Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Jeff Bezos' Nightmare." As Joe Biden cchases his tail, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders rise in the polling much to Jeff's dismay. Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS.
Jeff and the oligarchy got their way -- Bernie didn't get the nomination, Elizabeth didn't get the nomination. It went to craven and corrupt Joe. Any idiot dumb enough to tell you we have to be hopeful is just postponing reality. Joe's plan is to do nothing. And we can't afford that.
We need to be aware that climate change isn't be addressed, that the wars are continuing and that Joe and the Congress have no plans to help the American people.
Friday, January 1 2021. History is largely ignored by the press.
REUTERS notes,
"Iraqi security forces have killed Abu Yaser al-Issawi, an Islamic
State
commander who had claimed to be the leader of the group in Iraq and its
'deputy caliph', Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi said on Thursday."
Said? Well he Tweeted:
We promised and fulfilled. I gave my word to pursue [ISIS] terrorists, we gave them a thundering response. Our heroic armed forces have eliminated [ISIS] commander Abu Yaser Al-Issawi as part of an intelligence-led operation.
Long live Iraq and its patriotic armed forces.
And while Tweeted is more accurate than "said," even more accurate would be "claimed."
How
many times did we hear, for example, that Abu Ayyub al-Masri was killed
-- starting as far back as 2006 and he wasn't killed until 2010. And
what of the other leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi? How many times was the
world told he was dead? Repeatedly in 2007, as I remember, and also
true, the Iraqi government insisted they had arrested him in 2009 --
even produced photos claiming it was him. It wasn't. He would be
killed in 2010 -- in the same attack that killed al-Masri, by the way.
More to the point, those two deaths didn't really matter. David Rising (AP) reported on those two deaths:
The U.S. and Iraq claimed a major victory against al-Qaida
on Monday, saying their forces killed the terror group's two top figures
in this country in an air and ground assault on their safehouse near
Saddam Hussein's hometown.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki announced the killings of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub
al-Masri at a news conference and showed photographs of their bloody
corpses. U.S. military officials later confirmed the deaths, which Vice
President Joe Biden called a "potentially devastating blow" to al-Qaida
in Iraq.
[. . .]
But Biden, President Barack Obama's point person on Iraq,
said the deaths of the al-Qaida leaders underscored their overall
improvement.
"The Iraqis led this operation, and it was
based on intelligence the Iraqi security forces themselves developed,"
said Biden, who came before reporters in the White House briefing room
to draw added attention to the results.
Potentially devastating blow, Joe?
No.
No, four years later, they'd not only be stronger, they'd become one of
the most infamous terrorist groups in the world when they seized
control of the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul. Now terrorist groups
terrorize -- hence their name. They don't attempt to rule. Somehow,
ISIS -- not at all weakened -- managed to do what none before them could
and they occupied and controlled Mosul not for days, not for weeks, not
for months, for years.
And something else let's not
forget, a US service member was killed in that attack. Private 1st
Class Charlie Cabay Antonio. He was 28 years old, his friends called
him Bong, he was from Kahuhi, Hawaii. He suffered. His family and
friends suffered.
But for all of Joe's blustering --
which never included mentioning Charlie Antonio by name -- ISIS wasn't
ended or even really harmed.
Much has been made of Monday’s announcement of the recent killing of
the number three man in all of Al Qaeda. The consensus seems to be that
Mustafa Abu al-Yazid’s death will be a significant blow in the war on
terror, but it’s much more likely to have no effect at all. If the past
seven years in Iraq is any indication, the removal of enemy leaders has
little to no impact on the group’s ability to conduct attacks against
us.
The recent killing of top two leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu
Ayub al-Masri and Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, is a perfect example. “The
death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to Al
Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” said General Ray
Odierno, commander of US forces in Iraq, after the operation, which took
place late last month.
The good feeling lasted less than three weeks, however. A series of
devastating jihadist-led coordinated attacks across Iraq, killing over
100 people, soon reduced Odierno’s comments to mere hyperbole. And the
fact that Masri’s death didn’t mean the end of Al Qaeda in Iraq
shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has followed Iraq closely since
2003. In the past, whenever officials have pronounced upon the
significance of an enemy killing, it has always proven premature.
So why hasn’t the removal of insurgent and terrorist leadership
yielded more successful outcomes in Iraq? My research of twenty
different high-value targeting campaigns from Algeria to Chechnya to
Japan suggests that such operations have the greatest chance of success
when conducted by local forces against a centralized opponent in
conjunction with larger counterinsurgency operations. Until recently,
American targeting efforts in Iraq failed to meet any of these criteria.
One needs to go back in time only four years to understand this
dynamic firsthand. In June 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was finally killed
after a months-long manhunt. “Zarqawi’s death is a severe blow to Al
Qaeda. It’s a victory in the global war on terror,” President Bush said
at the time. But the “victory”—such as it was—proved to be short-lived.
Weekly attacks against Coalition forces climbed from 950 in the week
before Zarqawi’s death to 1400 just three months later. High-profile
attacks nearly doubled over the next nine months, according to U.S.
military data.
And our struggles with high-value targeting operations in Iraq
have hardly been limited to Sunni jihadist groups. Overemphasis on
targeting operations plagued our efforts in the early years of the war.
In the months following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, U.S. forces
made finding the fugitive leader, his sons, and other holdouts from the
infamous “deck of cards” their top priority, ignoring the fact that
anti-occupation sentiment had spread to tribal and non-Baathist Sunni
figures and spawned a broad decentralized insurgency.
Poorly-conceived and poorly-managed targeting efforts added fuel to
the fire. Brazen midnight US military raids sometimes led to the capture
of an insurgent, but often created a new generation of enemies as a
result of rough tactics and lack of sensitivity towards local customs.
Furthermore, since the Sunni insurgency was decentralized, with local
commanders holding large amounts of autonomy, the targeting campaign
did little to stem the levels of violence. The eventual capture of
Saddam, and the deaths of his sons, had no effect on the growing
insurgency. Instead, it took a combination of persistent attacks by Shia
militias and the rise of the Anbar Awakening to defeat the bulk of the
Sunni insurgency.
History has shown that a military force that fights insurgents far from
its home turf, like American soldiers have done in Iraq, will have a
severe disadvantage because troops don’t understand the local cultural
dynamics and networks. Despite our technological superiority, the United
States often falls short in the area of local intelligence collection,
leading to poor target selection and unnecessary collateral damage as we
have seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The press,
yet again, plays dumb today and treats a claim as proof and treats the
claim as significant. There's no historical evidence to suggest that
the death, if it took place, is in any way significant or that it will
alter the trajectory of ISIS in any significant manner.
But don't let facts, reality or the examples from the past interrupt the nonsensical ravings, right?
And don't let the claim force you to note the executions in Iraq. MEMO notes:
Executions are imminent in Iraq following
the president's approval of the death sentences for hundreds of Sunni
prisoners in response to the suicide bombings in the capital Baghdad last week, the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) has warned.
The execution of 340 civilians arrested and detained under Article 4 of the country's Terrorism Law was approved two days after the bomb blasts, in which 32 were killed and for which [ISIS] claimed responsibility.
Three detainees were executed
last Monday in the Nasiriyah Central Prison. According to AOHR UK, the
condemned men came from the provinces of Nineveh, Anbar. Notably, all
three were Sunni Muslims, raising concerns that their execution was
based on sectarian grounds.
Mosul. The city was
destroyed by bombings carried out by ISIS, the US government and the
Iraqi government. That US and Iraq were 'liberating' the city. All
this time later, Mosul remains in ruins. AFP reports on one section of the city:
Mosul's Old City still lies in ruins three years after intense
fighting drove out Islamic State jihadists. Many Mosul residents long
waited for compensation or rebuilding -- in vain, as Iraq remains mired
in political and economic crisis, reported AFP. With rebuilding unlikely
and Iraq's economy in tailspin, homeowners are desperate to sell. But
many who lived through the horrors of IS rule there are now unable to
find buyers for their properties in what still resembles a warzone.
"#Iraq's second largest city remains scarred by the war against the Islamic State. Although peace has returned, much of Mosul still lies in ruins" writes Sylvain Mercadier
The U.N. has estimated that over 8,000 Mosul homes were destroyed in
intense airstrikes to root out IS. The nine-month operation left at
least 9,000 dead, according to an AP investigation.
Memories
of the group’s brutality still haunt locals, who remember a time when
the city squares were used for the public beheading of those who dared
violate the militants' rules.
The
Old City on the west bank of the Tigris River, once the jewel of Mosul,
remains in ruins even as newer parts of the city have seen a cautious
recovery. The revival, the residents say, is mostly their own doing.
“I didn’t see a single dollar from the government,” said Ahmed Sarhan, who runs a family coffee business.
There are many problems with what Kullab wrote -- not reported, typed. Including where did the reconstruction money go?
Recently,
the last seven or so months, the Iraqi government has claimed (lied)
that they diverted it to COVID relief. Again, that's a lie. But if
they had diverted it, it still wouldn't explain where all the money was
prior to the COVID emerging on the world stage in February of last
year. Mosul should have been rebuilt long ago and it is an example of
the ongoing corruption of the Iraqi government that continues year after
year, regardless of which coward who fled Iraq is installed as prime
minister.
In 2020, AFP noted, "Iraq gathered $30 billion in pledges from international donors in Kuwait
in 2018 to rebuild, but virtually none of the funds have been
disbursed." 30 billion. And yet no real rebuilding -- the rebuilding that has taken place has been done by the United Nations.
$30 billion. Wasted. A corrupt government that pockets the money -- over and over, we see this.
On January 4, Joe Biden made an unequivocal pledge, telling voters that by electing Democrats
to Georgia's senate seats, "you can make an immediate difference in
your own lives, the lives of people all across this country because
their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000
stimulus check, that money that will go out the door immediately to
people who are in real trouble."
Less than four weeks later:
Biden is pushing $1,400 checks, rather than using his election mandate to demand new, full $2,000 checks.
Democrats are now suggesting that it could take at least until
March to even pass the legislation, even as the economic crisis worsens.
Biden
is now responding to threats of Republican obstructionism by floating
the idea of reducing the number of people who would even get the checks.
"He is open to negotiating the eligibility requirements of his proposed
$1,400 COVID stimulus check, a nod to lawmakers who have said they
should be more targeted," reported Reuters.
The signals of retreat are happening even as new polling data show that the original promise for a full $2,000 stimulus check is wildly popular.
Feel familiar? We've gotten into a flux-capacitor-powered DeLorean, flown back in time and dropped ourselves into 2009.
Back then, Barack Obama
and Biden had gotten themselves elected in the middle of an economic
crisis after promising to pass a public health insurance option. It was a
promise as clear and explicit as the $2,000 checks promise is
today—their platform was explicit in pledging that "any American will
have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan."
But then over the course of the year, as Republicans
in the congressional minority kicked and screamed, the administration
ever so gradually started backing down, rather than using the election
mandate to try to shame the GOP into submission.
By the middle of
the year, Obama said: "The public option, whether we have it or we don't
have it, is not the entirety of health care reform." His Health and
Human Services secretary said that it was "not the essential element" of
health care reform.
By the winter, Obama lied, insisting "I didn't campaign on a public option."
And then by 2010, the Obama White House had killed the plan, and Senate
Democrats refused to even bring it up for a floor vote when they had
the chance. Soon after, voters delivered what Obama called a
"shellacking" in the midterm election, effectively foreclosing on the
possibility of transformative change during Obama's presidency.
Meanwhile, an Iranian government spokesman appealed directly to the
Biden administration to lift sanctions that have restricted the
country’s ability to import vaccines needed to combat the COVID-19
pandemic, which has hit Iran harder than any other country in the
region, with 1.4 million reported cases and nearly 60,000 reported
deaths.
“Since [Biden’s] administration claims not to be
anti-science like the previous one...one expects it to free the transfer
of Iran’s own foreign exchange resources to fight the coronavirus and
for health and food, and lift banking sanctions quickly,” government
spokesman Ali Rabiei told state television.
With its appeal for
“unity” with the Republican Party, the Biden administration has little
stomach for a swift and sharp reversal of the “maximum pressure”
campaign imposed by Trump. Leading right-wing congressional Democrats,
including Senator Robert Menendez, the incoming chairman of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations, have also opposed any letup of US
aggression against Iran.
Biden has also pledged to “engage” with
Israel before taking any steps to change the current “maximum pressure”
regime against Iran, while Blinken has repeatedly stated that the new
administration views Israel’s security as “sacrosanct.”
Tel
Aviv has not only opposed any US return to the JCPOA but has threatened
to militarily attack Iran and its nuclear facilities in response. This
was expressed most directly by the new chief of staff of the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF), Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who gave a bellicose speech
on Tuesday, declaring a return to the Iran nuclear deal an “intolerable
threat” to Israel. He said that “anything that is similar to the
current deal is a bad thing, and we cannot allow it,” adding that he had
ordered the IDF to prepare new “operative plans” for attacking Iran.
From May 15, 2019, that's "The Scream." C.I. noted:
Isaiah's
latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Scream." As Elizabeth Warren
makes a campaign choice to mimic Edvard Munch's classic painting, a man
asks, "What's her problem this time?" A woman replies, "Who knows?
She's always screaming." Another man rips up an Elizabeth Warren sign
while declaring, "Too much drama." Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS.
Elizabeth Warren was such a disappointment -- and that's before her recent and non-stop ass kissing of Joe Biden in the hopes of getting an appointment in a Biden administration.
Friday, October 30, 2020. It's Friday, we look at the race for the
US president which means looking at a number of presidential candidates
-- not just two -- and Glenn Greenwald has left THE INTERCEPT after they
removed his article on Joe Biden.
Glenn Greenwald has left THE INTERCEPT. As we explained yesterday,
the press organizations exist to lie and cover. An e-mail to the
public account states, "You should have noted the Iraq War." We did.
Do you know how to read? How's your comprehension level. "Instead of
noting the Iraq War or the way the liberal press turned on Richard Nixon
and fabricated Watergate, you noted a bunch of silly stories."
I'm
not sure where you're getting that Watergate was fabricated. I will
allow that there was a lot more to Watergate that got buried. I will
even allow that Richard Nixon's enemies in the government brought about
his downfall. We can even have a conversation about the intel community
and how Bob Woodward's background was in intel. But you're losing me on
the fabricated aspect.
And that's why I chose what I chose.
Marilyn
Monroe. If she's just a silly story, then, by all means, the press
should have had no trouble getting the story right. But they didn't.
They lied about her. They lied about her when FOX fired her as well.
It was a smear campaign intended to destroy her. It didn't. And she
had several films in the pipeline and, more importantly, FOX had already
come crawling back and offered her SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE again.
Young
people today may think that her affair with JFK was always known.
That's not how the media treated it. When it did pop up in the 60s or
70s, it was dismissed as rumor and as a false rumor at that. The tide
turned when? When Anthony Summers wrote his groundbreaking book on
Marilyn (GODDESS) and the British media began reporting on it. That was
1985. As a result, the US 'news' magazine 20/20 prepared a report.
The report was set to air and then, at the last minute, Roone Arlidge
(who knew a tiny bit about sports and nothing about the news) killed it
and he killed it because he was friends with Rose Kennedy (mother of
JFK). John was dead for over 20 years by that point and ABC 'NEWS'
killed the story to 'protect' . . . news? Hosts Barbara Walters and
Hugh Downs made it clear that they were appalled by the decision to kill
the story and, in killing the story, Roone actually got it more
attention than it might have gotten if it had just aired on 20/20.
A
lot of 'protecting' went on. That included the use of the Secret
Service and the FBI in the immediate hours after Marilyn died. Photos
were seized from wire services and publications of the two of them
together, Marilyn Monroe's personal phone bill was seized (actually the
toll slips that would be used for a monthly statement).
All of this was done and it was known that it was being done. Known but not reported.
You
can dismiss it as a silly story -- I don't know how Marilyn qualifies
as silly -- but if that's what you think then please explain to me why
so many in the press were vested in lying and continuing the lies?
Although
we're at the point finally where the affair between Marilyn and JFK can
be acknowledged, there is still some pushback to the fact that she also
had an affair with RFK. And who knows what more we'll find out in a
few more years?
The press lies. And as long as you go
along with those lies, you can have a nice little career. Your writing
won't mean much (Robert Fisk, I'm looking at you, especially) but you
will make coin and if that's all it is to you, a paycheck, you will find
some sort of satisfaction.
A paycheck wasn't enough
for Glenn Greenwald. Glenn had a big paycheck. All he had to do was
not rock the boat. And there were times prior when he was biting his
tongue that I felt he should have come forward publicly. We'll come
back to biting of the tongue. But Glenn tried to be loyal to the outlet
and he tried to tell the truth. That never works out very well. Ask
Kristina Borjesson -- and read the book she edited INTO THE BUZZSAW:
LEADING JOURNLISTS EXPOSE THE MYTH OF A FREE PRESS. You could ask Gary
Webb . . . if he were still alive. Certainly, Michael Hastings was
persecuted at the end of his life for the reporting he did. Even Sy
Hersh could tell you about how his investigative reporting, so valued at
THE NEW YORKER when Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House, fell out
of favor when Barack was president which is why his articles ended up at
THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS.
While Sy fell out of
favor, whore Jane Mayer knew what was what. And she wanted to whore.
No more articles about the torture programs or other things the
government was doing wrong -- not once Barack was president. No, when
Barack became president, Jane focused her eye on ridiculing people who
believed in Jesus Christ and going after what she termed "hillbillies"
-- basically anyone more than a 15 minute cab ride from Manhattan. The
'investigative' reporter no longer investigated the government.
We
noted yesterday that they don't even need orders. Yes, orders do
sometimes come, but they're not needed because working for these
corporate institutions allows them to daily instill the parameters of
what is and is not allowed.
That's Glenn explaining to Tucker Carlson why he resigned from THE INTERCEPT.
They pulled an article Glenn wrote about the Hunter Biden scandal. You can read the article here.
Tht link goes to SUBSTACK, not THE INTERCEPT. THE INTERCEPT would only
put the article back up if Glenn removed various paragraphs.
Today I
sent my intention to resign from The
Intercept, the news outlet I
co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and
Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent
company First Look Media.
The final, precipitating cause is that The
Intercept’s editors, in violation of my
contractual right of editorial freedom, censored
an article I wrote this week, refusing to
publish it unless I remove all sections critical
of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,
the candidate vehemently supported by all
New-York-based Intercept editors involved in
this effort at suppression.
The censored article, based on recently
revealed emails and witness testimony, raised
critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not
content to simply prevent publication of this
article at the media outlet I co-founded, these
Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain
from exercising a separate contractual right to
publish this article with any other publication.
I had no objection to their disagreement with
my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a
last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I
encouraged them to air their disagreements with
me by writing their own articles that critique
my perspectives and letting readers decide who
is right, the way any confident and healthy
media outlet would. But modern media outlets do
not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of
my article, rather than engagement with it, was
the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.
The censored article will be published on
this page shortly. My letter of intent to
resign, which I sent this morning to First Look
Media’s President Michael Bloom, is published
below.
As of now, I will be publishing my journalism
here on Substack, where numerous other
journalists, including my good friend, the great
intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi, have come in
order to practice journalism free of the
increasingly repressive climate that is
engulfing national mainstream media outlets
across the country.
This was not an easy choice: I am voluntarily
sacrificing the support of a large institution
and guaranteed salary in exchange for nothing
other than a belief that there are enough people
who believe in the virtues of independent
journalism and the need for free discourse who
will be willing to support my work by
subscribing.
Like anyone with young children, a family and
numerous obligations, I do this with some
trepidation, but also with the conviction that
there is no other choice. I could not sleep at
night knowing that I allowed any institution to
censor what I want to say and believe — least of
all a media outlet I co-founded with the
explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to
other journalists, let alone to me, let alone
because I have written an article critical of a
powerful Democratic politician vehemently
supported by the editors in the imminent
national election.
But the pathologies, illiberalism, and
repressive mentality that led to the bizarre
spectacle of my being censored by my own media
outlet are ones that are by no means unique to
The Intercept. These are the viruses that have
contaminated virtually every mainstream
center-left political organization, academic
institution, and newsroom. I began writing about
politics fifteen years ago with the goal of
combatting media propaganda and repression, and
— regardless of the risks involved — simply
cannot accept any situation, no matter how
secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my
journalism and right of free expression to its
suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.
From the time I began
writing about politics in 2005, journalistic
freedom and editorial independence have been
sacrosanct to me. Fifteen years ago, I
created a blog on the free Blogspot software
when I was still working as a lawyer: not with
any hopes or plans of starting a new career as a
journalist, but just as a citizen concerned
about what I was seeing with the War on Terror
and civil liberties, and wanting to express what
I believed needed to be heard. It was a labor of
love, based in an ethos of cause and conviction,
dependent upon a guarantee of complete editorial
freedom.
It thrived because the readership I built
knew that, even when they disagreed with
particular views I was expressing, I was a free
and independent voice, unwedded to any faction,
controlled by nobody, endeavoring to be as
honest as possible about what I was seeing, and
always curious about the wisdom of seeing things
differently. The title I chose for that blog,
“Unclaimed Territory,” reflected that spirit of
liberation from captivity to any fixed political
or intellectual dogma or institutional
constraints.
When Salon offered me a job as a columnist in
2007, and then again when the Guardian did the
same in 2012, I accepted their offers on the
condition that I would have the right, except in
narrowly defined situations (such as articles
that could create legal liability for the news
outlet), to publish my articles and columns
directly to the internet without censorship,
advanced editorial interference, or any other
intervention permitted or approval needed. Both
outlets revamped their publication system to
accommodate this condition, and over the many
years I worked with them, they always honored
those commitments.
When I
left the Guardian at the height of the
Snowden reporting in 2013 in order to create a
new media outlet, I did not do so, needless to
say, in order to impose upon myself more
constraints and restrictions on my
journalistic independence. The exact opposite
was true: the intended core innovation of The
Intercept, above all else, was to create a new
media outlets where all talented, responsible
journalists would enjoy the same right of
editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for
myself. As I told former New York Times
Executive Editor Bill Keller in a 2013
exchange we had in The New York Times about
my critiques of mainstream journalism and the
idea behind The Intercept: “editors should be
there to empower and enable strong, highly
factual, aggressive adversarial journalism, not
to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the
journalism.”
When the three of us as co-founders made the
decision early on that we would not attempt to
manage the day-to-day operations of the new
outlet, so that we could instead focus on our
journalism, we negotiated the right of approval
for senior editors and, especially the
editor-in-chief. The central responsibility of
the person holding that title was to implement,
in close consultation with us, the unique
journalistic vision and journalistic values on
which we founded this new media outlet.
Chief among those values was editorial
freedom, the protection of a journalist’s right
to speak in an honest voice, and the airing
rather than suppression of dissent from
mainstream orthodoxies and even collegial
disagreements with one another. That would be
accomplished, above all else, by ensuring that
journalists, once they fulfilled the first duty
of factual accuracy and journalistic ethics,
would be not just permitted but encouraged to
express political and ideological views that
deviated from mainstream orthodoxy and those of
their own editors; to express themselves in
their own voice of passion and conviction rather
stuffed into the corporatized, contrived tone of
artificial objectivity, above-it-all
omnipotence; and to be completely free of anyone
else’s dogmatic beliefs or ideological agenda —
including those of the three co-founders.
Again,
I am surprised it took Glenn so long. I don't know how he bit his
tongue so long. But he doesn't have to now. As a father with bills to
pay, Glenn may consider writing a book on his experience. If he does,
it won't go over well for bitsy ditsy Betsy Reed. But Glenn doesn't owe
her or anyone else anything. He could get a princely sum for a
tell-all. And it would sell very well.
All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been
disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important
questions about whether the former Vice President and current
front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to
peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether
the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the
intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son's business
associates. But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial
story, a union of the nation's most powerful entities, including its
news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these
questions rather than try to provide answers to them.
The initial
documents, claimed the New York Post, were obtained when the laptops
containing them were left at a Delaware repair shop with water damage
and never picked up, allowing the owner to access its contents and then
turn them over to both the FBI and a lawyer for Trump advisor Rudy
Giuliani. The repair store owner confirmed this narrative in interviews with news outlets and then (under penalty of prosecution) to a Senate Committee; he also provided the receipt purportedly signed by Hunter. Neither Hunter nor the Biden campaign has denied these claims.
Publication of that initial New York Post story provoked a highly unusual censorship campaign
by Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, through a long-time former
Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its
“fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions. And
while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized for Twitter’s handling of the
censorship and reversed the policy
that led to the blocking of all links the story, the New York Post, the
nation’s fourth-largest newspaper, continues to be locked out of its
Twitter account, unable to post as the election approaches, for almost
two weeks.
After that initial censorship burst from Silicon Valley, whose workforce and oligarchs have donatedalmost entirely
to the Biden campaign, it was the nation's media outlets and former CIA
and other intelligence officials who took the lead in constructing
reasons why the story should be dismissed, or at least treated with
scorn. As usual for the Trump era, the theme that took center stage to
accomplish this goal was an unsubstantiated claim about the Kremlin
responsibility for the story.
Numerous news outlets, including the Intercept,
quickly cited a public letter signed by former CIA officials and other
agents of the security state claiming that the documents have the
“classic trademarks" of a “Russian disinformation” plot. But, as media
outlets and even intelligence agencies are now slowly admitting, no
evidence has ever been presented to corroborate this assertion. On
Friday, the New York Times reported
that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian
disinformation” and the paper said even the FBI has “acknowledged that
it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”
The Washington Post on Sunday published an op-ed
-- by Thomas Rid, one of those centrists establishmentarian professors
whom media outlets routinely use to provide the facade of expert
approval for deranged conspiracy theories -- that contained this
extraordinary proclamation: "We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if
they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably
aren't."
Even the letter from the former intelligence officials
cited by The Intercept and other outlets to insinuate that this was all
part of some “Russian disinformation” scheme explicitly admitted that
“we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” though many media
outlets omitted that crucial acknowledgement when citing the letter in
order to disparage the story as a Kremlin plot:
Despite
this complete lack of evidence, the Biden campaign adopted this phrase
used by intelligence officials and media outlets as its mantra for why
the materials should not be discussed and why they would not answer
basic questions about them. “I think we need to be very, very clear that
what he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation," said
Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield about the possibility
that Trump would raise the Biden emails at Thursday night’s debate.
Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC:
“if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the
vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation."
The
few mainstream journalists who tried merely to discuss these materials
have been vilified. For the crime of simply noting it on Twitter that
first day, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman had her name trend all morning along with the derogatory nickname “MAGA Haberman.” CBS News’ Bo Erickson was widely attacked even by his some in the media
simply for asking Biden what his response to the story was. And Biden
himself refused to answer, accusing Erickson of spreading a "smear."
That
it is irresponsible and even unethical to mention these documents
became a pervasive view in mainstream journalism. The NPR Public Editor,
in an anazing statement
representative of much of the prevailing media mentality, explicitly
justified NPR’s refusal to cover the story on the ground that “we do not
want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories . . .
[or] waste the readers’ and listeners’ time on stories that are just
pure distractions.”
Let's stay with NPR's ombudsperson for a moment. Kelly McBride was the focus of Ava and my "Media: NPR doesn't trust its listeners"
this week. As we noted, Kelly's journalistic malpractice includes not
only censoring the Hunter Biden article, but also devoting a column to
James Fallows interests because, apparently, his many appearances on NPR
commenting aren't enough for him to have a platform for his views and
his position at THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY does not give him much of a
platform either. She fails to explore real issues raised by listeners
-- we know that at least 65 listeners have complained to her about the
gender imbalance on ALL SONGS CONSIDERED since Ava and I began writing
about that over the summer -- but will devote her time and attention to a
topic that a member of the press wants addressed. She also failed to
disclose her friendship with James Fallows.
Why does
that matter? Goes to ethics absolutely. More to the point, she was
just chiding Nina Totenberg for her long friendship with RBG and failure
to clearly disclose that over the years when reporting on the Supreme
Court. In her criticism of Nina, she also failed to make the most
important point: Nina says it never conflicted but this isn't a
self-determination. Nina can't make that determination, she's too close
to the subject -- and, after all, that's why a disclosure should have
been made for every report in the first place. Also wrong? Her
constantly quoting people with POYNTER. That's her other job. So she's
using NPR to promote her other employer. That's a conflict of
interest. POYNTER staff already work on her columns and now she's using
her position at NPR to plug various 'names' at POYNTER. It's
disgusting and it's unethical.
Wait, we're not done. Let's quote from Ava and my piece:
A lot of what she does is wrong -- including ignoring the gender
imbalance on NPR's ALL SONGS CONSIDERED (we reported on that most
recently here).
Take the way, in the newsletter we just linked to, she refers to an
interview with a guest: "But over on Twitter, many listeners were
cheering Inskeep on for putting Anton in his place." It's the purpose
of NPR to put guests they invite on 'in their place'? That's an
interesting way of looking at it.
That alone, her wording there which implies a guest was put in their place, should have gotten her immediately fired.
Kelly
McBride is not up to being a public editor or ombudsperson and, in
better journalistic times, she'd be crucified -- and she should be.
Think about when the NPR public editor came out against Terry Gross over
the Bill O'Reilly interview. At that time, the position of public
editor was supposed to be independent and practice ethics. Under Kelly,
there are no ethics.
Here's Jimmy Dore on the effort to discredit the Hunter Biden e-mails.
Do
you know who hasn't covered the e-mails -- besides members of the
corporate press? Ana Kasparian. A weekly show and she's got time to
bore us with so much but she can't cover that? And she wants to get
into a feud with Jimmy Dore?
How sad.
But
sad is also the same corporate media that sold the country the Iraq War
now wants to sell the country War Hawk Joe Biden as president.
There
are choices beyond Joe and Donald Trump. There's Gloria La Riva who is
the candidate from the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Gloria is a choice.
I'm not sure we noted this last Friday, but this is Gloria's response to the Biden-Trump debate:
Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate Gloria
La Riva issued the following statement at the conclusion of the second
debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump
Tonight’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was one of the
closing events of a presidential campaign that has been an utter insult
to the working class. The crises facing poor and working people could
not be more dire -- hundreds of thousands dead from the pandemic, tens
of millions unemployed and facing eviction, racist police waging war on
Black communities, an environment on the brink of total catastrophe, and
so much more. Neither candidate put forward anything remotely close to a
serious plan to solve these problems.
Instead, we heard more ludicrous denialism on COVID-19 from Trump,
who claimed, “We’re rounding the corner, it’s going away.” In fact the
number of infections is surging along with deaths. But Biden offered no
specific, credible solutions. Biden claimed in the debate that he
believed “Health care is not a privilege, it's a right.” But he opposes a
universal healthcare system that would actually make healthcare a right
in practice, something that’s all the more pressing in the middle of a
pandemic.
The two candidates competed to outdo each other in militaristic
bluster. Biden claimed that Russia wants to “Make sure I do not get
elected the next president of the United States” and referred to
unsubstantiated reports that the Russian government was paying fighters
in Afghanistan to target U.S. troops occupying the country. Trump
countered that “There has been nobody tougher on Russia” than him,
citing his actions to coerce members of NATO into increasing their war
spending “to guard against Russia” and that he “sold tank busters to
Ukraine.” Both candidates signaled their absolute support for the
Pentagon’s drive to war against China and Biden ridiculously compared
North Korea to Hitler’s Germany.
Trump unsurprisingly used the debate to spout more racist rhetoric
targeting immigrants, saying that children his administration cruelly
separated from their parents were brought to the United States by “gangs
and drug dealers.” And Biden was part of an administration that cruelly
deported far more immigrants than the Trump White House. Biden’s
hypocritical appeal to “those DACA kids” omitted the fact that DACA was
won not because of the kindness of the Obama administration, but because
undocumented youth courageously organized civil disobedience at Obama /
Biden campaign offices and put enough pressure on the government to win
temporary legal status.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation’s campaign believes that the
wealth of this society -- wealth that was created by workers, not the
millionaires and billionaires -- should be used to provide a dignified
life for all with education, housing, a job or income, healthcare, and
more guaranteed as constitutional rights. Our campaign demands that
racist killer cops be locked up and the end of the system of mass
incarceration. We are against war for empire. We want to end the
extraction of fossil fuels. Don’t throw your vote away on one of the two
capitalist parties -- vote socialist and help build a movement for a
better world!
And she participated in a debate with some of the other choices the corporate media ignores.
Jo
Jorgensen wasn't at that debate. But she is on the ballot in all fifty
states and she's the candidate for the Libertarian Party.
Jo's campaign issued the following:
GREENVILLE, S.C. October 28, 2020— “I
don’t vote because it wouldn’t make any difference,” is the refrain
heard from millions of Americans. They believe the system is rigged and
that there’s no chance of getting the kind of candidate they’d want to
see in office elected.
Dr. Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian candidate for president, has a message for such voters.
“Washington, D.C. wants you demoralized,” said Jorgensen. “They don’t want you to vote because they need you to stay home in order for their status quo candidates to win.”
“Refusing to vote feeds right into their hands,” she added. “It
doubles the impact of the voters who do, and it keeps career
politicians, cronies, and special interests in power.”
“But you actually have much more influence over the system than you
realize,” she said. “Enough, in fact, to turn the establishment on its
head.”
In 2016, 102 million Americans were eligible to vote, but stayed
home. Meanwhile, Donald Trump won the election for president with just
63 million votes.
“Americans who sit out elections hold an overwhelming majority in
this country,” notes Jorgensen. “If just two-thirds of them voted, we
could bring down the powers that be in Washington, D.C.”
“With a large turnout of anti-establishment voters, those who already
vote but who have settled for the ‘lesser of two evils’ would vote
their conscience instead. They’d join forces with you to bring in real
outsiders,” she said.
“Don’t let media blackouts, manipulative polling, and fake debates
trick you into believing you don’t have a choice,” she said. “You most
definitely do have a real choice, and a chance for real change.”
Libertarian Jo Jorgensen is on every ballot in America this election — all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.
“If you know the two-party system is broken and doesn’t serve your family’s needs, please vote for me this election,” she said.
Dr. Jorgensen advocates lowering health-care costs dramatically by
way of free-market competition, bringing our troops home from endless
foreign wars, allowing wage-earners to opt out of paying the Social
Security (FICA) tax, and ending the failed and destructive War on Drugs.
Her campaign gives voters a viable alternative to Donald Trump and
Joe Biden, who are the only other presidential choices appearing on
every ballot.
This year marks the fifth time the Libertarian Party has succeeded in
placing its presidential ticket on the ballot in all fifty states,
having done so previously in 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2016.
“There’s no such thing as not voting,” said Jorgensen. “If they get
you to stay home, you’re ‘voting’ for your opponents to win. If you want
a different outcome, do something different.
“You hold the power to change everything. All you have to do is vote.”
Howie Hawkins is the US presidential candidate for the Green Party.
In 2004, a number of prominent progressives issued statements calling
on people to vote for Democrat John Kerry in the close states and the
Green Party candidate in the so-called safe states where the outcome
would not be close. In 2020, many of these same people have
moved further to the right and call for a vote for Biden without any
support for a Green vote in the so-called safe states.
In 40 states, the vote for the Green presidential ticket determines
whether the Green Party retains or gains ballot line for the next
election cycle. In most states, it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, or 5%. But there is no
support for the Green Party this year from these progressives. What
happened to left solidarity?
They have abandoned the idea that the best way for the left to fight
the right is to build and fight with its own independent strength,
advancing its own program under its own banner against
two-capitalist-party system of corporate rule. Instead, they have
responded to the rise of Trump by shifting to the right with him,
telling the independent left to silence and disarm itself and back
Biden, a man who would fit comfortably into the center-right parties of
Europe.
“They have responded to the rise of Trump by shifting to the right with him.”
Reliance on the lesser evil has historically led to greater evils. In
the classic case, instead of running their own candidate for German
president on 1932, the largest party, the Social Democrats, supported
the conservative Paul von Hindenberg as the lesser evil to Hitler. Von
Hindenberg won and appointed Hitler to the Chancellorship. The
Communists ran their own candidate in the most sectarian way imaginable,
saying the Social Democrats were the “social-fascist main enemy” and
“after Hitler it’s our turn.” That was a case where left solidarity
against the fascist threat instead of relying on conservatives to stop
the fascists. Had the socialists and communists formed a left united
front, they would have easily outpolled the rightwing parties.
The result of progressives consistently settling for the Democrats as
the lesser evil has created a political dynamic has been moving US
politics to the right for decades. The soft-right Democrats ignore
progressive demands because they pose no threat of taking their votes
elsewhere. Instead, they adapt to the hard-right Republicans. Bill
Clinton called it “triangulation.” Joe Biden calls it “working across
the aisle.”
Meanwhile, the progressives in the Democratic Party are accommodating
to Biden’s politics. Bernie Sanders is now for Medicare for All over 55
years old with a public option for the rest. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
took the Green New Deal slogan from the Greens and diluted the content
in the non-binding resolution for a Green New Deal by dropping the
essential immediate demand for a ban on fracking and new fossil fuel
infrastructure, eliminating the rapid phase-out of nuclear power,
removing the deep cuts in military spending to help fund the program,
and extending the deadline for zero carbon emissions from 2030 to 2050.
The words Green New Deal were not mentioned at the Democratic
convention, in the Sanders-Biden Unity Task Force recommendations on
climate, or in the Democratic Platform, which is pro fossil fuels and,
for the first time in 50 years, pro nuclear.
“The progressives in the Democratic Party are accommodating to Biden’s politics.”
There will be no Medicare for All or Green New Deal from the
Democrats, let alone a retreat from military bloat, wars, and coups
abroad. But these progressives counsel people to vote for them
everywhere, which tells the Democrats to take them for granted because
posed no threat to vote for the Greens anywhere.
I don’t support a safe states strategy. Every state is a battleground
for the Green Party. The gas industry is fracking the hell out of
battleground states Pennsylvania and Ohio where the ducking Democrats
join the retrograde Republicans lending no support to the anti-fracking
movement. Greens, not the Democrats, are fighting the expansion of the
Enbridge oil pipelines that take Alberta tar sands oil and Bakken
fracked oil across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota on to oil
refineries. In every state, Greens are taking on Democratic machines in
the cities, and real estate industry that finances them, when we fight
for affordable housing and against the brutality of police forces that
do what the Democrats in the cities designed them to do, which is to
keep downscale people, particularly Black people, down and out of
upscale communities. They are set up to police the New Jim Crow lines of
school district and municipal boundaries that segregate us by race and
class.
We should all be concerned about the voter suppression activities of
Trump and the Republicans. But Greens know from bitter experience that
we should also be concerned about voter suppression in the form of party
suppression by the Democrats. The Democrats were able to knock the
Greens off the ballot in Montana, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania where the
Green petitions had two to three times the required signatures, which
was difficult to do in the Covid lockdown. But the Democrats are also
legislating party suppression. For example, in New York the Democrats
rammed through a law attached to the state budget bill in April while
attention was focused on the pandemic that triples the number of votes
the Greens need to keep their ballot line. Only Nader for president in
2000 and me in 2014 for governor ever got that many votes as a Green
candidate in New York. If we lose the ballot line, we will need 45,000
good signatures – triple the old number – collected in a six-week window
to get statewide candidates on the ballot. When the Socialist Party
lost its ballot line in 1938 in New York, it never recovered it. There
was not an independent left party with a ballot line in New York again
until the Green Party, 1999-2002 and 2010-?.
