Andy NGO Discusses ANTIFA, Including Media Coverage

Earlier this month, independent journalist Andy Ngo gave a talks at Hillsdale College. I saw images and videos I hadn't before seen, including massive disruption and violence in downtown Portland, Oregon. Until I saw this, I only had a vague notion of the goals and history of ANTIFA. Ngo's account is the only detailed account I have heard, so I won't pretend that anyone should stop their research after watching this one presentation.

That said, Ngo's account of ANTIFA provided considerable detailed information I had not heard before, even though I had often heard the term ANTIFA. Mostly, I had heard the term ANTIFA as part of a dispute of whether the group even exists. Ngo showed the audience these headlines:

My reason for sharing this video is twofold. Andy Ngo presents detailed information about an ideology (Ngo explains it is not one cohesive group) about which I hadn't before heard detailed information.

Much more interesting and concerning to me is the legacy media's almost total shutdown of selected events. I invite you to visit NPR/NYT/WP and word search for the terms "ANTIFA," "Portland" or "riot" and compare the threadbare on-the-ground news coverage of what happened on the streets with the vast and intense news coverage you will see for "Capitol Riot." I was disturbed by both of these incidents. I see them both as attacks on my government. These were both attempts to invoke a feeling of chaos and loss of confidence in the social order. In Portland, I see a federal courthouse under attack, night after night, forcing police into a defensive shell, hopelessly waiting it out. As I watch these videos and photos it repeatedly occurs to me that Courthouse are where our Civil Rights Laws are often enforced, where people abused by government action find a remedy. Yet the images show repeated attempts to damage or destroy it. The attacks on Portland (and Seattle) lasted for weeks, and they included substantial violence and destruction of property, far more than the damage down the our DC Capitol. The violence in Minneapolis amounted to a half-billion in uninsured property losses, substantial amount of this falling on fledgling businesses and immigrant shopkeepers.

I can think of no better evidence proving that the left-leaning media consciously embraces its chosen narrative every bit as much as FOX does on the political right. This is important to see, at a time when numerous left-leaning people I know insist that there is no such thing bias on the left. I personally know dozens of people who deny media bias on the left, people who hunker down only with NPR/NYT/WP and assume that they are getting the full story.

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CNN’s Puff Piece on Transgender Issues

CNN has published an article on transgender that gets one thing right: Many more young adults are claiming to be transgender compared to only a few years ago. The title: "High schoolers may be more gender-diverse than previously thought, new study says."

This is a classic one-sided puff-piece honed to fit the prevailing narrative. Apparently, we can sidestep a well-established medical term "gender dysphoria" by simply asking a CHILD if they are gender dysphoric (ignoring the effects of social media driven contagion). That number of almost 2% number corroborates with what Abigail Shrier stated, when she was excoriated for suggesting that something ELSE was going on when there is a 4000% increase in "gender dysporia" within a few short years (and see here). According to this CNN article, it's supposedly all very simple:

More awareness, more understanding, more exploration. One is that there is a greater understanding of the naturalness of gender diversity, whether that's expressed in terms we use to define ourselves, the way we dress, or how we see ourselves in relation to our culture. "Being gender-diverse is a totally normal part of human experience," [Dr. Kacie] Kidd said.

I have no problem with any adult doing anything they want with their body, sleeping with anyone they want, doing any surgery or hormones. But I am against casually expanding a known and useful medical term that only yesterday applied to only 1 out of 10,000 people, mostly males, claiming that it now applies to almost 2% of high schoolers, mostly girls, shutting off the obvious questions that should be asked about why this is happening. There are no mentions of "contagion" or "Shrier" in this article. There is no mention of the dangers of teenage use of puberty blockers and hormones (including sterility). There is no mention that therapists are being prevented from giving real counseling to teenagers who claim to be transgender based on "conversion therapy" laws. This article has been carefully pruned to make sure that serious pressing questions are not raised.

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Glenn Greenwald Puts Spotlight on CNN’s Natasha Bertrand to Illustrate the DNC – Spy State Alliance

It wasn't that long ago that Democrats were suspicious (if not hostile) to the CIA and America's other spy agencies. There was good reason for that, given the long history of propaganda, lies and manipulation by the CIA, FBI and NSA. Perhaps the peak of this DNC anti-spy state feeling occurred during Edward Snowden's revelations.

But then something happened. The Spy State became useful to the DNC, driven by their mutual hostility to Donald Trump. This was brought on by Trump himself by his ridicule of the spies. This makes for terrible political strategy, as highlighted in this short interview from 2017, Rachel Maddow interviewing Chuck Schumer: "When you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." The CIA and NSA have immense resources for getting back at you by fueling campaigns of disinformation:

We know remarkably little about the nature of the nation’s intelligence spending, other than its supposed total, released in a report every year. By now, it’s more than $80 billion.
During the good old days of 2013, some Democrats took seriously the revelations disclosed by Edward Snowden, even though they were hesitant to applaud his efforts publicly.  This headline tells you what the DNC thinks about Snowden's heroic actions: "Almost No Democrats Are Calling On Trump To Pardon Edward Snowden: Many progressive lawmakers have pushed reforms based on Snowden’s leaks, which makes their silence about a potential pardon that much more curious." This is a complex multi-variate issue, of course, but I suspect that Snowden has been abandoned to twist in the wind because he is not useful to the DNC and because Snowden is not a friend of the DNC's newish friend, the U.S. spy state.

This brings us to Glenn Greenwald's most recent article about the bubbly friendship involving the spy state, the DNC and the DND-allied "news" media. Corruption doesn't happen in the abstract. Rather, it is furthered by the conduct of real-life human beings, often by people who willingly betray the principles that should be guiding them in exchange for money and career advancement.  CNN's Natasha Bertrand is one for those people.  Greenwald's article is titled: "CNN's New "Reporter," Natasha Bertrand, is a Deranged Conspiracy Theorist and Scandal-Plagued CIA Propagandist: In the U.S. corporate media, the surest way to advance is to loyally spread lies and deceit from the U.S. security state. Bertrand is just the latest example."

Glenn Greenwald continues to be a lightning rod for abuse from many political directions.  These ad hominem attacks stem from his reporting because he has a problem: he follows facts where they lead, regardless of who this pisses off. His resulting and undeservedly untarnished reputation makes many people (including many of my FB "Friends") viscerally hostile to Greenwald and hesitant to read or believe what he has written. Here is the solution to that (unwarranted) hostility: Greenwald's article contains numerous links allowing you to read the underlying evidence and weep. Here is an excerpt, but I urge you to read the full article, to follow Glenn Greenwald at his Substack account and, further, to financially support his courageous journalism.

Natasha Bertrand has spent the last five years working as a spokesperson for the alliance composed of the CIA and the Democratic Party, spreading every unvetted and unproven conspiracy theory about Russiagate that they fed her. The more loyally she performed that propagandistic function, the more rapidly she was promoted and rewarded. Now she arrives at her latest destination: CNN, not only Russiagate Central along with MSNBC but also the home to countless ex-operatives of the security state agencies on whose behalf Bertrand speaks.

Once again we see the two key truths of modern corporate journalism in the U.S. First, we have the Jeffrey Goldberg Principle: you can never go wrong, but only right, by disseminating lies and propaganda from the CIA. Second, the organs that spread the most disinformation and crave disinformation agents as their employees are the very same ones who demand censorship of the internet in the name of stopping disinformation.

I've long said that if you want to understand how to thrive in this part of the media world, you should study the career advancement of Jeffrey Goldberg, propelled by one reckless act after the next. But now the sequel to the Goldberg Rise is the thriving career of this new CNN reporter whose value as a CIA propagandist Goldberg, notably, was the first to spot and reward.

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Bari Weiss Describes Her Plan to Cover Undercovered Social Shifts and Realignments

A reader asked Bari Weiss why she recently gave a lot of space on her Substack site to the writings of Paul Rossi's and Andrew Gutmann (See here and here). I found her answer interesting in that she is describing many large-scale social shifts and realignments, many of which are not being covered by legacy media. Here is an excerpt from "The Goal of This Newsletter":

My goal is not to make a living publishing only my views —  or ones that conform exactly to my worldview —  on this Substack. (Trust me, it’d get boring.) My ultimate goal is far more ambitious. I want to run the most interesting opinion page in America, filled with fresh reporting and commentary.

In a sane world, you would have read Paul Rossi’s essay or Andrew Gutmann’s letter — remember, in 2012, when the Times ran this incredible resignation letter from the Goldman Sachs executive? — in the paper of record.

But such pieces will not appear in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post because those papers have mostly ignored the story of the ideological takeover of schools. In part, that is because they are implicated in the story: The same ideological force transforming schools like Grace Church and Brearley has also transformed the establishment press.

The forced political homogenization of schools and newsrooms isn’t the only story being overlooked, underplayed or disregarded by the legacy media. There are many untold stories including: The strange and still emergent political realignment between the Glenn Greenwald left and the J.D. Vance right. The alliance between woke ideologues and corporate America. Anti-Asian discrimination. Rising crime in American cities. The death — and possible revival — of local life and of organized religion. And so so much more.

This leaves a huge opening for writers and editors like me.

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