CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—This is just one more item on the ever-growing mountain of evidence that these giant, immensely influential social media platforms we’ve all been herded into are nothing other than state propaganda for the digital age. True, they operate in a way which disregards the official lines that are drawn between government power and corporate power and the lines that are drawn between nations, but then, so do our rulers. We are living in a globe-spanning corporate oligarchic empire, and these government-aligned Silicon Valley giants are a major part of that empire’s propaganda engine.
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CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Establishment loyalists write smear pieces about me because they can’t get me fired since I’m crowd-funded and can’t get me deplatformed since I don’t have any platform beyond blogging and social media. Their only shot, then, is to circulate material making the general public suspicious of me so that nobody will read what I write. That doesn’t really work either, though; the most prominent lefty outlet in America spent all of last July throwing smear pieces at me and it didn’t even slow me down. My leftist haters are out of ammo, and my centrist and right-wing haters only help me.
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GODFREE ROBERTS—Thanks to some modifications to NSLs by the USA Freedom Act, we’re finally seeing recipients posting NSLs they’ve received. NSLs used to come with “forever” gag orders, preventing recipients from discussing them, much less posting the documents themselves. The new law, along with a decision from the DC Circuit Court, requires the FBI to periodically review its NSLs and decide whether the gag orders are still justified.
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CHRIS HEDGES—Impeachment is about cosmetics. It is about replacing the public face of empire with a political mandarin such as Joe Biden, himself steeped in corruption and obsequious service to the rich and corporate power, who will carry out the same suicidal policies with appropriate regal decorum…
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PEPE ESCOBAR—The opposition sees the internal Saudi dynamics as MBS being Trump’s man in Riyadh – because of the oil angle – while the CIA, like Khashoggi, would rather deal with a constitutional monarchy and have its own asset in command. Total instability reigns. The only certainty is that the Houthi movement’s increasingly sophisticated offensive will continue to be deployed inside Saudi Arabia, unless MBS shelves his vicious war. Otherwise, he’d better start booking a one-way ticket to London.
