slate | On Thursday morning, a federal court released a 2016 deposition given by Ghislaine Maxwell, the 58-year-old British woman charged by the federal government
with enticing underage girls to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein. That
deposition, which Maxwell has fought to withhold, was given as part of a
defamation suit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges that
she was lured to become Epstein’s sex slave. That defamation suit was
settled in 2017. Epstein died by suicide in 2019.
In the deposition, Maxwell was pressed to answer questions about the
many famous men in Epstein’s orbit, among them Bill Clinton, Alan
Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. In the document that was released on
Thursday, those names and others appear under black bars. According to the Miami Herald,
which sued for this and other documents to be released, the deposition
was released only after “days of wrangling over redactions.”
It turns out, though, that those redactions are possible to crack. That’s because the deposition—which you can read in full here—includes
a complete alphabetized index of the redacted and unredacted words that
appear in the document. For example, after cracking the redactions, we
know that Maxwell was asked about an email that Dershowitz allegedly
sent to Epstein. In that email, Dershowitz reportedly wrote that he was
“working on several possible articles about unfairness in the legal
process that allows false charges to be inserted into legal documents.”
Here’s how to deduce the redacted words, using former President Bill Clinton as an example.
When asked local Wisconsin TV station WISN if there was any legitimacy to comments by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that Hunter "together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name," the former Vice President replied "None whatsoever," adding (without finishing the sentence) "This is the same garbage Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman..."
"It's the last ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family."
Except, Hunter admitted he profited off his family name!
"If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?" asked ABC News' Amy Robach in an October 15, 2019 interview.
"I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect," said Hunter. "I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden," he added, "because my dad was Vice President of the United States."
"There’s literally nothing, as a young man or as a full-grown adult that — my father in some way hasn’t had influence over."
j|onathanturley | The convergence of law and politics is a common occurrence in Washington. While law is used to ascertain truth, politics is often used to obscure it.
That is why the truth is rarely evident in looking at a scandal straight on. Rather it requires peripheral vision or analysis – often what is not evident is what is most enlightening.
This
most famous example of such reasoning was found in Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s story “Silver Blaze,” on Sherlock Holmes’s investigation of the
disappearance of a racehorse.
The local inspector asked if there was “any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes responds, “To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”
When the inspector objects, “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” Holmes replies, “That was the curious incident.”
There is always something a tad curious of Washington legal scandals
in what has not occurred. That is why the latest Hunter Biden scandal is
so curious.
When the story broke in the New York Post, the Biden campaign was
faced with thousands of emails that purportedly showed clear support for
allegations that Hunter Biden was given millions as part of an
influence-peddling scheme related to his father, then-Vice President Joe
Biden.
There was ample reason to be skeptical about the sketchy account of a
computer being left by Hunter Biden at a computer store with a man who
cannot see beyond a couple of feet. And then there is the timing of
disclosure just weeks before an election.
The problem was the absence of “barks” from the Biden camp. The
computer files revealed a host of embarrassing pictures of Hunter Biden
using drugs or exposed in other embarrassing ways. The emails contain
dates and addresses that match up with confirmed records.
If they are fabricated, there were three barks that we would have expected within hours of the release.
Bark 1: This was not Hunter Biden’s computer
The most obvious response would be that this is not the computer of
Hunter Biden. After all, the computer store owner John Paul Mac Isaac
who is legally blind said that he could not recognize the person who
dropped off the laptop.
However, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has now stated, as a fact, that
“the laptop was left by Hunter Biden, in an inebriated, heavily
inebriated state with the merchant.” That does not purport with what
Isaac said.
However, there remains the question of a laptop with a “Beau Biden Foundation” sticker on it with highly incriminating files.
Someone in the campaign must have called Hunter Biden and he had to have told them whether or not it was his laptop.
The response on ownership has been crickets for days.
Bark 2: These were not Hunter Biden’s photos or emails
Even if the campaign cannot deny that the computer was Hunter
Biden’s, it could deny that these incriminating pictures and emails were
his.
Again, crickets.
Note that if these are fabricated emails or pictures, this would be a serious federal crime and the basis for legal action.
The Biden camp has no shortage of lawyers. Indeed, they have been
signing up lawyers in droves in preparation for election challenges.
Yet, there is not a single allegation of fraud or fabrication after days of a brewing scandal.
Bark 3: This is defamation
Perhaps this bark is the most telling. If these emails or pictures
are fabricated, it is a clear case of defamation and other tort actions.
It would seem that one of the hundreds of lawyers currently lined up
by the Biden campaign would fire off an “intent to sue” letter.
Truth is a defense to defamation, so the letter might start with the
earlier bark and deny that this was Hunter Biden’s computer and these
were Hunter Biden’s file.
One big difference between the legal and political worlds is that in
the latter there is no protection for the right to remain silent. In
politics, scandals can be managed but not silently.
Instead of these obvious barks, the public heard something closer to a
whimper: that the campaign could not find any notation on Vice
President Biden’s official schedule that he met with a Ukrainian figure
connected to the payments to his son Hunter Biden.It would be a curious
sight in itself for Biden’s official schedule to include “meeting with
Ukrainian connected to Hunter.” Many meetings are not part of an
official schedule that staffers know is subject to official records laws
for preservation and review.
That is what is so curious about the Hunter Biden story and, to move
from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Lewis Carroll, it is becoming “curiouser
and curiouser.”
guardian | Although unfortunate, the circumstances of the set-up appear
consensual, with Giuliani led to believe he was being courted. Bakalova,
24, is highly plausible in the sting, despite also having to pretend,
for the benefit of viewers, to be a feral child posing as a far-right
journalist.
In a radio interview after news of the scene broke, Giuliani claimed that he was only trying to take off his microphone and tucking in his shirt.
“I had to take off the electronic equipment,” Giuliani told WABC.
“And when the electronic equipment came off, some of it was in the back
and my shirt came a little out, although my clothes were entirely on. I
leaned back, and I tucked my shirt in, and at that point, at that point,
they have this picture they take which looks doctored, but in any
event, I’m tucking my shirt in. I assure you that’s all I was doing.”
He added that he had believed the interview with Bakalova was
entirely legitimate. “At one point she explained to me some problems she
had. I actually prayed with her,” he said. “And then I had to leave. I
had my jacket on. I was fully clothed at all times.”
Later on Twitter, Giuliani derided the film as “a complete fabrication”.
“At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever
inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold
liar,” he added.
justthenews | Giuliani dismissed suggestions that filing a police report as Trump's
private attorney two weeks before Election Day should be deemed
political.
"The conduct falls under the mandatory reporting requirements for
child endangerment," Giuliani said. "If I was the U.S. attorney or the
mayor or Bernie was still the commissioner, it would have been a crime
for us not to report what we had."
The police report is the latest drama to unfold from the week-old
Biden laptop revelations, news about which influential social media
sites choose to block from public view, including stories from The New
York Post, purportedly because of "potential harm." Facebook and Twitter
did not disclose any details of the "potential harm." Conservatives
have pointed out that the FBI has possessed the computer materials for a
year. Giuliani said the FBI's apparent inaction factored into his
decision to report the matter to local police.
"The FBI has had this for a long time," Giuliani said. "No indication
they did anything about this, so I went to the local police and said,
'What are you going to do about this?'"
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings
was a protege of the vice president’s late son Beau Biden, who served
as the state's attorney general from 2007-2015. She began her tenure as
state prosecutor in 2011 and was named Delaware's top law enforcement
officer in January 2019. Jennings' Chief Deputy Attorney General is Alexander S. Mackler, who was Vice President Biden's deputy legal counsel.
churchmilitant | A whistleblower is claiming there are multiple videos on Hunter
Biden's laptop showing him raping and torturing underage Chinese girls,
and that the Chinese Communist Party is using these videos as blackmail
against Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden.
DingGang Wang, a member of Miles Guo's team,
which has worked with Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani for many months,
said in a Sept. 24 broadcast for Lude Media — two weeks before the New York Post bombshell — that he has reviewed the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.
"So what about Hunter Biden? Sex tapes, pedo tapes, one by one —
Hunter Biden," said Wang. "Extremely disturbing and obscene ..."
Indicating extreme abuse, he continued, "Not treating the Chinese as human beings."
"Who filmed these?" he asked. "The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did it!"
Wang indicates there is much more compromising material on the
laptop, and that the CCP is using the child porn videos as blackmail
against Joe Biden, whom they hope is elected president.
"The message of the CCP is: Don't ever think I don't have your
secrets in possession," Wang explained. "To give you this hard drive is
to let you know that, don't forget, we have evidence of your crimes. You
have to win this election."
Sexual blackmail is a classic tactic of the communists, and was
routinely used by the KGB. In addition to the famed "honeytrap," wherein
female KGB agents seduced American men and caught their misdeeds on
tape, there is evidence General Secretary Yuri Andropov created pedophile rings in order to blackmail businessmen and political leaders.
The tactic is also used in communist China.
"The CCP was accused in 2015 of using attractive women to seduce
spies from the British MI6 intelligence agency and lure them into
honeytraps to obtain state secrets," writes Joshua Philipp.
"A top-secret MI6 memo obtained by the UK's Mirror news outlet said
Chinese spies were 'aggressively' targeting spies and their families."
The New York Post confirmed porn was found on Hunter's laptop:
"A computer camera roll of nearly 25,000 images is loaded with sexually
explicit selfies and porn (which The Post is not publishing) ... ."
brucewilds | Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence
peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in
government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or
preferential treatment falls into this category. One thing is
clear, whenever we are talking about the involvement of huge sums of
money, foreign players, officials holding high public office, or family
members of politicians a few eyebrows should get raised. With this in
mind, the Biden problem extends well past Hunter but also into how other
family members have profited from Joe's time as Vice President such as
his brother's involvement in a huge government contract in Iraq.
The
issue of Hunter Biden receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and China
surfaced during the first
Presidential debate and Biden claimed it was a story already discredited
by authorities. This narrative was destroyed when the Washington Times
acknowledged the Treasury Department records confirm Hunter Biden
received a
wire transfer for $3.5 million from the Mayor of Moscow’s
wife. It is difficult to find anyone that holds Hunter in high esteem
and the fact theUnited States suspects the woman sending him
this money built much of her wealth through corruption does little to
improve his standing. For those of us cynical of all the so-called
public servants that seem
to line their pockets and hold the attitude they are above the law this
is a big red flag.
If the veil of secrecy surrounding
Hunter's career is lifted we will most likely find Hunter's dad did
share in the spoils bestowed upon not
only his son but others in the Biden family. I contend Joe Biden's cozy
relationship with corruption is why former President Obama did not rush
to endorse
Biden when he announced he planned to run. To be clear, we are talking about, millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars or more.For
us cynics, we see this as what may be only the tip of the spear when it
comes to public officials throwing the American people under the bus
for fun and profit. As a voter, this dovetails with my concern about
Biden's relationship and attitude towards China which I consider a major
issue.
NYPost | Rather than set up shop in New York City, the financial capital of the
world, Rosemont Seneca leased space in Washington, DC. They occupied an
all-brick building on Wisconsin Avenue, the main thoroughfare of
exclusive Georgetown. Their offices would be less than a mile from John
and Teresa Kerry’s 23-room Georgetown mansion, and just two miles from
both Joe Biden’s office in the White House and his residence at the
Naval Observatory.
Over the next seven years, as both Joe Biden and John Kerry
negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments,
Rosemont entities secured a series of exclusive deals often with those
same foreign governments.
Some of the deals they secured may remain hidden. These Rosemont
entities are, after all, within a private equity firm and as such are
not required to report or disclose their financial dealings publicly.
Some of their transactions are nevertheless traceable by
investigating world capital markets. A troubling pattern emerges from
this research, showing how profitable deals were struck with foreign
governments on the heels of crucial diplomatic missions carried out by
their powerful fathers. Often those foreign entities gained favorable
policy actions from the United States government just as the sons were
securing favorable financial deals from those same entities.
Nowhere is that more true than in their commercial dealings with Chinese government-backed enterprises.
Rosemont Seneca joined forces in doing business in China with another
politically connected consultancy called the Thornton Group. The
Massachusetts-based firm is headed by James Bulger, the nephew of the
notorious mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger. Whitey was the leader of the
Winter Hill Gang, part of the South Boston mafia. Under indictment for
19 murders, he disappeared. He was later arrested, tried, and convicted.
James Bulger’s father, Whitey’s younger brother, Billy Bulger, serves
on the board of directors of the Thornton Group. He was the longtime
leader of the Massachusetts state Senate and, with their long overlap by
state and by party, a political ally of Massachusetts Senator John
Kerry.
Less than a year after opening Rosemont Seneca’s doors, Hunter Biden
and Devon Archer were in China, having secured access at the highest
levels. Thornton Group’s account of the meeting on their
Chinese-language website was telling: Chinese executives “extended their
warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont
Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe
Biden).”
The purpose of the meetings was to “explore the possibility of
commercial cooperation and opportunity.” Curiously, details about the
meeting do not appear on their English-language website.
Also, according to the Thornton Group, the three Americans met with
the largest and most powerful government fund leaders in China — even
though Rosemont was both new and small.
The timing of this meeting was also curious. It occurred just hours
before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese
President Hu in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit.
Slate | Last week, the New York Post began publishing reports on a series of photos, emails, and documents allegedly taken from a laptop hard drive
that belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential
nominee Joe Biden. As it became increasingly clear that the Post was
using hacked, unverified information that may have been manipulated by a
foreign entity for the purposes of influencing the upcoming
presidential election, social media companies started to ban or otherwise attempt to reduce the spread
of the Post’s initial story. But the tabloid continued printing
information from the hard drive, a copy of which it says it received
from disgraced Donald Trump associate and former New York City Mayor
Rudy Giuliani.
Given
that Giuliani and Steve Bannon were the Post’s two sources of
information about the hard drive, the provenance of the Rupert
Murdoch–owned paper’s information is more than a little suspect.
Giuliani, for one, has said that there’s a 50-50 chance
he worked with a Russian spy to dig up embarrassing material about the
Biden family. And the computer repair shop owner who allegedly obtained
the hard drive and turned it over to Giuliani’s lawyer doesn’t exactly seem like a trustworthy fellow
either. So it is with a massive grain of salt that we consider the
contents of the hard drive itself. One of the stories contains an
alleged text exchange between Hunter and Joe Biden from two months
before Joe announced his presidential campaign. It began with a text Joe
sent around 7 a.m. to Hunter, who was residing in a rehab facility.
“Good morning my beautiful son,” the text reads. “I miss you and love
you. Dad.”
Whether or not the hacked material is accurate and complete, the
father-son text exchange does the exact opposite of what Giuliani and
Trump have been trying to do. For years, Trump and his allies have
attempted to paint Hunter as the beneficiary of (Trump-style) nepotism
and a shameful sleazeball who reflects poorly on his father. Yet, in the
text conversation, Biden comes off as loving and concerned. Hunter
certainly admits to struggling with addiction and the pressures of
living under intense public scrutiny, but there is nothing politically
damaging about the exchange—only a sad, humanizing portrait of a family
working through a difficult time.
msdnc | It must've seemed like a good idea at the
time. Rudy Giuliani and his allies apparently thought they could package
an anti-Biden smear, hand it to a media ally, and watch as the closing
weeks of the 2020 presidential race focused on their "October Surprise."
It'd fundamentally change the trajectory of the election and put Donald
Trump in a position to hold onto power.
It's not quite working out that way.
As
we've discussed, Giuliani and Steve Bannon delivered an anti-Biden
smear to the New York Post, and the conservative tabloid ran its literally unbelievable story last week. The article was filled with convoluted details
involving a Ukrainian gas company, Hunter Biden, his alleged laptop,
some of his alleged emails, and an unnamed shop owner in Delaware. Of
course, the underlying premise of the allegations was discredited quite a while ago, which is why most major news organizations had the good sense to steer clear of the Post's reporting.
As scrutiny of the scheme intensified, we learned that many inside the tabloid disagreed with the decision to publish the anti-Biden article. But more importantly, they're not the only ones with concerns.
The entire mess is now being investigated
by federal authorities as potentially being part of a hostile foreign
influence operation illegally targeting our election. Indeed, Politico publishedthis report overnight:
More
than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter
outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly
belonging to Joe Biden's son "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian
information operation."
These
dozens of former officials added that their extensive national security
experience has left them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government
played a significant role in this case" and cited several elements of
the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand at work.
In May 2013, Biden's application for a position in the U.S. Navy Reserve was approved.[73]
At age 43, Biden was accepted as part of a program that allows a
limited number of applicants with desirable skills to receive
commissions and serve in staff positions.[74]He received an age-related waiver and a waiver due to a past drug-related incident, and was sworn in as a direct commission officer.[73] Joe Biden administered his commissioning oath in a White House ceremony.[3]
The following month, Biden tested positive for cocaine during a urinalysis test and was subsequently discharged administratively.[75][76]Biden attributed the result to smoking cigarettes he had accepted from
other smokers, only later suspecting they had been laced with the drug.[3]
He chose not to appeal the matter as it was unlikely that the panel
would believe his explanation given his history with drugs, and also due
to the likelihood of news leaking to the press, though it was
ultimately revealed to The Wall Street Journal by a Navy official who provided information to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.[3][73]
technologyreview |The news: When Twitter banned, and then unbanned,
links to a questionably sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden’s
son Hunter, its stated intention was to prevent people from spreading
harmful false material as America heads into the final stretch of the
election campaign. But thanks to the cycle of misinformation—and claims
from conservatives that social-media platforms are deliberately
censoring their views—Twitter managed to do the opposite of what it
intended.
According to Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm,
shares of the Post article “nearly doubled” after Twitter started
suppressing it. The poorly-thought-through ban triggered the so-called Streisand Effect
and helped turn a sketchy article into a must-share blockbuster. And
then on Friday, the Republican National Committee filed a Federal
Election Commission complaint against Twitter, claiming that the ban
“amounts to an illegal corporate in-kind political contribution to the
Biden campaign.”
The ban: Twitter blocked shares of the story under its policy against hacked materials, in part because of the dubious sourcing
by the New York Post, the company said. The article also contained
screenshots of emails with the addresses unredacted. Federal
investigators are now looking into whether they are tied to a foreign
intelligence campaign, according to NBC News.
But on Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said
that blocking the URL was “wrong,” and that the company has changed its
policy and enforcement procedures in response to the outrage over this
decision.
revolver | What is the most incriminating thing on the hard drive? Rudy has
suggested illegal things, and as Revolver reported, the FBI person
tasked with the hard drive is associated with the child pornography
division. Could you give more insight into how bad it is we’re talking
about?
Mr. Bannon: Joe Biden is a liar, a fraud, and
compromised by Chinese cash. In short, he is a national security crisis.
The hard drive combines emails and text messages that show a massive
involvement with companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Also, there are 25,000 images that show a drug-addled, depraved
lifestyle — one that decent hardworking Americans will not want near the
White House.
Revolver: The FBI has been holding onto the hard
drive for almost a year? Any sense of why? Was there any indication that
they were seriously interested in a criminal case, assuming that there
is, in fact, illegal material on there? If not, why would the FBI simply
hold onto information like that?
Mr. Bannon: The President must confront the director
of the FBI on why the information housed on this hard drive was not
moved on immediately. If the content of the hard drive had been released
when received in November 2019, there would have been no impeachment of
Trump, and Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic Party nominee. This
confrontation should take place this weekend in the Oval Office. If Wray
doesn’t have a bulletproof reason he should be fired in the room.
Revolver: What are your best estimates on how many foreign entities may have obtained possession of the hard drive? Chinese intel?
Mr. Bannon: It’s the actions represented on the hard
drive that the American people must understand our enemies know about.
The cash and equity given for access to Biden, the favors done for that
cash, the drugs, the depravity. The CCP, Russian Intel, the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Intel Services — they know the Bidens are for sale.
americanthinker |It
didn’t surprise the informed, and understandably a bit cynical, to hear
that the FBI sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop instead of seeking justice.
The bureau was previously involved in an illegal plot to take down
Donald Trump, after all, and its Deep State elements would assuredly
love to see Joe Biden succeed him in January. So why would they reveal
damning information on their establishment hope? Yet suppressing
Huntergate perhaps provided a secondary benefit:
The information could be used against Biden once he was in office.
This
wouldn’t be anything new. It’s believed that longtime, legendary FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover used “dirt files” on politicians for leverage;
for one thing, it’s said, this enabled him to remain bureau head for as
long as he wished. William Sullivan, once the number three official
under Hoover, put it this way: From the moment the director got damning information on a senator, the man would be “right in his pocket.”
So
not only could suppressing Huntergate get Biden in office, but then
maybe it’s, “Nice presidency you’ve got there, Mr. Biden — I’d hate to
see anything happen to it.”
Since
the criminality in question could, apparently, put Hunter in prison
along with destroying China Joe, the leverage is profound. It could not
only be used to control Biden but also his wife, Jill, in the unlikely
event she for a time is able to pull off an Edith Wilson (who supposedly
ran the show when Woodrow Wilson became incapacitated). She wouldn’t
want to see her stepson in the hoosegow and her family’s reputation
ruined, after all.
caitlinjohnstone | Fight it all you want, but there’s nothing you can do. “The emails
are Russian” is going to be the official dominant narrative in
mainstream political discourse, and there’s nothing you can do to stop
it. Resistance is futile.
Like the Russian hacking narrative, the
Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian bounties in Afghanistan
narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that
simultaneously advances pre-planned cold war agendas, is politically
convenient for the Democratic party and generates clicks and ratings,
the narrative that the New York Post publication of Hunter
Biden’s emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and
hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus.
This
will happen regardless of facts and evidence, up to and including rock
solid evidence that Hunter Biden’s emails were not published as a result
of a Russian operation.
This is happening. It’s following the same formula all the other
fact-free Russia hysteria narratives have followed. The same media tour
by pundits and political operatives saying with no evidence but very
assertive voices that Russia is most certainly behind this occurrence
and we should all be very upset about it.
“To me, this is just
classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work,” Russiagate founder
and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is heard assuring CNN’s audience.
“Joe
Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are
spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda,” begins and eight-part
thread by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who claims the emails are “Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.”
“It’s
not really surprising at all, this was always the play, but still kind
of head-spinning to watch all the players from 2016 run exactly the same
hack-leak-smear op in 2020. Even with everyone knowing exactly what’s
happening this time,” tweets MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“How
are you all circling the wagons instead of being embarrassed for
peddling Russian ops 18 days before the election. It’s not enough that
you all haven’t learned from your atrocious handling of 2016 — you are
doubling down,” Democratic Party think tanker Neera Tanden tweeted in admonishment of journalists who dare to report on or ask questions about the emails.
jonathanturley | For four years, I have written about the alarming loss of neutrality
and objectivity in journalism — a trend that is reflected by many polls
showing that the majority of the public no longer trusts the media for
fair and honest reporting. While I have regularly criticized President
Donald Trump, I have also objected to unrelentingly biased reporting as
well as embarrassingly soft coverage of former Vice President Joe Biden.
Now, Stanford Communications Professor Emeritus Ted Glasser has publicly called for an end of objectivity in journalism as too constraining for reporters in seeking “social justice.”
In an interview with The Stanford Daily,
Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this
notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected
the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he
views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and
indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists
need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard
to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”
Dressing up bias as “advocating social justice,” does not remove the
taint of yellow journalism. It is the same rationalization for shaping
the news to fit your agenda and treating readers as subjects to be
educated rather than informed.
While other professors in The Stanford Daily disagreed, Wesley Lowery, who has served as a national correspondent for the Washington Post, also rejects objectivity. In a tweet,
Lowery declared “American view-from-nowhere, “objectivity”-obsessed,
both-sides journalism is a failed experiment…The old way must go. We
need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral
clarity.”
These are major voices in media. Glasser is a Stanford Department of
Communication professor emeritus and served as the director for
Stanford’s Graduate Program in Journalism. He is also the former
president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication.
WaPo | U.S.
intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President
Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an
influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former
officials familiar with the matter.
The
warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted
communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to
Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to
Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would
expose corrupt acts by former vice president Joe Biden and his son
Hunter.
The
intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed
Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said,
speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information
and conversations.
The
warnings to the White House, which have not previously been reported,
led national security adviser Robert O’Brien to caution Trump in a
private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from
Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia, one of the former
officials said.
The
message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been
worked by Russian assets in Ukraine,” this person said. Officials wanted
“to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid,”
particularly since he was facing impeachment over his own efforts to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens.
But
O’Brien emerged from the meeting uncertain whether he had gotten
through to the president. Trump had “shrugged his shoulders” at
O’Brien’s warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about
his lawyer’s activities by saying, “That’s Rudy.”
Officials’
warnings about Giuliani underscore the concern in the U.S. intelligence
community that Russia not only is seeking to reprise the disinformation
campaign it waged in 2016, but also may now be aided, unwittingly or
otherwise, by individuals close to the president. Those warnings have
gained fresh urgency in recent days. The information that Giuliani
sought in Ukraine is similar to what is contained in emails and other correspondence
published this week by the New York Post, which the paper said came
from the laptop of Hunter Biden and were provided by Giuliani and
Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top political adviser at the White
House.
The
Washington Post was unable to verify the authenticity of the alleged
communications, which concern Hunter Biden’s business dealings in
Ukraine and China.
usatoday | The New York Post story's publication prompted
some to draw parallels to the runup to the 2016 election, when emails
from the Democratic National Committee were hacked by Russian-affiliated
operatives and released by WikiLeaks.
The FBI is now examining whether Russia is tied to the information cited by the New York Post.
Some experts say the story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.
"It
is also an old Cold War disinformation tactic to pass information,
especially but not exclusively when forged, to low-brow newspapers that
have high circulation and low standards of investigation. Ideal for
surfacing and amplification," Thomas Rid, a political scientist who
focuses on disinformation and information warfare at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies, said in a tweet.
Russian
operatives worked to sow partisan divisions in the U.S. and spread
disinformation during the 2016 presidential election cycle, according to
a 2017 report from U.S. intelligence services. That report found that
Russian President Vladimir Putin "aspired to help President-elect
Trump’s election chances," in part by discrediting his Democratic
opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump's own intelligence officials have warned Moscow is interfering again in the 2020 election.
Bannon was indicted for fraud
in August in connection to a border-wall fundraising effort that raised
more than $25 million "under the false pretense that all of that money
would be spent on construction," according to prosecutors. Bannon has
pleaded not guilty.
In
the case of Giuliani associate Derkach, the Treasury Department's move
was aimed at "exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting
our upcoming elections from foreign interference." It also made clear
that Giuliani has engaged with Russian agents in his campaign against
the Bidens.
Former Biden aides have also suggested that Russians are behind the story.
"This
is a Russian disinformation operation,” Michael Carpenter, a former
deputy assistant secretary of defense with a specialization in Eastern
Europe who now heads the Penn Biden Center, said to POLITICO. "I’m very comfortable saying that.”
Every public school district in America should be planning for in person school next semester. It can be done safely, *even in places with pretty high community transmission*. We now have pretty good data to show that. https://t.co/4fCs2tqVHa
economicprism | One of the absurdities of the coronavirus era is the purported faith
in science by the political class; in particular, the left. Joe Biden,
for instance, said he would shut the country down if recommended by scientists. Nancy Pelosi, this week, with respect to coronavirus stimulus, told Wolf Blitzer, that “…the science should call the shot and when they do, we should all trust it.”
“Trust, but verify,” counseled Ronald Reagan. No doubt, the Gipper, didn’t envision the ridiculous science behind coronavirus containment policy.
President Trump, taking the advice of Reagan, recently verified the
effects of coronavirus himself. His findings, following a three day
bout with the illness, revealed the science based policies that have
been applied are not to be trusted. Trump tweeted these conclusions:
“One thing that’s for certain: Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’re going to beat it.”
According to Science magazine, “[Trump’s]
repeated public dismissals of scientific expertise, and his disdain for
evidence have prompted many researchers to label him the most
antiscience president in living memory.”
Maybe so. But when science is being used by policy makers to do
stupid and destructive things, like locking down the economy, being
antiscience is the intelligent choice. What’s more, the World Health
Organization now says it’s opposed to lockdowns, and told world leaders: “stop using lockdowns as your primary control method.”
We have a hunch that the science of lockdowns has little to do with
stemming the spread of coronavirus. We’ll have more on this in a
moment. But first, we must make an important distinction. And to do
so, we must take a brief diversion…
Black Lives Matter has no concrete specific policy, statutory, or legislative agenda - which is how you know it's a symbolic "stir the pot" and "get out the black vote" initiative. (as if you didn't gather as much from the fact that it's a Warren Buffett production)
The problem with this is that the MSM and social media have amplified the already popular and political cultural influence of selected "woke" sock puppets who have leveraged the disproportionate social, cultural and political capital of American negroes and applied this appropriated clout the exceedingly pedestrian objective of re-aquiring partisan control of the presidency, period. (and that control won't be used to satisfy any concrete-specific political-economic priorities or needs of Black Americans.
Once it was known that Negroes boycotted the 2016 election, the obvious marketing strategy became to
create racial appeals that boosted the Democrat’s ‘brand’
and diminished their competitor’s. In fact, leading Democratic
strategists who had spent storied careers crafting cynical dog whistle
campaigns, began shouting racist! to shut down any challenge to their
campaign.
By election eve 2016, Clinton campaign officials had
decided on the ‘Russia stole the election’ storyline. Additionally,
Democratic strategists were most certainly aware that blacks stayed home
en masse in 2016. This made Donald Trump, with his nativist chatter and
typical Republican deference to repressive authority, the perfect foil
to retroactively portray the election as about race and foreign
intrigue.
When the Democratic-leaning press began (falsely) reporting on
rising hate and racial backlash, and the CEOs of large banks and tech
companies began stating publicly that white supremacy is the only
problem in need of solving, the havoc that neoliberal policies have
wrought quickly disappeared as a topic of polite conversation.
This elite pot-stirring and color-revolution antic is an exceedingly dangerous gambit. Since it wasn't done for Black people in America, but was instead something done to Black people in America - I gots to say the nayno...,
Right-wingers
come from somewhere other than thin air. There’s at least a germ of
truth in their beliefs. Fortunately, the rest of their beliefs are so
abhorrent they’re dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, I believe the day
of another European holocaust, ethnic cleansing in the parlance of the
day, has moved a step closer with this weeks display of barbarism in France. Cutting off a single French head doesn't really hold a candle to the pain and suffering and self-serving pot-stirring implemented this year in the U.S. Does this sound familiar?
For a start, this is a murder that has nothing to do with immigration
from the Maghreb, unemployment, discrimination, neo-colonialism or
anything similar. The assailant was white, and came from a refugee
family that had been settled in France, looked after and educated. The
town where it happened, Conflans Sainte-Honorine, is a quiet, dull,
middle-class community about thirty-five kilometres west of Paris at the
end of the high-speed Metro. (I passed through there once: it was
closed). “Nothing ever happens here” said one shocked resident this
morning. The killer was not a native of the town, but travelled there to
do the killing. Moreover, this is one of a series of murders since 2015
– the body count is nearly 300 – carried out for explicitly political
and religious reasons by radicalised young men, who believe, as do a
significant proportion of French Muslims, that the Koran takes
precedence over any secular laws. Thus, laws conflicting with Islam must
not be obeyed, but equally it is the responsibility of all Muslims to
punish anyone who violates the injunctions of the Koran. hence the
present killing. This would be problematic in any modern state, but
especially so in France, with its history of bitter struggle against the
Church to establish a secular republic.
The problem has been
building in schools for decades now, but has been ignored by successive
governments, worried about upsetting the professional anti-racist lobby.
Teachers have been threatened and physically attacked for giving
lessons on secularism, for teaching the theory of Evolution or
discussing non-Islamic religions. Militant parents, egged-on by
fundamentalist Imams mostly sent from Qatar, have pressured schools to
stop serving pork, or to excuse their daughters from mixed swimming
classes or class photographs where non-muslim pupils are not veiled.
Little by little, such tactics have undermined the educational system,
as local mayors, always in search of votes, have made accommodations
with local religious leaders. (Ironically, French schools only went
co-educational in 1969, after generations of bitter opposition from the
Church). This horrific incident at last seems to have brought home to
French elites that uncontrolled immigration has produced communities in
the country which do not believe that they have to obey the law, and
consider themselves justified in using violence to enforce their
religious principles. Macron seemed genuinely shocked when he spoke
yesterday . Of course doing something about it is another matter.
Finally,
the fact that the victim was a teacher doing his job has stunned
people. Partly this is because so many French people are parents of
school-age children or have a teacher in the family. But partly also the
teacher is a traditional mythic figure of Republican Virtue, a kind of
secular priest promoting the virtues of equality and secularism. Not for
nothing were teachers known as “the hussars of the Republic”, and the
bitter opposition between the local priest and the schoolteacher was a
feature of French life until quite recently. As a number of politicians
have said, to strike at a teacher is to strike at the very foundation of
secular and republican French values. Unlike many countries who witter
on about “values” the French do actually have them written down and seek
to adhere to them: hence the shock and dismay.
Rejuvenation Pills
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No one likes getting old. Everyone would like to be immorbid. Let's be
careful here. Immortal doesnt include youth or return to youth. Immorbid
means you s...
Death of the Author — at the Hands of Cthulhu
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In 1967, French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes wrote of
“The Death of the Author,” arguing that the meaning of a text is divorced
from au...
9/29 again
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"On this sacred day of Michaelmas, former President Donald Trump invoked
the heavenly power of St. Michael the Archangel, sharing a powerful prayer
for pro...
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
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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 ...
