Glenn Greenwald is outraged that Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke a “sermon you have to hear to believe” where Blinken supported press freedom for World Press Freedom Day. The offensive language? He said this: “Everywhere journalism and freedom of the press is challenged, we will stand with journalists and with that freedom.”

Just past one hundred days into the first Democratic government since early 2011, Glenn has long-since already thrown out any chance that there could be progress under a Democratic government, and he is not willing to do anything but trash them wholesale from his libertarian sidelines. Glenn prefers working with freshly out-of-power Republicans: “Attempting to induce more [Republicans], rather than wallowing in smug resignation about how all Republicans suck, seems the better course to me.”

JULIAN ASSANGE PROSECUTION

Attempting to invoke a familiar “hypocrisy” funny bone, Glenn lists all the terrible things that Democrats did, particularly focusing on Julian Assange. Glenn mentions that Donald Trump prosecuted Julian — after a long list of Democratic statements and investigations concerning him. But the biggest offense is that the Joe Biden administration has not yet cancelled the Donald Trump prosecution.

In fact, many of the charges that Julian Assange faces come from his activities in 2010. Barack Obama refused to charge these things. Instead, Donald Trump went after his “I love Wikileaks” ally even though Julian was loyal to the end; and as far as we know, still is loyal to his beneficiary and prosecutor.

Julian Assange knows things that Donald Trump doesn’t want out there. Between the Trump administration policy of total obstruction, pardoning of Trump’s criminal cohorts, and the sidelining of Julian Assange out of earshot, we do not have the full story of Julian’s foreign interference in the American election.

We know that Julian Assange was in touch with the campaign, providing strategy tidbits and even suggesting that Donald Trump refuse to “conceed.” We also know that Julian Assange was very much a partisan: “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.” We know that one of the charges against Julian involves–not press freedom but hacking assistance.

Rather than ending the prosecution, the investigation truncated by the Donald Trump policy of obstructing everything needs to be fully resumed. Once the full nature of the foreign interference by Julian Assange himself is known, we can look at all the charges and drop those that were purely about press freedom. Others, like the hacking charge already filed, will remain.

PRESS FREEDOM

Glenn complains: “It is hardly new for the U.S. to dole out lectures which the rest of the world recognizes as complete farces.” That’s nice for invoking the hypocrisy funny bone again, which is the entire point of his partisan article — namely that Democrats are hypocrites — but it doesn’t help the actual issue of press freedom. Glenn continues:

But galavanting around the world masquerading as the champion of press freedoms and the rights of independent journalists, all while working to extend the confinement and detention of one of the people responsible for much of the most important journalistic revelations of this generation beyond the decade he has already endured, is a whole new level of deceit. “Hypocrisy” is insufficient to capture the craven insincerity behind Blinken’s posturing.

Should the United States give up press freedom around the world because of its own record? Wouldn’t that likely make everything worse everywhere? The answer is yes — yelling hypocrisy constantly is a sure way to keep people arguing rather than pressuring for change.

We have a new administration in office for just over one hundred days, and the first elected Democratic government in ten years, but all Glenn can do is publish attacks about the past and claims of hypocrisy. There are no suggestions to try to induce the new government to do something, no strategy for trying to work this administration and this government to deal with the issue — just constant generalized Twitter complaints about “liberals” and “the left” in the style popularized by mainstream media star Rush Limbaugh.

It seems like Glenn Greenwald agrees with his good friend Julian Assange: “it would be much better for GOP to win.” Glenn will spend the rest of the next four years working on his partisan goal whether that means finding credibility in the flurry of 2021 Jim Crow voter suppression, denying the Donald Trump coup attempt, or whatever else he needs to push — for the purpose of lowering voter turnout to help Republicans.

Noam Chomsky knew the January 6 coup attempt was real as did the World Socialist Web Site:

But regardless of the outcome, the event itself was an attempted coup d’état. To deny this obvious fact is an evasion and distortion of reality, which serves to cover up the immense political dangers that persist, and will grow more intense, in the months ahead

In the immediate aftermath of the attempted coup, well-known independent journalists such as John Pilger, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges and Joe Lauria (of Consortium News) are advancing a dangerously misguided view of the events of January 6, which claims that what occurred in Washington was nothing more than a constitutionally protected exercise of free speech that simply got out of hand.

The World Socialist Web Site is legitimately socialist, unlike Glenn Greenwald who once complained about “worn-out, socialist/collectivist policies” in Latin America.

Noam Chomsky also knows that voting in elections matters. It’s literally the way we get representative government. Glenn Greenwald, should he ever decide to reflect upon his apparent ideology, has many basic things to learn.