Categories for Musings

Glen Greenwald is Putin’s useful idiot

— 12.10.2016 08:29 AM

To recap: U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that Putin’s regime interfered in the U.S. election (to destroy Clinton) – and held onto some of what they found (ro blackmail Trump).  It’s been in all the papers.

I comment on it on Twitter.


I see the online Glen Greenwald, once a journalist but now a shill for every anti-Clinton cause, furiously defending Putin’s covert campaign. So I remark on what I think of him now.


The former journalist notices and responds with this:


I respond:


So, Greenwald then comes up with this:


Tellingly, a Canadian extremist who I blocked long ago becomes one of Greenwald’s sources in this Twitter exchange. She tells him I ran a campaign against Rob Ford. Here’s what he says next about Yours Truly:


This is kind of typical of the tire fire that is now Glen Greenwald’s journalism. To wit: (a) I didn’t run anyone’s campaign against Rob Ford and (b) Rob Ford wasn’t even on the ballot in the campaign Greenwald is referring to. Greenwald, as is so often the case, makes a couple big factual errors. So, I say:


He doesn’t know what to say about his errors, apparently.

So, I return to his “evil imbecile” insult.


Anyway. Various trolls came into it after that, I got bored, and I had to let the dogs out.

There’s a point to all of this: Glen Greenwald, and those like him, became micro-celebrities by promoting their heroes Snowden, Assange, et al. They came to despise the Obama-Clinton folks for their objections to the law-breaking of Snowden, Assange et al. And, in the depths of their hatred, they became (like the Republican Party) apologists for Vladimir Putin, who (we now know) was running the whole show back in Moscow, and laughing his ass off.

The point: American democracy has been compromised, and Donald Trump is to blame for that. And American journalism has been compromised, too – and Glen Greenwald and his ilk are to blame for that.


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Trump Virus: now in Kelowna

— 12.09.2016 11:30 AM

…my wife’s former town. Got a lot of friends there, too.

From Kelowna Now: “Some students at the UBC Okanagan campus in Kelowna were shocked to find pro-white posters telling readers to abandon political correctness and multiculturalism and free themselves of “white guilt.”



ubco-poster


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Being a contrarian, here is my defence of Monsef

— 12.08.2016 08:41 AM

From next week’s column:

A year later, the electoral reform promise is in shambles. And, when you think about it, the “democratic reform” file has been a fiasco from the earliest days.  

The minister responsible, Maryam Monsef, bears responsibility for some of that. Monsef did herself no favours by criticizing the work of an all-party committee into the issue – or by sounding less-than-candid when some conservative conspiracy theorists earlier cooked up a racist “birther” narrative to destroy her and her policy.

 But she has also been subjected to more abuse and derision than any cabinet minister since Bev Oda, she of the $16 orange juice fame. This writer’s strong suspicion is that the hostility and hatred that Monsef has endured (as with Oda) possibly had something to do with (a) her gender and (b) her race. We’ll never know that for sure, of course, but (as with Oda) Monsef’s coming punishment seems to be far, far out of proportion to the offence.   

There is plenty of blame to go around in this ignominious mess. Personally, this space is unimpressed with all of the combatants in this hellacious mud-wrestling match.   There is much to oppose, if you are a sensible person.


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