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Anthony Blinken Raises The Pucker Factor On Dissent: Taibbi
Anthony Blinken Raises The Pucker Factor On Dissent: Taibbi
After publishing “On John Lennon’s Birthday, a Few Words About War” last night, old friend and former Moscow Times editor Matt Bivens* and I discovered we’d written on the same topic.
You can find Matt’s excellent essay here.
He notes a big thing I missed. A series of ominous statements was buried in Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent joint press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, trumpeting the “tremendous opportunity” the Nord Stream blasts afforded to remove “the dependence on Russian energy.”
A few public figures questioned those comments, but Blinken said something else that was worse. The relevant passage:
I also made clear that when Russia made this move, the United States and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe costs on individuals and entities – inside and outside of Russia – that provide political or economic support to illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory…
We will hold to account any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support for President Putin’s illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory. In support of this commitment, the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce are releasing new guidance on heightened sanctions and export control risks for entities and individuals inside and outside of Russia that support in any way the Kremlin’s sham referenda, purported annexation, and occupation of parts of Ukraine.
There’s no way to know what a State Department official might believe meets the definitions of “political support,” support “in any way,” the “Kremlin’s sham referenda,” or any of a half-dozen phrases in that passage. This is why the negative precedent of government watch lists after the PATRIOT Act was important…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Activism Uncensored: The Freedom Convoy
Activism Uncensored: The Freedom Convoy
Fringe Minority, Eh? TK Partners News2Share take a balanced look at the Canadian protests
In the above video, TK Partners News2Share do a fantastic job of doing what the conventional press mostly hasn’t done with the “Freedom Convoy” story, asking the right questions about who’s participating, what their concerns are, and how the event is being received on the ground.
As Ford Fischer demonstrates in his narration, the protesters are a mix of people who see themselves as politically liberal, and politically conservative. There are some whose objections seem to be purely about mandates. “I’m double-vaccinated,” says one speaker. “To think… I will show my papers to buy a sandwich? Hell, no!”
For others, the issue is the vaccine itself:
“They said, ‘Get your booster…’ If it doesn’t work once, it doesn’t work twice, maybe it’ll work the third time. You know who does that? Gamblers. People who play blackjack!”
The scenes outside the Super Bowl, meanwhile, look quite different. Although trucker protests have gathered steam in too many countries around the world to count by now, the U.S. version has so far failed to produce the large numbers Canadians have seen. The News2Share footage also shows a crowd that looks and sounds different from the ones in Ottawa.
Stories like the Freedom Convoy are exactly why we like the idea of having Ford and his shooters just let the cameras run for a while at heavily covered events. The idea is to let audiences watch longer pieces of footage with minimal contextualization, so they may draw their own conclusions. Hopefully, News2Share’s pictures from Ottawa and L.A. shed some light.
An earlier version of this story contained an extraneous quote at the bottom of the page. TK apologizes to readers, and to News2Share, for the error.
The Great International Convoy Fiasco
The Great International Convoy Fiasco
As America puts the Canadian Prime Minister’s unmentionables in a vice over a truck protest, it’s clearer than ever: the world’s leaders have forgotten how to govern
The White House issued a statement Friday, after Joe Biden chatted with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:
The two leaders agreed that the actions of the individuals who are obstructing travel and commerce between our two countries are having significant direct impacts on citizens’ lives and livelihoods… The Prime Minister promised quick action in enforcing the law, and the President thanked him for the steps he and other Canadian authorities are taking to restore the open passage of bridges to the United States.
Translation: Biden told Trudeau his testicles will be crushed under a Bradley Fighting Vehicle if this trucker thing is allowed to screw up the Super Bowl, or Biden’s State of the Union address. Trudeau’s own statement that day came off like the recorded video message of a downed pilot:
I’ve been absolutely clear that using military forces against civilian populations, in Canada, or in any other democracy, is something to avoid having to do at all costs.
An anxious Trudeau promised to deploy law enforcement in a “predictable, progressive approach” that would emphasize fines and other punishments. Because demonstrators will see that the “consequences” for those continuing to engage in “illegal protests” are “going to be more and more extensive,” he said, “we are very hopeful” that “people will choose to leave these protests peacefully.”
Switching gears just a bit, he then added, “We are a long way from ever having to call in the military.”
Such a move, he said, would only be a “last resort.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
We Need a New Media System
We Need a New Media System
If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences
The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.
Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.
It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.
What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.
News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
