The press, Big Tech, and the intelligence services cannot be shamed into greater honesty, so complaining about them is useless

NOTE:

This was the best article I read in the past 24 hours ... after I edited it down to a reasonable length, and used a different title -- a quote from the article's conclusion.

Ye Editor

FULL  ARTICLE  HERE:
https://www.revolver.news/2022/03/russian-disinformation-canard-and-the-hunter-biden-laptop/

Carefully  Selected  Quotes
Ye Editor

"Rookie reporters at most outlets are taught to use the “inverted pyramid” model to write their stories:

Open with the central conclusion of the story first, then give the most important evidence and details first, and finally deliver more general information and background at the bottom.

But for the “reporters” at The New York Times, a very different model prevails. If one wants to get the most important information from a Times piece, it behooves oneself to start at the bottom and read up.

Holocaust survivor got butchered in the streets of Paris?

The Times won’t mention a migrant was responsible until the 12th paragraph.

Democratic lawmaker is accusing a random citizen of racism?

Bury her admission.

And so it was on Wednesday, when near the end of a 1,700-word article on Hunter Biden’s possible legal troubles, the Times admitted what all honest reporters have known for a year and a half:

The contents of the Hunter Biden laptop are real, and the press simply ignored it for political reasons:

    "People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity.

Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop.

The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation."

That the Times finally came out to awkwardly admit the truth almost a year and a half later points toward a very obvious conclusion:

Things might very soon become even more embarrassing for Hunter Biden, and the Times‘s editors have decided they cannot credibly remain silent until the hammer drops.

The Times’s controlled admission also allows them to try and keep public focus on relatively boring matters of tax payments and FARA compliance,

rather than other salacious and still-relevant parts of the laptop, such as Hunter apparently buying prostitutes with his father’s credit card.

Still, the Times’ admission is good news.

But this belated shift cannot for one moment be treated as improving or restoring the Times’ credibility.

Americans will remember, for all time, how totally and completely the press lied in order to throw the 2020 election to Joe Biden by any means necessary.

There is another lesson that must be learned as well:

That “Russian disinformation” has displaced “white supremacy” and even “racism” as the elite’s preferred vehicle for mass censorship.

... The media’s claims about being unable to “verifying the authenticity” of the emails was always a lie, as Glenn Greenwald chronicled on Rumble last year:

... CNN’s suppression of the Biden laptop was so aggressive that hosts would intervene if guests attempted to even mention it ...

... Taxpayer-funded NPR repulsively dispatched its public editor to write a smug explanation for why the prole masses should not hear about the story:

... Of course, NPR once famously dedicated a lengthy segment to the problem of racist bird names.

And so it unfolded that American journalists, as a class, boasted that they would not cover the story, and nobody could make them.

Instead of pursuing the truth, they became the defenders and celebrators of silence and censorship.

... The most brazen media effort to attack the laptop’s legitimacy, though, came from Politico, which published and promoted a letter signed by more than fifty “former senior intelligence officials”

claiming the Biden laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

All of these intelligence officials had to admit they had no evidence at all that the emails were fake.

But that didn’t stop them from boldly asserting it as fact, based on the “earmarks” of the story.

... Signatories to the letter included James Clapper
(who lied about NSA spying)

and John Brennan
(who lied about US drone casualties).

Another signatory, Marc Polymeropoulos, has distinguished himself as a militant believer in and evangelist of Havana Syndrome.

Unsurprisingly, the same man who blamed his personal health problems on Russian microwave beams was also easily convinced that unwelcome political developments at home were a Russian plot.

... The New York Post glumly noted that so far, none of the shameless hoaxers have been held to account:

    No one actually proved The Post’s reporting was wrong.

Media outlets showed up at the doorstep of the computer repairman who had gotten the laptop, and he confirmed it.

People who exchanged e-mails with Hunter Biden attested to their accuracy in the days and weeks that followed.

    Only after the election was safely over did Hunter tacitly admit the laptop was his.

Last year, a Politico reporter confirmed that the laptop’s materials were real.

And now, the coup de grace: The Times said it’s “authenticated” material from the laptop.

    There have been no consequences.

Twitter and Facebook still censor information based on political bias, and Congress takes no action.

Many of the letter signers continue to be used as “experts” by the media.

Clapper, for instance, spent years on CNN calling Donald Trump a “Russian asset,” a lie invented and fed by political operatives of Hillary Clinton.

He’s still there.

Guess accuracy is not a condition of employment.

The Post Editorial Board reports that they contacted the letter’s signatories, and the vast majority didn’t even bother to respond.

Only two, James Clapper and National Counterterrorism Center acting director Russ Travers, so much as acknowledged the letter’s claims had been disproven.

None apologized.

... In the past, the globalist political establishment used terms like “racist” and “white supremacist” as their most powerful levers for shutting down and de-platforming opposition.

But since the 2016 election, the “Russian disinformation” label has slowly supplanted “Nazi” accusations, and the like, to become the elite’s favorite censorship predicate du jour.

Accusations of “Russian disinformation are quite useful to nullify any figures and narratives that dare to oppose the Deep Security State.

“Russian disinformation” is a different, and more powerful, crimestop term of art in comparison with worn-out and discredited labels like “racist”, “sexist”, “xenophobe”, and the like.

That’s because this accusation magically turns political speech the ruling class doesn’t like into a national security issue.

And once something is cloaked in the language of “national security,” the discussion is over.

There can be no debate, and “national security” requires immediate and sweeping action.

It also opens up harsher penalties to intimidate the enemy with.

For the time being, “racist” speech is still protected from direct government censorship.

But promoting “Russian policies and ideology”?

... The very term “Russian disinformation” has become a crucial tool of psychological warfare.

It has become the media/free speech element to a wider deep state war against “deplorables” and America First conservatives more generally.

...  right now, in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it (Russian disinformation. Ye Editor) is as strong as ever.

... The “Russian disinformation” canard has never been about stopping foreign threats.

It has always been about protecting our corrupt power elite from the justified anger of the American people.

... (1) The intelligence services have entirely forfeited any and all public trust on this topic.

At this very moment, hundreds of Republican lawmakers, pundits, and D.C. creatures are being herded like cattle into supporting greater censorship of Russia, China, or anyone “supporting” them.

This is a grievous blunder.

Indeed, lower-level establishment flunkies and stooges will only have themselves to blame when these new powers are turned back against them.

Of course, the ability to wield these tools like a weapon over a cowed populace is exactly the real purpose of expanding such powers in the first place.

... (2) In hindsight, it was clearly a mistake for Rudy Giuliani to try and carefully release the laptop’s contents through press outlets.

The story trickled out too slowly, and it was too easy for the press and Big Tech to unite in simply shutting out the New York Post entirely.

If the laptop’s entire contents had simply been uploaded online for anybody to read, a la Wikileaks, suppressing the story would have been much harder, verging on impossible.

    (3) Defund the intelligence state.
America’s intelligence agencies have essentially gone rogue.

They spied on the Trump campaign in 2016 and sabotaged President Trump internally from 2017 onward.

They constantly deliver preposterous lies in the guise of “expertise”, which is then used to justify mass censorship and the stripping of Americans’ rights.

Oh, and they’re the same group behind warrantless espionage and the Iraq War and so much else.

The intelligence agencies have become one of the chief impediments to American liberty, and they have declared American nationalists, populists, and conservatives a de facto enemy class.

Breaking the power of these agencies should be the primary political goal of all decent Americans in the years to come.

A good blueprint for a future Republican presidency?

Declassify everything, so agencies can no longer conceal their blunders, lies, and outright crimes under the cloak of “national security.”

The key point is this:

The press, Big Tech, and the intelligence services cannot be shamed into greater honesty.

They have no shame whatsoever, so complaining about them and crying flagging hypocrisy is useless.

Pointing and sputtering about their lies two years later only gives them the power trip of appreciating how successful the lies were.

So don’t just point and sputter:

Do better, and build an America where the perpetrators of these lies get the treatment and attention they deserve."