Guest Post by Glenn Greenwald
The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.
Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.
The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.
The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.
I had no objection to their disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.
The censored article will be published on this page shortly. My letter of intent to resign, which I sent this morning to First Look Media’s President Michael Bloom, is published below.
As of now, I will be publishing my journalism here on Substack, where numerous other journalists, including my good friend, the great intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi, have come in order to practice journalism free of the increasingly repressive climate that is engulfing national mainstream media outlets across the country.
This was not an easy choice: I am voluntarily sacrificing the support of a large institution and guaranteed salary in exchange for nothing other than a belief that there are enough people who believe in the virtues of independent journalism and the need for free discourse who will be willing to support my work by subscribing.
Like anyone with young children, a family and numerous obligations, I do this with some trepidation, but also with the conviction that there is no other choice. I could not sleep at night knowing that I allowed any institution to censor what I want to say and believe — least of all a media outlet I co-founded with the explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to other journalists, let alone to me, let alone because I have written an article critical of a powerful Democratic politician vehemently supported by the editors in the imminent national election.
But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.
From the time I began writing about politics in 2005, journalistic freedom and editorial independence have been sacrosanct to me. Fifteen years ago, I created a blog on the free Blogspot software when I was still working as a lawyer: not with any hopes or plans of starting a new career as a journalist, but just as a citizen concerned about what I was seeing with the War on Terror and civil liberties, and wanting to express what I believed needed to be heard. It was a labor of love, based in an ethos of cause and conviction, dependent upon a guarantee of complete editorial freedom.
It thrived because the readership I built knew that, even when they disagreed with particular views I was expressing, I was a free and independent voice, unwedded to any faction, controlled by nobody, endeavoring to be as honest as possible about what I was seeing, and always curious about the wisdom of seeing things differently. The title I chose for that blog, “Unclaimed Territory,” reflected that spirit of liberation from captivity to any fixed political or intellectual dogma or institutional constraints.
When Salon offered me a job as a columnist in 2007, and then again when the Guardian did the same in 2012, I accepted their offers on the condition that I would have the right, except in narrowly defined situations (such as articles that could create legal liability for the news outlet), to publish my articles and columns directly to the internet without censorship, advanced editorial interference, or any other intervention permitted or approval needed. Both outlets revamped their publication system to accommodate this condition, and over the many years I worked with them, they always honored those commitments.
When I left the Guardian at the height of the Snowden reporting in 2013 in order to create a new media outlet, I did not do so, needless to say, in order to impose upon myself more constraints and restrictions on my journalistic independence. The exact opposite was true: the intended core innovation of The Intercept, above all else, was to create a new media outlets where all talented, responsible journalists would enjoy the same right of editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for myself. As I told former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a 2013 exchange we had in The New York Times about my critiques of mainstream journalism and the idea behind The Intercept: “editors should be there to empower and enable strong, highly factual, aggressive adversarial journalism, not to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the journalism.”
When the three of us as co-founders made the decision early on that we would not attempt to manage the day-to-day operations of the new outlet, so that we could instead focus on our journalism, we negotiated the right of approval for senior editors and, especially the editor-in-chief. The central responsibility of the person holding that title was to implement, in close consultation with us, the unique journalistic vision and journalistic values on which we founded this new media outlet.
Chief among those values was editorial freedom, the protection of a journalist’s right to speak in an honest voice, and the airing rather than suppression of dissent from mainstream orthodoxies and even collegial disagreements with one another. That would be accomplished, above all else, by ensuring that journalists, once they fulfilled the first duty of factual accuracy and journalistic ethics, would be not just permitted but encouraged to express political and ideological views that deviated from mainstream orthodoxy and those of their own editors; to express themselves in their own voice of passion and conviction rather stuffed into the corporatized, contrived tone of artificial objectivity, above-it-all omnipotence; and to be completely free of anyone else’s dogmatic beliefs or ideological agenda — including those of the three co-founders.
The current iteration of The Intercept is completely unrecognizable when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.
As a result, it is a rare event indeed when a radical freelance voice unwelcome in mainstream precincts is published in The Intercept. Outisde reporters or writers with no claim to mainstream acceptability — exactly the people we set out to amplify — have almost no chance of being published. It is even rarer for The Intercept to publish content that would not fit very comfortably in at least a dozen or more center-left publications of similar size which pre-dated its founding, from Mother Jones to Vox and even MSNBC.
Courage is required to step out of line, to question and poke at those pieties most sacred in one’s own milieu, but fear of alienating the guardians of liberal orthodoxy, especially on Twitter, is the predominant attribute of The Intercept’s New-York based editorial leadership team. As a result, The Intercept has all but abandoned its core mission of challenging and poking at, rather than appeasing and comforting, the institutions and guardians most powerful in its cultural and political circles.
Making all of this worse, The Intercept — while gradually excluding the co-founders from any role in its editorial mission or direction, and making one choice after the next to which I vocally objected as a betrayal of our core mission — continued publicly to trade on my name in order to raise funds for journalism it knew I did not support. It purposely allowed the perception to fester that I was the person responsible for its journalistic mistakes in order to ensure that blame for those mistakes was heaped on me rather than the editors who were consolidating control and were responsible for them.
The most egregious, but by no means only, example of exploiting my name to evade responsibility was the Reality Winner debacle. As The New York Times recently reported, that was a story in which I had no involvement whatsoever. While based in Brazil, I was never asked to work on the documents which Winner sent to our New York newsroom with no request that any specific journalist work on them. I did not even learn of the existence of that document until very shortly prior to its publication. The person who oversaw, edited and controlled that story was Betsy Reed, which was how it should be given the magnitude and complexity of that reporting and her position as editor-in-chief.
It was Intercept editors who pressured the story’s reporters to quickly send those documents for authentication to the government — because they was eager to prove to mainstream media outlets and prominent liberals that The Intercept was willing to get on board the Russiagate train. They wanted to counter-act the perception, created by my articles expressing skepticism about the central claims of that scandal, that The Intercept had stepped out of line on a story of high importance to U.S. liberalism and even the left. That craving — to secure the approval of the very mainstream media outlets we set out to counteract — was the root cause for the speed and recklessness with which that document from Winner was handled.
But The Intercept, to this very day, has refused to provide any public accounting of what happened in the Reality Winner story: to explain who the editors were who made mistakes and why any of it happened. As the New York Times article makes clear, that refusal persists to this very day notwithstanding vocal demands from myself, Scahill, Laura Poitras and others that The Intercept, as an institution that demands transparency from others, has the obligation to provide it for itself.
The reason for this silence and this cover-up is obvious: accounting to the public about what happened with the Reality Winner story would reveal who the actual editors are who are responsible for that deeply embarrassing newsroom failure, and that would negate their ability to continue to hide behind me and let the public continue to assume that I was the person at fault for a reporting process from which I was completely excluded from the start. That is just one example illustrating the frustrating dilemma of having a newsroom exploit my name, work and credibility when it is convenient to do so, while increasingly denying me any opportunity to influence its journalistic mission and editorial direction, all while pursuing an editorial mission completely anathema to what I believe.
Despite all of this, I did not want to leave The Intercept. As it deteriorated and abandoned its original mission, I reasoned to myself — perhaps rationalized — that as long as The Intercept at least continued to provide me the resources to personally do the journalism I believe in, and never to interfere in or impede my editorial freedom, I could swallow everything else.
But the brute censorship this week of my article — about the Hunter Biden materials and Joe Biden’s conduct regarding Ukraine and China, as well my critique of the media’s rank-closing attempt, in a deeply unholy union with Silicon Valley and the “intelligence community,” to suppress its revelations — eroded the last justification I could cling to for staying. It meant that not only does this media outlet not provide the editorial freedom to other journalists, as I had so hopefully envisioned seven years ago, but now no longer even provides it to me. In the days heading into a presidential election, I am somehow silenced from expressing any views that random editors in New York find disagreeable, and now somehow have to conform my writing and reporting to cater to their partisan desires and eagerness to elect specific candidates.
To say that such censorship is a red line for me, a situation I would never accept no matter the cost, is an understatement. It is astonishing to me, but also a reflection of our current discourse and illiberal media environment, that I have been silenced about Joe Biden by my own media outlet.
Numerous other episodes were also contributing causes to my decision to leave: the Reality Winner cover-up; the decision to hang Lee Fang out to dry and even force him to apologize when a colleague tried to destroy his reputation by publicly, baselessly and repeatedly branding him a racist; its refusal to report on the daily proceedings of the Assange extradition hearing because the freelance supporter doing an outstanding job was politically distasteful; its utter lack of editorial standards when it comes to viewpoints or reporting that flatter the beliefs of its liberal base (The Intercept published some of the most credulous and false affirmations of maximalist Russiagate madness, and, horrifyingly, took the lead in falsely branding the Hunter Biden archive as “Russian disinformation” by mindlessly and uncritically citing — of all things — a letter by former CIA officials that contained this baseless insinuation).
I know it sounds banal to say, but — even with all of these frustrations and failures — I am leaving, and writing this, with genuine sadness, not fury. That news outlet is something I and numerous close friend and colleagues poured an enormous amount of our time, energy, passion and love into building.
The Intercept has done great work. Its editorial leaders and First Look’s managers steadfastly supported the difficult and dangerous reporting I did last year with my brave young colleagues at The Intercept Brasil to expose corruption at the highest levels of the Bolsonaro government, and stood behind us as we endured threats of death and imprisonment.
It continues to employ some of my closest friends, outstanding journalists whose work — when it overcomes editorial resistance — produces nothing but the highest admiration from me: Jeremy Scahill, Lee Fang, Murtaza Hussain, Naomi Klein, Ryan Grim and others. And I have no personal animus for anyone there, nor any desire to hurt it as an institution. Betsy Reed is an exceptionally smart editor and a very good human being with whom I developed a close and valuable friendship. And Pierre Omidyar, the original funder and publisher of First Look, always honored his personal commitment never to interfere in our editorial process even when I was publishing articles directly at odds with his strongly held views and even when I was attacking other institutions he was funding. I’m not leaving out of vengeance or personal conflict but out of conviction and cause.
And none of the critiques I have voiced about The Intercept are unique to it. To the contrary: these are the raging battles over free expression and the right of dissent raging within every major cultural, political and journalistic institution. That’s the crisis that journalism, and more broadly values of liberalism, faces. Our discourse is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting views, and our culture is demanding more and more submission to prevailing orthodoxies imposed by self-anointed monopolists of Truth and Righteousness, backed up by armies of online enforcement mobs.
And nothing is crippled by that trend more severely than journalism, which, above all else, requires the ability of journalists to offend and anger power centers, question or reject sacred pieties, unearth facts that reflect negatively even on (especially on) the most beloved and powerful figures, and highlight corruption no matter where it is found and regardless of who is benefited or injured by its exposure.
Prior to the extraordinary experience of being censored this week by my own news outlet, I had already been exploring the possibility of creating a new media outlet. I have spent a couple of months in active discussions with some of the most interesting, independent and vibrant journalists, writers and commentators across the political spectrum about the feasibility of securing financing for a new outlet that would be designed to combat these trends. The first two paragraphs of our working document reads as follows:
American media is gripped in a polarized culture war that is forcing journalism to conform to tribal, groupthink narratives that are often divorced from the truth and cater to perspectives that are not reflective of the broader public but instead a minority of hyper-partisan elites. The need to conform to highly restrictive, artificial cultural narratives and partisan identities has created a repressive and illiberal environment in which vast swaths of news and reporting either do not happen or are presented through the most skewed and reality-detached lens.
With nearly all major media institutions captured to some degree by this dynamic, a deep need exists for media that is untethered and free to transgress the boundaries of this polarized culture war and address a demand from a public that is starved for media that doesn’t play for a side but instead pursues lines of reporting, thought, and inquiry wherever they lead, without fear of violating cultural pieties or elite orthodoxies.
I have definitely not relinquished hope that this ambitious project can be accomplished. And I theoretically could have stayed at The Intercept until then, guaranteeing a stable and secure income for my family by swallowing the dictates of my new censors.
But I would be deeply ashamed if I did that, and believe I would be betraying my own principles and convictions that I urge others to follow. So in the meantime, I have decided to follow in the footsteps of numerous other writers and journalists who have been expelled from increasingly repressive journalistic precincts for various forms of heresy and dissent and who have sought refuge here.
I hope to exploit the freedom this new platform offers not only to continue to publish the independent and hard-hitting investigative journalism and candid analysis and opinion writing that my readers have come to expect, but also to develop a podcast, and continue the YouTube program, “System Update,” I launched earlier this year in partnership with The Intercept.
To do that, to make this viable, I will need your support: people who are able to subscribe and sign up for the newsletter attached to this platform will enable my work to thrive and still be heard, perhaps even more so than before. I began my journalism career by depending on my readers’ willingness to support independent journalism which they believe is necessary to sustain. It is somewhat daunting at this point in my life, but also very exciting, to return to that model where one answers only to the public a journalist should be serving.
* * * * * * * *
LETTER OF INTENT TO RESIGN
——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: ResignationDate: Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:20:54 -0300From: Glenn Greenwald <[email protected]>To: Michael Bloom <[email protected]>, Betsy Reed <[email protected]>
Michael –
I am writing to advise you that I have decided that I will be resigning from First Look Media (FLM) and The Intercept.
The precipitating (but by no means only) cause is that The Intercept is attempting to censor my articles in violation of both my contract and fundamental principles of editorial freedom. The latest and perhaps most egregious example is an opinion column I wrote this week which, five days before the presidential election, is critical of Joe Biden, the candidate who happens to be vigorously supported by all of the Intercept editors in New York who are imposing the censorship and refusing to publish the article unless I agree to remove all of the sections critical of the candidate they want to win. All of that violates the right in my contract with FLM to publish articles without editorial interference except in very narrow circumstances that plainly do not apply here.
Worse, The Intercept editors in New York, not content to censor publication of my article at the Intercept, are also demanding that I not exercise my separate contractual right with FLM regarding articles I have written but which FLM does not want to publish itself. Under my contract, I have the right to publish any articles FLM rejects with another publication. But Intercept editors in New York are demanding I not only accept their censorship of my article at The Intercept, but also refrain from publishing it with any other journalistic outlet, and are using thinly disguised lawyer-crafted threats to coerce me not to do so (proclaiming it would be “detrimental” to The Intercept if I published it elsewhere).
I have been extremely disenchanted and saddened by the editorial direction of The Intercept under its New York leadership for quite some time. The publication we founded without those editors back in 2014 now bears absolutely no resemblance to what we set out to build — not in content, structure, editorial mission or purpose. I have grown embarrassed to have my name used as a fund-raising tool to support what it is doing and for editors to use me as a shield to hide behind to avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes (including, but not only, with the Reality Winner debacle, for which I was publicly blamed despite having no role in it, while the editors who actually were responsible for those mistakes stood by silently, allowing me to be blamed for their errors and then covering-up any public accounting of what happened, knowing that such transparency would expose their own culpability).
But all this time, as things worsened, I reasoned that as long as The Intercept remained a place where my own right of journalistic independence was not being infringed, I could live with all of its other flaws. But now, not even that minimal but foundational right is being honored for my own journalism, suppressed by an increasingly authoritarian, fear-driven, repressive editorial team in New York bent on imposing their own ideological and partisan preferences on all writers while ensuring that nothing is published at The Intercept that contradicts their own narrow, homogenous ideological and partisan views: exactly what The Intercept, more than any other goal, was created to prevent.
I have asked my lawyer to get in touch with FLM to discuss how best to terminate my contract. Thank you –
Glenn Greenwald
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
ABOUT TIME GLENN–HOPEFULLY not too late….
I am impressed and inspired!
Mr. Greenwald, you and your friends hired left wing Democrats as Editors…You were extremely naive to believe that they wouldn’t start harassing and censoring you once they got entrenched…I advise you to file suit for breach of contract….
pyrr- Kind of like Trump hiring Barr, who just may be the biggest frog in the swamp and then wonders why he can’t get any cooperation. If you hang around snakes, don’t be surprised when you are bitten.
Wow
Sounds like a letter written by Winston in 1984. One can only hope he doesn’t meet the same fate.
He apparently did not mind their views and free-speech suppression…..as long as it was not HIS speech suppressed.
Touche.
What Auntie really wants to know is, is Mr. Greenwald still going to vote for a Harris administration?
Do you know that to be true? It doesn’t seem possible given his history. I’m half way through his Rogan podcast and he names Biden as the hatchet man for Obama denying Snowden access to enter other countries when he was trying to get to Ecuador. Now he’d vote for him?
Sorry, CC, Auntie needed to add a //SARC OFF// tag.
Anyone who votes is the bad guy.
Historic times, indeed.
If the major social media companies would now simply ban Greenwald, he would essentially no longer exist. There used to be a guy called Milo Yiannopoulos, but he no longer exists. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? Meanwhile the herp-derp “Conservatives” (the Paul Ryans and Jim Jordans and laissez-faire ideologues) will say “start your own platform”. Sure. Start your own electric company, too.
No matter how bad you think the echo chamber is, it’s worse.
I just want to punch those mfers.
Glenn lost me when he partnered up with Omidyar to begin with… The ebay founder owns First Look. Two important articles. To help understand.
I find it impossible to see Greenwald trying to claim he was “free” all this time working for Pierre. They essentially suppressed the 57k docs that were claimed to have been given by Snowden. The whole thing stinks. Read these and comment. I would like to hear if others noticed this. Thanks MLG
I also felt Glenn had been strongly left leaning for some time now and couldn’t take him that serious anymore. It also seems he never realized the whole Brazilian dog&pony show stank like CIA.
But that he now was able to take a hard look at Biden’s mess, and conclude against his prejudice that it stinks to high heaven seems to indicate he didn’t leave his conscience at the coat check.
Dah, dah, da-da-dah;
Dah, dah, da-da-dah, DAH!
Start spreadin’ the news.
Glenn’s leaving today.
No more a part of it, New York, Jew York
Those Twitter check blues,
Dems lie and betray.
And make a Liberal shart of it, that city, New York
Don’t wanna wake up, in a shithole full of peeps
And find the Intercept’s ill; with arrogant sheep;
Bloomberg’s a bum, Cuomo’s a creep.
All little town views
like Donald, they say.
He’ll make a brand new place of it,
New York, New York.
He was successful there, and
now he’s everywhere.
Reject the blues, upstate New York.
When two left-leaning journalists like Greenwald and Taibbi have to go independent to publish actual journalism, tyranny has taken over. All the US media now resembles the media of the old Soviet Union. Only party-approved narratives can be published. The MSM is now just Pravda with more modern logos.
Indeed, you get more truth from RT and Sputnik than any MSM outlet here
You quit and the communists have taken over yet again while you start over.
I’m speechless.
Civil war is coming…
Hot widespread shooting and killing Civil War is just around the corner of 4th & Tribulation…cold occasional killing civil war has been ongoing for generations…one side just didn’t realize it.
When you see someone without a mask…in public…that will give you an idea of the numbers of the ones who you can rely on to cover your six.
Seems to me 3% is an interesting and powerful number.
Encouragement! I went to a fund raiser in the Raleigh burbs for a self-made well off friend running for the statehouse…125 people there…he is what the Founders envisioed…only two wearing a face diaper.
Many young people in attendance…only four blacks…made sure I spoke to them, they were few but exceptional…another race but three percenters?
If it’s voters vs non-voters, the voters will be slaughtered. We outnumber voters at least 3 to 1. When you count that about 40-50% voters are anti-arms sitting ducks that means about capable non-voters outnumber capable voters about 4 to 1. Voters are definitely a minority. When you consider that voters are predictable sheep who hate the other side of voters then it will be much easier for non-voters to get voters to attack each other thereby further reducing the number of voters before non-voters even need to get started with bringing the real heat. Voters have a communist system to fight for while non-voters have freedom to fight for. Definitely not looking good for voters.
Some of us Actual Voters qualify solidly as “non-voters” by your definition and we will be shoulder to shoulder with ya’ll when the voting that matters starts. I laid it out for my County Commissioner (the phony PCR positive cases, useless face muzzle conditioning, the Fed slow elimination of all currencies, the Gates poison shots with mRHAs and a secret skin dye, the Mark of the Beast (Rev 13:17, etc) and asked if he was a Patriot for God and Country or a Judas Goat for The Powers That Should Not Be; he did not answer.
The flaw in your thinking is that non-voters are non-partisan or not extreme in their views.
Lots of ghetto rats, marxist mental midgets and even common conservatives don’t bother to vote.
Why would a Trump supporter in NY, California or Maryland even bother? In fact, what is the motive for even a welfare queen to waddle herself to a polling booth when her “team” is assured of a 80% landslide even if she stays on the couch watching her stories and crunching another bag of pork rinds?
I like your thinking but most non-voters will quickly join the rank and file in an escalated conflict.
In any kind of war the actual warring participates are generally a small percentage of the population. Most non-combatants either have to huddle down somewhere isolated or become refugees, and suffer the consequences of non-action.
The rank and file will be disciplined if they want to win. Just look at the Taliban, they only appear ragtag without a single airplane, but have defeated a nation with nuclear carriers.
Mark, you got any suggestions for churches in SW Virginia that don’t require masks? I will not comply.
Maybe Shepard Smith will have him on his new CNBC show like he did his former Fox show.
I have a feeling there was more than one draft written before the final draft. All that no hard feelings stuff just doesn’t ring true.
I never paid much attention to Greenwald. Something about him just annoyed me.
Every one wants subscribers. Unfortunately there’s not enough dough to go around and you have to make choices.
I guess I am out of the loop but I don’t think I am familiar with Glenn Greenwald. I prefer writing that gets to the point and doesn’t take all day to get there – writers like Jim Quinn and Bob Gore.
It took many words to tell why he’s leaving an outfit he established. He could have said that he was betrayed by those in whom he had mistakenly placed his trust. Regardless, I applaud his decision. Principles are worthless if you disregard them for personal gain. I wish him well in his future endeavors. I think he will need it.
He helped Edward Snowden get his story out.
Hey Admin,
Over on the “Sun” thread ICE-9 is giving me a lot of shit … simply cuz I believe the Earth is warmed by its molten core, not the sun. Can you believe it?
I don’t know what you think about that …… but, can you at least ban him? TIA
Hmmmm….,again(yet again)rethinking the wisdom of the stuckman and unlimited net access,this seems to be a fluid thought process!Some days brilliant(almost),other days,hmmmmm…..
*coughLOSERcoughcough*
What, did you take some good drugs before stating that??? 😉 Yes, we have a molten core, but it does not spawn nuclear reactions. The Earth (itself as a system) has a finite amount of energy contained within the core and it is continuously dissipating it. Yes, it provides heat to the crust. However, if the Earth were not warmed by the sun, you would not feel the temperature differences between night and day. Those significant temperature differences in such short duration should indicate to you that the Sun plays a very significant role in warming the Earth. Or… if you want to extrapolate to the extremes a bit, look at Venus versus Mars. Very extreme planetary temperatures because of their distance from the Sun.
Damn! Can no one take a joke?
Did we go to the moon?
NO!!
My resignation from the burning platform:
I’ve been visiting this site since at least 2013, but only regularly for the past 3 years or so, often multiple times per day.
You just lost another regular millenial visitor. A long-time fan. Sucks for you, because people always enjoyed- no, thirsted for- my social commentaries, especially recently, and I’m glad I could enrich your life a bit- hope it made you happy. It’s sad to say that the exchange was very one-sided, however. Almost everyone here is STILL sucking a gopher’s ass regarding the imminent hispanic war (which absolutely nobody seems to comprehend except the daily stormer- which is a shame in itself that Anglin is the only one who is even semi-aware of what’s coming). This site is tired and worn out, mostly just using other websites’ material, and stale as a 3-week old bag of open cheetos.
Any of you even seen fight club?? The real Tyler Durden would say that you guys have bitch-tits, and to get the fuck off his porch. You cannot join project mayhem… even if you are part of fight club.
These days, the burning platform offers very little useful, original material when compared to other, actually useful sites like counter-currents, among others. The kids don’t wanna hear that tired old shit about the economy that we’ve never got to participate in! Maybe you can tell those campfire stories to the goody-two shoes eagle scouts with no life, who occasionally pop in… I’ve given up hope trying to talk any sense into you lot. A bunch of tired old men with a hopeless normalcy bias, offering very little but criticisms diguised as “advice”. Yeah… Lemme just pull myself up by my fuggin bootstraps, boomer. Have YOU left the basement lately, gramps?? If you guys wanna ignore a changing reality, that’s cool, be fossils. But generally speaking (always a bad idea) the youth is more radical, on both ends of the spectrum, and much of what I see here hasn’t changed in any MEANINGFUL way in a while.
This place is going the way of the dinos. Most of the commentariat here is boring and way OUT-OF-TOUCH (and not what they used to be). Reading this shit everyday literally makes me wanna be a (fake) liberal given the choice between the two, because there is nothing new or interesting going on here (at least the kids over on that side of the block have SOME fun, and I could probly have fun bullying them when I get bored, or raid their lemonade stand for comic-book cash when I need something to else to do). But anyway… don’t git yer Depends in a wad, I’ll be staying further to the right than you. Enjoy the retirement home, homes! Peace owtt
Since you don’t have the balls to use your name and do all that whining under anonymous I’m just gonna say you are a big whiny coward. You probably look like those pics of the sorry looking antifa dudes that get arrested in Portland all the time.
I would say don’t let the door hit you but that’s not my call.
Just remember… You heard it here first, from another millenial you apparently hate. For some reason… I said don’t get your dependz in a wad… Man those hormone changes must be rough. Good thing I’ll never get that old
Haha I look just like them dudes, minus the tattoos. Ink is just way too cringe for me to indulge in unless i go to prison. I look this way on purpose. Grew my hair out because people kept *suspecting* i was a white nationalist. Lol. I wear black a lot because I’ve listened to bands like Suffokate since my balls (which YOU mentioned) started growing fuzz… But mostly, I live in a very liberal shithole, and was hoping to infiltrate antifa. I hate those guys more than you do. I just have MASSIVE balls and would gore that organization badly if I ever seriously got invited. Fuck it. I’m going to portland someday soon.
Ps… Lyk, I knowww dik pics are a bit played out these days, but maybe we could mix it up with pics of my balls… Since you guys can’t stop talking about my junk. Im kinda getting hot and bothered now…. Should I put one up? Will that make you like me? I neeeed your social validation.
Bye
I would have those MASSIVE balls checked out. That’s usually a sign of prostrate cancer.
or perhaps a new CoVid-19(84) complication.
And the tears of all TBP filled an ocean. / sarc
Buh bye.
One nice thing about anonymous commenters leaving in a huff is how easily they are replaced.
One last bit. I expect a totalitarian police state, in short order. Enjoy martial law. And to the haters: this is your loss, not mine lol bye
Enjoy martial law,eh,only if you accept it.
Sure yeah bro, go tell an army to fuck off. Get your musket and indian face-paint, and be ready to board the ship at midnight!
Many armies have thru history,4th gen been around awhile.
Uh…..,Thursday evening sarcasm?
It is only 4 days to election,might need to get a early start on fun!
Bidens Laptop Matters!(ect.!)
Is “ect” the electro convulsive therapy everyone has been needing the last, now going on, NINE months of the medical martial law imposition?
I love the flounce.
It’s always theatrical.
I’m truly offended by his swipe at my three week old bag of Cheetos. How’d he know?
DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU IN THE DICK PRICK
Wow. I think VD would peg this one as a gamma.
Dude knows how to flounce.
Flounce is basically social currency on the webz these days. Much respect hf. Gonna miss your wisdom. Naaaa fuck that im still gonna see what youre up to from time to time. You’re alright
Soooo, you’re not REALLY leaving??
Goddammit!
================== =
BTW, I, myself, have “left” TBP many times over the years. Really, ask anyone. I once loved flouncing. Then I grew some balls.
Wonder if Greenwald has concluded that Leftism is dead?
He’s late. Perhaps he should read more?
All throughout the 20th Century, Socialist Communist Idealists of all stripes howled:
“Freedom has had it’s chance – and failed.”
While their ruling clique murdered a quarter billion of their own citizens.
Now it’s time for us all to share:
“Taxation is robbery. FED counterfeiting is theft. Regulations are violent domination.
Free men don’t rob their fellows to virtue signal their generosity.”
Government has had it’s chance and failed.
It’s day in the sun began with a blood red sunrise and will end with a bloody sunset.
Nevermore.
No doubt by now most of you have seen The Intercept’s response to Greenwald, but here it is for those who haven’t read it yet:
“The Intercept Responds To Greenwald Resignation, Says He’s ‘Throwing Tantrum’ Over ‘Dubious’ Biden Claims”
Complete condescension and contempt, no? And, yet, it also smacks of desperation, does it not? The reason I say that is because they refuse to directly confront the proverbial elephant in the room.
Those who have read my past articles will know to whom I am referring when I say I had lunch today with The Socialist and The Rino. The Rino told the Socialist he was voting for Trump. I was surprised. Afterward, I privately asked the Rino if he had seen Tucker Carlson’s interview of Tony Bobulinski. He replied that he did not watch “pulp journalism” and that he only deals in facts and hard reporting (i.e. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal).
Of course, another shitfest ensued and I may write about it after the election. In summary, he would not hear anything about Bobulinski’s response to Joe Biden’s (second presidential debate) claims of “Russian disinformation”, he believes Biden will (deservedly) win in a landslide, that Trump has f*cked up America’s Covid response …. and… that he was actually voting for Biden. Evidently, he was joking inside the restaurant when he said he was voting for Trump. And, surprisingly, all of this was revealed with a seemingly desperate amount of condescension and contempt, as well.
Needless to say, by the time we were done, I left him there on the sidewalk ideologically eviscerated and bleeding out.
Unfortunately, though, he’ll recover because of his faith in me as a conspiracy theorist.
Sad, but true. As I stated in my last article, you just can’t reason with people. Not anymore.
Yes, denial, we have entered a special historical time, the Paradigm Shift, and the actions of some become rather comical.
They just as well have said “C’mon maan” as opposed to the verbose reality suppression.
May we live in interesting times?
So true, Otto.
Also, as an addendum to my above post: During our discourse, as The Rino was citing the polls as proof of a forthcoming landslide win for Biden, I told him I thought the fundamentals were now favoring Trump more in 2020 than they were four years ago. He was surprised by that statement and asked me to explain. In turn, I mentioned Biden as the second-worst presidential candidate in history, more and more swamp-creature revelations, urban rioting, et al.
When I told The Rino I thought this coming Tuesday will serve as a referendum on Covid, he scornfully asked me to name Trump’s Covid policy. When I said: “Focused Protection” as opposed to Biden’s proposed lockdown and mandates, The Rino seemed stunned and had no response.
Then, when I asked The Rino if he would consider his complete shock in the wake of a Trump win, as proof of his insular closed-mindedness, he told me he would move to Canada if Trump wins.
Mission accomplished. All in all, it was a good day.
Interesting times, indeed.
If only those that threaten to move to Canada or elsewhere ever followed through. They never do. Anson Mount wrote a great open letter to his fellow actors and Hollywood ilk after the 2016 election that was great.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/an-open-letter-to-celebrities-threatening-to-leave-the-nation
Who was first?
What exactly is NOT a hoax?
Learn to code, dude.
The situation in this country has gone completely sideways when Glenn Greenwald has to go on Tucker Carlson to get a fair hearing.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8895519/Glenn-Greenwald-tells-Tucker-Carlson-left-bed-CIA-set-destroying-Trump.html#article-8895519
He’s got oriental eyes…..a variation on a lyric by Rod Stewart.