A lifelong activist based in San Francisco, Gloria La Riva is the
Party for Socialism and Liberation’s presidential candidate in 2020. La
Riva is calling for
a complete rethink of how society is structured, arguing that all
essentials for human survival, including food, water, housing,
education, healthcare, and jobs should be considered guaranteed human
rights for all rather than distributed on a for-profit basis.
“For the Earth to live, capitalism must be replaced with a socialist
system,” she claims, noting that incessant growth and overproduction is
threatening the future of the planet. La Riva is also advocating closing
all foreign U.S. military bases, taking over giant Wall Street banks,
and jailing those responsible for the financial crisis.
There are also a number of other candidates on the ballot in many
states, including Rocky De La Fuente of the Alliance Party, Don
Blankenship of the Constitution Party, Brian Carrol of the American
Solidarity Party, Jade Simmons from Becoming One Nation, and independent
Brock Pierce. Rapper Kanye West’s name will also appear on ballots in
12 states.
I'm voting for Howie Hawkins (Green Party) but I've been very impressed with Gloria La Riva's campaign. She seems like a solid candidate who campaigned on real issues. I think Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen has also run a strong campaign.
Now here's Jimmy Dore.
I'm not looking forward to the election, to be honest. I'm picturing days and days of uncertainty about the results. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's decided quickly.
I am with Jimmy Dore. Joe Biden does have a worse record than Donald Trump. Joe Biden's bad for the whole world and only the xenophobia of assholes like Noam Chomsky prevent others from grasping that reality.
Monday, November 2, 2020. This morning, we talk voting and Glenn Greenwald, among other things.
We're
going to start with Glenn Greenwald but first we're going to start with
why I'm starting with him. For THIRD, Ava and I have written our
piece. Nothing else is completed so if anything I'm writing here steps
on some planned feature, sorry, not my intent.
Glenn
was a blogger and a citizen-journalist. At that point, he was not
someone we noted. I wasn't really impressed with some of the stunts he
pulled in 2008 and, if you're surprised by that, you're late to the
party. When he broke the Ed Snowden story about the spying being
carried out by the NSA, we noted the story here -- extensively. And I
repeatedly praised him for what was clearly journalism and clearly
superior to what others in the field of journalism were doing at that
time.
I did not become a Glenn groupie. I'm still not a Glenn
groupie. Over the weekend, a number of drive-by e-mailers to the public
account (common_ills@yahoo.com) insisted (a) this story isn't important
and (b) I'm part of an organized effort to protect Glenn. Organized
with whom?
Seriously. I don't believe the other
community sites have been covering this story. I'm not slamming them
for that. Mike would have on Saturday had Sean Connery not died.
Mike's probably written about James Bond 100 times -- at least at his
site. Of course, he would cover Sean's death. Rebecca
didn't post this weekend and I know that's because she was upset by all
of these attacks on Glenn. Rebecca's probably the closest, in this
community, to a Glenn groupie.
Glenn's never done a
damn thing for me or this site. I have no expectation that he ever
will. So I'm missing the organized effort I'm a part of. Equally true,
I do not do press for THE COMMON ILLS. I do press in my own life but
not for this website (and, in fact, long ago asked/begged NPR friends to
stop mentioning it on air). So it's not as though Aaron Matte is going
to invite me on THE GRAYZONE or Krystal Ball is going to invite me on
RISING or Katie Halper or . . . I'm so not a part of that that I have
never typed or dictated Katie's partner's name. We all grasp that,
right?
His name has only appeared here recently and
that's my copy and pasting it from ROLLING STONE videos. It appeared
once at THIRD because of an interview we did where the person praised
that man. I don't hate that man but, as I long ago noted here (and
repeated several times over the years), I was asked by one of his
parents not to note him. This was during his wilder period. I'm sure,
if we spoke today, I would be told differently but I don't have the time
to do all of that. We'll get back to the time issue.
I'm
not a Glenn groupie. I don't run in his circle and I never want to run
his circle. (That could change, if I'm honest, in that the way he's
been burned may send him over to some people who already are my
friends.) I get nothing out of defending Glenn.
Except for the fact that it's the right thing to do.
You knew we were going to have to insert Carly Simon, right?
So,
no, there's nothing personally in it for me in defending Glenn. We
aren't friends. We aren't acquaintances. I will not benefit in any way
from this and, if history holds, I'll actually be harmed for it.
Now
for the story isn't important claim. Yes, it is. We're on the eve of a
presidential election and he's being censored for covering a political
scandal about the candidate his editor ditzy bitsy Betsy Reed is
supporting. As when she was part of the move to kill the story (at THE
NATION) on Dianne Feinstein's corruption -- including her husband's
corruption, Bitsy Betsy won't allow Glenn's story in print. Bitsy Betsy
was a nightmare of censorship at THE NATION. She was also a hideous
person to work under or around -- her tantrums and explosions are
legendary. (And not just for the fool we 'outed' politically -- it was a
story -- during the 2008 election. Found out and fearing I intended to
reveal more -- I didn't, I had made my point -- he served up one story
after another about Bitsy Betsy -- stories I'd already heard from
friends at THE NATION -- and he forwarded e-mail documentation to back
his claims up).
Betsy's a nightmare and always has
been. She has a very difficult and estranged relationship with free
speech and what can only be termed an abusive relationship with
journalism.
Since February 2003, I've spoken publicly
about the Iraq War. And I've noted many times how that enriches me and
increases my knowledge and provides me with the equivalent of focus
groups. I have another set that provides me with focus groups: My
friends.
Some, maybe many, are idiots when it comes to
politics. That's fine. I'm not someone who has to talk politics in my
real life. Many of my friends are artists and they don't have a clue
about politics and that's fine. But there are some, one we'll call
Blue, who, when an election comes along, feel the need to scramble to
get informed and, sadly, they tend to run to MSNBC. Green showed up
yesterday.
She's an artist -- painting and sculpting.
And she's a good friend. But I've avoided her for months now because I
didn't want to hear about Joe Biden. Our last conversation was in
March, when Tulsi dropped out. She was never going to support Joe
Biden, she insisted, and she had all these bad jokes that she got from
somewhere about Joe. And as she yammered on, I thought, "Oh s**t, she's
going to be supporting Joe and rewriting history."
So I've avoided her.
She
dropped by yesterday. I didn't know she was there or I wouldn't have
come downstairs. But I was looking for something and going to the music
room when she saw me from the entry way and rushed over. (She was
being sent away prior to seeing me.) "I'm masked and gloved!" she
called out as she approached. She was worried about me, she said (I'm
sure she was sincere), and knew that between Covid, the chemo I'm on and
assorted other things, I was just "sequestering." No sooner did she
sit down in the music room (I was looking for some specific sheet
music), then she began trashing Glenn.
The Joe Biden
nonsense? I'd expected that. But the only news issue she's followed in
the last ten years was Ed Snowden (she calls him "Eddie") who she
thinks is a national hero and who she talks about constantly. You can
not speak to her for more than five minutes on any given day without her
bringing up Ed. I'm not joking. And so, naturally, the love for Ed
resulted in love for the person who broke the story, Glenn Greenwald.
As
she trashed Glenn, it became obvious that her need to be part of the
herd around Joe Biden meant that she was abandoning everything she
believed in. It was disgusting.
"Oh, C.I., what will
you say when she reads this?" She never does. But, for some reason,
she's forever apologizing to me, year-after-year, for it having
'slipped' who I was -- in terms of her constantly telling people that
I'm online as THE COMMON ILLS. It's always an accident and always a
slip and I'm really thinking it may be time to cut her out for that
reason alone. (She's also a gamer and, this visit, revealed she'd
revealed it in a chat room. Why? It slipped.)
But I'm listening
to her garbage about how, this close to an election, ''the most
important election of our lives,'' how dare Glenn write anything against
Joe Biden and how dare he make a scene and blah blah blah.
She
hadn't read a word Glenn had written about the situation. She had read
Betsy's garbage. I left the music room and returned with my filed on
Bisty Betsy. Yes, I do keep files on certain journalists, files
containing what their peers pass on (including e-mails). I handed her
the file and told her, "This is the ____ you're defending." She flipped
through it and was shocked. Basically, two-thirds of THE NATION
writers are in that folder talking about the awful things Betsy did when
she was at THE NATION.
I think got to the heart of the matter, which no one seems to have a desire to.
Forget Joe Biden. Set him aside.
If you're going to gripe at Glenn and take Betsy's line that he's having a tantrum? Then you better have done the work.
Betsy didn't. She wrote an attack on Glenn that didn't deal with anything.
And her supporters try to insist that was a good move because then you're repeating what Glenn said about Joe.
No,
only an idiot would say that and I'm sorry but I really don't have time
for the stupid these days. I'm on chemo. Still. I. Do. Not. Have.
Time. For. The. Stupid.
I'm fully aware that I could be dead tomorrow. I don't have time for the stupid.
Glenn
had a legal contract with THE INTERCEPT. I know that not only because
he wrote about it but also because I've seen the contract. I've also
seen Naomi Klein's contract and she should be ashamed of herself. But
Glenn's contract promised him certain things. And Betsy violated that
contract.
She can't. Legally, she can't violate it.
Glenn should sue and I marvel over how a judge would respond to Betsy's
published 'response' that was nothing but a character attack and that
never responded to the legal violations of his contract.
Whores gotta whore, right, Naomi?
I
don't need Naomi's opinions on the US political scene. As far as I'm
concerned, White Privilege Klein lost the right to talk about US
politics when she invented a conversation. It was the night of the 2008
election and, across the street, she could see two African-Americans
talking and she just knew what they were saying, about Barack Obama,
about themselves, about life. Now she wasn't close enough to hear them
and she knew no African-Americans in her own life that she could talk
to, but, as a White person, she felt totally justified in inventing a
conversation -- one that she shared for publication with Matthew
Rothschild -- that she imposed upon them because, hey, isn't that the
basis of White privilege?
Naomi, some would also argue,
shouldn't talk about US politics -- certainly not advocate for whom to
vote for -- since she's Canadian.
She would respond (in a whisper) that she's got dual citizenship.
And
she does. Her father is an American. Her father is an Ameenrican who
fled this country to avoid serving in Vietnam, moved to Canada and
started a family there. Years after that, Naomi was born. I don't
really see her as a US citizen. I do see her as a coward who refused to
talk about her father publicly when the War Resisters of the ongoing
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq needed her -- needed her in her own
country. That's why we outed her on this over 15 years ago. She
benefitted from the actions of people like me and Elaine
who risked a lot to help her father and others. And here she was, big
columnist for THE NATION and THE GUARDIAN, best selling author, laughing
uncomfortably on air when Al Franken made disparaging remarks about War
Resisters. What she should have done, on air, is said, "Excuse me, Al,
you do know I am the child of a War Resister, right?"
But the living embodiment of Robin Sparkles showed no courage.
She benefitted from a movement that supported her father but she wasn't going to pay it forward.
She's
a greedy self-promoter and I thought that before I saw her contract
over the weekend. Looking at her contract and thinking of all the
begging THE INTERCEPT does for money? It's appalling. She does not
deserve that kind of money and THE GUARDIAN sure didn't give it to her.
She's a well paid whore and that's why she attacked Glenn.
She's a
busy-body bitch who sticks her nose in the US political scene even
though she's Canadian. Her country has enough problems but you won't
see her addressing those. She's a shallow idiot who worships at the
feet of empire and that's why she hangs with fellow whores like Bill
McKibben.
She attacks Glenn's character when you damn well better believe that if her contract was violated, she'd be having a public fit.
Glenn's
been calm. He's not thrown a fit. But even my friend Blue got the
point when I brought up the contract issue. What if, on one of her art
installations, they violated her contract? Oh, suddenly, it hit home.
Glenn
was done wrong. And it is a story of censorship and it is a story of
pack mentality and much more. It's also a legal story. His contract
was violated and Bitsy Betsy can issue all the lies and attacks she
wants but, please note, the ____ won't address the legal issue, she
won't explain how it was okay to violate what he had been legally
promised in a contract.
Bitsy Betsy is circling the drain currently.
Only
an idiot would defend her or THE INTERCEPT right now. Defending it is
saying, "I will sign any contract but no one has to honor it." If
that's your position, that's great and I hope your employers grasp that
position because there's no need to pay you what they've promised and
there's no need to honor any items in your contracts.
My
friend Blue had been fed a diet of lies and even she got the point when
we talked about the legal aspects. Betsy Reed won't deal with those
aspects, the most important ones -- did the employer honor the contract
-- because she knows she loses on those grounds -- on the only grounds
that matter in a court of law. Glenn should be suing THE INTERCEPT. He
should get every one of them on the witness stand to address what they
did and what they've said.
Joe Biden? He's a piece of
trash. I say that sadly. I knew Joe for years. Tara Reade is telling
the truth. But setting Tara aside -- as so many were willing to do --
there's Iraq. I stated before Tara came forward and before Lucy Florez
came forward that Joe needed to get honest about Iraq.
He
never did. He never took accountability for his role in the rise of
ISIS, for his spitting on the Iraqi people by overturning their 2010
votes with The Erbil Agreement, he never . . .
Go down
the list. And what he would talk about, the only thing the press would
ever raise, was his 2002 vote. When he did talk about that, he lied
non-stop. And they let him. "Joe said his vote was a mistake.' No.
Joe said his mistake was to trust Bully Boy Bush. There's a world of
difference.
I can't vote for Joe Biden. If you can,
that's fine. I'm not here to take you to the polls and hold your hand
while you vote. Blue voted for Joe and as she realized that Glenn was
in the right legally, she began to see some of the other lies she bought
into begin to shatter. "I shouldn't have voted for Joe!" she
exclaimed. I told her what I tell everyone: We make the decision how
to vote or not to vote based upon the information we have at the time.
If we did our best at that minute, then that's all we can do. (Joe's
vote for Iraq? Not his best and he didn't try to do any better.)
That's all you can do, find out what feels right to you and vote
accordingly.
I'm not voting for Joe. He didn't get
honest about Iraq and over a million Iraqis are dead. He didn't get
honest and Iraqi children are born with birth defects. I won't turn my
back on the Iraqi people, sorry. They matter more to me than Joe Biden
or any politician. I stated over and over here, for over a year before
Joe declared, that he had to get honest about Iraq. If he had, if he'd
owned his mistakes and provided ways to make good on them, I might be
voting for him.
Might? I believe Tara Reade. I
couldn't vote for him after she came forward. Her story rings true and
Joe was a 'player' in the 80s and 90s. He cheated on his wife over and
over. And he thought he was catnip to women. I wasn't aware he was
pressuring women he worked with but Tara's story rings true. And, no, I
can't vote for him.
Those are "I" statements. If you
can vote for him, do so. If you're going to vote for Donald Trump
because he speaks to you, that's your right and more power to you. The
same if you're voting for Howie Hawkins or Gloria La Riva or Jo
Jorgensen or Joseph Kishore or anyone else. The same if you look at the
people running who made your ballot and decide not one of them spoke to
you so you're not voting. That's your right. No one needs to tell you
how to vote or even to vote. This is the United States. In some
countries, the turnout is close to 100% and that's because you are
forced to vote. That's not the case in the US.
Candidates campaign. They have to win your vote. If someone has done so, I'm happy for you.
The antigovernment protests in Iraq were
resumed on Monday with new force in this capital, other cities and the
port of Basra, after an appeasement of people's anger contained for
months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Riot forces dispersed some 500 demonstrators in Basra, as well as in
the capital, where activists occupied Tahrir Square, the epicenter of
the uprising that started in October 2019.
The square is near Baghdad's Green Zone, where all Government offices and foreign embassies are located.
For
a brief period, authorities opened the al-Jamhuriya bridge, which
connects Tahrir with the Green Zone, which had been closed since the
demonstrations started a year ago.
Another mass protest took
place in the city of Nasiriyah, where people condemned unemployment and
deficient public services, burned tires and blocked roads.
In the
city of Kut, scores of people demanded justice for those assassinated
during last year's popular uprising, as a result of which more than 600
people were killed, according to unofficial statistics.
Sean Connery has passed away. I'm going to guess he had a complicated life and will leave that for others to address. In terms of acting, he had IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE with Christian Slater which was a great film and he had THE RUSSIA HOUSE with Michelle Pfeiffer which was a great thriller (and Pfeiffer was the last actress he had chemistry with -- by the time he and Lorraine Bracco were yelling at each other on the big screen in THE MEDICINE MAN, it was clear he couldn't be a romantic leading man again) and he had Brian De Palma's classic THE UNTOUCHABLES.
If he only had those three films and the off-beat MARNIE (a minor Alfred Hitchcock classic with Tippi Hedren),he would have had an amazing career. But, more than any other film, he had the James Bond films.
He played the first James Bond in a feature film with DR. NO. It was a huge hit and resulted in a sequel and then another and then another . . .
He was the one and only James Bond: DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER, THUNDER BALL and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. All were huge hits from 1962 to 1967. And then he walked away. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE followed without him.
It wasn't a bomb and George Lazenby might have continued in the role if he hadn't announced he was done, after only one film, with the series and that Bond was out of date.
In 1971, he returned with the hit DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. Then Roger Moore took over the franchise with films like THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, OCTOPUSSY, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, VIEW TO A KILL, MOONRAKER and LIVE AND LET DIE -- playing the role from 1973 to 1985 and, during that time, Sean Connery slipped back into the role for NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (1983).
He was the first film version of James Bond and, in all, he played Bond in seven films. Roger Moore also played Bond in seven films, however, Moore's more tongue-in-cheek approach to the role put off many. Though Moore was popular, Connery not only set the standard, he was the definitive Bond for most. Timothy Dalton would take over from Moore and then Pierce Brosnan would take over from Dalton. Both were considered solid Bonds (and Brosnan really delivered an audience when he played the role); however, it wasn't until Daniel Craig took over with CASINO ROYALE that most Bond fans like me felt we finally had a Bond who matched Sean Connery's original version of the role.
Roger Moore passed away in 2017 which means the living Bonds currently are: Daniel Craig, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby. You could include David Niven as a film Bond since he played the role in the 1967 comedy film CASION ROYALE (Woody Allen played the villain, James Bond Jr.).
Until Daniel Craig began playing the character, Sean was my favorite Bond.
I love every Bond that Sean starred in. My favorite though is YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. I love the look of the film. I love the Japanese setting. The Nancy Sinatra theme song is probably the best Bond theme of the sixties Bond films. (The best theme of the entire franchise is Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" for THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and, in the sixties, Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" is second only to Nancy's theme.) I can still remember the first time I saw the film and was so upset. Bond is in bed with a woman and the bad guys break in and shoot him dead. Then he's buried at sea.
:(
But then it turns out to be a con so the world will believe James Bond is dead.
It's a great movie and so much of it is used in the Mike Myers' Austin Powers films. That includes the bad guy killing his underlings with the push of a button.
I love GOLDFINGER and it's probably second but I also love FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE hugely so maybe it's second? Regardless all seven -- including NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN -- are excellent films.
He was James Bond for so many and for so long.
I owe him for providing me with so much enjoyment over the years. I know some people love, for example, the Spider Man franchise or the Star Wars one or even Jaws or Friday the 13th or whatever. But for me, the Bond franchise is the best and the one I could watch endlessly.
Friday, October 30, 2020. It's Friday, we look at the race for the
US president which means looking at a number of presidential candidates
-- not just two -- and Glenn Greenwald has left THE INTERCEPT after they
removed his article on Joe Biden.
Glenn Greenwald has left THE INTERCEPT. As we explained yesterday,
the press organizations exist to lie and cover. An e-mail to the
public account states, "You should have noted the Iraq War." We did.
Do you know how to read? How's your comprehension level. "Instead of
noting the Iraq War or the way the liberal press turned on Richard Nixon
and fabricated Watergate, you noted a bunch of silly stories."
I'm
not sure where you're getting that Watergate was fabricated. I will
allow that there was a lot more to Watergate that got buried. I will
even allow that Richard Nixon's enemies in the government brought about
his downfall. We can even have a conversation about the intel community
and how Bob Woodward's background was in intel. But you're losing me on
the fabricated aspect.
And that's why I chose what I chose.
Marilyn
Monroe. If she's just a silly story, then, by all means, the press
should have had no trouble getting the story right. But they didn't.
They lied about her. They lied about her when FOX fired her as well.
It was a smear campaign intended to destroy her. It didn't. And she
had several films in the pipeline and, more importantly, FOX had already
come crawling back and offered her SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE again.
Young
people today may think that her affair with JFK was always known.
That's not how the media treated it. When it did pop up in the 60s or
70s, it was dismissed as rumor and as a false rumor at that. The tide
turned when? When Anthony Summers wrote his groundbreaking book on
Marilyn (GODDESS) and the British media began reporting on it. That was
1985. As a result, the US 'news' magazine 20/20 prepared a report.
The report was set to air and then, at the last minute, Roone Arlidge
(who knew a tiny bit about sports and nothing about the news) killed it
and he killed it because he was friends with Rose Kennedy (mother of
JFK). John was dead for over 20 years by that point and ABC 'NEWS'
killed the story to 'protect' . . . news? Hosts Barbara Walters and
Hugh Downs made it clear that they were appalled by the decision to kill
the story and, in killing the story, Roone actually got it more
attention than it might have gotten if it had just aired on 20/20.
A
lot of 'protecting' went on. That included the use of the Secret
Service and the FBI in the immediate hours after Marilyn died. Photos
were seized from wire services and publications of the two of them
together, Marilyn Monroe's personal phone bill was seized (actually the
toll slips that would be used for a monthly statement).
All of this was done and it was known that it was being done. Known but not reported.
You
can dismiss it as a silly story -- I don't know how Marilyn qualifies
as silly -- but if that's what you think then please explain to me why
so many in the press were vested in lying and continuing the lies?
Although
we're at the point finally where the affair between Marilyn and JFK can
be acknowledged, there is still some pushback to the fact that she also
had an affair with RFK. And who knows what more we'll find out in a
few more years?
The press lies. And as long as you go
along with those lies, you can have a nice little career. Your writing
won't mean much (Robert Fisk, I'm looking at you, especially) but you
will make coin and if that's all it is to you, a paycheck, you will find
some sort of satisfaction.
A paycheck wasn't enough
for Glenn Greenwald. Glenn had a big paycheck. All he had to do was
not rock the boat. And there were times prior when he was biting his
tongue that I felt he should have come forward publicly. We'll come
back to biting of the tongue. But Glenn tried to be loyal to the outlet
and he tried to tell the truth. That never works out very well. Ask
Kristina Borjesson -- and read the book she edited INTO THE BUZZSAW:
LEADING JOURNLISTS EXPOSE THE MYTH OF A FREE PRESS. You could ask Gary
Webb . . . if he were still alive. Certainly, Michael Hastings was
persecuted at the end of his life for the reporting he did. Even Sy
Hersh could tell you about how his investigative reporting, so valued at
THE NEW YORKER when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House, fell out
of favor when Barack was president which is why his articles ended up at
THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS.
While Sy fell out of
favor, whore Jane Mayer knew what was what. And she wanted to whore.
No more articles about the torture programs or other things the
government was doing wrong -- not once Barack was president. No, when
Barack became president, Jane focused her eye on ridiculing people who
believed in Jesus Christ and going after what she termed "hillbillies"
-- basically anyone more than a 15 minute cab ride from Manhattan. The
'investigative' reporter no longer investigated the government.
We
noted yesterday that they don't even need orders. Yes, orders do
sometimes come, but they're not needed because working for these
corporate institutions allows them to daily instill the parameters of
what is and is not allowed.
That's Glenn explaining to Tucker Carlson why he resigned from THE INTERCEPT.
They pulled an article Glenn wrote about the Hunter Biden scandal. You can read the article here.
Tht link goes to SUBSTACK, not THE INTERCEPT. THE INTERCEPT would only
put the article back up if Glenn removed various paragraphs.
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.
Again,
I am surprised it took Glenn so long. I don't know how he bit his
tongue so long. But he doesn't have to now. As a father with bills to
pay, Glenn may consider writing a book on his experience. If he does,
it won't go over well for bitsy ditsy Betsy Reed. But Glenn doesn't owe
her or anyone else anything. He could get a princely sum for a
tell-all. And it would sell very well.
All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been
disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important
questions about whether the former Vice President and current
front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to
peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether
the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the
intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son's business
associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial
story, a union of the nation's most powerful entities, including its
news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these
questions rather than try to provide answers to them.
The initial
documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops
containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage
and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then
turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy
Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.
Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual censorship campaign
by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former
Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its
“fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And
while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter’s handling of the
censorship and reversed the policy
that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the
nation’s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its
Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost
two weeks.
After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donatedalmost entirely
to the Biden campaign, it was the nation's media outlets and former CIA
and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing
reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with
scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to
accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin
responsibility for the story.
Numerous news outlets, including the Intercept,
quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other
agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the
“classic trademarks" of a “Russian disinformation” plot. But, as media
outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no
evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On
Friday, the New York Times reported
that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian
disinformation” and the paper said even the FBI has “acknowledged that
it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”
The Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed
-- by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors
whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert
approval for deranged conspiracy theories -- that contained this
extraordinary proclamation: "We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if
they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably
aren't."
Even the letter from the former intelligence officials
cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all
part of some “Russian disinformation” scheme explicitly admitted that
“we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” though many media
outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in
order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:
Despite
this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase
used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why
the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer
basic questions about them. “I think we need to be very, very clear that
what he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation," said
Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility
that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night’s debate.
Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC:
“if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the
vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation."
The
few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials
have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that
first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname “MAGA Haberman.” CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media
simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden
himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a "smear."
That
it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents
became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor,
in an anazing statement
representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly
justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not
want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . .
[or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just
pure distractions.”
Let's stay with NPR's ombudsperson for a moment. Kelly McBride was the focus of Ava and my "Media: NPR doesn't trust its listeners"
this week. As we noted, Kelly's journalistic malpractice includes not
only censoring the Hunter Biden article, but also devoting a column to
James Fallows interests because, apparently, his many appearances on NPR
commenting aren't enough for him to have a platform for his views and
his position at THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY does not give him much of a
platform either. She fails to explore real issues raised by listeners
-- we know that at least 65 listeners have complained to her about the
gender imbalance on ALL SONGS CONSIDERED since Ava and I began writing
about that over the summer -- but will devote her time and attention to a
topic that a member of the press wants addressed. She also failed to
disclose her friendship with James Fallows.
Why does
that matter? Goes to ethics absolutely. More to the point, she was
just chiding Nina Totenberg for her long friendship with RBG and failure
to clearly disclose that over the years when reporting on the Supreme
Court. In her criticism of Nina, she also failed to make the most
important point: Nina says it never conflicted but this isn't a
self-determination. Nina can't make that determination, she's too close
to the subject -- and, after all, that's why a disclosure should have
been made for every report in the first place. Also wrong? Her
constantly quoting people with POYNTER. That's her other job. So she's
using NPR to promote her other employer. That's a conflict of
interest. POYNTER staff already work on her columns and now she's using
her position at NPR to plug various 'names' at POYNTER. It's
disgusting and it's unethical.
Wait, we're not done. Let's quote from Ava and my piece:
A lot of what she does is wrong -- including ignoring the gender
imbalance on NPR's ALL SONGS CONSIDERED (we reported on that most
recently here).
Take the way, in the newsletter we just linked to, she refers to an
interview with a guest: "But over on Twitter, many listeners were
cheering Inskeep on for putting Anton in his place." It's the purpose
of NPR to put guests they invite on 'in their place'? That's an
interesting way of looking at it.
That alone, her wording there which implies a guest was put in their place, should have gotten her immediately fired.
Kelly
McBride is not up to being a public editor or ombudsperson and, in
better journalistic times, she'd be crucified -- and she should be.
Think about when the NPR public editor came out against Terry Gross over
the Bill O'Reilly interview. At that time, the position of public
editor was supposed to be independent and practice ethics. Under Kelly,
there are no ethics.
Here's Jimmy Dore on the effort to discredit the Hunter Biden e-mails.
Do
you know who hasn't covered the e-mails -- besides members of the
corporate press? Ana Kasparian. A weekly show and she's got time to
bore us with so much but she can't cover that? And she wants to get
into a feud with Jimmy Dore?
How sad.
But
sad is also the same corporate media that sold the country the Iraq War
now wants to sell the country War Hawk Joe Biden as president.
There
are choices beyond Joe and Donald Trump. There's Gloria La Riva who is
the candidate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Gloria is a choice.
I'm not sure we noted this last Friday, but this is Gloria's response to the Biden-Trump debate:
Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate Gloria
La Riva issued the following statement at the conclusion of the second
debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump
Tonight’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was one of the
closing events of a presidential campaign that has been an utter insult
to the working class. The crises facing poor and working people could
not be more dire -- hundreds of thousands dead from the pandemic, tens
of millions unemployed and facing eviction, racist police waging war on
Black communities, an environment on the brink of total catastrophe, and
so much more. Neither candidate put forward anything remotely close to a
serious plan to solve these problems.
Instead, we heard more ludicrous denialism on COVID-19 from Trump,
who claimed, “We’re rounding the corner, it’s going away.” In fact the
number of infections is surging along with deaths. But Biden offered no
specific, credible solutions. Biden claimed in the debate that he
believed “Health care is not a privilege, it's a right.” But he opposes a
universal healthcare system that would actually make healthcare a right
in practice, something that’s all the more pressing in the middle of a
pandemic.
The two candidates competed to outdo each other in militaristic
bluster. Biden claimed that Russia wants to “Make sure I do not get
elected the next president of the United States” and referred to
unsubstantiated reports that the Russian government was paying fighters
in Afghanistan to target U.S. troops occupying the country. Trump
countered that “There has been nobody tougher on Russia” than him,
citing his actions to coerce members of NATO into increasing their war
spending “to guard against Russia” and that he “sold tank busters to
Ukraine.” Both candidates signaled their absolute support for the
Pentagon’s drive to war against China and Biden ridiculously compared
North Korea to Hitler’s Germany.
Trump unsurprisingly used the debate to spout more racist rhetoric
targeting immigrants, saying that children his administration cruelly
separated from their parents were brought to the United States by “gangs
and drug dealers.” And Biden was part of an administration that cruelly
deported far more immigrants than the Trump White House. Biden’s
hypocritical appeal to “those DACA kids” omitted the fact that DACA was
won not because of the kindness of the Obama administration, but because
undocumented youth courageously organized civil disobedience at Obama /
Biden campaign offices and put enough pressure on the government to win
temporary legal status.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation’s campaign believes that the
wealth of this society -- wealth that was created by workers, not the
millionaires and billionaires -- should be used to provide a dignified
life for all with education, housing, a job or income, healthcare, and
more guaranteed as constitutional rights. Our campaign demands that
racist killer cops be locked up and the end of the system of mass
incarceration. We are against war for empire. We want to end the
extraction of fossil fuels. Don’t throw your vote away on one of the two
capitalist parties -- vote socialist and help build a movement for a
better world!
And she participated in a debate with some of the other choices the corporate media ignores.
Jo
Jorgensen wasn't at that debate. But she is on the ballot in all fifty
states and she's the candidate for the Libertarian Party.
Jo's campaign issued the following:
GREENVILLE, S.C. October 28, 2020— “I
don’t vote because it wouldn’t make any difference,” is the refrain
heard from millions of Americans. They believe the system is rigged and
that there’s no chance of getting the kind of candidate they’d want to
see in office elected.
Dr. Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian candidate for president, has a message for such voters.
“Washington, D.C. wants you demoralized,” said Jorgensen. “They don’t want you to vote because they need you to stay home in order for their status quo candidates to win.”
“Refusing to vote feeds right into their hands,” she added. “It
doubles the impact of the voters who do, and it keeps career
politicians, cronies, and special interests in power.”
“But you actually have much more influence over the system than you
realize,” she said. “Enough, in fact, to turn the establishment on its
head.”
In 2016, 102 million Americans were eligible to vote, but stayed
home. Meanwhile, Donald Trump won the election for president with just
63 million votes.
“Americans who sit out elections hold an overwhelming majority in
this country,” notes Jorgensen. “If just two-thirds of them voted, we
could bring down the powers that be in Washington, D.C.”
“With a large turnout of anti-establishment voters, those who already
vote but who have settled for the ‘lesser of two evils’ would vote
their conscience instead. They’d join forces with you to bring in real
outsiders,” she said.
“Don’t let media blackouts, manipulative polling, and fake debates
trick you into believing you don’t have a choice,” she said. “You most
definitely do have a real choice, and a chance for real change.”
Libertarian Jo Jorgensen is on every ballot in America this election — all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.
“If you know the two-party system is broken and doesn’t serve your family’s needs, please vote for me this election,” she said.
Dr. Jorgensen advocates lowering health-care costs dramatically by
way of free-market competition, bringing our troops home from endless
foreign wars, allowing wage-earners to opt out of paying the Social
Security (FICA) tax, and ending the failed and destructive War on Drugs.
Her campaign gives voters a viable alternative to Donald Trump and
Joe Biden, who are the only other presidential choices appearing on
every ballot.
This year marks the fifth time the Libertarian Party has succeeded in
placing its presidential ticket on the ballot in all fifty states,
having done so previously in 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2016.
“There’s no such thing as not voting,” said Jorgensen. “If they get
you to stay home, you’re ‘voting’ for your opponents to win. If you want
a different outcome, do something different.
“You hold the power to change everything. All you have to do is vote.”
Howie Hawkins is the US presidential candidate for the Green Party.
In 2004, a number of prominent progressives issued statements calling
on people to vote for Democrat John Kerry in the close states and the
Green Party candidate in the so-called safe states where the outcome
would not be close. In 2020, many of these same people have
moved further to the right and call for a vote for Biden without any
support for a Green vote in the so-called safe states.
In 40 states, the vote for the Green presidential ticket determines
whether the Green Party retains or gains ballot line for the next
election cycle. In most states, it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, or 5%. But there is no
support for the Green Party this year from these progressives. What
happened to left solidarity?
They have abandoned the idea that the best way for the left to fight
the right is to build and fight with its own independent strength,
advancing its own program under its own banner against
two-capitalist-party system of corporate rule. Instead, they have
responded to the rise of Trump by shifting to the right with him,
telling the independent left to silence and disarm itself and back
Biden, a man who would fit comfortably into the center-right parties of
Europe.
“They have responded to the rise of Trump by shifting to the right with him.”
Reliance on the lesser evil has historically led to greater evils. In
the classic case, instead of running their own candidate for German
president on 1932, the largest party, the Social Democrats, supported
the conservative Paul von Hindenberg as the lesser evil to Hitler. Von
Hindenberg won and appointed Hitler to the Chancellorship. The
Communists ran their own candidate in the most sectarian way imaginable,
saying the Social Democrats were the “social-fascist main enemy” and
“after Hitler it’s our turn.” That was a case where left solidarity
against the fascist threat instead of relying on conservatives to stop
the fascists. Had the socialists and communists formed a left united
front, they would have easily outpolled the rightwing parties.
The result of progressives consistently settling for the Democrats as
the lesser evil has created a political dynamic has been moving US
politics to the right for decades. The soft-right Democrats ignore
progressive demands because they pose no threat of taking their votes
elsewhere. Instead, they adapt to the hard-right Republicans. Bill
Clinton called it “triangulation.” Joe Biden calls it “working across
the aisle.”
Meanwhile, the progressives in the Democratic Party are accommodating
to Biden’s politics. Bernie Sanders is now for Medicare for All over 55
years old with a public option for the rest. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
took the Green New Deal slogan from the Greens and diluted the content
in the non-binding resolution for a Green New Deal by dropping the
essential immediate demand for a ban on fracking and new fossil fuel
infrastructure, eliminating the rapid phase-out of nuclear power,
removing the deep cuts in military spending to help fund the program,
and extending the deadline for zero carbon emissions from 2030 to 2050.
The words Green New Deal were not mentioned at the Democratic
convention, in the Sanders-Biden Unity Task Force recommendations on
climate, or in the Democratic Platform, which is pro fossil fuels and,
for the first time in 50 years, pro nuclear.
“The progressives in the Democratic Party are accommodating to Biden’s politics.”
There will be no Medicare for All or Green New Deal from the
Democrats, let alone a retreat from military bloat, wars, and coups
abroad. But these progressives counsel people to vote for them
everywhere, which tells the Democrats to take them for granted because
posed no threat to vote for the Greens anywhere.
I don’t support a safe states strategy. Every state is a battleground
for the Green Party. The gas industry is fracking the hell out of
battleground states Pennsylvania and Ohio where the ducking Democrats
join the retrograde Republicans lending no support to the anti-fracking
movement. Greens, not the Democrats, are fighting the expansion of the
Enbridge oil pipelines that take Alberta tar sands oil and Bakken
fracked oil across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota on to oil
refineries. In every state, Greens are taking on Democratic machines in
the cities, and real estate industry that finances them, when we fight
for affordable housing and against the brutality of police forces that
do what the Democrats in the cities designed them to do, which is to
keep downscale people, particularly Black people, down and out of
upscale communities. They are set up to police the New Jim Crow lines of
school district and municipal boundaries that segregate us by race and
class.
We should all be concerned about the voter suppression activities of
Trump and the Republicans. But Greens know from bitter experience that
we should also be concerned about voter suppression in the form of party
suppression by the Democrats. The Democrats were able to knock the
Greens off the ballot in Montana, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania where the
Green petitions had two to three times the required signatures, which
was difficult to do in the Covid lockdown. But the Democrats are also
legislating party suppression. For example, in New York the Democrats
rammed through a law attached to the state budget bill in April while
attention was focused on the pandemic that triples the number of votes
the Greens need to keep their ballot line. Only Nader for president in
2000 and me in 2014 for governor ever got that many votes as a Green
candidate in New York. If we lose the ballot line, we will need 45,000
good signatures – triple the old number – collected in a six-week window
to get statewide candidates on the ballot. When the Socialist Party
lost its ballot line in 1938 in New York, it never recovered it. There
was not an independent left party with a ballot line in New York again
until the Green Party, 1999-2002 and 2010-?.
Jimmy Dore calling out the whores of the corporate press.
The press can't be trusted. They don't even pretend that they're objective now. They just refuse to cover a story -- Tara Reade earlier, Hunter's latest scandal now. It's all about who they want elected, not about the truth.
This moment will not be forgotten.
It gives conservatives all the proof they want that the media is liberal.
The media's not liberal. The media is pro-war and pro-corporation and pro-poverty and pro-homeless.
Thursday, October 29, 2020. Let's talk about that 'truthful' press.
Starting
in the US where the final days of the presidential election loom. Joe
Biden is the Democratic Party's presidential nominee -- making the
party's theme song "Old Man . . . Senile"? He knows he's running for
something -- the presidency or maybe the Senate, he's not sure which.
And he knows he's running against Donald Trump . . . or maybe George?
He's so confused in public that he's even stood on stage at an event and
mixed up his own sister and his own wife. Hopefully, should he ever be
put in charge of the launch codes, he'll have it more together than he
does currently. A caretaker presidency? Is that what the party's
proposing?
At any rate, his lousy memory may give him that "plausible deniability" that his brother Jim Biden believes will protect him. Brooke Singman (FOX NEWS) reports:
Joe Biden
and his presidential campaign are staying mum after Hunter Biden’s
former business associate went public to say he met twice in the past
with the former vice president -- despite past statements from Biden on
the campaign trail that he had no involvement with or discussions about
his family's overseas business ventures.
That associate, Tony Bobulinski,
gave an interview on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Tuesday
and detailed his alleged meetings with the former vice president—one of
which took place on May 2, 2017, according to text messages first
reported by Fox News last week.
Those messages indicated that the meeting did, in fact, take place.
Bobulinski claimed Tuesday that it was Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the
brother of the former vice president, who had pushed the meeting.
“They were sort of wining and dining me and presenting the strength of the Biden family to get me engaged,” he said.
The
Biden campaign declined to comment on the meeting Biden allegedly had
with Bobulinski. Biden himself has not yet directly addressed
Bobulinski's claims on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
The
media is a pack of whores and liars and that's nothing new. Why, oh
why, a drive-by e-mail to the public account wonders, why can't I be
nice about the press like the great Meryl Streep?
Unlike
Meryl, the press has nothing on me. She's got that genteel reputation
that they've built for her that's a complete falsehood. She benefits
from their lies so she lies for them. I'm not accusing her of anything
criminal, to be clear, but the press has long made a point to hush-up
her sexual affairs. Pets of the press know to not to bite the hands
that feed them.
The press is a damn liar. That's the
bulk of the press and it's nothing new. We could go over the Iraq War
-- and how Meryl's praise of the press (when she was promoting a film
about the press) ignored that history -- and how they collectively and
intentionally lied. They refused to offer dissenting voices and they
ran a crackdown on descent that even included trashing Sheryl Crow. A
critic trashed Sheryl on orders of the editor. The critic wrote that
Christian A should have been nominated because her album was superior.
Whatever the merits of that album (considered one of Christian's worst)
it would not have been nominated for a Grammy that year because it came
out after -- after -- the eligibility period. I met that critic who
wanted to interview me for something else. I had already said no but I
did speak to the critic because I wanted to know why the hell they wrote
those lies. I already knew because a columnist at the same publication
had already told me (I'm friends with the columnist, we've highlighted
him here many times). But I wanted to see if the critic had the guts to
get honest. The critic got honest. The Grammy piece was intended to
be a hit job on Sheryl to discredit her because she was opposed to the
Iraq War. Need another example? Jane Fonda's return to comedy with
MONSTER-IN-LAW -- I have the e-mails on that, the e-mails where three
different papers planned how they would knock the film -- planned this
before it was released and before anyone had seen it -- because Jane
might become "a powerful voice against the Iraq War the way she was with
Vietnam."
Take Tom Cruise. Sumner Redstone was doing
poorly with stockholders and it was about to get worse. To save his own
ass, he went after Tom Cruise trying to blame him and destroy him. As
noted when this was going down, I don't like Tom. I was wary of Nicole
when she was married to Tom. (I like Nicole now.) I am friends with
Paula Wagner but that's not why I defended Tom. I defended him because a
corporation wanted him trashed and the whorish press was yet again
doing big business' bidding. They did the same thing with Marilyn
Monroe.
I'm glad FOX is no more as a film studio.
Marilyn
Monroe killed herself because her career was over. I dictate that
right now and I know confusion abounds. Younger people are going,
"Huh? Her career wasn't over." Because they know reality. But reality
was hidden by the press until the mid 80s. They ran with the lie that
her career was over. She'd been fired from SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE.
Getting older and no career prospects, she took her own life!
Except
she was signed for other films and FOX had rehired her for SOMETHING'S
GOT TO GIVE. She was the lamb they slaughtered -- with the help of the
press -- when FOX was in deep trouble (the CLEOPTATRA overfuns).
The
press lies all the time. A friend is gay and is always just about to
come out, always just about to. The current excuse he offers it the
pandemic. Who knows, when films are being shown again, who will have a
career and who won't? So he's going to wait.
In the
meantime? He's yet again portrayed as a ladies' man. This is a man who
started taking viagra in his twenties and was telling the press that
(until I asked him if he realized what he was confessing to). This is a
man whom everyone pretty much knows is gay. But the press continues
the lie. They're part of it.
They lie about the
little things, they lie about the big things. Even when they're given
direct orders, they know what the policies are.
Jonathan Chait's the latest example of a liar. Ruth's "Jonathan Chait is a liar"
notes that Jonathan's lying about the Hunter Biden e-mails. He tells
you that TIME reported on the e-mails and told you that the e-mails THE
NEW YORK POST published a report about were first shopped in Ukraine.
No. No, TIME didn't say that.
The two people who said they were approached with Hunter Biden’s alleged
emails last year did not know whether any of them were real and they
declined to identify who was behind the offers, the first of which came
in late May 2019 and the second in mid-September 2019. The two people
said they could not confirm whether any of the material presented to
them was the same as that which has been recently published in the U.S.
There have been several fishy aspects to the accusations, however. For
one, incriminating information supposedly located on a Hunter Biden
laptop left in a Delaware computer shop had in fact been circulating in
Ukraine well before it was reportedly turned over to Rudy Giuliani’s
lawyer. Over the weekend, Time
reported that the Hunter Biden emails and photos were being shopped in
Kiev last fall by somebody who “wanted to sell it to Republican allies
of President Trump.”
TIME reported no such thing,
you just saw what they reported. Jonathan Chait is a liar. He was an
Iraq War cheerleader so he's also a disgusting piece of trash. A
functioning society would have flushed him down the drain but NEW YORK
MAGAZINE employs him. That tells you all you need to know about the
press in the United States. There is no accountability and, as long as
you whore, they will pay you.
The editorial board of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL argues,
"Joe Biden is asking voters to elect him on the strength of his
character, honesty and judgment. Which is why Mr. Biden owes a response
to new allegations about his son Hunter's business deals." Yes, it's a
conservative editorial board. That doesn't mean the issues raised
don't need to be addressed. We could note the comments of the Senate Committee
but its chair is a Republican so some will dismiss those comments. But
what the editorial board is stating should not be controversial in the
least.
Elsewhere in the world of madness, Katie Bo Williams (DEFENSE ONE) writes of Bully Boy Bush's talk of training Iraqi forces in 2004 and how it would mean this and that:
It’s
the same buoyant progress report that dozens of American generals have
delivered for 16 years. Now, there is constant and ongoing pressure from
President Donald Trump — and the American public — to “end the forever
wars” by bringing troops home from places like Afghanistan and Iraq. As
Trump is directing the United States drawdown its military presence in
Iraq — and reportedly weighing closing its sprawling embassy in Baghdad
if Iraq doesn’t do more to stop security threats from Iran — it’s not
clear what standard Iraqi security forces would need to meet to satisfy
the terms laid out by Bush, McKenzie, and a host of presidents and other
officials in between.
They have been trained and
re-trained. There is no improvement. There will not be because there
is no reason to fight or secure. The government does not represent the
people. That's why so many military forces flee in battle to this day.
The Iraqi government is a false creation that repeatedly has the US and
Iran coming together to select whatever coward fled Iraq under Saddam
to now be the prime minister. They aren't qualified, they aren't wanted
and they aren't leaders.
That's why the security
forces are not giving it their all. They have no investment in
preserving a government that does not represent them.
Joe
Biden overturned election results in 2010 -- nullified them with The
Erbil Agreement. And maybe that was a good thing -- maybe it made clear
to the Iraqi people that they really did not have a say in their
government. Maybe it kept them from becoming deluded about the
so-called promise of democracy?
