The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Matt Taibbi about Russiagate and the most pernicious campaign of censorship since the red baiting of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Matt Taibbi about Russiagate and the most pernicious campaign of censorship since the red baiting of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.
This is INTENTIONAL behavior directed by the corporate owners of Mainstream Media!
These are intentional lies and propaganda that the owners of these media corporations are DEMANDING from their employees who masquerading as “journalists”
I called this fraud in response to Robbie Mook's tweet about Russian interference the Saturday before the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Not calling firsts, just pointing out how utterly absurd the allegations were from the get go. I was running a primary campaign in WI and honestly could not think of anything I could do to impact the election without actually being in the district and interacting with voters every day.
To think that foreign actors could influence our elections with facebook ads and dis/misinformation is ridiculous! No one including the accusers have ever cited any actual action that could have conceivably have had an impact on that election and now there is proof that none of it ever happened and still NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT PURGING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF ITS CORRUPT LEADERSHIP!
We're still in the 'why won't the media admit they were used?' stage of grieving 2016. Nothing will get better until enough state parties cut ties with the DNC, run their own caucuses/primaries when they choose and by their rules, and then the DNC can throw their delegates out or accept them but either way the party either bends>reforms or breaks.
Break this party or fix it -- I don't care, but the folks in charge of the D party should never be allowed to work another election. Being good at excuses after the fact is not in the job description.
To be fair, it was obvious from the outset that the russiagate conspiracy theory was so ludicrous that it would have embarrassed The John Birch Society, ca. 1962.
When I worked at the Iowa State Fair in the 80s, I would regularly pass a small, rarely visited John Birch Society booth and ridicule the living shit out of the mousy guy who manned it. I guess the joke's on me because his side ultimately won. Unbelievable.
The funders of the propaganda that drove the "mousy guy who manned" the JBS booth to become a true believer eventually learned that other ways to convince simple minded Americans that voting against their own economic interests was a good idea.
Good point. I think if you objectively look at it there are as many people on the left that are as committed to terrible policy as there are on the right.
I - like everyone here, I bet, even your good self - know an ocean of people that just don't want to hear it. They've picked their favorite color (if they even let themselves expend that much brain power) and shuffle through the motions on game day. If they show up at all.
They glaze over when the MSM is criticized - at best. And the only independents they'd even consider are the ones one that are allowed to float around the trough for whatever reason. 9/10 times so they can watch these candidates ridiculed, abused and forgotten. Like a TV show.
Like A TV Show!
Seriously, you've sat in a room with family/friends/both and seen this. A lot. Since you were able to recognize what it is.
I know you love them, I know I do. But. This "politeness" - it's just encouraging them to keep turning their minds over to the courtiers.
I like to name-drop my weekly reads and subs and the interesting things they teach me. It does come back - albeit in drips and drabs, at work and on visits and I think strategic persistence will prevail.
If you want to be fair about the Russiagate Conspiracy theory "being ludicrous" (which it was) then don't ignore right wing media like Fox and other right wing media being as WRONG as MSM.. From "Not a shred of evidence" "Trump is innocent" the Meuller report thoroughly refuted that narrative that Right Wing media was lying about while MSM was lying too... Meuller did NOT exonerate Trump or his team. The Trump team LIED endlessly and lying more than breaking the law is how most of them ended up in jail.
Yes MSM wildly exaggerated Russia Gate. So did right wing media, just as bad if not worse...
I mean no disrespect but as I said you can't be feral if you've never been domesticated. I speak English not Newspeak. Russia is an abstraction it is a piece of art and anything you imagine it to be. There are probably close to eight billion Russias alive and well on this planet.
Mark Twain spoke Russian and knew Russia's people. He wrote Russian and understood literature written in Russian. He loved the people and their absurd sense of humour and hated their government long before the revolution.
You must know Russian to understand the American Claimant it is Zelenskiy's humour.
It is painful at my age to roll on the floor laughing with tears in my eyes.
Your statement reveals you to be as misinformed on Russia Gate (only from right wing media) as the people that listened to MSNBC and CNN and NYT on Russia gate.
You are different sides of the same coin. Misinformed.... Read the Mueller report. I did. People went to prison over process crimes. What Mueller found out caused these people to LIE to hide their crimes....
The Trump campaign was found literally to STUPID to have had intent. But it was PROVEN that the Russians had a massive impact on the election. Massive.
They had facebook accounts with hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters on them and attending rallies at their direction. They reached out to numerous people in the Trump orbit to coordiate. Those people first tried to make MONEY by engaging with the Russians... That is what they lied about. Trumps entire team was trying to cash in on their association with him.
Triaitors, not too stupid to be. But lying petty criminals yes. That is who he surrounded himself with. Deal with it.
Note that none of the process crimes that you hype in any way related to Russia.
Paragraph 95 of the Mueller Report describes the Internet Research Agency as a "commercial organization". In other words, a clickbait troll farm. When IRA answered the criminal charges against them, the DoJ was unable to provide the court any evidence that it was in any way linked with the Russian government, and the indictment was dismissed under threat of sanctions.
As for the idea that Russia had some "massive" impact on the 2016 election, that has been dispensed with more times than anyone can count, including by Taibbi and Greenwald, among others.
<In other words, a clickbait troll farm. When IRA answered the criminal charges against them, the DoJ was unable to provide the court any evidence that it was in any way linked with the Russian government, >>
Factually wrong and further evidence you are misinformed on this. I get it, you wont ever admit to yourself you are factually wrong. Your narrative is REFUTED by the Mueller report. Next you will say "Mueller was wrong". Isnt this how these conversations go?
"The IRA posed as Americans, hiding their Russian background, while asking Trump campaign members for campaign buttons, flyers, and posters for the rallies. The Mueller report detailed that the IRA spent $100,000 for over 3,500 Facebook advertisements, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements. They started scores of anti-Clinton Facebook pages many of which had hundreds of thousands of 'friends' posting anti Clinton propaganda"
I was born in Quebec when it was a theocracy and fascist.
It evolved into a secular humanist liberal democracy that is matriarchal rather than patriarchal. The mayors of all our large cities are xx. Our universities are mostly xx. Seventy percent of new doctors for over a decade are xx. Most of our political leaders are xx and even are businesses are increasingly xx. We old geezers are in seventh heaven and well looked after but some day they might realize they need us like fish need bicycles.
America is run by the organ with which Zelensky played piano.
When I first watched Zelenskiy play piano I thought of an earlier Black Sea Comedian called Diogenes. Men travelled the known world just to see Diogenes perform his stand up comedy. Diogenes was the only human Alexander the Great trusted. My middle name is Alexander as is Zelenkiy's all my family are named after Alexander.
It is something about Babi Yar that is most familiar.
Maybe it is all about playing piano with your penis.
You mean Fred C. Koch's John Birch Society that Reagan welcomed back intothe GOP tent in 1964 in San Francisco.
American's history is so distorted people remember Nixon threw the Bircher's out.
In Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story Nixon lost California to Pat Brown because the Birchers stayed home. Reagan did not make the same mistake and embraced the Bircher and the white supremacists and became California governor.
In San Francisco in 1964 there was Reagan embracing the Klan and the White Citizen's councils. The Klan marched outside the Cow Palace with their Goldwater signs. If your too young or if you forget it is all on youtube and in the Smithsonian archives.
This is my favourite but for real history it is hard to argue with the Smithsonian archivists.
I am 75. I was born in 1948. We stidied Orwellin school Orwellian meant using precise language not Newspeak. Stalin said: "Some are more equal than others" in Animal Farm.
Fred C Koch was a Stalinist and founded the John Birch Society. Stalinist referred not to Communism or Capitalism but a way to sow hate and division and create totalitarian states.
I suggest Orwell and his essays.
If you need to understand what is happening I suggest his essay on Nationalism
What I believe is that we are primates. I believe primates evolved t obe social animals. The great apes are not all that good at reproduction and requires a long time to reach maturity. this requires a great deal of social interaction. I would suggest Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari as competent evolutionary biologists.
I will suggest that Mark Twain understood human mob behaviour as well as any geneticist and actually understood Darwin.
There are two Bibles I would suggest but I hesitate to use the word Bible because too many people believe in magic. There is the Bible according to Mark Twain which would get any teacher fired in any public school in the USA
There is Jefferson' Bible which is the ethics and Values of Jesus the Nazarene.
Bibles are foundational in human societies but they take on magical properties in the hands of priests and lawyers.
There is the Mormon Bible which makes my head spin.
I watched one of my economic gurus Richard Wolff completely miss the War of 1812 which saw Madison challenge the sovereignty of Canada's parliaments.
Of course Madison rejected parliamentary democracy and attacked congress on behalf of The Commander and Chief when Washington assumed office under the new constitution.
The war of 1812'1814 was an American War of aggression on land and on sea. The Battle of Fort McHenry and The Star Spangled banner bear a need for strong scrutiny. Francis Scott Key was a deplorable Human Being even by his contemporary standards.
If you want the only answer I can honestly give it is
Autistic what you are not who you are. In Quebec Autism is very real and affects one out of 66 of the population. We are who we are and there is no such thing as normal on a spectrum of normality and a spectrum of abnormality.
There are no two creatures exactly the same in this universe remember the story of snowflakes and we are much more complex than snowflakes.
My wife's masters degree is in science education. Science Teachers don't know science.
The debate is whether there really is such a thing as free will.
I would suggest Stephen Fry the writer actor and public intellectual to ask the right questions.
Today's Peter Coy opinion piece in the NYT asks about the meaning of 10 quintillion.
This is not a number for human beings but it is still a number.
Here is where the metaphysics get really confusing. Philosophy and science is exactly the same word. They are more than synonyms they are exactly the same in meaning.
How do you teach when you can only pretend to know?
The more I learn the more there is to learn.
My theory is that there is no such thing as matter there is only energy and the universe is simply energy waves.
That brings me back to a promise I made to a dying Buddhist monk and Seeker of mystical wisdom. I promise I would attempt to write my story. He was a writer and a scholar and an educator but most of all he was a friend.
I never believed I could learn to write and I want to spend the rest of my life writing.
What do you believe it doesn't matter what I believe.
That is the essence of 21 st century secular humanist liberal democracy.
That is not the USA.
In Quebec everybody owns themselves and nobody owns anyone else.
The constitution says all men are created equal but some are more equal than others.
Germany was not a threat to the US in 1935. But they were a threat to Europe. And while we sat on our hands a massive world war broke out and we were sucked into it.
Russia is absolutely a threat to Europe, they just proved it. This time we are not sitting on our hands. And at the same time our FAILED diplomacy (under Obama and Trump equally) is as much the CAUSE as Putin's criminal act of war...
I think Russia at the end of WWII was virtually zero threat to the USA. The powerbrokers were afraid we'd sink back into depression and they needed to have govt. spending to stave that threat off. Could've spent the money on infrastructure etc. for the American people. Building up the military to guard against an imaginary enemy was a better choice as it kept workers here hungry while having the same positive effect of boosting the economy. Fast forward and now with Russia's abyssmal performance in Ukraine we can't be fooled into thinking they're still a threat (though they still try) -- so, China.
I think your a bit off. After WW2 the US spent billions on infrastructure, free college and home loans for Americans. Plus tons on R&D and in bailing out Japan and Europe.
After WW2 Russia did not come into the American fold and instead took a different path and that path was a threat to EUROPE and as such a threat to the US...
I wont argue with your view that the "military industrial complex" pushed this war and profited from it. On that we agree... But to say Russia was not threat is simply factually wrong.
Note further how the Left instantly turned into warmongers and supporters of The National Security State, the moment they were offered the whip hand, while the underground pranksters, the people who speak uncomfortable truths that you aren't supposed to say in public, are increasingly on the dirtbag left or on the alt-right.
This is certainly not because of any inherent censoriousness on the Left or any inherent virtue on the Right, but because of their respective relationships to power.
Lets be clear. The right wing press is in far worse moral decay than the MSM that Matt accurately reports on.
Not justifying what the government is secretly doing with the platform companies or the war mongering from MSM... Just saying that the Right Wing media lies have caused an entire class of voters to consistently vote against their own economic interests for a generation....
Matt can't keep it fair and balanced or he will lose viewers who don't want to hear both sides. I can.
Your introduction so perfectly captures how politically toxic this psyop was. Matt's reporting missed that dimension. He viewed the effort through his background as a reporter and saw only fraudulent reporting. By viewing it from a broader perspective, you saw the political dimension.
I don't know what my problem is. It seems Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul has been telling us this for thirty years. He served consecutive terms as head of PEN International and talked about it in Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West) it has been thirty years and Chris Hedges wrote the foreword to the twentieth anniversary edition.
Who do you think paid the Town Criers?
Before I begin this week's news the specials at Raytheon..................................
Don't tell anybody this week's special is hot and sour soup and the shitakes and elephant ears are of Chinese origin. The tofu , chickens are local and the vinegar and fermented garlic came from China. The eggs are delivered by our neighbour and we talk chickens and economics.
Our neighbour is very weird. He loves his chickens and if the foxes don't get them they die of natural causes. Fermented garlic is sugar not garlic in flavour.
The price of fresh mushrooms is prohibitive and I wouldn't waste fresh mushrooms in hot and sour. Fresh shitakes are great on an olive oil, pine nut mozzarella and anchovy pizza.
We had pizza before we had tomatoes.
You are talking atom bombs . It is 2023 thermo nuclear is a powerful microwave not a flame thrower. No radioactivity.
I have no empathy for David Corn. He is corrupt to the core. Many other Mother Jones writers changed too. They went on to corrupt other good publications and companies.
I remember mea cuplas from the press about not vetting government lies during the lead-up to the Iraq war. But the press did not correct itself. This time will be no different.
I heard Biden's speak and I am speechless. In his time for choosing speech Reagan said 1933-1964 was America's worst Nightmare. That was the year of Duck Soup and the New Deal.
It sounded like 1933 all over again and maybe this time America will get The New Deal correct.
Democracy may be coming to the USA.
I think Biden got it right except when you are the Empire America First may not be the road less travelled by. The barbarians are more dangerous inside the gates. Men like Pompeo, Abbott, Cruz, Rubio and DiSantis are inside the gate.
It is a new beginning or the end in either case it is up to America. God told me she gave up on America well Jerry Falwell claimed he possessed a moral? (amoral) majority.
At the same time I received my monthly receipt for my contribution to The Quebec Co-operative for Independent media. Cooperative nationale de l'information independante.
Without an independent press democracy is just a Coleridge pipedream.
I listened to Biden's speech as a Canadian of 75 years who once upon considered America the promised Land. I lived in America for almost twenty years but came home to die and brought my Nashville born wife with me.
I was born an Orthodox Jew but somehow I reverted to my father's Jewish Gnosticism.
Every night my wife whose is deeply rooted in American Deism and recite the holy prayer Blessed art thou o lord that we are living in Canada.
This is the right speech in some country that no one pays attention to, but this will not endear America to Canadians or any other people who take pride in their identity.
America is the front page of every major newspaper in the world and that kind of unsupportable by the evidence; arrogance is just outrageous.
America isn't even one of the twenty one Fully Democratic Nations on Earth. It standard of living isn't world class. Its life expectancy second world. Its education is not germane to future needs. America is a bad joke and there is no buffoon like an arrogant buffoon.
Indeed Atkinson is the mentor for M. Piketty who's moniker i prefer.. Lets see if i catch your drift... Religion can be used for good and used for bad.... Sort of like the "can't live with it and can't live with out it" reference.... Is that your implication on economics too?
If anyone here knows the answer to this question please answer. The Mueller report said Russia hacked email of Podesta and DNC and gave the emails to Wikileaks. Was that just lies? I remember at the time Wikileaks said the emails came from non-state sources.
Caity Johnstone asks how one can be opposed to eternal war and Empire without being accused of being a Secret Russian Agent.
The answer, of course, is that you can't.
She is so good! Straight out with it!
Cmon
This is NOT slippage in journalistic standards
This is INTENTIONAL behavior directed by the corporate owners of Mainstream Media!
These are intentional lies and propaganda that the owners of these media corporations are DEMANDING from their employees who masquerading as “journalists”
This is insidious and pernicious
I called this fraud in response to Robbie Mook's tweet about Russian interference the Saturday before the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Not calling firsts, just pointing out how utterly absurd the allegations were from the get go. I was running a primary campaign in WI and honestly could not think of anything I could do to impact the election without actually being in the district and interacting with voters every day.
To think that foreign actors could influence our elections with facebook ads and dis/misinformation is ridiculous! No one including the accusers have ever cited any actual action that could have conceivably have had an impact on that election and now there is proof that none of it ever happened and still NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT PURGING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF ITS CORRUPT LEADERSHIP!
We're still in the 'why won't the media admit they were used?' stage of grieving 2016. Nothing will get better until enough state parties cut ties with the DNC, run their own caucuses/primaries when they choose and by their rules, and then the DNC can throw their delegates out or accept them but either way the party either bends>reforms or breaks.
Break this party or fix it -- I don't care, but the folks in charge of the D party should never be allowed to work another election. Being good at excuses after the fact is not in the job description.
To be fair, it was obvious from the outset that the russiagate conspiracy theory was so ludicrous that it would have embarrassed The John Birch Society, ca. 1962.
When I worked at the Iowa State Fair in the 80s, I would regularly pass a small, rarely visited John Birch Society booth and ridicule the living shit out of the mousy guy who manned it. I guess the joke's on me because his side ultimately won. Unbelievable.
KP
The funders of the propaganda that drove the "mousy guy who manned" the JBS booth to become a true believer eventually learned that other ways to convince simple minded Americans that voting against their own economic interests was a good idea.
Right?
If people have to choose between two equally bad options, is it fair to call them simple minded?
KP
Good point. I think if you objectively look at it there are as many people on the left that are as committed to terrible policy as there are on the right.
Zombies? NPC's? Lazy? Terrified? Cult-like?
I - like everyone here, I bet, even your good self - know an ocean of people that just don't want to hear it. They've picked their favorite color (if they even let themselves expend that much brain power) and shuffle through the motions on game day. If they show up at all.
They glaze over when the MSM is criticized - at best. And the only independents they'd even consider are the ones one that are allowed to float around the trough for whatever reason. 9/10 times so they can watch these candidates ridiculed, abused and forgotten. Like a TV show.
Like A TV Show!
Seriously, you've sat in a room with family/friends/both and seen this. A lot. Since you were able to recognize what it is.
I know you love them, I know I do. But. This "politeness" - it's just encouraging them to keep turning their minds over to the courtiers.
I like to name-drop my weekly reads and subs and the interesting things they teach me. It does come back - albeit in drips and drabs, at work and on visits and I think strategic persistence will prevail.
All the best.
FF
If you want to be fair about the Russiagate Conspiracy theory "being ludicrous" (which it was) then don't ignore right wing media like Fox and other right wing media being as WRONG as MSM.. From "Not a shred of evidence" "Trump is innocent" the Meuller report thoroughly refuted that narrative that Right Wing media was lying about while MSM was lying too... Meuller did NOT exonerate Trump or his team. The Trump team LIED endlessly and lying more than breaking the law is how most of them ended up in jail.
Yes MSM wildly exaggerated Russia Gate. So did right wing media, just as bad if not worse...
Basically, a bunch of process crimes, none of them connected with Russia.
Feral,
I mean no disrespect but as I said you can't be feral if you've never been domesticated. I speak English not Newspeak. Russia is an abstraction it is a piece of art and anything you imagine it to be. There are probably close to eight billion Russias alive and well on this planet.
Mark Twain spoke Russian and knew Russia's people. He wrote Russian and understood literature written in Russian. He loved the people and their absurd sense of humour and hated their government long before the revolution.
You must know Russian to understand the American Claimant it is Zelenskiy's humour.
It is painful at my age to roll on the floor laughing with tears in my eyes.
Your statement reveals you to be as misinformed on Russia Gate (only from right wing media) as the people that listened to MSNBC and CNN and NYT on Russia gate.
You are different sides of the same coin. Misinformed.... Read the Mueller report. I did. People went to prison over process crimes. What Mueller found out caused these people to LIE to hide their crimes....
The Trump campaign was found literally to STUPID to have had intent. But it was PROVEN that the Russians had a massive impact on the election. Massive.
They had facebook accounts with hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters on them and attending rallies at their direction. They reached out to numerous people in the Trump orbit to coordiate. Those people first tried to make MONEY by engaging with the Russians... That is what they lied about. Trumps entire team was trying to cash in on their association with him.
Triaitors, not too stupid to be. But lying petty criminals yes. That is who he surrounded himself with. Deal with it.
Note that none of the process crimes that you hype in any way related to Russia.
Paragraph 95 of the Mueller Report describes the Internet Research Agency as a "commercial organization". In other words, a clickbait troll farm. When IRA answered the criminal charges against them, the DoJ was unable to provide the court any evidence that it was in any way linked with the Russian government, and the indictment was dismissed under threat of sanctions.
As for the idea that Russia had some "massive" impact on the 2016 election, that has been dispensed with more times than anyone can count, including by Taibbi and Greenwald, among others.
<In other words, a clickbait troll farm. When IRA answered the criminal charges against them, the DoJ was unable to provide the court any evidence that it was in any way linked with the Russian government, >>
Factually wrong and further evidence you are misinformed on this. I get it, you wont ever admit to yourself you are factually wrong. Your narrative is REFUTED by the Mueller report. Next you will say "Mueller was wrong". Isnt this how these conversations go?
"The IRA posed as Americans, hiding their Russian background, while asking Trump campaign members for campaign buttons, flyers, and posters for the rallies. The Mueller report detailed that the IRA spent $100,000 for over 3,500 Facebook advertisements, which included anti-Clinton and pro-Trump advertisements. They started scores of anti-Clinton Facebook pages many of which had hundreds of thousands of 'friends' posting anti Clinton propaganda"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#:~:text=The%20IRA%20posed%20as%20Americans,Clinton%20and%20pro%2DTrump%20advertisements.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-report-ira-internet-research-agency/
Yes ,Yes a thousand times yes.
I was born in Quebec when it was a theocracy and fascist.
It evolved into a secular humanist liberal democracy that is matriarchal rather than patriarchal. The mayors of all our large cities are xx. Our universities are mostly xx. Seventy percent of new doctors for over a decade are xx. Most of our political leaders are xx and even are businesses are increasingly xx. We old geezers are in seventh heaven and well looked after but some day they might realize they need us like fish need bicycles.
America is run by the organ with which Zelensky played piano.
Zelenskiy playing piano
Before he designed Europe needed an adult to take charge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oua0Puihrkc
When I first watched Zelenskiy play piano I thought of an earlier Black Sea Comedian called Diogenes. Men travelled the known world just to see Diogenes perform his stand up comedy. Diogenes was the only human Alexander the Great trusted. My middle name is Alexander as is Zelenkiy's all my family are named after Alexander.
It is something about Babi Yar that is most familiar.
Maybe it is all about playing piano with your penis.
You mean Fred C. Koch's John Birch Society that Reagan welcomed back intothe GOP tent in 1964 in San Francisco.
American's history is so distorted people remember Nixon threw the Bircher's out.
In Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story Nixon lost California to Pat Brown because the Birchers stayed home. Reagan did not make the same mistake and embraced the Bircher and the white supremacists and became California governor.
In San Francisco in 1964 there was Reagan embracing the Klan and the White Citizen's councils. The Klan marched outside the Cow Palace with their Goldwater signs. If your too young or if you forget it is all on youtube and in the Smithsonian archives.
This is my favourite but for real history it is hard to argue with the Smithsonian archivists.
https://mashable.com/feature/1964-gop-convention#PnF5L1lSmkqL
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1964-republican-convention-revolution-from-the-right-915921/
Moe
I can understand why Reagan embraced the Klan and White citizens counsels. Clearly to get votes.
My question is... why did American voters vote for Law makers that embraced such organizations?
I am 75. I was born in 1948. We stidied Orwellin school Orwellian meant using precise language not Newspeak. Stalin said: "Some are more equal than others" in Animal Farm.
Fred C Koch was a Stalinist and founded the John Birch Society. Stalinist referred not to Communism or Capitalism but a way to sow hate and division and create totalitarian states.
I suggest Orwell and his essays.
If you need to understand what is happening I suggest his essay on Nationalism
here it is from the Orwell Foundation.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
I highly recommend Orwell selected essay Oxford Press 2021
Orwell knew how to write proper political and social essays and warned us about Newspeak.
If you need to go back in history there were no Jews in England from the Crusades to Cromwell because of the genocide or the exile.
In Europe the motto of the Holy Romans was divide and conquer.
Moe
I have read and enjoyed Orwell and I am well read on Fred and his evil sons.
My question pertains to "WHY" you think voters embrace Law Makers that embrace organizations like the Klan and White Citizens counsels.
"Know your enemy" Do you know the answer to this question?
Michael
What I believe is that we are primates. I believe primates evolved t obe social animals. The great apes are not all that good at reproduction and requires a long time to reach maturity. this requires a great deal of social interaction. I would suggest Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari as competent evolutionary biologists.
I will suggest that Mark Twain understood human mob behaviour as well as any geneticist and actually understood Darwin.
There are two Bibles I would suggest but I hesitate to use the word Bible because too many people believe in magic. There is the Bible according to Mark Twain which would get any teacher fired in any public school in the USA
There is Jefferson' Bible which is the ethics and Values of Jesus the Nazarene.
Bibles are foundational in human societies but they take on magical properties in the hands of priests and lawyers.
There is the Mormon Bible which makes my head spin.
I watched one of my economic gurus Richard Wolff completely miss the War of 1812 which saw Madison challenge the sovereignty of Canada's parliaments.
Of course Madison rejected parliamentary democracy and attacked congress on behalf of The Commander and Chief when Washington assumed office under the new constitution.
The war of 1812'1814 was an American War of aggression on land and on sea. The Battle of Fort McHenry and The Star Spangled banner bear a need for strong scrutiny. Francis Scott Key was a deplorable Human Being even by his contemporary standards.
If you want the only answer I can honestly give it is
Autistic what you are not who you are. In Quebec Autism is very real and affects one out of 66 of the population. We are who we are and there is no such thing as normal on a spectrum of normality and a spectrum of abnormality.
There are no two creatures exactly the same in this universe remember the story of snowflakes and we are much more complex than snowflakes.
My wife's masters degree is in science education. Science Teachers don't know science.
The debate is whether there really is such a thing as free will.
I would suggest Stephen Fry the writer actor and public intellectual to ask the right questions.
Today's Peter Coy opinion piece in the NYT asks about the meaning of 10 quintillion.
This is not a number for human beings but it is still a number.
Here is where the metaphysics get really confusing. Philosophy and science is exactly the same word. They are more than synonyms they are exactly the same in meaning.
How do you teach when you can only pretend to know?
The more I learn the more there is to learn.
My theory is that there is no such thing as matter there is only energy and the universe is simply energy waves.
That brings me back to a promise I made to a dying Buddhist monk and Seeker of mystical wisdom. I promise I would attempt to write my story. He was a writer and a scholar and an educator but most of all he was a friend.
I never believed I could learn to write and I want to spend the rest of my life writing.
What do you believe it doesn't matter what I believe.
That is the essence of 21 st century secular humanist liberal democracy.
That is not the USA.
In Quebec everybody owns themselves and nobody owns anyone else.
The constitution says all men are created equal but some are more equal than others.
In summary -- fascism rules in the US and US media.
Twitter Files alone is 20X bigger than Watergate but a total silence in state-controlled media.
Here are the references to the Columbia Journalism Review series by PULITZER PRIZE winning journalist, Jeff Gerth, that Matt Taibbi cites:
1-Gerth Jeff. (2023). "INTRODUCTION: ‘I REALIZED EARLY ON I HAD TWO JOBS’" The Press Versus the President, part one. Columbia Journalism Review;
2-Gerth Jeff. (2023). " THE ORIGINS OF FAKE NEWS" The Press Versus the President, part two. Columbia Journalism Review;
3-Gerth Jeff. (2023). A CONTESTED PULITZER. The Press Versus the President, part three. Columbia Journalism Review;
4-Gerth Jeff. (2023). HELSINKI AND THE $3,000 RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN The Press Versus the President, part four. Columbia Journalism Review.
As far as I know, Russia has not been a military threat to the U.S. since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.
So what accounts for the obession with making Russia the boogeyman? Retribution for the pogroms of a hundred and twenty years ago?
AM
Germany was not a threat to the US in 1935. But they were a threat to Europe. And while we sat on our hands a massive world war broke out and we were sucked into it.
Russia is absolutely a threat to Europe, they just proved it. This time we are not sitting on our hands. And at the same time our FAILED diplomacy (under Obama and Trump equally) is as much the CAUSE as Putin's criminal act of war...
Maybe study history before making such remarks?
I think Russia at the end of WWII was virtually zero threat to the USA. The powerbrokers were afraid we'd sink back into depression and they needed to have govt. spending to stave that threat off. Could've spent the money on infrastructure etc. for the American people. Building up the military to guard against an imaginary enemy was a better choice as it kept workers here hungry while having the same positive effect of boosting the economy. Fast forward and now with Russia's abyssmal performance in Ukraine we can't be fooled into thinking they're still a threat (though they still try) -- so, China.
TS
I think your a bit off. After WW2 the US spent billions on infrastructure, free college and home loans for Americans. Plus tons on R&D and in bailing out Japan and Europe.
After WW2 Russia did not come into the American fold and instead took a different path and that path was a threat to EUROPE and as such a threat to the US...
I wont argue with your view that the "military industrial complex" pushed this war and profited from it. On that we agree... But to say Russia was not threat is simply factually wrong.
Note further how the Left instantly turned into warmongers and supporters of The National Security State, the moment they were offered the whip hand, while the underground pranksters, the people who speak uncomfortable truths that you aren't supposed to say in public, are increasingly on the dirtbag left or on the alt-right.
This is certainly not because of any inherent censoriousness on the Left or any inherent virtue on the Right, but because of their respective relationships to power.
Chris has the best quotes to steal, we are witnessing the complete moral decay of the press.
PD
Lets be clear. The right wing press is in far worse moral decay than the MSM that Matt accurately reports on.
Not justifying what the government is secretly doing with the platform companies or the war mongering from MSM... Just saying that the Right Wing media lies have caused an entire class of voters to consistently vote against their own economic interests for a generation....
Matt can't keep it fair and balanced or he will lose viewers who don't want to hear both sides. I can.
Your introduction so perfectly captures how politically toxic this psyop was. Matt's reporting missed that dimension. He viewed the effort through his background as a reporter and saw only fraudulent reporting. By viewing it from a broader perspective, you saw the political dimension.
Thank you.
I don't know what my problem is. It seems Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul has been telling us this for thirty years. He served consecutive terms as head of PEN International and talked about it in Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West) it has been thirty years and Chris Hedges wrote the foreword to the twentieth anniversary edition.
Who do you think paid the Town Criers?
Before I begin this week's news the specials at Raytheon..................................
"Before I begn this week's news the specials at Raytheon..."
Not meatloaf with mushroom cloud---I mean, mushrooms, again, I hope.
Don't tell anybody this week's special is hot and sour soup and the shitakes and elephant ears are of Chinese origin. The tofu , chickens are local and the vinegar and fermented garlic came from China. The eggs are delivered by our neighbour and we talk chickens and economics.
Our neighbour is very weird. He loves his chickens and if the foxes don't get them they die of natural causes. Fermented garlic is sugar not garlic in flavour.
The price of fresh mushrooms is prohibitive and I wouldn't waste fresh mushrooms in hot and sour. Fresh shitakes are great on an olive oil, pine nut mozzarella and anchovy pizza.
We had pizza before we had tomatoes.
You are talking atom bombs . It is 2023 thermo nuclear is a powerful microwave not a flame thrower. No radioactivity.
great interview. Thank you both for the tireless work you do. I am so appreciative
I have no empathy for David Corn. He is corrupt to the core. Many other Mother Jones writers changed too. They went on to corrupt other good publications and companies.
I remember mea cuplas from the press about not vetting government lies during the lead-up to the Iraq war. But the press did not correct itself. This time will be no different.
I heard Biden's speak and I am speechless. In his time for choosing speech Reagan said 1933-1964 was America's worst Nightmare. That was the year of Duck Soup and the New Deal.
It sounded like 1933 all over again and maybe this time America will get The New Deal correct.
Democracy may be coming to the USA.
I think Biden got it right except when you are the Empire America First may not be the road less travelled by. The barbarians are more dangerous inside the gates. Men like Pompeo, Abbott, Cruz, Rubio and DiSantis are inside the gate.
It is a new beginning or the end in either case it is up to America. God told me she gave up on America well Jerry Falwell claimed he possessed a moral? (amoral) majority.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifwtWF485HU
At the same time I received my monthly receipt for my contribution to The Quebec Co-operative for Independent media. Cooperative nationale de l'information independante.
Without an independent press democracy is just a Coleridge pipedream.
I listened to Biden's speech as a Canadian of 75 years who once upon considered America the promised Land. I lived in America for almost twenty years but came home to die and brought my Nashville born wife with me.
I was born an Orthodox Jew but somehow I reverted to my father's Jewish Gnosticism.
Every night my wife whose is deeply rooted in American Deism and recite the holy prayer Blessed art thou o lord that we are living in Canada.
This is the right speech in some country that no one pays attention to, but this will not endear America to Canadians or any other people who take pride in their identity.
America is the front page of every major newspaper in the world and that kind of unsupportable by the evidence; arrogance is just outrageous.
America isn't even one of the twenty one Fully Democratic Nations on Earth. It standard of living isn't world class. Its life expectancy second world. Its education is not germane to future needs. America is a bad joke and there is no buffoon like an arrogant buffoon.
Moe
As a proud American let me tell you this right here and now...
"The truth Hurts"
Thank you.
Interesting name Piketty. Goes with Atkinson, and inequality studies.
I think economics as religion and inequality studies as sociology. Like Bauhaus form follows function.
Indeed Atkinson is the mentor for M. Piketty who's moniker i prefer.. Lets see if i catch your drift... Religion can be used for good and used for bad.... Sort of like the "can't live with it and can't live with out it" reference.... Is that your implication on economics too?
Next week Biden must humble himself before the President of the Free World. Vlodomyr Zelenskiy. I don't envy Biden the job.
Orwell wrote about it in his essay on Nationalism
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
If anyone here knows the answer to this question please answer. The Mueller report said Russia hacked email of Podesta and DNC and gave the emails to Wikileaks. Was that just lies? I remember at the time Wikileaks said the emails came from non-state sources.