A BAD WEEK FOR LIARS
and a good week for indy media -- and Tucker.
I’m recording an interview this morning but I wanted to alert you to something historic you should watch live if you can. Indy journos Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger will be addressing the House Judiciary Committee with some harsh words about censorship and government control of information. Here are the first few graphs of Taibbi’s remarks. 10:00 AM EST. Do not miss. I know it will give you all a lift!
Chairman Jordan, ranking member Plaskett, members of the Select Committee,
My name is Matt Taibbi. I’ve been a reporter for over 30 years, and an advocate for the First Amendment. Much of that time was spent at Rolling Stone magazine. Over my career, I’ve had the good fortune to be recognized for the work I love. I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for independent journalism, and written ten books, including four New York Times bestsellers. I’m now the editor of the online magazine Racket, on the independent platform Substack.
I’m here today because of a series of events that began late last year, when I received a note from a source online.
It read: “Are you interested in doing a deep dive into what censorship and manipulation… was going on at Twitter?”
A week later, the first of what became known as the “Twitter Files” reports came out. To say these attracted intense public interest would be an understatement. My computer looked like a slot machine as just the first tweet about the blockage of the Hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million impressions and 30 million engagements.
But it wasn’t until a week after the first report, after Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and other researchers joined the search of the “Files,” that we started to grasp the significance of this story.
The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere.
What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise, and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.
A bad week for liars is a good week for truth. Yesterday former CDC Director Robert Redfield UNDER OATH - essentially accused Tony Fauci of lying about the origins of the virus and taking part in a coverup. This is huge and exposes Fauci to possible criminal sanctions but it also reveals legacy media’s insipid public relations campaign for Fauci that began when the pandemic was declared.
Why hold the top medical bureaucrat accountable when you can turn him into a media star? This In Style cover will come back to haunt someone. Shameful.
Tucker Carlson’s release of the previously embargoed/hidden January 6th tapes was like a bomb going off in DC, causing panic and bedwetting in Georgetown and Kalorama. The most obvious lie is one we’ve been banging on about since Jan. 6. It concerns the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick — who collapsed from a stroke — after the protest/riot.
Officer Sicknick’s death is perhaps the most politicized since George Floyd. Story one was that he died from head injuries after being attacked by protesters with a fire extinguisher. After the medical examiner reported no head trauma — that he died of natural causes — the story changed to imply that somehow pepper spray was responsible. Even so, Democrats insisted on giving the officer all the trappings of a state funeral because it suited their narrative and made their nemesis, Donald Trump look terrible.
Capitol Police started a GoFundMe for the family propagating the same false narrative. He was injured while "physically engaging" with rioters, according to the Capitol police, and died after being taken to the hospital. The original campaign that raised 600 T dollars has disappeared from the net and I am not begrudging his grieving family the money — but facts matter.
And the story of dead Capitol Police officers grew and grew. Democratic House Leader Hakim Jeffries continued the false narrative when he said:
“As a result of the events on January sixth, the lives of five heroic officers were lost,” Jeffries claimed during the speech.
That often-repeated figure classifies Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick's stroke on Jan. 6 and death the following day as a death related to the riot; the D.C. medical examiner ruled Sicknick's death was from natural causes, though the examiner cryptically alluded to the Washington Post that "all that transpired" at the Capitol "played a role" in his death.
Four other police officers who responded to the riot—Capitol Police officer Charles Liebengood and Metropolitan police officers Jeffrey Smith, Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida—died by suicide in the months following the incident.
Tucker’s reporting on the so-called Q-Anon Shaman suggests exculpatory evidence was withheld from his defense counsel — and I think this is perhaps a Brady violation. Could he now pursue a wrongful conviction - despite the (likely coerced) guilty plea?
Narratives are crumbling. Oh, what a week to be alive!
Here’s a fun kicker.
Stay critical.
It was not a revelation to me, in that I already had my own preconcieved ideas of the above mentioned lies and those who told them, continue to tell them, and still manage to stay standing. I also believe that our unethical Prime Minister and his "story tellers", shall be facing the same end as those who perpetrated these grand scaled misinformation and disinformation campaigns on American citisens. The January Sixth Committee and Trudeau's rendition of the Truckers Protest and Commission are eerily similar. Same "storytelling" by the usual suspects, as they attempted to hoodwink Canadian's who were easily influenced by bad actors, narcisists, compliant ideological bureaucrats with an agenda, and their paid media propogandists. Thanks for speaking loudly Trish and being a voice for those who are screaming at the top of thier lungs but are muffled by all the disingenuous, delinquint, ideologues, politicians, bureaucrats, and their corrupt propogandists. To think that all the same bad actors in Canada will have control of what is deemed "truth," is frightening beyond belief.
The problem is that most people go about their lives not caring about any of this because they are not directly affected by it. Yet. I just pray that there will some retribution for these crimes at some point.