[FROM LARRY JOHNSON — A new author for sonar21.com. He prefers to keep his identity a secret. However, he has something important and useful to share.]
I first became acquainted with Matt Taibbi when he came to Moscow in the late 1990s and
was co-editor of a newspaper called The eXile, along with another American, Mark Ames.
The eXile’s motto was “We $#it on everybody equally.”
Ames and Taibbi wrote all manner of expose articles on the corruption of the Boris Eltzin administration, the World Bank, the IMF, and USAID. One of their favorite targets was that pompous moron, Michael McFaul, then a World Bank “consultant” who later became U.S. Ambassador under O’Bongo. Arguably our worst-ever ambassador, the Russian Foreign Ministry basically ignored him, and then threw USAID and many US backed NGO’s out of the country for good. But Ames and Taibbi also investigated many, many Russian Government officials and exposed their corrupt dealings. They also regularly published columns by Eduard Limonov, a Russian dissident and head of the banned “National Bolshevik Party.”
As Matt’s co-editor Ames once wrote, “we’d be sued out of existence within a few weeks of appearing in any Western democracy, but here in Russia, in the so-called kleptocracy, the power elite has been too busy stealing and killing to give a f**k about us, allowing us to fly around the capital beneath their radar, like a cruise missile. A real democracy would never let us get off the ground.” Flash forward 20+ years, and after a stint at The Rolling Stone, suddenly over the past few months, Taibbi became a household name here in the USA, culminating with his being the front guy for the release of all that material proving how various U.S. “intel” agencies conspired with Twitter and other social media platforms to censor the news, manipulate public opinion and possibly to influence the outcome of elections, Oh My!
And look what has happened to “poor” Matt over the last 6 months or so, a real dyed-in-the-wool Liberal Democrat.
In March, the Democrats in Congress skinned him alive at the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearings, and now the IRS is on his case. His life and reputation is being utterly ruined.
<<The records also show that Mr. Taibbi was able to resolve the tax issue quickly, did not owe the IRS anything and in fact was due a “substantial refund,” Mr. Jordan said Wednesday in a new letter demanding answers from the bureau.>>
See May 24, 2023 letter from Judiciary Committee below
So the irony is – none of anything like this happened to Matt Taibbi in Moscow. Taibbi was never arrested, detained, poisoned, run off the road by a truck into a bridge abutment, etc. by those “despots in Russia.” It all happened/is happening right here in the good ole USA, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, First Amendment, Freedom of the Press, etc. and is being orchestrated – ironically enough – by Libtard left-wing Democrats!
Meanwhile, what about Gonzalo Lira? He was arrested by goons from the the Ukro-Nazi SBU (Service for “Security” of Ukraine) three weeks ago in the country to which billions and billions of your tax dollars are being sent “to support Democracy.”
It’s Memorial Day weekend. Do you think this is what so many fought and died for to be happening in the USA or funded with your tax dollars and mine?
Select Comments from the original thread MileBarsays
On the relationship between the USSR, resp. Russia and the USA, resp. NATO NATO was founded in 1949 by the USA. The USSR wanted to join NATO. When NATO rejected this, six year later the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 – as a reaction to this rejection. (Ideologies were different, but military alliances are another matter.)
(The monstrous Stalin was not a Russian, but a Georgian, under whom the Russian population suffered the most).
Yeltsin and afterwards Putin also wanted to lead Russia into NATO. Putin to Clinton during his visit to Moscow in 2000: What does America think about Russia joining NATO? Clinton’s response was (as Putin said) “we say very reluctant.” Putin: “If you don’t want us as friends and allies, why are you making an enemy out of us”?
Why is the USA making an “enemy” out of Russia? Because they need such an “enemy” to be able to invest even more of their national wealth in the war machinery, to become even stronger militarily, and then to dominate the whole world. Thereby, Russia is to be smashed, and the huge Siberian mineral resources are to be plundered. That is an old USA strategic goal. It’s (almost) always about earth resources. Even Henry Kissinger (after his retirement) stated this publicly. But the related YouTube video has been deleted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AetGRpg0p6s&list=PLpzSpevFD7qw367OhrdLRXedgPZySrOlX&index=41
John Pilger, among many others, has also reported on this: John Pilger’s Guide To Propaganda (54:20 Main goal = to smash Russia) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOZZbK4Y-YM
That was/ is now tried with this Ukraine war organized by the USA & GB (Maidan coup in 2014 against a democratically elected president), but can by no means succeed. This time they have overestimated themselves enormously and this will have catastrophic consequences for them.
Who does not seek peace, who organizes coups of the democratically elected foreign governments, causes (by lies) and leads wars (worldwide)? Just to mention a few examples: Hawaii, Guatemala, Panama, Vietnam (3 million murdered, mostly civilians, children, and women), Iran (1953), Iraq (1 million murdered, mostly civilians, children, and women), Syria …. up to Ukraine?
8000 murdered in Srebrenica (no children and women among them) the UN courts qualified as GENOCIDE. Compare 8000 with the above-mentioned MILLIONS. _______________
Just one more example: According to the clearest report commissioned by the EU, under the leadership of Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini – Georgia was the aggressor and Russia merely retaliated, paid back, and then withdrew. Already in 2004 and 2006 Georgia (egged on/ misused by the USA, otherwise they would never have dared) undertook military operations against Russia and the UN Security Council even passed a resolution calling on Georgia to refrain from such actions in the future. How many of you, in your “free world” with your “free media” and “democracy” were informed objectively also in this matter? Why don’t you know it? Because most of the media spread the lies/ propaganda of the high-ranking NATO experts and even Jens Stoltenberg’s, who still today (06. 04. 2023) accuses Russia (against the best knowledge) to have invaded/ attacked Georgia in 2008 1: 50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bEFg9oZKeY Such persons must not be believed a word. In Stoltenberg’s eyes you can see discomfort and fear, but he has to do it because he is ordered to do so by Washington. ________________________ The USA government and CIA poisoned Alexey Navalny with Novichock (= typical USSR/Russian) to defame Putin. If Putin wanted to do it, he would have done it by another means. _____________________________ USA/ NATO officers and soldiers participate directly in this war against Russia from the beginning (and later this year will no longer do it secretly, but massively, but will not have much time to regret it). Proof: Oberst bestätigt: NATO Soldaten kämpfen bereits in der Ukraine! (2: 23 ff. High number of Western/ NATO soldiers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wur4YRSrwIk
Sorry, Mattsays
I like Taibbi. He has guts. He’d have to, to have gone out on so many limbs over the years but while being grilled in Congress, he folded like a cheap umbrella.
Sorry, Matt – I watched this hearing and I don’t recall Taibbi “folding like a cheap umbrella.” I found the whole thing (Congress hearing) rather surreal, and this fake representative, Plaskett, plain rabid. Everybody fancies himself, the hero, watching a battle from the sidewalk. Would you do better in his shoes?
That’s exactly my point. To be subjected to the surreal slings and arrows unleashed at Taibbi by such Democrats and to respond factually yet meekly, to me is ‘folding like a cheap umbrella’…and this was while he had so many Republicans running interference for him.
Maybe, as a liberal it had something to do with his discomfort at being attacked by so-called ‘liberal democrats’ in such a ‘surreal’ and insulting way and equally supported by conservatives, both in furtherance of their agendas that had nothing to do with his own, or maybe it was his breaking voice that unfortunately carries little authority in itself, or maybe it was the realization that to stand too firm before his inquisitors would relegate his entire career and future to the funeral pyres (which they’re attempting anyway).
Maybe I’m being too harsh and yes, you’re right. I might have done no better in his shoes although I flatter myself to imagine otherwise from my armchair. I’m confrontational by nature with (sometimes to my detriment), a voice that’d have overshadowed those hearings and probably would have been called in contempt numerous times (if they have such a thing in those hearings). This crap just has gone on too long for a functioning ‘democracy’, even in name only and is leading nowhere but to the horsemen of nuclear apocalypse that are slowly beginning to appear in every thinking man’s rearview mirror. Not sure if I’d done what he’d done in 90’s Moscow though with the Exile. I was there at that time too just making money and used to read his stuff. He has balls, to be sure.
Sorry for the rant. These are rant-invoking times we live in.
Sentientsays
I first learned of Taibbi when he wrote a column entitled Flathead in 2005 mocking imbecile Thomas Friedman. While it’s probably generally best to not mock the imbecilic, Friedman deserved it fully, as he’d been embraced by the elites as a Deep Thinker. Last time I saw Friedman’s wiki page (which I’m sure he manages himself), his picture shows him deep-thinking.
Taibbi also described Goldman Sachs as a “Giant Vampire Squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
How can you not like a guy like that?
Tim Connellysays
Thank God for gutsy guys like Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and of course, Julian Assange. Few people could withstand the kind of crap they face day-in day-out just reporting the truth.
“It is not our task to secure the triumph
of truth but merely to fight on its behalf.”
—Blaise Pascal
William Simontonsays
Matt Taibbi was always an honest progressive like Jimmy Dore and so I have always been able to listen to them. Although I’m constitutional populist.
Dore is amazing and I can listen to him all day. He’s said he must be a populist now since progressives do something or other that irritates him. Sorry. I can’t recall what it was. Greenwald was interviewing him….
He’s still strongly in favor of “Medicare for all” and he doesn’t seem to care that “provide health care to all” isn’t one of the enumerated powers. But a class act any way you slice it. He started doing his videos in his garage with his wife’s help.
I am concerned that the vax may have done him some real harm….
I am always amazed at how Larry is able to connect so many dots in so many places. Now, Taibbi. Of course, that is actually “Daniel L” but kudos to Larry for guesting writers like Daniel and others so their voice can be heard. I’m lucky to work here in Tokyo, where the Japanese just don’t care much about crazy foreigners who write in that not-real language English. “Gaijin” does not equal foreigner. Rather it means “Outsider”. Kinda like the Village Idiot. But I get hired on occasion precisely for that “outsider” point of view to sort out some of the confusion about the bewildering world of the West.
There is a lot of information on the Internet and elsewhere — and it is easy to drown on it.
Analysts like Larry, Brian Berletic, Alex Mercouris, Aleks at Black Mountain Analysis, John Helms, Alastair Crooke and others throw us lifelines to keep our heads about water.
maskazersays
The elites in USA/EU censor anything and everything that runs against their own interests. Unfortunately, since last week the Moon of Alabama website has become unreachable from this location i.e. Iran-Tehran, showing Access Denied. Do other commenters face similar issue with the MoA? Is it being hacked by the same democratic body?!!
zinasays
Why, no one asks the question what about Gonzalo Lira, what about him, is he alive.
Jimsays
Regarding Mr. Lira, it looks like the US State Dept. is not going to help to free him. We might have better luck appealing to the Chilean diplomatic services to intervene, if they haven’t already, since I believe Gonzalo had dual citizenship.
If you just switched the names from Putin to Biden and the show hosts to Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow & Whoopi Goldberg, the article could be reprinted under the title: “A Day Inside Biden’s Surreal Television Empire, How the nonstop blare of United States’ state media fuels the war effort—and blurs reality.”
What is really so interesting is that in Russia the people support their leadership and the struggle in Ukraine and the majority of the Global South are with them… however, the message delivered by the much better funded and more sophisticated US/Western media, that this is a war was unprovoked, being fought to save democracy and that Russia is a threat to the world falls flat to a good many in the United States and the majority in Global South.
It seems like Russian media is more in accordance with the reality that everyday people perceive than the US media which requires you to continuously suspend common sense and believe in the most unlikely and absurd scenarios.
My guess here is that most of us at Sonar21 would prefer Russian media, which sounds more in accordance with Matt Taibbi, Glen Greenwald, John Mearsheimer, Aaron Mate, Tucker Carlson, Scott Ritter, Gonzalo Lira, Douglas Macgregor, etc.
The fact that this was published in Foreign Policy indicates that our elites are blind to or actually believe in the Western propaganda. (sigh)
According to the News channel Vesti another Patriot air defense system was destroyed near Kiev (Zhuliany airport) during the latest massive attack with drones, cruise missiles, etc. Another billion dollars up in smoke? https://www.vesti.ru/article/3377110
During the attack on Kyiv near the Zhuliany airport, an “imported air defense installation” was destroyed. This is reported by a number of media and telegram channels. According to some reports, we are talking about the American-made Patriot anti-aircraft missile system. Also, according to preliminary information, the launch base for Ukrainian drones became the target of Russian missiles. Kiev air defense was taken by surprise .
Earlier, another massive blow was dealt to the capital Nezalezhnaya [= 404 Not Found]. They became a response to the terrorist act of the Ukrainian special services against the Crimean bridge. It is known that during the previous attack, local residents were not allowed into the subway .
The vaunted Patriot has already become a victim of Russian weapons: on May 16, the Ministry of Defense reported on the destruction of an air defense system hidden in a residential area with a hypersonic “Dagger”. Then the enemy lost five launchers of the battery of the American missile defense system.
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MileBar says
On the relationship between the USSR, resp. Russia and the USA, resp. NATO
NATO was founded in 1949 by the USA. The USSR wanted to join NATO. When NATO rejected this, six year later the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 – as a reaction to this rejection. (Ideologies were different, but military alliances are another matter.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxhLkwmSu98
(The monstrous Stalin was not a Russian, but a Georgian, under whom the Russian population suffered the most).
Yeltsin and afterwards Putin also wanted to lead Russia into NATO.
Putin to Clinton during his visit to Moscow in 2000:
What does America think about Russia joining NATO?
Clinton’s response was (as Putin said) “we say very reluctant.”
Putin: “If you don’t want us as friends and allies, why are you making an enemy out of us”?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/__DnpU8-20w
Why is the USA making an “enemy” out of Russia?
Because they need such an “enemy” to be able to invest even more of their national wealth in the war machinery, to become even stronger militarily, and then to dominate the whole world.
Thereby, Russia is to be smashed, and the huge Siberian mineral resources are to be plundered. That is an old USA strategic goal. It’s (almost) always about earth resources.
Even Henry Kissinger (after his retirement) stated this publicly. But the related YouTube video has been deleted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AetGRpg0p6s&list=PLpzSpevFD7qw367OhrdLRXedgPZySrOlX&index=41
John Pilger, among many others, has also reported on this:
John Pilger’s Guide To Propaganda
(54:20 Main goal = to smash Russia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOZZbK4Y-YM
That was/ is now tried with this Ukraine war organized by the USA & GB (Maidan coup in 2014 against a democratically elected president), but can by no means succeed. This time they have overestimated themselves enormously and this will have catastrophic consequences for them.
• Organizers of the Maidan coup:
• Phone call Victoria Nuland – Pyatt
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwAcbZGDXww
• Nuland phone call
• https://youtu.be/WV9J6sxCs5k
• Some White House staffers call Victoria Nuland the “Mad Jewish Arsonist of War.”
• 0:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmlScyYF_UM
• Noam Chomsky – The Crimes of U.S. Presidents
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXtgq0Nhsc
• Wikileaks
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naLzrXvnoXE
• About Maidan coup + other coups of USA, long E
• https://youtu.be/p84KzkdKZb4
Who does not seek peace, who organizes coups of the democratically elected foreign governments, causes (by lies) and leads wars (worldwide)?
Just to mention a few examples: Hawaii, Guatemala, Panama, Vietnam (3 million murdered, mostly civilians, children, and women), Iran (1953), Iraq (1 million murdered, mostly civilians, children, and women), Syria …. up to Ukraine?
8000 murdered in Srebrenica (no children and women among them) the UN courts qualified as GENOCIDE. Compare 8000 with the above-mentioned MILLIONS.
_______________
Just one more example:
According to the clearest report commissioned by the EU, under the leadership of Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini – Georgia was the aggressor and Russia merely retaliated, paid back, and then withdrew.
Already in 2004 and 2006 Georgia (egged on/ misused by the USA, otherwise they would never have dared) undertook military operations against Russia and the UN Security Council even passed a resolution calling on Georgia to refrain from such actions in the future.
How many of you, in your “free world” with your “free media” and “democracy” were informed objectively also in this matter?
Why don’t you know it?
Because most of the media spread the lies/ propaganda of the high-ranking NATO experts and even Jens Stoltenberg’s, who still today (06. 04. 2023) accuses Russia (against the best knowledge) to have invaded/ attacked Georgia in 2008
1: 50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bEFg9oZKeY
Such persons must not be believed a word. In Stoltenberg’s eyes you can see discomfort and fear, but he has to do it because he is ordered to do so by Washington.
________________________
The USA government and CIA poisoned Alexey Navalny with Novichock (= typical USSR/Russian) to defame Putin. If Putin wanted to do it, he would have done it by another means.
_____________________________
USA/ NATO officers and soldiers participate directly in this war against Russia from the beginning (and later this year will no longer do it secretly, but massively, but will not have much time to regret it). Proof:
Oberst bestätigt: NATO Soldaten kämpfen bereits in der Ukraine!
(2: 23 ff. High number of Western/ NATO soldiers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wur4YRSrwIk