Not My Hero

Jon Schwarz has an excellent critique of The Post at one of my favorite sites, The Intercept.

I wrote this comment about the Post and legendary publisher Katherine Graham.

The Post has always been at social center of plutocracy. Owner Edward McLean bought the Hope diamond for his wife, who wore it socially. Cursed or not, he died in a sanitarium, and the Post was purchased by the boy financial wizard of his time, Eugene Meyer, who had made $15 million dollars before the age of 40 in 1915. He used the pages of the Post to rail against the New Deal. Katherine Graham is his daughter. Eugene gifted the paper mostly to her husband, but also partly to her.
Certainly the paper represents the plutocratic class. Does it also represent the Deep State, CIA, and so on? It has long been alleged, and nothing in the facts would dissuade one from that belief. It's also been called the Pentagon Post.
By 1965 the Vietnam War was obsolete, the ultimate domino, Indonesia, having been taken by a client dictator and purged of adversaries. Johnson Advisors including McNamara were decrying pointlessness. Noam Chomsky has written the capitalist class was turning anti-war by the last years of the 1960's. But the war was a political inconvenience for some people, and opportunity for others. I narrowly escaped the draft years, but somehow never learned for decades that Nixon officially ended the war just before the 1972 election, the ultimate October Surprise. So it had finally served its purpose.
Anyway, printing the Pentagon Papers was gutsy and admirably, but hardly an act of treason either to the capitalist class or the national security class of the day.
Nixon, though he did oversee the undoing of Allende, was not proving the domestic neoliberal that the capitalist class really wanted, and finally got with Reagon, after Carter having done some capable preparatory work. Chomsky has called Nixon the last New Deal President, and Nixon's last unrealized proposal was national healthcare reform based on employer mandates. THAT is what was undone by exposing the Watergate Burglary.

*** end of comment posted.

The Book on Katherine Graham was originally written in the 1970's, entitled Katherine the Great.  It exposes much of the way the government used the paper as a propaganda mouthpiece for the government.  Katherine Graham herself suppressed the mainstream publication of the book.

I found this great background information site looking for info on Philip Graham and the CIA.  Important...read all the comments!  Mr Graham had a stellar rise, as editor of Harvard Law Review, clerk to Felix Frankfurter, and assistant to William O Donovan, the colorful "Oh So Social" director of the OSS.  Then he marries into the Washington Post by marrying Katherine Meyer, and turns it into the nation's most efficient conduit for pumping out pro-cold-war disinformation cooked up at CIA under Project Mockingbird.

But by the late 1950's, Philip's father-in-law begins to have doubts about the arrangement.  Philip and Katherine are living separately, often forcing friends to take sides.  Philip has a new mistress, and tries to get his will re-written 3 times to make her inheirit the Post.  Ultimately, at a press convention in the spring of 1963, he launches a tirade about government manipulation of the media.  He names a name.  His wife rushes to the scene, Philip is put in a strait jacket and put into a sanitarium (reminiscent of what happened to Edward McLean).  Later, Katherine drives him back to the country home, where he is shortly found dead in the bathtub, the death ruled a suicide.  The last will is ruled intestate, and Katherine becomes the full owner and publisher of The Post.  All this, the efficient elimination of a potential independent voice, someone who has actually had enough and won't take it anymore and might go public about the whole corrupt establishment--conveniently occurred just 4 months before the Kennedy assassination, when there might need to be good media control.

As her fate becomes secure Katherine Graham continues the Post's proud traditions of boosting war and plutocracy and otherwise serving the Deep State better than any major paper, ultimately becoming the last major US newspaper to denounce the Vietnam War.

The Post's leading role in exposing Watergate is also in the comments brushed away as I have done, against the background of the plutocracy deciding Nixon is too independent minded to implement the desired new regime of neoliberalism to replace the New Deal, so he is done in by the Deep State through their friendly local newspaper, somehow always owned and operated by friends, the Post.

Maidan Massacre

There were at least 50 foreign snipers in Kiev on February 20, 2014, sowing murder and chaos to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and put in place a new NATO-friendly government.  The latest news is that one of the military commanders now appears to have been a "former" American soldier.

No less than Edward Herman underlined that the US media, quick to point out any hearsay about the Russians, has only given a stony silence to all the increasing evidence that the Maidan Revolution was a coup orchestrated by foreigners with the explicit aim of turning around Ukraine, once the heart of Russia, into a western client state armed to threaten Russia.

Accepting the Maidan Revolution as a Military Coup, which it clearly was, negates and reverses claims of Russian aggression afterwards.

So, western propagandizing media, stoking cold war as always, will not do so.

One State Solution

As masterfully defined by Professor Edward Said in 1999.

My only quibble: He says both Jews and Palestinians may need to relax the full "Right of Return" for all in their respective categories.   I think best to stick with categorical justice, which certainly must include right of return for all Palestinians.

The Real Jesus Story

As noted in a "greatest lie" section of Quora, constrasting the Christian legends with what common sense likely took place.

Jesus appears to have been very well born, with both of his parents having leading Royal blood (and they were cousins too) and literally being the grandson of the last greatly respected King of the Jews.  The second in line only to his elder cousin John the Baptist, and after John's murder Jesus becomes a replacement public figure...a new contender for a good new King.

He rides into Jerusalem in phrophesized style with his followers, and attempts to start a debt jubilee by turning over the money changers tables.  Economist Michael Hudson believes that debt jubilees were a great idea which should be brought back.  In any case, it's a brash populist-socialist move on the part of a new aspiring king-to-be, and also portrays his populist socialist tendencies.

But the Romans are having none of it, and kidnap Jesus' own son.  Judas, Jesus cousin and closest confidante, works out an amazing deal with the Romans in which Jesus' son is freed, and Jesus himself gets to spend a mere 3-6 hours on the cross just before the Jewish holiday...and most importantly not having his legs broken...and to get hauled away by his father to his father's royal tomb.  He was well attended, quickly recovered, and ultimately escaped to live a life in exile, where he is occasionally recognized but otherwise keeps a very low profile.  To his followers, this is a symbolic watershed which they will soon avenge--but even with their support newer generations of Jewish  Resistance face ultimate defeat, with the multiple sackings of the the too-independent-thinking Jerusalem by the Romans, who ultimately found Israel incompatible with the Roman Empire principles and renamed it Palestine for the long co-inhabitant "Philistines" who remained after the departure of the more well placed and known diaspora Jews.

Jesus never made an issue of his god-ness, but once Jesus had passed on, an antagonistic outsider named Saul changed his identity to Paul and hijacked the identity of Jesus for the godhead he was enterpreneuring, declared that Jesus had not merely escaped death but arisen from the dead, with "gospels" ultimately created to blend his new religion-of-idealist-deity with the old Jesus-was-the-good-king-who-showed-the-principles-of-courage-and-love-and-survived-and-will-be-restored, and that became the Christianity we know, well after it got hijacked and filtered again by the clerics appointed by Constantine, and so on.

And it all fit a pattern of many similar stories in many other cultures beforehand, such as Buddha, etc.

The real Jesus story is that when the blindfolds are removed we all understand the essential nature of the common good and that it cannot be achieved by selfish means alone.  There is hope then that we can work together.

As a Jew, ...

After my Kindergarten era best friend, a Danish/Irish ancestry kid surnamed Anderson, moved away to the Bay Area in 1963, all of my childhood friends were Jewish, of Russian ancestry (which I now find interestingly coincident with when Kennedy was replaced by Johnson, apparently with the assistance with some involvement of a vehemently anti-communist Russian exile community in Texas which "handled" Oswald for the CIA...perhaps I was being "handled" by the CIA as well, and this is only one of several cases where political swings coincided with unintended departure of my best friends in curious ways).

Sometime not long after my mother put me in Lutheran bible school.  But while I found many of the kids there entertaining, somehow none of them ever became my friends.

The Jewish kids were cooler.  Perhaps it was also they took much more initiative in making friends, inviting me to their homes, on their outings.

I might have converted to Judaism.  Except for one thing.  Sometime around 1973 I became aware of the occupation of the west bank.  This did not fit my childhood myths about Israel: that the Palestinians within Israel to the west of Jerusalem were equal citizens in a democracy, and that the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem were Palestine, where Palestians were free citizens a somewhat backward but picturesque country with many of the most interesting sites to Christianity.

Vision having been thusly shattered, by some voices on Pacifica Radio, I tried to ask all my Jewish friends about Israel and Palestine.  Or, at least three of them.  The most important ones at the time.  It was pretty much the end, or at least at the ending point, of all 3 friendships.

I think now, if my Jewish friends could ever have answered me satisfactorily, I might well have converted to Judaism.  Christianity had nothing for me, my friends were Jewish, and Jewish girls were usually the most attractive.  So, one way I could classify myself would be would-have-been-Jewish, a kind of Jewishness.

And there are other angles, such as one having been called a Jew, and defending Jews at that time.

Jewish ancestry likely also.  My mother, who had been adopted during her infancy, looked vaguely Russian-Jewish, herself always proclaiming the now-discredited Twelve Tribes theory, of being among best children of Israel.  A discredited theory...but perhaps the truth in her undocumented ancestry includes Jewish maternity or something like it.

So, in the fashion of any Marque, I declare myself a Jew, under my own authority., all other worldly authorities being hopeless corrupt  Actually, as it turns out, as I could expound upon in greater fashion another time, the King of Jews.  But not exclusive of other categories, nationalities, and causes, including Palestinian, Iranian, and Russian, for example.

But, anyway, I prefaced one of the most relationship-fatal questions to a Jewish girl I had been in great lust with for a long time, with the ill chosen and immediately regretted words, which slipped off the tongue so easily I must have been primed by endless TV programming, "As a Jew"

"As a Jew, what do you think about Israel and the Palestinians?"  Or something like that.

Immediately offended, at great length she critized the phrase "As a Jew", not identifying otherwise, or even at all, but with the notion that Jews should be expected to have, as a group, an opinion on this or any other matter.  Some Jews, she noted (setting the stage for what I have become) there were anti-Zionist Jews.

After a minute or two of this backlash, I tried to rephrase my question.  "Well I'm sorry for putting it that way.  But...what do You think about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?"

I continued not to get an answer, just more backlash for asking the question as if Jews should have a collective opinion on it.

Now, gazillion years later, I'm listening to the great orthodox rabbi on Youtube describing the opposition between Zionism and Judaism.  At some point in this previously terrific little lecture, he veers off into the badness of being asked about Israel's treatment of the Palestians as a Jew...he doesn't therein delve deeply in the semantics or philosophy, just with the rhetorical response, "Why don't you ask me about China and how it treats it's citizens."

As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the worst forms of argument, begging the question to get off from having to make a hard statement with respect to a group one self identifies as.

"As a Jew" as I declare myself to be, I can answer the question.  Or "as a human being" or "as a leftist" as I describe myself in those ways also.

And, it's quite simple.  The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is abominable.  It must be stopped.  The best way to stop it would be to stop US imperialism, and the hype that sustains it.  BDS is another perfectly legitimate tactic, and there is no good reason why a religion supremicist state needs to exist for Jews or anyone else, and it's peculiarly oximoronic for Judaism.  "The Jewish State" is a contradiction in terms, and the Israeli government not only doesn't speak for me, it speaks for what I deeply oppose, and vice versa.  The creation of "The Jewish State" without coincidentally solving the displacement and refugee crisis was a terrible mistake, for which my country was a key facilitator and still is, to the great loss of many including Palestinians,  and for which minimal justice requires a full right to return for all displaced Palestinians as well as full equal rights for all Palestinians in Phisreal.

But, what about Russian leftists?

I describe Russiagate as the Deep State response to the potential (perhaps in some small ways realized) softer tone between the US and Russia under Trump.  The Deep State presumed Hillary would be elected.  My fear was that military confrontation might begin pretty soon after Jan 21, as Hillary was the ultimate Deep State invention--a proven imperial hawk, a friend of Kissinger since the 1970's, a Zionist to the core, a neoliberal bankster slave to the core, yet with the required appearance of being a progressive--despite the very destructive Presidency of her Husband* which from all appearances she strongly supported then and still does.  Hillary seemed to approve of stronger action against Russia, before the election, and afterwards, and the whole Russiagate narrative which she and her Deep State friends authored, proves it to the hilt--that they wanted and still want greater cold if not hot war with Russia, and will stop at nothing to get there.

(*Remember the million Iraqi children killed by the heartless US sanctions against Iraq for basic supplies such as to continue chlorinating their water?  Only by the even more militarily destructive standards of all Presidents who have followed does Bill Clinton look like a peace nik.  And then he tore up the most basic welfare program, AFDC, and eliminated the basic banking protections of the New Deal, and failed to allow regulation to be extended to credit derivatives, the crucial actions which directly led to the crash of 2008.  He intended to destroy Social Security as well, fortunately Monica Lewinsky saved us from that.  On the plus side, he created a partial decade of prosperity--the best we've had since the 1960's--through long overdue tax increases.)

I see Russian actions in Ukraine and Crimea to have been largely defensive responses to well orchestrated US/NATO provoked seccessionism and imperial expansion.  And, the biggest part of all I contend, is that we did and are continuing to do far worse.  By such standards there should be far harsher sanctions against--against the USA for our continuing actions and influences in many places, including Afghanistan and Yemen and Palestine.


My critics portray me as being too soft on Putin, too soft on Russian imperialism as well as backwardness in civil rights.  And, most troublesome to me, they say I'm not considering the point of view of Russian leftists, and those of Ukraine and Syria.  They question my leftism...and assert I've been brainwashed by Russian propaganda.

But this brings up many key points, in philosophy, the nature of leftism, and so on.

In philosophy, the important thing is the whole truth, the big picture.  On the world stage, US imperialism has wreaked far greater destruction over the world than Soviet/Russian imperialism.

Of course it cannot be denied that, in the big picture, there are small villans as well as the bigger ones.

But, there is a basic problem here.  We (the USA, and NATO Countries, and Israel and Saudi Arabia and other imperial clients of US) are the ones doing the greater violence.  For us to criticize Russia is to ignore the log in our own eye, in the words of Jesus, to criticize the mote in another's.

OK, there is one way we *could* do this, and it would be in each and every case criticizing Russia we simultanously, without interruption, similarly denounce our own crimes.  Or, better yet, start with ours and proceed to the lesser Russian's, and so on.

But when have you heard that done?  I've heard it once or twice, in gazillion comments about evil Russia, Putin, Assad, etc.

In fact, following the same reasoning, it's far worse Not to mention our crimes, than not to mention the Russian (Syrian, etc) crimes.

So then, in being soft on Russia, Putin, Syria, Assad, etc., or not even mentioning them at all, one is being far less bad than doing the reverse...which nearly everyone does all the time.

So, then, it can't be all that bad.  And given there is a limited amount of time, at any such point as making an argument, and in life in general, it can't be such a big deal to save a bit of time by not mentioning all the lesser points, ad infinitum.

And, meanwhile, WE (the people of the US) are the ones nominally an otherwise somewhat more responsible and capable of peacefully confronting and diminishing the US Imperial violence.  By criticizing the violence of others, we may position ourselves to further violence with less violent actors, principally not because of their violence but because they are independent of US, and a threat to our hegemony.  This furthers the greater evil of mentioning their crimes and not ours, by providing the starting point for even worse crimes on our part.  We further the ends of the greater evil, effectively becoming part of it.

So much for my philosophical point.

About those Russian leftists.  One always has to understand that Leftism is not inherently a local thing.  By it's own definitions and concerns, leftism is global.  Leftists are the true Globalists.

But there are several problems here.  In our own time, Globalism has been hijacked by those who would decimate labor solidarity, drive wages to starvation and free capital to rule over all.  As Jim Hightower calls it, Globaloney.

Such little official social democracy as we have in this world, real existing social democracy, exists almost entirely through nation state institutions.  Very little of it exists in global institutions.  Social Democracy has been stripped out of the newfangled multilateral agreements such as NATO and WTO.  Only the crippled and essentially powerless UN is there anything almost like social democracy, and there it only takes the form of high minded declarations without any funding.

So, as a leftist cares about social democracy, always better than none even if not the perfect proletarian rule, he cares about nation institutions.

But as a leftist cares about the world, a leftist also cares about the world imperialism of capital, which is precisely what all existing globalism is, with the tiny exception of a tiny amount of progressive world labor unionism and NGO's.  And, even moreso, this leftist would care about where the greater imperial world violence comes from.

And in the bigger stage, the US has been the greatest and most destructive imperialist.  If our Russian Leftists have not been blinded by US propaganda or contributions, they would see this as clearly as I do.

If they choose not to, then they aren't real leftists, are they?

Monopsony

A criticism of my "selling sex should be as free as selling anything else...regulated for fairness and safety" philosophy as applied to that venerable (but never again) institution, the casting couch.

Suppose I'm a talented actress, I want to make a cutting edge independent film, have it produced by the best.  Why should that require having sex with Harvey Weinstein?

I admit, my weak glibertarian response, such people can find someone else to produce their movie, may not always be available.

There may not be the big no-sex-required studio to compete with all the old boys.  The old boys have a monopony on buying talent, they are the only ones with all the right connections, don't you know, to make and distribute movies.  And old boys can help keep the old boys club going, and so on.

It still seems to me there could be "Harvey's Orgy Club and Movie Studio."  It just has to be openly that...and not a market controlling force, by itself, or in coordination.

Strange how insistent Harvey was about including a superfluous sex scene in the movie Frida.  That's what seems to figure as much as Harvey himself trying to tough talk his way into personal sex, in a recent story compellingly told by Selma Hayek.

Yes, we the public have noticed how movies sometimes seem to contain bits of sex, perhaps for the higher ratings themselves.  One of many many "commercialisms."  Higher rated movies go into different streams, just what the producer might be trying to do, to coordinate business.

Disgusting.

The word people also use, perhaps more general, is Gatekeeper.

Basically, there shouldn't be Gatekeepers.

But Gatekeepers exist, with myriad different claimed faults.  Some discriminate upon skin color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, political orientations.  Most of these are far more deeply ingrained, in most industries, than willingness to perform sex acts.

The alternative to gatekeepers might be panels drawn by lottery.

Seen in this context, discrimination based on whether or not you will consent to some kind sex with some producer...is at least something you can change.  Unique resistance to that, as opposed to all kinds of gatekeeping and harassment, represents an aesthetic elitist solidarity of the most powerful, who could be defined as those who can always define themselves not as such.

Sex-willingness gatekeepers have a potential use in serving industries where participants could engage in group orgies, which may even serve the end of production of sexual-oriented entertainment by developing greater closeness and flexibility.

So I still believe there is a place, in sex entertainment businesses, where a casting couch is a reasonable gatekeeping arena, assuming there is always consent.

Russia-Gate called out by Edward S Herman

I've been wondering how to write a definitive take down of Russia-gate, which sadly has sucked in many of my friends looking for a cheap and easy way to dump Trump.

I saw Russia-gate as dangerous war mongering and distraction right from the beginning, and of course I will not forget that it began with denunciations of the Wikileaks release of DNC emails proving active DNC favoritism for Clinton over Sanders, which had previously been vehemently denied by the mainstream media which had been busy inventing cheap shots to discredit Sanders supporters.  The ultimate orientation of Russia-gate as a weapon against anti-imperialism, anti-neoliberalism, and other independent thinking was not hard to discern.

Edward S. Herman, who co-authored Manufacturing Consent with Noam Chomsky in 1988, had already done the definitive work this past July, shortly before his death.  He cites precedents back to 1917.  Russia-phobic fake news has never been a purely Republican or conservative thing; liberals have often played key and supporting roles.  Palmer of the Palmer Raids was a liberal Democrat.  Robert F Kennedy came very close to being McCarthy's chief counsel.

Now, the producer of a Pacifica 14 part series on Julian Assange, Randy Credico, has been subpoenaed to testify in a private transcribed interview (aka star chamber) by the Russia-gate inquisitors.  He had declined to testify voluntarily, and now says he would prefer a public hearing, where he could call out the McCarthyism.

One breaking headline after another emerges, for more than a year now, with no actual evidence for Russia (by which is meant Putin) colluding in the election with the Trump and his aides.  And yet, as Herman said, the mainstream media continues to take the veracity of all the claims for granted, simply piling on more.

The currently breaking Flynn plea bargain may only be unusual in that the basic story has been around so long.  Flynn talked to the Russian ambassador in the lame duck interim between when Trump won the selection and took office.  This would seem to a sane person to be a good thing, for an incoming security advisor to talk with to ambassadors, particular of one so central to US concerns as Russia.

Now, however, we have the actual details that Flynn didn't previously report.  He didn't previously report having asked the Russians, on behalf of Netanyahu, Kushner, and Trump, if Russia would kindly veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the settlements.  The background is that Obama had decided to abstain this time, instead of the usual double veto (vetoed from UN Security council law, and also vetoed from history--virtually never reported in the mainstream media--the very many votes taken to censure Israel which are double vetoed by the US).  So this was not Russian influence--it was Israeli influence that was motivating this conversation, trying to get Russia to do something (which, in this case, it failed to do, Russia did not veto the Security Council resolution, and for the first time that I can remember going back 30 years, the UNSC condemned Israel, fwiw).

This first part is of course the part that won't get told as much in the...zionist imperialist...media.

The second part we've heard before, it was once again to ask the Russians for a favor.  The Russians were asked not to retaliate for Obama's final set of sanctions.  Well this may have been somewhat effective as the Russians did indeed withhold retaliation...for a few months.  Once again, this does not seem like a bad thing in itself, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the 2017 election.  But it was part of the deep state effort to pressure Trump to be tough on Russia.  And that was a bad thing that doesn't get talked about in the mainstream media at all.  And, it was effective, before long Trump was back to playing the tough game with Russia, though still the mainstream media was saying it wasn't truly serious or serious enough.  And that's another bad thing, which has little to do with Trump but everything to do with how the deep state works through controlling the media to push for a more imperialist militarist corporatist policy.

Here's a good discussion at Mondoweiss.  One commenter notes that acting on behalf of Israel to undermine still acting President Obama, it could be argued, could be interpreted as treason, as well as violation of the Logan act--which many people feel is unenforceable.  But if Israel influence in government were called out in a McCarthy style hearing, there wouldn't be any elected government officials left.