I don’t see a way out of this, I suppose we should all just get used to living in reality tunnels and learn to get along with people with opposite beliefs.
The internet has broken the old model of trust and information propagation (similarly to how books broke it in the middle ages). A new model will eventually arrive and settle, but boy it's going to be painful for the society until then.
The motive of MSM journalists today is to conform to the DNC/leftist narrative to avoid being fired and disowned by their colleagues. Source: 2020 Greenwald interview.
If you watch interviews with former US leftists who became centrists and spoke out about burning downtowns, deplatforming, etc. they all had to find new careers.
The MSM owners want that, but the actual staff and journalists are mainly trying to not get their career cancelled.
Same in Hollywood. Studio owners care about profits, but everybody working in the industry is trying to stay employable.
(It's rumored that if you complain about wokeness in your private school in LA, they'll put you on a "racist blacklist" at other area schools. So this is affecting even parents now.)
The motive hasn't changed, it's to get attention, to appeal to their audience, to speak to their ingroup. It is no evil conspiracy it's the nature of The News
It seems it’s a very corrupt institution and probably always has been. For a while there they made people believe them to be the “fourth estate” the defenders of the democratic faith, etc. Sadly, it seems it was all a rouse and a bullshit narrative.
They are not defending the constitution in any way. All they care about is whatever happens to be their particular agenda at a particular point in time which may coincide with constitutional interests.
I’m not referring to your local beat reporter but rather your journalists with renown who bask in the power they feel they have and aren’t shy to wield their symbolic swords.
I've also worked with "journalists" (can you call yourself that when the show is named after you?). They are not well adjusted individuals, so I guess they aren't technically lying once they've sufficiently deluded themselves.
Maybe you can explain what you mean by "journalists" (quotes and all)? I like you you take an entire profession and just say they are "not well adjusted individuals" - thats not just a strong argument.
I don't think you have worked with journalists in the sense that I use the word. When I use the term its with trained news gatherers, who go to great lengths to cover a subject, and have an approach to objectivity and fact-checking when they present their work - and follow-up as corrections (inevitable at some point) are required.
When you bring in organizations like the NYT/WaPo/etc to this, you will find layers of process and rigor to ensure any story is held to high standards, facts are verified and substantiated.
Yes, the process can break and is not perfect, but it generally works. Facts often speak for themselves.
As one person once told me (I'm paraphrasing): good journalists don't just write and publish. It's like when a developer writes code directly on production - you don't do that. Instead there are unit tests, code review, editing, testing, and then its deployed. Journalism institutions have their own versions of this.
Look at the story of how Greenwald parted ways with The Intercept. It was because he wouldn't follow that journalistic process. He said he was above being 'edited' and free to make any claim he wanted without substantiating it - those are the people you need to be careful of.
> Maybe you can explain what you mean by "journalists" (quotes and all)?
I don't know how to be any more clear than "can you call yourself that when the show is named after you?", without getting very specific. I'll make another generalization that you'll hate: "journalists" are incredibly vindictive. So I'll not be getting specific.
> I don't think you have worked with journalists in the sense that I use the word.
Oh, you mean people like Kurt Eichenwald... well I have, but not to the same extent.
It is accurate to describe the events leading up to Greenwald's departure as the "journalistic process", but that doesn't reflect as positively on the profession as you seem to think:
Separate from all that, in terms of the phrase "can you call yourself that when the show is named after you?" - I have zero idea what this reference is - can you explain?
Pre-2010, the MSM was often wrong but only slightly biased: journalists made an effort to find 2 sources. Sure, owners and local real estate developers had a lot of influence.
Today, the MSM is literally fake news that conforms to leftist/DNC dogma. See my other post in this thread for why.
You can see this in the common use of narrative keywords like "no widespread election fraud" and "insurrection" across multiple MSM media properties. Everybody knows there is always election fraud (voters moving to another state and voting in their old state is considered voting fraud by the FEC), but inserting "widespread" in the phrase makes it easy to keep moving the goalpost.
But, there wasn't. This has been backed up in courts and by various gov and independent agencies - and then reported in the news.
"insurrection"
The Capitol was stormed. You can even watch the video. There is evidence of advance planning by some groups involved (see Proud Boys and Oath Keepers etc.). It disrupted sessions of the House and the Senate. VP was evacuated by Secret Service. Many were armed. 5 people died, one of those shot as she tried to get into the barricaded doors of the House. At least one member of the police also killed. Extensive video footage exists documenting the day.
It’s like saying, did you steal a million dollars? No, I didn’t steal a _million_ dollars! (leaving blank they stole ten thousand thousand).
A member of the police force died. It’s uncertain he was killed.
If you listened to the media it was an armed insurrection. In reality it was a bunch of idiots a half dozen of whom had weapons. If you believed the media hundreds or thousands or armed goons were on the cusp of taking over government. It’s so far removed from reality but people believe that is what happened.
Trump was a sitting President at the time, so what insurrection?
Note that the first person arrested for entering the Capitol was BLM/antifa.
> Often it can be opportunistic armed goons that topple governments.
You mean like Democratic mayors refusing to allow the National Guard to counter BLM/antifa terrorists for 8 months, and allowing them to burn downtowns? Got it.
It's almost comical how you go from "it doesn't matter what the scale of the irregularities is, fraud is fraud" to "you have to qualify the scale of the insurrection, only a few were armed" in the same post.
No, it illustrated the media's "concern". They exaggerate on one side and minimize on the other to peddle a narrative.
We know fraud happens. People go to jail over it every year. It's not a lie. So to cover that, they qualify it as "widespread" Ok.
The Capitol. On the one hand, The CHAZ and Portland is inconsequential where business get looted, we have fires and people were murdered (not just happened to die) and it's yeah, protesters will protest... When it comes to the Capitol, oh, the interrupted congress!!! I mean, like congress has never been interrupted before. And then they make it out to be a full blown rebellion. Yes, you had thugs and goons, but you're deluded if you think that's how coups happen.
> This has been backed up in courts and by various gov and independent agencies - and then reported in the news.
No, most of the courts declined on standing. Chief Justice John Roberts also admitted in a recording to being personally biased against Trump.
So far 2 elections have been overturned, and in Michigan the last-minute voting rule changes have been overturned.
> The Capitol was stormed.
By whom? Not Trump. Pelosi refused to pay for Capitol security, so the buck stops with her.
Also, leftists stormed the Capitol in 2018.
> 5 people died, one of those shot as she tried to get into the barricaded doors of the House.
Some died of natural causes. Who shot the woman (entering a window) - was it Capitol police? Her family is suing, so that's the only way we'll find out - again, leftist politicians and the MSM can't be trusted to tell the truth.
Most of the Capitol entrance news has been walked back at this point.
I've worked with journalists and like anything there were different types of approaches to journalism like there are different approaches to any human endeavor. The ones with the most integrity started with an idea for a story but did their best to follow the evidence, and never discarded facts because they didn't fit their preconceived notions.
The ones that people are typically frustrated with but get the most clicks from 'their' side, are the ones that have an idea for a story, write the conclusion first, and then only include facts that fit that conclusion. Alternatively they discard an article if the facts overwhelmingly disagree with their original conclusion.
Journalists who challenge narratives are not given access to people to interview. If you are asking the wrong question, you will simply get "no comment" - and if you do it too much, people will simply stop answering your calls.
That is why the media has effectively aligned with the political parties.
You simply cannot survive in journalism without political support.
> The ones with the most integrity started with an idea for a story but did their best to follow the evidence, and never discarded facts because they didn't fit their preconceived notions.
It costs a magnitude more (at least) for this type of journalist, as opposed to the latter.
Where we hear about the CIA deep state in its long attempt to thwart Donald Trump, even before his election. Just part of the story of Greenwald leaving the Intercept.
Accoring to Greenwald, the conspiracy goes deep. There is now a full union with the Democrats, the CIA, the Bush-Cheney operatives, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. Also that the CIA, DOJ, FBI and NSA, have infiltrated news media.
'THE SKY IS FALLING! THE ELITES ARE LYING! THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ARE IN BED WITH THE ELITES! ONLY I GLENN GREENWALD AM TRUSTWORTHY! BUT THEY ARE TRYING TO DEPLATFORM ME! SHARE LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT! BWARARARAHWHHWGAG!"
Meanwhile what's his deal? He accuses The Intercept of skullduggery because they dared edit him. Substack is most likely secretly subsidizing him to write there. I see him publish on Conrad "Trump pardoned me after I wrote a nice book about him" Black's NationalPost that the American press is in bed with Biden.
Granted, I am biased: at this point, 2021, populism enrages me like nothing else. Being on the internet feels like I'm trapped in some plonker's smoky dorm room.
>Careful, Greenwald has gone a bit off the rails recently.
In its present form this is just poisoning the well. Surely you can discuss your issues with the article or, at the very least, substantiate your claim.
Terrence Tao, respected mathematician, doesn't take the time to read most people who send him their work, and in fact has an explicit policy about how he will ignore such requests.
And I doubt it's fair to say that mathematical error or amateurism makes you "off the rails". Yet Terrence Tao won't give such people the time of day.
Did you just compare yourself with Terry Tao? Or are you comparing Glenn Greenwald—a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and one who helped Snowden tell his story—with crackpots who send Tao their papers?
A math amateur is not a crackpot. Being a non-professional means you have credibility issues, not mental issues. After all, a math amateur who is rejected by Tao doesn't necessarily think the math world is in conspiracy. I also would not presume that a math amateur would go on Tucker Carlson's show to talk about the deep state infiltrating the CIA and thwarting Donald Trump.
Careful about what specifically? You say that Greenwald has gone off the rails. But would you have written this comment if this article of Greenwald criticized conservative media outlets instead of liberal ones?
If we are critical of Trump's lies, and expect media to fact-check Trump's statements, I suppose that we should likewise morally expect media to fact check CIA statements (with a track record of false statements), as opposed to the behavior that Greenwald is criticizing here, i.e. spreading and exaggerating their statements.
What gets me about this is that it's always a "laptop" being discussed. Shouldn't we be discussing a hard drive? Or is the incriminating evidence on the keyboard?!
It pains me that you could be right about their reasoning for word choice. It's one of those things where the misconception rivals the truth, not too unlike sherbet being pronounced sherbert, using "literally" for emphasis, or saying "I could care less".
Hunter Biden's laptop is an incredibly awful story.
Fox reporters claimed to have obtained the hard drive, then lost it due to conspiracy from the delivery company, then found it, and now refuses to show the contents because Hunter Biden is a down and out man, and it's so sad to kick a remorseful man trying to turn his life around.
This is the story according to Fox, and specifically Tucker Carlson — that we cannot see the evidence because Tucker Carlson feels sorry for Hunter Biden's low fortunes.
I’m sorry? Specific content of the laptop was released, the Biden team was asked if it was authentic and the answer was “no comment”. Why would they do that if it was fake news?
And what content was released? Tucker Carlson specifically stated that kindness for a "pathetic" man was his reason for not releasing "damning" criminal evidence to the public.
Where would the Intercept go with that story, not getting to see any evidence, and having the story end on Tucker Carlson saying he won't publicize evidence on corruption? And that the FBI has no comment? What would The Intercept do with No Comment?
That's the vulnerable position that Glenn Greenwald would've placed the publication with the bet to jump on the Hunter Biden story with zero access to evidence. Greenwald wanted the Intercept to go all-in with him.
Have you read the article Glenn wrote that was never published? I’m curious what part exactly you’d call dishonest or unworthy of publication? Glenn does write in an emotional way, but what I like is he tends to exhaustive reference and source his data points.
You nicely danced around my comment that none of the content from the laptop has been denied by the Biden team.
Sean Hannity said there was evidence of crime that would destroy the Bidens and the Democrats. Tucker Carlson said he will not publish. Guliani is now mute. Enough with the teasing.
> What would The Intercept do with No Comment?
Truly, all the news agencies around the world are failing to report on the urgency of No Comment.
That unpublished article was expertly crafted lightning rod contrarian bait.
He calculatedly spun two ‘sides’ very differently and held the ‘evidence’ to different standards, including specifically omitting multiple source facts inconvenient to his spin while seeming to invite them.
Example, from the top level article today:
> In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, The New York Post obtained that laptop and published a series of articles about the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.
‘Obtained’? Really? That word is doing a lot of work there. It’s not false, but really? Everything he writes now is like this — no precise word is dishonest.
His schtick is super well done, imperceptible to or even hotly denied by smart anti-mainstream readers. He’s very good.
How the laptop was "obtained" is actually a separate story from the content of the laptop, if the content is real.
Given that the content HAS been verified as real, then bringing up the circumstances of how the laptop ended up in the NY Post's hands is simply an irrelevant diversion designed to muddy the waters.
> That word is doing a _lot_ of work there.
What work is it doing? If the content is real, what circumstances of the obtaining could possibly change opinions or analysis made *solely about* the content?
Nobody denies there were political machinations and obfuscations about the laptop's journey, involving political adversaries of Joe Biden, but that story is a separate one from analysis of the laptop's contents.
What a strange take. If someone made up a story about me and then someone else asked if it was true, I'd tell them to get lost, not validate the ridiculous attempt at shaping a narrative by engaging with it. It's very very common to "no comment" every false story, because engaging (even with a denial) creates legitimacy for the falsehood.
Unless I knew the emails existed I would say "I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm not interested in talking about it." But more succinctly, with just two words maybe. Something along the lines of "no comment". It's not possible for someone to have made even a cursory glance the history or ubiquity of the phrase "no comment" and honestly claim that it's either not a reasonable approach or not typically done. This just silly.
Glenn Greenwald is correct, the initial tweet by Patrick Tucker was false as the ODNI report does not explicitly mention Hunter Biden's laptop. However, Glenn Greenwald also massively mischaracterizes how the "liberal corporate media bubble" handled the situation.
> As this false claim went massively viral, conservative journalists — and only they — began vocally objecting that the report made no mention whatsoever of the Hunter Biden laptop, let alone supplied proof for this claim.
Greenwald basically invalidates his own argument a few sentences later where he describes how there actually were other journalists such as Chris Hayes who objected to the description of the report. And, again stated by Greenwald, Patrick Tucker himself came around, deleted his initial tweet and posted a clarification.
And just as an aside, the "conservative journalists" cited by Greenwald work for the Daily Caller, described by Wikipedia [1] as:
>
The Daily Caller has published false stories on multiple occasions. The website publishes articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. Until 2018, the website had also published articles by white supremacists such as Jason Kessler and Peter Brimelow.
I also find it laughable that he characterizes some journalists as minions of the "liberal corporate media" but The Daily caller, founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, is somehow home to harmless independent "conservative journalists". That Glenn Greenwald tries to sell me journalists of a white supremacist outlet as trustworthy and truthful is not really a good sign in my book.
So while I agree that the initial tweet by Patrick Tucker lead to a falsehood being spread on social media I just can't follow Glenn Greenwald's take of seeing this as a coordinated misinformation operation.
Your opinion about that label changes nothing. And you attacked Glenn by claiming he said things he didn't.
This is really, really common. If you want to laugh look at Glenn's tweets and replies sometime. He gets in there and aggressively defends himself from a never-ending string of false accusations ranging from ridiculous to heinous. I guess a lot of democrats shut their eyes because Trump was horrible and said things that were pretty nuts to "help." Now that the incredibly low bar of "better than Trump" is no longer interesting they're faced with having done it and don't like it when Glenn calls it out. He then gets a lot of hate. I've seen him accused of being a white supremisist, a libertarian shill, a homophobe, a Russian asset, an anti-semite. The convulsions people attempt to try and make something, anything stick is really quite mind boggling until you give up and just start laughing.
The caller are conservative. They have passing reference at best in that story and mostly to note they called it out because they're allowed in their corporate structure for partisan reasons (vonservative) rather from any commitment to truth. All the people mentioned who did back down on the claim and those who didn't he called out on Twitter on real time. It's a short report. It's nuts to have claimed it ever!
The media landscape is a lot worse than most people have noticed. Glenn is a welcome relief from that. Disagreeing with Glenn is good. Shouldn't make you feel bad because he argues from evidence and has integrity. Unless you're too partisan to see it and want him to be a scoreboard reinforcing 'my team is better' and give you warm fuzzies about it because he doesn't do that.
More power to Glenn. I know i don't have the stomach for what he puts up with on a daily basis.
It's right there where i said it still. Glenn argues from evidence. Your claim of mislabeled changes none of that evidence. And i's not mislabeled either, the caller isn't socialist.
Pretty sure this conv has gone past the point of being useful or entertaining to anyone so i wish you the best.
Can you imagine being a professional journalist, and making the fully rational decision that the hunter biden laptop story was the hill you wished to die upon, resigning in a huff from your employer of many years?
Greenwald has lost a great deal of credibility.
And now he's still harping on about it as if this supposed laptop is earth-shatteringly important news?
Mostly I feel sorry for Greenwald and how clearly unhinged he has become.
It sounds like you don’t understand why he left. The agreement at The Intercept was that reporters had editorial control. That worked fine until Glenn decided to write about the Hunter laptop. Suddenly that rule went out the door. Suddenly the article had to be revised or else.
I mean, if you employer promised to do something important and then reneged, isn’t leaving a pretty reasonable thing to do?
I'm aware of his agreement. My personal opinion is also that the whole "laptop story" is such a fantastic mess of fabrications, bullshit, suspicious Giuliani-linked political hacks, the guy's repair shop that is the supposed origin of the laptop, lack of evidence chain of custody, lack of proper forensic examination, that there's a reason the editors decided to put their feet down at a firm red line of not publishing absolute dreck.
Of course at that juncture, Greenwald was free to disagree with that and depart.
The Intercept obviously had a rather different take[1]
In Short Greenwald had full control about his opinion pieces. What he wanted and didn't get is no editorial intervention in a piece of factual reporting.
No half way sane media outlet would ever allow that.
This is wrong and a total mischaracterization. It *was* an opinion piece that they blocked:
From Greenwald's resignation blog post [1]:
> The latest and perhaps most egregious example is an *opinion column* I wrote this week which, five days before the presidential election, is critical of Joe Biden, the candidate who happens to be vigorously supported by all of the Intercept editors in New York who are imposing the censorship and refusing to publish the article unless I agree to remove all of the sections critical of the candidate they want to win.
Additionally, the emails he published between himself and the editors indicates specifically the claims they wanted him to remove, which did not include any factually inaccurate claims [2]:
> But your memo *doesn't identify a single factual inaccuracy*, let alone multiple ones. And that's why you don't and can't identify any such false claims. And that, in turn, is why your email repeatedly says that what makes the draft false is that it omits facts which -- as I just demonstrated -- the draft explicitly includes.
Calling the story about "The Hunter Laptop" is reductionist. The story was about alleged business dealings by Hunter and James Biden and their relationship to and utilization of Hunter's father's political power. The laptop was one source of information as well as independent corroboration including statements and text messages from other people involved, and other news articles where company documents and court papers corroborate as well.
Yes. The better question is, how many years ago, exactly, did Giuliani lose the last shreds of credibility he had remaining? He's the supposed origin of it, right? He claims he received it from some sole-proprietorship independent Mac repair shop, which has now conveniently vanished?
I don't know what to think about the drama surrounding Tucker screaming "There is a conspiracy at UPS - they stole important Hunter Biden's documents because they don't want you to know the TRUTH!". Then UPS found the package they had lost and delivered it, and Tucker Carlson suddenly became full of compassion for Hunter Biden. It makes one go 'hmm?'
You comments here are representative of the issue.
Yes, Giuliani is a clown. Yes, the circumstances surrounding the laptop are suspicious, to say the least. But the laptop exists and has concerning emails of known provenance. And yet one "side" of the media continues to spread actual disinformation about it. For some reason you find that acceptable?
I mean, if Russian agents dropped the laptop off at Giuliani's office and said, "We broke into Hunter's hotel room and stole his laptop, check out his emails" that would be gross, and illegal. But if the contents demonstrated massive corruption, and were legitimate, I couldn't care less how the information was obtained.
This is a curious take I’ve noticed in various conversations. Instead of talking about the merits of the discussion, the discussion shifts to why someone is so interested in it. As if it’s not right or appropriate to be interested and discuss.
I think this is a characteristics of the “conflict v. mistake theory” [0] where I’m already on a side, try to find an argument for or against and then make it even if it’s not reasonable.
Greenwald writes a lot. He’s written a few articles on the HunterBiden laptop story, but not like he writes every day.
I don’t think it’s unusual to write about this topic given everything else he writes on. Framing this as a “hill to die on” seems disingenuous and not really relevant to the article under discussion, or Greenwald in general.
I can understand arguing on the merits of the topic on whether it is or is not Russian propaganda, but bringing up how Greenwald shows a normal amount of interest seems odd. It seems the summary of OP’s comment is “Greenwald sucks and chooses bad topics.”
My reasoning on how to interpret this, and I may be wrong, is that the belief that Greenwald sucks existed before this article and this thread. And trying to find some reason to discuss the suckers, OP came up with the rhetorical doozy that he reports on this topic too frequently.
Completely ignoring the content and claims of any of his substack articles, the actual writing style is getting more and more alarming. Each new piece reads more like the manifesto of someone about to go on a shooting spree than the work of a professional journalist. This particular article reads like Charlie's mail room murder board in Always Sunny.
Why wouldn't this be something worth going after? It's a pinnacle example of the overwhelming bias the highest traffic news outlets have. They shut it down even before the laptop was investigated.
If you remember three years ago the talking heads were chanting 'believe all women' in the middle of the Kavanaugh hearings despite the overwhelming lack of evidence. The double standard has to be addressed.
Greenwald has a lot of controversial views, but this isn't one of them. An objective press makes for a better society.
> Greenwald, a former lawyer who, in 2013, was one of the reporters for a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the Guardian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Security Agency, is a longtime critic, from the left, of centrist and liberal policymakers and pundits. During the past two years, he has further exiled himself from the mainstream American left by responding with skepticism and disdain to reports of Russian government interference in the 2016 Presidential election. On Twitter, where he has nearly a million followers, and at the Intercept, the news Web site that he co-founded five years ago, and as a frequent guest on “Democracy Now!,” the daily progressive radio and TV broadcast, Greenwald has argued that the available evidence concerning Russian activity has indicated nothing especially untoward;...
> ... Greenwald has tried to cut back on social media. “My No. 1 therapeutic goal is to reduce my Twitter usage,” he said...
> It is well worth examining how they function because this is how they deceive the public again and again, and it is why public trust in their pronouncements has justifiably plummeted.
I wonder if that might also be due to the previous president repeatedly referring to them as "the enemy of the people".
Like if I said "the current president of the United States 's family name is Bidden" then that's as false as "Santa Clause's middle name Elvis, is in tribute to his mother's favourite singer".
But you could argue that there's measures by which one is more true than the other.
In this case, these "lies" all seem to be vaguely within shouting distance of the truth, and his repetition of the accusation seems a bit lawyerly in its specificity. In fact, a fuzzy definition of "lie" could well suggest that his statements are further from the truth than the ones he's criticizing.
It's at least somewhat odd that some lies are widely spread on Twitter and the media because they're true-in-spirit despite being false, while some truths are banned on Twitter and the media because they're false-in-spirit despite being true.
There's zero evidence of any Russians anywhere being involved with Hunter Biden's laptop. It's not a 'gotcha' fact check, the lies are in fact nowhere near the truth.
Greenwald is certainly biased, on the one hand he says this:
> Think about that: to a CNN reporter, evidence-free assertions from the U.S. security state are tantamount to “confirmation.” That they really do think this way is nothing short of chilling.
On the other hand, the laptop produced by Guliani (of which how he got it is weird) is taken as absolute gospel by Greenwald.
The DKIM signatures on the emails were verified. Whatever the laptop's sketchy provenance, the actual content being published from it wasn't a forgery.
Not only that, two people from the emails, Bevan Cooney and Tony Bobulinski, were tracked down and both confirmed the information in the emails were true.
AFAIK, only a single email was verified this way, and it is innocuous, only suggesting that a Burisma executive met Joe Biden sometime through Hunter. https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim
Graham notes upfront:
"Remember that while the email is validated, the context isn't. It's possible this reflects a secret meeting to conspire with Vice President Biden. Or, it's possible the guy attended one of the many Washington D.C. social functions whereby people shake hands with politicians and exchange pleasantries. As Richelieu is claimed to have said 'Give me six words by the most honest of men and I'll find something to hang him by'. Give me an email dump from the most honest of persons, and I'll pull one out of context to hang them in the court of social media."
I agree: the email reads to me as entirely innocuous.
The rest of the world doesn't seem to agree, though. Right-leaning media proclaimed it was a smoking gun that would destroy Biden's candidacy. But Left-leaning media wasn't any better: to the extent it covered it at all, it was that the email was part of a sophisticated forgery and disinformation campaign by Russian state security services intended to cement Putin's dominance over the USA, with Twitter and most mainstream sources going so far as to ban sharing it.
It's not even clear to me that the tense of the message isn't distorted due to a language barrier.
It could just as easily be interpreted as a thank you for a promise to meet Biden at some point in the future. Something that it seems likely Hunter was promising to a lot of people.
It was pretty apparent Hunter Biden was engaging in foreign lobbying work.
You can pay a lobbyist to influence politicians but paying a politician directly is bribery. The question is if giving money to a politician's son is bribery since they indirectly benefit.
Then there is also the allegation that Joe Biden was taking a percentage of Hunter Biden's lobbying fees ("10% to the big guy"). Which if true is Ron Blagojevich level of corruption.
The question is if giving money to a politician's son is bribery since they indirectly benefit.
If that were true, every politician's close relatives would have to stay in some kind of economic suspended animation while they serve in office. But other sensible measures, like prohibiting a President or his children from maintaining control of a global business empire while he is in office, are probably warranted in light of recent events.
There is no evidence that the "big guy" quote is genuine.
>If that were true, every politician's close relatives would have to stay in some kind of economic suspended animation while they serve in office.
The key is money in exchange for political favors.
While I'm not going to comment if Joe Biden's situation fits the definition of criminal bribery, it is very similar to the situation with South Korean President Park Geun-hye who went to prison for 20 years for bribery related to policy decisions that were made in exchange gifts given to a close friend.
One of Hunter Biden's business partners -- the one the "big guy" email was sent to -- has come out that Joe Biden was directly involved in Hunter's business and taking money from it. He even shared emails and text messages that the Bidens told him the keep Joe's involvement a secret for obvious reasons.
Yeah that's what happened with the "Climategate" e-mails as well. A bunch of scientists were being attacked for political reasons and their hacked, leaked e-mails showed a certain amount of us-vs-them bunker mentality. Go figure. That was spun into a narrative about how they were conspiring to manipulate public opinion using statements pulled out of context.
I read them and they definitely proved an attitude very far from that of the dispassionate scientific enquiry. Had the scientists been involved in any other less politically charged research (say, Alzheimer's research) nobody would have questioned the existence of a certain amount of scientific malpractice. So you're right, that's exactly as Hunter Biden's laptop case.
I read the full emails. The statements weren't out of context. I don't think it quite rose to the level of 'conspiring to manipulate public opinion' but they were absolutely conspiring to manipulate the data and the conclusions of the "science".
They also lied repeatedly about it, including to Parliament, and generally engaged in all kinds of BS behaviour that would be fatal to people in the private sector - regulators and lawsuits would take down any company that tried those things - but because it's academia and climatology they just ignored the entire scandal and told the world to go fuck itself. And because the media have a massive blind spot for academics, everyone just sort of forgot about it and pretending it never happened.
In other words they were attacked for entirely justifiable reasons, by people who aren't even in politics to begin with.
There's a long retrospective on the Climategate emails here that goes into a lot of background and context, as well as the subsequent fallout. Suffice it to say, when even the Guardian admits the behaviour of these people was bad, it must be really, really bad.
>On the other hand, the laptop produced by Guliani (of which how he got it is weird) is taken as absolute gospel by Greenwald.
What do you mean "taken as gospel"? The laptop exists, the source of the emails confirmed. Is any of it meaningful or evidence of corruption? Who knows.
Since no side disputes the authenticity of what's in the laptop, there's no reason for Greenwald to do so.
The one-sided burrying of the story from tech and media at the time though (and this new BS faux-reporting coming up now), would be hugely problematic if it wasn't standard practice by now...
Framing is a really important part of mitigating the damage of this story.
For example, make the story about where the laptop came from, and avoid as much as possible the fact POTUS son has incriminating photos and videos (and more?) of himself in the hands of our foreign adversaries.
Wow. Just wow. I remember early cyberpunks talking about how the internet would enable infinite lies to spread and for the truth to be completely buried in the noise. And here we are. Now our entire reality has been taken over by people living in a fantasy world. No end in sight. Maybe they weren't nearly pessimistic enough.
Ha my buddies and I have this debate. BNW to me is scarier for a couple of reasons: 1) it's more likely to happen 2) it will happen and you won't even realize it: there's no mustachioed man that is the antagonist.
I think we get (got?) both. You have your televisor already in the pocket. Here in Germany there are strong tendencies to use this for all-encompassing tracing to fight COVID (Luca-App).
It’s not widely known but I know of telecoms that sell analytic platforms. It’s processed so it’s anonymous when sold, but your phone is always connected to the telecom provider so they where good at tracing you even before the tracing apps where made.
I find it odd when people deny the extremely obvious signs that foreign allies are buying influence in DC. I'm sure that happens on both sides of the aisle.
Hunter Biden had zero relevant experience to be a member of the board to a Ukrainian oil company during a conflict with Russia that had huge oil assets at risk. It seems obvious to me that they paid him to have access to his father (then VP to Obama).
The same was true when the Clinton Foundation received tens of millions in donations during the ramp-up to the Syrian civil war while Clinton was the Sec of State. Clinton emails released confirmed weekly meetings with the Saudi Foreign Minister at the same time. It seems obvious that the State Dept & CIA participation in arming rebel groups was facilitated through the conversations had.
...and I don't mean to pick on Democrats. John McCain was part of that effort. I'm sure if we look closely, we'll find a "core establishment" group that holds members of both parties.
...and, arguably, both cases above were in the interests of the US.
It's complicated. A world power with big adversaries cannot operate transparently, so I would not expect the public to be told everything. On the other hand, it would be reassuring if there were private mechanisms whereby this "deep-state club" self-regulates to ensure that these covert actions at least benefit the US, and do not simply enrich those politicians taking cash. ...or maybe that does exist in some form and we just are not aware?
> I find it odd when people deny the extremely obvious signs that foreign allies are buying influence in DC. I'm sure that happens on both sides of the aisle.
That corruption exists on both sides - this is understood by pretty much everyone who isn't wildly partisan. That there is both legal (meaning that it does break specific laws but is instead privilege accessible by those in circles of power) and illegal corruption, likewise.
In the case of Hunter Biden, he is just reaping the benefits of being close to power. This isn't illegal - ex-presidents go on the talk circuit to tutor people in how to handle specific situations or to discuss events they have encountered. One would think that Hunter Biden would have received a masterclass in power politics through his father having been VP for 8 years. Her certainly would have met a lot of people over the years who could help him in the real world. This is not illegal, this is just one of the privileges of privilege.
Privilege is human nature. There is no mystery club - you are just either inside the tent or outside the tent. This does not mean we should not break it down, or tear it up, but it is also not illegal to hang out with people who are like you and who get you.
The problem with Greenwald's pieces are that he conflates this with obvious, illegal corruption. He claims it to be illegal - which is is not - and conflates it with actual corruption... but only on one side of politics. He seems to see himself as a maverick, a lone-wolf, but then whines that no one is there to support him, and all the legitimate papers decry or ignore him.
Greenwald is either unwell (and who isn't these days) or is trying to wedge himself into the role of the "reasonable" right-wing partisan. If it is the first, I hope he recovers, if the second, I hope he goes down in flames. The world needs fewer partisans.
> >anyone who disagrees with my worldview is mentally ill
No, but someone who invests so much anger in the idea that all journalists are corrupt because they do not buy into their fantasies of persecution and corruption is almost certainly either unwell or pretending to have an actual grievance.
It's like the Fox News, OAN, etc drama over the "poll observer" or the "Hunter Biden laptop" fiascos. The journalists wailed and moaned about how other press agencies were ignoring the stories, or dismissing them. This was all political theatre, in these cases, as none of them really seemed to believe the stories they were peddling and gave them up the moment that all political value was wrung out of them. Greenwald hasn't let these themes go - and he appears to hate the journalists who just won't buy into his fantasy.
Before the internet you could have two local newspapers in every town, each profitably reporting facts.
Then the internet came and commoditised facts. New facts are disseminated immediately across social media. Open Google News and you can find thousands of articles covering the same event.
Suddenly, just reporting facts was no longer a viable business. Being a newspaper of record was no longer economically viable. Only the news media that shifted to reporting opinions, outrage, and entertainment survived.
Excerpt from the tweet quoted in the article from Asha Rangappa who is retweeting Patrick Tucker:
>"Derkach, Kilimnick, and their associates sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences..."
Now, I don't know if any of this is true or not...
In fact, I don't know any of these people...
But that's not the point!
You see, as an amateur linguist (I know, "keep the day job!" <g>), I am always on the look out for new buzzwords, new catch phrases, new lingo...
Before this article (or more specifically, the quoted retweet), I had never seen the words "launder" and "narrative" used adjacently (or very close to adjacently), that is, "launder their narratives".
Phrasing those two concepts in language more succinctly, one gets:
"Narrative Laundering"
Which is my (linguistic!) takeaway from this article...
So, that term -- is going into my 2021 lexicon!
"Narrative Laundering"
(It sort of fits alongside such other words/terminology as "Fake News", "Making Mountains Out Of A Molehills", "Memory Hole", "De Minimis", "Much Ado About Nothing", "Revisionism", "Damnatio Memoriae", "Conflation", etc.)
people were happy to buy the medias distortions when it came to trump, so it's its only natural the media became accustomed to distort what they want. one cannot understand the news anymore without reading every sentence skeptically, as everything is obfuscated to fit the narrative.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadIf you watch interviews with former US leftists who became centrists and spoke out about burning downtowns, deplatforming, etc. they all had to find new careers.
Same in Hollywood. Studio owners care about profits, but everybody working in the industry is trying to stay employable.
(It's rumored that if you complain about wokeness in your private school in LA, they'll put you on a "racist blacklist" at other area schools. So this is affecting even parents now.)
They are not defending the constitution in any way. All they care about is whatever happens to be their particular agenda at a particular point in time which may coincide with constitutional interests.
I’m not referring to your local beat reporter but rather your journalists with renown who bask in the power they feel they have and aren’t shy to wield their symbolic swords.
I don't think you have worked with journalists in the sense that I use the word. When I use the term its with trained news gatherers, who go to great lengths to cover a subject, and have an approach to objectivity and fact-checking when they present their work - and follow-up as corrections (inevitable at some point) are required.
When you bring in organizations like the NYT/WaPo/etc to this, you will find layers of process and rigor to ensure any story is held to high standards, facts are verified and substantiated.
Yes, the process can break and is not perfect, but it generally works. Facts often speak for themselves.
As one person once told me (I'm paraphrasing): good journalists don't just write and publish. It's like when a developer writes code directly on production - you don't do that. Instead there are unit tests, code review, editing, testing, and then its deployed. Journalism institutions have their own versions of this.
Look at the story of how Greenwald parted ways with The Intercept. It was because he wouldn't follow that journalistic process. He said he was above being 'edited' and free to make any claim he wanted without substantiating it - those are the people you need to be careful of.
- https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...
- https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/inside-glenn-greenwa...
- https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
I don't know how to be any more clear than "can you call yourself that when the show is named after you?", without getting very specific. I'll make another generalization that you'll hate: "journalists" are incredibly vindictive. So I'll not be getting specific.
> I don't think you have worked with journalists in the sense that I use the word.
Oh, you mean people like Kurt Eichenwald... well I have, but not to the same extent.
It is accurate to describe the events leading up to Greenwald's departure as the "journalistic process", but that doesn't reflect as positively on the profession as you seem to think:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
Separate from all that, in terms of the phrase "can you call yourself that when the show is named after you?" - I have zero idea what this reference is - can you explain?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_...
Today, the MSM is literally fake news that conforms to leftist/DNC dogma. See my other post in this thread for why.
You can see this in the common use of narrative keywords like "no widespread election fraud" and "insurrection" across multiple MSM media properties. Everybody knows there is always election fraud (voters moving to another state and voting in their old state is considered voting fraud by the FEC), but inserting "widespread" in the phrase makes it easy to keep moving the goalpost.
But, there wasn't. This has been backed up in courts and by various gov and independent agencies - and then reported in the news.
"insurrection"
The Capitol was stormed. You can even watch the video. There is evidence of advance planning by some groups involved (see Proud Boys and Oath Keepers etc.). It disrupted sessions of the House and the Senate. VP was evacuated by Secret Service. Many were armed. 5 people died, one of those shot as she tried to get into the barricaded doors of the House. At least one member of the police also killed. Extensive video footage exists documenting the day.
It’s like saying, did you steal a million dollars? No, I didn’t steal a _million_ dollars! (leaving blank they stole ten thousand thousand).
A member of the police force died. It’s uncertain he was killed.
If you listened to the media it was an armed insurrection. In reality it was a bunch of idiots a half dozen of whom had weapons. If you believed the media hundreds or thousands or armed goons were on the cusp of taking over government. It’s so far removed from reality but people believe that is what happened.
I do not need MSM to tell me that an insurrection was happening. I see it for myself.
And here you are down-playing, ignoring facts, ignoring the other points I made that counter yours, and generally being mis-leading.
I think you should refresh your history. Often it can be opportunistic armed goons that topple governments.
Which holds for everybody. And it's the diversity of those sources that determines how close your view matches the truth.
I am aware of my bubble. Are you aware of yours?
There's that narrative keyword again.
Trump was a sitting President at the time, so what insurrection?
Note that the first person arrested for entering the Capitol was BLM/antifa.
> Often it can be opportunistic armed goons that topple governments.
You mean like Democratic mayors refusing to allow the National Guard to counter BLM/antifa terrorists for 8 months, and allowing them to burn downtowns? Got it.
If this is a sarcastic post, well done!
We know fraud happens. People go to jail over it every year. It's not a lie. So to cover that, they qualify it as "widespread" Ok.
The Capitol. On the one hand, The CHAZ and Portland is inconsequential where business get looted, we have fires and people were murdered (not just happened to die) and it's yeah, protesters will protest... When it comes to the Capitol, oh, the interrupted congress!!! I mean, like congress has never been interrupted before. And then they make it out to be a full blown rebellion. Yes, you had thugs and goons, but you're deluded if you think that's how coups happen.
No, most of the courts declined on standing. Chief Justice John Roberts also admitted in a recording to being personally biased against Trump.
So far 2 elections have been overturned, and in Michigan the last-minute voting rule changes have been overturned.
> The Capitol was stormed.
By whom? Not Trump. Pelosi refused to pay for Capitol security, so the buck stops with her.
Also, leftists stormed the Capitol in 2018.
> 5 people died, one of those shot as she tried to get into the barricaded doors of the House.
Some died of natural causes. Who shot the woman (entering a window) - was it Capitol police? Her family is suing, so that's the only way we'll find out - again, leftist politicians and the MSM can't be trusted to tell the truth.
Most of the Capitol entrance news has been walked back at this point.
The ones that people are typically frustrated with but get the most clicks from 'their' side, are the ones that have an idea for a story, write the conclusion first, and then only include facts that fit that conclusion. Alternatively they discard an article if the facts overwhelmingly disagree with their original conclusion.
YMMV
Journalists who challenge narratives are not given access to people to interview. If you are asking the wrong question, you will simply get "no comment" - and if you do it too much, people will simply stop answering your calls.
That is why the media has effectively aligned with the political parties.
You simply cannot survive in journalism without political support.
It costs a magnitude more (at least) for this type of journalist, as opposed to the latter.
You can get lie peddlers of all stripes for free.
https://youtu.be/l8pkCZBjgrk?t=252
Where we hear about the CIA deep state in its long attempt to thwart Donald Trump, even before his election. Just part of the story of Greenwald leaving the Intercept.
Accoring to Greenwald, the conspiracy goes deep. There is now a full union with the Democrats, the CIA, the Bush-Cheney operatives, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. Also that the CIA, DOJ, FBI and NSA, have infiltrated news media.
Don't believe a single word on cnn.com for starters.
'THE SKY IS FALLING! THE ELITES ARE LYING! THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ARE IN BED WITH THE ELITES! ONLY I GLENN GREENWALD AM TRUSTWORTHY! BUT THEY ARE TRYING TO DEPLATFORM ME! SHARE LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT! BWARARARAHWHHWGAG!"
Meanwhile what's his deal? He accuses The Intercept of skullduggery because they dared edit him. Substack is most likely secretly subsidizing him to write there. I see him publish on Conrad "Trump pardoned me after I wrote a nice book about him" Black's NationalPost that the American press is in bed with Biden.
Granted, I am biased: at this point, 2021, populism enrages me like nothing else. Being on the internet feels like I'm trapped in some plonker's smoky dorm room.
That story ended up to be a shit-show, with Fox News essentially killing the story by dropping it off the table.
In its present form this is just poisoning the well. Surely you can discuss your issues with the article or, at the very least, substantiate your claim.
And I doubt it's fair to say that mathematical error or amateurism makes you "off the rails". Yet Terrence Tao won't give such people the time of day.
What role does Credibility play in conversation?
https://youtu.be/l8pkCZBjgrk?t=252
If you value your time, skip it.
It’s completely impossible there could be a disinformation campaign on such a pedestrian political campaign. /s
Fox reporters claimed to have obtained the hard drive, then lost it due to conspiracy from the delivery company, then found it, and now refuses to show the contents because Hunter Biden is a down and out man, and it's so sad to kick a remorseful man trying to turn his life around.
This is the story according to Fox, and specifically Tucker Carlson — that we cannot see the evidence because Tucker Carlson feels sorry for Hunter Biden's low fortunes.
Where would the Intercept go with that story, not getting to see any evidence, and having the story end on Tucker Carlson saying he won't publicize evidence on corruption? And that the FBI has no comment? What would The Intercept do with No Comment?
That's the vulnerable position that Glenn Greenwald would've placed the publication with the bet to jump on the Hunter Biden story with zero access to evidence. Greenwald wanted the Intercept to go all-in with him.
You nicely danced around my comment that none of the content from the laptop has been denied by the Biden team.
That’s relevant, no?
What Is The Content? Why the teasing?
Sean Hannity said there was evidence of crime that would destroy the Bidens and the Democrats. Tucker Carlson said he will not publish. Guliani is now mute. Enough with the teasing.
> What would The Intercept do with No Comment?
Truly, all the news agencies around the world are failing to report on the urgency of No Comment.
He calculatedly spun two ‘sides’ very differently and held the ‘evidence’ to different standards, including specifically omitting multiple source facts inconvenient to his spin while seeming to invite them.
Example, from the top level article today:
> In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, The New York Post obtained that laptop and published a series of articles about the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.
‘Obtained’? Really? That word is doing a lot of work there. It’s not false, but really? Everything he writes now is like this — no precise word is dishonest.
His schtick is super well done, imperceptible to or even hotly denied by smart anti-mainstream readers. He’s very good.
Given that the content HAS been verified as real, then bringing up the circumstances of how the laptop ended up in the NY Post's hands is simply an irrelevant diversion designed to muddy the waters.
> That word is doing a _lot_ of work there.
What work is it doing? If the content is real, what circumstances of the obtaining could possibly change opinions or analysis made *solely about* the content?
Nobody denies there were political machinations and obfuscations about the laptop's journey, involving political adversaries of Joe Biden, but that story is a separate one from analysis of the laptop's contents.
If someone says “are these emails real?” you say “no”. Case closed.
> As this false claim went massively viral, conservative journalists — and only they — began vocally objecting that the report made no mention whatsoever of the Hunter Biden laptop, let alone supplied proof for this claim.
Greenwald basically invalidates his own argument a few sentences later where he describes how there actually were other journalists such as Chris Hayes who objected to the description of the report. And, again stated by Greenwald, Patrick Tucker himself came around, deleted his initial tweet and posted a clarification.
And just as an aside, the "conservative journalists" cited by Greenwald work for the Daily Caller, described by Wikipedia [1] as:
> The Daily Caller has published false stories on multiple occasions. The website publishes articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. Until 2018, the website had also published articles by white supremacists such as Jason Kessler and Peter Brimelow.
I also find it laughable that he characterizes some journalists as minions of the "liberal corporate media" but The Daily caller, founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, is somehow home to harmless independent "conservative journalists". That Glenn Greenwald tries to sell me journalists of a white supremacist outlet as trustworthy and truthful is not really a good sign in my book.
So while I agree that the initial tweet by Patrick Tucker lead to a falsehood being spread on social media I just can't follow Glenn Greenwald's take of seeing this as a coordinated misinformation operation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Caller
Glenn is ok. What he describes is a real problem.
I still consider it disingenuous to hide Daily Caller journalists behind the label "conservative".
This is really, really common. If you want to laugh look at Glenn's tweets and replies sometime. He gets in there and aggressively defends himself from a never-ending string of false accusations ranging from ridiculous to heinous. I guess a lot of democrats shut their eyes because Trump was horrible and said things that were pretty nuts to "help." Now that the incredibly low bar of "better than Trump" is no longer interesting they're faced with having done it and don't like it when Glenn calls it out. He then gets a lot of hate. I've seen him accused of being a white supremisist, a libertarian shill, a homophobe, a Russian asset, an anti-semite. The convulsions people attempt to try and make something, anything stick is really quite mind boggling until you give up and just start laughing.
The caller are conservative. They have passing reference at best in that story and mostly to note they called it out because they're allowed in their corporate structure for partisan reasons (vonservative) rather from any commitment to truth. All the people mentioned who did back down on the claim and those who didn't he called out on Twitter on real time. It's a short report. It's nuts to have claimed it ever!
The media landscape is a lot worse than most people have noticed. Glenn is a welcome relief from that. Disagreeing with Glenn is good. Shouldn't make you feel bad because he argues from evidence and has integrity. Unless you're too partisan to see it and want him to be a scoreboard reinforcing 'my team is better' and give you warm fuzzies about it because he doesn't do that.
More power to Glenn. I know i don't have the stomach for what he puts up with on a daily basis.
Well, for me this this mislabeling makes me distrust the entire post so it does indeed change a lot.
> And you attacked Glenn by claiming he said things he didn't.
Which are?
Pretty sure this conv has gone past the point of being useful or entertaining to anyone so i wish you the best.
How did cf21 misrepresent Greenwald?
Greenwald has lost a great deal of credibility.
And now he's still harping on about it as if this supposed laptop is earth-shatteringly important news?
Mostly I feel sorry for Greenwald and how clearly unhinged he has become.
I mean, if you employer promised to do something important and then reneged, isn’t leaving a pretty reasonable thing to do?
Of course at that juncture, Greenwald was free to disagree with that and depart.
In Short Greenwald had full control about his opinion pieces. What he wanted and didn't get is no editorial intervention in a piece of factual reporting.
No half way sane media outlet would ever allow that.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...
From Greenwald's resignation blog post [1]:
> The latest and perhaps most egregious example is an *opinion column* I wrote this week which, five days before the presidential election, is critical of Joe Biden, the candidate who happens to be vigorously supported by all of the Intercept editors in New York who are imposing the censorship and refusing to publish the article unless I agree to remove all of the sections critical of the candidate they want to win.
Additionally, the emails he published between himself and the editors indicates specifically the claims they wanted him to remove, which did not include any factually inaccurate claims [2]:
> But your memo *doesn't identify a single factual inaccuracy*, let alone multiple ones. And that's why you don't and can't identify any such false claims. And that, in turn, is why your email repeatedly says that what makes the draft false is that it omits facts which -- as I just demonstrated -- the draft explicitly includes.
[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
[2] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXgO7L0rcAQ
Yes, Giuliani is a clown. Yes, the circumstances surrounding the laptop are suspicious, to say the least. But the laptop exists and has concerning emails of known provenance. And yet one "side" of the media continues to spread actual disinformation about it. For some reason you find that acceptable?
I mean, if Russian agents dropped the laptop off at Giuliani's office and said, "We broke into Hunter's hotel room and stole his laptop, check out his emails" that would be gross, and illegal. But if the contents demonstrated massive corruption, and were legitimate, I couldn't care less how the information was obtained.
I think this is a characteristics of the “conflict v. mistake theory” [0] where I’m already on a side, try to find an argument for or against and then make it even if it’s not reasonable.
Greenwald writes a lot. He’s written a few articles on the HunterBiden laptop story, but not like he writes every day.
I don’t think it’s unusual to write about this topic given everything else he writes on. Framing this as a “hill to die on” seems disingenuous and not really relevant to the article under discussion, or Greenwald in general.
I can understand arguing on the merits of the topic on whether it is or is not Russian propaganda, but bringing up how Greenwald shows a normal amount of interest seems odd. It seems the summary of OP’s comment is “Greenwald sucks and chooses bad topics.”
My reasoning on how to interpret this, and I may be wrong, is that the belief that Greenwald sucks existed before this article and this thread. And trying to find some reason to discuss the suckers, OP came up with the rhetorical doozy that he reports on this topic too frequently.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
If you remember three years ago the talking heads were chanting 'believe all women' in the middle of the Kavanaugh hearings despite the overwhelming lack of evidence. The double standard has to be addressed.
Greenwald has a lot of controversial views, but this isn't one of them. An objective press makes for a better society.
> Greenwald, a former lawyer who, in 2013, was one of the reporters for a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the Guardian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Security Agency, is a longtime critic, from the left, of centrist and liberal policymakers and pundits. During the past two years, he has further exiled himself from the mainstream American left by responding with skepticism and disdain to reports of Russian government interference in the 2016 Presidential election. On Twitter, where he has nearly a million followers, and at the Intercept, the news Web site that he co-founded five years ago, and as a frequent guest on “Democracy Now!,” the daily progressive radio and TV broadcast, Greenwald has argued that the available evidence concerning Russian activity has indicated nothing especially untoward;...
> ... Greenwald has tried to cut back on social media. “My No. 1 therapeutic goal is to reduce my Twitter usage,” he said...
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/glenn-greenwal...
I wonder if that might also be due to the previous president repeatedly referring to them as "the enemy of the people".
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/437610-trump-cal...
Like if I said "the current president of the United States 's family name is Bidden" then that's as false as "Santa Clause's middle name Elvis, is in tribute to his mother's favourite singer".
But you could argue that there's measures by which one is more true than the other.
In this case, these "lies" all seem to be vaguely within shouting distance of the truth, and his repetition of the accusation seems a bit lawyerly in its specificity. In fact, a fuzzy definition of "lie" could well suggest that his statements are further from the truth than the ones he's criticizing.
> Think about that: to a CNN reporter, evidence-free assertions from the U.S. security state are tantamount to “confirmation.” That they really do think this way is nothing short of chilling.
On the other hand, the laptop produced by Guliani (of which how he got it is weird) is taken as absolute gospel by Greenwald.
I mean, question both sides at least??
Graham notes upfront: "Remember that while the email is validated, the context isn't. It's possible this reflects a secret meeting to conspire with Vice President Biden. Or, it's possible the guy attended one of the many Washington D.C. social functions whereby people shake hands with politicians and exchange pleasantries. As Richelieu is claimed to have said 'Give me six words by the most honest of men and I'll find something to hang him by'. Give me an email dump from the most honest of persons, and I'll pull one out of context to hang them in the court of social media."
The rest of the world doesn't seem to agree, though. Right-leaning media proclaimed it was a smoking gun that would destroy Biden's candidacy. But Left-leaning media wasn't any better: to the extent it covered it at all, it was that the email was part of a sophisticated forgery and disinformation campaign by Russian state security services intended to cement Putin's dominance over the USA, with Twitter and most mainstream sources going so far as to ban sharing it.
That's a far cry from innocuous.
It could just as easily be interpreted as a thank you for a promise to meet Biden at some point in the future. Something that it seems likely Hunter was promising to a lot of people.
It was pretty apparent Hunter Biden was engaging in foreign lobbying work.
You can pay a lobbyist to influence politicians but paying a politician directly is bribery. The question is if giving money to a politician's son is bribery since they indirectly benefit.
Then there is also the allegation that Joe Biden was taking a percentage of Hunter Biden's lobbying fees ("10% to the big guy"). Which if true is Ron Blagojevich level of corruption.
If that were true, every politician's close relatives would have to stay in some kind of economic suspended animation while they serve in office. But other sensible measures, like prohibiting a President or his children from maintaining control of a global business empire while he is in office, are probably warranted in light of recent events.
There is no evidence that the "big guy" quote is genuine.
The key is money in exchange for political favors.
While I'm not going to comment if Joe Biden's situation fits the definition of criminal bribery, it is very similar to the situation with South Korean President Park Geun-hye who went to prison for 20 years for bribery related to policy decisions that were made in exchange gifts given to a close friend.
One of Hunter Biden's business partners -- the one the "big guy" email was sent to -- has come out that Joe Biden was directly involved in Hunter's business and taking money from it. He even shared emails and text messages that the Bidens told him the keep Joe's involvement a secret for obvious reasons.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/1671063/hunter-biden-texts-dont...
By sad, I mean pathetic.
They also lied repeatedly about it, including to Parliament, and generally engaged in all kinds of BS behaviour that would be fatal to people in the private sector - regulators and lawsuits would take down any company that tried those things - but because it's academia and climatology they just ignored the entire scandal and told the world to go fuck itself. And because the media have a massive blind spot for academics, everyone just sort of forgot about it and pretending it never happened.
In other words they were attacked for entirely justifiable reasons, by people who aren't even in politics to begin with.
There's a long retrospective on the Climategate emails here that goes into a lot of background and context, as well as the subsequent fallout. Suffice it to say, when even the Guardian admits the behaviour of these people was bad, it must be really, really bad.
https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climat...
What do you mean "taken as gospel"? The laptop exists, the source of the emails confirmed. Is any of it meaningful or evidence of corruption? Who knows.
Since no side disputes the authenticity of what's in the laptop, there's no reason for Greenwald to do so.
The one-sided burrying of the story from tech and media at the time though (and this new BS faux-reporting coming up now), would be hugely problematic if it wasn't standard practice by now...
For example, make the story about where the laptop came from, and avoid as much as possible the fact POTUS son has incriminating photos and videos (and more?) of himself in the hands of our foreign adversaries.
Hunter Biden had zero relevant experience to be a member of the board to a Ukrainian oil company during a conflict with Russia that had huge oil assets at risk. It seems obvious to me that they paid him to have access to his father (then VP to Obama).
The same was true when the Clinton Foundation received tens of millions in donations during the ramp-up to the Syrian civil war while Clinton was the Sec of State. Clinton emails released confirmed weekly meetings with the Saudi Foreign Minister at the same time. It seems obvious that the State Dept & CIA participation in arming rebel groups was facilitated through the conversations had.
...and I don't mean to pick on Democrats. John McCain was part of that effort. I'm sure if we look closely, we'll find a "core establishment" group that holds members of both parties.
...and, arguably, both cases above were in the interests of the US.
It's complicated. A world power with big adversaries cannot operate transparently, so I would not expect the public to be told everything. On the other hand, it would be reassuring if there were private mechanisms whereby this "deep-state club" self-regulates to ensure that these covert actions at least benefit the US, and do not simply enrich those politicians taking cash. ...or maybe that does exist in some form and we just are not aware?
That corruption exists on both sides - this is understood by pretty much everyone who isn't wildly partisan. That there is both legal (meaning that it does break specific laws but is instead privilege accessible by those in circles of power) and illegal corruption, likewise.
In the case of Hunter Biden, he is just reaping the benefits of being close to power. This isn't illegal - ex-presidents go on the talk circuit to tutor people in how to handle specific situations or to discuss events they have encountered. One would think that Hunter Biden would have received a masterclass in power politics through his father having been VP for 8 years. Her certainly would have met a lot of people over the years who could help him in the real world. This is not illegal, this is just one of the privileges of privilege.
Privilege is human nature. There is no mystery club - you are just either inside the tent or outside the tent. This does not mean we should not break it down, or tear it up, but it is also not illegal to hang out with people who are like you and who get you.
The problem with Greenwald's pieces are that he conflates this with obvious, illegal corruption. He claims it to be illegal - which is is not - and conflates it with actual corruption... but only on one side of politics. He seems to see himself as a maverick, a lone-wolf, but then whines that no one is there to support him, and all the legitimate papers decry or ignore him.
Greenwald is either unwell (and who isn't these days) or is trying to wedge himself into the role of the "reasonable" right-wing partisan. If it is the first, I hope he recovers, if the second, I hope he goes down in flames. The world needs fewer partisans.
>the world needs fewer partisans
No, but someone who invests so much anger in the idea that all journalists are corrupt because they do not buy into their fantasies of persecution and corruption is almost certainly either unwell or pretending to have an actual grievance.
It's like the Fox News, OAN, etc drama over the "poll observer" or the "Hunter Biden laptop" fiascos. The journalists wailed and moaned about how other press agencies were ignoring the stories, or dismissing them. This was all political theatre, in these cases, as none of them really seemed to believe the stories they were peddling and gave them up the moment that all political value was wrung out of them. Greenwald hasn't let these themes go - and he appears to hate the journalists who just won't buy into his fantasy.
Then the internet came and commoditised facts. New facts are disseminated immediately across social media. Open Google News and you can find thousands of articles covering the same event.
Suddenly, just reporting facts was no longer a viable business. Being a newspaper of record was no longer economically viable. Only the news media that shifted to reporting opinions, outrage, and entertainment survived.
NYT was fading into irrelevance up until mid-2016, it is now more relevant than ever: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NYT/
This resurgence was driven by a conscious shift to peddle tribal propaganda: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great...
>"Derkach, Kilimnick, and their associates sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences..."
Now, I don't know if any of this is true or not...
In fact, I don't know any of these people...
But that's not the point!
You see, as an amateur linguist (I know, "keep the day job!" <g>), I am always on the look out for new buzzwords, new catch phrases, new lingo...
Before this article (or more specifically, the quoted retweet), I had never seen the words "launder" and "narrative" used adjacently (or very close to adjacently), that is, "launder their narratives".
Phrasing those two concepts in language more succinctly, one gets:
"Narrative Laundering"
Which is my (linguistic!) takeaway from this article...
So, that term -- is going into my 2021 lexicon!
"Narrative Laundering"
(It sort of fits alongside such other words/terminology as "Fake News", "Making Mountains Out Of A Molehills", "Memory Hole", "De Minimis", "Much Ado About Nothing", "Revisionism", "Damnatio Memoriae", "Conflation", etc.)
"Media trust hits new low"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26508039
(I don't think that article itself is very good, but the HN discussion is interesting.)