Those who want to combat Fake News should stop aggressively spreading it when it suits their agenda.
(updated below [Fri.])
Julian Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents).
But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make. This article is about how those false claims — fabrications, really — were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news. The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.
One’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article because, presumably, everyone agrees that publication of false claims by a media outlet is very bad, even when it’s designed to malign someone you hate. Journalistic recklessness does not become noble or tolerable if it serves the right agenda or cause. The only way one’s views of Assange are relevant to this article is if one finds journalistic falsehoods and Fake News objectionable only when deployed against figures one likes.
The shoddy and misleading Guardian article, written by Ben Jacobs, was published on December 24. It made two primary claims — both of which are demonstrably false. The first false claim was hyped in the article’s headline: “Julian Assange gives guarded praise of Trump and blasts Clinton in interview.” This claim was repeated in the first paragraph of the article: “Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has offered guarded praise of Donald Trump. …”
The second claim was an even worse assault on basic journalism. Jacobs set up this claim by asserting that Assange “long had a close relationship with the Putin regime.” The only “evidence” offered for this extraordinary claim was that Assange, in 2012, conducted eight interviews that were broadcast on RT. With the claimed Assange-Putin alliance implanted, Jacobs then wrote: “In his interview with la Repubblica, [Assange] said there was no need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there.”
The reason these two claims are so significant, so certain to attract massive numbers of clicks and shares, is obvious. They play directly into the biases of Clinton supporters and flatter their central narrative about the election: that Clinton lost because the Kremlin used its agents, such as Assange, to boost Trump and sink Clinton. By design, the article makes it seem as though Assange is heralding Russia as such a free, vibrant, and transparent political culture that — in contrast to the repressive West — no whistleblowing is needed, all while praising Trump.
But none of that actually happened. Those claims are made up.
Despite how much online attention it received, Jacobs’s Guardian article contained no original reporting. Indeed, it did nothing but purport to summarize the work of an actually diligent journalist: Stefania Maurizi of the Italian daily la Repubblica, who traveled to London and conducted the interview with Assange. Maurizi’s interview was conducted in English, and la Repubblica published the transcript online. Jacobs’s “work” consisted of nothing other than purporting to re-write the parts of that interview he wanted to highlight, so that he and The Guardian could receive the traffic for her work.
Ever since the Guardian article was published and went viral, Maurizi has repeatedly objected to the false claims being made about what Assange said in their interview. But while Western journalists keep re-tweeting and sharing The Guardian’s second-hand summary of this interview, they completely ignore Maurizi’s protests — for reasons that are both noxious and revealing.
.@ggreenwald I am completely furious about how my interview with Julian #Assange has been distorted and strumentalised
— stefania maurizi (@SMaurizi) December 28, 2016
To see how blatantly false The Guardian’s claims are, all one needs to do is compare the claims about what Assange said in the interview to the text of what he actually said.
To begin with, Assange did not praise Trump, guardedly or otherwise. He was not asked whether he likes Trump, nor did he opine on that. Rather, he was asked what he thought the consequences would be of Trump’s victory: “What about Donald Trump? What is going to happen? … What do you think he means?” Speaking predictively, Assange neutrally described what he believed would be the outcome:
Hillary Clinton’s election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States. Donald Trump is not a D.C. insider, he is part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States, and he is gathering around him a spectrum of other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities. They do not by themselves form an existing structure, so it is a weak structure which is displacing and destabilizing the pre-existing central power network within D.C. It is a new patronage structure which will evolve rapidly, but at the moment its looseness means there are opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better.
Most of those facts — “Clinton’s election would have been a consolidation of power” and Trump is creating “a new patronage structure” — are barely debatable. They are just observably true. But whatever one’s views on his statements, they do not remotely constitute “praise” for Trump.
In fact, Assange says Trump “is part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States” who “is gathering around him a spectrum of other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities.” The fact that Assange sees possibility for exploiting the resulting instability for positive outcomes, along with being fearful about “change for the worse,” makes him exactly like pretty much every political and media organization that is opportunistically searching for ways to convert the Trumpian dark cloud into some silver lining.
Everyone from the New York Times and ThinkProgress to the ACLU and Democratic Socialists has sought or touted a massive upsurge in support ushered in by the Trump victory, with hopes that it will re-embolden support for critical political values. Immediately after the election, Democrats such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chuck Schumer said exactly what Assange said: that they were willing and eager to exploit the ways that a Trump presidency could create new opportunities (in the case of the first two, Trump’s abrogation of the TPP, and in the case of the latter, fortified support for Israel; as Sanders put it: “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him”). None of that remotely constitutes “praise for Trump.” And if it were anyone but Assange saying this, nobody would pretend that was so — indeed, in those other cases, nobody did.
If one wants to be generous and mitigate that claim as sloppy and deceitful rather than an outright fraud, one could do so. But that’s not the case for The Guardian’s second and far more inflammatory claim: that Assange believes Russia is too free and open to need whistleblowing.
In that part of the interview, Assange was asked why most of WikiLeaks’ publications have had their biggest impact in the West rather than in countries such as Russia or China. To see how wildly deceitful Jacobs’s claim was about his answer, just read what he said: He did not say that Russia was too free to need whistleblowing. Instead, he explains that any Russian whistleblower who wanted to leak information would have many better options than WikiLeaks given that Assange’s organization does not speak Russian, is composed of English-speaking Westerners, and focuses on the West:
In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum. There are also newspapers like Novaya Gazeta, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isn’t a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks, and no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player. WikiLeaks is a predominantly English-speaking organization with a website predominantly in English. We have published more than 800,000 documents about or referencing Russia and President Putin, so we do have quite a bit of coverage, but the majority of our publications come from Western sources, though not always. For example, we have published more than 2 million documents from Syria, including Bashar al-Assad personally. Sometimes we make a publication about a country and they will see WikiLeaks as a player within that country, like with Timor East and Kenya. The real determinant is how distant that culture is from English. Chinese culture is quite far away.
What Assange is saying here is so obvious. He is not saying that Russia is too free and transparent to need whistleblowing; indeed, he points out that WikiLeaks has published some leaked documents about Russia and Putin, along with Assad. What he says instead is that Russian whistleblowers and leakers perceive that they have better options than WikiLeaks, which does not speak the language and has no place in the country’s media and cultural ecosystem. He says exactly the same thing about China (“The real determinant is how distant that culture is from English. Chinese culture is quite far away”).
To convert that into a claim that Assange believes is Russia is too free and open to need whistleblowing — a way of depicting Assange as a propagandist for Putin — is not merely a reckless error. It is journalistic fraud.
But, like so much online fake news, this was a fraud that had a huge impact, as The Guardian and Jacobs surely knew would happen. It’s difficult to quantify exactly how many people consumed these false claims, but it was definitely in the tens of thousands and almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Here’s just one tweet, by the Washington Post’s Clinton-supporting blogger (and Tufts political science professor) Dan Drezner, that spread the claim about Assange’s purported belief that Russia is too open to need whistleblowing; as of today, it has been re-tweeted by more than 7,000 people and “liked” by another 7,000:
The next time you're inclined to take Julian Assange seriously, remember this. https://t.co/JIPcns2KTa pic.twitter.com/TUoqHa1KNp
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 25, 2016
Nothing illustrates the damage done by online journalistic deceit better than this: While Drezner’s spreading of Jacobs’s false claim was re-tweeted thousands and thousands of times, the objection from the actual reporter, Maurizi, pointing out that it was false, was almost completely ignored. At the time this article was published, it had a grand total of 14 re-tweets:
.@dandrezner this is completely false: Julian #Assange never ever declared that in my interview
— stefania maurizi (@SMaurizi) December 26, 2016
Worse still, the most vocal Clinton-supporting pundits, such as The Atlantic’s David Frum, then began promoting a caveat-free version of the false claims about what Assange said regarding Trump; he was now converted into a full-fledged Trump admirer:
Part of why this happened has to do with The Guardian’s blinding hatred for WikiLeaks, with whom it partnered to its great benefit, only to then wage mutual warfare. While the paper regularly produces great journalism, its deeply emotional and personalized feud with Assange has often led it to abandon all standards when reporting on WikiLeaks.
But here, the problem was deeply exacerbated by the role of this particular reporter, Ben Jacobs. Having covered the 2016 campaign for The Guardian U.S., he’s one of those journalists who became beloved by Clinton’s media supporters for his obviously pro-Clinton coverage of the campaign. He entrenched himself as a popular member of the clique of political journalists who shared those sentiments. He built a following by feeding the internet highly partisan coverage; watched his social media follower count explode the more he did it; and generally bathed in the immediate gratification provided by online praise for churning out pro-Clinton agitprop all year.
But Jacobs has a particularly ugly history with WikiLeaks. In August 2015, news broke that Chelsea Manning — whose leaks became one of The Guardian’s most significant stories in its history and whom the U.N. had found was subjected to “cruel and inhumane” abuse while in detention — faced indefinite solitary confinement for having unapproved magazines in her cell as well as expired toothpaste. Jacobs went to Twitter and mocked her plight: “And the world’s tiniest violin plays a sad song.” He was forced to delete this demented tweet when even some of his Guardian colleagues publicly criticized him, though he never apologized publicly, claiming that he did so “privately” while blocking huge numbers of people who objected to his comments (including me).
The absolute last person anyone should trust to accurately and fairly report on WikiLeaks is Ben Jacobs, unless the goal is to publish fabrications that will predictably generate massive traffic for The Guardian. Whatever the intent, that is exactly what happened here.
The people who should be most upset by this deceit are exactly the ones who played the leading role in spreading it: namely, those who most vocally claim that Fake News is a serious menace. Nothing will discredit that cause faster or more effectively than the perception that this crusade is really about a selective desire to suppress news that undermines one’s political agenda, masquerading as concern for journalistic accuracy and integrity. Yet, as I’ve repeatedly documented, the very same people most vocal about the need to suppress Fake News are often those most eager to disseminate it when doing so advances their agenda.
If one really wants to battle Fake News and deceitful journalism that misleads others, one cannot selectively denounce some Fake News accounts while cheering and spreading those that promote one’s own political agenda or smear those (such as Assange) whom one most hates. Doing that will ensure that nobody takes this cause seriously because its proponents will be seen as dishonest opportunists: much the way cynically exploiting “anti-Semitism” accusations against Israel critics has severely weakened the sting of that accusation when it’s actually warranted.
It is well-documented that much Fake News was disseminated this year to undermine Clinton, sometimes from Trump himself. For that reason, a poll jointly released on Tuesday by The Economist and YouGov found that 62 percent of Trump voters — and 25 percent of Clinton voters — believe that “millions of illegal votes were cast in the election,” an extremely dubious allegation made by Trump with no evidence.
But this poll also found that 50 percent of Clinton voters now believe an absurd and laughable conspiracy theory: that “Russia tampered with vote tallies to help Trump.” It’s hardly surprising they believe this: Some of the most beloved Democratic pundits routinely use the phrase “Russia hacked the U.S. election” to imply not that it hacked emails but the election itself. And the result is that — just as is true of many Trump voters — many Clinton voters have been deceived into embracing a pleasing and self-affirming though completely baseless conspiracy theory about why their candidate lost.
By all means: Let’s confront and defeat the menace of Fake News. But to do so, it’s critical that one not be selective in which type one denounces, and it is particularly important that one not sanction Fake News when it promotes one’s own political objectives. Most important of all is that those who want to lead the cause of denouncing Fake News not convert themselves into its most prolific disseminators whenever the claims of a Fake News account are pleasing or self-affirming.
That’s exactly what those who spread this disgraceful Guardian article did. If they want credibility when posing as Fake News opponents in the future, they ought to acknowledge what they did and retract it — beginning with The Guardian.
UPDATE [Fri.]: The Guardian, to its credit, has now retracted one of the baseless claims in Jacobs’ article, and corrected and amended several others:
Unfortunately, those falsehoods were tweeted and re-tweeted and shared tens of thousands of times, consumed by hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. We’ll see if those who spread those falsehoods now spread these corrections with equal vigor.
Wow, what a complete asshole ben jakobs is. Little wonder he works for the guardian.uk newspaper–which I stopped reading several years back. The guardian was at least tolerable say, back when Greenwald did his Snowden articles there. But in the years since then–WTF happened? It has become so much propaganda and as Greenwald reveals here a fake news bullshit apparatus. I hate the Guardian–their Syria war coverage is fake news propaganda, their Ukraine coverage is fake news propaganda. Fuck you Guardian editors! NO respect.
Forgot to include the link. http://www.thelocal.se/20120604/41228
Not sure if you spotted this (and I am no Assange groupie), but one of the things that troubled me the most about the allegations of sexual assault made against Assange was that in the midst of it all Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, made the first visit to Sweden of a US Secretary of State in 40 years. Make of that what you will…
Just read the original interview. I really don’t see how one can interpret it like Jacobs did.
Good job Mr. Greenwald.
Yeah, sorry, this is completely baffling to any independent-minded reader. It’s not the exposure of fake news that it purports to be. It’s something that is actually even more sinister than fake news itself. It’s a fake smearing, as “fake news”, of something that is really of a more or less equal level of tendentiousness with Greenwald’s piece itself.
As several commenters have pointed out, the feigned outrage and the acccusations of barefaced lying are a ludicrous inflation of the extremely tenuous grounds for hermeneutic complaint that might, at a pinch, be squeezed out of what the Guardian published. The Guardian engages in FAR more egregious distortion EVERY DAY, in just about every article they publish on Trump or on Nigel Farage, for example, and I don’t notice Greenwald complaining about that.
I read Ms Maurizi’s interview in the English version on the Repubblica website and formed pretty much the same impressions of Assange’s views on Trump and Russia as Mr Jacobs formed and published. It seems to me completely inarguable that, on the basis of what he said to Ms. Maurizi, Mr Assange DOES “approve” of Trump in the sense that he sees him as shaking up a profoundly rotten and evil system whereas Clinton would have consolidated and expanded this system. Likewise, Assange plainly DOES say that, contrary to what Clinton, Obama and their media would have us believe, contemporary Russia has – in part – a “vibrant” media and is NOT a monolithic totalitarian dictatorship like North Korea or China. The DIFFERENCE between what he says about China and what he says about Russia is impossible to overlook. The ONLY reason he gives for Wikileaks not being active in China is the lack of linguistic and cultural competence. He cites the same reason regarding Russia as just a SECONDARY reason. The PRIMARY reason – this is there in black and white – is that there is LESS NEED in Russia’s than in China’s case. in Russia, dissent, he plainly says, IS possible.
I find myself differing, then, from both Mr Jacobs AND Mr Greenwald on this issue. I agree with Mr Jacobs, and entirely disagree with Mr Greenwald, that Mr Assange SAID all these things. But I don’t share even the tiniest bit of Mr Jacobs’s disappointmet or outrage about Mr Assange’s having said them. The analysis that I understood Mr Assange to be giving in the Repubblica interview seemed to me to be an excellent, an accurate and a much-to-be-welcomed one: an acknowledgment that a Trump presidency is BY FAR the lesser of two evils and a vigorous, common-sense repudiation of the New Cold War rhetoric about Russia that has been building up since the Ukrainian revolution and has reached an acme – or nadir – in the “Putin hack” hysteria.
If there is any “distortion” in Mr Jacobs’s reporting of these expressed views of Mr Assange’s, it consists at most in the perceptible tone of disapproval with which he reports (accurately) these expressed views.
I think this is the crux of the falsity of Mr Greenwald’s “fake exposure” of “fake news” here. Mr Greenwald disapproves of Mr Assange’s expressed views even more than Mr Jacobs does. I don’t know Mr Greenwald’s position on Putin’s Russia but I’d bet my bottom dollar that he is someone whose instinct is to react to the suggestion that a Donald Trump presidency represents something to be welcomed – even if only in the sense that Assange very precisely specifies of representing the victory of a much less established and consolidated section of the global ruling class over a much more established and consolidated one, and thus a “chance for change” – with the kind of almost religious dread and horror that a Michael Moore or a Paul Schrader would react to it. The things that Assange, as I’m sorry to have to insist yet again, VERY PLAINLY DID SAY are things so unacceptable to him that he feels compelled to deny he ever said them. And, even sorrier as I am to have to say that, that makes Glenn Greenwald an even more egregious purveyor of “fake news” than Ben Jacobs.
You obviously don’t understand how wikileaks works. There is no primary or secondary reason as you suggest. Wikileaks can only publish material they get offered by people who took the risk to acquire the material.
Assange isn’t saying that he doesn’t need to operate in Russia. What he is saying is that whistleblowers in Russia don’t perceive wikileaks as their primary choice when it comes to choosing the leak target for impact. Since wikileaks is predominantly in English, but Russian whistleblowers need Russian coverage for impact, the seem to choose Russian media instead of wikileaks, which also proves, that they still have other options than wikileaks.
If at all you should therefore blame those whistleblowers in Russia for not choosing wikileaks as the recipient.
While you are just some random guy on the Internet who can be as stupid as he wants to, the same standard doesn’t apply to Ben Jacobs. He gets payed for knowing better …
Thanks, Glenn! Amazing reporting by everyone at the Intercept!
The Guardian piece is not “completely false.” It is a different interpretation of exactly the same quotes attributed to Assange. It is completely possible to read those quotes and interpret them as “guarded praise” for Donald Trump. It is also possible to conclude that Assange has a naively rosy view of freedom of speech in Russia.
Glenn Greenwald disagrees with those interpretations, and may be right – he is a writer of repute. But about the only factual lie in the piece was to assert that Assange has had a long relationship with Putin, and the Guardian has withdrawn that. All else is a different interpretation of what Assange said from Greenwald’s.
I’m not saying I agree with the Guardian headline’s interpretation of what Assange said. I’m saying Greenwald’s piece over-eggs it by saying it’s a factual lie. It’s at least hysteria to describe that as “lies”. The issue in this particular case is not Fake News. It’s slanted headlines – something as old as journalism. It is Fake News that Russia directly hacked the polls – but the Guardian piece goes nowhere near that.
It is also the usual sound of the left eating itself when we should be concentrating on the likes of Breitbart and Fox News. It’s a waste of Greenwald’s own talent.
As for Assange’s own reported position – his line now appears to be “Well, anything’s better than the establishment (i.e. Hillary) and a Trump presidency would shake things up enough to provide opportunities”. I’d question both those assumptions. To say the least.
Are you really saying that this from The Guardian:
“ The la Repubblica interviewer noted that most of Wikileaks biggest revelations concerned what she described as ‘US human rights abuses’. Asked why human rights abuses in China and Russia had not produced similar leaks, and what could be done to ‘democratise information in those countries’, Assange said there was already a ‘vibrant’ Russian media which included critics of the Kremlin. ”
“ He said: ‘In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum. There are also newspapers like ‘Novaya Gazeta’, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isn’t a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks.’ In addition, he claimed ‘no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player.’ “
“ Dozens of journalists have been killed in Russia in the past two decades, and Freedom House considers the Russian press to be ‘not free’ and notes: ‘The main national news agenda is firmly controlled by the Kremlin. The government sets editorial policy at state-owned television stations, which dominate the media landscape and generate propagandistic content.’ “
As a side note, I know that “Freedom House” doesn’t really have any real competitors in what it does (though how something so flawed can continue as the only offering in its field is beyond me,) it is work noting the serious deficiencies & biases that have been continously found in their reports/rankings since their founding.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510340903453716 – unlocked @ http://sci-hub.cc/10.1080/13510340903453716
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13876988.2013.877676 – unlocked @ http://sci-hub.cc/10.1080/13876988.2013.877676
Is a fair, accurate, and reasonable intrepretation & summary of what it is referring to which is:
“ In a famous interview, you declared that at the beginning you thought that your biggest role would be in China and in some of the former Soviet states and North Africa. Quite the opposite, most of WikiLeaks’ biggest revelations concern the US military-industrial complex, its wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq and its serious human rights violations in the war on terror. These abuses have had a heavy impact in an open and democratic society like the United States and produced ‘dissidents’ like Chelsea Manning willing to expose them. Why aren’t human rights abuses producing the same effects in regimes like China or Russia, and what can be done to democratise information in those countries?” – Question (Stefania Maurizi)
“ ‘In Russia, there are many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics such as [Alexey] Navalny are part of that spectrum. There are also newspapers like ‘Novaya Gazeta’, in which different parts of society in Moscow are permitted to critique each other and it is tolerated, generally, because it isn’t a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect, its audience is educated people in Moscow. So my interpretation is that in Russia there are competitors to WikiLeaks, and no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian, so for a strong culture which has its own language, you have to be seen as a local player. WikiLeaks is a predominantly English-speaking organisation with a website predominantly in English. We have published more than 800,000 documents about or referencing Russia and president Putin, so we do have quite a bit of coverage, but the majority of our publications come from Western sources, though not always. For example, we have published more than 2 million documents from Syria, including Bashar al-Assad personally. Sometimes we make a publication about a country and they will see WikiLeaks as a player within that country, like with Timor East and Kenya. The real determinant is how distant that culture is from English. Chinese culture is quite far away’. “ – Answer (Julian Assange)
I don’t just mean the words the article quotes are in fact words that were used, though I will note that the 2nd paragraph I qutoed from The Guardian replaces […WikiLeaks, and no…] with [… Wikileaks.” In addition, he claimed “no…] which not only created a nonexistent end of a sentence (therefore an end to that thought) but also unnecessarily added like 23 unnecessary characters. But, the entire framing and characterization is fair, again not just theoretically and technically possible because the bits that were quoted were in fact said at one point or another? Be honest.
You’ve already pasted that reply two postings down the line. You need to copy a new one before pasting it or jump to the next link on your list and hit CTL+V again.
This piece is itself “journalistic fraud” insofar as it claims the Guardian piece does something it does not do. The Guardian piece is not “completely false.” It is a different interpretation of exactly the same quotes attributed to Assange. It is completely possible to read those quotes and interpret them as “guarded praise” for Donald Trump. It is also possible to conclude that Assange has a naively rosy view of freedon of speech in Russia. You disagree with these interpretations, and you may be right. But about the only factual lie in the piece was to assert that Assange has had a long relationship with Putin, and the Guardian has withdrawn that. All else is a different interpretation of what Assange said. from yours. It’s a lie to describe that as lies.
Fucking shill!
Well Gus, omitting, rephrasing, shifting (words), ‘quoting’ stuff, that actually never has been said is pretty much a bad definition of “interpretation”, and a definition made by you alone.
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In most parts of the world, educated people tend to name Ben Jacobs’ crap of that scale “fake news” at best, a more common word would be “lie”.
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And given Ben Jacobs well documented history of epic failures in terms of journalistic (bare/ minimum) standards, one has to face the simple fact, B. Jacobs was, is, and will ever be a pathological mobbed-up liar.
Gus: pull your head out of your ass and re-read the article. Or maybe you don’t know how to read? Most likely.
one way to deal with a newsmedia that has spread false news is to sue it to bankruptcy. .on the public level is to boycott the Guardian and any commercial brand that advertises it s products on the Guardian.
I read the MSN only for the trivia, they are part of the methods that the ruling class uses to control the working class, along with the church, the school’s etc. Create a myth of of something imaginary like God, money, capitalism, economics etc., etc. Never admit that it’s a myth, reinforce it with everything going…. That is the true meaning of propaganda; how else could you control the masses. 1 Priest is cheaper and more effective than 100 soldiers and 1 corporate media puts the priests to shame. Sometimes the more educated you are only means that you are more intertwined in the system, have been indoctrinated over a longer period; physicians are a good example of this. “They all get out into boxes and they all turn out the same”. A pic on all the parasitic classes who produce nothing and live large!!!!
Glenn, Love your reporting and journalistic integrity. Please continue your pursuits of truth despite the pressure that is applied to stifle your reporting. Freedom of speech and of the press is under assault from every direction. Hope this comment encourages you to continue your fight and struggle against the powers that be.
BTW, I’m not a sycophant and many of my political beliefs differ significantly but integrity is not one of them.
Once again Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head. Many thanks sir.
And like The Washington comPost, The Guardian has become/is merely a subtle brainwashing tool, designed and utilized like a weapon. The super elite are sick.
And to think both those “publications” are syndicated probably over 9000 times.
So much rubbish intentionally distributed to create/maintain a narrative.
Humans appear to be “infected”.
So sad.
Thank you for sharing the TRUTH sir.
Respect.
There is a Salon article posted just yesterday echoing the wild mischaracterizations of the Gaurdian article described here, verbatim, apparently after that was at least partially corrected. For real.
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/julian-assange-denies-russian-hacking-allegations-claims-president-obama-is-trying-to-delegitimize-donald-trump/
Assange is being waterboarded and tazered at Gitmo.
Everything is fake.
If the above paragraph was the only correction(s) published by The Guardian, it would seem grossly inadequate in view of the completely false allegations it had made in regard to what Assange had actually said.
At the very least, if the Guardian aims to be a respected paper, it should have suspended Ben Jacobs for that shameful article in addition to publishing an open apology for misleading its readers.
Especially since the falsehoods had already been tweeted and retweeted to many unsuspecting readers.
This will be a test to see if The Guardian genuinely aims to be a respected paper, or merely aims to compete with other main stream media (e.g. WaPO, NYT, CNN, etc.) which had lately been caught with propagating their own fake/false news apparently to further their own agendas or those of the political parties they support.
Glenn, thank you for your integrity over the years. I doubt we would agree on much politically but I greatly appreciate your desire to report the truth even in the face of potential persecution.
Of all the blundering media missteps in 2016, pushing the ‘Fake News’ narrative has to be the dumbest and will backfire on them. Formerly, most folks would ingest a news story and accept it at face value, but now the media/gov is encouraging them to think critically about what they are reading and watching. This produces an electorate that has to contrast propaganda with reality. It also means establishment rags like the Washington Post will be outed as conduits of Fake News, as they were twice just this past month.
Incredulity is one of the great safeguards of a republic. Skepticism underpins our constitution, evinced by the separation of powers. That the globalist elite have somehow missed the implications of encouraging their underlings to think demonstrates why they are in retrograde and assures that there will be more Brexits and Trumps moving forward.
Oh please. Trump is just as guilty of pushing fake new as anyone else, whatever he or his supporters may claim he stands for. The best that can be said is that his election demonstrates a desire for candidates willing to cut through the bullshit.
And hopefully the lies he’s yet to tell over the next 4 years will feed into that sentiment, and we can get some REAL change in 2020.
Have to say that this piece here opened my eyes a bit. Who knew that even individuals with an axe to grind can easily manipulate the public? Kinda scary.
Why is Trump’s millions of illegals voted “an extremely dubious allegation”, but Democratic claims of Russian election interference is described as deceitful? What is the difference?
“What is the difference?”
You answered your own question. See, this is what we free thinkers like to call “unbiased reporting.” Sometimes, both sides of the political fence are equally guilty of swallowing bs.
I think you missed her point, Mike.
She is agreeing that the two statements are both bs. Her issue is with the way that the author is describing them.
By referring to the Democratic claims as ‘deceitful’ and Trump’s claims as ‘an extremely dubious allegation’ he is implying that one (the Democratic claim) is worse that the other due to the harshness of the words and phases used.
Keep on ‘free-thinking’ brother
They are two completely distinct things, seperate in space and time.
There was no substantive evidence to back up either claim. The one was absolutely bananas out of thin air make-believe, the other was supported by some circumstantial evidence presented as credible fact that did not hold up, and appeared to be a flimsy pretext (accusing another nuclear power of an act of war) to save face for the humiliated dems.
Trump will say any awful, damaging, patently untrue thing, anytime. The more polished political caste are calculating and decietful, and will construct a narrative to advance their oblique agenda. (Or possibly out of pettiness or blinkered stupidity.)
Well first of all wow to this entire little thread of comments. It seems that the first step people need to carry out is to be sure and actually read the words that are said (if for some reason the words I am reading were somehow different than what was on here when these comments were made I apologize.)
So, the answer to the original question in the thread is that those were not the 2 claims that Mr. Greenwald discussed. The one for the right is (millions of illegal voters,) but the other one was not the claim he was discussing, nor for that matter was “deceitful” the characterization he used to describe the claim he did talk about.
So, the claim on the left Mr. Greenwald discussed was how the same poll that showed so many Trump voters thinking illegals voted for Clinton also showed that 50% of Clinton voters believed, “Russia tampered with vote tallies to help Trump.” Now, tampering with vote tallies is a very particular claim… not some overly broad, vague “interfering with the election” claim. It in fact refers to actually changing the tallied vote total at some point in one of the machines used for counting and/or reporting voting results. Now, this is a claim that in fact has not been made anywhere, by anyone (that I am aware of,) and seems to originate from an incredibly misleading headline/phrase that is being tossed around a lot that Mr. Greenwald also mentions which is, “Russia hacked the U.S. election”. He then follows that with where I guess Tracy Adams picked up the “deceitful” portion of their comment when Mr. Greenwald says, “… many Clinton voters have been deceived into embracing a pleasing and…” though the actual characterization given to the belief (not the deceptive headline/phrase that caused it,) is “an absurd and laughable conspiracy theory”.
So apparently the lesson is that we not only need “unbiased reporting” but readers need to use “unbiased reading/listening/watching” when consuming media.
thank goodness for Glenn Greenwald’s mythbusting. The Guardian is part of the establishment, part of the propaganda model in the UK, and therefore part of the problem. Their continued hit pieces on WikiLeaks, as well as their smearing of Corbyn and Sanders, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Right-click on that last graph and be prepared to upload it anywhere uploading is allowed. It’s helpful if you’re a Trump fan or an anti-partisan. If you’re a Clinton fan, you’ll probably want to crop out the right half. These are the statements one can make,based on what it shows:
Trump voters are 2.25 times as likely as Clinton voters to believe that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election. Clinton voters are 4.5 times more likely than Trump votes to believe Russia tampered with vote tallies to help Donald Trump.
Half of all Clinton voters believe something only 25% of all voters believe (that Russia tampered with the count). That means Clinton voters are twice as likely as the average voter to think Russians hacked into voting machines or related computers to cause Clinton’s defeat.
62% of Trump voters believe in something that only 44% of voters believe (that millions of votes we cast illegally.) They are only 1.4 times as likely as the average voter to believe it.
Overall, 37% of voters believe something unfounded and unlikely. Of those, 51% and Clinton voters and 40% are Trump voters.
All of this treats the unfounded allegations as equally absurd. But, one allegation is absurd only as a matter of degree, and does not specify which candidate got an illegal boost. It’s an easy thing to accomplish, too. Presumably some votes (one or more) were cast by people without the right to vote, and Clinton voters who think millions of votes were cast illegally might think they were cast for Clinton, just as Trump voters might think they were cast for Trump. The other is absurd and alleges something unprecedented and very difficult to do. It also alleges that if it happened, it hurt only Clinton.
It’s too bad the illegal votes question didn’t specify which candidate the responder thought had benefited from the hypothetical illegal votes. It might be that even Clinton voters believe millions of her votes were illegal.
Any way you slice it, if these results are representative and if the sample sizes for both questions were about the same, Trump and Clinton voters are equally likely to believe something unfounded, out of the 38% overall who believe it. Clinton voters are more likely to believe in something as fantastical as unicorns. Specifically, it is as fantastical as the belief that a right-handed unicorn pitched for the Cubs and broke their World Series curse this year. Heck, skip the unicorn, the Cubs win was unlikely enough without it.
I simply want to express my appreciation to you and The Intercept. One must listen, read and discern carefully. Even Democracy Now!, which I’ve watched for several years, has seemed careless with some reporting; almost veering over to what the main stream media is saying….more particularly regarding the “white helmets”, among other issues. I am grateful for your honesty, integrity and for pursuing the truth. Thank you.
Its amazing how neither the NYT, nor the Washington Post have a story on the new Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act which actually authorizes the US Govt to engage in and propagate propaganda.
Re-posting without links
Why is the Intercept silent on this
Zero Hedge
Published on Zero Hedge (http://www.zerohedge.com)
Senate Quietly Passes The “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act”
By Tyler Durden
Created 12/12/2016 – 01:13
While we wait to see if and when the Senate will pass (and president will sign) Bill “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017″ [4], which was passed by the House at the end of November with an overwhelming majority and which seeks to crack down on websites suspected of conducting Russian propaganda and calling for the US government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly,” another, perhaps even more dangerous and limiting to civil rights and freedom of speech bill passed on December 8.
Recall that as we reported in early June [5], “a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth has been quietly introduced in Congress. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”
Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.
“Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.”
Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on wuch mainstream fake news portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would rask the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.
* * *
Fast forward to this past Thursday, December 8, when the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report.
Here is the full statement [6]issued by the generously funded [7] Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the passage of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of “disinformation and propaganda” and is shut down by the government.
Senate Passes Major Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill as Part of NDAA
Portman/Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others
U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has passed the Senate as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower local communities to defend themselves from foreign manipulation.
“The passage of this bill in the Senate today takes us one critical step closer to effectively confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us. While the propaganda and disinformation threat has grown, the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel. Today we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on,” said Senator Portman. “With the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against our allies and our interests will fail.”
“Congress has taken a big step in fighting back against fake news and propaganda from countries like Russia. When the president signs this bill into law, the United States will finally have a dedicated set of tools and resources to confront our adversaries’ widespread efforts to spread false narratives that undermine democratic institutions and compromise America’s foreign policy goals,” said Murphy. “I’m proud of what Senator Portman and I accomplished here because it’s long past time for the U.S. to get off the sidelines and confront these growing threats.”
NOTE: The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation. They are as follows:
The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering foreign propaganda and disinformation. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China in addition to violent extremists. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.
Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.
* * *
In other words, the Act will i) greenlight the government to crack down with impunity against any media property it deems “propaganda”, and ii) provide substantial amounts of money fund an army of “local journalist” counterpropaganda, to make sure the government’s own fake news drowns that of the still free “fringes.”
So while packaged politely in a veneer of “countering disinformation and propaganda”, the bill, once signed by Obama, will effectively give the government a full mandate to punish, shut down or otherwise prosecute, any website it deems offensive and a source of “foreign government propaganda from Russia, China or other nations.” And since there is no formal way of proving whether or not there is indeed a foreign propaganda sponsor, all that will be sufficient to eliminate any “dissenting” website, will be the government’s word against that of the website. One can be confident that the US government will almost certainly prevail in every single time.
Active Measures Working Group Broadcasting Board Broadcasting Board of Governors China civil society Communication Congress Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act Counterpropaganda Department of Defense Department of State Disinformation Fail Fake news website Global Engagement Center Greenlight Information warfare Media manipulation Ministry of Truth National Defense Authorization Act national intelligence National Intelligence Ohio Politics Propaganda Rob Portman RT Russian propaganda Senate United States Agency for International Development US government
Scary. How long do you wager before the Supreme Court strikes it down as unconstitutional?
Yes. i believe that you have hit the nail on the head Seema. All of this Russian hacking hysteria and feigned concern for “fake news” should be viewed circumspectly with a eye to identifying the hidden agenda that each is actually intended to serve.
Fake News has been around for many years, except that today it has been given a name. I am not the least surprise that The Guardian would generate false news about Julian Assange; it is all about politics or as Glenn Greenwald states “The Guardian’s blinding hatred for WikiLeaks” and for others it is “pleasing and self-affirming.” As a consumer of “news,” I became extremely cautious about my sources once I reached the age of reason and became a critical thinker and a conscious person. I do not watch the so-called mainstream “news.” Here are some of my sources: Democracy Now!, The Black Agenda Report, The Intercept, The Real News, Hard Knock Radio, John Pilger, and other community programs. Remember that disinformation generates confusion and ignorance among the masses and victory for the dominant culture and their errand boys and girls.
Eu pensei qie tratasse disso. Afinal a campanha da vida dele sempre expôs transparência.
Que seja sua campsnhs também lembrada e afirmada.
Romper padrão e obter a mídia que consinta espaço… tareia!
In exact relation to my previous comment: The War Against Alternative Information
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/01/the-war-against-alternative-information/
The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.
“Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” looks very important. An Intercept article perhaps?
“Those who want to combat Fake News should stop aggressively spreading it when it suits their agenda.” With all due respect to your revealing article, statements like the latter quote serve to give Credibility to the whole Fake News propaganda campaign. They are not out to “combat Fake News.” That is a PsyOp — with various goals. And, one of their goals is for there to be only Fake News — which is Controlled within Sanctioned Narratives. Then, through 1984 Censorship, Blacklists, and life threats, all other (actual) News/Voices are to be quashed. Further, they do not care how many times people like you expose their fraudulent successes, for these missions are funded, ongoing, and set.
For further clarity, I stand by my initial criticism of giving them credibility (since they are brazenly premeditating in what they are doing on a worldwide Fraud/WMD scale). Yet, I felt that my last (original) statement (“Further, they do not care how many times people like you expose their fraudulent successes. . . .”) could be taken the wrong way by remaining independent journalists. While it is true that “they do not care,” essentially (for now), it is also true that we need your efforts to continue more and more, but, deeper and deeper — while those of us even commenting deal with trying not to succumb to the fear of being attacked for merely doing so. This has been a long sought objective for them (first hidden, now up-front), to evolve from Total Information Awareness to Total Information Control. As a result, it is critical that voices from publications like yours, and Consortium News, etc., take the next courageous steps. Tell us how or what things really are — without playing along with, or giving credibility to, any of their Fake Narratives — especially since, with so many looking to you as a last resort, you will become primary targets. For Total Information Control to succeed, the audiences as well as the sources will need to be quelled.
Like another commenter, my attempt to, relevantly, reference Greenwald’s Intercept article in Guardian comments was deleted three times. The Guardian is resorting to blatant barefaced censorship these days.
I got my comments to this Guardian article removed three times!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/01/donald-trump-savvy-army-won-internet-war
Below is my last modded comment:
I copied the last two paragraphs of this column, and a link to Glenn Greenwald’s takedown of a Ben Jacobs column titled “The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False”. This was immediately modded.
I then posted what I just wrote above, and requested an explanation from the Guardian as to why it was removed as it seemed relevant and on topic. That post has now been modded and removed. I have however received an email stating the reason that my posts have been removed is that they were “Off Topic”.
Given that what Ben Jacobs (a Guardian writer, on a left wing media outlet) did, is exactly what this columnist is accusing “far right” websites of doing, I can’t see how this could be considered “Off Topic”.
Clearly, as Ben Jacobs’ column, and many others from other “left”media sources demonstrate (see WaPo ProporNot article), the left are doing exactly what others on the right are doing. If we want transparency and facts to be valued above all else, then this abuse of truth and facts must be called out no matter the origin.
That the Guardian would choose to remove my comments indicates that they have no interest in facts, truth or valid criticism, and would prefer to create a propagandistic echo chamber. This is exactly what they accuse others of doing. It is a disgrace.
I fully expect this comment to be removed as well.
Oh, and this was removed as well.
Moderators are lazy. Try posting a comment with several paragraphs of lavish praise for the Guardian writer, and the moderator will often stop reading and move to the next comment. It may be possible to post a mild criticism in the third and fourth paragraphs without having the comment deleted. This may not be ideal, but remember that Voltaire managed to criticize the ruling classes without losing his head. The tightrope he walked was an even higher one with more dangerous consequences from a fall than that negotiated by Guardian commenters.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ericgarland/status/815287413207683072
To The moderators:…
Well …I do not comment regularly, on the contrary…just occasionally I’d like to see my comments published especially given that do not go against any rules etc…I wrote one for this article and one for the latest of Greenwald and the WP Histeria…is my english that bad?
Okay yes it seems like Assange’s interview was spun inappropriately. Shame on The Guardian. But don’t put this in the same category of fake news that includes Hillary Clinton involved in a child porn ring based out of a pizzaria. Let’s combat bad reporting across the whole spectrum, but let’s start by not conflating these two ends of that spectrum.
Yeah, more a case of exaggeration and supposition, than completely false. So shame on the Intercept too.
Thank you for your article! I read the above article in the Guardian and was disturbed by Assanges reported response! It is very disquieting to have to read the corrections to an article in a publication you trust by another publication that obviously has better journalistic standards for reporting the FACTS!!!
The Guardian has been on the forefront of the ‘groupthink’ Greenwald refers to in another article…I wouldn’t say it …’ to its credit ‘ when it is forced to retract and correct blatant lies as they knew before …
A lot of huffing and puffing over what – random brain-farts in battling Twitter feeds? Why is anything on Twitter taken seriously? The platform encouraged stupid remarks by its very nature.
And why are we surprised that Clinton’s most prominent cheerleaders are kinda delusional? After all, they would have had to be delusional in the first place to actually think she was a good choice, given the huge gap between her root politics and what we actually need.
Twitter definitely belongs right up there with El Salvador on the list of things to “take back”, if Tom Petty’s song ever gets updated.
Incredible article. Wishing you the best in good reporting, Glenn.
You sure do expend an enormous amount of emotional energy over what are at best disputable characterizations of the subject in question. Assange does, for a fact, exclaim about an aspect of so-called open debate in Russia (among elites only, ironically) as opposed to calling out one of the least open societies on earth. It is also an unassailable fact he has guarded praise for Trump and nothing remotely neutral or positive to say about Hillary Clinton. I’m sure you believe that to be fair and objective reporting as well.
All the more galling, though, is your propensity to commit the exact same sins you accuse others of inflicting on the public. Your entire screed is full of emotional provocation and spurious accusations about deceit, including paragraph after paragraph about how you have some pseudo-psychological pipeline to all Clinton voters. Nobody can read minds, Mr. Greenwald.
After the many years of vitriolic attacks against anyone who disagrees with your “narrative”, I have little reason to believe your automatic disavowals of any and all accusations against Russia or Assange over established documented evidence. Assange attacked the Democratic Party, with the aid of Russia, and the encouragement of the Trump campaign, in exacting fulfillment of a promise of a Trump official months beforehand. Spin that.
Always read the material direct.
Humans have a wonderful capacity to imagine and strategize, and this can descend into paranoia to extents that vary only in the depth of the particular skeptic.
Here’s just one article worth close examination, on the Authoritarian personality, which, to help the lay understand, refers to those who are eager to submit. Those who are eager to control, are covered with the term Social Dominance Orientation.
It remains unlikely that those of either orientation are able to understand that someone like Assange, or Greenwald, may not be quite so adherent to one’s own beliefs about the value of following ANY banner blindly.
It is surely worthwhile to recognize the difference between oneself and another, but likely mistaken to presume that a passion for truth and accuracy is automatically leveled against one’s self or preferred social-dominance-seeking group.
Vitriol is sulphuric acid, and one should perhaps distinguish between attempts to return to actual wording (in this case) in the falsely characterized interview, rather than claim that one’s imagined group is violently disfigured by mere exposure to truth.
Keep up the good work Mr. Greenwald we appreciate the truth and we know you will continue to Intercept it for us
excellent article
Glenn Greenwald is an amazing reporter who knows how to break a story down.
Glenn Greenwald is not a reporter nor has he been for a very long time. He is an opinion columnist, an extremely opinionated columnist at that.
Thank you for setting things straight Mr. Greenwald!
So, yet another year’s profusion of lies and misdirection clouds even what purports to be the new guardian of clear, professional journalism. Sad irony abounds. Truth intercepted again. Clapper has no corner on farce.
What’s lost, maybe found somewhere below in one of over 600 comments, is the fact that the truths of the leaks directed to this put-upon public, are deftly buried in contrived controversies of emotion laden diversion to the mundane. Meantime Manning rots in cruel isolation.
And here we have the targeted Assange substituting for what should be the real focus: a murderous cabal deeply entrenched in most abject corruption of office. Never mind the distraction from released mounds of verified proof of the nearly unthinkable criminality by psychopathic and pedophilic monstrosities of grotesque human perversity. Let’s pretend it just doesn’t exist, eh?
It’s just that violations are so egregious they can’t seem to find the broad light of exposure intended by courageous whistleblowers self-sacrifice in vain belief that evil dispels with exposure to the caring. Rather, it seems only to compound with desperate and frantic energy of the fearfully self-absorbed, preoccupied and agenda determined sociopaths.
Now another year passes into what likely proves one with no precedent. A year that finally engulfs us in unrelenting blowback of confusion, destruction and despair. If we think that there’s no cost to our accepting what’s dished passing as urgent and pertinent criticism, we’re very sadly mistaken. It will be quite a shock.
Now there’s nothing but shades of lies masking the grotesque as literal as Kubrick’s depiction of the real consequence beyond murder of flesh and the maiming of children.
Spirit cooking is but one alien act of their ritual evil we barely acknowledge. We sense collateral societal damage yet we entertain our minds with indignant, indulgent fallacies to our shame. This is our pathetic legacy. A cowardice of failure to stop it now with the tools at hand.
There are no excuses for accepting the evil that possesses us as its compliant slaves. There’s no exemption by denial for any of us in its further toleration. We may not read every detailed, sordid nuance contained in released documents and video, but we know, nevertheless, that this diseased body politic has a wretched end coming. It’s unraveling fast and we know it despite our best efforts to deny.
This exemplifies what we’ve allowed to by default of our blinded indifference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCTzFNrsKns&list=PLcgk8FfGnzkxDSYW-3gqzNBVxJVE2a9Hh
“Unfortunately, those falsehoods were tweeted and re-tweeted and shared tens of thousands of times, consumed by hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. ”
again you have no idea of the real numbers, stick to facts you can validate which is what you seem to be accusing others of not doing
If you wanted, you could write a fake news article talking about lax journalistic standards in The Intercept’s reporting… You say they are not sticking to facts when the sentence is clearly a speculative educated guess, and you are right in that instance, but unlike fake news in no way does it purport to be fact. Perhaps instead of focusing on exact viewership numbers you could instead focus on the propagation of fake news by a media giant with a recognisably large following? As in all journalism it’s simply a matter of perspective.
I agree, I just wish all journalists would stick to the facts and stop adding perspective or add numbers to give what they are saying more importance, i.e their own spin on stuff to fit with their point of view, a lot of “fake news” stuff isn’t really intended agenda stuff it’s just lazy journalism where they don’t validate stuff. Maybe I’m just a bit too naive.
OK, you malodorous gaseous spirit, explain why that statement is in appropriate in an opinion piece as opposed to outright lies in something that purports to be factual.
Your comment….
Farts are made up of gas that’s comes out of a bumhole …. waste material that has no use
Sadly now we have a lot of the controls on alternative (truth) media in place it seems that the MSM are now stepping up the fake news in what appears to be an attempt to further discredit the alternative source.
Germany is currently considering a law that will impose a €500,000 A DAY fine on any article/post flagged as ‘fake news’ on social media.
This will close the circle on ‘fake news’, and will be replicated throughout Europe, the U.K. and the US. with similar laws.
How is the circle closed?
This law would impose fines on all news flagged as ‘fake’, by the ‘fact checkers’, you know the Soras sponsored organisations, Snoops, PolitiFact, et al. That the social media sites are employing to find and flag ‘fake news’.
There organisations will flag an article/post ‘fake’. Will it be left visible while its validity is disputed?
No of course not, it will removed to avoid the fine.
Don’t forget the US has just signed into law the ‘Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016′ and appointed a head to this agency all in the last week.
Once these laws are enacted throughout the western world and the government organisations combined with the Neocon fact checkers are running at full speed, the approved narrative will be all that’s available for the majority of the public.
Any alternative view will be difficult to find, when it doesn’t show up in any search engine, social media site or MSM outlet, and the sites have there bandwidth limited, DNS blocked and state firewalls filter out access to sites deemed to be ‘propaganda’. And of course why would Joe Public go looking for what he’s been told is ‘fake news’ anyway, especially when the ‘trusted’ establishment news sites are writing BS like this Guardian article.
And now something completely different. Was Obama really doing a silly walk yesterday …it looked like his shoes were way to big !
they’ll be fine with corrections because they know most of the people who already saw it aren’t the types to reread something. new readers will see it but 50% is still 50% so it’s a propaganda profit. plus a huge number of the retweeters and repeaters wanted to believe it anyway (no actual convincing needed) and won’t let “facts” deter them.
as i said in my last comment that disappeared down some digital glory hole and never showed up: the headline for me is that people still go to the guardian or NYT or _____ (insert hated prominent news source) when the original article is in english somewhere else or when other sources are easily found and far more reliable (aleppo comes to mind).
they’ll be fine with corrections because they know most of the people who already saw it aren’t the types to reread something. new readers will see it but 50% is still 50% so it’s a propaganda profit. plus a huge number of the retweeters and repeaters wanted to believe it anyway (no actual convincing needed) and won’t let “facts” deter them.
as i said in my last comment that disappeared down some digital glory hole and never showed up: the headline for me is that people still go to the guardian or NYT or _____ (insert hated prominent news source) when the original article is in english somewhere else or when other sources are easily found and far more reliable (aleppo comes to mind).
I think there should be a Sabrina Rubin Erdely award that is given out to these piss-yellow con artists like Ben Jacobs of the Guardian.
There should be several categories of the award, and it could include ” viral SM infections” of the year, and a “bolshevik bankster best of” and my favorite every year would be the one named specifically after Sabrina Rubin Erdely of Rolling Stone fame- the highest achievement of any journalist-the “rapeocaust and rapeflation industry prize of ultimate achievement,” which would come with a gift of the complete works of Theodor Herzl, and a plaque with a list of famous piss-yellow propagandists who came before- great names like the author of the Protocols of the Elders, and leaflets by the Jewish Defense League, or a special presentation of an arts and letters certificate with Jerry Rubin’s name on it.
Then, maybe a special ceremony “for the children” of the future, and a scholarship to the awardee’s children to go to the Herzl summer camp, and tours through Auschwitz to remind the future that telling the truth and reporting facts, or even showing a sliver of spine to take on the billionaires and the war industry really isn’t “that” important anyways, cuz, goy vey! The truth? You can’t handle the truth(and remember who your patrons/subscribers are and so on)!
“The Guardian, to its credit…”
The Guardian deserves zero credit. It knows exactly what it was doing. It knows perfectly well that its lies have have travelled around the world, and its ‘retraction’ will have been seen by next to nobody. But it can point to the retraction and claim that it has “maintained its journalistic integrity”.
I read the original article, and dismissed it as a fabrication, like everything else they publish about Assange nowadays. I didn’t realise quite what a complete pack of lies it was until I was given a link to this article.
I wonder how many people actually revisited the article and saw the retraction. Why would they? I certainly didn’t.
I agree with your overall premise, but where is the evidence of this: “The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.” What proof is there that liberals spread more fake news than white supremacists (alt-right)? Isn’t this a fake news statement? If not, show me the proof.
exactly so! thank you Glen
Due to the high volume of comments that have now been posted, and due to how a number of them are a wretched waste of space, such as any and all of Craigsummers comments, I’m going to go off topic by bringing on one our ol’ traditions on Greenwald threads from since the beginning:
The Musical Interlude
This Musical Interlude is a combination of the new and the old. The new aspect is that the drummer musician is 17. The old aspect is that she is playing a cover of a classic rock tune called Wipeout — by The Surfaris. As you’ll see and hear, she’s danged good at instrument. Her dad sits in for this one playing the guitar part of the tune — which he also does quite well.
Holy Crap! That was beautiful. She’s amazing, and wearing the most perfect shirt.
I’m going to now post, for your entertainment, my favorite youtube segment from this week on…. hold… hold… Israel (the country that can turn Jews into republicans – Jimmy Dore.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7UbuuOboc
Yes!
Good times, good times.
Awesome!
Kitt
You always have the option of going to the new “one viewpoint” site, of course, if you were invited. I keep waiting for my invitation from Mona, but nothing yet. I wonder if even Robert Mackey received an invitation from Mona. Can you imagine anyone supporting HRC? This must have been a great disappointment to the founders of the Intercept – Mona, Poitras, Greenwald and Scahill.
The phrase Julian uses, namely “it is tolerated, generally, because it isn’t a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect” actually implies that Russian authorities, like their Western counterparts, don’t hesitate to do domestic population control via propaganda and via suppression of certain facts or viewpoints via media. Of course Ben and associates wouldn’t be interested in pointing that out. That would interfere with their Cold War rhetoric, which rhetoric has serious negative consequences for society. And casualties of this media service (to those who want a Cold War) like Julian and Chelsea and so many others are just the cost of the neocon/neolib corporatocracy doing it what it must to protect itself.
I think this comment from Mouse is important enough to bring to the top:
I do not think they are lying, nor do I think they are not lying. I do not know anything about the reliability of what is called the “evidence”, and that is the problem: the evidence is secret, and many people believe that it is correct to get behind a leader’s actions based solely on whether or not you think he is trustworthy or not. No, the facts matter no matter who the leader is. We must have the facts.
Do you really believe that the intelligence agencies are going to release how they know that the DNC hackers were associated with the Russian government? Certainly, you can see why intelligence needs to be secret? That is the problem with Snowden releasing NSA documents. The decision is not about going to war with Russia, but to implement some more sanctions and possibly follow this up with some kind of cyber -related release of information, or attack. That is up to the President you elected to make those decisions.
You assume a hack because that is what the White House and the DNC want you to believe. What about a leak ….. Never ! That would implicate a completely different policy.
It’s not like Russia didn’t have the incentive to sway the elections toward a candidate they prefer, right? They clearly had the motive. They feared Hillary, and outwardly supported Trump. You factor in other evidence such as Crowdstrike’s conclusions, the clear ability of US Intelligence to trace a hack (as Snowden indicated plus the Biddle article) and the general agreement of the 17 US intelligence agencies, it is not far fetched to implicate Russia.
Let’s also not forget that Obama agreed to remove the chemical weapons from Syria instead of bomb the Assad regime, signed an agreement with Iran on their nuclear program, correctly confronted Russian aggression in Ukraine with sanctions and confronted Israel on their settlements. In general, Obama has resisted a great deal of internal pressure on all of those issues to make decisions he considered to be right. Obama has developed enough credibility that it’s reasonable to conclude that he views the evidence by US intelligence to be conclusive.
That’s the way I view this issue – and it is a serious issue.
Thanks.
Try to look at these achievements with some objectivity. Some people would say Obama forgot his own red line in Syria, some allies are not happy with the nuclear agreement, sanctions against Russia have served only the popularity of Putin and the confrontation with Israel’s settlements came rather late….. You forgot the most important achievement : the Nobel peace prize. And by the way it is not because you have a motive that you commit the crime ! Even more ridiculous when the crime is publishing the true e-mails.
“…….Even more ridiculous when the crime is publishing the true e-mails……”
This is a hard point to get across. Russia didn’t hack the DNC so we could make a more informed decision. A person needs to separate the issues of the DNC hack of emails which correctly show the DNC is being run by a bunch of corrupt liars and the decision by Russia to release the emails to Assange to influence the election toward a desired result (for both Assange and the Russians). They are completely distinct issues. One does not justify the other.
At least we agree on the fact that the DNC is being run by a bunch of corrupt liars. As for the hacking we will see next week what the president-elect thinks of the classified proof…
Craigsummers says:
Let’s also not forget that Obama agreed to remove the chemical weapons from Syria instead of bomb the Assad regime [the evidence suggests that the chemical attack was a false flag carried by the US/Saudi supported terrorists], signed an agreement with Iran on their nuclear program [forcing Iran to dismantle the nuke developing program that they didn’t have], correctly confronted Russian aggression in Ukraine [whose legitimate and democratically elected president was overturned in a violent coup engineered by the US with Victoria Nuland openly discussing ‘who’ to place as the prime minister (Yats) on a phone conversation] with sanctions and confronted Israel on their settlements [by ‘not vetoing’ a completely toothless resolution while more than doubling the multi-billions we ‘give’ the apartheid ‘Jewish State’ every year?].
Hmmm… what exactly is the difference between O’Bomba and DoubleCrap? Oh, I remember, one of the 2, I forget which, got the Nobel ‘Peace’ (??????) prize.
Craig, perhaps you are a fool who has no idea that the government keeps nearly everything secret, mostly with CYA related motives.
That said, surely if something has been discovered by means that must be kept secret, additional information can be determined by other means, information that can be released, if the matter is important enough. This is.
If important decisions are made in total secrecy, there is the strong possibility that something is foul. I do not care who the leader is. At the very least, one must suspect that someone’s personal gain is at stake, but the motives go down hill from there. History is a cesspool.
“Why do you think all the intelligence agencies are lying?”
I would direct you to Colin Powell presentation of clear and total and slam-dunk evidence of ‘Saddam’s WMDs’ to the UN, right before DoubleCrap’s Iraq invasion.
I would add that it’s rational to presume they are lying, because (1) that’s their area of expertise, (2) they are an arm of the US executive which at the moment has an interest in that type of disinformation, and (3) in the past when they’ve provided assessments based on “secret evidence”, those assessments have proved to be false.
Of course they lie. But are they lying in this case?
Jose likes to think so, but I don’t buy that for a moment……on the other hand I could be wrong!
Wikileaks has stated emphatically and repeatedly that Russia had nothing to do with releasing the DNC emails.
The Wiener trove came directly from detective elements of the NYPD who remain incensed due to the criminal substance and scope that the DoJ under O are suppressing the FBI investigation to which the NYPD is party.
The Russians hack like the NSA hacks like the Chinese hack etc. But the accusation that Russia had any part in the Pizzagate release is a CIA ruse intended to support the status quo and HRC’s placement.
Thanks for the response Mike Sulzer,
My general approach is to believe experts (professional) in cases in which I know I am not competent to evauluate the relevant evidence (which I’m not with code/malware). Otherwise the motivated reasoning impulses become too strong. :) As far as I could see, the experts seems to be attributing the hacks to Russia.
No offense intended to you, but I have met far too many people online who demands for evidence are actually just attempts to undermine validate expert analysis. (Global warming comes to mind) Shrug, it’s the afe we live in, I guess.
But I do think it’s important to look for genuine experts with opposing analysis. Todays Intercept quotes an expert with some different views. That’s interesting, so I probably feel less certain today, than I did the other day.
Time will tell, I guess.
I’ll just keep looking
howdy folks. For 2 months I reactivated my Facebook account, and cut it off again today, more out of sorrowful boredom than anger.
My friends, if political, are almost all mainstream Democrats, and so I’ve gotten to see the insanity that ensued when the election didn’t go their way, and felt the wrath whenever I challenged their paranoia regarding Russians, or if I was insufficiently impressed with their trivial complaints about Trump (substantive complaints made less often than trivial complaints).
Nearly no self-reflection is happening among your everyday Democrats: why is it?
I’m not in a position where I should wisely be making enemies out of 85% of the academics I will be spending a big portion of the rest of my life consorting with right now, although I’d like to make enemies of them, frankly. They are spreading, simultaneously, tales of Russian interference and sage warnings against Fake News. And they don’t see the irony. It’s hysterical.
The new leftist movements in America are very exciting and I want to talk about them in academic terms — and I plan to — but there’s a partisan chill over serious inquiry right now. And the really irritating thing is: these people were all warned, and they chose to be smug, and now they want to act like the sky is falling.
I’ll bet. And the Academy can punish dissent harshly, especially in a world where tenure track jobs are few and far between.
Many years ago, when I was a college kid, a student drinking beer near our group took issue with my anti-war comments. He snarled at me, “In Russia, they’d shoot you for that!”
The fellow sitting next to me looked up from his drink and said, “Yeah. In America they’ll just starve him to death — very slowly.”
that’s good! Reminds me of the Anatole France line about sleeping under bridges.
So true, In America they will starve him until is is willing to fight for them.
Doug Nice-
“Many years ago, when I was a college kid, a student drinking beer near our group took issue with my anti-war comments. He snarled at me, “In Russia, they’d shoot you for that!”
The fellow sitting next to me looked up from his drink and said, “Yeah. In America they’ll just starve him to death — very slowly.””
That must have been before the internet, because today, they also route your internet connection to the nearest Fusion Center, which routes you to one of the big agencies, via the NSA programs, JTRIG, or the DEA Hemisphere wiretap- and then they go to work on your mind: cutting your connection intermittently, redirecting your web searches, delaying your email delivery, and more- much more.
Like the jihadist recruitment pop-ups that your computer can’t seem to get rid of, and the Facebook updates that ask ” Do you know Ali Bin Bunburyin, or Raheem You bin Da-ass?”
Or the targeted advertisements that, for some reason, ask you after every news article that you read: “do you know the facts about suicide?” and point you to thhe story about the “suicide cleaner who just LOVES his ob!” and so on.
And all of that before they start the hidden whisper campaigns, followed by the “community corps” or private security contractors working with the DHS to peek in your windows, or play back just a little piece of your last phone call to you as you dial the next one.
And even then, they haven’t directly begun their full assault on your ability to associate freely, or to earn a living. Nope- that comes later, after they have tried everything else to get you to just shutupaboutit.
But Doug, it’s come a long way since mere starvation….we are in the ‘influence, mind control, and asset creation era’ of full and total human exploitation.
“…….My friends, if political, are almost all mainstream Democrats, and so I’ve gotten to see the insanity that ensued when the election didn’t go their way, and felt the wrath whenever I challenged their paranoia regarding Russians…..”
Looks like to me your friends were right. Their paranoia was justified – at least according to your elected government. It’s clear that the Russians did intervene in the elections and that might have made the difference between a Trump win and a Trump loss – especially in the Midwest where such a small percentage of votes made the difference for a large amount of electoral votes.
I’m sure your “friends” will miss you on Facebook – just not your inability to see the obvious……
More spotlight should surely be shined
in the direction of craigsummers,
who, so far as I can tell, is literally the only
non-famous creepy
republican who actually was reached
by hillary’s idiotic
‘reach out to conservatives who don’t like trump’
campaign. the only way this ever made sense
was if said
idiot conservative hated
russia more than liberals
then it would work. she miscalculated: as much
as most of them would like to have piled on
russia,
the chance at liberal throats made their blood pound
harder.
hence this man craigsummers,
a fool who wastes his time in
argument
with people who will never care about him,
ever.
craigsummers,
likely retching,
remains “with her”
like some ideological caddy
afraid to go get another
putter
Vic Perry, I like you. I want to be your facebook friend. Pleeease come back.
The obstinacy of the Democratic intelligentsia I think comes from Job insecurity. You see, these people thought they had it made. They were to be the viziers of the annointed Queen. Then this asshole called Bernie showed up, with his ensemble of no-name 20 something riff raffs. We can’t have that. So we will ignore them, because… you know… fuck them.
Then they lost. And now those jobs aren’t there. But they still need to make a living. And it can’t help to say that they were wrong. So they will blame everybody under the sun but themselves.
People kill for money. They destroy the earth for money. They poison the fish in the sea for money. What’s a little Russia bashing? C’mon Vic. Enough with your disappointment. Get over it. Learn to recognize a Democrat for what s/he is. A closet Republican.
AiC: I’m sure we are on the “same side” and all but I don’t care for this post. The friends to whom I refer will not be losing their jobs because they don’t literally work in politics: none of them.
You seem to presume people who are partisans are all getting paid to be partisans “people kill for money” etc.
That would be a mistake, a sadly typical one. Accept that people believe things without necessarily expecting a reward for it, and perhaps your endeavors to improve their viewpoints will prosper from this newfound insight.
ever faithfully yours, etc.,
Calm down bud. I wrote that in jest :). But I’m a poor writer, so I can see how it could be easily misconstrued.
And I wasn’t talking about your friends but the Democrats setting the agenda, who, unfortunately, your friends are listening to.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year !!!
Keep’em coming Vic. I love your posts.
oh I’m eerily calm….
it is indeed who they are listening to, very good point
best to you too!!!
The Guardian corrected errors in its story: glad you have belatedly acknowledged your ex employer has done the right thing.
Reading the Guardian article, I have no idea how you could possibly claim that their claim that Assange had given “guarded praise” to Trump amounted to fraud.
In the context of the article and original report where Assange was bitterly criticising Clinton, he did offer the view that Trump may do some good things. It could be argued if it was too much too equate this with “guarded praise”, but it is quite ridiculous to claim that the Guardian claim was fraudulent.
“We’ll see if those who spread those falsehoods now spread these corrections with equal vigor.” Of course they won’t. It’s unlikely they will acknowledge it as fake. Like religion, believers of fake news are bound by faith, and, even in the face of strong evidence against their beliefs, they will find any excuse they can to defend them. I think we are all guilty of this in some form or another, especially in this age where opinion pieces masquerade as news.
Basically GG has a bit of a beef with the Guardian since the Snowden thing so will bash them when he can. There are more important issues to focus on at the moment I think.
Basically, you have no idea what you’re talking about, but you have selected an appropriate screen name.
nice work Doug
“nice work Doug” (arse lick)
If you read Glenn’s few comments about his treatment by the Guardian, and vice versa, over the Snowden affair, you will (if honest) find them to be quite fair. Laura was more soured on The Guardian than Glenn in fact. And they had good reason to be. The Guardian (understandably, but…) forced them to allow Ewen McAskill to join them in meeting Snowden, something that could have easily scuttled the whole operation. And then a Guardian employee suggested to Laura that she FedEx a repaired archive (part of the whole) from Berlin to Glenn in Brazil. (Part of the archive given to Glenn et al was damaged, but capable of being repaired.) Laura was “furious.” And then there was the GCHQ Stasi crap, where they were given access to the Guardian’s basement in order to physically destroy computers. Glenn (in my view rightly) saw in that a real failure on the part of the Guardian to defend free speech.
yes I have read his book and other stuff and realise he feels they stole his thunder when they released their book first by someone who wasn’t really involved, but he did use their organisation and reputation without which some of it would not have got done. In the end they had much more to lose than him and the destruction of the hardware was just symbolic anyway.
Sometimes he loses sight of the bigger picture and the long game e.g. Trump / Clinton you may not like either but at the end the end of the day you choose the one that you dislike least and don’t flame both.
OED – farty from the latin “fartulous”, bringer of wisdom and light
You are farting in the wind, arsehole.
I know
Just over a year ago (or longer?), The Guardian US editor suddenly quit. Since, The Guardian US has slid into an unpardonable shell of its once glorious truth-telling self. Like if Common Dreams or The Intercept suddenly became as odious, as to remind its regular reader of USA Today, WaPo or The NYT corporate-biased reporting.
For almost a year, The Guardian US has taken an odious turn. Am I the only one who sees this? lol – I suspect not. The oligarchs got to the purse strings that have protected The Guardian US, but can’t say for sure – to print whatever their investigations found. I still return every once in a while to read it, but all I see is its sneaking-in of obviously biased, corporate-slanted nonsense between some still normally savvy reporting. Sad. Getting truth in reporting is going nowhere fast, corporate-wise, anyhow.
“Truth” seems to up for auction to the highest bidder. Cable viewers nee to bite the bullet and unplug. Odds are that will not happen anytime soon. Do Mcmansion dwellers ever look outside that window and perhaps see a bird or butterfly? Or snowman? In those high-rises? I digress.
Truth has no value and that’s THE TRUTH !!
Deception on the other hand ,,well ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
And please ,, let us not get all teary eyed about the basic goodness of human nature . The striving of the species to overcome our animal instincts .
Save it for the upcoming generation of VR humans encased in their SMART-SUITS !!
Maybe instead of Truth has no value
I should have said ,,,,
Truth is priceless ?
That’s why we have re-writes , No ?
As the Spanish padres would make the locals ( aka Native Americans ) say before chopping off their heads —–
A DIOS
thank you for the truth. i didn’t realize the guardian liked to post inaccuracies like the msm in the usa.
do not just accept what GG says is the truth, question it (I hope he would want you to)
Excellent article. Cheers to Mr. Greenwald. The Observer’s damage is done, and Jacobs should be charged with slander.
The very fact that there is an ongoing debate among “journalists” regarding Glenn’s fact-based rejection of Jacobs’ article should tell us how irrelevant facts have come to be.
This is not to say that we should throw in the towel – but, it is worth cogitating that facts have become debatable!
Ignorance can be an ideology – a religion – once it is practiced as a way of life. And, similar to all other extremists that practice their ideology – facts be damned – these ideologs, be it journalists or politicians, become another form of Daesh.
Keep it up Glenn!!
Truth has no value and that’s THE TRUTH !!
Deception on the other hand ,,well ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
And please ,, let us not get all teary eyed about the basic goodness of human nature . The striving of the species to overcome our animal instincts .
Save it for the upcoming generation of VR humans encased in their SMART-SUITS !!
Thank you . It is sad to see the level to which the Guradian (sic) has sunk, after its benefiting from the WikiLeaks then its “biography” by David Leigh to denigrate Assange personally. Tweeting and Facebook are very dangerous ways for people to gain “news” when we see how easily false words are spread.
The worst offenders are the Linkers . The second worst are the Quoters . And then you have your Believers .
In an ideal world, such solutions are compensatory at best. Most often, the relocation of a particular element of a conversation robs it of necessary context; the reasons for this are fairly obvious. In a highly contentious and variegated forum, the relocation of a particular element of a conversation to the top of the thread more often serves ignoble functions. For instance, controlling the top of the thread is akin to controlling the flow of the narrative; If this were used simply to keep the conversation on point then it would not be so nefarious. However, it is most often used to as a form of sophistry wherein more salient, on-topic points are intentionally buried if they stand in stark opposition to the main narrative being forwarded by the author and his self-appointed shills at that time. Mona especially likes to remove contentious comments from their context as a pretext to dishonestly arguing that they lack substance or merit. Yet, had the same criticisms been applied in context, they would have been readily seen as baseless and self-serving themselves. You have been around for a long time Pedinska, so you know that sub threads have no problem evolving over a period of days. I find it interesting that Mona has chosen to once again engage in a form of preemptive damage control by accusing me of the very reason that she most often relocates adversarial comments to the top of the thread:
It’s not respectful to the board; such sniping and feuding should be confined to the sub-thread in which it broke out. – Mona
You and I have witnessed this form of behavior coming from Mona on countless occasions. Thus I am at a loss to extend to you the benefit of the doubt when you attempt to advance an explanation that serves to mask Mona’s manipulative machinations. All the more the shame.
Bottom line: Glenn Greenwald is attempting to hold the Guardian to a higher standard then that which he applies to the Intercept itself. Mr Jacob’s pro-Putin characterization of Wikileaks was no more offensive then that offered by Mr. Biddle on the same day.
Now we are back on topic.
In an ideal world, such solutions are compensatory at best.
Of course. That’s why I noted the advantages of a timeline form of commenting versus those of a threaded one. I personally find that I tend to drift away from conversations that I have to scroll along way to get to, which is why I may choose to continue them at the top, especially if I am looking for a response from my interlocutor. And, presumably, my interlocutor will have little problem putting things in context. Others interested in the convo can certainly find the rest if so inclined.
controlling the top of the thread is akin to controlling the flow of the narrative;
I think that really only happens in comment sections with up- and/or down-voting. Otherwise, in threads like what is used here at TI one would have to keep repeating one’s point on some kind of regular basis in order to stay at the top. Not a very efficient way to control anything, imho.
Thus I am at a loss to extend to you the benefit of the doubt when you attempt to advance an explanation that serves to mask Mona’s manipulative machinations.
I am not commenting on behalf of Mona. Your beef with her belongs to you and her, not me. I was making a point about how others, myself included, may use posting at the top of a thread. It is a valid point whether or not you extend a benefit of the doubt I don’t actually need. I have no reason to lie to you or anyone else about how I manage commenting here or elsewhere.
Bottom line: Glenn Greenwald is attempting to hold the Guardian to a higher standard then that which he applies to the Intercept itself. Mr Jacob’s pro-Putin characterization of Wikileaks was no more offensive then that offered by Mr. Biddle on the same day.
He actually addressed this in a comment to rrheard below (emphasis mine):
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of-julian-assanges-interview-went-viral-and-was-completely-false/?comments=1#comment-328363
You may have missed it though because it was…..not at the top of the thread. ;-}
Actually, Glenn’s response to RRHeard did not speak directly to his own departure from “good journalistic standards.” Again, in finding fault with Jacobs’s characterization of Assange, Glenn Greenwald placed the blame on the Guardian; the presumption being that Jacobs’ opinions had to closely align with those of his employer. Given that Glenn Greenwald has chosen to fault the Guardian for allowing one of their journalists to publish a wholly unsubstantiated opinion concerning Assange’s alleged relation with Putin, the Intercept should also have been cited for allowing Mr Biddle to employ exactly the same sub-standard method – else the Guardian is being held to a higher standard than that employed by Glenn Greenwald and the Intercept. This is commonly referred to as hypocrisy.
I understand the greater point of “it’s bad if you do it but good if I do it” but I think it’s dangerous to link a respected outlet that occasionally screws up with “fake news” which intentionally generates bogus stories and uses them as click bait for revenue.
The line is becoming so blurred that many Trump supporters believe any mainstream media site is fake news simply because they disagree with the story or facts.
We must maintain a clear distinction.
what ARE you talking about? name names, title titles. If you are going to say the Guardian is some kind of non-biased outfit I am going to laugh at you, because I have been paying attention for the past few years.
I never read the Guardian piece or any derivative. I saw Assange putting down Hillary and offering guarded praise for Trump. I’ll also note that the youtube “Anonymous” did the same. They haven’t figured out it is/was a two person race, one or the other. Or maybe they did after all. Assange, Snowden, Greenwald are all the same: trying to save the world from itself by destroying it.
So what if Assange or anyone else was “putting down” Hillary? Do they not have a right to argue against Hillary’s positions, policies, or political/economic relationships?
Here’s the simple truth of the matter, Hillary Clinton ran against the weakest candidate in American history. The race shouldn’t even have been close, if Hillary Clinton was a better candidate, who appealed to more Americans, particularly in key “swing” states. She didn’t, whether for good, bad or indifferent reasons, if you can’t as a candidate, specifically Hillary Clinton motivate enough members/voters of your own party to be motivated enough to come out and vote for you–that’s on the candidate, her campaign staff and their extended campaign operatives.
Blaming it on your own voters, or Comey, or Russia because you, candidate Clinton, couldn’t run an effective enough campaign to not make the race even close, much less close enough to be theoretically influenced by external forces, speaks precisely to the weakness of both the candidate and the Democratic party apparatus, lack of trust she/they engender in the minds of party aligned voters, and the general voting public at large in the general election.
If they/you or anyone else can’t see, accept and grapple with the implications of the above, then by all means start being prepared for the Democratic party to continue to be a minority party in the vast majority of this nation’s state governments, and the federal government.
Or the party could change accordingly and rebuild the trust of more than a bare majority (1-2% popular vote majority) of the American public.
Clintonism was/is the wrong “politics” for this election and for any other going forward. So those clinging to the Clinton way, can either get out of the way and let others try their hand at appealing to the American people, or they can continue to lose.
And on top of it, she won the popular vote by almost 3 million people. If anything is to blame, it’s the shitty system they so love to call ‘the greatest democracy in the world.’
The US government is not there to represent their citizen. It’s only there to keep the proletariat in tow. Never mind if it’s an orange dick in office or a ‘oh, so cool’ Nobel Laureate, the inner workings never change. The true powers to be play on a different level and use party politics just for ‘divide and rule’ purposes.
We don’t have a single popular vote contest for the presidency in the U.S. We never have and it was never intended by the Founders or the Constitution that we should. What we do have is a federal republic, in which authority is distributed between the central government, the states and the people.
The above is the reason we have two senators from each state and the reason that each state’s Electoral College delegation is equal to the number of its representatives in Congress.
If you read just a bit of the history of our government, you will quickly understand that, absent these arrangements, there would be no United States as we know it — the smaller states would have refused to ratify the Constitution.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s consider the following, which should be obvious: If we did have a single popular-vote election, candidates and campaigns would conduct themselves very differently, so there is little value in talking about the popular vote in an election where that’s not how a winner is determined.
Finally, Clinton’s entire lead in the overall popular vote can be attributed to her massive win in a single state, California. One of the intentions of the Founders in establishing the Electoral College was to prevent a single state or region from swamping and overwhelming the votes and interests of the rest of the nation.
Additionally (an addendum to the “finally” ;^), because of California’s current primary system, many Republicans here had, literally, no candidates from their party to vote for in November: two Democrats, no Republicans in the race for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat; nine congressional districts with no Republican candidates; six state senate districts and sixteen assembly districts with no Republicans running; and so on. Not to mention, of course, that it was a dead certainty, from the beginning, that Clinton would receive every single one of California’s EC votes, so voting for any other presidential candidate could not have any effect on the outcome.
I hope this helps (and I think I’ll save it for the next 26 times I see uninformed nonsense about “winning the popular vote”).
Thanks for clearing that up. I knew about the whole idea behind the Electoral College but from an outsiders point of view it just comes over as a huge hole that is completely open for all kinds of fuckery.
Mr Salzmann – you seem to have missed out a key rationale for the composition of the Electoral College, as adumbrated by Akhil Reed Amar in Time “…in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.”
RR: Why do you believe that Trump — a celebrity billionaire “outsider” with the Republican Party, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and (perhaps) the government of Russia behind him — was the weakest presidential candidate in American history?
Given the degree of brand loyalty among modern Republican voters (one might call it a form of “identity politics”), it seems to me it is not possible for any Democrat to win in a landslide, as that would presumably require a substantial number of Republicans to vote for a Democrat, which ain’t gonna happen. To put it another way, any Republican presidential nominee is a fairly strong candidate, IMHO.
I haven’t seen any credible evidence that any of those entities were strong supporters of Trump.
@ Gator90
Weakest in the sense of no political experience and no campaign apparatus, dwarfed in campaign spending, ran “against” his party establishment, ran a campaign that had him with the highest “negatives” only remotely approached by the Dems chosen candidate . . . as far as who was “behind”, please prove to me that either/both Comey or the Wikileaks documents swayed or caused voters who would have otherwise voted for Clinton to switch their vote to Trump specifically in the following states–FL, MI, OH, WI.
I’ll wait.
That portion of the eligible US voting population that is loyal to the GOP amounts to about 25-30% (at most) of the US’ eligible voting population. That leaves 70-75% of the US population (25-30% of which is nominally aligned with the Democratic party) who are not. Figure out how to “reach” that 45-50% of the US population that refrains from voting, and who likely skew less affluent and/or minority populations, and you’ll figure out how to win in a landslide.
No look at vote totals for the GOP over the last 4 presidential elections–you can see their upper limit of possible voters, who by and large turn out to vote in every election and have for a long time–they skew, generally speaking, older, whiter, and more affluent.
If Dems can’t figure out why they’ve lost poor(er) working class voters (of whatever race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or whatever “identity group” you want to place them in) who abstain because they rightly understand that they get little more than “scraps” from either of the neoliberal parties, then I can’t help them. They will continue to engage in ridiculously close elections fighting to win by 1-2% of those voters who actually take the time to vote.
And then the Dems better figure out why within their own nominal “party” they are losing people who are more educated, more liberal/progressive generally, than their pathetically weak anti-labor anti-union, who absolutely understand that you can’t claim to be for the “working class” in America and simultaneously fund and cater to the interests of the hyper-wealth finance and entertainment industries.
I’m not an ‘incrementalist’ and I’m not a ‘centrist’, I’m an actual progressive who believes there is another way for the Democratic party to conduct its politics, and it isn’t the Clinton way, and I won’t vote for any candidate who runs that way or on that platform. Because I’ve watched if fucking fail for my entire life, and continue to sell out the working class of this country of which I’m a part.
“Weakest in the sense of no political experience ”
Huh?
Pal,,, not being a politician was his strongest asset !!!
I’ll lay 6 to 5 you went in and pushed that button that all trained citizens push on election day !!
rrheard—-after 56 years of voting I threw in the towel this time around . In 1960 I voted for Nixon , I was not about to have an Irish Catholic as President , i.e. J.F Kennedy , after my H.S. experiences with the Irish Christian Brothers .
In 2012 I voted , the second time , for Obama , thinking maybe now he’s got nothing to lose and will fight the good fight .
In 2016 I canvassed , donated , and knocked on doors for Bernie Sanders ( The SOB got $575 of my money ) .
It is all a bunch of BS !! I stayed home and drank beer on election day . For me , personally , in my 78th year , the change had come .
I don’t give a flying f**k for anything that goes by the name UNITED STATES of AMERICA . It is , maybe the final , human disease !!!
by “second time” I meant it was the second time I I had voted for Barry Da Bomber .
BTW that was the only time I have ever voted twice for the same political phony .
I’m very skeptical of these “…..in American History!” pronouncements since nobody seems particularly aware of the great valleys of American history that go unloved and uncared for. Chet Arthur? Millard Fillmore, whose name used to be a punchline? But better, how about a loser: Alf Landon. 1936. Very funny stuff, his campaign, like Hilary Clinton’s in terms of not going anywhere, but with a much more devastating defeat.
But plainly we don’t have to go that far back. Obviously Trump was – literally – not as weak a candidate as Mitt Romney, or John Kerry, or Bob Dole, or Michael Dukakis, and I could go on….
Your points are well taken RR, though I would suggest that in a very close election, the news media’s obsessive focus on a negative story about one candidate for the last 10 days of the campaign is bound to have a significant effect. (How could it not?) As I understand it, most voters (including in the swing states you mentioned) who made their decision late in the campaign broke for Trump. You may see that as mere coincidence; I don’t.
Trump’s lack of political experience (i.e. his “outsider” cred) was an enormous asset in the current climate, and his deficits in the areas of organization and funding were more than offset by his ability to command free media attention nationwide.
Lesser of the Evil ? Weaker of the Weakest ? Who the hell in their right mind votes for the slime on top of the bottom slime .
The only thing that voting does now is perpetuate the myth that the general population has a say in government .
Power never has , never will , give up its power by vote .
Oh, right. So that’s why 3 million more people voted for Clinton than Trump.
Convenient for you to dismiss Comey: until his calculated intervention, Clinton was well ahead, that helped Trump get his wafer thin “wins” in the rustbelt.
Never mind USA – snooze on – you have been conned again.
.
“We’ll see if those who spread those falsehoods now spread these corrections with equal vigor.” — GG
The Guardian? Never. They’ve done what they’ve been doing in similar cases previously: hide the article in a dark corner of the publication so that no-one can bump into it by accident.
I just checked, browsed page after page for half an hour, couldn’t find the article from within the Guardian navigation system. Then I gave up, ran a specific web search (“the guardian ben jacobs assange”) and finally found it. Translate by: if you know (thanks to GG and the Intercept) there’s a retraction to be found, spiffy, but if you haven’t been told otherwise, you sure won’t learn about it on the Guardian’s front page, or any other main navigation page (UK, World, …) for that matter. It’s there but well hidden.
And to add insult to injury, the page in question comes with a bottom banner which reads: “The Guardian’s voice is needed now more than ever. Support our journalism for just $69 / €49 per year”.
I nearly fell off my chair laughing. If there’s one article warranting NOT showing that banner, for fear of drawing well-deserved scorn, I say that’d be the one.
Taibbi:
Something About This Russia Story Stinks
p`ska
stinky link..
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439
Weird. Not sure what I’m doing that I occasionally have trouble getting the links in correctly. Oh well….At any rate, thanks for providing the correct one!
FBI/DHS Joint Analysis Report: A Fatally Flawed Effort
Exactly.
Is it 5, 5000, 5 million ? you have no idea so stick to the facts that you know and can authenticate rather than sensationalising coverage and impact.
Do you ever report and give anything on a positive side or just criticize and be negative ?
These progressive leftist outlets all have kind, supportive words for TPP:
New York Times
The Intercept
Salon.com
New York Daily News
Won’t you join them?
Well I see those pathetic nobodies and assistant college professor bloggers (Loomis excluded though he’s piling on in the comments), and specifically the law school professor and author of the widely derided The Obesity Myth/The Diet Myth is taking another decontextualized swipe at Glenn.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/sad-2#comments
I really love how they are catastrophically wrong about just about anything to do with politics, or journalistic integrity, teach at second rate universities as assistant professors (Campos excluded), have never written anything of significant merit either academically or otherwise, have received no significant awards for any of their work, and yet they love to make a boogieman out of Glenn Greenwald and dwell on his every utterance as if Glenn is the all powerful driver of everyone’s opinions.
Fucking pathetic. Like I said I’m incredibly thankful I never had the misfortune to be required to pay tuition to any institution that employed those clowns (Loomis excluded). The rest of their bloggers are even lower on the nobody food chain than Lemieux, Campos, Farley and Loomis so aren’t even worth mentioning.
Maybe they should spend a little more time analyzing why they are wrong about just about everything political instead of blaming it all on Comey and the scary scary Russians. And that’s only when they aren’t too busy claiming everyone who didn’t vote for Clinton is a racist, misogynist white male and stupid.
Help the New York Times backhandedly diminish your next fringe, far out Democratic candidate like it did your last one. Renew a Digital Subscription:
https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp8XKUR.html
After you’ve donated again to the Guardian.
information is like toothpaste…once you get it out of the tube, you can’t get it back in and all you get is a mess to clean up if you try…
Media, whether it is online or traditional is facing an identity crisis. Its value of spreading truths and analysis of facts effectively has been undermined by other channels. Whether they are as high quality is irrelevant. They are pipped to the post and scooped. In today’s race, we measure the wrong metrics in assessing value – first to publish, most articles, most clicks…probably all driven by advertising polluting the purpose of journalism. How about we use different metrics like accuracy, quality of readership, journalistic integrity. Given the potential for dire consequences of the pen over the sword now, perhaps journalists should have an equivalent to the Hippocratic oath and could be struck off for irresponsibility in reporting?
Just my thoughts…
A Hippocratic oath will not help. It should be common practice for journalists to responsibly report, because that is what you do as a journalist. If journalists first have to take an oath before they are allowed to report, it will soon enough become a Hypocrytic oath.
What would be a much better idea is when schools and academia propagate courses where you can learn to recognize propaganda. Such courses exist (long ago I followed such a course in my country, the Netherlands). And although the course was not obligitary it was followed by many students. Lots of fun too.
What irresponsible journalists and those who write about irresponsible journalists seem to forget or do not know, is that readers actually do not need them to understand what is happening in the world.
Obama says –
“Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election. These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.
All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions. In October, my Administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences. Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response.”
The NYT reports –
“While it is definitely too late, and may also be too little, there should be no doubt about the correctness of President Obama’s decision to retaliate against Russia for hacking American computers and trying to influence the 2016 presidential election.
It would have been irresponsible for him to leave office next month and allow President Vladimir Putin to think that he could with impunity try to undermine American democracy. That would have been a particularly dangerous legacy given President-elect Donald Trump’s alarming affinity for Mr. Putin and stubborn refusal to accept the conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed at helping him and hurting Hillary Clinton. The president-elect told reporters dismissively before Mr. Obama’s decision was announced that Americans should “get on with our lives” and forget about the hacking scandal. So much for that wishful thought.”
NYT publishing Obama propaganda to delegitimize the Trump Presidency and to derail Trump’s mandate on US-Russia ties. Note even Obama does not state that Russia hacked the DNC.
Trump should undo this.
To answer your question
It’s an earlier post by Fran Macadam .
Probably one of Mona’s educated acolytes
__________________________________________
Fran Macadam
December 29 2016, 5:44 p.m.
“Fake News” is a thoroughly agitprop meme. But its susceptibility is due to a widespread belief that everyone is free to make up his own reality. Wish upon a star, and what ever you dream up will all be true.
“Obama action: Obama’s Department of Homeland Security announced last week it was dismantling a Bush-era program that was used to track mostly Muslim and Arab men in the United States. Dormant since 2011, the program, known as NSEERS, could have provided the basis for a Muslim registry that Trump has promised. He could still set one up, but the existing framework is no longer in place.
Obama administration ending program once used to track mostly Arab and Muslim men”
From CNN dated 30 Dec 2016
How come all the news including on the Intercept about Trump’s Muslim registry possibility never told us that Obama was already running a Muslim registry.
Thank you for pointing that out.
That whole Kazir Khan incident was fake from the get go. Trump never proposed deporting (or registering) Muslim CITIZENS and the Clinton campaign knew it. It was all fake.
And as you point out, the government already had a long running program that was essentially the same as what Trump was actually proposing … a program that would have had no impact on Khan (or his son had he lived) because they are citizens.
How come all the news including on the Intercept about Trump’s Muslim registry possibility never told us that Obama was already running a Muslim registry.
As one of our “EDUCATED ELITES ” wrote earlier it’s Agitprop-Memes
Barry De Bomber has turned out to be the biggest HOUSE NIQQAR since Clarence Thomas !!
@ Dear Intercept Comment Moderators
It is truly befuddling, if not incredibly disturbing, that you are “pre-modding” certain commenters for unknown reasons yet purportedly in line with your “Comments Policy” as follows:
And yet you’ve let remain this repeated racist slur (in various threads in various iterations) from commenter Mudbone:
Spell it with qq’s or spell it however, but the slur is self-evident.
It would be really nice if The Intercept moderation team actually had any sort of coherent practices when they decide to moderate. Either leave it all, or do it consistently, but you folks are really starting to embarrass yourselves with how you are handling the moderation around here.
Commenter Mudbone takes exception at your self-evident evidence of racial bias . Would you accept HOUSE BOY in its stead ?
I’m of Cajun Black and Louisiana French heritage . I’ll refer to Clarence and Obama as I damn well please ! I don’t give two craps about The Intercept any longer . Its nothing but a rag wipe now .
And calling a censor a moderator is the first step to becoming a rag wipe !
@ Mudbone
I could give a flying fuck what your heritage is or your nominal rationale for referring to any grown man as a “house ni**er” or “boy”, much less the President of the United States.
Further, I could give a crap about what you think of The Intercept. What I do care about is that if The Intercept is going to claim to have a “Comments Policy” they should apply it consistently to all commenters, including you, which IMHO you’ve violated at least the following:
Short of that, what you think, what you write here, or why you would refer to another man the way you are referring to the POTUS is irrelevant to me, notwithstanding I understand quite plainly the racial history of referring to a man, particularly an AA man, as a “house ni**er”.
So fuck off.
**gg
The substance of This argument is name-calling
I raise your ni**er and bet two wops .
Almost snarked yourself out of existence there, Glenn. ;-}
The above quote has been attributed to a great many authors over time. Arguments over its attribution cover over 300 years, which solidifies the fact that our current media knows exactly what it’s doing when it engages in such tactics.
Thanks for being one of the few to effectively pushback. They wouldn’t engage in even the small bit of ass-covering they did if what you wrote wasn’t reaching a significant audience. And that is very satisfying indeed.
“Obama’s decision to expel Russian diplomats—in addition to sanctioning a number of Russian companies and individuals—is nothing but evidence of the agony of the outgoing administration, Konstantin Kosachev, head of the International Committee of the Russian Upper House of Parliament, said to RIA Novosti. “The leaving administration has no reason and no political or moral right for such drastic and disruptive steps with regards to bilateral relations with Russia. Forgive me for being harsh, but I just cannot find other words: this is the agony of not the lame ducks, but of political corpses,” the Russian Senator said. “[President Obama] put at stake the US’ reputation as an adequate state that ensures policy continuity in the process of change of power.”
“This is really a disturbing news,” responded Kosachev’s deputy, Alexei Chepa. According to the politician, Obama’s goal was simply to create new problems for President-elect Donald Trump—more obstacles in building better relations with Russia. “It creates additional difficulties for the [Trump] administration to overcome later.””
From The Observer website
Obama is getting desperate and scared that Trump + Putin will expose Obama-Clinton war crimes and treason in creating ISIS and for their proxy role in the Syrian massacre.
Juan Cole has an interesting article at Truthdig (“Now Is the Time for Obama to Recognize a State of Palestine” (from @Truthdig) http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/now_is_the_time_for_obama_to_recognize_palestine_20161229#.WGZ3NhEcvno.twitter).
Juan Cole suggests that Obama recognize a Palestinian state before he leaves office. The incredibly harsh reaction directed at the Obama administration abstaining on a vote at the UN condemning the settlements seems to me to express a much greater fear by Netanyahu that Obama could recognize a Palestinian state before he leaves office. Supporters of Israel like Alan Dershowitz and the ADL (etc.) said the vote would make peace with the Palestinians far more difficult. To me, this is a preemptive strike directed at Obama against recognition of a Palestinian state. In my opinion, Obama does not have the guts to take that step.
Juan Cole also writes in a way so typical of the left:
“………I don’t really care whether Israel has a Jewish majority, just as I don’t care if Egypt has a Sunni Muslim one or if Germany has a German one…….”
Of course, HE doesn’t care, but does he believe for a moment that Pakistan doesn’t care if they have a Muslim majority population? Does Cole believe that Iran doesn’t care if they have a Shia majority or that Egypt doesn’t care if they have a Sunni majority? Does Juan Cole believe that Armenians don’t care if they have an Armenian majority, or that South Ossetians don’t care if they have a South Ossetian majority (in their new Russian-imposed state)? Juan Cole may not care, but Jews do care if they have a Jewish majority state – and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that concept (i.e., Zionism). However, denying Palestinian self-determination is wrong. That was the idea behind the US abstention – nothing more, nothing less. Settlements inhibit Palestinian self-determination.
This Jew doesn’t care. (Of course there’s nothing wrong with the concept of a Jewish majority state; it’s the implementation of the concept in the chosen location that has been an ongoing crime against decency.)
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with the concept of a Jewish majority state; ”
Of course there’s nothing wrong with the concept of a White majority state;
Disagree, Zionism at its fundamentals is racist. Non-Jews have a right to demand a state that doesn’t demean them just like a Christian in Egypt should demand equal rights as well.
This isn’t a typical leftist. This is human decency.
craigsummers v craigsummers
– craigsummers cares what Pakistanis think.
– craigsummers, showing how much he cares.
“……. Zionism at its fundamentals is racist…….”
Zionism at its fundamentals “is the national movement of the Jewish people that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel”. UN resolution 3379 equated Zionism to racism and to apartheid South Africa. It passed in 1975 only to be rejected about 15 years later at the same UN. Zionism has nothing to do with racism or apartheid. It was not a colonial venture. The Zionist movement was motivated by centuries of anti-Jewish bigotry and violence directed at Jews. Hope that helps!
I don’t see what’s so complicated. I’m sure a lot of people in those countries care about the ethnic compositions of those countries. But should I care? I kind of prefer countries to be entirely secular, but it’s really none of my business. Demographic shifts are perfectly fine, so long as they are natural (i.e. not through genocide or ethnic cleansing.)
Agreed. Thanks.
Importance of Glenn Greenwald having his platform
It’s not the first time he”s used his powerful voice to force corrections to garbage pieces of “journalism.” As he notes above:
If Ben Jacobs reacts with all the dignity and calm other wayward journalists have whom Glenn has shown to be knaves or fools, we can expect Jacobs to become obsessively consumed with attacking Glenn as the anti-Christ.
Glenn’s role as watchdog of the most egregious journalistic malpractice is highly valuable. I applaud him for using his stature as he continues in that role.
Jacobs is now calling GG a “Brazilian blogger.” Acting like an aggrieved toddler.
Ah, the “Brazilian blogger” who led his paper to a Pulitzer prize. What a blogger!
Jacobs has a way to go, tho, before he reaches the depths of crazy bile such as Mark Ames stooped to when Glenn compelled the Nation to retract Ames’ bullshit and to apologize to Ames’ subject.
Prize ,, Chmize ,,, who gives a crap about medals . The thing to remember is that Glenn had the balls to go to Hong Kong and meet up with Snowden . And you can bet the CIA at that point in time was trying to figure out how visible the hit would be .
Glenn every minute of every day , unless he’s turned , must live with the fear of death by ” unexplained ” circumstances .
Ain’t no medal for that folks !
Jacobs is now calling GG a “Brazilian blogger.”
Heh. Missed that though it certainly sounds familiar.
One wonders where Jacobs was and what he was doing when that Brazilian blogger broke the story that got the Guardian a Pulitzer.
Jacobs is now calling GG a “Brazilian blogger.”
Well, after poking around a little, this gets even funnier.
At the time Greenwald was reporting about Snowden at the Guardian, a well-known “British daily newspaper” – and in the midst of reporting that would subsequently win a Pulitzer, “an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism” – Jacobs himself was writing derivative pieces on Snowden, based on Glenn and Wikileak’s actual interactions with Snowden, at the Daily Beast, the living embodiment of the definition of a blog, “a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web”.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/24/as-snowden-eyes-ecuador-wikileaks-begins-to-lay-out-his-legal-case.html
The piece – co-authored with Eli Lake, who is also jumping on this particular bandwagon, egghead first – was a good, factual account of some of the legal issues facing Snowden in his flight toward asylum. It has none of the agenda-twisting factual misrepresentation found in Jacobs’ current Guardian (so good he finally made it off a mere “blog”, dontcha know) piece.
It would be interesting to know what caused Jacobs’ descent from the above piece to the latest tripe he wrote. Now that the Guardian’s been forced to retract one of the key assertions in the piece, acknowledging it as baseless, it’s doubtful Jacobs’ current trajectory will change based on the cumulative history of past Greenwald fiskings and their infamous authors’ bilious post-mortem eructations.
Glenn should get out of this whirling cesspool called journalism now .
GEEZ , the straight poop vs the wiggly poop can no longer be separated . Technology has elevated human jibber-jabber to pure noise .
Oh, ffs. And then we have this:
dl willson @im2b
@mtaibbi part of the reason facts became irrelevant is @ggreenwald ‘s biased ego. He is a cancer to journalism. @Dem_A_Dog
to which Taibbi responded
Matt Taibbi [email protected]
The Guardian just had to amend their story based on his reporting, so @ggreenwald isn’t the one with the fact problem here.
coram nobis, phone home..
por`favor
#thedongerneedjustice
P’ska seconds this request. :-)
.. el suav` abides
october ’10 (coolio – rip)
re: “why is assange still alive? -jonah goldberg
http://www.salon.com/2010/10/29/goldberg_11/
ht` gg
..
coram nob`z
“paranoia is having all the facts” -edmund white
Wow, is this a terribly researched article. Did we already forget about the Time interview of Mr. Assange? Let’s refresh our memories, shall we?
Asked if he wanted to expose the secret dealings of China and Russia the way WikiLeaks has done with the U.S., Assange said, “Yes, indeed. In fact, we believe it is the most closed societies that have the most reform potential.” He sounded heartened, if not overwhelmed, by the response to the megaleak so far. “The media scrutiny and the reaction are so tremendous that it actually eclipses our ability to understand it.” But he said he believed there was a shake-up going on, adding, “There is a tremendous rearrangement of viewings about many different countries.”
So he has not only expressed interest in exposing Russia and China in the past, he cited it as possibly of more importance even than “exposing” the inner dealings of the United States government. Given the context, Mr. Greenwald, the only dishonest take is yours, claiming that this reversal isn’t noteworthy, and that the “we don’t speak Russian” excuse is somehow a good one. Assange has cited exposing Russia as a vital part of his mission, not all that long ago. Now he’s saying he can’t do that because his staff doesn’t speak Russian? Are you really that dense? Hire some expats and do the freaking job you said you were going to do!
Just wondering, why do people speak or write this way?: “Let’s refresh our memories, shall we?”
Keith, you seem to believe that Assange manufactures the documents himself which Wikileaks releases.
Wikileaks depends on documents being provided by their protected sources, and hence can only publish what they receive. Assange obviously wants to explain why Wikileaks doesn’t receive as many documents from Russian or Chinese wistleblowers as from English-speaking sources.
I don’t see any sign that Assange has changed his opinion. He merely tries to explain what he observes.
I find your style quite unfitting given that you allege a reversal of Assange’s opinion, for which you have no evidence, except for your own misunderstandings.
Don’t they think we can figure it out?
“Fake News” is a thoroughly agitprop meme. But its susceptibility is due to a widespread belief that everyone is free to make up his own reality.——Fran Macadam
___________________________________________
I find the above a very interesting post . It has contains two qualities the “educated” posters invariably display :
1—–Instead of simply writing ” propaganda ” the educated poster writes
” agitprop meme ” in an attempt to crap higher than their ahole .
2—–The educated poster’s reality is the real reality and the idea that
” everyone is free to make up his own reality ” must be crushed .
#1—Is mere narcissism , but #2 is the basic human desire to control other
people’s minds . Watch out for #2 !!!
If you were educated, maybe you would be aware why everyone is not free to make up his own reality. Of course most people do not need an education to realize that.
But everyone should be free to make up their own minds.
BRAVO !!
As usual, you miss the point.
What’s being ‘made up’ here are ones own facts. The author simply used the word reality instead of the word facts.
Duh
To Duh —-
So Facts and Reality are synonymous ?
Gimme a friggin break oh Educated One !!
Maybe in the vernacular . But Galaxie ,,, the vernacular is what is trippingly spoketh o’re the tongues of commoners .
It’s not the words being spoken that’s the issue here. It’s your obvious deceitful misinterpretation of them, O Deceitful One.
I.e…your Red Herring
Yes, the term fact is just a clearer or more accurate description of the authors intent. Here, look it up for yourself.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/fact?s=t
Intent ? So now you can read minds ? What next ? Levitation ?
I love it when people like you result to this sort of mocking tactic. In tells me that your argument is so weak and void of facts that you cannot put forth a reasonable response.
Thanks for pointing out your argument’s weakness.
Congrats, you defeated yourself.
And can you tell me who posted this ——————–
It’s not the words being spoken that’s the issue here. It’s your obvious deceitful misinterpretation of them, O Deceitful One.
——————–
Was it Galactus ?
people like you
??
people like you
??
Is that some sort of inference that I’m not like you ?
Another Red Herring
Your attempts to personalize the argument are weak.
Geez ,,and I thought you were a person !
Crickets
And what do you know about Einstein’s curvature tensor . The Solipists ?
How it feels to be below sealevel in an FBM sub for 60 days ? What Cajun Gumbo tastes like ? Pytharors’s harmonics ? Inertial navigation . NYC punch ball ? The streets of Chicago , circa 1968 ?
Go and change your diaper Sonny , you just crapped yoursel !!
Getting laid on top of a ‘powder blue’ vw beetle during Carnaval de’ Cadiz`?
I wish !!!
A white , 1968 , karmann ghia convertible is what I had back then .
Also had a BSA twin 650 and a Ford Econoline van .
The van is where I worked off a lot of my adolescent sexual fever .
Yeah I was motor freak back in the day .
Funny you should mention Cadiz .
We had an FBM station in Rota Spain back then ( ~1965 ) and we civvies got dropped off at Cadiz .
I have a lot of good memories about Cadiz ,, it was still a fishing village back then , Sevilla , Madrid , those were cities .
Franco was still in charge . He outlived his pal Hitler for a long time .
The people were like family . The priests sucked !
Latin ?duc?ti? (“A breeding, a bringing up, a rearing”) from ?d?c? (“I educate, I train”)
____________________________________________________
Can a flea be “EDUCATED” ?
Certainly . If you educate fifty you have yourself a ” Flea Circus ” .
You sell tickets and make a million !
Have you observed much of Mudbone’s (frequently) promiscuous output? It stands to reason s/he would feel threatened by Fran Macadam’s denunciation of those “make up their own reality.” Mudbone’s on the list of offenders who live in the post-fact world.
Ah ,,
The High Priestess of Educated Elitism has answered the bell with
Mudbone’s (frequently) promiscuous output
May God help you now Galactus ,, I’m girding myself for battle !
I suggest you stay out of the Arena lest your soul be laid down bare on its sand .
Let us have at It Mona !!!~
You and your gang insisted on a Woman . The fact that woman had been a primary player in the international anything for money and power game meant nothing to you . Now you come on with your ” I’m educated ” BS . GO FOR IT GIRL !!
In which Mudbone continues to abide in his post-fact world:
Yes, I, above all people, am well known for having sang the praises of Hillary Clinton and insisting we vote for her because she’s a woman. All my ranting about her being a Wall St. whore and warmongering shill who was unworthy to be elected country clerk couldn’t fool Mudbone, perched afar as he is in an alternate reality.
When did you rant Anti-Hillary ? I can’t seem to remember ? Maybe you have saved a post or two ,, properly dated of course .
Don’t try that revisionist crap on this old dude . I’ve got two of your posts before Bernie caved !!!
Really?
And you expect people to take you seriously with this sort of post?
Thanks for the End Of Year laugh. It was enjoyable.
The guy’s clearly not operating on all cylinders, to claim *I* ever said one nice word about Hillary fucking Clinton. [eyes rolling]
Look kid ,,
are you sure about that ?
Even I, a notorious HRC supporter, really got sick of your incessant apologias on her behalf during the campaign. It was even more obnoxious than your hasbara.
LOL. Yes, I’ve been called a “hasbara-ist,” and now I am also an avid fan of HRC, because she’s a woman, and I just LUUUVED her.
This place has quite the assortment of doofuses who come up with darndest things. Especially about moi!
Hey ,,
a little laughing ain’t gonna hurt !
You are more then welcomed educated one . Laughing is a great release !
Didja here the one about the Rabbi , the Priest , and the Leper walking into the bar ?
Sick joke pal ,, but it gets a lotta laughs !
Same can be said for many of your “arguments”.
“Fake News” is a thoroughly agitprop meme. But its susceptibility is due to a widespread belief that everyone is free to make up his own reality.——Fran Macadam
Mudbone – where is this from?
I am trying to figure out exactly what the author meant by stating “But its susceptibility is due to a widespread belief that everyone is free to make up his own reality.”
It’s an earlier post by Fran Macadam .
Probably one of Mona’s educated acolytes
__________________________________________
Fran Macadam
December 29 2016, 5:44 p.m.
“Fake News” is a thoroughly agitprop meme. But its susceptibility is due to a widespread belief that everyone is free to make up his own reality. Wish upon a star, and what ever you dream up will all be true.
Agree with your sentiment, but disagree with your definition of free press / fake news. Fake news is when an opinion piece, like the Guardian piece clearly was, is presented as news
Actually I think this article is about Assange. The comments certainly suggest a broader interpretation by readers. This attempt to critique (let’s call it) “impressionistic journalism” fails to establish a norm for actual or honest journalism.
Jacobs didn’t commit fraud by saying that Assange “praised” Trump. His tepid avoidance of the question with grad school academese definitely wasn’t a condemnation of Trump; one could say that by pointing out Trump’s lack of Washington insiderness — a major Trump talking point — Assange favorably contrasted Trump with Clinton.
But here’s Mr. Greenwald’s subjective assessment:
Jacobs cited Assange’s words. Since his citation is accurate, where is the “fraud”? Sure some might use a different word than “fraud” as Mr. Greenwald correctly observes, but that acknowledgment implies a central subjectivity — an impression of Assange’s actual statement. I don’t see how that constitutes “fraud.” It seems to me that fraud must be deliberate and malicious.
The actual issue, according even to Mr. Greenwald, “Part of why this happened has to do with The Guardian’s blinding hatred for WikiLeaks, …” and furthermore, “… Jacobs has a particularly ugly history with WikiLeaks. …” upon which Mr. Greenwald then elaborates.
Assange is central to this speculative non-speculation of Jacobs’ and The Guardian’s motives:
Assange is a polarizing figure, yes. But there’s reason for this polarization beyond personal animus towards Assange. One only needs read the comments to reach this fairly obvious conclusion.
Having read the source material (Maurizi’s interview), Jacobs’ original article, and Mr. Greenwald’s angry jeremiad, I sense a terrible frustration with various issues by all three parties (Assange, Jacobs, and Greenwald) which cannot be generically described as “fake news.” Neither is it fraud, deception, or a fabrication to find these larger issues compelling.
Again, notice the comments.
In my opinion, Assange demonstrates two things:
1. A personal grudge against Clinton and the US political establishment for his “imprisonment.”
2. A poor — and self-serving — understanding of other major political issues.
Further, I felt Jacobs’ treatment of Assange wasn’t unfair — much less was it deceitful. I can see why others might reach a different conclusion but isn’t the function of a free press the uncensored expression of competing assessments and perspectives?
Our governing institution have failed us. As we careen into an authoritarian future in which oversimplification, cunning, propaganda and brute force trample the ideals of democracy (“a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”), the horrors we recently saw in Aleppo will be repeated elsewhere.
Wikileaks and Assange will be nothing more than quaint reminders of our collective failure.
Looks like The Guardian disagrees with you:
Now really, Milton, commenters misinterpreting the meaning of what GG wrote is bread and butter for some.
As for fraud, why is it not journalistic fraud to take answers so out of context to upset the journalist who did the original interview? The distortions were not accidental unless Ben Jacobs and his editor have matching comprehension issues.
In my opinion, Assange demonstrates two things
——————————————————————————————————————
Ahh ,, the old legal disclaimer ,,, No ?
This is a wholly absurd article. Smearing opposing opinion pieces as “fake news,” all while stripping Assange’s words of any and all context to try to make them appear different from what they would mean to anyone who has been paying attention is a virtuoso attempt at gaslighting his readers. Trump himself would probably applaud the effort.
Assange is human – he deserves the right to hold a personal grudge against Clinton and the US establishment.
And why do we all have to be anti-Russia and anti-Putin just because the CIA is.
“isn’t the function of a free press the uncensored expression of competing assessments and perspectives?”
Yes, as long as these are grounded in facts, the correct facts and the complete facts. And if such assessments and perspectives are found upon examination to be based upon false facts, or upon a biased selection of facts leaving out relevant facts that would offer a competing assessment or perspective or upon a presentation of facts that are unsubstantiated then we as readers/ commenters are entitled to question such assessments and perspectives and also to question the motive and credibility of the press card holder who presents them for our consumption.
Imo, Jacobs did commit fraud. “Praising” is not the same as “not condemning”. He deliberately lies when he claims it is the same in order to paint Assange as a trumpfan. It is the intentional perversion of truth (“praise = not condemn”) in order to induce another (Assange) to part with something of value (reputation, affiliation, …) or to surrender a legal right, aka ‘fraud’.
Who said that ‘a terrible frustration with various issues by all three parties’ was ‘fake news’ and ‘finding the larger issues compelling’ is fraud, deception or a fabrication? (sorry, too lazy to scan all the comments).
A free press can work with uncensored expression of competing assessments and perspectives even if Jacob’s treatment of Assange was unfair and deceitful. I don’t think GG suggested that something must be done about press-freedom in order to stop fabricated news.
Angels dance.
If you want to see “fraud,” you need look no farther than the front page of your daily newspaper, the portal page of your favorite news-site, or the happy faces appearing on one of the thousands of cable “news” vortex broadcast as infotainment.
To put it differently, why do you jabber about an unknown journalist using certain words to describe something while feuding with another unknown journalist using certain words to describe sometime?
You’re swatting at some very small flies while riding a huge elephant.
This discussion of the objective accuracy of the word “fraud” sounds like scriptural exegesis rather than any real attempt to address journalistic integrity.
That was and is my point.
I don’t need a dictionary to say that this entire discussion — including the original piece — is entirely subjective.
I disagree that the Gaurdian article in question can be called fake news. I would describe it as overly bias or slanted, along the lines of many Fox News reports (which is not to say Fox never offers fake news).
Note that the Gaurdian did make some corrections in their article, something not done in fake news. (It would be good if that fact could be noted as an addition to this article as it current is reporting that the Gaurdian not respond at all to criticism.)
I usually reserve the label of fake news for articles that are deceptive on clearly objective points (rather than subjective points, like how Assange feels about Putin or Trump), that depart more egregiously from the available evidence.
So IMO fake news,= pizza gate, Russia changed election by hacking U.S. voting machines* and vaccines cause autism.
I point this out because I have been appalled by slanted news and documentaries for years, but the prominence of entirely fake news, to me, seems to deserve it’s own version of despair.
As an aside, some of the most masterfully succint slanted news I saw before the election was from Wikileaks twitter. Amazing how well taking quotes out of context in an “exposee” context works, eh?
Example: https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789887724199313408?lang=en
Very important article. Thank you.
On point article. That being said, while Trump’s claim of millions of illegals voting in this election is dubious, previous incidents in Congressional elections indicate that it is likely there was some in this POTUS election. Especially given the hysteria generated by the MSM and the current ruling class that favored Clinton.
But note that there is little effort to investigate the alleged numbers of illegal votes. That isn’t anything new as voter fraud and manipulations has likely decided a number of elections in the US.
Given the stakes these elections represent, perhaps it is time to examine the premise of voting for gain and reduce the rewards for the victors . That would mean decreasing the power of the welfare warfare state. A unthinkable event that would reduce the corruption in DC.
I think the recounts were an effort to look at the integrity of the election. I think the only conclusion was that it would be too easy to interfere, but it did not happen.
Which elections has voter fraud affected in the past? Where is the evidence? IMO, you are making this up.
Out of 323,995,528 (July 2016 est.) eligible U.S. citizens of appropriate age, sound wisdom and moral turpitude … I can’t think of two bigger frauds than Clinton or Trump.
I’m not sure it didn’t happen.
Or rather, even if the US government found concrete and indisputable evidence of cheating, what could it do?
Absence of response isn’t proof of absence of voting irregularities.
Like climate change (and various other major and intractable political problems) if you can’t do anything about it, why talk about it?
When making accusations of fraud the argument ‘there is not enough evidence that fraud didn’t happen.’ is not an acceptable, since logic shows us that you can’t prove a negative.
Just provide evidence of fraud or stop making accusations. It’s as simple as that.
How does a vote recount do anything to challenge the legitimacy of those who casted the votes being recounted?
Where is the evidence for this claim?
If voter fraud was so rampant, why haven’t republicans, with all their money been able to catch a “single” one? Trump sent his investigators to Hawaii to find out if Obama was born in Kenya, but he couldn’t gather up a team to find out if there was voter fraud??
Think about what you’re claiming, or at least claiming to believe, or give your reason to. You’re claiming that in a country, where nobody gives a shit about voting, and 60 % of the voters stay home, or at work, 3million or 1 million or whatever, are SO interested in Hillary Clinton, that they would risk committing a felony to get a criminal like her elected. That is absurd, and totally preposterous, and does not survive a second thought, let alone proper scrutiny.
I am sitting here in Norway, half way freaking out over what is happening in the US. This is scary shit and I feel that this Assange thing is a brick in the US warmongering.
You can help by staying out of the EU.
Fabulous article. The serial LIARS that have had a ‘clear run’ in western media for far too long must be exposed at every opportunity. Literally millions of lives have been lost around the world (Libya, Iraq, Syria to name but three ) due to dishonest mercenary ‘journalists’ spreading agit-prop masquerading as news.
The captive and unarmed Palestinians have been tortured for 70 years by a ruthless and ‘armed to the teeth’ occupying ethnocracy. Dishonest reporting has played a significant part in making sure the situation remains unaltered.
Silence is no longer (if it ever was) an option.
For humanity’s sake, the onus is on us, as individuals, to expose these dangerous charlatans.
Wow. Glenn Greenwald, crushing it. That second-to-last paragraph: I just can’t parse it like that and remain sounding thoughtful and intellectual and so on: I just say the mainstream press is full of fake news. At my most polite, I call it fake news. Do most people even understand fake news spread from the intelligence agencies and designed to mislead the American population is totally legal in this country? Not only is the cognitive dissonance overwhelming, I think people’s very ability to believe contradictory premises is pretty much spent. People are going to start landing on answers. Thus the fake push against fake news. I wish I could be more upbeat about this. I don’t have a good feeling, though.
Many folks believe he is no longer in the embassy but in US custody. I do not know if this is true
Great article ! Illustrates how to ‘drone Assange’ with fake ‘journalism’. Proves the Guardian is part of the lugenpresse…
Why do you use the term ‘lugenpresse’ given the connotations?
Maybe I should have used the term ‘gekaufte journalisten’. But that also has connotations. Using German words has connotations…..but I find them to be very precise and connotations are in the eye of the beholder.
None of the scumbags belonging to greenwald’s fan club, nor greenwald himself can reply to this one
“Snowden expressly forbade it as a condition for receiving them.”
By the way, the documents don’t belong to snowden, and don’t belong to mafiosos like greenwald. The documents belong to the public.
This article isn’t about Snowden. Try to pay attention.
Ah, please go and fuck your ignorant self.
And the public would never have known that the docs existed, except for the work of Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald.
Details, I know, details…
Possession is 9/10ths of the law.
Oh goodie! We has the cold War back.
Forget the cold war sanctions. If the U.S. “intelligence” is true and correct here — that is, Putin/Russia undermined and swayed U.S. Presidential election in favor of Putin-stooge Trump — President Obama really has no choice as far as I can see. President Obama, pursuant to his obligations under the U.S. constitution, must forthwith and at once (& time is of the essence) act:
Issue executive order declaring the Presidential election results null and void due to foreign power interference
*If the intelligence is correct, there really is no other choice … it’s the only way to be sure.
p.s. in any case, sis, with the fake election (i.e. Russian ‘coup’) of Trump I’m confident the anarchy inherent in State sovereignty is … moving to a climax!
Still, the public has not seen the evidence. Instead: Evidence about the evidence. News reports that oh so many important people believe the evidence, etc.
It reminds me of the build up to the Iraq war, except I think this one has more of a chance of being true. But, sorry, without the evidence, it gets no support from me.
Would you agree if it’s true, it’s a coup mike?
*I assume that’s what President Obama means by vital “U.S. interests” in his executive order for sanctions:
“These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior,” Obama said in a statement from Hawaii, where he is on vacation.
“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” he said.
What’s up Bah? That’s you sounding reasonable! However, I would also add that Assange deserves as much serious criticism for his role in releasing information to achieve a desired outcome in the elections.
What’s snapping criag? Allah rests in reason … i don’t know what S/He is doing the rest of the time.
*lets all hope, trying to talk some sense into Trump … if such a thing is possible!
p.s. >”What’s up Bah?”
A “Trumpian dark cloud” … floating across my clear, sky-blue mind.
Trump is a nutcase. While I am a staunch Republican, I declined to vote for him. Robert Mackey took a lot of heat below the line at the Intercept for his apparent support for HRC, I suspect this was mainly an anti-Trump driven support. His criticism of Assange and his argument in one of his articles that the Russians hacked the DNC are not popular at the Intercept (above and below the line). I wonder if Mackey is going to last here?
I don’t find the comparison to the build up to the Iraq war apt. I remember during that time hearing several expert voicing intelligent argument of skepticism. There was the Valerie Plame Wilson incident. The was the fact that the nuclear inspectors were not supportive of the idea that there were WMDs (I am working from memory here). Many of our allies were skeptical as well.
At this point, what I have seen is reporting that all the intelligence agencies agree that the source of the hack on DNC and Pondesta was Russia. I haven’t yet heard a coherent argument to the contrary from any party that has access to the intelligence. Trump, ‘no one really understands computers’ really doesn’t count as a coherent argument, especially considering his lack of credibility.
Why do you think all the intelligence agencies are lying?
“By all means: Let’s confront and defeat the menace of Fake News. But to do so, it’s critical that one not be selective in which type one denounces, and it is particularly important that one not sanction Fake News when it promotes one’s own political objectives”
One wishes The Intercept had applied this standard when meeting Pierre Omidyar’s rank political objectives in its Ukraine reporting:
https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2015/02/20/the-intercept-takes-a-dive/
^
The ominous reality is that this vigorous campaign to counter “fake news” has no intentions of unmasking falsehoods and/or disseminating facts. In practice it has demonstrated that it is actually about creating “authorities” who’s statements are true by virtue of decree. All who dare to disagree or challenge these statements will be branded traitors working to promote the nefarious agenda of the evil Putin :^0
Ironically the new “authority” bestowed with these truth making powers will be Trump and his incoming administration.
In keeping with Mona’s practice of monopolizing the top of the thread, I have preemptively carried this up from down below (Apparently, Mona likes to be on top). I knew that she wouldn’t mind however because it addresses a quote by her.
A simple google on both names (Hypatia and Mona) reveals that you were simultaneously using both in the same thread without disclosure on the Intercept’s blog:
-Mona-
11 Feb 2014 at 7:10 pm
>>At best, Glenn Greenwald’s association with Omidyar is a Faustian bargain. At its worst, it is the penultimate culmination of Greenwald’s ambition. There is nothing more corrupting than the desire for material wealth and fame. Selfish greed is the grease that keeps the wheels of the machine well lubricated.<<
Hypatia
11 Feb 2014 at 11:05 pm
Congratulations to three great journalists, who have earned their credibility, by standing up to the lies and deception. Hope this website is successful, and we shall look forward to great articles.
Source:
Welcome to The Intercept
By Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill
10 Feb 2014, 12:01 AM EDT
http://archive.is/OPBBL#selection-411.0-431.25
That “Hypatia” is not me.
Moreover, you cut off my comment. The part you offered is me quoting “Wilhelmena,” to whom I replied:
(And I seldom, if ever, start a new thread when it’s about this kind of O/T bullshit. Why did you?)
And P.S. You are spamming. You already posted this just below.
Then there was Mona writing “in Greenwald’s space” as MyrtleLandover:
https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/10934712
Yeah, the two writing styles are so SIMILAR…not.
It is denials such as this that leave no doubt that you can not be trusted.
Karl, that a rightwing racist such as yourself — who obsessively spits out myriad bizarre accusations to and about me — spews doubts on my trustworthiness can only inure to my credit.
In keeping with Mona’s practice of monopolizing the top of the thread, I have preemptively carried this up from down below (Apparently, Mona likes to be on top).
Many long term Greenwald commenters remember his first blog and the one at Salon where comments were sequential according to time posted. It was a much more primitive system that didn’t allow for threading, but one advantage of it was that you could come back to a thread and take up reading where you left off, content that you weren’t missing some bit of a conversation of interest to you.
Threaded conversations are a different beast and, imho, better in some ways in that one almost always knows whom is being addressed. But one of the drawbacks I have found is that a given conversation can become buried in the thread. One way to avoid that happening, and to ensure that your interlocutor knows you have responded (absent notifications, which TI doesn’t employ) is to respond at the top of a thread. I’ve done that many times and never been called out for wanting – or liking – to “be on top”. Then again, perhaps my respondents don’t find having a woman on top all that threatening. ;-}
Exactly. That’s also why I do it — when the thread has grown old, when it’s very far down the pile.
Except, I very seldom, if ever, start new threads about petty personal disputes such as Karl is perpetuating. It’s not respectful to the board; such sniping and feuding should be confined to the sub-thread in which it broke out.
It’s not respectful to the board; such sniping and feuding should be confined to the sub-thread in which it broke out.
Well, I’ve been known to carry something that could probably be called a “feud” to the top on occasion – mostly depending on how far down the thread a comment I was responding to had fallen – so I dunno. But my scrolling finger definitely gets more exercise at some times than others. :-)
p.s. Snipe hunts aren’t successful without snipes to chase. So I mostly agree they should have to go looking for them. ;-}
Really? Your posts strike me as virtually always on-topic and substantive?
Anyway, I attract quite a few oddballs who seek to depict me as all manner of vile and bad thing, and lately it’s an obsessive belief that you and half of the rest of the commentariat are… actually me! I’ll engage that dumb stuff to an extent, but dislike the idea of starting new sub-threads for it. Readers shouldn’t have to wade past and through so much irrelevant crap that largely only interests those involved.
Not saying I’ve never started a new thread to reply to stuff like that, but it’s rare. Just my idea on how to practice good thread hygiene.
Mona On Top
Was that imagery really necessary? I think I’m scarred for life. ;)
Sorry Mona. It’s too good to pass up.
Now, now Galactus. Don’t take Karl’s hair shirt from him. It’s almost January and he may freeze without it. ;-}
Lol, it sounds more like latent feelings to me. I wonder what Freud would say. ;)
Happy New Year, Pedinska.
Good onya Glen, cheers. So tired of the Gardian ‘False News’ articles on Julian.
Way past time the writers were thrown into the sunlight and exposed as the peddlers of lies they are. Stay safe and well Julian, and thank you and those who work with you for the great work you do, if humanity is to survive we need it.
The Ministry of Truth have a monopoly on ‘truth.’
The elite mainstream media also suffers a lot from what Chomsky describes below.
“Chomsky: Look they’ve just internalized the values. They’ll tell you, and they’re correct, that nobody is ordering them to do anything. That’s right. Nobody is ordering them to do anything. The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they’re being objective. Actually this is a point that Orwell made. You and everybody else has read Animal Farm, I’m sure, but you and everybody else hasn’t read the introduction to Animal Farm. There’s a good reason for that: because it was suppressed. The introduction was found 30 years later in Orwell’s own published papers. The introduction to Animal Farm says look this book is a satire on a totalitarian state but I’m going to talk about England, Free England. In Free England it’s not that different. Without state coercion unpopular ideas can be suppressed and are. And then he described how. He didn’t go in much details but he said partly it’s because the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. But the more important reason, he said, was because of a good education. By the time you’ve gone through, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here you could say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and even less fancy places, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things that just wouldn’t do to say, and that’s what a good deal of education is. So the people who come out of it – and there are many filters, if people go off and try to be too critical there are many ways of discouraging them or eliminating them one way or the other. Some get through, it’s not a uniform story. There are plenty of journalists with integrity and honesty. And many of them, some personal friends, will give a much harsher picture of the media than I do, because they have to live with it. But the basic points that Orwell made are fundamentally correct. The more educated you are the more indoctrinated you are. And you believe you are being free and objective, whereas in fact you’re just repeating state propaganda.”
“Snowden expressly forbade it as a condition for receiving them.”
By the way, the documents don’t belong to snowden, and don’t belong to mafiosos like greenwald. The documents belong to the public.
Nope. Below you write (why do you keep starting new threads when the initial sub-thread is still fresh?):
That you do not know the arrangement Snowden had with the journalists he chose is evidence you know too little to hold a serious opinion on these matters. You would have had to miss all of: countless of Snowden’s most important interviews, the Oscar-winning documentary “Citizen Four,” and much of Greenwlad’s own writing on the subject in order to be ignorant of Snowden’s agreement with his journalists.
In sum: You are spewing from a base of utter ignorance.
Snowden is on Twitter. Do go there and tell this courageous man to “fuck himself.”
“Snowden specifically wanted journalists to exercise their judgment about which documents to publish and how. His every public statement on the matter has evinced enormous satisfaction”
If that is true (wich I don’t know if it is), snowden can go fuck himself.
The fact remains : the journo mafia only publish what the pentagon tells them to. And greenwald is nothing but one more mafioso, on the payroll of ebay.
Dude, you should maybe consider cutting down on whatever the fuck it is you’re smoking.
Is that why Glenn’s living in Brazil? Why he’s had government officials openly threatening to have him locked up or even killed in the aftermath of Snowden blowing the whistle?
Who are YOU working for, I wonder…
Glenn has indicated in past threads that he lives in Brazil because his husband is there.
What the fuck are you blabbering about? When confronted with an articulate and logical arguement, you respond with an illiterate rant that would barely be suited for a paranoid meth-head.
I knew from the get-go that the “fake news” meme was propaganda. How did I know? Because it unaccountably spread like wildfire throughout the media. That’s always a tell–when a such an ambiguous, meaningless meme goes viral.
The MFM (mainstream fucking media) tends toward neoliberalism and jealously guards its gatekeeper status. And bloggers and internet newsies are declasse upstarts, doncha know.
Who watches the supposed watchdogs? Fellas like Glenn Greenwald. And you know that the self-appointed watchdogs don’t appreciate the scrutiny from ones such as he.
Ironic, the masthead “The Guardian.” What exactly are they guarding? Their own position, their own reputation?
The MFM is patently progressive leftist–there’s nothing neoliberal about it.
There’s nothing neoliberal about trannies every day on A1, nothing neoliberal about immigration reform, nothing neoliberal about squealing that “millions will lose their healthcare,” nothing neoliberal about Climate Change, nothing neoliberal about crying that North Carolina passed a bathroom bill and nothing neoliberal about celebrating that events are bypassing the state as a result, nothing neoliberal about PP advocacy,….
Says the guy who insists Adolph Hitler was a leftist, who declares that North Korea is a democratic republic, and who believes that the world is in the grips of a Satanic plot by the Illuminati to control people’s minds.
The kooks are out in force tonight I see! Nattering away at length so as to obscure the original piece, and completely flood out all comments that might actually pertain to it.
Hope you are doing well Hypatia. I really liked this article. It was beautifully, simply written and spot on. One of Glenn’s best.
Yes, Hypatia is one of Mona’s socks.
Nope, Hypatia was my pseudonym the first year or so that Glenn blogged. Eventually I became comfortable being outed as his friend and former law partner and so switched to my real name. Hypatia never posted in Greenwald’s space again lo these past ten years.
I saw you using Hypatia in commentary within the last 8 years–after you used -Mona-.
Not in Glenn’s space, only at platforms using Disqus or at Youtube — because I comment with Disqus/Yutube via my google account. After I figured out how to change my email name to my actual first name that changed, too.
A simple google on both names (Hypatia and Mona) reveals that you were simultaneously using both in the same thread without disclosure on the Intercept’s blog:
-Mona-
11 Feb 2014 at 7:10 pm
>>At best, Glenn Greenwald’s association with Omidyar is a Faustian bargain. At its worst, it is the penultimate culmination of Greenwald’s ambition. There is nothing more corrupting than the desire for material wealth and fame. Selfish greed is the grease that keeps the wheels of the machine well lubricated.<<
Hypatia
11 Feb 2014 at 11:05 pm
Congratulations to three great journalists, who have earned their credibility, by standing up to the lies and deception. Hope this website is successful, and we shall look forward to great articles.
Source:
Welcome to The Intercept
By Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill
10 Feb 2014, 12:01 AM EDT
http://archive.is/OPBBL#selection-411.0-431.25
That “Hypatia” is not me. Lots of women choose her as a moniker because of her feminist role in history.
Lol… bullshit!!!
I AM SORRY I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW THIS COMMENT SECTION WORKS — this by the way is not the Karl above I (Cody) made this comment to prove a point
“That “Hypatia” is not me. ”
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
She clogs the board with half a dozen handles.
It is disrespectful to the board to have someone like Craigsummers posing as different people.
Why does -Mona- get to do it with such reckless abandon?
And let’s be clear, you chopped off my comment. That text you post is my quote of one “Wilhelmina.” My reply, accurately, read:
I provided a link so that anyone could see for themselves that which I contest is you posting under two different names on the same intercept thread – contrary to your repeated claims to the contrary. I am satisfied in allowing others to determine for themselves if it is reasonable to conclude that, in response to Glenn’s very first article on the Intercept, someone else happened to post under the avatar Hypatia. Personally, I have no doubt that you are lying ONCE AGAIN. Hell, I caught you in two lies today in the conversation that was just between us. In fact, it has been by default position for years to assume that all unsubstantiated claims made by you are false – especially those you attempt to shore up with specious claims of consensus and/or repetition (Honest mommy, I didn’t do it… wahhhhh! All my puppets say so!!!).
PATHETIC!
It really is a very fine piece. You’ve been too much the stranger! Stop it!
North Korea is democratic, as was Democratic Kampuchea and the German Democratic Republic. And so is the Democratic National Committee.
(BTW, who shows up at functions with “Socialist Workers Party” scribbled over the doorbell? National as in NPR.)
(And who showed up for Obozo? Now just as conveniently disowned using the same post-Nuremberg playbook, chapter and verse.)
Your cult admiration for, and support of, a sincere endorser of Hillary Clinton is a cardinal example of mind control.
Don’t forget to take your pills. You won’t know progressive if it hits you full-on right in your face.
More pill talk from the progressive left. Natan Sharansky and Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner would recognize your words.
There’s nothing neoliberal about The Guardian. The sooner you wake up to that,….
Well argued article.
Just a few comments –
Greenwald points out that the Trump campaign engineered a fair bit of fake news about Hillary. He should have also stated that Hillary’s campaign did the same about Trump and in much greater degree and with the support of more mainstream news outlets like the NYT, WaPo and CNN.
There is a seeming consensus among the commenters here that admiring Putin is bad. Why? I admire and like Putin more than any of the last four US Presidents (The Bushes, Obama and Clinton). Why? Well, because Putin appears to be a Russian patriot. His statements challenging US claims to exceptionalism and his role in Syria and his expose of ISIS are positives. In his interviews, he appears to be more honest, more straightforward, less deceitful and frankly a nicer person than either Obama, or Hillary or Bill Clinton.
Intercept writers and a large number of commenters also appear to hold the view that admiring Trump in any way or for anything is bad. Now I am no defender of Trump, but did these people also extend the same sharp scrutiny to the two Bushes, the two Clintons and to Obama? Did they condemn all declarations of admiration for Hillary, or Bill, or Obama? Why is admiring Trump a bigger crime than admiring Obama or George W or Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton?
Coming to fake news – I would suggest that fake news which has always been around is a news story that is published and which contains demonstrably false statements of fact. Most fake news and the most egregious fake news is published with the deliberate intent to spread a false narrative. When fake news is published and its publication is caused by a powerful entity like the Government or an arm of government (the CIA) it also becomes propaganda. But any entity or interest-group can be responsible for published propaganda masquerading as fake news and the Government/ deep state/ corporate interests are only the biggest (but not the only) sources of propaganda.
Opinion statements might be biased, based upon false facts or be agenda-driven but mere opinion is not news and therefore not fake news.
Satire is not fake news because successful satire will be read as satire.
Now fake news has been around forever. Controlling the discourse is important for political control. So the largest purveyors of fake news are establishment-controlled news outlets like CNN, WaPo and NYT.
The internet and social media has opened up other avenues of information including social media and alternative media. The pro-Clinton narrative in the MSM in the 2016 elections was successfully countered by these alternative sources of information and news. This has led to a loss of credibility and influence of MSM. So the establishment-backed MSM has created a new recent narrative of fake news in an attempt to re-establish its dominance. Calls are being made for censorship of alternative media. This is very dangerous and regressive for freedom of speech and information and must be fought.
We should be able to read everything and then make up our minds. Some commenters here mock those who read so-called right wing websites and so-called conspiracy websites. This is an example of trying to keep the discussion limited. I think people should read anything and everything without fear or embarrassment. The true facts about politically taboo, controversial and sensitive topics and news can usually only be discovered after reading all kinds of sources of facts and news.
“I would suggest that fake news which has always been around is a news story that is published and which contains demonstrably false statements of fact.”
I would add that presenting a false narrative through lying by omission of relevant facts, or by a selective and biased presentation of facts, or by presenting unsubstantiated facts from interested and biased sources as true without any disclaimer or honest attempt at verification, can also produce a false news narrative and would amount to fake news.
“Opinion statements might be biased, based upon false facts or be agenda-driven but mere opinion is not news and therefore not fake news.”
And I would add that mere opinion pieces published by news outlets might not be fake news as such but could amount to propaganda. Opinion statements knowingly based upon false facts would be the most egregious and dangerous form of propaganda.
“He should have also stated that Hillary’s campaign did the same about Trump and in much greater degree and with the support of more mainstream news outlets like the NYT, WaPo and CNN.”
I would appreciate examples of three or four fake news articles about Trump that you can tie to the Clinton campagn that were reported in NYT, WaPo and CNN.
There is something bigger, more nefarious, going on here. All this back and forth between Russia and WikiLeaks, etc. has a larger agenda that will play out soon, I believe. While it might be as simple as only discrediting President Trump, it may be setting the stage for far worse, a coup d’etat in the USA. Many very powerful people are not happy that Trump won and will stop at nothing to stop him from exercising any power whatsoever. Trump is in mortal danger now.
And I’m SURE that you were as concerned with the health & safety of President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, given America’s proud history of assassinating black and Democratic party folks?
stefania maurizi [email protected] 14h14 hours ago
thank you @ggreenwald and @theintercept for reestablishing FACTS about my interview w/ @wikileaks founder, #Assange
Kudos to Greenwald for presenting the primary source for the interview by linking to the original
transcript. Primary sources are nor the sole purview of librarians and academics! Since the Guardian was made to heel at the behest of GCHQ, It has not gone unnoticed by its readership that its viewpont has changed. To wit — the creation of an alternate critiquing publication….
Off Guardian is the creation of people from different parts of the world committed to the original vision which drew us together on The Guardian‘s CiF pages. We followed with dismay and disappointment the increasingly distorted and tendentious news reporting on Libya, the proxy-war in Syria, and the Ukraine Crisis. Tired of being censored by our beloved, once-upon-a-time left-of-centre newspaper, in February 2015 we decided to create our own platform for airing our unacceptable opinions.
Our small group is dispersed globally, with representatives from North America, Britain, and Southern and Eastern Europe. The site is our own work, and is not supported by any governments, institutions or pressure groups.
We believe in the concept of truth itself — not merely in that of competing narratives — and in the sanctity of facts themselves. For that reason, we shall try to track them down, present them to the public, and preserve them as best we can. We believe in a true free press that (consistently) speaks truth to power. And we’ll be doing our little best to remind our mainstream media, including The Guardian itself, that this is supposed to be their duty. They probably won’t listen, but we’ll keep saying it anyway.
If you’re also sick of being stifled, moderated, abused or slandered as Putinbots or worse, and censored to oblivion on any of the Readers’ Comments sections of our mainstream press, come and tell us about it. We operate a completely open comment policy, and all shades of opinion are welcome.
https://off-guardian.org/
Thanks for the heads-up about “Off-Guardian.” The link’s a keeper.
OK Mona – I mistakenly thought you had more intellectual honesty than you actually have. So, let me know when greenwald and co start explaining how do ebay and paypal cooperate with the american police state.
greenwald can also start dumping the full collection of documents he got from snowden istenad of publishing what the pentagon tells him to publish.
Well, now you simply reveal yourself as unhinged as well as uninformed. Neither Glenn, nor Laura Poitras, the Guardian nor Bart Gellman are going to do a dump of the Snowden documents. Snowden expressly forbade it as a condition for receiving them.
Snowden specifically wanted journalists to exercise their judgment about which documents to publish and how. His every public statement on the matter has evinced enormous satisfaction with how the journalists have undertaken this obligation.
Snowden specifically wanted journalists to exercise their judgment about which documents to publish and how. His every public statement on the matter has evinced enormous satisfaction with how the journalists have undertaken this obligation.
____________________________________________
Specifically ? He has ” evinced enormous satisfaction ” ?
Craps Allmighty !!
Fake news, fake archives of newspapers published. It’s no longer possible to know what’s real.
The BBC’s response to its broadcast of fake news – “These decisions are always judgement calls rather than an exact science,” https://rjrbtsrupertsfirstnewspaper.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/bbc-broadcast-of-fake-news/ The Guardian & the BBC are as trustworthy as each-other.
The Guardian amended its article with an extremely long correction:
“This article was amended on 29 December to remove a sentence in which it was asserted that Assange “has long had a close relationship with the Putin regime”. A sentence was also amended which paraphrased the interview, suggesting Assange said “there was no need for Wikileaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there”. It has been amended to more directly describe the question Assange was responding to when he spoke of Russia’s “many vibrant publications”.
Thanks to Greenwald’s report. But they didn’t change the main thrust of the article or the headline. Damage has been done.
Doo . . . Doo . . . Do
Another one bites the dust
Doo . . . Doo . . . Doo
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone
And another one gone
Another one bites the dust
Hey, he gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust . . .
There are multiple third party testimonials to back up the cliam that Assange is a Kremlin stooge. He’ll go to any length to fight what he sees as the ‘new world order’, corrupted to his own ideology to the point he can’t see his own bedfellows for what they are. He might as well be a Republican.
So Assange, an australian national, hiding from the US kidnapping in “pro-pirate” Ecuadorian embassy in London, GB, for years, charged with rape allegations in Sweden IS a stooge to a country that depends on giving all of its oil in exchange for the ability to issue its own currency. But he is deluded and keeps fighting, wow, that would make a good Star Wars sequel.
This is the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog
That worried the cat
That killed the rat
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
Yes, I have already said that. have lipstick on my collar, but, I don’t see my comment. All we want, if you are rich people, is a) not to have involuntary coercive psychiatry. This may be abused, and destroys people while I’m cooking, no more time than that. Instantly and for life. b) Kidnapping, and raping our children, as well, we don’t like. We don’t ask much of you.
“Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of the Christians as their charity to strangers…the impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor, but for ours as well,” -Emporer Julian. Now, it seems that GUARDIAN is an anagram for DRUID. They have a lot of the same letters. They’re fellow travelers, much as aphids. (Celtic: “Knowing [or Finding] the Oak Tree”), member of the learned class among the ancient Celts. They seem to have frequented oak forests and acted as priests, teachers, and judges. The earliest known records of the Druids come from the 3rd century bce.
To tell the truth, I despise Druids, and that it’s hard to find data to support this. But, the Guardian I particularly hate. You have quit them, and I so admire you for this. They always say my comments are “pre-moderated”, for five years now, every time I read an article. There is no ground my enemies may occupy. Learn from the Druids how to do the Mexican Celt.
Oh, dear lord! In a Dec 24, 2016 Intercept article entitled “Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC — It’s Not Enough”, Sam Biddle unequivocally characterized Wikileaks as harboring ” affection for Vladimir Putin:
I suggest that Glenn’s self-righteous criticism of the Guardian’s purposeful distortions of Assange’s words and actions would be far better received if he at least acknowledged equal culpability on Biddle’s behalf; glass houses and all of that.
The comparison between Jacobs’ assertion and Biddle’s is apt.
Glenn, however, is not the editor or publisher of The Intercept. We don’t even know if he has read Biddle’s piece.
Glenn: If you’re still following the thread, would you agree that Sam’s characterization is as unfounded and uncalled-for as Jacobs’?
Nah. Reasonable people praised it, and I thought it was fine except for the part Karl quotes. (I was the first to object to that one bit of unsupported garbage.)
I believe that this claim is false. A comment from Julius
(December 14 2016, 10:10 a.m.) first takes exception to Mr. Biddle’s characterization of Wikileaks. Yours comment merely reflected his six minutes later. But hey, what is a little thing like the truth when it comes to your desperate attempts at creating self-aggrandizing fictions in service to you own ego; no contest, eh Mona?
Secondly, it does not matter whether the rest of Mr. Biddle’s article received “praise” from the Intercept’s number 1 apologist and her string of sock puppets. Biddle and, by extention, the Intercept are as equally guilty of engaging in exactly the type of distortion that Greenwald now professes to detest. One might presently provide a modicum of cover for Biddle in arguing that he is free to express his own opinions; but, in the doing the same argument must apply to Ben Jacobs.
If so, I was writing mine when his posted. Moreover, mine is the one Biddle and many others engaged, as can be seen in the thread.
Karl, you persist in this madness about other regular commenters here having a slew of sock puppets. Glenn has already advised another who shares that feverish delusion that it’s false, and that he should stop it. (Glenn has met many of us and knows who we are, as well as where we live, and what geographical location is associated with our IP address.)
In any event, Biddle’s piece was largely good and nothing as error-riddled as Jacobs’.
Even when shown irrefutable proof that your claim was false, you still persist in your grandiose delusions. More pathetic still, is your continued use of a non sequitur in attempting to explain away Greenwald’s apparent hypocrisy. If Greenwald wants to singularly fault Jacobs for that which he wrote concerning Wikileaks, then I I have no problem – as Jacobs might also have the liberty to take a position contrary to that of the Guardian. But to hold the Guardian responsible for that which Jacobs wrote, while ignoring the same perceived effect engendered by Biddle’s identical characterization of Wikleaks, is plain hypocrisy.
Karl, you continue to manifest very poor reasoning skills. You begin a sentence thus: “Even when shown irrefutable proof that your claim was false,” [you showed me nothing; you made an assertion]. What follows has no relationship to the first half of the declaration, for you continue with this non sequitur: “you still persist in your grandiose delusions.” That last half bears no relationship to when my comment was posted, which was the basis for your accusation. (Reasonable people understand that someone is likely writing all but the shortest comment when another posts six minutes before.)
My “grandiose delusions,” btw, are facts to which I linked, something you did not do — you expect readers to simply take your word for it. Something they should not do where you are concerned. (Some commenters have reputations for reliability and honesty; you are not among them.)
As for Glenn’s purported hypocrisy, again, the Biddle story was largely very good. Jacobs’, by contrast, was rancid and built largely of lies — and went viral. It’s entirely reasonable for Glenn to debunk a tissue of falsehoods that flew all over the Internet and to thereby secure the deep gratitude of the journalist whose interview of Assange Jacob’s so severely misrepresented.
Finally, I am pleased you have abandoned the silliness about sock puppets. Glenn felt moved to address it once, and making him waste any more time on such inanity would be inconsiderate.
Mr. Biddle did Julian Assange and Wikileaks a grave disservice by falsely insinuating that either is harboring “affection” for Putin. The fact that you continue to defend him by arguing that his intentional defamation is somehow okay because of the way in which it was packed speaks volumes to your own lack of moral integrity.
I haven’t abandoned the claim that you use sock puppets; unlike you, I do not believe that the repetition of a claim makes it any stronger. It is enough to alert readers to the FACT whenever you attempt to use unsubstantiated consensus opinion in support of your own.
I said that the comparison between Jacobs’ assertion and Biddle’s (about Assange’/WikiLeaks’ relationship/affection for the Putin regime) was apt. It clearly is.
About comparing the two pieces overall, affiant said naught.
That bit you quote from Biddle was crap, as I said in the comments there. Biddle’s article was good in the main, however, and certainly not the egregious mess that is Jacobs’ piece at the Guardian.
greenwald is fully owned by paypal-ebay-omidyar. Even you Mona have finally realized what sort of joke the intercept is though of course your unthiking, unjustified loyalty for greenwalds prevents you from speaking up too much.
Greenwald is owned by Greenwald. Nor have I “finally realized what sort of joke the Intercpet is” in any fashion. Rather, I noted in a comments to a Mattathias Schwartz piece that I was disturbed by some directions of the writing here.
Greenwald addresses these issues in a sub-thread below in multiple comments.
If you had followed Greenwald’s writing with careful attention over time, you would know that to be a ridiculous accusation. He would go back to solo blogging or selling apples on the street before he would permit himself to be “owned” by anyone.
The Way To Fight Fake News Is Real News, not different opinions.
scammer clown greenwald should write a few articles about how ‘trnasparent’ a scam like the intercept is. He can start explaining what does working for a fascist corporation like ebay entails.
Glenn Greenwald does not work for ebay. Thanks for stopping by.
English doesn’t seem to be your first language. I wonder what is.
The syntax and constructs are reminiscing of German, if you ask me. Verbs at the end of sentences usually are a dead giveaway.
It has been years since I commented on one of your articles, so I just wanted to thank you for your continued fight for what is real and true.
Via @MicahZenko on twitter:
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-press-releases-2016/1463-joint-dhs,-odni,-fbi-statement-on-russian-malicious-cyber-activity
I would have said same wrinkle, different angle. :-s
Howsomever, just to be clear, we should perhaps re-quote the Department of Motherland Security:
. . .nor should this disclaimer be understood to suggest that there are not extremely mutually profitable relationships between the U.S. Government and the aforementioned other parties — or that there are, of course.
We need a new bumper sticker based on the motorcycles one:
WHORES ARE EVERYWHERE
I was disturbed to read a piece so directly critical of another outlet and reporter. But considering @SMaurizi’s “furious” yet under-reported reaction, I can’t see how you could have written this up any other way.
I’m a regular Guardian reader/supporter, so I will go looking / asking for Jacob’s response.
Too little, too late, but it looks like you did get a response:
“This article was amended on 29 December to remove a sentence in which it was asserted that Assange “has long had a close relationship with the Putin regime”. A sentence was also amended which paraphrased the interview, suggesting Assange said “there was no need for Wikileaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there”. It has been amended to more directly describe the question Assange was responding to when he spoke of Russia’s “many vibrant publications”.
Greenwald rhetorically flays other journalists rather often. Some of those instances have been works of art.
While he usually chops up wretched journalists via written analysis, this face-to-face bit with David Gregory is widely heralded as a classic.
Thanks for the link Mona. One look at that clip and it’s obvious that Gregory should have his press pass taken away… and that he knows it.
haha. Yes they have.
Amusingly, the next time Glenn was booked on Meet the Press, they brought in Pete Williams to do the interview.
Yes, classic Greenwald! Unforgettable.
Glenn Greenwald is our national treasure.
Thank you Glenn for all the hard work you do.
I read that guardian article more or less uncritically and was very confused by it. Thanks. It’s reminiscent of the frightening way in which Jacobs and others went blindly hunting for Sanders’ scalp during the primaries. And so it comes full circle.
The Guardian’s Ben Jacob scurrilously reframes “not raging criticism of Trump”, as praise. Attempts to correct the record are ignored. Typical mainstream journalism.
This problem arises the moment media move from reporting news, to editorializing it. What is needed is a firewall between NEWS and BLOG journalism. In our edu-tainment culture, not bloody likely. But there it is
Mixed Messages
Calling purposeful lies “fake news” is like calling torture “enhanced interrogation”. Euphemism as a soft pillow for smothering and selling lies.
But what is very interesting here is that the euphemism is used as a critique. It would be like saying “It is always extremely immoral to use enhanced interrogation.” Using the euphemism “enhanced interrogation” instead of the word “torture” in this context is absurd and surreal and directly contradicts the message.
“Fake News” is something a nine year old would say to try and “kid rationalize” why their obvious lie wasn’t really lying it was only “fake news.”
To use such an unneeded and cheesy euphemism when much more powerful words are available make the whole “fake news” phenomenon hilariously impotent.
It’s like they had a meeting and said “Let’s come up with a way to criticize someone for lying–but without coming out and saying that lying is bad–because we don’t want to say something we may regret later.”
If you call torture “enhanced interrogation” then you aren’t criticizing torture.
If you call lying “fake news” then you aren’t criticizing lying.
Calling purposeful lies “fake news” is like calling torture “enhanced interrogation”. Euphemism as a soft pillow for smothering and selling lies.
ondelette – you and many others here will recall ondelette – once wrote a scathing piece on the use of euphemism to describe torture:
For me, “fake news” is any news that is an outright lie or news that is
lies by omission of facts that can be proven. Propaganda.
CNN, MSNBC or FOX.
Case in point would be the recent UN vote against Israel.
All the above mentioned cable stations talked about was poor Israel.
Nothing regarding the fact that Great Britain, Germany, France and
Russia all voted to condemn Israel. No mention of the fact that if
there had been a General Assembly vote that the only countries that might have abstained would have been Micronesia and Palau.
Americans receive “fake news”/propaganda day in and day out.
I quote from the Ben Jacobs article:
The tragedy is that they cannot, between this Jacobs hack and the Guardian editors, figure the difference between “holed up” and “hold up”. Very, very shameful. This is even more shameful than the fact that they cannot tell the truth. At least they should write proper English even when they are lying.
Thanks for reporting on this issue Glenn. Having lived in China this fake news stuff scares me. I feel like censorship (whether corporate or government) is just around the corner. I can remember a time when the internet was open. The pirate bay had everything, from academic text books to 1950’s korean cinema. Now everything is closing in on itself. Countries have set up intrawebs, people are reporting “fake news” to encourage new media organizations to select what information we can see. They can’t stop info leaks like snowden and manning, but they can install more filters. Cheers.
I am so sickened by what Jacobs tweeted about Manning.
I read that Obama “quietly” signed the NDAA, which “will create a national anti-propaganda center. Under the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, the State Department will actively work to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.”
What will this mean for real journalism? The bill seems very dangerous.
Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act?
thanks for that heads up
very alarming.
I shit my pants when I saw that. So Orwellian. And now we have Obama taking actions against Russia, btw. This is all beyond-the-pale terrifying.
Speaking of fake news from the CIA, this is my desperate tweet from the powerless today:
Dear @RussianEmbassy
I speak for a lot of Americans when I say I do not want sanctions, do not believe the CIA, and do not want nuclear war.
Thanks for that.
Glad to say it is getting a lot of retweets (relative to my number of followers). A lot of people seem to feel the same way.
I just go by what Wikileaks tweets and what I heard Assange say in an interview.
For example, Wikileaks tweeted a video of HRC stumbling into van with text: “mysterious piece of metal flings out of Hillary’s pant leg”. What the heck does that imply? Looked to me like someone kicked a little piece of trash on sidewalk. But, a mysterious piece of metal?
Another example, Assange, in an interview, brings up murder of DNC employee, Seth Rich, then talks about the risks their sources take. What the heck! Talk about fake news. Where’s some outrage over that?
another great piece.
ty gg
which means
The hierarchal structure of the insect colony which needs to feed on (or off the works of) the worker bees depends on an inequality of power and the constant deception that the worker bees are not entitled to equal power.
Lying is a way of life for thieves.
“Lying is a way of life for thieves”:
Can’t help but think of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It was her incessant lying that caused those 100,000 Americans in the electoral college states that brought her down.
More Americans were willing to go with Trump than her.
Brilliant work as always Glenn. I know you probably don’t want the comments section filled up with empty “Thank Yous”, but you really need to know what an absolutely vital public service you’re doing. Please keep it up.
Since Truman founded the CIA, no Party or President has stood up to the CIA except Kennedy and we know what that got him. They were the government’s official advisors on foreign affairs. When George H W Bush, Director of the CIA was elected he took them to another level. They were the group that made all foreign policy decisions. Bill Clinton had no problem with that and the Bush boy didn’t, because he was there as the CIA messenger.
In 2006/7 it became apparent to even idiots that such a mess had been made by going into Afghanistan & Iraq that NO Republican could get elected, the CIA, who knows where every DC skeleton is planted, took ownership of the DNC and found two firsts, one Black the other Female, either completely controlable. When Obama won, Hillary was assured she would succeed him. She was given the State position to polish her credentials as “presidential”.
Hillary did what the CIA told her to do in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Ukraine. She initiated the new belligerance toward Russia, the sclerotic- minded CIA’s old bugaboo from the Cold War. That pleased everyone from the DOD and MIC to all of the old pols.
For 8 years, the ventriloquists opened and shut Obama’s mouth and their words and policies issued forth. But just as there had been with the Bush and Obama wars, there was this horrible error in the decision-maker’s calculations and the monster Trump appeared and won on a TKO.
Embarrassed beyond red, enraged beyond purple, Trump was an unacceptable defeat. He was an uncontrolable, anti-establishment rebel. The CIA knows where all of the closets are with all of the skeletons. They, in collaboration with the DNC and the Hillary organization tried everything: his taxes, his women, his misogeny, his family, his debts, failures, friends – and it all seemed to roll off his back. They had shot down Sanders, but couldn’t find the formula for Trump.
Who is best at manufacturing false birth certificates and false papers or false news than the CIA? No one in America. So we see what they did for Assange and Snowden and Kiriakou who they didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t assassinate. Well, is it surprising that they plant their false news with Trump and Russia and pitiful Obama does his sanctions number or that the “proof” the FBI is forced to release turns out not to be proof at all to anyone with a little computer security experience?
They are supposed to be our government on everything international and they lost. Rest assured, they know all of the dirty tricks – and they will use them.
the CIA, who knows where every DC skeleton is planted, took ownership of the DNC and found two firsts, one Black the other Female, either completely controlable.
FITS my theory that the CIA MURDERED SETH RICH.
When it was decided that hillary was 2-faced and untrustable, and a likely loser, DT was accepted as the best deal for israel. Then, the mossad and or cia decided to make russia the “did it” and enemy just as they did with WMD to invade iraq. The only problem that faces these menacing organisations of evil is whether Donald is going to favor Melania or Jared.
Regardless of what whether or not Assange has praised Donald Trump, we are going to get him out of that embassy in Knightsbridge and into the freedom that he deserves. Teresa May is a good hack, she knows how to cooperate. And that Paki mayor of London is going to help Assange anyway, so this will please him, unless he is still to recover from Clinton’s bitter loss.
This fellow Ben Jacobs and the Brit masterpiece Guardian are both despicable hacks. Trump is always right when he calls them the most dishonest people on earth. This episode proves Trump right on all counts.
Build the wall and #MAGA. We are going to make all the Brit hacks swim across.
There is something to be said about the lack of offensive capability.
In light of having near zero consequences for attacking the weak and crippled, some are highly motivated to demonstrate their loyalty to their master. In the case of bully, one would have to show capacity to bully common victim. Not for 3 silvers but for an ounce of association. To stay in the circle of power.
Glenn. Thanks for this. It read absolutely beautifully. Like a force of nature :) Nice job.
Loved watching you with Jimmy Dore.
Jimmy Dore is so utterly awesome. A show (I think there’s two now) with them both is balm for the soul. This should be a regular occurrence.
Jimmy Dore interviews Glenn Greenwald on the state of journalism in the U.S.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKVzB1UMsn8
Excellent article and beautifully spotted, though any sensible reader of the Jacobs article should have picked it. People share by headline not by content. Not that that makes Jacobs article any more accurate than the headline, but careful reading of the article should lead any reader to double check the weak claims made by Jacobs.
A great article, BUT…
“The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.”
How can you possibly justify this without a broad evidence based analysis of a large swathe of the media? You’ve linked to a few articles here and there but “most aggressive”? Thats a pretty tall and poorly supported claim. You repeat it Again
“Yet, as I’ve repeatedly documented, the very same people most vocal about the need to suppress Fake News are often those most eager to disseminate it when doing so advances their agenda.”
I am sorry a few claims do not a broad statement make. I would tone down the hyperbole a little.
Thanks, Glenn. I had the same thought when I read the Guardian headline. I then read the article and realised that Julian had not said any of it.
The Guardian article also contradicts itself in some places. Note the first half of this sentence: “It is impossible to know how much the email disclosures affected the outcome of the race…”
It contradicts the latter half of the same sentence: “…but there is little doubt the revelations harmed Clinton’s prospects during the crucial last weeks of the campaign.”
its impossible, from the above comment alone, to know exactly how stupid sam varghese is but the fact that he can’t accurately identify contradiction leaves little doubt he is stupid.
im not so serious sam, but there is no contradiction in either my nor greenwald’s statements.
Via Wikileaks Task Force on twitter:
https://twitter.com/WLTaskForce/status/814567345486237701
My comment posted to Sam Biddle’s piece on “Russian hacking,” wrt Obama’s sanctions announcement and the “supporting evidence” offered therewith:
Yep~ :P
“nothingburger” hee hee
I think that this assault on Russia has been a long time coming. I think that the US is afraid of the BRIC alliance and the possibility of an alternative monetary system. I am sure this has a lot to do with what is going on.
I think you’re absolutely right. The Imperial Owners must be aghast at the possibility of their unchallenged control of the planet being. . . challenged!?!?!? By a multi-polar world, no less. The very idea must be horrifying.
The notion that horrifies me, as it does you and should everyone with a lick of sense, is the one that sees friendly relations with the Earth’s only other nuclear superpower as anything but a very good idea indeed.
Unchecked greed becomes a form of madness, so I greatly fear that the kings of Western capitalism will do anything–at whatever cost to us ordinary people–to keep Russia and China down. They know better than anyone that we are undergoing an inexorable shift in economic power across the globe, and the shift is away from the US. In their madness, they think that having the most weapons can stop this.
Well done Glenn.
Thanks Glenn, great read.
“Fake News” is a thoroughly agitprop meme. But its susceptibility is due to a widespread belief that everyone is free to make up his own reality. Wish upon a star, and what ever you dream up will all be true.
Well-stated. The Trumpers, and increasingly the DNC, wish to take us to a post-fact world.
And which reality should one adapt ? Yours ?
The best part of the Guardian coverage are some of the comments (when the editor permits it). Outside of that, under AR, the Guardian was already in its death bed. Now under the female editor, the newspaper died and the day there are no comments, there is no reason to read it.
The Guardian was an upstanding newspaper, now it is part of the murdochization of news… Sad
Well done, Glenn. You forgot to add that at the end of this bit of putrid prose, they also beg the reader for a donation.
Yeah, every time I see that plea for support of their “courageous” and “independent” journalism, I think, “Go ask NATO. You obviously represent them, not us.”
C.P. Scott must be spinning.
In an answer to the question ‘what does Trump means’, Assange’s first statement is “Hillary Clinton’s election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States.” Considering Assange had devoted, in the past year or so, Wikileaks’ reputation and resources almost entirely to the demonization of Clinton and that he considers Clinton lose an outright positive, while not a straightforward praise, it certainly puts Trump in a positive perspective. Considering Assange’s distinct criticism of DC corruption (elsewhere), “not a DC insider” is also a positive. He then goes to length about how Trump and his cohorts represent “a weak structure” and “opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better”. The first assertion is completely false – practically all his cabinet choices represent exclusively rich, white, conservative and Republican power centres; the second assertion is also false, for two reasons: Trump, as his cabinet choices show, is an extreme conservative, and his presidency is therefore not a change but continuation of Republican rule; all Republican presidents since at least Reagan had left the US in far worst condition than they received it on all issues and accounts, so the assertion that there is a possibility for a positive change is practically non existent.
To sum, Assange denotation of Trump as not-Clinton first, not DC second, and change (in the context of political corruption) last, while hardly a “praise”, can certainly be interpreted as “guarded praise”. Considering it completely ignores any other aspect of Trump – oligarchy directly at the seat of power, likely civic havoc resulting from all three branches of government in the hands of the most extreme conservative gang in US history, China-baiting, Iran-bashing, Islamophobia galore, and more – it also overly simplistic and ignorant. GG claim that “guarded praise” is completely false is a lie, then, and since it indirectly accepts Assange’s take on Trump, also simplistic and ignorant as well.
As to the supposed “worse assault on basic journalism”, GG mentions two claims from the article in question: Assange connection to Russia, and Assange’s claim Russia has its own Wikileaks. While the claim of close relations between Assange and Russia are an exaggeration based on past “interviews that were broadcast on RT” (which, typically, are not linked directly by GG), they are a far cry from an “assault on basic journalism”, and “worse” is certainly as egregious exaggeration as any GG might have in mind. Assange’s claim to Russian Wikileaks hides two fallacies: it assumes that the thirst for information about Russia’s inner workings is irrelevant or unimportant to people in the west, and that Wikileaks’ exposure of the secretes of the powerful does not require exposure of Russia’s problematic democracy under Putin; it talks about “many vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics”, mentioning only one critic and one news site, that are “permitted to critique each other” (permitted by whom?), then jumping to claim, without any evidence, that Russia have it own Wikileaks, falsely comparing interpretive and discursive publications with that of documentation and written evidence for the workings of power. The claims are not only entirely based on Assange’s interview, but are also a fairly reasonable interpretations of his answers.
Someone should remind GG that it is not a good idea to blame others of falsification through lies: the guardian’s article is neither “completely false”, if at all, nor is it the “worse assault on basic journalism” (eg Fox news, Info-wars, Breitbart).
You can’t hear it, but I’m applauding you.
Yes, it’s no surprise that you’d like Nir Haramati’s offering. Nevermind that it is a tangle of fallacies.
But then you are fond of commenters who commit lies of omission about a material matter, a matter that definitely rebuts your preferred narrative.
I took it as meaning he was applauding sarcastically. Am I wrong?
I was sort of doing the same thing myself. The twisted logic in that post is just amazing!
I really doubt it’s meant sarcastically. But MB should correct me if I’m wrong.
It wasn’t an applaud of sarcasm. I didn’t need to defend my approval, since everything you asserted about me is baseles–and I think Haramati could well defend the validity of his own criticism.
You’ve already shown that context is irrelevant to you, unless you are the one who defines the context. You provide yourself with any ridiculous equivocation necessary to give a crutch to the incessant gibberish you spew. You proposed constant etymological fallacies to discredit a valid argument from a commenter, and if anyone cares to scroll down, they will see it.
“a tangle of fallacies”
For example?
Did you actually read the full article? Because it seems like you didn’t.
You also make a lot of statements that are hardly facts, but personal opinions.
Yes, I did. Why do you ask?
As to non-factuals on my part, please specify.
I liked the part where he accuses the Guardian of a “deeply emotional and personalized feud” against Assange while linking to an article of his from the Guardian which supplies no such proof and in fact only offers praise for a Guardian analysis on the media’s reaction to Assange.
He also apparently doesn’t see any irony in making this accusation even though Assange clearly was motivated by a deeply emotional and personalized feud with Clinton.
This is commonly known. Greenwald worked for the Guardian at the time Snowden handed him, Laura Poitras and another Guardian journalist his trove of documents. He was in their tent.
But even had he not had insider access, what Greenwald reports is well known.
Well, given that you have provided no evidence for your claim, and Greenwald either through neglect or intentional bullshitting provided a link that doesn’t back up that claim either, you’ll excuse me if I don’t accept it as gospel.
Good analysis.
Instead of “guarded praise” of Trump by Assange, how about “muted lack of opinion” or “tepid analysis” or — to be honest — “sophomoric bullshit designed to hide the fact he doesn’t give a shit about Trump.”
For myself, after reading the interview, my opinion of Assange suffered.
He has thrown his lot in with Putin. BTW, if the only interaction between Assange and the Russians was RT, then why does Assange claim credit for getting Snowden safely to Russia? (“We went head to head with the NSA getting Edward Snowden out of Hong Kong, we won and got him asylum.”)
Further Mr. Greenwald ignores the factual misstatements Assange makes. The US never went to war with Libya; NATO enforced UN resolutions against Gadaffi regime. Whatever Clinton’s role, it wasn’t as the mastermind of a US war against Libya. Furthermore, the European refuge crisis comes mainly from Syria — by far. Rather a fortuitous version of reality for Russia.
This isn’t “fake news.” This is dueling self-promotion.
Assange fares better than he should in Jacobs’ article.
“This isn’t “fake news.” This is dueling self-promotion.”
Ding ding ding ding.
Okay, journalist and politicians, mainstream academia are engaged in a class warfare, they will defend their position to the last, and when backed into the corner, will say “Of course I did what I did, I was securing my profits and my standing in the community, you fool!”
But what makes YOU sheet bricks over things you know nothing about is beyond me. Thing stated is very clear, wikileaks has near zero credibility/influence in Russia, while local russian language outlets have their readership. Journalists aim to affect their OWN society in a certain way, posting russian leaks in western media would not achieve that goal and vice versa.
Situation in Russia’s “troubled democracy” explained in one graph:
http://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/russia-cross-and-russian-hegaxon.png
Wikileaks IS a western outlet. The hidden Assange claim to western disinterest is not only false, but idiotic and demagogues as well. In addition, it is typical of both Assange and GG to exaggerate and fail to provide adequate support for their claim. In Assange’s interview case he speaks of multiple sources of open debate, provide a single name and a publication, and then mentioned they are “permitted” to exist, because they have very limited reach, thus exposing his own “sheet bricks” moment.
Wonderful article. Seems like people have to be extra brave to write the truth sometimes. Thanks for exposing this, you have a new follower. :)
92% of trump voters disagreed with the other 9%? 101%? looks TAMPERED.
i’d say the biggest angle of this story of which i’ve yet to see major coverage would be: why do people still read the guardian? or the NYT? or the washington bezost? i see them discussing this stuff on the internet so i know they have access to it. the CIA recently gave them a great list of other sources to check out (www.propornot.com – bookmark it now!) and google is willing to provide them with a totally unfiltered and unbiased plethora of similar wellsprings. yet they continue to read ancient relics and watch the political equivalents of dr. phil (MSNBC, fox, etc.)
i expect such attraction to subjective reality from conservatives given their susceptibility to whatever oil companies or snake handling preachers say. but the democrats count among their ranks so many New Atheists. those scientifically minded pillars of reason famed for their critical thinking and their vast knowledge of How Everything Works. they can prove humans are the be-all-end-all of existence beyond any doubt yet they read vox and vice. their only flaw. human, all too human.
anyone still reading this probably realizes by now i have nothing useful to add and am screwing about. great article as usual, mr. g.
This is seed propaganda. It is then re-spawned in and by the media’s vast echo chamber.
It is hard, don’t you think, not to imagine that these pieces are assigned to various “journalists” and then re-spawned by the whole global propaganda machine so that no one “journalist” takes the heat for such transparent and malicious nonsense.
The members of the “Free Press” have become the the thing they hate. It’s pathetic, really.
P.S. Even Greenwald’s piece does not bring up the question of Assange’s location. Why?
Jay Warren Clark
What does Assange’s location at the Ecuadorian embassy in London have anything to do with this article. Most of the readers here are well aware of this anyhow…..
“Fake news” has no widely accepted definition and is useful mainly for censors and the whiney
As Techdirt writes:
That bolded bit? That is, indeed, what the term functionally means.
As I wrote below, the terms “propaganda and “lies” remain perfectly sound and capture a phenomenon that is not remotely new; “fake news” is merely trendy and useful for malicious actors.
So, when Nate provided you with five credible sources who share a similar definition for “fake news,” you counter-argue that there is no widely used definition based on the proclamation of just single source?
That makes me wonder if there is any widely used definition for “credibility” anymore.
What Mona fails to recognize is that my well-accepted definition specifically aims to avoid dishonestly labeling “reporting [that] people don’t like” as fake news.
There is no arguing that the article claiming an “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide” was fake. NONE. The Special Agent was made up. The addresses made up. The website intended for fake news. Admission from the site owner that they made it up.
I also find it hilarious that Mona wants to chime in on her supposed concerns of marginalizing “reporting [that] people don’t like.” That’s some fine hypocrisy. Mona literally whined to Glenn and threatened to “the powers that be” because she disliked Robert Mackey’s content.
Mona:
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/30/donald-trump-raises-crucial-issue-of-whether-reality-tv-scenes-count-as-sex-tapes/#comment-288851
The biggest loss to society during the 2016 election was the forfeiture of understood credibility. Somehow we’ve reached a spot where credible journalists are liars, politicians tell the truth, the rich are friends to the impoverished, Russia is a potential American ally, and anyone who questions these positions are accused of being brain-washed by the MSM. Credibility has been replaced by credulity.
Nate, I don’t think Mona is failing to understand anything. She’s being obtuse, purposely confusing the context of your argument with semantics. She would have a valid point if you had not defined your context for “Fake News” prior to stating your criticism.
She is treating language as if it’s a monolith, and context is not required for interpretation. But language isn’t a monolith. Words are placeholders for meaning. She makes an appeal to dictionary, and distracts rather than discredits.
She suggests that because the term “Fake News” is abstract and not concrete, that fact somehow discredits your argument–utterly fallacious. The fact that she refuses to even try and acknowledge what she is doing, although I’ve spelled it out for her, makes her obtuse.
I remember when I was in my early twenties and argued like a pedantic and arrogant child, closing my points with cute little phrases like “you’re welcome” to who I was arguing with. Then I grew up and realized that winning the last word doesn’t mean I’ve won the argument.
First, he provided no links. Second, he didn’t indicate he was quoting an entire “definition.” Third, those do not exhaust treatment of the term “Fake news.” As many, not just Techdirt, maintain, the faddish term is integral to censorship movement and is otherwise deployed by bad faith actors.
Again: “Propaganda” and “lies” remain perfectly useful words with long pedigrees.
You’re welcome.
Ah, here’s Snopes, which Nate didn’t see fit to share, save for a snippet of the first entry (Nate posted a lie of omission — see I don’t need “Fake news.”)
You are again welcome.
Heh. So, in the final analysis, Nate’s definition was apt and contextualized accurately. Thank you for verifying that.
Uh-huh. In the “final analysis,” Nate omitted the part of the Snopes entry that proved my point.
“Fake news” functionally means “a story I don’t like.” Just as Snopes and Techdirt both point out.
I can call Trump a genius, but that doesn’t make him one, nor does it change the meaning of “genius” to include him. The usage of “fake news” you are citing is as a speculative accusation – not a proper equivalency.
Yeah, what Mona is doing is called equivocation. Whether or not there is a definitive meaning for “Fake News” is irrelevant to the context or validity of an argument. She distracts, but she can’t discredit. Simply suggesting that other words might be as useful, or more useful, than a word or phrase being offered is nothing more than a etymological fallacy.
The Guardian has become ostensibly a click bate journal, with hoards of fake, and or abstracted articles selectively edited for their own propagandistic purposes. One can easily see their attempt at manipulation on a secondary platform by the control they force upon their readers by selectively choosing which articles they permit readers to comment on.
Glenn, you and your colleagues at The Intercept are without doubt, a conveyor of truth in journalism, and a minority in a landscape of self promoting hacks. Thank you.
Yep, they are very bold hypocrites. Now complaining about fake news while writing fake news. And earlier this year complaining about the online troll problem, when many of their writers/articles (such as Valenti) are master trolls. Exaggerating, strawmanning, including wrong or misleading statistics, insulting various groups of people. Then having the gall to tell us trolls are a terrible blight and something must be done.
I’ve read the original interview. I agree that Guardian’s off when it says that Assange “praises” Trump. However, it is also true that in the original interview, Assange has nothing good to say about Clinton, and offers some minor hope for Trump. I’m not sure why anyone should deny Assange such feelings, or deny that the email leaks worked for Trump, and against Clinton. Assange, clearly, does not like Clinton and he has excellent reason for feeling this way. From the Italian interview:
“Hillary Clinton and the network around her imprisoned one of our alleged sources for 35 years, Chelsea Manning, tortured her according to the United Nations, in order to implicate me personally.”
I think that alone is good reason for Assange to work against Clinton and company. He goes on:
“According to our publications Hillary Clinton was the chief proponent and the architect of the war against Libya. It is clear that she pursued this war as a staging effort for her Presidential bid. It wasn’t even a war for an ideological purpose. This war ended up producing the refugee crisis in Europe, changing the political colour of Europe, killing more than 40,000 people within a year in Libya, while the arms from Libya went to Mali and other places, boosting or causing civil wars, including the Syrian catastrophe. If someone and their network behave like that, then there are consequences. Internal and external opponents are generated.”
Clinton imprisons and tortures people. Clinton started a war which killed 40,000, started a refugee crisis, boosted countless civil wars “as a staging effort for her Presidential bid.” All true, btw. It’s no wonder that this would generate “internal and external opponents.” Assange does not describe himself as one of these opponents, but reading this interview and concluding that he is one is not a stretch.
Trump comes in only at the end, as a cypher: “Now there is a separate question on what Donald Trump means.” Where “Hillary Clinton’s election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling class of the United States,” Trump offers a new “patronage structure.” This structure is as yet undefined, hence relatively “weak.” Its looseness offers a glimmer of hope in “opportunities for change in the United States: change for the worse and change for the better.”
Standing by itself, there’s nothing controversial about this statement; as was pointed out, Sanders, Warren and others said similar things after the election. But this comes immediately after the paragraph describing what Clinton did, to Assange, to Manning, to Libya, to Syria, to tens of thousands of innocents. Assange is damning Clinton and offering some hope, however minor, for Trump. It’s a very strong anti-Clinton statement. Not so for Trump.
Where the Guardian article fails is in turning Assange into a villain, dismissing most everything he says.
After Iraq, Libya, Syria and the whole ME mess, including thousands of children dying because the sanctions,and the DNC behaviour towards Bernie Sanders, who has anything positive to say about Hillary?
Rock de La Fuente was sabotaged….
Where all of you, Hillary’s supporters, get your news from?
The woman is a warmonger…
The Intercept is one of the few publications that actually posts proper journalism as opposed to fake news. Funny how the Guardian is the pot calling the kettle black.
Great to see you’ve distanced yourself from the Guardian Glenn. It used to be the best of a bad bunch but it’s now as shitty as all the other UK corporate media outlets. MSM bullshine!
I guess “Fake News” is the latest new imperial think-speak term for Propaganda.
I stopped reading the Guardian during the Ukraine crisis when it became apparent that their reporting on the issue consistently twisted and cherry-picked facts, which later devolved into restricting comment, selectively or entirely to suppress facts contradicting the article, to the degree that it gave rise to ‘off-guardian.org’ which serves a fairly accurate account of what they have become.
The ubiquity and pervasiveness of anti-Russian and Putin-demonization in Western culture and our media, seeded in dishonesty and propagated in ignorance – is beyond comprehension.
I have little doubt that the “Fake News” is intended to to mentally shield “mainstream” coverage from scrutiny, and ultimately to effectively blacklist the nasty uncontrolled variable of free-opinion.
Excelent report, thank you – there is a small mistake: I think Assange did 11 interviews on RT not 8 as mentioned.
It is kind of amazing how the DNC’s & HRC’s perversion of the primary process was apparently not considered “interfering in the election”, while John Podesta giving up the password to his gmail account was “hacking the electoral system”.
that Podesta used a gmail account says all that needs to be said
Ironic that the guardian reported (jokily) at length yesterday about fake news, but failed to admit its own reporting of such fakery as the summer’s persecution of Angela Eagle- fake bricks,fake windows fake abuse. What is also disturbing is anyone’s guilt by association if they somehow, mention, quote ,read or speak to either Russia Today or the Morning Star (ironically these people are increasingly referred to as Stalinist-for attempting to obtain different views of news?)
I am looking forward to these same media outlets reporting Russia Today’s very open support for David Cameron as head of Nato- or is this also a plot?
Glenn,
That was a well written article. I helped spread it a little on Twitter as I think it one of your better ones this year.
When one of your posts is very good, I sometimes look to the comments section to see if the situation has changed any of late. Oh well, the same old stuff. I wonder if you ever tire of it all.
I have only one comment for you and that is you are correct that all “news outlets” and all opinion sites have a world view [ or a bias ]. Sometimes man can not see what he does not want to see — just can’t not fathom that there might be another interpretation. You do a good job of offering a different opinion from the political left. I hope you continue to do so.
I would only ask that you take a strong look at the “golden rule” or what we radical libertarians call “The Non-Aggression Principle”. It would be enlightening to find out how you could support either the “left” or the “right” given that both will rule via force and intimidation.
Anyway, happy new year to you and may the wind always be at your back. (and you and your mate should get a tuxedo cat to go with the dogs)
~ Mark
Another brilliant article by Senior Greenwald! Bravo! As apposed to Nate’s critique, Glenn has made a solidly supportable argument that what the Guardian published was in fact, fake news. The purpose behind the Guardian piece was deceitful. Nothing else needs to be noted.
What Nate does is called “ankle-biting.” It’s nearly always far too long , with turgid prose that reduce to bullshit. I seldom bother to engage him.
He did, however, deploy a supposed definition of “fake news,” and then claim Glenn doesn’t use the phrase properly. Which is hilarious, so I called that to his attention. There is no definition for “fake news” other than a “story I don’t like.”
Propaganda and media lies are as old as journalism, and that includes the United States. This wasn’t “fake news”; it was lying propaganda:
The term “propaganda” is perfectly fine. So is the word “lies.”
Please post updates to this story as they develop!!!
I am very grateful to avoid the BS circus that is Twitter, but I do miss some of the good moments, too.
Thank you for setting the record straight.
I’m not an admirer of Mr. Assange, overall – though I think he and WikiLeaks perform an essential function in a free society.
I very much doubt he is personally in cahoots with Mr. Putin, but I am still suspicious that Assange and WL were used by the Russians as a vehicle to influence the U.S. elections. I also am highly suspicious there may be undisclosed ties between Trump and Putin. And I fear the FBI has become a political actor.
All the above would be a serious threat to our freedom in the U.S. But the point is, so far it is only suspicion, not proven fact. Getting to the facts requires serious journalism, not agitprop, which it appears The Guardian may be guilty of.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much for writing this, Glenn. I’ve been a Guardian reader for 15 years and a BTL commenter for ten of those. These last two years has been terrible for this once-respected paper, tho’ the rot really started once those allegations against Assange first surfaced.
I used to read your regular pieces when you wrote for The Guardian yourself, and wondered why you stopped. I think I understand now.
All the best from Berlin,
Darren
I stopped buying The Guardian [after 40 odd years] and went over to the ‘i’. 2 reasons: 1. No longer liked their political ‘line’ [day after day of articles hostile to Jeremy Corbyn] and 2. need for shorter news vehicle [although still read articles online, so took out a sub].
As ‘captainbeefheart’ I found it harder and harder to get my posts BTL through the moderators ~ many ending up in the ‘memory-hole'; so cancelled my £5 per month sub and retired the captain, as the situation became Kafka-esque, or Orwellian ~ whichever you prefer.
The slant of The Guardian’s anti-Assange articles was easily cancelled out by finding original documents online; but that shouldn’t have proved necessary.
I hear ya, Jan. I was on pre-mod for over a year. Back in sunnier times when we had the whaddya thread to foster community I wrote above-the-line, and was proud of it. It was a very inclusive and welcoming place then. Taking away that daily thread took away the ability for regular commenters to voice general opinion on the state of the paper.
Interestingly the ability to sort via ‘recommended’ comments is still active, almost without exception the best-rated comments on identity-politics articles are witheringly critical of the Graun line. This led to that delusional ‘Web we want’ series and Guardian ‘picks’ only ever being favourable of the article. Since then it feels only a matter of time before they drastically change something. We’re already seeing many articles and opinion pieces with no comments allowed (as in that Assange piece Glenn is discussing here).
It’s sad and also tough to let go, as Glenn said above The Guardian is still capable of excellent journalism and, mostly via Jenkins & Monbiot, we still get quality considered opinion, so part of me is hoping they’ll be a change in editorship and thus the self-awareness might return.
Until then, we can be thankful for The Intercept and others for flying the flag in the right way.
Glenn, you are doing your readers a disservice by associating bad reporting or questionable analysis and interpretation with “fake news.”
“Fake news” is intentionally fabricating information and promoting fictional content as news. There is a blatant effort to deceive. For example, when NPR did its piece on fake news it talked about an article by the “Denver Guardian” (LOL) with the headline “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide.” This is the epitome of fake news. Comes from a fake news site, fabricated facts and links, intentionally created to trick hapless Trump supporters.
This particular Guardian article isn’t fake news, but at worst lackluster reporting and questionable spin of the Italian newspaper’s interview.
I agree that calling it “praise” is unsupported by the interview transcript. Had this author said Assange was “guardedly hopeful” or “provided guarded optimism” I think he would have been in safe territory. Exaggerating, sensationalizing, and spinning the news is irritating and intended to promote clicks, but does not deserve the label of fake news.
For example, Sam Biddle said this a couple weeks back:
I find this analogous to the Guardian’s article. It was Sam Biddle’s interpretation of the WL-Russia interplay and I thought it was off-target and exaggerated. IMO Assange has no personal affection for Putin but is merely sympathetic to the Russian Government because Russia does not present a threat to Assange’s personal livelihood like the U.S. does. Does Sam Biddle’s arguable mistake make him a purveyor of fake news!? Do you need to fight him on Twitter too!? I’m glad you point this stuff out, but I find your approach quite toxic. You attack the guy’s character, bringing up his past history to further paint him as a villain and basically tell your readers to ignore his content. It seems so personal; and since it largely plays out on Twitter, your acolytes and readers can attack and shame him.
In another example, TI’s Matt Cole said a couple weeks back that “Trump’s Pick for Interior Secretary Was Caught in ‘Pattern of Fraud’ at SEAL Team 6.” A couple readers looked into this and found that this was supported by hearsay from anonymous sources, and another reader identified public records that cast serious doubt on the supposed “pattern” of fraud claims. Turns out the pattern consisted of two instances over the guy’s career. Is Matt Cole also a peddler of fake news?
So would a “short and close relationship with the Putin regime” have sufficed? Assange hosted a show on a Russian-funded news network! Glenn, wouldn’t you agree that the coverage at RT is at times overly deferential to the Russian government!?
But you mainly take issue with the following from Ben Jacobs:
Glenn, this comment is imperfect but fair game. Ideally, the author should have said Assange “ suggested there was no need for Wikileaks to undertake a more ‘concerted or coordinated’ role in Russia.” But first back up. Assange didn’t answer the interviewer’s question. She asked “what can be done to democratise information in [China or Russia]? This question could be construed as broadly asking, or directly asking WL what it can do to open the informational floodgates in Russia and China. But Assange sidesteps the question, giving no indication that he intends to expand WL’s outreach beyond the West, such as by recruiting non-English speakers. Instead, he describes his view of existing conditions on the ground in Russia. That Russia has “vibrant publications, online blogs, and Kremlin critics.” Oh really? More vibrant than publications in the West? This is a punt if I’ve ever seen one, and he is indeed implying that other entities in Russia already have it covered. For you to call this fake news is absurd.
Your critiques always gloss over or ignores Assange’s other sympathies for Russia. During the Panama Paper revelations that implicated Putin loyalists. Assange went on the defensive, suggesting the revelations about Russian-based shell companies was a U.S. led “Putin attack.” Ironically, Assange said that for the U.S. government to collaborate with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists undermined the integrity of the report, apparently forgetting his paid stint at RT. Assange simply makes excuses for his more recent lack of coverage in Russia. Assange told the NYT that he neither targets nor spares any particular nation, but then downplayed the importance of focusing on Russia, saying they’re a “bit player on the world stage” and that “every man and his dog is criticizing Russia…it’s a bit boring isn’t it.” Now it’s supposedly his lack of Russian speaking individuals. That’s called an excuse. Am I to believe that Assange cannot recruit or directly collaborate with Russian speaking sources!? Ben Jacobs may have slightly erred with this statement, but the overarching point is true: Assange doesn’t have any intention at the moment to expand WL’s reach into Russia.
“Does Sam Biddle’s arguable mistake make him a purveyor of fake news!?”
Yes.
You have no definition of “fake news”; you simply made one up.
Could you contradict yourself more? Fake News is an abstract description, aptly described above that directly challenges the context Glenn’s definition. You act like abstract words or phrases have the power to simply define themselves–that’s ludicrous.
Reply. (I musta been absent the day they told us abstract nouns don’t have definitions!)
I think you’re being obtuse. I saw your reply above, but you’re merely arguing semantics. Nate provided a solid working context for “Fake News,” and presented a valid critique. He also provided solid examples and did not rely on purely anecdotal evidence.
‘“Fake news” is intentionally fabricating information and promoting fictional content as news. There is a blatant effort to deceive.”
Your opposing definition of “story I don’t like,” is vague and fallacious; absent any real context. (I’m not even sure if you were being sarcastic). Under your definition, facts are happenstance and context is relative–leaving the door wide open for any level of absurdity possible in interpretation. Which, I think, was Nate’s point to begin with.
Glenn is being absurd with his indictment of Jacobs. If Glenn is using your definition of “Fake News,” it’s easy to see why.
Well, I’m sure glad that someone of your views would say they think I’m being “obtuse.”
You do not rely believe that.
There may not be a Merriam-Websters definition of the term (hence my putting it in quotations), but my description of what encapsulates “fake news” is widely shared. It is also narrow so as not to encapsulate disagreeable or partisan articles that stretch or twist the facts. My definition is well supported by credible entities
Politifact: “Fake news is made-up stuff, masterfully manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are easily spread online to large audiences willing to believe the fictions and spread the word.”
NYT: “Narrowly defined, ‘fake news’ means a made-up story with an intention to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks.”
Factcheck.org: “We called it ‘a malicious fabrication’ — that’s “fake news” in today’s parlance.”
Snopes: “fabricated stories set loose via social media with clickbait headlines and tantalizing images, intended for no purpose other than to fool readers and generate advertising revenues for their publishers.”
Wikipedia synopsis: “Fake news websites (also referred to as hoax news deliberately publish hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation, using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, fake news websites seek to mislead, rather than entertain, readers for financial or other gain.
The Guardian: “fake news is completely made up and designed to deceive readers to maximise traffic and profit.”
It appears I’m in good company.
If you need a good example of a gullible chump falling for fake news on this very website, get a load of this sucker: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/07/excerpts-of-hillary-clintons-paid-speeches-to-goldman-sachs-finally-leaked/?comments=1#comment-293493
Reply.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks
Well done, Nate. I had originally written a critique like this, but it’s stuck in a moderator limbo.
The Guardian article was an intentional (and very successful) attempt to propagate lies: That Assange praised Trump, and that he claimed that Russia is too free and open to need Wikileaks.
This is NOT sloppy reporting. This is a deliberate propagation of a knowingly false narrative.
If this isn’t “Fake News”, the term has no meaning.
Fake news is not a new phenomenon, neither is claiming to be an opponent of it while engaging in the practice oneself. Neither is denouncing the hypocrisy of doing that, or warning that that practice diminishes the gravity of the term.
That is why there have been so many terms over the years in the english language for it over the centuries (what, you think that back when ‘mass media’ consisted of priests railing to their congregations, or a hired man bellowing at the top of his lungs as he went from public gathering place to public gathering place, mixing stuff designed to inflame passions in a certain direction with accurate news and real concerns wasn’t common?) and a basically unending chorus of voices raised against the practice.
And those voices have ALWAYS proved ineffectual, because of one simple thing, humans are first and foremost emotional, social creatures, with intellect and reasoning coming a far distant second.
Their has still not been any verifiable visual proof of life. Even anonymous says WikiLeaks is compromised and not to submit leaks.
All he has to do is pull back the blinds and wave. Tons of interviews but he can’t even peep out the window? Don’t be sheep people.
The problem that exists now is that journalism as it was conceived to be is mostly dead. Communities are been lied to and propagandized to serve an agenda they don’t figure in.
Now, you have schools of journalism churning out unprincipled, unethical scum who are in it only for personal gain while pleasing their masters and employers. The public good on “public airwaves? Who cares!
The cult of personality worship and other disgusting displays of self-importance pervading our society, thanks to our misguided and dumbed down populace, has catapulted these self-serving bigots into an undeserved position of power over what we get to hear and see.
The media, the supposed gate keepers of truth, have been in general anything but that. So, based on that observation alone, one has to be healthily sceptical about what is dished out just like inspecting your food before you ingest it.
I have to say, though, that the profession still has its torch bearers who are concerned about the disease that has eaten away at its core principles for decades now and especially after the monopolizing of the MSM outlets by a few corporations.
I do appreciate and applaud outlets like TI who try to bring some journalistic sanity to the demented times we live in.
Amen! I completely agree!
The propaganda that I see oozing out of academia, or the heavy propaganda in the likes of WaPo and NYT or Guardian here, only rivals the brutal disinformation that was endlessly pumped out through every possible channel in my childhood behind the Iron Curtain.
Unfortunately Americans are not able and/or equipped to withstand its assault. Where we were suspicious by default, and savvy to the ‘party line’ brainwashing, and critical, and always read between the lines, Americans swallow misinformation with trust and naivete.
That makes for a very dangerous society.
Anyone familiar with the Guardian’s coverage of Scottish politics, and the SNP in particular, wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. And this is the better end of the British media.
Fake News is itself fake news. There’s nothing new about it aside from there being new media for its propagation. That aside it’s just good old propaganda and, as Orwell noted long ago, the British media are practiced in the art of portraying the world as the British establishment see fit.
First, Assange absolutely does not help himself by being so nuanced and leaving himself therefore so open to distortion and intellectually dishonest misinterpretation; secondly, the Guardian absolutely does it on purpose and programmatically, they are clearly in cahoots with Anglo-American intelligence agencies and Nato-ist politicians.
Defending people one disagrees with is unique by 2016 standards of US journalism, props to ggreenwald
The big red arrow (w/ drop shadow) has never been used to such poignant effect.
The Guardian article might also be intended to help forestall any attempt by Trump to arrange for Assange’s release. If Assange is an agent for the foreign power that “hacked our election,” it might not go over that well. McCain and Co. already agree with the democrats on this, too.
Also, typo: “puported”
How could Trump “arrange for Assange’s release?”
He’s not being “held”, by anyone, let alone the US.
It’s time to drop the nonsense about the US having any interest in Assange. He’s not been charged with anything, nor will he ever be.
Trump could ask the Swedish to drop the extradition request and unsupported charges. Then Assange wouldn’t be surrounded by police 24/7 and not allowed to move anywhere but jail. You know, cease being “held” (by the Brits, whom the U.S. leads around on a leash).
There was a grand jury investigation of Assange in the U.S., and all I found out about it upon checking quickly was that officials said in 2013 that there was no indictment, yet, at that time. I don’t know what the latest verified truth on the matter is. But to pretend that the U.S. has no interest in gagging Assange and that his current containment has nothing to do with U.S. influence on the matter, to me, is the “nonsense.” Certainly, the implication that a U.S. President’s active intervention on Assange’s bahalf would make no difference is, uh, controvertible. Finally, even if you’re right and I’m spewing “nonsense,” I’ll decide when “it’s time to drop” it, thank you.
You progresive leftists just keep depositing money into the Guardian’s cup. Just like you keep buying Digital Subscriptions to a NYT that held Hillary’s hand to the finish line at the expense of your fringe hopeful.
The mind controlled progressive left, insidiously conditioned serfs.
Thank you. This is really helpful. I am glad I read it because I had recently read the Guardian article. However, I admit I’m far more interested in dismantling the Rupert Murdoch variety of Fake News which if it could be quantified, has been far more destructive to our politics and to the truth. But I see your point.
Hatred of Assange in the UK is typical of its racism against Australians. Australian talent and success is deeply and profoundly resented and rejected. The Guardian regularly publishes nasty and sneeringly humorous articles about Australians and Australia. For evidence of the UK’s attitude to Australia, look at its immigration policy over time. There is no right of return for the descendants of the ethnic British who were dumped as waste in the Pacific. No redress for the white fella. It’s about time the UK recognises its responsibility to ethnically British, especially British South Africans. Allow repatriation now!
This is a necessary and important article and I shall save this for my Gr 10 civics classes as an excellent example of why we must treat all information with suspicion until we can verify it for ourselves. The ability to think critically is as fundamentally important to democracy as the 4th Estate’s duty to reliably report the news as accurately as possible.
I may also us this in my Gr 11 Law class as an example of a potentially libelous action. Yet, even if Jacob’s were a sin of omission – his emotions and bias clouding his perspective, such an egregious error is as serious a journalistic crime as plagiarism.
However Glenn, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a Christmas Card from Jacobs next year!
It must be difficult for an enlightened person to run a government class these days.
“There is the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branch and the 4th Estate***, all meant to provide checks and balances*** against a privileged aristocracy.*** However,…(see disclaimers below)”
Excellent work as usual.This stuff keeps me rolling out of bed and ready to fight daily.
I read the article and he did give guarded praise tho.
Seems like you have enough characters left in your entry (I’m pretty sure the Intercept’s is comparably limitless) to have quoted it if you were really sure of that and not just trying to provoke
Good call, Andrew. I think the writer here is fundamentally misunderstanding the context of “guarded.” Any assumption that Assange is not offering a “guarded support” for Trump should at least attempt to explain the sheer lack of Assange’s journalistic effort to criticize Trump. Calling him a part of the “rich elite” isn’t a real criticism, it’s a demonstrable fact.
Considering the context of Assange’s language in his interview, he suggests that a Clinton presidency would have been a “consolidation of power” for some abstract force that is responsible for all the ills on Capitol Hill–one that Assange’s merely refers to a “ruling class.”
Assange’s then takes neutral language in describing Trump as a “DC outsider,” who is merely just a rich guy running for President. As if being a billionaire isn’t enough to qualify Trump as part of the “ruling elite” in DC, what’s truly ludicrous is suggesting Trump is some kind of real outsider. This kind of statement is false by Trump’s appointment of D.C. Lobbyists and by his OWN words, that he has been involved in politics all of his life. One of Trump’s central claims was he wasn’t “inexperienced” because he’s been associating with politics from his position as a rich elite. That’s the opposite of “outsider.”
It’s fairly clear to any thinking person that Assange is unwilling to directly criticize Trump, and veils his responses in soft compliments like “hiring a spectrum of rich people with idiosyncratic personalities.” Rich elites in America, especially of the kind Trump is bringing on, don’t have idiosyncratic personalities. That’s the nature of a damned political party–that idiosyncrasy should be impossible. Calling rich elites who share Trump’s ideology at nearly every turn “idiosyncratic” is as “guarded” a compliment a person could make.
where?
There’s nothing even remotely surprisingly about these practices if you’ve been paying attention for the past 15 years. Hell, if you study history you will understand journalism has always been pseudo-propaganda since its inception. The institution itself is a business, so their primary goal is profit. The best way to achieve profit is pandering to the lowest common denominator. How can you have a noble institution when it’s built on a corrupt foundation?
It’s sad that using basic critical thinking skills is considered an amazingly noble journalistic trait. We young people who pay attention have known for years that politics and journalism is a steaming pile of B.S. that doesn’t work for us. Sure, politicians and parents do the usual victim-blaming tactic of “Well if you voted then we’d listen” but we all know that isn’t true. I know a lot of the readers here were of the Watergate and Church Committee folks, so you think there’s a glimmer of hope cuz you’re still riding the high of a victory some 40 years ago. It’s time to snap out of it.
Parents and politicians are beginning to feel the weight of their lies because the young are defying expectations. They’re becoming radicals in a vain attempt to give their life some meaning since school and parents conditon us to believe our lives have some great purpose in society. They’re throwing their entire lives into pet projects and inventions that get bought out and archived to make sure there’s no competition in business leaving them back where they started. They’re being told to get involved in a political system that panders to the 60+ crowd while their interests are consistently side-lined. They’re losing hope, so they’re committing suicide or do the all too familiar “suicide by cop in a public place”. Or, they’re resigned to the fact their future as a wage-slave for a bank is that bright future promised by parents and politicians. We young people care about stuff like marijuana cuz at least we can numb the pain of this crap our parents left us.
We’ve known since we were teenagers and our parents lie to us in some vain attempt to protect us. Now parents are dealing with the consequences of years of lying to us.
That being said, people survive these things. Institutions are just ideas, and ideas can change given enough time and pressure. Maybe once the system collapses on itself some bright young people will make new communities.
Until then, fellow young people, DON’T HAVE CHILDREN. It’s an economic trap that guarantees you and your family a life in poverty, and the politicians and parents will blame you for it because they don’t want to be held responsible for their bad parenting. That and parents who can’t get out of debt are great for businesses who want a slave population to work for them.
I don’t see much happening until the institutions collapse though. I’ve got my popcorn and I’m ready to laugh at the dark comedy ahead of us!
I didn’t really read your whole comment but sorta browsed the “don’t have children” and “slave population” standouts, just FYI…
What exactly do you hope to accomplish?
I have no agenda other than a recognition in shared humanity and offering compassion. I’ve just been watching what’s happening to my generation. Most politicians and parents like to call us milennials. I’m offering my perspective on our situation as someone of the younger generation to the older types, and I’m offering advice to other young people. See, I have lots of friends who went to college because their parents and school duped them into believing college = job = meaning = happy. Some of those friends got jobs, most them didn’t because of the financial crisis, so they moved home and stagnated. Some are still searching for a job, some just gave up and live off their parent’s retirement. Those who got jobs soon got married and started having kids. Now their kids are around kindergarten age and the parents are feeling the insurmountable costs. Multiple credit cards maxing out, college savings funds that still will never afford college, predatory mortgages, stagnating wages, lay offs, increasing costs, and little to no help for them from any of the institutions that claim to help.
The most compassionate thing we can do is resist the urge to have children because not only will it ruin your life prospects, but you’re bringing an innocent life into the world that is guaranteed to suffer in poverty.
Most people are like you though. Short attention spans who think everyone is pushing an agenda. It’s why everyone devolves into trolling instead of discussion. People’s egos are out of control and hubris has always been the downfall of man. I don’t expect most to listen, but if I give hope to a few thoughtful people out there, if I can do good for the collective of humanity, then I will.
lol. You almost had me with the first part. And then the agenda of the second part…and then the labelling of the third.
Your comments are more a reflection of your paranoia than anything.
OMG HOW DID YOU KNOW I JUST GOT BACK ON
“Your comments are more a reflection of your paranoia than anything.”
That’s some Mona right there. You are running at least 4 today.
S guessed right the first time (you are that obvious)
I’m curious, what, exactly, your aim was when posting a reply to a comment you didn’t read…
Are you the same guy
…as you? I don’t believe so but can’t be sure.
And you piled-on a tl:dr comment. What’s your “aim”?
Solely for you to accuse me of being yet more other peoples.
PS – Sorry my one or two sentence posts are “tl:dr [sic]” for you to grasp. I’ll comment with brevity in mind from now on for your sake.
You accuse yourself.
S posted a tl:dr comment and you responded, to what “aim”.
I merely noted that.
MS wandered off, S quipped, and you responded.
I’ll just add it to the list.
No one thinks you are anyone else any longer. Glenn specifically commented to tell nuf it isn’t true and that he shouldn’t say that kind of shit.
Where is the link to what Glenn said?
S pointed to the obvious and you launched into your usual mode;
to pick a fight.
Reply.
“No one thinks you are anyone else any longer. ”
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
I submitted a comment earlier, but it seems to be stuck in moderator limbo right now. Until it pops up I’ll say this:
If you’re not willing to listen, or read in this case, how do you expect to have a discussion? I’m tempted to disregard any and all comments you make now since you don’t care to even read mine, but then ask for me to continue? Absolutely confusing behavior.
Perhaps my original response won’t appear. Oh well, in short: young people should stop listening to their elders because the elders just lie to stay in power and mooch off the youth. It’s just a hope though. Most kids are conditioned to be dumb consumers and their parents are just kids raising kids, so may as well enjoy it for the entertainment.
Insightful comment. I’m not sure your chronological age but fwiw your comments echo my thoughts when I was finishing college in the early 1990’s and entering my chosen career path, contemplating marriage and children, etc. It was clear then that buying into the American Dream was the acquiescing the the big lie. And I did. And you know what? You’re right. I was right. And if I learned anything in the intervening 25 years, it’s that it’s harder to divest oneself of the B.S. in your late 40s than it is to avoid ever going down that path.
So drop out. The old order will die. Consume itself. We can hope, perhaps beyond reason, in doing so it does not take everyone with it. But it’s doomed, and for those of us who did like mom and dad taught us and grabbed a deck chair before they were all gone–our little slice of this stinking rotten pie–we’ll have a front row seat when the ship sinks.
The rest of you, swim like hell now while you still can.
“Insightful comment. @MS”
Is that you? The only insight MS offered was thru the make-up mirror.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’m 30, but people have said I have an “old soul”, which I guess means I’m mature for my age.
I talked with lots of elders and told them things like, “Oh yeah I’m not getting a credit card. What’s the point of spending money you don’t have?” And they said I would go far. My peers, on the other hand, spouted things like “You’re a fool! You gotta start building credit if you want a house!” The warnings became more and more clear as I got into college.
I won’t fill a wall of text again. All I can say is that wisdom will take you far, but you will walk a lonely road. I’d rather be alone and content than surrounded by sycophants and worrying what they think.
You’re wise indeed. It is very clear if we open our eyes.
Certainly in a world with very limited resources, and correspondingly limited opportunities to use them, the act of reproduction is something that needs serious explanation.
Even beyond this, we have the issue that our environment is rapidly changing. For some species, a rapidly changing environment is dealt with by hybridization, and certainly we should get some benefit from all the intercontinental relationships that people have struck up. But… still, there’s a basic fact that most of the genetic diversity is in Africa. It is hard for the rest of our populations to adapt to changing circumstances – any trouble the Indians have had, e.g. with plagues and the introduction of things like alcohol, Europeans won’t be that far behind.
Time and time again, human races have evolved in Africa and gone out to dominate the rest of the world, and that time draws near again. There are “pygmy” races like the Twa who can pack what – so far as anyone seems to be willing to say, at least – pack a fully human intellect into a much smaller physical space. They are therefore preadapted for space travel and colonization, as well as for survival on a crowded Earth. It is, I think, an eminent destiny that racial groups like this (yes, with other genetic input from around the world! Yet they already show some tendency to reproductive isolation, though mostly culturally based) will come to form a new species I dub Homo apotelesmatis, which will come to incompletely supplant our current species as we once supplanted the Neanderthals. So I think no one need feel too bad about not making an all out effort to pass on genes; our species may be so young it can’t even give birth properly yet it is long in the tooth already. In the meanwhile, we should look toward Namibia and its neighbors with a protective eye, remembering the seasonal killing fires and muddy floods of the Okavango that shaped our ancestors, resolve to protect the cradle of the next humanity.
Absolutely no surprise here
Hmm, and understood indeed. I read that Jacobs article and it didn’t sit well with me at the time. Now, Mr Greewald I see why.
I can say I haven’t taken too much notice of authorship for articles in media I use. Though some reporters have stood out to me. This has been due to a relatively recent (and I compare to people who have read forever in comparison) use of news for gaining information by myself. Prior to 2011 I had not read news really, and in 2013’ish I began to subscribe here and there.
Never-the-less this habit of mine of regarding the news’ media as credible source and all its reporters ‘ authorship has just ended. I shall endeavour to now look-see to the author and decide more disrimitavely of what to do in light of that authors character.
You know, I have noticed that the Guardian and NYTimes have had a bit to say over Assange since especially an NYTimes article a couple of months back. Which, and I was put off by it, but which lambasted Assange virtually as a Russian stooge and so forth. Again I took little notice if the writers name, but it didn’t sit well with me.
So, my lesson is now learned. But, false news? To end my comment I’ll ask a question please : if the Guardian for one is submitting to its readership this sort of thing. And say, respected media outfits are even in cahoots as if cartels acting to nudge its readership into opinionated stances. Who then, are we able to gain from for truth. As here in the UK we have since the BREXIT period begun to realise the “Post – Truth” environment we seem to exist within now.
So, who do you go to for truth? As our, the US and for gods sake, many democratic governments are meant to be held accountable by news media. Who…?
I noticed this when I was reading their article and was like, “well, if you leave the nuance out of everything and listen only to your opinion echoing off of the subject you’re talking about but not listening to.” I mean, I honestly can’t imagine coming to such conclusions on accident but, giving the benefit of the doubt, some people are in really deep holes. But that’s a generous leeway…
And on a second note, if they’re going to constantly ask for donations because real journalism is so important…y’know…
I read the Guardian regularly and saw that headline and thought to myself ‘What is going on with Assange???” Thanks for writing to set the record straight, as the prior Italian interview was news to me. Although even that headline didn’t make me dislike Wikileaks – as Assange’s politics are irrelevant if the material is true. Which it is, even IF he thought Putin was his best buddy. Which he doesn’t.
Assange is the leftist version of Cardinal Mindzenty in Hungary, kept in an embassy for many years by the Hungarian CP. This time the jailers are the Atlanticist ruling class. Both he and Snowden are, in a way, political prisoners.
Greenwald’s only half-right here. The Guardian article by Ben Jacobs that he criticizes is sloppy journalism and below any acceptable standards of accuracy, but it contains grains of truth. Greenwald thinks that Ben Jacobs’ article is fraud — in other words, intentional distortion. To me it seems that Jacobs’ inaccuracies were not intentional; they look more like emotionally driven misreading by someone who’s too busy trying to gratify his own views to remember to be fair. Here’s the grains of truth I see in Jacobs’ article:
— Assange did say that Trump is “not a DC insider” — and of course Assange is known to be an opponent of the DC elite. So I suppose it makes sense to call that a positive statement (if you look at that one statement by itself, out of context) that Assange made about Trump. But Jacobs is wrong to say that Assange “offered guarded praise of Donald Trump”, for several reasons. First, journalists shouldn’t automatically describe a mildly positive statement as praise or guarded praise, because the word “praise” means something more than that. If I hate labor union leaders and I say to you “You’re not a labor union leader”, I haven’t praised you even in a guarded way, I’ve just said something mildly positive. Besides, that one mildly positive statement that Assange made was mixed in with other negative statements about Trump; when Assange calls Trump “part of the wealthy ruling elite of the United States”, Assange is making a clear negative statement. So Assange’s tone about Trump isn’t positive overall. Assange does imply that Clinton would have had worse effects than Trump as far as the immediate future is concerned, but that doesn’t amount to praise for Trump either. Jacobs seems to have succumbed to the shoddy horse-race tradition of journalism which portrays statements like “Candidate A is worse than Candidate B” as praise or qualified praise for Candidate B — even in cases like this one where the person making the statement didn’t intend to praise either candidate. When the person you’re reporting on is doing their best to convey a lack of approval for both candidates and says things like “Candidate A is even worse than Candidate B”, the reporters who habitually distort that into a kind of praise for Candidate B are pushing their readers into thinking it’s all about picking between these two options, and suppressing the point that both of these media-hyped options are bad. Reporters like Jacobs are deceiving their readers by downplaying or ignoring the reasons offered for thinking that we should look beyond the two media-hyped candidates and parties. In doing that, these reporters make it hard for their readers to look for better alternatives, and they ensnare the public more in the destructive passions of Democrat vs. Republican, a realm of negative and misleading emotion which media people find themselves comfortable in even when it’s obvious that both options are flawed.
–There’s another grain of truth in Jacobs’ article when he comments on what Assange says about Russian media, although as usual Jacobs distorts things by leaving out the details that undermine Jacobs’ preferred point. According to Jacobs, Assange “said there was no need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there.” If Jacobs had been reasonably accurate, he would had to write instead that Assange said there was RELATIVELY LITTLE need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in CERTAIN PARTS OF RUSSIA SUCH AS EDUCATED SECTORS OF MOSCOW because of the competitive debate that (according to Assange) exists TO THE LIMITED EXTENT THAT THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT TOLERATES open discussion IN MEDIA THAT LACKS A MASS POPULAR INFLUENCE. Jacobs’ biggest distortion was in suppressing Assange’s words about how the Russian government doesn’t tolerate critical media “that might have a mass popular effect”. If Jacobs had mentioned that, it would have nearly completely undermined Jacobs’ criticism of Assange here. Also, since Assange did in fact explain in the interview that WikiLeaaks had published nearly a million documents about Russia and Putin, Jacobs had every obligation to recognize that Assange didn’t think there was “no need” for WikiLeaks’ whistleblowing role in Russia. Jacobs falsely reported that Assange saw “no need” for WikiLeaks to take this role in Russia, but an accurate reading of the interview demonstrates that Assange does think that there is a need for WikiLeaks there, and that WikiLeaks hasn’t put more effort into Russia primarily because “no WikiLeaks staff speak Russian”.
So yes, Jacobs’ article is a terrible distortion, but I don’t think it’s a deliberate fraud. He seems to have believed what he was writing. Jacobs is the kind of fool who enjoys interpreting what he reads in a way that suits his pre-existing views and then presenting a highlighted version of this misreading to whatever audience he can find. It is natural that such people will at times succeed in getting themselves accepted as journalists, and will spend their greatest energies in anti-journalism, in attacking those who have suffered for bringing a greater sense of fairness to informing the public. Jacobs appears morally jealous of Assange, as he quietly acknowledges in his article that WikiLeaks’ whistleblowing role is the kind of thing that could do good in countries like Russia. As for the good that WikiLeaks’ whistleblowing does in the West, Jacobs can’t acknowledge that at all (though again, it’s implied when he tries to criticize WikiLeaks for ignoring Russia). Faced with the fact that WikiLeaks has done good in the West through whistleblowing, on a scale that Jacobs’s own “journalism” can hardly rival, all Jacobs can do is to go back to miscasting Assange as a supporting player in the electoral-politics hatefest that’s screening in his own mind. I think a lot of us do that — we use our loyalties to corrupt parties, corrupt politicians and national governments to give ourselves a narrative that excuses our own failure to act with integrity for the common good. In that way, Jacobs is a good example of what not to do.
A correction: Jacobs’s article did actually mention Assange’s phrase about how the freer newspapers in Russia are tolerated “generally” by the government because they aren’t “a big TV channel that might have a mass popular effect”. So I’ll withdraw the sentence I wrote that criticized Jacobs for not mentioning that. Still, the rest of my criticism stands. And even though Jacobs did include a lengthy Assange quote containing that phrase, he also portrayed Assange in a way that isn’t compatible with what that phrase actually said.
You wrote a lot of words related the truth of that assertion, (one that you do not justify), and its relevance to the significance of GG’s article. I do not care whether it is true or not because it has no significance.
Not intentional, really ?
You said « Greenwald thinks that Ben Jacobs’ article is fraud — in other words, intentional distortion. To me it seems that Jacobs’ inaccuracies were not intentional…So yes, Jacobs’ article is a terrible distortion, but I don’t think it’s a deliberate fraud.. .Jacobs falsely reported… Jacobs’ biggest distortion… » and add « It is natural that such people will at times succeed in getting themselves accepted as journalists, and will spend their greatest energies in anti-journalism, in attacking those who have suffered for bringing a greater sense of fairness to informing the public. Jacobs appears morally jealous of Assange »
So this is about one jalous journalist againt a famous whistleblower and nothing to do with the impact of these kind of fake news all around the web not to mention the libel about Trump praisal Of course, there is no recent Russian conspiracy on American President elections fed and spread by major international newpapers like WaPo, The Guardian…and we should focus on your « grains of truth » ?
PS : i answered to Paul and Lord HH today but i am not the person who commented on 29/12/16 at 10:02
@Maria: Sure, I wasn’t suggesting people should focus primarily on the small grains of truth in Jacobs’ article. Those are considerably less important than Jacobs’ distortions, and that’s why I basically appreciate Greenwald pointing out where Jacobs is wrong.
But Jacobs’ article also started to point out some truths which, if you can cut through how Jacobs overstated them, are worth paying some attention to. Since Assange has an important media platform, it sometimes matters to watch Assange’s work for signs of slant and disparate treatment. It does matter that Assange seems to, for the moment, prefer Trump and his ilk to Clinton and her ilk. It is worth watching to see if Assange feels little need to expose faults of Putin’s government, particularly since there is, as far as I know, no site like WikiLeaks that actually does focus on Russia. I would have appreciated if Jacobs had pointed these things out in a fairer way, and I will remember the grains of truth in Jacobs’ article, even though I think WikILeaks is considerably more evenhanded and valuable than Jacobs gave it credit for.
It matters to me whether someone is intentionally distorting or whether someone is led into distortion unconsciously by their selfish emotions. People who accuse others of deliberate distortion, without adequate evidence to support the accusation, tend to come off as unconvincing and unreasonable, and only reinforce the prejudices of the side they’re trying to criticize. I don’t want to fall into that trap, and I don’t want my hostile emotions to make me unfair in that way. Also, when I manage to achieve enough empathy to understand how someone else might unconsciously distort things, it helps me think better because it helps make me aware of my own unconscious distortions. So that’s why I care about the difference.
When the “fake news” meme, hit the presses from the MSM; the first rebuttal I recall was Iraq’s WMD. It was amazing how many liberals turned logic on its head, and supported the idea that Iraq really did have WMD.
Further, when the CIA claimed Russia hacked the election; those same liberals considered it an absolute truth considering the accusation came from the CIA. Again, Iraq’s WMD came up, and suddenly those same liberals decided to re-write history claiming that George(slam dunk) Tenet never made the claim that the case for Iraq having WMD was a “slam dunk”.
If it fits your narrative, I guess you will believe anything.
Thank you Glen Greenwald for so eloquently and honestly speaking out against propaganda and the de-legitimization of investigative reporting done by Stefania Maurizi of the Italian daily la Repubblica. Unfortunately this is becoming a trend that not even the Intercept is immune to.
Since the election, I have watched in horror as Betsy Reed the Editor in Chief of the Intercept has granted Matthias Schwartz, and the weaker contributing writers to the Intercept the same latitude to write opinion pieces as if readers turn to the Intercept for opinions and not news. If I wanted opinion pieces I wouldn’t be turning to a “News” publication. In my opinion this irresponsible and lazy editing that personifies “fake news” and contributes to the proliferation of disinformation.
The Washington Post, the New York Times, LA Times, and just about every other conglomerate owned publications are incessantly stirring the pot with nonsensical opinion pieces intended only to obfuscate, because it is those very meaningless opinion pieces that can be adorned with clickbaiting headlines. What’s worse is that articles read as if they contain reporting. Many times in fact these articles are opinion pieces that are often baseless, factless and patentlty false as in the case of the Guardian’s Ben Jacob’s article of Dec 24.
The inherent problem is the hypocrisy of Betsy Reed, and the failure of the Intercept to set and maintain the standards that it’s contributors and readers deserve, policies that the public desperately needs NOW. If The Intercept is to be a respected news leader then those qualities should be reflected in the standards you hold yourselves to, Ms Reed. Lest you join the rest of the “manipulators” and completely depart the integrity standards set by Edward R. Morrow’s legacy.
A good bit of opinion is going to comprise any news media. It’s virtually unavoidable: preventing one’s own biases, as an author, from permeating the (theoretical) objective divide. The real problem I’ve observed with TI is the boundlessly atrocious quality of opinion – i.e. unsupported – and baseless speculation heaped upon readers by a select handful of journalists here.
You’re very confused about the Intercept:
First, central to the creation of TI from the start was journalistic independence: which means nobody needs Betsy’s permission or anyone else’s to express their views, provided those views meet basic standard of factual accuracy.
Second, I reject – and the Intercept was created to avoid – this artificial distinction between “news” and “opinion.” For reasons I’ve explained many times – most notably in my debate with Bill Keller at the NYT – this distinction is really a nonsensical and deceitful conceit used by journalists to pretend that they view the world objectively.
Third, do you also avoid reading the NYT and WashPost because they publish opinion pieces? Do you also avoid all blogs and independent media outlets which do the same?
Fourth, I would not want to be at a media outlet – let alone be the co-founder of one – where an editorial orthodoxy is imposed on everyone or where journalists are told they can’t express their views freely. There are lots of articles in the Intercept that contain claims I disagree with or even find highly objectionable, and that’s how it should be.
Finally, it’s bizarre to say that you like this article but dislike any article that contains opinions. Like most of the articles I write, this one contains very strong opinions along with facts.
@ Glenn
I don’t think anyone here wants you or anybody else at The Intercept to enforce any sort of “editorial orthodoxy”, at least not as a “substantive matter”.
But many of us, particularly some of your very long-time readers, have, at least in our humble opinions, legitimate concerns about the “quality” of certain “opinion” pieces as a function of the underlying factual accuracy of premises and validity of arguments relied upon in crafting and publishing some of those opinion pieces being generated here lately. But generally those concerns are limited to some of The Intercept’s writers, not all, and those “concerns” aren’t born of some desire on our part to limit “diversity of opinions” or “journalistic independence” and/or impose some sort of “editorial orthodoxy.”
Some of our criticisms of some of those opinion and other pieces are that they are not of a high quality, factually accurate, not decontextualized, and well argued.
And if you haven’t seen some of the very well founded critiques of some of those pieces from some of us lately who have been long-time commenters, then I think you take a look if you have the time.
And the only reason we care enough to be critical, is because we care about the success of this endeavor because it is important. But The Intercept loses credibility when it produces “low quality” opinion pieces that contain flagrant misstatements of fact and/or poorly reasoned opinions. And that’s something I’d think you as a founder would be concerned about generally.
Now we, you included, are free to disagree with our critiques of some of your colleague’s work lately, but I’d think if you take the time to really read them, and the comments, you’d largely agree with some or all of our critiques and that they have nothing to do with wanting to limit diversity of opinion, journalistic independence or impose and editorial orthodoxy.
Just my $0.02.
I’m not sure which specific articles you have in mind but there have been articles here, or parts of articles here, that I think fall below what our standards should be. I don’t read every article, and I’m not the Editor of the Intercept, so I’m not reviewing all articles for that. But there are ones I’ve seen that I haven’t just disagreed with but that I thought were journalistically unjustifiable
But that’s inevitable. We now have almost 50 people on our staff, and regularly publish freelance writers as well. Different people have different views on what is good journalism, etc. Sometimes people make mistakes. Other times not enough attention is paid.
I’m really glad that we have a smart and aggressive readership to push back on that when it happens. As I’ve always said, I think this is one of the most important parts of New Media: that journalism is a dialogue, not a monologue, and readers have a way to push back on bad journalism. Not to preview something before it happens: but we’re hoping to upgrade our (quite inadequate) commenting software to improve the quality of how comments are conducted, in large part to enhance that check feature.
This is also a big reason I’m such a fervent believer in both the value and duty of journalists to respond to good faith critics, whether on social media, by email, in comments, etc: because it’s necessary and beneficial to interact with valid, substantive critiques.
Basically, though, at an outlet that has dozens of writers and editors, there are going to be some things readers (including me) vehemently disagree with, and other things they find (validly or otherwise) to fall short of good journalism standards. No site can be free of that, but we’re definitely good about internally facing those criticisms and trying to improve on them and I think we still need to get better at it. But by all means: keep making yourselves heard when it happens. It has a genuine impact, even if it’s not immediately apparent.
Thanks for the response Glenn.
It’s like any “black box” from a reader/commenter’s perspective.
Many of us have a long history with you, and your willingness to engage those who critique your work. Over time we have learned based on the overall quality of your “work product” what it is you value in your work–accurate facts, proper context, valid argument. That’s what some of us value generally and specifically in your work. And so there’s not much of a “black box” when it comes to your work product, biases, agenda or whatever.
Our understanding was that those fundamental principles would also be, at the very least, the aspirational standard for all of The Intercept’s hires and work product. So when The Intercept’s “work product” falls short of our expectations, we are critical of it, whether that be in your work or any others.
But with you, that can be sorted out generally because you’ll engage us to defend your work (or on the rare occasion you believe you’ve made an error or overemphasized an argument or the weight of a piece of evidence–and you’ll either change it, or (dis)agree, or at the very least countenance that one of our critiques is valid, and that “the issue” in question can be seen or weighted more than one way by people of reasonableness and good faith and we can all agree to disagree.
But many of The Intercept’s writers refuse to even engage their readership in the comments, particularly when the comments become a little strident, or really start deconstructing and being critical of their work.
No one is perfect. Not you, not me, not anybody.
But it is only reasonable, given the “black box” effect of not having all of The Intercept’s writers engage their readership in the good faith way you always have, that readers/commenters will choose to speculate why that is–is it institutional, is it individual and idiosyncratic, is it a function of the individual’s undisclosed biases . . . whatever.
From this reader’s perspective, and knowing many of the long-time supporters of your work, we understand that you’d always continue (and we’re pretty convinced you always will as a founder of this place) to push your colleagues to engage their readership, and grapple with our critiques because we believe, as you do, that it acts as a valuable “sounding board” that forces a writer to check their foundational premises and arguments, and that can only make The Intercept and The Intercept’s writers stronger and producers of a higher quality work product over time. But we also know you’re just one man, and you aren’t all powerful, and all you can do by and large is lead by example. That’s the way the real world works and an endeavor like The Intercept.
Granted we can be a pretty strident lot at times. And maybe even a little too “personal” in some of our critiques against your colleagues when we don’t get the sort of interaction and good faith back and forth we value. However, that usually only happens because in the absence of that back and forth, we lack to data points to be able to evaluate whether a particular writer made a good faith error/overstatement whether due to lack of time, or laziness, or a particular bias, or a “blind spot” in their reasoning or biases or whatever . . . .
Please tell your colleagues it isn’t “personal” in that “personal sort of we don’t like you at a personal level” but more “we don’t trust you unless you show your work and defend it against all comers acting in good faith” and as the writer’s time constraints permit.
Short of that, many of us struggle to discern what the writer’s biases, good faith points of view which and motivations are on any topic, which undermines “trust”. It’s not that we mind that some Intercept journalists/writers disagrees with our critiques on the merits, but a failure to engage the critiques (at least apparent good faith ones on the merits) makes us less inclined to see that writer’s work as worthy of supporting as “high quality journalism/opinion” that we want to support and living up to The Intercept’s stated purpose and principles.
As always that is why some of us will support your work until the wheels come off–because you’ve earned that level trust based on your personal integrity over time. And I think that is valuable because that means in the real world we’re willing to stick our necks out to disseminate and defend your work, and always have. And defend you personally which I think you’ve earned too.
We’re well aware of the personal price you pay, and risks you run, to do the work you do, be open about your opinions and life, and be critical of those in power. And we value that courage and why some of us have always tried to have your back.
I’d think that’s the kind of relationship all The Intercept’s writers would want to cultivate with their readership, but you’ve got to earn that over time by engaging your readers.
Again, just my $0.02, and way of saying thank you for what you do at the very least.
I might recommend reviewing an article penned by Robert Mackey – any one, chosen arbitrarily – as any given piece is second-rate, party-line propaganda, full of disingenuous distortions and outright lies commensurate with his MSM-inspired journalistic approach. Surely, many other readers must agree with my allegations, given the consistently unfavorable tone of comments found below his articles…on the odd occasions they’ve been allowed, anyway.
Luckily, it’s so easy to access his scrawlings: Of the scant six items in the site’s navigation menu, one is especially allotted as a direct link to his content. That his writing is so prominently featured might lead one to suspect that the objective is to attract readers, not through well-researched investigative reporting, but solely for stirring up controversy by riling up the audience with unimaginative Trump-bashing and Democrat talking points – click-bait, in other words. The readership awaits each new Mackey piece with bated breath, to either incredulously denigrate his inevitably shoddy work or be drawn into aimless sectarian arguments with the crowds recently lured from the likes of Breitbart, drawn like moths to a lamp to the sort of polarizing trash we already find everywhere else these days.
Mr. Greenwald,
As always I am impressed, and respect the time you have taken to reply.
First, I have followed TI since it’s inception. However, I have been disappointed since the election by the content of some opinion pieces in the Intercept.
Second, objectivity is the one fundamental everyone should strive for in society. Journalist and readers may never reach the true enlightenment of 100% objectivity. True, but there is no such thing as being too objective.
Third, yes beginning in January 2016 I stopped supporting CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and NBC. Shortly there after I stopped reading the New York Times, the Washington Post and save for some great journalistic work by Steve Lopez, the LA Times as well. I tuned out Bill Maher, and all of the other Clinton $hills.
That being said opinions belong in the “opinion section”, something I should remind you the Intercept fails to denote on articles. All of the reporting and opinion pieces are grouped together in one place. Articles do not contain annotation informing the reader that this is an opinion piece. Even the Observer notes Matt Sainato pieces are “Opinion”.
Fourth, my critique and judgement is a valid one, not a cry for censorship. Merely type “Opinion” on the top of “Opinion” pieces and you guys can pontificate all over the place oil your heart is content, and you will never hear complaint one from me ever again.
In closing, I respect the Intercept and the vast number of reporters and researchers that comprise this publication. I come to your website daily. As a result, I have come to expect higher standards from the Intercept. And just so you know, I learned from you sir the importance for holding the feet to the fire, those that possess the responsibility of maintaining a “well informed public”.
Greenwald and many of the other journalists here specifically reject the “objectivity” model of journalism in preference for activist journalism. That is, they decline to posture as if, as Jay Rosen puts it, they have a View From Nowhere.
They do, however, in general, deeply care about factual accuracy.
Mr. Greenwald, since I can’t think of any of the articles that contain reporting you find highly objectionable, would you mind listing one or more of them so that I could read them and better understand what it is that you disagree with about them?
Thanks for your time.
If The Intercept is a News Journal it is a News Journal .
If The Intercept is an Opinion Paper it is an Opinion Paper .
IT CANNOT BE BOTH !!!!
“those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combatting it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.”
Glenn’s criticism has been very one sided throughout and after this election. Google “Obama nationalize police” and estimate the ratio of falsehood to truth: 28-to-2? Glenn is writing about specks in one set of eyes and ignoring logs in the other sets. He brings to mind Ellsworth Toohey, a character in one of Ayn Rand’s novels, who was not what he appeared to be.
I don’t regard Assange as a Russian stooge or pawn but I thought his comments about the Russian media were odd. I thought they went further than Greenwald’s interpretation allowed. Assange should have just said that Russian language documents are outside the capabilities of Wikileaks.
He was very clear about that. He mentions there isn’t anyone on staff that speaks Russian. He even goes further to explain that even if there were, it wouldn’t circulate much in Russia do to censorship similar to China. Meanwhile, he also mentions there are multiple documents on Russia and Putin, from other sources. It’s not like those were edited out of their publication.
Yes, I read the interview. I’m saying that he should have confined himself to the language comments, not added ambiguous remarks about “vibrant” publications and competitors. I support Wikileaks but I thought the comments were odd, and by that I don’t mean suspicious.
He said Russia “tolerates” outlets that dissent provided they don’t achieve mass impact. What’s wrong with saying that?
You mean beside using the word “vibrant” to characterize Russian media?
This.
Well, I suppose Assange meant “vibrant” in the same vein as Western publications are “vibrant.” Yes, Journalists don’t get killed in these parts, but I’m sure, Russian journalists think of themselves as being part of a “vibrant” effort.
But of course, you can hang your sanctimony on that word used by Assange, instead of the substance of his overall comment.
Nothing. He also refers to “vibrant” publications and suggests that there are competitors to Wikileaks. I could be wrong, but is there anything publishing raw source material like they do?
My stance actually is that Wikileaks should be less defensive about what they publish. Why should or could they devote equal space to the US and Russia, for example, or anything like equal space? Do English language AP or Reuters? Of course not. Wikileaks publishes what they get, within their organizational capabilities, without fear or favor. The whole balance argument is a trap.
Wh