Any chance we could get Julian Assange to weigh in on this topic? Oh, wait...--On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 11:06 AM Edward Luce via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:Chas, I always enjoy the breadth of stuff you disseminate and it's a great service. Thankyou.On this issue, however, the Mike Benzs and Tucker Carlsons and Clayton Morrises are Father Coughlin-level sources. Morris is literally a fraud (he fled lawsuits and now lives in Portugal). Benz is demented alt-right conspiracist, and Tucker Carlson, well I shouldn't need to characterize his untrustworthiness....Compared to any other country in the world, formal censorship in the US is a red herring: I've never come across it in 20 years based here. To be sure the NYT and Wapo etc have their biases and have collectively got things badly wrong, such as the Iraq war. But big tech using their algorithms to tilt propaganda one way or another is the real issue. Right now Musk is skewing X towards Russian bots that spread the kind of demagoguery that you now seem to be saying we should seriously engage. The age we live in gives too much credence to charlatans.On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 at 09:49, Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com> wrote:No. The collusion of communications oligopolies with government to enforce government and political correctness-preferred narratives by deplatforming nonconformist or politically offensive dissent and stifling policy debate is a serious problem that transcends ideology.On Wed, Feb 21, 2024 at 8:38 PM Edward Luce <edward.luce@ft.com> wrote:Is this stuff being posted ironically?On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 at 20:31, Michele Kearney via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:Tucker Carlson just EXPOSED something incredibly terrifying inside the U.S. | Redacted News
--On Wed, Feb 21, 2024 at 1:15 PM Michele Kearney <micheletkearney@gmail.com> wrote:New Documents Show Government-Funded AI Intended for Online Censorship: They Can Then Use the Same Tool to Suppress, Silence, and Shut Down Whatever Speech They Don’t Like
On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 9:47 PM Michele Kearney <micheletkearney@gmail.com> wrote:Mike Benz (Part 1): The West’s Burgeoning Censorship Industry and the Government Funds Pouring In–From DHS to DARPA to National Science FoundationOn Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 4:36 PM Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:This is basically what Benz is describing.--On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 4:04 PM Wolfgang Wittenburg via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:--Maybe ‘no grand conspiracy’, but what about simply ‘institutional creep’ as in mission creep? Was Eisenhower’s concept of the ‘Military Industrial Complex’ a conspiracy theory too?
Wolfgang Wittenburg
From: Clyde Prestowitz <presto@econstrat.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2024 1:01 PM
To: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>; Chas Freeman <salon@listserve.com>; Chas Freeman <salon@committeefortherepublic.org>
Subject: Re: [Salon] Fwd: Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
For what it’s worth, I’m with Jonathan on this.
From: Salon <salon-bounces@listserve.com> On Behalf Of Warren Coats via Salon
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2024 3:27 PM
To: Chas Freeman <salon@listserve.com>; Chas Freeman <salon@committeefortherepublic.org>
Subject: [Salon] Fwd: Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
More on Carlson Benz interview Jonathan Rauch offered the comments below.
Warren Coats
1211 S Eads St. #2101
Arlington VA 22202
Mobile 703 608-2975
http://wcoats.blog/ http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/ https://twitter.com/wcoats2
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jonathan Rauch <JRAUCH@brookings.edu>
Subject: RE: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
Date: February 18, 2024 at 2:58:25 PM EST
To: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>
Thanks. I probably won’t have time to play this through for a while, but from a skim of the transcript, I’d say it lacks credibility. There’s no government plot to censor the internet, and the government couldn’t do that if it tried. Benz, Shellenberger, et al. have been dishonest in their attacks on Renee DiResta (e.g. that she’s connected to the CIA), the Stanford Internet Observatory (that it’s a cut-out for the USG), etc. The New Yorker had an article a few months ago about this campaign to create a conspiracy narrative about internet censorship. Might be worth a look. Also, this.
Government communication with social media companies is legit but should be done in a transparent, procedurally regular way, instead of via jawboning. So that needs to be fixed. Content moderation (“gatekeeping”) is unavoidable for media companies and unavoidably controversial, and that’s just a hard problem. But there’s no grand conspiracy.
FWIW.
From: Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2024 10:30 AM
To: Jonathan Rauch <JRAUCH@brookings.edu>
Subject: Fwd: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
Jonathan,
What do you think of this?
Begin forwarded message:From: Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com>
Date: February 17, 2024 at 9:08:15 PM EST
To: graham <bozorgg@aol.com>
Cc: salon@listserve.com
Subject: Re: [Salon] Tucker Carlson on X: "Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy
Reply-To: Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>This is a major story and I think it will have large legs. It explains so much about what is now wrong with our democracy. I note that Carlson's interview with Putin appears to have achieved 1 billion views. This interview will be of far greater interest to Americans than to foreign audiences, many of which now regard us as evil and will, if they bother to view this at all, see it as corroborating their worst evaluations of our manipulation of both our own politics and the politics of other countries.
Chas
On Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at 8:57 PM graham <bozorgg@aol.com> wrote:
Hi Chas, don't know if you had a chance to listen to this whole thing, but I found it simply extraordinary. Dynamite. From things I know from here and there over the years both in the agency and later in Washington it rings very true I found very little of the conspiracy mentality in the interviewee, it has huge explanatory power for some of my perplexity at the sweeping scope of US domination of the western narrative on Ukraine and other issues.
Do you yourself take this guys story seriously? Will it have legs, or simply be stifled?
Graham
On Saturday, February 17, 2024, 4:16 PM, Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
--
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon--
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon
This email was sent by a company owned by Financial Times Group Limited ("FT Group"), registered office at Bracken House, One Friday Street, London, EC4M 9BT. Registered in England and Wales with company number 879531. This e-mail may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, delete all copies and do not distribute it further. It could also contain personal views which are not necessarily those of the FT Group. We may monitor outgoing or incoming emails as permitted by law.
This email was sent by a company owned by Financial Times Group Limited ("FT Group"), registered office at Bracken House, One Friday Street, London, EC4M 9BT. Registered in England and Wales with company number 879531. This e-mail may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, delete all copies and do not distribute it further. It could also contain personal views which are not necessarily those of the FT Group. We may monitor outgoing or incoming emails as permitted by law.
--
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon
Salon mailing list
Salon@listserve.com
https://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon