XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.misc, comp.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics   
   From: d@ray   
      
   "System Update" journalist Glenn Greenwald and "Racket News" founder Matt   
   Taibbi discuss what we can learn from this New York Times piece: How   
   Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation   
      
   GLENN GREENWALD: This is the New York Times telling their readers that the   
   only thing the government is doing is trying to keep everybody safe from   
   Donald Trump's lies and from disinformation that's designed to help Donald   
   Trump. And this is why they think that if you stand up and say, "You know   
   what? On free speech grounds, I don't want the government controlling   
   online speech. I don't want the government dictating what is and is not   
   disinformation."   
      
   This is why they think you're on the right because they believe that the   
   only people who would believe in free speech at this point are people on   
   the right because the censorship is designed to protect the country from   
   right-wing extremism. I mean, do you see how clear it is when they frame it   
   this way?   
      
   MATT TAIBBI: Absolutely. And notice how many things they gloss over in just   
   that little passage, like the fact that they presented this entire program   
   as an effort against foreign misinformation and disinformation and sort of   
   on the fly converted it to allowing the State Department for whatever   
   reason to be involved in combating domestic misinformation and   
   disinformation.   
      
   But leaving all that aside, you're absolutely right. They frame this as   
   being about Trump, being about things like Sharpie Gate, whereas in fact,   
   it's a whole galaxy of topics that most of them, most of which have nothing   
   to do with Donald Trump.   
      
   A lot of them are just sort of broad switch from basically from what one   
   source of mine called "CT to CP" counterterrorism to counter-populism.   
      
   It's just the government going out stories that run counter to official   
   narratives and they just don't like that idea.   
      
   A great example is again in this case, you had Dr. Jay Bhattacharya... I   
   know Jay and Jay is more interested in board games than politics. He's the   
   farthest thing from a Trumpist than you could possibly imagine.   
      
   But if you remember early in the pandemic, Glenn, the WHO put out this   
   terrifying press release in March saying that they were estimating the   
   infection mortality rate to be 3.4%, which is an enormous number. I mean we   
   were looking at a specter of millions of deaths, possibly even that in that   
   year.   
      
   So Dr. Bhattacharya had conducted an experiment in Santa Clara County that   
   found that they had overstated that number by roughly a factor of 22. That   
   the real infection mortality rate was closer to 0.015 which was exactly   
   matched the numbers that came out of the cruise ship on the Diamond   
   Princess.   
      
   He also found that the disease was far more infectious than the government   
   was letting on, which meant that interventions like masking and lockdowns   
   were not likely to be effective, not because of any ideological reason, but   
   just because they wouldn't work, the disease is gonna be, people are gonna   
   get it anyway.   
      
   So they suppressed this true information because they were advancing this   
   other idea that this was the most terrifying thing in history, and they   
   stood behind it for a year and a half, and suppressed doctors who had an   
   opposing view, that they later conceded was correct.   
      
   Now, that's, that's why we have the First Amendment.   
      
   We have the First Amendment to prevent the government from creating a   
   hegemonic opinion that no one can challenge.   
      
   It was a misuse and overlooked exactly as the constitutional framers feared   
   in this case. And that is what is so terrifying about the situation.   
      
   GLENN GREENWALD: The thing that is so important in what you just said that   
   I just have to draw out and emphasize is it is not confined to one issue.   
      
   It's not like this was done as an emergency against election questioning of   
   2020 because of the "insurrection."   
      
   It wasn't done as an emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.   
      
   It is a framework that is being used in every major political debate. We've   
   seen the same kinds of censorship on the same basis when it comes to the   
   war in Ukraine, where people were constantly being censored because they   
   were challenging the NATO narrative about Ukraine.   
      
   Rumble is not available in France because France demanded that Rumble   
   remove RT and other Russian state media as a condition to remaining in   
   France.   
      
   And when Rumble said we're not going to remove Russian state media because   
   if people want to hear it, they should be able to, now Rumble as   
   unavailable in France.   
      
   This is a precedent that they have created. And of course, after October   
   7th, it has been applied to Israel as well. The first case, the EU brought   
   under their new censorship law to claim that X is violating EU law by   
   allowing to this information is based on an allegation that Elon Musk and   
   Twitter did not censor enough anti-Israel content and therefore became   
   guilty under the law.   
      
   It is a framework that is going to be applied to every major political   
   debate, which is what the purpose of censorship precedents are.   
      
      
      
      
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)