Puppet Masters

How Substack revealed the real value of writers' unfiltered thoughts

Jack Shafer
Politico
Fri, 16 Apr 2021 06:13 UTC

What sort of journalist who has been filing brilliant, scoopy copy about technology, privacy and politics for the past two years on the New York Times editorial page would leave that main-course for the side-dish of a newsletter? Charlie Warzel made that leap this week, resigning from the paper to take up residence at the newsletter publisher Substack, where he intends to expand the coverage of his beat with a newsletter titled "Galaxy Brain."

Warzel commented on Twitter that he was "honestly terrified" of his move, but he needn't be.

In recent months, a slew of accomplished writers have migrated to Substack, including Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Yglesias, Heather Havrilesky, Roxane Gay, Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss and others. Given the reader base Warzel formed at the Times, readers will likely accept his change of venue with the sort of enthusiasm they bestowed on the other runaways, and he'll be filling his moneybag with cash as readers line up to subscribe.

The rise of Substack — and of platforms of its competitors — signals a new juncture in journalism, one that combines the power and mystique of the byline with the editorial independence afforded by the blog. After being lectured forever about how information wants to be free, Substack is teaching us that not only will readers pay for top-drawer copy, but that the work of some writers was actually undervalued in the market before readers were given the opportunity to purchase journalism a la carte instead of from a prix fixe menu.

Comment: 'The pen is mightier than the sword.' Substack is proving this metonymic to be true: no censorship, more lucrative!

Supreme Court rejects lingering 2020 election challenge case

AP
Mon, 19 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC

The Supreme Court on Monday said it will not hear a case out of Pennsylvania related to the 2020 election, a dispute that had lingered while similar election challenges had already been rejected by the justices. The high court directed a lower court to dismiss the case as moot.

The justices in February, after President Joe Biden's inauguration, had rejected a handful of cases related to the 2020 election. In the case the court rejected Monday, however, the court had called for additional briefing that was not complete until the end of March.

The case involved a federal court challenge to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision requiring election officials to receive and count mailed-in ballots that arrived up to three days after the election. More broadly, however, the case concerned whether state lawmakers or state courts get the last word about the manner in which federal elections are carried out.

The Democratic National Committee was among those that argued the case should be rejected as moot because the 2020 election is over. Those that brought the case said the justices should hear it because the issues involved are important and recurring. The court had previously rejected other cases that had involved the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots. Three of the court's conservative justices dissented, saying they would have taken up the cases.

George W. Bush: Today's GOP is 'isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent nativist'

Olafmihan Oshin
The Hill
Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:43 UTC

Former President George W. Bush said on Tuesday that today's Republican Party is far from what it used to be.

Bush said to host Hoda Kotb during an appearance on NBC's Today:

"I would describe it as isolationist, protectionist and to a certain extent nativist,"Well, that's not exactly my vision, but you know what, I'm just an old guy they put out to pasture. So just a simple painter."

The former president also said that he thinks a GOP candidate with progressive positions on immigration laws, young immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents, gun reform and funding for public schools has a shot to win the White House in 2024.

"I think that it depends upon the emphasis. I think if the emphasis [is] integrity and decency and trying to get problems solved, yeah, I think the person has a shot."

Comment: George W., compared to Joe B., comes across as a fairly intelligent and knowledgeable speaker (with no tricks up his sleeve)!

'Not anti-China': EU defends plan to step up activity in Indo-Pacific region amid South China Sea tension

RT
Mon, 19 Apr 2021 16:16 UTC

The EU has defended a newly-unveiled plan to increase its activity in the Indo-Pacific region, insisting the measures are not targeted at China, despite rising international tensions over the South China Sea.

Officials said the proposal, headed up by France, Denmark and Germany, is aimed at bolstering EU ties with Australia, India and Japan, and would raise the bloc's presence in the Indo-Pacific area amid an escalating regional spat with Beijing over control of the South China Sea.

Outlining the plan on Monday, EU officials said member states agree "that the EU should reinforce its strategic focus, presence and actions in the Indo-Pacific", emphasising the importance of "the promotion of democracy, rule of law, human rights and international law."

Despite the potential for this to be seen as a challenge to Beijing's position and activity in the region, the EU was swift to add that the plan is not "anti-China" but is about focusing on working with "like-minded partners".

The suggestion from the EU that the bloc will become involved in "responding to challenges to international security, including maritime security" could be seen as Brussels giving its backing to the US in Washington's increasingly confrontational relations with China over military movements in the South China Sea.

New York Post: 'Impeach and remove Maxine Waters for inciting violence'

Editors
New York Post
Sun, 18 Apr 2021 15:34 UTC

In supporting the second impeachment of President Donald Trump, California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters said he was "inciting" his followers, and was "trying to create a civil war."

By her own standards, Maxine Waters should be impeached and removed.

On Sunday in Minnesota, Waters, breaking the law by violating curfew (because "she didn't agree with it"), said that if ex-police officer Derek Chauvin is not found guilty of murdering George Floyd, "We've got to get more confrontational."

There's been rioting, looting, graffiti — what did Waters mean by "more confrontational"? In Portland, they set fire to an Apple store. They're trying to take over government buildings.

Comment: See also:

Pharmaceuticals earn $152 billion from the pandemic

teleSUR
Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:00 UTC

© Twitter/@StopTechnocracy
Johnson & Johnson had a stock market value of $436 billion,10 percent more than the $384 billion registered before the beginning of the health crisis.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, pharmaceutical companies have accumulated a profit of $152 billion, immune to the uncertainty caused by the effectiveness of some of their vaccines against COVID-19.

According to market data, the stock market value of pharmaceutical companies will not be affected by the problems presented in some places, given their efficacy.

Comment: As detailed above, Western pharmaceutical companies involved with coronavirus vaccines can't seem to lose. Politicians in the West have also been found to have been involved in dodgy PPE deals where it's highly likely they'll reap some benefits. Overall, it would appear that there are numerous incentives for the establishment to keep the appearance of a crisis going, despite the data showing otherwise:

Boris Johnson's office goes to war with UN group that said race report 'normalizes white supremacy'

Lizzy Buchan
Mirror
Mon, 19 Apr 2021 13:11 UTC

Downing Street said the response by human rights experts 'misrepresents' the findings of a widely-panned Government-backed review into racism in the UK

Downing Street has hit back at a UN group of human rights experts who claimed a controversial report into racism in the UK attempted to "normalise white supremacy".

The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent said the recent report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Cred) could "license further racism, the promotion of negative racial stereotypes, and racial discrimination".

No10 rejected the criticism and said the UN group "misrepresents" the findings of the commission.

A major row erupted last month over the report - commissioned in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests - which found there was no longer institutional racism in the UK.

Comment: Johnson checks nearly all the boxes of globalist woke/green/reset policies but this one! Maybe he should pay more attention to how the Biden administration is implementing critical race theory so that he too may claim the now vaunted mantle of wokeness and make the UN technocrats happy...

And let's not forget so-called Biden's commitment to gender equality:

Czech PM backtracks saying Russia did NOT attack country, alleged blowing up of munition depot was 'not act of state terrorism'

RT
Mon, 19 Apr 2021 17:12 UTC

Russia "did not attack" the Czech Republic and the 2014 explosions at the Vrbětice arms depot were "not state terrorism," Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told reporters, but insisted the 'GRU' was still involved in the blast.

"It was not an act of state terrorism, which means that Russia did not attack the Czech Republic," Babis said on Monday. "Once again - it was not an act of state terrorism, it was an attack on goods belonging to a Bulgarian arms dealer."

He maintained, however, that the presence of 'GRU' agents in Czechia is "absolutely unacceptable" and that they "messed up" the alleged attack.

Comment: See also: Are the Brits behind Czechia's surprise decision to expel Russian diplomats?

Federal government caught buying 'fresh' flesh of aborted babies who could have survived as preemies

Edie Heipel
The Federalist
Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:21 UTC

Americans should be outraged their government participates in the wide-scale human trafficking operation that created a market for harvesting the organs of murdered infants.

This article contains disturbing information about human dismemberment.

Last week, legal accountability group Judicial Watch dropped a bombshell: a nearly 600-page report proving the U.S. government has been buying and trafficking "fresh" aborted baby body parts. These body parts, purchased by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to "humanize" mice and test biologic drugs in scientific experiments, came from babies up to 24-weeks-old gestation, just weeks from being born.

While Americans may be used to hearing pro-lifers beat the warning drum on abortion groups harvesting baby bodies and selling them for research, (who hasn't heard of the lawsuit against David Daleiden, who exposed Planned Parenthood haggling over baby lungs and livers at dinner parties?) this time, the U.S. government was the one trafficking baby parts.

Comment: See also:

Globalists will need another crisis in America as their Reset agenda fails

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.us
Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC

It might sound like "US exceptionalism" to point this out (...and how very dare I), but even if the globalist Reset is successful in every other nation on Earth, the globalists are still failures if they can't secure and subjugate the American people. As I've noted many times in the past, most of the world has been sufficiently disarmed, and even though we are seeing resistance in multiple European nations against forced vaccination legislation and medical tyranny, it is unlikely that they will have the ability to actually repel a full on march into totalitarianism. Most of Asia, India and Australia are already well under control. Africa is almost an afterthought, considering Africa is where many suspect vaccines are tested.

America represents the only significant obstacle to the agenda.

Conservative Americans in particular have been a thorn in the side of the globalists for generations, and it really comes down to a simple matter of mutual exclusion: You cannot have an openly globalist society and conservative ideals at the same time in the same place. It is impossible.

Conservatives believe in limited government, true free markets, individual liberty, the value of life, freedom of speech, private property rights, the right to self defense, the right to self determination, freedom of religion, and the non-aggression principle (we won't harm you unless you try to harm us). None of these ideals can exist in a globalist world because globalism is at its core the pursuit of a fully centralized tyranny.

Too bad black America won't listen more to Charles Barkley who recently said on air: I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether...

Heosphorus

Referendums are the TYRANNY of the Majority ! As per :Timothy Andrew Fischer, was an Australian politician and diplomat who served as leader of...

Mr Reynard

.. .. 'they' are herding people like sheep with dogs, brands, ..

TheImperialYeomanry

Images of the park: [Link]

Yupo

.. .. A real mask has holes in it

TheImperialYeomanry

Puppet Masters

How Substack revealed the real value of writers' unfiltered thoughts

Supreme Court rejects lingering 2020 election challenge case

George W. Bush: Today's GOP is 'isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent nativist'

'Not anti-China': EU defends plan to step up activity in Indo-Pacific region amid South China Sea tension

New York Post: 'Impeach and remove Maxine Waters for inciting violence'

Pharmaceuticals earn $152 billion from the pandemic

Boris Johnson's office goes to war with UN group that said race report 'normalizes white supremacy'

Czech PM backtracks saying Russia did NOT attack country, alleged blowing up of munition depot was 'not act of state terrorism'

Federal government caught buying 'fresh' flesh of aborted babies who could have survived as preemies

Globalists will need another crisis in America as their Reset agenda fails

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