Democrats Threaten Journalists With Prison
“PLUS: Twitter Sneetches :: Blinken, Conspiracy Theorist :: Golden Age Of Substack” MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER AND LEIGHTON WOODHOUSE
Democrats Threaten Journalists With Prison
PLUS: Twitter Sneetches :: Blinken, Conspiracy Theorist :: Golden Age Of Substack
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER AND LEIGHTON WOODHOUSE
APR 21, 2023
Democrats Threaten Journalists
Last month, Matt Taibbi and I testified to Congress about the existence of a Censorship Industrial Complex.
The night before, the US government’s Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to Twitter owner Elon Musk demanding that he “identify all journalists” involved in reporting on the Twitter Files.
Then, at the very moment that members of Congress were accusing us of being fake journalists, an IRS agent visited Matt’s home. They still haven’t explained why.
Happily, the attacks backfired. The members of Congress went too far. And their deliberate or accidental use of sexual innuendos made them a laughingstock on social media.
But it turns out that they weren’t done.
Two weeks ago, a whistleblower told me that the censorship industry would soon retaliate. It turned out that, at that very moment, MSNBC host Medhi Hasan was berating Taibbi on air. Shortly after, Hasan and many others in the mainstream news media falsely claimed they had debunked the Twitter Files.
Now, the same member of Congress who called us “so-called journalists” is threatening Taibbi with prison time for supposedly lying to Congress. Rep. Stacey Plasket sent Matt a letter that recycles the false MSNBC allegations and ends by saying he could face “five years imprisonment.”
Never in my life have I seen members of Congress threaten an expert witness with prison time. All of us who give expert testimony do so on our own time without even our travel costs covered. We do so because we consider it a patriotic duty. To threaten a witness with prison is grossly inappropriate. Why would anyone agree to testify in the future if they are to face treatment like that?
For the record, Matt’s statements were accurate. A small error was made in a tweet, not his testimony. And as soon as Matt learned of it, he corrected it, as all ethical journalists do.
Lee Fang, formerly of the Intercept and now writing at Substack, has thoroughly debunked MSNBC’s claims, and last night Taibbi documented that his testimony was correct.
Moreover, Fang discovered that Hasan has repeatedly engaged in dis- and misinformation, including plagiarism.
The bottom line is this: the Twitter Files blew the lid off the Censorship Industrial Complex, and its leaders are retaliating not just to scare us off, but to scare other journalists.
But here’s the thing: they don’t scare us, they energize us.
We are undertaking a major effort to expose the connections between the Censorhip Industrial Complex and the military and intelligence communities in the so-called Five Eyes nations of the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. We are building a team to turn the table on the would-be totalitarians.
We can’t do this alone. If you know something, say something. You may work in the government, or for a think tank or university, working on so-called mis and disinformation. We need to hear from you. We will protect all confidences. michaelshellenberger@proton.me
When Matt and I testified to Congress about the existence of the Censorship Industrial Complex, we were just getting started. We won’t rest until we dismantle it and bury its parts underground.
—Michael
Blinken the Conspiracy Theorist
Try as they might, the White House and the stenographers in the news media are struggling to keep the president’s son out of the news.
On Wednesday, an IRS whistleblower, through his lawyer, said that the IRS was giving special treatment to Hunter Biden. The whistleblower is “a career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation,” said the man’s attorney. “The protected disclosures… contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee… and… detail examples of preferential treatment and politics…” Yikes.
Then, yesterday, the House Committee on the Weaponization of Government released a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, citing recent testimony given by former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell. According to Morell, on or around October 17, 2020, Blinken, then working for the Biden campaign, contacted Morrell to discuss the New York Post’s October 14, 2020, Hunter Biden laptop story. Shortly after, Morell helped create a letter from 51 former CIA and other Intelligence Community officials suggesting the laptop was a result of “Russian disinformation.”
It was a wild conspiracy theory. The New York Post had published the FBI subpoena, proving it had confiscated the laptop in December 2019. It also published the computer repair store receipt signed by Hunter Biden. The obvious reality was that an intoxicated Biden had dropped the laptops (there were two in total) in his bathtub. But the IC treated the truth like a conspiracy theory and proposed that its own wild conspiracy theory — that the Russians had hacked the laptop — was the truth.
Sound familiar? It should. The NIH’s Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins did the exact same thing when they depicted a coronavirus lab leak as a conspiracy theory.
The walls appear to be closing in on Hunter Biden. Congress has been pounding away on him and it’s just getting started. The only thing he had going for him was the FBI and press. And now he appears to be losing the press.
Sneetch Snobs Against Twitter Blue
A 1961 Dr. Seuss story opens with a feud: some of the Sneetches, which are big yellow birds, have green stars on their bellies, while others don’t. The ones with the stars are snobs. They ostracize the Sneetches that don’t have them.
And so somebody builds a machine to stick them on the bellies of Sneetches, and makes a fortune.
But as soon as the deplorables get the green stars, the snobs don’t want them anymore, and turn around and pay the inventor to take them off — for a price of $10.
The exact same plot is now playing out on Twitter. Yesterday, Twitter started removing blue “verified” check marks from the previously verified people who refused to pay Elon Musk the $8 per month verification they require.
Ostensibly, the former Twitter verified (star-bellied Sneetches) elites are refusing to pay because they don’t think they should have to pay for something that was free. LeBron James, Steven King, and William Shatner all publicly complained.
And so Elon Musk called their bluff by offering to personally pay for the continued verification of Shatner, King, and James, as though the issue for the richest actors, authors, and athletes in the world was that they couldn’t afford $8 a month.
What’s clear is that the elites don’t believe they should share the same visible status as ordinary, non-famous Twitter users.
They should peek inside the Sneetches, which Dr. Seuss made clear was an attack on prejudice. At the end of the story, the Sneetches reflected on the folly of their snobbery and began to see each other as their equals, no matter what symbol was attached to them.
Golden Age Of Substack
Martin Gurri is back with another terrific piece on the news media’s failings. He opens by noting its studious ignoring of the Twitter Files. “Elite media reacted to the Twitter Files by pretending nothing had happened,” writes Gurri. “It was as if Woodward and Bernstein had told Deep Throat, ‘You’re just peddling a debunked conspiracy theory.’”
We were happy to receive a shout-out: “Shellenberger and Woodhouse broke the news that a 14-year-old orphan girl continued to be ‘sex trafficked’ by the MS-13 gang in San Francisco despite a warrant for her rescue issued by Child Protective Services. Their old-style investigative report, though at first ignored, eventually shamed the police into action. After months of languishing in virtual bondage, the girl was taken from her captors and placed in the care of social workers.”
Gurri has a way with words: “The effect of the digital age has been like that of the meteor that struck Earth during the age of the dinosaurs. And this is the source of the panic of the elites and of the corruption of journalism. Ancient organisms, maladapted to the harsh new environment, are going extinct.….The wounded news media is now condemned to parrot its master’s voice, but the public knows another side of the story.”
Gurri, a former CIA media analyst, proves that ex-IC officials can be aides to, rather than enemies of, freedom and democracy.