The Decline Of The US Empire & The Rising Star Of Mexico

I’ve written extensively and in depth, for decades, in two published books and over a thousand published articles, with tens of thousands of references, on the rapidly shifting state of the world, the causes and major factors and historical unfolding of these changes, what it all means and entails, and what we must do about it. The following brief set of thoughts is the most concise possible summary of just one facet of these great, global tectonic shifts, which are now underway and accelerating fast. That is: a few brief, pithy thoughts on Mexico, the rising star of Latin America, in comparison with the declining and collapsing US empire and broader Western world.

Of course, no one should take my words as unquestionable gospel truth – nor take anyone’s word on anything: examine things for yourself; question everything. Think for yourself. These words should spark fresh thought, and begin a quest for truth and understanding, or galvanize and reaffirm such a quest. Provocative statements should spark thought and further the quest for truth, not curtail it. Let us bear that in mind always.

Amidst the US and Western media making its usual suspect and dubious pronouncements of “facts”, almost all of which are sheer propaganda, the actual facts, the truth, will sound shocking to some people. That is to be expected. The Western media is owned and controlled by the same oligarchy that seeks a consistent agenda around the world: divide, demoralize, disempower, dispirit, distract, loot, pillage and subjugate the people, by means of both propaganda and force, in order to further consolidate, protect and expand the power and wealth of the richest 1%. Of course the major media presents a make-believe image of the world, in order to camouflage the criminal actions of the elite, while deceiving the people into supporting, or at least docilely acquiescing to, the same criminal actions of the ruling oligarchy. How could we expect anything else of them?

The rising star of Mexico – and the declining, now collapsing, US empire and broader Western world: in a nutshell – a thesis to be corroborated or disproved, not simply skoffed away because it does not fit comfortably with our comforting delusions:

The reality is that Mexico, with the leadership of its new president, AMLO, is far more democratic, far more free, and far less corrupt, than the US, Canada, Britain or Europe. The corporate-state media won’t tell you that, of course, because they are deeply corrupt, functioning as a propaganda system for the ruling corporate oligarchy. If this is surprising to anyone, it means you need to read more, question more, and turn off the mainstream media. Now.

Question more. Assume less.

JTR,

February 7, 2024

P.S.:

Today I move to Mexico. At midnight I fly.

Worth watching:

Also worth watching, as more food for thought:

with my response to Ben Norton, on the video below:

My response:

Excellent as usual, Ben. Do have a look at my own work, as well. It’s all over the web.

Search:

J. Todd Ring:

Enlightened Democracy

The People vs The Elite

And much more…

On WordPress, Substack, Rumble, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon.

More food for thought:

And here is another excellent video short, with the excellent Mexican-based journalist, John Ackerman:

Also excellent:

And another important video short:

Another important video, with the excellent Mexican-based journalist, Kurt Hackbarth:

And here is Kurt Hackbarth, interviewed on one of my top sources, Geopolitics & Empire, with the venerable Hrvoje Moric:

(See you in Mexico, John, Kurt, and Hrvoje!)

Intellectual Self-Defence: Time For A Reading Sabbatical

To be brief:

The obsession with quantity and volume has to end. More is not always better. Quality matters most. But people in the 21st century are addicted to endless entertainment, distraction, empty and largely useless talk, and endless amounts of “news” and commentary. Unless we step back, pause, reflect, and do some serious reading, all of this endless flood of information is, quite simply, worse than useless – it is blinding, and it is a distraction. It is utterly counter-productive and simply self-defeating.

I would say that no one should be reading, watching or listening to “the news”, in any form, from any source, until they’ve at least read Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, and Necessary Illusions. Without that course in intellectual self-defence, they are simply far too easily manipulated, lied to, propagandized and deceived. Turn off all media and all electronics until you’ve read these two books, at a minimum. I would also frankly add my own, Enlightened Democracy, The People vs The Elite, The Collapse Of The West, and Slavery Or Rebirth; along with Henry David Thoreau’s, Walden, and On Civil Disobedience; and Vandana Shiva’s, Oneness vs The 1%.

It’s time for a reading sabbatical. Turn off the media and all electronics – and read.

JTR,

February 6, 2024

Here is a case study in propaganda, aka, “journalism” and “the news”:

Trump Hysteria

“Imagine, being so gullible, that you believe the world’s largest media corporations, are there to help you understand the world, rather than mislead and propagandize you.”

 - Glenn Greenwald

Fortunately, the spell is starting to wear off, at least for the growing majority of the people.

*

Trump did little good in his first term as US President, and much that was bad – but he didn’t turn the US into a fascist police state: Cheney, Obama and Biden did that.

I am no Trump supporter, but the establishment political elite of the two dominant US parties are far worse and far more dangerous.

Trump may be terrible, but it is the twin party machines, both run by Wall Street and the Deep State, that are truly fascist.

The hysteria over Trump is not only profoundly hypocritical, delusional and deceitful. It’s an absurdity in the extreme.

Lesson: Turn off the mainstream media, permanently.

JTR,

January 17, 2024

Yo, Podcasters! Read This.

An excellent, important video was the inspiration for this short post (linked here, below) from a generally lackluster podcast. The musings arising after watching the video, however, I would say are even more important.

The podcast host asked for video ideas at the end of his presentation. Here is my response. I’d take it as a study list for everyone. Buy, borrow or print these texts from off the internet, then turn off your cell phone, computer and TV, and read.

Podcasters, Youtubers, media workers, journalists, activists and intellectuals, take note. If you want intelligent content, fuel or fodder for your own work, or simply a better understanding of what is actually going on, read, reflect on, and discuss the following, I would humbly urge.

Video Ideas:
Subjects For Discussions

Necessary Illusions, Year 501and Class Warfare, by Chomsky

Killing Hope, by Blum

Memory of Fire, by Galeano

A Short History Of Progress, by Ronald Wright

The Ecology Of Freedom, by Murray Bookchin

Mutual Aid, by Kropotkin

World As Lover, World As Self, by Joanna Macy

Choosing Reality, by Allan Wallace

Oneness vs The 1%, by Vandana Shiva

Walden, and On Civil Disobedience, by Thoreau

And my own books and articles, as topics of discussion:

Enlightened Democracy
The People vs The Elite
The Failure of Propaganda
What Is Fascism?
Sinking All Ships
Importing From China
When Liberals & The Left Lose Their Minds
Why The Left-Libertarians Are Right
The Worst Of Both Worlds
Flashdrive Revolution
The Collapse Of The West
And

Slavery Or Rebirth.

– J. Todd Ring,
Villa Samadhi,
Uruguay,
December 18, 2023

Actually, after watching this video below, I have to raise the evaluation of this podcast, from generally lackluster, to spotty, and hit and miss. Sometimes they are excellent, other times the errors and blindspots are so glaringly enormous that it is painful to watch. So much for what’s left of Europe’s “Left”. But the video below is truly excellent.

On The Use & Abuse Of History

A typical account of history is presented in the video linked below, and here are some reflections on it, and on the general practice, or malpractice, of professional historians, and scholars and intellectuals broadly.

As Noam Chomsky has said, the major media portray themselves as free and unbiased media, but the record of their conduct proves the opposite: the major media serve the function of being a propaganda system for the ruling elite. Similarly, as Chomsky has also said, academia presents itself, and likes to think of itself, as centres of free and open inquiry, and honest scholarship, but again, their record shows that, aside from a minority of exceptional and courageous scholars, academia serves the same function as the major media: it serves the role of being a propaganda and indoctrination system for the ruling elite.

Considering these facts, the abuse and misrepresentation of actual history to give greatly distorted historical narratives, and other narratives, also serves the ruling power elite. In both cases, in the media and in academia, and among “intellectuals” generally, there is no conscious lying or distortion involved: aside from a few key people in positions of power and influence, who are conscious liars and conscious propagandists – meaning, intellectual prostitutes – the great majority of scholars, intellectuals, media workers, pundits and “journalists”, are simply deeply indoctrinated themselves. Moreover, they learn early on what can and cannot be said, and how to frame the narrative, so that they keep their jobs, their positions, and are not squeezed out of the propaganda and indoctrination system that employs them.

These things must be born in mind, and understood, or else we have no real understanding of anything whatsoever. Maybe we know the periodic table, or basic geography, or even advanced physics or math, but we misunderstand virtually everything else, if we do not understand – and viscerally understand, as well as intellectually understand – that both the major media, and academia and “intellectual culture”, are, primarily, and overwhelmingly, systems of thought control in democratic societies, to use the phrase in the subtitle of Noam Chomsky’s most important book, Necessary Illusions.

*

Here is a fascinating and thoughtful look at the industrial revolution….but, with three glaring problems, errors or blunders:

1. As usual, historians talk about “important” people, when they mean, and should say “influential” or “powerful” people. This is not merely semantic. The words we use have a profound influence on shaping how we view, understand, or misunderstand things. Using the term important instead of simply saying powerful or influential, re-enforces and reifies the hierarchical and elitist power structures which dominate our world, and which should be overcome, as the barbaric, out-moded archaic models which they are. Like the terms progress, evolution, evolved, educated, civilized, savage, heathen, pagan and barbarian, terrorist, freedom fighter, rebel, populist, nationalist, etc., as with the term “important people”, we should use them with thoughtful editorial remarks and reflection, or not at all.

2. A discussion of the industrial revolution with zero analysis of class relations? You are joking, right?

3. How can you talk about the industrial revolution without even mentioning, a) the land enclosures, massive land theft, the mass population displacement created by the land enclosures, and the resulting explosion of an urban destitute population, which provided the critically essential cheap labour; b) colonialism and the mass looting, and mass land theft, of Africa, Asia and the Americas, which provided the necessary capital for the industrial revolution; and c) the mass enslavement of Africans and indigenous peoples in the Americas, which generated further vast wealth for the European and American elite, and which further financed the industrial revolution?

4. Furthermore, how can you possibly talk about the industrial revolution, with a straight face, and pretend to be serious, without even mentioning the fact that, as well as being built upon the backs of the working class common men and women of Britain, the US and Europe, and built on mass land theft in Europe, the Americas and around the world; the entire history of colonialism and neocolonialism, from the industrial revolution up to the present day, has been shaped by a highly conscious and deliberate policy on the part of the ruling elite of Britain, the US, Europe, and their junior partners in crime in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, of de-industrialization and the blocking and dismantling industrialization and economic development in the Third World, the Global South, and in the East, as much as possible? As Brzezinski said, “To hearken back to a more brutal imperial age, we must keep the vassals weak and divided.” That was the very conscious policy of the globally dominant Western elite, for over 500 years, and still is. But such truths are unspeakable in Western academia, or in polite “intellectual” culture.

How about the fact that, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, India produced a superior quality and greater quantity of steel than Britain, or the fact that it was the policy of the British Empire to de-industrialize India, and force India to grow opium, so that the ruling British business elite could use the Opium Wars to flood China with opium, and thereby keep the two great powers of Asia, which were India and China, weak, subjugated, and subservient to the Empire? But again, such plain and honest truths cannot be spoken in polite “intellectual” conversation.

(Beginning in the 1970s China became one of the few exceptions to the policy of the ruling Western oligarchs of keeping the Global South weak and de-industrialized, when the Rockefeller gang decided China would make a good pawn, if industrialized, so that sweatshop labour there could be used to further weaken and subjugate the working class of the West – which of course, has always meant the 99% of the people who don’t live off of their stock portfolios. And the scheme did the job marvelously. But in any case, the general principle and policy architecture of imperial rule, from 1492 to the present, remains the same, in broad outline, despite the occasional divergence; and even the divergences are always motivated by the same underlying motives, objectives and imperatives of imperial power.)

In short, the talk here does a lovely job of examining the tip of the iceberg, while the 99% of the iceberg that is hidden under the water, goes unexamined, and even unmentioned.

And this is called scholarship?

If you want an honest account of history, read Noam Chomsky’s, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of The United States, Ronald Wright’s, Stolen Continents, Rianne Eisler’s, The Chalice and The Blade, and Murray Bookchin’s, The Ecology of Freedom.

In fact, I would strongly suggest that all professional and amateur historians, and all professional and amateur pundits, and social or political-economic analysts and commentators, do not say or write another single word, until they have read and digested all five. Until then, they are, in all likelihood, simply spreading gross distortions, misrepresentations, half-truths, lies, illusions, and misinformation, without even realizing it.

As a serious scholar of history once said, you should go for the big picture first, then zoom in, to flesh out the details. If you try to do it the other way around, you will most likely misunderstand everything, and in perpetuity.

If you are going to do a history podcast, or teach or write about history – or social commentary, or political-economic commentary or analysis – then you need to at least have a basic understanding of the big picture. If you don’t, then you are doing a very major disservice to everyone, even if you don’t realize it.

As Thoreau said, You should read the best books first; otherwise, you may never read them at all.

J. Todd Ring,
October 11, 2021

Post-Script and Video Link:

Order and read the special edition of the New Internationalist, titled, Starve Trek, as well, I would urge, along with the five books listed above. It explains the past 500 years of world history, and explains how the world works at present, in a short, cartoon graphic novel. You can laugh and cry, and then photocopy it, and pass it along to people who still just don’t get it.

Here is the wondrous podcast referred to above, from Wondery – so named, apparently, because if you are able to think critically at all, you will wonder how such drivel can be presented as serious scholarship, or as a remotely accurate account of history. It is neither. It is pablum for the people, laced with morphine and cyanide – like most of the content on the internet, in the media, the “alternative media” (a laughable misnomer, in most cases), or in academia or “intellectual culture”.

Impressive graphics and theme music, though!

Image is everything in our befuddled society. Content, conscience, compassion, truth – these things mean nothing. Image is all. It is the simulation we crave. Reality terrifies us, and from it, we perpetually, and with increasingly desperation, flee.

Stressed? Read This. Amygdala Highjacking – A Few Brief Thoughts

When under great stress, or when in great fear, our biological fight or flight response is triggered strongly, the amygdala is highjacked, which then highjacks our frontal cortex and our brain, and destroys both our peace, and also our capacity for rational thought. The cortisol and adrenaline stress hormones released also cause serious health risks, impair digestion and nutrient absorption, and undermine quality sleep. Knowing how to respond to – or better, prevent – the highjacking of our minds through fear, is therefore critical for everyone over two years old to know.

Good sleep is essential for good health, maximum performance, well-being, stress management, clarity of mind, emotional balance, or peace. Ideally, go to sleep before nine, and get up at five am. Eat a good breakfast and a big lunch, and a light, early dinner. And eat nothing after 5:30.

Even more important: Avoid stress in the evening before bed, in particular – that means, especially, no “news” or “social media” after (or during!) dinner. Read a book, go for a walk, meditate, pray, play with cats or dogs or kids, cycle, ski, kayak, canoe…play tennis, basketball, or a board game, sit by a river, stream, pond, lake or ocean, or sit in the woods or a park, and just relax, ponder and contemplate… talk with family or friends – directly, not through a screen! …knit, sew, swim, build, fix or make something, cook, bake, garden, do yoga…. Do almost anything else! Unplugging from the electronic mediascape is one of the most critically essential things we can and must do – especially in the morning and evening. Unplug!

You should also know that caffiene and other stimulants, coffee, alcohol, sugar, refined flour, processed food, pesticides and other neurotoxins and hormone disruptors, EMFs, “social media”, cell phone addiction, TV and “the news” – or a lack of sunshine, exercise and fresh air, clean water and nutritious food – will all increase anxiety and stress over time.

Eat a healthy, plant-based organic diet, with loads of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans and other legumes, essential oils and fibre, and that will be a giant step toward greater well-being and peace.

Add daily exercise as essential step number two – along with sunshine, green space time, and fresh air, which are equally critical – and that will be another giant step towards greater well-being and peace.

Third would be to add in other elements that are extremely powerful in supporting well-being and peace, including one or more of the following:

Meditation

Yoga, t’ai chi or chi gong

Prayer and other spiritual practices

Martial arts

Herbal and naturopathic medicine: particularly helpful are maca, St. John’s wort, holy basil, ashwaghanda, macha, raw cacao (sweetened with monk fruit, stevia, real maple syrup or honey, only – not aspartame or refined sugar, both of which are rat poison), turmeric or curcumin, omega-3s, co-Q10 or ubiquinol, milk thistle, borage, hawthorne, motherwort, nettle, gotu kola, dandelion, and a good quality multi-vitamin capsule or liquid (most of these can be taken as drinks or herbal teas, and maca, macha and cacao go well in smoothies)

Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine

Integrative or holistic medicine

Journalling, introspection, contemplation, reflection, silence and solitude, or quiet time

Support groups or psychotherapy

Talking to a close friend, family member, elder or mentor

Building community, building solidarity, building alliances of mutual aid

Time spent with animals – especially outdoors, in a quiet, tranquil, green space

Art, music, dance, or any wholesome form of self-expression or creativity

Gentle, periodic fasting and detoxification

Fourth would be to examine and reflect on your life, and your surroundings, your community and your society. What are your values? What are your priorities? What are your goals? What are your short term and long term plans? Is this how you want to be living? Is this what you want to be doing? Is this where you want to be? Reflect. This is so critically important, it cannot be stressed enough.

But, of all the many things you can do to increase well-being, peace, and also clarity of mind and empowerment, the single most urgent step, is to unplug from the media drug.

Unplug.

It’s a big, beautiful world out there. Live in it.

Don’t flee into media escapism. That will only degrade your life, and make you lonely, anxious, unhealthy, deluded, fat and sad.

Own your sovereignty of body and mind. Get outside – and live!

And remember:

“Only dead fish follow the stream.”

   – Swedish folk saying

JTR,

August 18, 2021

https://www.healthline.com/health/stress/amygdala-hijack#takeaway

Who To Trust: The Short Answer

Who to trust? That is always a perennial question, and particularly now, when not only government, corporations, politicians, and corporate and state media have repeatedly been shown to have lied, grossly distorted or concealed the truth, and engaged in deceitful PR and propaganda; but also, alternative and progressive media, along with the left, the right and the liberal centre, have repeatedly failed, in glaring, very serious ways.

In terms of interpersonal relations and general human interaction, I strongly agree with Alan Watts: “People who mistrust themselves and others are doomed.” Absolutely correct. But we’re not talking about trust in that sense. We’re talking about who to trust for reliable information. I trust people as a rule, until or unless they give me reason not to. But that doesn’t mean I assume everyone is a reliable source of information, vision or analysis. Most people are not.

I also strongly agree with Chomsky, on most things, including his statement that, “The great majority of people have basically decent impulses.” Most people are decent. That does not mean they are reliable sources of information on world issues. Most people simply are not.

So, who to trust, in terms of being reliable sources of information, vision or analysis? I’ve written an article exactly on that topic, on this blog, but I’ll mention just a couple of names here. Again, these are generally reliable sources. That does not mean they are omniscient or infallible. Above all, do your own research, examine things for yourself – and think for yourself.

Top picks for reliable sources:

A very incomplete list – and remember, no one is infallible!

It cannot be stressed enough:

Question everything.

Vandana Shiva (virtually in a class by herself)

Whitney Webb – arguably the best investigative journalist alive, at this moment at least

Glenn Greenwald – a rarely matched journalist of integrity, rivalled only by Whitney Webb, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, John Pilger, and a handful of others

Edward Snowdon – did more for truth, democracy, human rights and freedom than almost anyone in decades

Julian Assange – exactly as I said about Edward Snowdon, the same applies

Noam Chomsky
Peter Dale Scott
Gerald Celente
Max Keiser
James Corbett
John McMurtry
Paul Craig Roberts
James Howard Kunstler
Richard Heinberg
Helena Norberg-Hodge
Joanna Macy
Allan Wallace
Alan Watts
Aldous Huxley
George Orwell
Peter Kropotkin
Bertrand Russell
Murray Bookchin
Rianne Eisler
David Suzuki
Maude Barlow
Margaret Atwood
Arundhati Roy
Ronald Wright
Mathiew Stein
Geoff Lawton
Erich Fromm
Max Weber
C. Wright Mills
Peter Phillips
Herman Daly
Michael Albert
EF Schumacher
Cornel West
Naomi Wolf
Anthony J. Hall
Michael Parenti
Abby Martin
Matt Taibbi
Aaron Mate
Joseph Campbell
Mathew Fox
Thomas Merton
Gandhi
Martin Luther King Jr.

And I would humbly add my own writing to that list as well.

That’s more than enough good sources to figure out what’s really going on, to stay informed, and to form, refine or retain an inspiring vision for a better world.

JTR,

July 17, 2021

Post-Script:

I forgot to mention a few other particularly excellent sources that I go to regularly, or as often as I can stomach checking in on this slow motion train wreck of a collapsing civilization:

David C. Korten

Jeremy Rifkin

Sayer Ji

Gary Null

Dmitry Orlov

Russell Brand

The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues (podcast)

Trends Journal – if you choose just one subscription, make it this.

Geopolitics & Empire (podcast)

The Centre for Research on Globalization

All of them are excellent. And of course, none of them are omniscient or infallible.

Media literacy 101, Redux

Omg he is citing the National Post! That’s a right wing newspaper! They say, pouring over their daily ingestion of the now truly extreme right wing, corporate oligarchy-driven mainstream “liberal” and “progressive” media, such as the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, BBC, PBS or CBC. How utterly devoid of media literacy or basic political literacy are people?! All the major media are now controlled by the same global corporate oligarchy. Don’t trust any of them. But do realize that even inveterate liars, propagandists and paid idiots do occasionally get it right.

JTR,

April 17, 2021

Mass Digital Addiction vs Reading

Remember, as Thoreau said, “Read the best books first, otherwise you might never read them at all.” And in this age of pandemic digital addiction, media overload and mass information glut, when most people’s lives are far too “busy” – meaning, they have lost all sense of priorities and spend an average of four hours a day, 28 hours a week, watching TV, and four hours a day, 28 hours a week, on “smart phones”, the internet and “social media”, and laughably say they have no time to read – we should also say: if you erroneously and self-deceivingly believe you truly do not have time to read a book – ludicrously, because you are saying in reality that you have no sense of what is important, and therefore have no sense of priorities – at least watch well-chosen documentaries, films, podcasts and videos on the internet, on serious subjects, based on good sources, and not just fluff and entertainment – or worse, far worse, serious subjects covered in misleading and misinforming ways by people who are either liars and propagandists, or more commonly, misinformed idiots who are way out of their depth.

Whitehead is another great thinker who is worthy of our attention (short video below), but that is an incidental thought. We could list dozens here, but that is not my focus at this moment. This is:

98% or more of what is in the media, the “alternative media”, the “progressive media”, the “independent media”, YouTube, “social media”, podcasts, talk radio, TV, films, videos, the newspapers, magazines, and the internet generally, is not worth a second of our time. And that is a conservative figure. I would estimate it is closer to 99.999%.

Choose wisely, choose well. Question everything – especially your sources. But read widely, outside of your clique or social group, where everyone says essentially the same thing! And when you find good sources – not infallible, omniscient sources, but simply good sources – treat them like gold! In fact, they are infinitely more precious than gold. Gather them like secret treasures – then share them widely! But be prepared to change your mind and your views, and be prepared to have your icons toppled, your illusions shattered, your sacred cows and cherished assumptions questioned, and your heroes questioned and challenged, as well.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fluff is fine. Entertainment is fine. Humour and lightness, and a little playfulness and wildness, are imperative and essential. I acknowledge these things, certainly. But we should make time every week, if not every day, for quiet, solitude, nature, health and fitness, reflection, the people we love, and serious reading, and serious subjects – otherwise, our lives will be vacuous, superficial, and lacking in depth, vision, clarity, and integrity, as well as being fleeting, which they inevitably are.

Remember what the Upanishads say:

“You should seek the truth like a man whose hair is on fire jumps into a lake.”

Seek truth above all, and you will find it. Seek comfort, or approval, or conformity, or status, fame, wealth, power, endless consumption and material possessions, an ego boost, perpetual entertainment, or some other trivial and foolish obsession, and you will see nothing, but will live in a cave of shadows forever, enchained and imprisoned by your own actions, of voluntary servitude and unquestioning docile compliance and apathy, in the mind-forged manacles you have fashioned, or at least, accepted and secured, for yourself.

JTR,
April 5, 2021

Sliding Into Irrelevance: Pro-Censorship Stance Obliterates Careers – and Minds

The once-great Naomi Klein. I had great respect for her until she burned her very considerable credibility to the ground, by publicly and viciously attacking Glenn Greenwald recently – after he quit The Intercept, for not agreeing to their new policy of enforced censorship, saying Glenn had “lost the thread”.

A) She took the utterly wrong position on the matter; and B) she was viscious, and publicly viscious, with her friend and ally and peer, who was in fact in the right. Therefore, (C) she, not Glenn Greenwald, has lost all credibility.

Every thinking person should be opposed to censorship, and in favour of freedom of speech. It is shocking that this needs to be explained to the general public. Censorship always leads to authoritarianism, and is the very hallmark of authoritarianism. Good intentions don’t matter. It always leads to authoritarianism. And authoritarianism, of course, means the slow or rapid death of democracy, freedom, human rights and constitutional rule, and the birth of elitism and tyranny.

Understand this. If we lose freedom of speech, we lose democracy and freedom. I don’t know how anyone fails to understand that.

So, yes, every thoughtful person should be anti-censorship and pro-free speech.

As Chomsky said, summing things up with his usual lucidity, “There are only two positions on freedom of speech. You’re either for it, or you’re against it. If you’re in favour of freedom of speech, you’re in favour of it for precisely the views you despise. Everyone’s in favour of freedom of speech for views they like. Stalin was in favour of freedom of speech for views he liked.”

The trend among liberals and among large segments of the left for the past few years has been towards censorship. I would call this the faux left, because the real left has always been anti-authoritarian, and if you’re anti-authoritarian, you’re certainly opposed to censorship and in favour of freedom of speech. That, or you’ve had a virtual lobotomy.

So, when Glenn Greenwald quit The Intercept, which he co-founded, and where he was its star investigative reporter, over his unwillingness to go along with the Big Money-controlled Intercept’s, new policy of censorship, it was a litmus test, and a big deal. From Glenn’s stance, and from the reactions of people to what happened, we can see very well who is a closet authoritarian, and who has a brain remaining, and understands the value and fundamental importance of freedom of speech.

The Intercept and Naomi Klein lost all credibility in that incident. I would no longer cite either of them, or refer to either of them, and certainly would not rely on them, since they have now proven they have a profound lack of sound judgment. I will continue to encourage people to read Naomi Klein’s most important book, The Shock Doctrine, but I would otherwise not reference her as a reliable source for anything, anymore.

It’s too bad. When a media outlet or a journalist loses their sound judgment, or their integrity, and in this case it is both, it is a tragedy, and a great loss. They will be missed.

J. Todd Ring,
Author of, Enlightened Democracy,
and, The People vs The Elite
February 25, 2021

Find my writing on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and WordPress,
and meet me on Patreon or Minds

Post-Script:

What did the litmus test show? Did your favourite journalists or news sources defend freedom of speech, Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange, or attack one or more of them? From that you can tell where they stand.

If they were silent about Glenn Greenwald, maybe they just didn’t know about it. But if they were silent about Julian Assange, then they have zero credibility. If they attacked either Glenn Greenwald or Julian Assange, then you know their credibility is less than zero. And if they have adopted or supported censorship, then they are closet authoritarians, whether they realize it or not, and are leading us all into authoritarianism, whether they realize it or not – and their soundness of judgment, as a result, is zero.

Who got it right? A very partial and incomplete list, as a start, would be Aaron Mate, John Pilger and Jimmy Dore. There are many others, but the sad fact is, the pro-censorship zombies have taken over. We will have to push them back, or we will have a very dark age ahead.

Between the neo-Jacobins and neo-Maoists, the dim-witted many, and the truly fascist few at the top, we are in very grave danger – along with freedom, democracy, constitutional rule and human rights being under full-scale attack. Do not take this lightly.