FALSE DEMOCRACY

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has fully embraced the demand by the US intelligence agencies that technology monopolies censor political speech on the internet. At a hearing Wednesday at the House Financial Services Committee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to “take down lies.” “So you won’t take down lies or you will take down lies, it’s just a pretty simple yes or no?” Ocasio-Cortez demanded.

ERIC ZUESSE—What else can we call it when a publisher does what the New York Times did when it published the Pentagon Papers and was ruled by the Supreme Court in 1971 (New York Times Co. v. United States) to have been protected by the First Amendment, but the publisher this time has been kept for years in various types of imprisonment without trial, and by now has been so destroyed that, in this, his first court appearance to defend himself, he seems to have been drugged, but for whatever reason “When asked to give his name and date of birth, he struggled visibly over several seconds to recall both.” “It was a real struggle for him to articulate the words and focus his train of thought.” The event occurred on October 21st.

NORMAN SOLOMON—After many years of carefully refusing to launch a single campaign in support of brave whistleblowers who faced vicious prosecution during the Obama administration — including Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden, and CIA whistleblowers John Kiriakou and Jeffrey Sterling — MoveOn.org has just cherrypicked a whistleblowing hero it can support. [Well you guessed it, they picked a whistleblower who is no whistleblower, but a CIA agent helping to launch a coup against Trump.—Ed)

BILL WILLERS—Stephen Colbert has become another animal altogether. The introductory monologue has [been] more or less obligatory for nighttime talk show hosts since the middle of the last Century. In Colbert’s tenure, the monologue has long since morphed into what is arguably the Democratic Party’s most powerful and persuasive voice — and, conversely, one of loudest and most effective anti-Trump forces on daily TV.

ERIC ZUESSE—One of the reasons why the U.N. has failed is that it has never clearly defined even the most dangerous international crime, “international aggression” (the invasion by one country against another country that had never invaded nor seriously threatened it), much less established penalties for it. The Nuremberg Tribunals after WW II were supposed to start the process, but the effort just faded soon thereafter (under Truman).