Time to Rally Around Trump Against Selective Prosecution under Ridiculous Espionage Act

Trump Prosecution Is Not Credible

Commentary

Whether you love Donald Trump or despise him as a fascist lunatic, the selective prosecution of Donald Trump under the Espionage Act should be opposed. (See Special Counsel Jack Smith, U.S. Department of Justice.)

The Espionage Act cannot be enforced impartially, for the the Espionage Act is tyrannical caprice meant to punish or silence perceived enemies of the state. 

Since World War I, the Espionage Act was used just twice up to the Obama administration which used the Act with "unprecedented vigor, prosecuting more people under that law for leaking sensitive information to the public than all previous administrations combined," (AP).

In modern times, only the Nixon administration in its infamous prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo dared use this despicable device, until Obama, Trump and then Biden used the Act with apparent glee to control information and stop the press from reporting on administration abuses, outside of spying cases.

Hillary Clinton, David Petraeus, Sandy Berger and Joe Biden have all all skated despite often acting in spectacular fashion, but liberal establishment wants Trump, no matter the cost.

Enough. Deliver massage to Biden administration: You go through with this sick indictment, you lose political support.
---
I urge folks to read Scott Horton's piece on spotting politcal prosecutions. From Scott Horton, Harper's  Magazine, Feb. 2008; link follows.

Several red flags with current indictment.

Identity of the Subject. Is the subject an opposition political figure of some sort?

Nature of the Charges. Espionage Act, a ridiculous tool of oppression, brought back from life by Democrat administrations.

Timing and Circumstances of Criminal Investigations and Charges. Timing coincides with effort to stop Trump from running and winning in 2024.

Circumstances of Investigation; Arrest and Detention; Media Dealings. When political figures are involved, has an intrusive investigations been conducted? That is, does the investigation appear geared to disrupting the political figure’s work, for instance, as a parliamentarian or local official?

State Secrecy. Was state secrecy invoked in any aspect of the case? Yes.

Parallel Public Campaigns. Consider carefully whether the prosecution tracks any political campaign which is being run by the Government or the Government party? Yes.

Media Coverage. Particularly where the media is controlled or manipulated by the state (this includes almost every country in the region) or aligns itself with the political party which holds the prosecutorial power, consider carefully the tone and tenor of the media coverage. Ahh, yes.
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See also Glenn Greenwald, Political Prosecution: Trump Indictment Upends Decades of Lax Classified Docs Precedent and What Is the Espionage Act? A Brief & Repressive History.

Biden, Democrats Surpass Orwell's Imagination; Proclaim Power to Discern and Delete Harmful Speech

Facing political disaster in the mid-term elections this Nov, the Biden administration and its media acolytes want the American people to know something: Fear Elon Musk.

That's right, Elon Musk's buying Twitter is a dire threat, and we ought not worry about inflation, looming recession, supply chains, student loans, healthcare costs, household debt and corporate takeover of elected government.

Because you the American people have never had it so good, and you need to trust your betters, and stay away from disinformation.

Now, Musk 'threatens' to open up Twitter to dissident voices who are popular with the American people, but the wrong kind of people who voice the wrong kind of speech and think the wrong kind of thought.

It's obvious Democrats and liberal allies fear the mid-terms because they fear the American people. And when information and thought are presented that threatens Democrat rule, the medium that conveys this information must be policed, and the thought must be purged.

Notes Glenn Greenwald this morning: "The worst, most egregious and most nefarious official US disinformation campaign in years was the pre-election CIA lie that the authentic Biden emails were 'Russian disinformation.' It was led by liberal outlets: CNN, Politico/Natasha Bertrand, HuffPost, Mother Jones, Intercept."

The worst, most egregious and most nefarious official US disinformation campaign in years was the pre-election CIA lie that the authentic Biden emails were "Russian disinformation."

It was led by liberal outlets: CNN, Politico/Natasha Bertrand, HuffPost, Mother Jones, Intercept. pic.twitter.com/h3Exzd8YLJ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 2, 2022

Liberals have long besmirched social media because, they say, they fear platforms in which accredited "lies have unfettered access to the American electorate," in the words of corporatist Democrat, Aaron Sorkin, writing in the New York Times in 2019 in favor of censorship of Facebook.

Sorkin well represents the liberal mindset that reasons liberals and content managers are able to sift and winnow social media writing without being corrupted and misled, but most Americans are not equipped with liberals' powers of discernment.

I read about about Sorkin's call for heavy censorship in 2019, but now his narcissism and silly condescension have become Democrat orthodoxy, terrified of the American population.

Time again for a refresher on free speech.

Free speech need not be defended on grounds that consequences of liberty make for a healthy classical liberal society, ala New York Times v Sullivan (1964), an inspiring statement for liberty against those advocating for authoritative selection of published views.

However, the words of Justice William Brennan and other 20-century jurists speak forever to those who believe only they are immune from corruption of unorthodox thought, and their politcal rule must be protected against the vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.

Writes Brennan in Sullivan:

The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand,

presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many, this is, and always will be, folly, but we have staked upon it our all. United States v. Associated Press, 52 F.Supp. 362, 372 (D.C.S.D.N.Y. 1943).

Mr. Justice Brandeis, in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375-376, gave the principle its classic formulation:

Those who won our independence believed . . . that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. ... Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law -- the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Thus, we consider this case [New York Times v. Sullivan] against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. (New York Times v. Sullivan).

Aaron Sorkin and Democrats ought consider the foundations of Sullivan today, because free speech protections may not be around forever.

Facebook and other social media well serve our national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited.

Consider the thoughts of Glenn Greenwald this morning, and don't worry, you won't be corrupted.

In fact, some of the most sanctimonious leftist writers have been on the dole of Silicon Valley billionaires while attacking others for impure funding. That Musk's purchase of Twitter is some novel development - except for its potential to restore free speech - is laughable. pic.twitter.com/4y7E9LB4kF

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 2, 2022

Collecting my checks from the Sulzberger dynasty (NYT). Laurene Powell-Jobs (Atlantic), MacKenzie Scott (countless left-liberal NGOs), Jeff Bezos (WP), Comcast Corp. (NBC/MSNBC), Warner Bros. Discovery Corp. (CNN), to write about the dangers of a billionaire's control of Twitter.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 2, 2022

Ok so why is it better for Musk to run Twitter than Dorsey and co? Is it better in any way? Or just better because it’s closer to your worldview of social media operation?

— Xavier Koenig (@xavkoenig) May 2, 2022

Because the current scheme is a censorship regime imposed on major social media platforms. Musk is promising to uproot that and instead allow free speech.

If he's sincere and follows through, it will be important. If he isn't and doesn't, nothing will change.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 2, 2022

Google, YouTube, Facebook Censoring Former NYT Reporter, Chris Hedges

Democratic Party-supported Big Tech has discovered an enemy of the state that must be censored: Former New York Times reporter, Chris Hedges.

Reports Hedges this week in ScheerPost:

"The entire archive of On Contact, the Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews with the combat veterans and West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric Edstrom about our wars in the Middle East. Gone are the discussions with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the voices of those who are being persecuted and marginalized, including the human rights attorney Steven Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. None of the shows I did on mass incarceration, where I interviewed those released from our prisons, are any longer on YouTube. Gone are the shows with the cartoonists Joe Sacco and Dwayne Booth. Melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind."

The increasing censorship by Big Tech shows the extent to which Democratic Party-supporting Big Tech has become an adjunct the authoritarian Democrat Party.

Writes Glenn Greenwald: "I really believe history will record that the people who destroyed the full potential of the internet to free us of centralized state and corporate control are the liberal journalists, Dem politicians and activists who spent years demanding a new censorship regime from Big Tech."

Matt Taibbi wrote about Big Tech's censorship of Hedges. 

So, I quoted Greenwald in a Facebook post, and added a link to Taibbi's piece.

This morning, Facebook alerted me it was censoring my Chris Hedges piece as a "violation of community standards," effectively demonstrating again what Hedges, Greenwald and Taibbi have been warning about for years.

Clinton Liberals Attempt Assassination of Julian Assange

Update: The Biden administration should abandon a course that could lead to the criminalization of whistleblowers and investigative journalism.

A ruling by the British high court looks likely to send Julian Assange to the United States to face draconian, trumped-up espionage charges, (The Guardian).

Human rights, freedom of the press, commitment to truth and simple decency all have been jettisoned by the Biden administration, to the surprise of noone.

The United States is also implicated in a plot to kidnap and murder Assange.

But this latest effort to attempt to torture Assange and drive him insane is ongoing.

"The case against the 49-year-old relates to WikiLeaks’s publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011," reports The Guardian.

Assange's real crime is to reveal the duplicity of the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee to the world.

US liberals want Assange to rot in prison for one reason only: his reporting in 2016 - based on true and accurate documents - reflected poorly on Hillary Clinton and the DNC. They believe opposing Democrats is a crime and want their adversaries imprisoned. They are a true menace.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 10, 2021

Diversity Idiocy Is Rearing Its Head, Looking for Big Money Following Chauvin Verdict

Vicki McKenna is a heretic and radio
personality in Madison, Wisconsin.

Update: Madison West High School principal apologizes for email scheduling racially segregated meetings

Madison, Wisconsin — Diversity consultants look to ramp up their snake oil sales in the wake of important legal victories against racism, especially George Floyd.

Race consultants are making out like bandits sermonizing their fallacious drivel to corporations, police departments, universities, and all manner of education.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin local radio personality Vicki McKenna has had enough.

Vicki McKenna blew the whistle on the Madison Metropolitan School District's politically correct-identity politics tripe in the wake of the verdict against the killer cop Derek Chauvin.

The School District featured Zoom links for "white parents" and for "parents of color," in strict accordance to the ridiculous way liberal dogma describes race and racism.

This idiocy was too much. Writes McKenna:

Jim Crow 2.0, courtesy of the Madison School District. pic.twitter.com/qMKwHu4mMp

— Vicki McKenna (@VickiMcKenna) April 23, 2021

McKenna is right. Her tweet was picked up by Glenn Greenwald who added his own experience with the separate-by-color, identity politics practice.

For the last (and actually only) diversity session I attended before leaving The Intercept, the highly-paid outside consultant emailed everyone before saying employees would be divided by race into different rooms (white room & POC room) and it was shocking. Now it's standard: https://t.co/0c6YmFMCX0

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 23, 2021

Near the start of the session, before we were segregated by race, one employee of mixed race -- one white parent, the other parent Indian-American -- nervously and earnestly asked which room she should go into. This dividing people up this way is going to have long-term impact.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 23, 2021

Most of us have had our own experience with diversity consultants.

At one well-meaning company, (though the diversity consultants were cynical), a week-long diversity training seminar feature consultants explaining that we all have biases, a comment on human nature that we are just empty vessels to be filled somehow with prejudices, with no mention how critical reasoning and independent thinking played into who we are.

On the last day, each of the seminar participants confessed to her bias. Some mentioned Italian people, some mentioned black people, and so on.

When it my turn, I announced I had no biases and I was disappointed that everyone had jettisoned rational thinking to adopt bigotries. It's idiocy.

A friend at the company asked how the seminar went and I told her. She said, her admission of people against whom she had a bias was, 'Germans of a certain age."

Diversity consultants are good for a laugh, but this swindle is taking our country by storm.

Matt Taibbi too had a good laugh, but these corporate-consultant hucksters rake in a lot of money from credulous liberals.

Writes Taibbi in his scathing review of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility last year:

A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools in America since the early nineties was the view that individual rights, humanism, and the democratic process are all just stalking-horses for white supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like former corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (Amazon’s #1 seller!) reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions, to racial power contests. ...

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.

If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy ('Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness'), which naturally means 'a positive white identity is an impossible goal.'

DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except 'strive to be less white.' To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as 'leaving the stress-inducing situation' – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the 'ordeal by water' (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.

Greenwald too has been bashing this hokum for years:

The diversity and inclusion consultancy industry is creepy, authoritarian, cultish and toxic, with a painfully cramped and stilted understanding of how people interact with each other and the rules they must obey. There's a reason - several reasons - the corporate world loves it.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 29, 2020

Radical, independent thinkers lead the most recent movement against American racism. 

Let's foster young intellectuals, and not suppress their minds with dogma.

Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn Banned from Twitter for "Harmful Activity"

Updated - The psychology of the censor is at work following the Jan 6 capitol occupation.

Twitter has permanently banned attorney Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn, (Just the News).

Their crime? A Twitter spokesperson told media that they were removed "in line with [the company's] policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity."

This is beginning to to look like the banishing of heretics, with some of the hallmarks of a political Putsch.

I don't trust it.

I love Facebook and Twitter for the social media platforms' capacity to further speech, not to smash speech.

Angela Merkel, who knows something about destroying the press and communication of those perceived as unorthodox, condemned Twitter after the social media platform banned Trump.

Liberals are working to banish political movements from the public square. And what the liberal consensus does is not drawing a lot of opponents.

Glenn Greenwald is one.

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel blasted Twitter’s decision to ban U.S. President Donald Trump.

'The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,' Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Monday." https://t.co/1f8X98ZJIY

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 11, 2021

What makes Merkel's comments particularly striking -- apart from her well-reported acrimony with Trump -- is, as @AliceFromQueens noted, Europe generally and Germany specifically have far less permissive free speech traditions than the US. Yet even Merkel finds this alarming.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 11, 2021

Strength through unity, unity through faith. And no questions.

Statues, People and the Democratic National Convention

Madison, Wisconsin — This site will include reporting, analysis and commentary on the public crucifixion and state prosecution of two women who attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Madison in June, and an unusually fetid state senator, Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee), who pursues black people and their allies with a fanaticism that would make Joe McCarthy blush with shame.

That this Wisconsin pursuit of human beings by Democrats, for Democrats continues during the Democratic National Convention at the expense of our country's greatest liberation movement in 50 years ought at least to draw attention to the paucity of evidence in these criminal cases.

Amid this massive liberation movement for black lives, the Wisconsin legislature has acted swiftly and surely in a bipartisan fashion to protect ... statues. Naturally, Tim Carpenter is front-and-center in this pursuit while reminding the world that he knows some black people who are among his friends and mentors. 

I wonder which mentor taught Carpenter to consider why statutes are more important than black lives.

Carpenter exemplifies how much the Democratic Party has become the national security, law enforcement Party.

Democrats love the idea of state oppression of anyone holding to views, such as Black Lives Matter, that are unorthodox to the Party consensus.

Bear this in mind when Party talk against Trump continues this week at the Convention.

Principled political work and reasoned commitment on presidential power, police violence and the national security state will not emit from the Democratic Party.

Rewriting the limits of presidential powers https://t.co/QrJZsV6snx pic.twitter.com/4IiFcIbNVd

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) August 16, 2020

Reset The Clock

It has been 0 days since the last Police Brutality incident.

"Chicago PD assault protestors, beat them with clubs, slam bikes against them to pin them to the wall."#PoliceBrutality #Chicago #ChicagoProtests pic.twitter.com/0pLNFR4zIw

— Police Brutality Tracker Bot (@CopsRBad) August 16, 2020

The Democratic establishment mind and the neocon mind are completely merged in every meaningful respect.

Just ponder how monumentally stupid *and* unhinged one has to be to believe that PUTIN is behind Trump's considering of a pardon of Snowden. It's just a mass pathology:🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 https://t.co/K6XxQ8e0qi pic.twitter.com/eEbvz68reO

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 16, 2020

Democratic Party Racing Further to Bottom to Assault Joe Biden's Victim

Democrats are outdoing themselves in their character assassination of Tara Reade because she was assaulted by a perpetrator whom the Party wishes to install as the nominee.

Identity politics is a sham and always has been. The #MeToo movement is phony.

The Democratic Party is group of cheats, phonies and liars.

Imagine the fury if, during the Kavanaugh hearings, Republicans had elevated #ChristineFordIsALiar and #IBelieveBrett to the top trending Twitter terms.

What Democrats are doing to Tara Reade is one of the most amazing (repulsive) things I’ve seen in US politics: https://t.co/IwR4qamIJr

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 3, 2020

Bloomber's Racist Rant Caught on Video

Mike Bloomberg is running to win, or at
least to block Bernie Sanders from winning
the Democratic  nomination.
Above flyer was left at door of
frequent voters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin
two days after Iowa caucuses.

If Michael Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk black and brown people on sight were not sufficient to disqualify the oligarch from consideration, the following video certainly is.

Bloomberg is a racist.

Now-a-days this pathology is not a disqualification with the special interests who dominate the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is horrible.

Please circulate the video widely.

It will make your sick.

Racism is now part and parcel of the dems.

This is one of the most vile things you'll ever hear any mainstream figure say, and if you think you're going to bully or coerce or insult people into voting for him if he's the nominee, I think you're living in a very warped dream land. https://t.co/tKOMNAZWsv

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 11, 2020

MSNBC/NBC Politics Chief Assumes Democratic National Committee Duties in Bizarre Effort to Delay Story

It has been apparent in recent years that  MSNBC/NBC News has become a Party press organ for the national Democratic Party.

In the 2015-2016 Democratic Party presidential primary, the network became a de facto Hillary Clinton campaign operation against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a commitment continuing this cycle as Clintonites, Juanita Tolliver and Zerlina Maxwell, emit character assassinations against Sanders from their paid positions in occasional appearances on MSNBC.

The intimate connection between MSNBC/NBC News and the Democratic National Committee became more clear this week after a story from Yashar Ali, contributor to the New York Magazine and Huntington Post, was posted on Twitter.

Glenn Greenwald gave the story needed juice. The mainstream media is blacking out coverage.

This is stunning. Yes, some Fox hosts are often arms of the Trump WH, but this proves - not that it should surprise snyone - that NBC/MSNBC = DNC. Equals. MSDNC. NBC = DNC News. Read this: https://t.co/WbDkBB62Qw

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2019

Below are the 25 posts from Yashar Ali in which he recounts the story of Dafna Linzer, Managing Editor, Politics for NBC News and MSNBC, taking the position of the DNC to delay Ali's scoop on DNC debate scheduling, though Ali has no connection to either NBC News and MSNBC.

Ali doesn't care about his scoop. What concerns Ali is MSNBC/NBC News' Linzer interceding and trying to delay the story on behalf of the DNC.

1. Yesterday, I received a call from @DafnaLinzer who serves as managing editor of NBC/MSNBC politics. Dafna's conduct during the call was highly inappropriate and unethical. So what was the purpose of her call?

She called me to bully me on behalf of the DNC.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

3. Yesterday morning I received a tip from a trusted source. The source told me the DNC would be announcing the dates of the first 2020 primary debates later that day. The source gave me the dates they would be announcing: June 26 and 27.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

5. This wasn't a huge scoop but it was a decent one so I quickly called the DNC to fact-check the tip as I was running out of time: the dates would be announced on MSNBC in the 4:00 PM hour. It's important to note that almost of all of my communication with the DNC was off record

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

7. For another hour so they could go through their important notification calls to the state parties. I told them I couldn't wait as the news would leak and leave me without a story. That's all I can say about the call. Two minutes later I received a call from Dafna.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

9. So when I saw Dafna calling I assumed she would ask me to consider delaying my post so that MSNBC could announce it first. Given that this was an innocuous scoop and not some investigative story I wouldn't have lost sleep if I had delayed. But that's not why she was calling.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

11. She asked if I could hold the story and I said I couldn't. She was agitated, "why not?" I said I'm not going to lose a scoop. Then she got angrier and said "Why not? It's not a big deal, let them make a few phone calls."

My jaw dropped.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

13. I thought to myself "this is how people think it works." It's not. But Dafna was doing it. She kept pressing me. Now I acknowledged, for stuff that isn't about serious investigative reporting, there is no problem holding something. But I knew once others got the call

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

15. I couldn't believe what she was saying. Again, it was fine for me to print the story an hour later, beat her own network by three hours, she just wanted me to let the DNC inform state party leaders. Why the hell did she care?

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

17. I was so surprised me that she was talking this way with a total stranger. The head of the political division was trying to bully me at the behest of the DNC over a dumb scoop (even though they may not have asked her to)

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

19. I'm not one of those gotcha reporters, I think it's bad for sourcing relationships to make people like they constantly feel like they have to say "off record." But Dafna isn't a source and she was calling to intimidate me, so she doesn't get the benefit.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

21. I said "no, I want to go talk to my editor." Then she sent me over the edge and said "What's your editors name, I want to talk to them." She was trying to intimidate me..on behalf of the DNC. I ended the call.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

23. I'm not naive to the fact that this incident is going to be twisted by some with an agenda to discredit the media and say they collude with political parties. But I think its more important to expose bad behavior then keep it under wraps. What Dafna did was unethical

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

25. What I can't figure out is (and no one else I spoke to could understand), why open yourself up to this for a stupid story? How was this worth it?

END

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 29, 2019

The Intercept: Stop Exploiting LGBT Issues to Demonize Islam and Justify Anti-Muslim Policies

Critical coverage of the Orlando mass killing is being published in The Intercept and Informed Comment.

The aftermath filtered through the corporate media is ahistorical and aligns perfectly with the American foreign policy establishment and its purposes ranging from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.

Notes Zaid Jilani as the corporate media, Clinton and Trump all flee from facts and reason:

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reacted to the Orlando shooting with evidence that they can agree on at least one thing: bombing people. Both candidates called for an escalation of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

... Clinton suggested during her post-Orlando speech Monday afternoon that 'We should keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign'

That ISIS/ISIL has nothing to do with the killer in Orlando is of no relevancy to Clinton and Trump who want to bomb someone, somewhere.

Elsewhere, Juan Cole has another dose of sanity at his site, entitled, Top 7 ways to tell if Someone is lying about being a ‘Salafi Jihadi’.

Flaming Islamophobia is chronicled by Glenn Greenwald:

... When it comes to Jews and Christians, people instinctively understand how bigoted and deceitful it is to cherry-pick particularly offensive excerpts from their holy books and use them to demonize all contemporary Christians and Jews.

Indeed, a standard tactic of neo-Nazis and other various anti-Semites is to cite ugly excerpts from the Talmud — including ones purportedly endorsing Jews holding non-Jews as slaves or lying to and stealing from non-Jews — as evidence of the dishonesty and untrustworthiness of Jews generally. We all understand that this tactic is so vile, unscholarly, and anti-intellectual precisely because modern adherents to those religions interpret and apply (or ignore) those provisions in all sorts of ways.

Exactly the same is true of Muslims, yet an entire cottage industry of pseudo-intellectual charlatans — including ones who admit to never having even read the Quran — uses exactly this tawdry tactic to demonize Islam (watch this social experiment where people are read heinous Bible passages and falsely told they are from the Quran). There are literally millions upon millions of Muslims who hold positive views about, and engage in positive interactions with, gay people with regularity (which is why it’s almost always true that those most devoted to demonizing Islam are the ones who know the fewest number of Muslims (just as is true of LGBTs, ironically)).

Madness over madness as the lunatic Trump and the Queen of Chaos fight over details.

Greenwald on Covert Agents Using the Net to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

Think Scott Walker ordering Milwaukee County staff to post comments on news sites was bad, read Glenn Greenwald's new piece on The Intercept.

This repulsive activity described by Greenwald is worse than anything dreamt by J. Edger Hoover.

Cyber defamation and manipulation is not the sole purview of the U.S.; other countries and their assets engage in this cyber war ALL THE TIME.

Writes Greenwald:

"One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents."

Don't think of U.S. intelligence as a monolithic, unitary community.

There are as many factions in American intel as there are in the American public, though Mormons and hyper-Likud Party assets who routinely betray the U.S. are among the most fetid.

False flags, and other intel tactics are what happens every day behind the scenes, when it is turned on American citizens we have a bigger problem.

Greenwald has another exclusive on NSA

Update: US senators rail against intelligence disclosures over NSA practices

Writes Glenn Greenwald in another blockbuster:

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

Chomsky on Greenwald and Snowden

"Governments as I mentioned before always plead security no matter what’s going on. The reflexive defense is security. But anyone who’s looked at– first of all, you take a look at what he [Snowden] exposed. At least anything that’s been published, it’s not any kind of threat to security, with one exception, the security of the government from its own population."
Noam Chomsky, Geneva Press Club; July 2013

Governments as I mentioned before always plead security no matter what’s going on. The reflexive defense is security. But anyone who’s looked at– first of all, you take a look at what he exposed. At least anything that’s been published, it’s not any kind of threat to security, with one exception, the security of the government from its own population.

Governments as I mentioned before always plead security no matter what’s going on. The reflexive defense is security. But anyone who’s looked at– first of all, you take a look at what he exposed. At least anything that’s been published, it’s not any kind of threat to security, with one exception, the security of the government from its own population.

Governments as I mentioned before always plead security no matter what’s going on. The reflexive defense is security. But anyone who’s looked at– first of all, you take a look at what he exposed. At least anything that’s been published, it’s not any kind of threat to security, with one exception, the security of the government from its own population.

I Stand with So-called Traitor—Edward Snowden

No thinking, stay away and trust us.
We know better than you.

Edward Snowden stands tall against the miserable national security state clones and clowns

In the United States of America, what if major figures of the national security/surveillance state began to turn on an American and brand him or her, "traitor," and then try to imprison him for the rest of his life?

That's exactly what's happening as Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, is now targeted for arrest as he hides out in Hong Kong, some speculate.

In any event, Snowden is a hero and clueless miscreants in this democracy—such as congressional intelligence chairs Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein—have met expectations as having little to no conception of what the role of liberty is and what the status of citizens means in this democratic republic.

"If you realize that that’s the world you helped create and it is going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation and extend the capabilities of this architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risks and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is," Snowden said.

Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras report:

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because 'they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent,' and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

Few expect Snowden's revelations to spark a debate on secrecy and secret surveillance of Americans in a democracy to occur in Congress, widely reviled by the U.S. population as a near-worthless institution.

But the spectacle of a scandal is forcing many in the US media to address matters that Snowden brings to the attention of our society, as Congress, Rogers and Feinstein demonstrate their lack of any substantial value.

Here is a link to the words of Snowden.

I'm rooting for Snowden.

And from RT (formerly Russia Today):

Greenwald on the Covert NSA Program, 2007-Present

From the Amy Goodman and Juan González News Hour:

Rightwing Idiot Wind Blows Strong

Some must-reads:

• Amy Davidson in The New Yorker
• Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian
• Igor Volsky in ThinkProgress
• Jeff Simpson in Cognitive Dissidence
• Steven Rosenfeld in AlterNet

Rightwing repulsives are blowing strong after Boston, as many writers are pointing out.

And this is in a post-terror atmosphere of relative forbearance by the American right.

We won't see any Bush-Cheney imbecilities by President Obama, trying to gin up a new war; though I would love to the see the war on whistleblowers end today.

Still, we see the likes of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), desperate to say something stupid on the floor of the Senate: "On 9/11, we were forever disabused of the notion that attacks like the one that rocked Boston yesterday only happen on the field of battle, or in distant countries. With the passage of time, however, and the vigilant efforts of our military, intelligence and law enforcement professionals, I think it’s safe to say that, for many, the complacency that prevailed prior to September 11th has returned. And so we are newly reminded that serious threats to our way of life remain."

The only thing complacent about the American people RE terror is the hesitancy to condemn the American rightwing, as always seeing tragedy as an opportunity for power grabs, political expediency and fear mongering for the repulsive agenda of the Republican Party.

Glenn Greenwald Defends Chomsky Against the Idiot Wind

Noam Chomsky

Update: "The question is: what do we strive for in developing a social order that is conducive to fundamental human needs? Are human beings born to be servants to masters, or are they born to be free, creative individuals who work with others to inquire, create, develop their own lives?"
- Noam Chomsky, 2013
---
Glenn Greenwald has new piece out defending Noam Chomsky against the latest attack by one Aida Edemariam in The Guardian.

Not surprisingly, Edemariam's is a long personal attack, short on facts.

I personally have had the pleasure of speaking with Chomsky for an interview presenting his views in The Capital Times before a Madison appearance on his Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (with Edward Herman) ( New York: Pantheon Books, 1988).

Easiest interview I have ever conducted, I asked two questions and Chomsky replied with some 60 minutes of facts and analysis from which I wrote a short piece not doing justice to the book, interview or man.

Facts and analysis are why many hate Noam Chomsky, and routinely attack him especially when America decides to declare war.

Here's Greenwald summing up the latest in the long line of attacks on Chomsky, this attack by Edemariam. Writes Greenwald:

So to recap: Chomsky is a sarcastic, angry, soporific, scowling, sneering self-hating Jew, devoid of hope and speaking from hell, whose alpha-male brutality drives him to win at all costs, and who imposes on the world disappointingly crude and simplistic arguments to the point where he is so inconsequential that one wonders whether he has ever changed even a single thing in his 60 years of political work.

So, I guess we can just ignore Noam Chomsky then. Right.

Chomsky would advise ignoring the personal attacks on him.

After Slate/The New Republic/Atlantic/New Yorker in 2001-02 all similarly attacked Chomsky for opposing Operation Enduring Freedom, as the civilian toll in Afghanistan surpassed the total of those killed on 9/11, threatening a generation with mass destruction (a prediction that has been borne out just a decade later), Chomsky advised ignoring the personal attacks and keep organizing for peace, writing in April 2002:

"(L)iberal intellectuals have lined up in support of the war machine in the familiar style — discussed, for example, by Randolph Bourne in classic essays–and since they know they do not have the intellectual competence to deal with those who refuse to go along, resort to what comes natural to the educated classes: hysterical tantrums, lies, and abuse. Why become involved? There are more important things to do–such as continue to falsify their increasingly desperate claim that everyone is following them in their depraved subordination to power."

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking; Purveyors of Killing Today Go On, As a Hero Faces Life Imprisonment

Liberated Concentration Camp
From left to right, the generals are George S. Patton (Third Army),
Omar Bradley 12th Army Group (Patton's immediate commander),
Troy Middleton (VIII Corps, Third Army),
Walton H. "Bulldog" Walker (XX Corps, Third Army),
Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander.
Wisconsin's Al Liethen, of U.S. military intelligence and
chief interpreter is next to Ike, pointing with his left hand.
On the far right is Jules Grad, correspondent for the
military's independent daily newspaper Stars and Stripes.
This iconic photo is on display at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Eric Lichtblau, a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has a piece on the Holocaust that should be read by American youth in public schools.

American society does not engender a sense of history, nor for that matter a capacity to think.

Lichtblau reports the NAZI concentration camp system, examination of documents reveal, was wider and even more pervasive than previously believed.

Someone close to me, who worked as a museum curator on the East Coast, had an opportunity some years ago to work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

She turned it down and came back to Madison. One's psyche has limits.

Still, as sentient human beings, the Holocaust remains a discussion in our home.

Most literary treatments do not focus on resistance because there was not very much resistance at least until later; as Norman Cohn writes, just "passive compliance."

But a certain type of person remains committed to the idea that when forces in their countries lie to kill millions, speaking up is the least one can do.

Bradley Manning is one such person.

The Guardian: Bradley Manning blows whistle on American
atrocities. Prosecution to call full witness list despite guilty plea.

Had Manning lived in NAZI-occupied territory, he would have been in the resistance.

Manning leaked documents revealing the idiocies and deceit of American wars, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and "the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality." In May 2010, the 25-year-old Manning was arrested and held for years in a small cell by miserable men.

Now, he faces the prosecution, a group better-suited for fascist states.

As Glenn Greenwald writes today: "Manning is absolutely right when he said today that the documents he leaked 'are some of the most significant documents of our time'. They revealed a multitude of previously secret crimes and acts of deceit and corruption by the world's most powerful factions."

So, Manning must endure persecution, perhaps lifetime imprisonment.

I read Greenwald's piece in The Guardian early morning [first published Thursday], and there was 1,000s of Facebook 'Shares.' One hopes his words reach millions.

Today, we have a military that pisses on Vietnam War veterans; cheers the destruction, the near genocide of Muslims, and champions permanent war and the military-industrial complex in the name of Jesus Christ, an obscenity fought by a few like Mikey Weinstein.

The Manning persecution is President Obama's shame.

Bradley Manning is a hero. Manning spoke up against wars that have killed, wounded, displaced and traumatized millions of human beings.

President Obama and the U.S. military prosecution team are a disgrace.

President Obama can redeem himself by commuting Manning's coming sentence.

The Rule of Law

With Liberty and Justice for Some,
How the Law Is Used to Destroy
Equality and Protect the Powerful

 "The rule of law, as we have always understood it, has been radically degraded in a way that wasn't previously true," said Glenn Greenwald last year.

Listening to Scott Walker's glib and ignorant dismissal of the rule of law and civil rights; observing Madison, Wisconsin Capitol Police Chief David Erwin's disdain for liberty, watching the Wisconsin Supreme Court's GOP majority, Greenwald's observation is of particular relevance.

"The law is also a respecter of reality," notes Greenwald.

Reality. Never in my life time have we seen such contempt for facts and the law.