Glenn Greenwald

Thursday

Jack Hunter

How did free speech become a right-wing value?

In early May, I explored the left’s reaction to billionaire Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter and his vow to make it a free speech platform again. Since then, Musk and his vision have repeatedly been portrayed as “right-wing.” It’s the damndest thing. Canadian Conservative politician Andrew Scheer picked up on this strange phenomenon back in April, saying that that the corporate media framing free speech as a “right wing value” was just plain weird. As though to drive home the point, Twitch’s Zachary Ryan called Musk a right-winger on Monday. And over the weekend, entrepreneur Samir Tabar had a question for a whiny Robert Reich: https://twitter.com/SamirTabar/status/1601984560345907200 Answer: since, well, now. The evolution of this trend is not new.

free speech

Sunday

James Kirchick

Why Glenn Greenwald backs Putin

Few things are sure in life: death, taxes and Glenn Greenwald advocating whatever position happens to be in the interests of Vladimir Putin. The self-styled civil libertarian rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration for his withering attacks on American counterterrorism policies. Later, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his role in facilitating Edward Snowden’s leak of government documents. Always a rancorous figure who bristled at attempts to place him in a partisan box, Greenwald started to upset his confederates on the left and develop a fan base on the right during the Trump years. Greenwald was one of the most vocal critics of the narrative positing that the new American president was a pawn of the Russian one.

Greenwald

Thursday

Phillip Nieto

Glenn Greenwald: America First conservatives shouldn’t support unrest in Cuba

Glenn Greenwald wants right-wing populists to understand that the CIA is not their friend. On Sunday thousands of Cubans swarmed the streets of Havana amid ongoing blackouts, food shortages and rising prices. Increasing COVID infections have strained the island's healthcare system and put medical care at a standstill. The protests are the largest of their kind in over a decade. In turn, the government began a crackdown. More than 100 activists and journalists are reportedly in custody. One male protester was shot in his home on Wednesday during a police raid. Facebook and Twitter played a crucial role in allowing the rest of the world to witness the unrest — so of course the Cuban government has banned those platforms in the last 72 hours.

greenwald

Thursday

Grace Curley

Do you truly believe Joe Biden is in his right mind?

Liberal journalists and politicos are obsessed with the truth. The truth, besides Donald J. Trump and Fox News, is their favorite topic. In October, former Clinton administration secretary of labor Robert Reich called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help name every person ‘whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe’. In February, New York Times columnist Kevin Roose suggested President Biden appoint a ‘reality czar’. Speaking of Biden, during a campaign stop in 2020, Joe told a crowd in Iowa that ‘we choose truth over facts’. After the speech, MSNBC informed their readers that Trump supporters were pouncing on Biden’s ‘harmless mistake’.

right mind biden

Thursday

Cockburn

Long live the Riot Squad

Spare a thought for the joyless malcontents over at the Intercept, a website that once proudly defended journalists and fought government interference in the everyday lives of American citizens. Now the Intercept gleefully smears reporters who have dared to cover the protests-cum-riots of the past few years. The site's senior writer Robert Mackey and video producer Travis Mannion bothered to make a 25-minute-long video scrutinizing the coverage of 'the Riot Squad', a group of young journalists and videographers who film the violent aftermath of Black Lives Matter and antifa protests — among other riots. Some of these young reporters are, gasp, conservatives. Cockburn couldn't be bothered to watch the whole mini-documentary (seriously, must everything be a video these days?

riot squad intercept

Saturday

Ben Sixsmith

Substack attack

The online platform Substack has attracted thousands of writers seeking an independent home for their ramblings in the past year. Finding a freelance writer without a Substack account is like finding a businessman who does not know the meaning of the word ‘LinkedIn’. On Substack, you can publish your writing for free or offer readers exclusive essays and podcasts in exchange for paid subscriptions. Substack has also offered sizable advances to some notable writers to tempt them to the platform. (To declare an interest, I have a Substack but I have not been paid directly by the company. If Substack felt so inclined, I take cash, check or bank transfer...

substack

Friday

Charles Lipson

The American media is failing you

American journalism has lost its bearings, and we are all paying the price. For the past four years, egged on by President Trump, mainstream news swiftly descended past the first circle of hell — subtle partisanship — and reached a far darker, hotter one: blatant favoritism, stories killed for purely partisan reasons and occasional propaganda masquerading as solid news.Journalism’s decline mirrors that of other American institutions, but it has compounded the social damage. A thriving democracy depends on free and open debate and informed debate depends on trustworthy news. For most Americans, that trust has evaporated.The Washington Post is exactly right when it says, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.

media

Monday

Dominic Green

Trump is right to brand the IRGC terrorists

Donald Trump is a master of the obvious. This is why his foreign policy keeps surprising the status quo powers of American politics: the media, the bureaucrats, and the elected officials. Today, these wise monkeys are reeling at the news that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is a ‘foreign terrorist group’, and that the IRGC ‘actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft’. Here’s something else that’s obvious. Since 9/11, the United States has staggered from one fiasco to another in the Middle East: the invasion of Iraq, the endorsement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the trashing of Libya, the incoherent response to the Syrian civil war, the humiliation of an effort to get out of the region through the ‘Iran Deal’.

irgc