nakedcapitalism | This past Thursday the New York Times vomited up a hit piece on little ol’ me –
a guy who has been doing stand-up comedy for nearly 20 years and
thought maybe that comedy could be used to inform and inspire audiences,
rather than just make fun of the differences between men and women.
At first when you’re the center of a smear job, you’re annoyed and
frustrated. But as I read further through the piece, I realized it was a
master class in how to write propaganda for one of the most “respected”
news outlets in our country. I’m actually grateful it was written about
me because now I can see with my own eyes exactly how the glorious
chicanery is done. I count no less than 15 lies, manipulations, and
false implications in this short article, a score that even our fearless
prevaricator-in-chief Donald Trump would envy.
So here now is a “How To” for writing propaganda for the New York Times – using the smear piece against me as an example.
CounterPunch | To sum up: The Founders were wisely concerned about the potential
dangers of factions and partisanship and were aware of how previous
democracies had failed. They believed that a representative form of
government would obviate the unavoidable tendencies toward partisanship
and the ills to which it could lead.
Their concerns were justified. Their solution has been an utter failure!
The very worst version of the Founders’ fear has been realized. The
faction we know as the 1 percent, with the help of the Republican and
Democrat partisans, currently administers government policies “adverse
to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate
interests of the community”, to put it lightly!
Since these partisans are responsible for our current dreadful circumstances, just as the Founders warned, how can we possibly rely upon them to correct the situation?
The representative government that was supposed to protect us from
the evils of factions and partisans has collapsed. It has been subverted
by the very elected representative body that the Constitution created
for our protection!
Today, our two party form of government resembles a baseball game
where the players of both teams are also the umpires. Having nullified
voters, the parties have no independent check on their behavior or
performance. Imagine that the two baseball teams have the same owner
who chooses their players with no input from the fans (unlike the All
Star game, where fans get to vote for the starting lineups). Having a
common owner, all ticket sales go into the same pocket, so it doesn’t
matter who wins. One nominal team must “lose”, but, still, everybody
wins. So it is with the Dems and Repubs. Election wins and losses are
not important, because the owners always win. Different in name only,
they have no competition and are secure in their shared power. Backed by
incredible corporate and private wealth, they believe they have no
worries. And as long as their adversarial charade continues to fool and
divide a substantial portion of the public, they do not.
We voters have effectively lost all control of our government. Our
votes are managed, manipulated, gerrymandered, hacked and thrown in the
trash. Our representatives avoid, disregard and disrespect us. They lie
to and deceive us. They either openly show disdain , or they only
pretend to be working for us. Our representative body is giving us the middle finger. What other recourse do we have to access government in our own country?
smirkingchimp |“The Democrats are not fighting Trump over his assault on health
care, his attacks on immigrants, his militaristic bullying around the
world, or even his status as a minority president who can claim no
mandate after losing the popular vote. Instead, they have chosen to
attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the
right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military
confrontation with Russia.”
— Patrick Martin, “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming”, World Socialist Web Site
Donald Trump is not the target of an FBI investigation.
Donald Trump has never been the target of an FBI investigation.
The FBI is not investigating Trump for collusion, improper relations
with a foreign government, treason or any of the other ridiculous things
he’s been falsely accused of in the fake media. In fact, the FBI is not
investigating him at all.
We do not indict or impeach people for being boorish or
clueless … or simply being Donald Trump.” (“James Comey’s testimony
doesn’t make the case for impeachment or obstruction against Donald
Trump”, USA Today)
The fact that the obstruction charge won’t stick is not going to stop
Mueller from rummaging around and making Trump’s life a living Hell.
Heck no. He’s going to dig through his old phone records, bank accounts,
tax returns, shaky land deals, ex girl friends, whatever it takes. His
prosecutorial tentacles will extend into every nook and cranny of
Trump’s private life and affairs until he latches onto some particularly
sordid incident or transaction he can use he can use to disgrace,
discredit, and demonize Trump to the point that impeachment proceedings
seem like a welcome relief. It should be obvious by now, that the deep
state elites who launched this coup are not going to be satisfied until
Trump is forced from office and the results of the 2016 presidential
election are wiped out.
But, why? Why is Trump so hated by these people?
Trump is not being attacked because of his reactionary political
agenda, but because he’s been deemed insufficiently hostile to
Washington’s sworn enemy, Russia. It’s all about Russia. Trump wanted to
“normalize” relations with Moscow which pitted him against the powerful
US foreign policy establishment. Now Trump has to be taught a lesson.
He must be crushed, humiliated and exiled. And that’s probably the way
this will end.
NationalReview | Jeff Sessions looked at the morning newspapers. Both the Times and
the Post had the story. He turned on Morning Joe just in time to hear
Mika Brzezinski speculate that his career as attorney general may be
over.
“Ну, дерьмо,” he sighed, as he pulled down the bottom of his cashmere
sweater vest to eliminate any unwanted creases. He then calmly walked to
his private Senate office and pulled a painting of some ducks and
spaniels off the wall. He paused to look at the scene, as if for the
first time. “Ridiculous, Americans,” he muttered to himself. “Bears. Men
hunt medvedi,” he said, letting himself enjoy speaking Russian after
all of these years.
EUTimes | Need we remind each and every single one of you Demonrat
schizophrenics that Jeff Sessions was a US SENATOR up until only a few
days ago? He was not part of the Trump campaign. If the Demonrats manage
to destroy Sessions as they did with Flynn then there will simply be no
hope left.
Now top House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demands US
Attorney-General Jeff Sessions resign for “lying under oath” during his
confirmation hearings. Sessions’ spokeswoman said he was speaking of
Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, not of his own activities. Ohh
yeah everybody is a Russian spy according to those schizophrenics.
“Jeff Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearing before
the Senate. Under penalty of perjury, he told the Senate Judiciary
Committee, ‘I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that
campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.’ We now
know that statement is false,” mentally ill demonrat Pelosi wrote.
Unnamed Justice Department officials told the Washington Post on
Wednesday that Sessions spoke to Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey
Kislyak twice last year, which would contradict statements Sessions made
as US senator during Senate hearings for his confirmation to the
Attorney General post.
slate | But things really went off
the rails in this exchange, when Stone tried very hard not to answer a
yes or no question with “yes” or “no.”
Colbert: Do you like Vladimir Putin? After spending twenty hours with the guy, do you trust him?
Stone: I think you should see the film for yourself.
Colbert: I’m just asking you a question. Do
you trust him after spending twenty hours with him? I’d like to see the
film, I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.
Stone: He’s a head of state, he has
Russian—he has his own interests in Russia. I respect him for that, I
understand why he’s doing it. He’s a strong nationalist…
By the time Stone got to his monologue about how Putin refused to
badmouth anyone despite being “insulted and abused,” the audience was
audibly scoffing, and Colbert wasn’t above feeding off the mood of the
crowd. “Anything about him negative you found?” he asked as a follow-up,
to laughter and applause. “Anything? Anything? Or does he have your dog
in a cage somewhere?” The final straw came when Stone suggested that
Russia was a convenient scapegoat for people who didn’t like Trump.
Colbert interrupted him, dropped the “some people say” pose, and spoke
for himself:
Colbert: I don’t understand why our
president will never say anything negative about Vladimir Putin, given
that Putin is an oppressive leader of his country who suppresses the
free press and arrests his enemies—that is not something that I as an
American or a member of the press can respect. And I’m surprised that
you do respect that.
Stone: Well, you know I’ve always been for free speech.
Colbert: Yes, and it doesn’t seem like he would be a hero of that.
Stone: Listen, no question he’s a social
conservative in that way, he believes that [Audience laughter] I don’t
know why you’re laughing, but it’s—he believes strongly that—
Colbert: Because it seems like a mild description of his behavior. That’s why they’re laughing.
It’s brutal. Stone does make one good point, which is that it’s
ridiculous to talk about a four-hour film based on a few clips, or even
two hours. “What I said is in this four-hour documentary,” he told
Colbert. “I think that if you watch it patiently, you’ll see that it’s
developed, it’s a film, it has a flow from 2000 all the way to 2017—we
went back after the election to talk to him seriously about the
election.” He also specifically mentions the pressing Putin harder in
the fourth episode. It’s possible that Stone established a base of trust
with Putin before hitting him with harder questions—in fact, that’s
exactly what Colbert did with his ramble about how great it was to talk
philosophy with “an Oliver Stone” before asking him if he’d conducted “a
fawning interview with a brutal dictator.”
cbsnews | Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is known for such films as "Born
on the Fourth of July," "Platoon," "Wall Street" and "JFK." He also
wrote the screenplays for "Midnight Express" and "Scarface." Over his
career he has also interviewed controversial figures like Hugo Chavez
and Fidel Castro.
For his latest documentary, the Showtime series "The Putin Interviews," Stone was granted extensive access to the Russian president. Stone interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over two years. No topic was off limits.
In one conversation from February 2016, Stone asked Putin about the candidates in the United States' presidential election:
Stone:
"You do realize how powerful your answer could be; if you said subtly
that you preferred X candidate, he would go like that [indicates
nosedive] tomorrow, and if you said you didn't like Trump or something,
right, what would happen? He would win. You have that amount of power in
the U.S."
Putin: "Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere
within the domestic affairs of other countries. That is one of the
principles we stick to in our work."
On "CBS This Morning" Monday, Stone said he first got to know Putin
during production of his film about Edward Snowden, released in 2016,
for which he interviewed the former NSA analyst in Moscow nine times.
Stone also asked Putin about the Snowden affair and his point of view on
it, "and one thing led to another."
Stone said he was invited by Putin to conduct the interviews.
"I
think he needed to be heard fairly because I'm not going to be an
editor; I'm going to let him speak," Stone said. "And his point of view
is not heard; you don't hear him in Russian in the West; you hear a
dubbed voice, and sometimes a dubbed voice can be very harsh."
The four-part documentary series debuts on Showtime June 12.
Congratulations! You have graduated from fake news to falsified news,
arriving at a journalistic level that is identical to that in the
Soviet Union in its heyday.
A couple of days ago, the political talk show moderated by Vladimir
Soloviev on state television channel Rossiya 1 broadcast two versions of
a segment from Megyn Kelly's interview with Vladimir Putin last Friday
in the St Petersburg on the sidelines of the International Economic
Forum. One was the complete, uncut version that was aired on RT. The
other was the cut-to-shreds version that you put on air for the American
audience.
The segment was Megyn Kelly's aggressive question to Putin, asking his
response to what she said was Americans' understanding of his
government, namely one that murders journalists, suppresses political
opposition, is rife with corruption, etc., etc. In the NBC version,
Putin's answer has been cut to one empty introductory statement that
"Russia is on its way to becoming a democracy" bracketed by an equally
empty closing sentence. In the full, uncut version , Putin responds to
Kelly's allegations point by point and then turns the question around
asking what right the USA and the West have to question Russia's record
when they have been actively doing much worse than what was in Kelly's
charges. He asks where is Occupy Wall Street today, why US and European
police use billy clubs and tear gas to break up demonstrations, when
Russian police do nothing of the sort, and so on.
unz |Disinformation and lies have been used to justify the wars on Syria that started in 2011.[1]
But lately I’ve been amazed at the extent to which our entire public
discourse now rests on disinformation and lies. This is a broader
problem, but it also affects the prospects for peace in Syria, one of
several places where U.S./NATO activities heighten the risk of nuclear
war.[2]
I’ve
been feeling pretty overwhelmed by it all lately, capped (most
recently) by the third U.S. attack on Syria. As I put that together
with President Trump’s giving the military free rein over “tactics,” it
sank in that, with this delegation of authority, war-making power has
now devolved from the Congress through the President to the military
itself, in areas where not only Syrians but Russians, Iranians and
others operate.
In
the apparent absence of an organized peace movement, the concentration
of so many people on opposing Trump, rather than on opposing U.S. wars,
distracts attention from this problem. Otherwise under fire from all
directions, Mr. Trump gets approval – across the spectrum – when he does
something awful but military, like launching cruise missiles at Syria
or dropping that horrific bomb in Afghanistan. Meanwhile his attempt to
reset U.S. relations and reduce tension with Russia is being used to
lay the groundwork for impeachment and/or charges of treason.
The lies about Syria have of course continued. First, Amnesty International issued “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison Syria,”
claiming that the Syrian government executed between 5,000 and 13,000
people over a five-year period. Then another chemical weapons incident,
blamed without evidence on the government, was used as the excuse for a
second U.S. attack on Syria. Both of these charges were widely and
uncritically reported in the major media, though neither of them is
credible.[3]
But
the use of disinformation has been expanded in what I now see as an
attempt to destabilize the U.S. government itself, to achieve “regime
change” at home as it has been practiced in many foreign countries over
the last 70 years.[4]
It started right after the election with the attacks on General Mike
Flynn. And as it has continued, the campaign to demonize Russia and
Russian president Vladimir Putin has also intensified.
Bottom
line: It seems clear there is no evidence, let alone proof, that
computers at the DNC were hacked at all, let alone by Russia, or that
Russia tried in any way to “meddle” in the U.S. election. It has thus
far made no difference that, soon after the charge of Russian
interference in the last election was first made, an organization of
intelligence veterans who have the expertise to know pointed out that
U.S. intelligence has the capability of presenting hard evidence of any
such hacking and had not done so (and, I would add, still hasn’t).
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity stated bluntly: “We have
gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s
play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result
of a leak, not a hack.” They then explained the difference between
leaking and hacking.[5]
Counterpunch |Vladimir Putin and Megyn Kelly had a far more interesting exchange
about Syria and sarin gas at the St. Petersburg forum. NBC did not
include this in the 11 minutes that aired Sunday, but RT America filmed
and posted it to YouTube.
In this one, Kelly echoed former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, NPR
commentator Scott Simon, and other American politicians and pundits who
have characterized Bashar-al-Assad as “evil.” She noted that even his
alleged co-conspirator Donald Trump called Assad an “evil guy,” as he
did after the alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian army.
“Our president has said that you’re backing an evil guy there. He said Assad is an evil guy. Do you believe that?”
Putin dismissed the silly question about “evil” with a comic
response, then responded that Russia is not defending Assad; it is
defending the Syrian state from the fate of Libya, Somalia, and
Afghanistan.
iBankCoin | Former CIA Director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, is ‘stunned’
that former FBI Directors, James Comey leaked notes of private
conversations with the President of the United States to his friend and
then the press.
The CNN host, Fareed Zakaria, attempted to advocate on Comey’s
behalf, suggesting that since Comey was a ‘private citizen’ he had the
right to leak his notes. Woolsey was having none of that horseshit and
said it was ‘stunning’ that ‘he would give up the secrecy of a
conversation with the President of the United States.’
stockboardasset | Since President Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton
in the 2016 presidential election, much of the press have made note of
Steve Bannon’s interest in an influential book published in 1997 called,
“The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous With Destiny.”
In this book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe make the argument
that our ideas about the nature of history, linear time, and progress
are illusory, and that if we want a more accurate concept about the way
that history unfolds, we would do well to study the ancient Greek
concept of cyclical time. This concept views national and global
historical phenomenon not as randomly occurring events, or the linear
march of historical “progress,” but instead sees them as recurring
archetypes placed into a larger tapestry of a greater repeating
historical cycle.
According to Strauss and Howe, the relative geographic and historical
isolation of the United States provides a unique opportunity to view
this cycle unfolding regularly and predictably every 80 years.
This 80-year cycle can be divided into four stages or seasons, each lasting approximately twenty years:
High– This initial stage occurs immediately following a period of
crisis. The High is characterized by strong institutions, a sense of
collective destiny, and a weakness of individuality. The most recent
example of this would be the period of prosperity and conformity in the
U.S. immediately following the conclusion of World War II.
Awakening- The second stage, or turning, is a period of questioning
established values and asserting one’s independence from established
norms and morals, be they spiritual or political. This stage may be seen
as a rebellion of the previous era’s emphasis on material wealth and
conformity. The 1960’s, with the psychedelic revolution, anti-war
protests, Civil Rights marches, and New Age spiritual movements can be
seen as recent characteristics of this second stage, as well as
Reaganomics and the mid-1980s Wall Street ethos.
Unraveling- The emphasis on autonomy and the questioning of
spiritual, political, and individual authority in the Awakening stage
eventually destabilizes society, leading to the Third Turning, in which
institutions are weak and untrusted while the subjective experience of
the individual is emphasized. This stage can be thought of as the
inverse of the initial High stage, where collective destiny is replaced
by atomization. Recent symptom of this stage would be the culture wars,
corporate malfeasance, a lack of faith in government, social justice
movements, and political correctness.
Crisis- In the Fourth Turning, a destabilizing event, usually
involving warfare, leads to the destruction and reconstruction of
institutions of power. In the face of destruction, Americans are forced
to unite and forge a vision to restructure a disrupted society. This
fourth stage can be seen as the inverse of the Awakening stage, and the
authors cite World War II as the defining event of the most recent
period of Crisis.
Strauss and Howe predicted that the next Crisis period that the U.S.
would face would happen sometime around 2005 and end around 2025. Anyone
who has been paying attention over the last decade would have a
difficult time refuting this. The financial crisis of 2008 threw the
planet into discord, and we are now just beginning to see some of the
political ramifications of this. We may be reaching the apex of this
crisis this summer, or at least we will witness a significant
acceleration of it.
The institutions that once defined American stability are rapidly
crumbling. Mounting debt, unsustainable consumerism, and illegal
immigration are chipping away at once sturdy foundation of America.
And the robust civil discourse needed to solve these problems has
been interrupted by advocates of social justice, sometimes violently.
Recent small skirmishes between the two sides may be headed toward
larger eruptions.
globalintelhub | For those who are not drooling on their lazy-boy high on Prozac and
Lays (both strong brands) know that the world is not as seen on TV. But
even in TV, on shows such as “White Collar” – the strange relationship
between the ‘police’ and the ‘bandits’ can be seen and understood. The
differences in many cases between a career Special Agent and cat burglar
can be thin circumstantial nuances; and they often ‘flip’ sides, most
notably in the case we all know about Frank Abagnale,
now a successful security and fraud consultant, working with the FBI to
detect serious financial fraud. Let’s take a step back for a moment;
the “FBI” hires mostly accountants, and they pursue a number of crimes
but most notably financial fraud. They serve as the police for the
CFTC, the SEC, for extreme enforcement actions, as well as investigating
a number of issues – from their website:
Our Priorities Protect the United States from terrorist attack Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes Combat public corruption at all levels Protect civil rights Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises Combat major white-collar crime Combat significant violent crime Our People & Leadership The FBI employs 35,000 people, including special agents and support
professionals such as intelligence analysts, language specialists,
scientists, and information technology specialists. Learn how you can
join us at FBIJobs.gov. For details on our executives and organizational
structure, see our Leadership & Structure webpage.
What should stick out to readers in an environment where a
potentially politicized and corrupt FBI (at least, the leadership) is
the “Combat public corruption at all levels” – and going back to the age
old regulatory paradox, ‘who watches the watchers’ let’s take a look at
the old dog who made the FBI what it is today; J. Edgar Hoover.
In case you have not, and are interested in this topic, take a weekend and read this must read book about the FBI: J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets –
why bother reading about a figure who is long gone and has no
surviving heirs? Because in order to understand where we are today,
with the situation with the FBI and Trump, we need to understand where
we came from. Certainly the FBI has transformed since 1972; however the
power, scope, size, methods, political leanings, and other elements of
the FBI still remain as established by Hoover.
Let’s dismantle some of the false images many have about the FBI.
The FBI doesn’t ‘solve crimes’ as on popular TV shows like “CSI” –
although they do have excellent forensics labs, this rarely (but
sometimes) leads to a conviction. Primarily, the FBI relies on
informants, “Confidential Informants” (CIs), tips, and ‘turning’ – a
technique popularized by Hoover and used to this day. Global Intel Hub
interviewed several anonymous sources to confirm this information.
Here’s how it works. The FBI will arrest a petty low level criminal
and get him to ‘turn’ on his boss; they will threaten him with life in
prison, maybe poke his eyes a little or something, and get him to become
a witness in court. Also they will want a full blueprint of the
organization – and in exchange they will get into the Witness Protection
Program – yes this program really exists and there are literally thousands of people in this program:
thenation | The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment
not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for
the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by
police. This makes the league’s right-wing billionaire owners’ silk
boxers bunch up.
NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder. As dutifully printed and tweeted without commentary by Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, New York Giants owner John Mara said that he had received “letters” (letters that no one at Sports Illustrated
has seen) showing that fan reaction makes signing Kaepernick
impossible. He said this a year after he signed his kicker Josh Brown to
a multiyear deal despite seeing detailed and horrific reports about how Brown beat his wife, but Kaepernick’s taking a knee during the anthem was a bridge too far.
Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow
at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better
toe the line. The owners are again sending the message—just like when they tried to “influence” research on the effects of brain injuries in the sport—that the lives of players simply do not matter to the National Football League.
The big mystery is whether what is happening is an old-school
“blackballing” or if this is a conscious and coordinated campaign.
Former NFL player Eric Davis implied strongly
that he thought that the NFL had contacted the Seahawks and told them
not to sign Kaepernick. If this turns out to be true, we are no longer
in the realm of blackballing. We are talking about collusion. That could
mean lawsuits. Not just ordinary lawsuits, but nine-figure lawsuits.
Major League Baseball had to pay out $280 million in 1990, when it was found guilty of collusion,
and anytime you’re dealing with the closed market of professional
sports leagues, with their myriad antitrust provisions, collusion
penalties can cost a fortune.
But I don’t think that Colin Kaepernick is going to go the
litigation route. At least not now. He loves this sport and he wants to
play. Only two questions remain: Will he get signed by a team when a
quarterback inevitably goes down to injury, and will his name, until
he’s on a roster, become synonymous with the silencing of the political
athlete?
dallasnews | Whitlock, on the Herd with Colin Cowherd Friday, said Kaepernick is a
good fit, "As far as someone on the roster who can back up Dak
Prescott, who can play behind that offensive line that provides plenty
of protection, who would be playing for the perfect owner, the guy whose
brand has been about second chances for athletes."
Whitlock said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is the perfect guy to give Kaepernick a second chance.
"Whether
you like him or not -- and he's the poster boy for all these alleged
conservative bigoted NFL owners who voted for Trump and hate black
people -- yeah, Jerry Jones, he's that guy,"
Whitlock said. "The guy
that gave Greg Hardy a second chance. The guy that stood by Michael
Irvin during his playing career and after his playing career and has
helped Michael Irvin become a better person and someone who has been
able to take care of his family and friends. Jerry Jones the
conservative alleged bigot has been tremendous with black athletes. The
social justice warrior class won't tell you these things because they're
lying to you. That all these NFL owners, they're just so out of control
with their bigotry and they hate these black quarterbacks.
theatlantic | Colin Kaepernick won’t stand
for the national anthem because of what he sees as systemic racism in
American society. But in the days that followed the San Francisco 49ers
quarterback’s protest, the national debate hasn’t been about his
motivation for sitting, but the method of sitting.
Critics
have called his actions unpatriotic and disrespectful. Donald Trump,
the Republican presidential nominee, has even chimed in, saying
Kaepernick “should find a country that works better for him.”
The
wide array of criticism not only comes from political figures (Hillary
Clinton hasn’t addressed the incident, while White House officials
called his perspective “objectionable”), he’s also facing pushback from
his own colleagues in the NFL.
Players have been widely quoted
as saying they disagree with what they say is disrespect toward the
American flag. Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback, said
Kaepernick “can speak out about a very important issue,” but it
shouldn’t “involve being disrespectful to the American flag.” He told ESPN on Monday:
Like, it’s an oxymoron that you’re sitting down, disrespecting that flag that has given you the freedom to speak out.
What if Jackie Robinson had sat during the national anthem during the 1947 World Series, as the baseball great wished he had 25 years later, knowing “that I am a black man in a white world?”
But
if the discussion, for the most part, centers on whether sitting for
the national anthem is an appropriate means of protest, did Kaepernick
fail? He sat because of what he perceives is racial injustice and police
brutality in the United States. That’s not what his colleagues or
politicians or even the media are talking about four days after the
incident.
Or did others fail in this debate? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA legend and activist, wrote in The Washington Post:
What should horrify Americans is not Kaepernick’s choice to
remain seated during the national anthem, but that nearly 50 years
after [Muhammad] Ali was banned from boxing for his stance and Tommie
Smith and John Carlos’s raised fists caused public ostracization and
numerous death threats, we still need to call attention to the same
racial inequities. Failure to fix this problem is what’s really
un-American here.
Kaepernick sat for the national anthem to
spark a debate on racial injustice, but he sparked a debate about how we
should protest in this country.
Once seen, the nature of this usurpation cannot be unseen. Black DOS (descendants of slaves) had a singularly potent claim under law against the American government. Some would argue the 2nd amendment to the Constitution, for sure the 14th amendment to the Constitution, Brown vs. Board, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act - are all signifiers of precisely how potent a claim that we Black DOS have had and continue to have - if we properly assert and actively resist efforts to denature our specific priority as claimants with unique standing under law to pursue our claims.
The replacement negroe program under which 70 million immigrants have been brought into America to denature our hard fought political-economic standing
The cognitive infiltration of feminism into black politics which saw white women overwhelmingly supplanting Black DOS as the overwhelming beneficiaries of affirmative action intended principally as an economic redress for legally ostracized Black descendants of slaves (Shockley and the 70's eugenics revival was a concrete specific political backlash against affirmative action)
is the bane and singularly potent antidote for the dilution of our singular legal claims.
Under the Cathedral and its permitted discourse insistence upon "intersectionality" - everybody and their cousin has a more "legitimate" and substantive political economic claim against the American government than Black DOS. Despite the indisputable fact that we comprise an exclusive historical phenomenon driving the evolution of citizen rights in the U.S., we find ourselves profoundly and paradoxically Left Behind the curve of the hard won gains we have made under law, but which we have lost in fact due to political gatekeeping and the complicity of "go along to get along" leadership.
This is where we stand at this particular moment in time. It's not a good look, but the long arc of history is far from complete, and as I've long asserted, As goes Blackness, so goes America. Fist tap MHicks.
Counterpunch | Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI
Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law
enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such
fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the
investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable
character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law
enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as
FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided
over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled
Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited
plain vanilla incompetence.
Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller’s role
as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of
corruption and covering up of the FBI’s illicit deals with mobster
Whitey Bulger and other “top echelon” informants who committed numerous
murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through
intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S.
taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for
murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey,
too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and
signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless
surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey
also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an
American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
jezebel | During former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Thursday, Sen. John McCain embarked on a line of questioning so vague and meandering, so slurring and incomprehensible that the public only had two questions for him: 1) Da f*ck? and 2) May I have the phone number of your prescription pill dealer?
From what I could glean, McCain attempted to tie the Hillary Clinton email investigation to the Russian hacking investigation. But he was also so sleepy that he could easily have been dreaming and sleep talking about something completely separate.
dailycaller | Loretta Lynch, the former attorney general under Barack
Obama, pressured former FBI Director James Comey to downplay the Clinton
email server investigation and only refer to it as a “matter,” Comey
testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
Comey said that when he asked Lynch if she was going to authorize him
to confirm the existence of the Clinton email investigation, her answer
was, “Yes but don’t call it that. Call it a matter.” When Comey asked
why, he said, Lynch wouldn’t give him an explanation. “Just call it a
matter,” she said.
Comey added later that he was concerned about that direction as it
was false. He was further concerned because it aligned with the Clinton
campaign’s spin on the investigation.
Lynch’s order, Comey said, “concerned me because that language
tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s
concerning.”
“I don’t know whether it was intentional or not but it gave the
impression that the attorney general [Lynch] was looking to align the
way we talked about our work with the way the political campaign was
describing the same activity, which was inaccurate,” Comey added.
Comey complied, in his words, because it “wasn’t a hill worth dying
on.” In February 2016, the FBI confirmed in a letter that the agency was
“working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a
private email server.”
iBankCoin | Constitutional expert and famed Harvard law Professor, Alan
Dershowitz, took on Jeffrey Toobin to discuss the ongoing Trump-Comey
saga, saying in no uncertain terms that “this is not obstruction of
justice.”
He explains, “That is his constitutional power. He has the right to
say, ‘You will not investigate Flynn.’ The best proof of that is he
could have simply said to Comey, ‘Stop the investigation, I’ve just
pardoned Flynn.’”
To back up his assertions, Dershowitz reminded viewers of when Bush I
pardoned Casper Weinberger the night before trial. After doing so, no
one cried ‘obstruction’ because it was within the rights of the
President of the United States to do so.
“That’s what President Bush did,” Dershowitz said, citing
the case of Caspar Weinberger. “You cannot have obstruction of justice
when the president exercises his constitutional authority to pardon, his
constitutional authority to fire the director of the FBI, or his
constitutional authority to tell the director of the FBI who to
prosecute and who not to prosecute.”
He made the point that impeachment and obstruction are two entirely
different things, which reduced Jeffrey Toobin to look like an 11th
grade history student learning the constitution for the first time. The
President can be impeached for all manners of things, but not for firing
Comey and/or asking him to stop investigating Flynn — because it is his
right to do so.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
