the stragglers. I really dislike your (& anyone else's) spiritual stuff, but that's part of who you are & I have to take you with the whole of your beautiful being. Thanks, Caity, for being you.
I have never been on Twitter and I hope people have responded to Blinken's comment with Assange, Khashoggi and the persecution of journalists in Ukraine and the censoring and demonitizing of journalists online and the stealing of their money by PayPal, to name a few of the many examples. I hate hypocrisy! It's like how I felt when Biden had the gall to say, "What if we interfered in the elections of another country?"
Having been on Twitter, I would say that you're avoiding more unpleasantness than you are missing out on good stuff. Don't get me wrong; it's nice to follow people I respect and/or like and getting to say something to them every now and then and to see your tweets getting a lot of likes from people who agree with you....but good lord, there are SO many assholes...
Without looking, I imagine that the replies to Blinken's tweet would be mixed, but probably more people agreeing with him than not. You'd have people quote-tweeting him like "Here's what Blinken just said as he was complicit in the persecution of Julian Assange, what a sack of shit..." but I'm not counting those.
When I was still active on Twitter, I would usually quote-tweet something like that instead of replying (although the operator of the account sees both if they bother to check the various responses, or "mentions"). That's because replying to his tweet with "What about Assange, asshole?" right under it would invite all of the shitlibs who follow Blinken because they actually *like* him to verbally dogpile on me. I might have some others in the replies agreeing with me, but I learned long ago that trying to argue with half a dozen people simultaneously, or more than that, wastes a lot of time and emotional energy better spent elsewhere.
One wonders how long Substack can continued unimpeded by government censorship organs.
As a recovered Christian conservative, I still find myself sometimes agreeing with the WSJ, National Review, et al., but was led here by Matt Taibbi who I found to be refreshingly heterodox, honest about his biases, an excellent writer and willing to disagree, even mock mercilessly public figures of all stripes when needed.
Similarly, I've found Caitlin and Chris Hedges to be, in different ways, clear headed and brutally honest about the horrors of war, now edging closer to our doorstep. This, while otherwise smart, clear thinking people across the political spectrum cheer on each escalation and hope to hasten regime change in Russia, while ignoring our 100% failure rate in so doing over the past 70 years.
I fear that the time may soon come when even Substack will be pressured to fall in line or die on the vine.
Matt is generally pretty cool, I find, and I'm neither Christian nor what I would consider conservative, so it's nice to have that bit of common ground. :)
As for that first rhetorical question of yours, I remember Hedges saying something in an interview--in fact, it might have been Matt interviewing him--that he thought the government would start putting pressure on Substack sooner or later, and that Substack would eventually cave after that. I sure hope that he's wrong, but we've seen it happen often enough to other platforms...
"No member of the press should be threatened, harassed, attacked, arrested, or killed for doing their job. On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, we vow to continue protecting and promoting the rights of a free press and the safety of journalists” .
Stated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, November 2, 2022, and with the Australian Julian Assange languishing in a British prison after years of harassment by the same US government, has there ever been a more outrageous example of hypocrisy than this statement? Do something now, Prime Minister. It is there in front of you in black and white for you and the world to see and act upon. NOW.
HEADLINES INVOLVING PEACE TALKS FROM THE DAILY MAIL:
Could the end of the Ukraine war be in sight?
US 'is pressuring Volodymyr Zelensky to drop his ban on talks with Putin and negotiate an end to the fighting' amid growing fears of nuclear war, new report claims
The request is to ensure Kyiv maintains the support of its international backers
Zelensky’s ban has created concern in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America
US officials say several nations are worried about fueling a war for many years"
Ironic, since the U.S. last March wouldn't let Zelensky talk with Putin. The senile, evil, corrupt, anti-human, anti-God Biden regime, which stole the 2020 election, has caused this run-up to nuclear war in the first place!
Beautiful. If you are looking to see the full extent of humanity's creativeness, flexibility and the shifting nature of our society read this book!! Puts data behind the (correct) assertion that "human nature" is not competitive and greedy and unravels the myth.
I'm doing a poetry and translation workshop tonight. If you don't mind, I'll use this quote to remind us what honest public writing is really about:
"As more and more energy goes into distorting and manipulating public understanding of the world, it becomes more necessary to bare your soul to the furthest extent possible so people can decide on their own whether you're the kind of person they want to pay attention to.
People are very distrusting in today's environment, and rightly so; we swim in an ocean of lies. You can get around that distrust by manipulating people into thinking you're trustworthy, or you can do it by taking transparency to the furthest extent possible and letting yourself be fully seen so that people can make up their own minds about you for themselves."
Thanks for explaining things so clearly. I love this feeling when I read something that I somehow already knew, but had no language to express myself.
I completely agree. However, every Democrat on FB and Twitter currently believes in censorship. You could not make it up.
A lack of understanding uses words like every or all.
I agree.
I have been engaging that opinion -- very politely -- where it crops up, referencing our supposed rights of free speech and free expression. In one case I asked them if we were done with "free speech" now, or if not, where it applies. I think it's an interesting question, not just a piece of polemic. What _do_ people want?
I think it's really basic what they want: there are things they hate or fear (either with good reason or just because propaganda everywhere is telling them to feel that way) and they want those things censored.
When and if they change their minds about censorship will depend on whether or not it happens to somebody they don't hate or fear and whom they feel doesn't deserve it. Possibly when it happens to them.
The United States has done a hell of a lot that's morally wrong during its existence whereas Canada has a less shitty record (although it seems to be closing the gap; stuff like freezing people's bank accounts was sure a big step in the wrong direction!), but I've always felt that the United States had done one thing absolutely right that Canada did absolutely wrong, just like so many other countries that did the same as Canada were absolutely wrong.
Here it is: the United States has the First Amendment, and no laws against hate speech at this time. Canada has nothing like the First Amendment, and that's bad for Canadians. There's a fuckton of censorship happening in both countries, but at least in the US they seem to have to go to a little more trouble so that they can censor within the confines of the First Amendment. Like how instead of just declaring certain speech verboten, the government has to call Big Tech heads before Congress and coerce them into doing the censorship on the government's behalf. I think here in Canada, they could just make a law where saying X was punishable by being fined or jailed for a certain amount of money or time respectively.
I want free speech, like every other person who wants to be fully human. No free speech = no freedom of conscience = no freedom of religion = no freedom of assembly = no freedom to have a gun to defend people = no freedom to pursue health and avoid Pharma's poisons = no freedom to leave an oppressive society.
We must create parallel institutions like alternative schools and businesses so we don't have to participate in evil schools, businesses, banks, etc. This is why people leave corrupt states like CA and NY and move elsewhere.
In a manner of speaking, I did, but that was pretty naive of me.
It is always the same response with them. They feel that they are always on the side of truth, and that therefore anyone who does not believe what they believe is spreading untruth, and therefore must be censored. They cannot believe that they could be wrong, or that eventually someone in power might find their opinions to be misinformation. They also cannot wrap their heads around the fact that science is never "settled" or a matter of "consensus." Even so-called scientists will often use the "consensus" argument. No matter how many examples you give them of scientific consensus being wrong, they still don't believe it could be wrong now, because now we are enlightened, whereas in the past people were ignorant. This is their logic.
Most people think their opinions are on the side of truth. And yes, they do have the tendency to believe what they think is the consensus of the majority of the professionals. The problem is they do not see the corruption and are taken in by propaganda and egos. So what is your take on the uniparty as servants of the oligarchy which is capitalist and right-wing? What do you think about all of the brutal right-wing dictatorships installed over the years by republicans and democrats? (More Republicans than Democrats I think.)
I consider myself a libertarian socialist (probably more like an anarchist at this point). What that means is that civil liberties are my first value, the basis of classic liberalism. It is a huge irony that Democrats in this last decade have completely abandoned civil liberties, and can now be found actively advocating for authoritarian governments and arguing arcanely against basic human rights whenever they feel uncomfortable or unsafe for any reason. They cannot conceive of interacting with and coming to have common ground with what they conceive as "the enemy." Their solution is to shut them up. As they pull up into their tribal mindset, their criteria for citizenship in their tribe becomes more and more hysterical and unhinged, so that now, for example, anyone who questions the science of Pfizer is "far right," or who questions permanently mutilating child bodies as "hating trans people." I challenge the notion that more Republicans than Democrats have installed "right-wing dictatorships" here at home and around the world--both parties are equal opportunity offenders, since both are completely owned by American corporations who actually run the government in association with our security agencies. Since corporations tend to thrive under totalitarian governments that can be bought, those are the governments we install, no matter who is president or in Congress, whether it is Eisenhower, Truman, Reagan, Kennedy, Carter, Bush, Trump or Obama. We have even overturned the governments of our allies to make sure they were more amenable to our corporate control. The party makes no difference, because the party is not the one running the country, nor is the president. The character, personality and intelligence of the president makes not the slightest difference--those are only distractions from the machine operating in the background.
Human rights, freedom and equality are at the top of my list also. I agree both parties are corporate servants. Divide and conquer still seems to be a predominant strategy. If one side supports one thing it's almost automatic the other side will oppose it, except for war. I wonder if they switched sides on some issues to see if their propaganda would work.
A Russian emigré once asked me, "Everybody in this country talks about freedom, and hardly anybody does it. Why don't you use it?"
Putin gave a 5,600 word speech yesterday. I like to read people unfiltered by PMSNBC, Fox, etc.
Here is the link:
https://www.theinteldrop.org/2022/10/28/vital-putins-valdai-speech-in-full-deeply-censored-in-the-west/
Thanks for this! I absolutely love this guy! He is our only hope and I wish him complete success. There is a very dangerous road ahead as the Criminal Elite will not go peacefully!
I sent the speech on to a (tech data nut type) friend I thought might be interested. He showed me how Microsoft transferred my email and the post to him with a large red banner over it saying they know inteldrop was dangerous and horrible things would happen to him if he tried to open and read this wicked thing. But it's AOK for Microsoft to do nothing to stop the flow of scam offers forever cluttering the email which could do real damage to any innocent who fell for them. Just sayin.
This is good to have. I subscribed.
Beautifully written
Can't argue with that.
I love Caitlin's work when she discusses the US proxy war against Russia, and when she discusses how propaganda works. Actually, I even love her work when I disagree completely because I enjoy her bold, vivid prose.
But these statements were factually incorrect:
There's no such thing as an objective journalist. (CLOSE. There are people who strive for objectivity, as she later acknowledges.)
There's no such thing as a moral billionaire. (Well, no one's perfect, but some are a lot more moral than others.)
There's no such thing as a humanitarian intervention. (When did she become a libertarian? I thought she was a Marxist who got annoyed when people "babble about Stalin and Mao" and other socialist mass murderers, suppressors of free speech, institutors of gun control, and creators of societies where you are not allowed to leave.)
There's no such thing as an honest war. (What about a defensive war? Look up "Just War criteria." Many people have formulated sincere doctrines that involve self-defense. If Anne Frank had been able to fight back, that would have been a just war.)
Even though sometimes she overgeneralizes, I know she does it to get us to think, because if she is actually this rigid and ideological, I am sure circumstances will make her more flexible. Example: she sided with Elon Musk recently in his attempts to open up Twitter to free speech, if that is what he is doing, because the regime needs to be exposed as using Twitter as a psy-opp.
You are claiming that opinions you disagree with are "factually incorrect".
I see your point, but all it takes is one example to the contrary of a statement to disprove it. That's what they call reductio ad absurdem in mathematics or logic. For example, if I say all dogs are vicious, that might come across as an opinion if someone hates dogs, but all one needs to find is a friendly dog, and the statement collapses.
I don't mean to be nitpicky with you, Flipshod. I simply wanted to say that I think overgeneralizing is a fallacy of reasoning. I still enjoy Caitlin's work, and I appreciate your remark.
I likewise am not trying to be nitpicky, but now you are applying rules of logic to words like "vicious" and "friendly".
Before we get into formal logic or "fallacies of reason", we need to understand the difference between a statement of fact (true/false) and an opinion or characterization.
(Because this goes to the heart of the whole post--how opinions sneak into our discourse dressed up as facts.)
I'm glad we share the good opinion about Caitlin's writing.
Some of these things can exist, I agree, but with most of them it's all theoretical as far as I know.
Like can there be somebody out there with at least one billion dollars who's an overall moral person? Sure, I think so. Can I give an example? Er, that's the tricky part...like even if we take as fact that Musk is genuinely troubled by the restrictions on speech Twitter had in place and wants to change those, that would be a mark in his favor. But he'd still be the same guy who has a lot of government contracts just like his rival Jeff Bezos does, and the same guy who once tweeted about Bolivia "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!" (Lots of lithium in Bolivia--try saying that three times fast--and Musk's company needs lithium.)
Anthony "piece of shit" Blinken. Beautifully put.
EDIT: It's "Antony".
UPDATE: It's also a "scumbag".
"...a platform banning the way people talk about a war or a virus because government agencies told them to." Exactly.
I can't stand:
* Censorship of what's really happening in Ukraine and Russia, and why. I want this US proxy war over with.
* All of the communist lockdowns and restrictions that broke the world in 2020-21. Alcoholism shot way up. Starvation worldwide shot way up. Deaths due to lockdowns far exceeded deaths from a virus.
Stand for honesty, courage, and freedom, people.
If you take out the incorrect usage of the word communist I agree with your comments. There is nothing communist about the oligarchy, and the uniparty (neocons/neolibs) is right-wing.
I like the way you think
"Deaths due to lockdowns far exceeded deaths from a virus."
Although that's claimed a lot to date I have never seen any actual evidence of this.
Know what COVID19 really pointed out? That the world in general, and the US in particular, is woefully unprepared for a bio-terror attack. If everything else were equal but just the fatality rate were doubled (not a hard thing to design) the medical system worldwide would have collapsed.
Every so often someone goes on substack to post a thread consisting of nothing but racial or antisemitic slurs, seemingly to prove the point that censorship is necessary. You're right that the powerful conflate hate speech and political speech and they do it on purpose, to get people to support censorship. I am a free speech absolutist, I'd rather put up with the one than give up the other. Like a former professor put it back in the 90s when Larry Flynt was pretending to be a free speech champion, "Porn is the price we pay for free speech, not the reason for it."
You see the same thing on SlashDot, although in that case I think they're just assholes testing the site's claim that they never delete posts (they don't).
Caitlin, that last paragraph sums up why I love you & always will. I knew it anyway, long before you said it, but it's good you remind the poor in spirit & the stragglers. I really dislike your (& anyone else's) spiritual stuff, but that's part of who you are & I have to take you with the whole of your beautiful being. Thanks, Caity, for being you.
Two words: Global Walkout! Join the Reignite Freedom movement. The time is NOW!
Agreed. We must create parallel institutions, especially away from the WEF.
I have never been on Twitter and I hope people have responded to Blinken's comment with Assange, Khashoggi and the persecution of journalists in Ukraine and the censoring and demonitizing of journalists online and the stealing of their money by PayPal, to name a few of the many examples. I hate hypocrisy! It's like how I felt when Biden had the gall to say, "What if we interfered in the elections of another country?"
Having been on Twitter, I would say that you're avoiding more unpleasantness than you are missing out on good stuff. Don't get me wrong; it's nice to follow people I respect and/or like and getting to say something to them every now and then and to see your tweets getting a lot of likes from people who agree with you....but good lord, there are SO many assholes...
Without looking, I imagine that the replies to Blinken's tweet would be mixed, but probably more people agreeing with him than not. You'd have people quote-tweeting him like "Here's what Blinken just said as he was complicit in the persecution of Julian Assange, what a sack of shit..." but I'm not counting those.
When I was still active on Twitter, I would usually quote-tweet something like that instead of replying (although the operator of the account sees both if they bother to check the various responses, or "mentions"). That's because replying to his tweet with "What about Assange, asshole?" right under it would invite all of the shitlibs who follow Blinken because they actually *like* him to verbally dogpile on me. I might have some others in the replies agreeing with me, but I learned long ago that trying to argue with half a dozen people simultaneously, or more than that, wastes a lot of time and emotional energy better spent elsewhere.
Trust to the truth. It does not go away. It will endure and eventually it will prevail.
One wonders how long Substack can continued unimpeded by government censorship organs.
As a recovered Christian conservative, I still find myself sometimes agreeing with the WSJ, National Review, et al., but was led here by Matt Taibbi who I found to be refreshingly heterodox, honest about his biases, an excellent writer and willing to disagree, even mock mercilessly public figures of all stripes when needed.
Similarly, I've found Caitlin and Chris Hedges to be, in different ways, clear headed and brutally honest about the horrors of war, now edging closer to our doorstep. This, while otherwise smart, clear thinking people across the political spectrum cheer on each escalation and hope to hasten regime change in Russia, while ignoring our 100% failure rate in so doing over the past 70 years.
I fear that the time may soon come when even Substack will be pressured to fall in line or die on the vine.
Matt is generally pretty cool, I find, and I'm neither Christian nor what I would consider conservative, so it's nice to have that bit of common ground. :)
As for that first rhetorical question of yours, I remember Hedges saying something in an interview--in fact, it might have been Matt interviewing him--that he thought the government would start putting pressure on Substack sooner or later, and that Substack would eventually cave after that. I sure hope that he's wrong, but we've seen it happen often enough to other platforms...
"No member of the press should be threatened, harassed, attacked, arrested, or killed for doing their job. On the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, we vow to continue protecting and promoting the rights of a free press and the safety of journalists” .
Stated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, November 2, 2022, and with the Australian Julian Assange languishing in a British prison after years of harassment by the same US government, has there ever been a more outrageous example of hypocrisy than this statement? Do something now, Prime Minister. It is there in front of you in black and white for you and the world to see and act upon. NOW.
Referrer
HEADLINES INVOLVING PEACE TALKS FROM THE DAILY MAIL:
Could the end of the Ukraine war be in sight?
US 'is pressuring Volodymyr Zelensky to drop his ban on talks with Putin and negotiate an end to the fighting' amid growing fears of nuclear war, new report claims
The request is to ensure Kyiv maintains the support of its international backers
Zelensky’s ban has created concern in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America
US officials say several nations are worried about fueling a war for many years"
Ironic, since the U.S. last March wouldn't let Zelensky talk with Putin. The senile, evil, corrupt, anti-human, anti-God Biden regime, which stole the 2020 election, has caused this run-up to nuclear war in the first place!
Here is the Daily Mail Link:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11394623/US-pressuring-Zelensky-drop-ban-talks-Putin-negotiate-end-fighting.html
Beautiful. If you are looking to see the full extent of humanity's creativeness, flexibility and the shifting nature of our society read this book!! Puts data behind the (correct) assertion that "human nature" is not competitive and greedy and unravels the myth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
I'm doing a poetry and translation workshop tonight. If you don't mind, I'll use this quote to remind us what honest public writing is really about:
"As more and more energy goes into distorting and manipulating public understanding of the world, it becomes more necessary to bare your soul to the furthest extent possible so people can decide on their own whether you're the kind of person they want to pay attention to.
People are very distrusting in today's environment, and rightly so; we swim in an ocean of lies. You can get around that distrust by manipulating people into thinking you're trustworthy, or you can do it by taking transparency to the furthest extent possible and letting yourself be fully seen so that people can make up their own minds about you for themselves."
Thanks for explaining things so clearly. I love this feeling when I read something that I somehow already knew, but had no language to express myself.