8 ms·

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-groundwork-hunter-biden-conspiracy-deluge-n1245387 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-pe

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-groundwork-hunter-biden-conspiracy-deluge-n1245387 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-... This is why the Intercept didn't want to run Glenn's story. FYI this sob story has some precedent: In 2014: "I absolutely refuse to be exiled from my own country for the crime of doing journalism and I'm going to force the issue just on principle. And I think going back for a ceremony like the Polk Awards or other forms of journalistic awards would be a really good symbolic test of having to put the government in the position of having to arrest journalists who are coming back to the US to receive awards for the journalism they have done." He wasn't arrested. He wasn't even menaced by authorities. The dude has a serious persecution complex.

Lammy 6y ago
What is "the issue" he's referencing?
pvarangot 6y ago
Did you read his story? It's good, it's serious and it calls out the democrats about some real bullshit like inventing a fake Russian intelligence operation to not respond to allegations that come from the emails. I don't care if a journalist has a paranoid delusion as long as they are doing good writing and due diligence, and Glenn's story has both. He's not the most stable individual and he has made mistakes in the past, but he's a journalist he writes and we read and make our minds. I'm not going to doubt him because he's a "freak".
- mundo 6y ago
  I read it, but did not see any new reporting. It makes a bold claim in the lede - "a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories" and offers no specific evidence for it. It seems like Greenwald's gist is that circumstantial evidence is enough proof - that this story is so obviously important that not covering it prominently is <i>prima facie</i> evidence of bias. That's a reasonable opinion, but that's all it is, and if you didn't already believe it, I don't think there's anything here to change your mind. Personally, I don't see the bombshell part. All I see here is that most journalists want Biden to win, and sometimes politicians' kids get sinecures they don't deserve. I knew both of those things last year. The whole debacle like an obvious attempt to smear Biden Sr with salacious stuff that his kid did, and the only reason it's getting this much attention is that, unlike Trump, Biden doesn't have any other scandals to talk about.
  - pvarangot 6y ago
    Yeah I see where you are going and I think Biden is a "clean" candidate corruptionwise, at least as much if not cleaner than Hillary was. That being said I have no doubt he is an accomplice for the US backing corrupt politicians in the Ukraine or other countries. Also I think accusing Russia of running a disinformation campaign to try to cast doubt on the emails form Hunter is cheap and dangerous, it makes his base more angry for no reason.
- TearsInTheRain 6y ago
  Just posting a link to the story since I didnt see it elsewhere in this thread: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-b...
- monkeydreams 6y ago
  > Did you read his story? It's good, it's serious I have read it, and it's not good. It is an example of the worst aspects of pearl-clutching, can-you-imagine-what-this-means, ignore-the-actual-facts tendencies of the media today. He starts from a ludicrous premise and then doubles down on the ramifications, all without actually addressing the question of whether or not it is true. You certainly don't question the suspect if you already know their answer, and you have no proof to the contrary. At least not unless you are ready to cede to that suspect the moral high ground. Firstly, Glenn focuses on the fact this "de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community" is not asking the Bidens questions about the nature of these allegations. The simple answer is that "union" is focusing on questions of merit, unrelated to this fictional reality Greenwald is portraying. If one were to accept the premise that these are questions of merit, then one must believe the predicates - that Hunter Biden would send a personal computer to be fixed, thousands of kilometers from his home, by a coincidently pro-Republican repairman, who is coincidently blind but is coincidently also able to confirm that it was Hunter Biden who dropped this computer off, and that coincidently this repairman has a speed dial to Rudolph Giuliani, and that the proof of all of this was coincidently stolen by the USPS. By now the product of all these low-probability events is vanishingly small. > I don't care if a journalist has a paranoid delusion as long as they are doing good writing and due diligence, and Glenn's story has both. Due diligence would require Mr Greenwald to start with a neutral or cynical mindset. Who is to gain from this story, what is required for this to be true. It is telling that Mr Greenwald thinks there is the cabal against him, that the famously apolitical intelligence services are taking a stand contrary to his. And the thing it might tell him is this: start from the facts, and follow from there.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    This is exactly right. Greenwald has distanced himself from the Democratic establishment for years and basically given Trump a free pass to instead lead bizarre crusades against perceived Democrat hypocrisy. This stuff from him today is just playing on hype. Having read the draft article he put on Substack, there is simply nothing in it. There is no evidence anywhere suggesting the Biden emails merit this reaction, let alone merit any sort of investigation.
  - 6y ago
- noelsusman 6y ago
  I read it, or at least as much of it as I could get through. Good writing and due diligence are the last words I would use to describe that piece. It was more of a rant than an article. Glenn has been pushing the boundaries more and more every year, and it's not surprising that this is the article that finally made his editors draw a line in the sand. I even think he has several good points buried in there, but it reads like a screed from an unhinged man.
  - sam_goody 6y ago
    If the best you can do is call him names, just don't weigh in. The article may be a form of a rant, but it is meant as a opinion, and an articulate and specific opinion at that. Everything he says is either very believable, obvious, or verifiable. You may not like what he is preaching, but give examples of what is incorrect, and why, or just go home. Generally, labeling ("screed from an unhinged man"), hyperbole ("as much as I could get through"), unjustified claims ("pushing the boundaries more and more") and projections ("it's not surprising") are all great in debate class, and do wonders in a courtroom (unfortunately), but they are not content, they are tools of persuasion.
    - noelsusman 6y ago
      >The article may be a form of a rant, but it is meant as a opinion That's the whole problem. Greenwald doesn't call himself a columnist, he calls himself a journalist. The Intercept doesn't publish his articles as opinion pieces, they publish them as news. You can't publish that article as a news piece with any sort of credibility.
guybedo 6y ago
> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-... This is why the Intercept didn't want to run Glenn's story. Intercept's decision has nothing to do with this nbc article. Here's the emails exchange between Greenwald and Intercept editors: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  The earlier poster meant that the laptop story is b.s. and the intercept didn’t want any part of it.
elif 6y ago
The form of your comment is a continuation of the censorship trend he is referring to. Rather than engage his writing and journalistic perspective by providing your own, you have pigeonholed and dismissed it outright without even reading it. And rather than back up your own argument, you have chosen to attack his character as your support.
- xracy 6y ago
  1. I don't think you understand the word "censorship". OP of the comment doesn't have the power for it, and Greenwald certainly wasn't censored if everyone is able to read his opinions spearately 2. You don't know that the person didn't read it. That's an unprovable assumption. 3. OP's explaining why the article isn't worth running. This really doesn't amount to a real character attack unless you're new to the internet...
TechBro8615 6y ago
The NBC article is focused on an anonymously drafted report, which was mostly a dump of open source intel. The article criticizes that report for using a fake persona as its author. The initial disseminator of the report (who may or may not be the author of it as well) cites privacy and fear of retribution as reasons for publishing anonymously. What the NBC article does not do is address or refute any of the facts in the report. It also ignores a lot of relevant back story and fails to make connections between this report, Hunter's laptop, and Tony Bobulinski.
- reilly3000 6y ago
  You are correct that it doesn't address the laptop emails directly. The issue here is that this provably false dump that NBC identified is pushing the same basic story the laptop email attempted to expose. You're seeing domestically coordinated smear campaign. It was organized by a domestic PR firm and wrongly characterized as Russian disinformation. Certainly foreign assets (its not just Russia)have amplified it like anything else that is divisive, but at its core it was a plot to make an October surprise. NYPost broke embargo on the story and published ahead of the plan, and that kind of threw everything into chaos. They've been trying to get something out of it, but there is nothing but outrage over supression of a non-story. Emails are a remarkably verifiable thing, and ones these just aren't. Tony Bobulinski's tale has not been corroborated, even by Murdock's own WSJ journalists. https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/29/tony-bobulinski-hunter-biden-and-china-explainer/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/29/tony-bobulins... I find this whole thrust rather remarkable anyhow. If true, Biden's family committed nepotism and would do so again if they were put into power. Really? Coming from an administration which is openly profiting from the office and giving insane amounts of power to their family members?
  - zaroth 6y ago
    > * provably false dump* Not a single line of the NBC article seems to be refuting a single fact from the 64-page document. They do try very hard though to smear the anonymous publisher for trying to be anonymous, and imply without any evidence that somehow this document is tied to Hunter’s email story.
temp8964 6y ago
How does this nbc news related to Glenn's writing? Because there is a fake story on Biden, so all Biden stories should be censored? Wow, I hope you discovered this principal at the time of the golden showers story.
bigdict 6y ago
Matt Taibbi: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/glenn-greenwald-on-his-resignation https://taibbi.substack.com/p/glenn-greenwald-on-his-resigna...
- tptacek 6y ago
  Those two deserve each other.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    And may that pair long continue fighting the good fight against hypocrites and charlatans
    - messick 6y ago
      Hopefully somewhere we never have to hear from either of them ever again.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        Similar words have been expressed by the most wretched tyrants of the history of humanity.
        tptacek 6y ago
        Yes. Also by people with angry cats fucking in their back yards.
        cambalache 6y ago
        So they show more strength of character than many self-appointed tech leaders. For sure I would prefer them as neighbors.
        tptacek 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PedroBatista 6y ago
> He wasn't even menaced by authorities. Dude... really?
temp8964 6y ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/1321992067585765376 https://mobile.twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/13219920675857... Kimberley Strassel @KimStrassel I can say i have never seen this document, nor have i read anything quoting it. I can also say it therefore bears zero relevance on the legitimate evidence about Hunter Biden’s biz, via laptop and Bobulinski. Update: long response from one of the authors of the draft: https://mobile.twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/1321934695936917504 https://mobile.twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/132193469593...
googthrowaway42 6y ago
The report that NBC is referring to was compiled based on public data. It can all be checked. Really it's just sad how cattle-like some people are. Edit: Here it is: https://www.baldingsworld.com/2020/10/22/report-on-biden-activities-with-china/ https://www.baldingsworld.com/2020/10/22/report-on-biden-act... Every claim is footnoted with a direct link to a cited source that is publicly available.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
I don't see what the story you linked has to do with Hunter Biden's emails. They can't refute that, so they refute some other story that supposedly was "disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump"? Oh and that Greenwald feared getting arrested by a government whose unconstitutional spying he helped expose, a government that is still trying to arrest snowden - that proves he has a "serious persecution complex"? What a pathetic attempt at character assasination.

Lammy 6y ago

What is "the issue" he's referencing?

pvarangot 6y ago

Did you read his story? It's good, it's serious and it calls out the democrats about some real bullshit like inventing a fake Russian intelligence operation to not respond to allegations that come from the emails. I don't care if a journalist has a paranoid delusion as long as they are doing good writing and due diligence, and Glenn's story has both. He's not the most stable individual and he has made mistakes in the past, but he's a journalist he writes and we read and make our minds. I'm not going to doubt him because he's a "freak".

mundo 6y ago
I read it, but did not see any new reporting. It makes a bold claim in the lede - "a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories" and offers no specific evidence for it. It seems like Greenwald's gist is that circumstantial evidence is enough proof - that this story is so obviously important that not covering it prominently is <i>prima facie</i> evidence of bias. That's a reasonable opinion, but that's all it is, and if you didn't already believe it, I don't think there's anything here to change your mind. Personally, I don't see the bombshell part. All I see here is that most journalists want Biden to win, and sometimes politicians' kids get sinecures they don't deserve. I knew both of those things last year. The whole debacle like an obvious attempt to smear Biden Sr with salacious stuff that his kid did, and the only reason it's getting this much attention is that, unlike Trump, Biden doesn't have any other scandals to talk about.
- pvarangot 6y ago
  Yeah I see where you are going and I think Biden is a "clean" candidate corruptionwise, at least as much if not cleaner than Hillary was. That being said I have no doubt he is an accomplice for the US backing corrupt politicians in the Ukraine or other countries. Also I think accusing Russia of running a disinformation campaign to try to cast doubt on the emails form Hunter is cheap and dangerous, it makes his base more angry for no reason.
TearsInTheRain 6y ago
Just posting a link to the story since I didnt see it elsewhere in this thread: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-b...
monkeydreams 6y ago
> Did you read his story? It's good, it's serious I have read it, and it's not good. It is an example of the worst aspects of pearl-clutching, can-you-imagine-what-this-means, ignore-the-actual-facts tendencies of the media today. He starts from a ludicrous premise and then doubles down on the ramifications, all without actually addressing the question of whether or not it is true. You certainly don't question the suspect if you already know their answer, and you have no proof to the contrary. At least not unless you are ready to cede to that suspect the moral high ground. Firstly, Glenn focuses on the fact this "de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community" is not asking the Bidens questions about the nature of these allegations. The simple answer is that "union" is focusing on questions of merit, unrelated to this fictional reality Greenwald is portraying. If one were to accept the premise that these are questions of merit, then one must believe the predicates - that Hunter Biden would send a personal computer to be fixed, thousands of kilometers from his home, by a coincidently pro-Republican repairman, who is coincidently blind but is coincidently also able to confirm that it was Hunter Biden who dropped this computer off, and that coincidently this repairman has a speed dial to Rudolph Giuliani, and that the proof of all of this was coincidently stolen by the USPS. By now the product of all these low-probability events is vanishingly small. > I don't care if a journalist has a paranoid delusion as long as they are doing good writing and due diligence, and Glenn's story has both. Due diligence would require Mr Greenwald to start with a neutral or cynical mindset. Who is to gain from this story, what is required for this to be true. It is telling that Mr Greenwald thinks there is the cabal against him, that the famously apolitical intelligence services are taking a stand contrary to his. And the thing it might tell him is this: start from the facts, and follow from there.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  This is exactly right. Greenwald has distanced himself from the Democratic establishment for years and basically given Trump a free pass to instead lead bizarre crusades against perceived Democrat hypocrisy. This stuff from him today is just playing on hype. Having read the draft article he put on Substack, there is simply nothing in it. There is no evidence anywhere suggesting the Biden emails merit this reaction, let alone merit any sort of investigation.
- 6y ago
noelsusman 6y ago
I read it, or at least as much of it as I could get through. Good writing and due diligence are the last words I would use to describe that piece. It was more of a rant than an article. Glenn has been pushing the boundaries more and more every year, and it's not surprising that this is the article that finally made his editors draw a line in the sand. I even think he has several good points buried in there, but it reads like a screed from an unhinged man.
- sam_goody 6y ago
  If the best you can do is call him names, just don't weigh in. The article may be a form of a rant, but it is meant as a opinion, and an articulate and specific opinion at that. Everything he says is either very believable, obvious, or verifiable. You may not like what he is preaching, but give examples of what is incorrect, and why, or just go home. Generally, labeling ("screed from an unhinged man"), hyperbole ("as much as I could get through"), unjustified claims ("pushing the boundaries more and more") and projections ("it's not surprising") are all great in debate class, and do wonders in a courtroom (unfortunately), but they are not content, they are tools of persuasion.
  - noelsusman 6y ago
    >The article may be a form of a rant, but it is meant as a opinion That's the whole problem. Greenwald doesn't call himself a columnist, he calls himself a journalist. The Intercept doesn't publish his articles as opinion pieces, they publish them as news. You can't publish that article as a news piece with any sort of credibility.

guybedo 6y ago

> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-... This is why the Intercept didn't want to run Glenn's story. Intercept's decision has nothing to do with this nbc article. Here's the emails exchange between Greenwald and Intercept editors: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...

aaronbrethorst 6y ago
The earlier poster meant that the laptop story is b.s. and the intercept didn’t want any part of it.

elif 6y ago

The form of your comment is a continuation of the censorship trend he is referring to. Rather than engage his writing and journalistic perspective by providing your own, you have pigeonholed and dismissed it outright without even reading it. And rather than back up your own argument, you have chosen to attack his character as your support.

xracy 6y ago
1. I don't think you understand the word "censorship". OP of the comment doesn't have the power for it, and Greenwald certainly wasn't censored if everyone is able to read his opinions spearately 2. You don't know that the person didn't read it. That's an unprovable assumption. 3. OP's explaining why the article isn't worth running. This really doesn't amount to a real character attack unless you're new to the internet...

TechBro8615 6y ago

The NBC article is focused on an anonymously drafted report, which was mostly a dump of open source intel. The article criticizes that report for using a fake persona as its author. The initial disseminator of the report (who may or may not be the author of it as well) cites privacy and fear of retribution as reasons for publishing anonymously. What the NBC article does not do is address or refute any of the facts in the report. It also ignores a lot of relevant back story and fails to make connections between this report, Hunter's laptop, and Tony Bobulinski.

reilly3000 6y ago
You are correct that it doesn't address the laptop emails directly. The issue here is that this provably false dump that NBC identified is pushing the same basic story the laptop email attempted to expose. You're seeing domestically coordinated smear campaign. It was organized by a domestic PR firm and wrongly characterized as Russian disinformation. Certainly foreign assets (its not just Russia)have amplified it like anything else that is divisive, but at its core it was a plot to make an October surprise. NYPost broke embargo on the story and published ahead of the plan, and that kind of threw everything into chaos. They've been trying to get something out of it, but there is nothing but outrage over supression of a non-story. Emails are a remarkably verifiable thing, and ones these just aren't. Tony Bobulinski's tale has not been corroborated, even by Murdock's own WSJ journalists. https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/29/tony-bobulinski-hunter-biden-and-china-explainer/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/29/tony-bobulins... I find this whole thrust rather remarkable anyhow. If true, Biden's family committed nepotism and would do so again if they were put into power. Really? Coming from an administration which is openly profiting from the office and giving insane amounts of power to their family members?
- zaroth 6y ago
  > * provably false dump* Not a single line of the NBC article seems to be refuting a single fact from the 64-page document. They do try very hard though to smear the anonymous publisher for trying to be anonymous, and imply without any evidence that somehow this document is tied to Hunter’s email story.

temp8964 6y ago

How does this nbc news related to Glenn's writing? Because there is a fake story on Biden, so all Biden stories should be censored? Wow, I hope you discovered this principal at the time of the golden showers story.

bigdict 6y ago

Matt Taibbi: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/glenn-greenwald-on-his-resignation https://taibbi.substack.com/p/glenn-greenwald-on-his-resigna...

tptacek 6y ago
Those two deserve each other.
- cambalache 6y ago
  And may that pair long continue fighting the good fight against hypocrites and charlatans
  - messick 6y ago
    Hopefully somewhere we never have to hear from either of them ever again.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Similar words have been expressed by the most wretched tyrants of the history of humanity.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Yes. Also by people with angry cats fucking in their back yards.
        cambalache 6y ago
        So they show more strength of character than many self-appointed tech leaders. For sure I would prefer them as neighbors.
        tptacek 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

PedroBatista 6y ago

> He wasn't even menaced by authorities. Dude... really?

temp8964 6y ago

https://mobile.twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/1321992067585765376 https://mobile.twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/13219920675857... Kimberley Strassel @KimStrassel I can say i have never seen this document, nor have i read anything quoting it. I can also say it therefore bears zero relevance on the legitimate evidence about Hunter Biden’s biz, via laptop and Bobulinski. Update: long response from one of the authors of the draft: https://mobile.twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/1321934695936917504 https://mobile.twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/132193469593...

googthrowaway42 6y ago

The report that NBC is referring to was compiled based on public data. It can all be checked. Really it's just sad how cattle-like some people are. Edit: Here it is: https://www.baldingsworld.com/2020/10/22/report-on-biden-activities-with-china/ https://www.baldingsworld.com/2020/10/22/report-on-biden-act... Every claim is footnoted with a direct link to a cited source that is publicly available.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

I don't see what the story you linked has to do with Hunter Biden's emails. They can't refute that, so they refute some other story that supposedly was "disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump"? Oh and that Greenwald feared getting arrested by a government whose unconstitutional spying he helped expose, a government that is still trying to arrest snowden - that proves he has a "serious persecution complex"? What a pathetic attempt at character assasination.