Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Rosie O'Donnell, Cyndia Lauper, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., SUPERMAN AND LOIS and Little Ron Ron

 If you didn't know, Rosie O'Donnell is on YOUTUBE with her own weekly podcast.  This week, she has my oldest sister's favorite singer as the guest -- Cyndi Lauper.



And this is an interview with Robert F. Kennedy that I enjoyed.



Jonathan Turley's boy-crush Doo-Doo Ron Ron is caught plotting and scheming.  Beth Reinhard and Josh Dawsey (WASHINGTON POST) report:


For decades, the ambitions of Florida’s Republican governors were stymied by the liberal-leaning state Supreme Court.

That is, until Ron DeSantis was elected.

The court let him erase a congressional district with a large Black population. It opened the door to a law making it easier to impose the death penalty. Now, it’s poised to rule on the governor’s plan to outlaw most abortions in the third-most-populous state.

The hard-right turn was by design. DeSantis seized on the unusual retirement of three liberal justices at once to quickly remake the court. He did so with the help of a secretive panel led by Leonard Leo — the key architect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority — that quietly vetted judicial nominees in an Orlando conference room three weeks before the governor’s inauguration.

“So what I do is I convene a group of people that I trust — some people in Florida, some people outside of the state who you would know, who I’m not going to say, because you know, it’s private,” DeSantis later said on a conservative podcast. “Then they put these candidates through the wringer.”

After taking office in January 2019, DeSantis appointed three new justices in two weeks, flipping the court from what he described as a 4-3 liberal majority to a 6-1 conservative advantage.

More recently, two justices appointed by past Republicans stepped down and took more lucrative jobs with allies of the governor, allowing DeSantis to handpick his own stalwarts.

The governor’s efforts have yielded one of the most conservative state Supreme Courts in the country, reflecting Florida’s shift from a politically competitive state to a testing ground for culture war legislation over immigration, race and sex education that is now at the heart of DeSantis’s presidential bid.



That little doo-doo smear.  And he is little.  He's tiny.  Length wise.  But he's got that pot belly, have you noticed.  He's a tiny tubby.  Guess that makes Jonathan Turley a fat chaser.

He's also a huge fan of The Federalist Society and participates there repeatedly when he can slam Democrats.  Strangely, though, no calling out Bully Boy Bush's administration.  Yeah, he's a fake ass.  That's why he loves Doo-Doo Ron Ron.


Be sure to read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: How can you trust a journalist today?" and to read Stan's "SUPERMAN & LOIS dumps all actors of color."  They're getting rid of the character Kyle -- and all the actors of color.  I think people need to realize that and maybe bail on the upcoming season of SUPERMAN AND LOIS.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Tuesday, June 20, 2023.  THE GUARDIAN looks at the who's funding the war on LGBTQ+, a delegate in the US Congress calls for Donald Trump to be shot, some people seem confused over the difference between what Hillary Clinton was accused of doing and what Donald Trump's accused of doing, and much more.



I really had no interest in weighing on the indictment and charges against former US President Donald Trump.  But yesterday on USEFUL IDIOTS (watching only to see if they will note the war on LGBTQ+ people -- as I noted in "Transphobe Matt Taibbi," if you're not noting it, you don't belong on this site), it was stated that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump did basically the same thing -- her e-mail scandal, his stealing of classified documents.

No, they did not.

I would have been more than happy had Hillary been charged and tried for what she did.  Check the archives.  But what she did and what Donald did are not the same -- or what they were both accused of is not the same.

Hillary used multiple devices -- including devices that were not secure.  She argues she did what she did to make work more simple.  I'd argue if you're not up to protecting classified information, you're not up to being Secretary of State.  She was accused of mishandling classified information as a result of using multiple electronic devices.  She and/or her team did destroy evidence.  

I'm not seeing how that is the same as Donald.

Donald left the White House (reluctantly) and took classified documents with him.  As for his ability to declassify them as president, supposedly he's on tape stating that he didn't declassify them.  He took documents -- physical documents -- from the White House on his way out the door.  He was asked to return them.  He refused.  The FBI had to carry out a raid in order to get the documents back.

That is not what Hillary is accused of having done.

Hillary fans can argue she was just careless.  Donald shows clear intent to remove the documents from the White House and take possession of them and then refused to return them.    

It is not the same thing, not at all.  Either you don't understand the law or you're pretending.


As Jeffrey St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) points out, "If Trump had given his trove of documents to say Wikileaks (or even Tucker Carlson), he might have a credible claim as a whistleblower. Instead he kept them for his own vanity, flashed them to visitors and had his Justice Department file charges against Julian Assange for violating … the Espionage Act."

On the current case,  John Gallagher (LGBTQ NATION) notes:

Donald Trump’s behavior has already made it clear that he and his followers have no respect for the rule of law. Now they are making it clear that they have no respect for the institutions either.

In a dramatic escalation of rhetoric, Republicans are attacking the very structure of federal law enforcement, with the goal of not only discrediting it but destroying it altogether. They want the Department of Justice and the FBI to respond to the demands of the president, rather than maintain their current independence and integrity. Should the GOP succeed, it would have dire consequences for LGBTQ+ rights in the country. 

[. . .]

The proponents of this radical change dress it up as justifiable homicide. They argue that any federal agency is essentially under the president’s direct control and should act as such.

“Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend,” Russell Vought, who served Trump as director of the Office of Management and Budget, told The New York Times.

In short, the way to fight the alleged weaponization of the government is to really weaponize it.

Of course, not to be outdone, Trump’s rival Ron DeSantis goes one step further. He would dismantle the FBI and Department of Justice.

“We’re not going to let all this power accumulate in Washington, we’re going to break up these agencies,” DeSantis said during a private strategy session, according to a tape obtained by Real Clear Politics. He said that if he was elected, “some of the problematic components of the DOJ” would be “shipped to other parts of the country.”

This fits into a broader plan to stack the civil service with partisan hacks who will carry out the will of the president without regard to law or regulation. 


Since we're mentioning Donald, let's note an e-mail that came in last night.  US Delegate Stacey Plaskett declared Sunday on MSNBC that Donald needed "to be shot"  She then corrected it to "stopped."  An e-mailer to the public account insists that I won't call her out.  Of course, I will.  She said a stupid thing.  Not surprising because she's an idiot.  I called her out for bullying a witness.  I've called her out for being the head of a Committee since she can't vote in Congress.  I've called her out for, having failed in New York, moving  to the Virgin Islands so that she could become a delegate (stealing the job from someone who grew up there and could represent it better), I've even called out her cheap weave.  She can correct it all she wants, she said what she said and she meant it.  Things are at a high pitch already without members of Congress using such violent rhetoric.  It was wrong of her, it was stupid of her and she needs to apologize.  She also needs to be stripped of her post as Ranking Member on the House Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.  

When you've called for someone to be shot, I think you've more than weaponized the federal government.  

Equally true, as a non-voting member (a delegate) she shouldn't be in a ranking member or chair of a committee or subcommittee.  



I had no problem calling out Stacey.



Staying with stupid, Hudson Crozier has an idiotic column at THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER (which may be redundant).  He's in a tizzy because a federal judge found that Middleborough Public Schools was right to send Liam Morrison home for wearing a shirt that declared "There Are Only Two Genders."  By the way, I haven't seen the shirt but I think it's very unlikely that's what was across the t-shirt.  Typically, it would be all caps: "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS."  Maybe the way Hudson rendered it is just another example of his gross stupidity.  And that's not a reflection on his university -- I love UNT.  Love the new student union they finished about seven years ago.  And any time I speak there, I make sure to go to the square downtown and pop into Recycled Books -- one of the best stores in the country.  

I doubt Hudson likes Recycled Books -- it's so well stocked it's practically a learning institution (do not fail to go through their vinyl record section).  Hudson writes:

 

Judge Indira Talwani agreed with the school that, actually, it was Morrison who “invaded the rights” of students through his factual, nonviolent statement. She cited the school’s unproven claim that offending a gender-dysphoric child’s sense of identity in any way puts them at risk of suicide. Even some doctors who support transitioning children agree that this narrative is “exaggerated and hysterical,” and there is no solid data to back it up, but Talwani treats it as an undisputed fact.

“School administrators were well within their discretion to conclude that the statement 'THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS' may communicate that only two gender identities … are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent,” Talwani wrote, “and to conclude that students who identify differently, whether they do so openly or not, have a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities.”

It would be impossible to argue that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with the intent of protecting "gender nonconforming" children from any statement that might invalidate their feelings, a right given to no other group in society. But the leftist legal movement abandoned all notions of judicial integrity on politically charged legal matters long ago. Even so, Talwani's mental gymnastics are breathtaking.


See, the judge got it.  In the judge's quoted statement, the message on the t-shirt was in all caps.  When he's not quoting the judge Baby Dumb F**k Hudson keeps rendering it as "There Are Only Two Genders."  Again, that's not how a slogan on t-shirt usually reads.  The judge gets it, Hudson just gets to shove his thumb up is ass.

I don't believe anyone said the Constitution.  I do believe that Native Americans owned this country and it was stolen from them.  I do know that Native Americans did not believe in only two genders.  



One thing these new laws do not take into account is that the 12 federally recognized tribes in Montana have historically recognized multiple gender identities, including transgender identities. Most Indigenous peoples recognize multiple gender identities that are believed to be the result of supernatural intervention.

In this regard, Montana state Rep. Donavon Hawk, a Democrat from Butte who is Crow and Lakota, said, “It surprises me that this country is only a couple hundred years old, and we are not able to function with LGBTQ people in our communities.” Indigenous communities have incorporated LGBTQ+ peoples within their societies for centuries.

As an Indigenous scholar who studies the history and religion of Indigenous peoples, I am troubled by how these new anti-transgender laws might affect religious expression and the rights of Indigenous communities, not just in Montana but across the nation.

Indigenous ideas about gender

Indigenous peoples have been in North America for at least 30,000 years. As their societies developed over time, hundreds of different ethnicities, languages, religious practices, gender expressions and identities emerged.

Transgender individuals, an umbrella term for individuals whose gender identity is not linked to the sex they were assigned at birth, have existed throughout history, including within Indigenous communities.

I learned from my maternal grandparents about Blackfeet religion and history. The Blackfeet acknowledged and accepted individual gender expression and identity because it was granted by the divine. Personal gender identity was rarely questioned, because it was tantamount to questioning the divine.

I first learned about Blackfeet ideas about transgender individuals as a young person from hearing oral history stories about famous Blackfeet religious leaders, warriors and adventurers who were transgender. They were viewed as having a direct connection to the divine. People often sought out these individuals for blessings, prayer or spiritual guidance.

Indeed, anthropologists and historians have studied Blackfeet gender expression and learned that the Blackfeet recognized multiple gender identities, including what is defined today in Western societies as transgender.


Where's their freedom of religion?  Before it was stolen, this was all the country.  


I do get Hudson's anxiety.  If I were as ugly as he is, I'd be threatened by Elliot Page as well -- Elliot's a very cute looking man.  

I'd also point out that the right-wing hate merchants like Tulsi Gabbard keep saying "don't sexualize our kids!"  Seems like a t-shirt proclaiming any number of genders would be 'sexualizing' them.  You know, like when you preach opposite sex coupling in school, you're 'sexualizing' them.

The right-wing hate merchants are happy to scream 'sexualizing' when they disagree but are more than happy to sexualize and socialize if it meets their own desires.  They're hypocrites and they're idiots.  

UNT, Hudson does not speak well for you.  And I'm surprised by how many attacks he's published on the college since March.  



He's clearly a bitter little boy -- scared to trot by to Texas with that tiny little thing tucked between his legs. .  And if you were scrawny and ugly like him, I guess you would be too.  He didn't emerge triumphant from the genetic pool.


The war on the LGBTQ+ community if very real.  Those who are remaining silent?  They've chosen a side.  They're with the hate merchants.  By not speaking out, they've chosen a side.  At THE NATION, Karen Krajcer explains how this war impacts her life:

First, you find a folder.
It doesn’t have to be anything special—just something large enough to hold documentation of your love and care for your child. One of those cheery, primary-colored folders will do, like the one the kindergarten teacher slid into your daughter’s first backpack—the crisp, clean fabric doming over her shoulders like a turtle shell.

Into this folder, place the following:

A letter from your child’s pediatrician, confirming your child’s gender identity. Provide evidence of annual wellness checks and thorough vaccination records.

A letter from your child’s pediatric neurologist, detailing the negative impact of gender dysphoria on your child’s mental health. Ask them to please explain in layman’s terms how dysphoria—a feeling of unease or hatred of one’s body—is not necessarily inherent to being transgender but does result from having people (e.g., family, classmates, teachers, strangers, etc.) refuse to accept your gender identity. Ask them to explain that the disparity between the way society demands we behave and the way we see ourselves causes intense stress that often leads to depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts.

A seemingly harmless comment on the first day of kindergarten—_________ is wearing a dress!—can plague a child’s sense of self. ________ is wearing a dress! is the line she repeated to you when you tucked the covers around her tiny shoulders and she asked if she had to go to school tomorrow—only then the pronoun was he because you hadn’t yet understood what your child meant when she told you she is a girl. You’d set down your phone and, with the most self-satisfied look a parent can give, told your child that she didn’t have to be a girl to like girl things, that there was no such thing as girl or boy things.

[. . .]

You might do this because, one day, the CPS agent could knock on your door, and you would want the essential documents to be visible right away.

Have a plan for what you would do if the CPS agent does come. Accept that your life has now come to require these sorts of contingencies. Know exactly how you want to handle it if you hear the knock. We’re going to answer questions calmly. We’re going to help our children pack their essential items. We’re going to calm the neighbors. We’re going to keep our lawyer’s number in our favorites so that we can call right away.

Then we are going to stop. We’re going to look our babies in the eyes. We are not going to cry. We’re going to tell them that this is wrong and that we’ll see them soon. Then we will turn to the agent. We will tell them that they might not understand this now, but they could. That if they stop and really think about what’s happening, they’ll know this is wrong.

Do you understand now?

CPS did not open an investigation against our family, but the threat is real enough that my children and I are in Oregon now.

My daughter asking, Am I going to die? is when it felt most real. School employees calling CPS in tears, I don’t want to report this family, but I can’t lose this job. That is real. That is happening in our lifetime.

It doesn’t matter that we weren’t reported. Tragedy shouldn’t have to come knocking for you for it to matter to you. 


The hate merchants want to destroy democracy and freedom and all that is good in this country.  Adam Gabbat (GUARDIAN) reports:

With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures.

But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say.

Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, all in the name of Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center has termed it an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” that has extended its tentacles into nearly every area of the culture wars.

In the process, it has won the ear of some of the most influential people in the US, and become “a danger to every American who values their freedoms”, according to Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.

Through “model legislation” and lawsuits filed across the country, ADF aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the US.

Under the Trump administration, the group found its way into the highest echelons of power, advising Jeff Sessions, the then attorney general, before he announced sweeping guidance to protect “religious liberty” which chipped away at LGBTQ+ protections.

The organization counts among its sometime associates Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court justice who the Washington Post reported spoke five times at an ADF training program established to push a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law”.

ADF is engaged in “a very strong campaign to put a certain type of religious view at the center of American life”, said Rabia Muqaddam, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

“[The ADF campaign] extends to abortion, it extends to LGBTQ folks, to immigration, to what kind of religion we think is America, what kind of people we think are American,” Muqaddam said.



A 2,800-year-old stone tablet has gone on display in Iraq after being returned by Italy following nearly four decades.

The artefact is inscribed with complete cuneiform text - a system of writing on clay in an ancient Babylonian alphabet.

Italian authorities handed it over to Iraq's President Abdul Latif Rashid in the city of Bologna last week.

It is not clear how the tablet was found - or how it made its way to Italy where it was seized by police in the 1980s.

Iraqi Culture Minister Ahmed Badrani said that it might have been found during archaeological excavations of the Mosul dam, which was built around that time.


ALMAYADEEN notes, "The Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian civilizations, to which humanity owes writing and the first cities, originated in the land of modern-day Iraq."

 



Suffer not Your neighbor's afflictionSuffer not Your neighbor's paralysisBut extend your hand Extend your handLest you vanish in the city And be but a traceJust a vanished ghost And your legacyAll the things you knew Science, mathematics, thoughtSeverely weakened Like irrigation systemsIn the tired veins forming From the Tigris and EuphratesIn the realm of peace All the world revolvedAll the world revolved Around a perfect circleCity of Baghdad City of scholarsEmpirical humble Center of the worldCity in ashes City of BaghdadCity of Baghdad Abrasive aloof
Oh, in Mesopotamia Aloofness ran deepDeep in the veins of the great riversThat form the base Of EdenAnd the tree The tree of knowledgeHeld up its arms To the skyAll the branches of knowledge All the branches of knowledgeCradling CradlingCivilization In the realm of peaceAll the world revolved Around a perfect circleOh Baghdad Center of the worldCity of ashes With its great mosquesErupting from the mouth of god Rising from the ashes likea speckled bird Splayed against the mosaic skyOh, clouds around We created the zeroBut we mean nothing to you You would believeThat we are just some mystical tale We are just a swollen bellyThat gave birth to Sinbad, Scheherazade We gave birthOh, oh, to the zero The perfect numberWe invented the zero And we mean nothing to youOur children run through the streetsAnd you sent your flames Your shooting starsShock and awe Shock and aweLike some, some Imagined warrior productionTwenty-first century No chivalry involvedNo Bushido
-- "Radio Baghdad" written by Patti Smith and Oliver Ray, first appears on Patti's TRAMPIN' 


Patti's touring overseas right now.  She returns for performances in the US in August (and September before going to Germany in October).

Of the nearly 3,000 year old stone tablet, AFP notes, "The tablet -- whose text is written in cuneiform, the Babylonian alphabet -- bears the insignia of Shalmaneser III, the Assyrian king who ruled the region of Nimrod, in present-day northern Iraq, from 858 to 823 BC."  




 




In May, New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg announced the return of two ancient sculptures to Iraq: a limestone Mesopotamian elephant and an alabaster Sumerian bull from the old city of Uruk.
The figurines, stolen during the Gulf War, were smuggled into New York in the late 1990s, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The bull was part of the private collection of Shelby White, a billionaire philanthropist and Met trustee.

Earlier this year, CBS SUNDAY MORNING did a report on looting and theft.




New content at THIRD:



The following sites updated:





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Monday, June 19, 2023

Idiot and Judas of the Year: Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis

Let's dive in to Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis.  He's sporting his stupidity yet again:


Conservatives appear gleeful that they may have just scored another culture war win — this time, through Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers.

But their claim to have successfully boycotted a Dodgers game for its LGBTQ Pride participation and guests — notably echoed by presidential candidate Ron DeSantis — appears to be false. 

Leading up to the team's 10th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night, the Dodgers disinvited and then re-invited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a nonprofit "order of queer and trans nuns," which some religious conservatives found to be offensive to Christianity and Catholicism. 

"We have asked the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to take their place on the field at our 10th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night on June 16th," the team said in its re-invitation statement shared on Twitter. "We are pleased to share that they have agreed to receive the gratitude of our collective communities for the lifesaving work that they have done tirelessly for decades."

While the satirical group was given a community activism award at Dodgers stadium on Friday, religious groups protested outside the stadium and briefly shut down the main entrance, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently launched his 2024 presidential bid, tweeted in support of the protesters and claimed the stadium was "virtually empty." Some conservatives circulated photos and videos, which were reportedly taken before the opening pitch, of a near-empty stadium.

"The virtually empty stadium for the game itself was a powerful image," DeSantis said in his tweet. "Americans are fed up with the nonsense and are fighting back."

In reality, Friday's game surpassed the team's average attendance of 47,800 people, according to Forbes. 

"Our paid attendance on Friday night was 49,074," Joe Jareck, senior director of public relations for the Dodgers, told Insider in a comment.


Doo-Doo Ron Ron can't stop lying.  And please read my mother's "A Different Squash Casserole in the Kitchen" because she's right.  I'm Catholic and I'm not offended by the comedy troupe.  Taliban Tulsi keeps lying.  She's not Catholic so she should shut up, first off.  Second, go back to a country that doesn't allow comedy about religion if you find this so distasteful.  No one needs you, a member of cult -- a sick cult, talking about Catholicism.  You don't know a damn thing about.  You certainly didn't learn about when you were homeschooled.

 


I am a native of Fayetteville, home of Fort Liberty. I could only sigh at these two candidates’ political pandering.

But let’s talk about how dumb their idea really is.

Both Pence and DeSantis, the Florida governor, know the U.S. president cannot wave a wand and change Fort Liberty back to Bragg. 

Bragg’s name change was not done in isolation. It is one of nine Army installations that shed their Confederate names as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, aka the defense bill. It is the law, passed by a bipartisan vote of Congress and signed by Donald Trump.

U.S. Congress would have to vote to change these names back — and that is not happening. Congress promises to be closely divided after the smoke clears in 2024, whichever party comes out with the majority. A House majority for backing the Confederate names would be a tough stretch; 60 votes in a divided Senate would be next to impossible.

Why? Because there is no real constituency in Washington to offer visible support to Confederates and the racism associated with them, most especially the immoral institution of chattel slavery.


Doo-Doo Ron Ron is such an idiot.  Ed Mazza (HUFFINGTON POST) notes:



MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Sunday called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, for his latest “transparent pitch” to win over evangelical Christian voters. 

During an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last week, DeSantis said he’d like to have been among the original disciples of Jesus Christ. 

“These guys all went out and they dedicated their life to spreading the gospel,” DeSantis said. “I look back at that and would loved to have been able to be there with them.” 

Hasan couldn’t get over the “sheer arrogance” of that statement from a Republican. 

“Just imagine for a second if alongside Peter, John, James and co., there had been a Ron,” he said, then envisioned how that might’ve gone:

“A Ron who every time Jesus helped the poor and used loaves of bread and fish to feed the hungry Ron was like, ’You’re too woke, Jesus. You’re too woke. Let them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.′ Every time Jesus said, I don’t know, we should embrace refugees and migrants Ron was like, ’Stop all the wokeness, Jesus. Send them to Martha’s Vineyard. The Holy Land is where woke goes to die.’” 

“The truth is that the Jesus of the gospels and his disciples were way too left-wing for Ronald DeSantis,” Hasan told fellow MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin.  

Mohyeldin said DeSantis went from worshipping “cult leader” Donald Trump to running against him for the nomination ― and that could have supporters of the former president envisioning him as one very specific disciple.


“He’s probably been more of a Judas than a Peter,” Mohyeldin said. “Even Donald Trump has noticed this betrayal.” 

I agree, the doo-doo smear would have been a Judas to Jesus.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Monday, June 19, 2023.  They persecute whistle-blowers, don't they?  Daniel Ellsberg survived Richard Nixon's persecution to pass away at the age of 92 while Julian Assange remains in danger of being locked away forever by the US.

Late Friday morning, Daniel Ellsberg's family announced he had passed away.  The whistle-blower was 92-years-old.  CBS SUNDAY MORNING notes his passing.




A Letter from Daniel Ellsberg’s Family, 6/16/23:

Early this morning, Daniel Ellsberg died peacefully in his home in Kensington, CA. His cause of death was pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed February 17th. He was not in pain, and was surrounded by loving family. In the months since his diagnosis, he continued to speak out urgently to the media about nuclear dangers, especially the danger of nuclear war posed by the Ukraine war and Taiwan. (Links to the interviews are here.)

Daniel also shared many moments of love and joy in these months, including celebrating his 92nd birthday (April 7) and Patricia’s 85th birthday (April 26), and many visits and calls with friends and loved ones. He was thrilled to be able to give up the salt-free diet his doctor had him on for five years; hot chocolate, croissants, cake, poppyseed bagels, and lox gave him extra pleasure in these final months. He also enjoyed re-watching his favorite movies, including several viewings of his all-time favorite, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Thank you, everyone, for your outpouring of love, appreciation, and well-wishes to Dan in the previous months. It all warmed his heart at the end of his life.

In his final days, surrounded by so much love from so many people, Daniel joked, “If I had known dying would be like this, I would have done it sooner.” (Patricia replied, “Then I’m glad you didn’t.”)

Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an antiwar activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more. He will be dearly missed by all of us.

Thank you, Daniel, for sharing your wisdom, your heart, and your conscience with the world. We will keep your flame alive.

—Patricia, Mary, Robert, and Michael Ellsberg
Kensington, CA, 6/16/23


In Friady's snapshot (posted before the announcement, we noted:


Daniel Ellsberg was censored.  Like Julian Assange, Daniel tried to bring the truth to the people.  Richard Nixon persecuted Daniel Ellsberg.  Tricky Dick is a dirty joke and a criminal and he's forever remembered for Watergate, for his enemies list and for what he did to his enemies like Daniel Ellsberg.

Daniel is, sadly, dying.  He's lived a life to be proud of.  Joe Biden should realize that he can end up the next Richard Nixon in history or he can do something heroic and stop the persecution of Julian Assange.

Daniel Ellsberg was on Nixon's enemies list.  Plural.

Another person on that list was Barbra Streisand.  In May of 1973, Barbra did a fundraiser for Daniel.  It was held at the home of film producer Jennings Lang and those present could hear Barbra sing whatever requested song they pledged money for and she also sang over the phone at the benefit as well (also for donations).  She did a lot of standards like "You're The Top" and "Someone To Watch Over Me."  She even sang a duet with Carl Reiner.  Barbra was signed to  COLUMBIA RECORDS.  

COLUMBIA needed Streisand product always.  They were constantly churning it out.  In 1971, for example, she released two best selling albums -- one platinum, one gold -- studio albums STONEY END and BARBRA JOAN STREISAND.  That's 1971.  1972, it was LIVE CONCERT AT THE FORUM -- the concert she did for the George McGovern presidential campaign.  It was now May 1973 and no product.  Not even a greatest hits or compilation.  COLUMBIA needed product.  

Barbra had her performance at the benefit for Daniel recorded.  COLUMBIA wanted product.  Barbra singing torch songs live?  They loved the idea.  But Barbra also wanted the money the album raised to go to Daniel's defense fund.  

Problem.

COLUMBIA was part of CBS.  CBS was already facing 'issues' with the Nixon White House over their coverage of Watergate and over Walter Cronkite's THE SELLING OF THE PRESIDENT documentary that they had done.  The corporate order came down that they didn't need any more pressure and the album was killed.   It's still in the vaults by the way, it could be released now as a way to honor Daniel Ellsberg while he's still with us.



Barbra Tweeted:



Nixon's enemy list was lengthy and seemed to grow larger with each year that he was president.  WIKIPEDIA offers a list there that is very lengthy and includes 12 US senators -- sitting senators at the time they made the list (13 if you want to include Eugene McCarthy who was not in the Senate when the list was originally published) -- 19 members of the House of Representatives (including 12 African-American members such as Shirley Chisolm, John Conyers and Charlie Rangel), organizations like the Black Caucus in Congress (see the clause right before this one), the Black Panthers, Brookings Institution and the Farmers Union, labor leaders, journalists (such as Mary McGrory as well as journalistic outlets),  business leaders, academics . . . 


 

According to the book Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the Press: A Historical Retrospective, the White House staff compiled a list of people who were either critical of the president or simply not committed to his policies. To be on the list, someone had to be famous or powerful. Some of the entertainers on the list were Bill Cosby, Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Steve McQueen, Gregory Peck, and Streisand. Streisand landed on the list for some very specific reasons.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Streisand said why she was on the list. “I was on Nixon’s Enemies List because I supported [Eugene] McCarthy in 1968 and raised funds for Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers trial. Then I did a concert for George McGovern…” For context, McCarthy was A Democratic presidential candidate in 1968, the first year Nixon successfully campaigned for president. Ellsberg was a whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, documents which dealt with American involvement in Vietnam. Finally, McGovern was Nixon’s opponent in the 1972 presidential election — fans can hear Streisand’s pro-McGovern performance on the album Live Concert at the Forum. The album reached No. 19 on the Billboard 200 — which is relatively unimpressive given Streisand released 11 No. 1 albums, the most recent of which hit No. 1 in 2016.
So did Streisand take issue with her inclusion on the list? According to Deadline, Streisand told Bill Maher in 2018 she was “proud” to be on Nixon’s enemies list at the time and she remains proud to have been on the list. To date, the inclusion of so many celebrities on the list remains one of the most odd and amusing elements of the Nixon administration. 

June 23, 1973 John Dean, convicted felon, would reveal the list to Congress.  Many in the country knew several years before.  November 3, 1970, Jane Fonda returned to the US from Canada and was arrested for 'drugs' (vitamins and prescribed drugs).  Due to an off duty police officer being greedy and seeing a goldmine in suing Jane, it came out that they were following orders from the White House, than Jane was on a list of people to be harrassed when entering and exiting the country.  (Greedy people often forget the process of discovery kicks in when you file a lawsuit against someone.)  Jane and attorney Mark Lane were very vocal about this so those paying attention knew of the list before convicted felon John Dean handed it over.  Convicted felon Dean had the list because he helped implement it.  Not because he opposed it, but because he helped implement it.  And, no, all that Dean did is not forgotten and should not be forgotten.  

This is what Daniel Ellsberg stood up to -- a very vindictive administration that used US tax dollars to plot against US citizens and to carry out retribution -- hundreds of US citizens.


Ellsberg never ran for office and only occasionally appeared on TV. But he altered the course of U.S. history in a way few private citizens ever have.

As a military analyst working on a Pentagon project in 1971, Ellsberg chose to release to the public an extensive, documentary record of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Known as the "Pentagon Papers," Ellsberg's mammoth disclosure would help to end the longest U.S. war of the 20th century. It would also prompt a landmark Supreme Court decision on freedom of the press. And it would provoke a response from President Richard Nixon that led directly to the scandals that ended his presidency.

By the time he got to the Pentagon, Ellsberg, then 40, was a Marine Corps veteran with a Harvard doctorate who had worked for the Defense and State departments and the Rand Corporation. A "hawk" before going to Vietnam in 1965, Ellsberg had since turned against the war and the official justifications given for it.

Since 1969 he had been one of dozens of analysts studying and writing about the decisions behind the escalating U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The study covered the years from 1945 to 1968, and had first been commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara toward the end of that period.

Ellsberg and a Rand colleague, Anthony Russo, had access to a copy of the 7,000-pages of classified documents and historical narrative kept at Rand. The pair photocopied them at night, one page at a time over a period of months.

Ellsberg showed the material to a few senators who had been critics of the war. He said he hoped they would hold hearings, or enter the report in the Congressional Record. But they were not willing to do so, and one encouraged him to go to the New York Times.

Ellsberg did just that, contacting a legendary reporter at the New York Times whom he had known in Vietnam, Neal Sheehan. Supported by the top editors at the Times, Sheehan led a team of writers and editors in distilling the immense document for newspaper use. On June 13, 1971, the first story ran atop the front page.

Sheehan wrote that the United States had gone to war not to save the Vietnamese from Communism but to maintain "the power, influence and prestige of the United States ... irrespective of conditions in Vietnam."

The report that came to be known as the Pentagon papers said the U.S. had first been involved in Vietnam during World War II, when Americans helped Vietnamese resist Japanese occupation. After the war, the U.S. supported France's attempt to reclaim its colonies in Southeast Asia, largely to keep France in the alliance against the Soviet Union.

As the French forces faltered in Vietnam, the U.S. shouldered more and more of the cost of the war. And when the French gave up and left in 1954, the U.S. remained to protect Western investments and bolster an anti-communist government in Saigon (South Vietnam) while a Communist regime in Hanoi held sway in the country's northern half.

But almost none of this was known to the American public at the time, and when John F. Kennedy became president in 1961 he extended the commitments made by previous presidents. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, greatly expanded these commitments, escalating the war with hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and relentless bombing campaigns in the mid-1960s.

Richard Nixon came to office in 1969 promising to end the war, but even as he reduced the U.S. troop presence he also widened the war into Cambodia and stepped up the bombing.

The most shocking revelation in Ellsberg's report was the willingness of one president and one administration after another to continue the commitment — and the upbeat assessments of the situation — even as they each came to believe the mission would ultimately fail, that no amount of conventional military force would subdue the Vietnamese resistance. 



The leak itself did not end the war, and Ellsberg regretted not having come forward years earlier. He spent the rest of his life as a peace activist, encouraging others on the inside to reveal government malfeasance, and supporting those who did, including the 2003 GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. But his leaks did result in a landmark decision in favour of freedom of the press, and, ironically, led to the downfall of the US president Richard Nixon. It is not unreasonable to set Ellsberg’s leak alongside President John F Kennedy’s assassination as the ground zero of today’s distrust of politics.

Before working on the Pentagon Papers, officially a study titled A History of Decision-Making in Vietnam 1945-68 commissioned from the Rand Corporation research organisation by the secretary of defense Robert McNamara, Ellsberg had spent two years at the US embassy in Saigon, advising on General Edward Lansdale’s “pacification” programme. As he sifted through the material gathered for the report, including evaluations which deemed the war unwinnable, he realised the enormity of the political fraud.

He began copying the documents, with the help of a former Rand colleague Anthony Russo, and in 1971, as the US extended the war with bombings of Laos and Cambodia, resolved to make them public. The chair of the senate foreign relations committee, William Fulbright, turned him down, as did the Washington Post’s editor Ben Bradlee and owner Katharine Graham; Graham was close to the secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who had known Ellsberg at Harvard; he advised her Ellsberg was “unbalanced and emotionally unstable”. Matthew Rhys played Ellsberg in the 2017 film The Post which loosely covers those events.

Neil Sheehan of the New York Times was a reporter Ellsberg admired in Vietnam; Sheehan convinced the Times to take the papers, the first instalment of which revealed that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the casus belli which launched full-scale US participation in the conflict, had been bogus.

The Nixon administration obtained an injunction prohibiting further publication; the supreme court’s overturning of that injunction, dismissing the idea of “prior restraint”, remains a cornerstone of US journalistic freedom. But leakers themselves were not protected. Ellsberg was hidden by anti-war activists while Mike Gravel, the US senator from Alaska, entered most of the leaked papers into the congressional record, and the Post played catch-up.

Meanwhile Nixon, furious at the leaks, created the so-called “plumbers” covert special investigation unit, to discover if Ellsberg had further material that might affect him directly, and to discredit him. When the plumbers’ bungled break-in at the Watergate offices revealed an earlier burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, the ensuing chain of scandal and cover-up eventually forced Nixon’s resignation to avoid impeachment.



RESPECTS paid to Vietnam whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg are worthless if they do not translate into action to defend today’s foremost exposer of US war crimes — Julian Assange.

Nor can we ignore either the lesson from his leak of the Pentagon Papers — that our governments lie systematically about war — or the concerns he raised in the last months of his life, that Nato powers are hurtling towards nuclear conflict with Russia and China.

Ellsberg was turned against the Vietnam war by direct experience of it — of the brutality and dishonesty of US commanders and strategists, who hid their real reasons for prosecuting the war and their private understanding that it was practically unwinnable but would continue to swallow resources and human lives indefinitely.

Vietnam saw the US kill more than two million people in a doomed attempt to crush communist revolution. But it was also a proxy war, a battleground seen in Washington as part of the global struggle for supremacy with the Soviet Union.

Today’s proxy war rages in Ukraine, where the US and Britain have worked to scupper peace talks — according to testimony from even US allies like Israel — while flooding in weapons in a bid to weaken a strategic rival, Russia.

Again we are being lied to, as leaked documents revealed earlier this year. We learned that the US had no faith whatsoever in the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive. We learned that Nato states had put boots on the ground — Britain the highest number of all — bringing us dangerously close to direct war with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Such dishonesty is par for the course for the British government; it took the wounding of five special forces troops in Yemen in 2019 to reveal we were fighting that war, too.



Ellsberg played a prominent role in the defense of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and particularly Julian Assange, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks. He wrote of Assange, “I was the first whistleblower prosecuted under the Espionage Act, and now he is the first prosecution [under the Espionage Act] for publishing.”

While the New York Times and other corporate media had published material leaked by Manning and Snowden, or published by WikiLeaks, they made no effort to defend them against prosecution by the Obama administration, which made more frequent use of the Espionage Act to persecute leakers and journalists than all previous governments in US history, combined.

Ellsberg gave testimony in one of the innumerable court hearings in the protracted legal process in the course of which the British government kept Assange locked up in the high-security Belmarsh prison, Britain’s Guantanamo, even though the WikiLeaks publisher faced no criminal charges in Britain, only an extradition request from the United States.

Assange and his family deeply appreciated this support, and Assange put Ellsberg on the restricted list of people allowed to call and speak with him in Belmarsh. For that reason, Assange was allowed to call Ellsberg and say goodbye to him after he announced publicly that he was dying of pancreatic cancer.


The US government continues to persecute Julian Assange for the 'crime' of journalism.  US President Joe Biden could stop it at any moment but choose not to and, as a result, mars his own historical legacy.  For reporting the truth, Julian is wanted by the US government and he has lost his most recent appeal in the UK.  Ian Burrell (I NEWS) explains:

Assange is on the brink of extradition to the United States. He faces an unprecedented prosecution under the Espionage Act that could have him sentenced to 175 years – and open the way for Washington to pursue investigative journalists around the world who are deemed to have revealed US secrets.

Even at this 11th hour, the media is muted in condemnation of this obviously political case, in spite of the dire implications for freedom of information. And even though Assange has been held without charge for four years at Belmarsh high-security prison in London, at a cost to the UK taxpayer of hundreds of thousands of pounds, public sympathy for him is diluted because he has been cast as a reprobate.




The following sites updated:





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