The stench of the rancid psychopathy and now the even more obvious illegality of the prosecution of Julian Assange is overpowering to any sane person with a nose and a conscience. The collaboration of the corporate media by ignoring or even trying to justify this murder-in-progress is sickening. Julian Assange is the literal personification of America's actual regard for "freedom of speech"; we have none.
I don't see this as a new phenomena - it's what won Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. It's just pushed much further along. When you consider that 90% of the airwaves are taken up by what Matt Taibbi describes in his book "Hate Inc." as a war of ideologies based on fabrications, there simply is less of a need for it during a time the establishment's choice is in office. Actual news is too dark for the mainstream, the needs of the populace aren't in their best interest, what the news is back biting gossip. Had Trump whispered into a microphone like Biden did a week ago, it would have been wall to wall coverage complete with panelists with a background in psychology and political opponents pleading with the public for him to step down. All that stuff now is left up to the "online QAnon crazies" to discuss. The drop is ratings is a controlled demolition. Jake Tapper is down 75%, though I doubt his salary will be down a dollar. Nothing of public worth is reported any longer. It's by design. They don't give a shit about you. In fact, they never did.
Now I come to think of it, there was a news blackout about the capers of Ronald Reagan when he was the governor of California. If the American people had truly known some of the things he did, he would never have been elected - which was the point.
Memphis xmas bombing is another recent example. We got a couple space alien stories from the media and then no further questions were asked by the "media". Afterwards the "solar winds hack" story fizzled out in the media and the oil sanctions against russia that chevron wants were delayed and ultimately not implemented.
As commercial media has evolved since Edward Bernays forward we have seen a huge rapid exponential application of its tools and manipulations. No doubt new forms of commercial mind control will evolve and it will become more and more dystopian in greater dimensions, near impossible to predict. An outsider could easily get public attention and become corrupted in new and wondrous ways. Anyone see the movie THE LOBSTER? There could be so many variations of that or Brave New World, but most likely we will end in something resembling EARTH ABIDES, which is overdue for a screenplay.
Knowing how much shite -- political and otherwise -- I'm liable to encounter on any given day, starting it with you Caitlin provides me with a very welcomed degree of sanity. So thanks for that.
The 70's were horrible times -- Vietnam, COINTELPRO, disco -- but it also saw Woodward & Bernstein, mass civil action, and the revelations of the Church Commission.
Those heady times for a free press give today's article an appropriately terrible and sombre perspective.
True. I've a short list of those whom I once respected that have transformed themselves into repulsive unrecognizable shapes. Stephen Colbert and Howard Dean top the list, but it's a crowded field. I'm sure you've got a headfull of others. We've seen much of the idealism of earlier years sold to the highest bidder.
Woodward's pre-WaPO career suggests he was an intelligence operative. Watergate still has a lot of unanswered questions, and he may have misdirected from the real story.
I surmise that the NSA blackmails prominent journalists and their CEO bosses, just as surely as J. Edgar Hoover blackmailed Presidents and members of Congress. When Obama didn't charge Clapper for lying to Congress, and left Snowden in exile, this is why. I suspect journalists were similarly coerced into disseminating the anti-Russia narrative in the first place.
If my "conspiracy theory" is wrong, then the journalists in question are very wicked indeed. My theory is the most charitable to them.
It's easier to buy them off than threaten them. Honestly- sure the big shots get a couple mill a year each (under contract that...well, I'll be surprised if Rachel Maddow gets 3M/yr next go round. BUT...all the others? The profession is notoriously underpaid. For a multi-billion/year in rev corp to toss around low 6 fig jobs to hipsters in Bklyn is a drop in the bucket. And a hella lot safer.
Yeah, yeah everybody talks about The Power Broker. When I read it, (30+ years ago) what struck me was how the bag men of the 30's-50's were replaced by the think tank contracts for your fam. Just look @ Chelsa Clinton's job w/ NBC (I think)... the payola's still there, it just wears a suit and tie or a pencil skirt instead of a fedora.
Just as genuine reporters (v the news readers of today) have all had the shit scared out of them b/t the Assange trial and the lawyer against Chevron (make an example and most of the others will fall in line) that stick can also have a carrot....
'Well, little Suzie, that's a great article you wrote for the Vox blog for $200. Keep it up, and I hear there's gonna be openings @ the NY Times for $80K..." Easy peasy. As a result, you have hundreds of Journo skool grads coming out every year entering into a shrinking job pool. You play ball or you can drive for Uber w/ that degree.
"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread."
Thank you !! DNC oligarchs and CIA's unlimited budgets have bought many previously independent news outlets -- currently the most obvious are TYT's new millionaires despicable Cenk and Anna and previously stellar The Intercept. Here is my open letter to Krystal:
Dear Krystal - PLEASE tell me that you are not together with Kyle's horrible slander of both Aaron Mate and Jimmy Dore !!?? I hope you are not though.
Kyle Kulinski Omits Ana Kasparian's Blackmail Of Jimmy Dore From Video - YouTube
Kyle is immature and uninformed -- as well as garrulous and an extreme narcist. What he did after a despicable and desperate TYT's Anna did -- weaponized an invented "me-too" -- is unforgivable. You will be damaging your (and Saagar's) brand associating with Kyle's horrible "mistake".
Krystal, thank you for all your outstanding journalism -- I am among your greatest fans. There is another huge outrage going on -- a brazen and huge SLANDER of Aaron Mate and Grayzone regarding well-documented OPCW fabrications at direct request by US government.
Grayzone and Aaron are just coming out of huge 2.5 year long fake and just dismissed Syria-related lawsuit (a lawsuit with direct engagement of a well-known top pro-Israel lawyer).
TYT's Cenk and Anna have also been activated to slander and stop Aaron's outstanding investigative work on US/Al Qaeda horrible crimes in Syria -- TYT Cenk's and Anna's avalanche of slander and topic redirection by even inventing "me-too" is unprecedented.
TYT is also on record of slandering the publisher of a century -- Julian Assange.
Grayzone -- Ben Norton, Aaron Mate, and Max Blumenthal need maximum support -- including yours !!
Cancelling Jimmy's invitation without even informing him, inviting Cenk's relative instead to continue the slander project and above all - Kyle farting his fake and constructed outrage without even mentioning Anna's "me-too" blackmail -- while not addressing a well-orchestrated and choreographed efforts to slander and destroy the unique and invaluable Aaron Mate's reporting on Syria is an outrage.
Stay away of Kyle -- before it is too late for your reputation, please. Please watch Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate rebuttal of Kyle’s outrage:
Kyle Kulinski Omits Ana Kasparian's Blackmail Of Jimmy Dore From Video - YouTube
TYT, Jimmy and Kyle have formed a circular firing squad that accomplishes nothing but division among those who hear about them or follow them. Perhaps that's the goal here? TYT is a horrible show. But now Dore is wasting my time by showing me the same clip over and over and over.
I encourage people to watch Jimmy, especially when he has Dylan Rattigan on. Those Covid Money Talks videos are still excellent to view now over a year later. But if Jimmy keeps up this stupid TYT-crusade, I might cancel my subscription to his show.
Aaron and Max don't put out their podcasts often enough. Krystal and Saagar are too verbose although they have good information.
Please don't help push the Dore/TYT smears of one another. It merely diminishes Dore.
The bipartisan Syria-gate hoax is as huge as the Russia-gate hoax -- CIA has intensified efforts to slander Aaron Mate and silence the courageous Grayzone team. TYT was activated to do that.
You've proven my point. You have ignored what I said and now you're attacking me because I want the mud slinging to stop. Why is that "completely wrong"?
Jimmy did fight back, Dore and Mate did a great job -- a MONTH ago, reporting on what TYT did. Now Dore is just rehashing the same crap accomplishing nothing new. How many times do you want to see Ana say "F... Aaron Mate"? I've seen it or heard it over a dozen times already.
How is this dong-slinging helpful? It has even infected this normally informed exchange.
PS: The "me-too" accusation by despicable Anna is as dangerous to Jimmy as the huge multimillion fake 2.5 year long and well financed lawsuit against Aaron Mate and the Grayzone.
Jimmy simply has to fight back.
Plus -- "Crush the despicable" as the human Prometheus, Voltaire said.
But... but... but, Caitlin - much as I love you - the total media blackout campaign didn't just arise. Possibly the practice of reporters apologizing for reporting newsworthy yet unpopular stories is a new development, but there was a total MSM blackout of all the numerous and huge protests in many major cities in the US when George I announced the first Persian Gulf War in 1992.
And I seem to remember media blackouts as far back as the 1960s, as well.
You're absolutely right about past blackouts. Here's the thing: in today's day and age, people like us are AWARE now. Dore/Johnston/Pilger... I'm 62 and the closest to them and the host of others (Taibbi/Greenwald etc etc) I would have seen in the 70's would have been hippies passing out mimeographed tracts in Washington Square Park or at Columbia.
I believe we're at the beginning of wonderful times. Fuck I wish I was 30 to be able to see it all the way through. ('tho empty nesting ROCKS! LOL)
I'm 75 so I probably would have been one of those people handing out fliers, except I was a hippy and we didn't do those things. We left that up to the students at Berkeley. (You have different parts of the counter-culture mixed up, a common mistake. They may have looked like us, but we had different principles.)
My feelings about these times are: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Although if anyone had listened to us in the 60s, we wouldn't be out on the limb we are now, with climate change. We tried to warn you!
Here we are discussing propaganda and coverups, and it hasn't occurred to you that there is a sinister agenda behind climate change fearmongering? When was the last time you heard a climate change skeptic get airtime?
Hippie chick...mmmm.... (Dam you woodstock fore coming around when I was 10! Damn youuu! LOL)
Yeah, I read Dickens too! LOL Not for nothin', but today's climate change is our era's BOMB, K? We made it this far, right? I mean, c'mon... you were glued to your TV watching "The Day After". Hell, at your age, baby; you prolly watched 'Fail Safe' at a Loew's theater.
The kind of hippy I was didn't watch TV or go to theaters to watch establishment movies about lies. Too bad you were just a kid - you obviously know nothing about us at all. Maybe you should try asking questions instead of making statements.
Susan I am 69 and experienced much of what you did. Climate change is one failure of the boomers, but the anti war movement and capitalism are the other big glaring issues that I that I thought we would never fall back into. We need the younger generation to help us and carry forward our experience and wisdom. I wouldn't alienate them, welcome their interest.
I certainly don't want to alienate the millennials; I thought I would have to get up from my retirement and get out on the barricades (even if I had to use my aluminum walker to get there). I'm glad to see that they are stepping up to the plate in their turn. I've always tried to have friends of all ages.
Telling me that I was glued to my TV isn't really "light-hearted"; it's more "snarky." And something is only "fun" if both people are laughing. I felt insulted. Passive-aggressive humor is offensive.
I saw "Fail Safe" and many other classic movies. National security has always been involved in Hollywood blockbusters. Independent media and political comedy were and still are the best choice in film.
Sounds like you were the one glued to the TV. We didn't have a TV when I was in second grade; my mother thought they were brain-rot and wouldn't have one in the house. Apparently she was right.
And did you read my original post? Because I said that we tried to tell everyone about climate change, knowing it would get bigger and blow the world up!
I am not so hopeful. People can get overwhelmed and skeptical with floods of contradictory and misinterpreted factoids, some do not have critical thinking skills to filter. This has always been a problem, and it is overload now.
OMG, that was horrifying, just horrifying. And people who would have normally protested were scared shitless and tip toeing around, walking on eggshells, afraid to be called Traitors. Not me, I was out protesting and writing letters to the editor, and get rocks thrown at my house.
'Danno doesn't put these out often enough. He also has some good podcasts that keep us informed of what's going on in Oz.
When I first clicked on the link, it was playing the Star Spangled Banner and asking me to sign an e-card in support of our Troops for the 4th. That was really funny.
Having worked for major US newspapers for more than a quarter century, I can tell you that even though it was spottily applied there was a longstanding rule that if even FULLY VERIFIED damning information emerged about a presidential candidate in the final few weeks of a campaign, that information would be suppressed until after the election -- when it was essentially of no use.
However, I left the profession (was downsized out) years before Trump Derangement Syndrome set in. From all the evidence, I gather that things are much worse now. But the tiny seed for these awful developments I believe was laid in the practice described above, in which reporters and editors went a step beyond the (always superficial) attempt to tell some kind of truth to one of shepherding facts in certain ways they deemed beneficial to the republic rather than allowing a more fully informed electorate to render such judgments.
The stench of the rancid psychopathy and now the even more obvious illegality of the prosecution of Julian Assange is overpowering to any sane person with a nose and a conscience. The collaboration of the corporate media by ignoring or even trying to justify this murder-in-progress is sickening. Julian Assange is the literal personification of America's actual regard for "freedom of speech"; we have none.
I don't see this as a new phenomena - it's what won Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. It's just pushed much further along. When you consider that 90% of the airwaves are taken up by what Matt Taibbi describes in his book "Hate Inc." as a war of ideologies based on fabrications, there simply is less of a need for it during a time the establishment's choice is in office. Actual news is too dark for the mainstream, the needs of the populace aren't in their best interest, what the news is back biting gossip. Had Trump whispered into a microphone like Biden did a week ago, it would have been wall to wall coverage complete with panelists with a background in psychology and political opponents pleading with the public for him to step down. All that stuff now is left up to the "online QAnon crazies" to discuss. The drop is ratings is a controlled demolition. Jake Tapper is down 75%, though I doubt his salary will be down a dollar. Nothing of public worth is reported any longer. It's by design. They don't give a shit about you. In fact, they never did.
Now I come to think of it, there was a news blackout about the capers of Ronald Reagan when he was the governor of California. If the American people had truly known some of the things he did, he would never have been elected - which was the point.
But you just told me that Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with McCarthyism or the Cold War, make up your mind, at least be consistent.
Memphis xmas bombing is another recent example. We got a couple space alien stories from the media and then no further questions were asked by the "media". Afterwards the "solar winds hack" story fizzled out in the media and the oil sanctions against russia that chevron wants were delayed and ultimately not implemented.
What Memphis Xmas bombing? Solar winds hack?
Thorbjorn Jagland was likely a CIA agent is what won Showbama (the instigator of havoc in Syria and it's peoples) the peace prize.
As commercial media has evolved since Edward Bernays forward we have seen a huge rapid exponential application of its tools and manipulations. No doubt new forms of commercial mind control will evolve and it will become more and more dystopian in greater dimensions, near impossible to predict. An outsider could easily get public attention and become corrupted in new and wondrous ways. Anyone see the movie THE LOBSTER? There could be so many variations of that or Brave New World, but most likely we will end in something resembling EARTH ABIDES, which is overdue for a screenplay.
Knowing how much shite -- political and otherwise -- I'm liable to encounter on any given day, starting it with you Caitlin provides me with a very welcomed degree of sanity. So thanks for that.
The 70's were horrible times -- Vietnam, COINTELPRO, disco -- but it also saw Woodward & Bernstein, mass civil action, and the revelations of the Church Commission.
Those heady times for a free press give today's article an appropriately terrible and sombre perspective.
But look at what Woodward morphed into. The personification of the reporter Caitlin is describing here.
True. I've a short list of those whom I once respected that have transformed themselves into repulsive unrecognizable shapes. Stephen Colbert and Howard Dean top the list, but it's a crowded field. I'm sure you've got a headfull of others. We've seen much of the idealism of earlier years sold to the highest bidder.
Woodward's pre-WaPO career suggests he was an intelligence operative. Watergate still has a lot of unanswered questions, and he may have misdirected from the real story.
I surmise that the NSA blackmails prominent journalists and their CEO bosses, just as surely as J. Edgar Hoover blackmailed Presidents and members of Congress. When Obama didn't charge Clapper for lying to Congress, and left Snowden in exile, this is why. I suspect journalists were similarly coerced into disseminating the anti-Russia narrative in the first place.
If my "conspiracy theory" is wrong, then the journalists in question are very wicked indeed. My theory is the most charitable to them.
It's easier to buy them off than threaten them. Honestly- sure the big shots get a couple mill a year each (under contract that...well, I'll be surprised if Rachel Maddow gets 3M/yr next go round. BUT...all the others? The profession is notoriously underpaid. For a multi-billion/year in rev corp to toss around low 6 fig jobs to hipsters in Bklyn is a drop in the bucket. And a hella lot safer.
Yeah, yeah everybody talks about The Power Broker. When I read it, (30+ years ago) what struck me was how the bag men of the 30's-50's were replaced by the think tank contracts for your fam. Just look @ Chelsa Clinton's job w/ NBC (I think)... the payola's still there, it just wears a suit and tie or a pencil skirt instead of a fedora.
Just as genuine reporters (v the news readers of today) have all had the shit scared out of them b/t the Assange trial and the lawyer against Chevron (make an example and most of the others will fall in line) that stick can also have a carrot....
'Well, little Suzie, that's a great article you wrote for the Vox blog for $200. Keep it up, and I hear there's gonna be openings @ the NY Times for $80K..." Easy peasy. As a result, you have hundreds of Journo skool grads coming out every year entering into a shrinking job pool. You play ball or you can drive for Uber w/ that degree.
"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread."
- John Swinton
Thank you !! DNC oligarchs and CIA's unlimited budgets have bought many previously independent news outlets -- currently the most obvious are TYT's new millionaires despicable Cenk and Anna and previously stellar The Intercept. Here is my open letter to Krystal:
Dear Krystal - PLEASE tell me that you are not together with Kyle's horrible slander of both Aaron Mate and Jimmy Dore !!?? I hope you are not though.
Kyle Kulinski Omits Ana Kasparian's Blackmail Of Jimmy Dore From Video - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcNywyzhzs
Kyle is immature and uninformed -- as well as garrulous and an extreme narcist. What he did after a despicable and desperate TYT's Anna did -- weaponized an invented "me-too" -- is unforgivable. You will be damaging your (and Saagar's) brand associating with Kyle's horrible "mistake".
Krystal, thank you for all your outstanding journalism -- I am among your greatest fans. There is another huge outrage going on -- a brazen and huge SLANDER of Aaron Mate and Grayzone regarding well-documented OPCW fabrications at direct request by US government.
Grayzone and Aaron are just coming out of huge 2.5 year long fake and just dismissed Syria-related lawsuit (a lawsuit with direct engagement of a well-known top pro-Israel lawyer).
TYT's Cenk and Anna have also been activated to slander and stop Aaron's outstanding investigative work on US/Al Qaeda horrible crimes in Syria -- TYT Cenk's and Anna's avalanche of slander and topic redirection by even inventing "me-too" is unprecedented.
TYT is also on record of slandering the publisher of a century -- Julian Assange.
Grayzone -- Ben Norton, Aaron Mate, and Max Blumenthal need maximum support -- including yours !!
Cancelling Jimmy's invitation without even informing him, inviting Cenk's relative instead to continue the slander project and above all - Kyle farting his fake and constructed outrage without even mentioning Anna's "me-too" blackmail -- while not addressing a well-orchestrated and choreographed efforts to slander and destroy the unique and invaluable Aaron Mate's reporting on Syria is an outrage.
Stay away of Kyle -- before it is too late for your reputation, please. Please watch Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate rebuttal of Kyle’s outrage:
Kyle Kulinski Omits Ana Kasparian's Blackmail Of Jimmy Dore From Video - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcNywyzhzs
TYT, Jimmy and Kyle have formed a circular firing squad that accomplishes nothing but division among those who hear about them or follow them. Perhaps that's the goal here? TYT is a horrible show. But now Dore is wasting my time by showing me the same clip over and over and over.
I encourage people to watch Jimmy, especially when he has Dylan Rattigan on. Those Covid Money Talks videos are still excellent to view now over a year later. But if Jimmy keeps up this stupid TYT-crusade, I might cancel my subscription to his show.
Aaron and Max don't put out their podcasts often enough. Krystal and Saagar are too verbose although they have good information.
Please don't help push the Dore/TYT smears of one another. It merely diminishes Dore.
Slander is - a SLANDER.
The bipartisan Syria-gate hoax is as huge as the Russia-gate hoax -- CIA has intensified efforts to slander Aaron Mate and silence the courageous Grayzone team. TYT was activated to do that.
In summary -- you are completely wrong.
You've proven my point. You have ignored what I said and now you're attacking me because I want the mud slinging to stop. Why is that "completely wrong"?
Jimmy did fight back, Dore and Mate did a great job -- a MONTH ago, reporting on what TYT did. Now Dore is just rehashing the same crap accomplishing nothing new. How many times do you want to see Ana say "F... Aaron Mate"? I've seen it or heard it over a dozen times already.
How is this dong-slinging helpful? It has even infected this normally informed exchange.
PS: The "me-too" accusation by despicable Anna is as dangerous to Jimmy as the huge multimillion fake 2.5 year long and well financed lawsuit against Aaron Mate and the Grayzone.
Jimmy simply has to fight back.
Plus -- "Crush the despicable" as the human Prometheus, Voltaire said.
Was not it it in 90s Bill Moyers did his piece on the news conglomerates and who owned them?
But... but... but, Caitlin - much as I love you - the total media blackout campaign didn't just arise. Possibly the practice of reporters apologizing for reporting newsworthy yet unpopular stories is a new development, but there was a total MSM blackout of all the numerous and huge protests in many major cities in the US when George I announced the first Persian Gulf War in 1992.
And I seem to remember media blackouts as far back as the 1960s, as well.
You're absolutely right about past blackouts. Here's the thing: in today's day and age, people like us are AWARE now. Dore/Johnston/Pilger... I'm 62 and the closest to them and the host of others (Taibbi/Greenwald etc etc) I would have seen in the 70's would have been hippies passing out mimeographed tracts in Washington Square Park or at Columbia.
I believe we're at the beginning of wonderful times. Fuck I wish I was 30 to be able to see it all the way through. ('tho empty nesting ROCKS! LOL)
I'm 75 so I probably would have been one of those people handing out fliers, except I was a hippy and we didn't do those things. We left that up to the students at Berkeley. (You have different parts of the counter-culture mixed up, a common mistake. They may have looked like us, but we had different principles.)
My feelings about these times are: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Although if anyone had listened to us in the 60s, we wouldn't be out on the limb we are now, with climate change. We tried to warn you!
Here we are discussing propaganda and coverups, and it hasn't occurred to you that there is a sinister agenda behind climate change fearmongering? When was the last time you heard a climate change skeptic get airtime?
Hippie chick...mmmm.... (Dam you woodstock fore coming around when I was 10! Damn youuu! LOL)
Yeah, I read Dickens too! LOL Not for nothin', but today's climate change is our era's BOMB, K? We made it this far, right? I mean, c'mon... you were glued to your TV watching "The Day After". Hell, at your age, baby; you prolly watched 'Fail Safe' at a Loew's theater.
Dr. Strangelove. On the Beach.
A little respect goes a long way to the meeting of the minds.
The kind of hippy I was didn't watch TV or go to theaters to watch establishment movies about lies. Too bad you were just a kid - you obviously know nothing about us at all. Maybe you should try asking questions instead of making statements.
Susan I am 69 and experienced much of what you did. Climate change is one failure of the boomers, but the anti war movement and capitalism are the other big glaring issues that I that I thought we would never fall back into. We need the younger generation to help us and carry forward our experience and wisdom. I wouldn't alienate them, welcome their interest.
I certainly don't want to alienate the millennials; I thought I would have to get up from my retirement and get out on the barricades (even if I had to use my aluminum walker to get there). I'm glad to see that they are stepping up to the plate in their turn. I've always tried to have friends of all ages.
Susan Mercurio, my apologies for not trusting your original response to JM's comment. You were absolutely right.
Nahh... I'm good. Light hearted's kinda fun; you oughta try it sometime.
Telling me that I was glued to my TV isn't really "light-hearted"; it's more "snarky." And something is only "fun" if both people are laughing. I felt insulted. Passive-aggressive humor is offensive.
I saw "Fail Safe" and many other classic movies. National security has always been involved in Hollywood blockbusters. Independent media and political comedy were and still are the best choice in film.
I was in 2nd grade and saw it on TV. NBC Sat night @ the movies I think. Gave me nightmares. Lived in NYC then.
Sounds like you were the one glued to the TV. We didn't have a TV when I was in second grade; my mother thought they were brain-rot and wouldn't have one in the house. Apparently she was right.
And did you read my original post? Because I said that we tried to tell everyone about climate change, knowing it would get bigger and blow the world up!
My respect comment was to Jim M.
I am not so hopeful. People can get overwhelmed and skeptical with floods of contradictory and misinterpreted factoids, some do not have critical thinking skills to filter. This has always been a problem, and it is overload now.
Keep hope alive. Keep The Faith. It will be rocky, but it will work out and our species will be better.
And then First Contact. Just sayin'....
OMG, that was horrifying, just horrifying. And people who would have normally protested were scared shitless and tip toeing around, walking on eggshells, afraid to be called Traitors. Not me, I was out protesting and writing letters to the editor, and get rocks thrown at my house.
There's a word that describes people like you, y'know...
Heroes.
Thank you for your courage.
And now -- something funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uXo7wtGW7M&t=41s
This was really and truly funny.👍
Yes, thank you --The Juice Media is really great
'Danno doesn't put these out often enough. He also has some good podcasts that keep us informed of what's going on in Oz.
When I first clicked on the link, it was playing the Star Spangled Banner and asking me to sign an e-card in support of our Troops for the 4th. That was really funny.
My apology - don't understand -- who is "Danno"?
Fabulous assessment of the dismal state of investigative journalism Caitlin. Spreading it far and wide.
It’s the job of the media to keep us divided distracted and afraid
80s was bad too. I literally had to read really far left rags to get the real stories, and publish my own local activist rag.
USA!
I will not celebrate a United States where there is no economic justice
I will not glorify an America that built its wealth through genocide and slavery
I will not deify a government full of venal politicians
I will not be ignorant of a debt based economy that serves a very few and penalizes everyone else
I will not vaunt a military that is the largest and most powerful purveyor of terror on planet earth
I will not respect police who kill my Black brothers and sisters
This day I will not fly a flag
this day I will reflect on the reality of US
I will find my peace here and now
With no flags or borders to hold on to
God Bless
America
Peter Stoup, 7/3/2021
Having worked for major US newspapers for more than a quarter century, I can tell you that even though it was spottily applied there was a longstanding rule that if even FULLY VERIFIED damning information emerged about a presidential candidate in the final few weeks of a campaign, that information would be suppressed until after the election -- when it was essentially of no use.
However, I left the profession (was downsized out) years before Trump Derangement Syndrome set in. From all the evidence, I gather that things are much worse now. But the tiny seed for these awful developments I believe was laid in the practice described above, in which reporters and editors went a step beyond the (always superficial) attempt to tell some kind of truth to one of shepherding facts in certain ways they deemed beneficial to the republic rather than allowing a more fully informed electorate to render such judgments.
"Manufacturing Consent" seems a drastic overstatement.
It happens so automatically now it appears effortless.
The media silence on the now collapsed narrative on Assange has exposed the media as a willing participants in massive security state corruption.
If anyone was confused about what Eisenhower meant when he said "undue influence", they shouldn't be confused anymore.