RT America and Lionel on How New York Times Is Envious of RT’s Success

The American media and political establishment have launched a witch-hunt against left-wing alternative media, and especially RT, because of the way these news outlets are becoming increasingly popular. People are becoming disenchanted with the lamestream media, just as they are heartily fed up with establishment, corporate politicians. And that has got the media-industrial-political complex very worried.

RT is being particularly targeted for suspicion, ’caused it’s owned by the Russian state, and so must be part of a terrible plot by Putin and his minions to undermine America and destroy capitalism by, er, doing their job as reporters properly and holding government to account. Which means covering Killary’s corruption.

Now the New York Times has joined the witch-hunt with an article attacking RT.

In this clip from RT America, Ashley Banks and the media commentator, Lionel, of Lionel Media, discuss this story. They make the point that it’s based fear much in fear of Russia, and that RT is doing nothing more than every other media outlet. They’re expanding, yes, but every media outlet wishes to pursue excellence. RT has 2.1 billion views worldwide, and 2.2 million subscribers. But Pewdiepie has 57 million subscribers. Lionel goes on to say that the NY Times article is ‘confused and envious’, embarrassing, and looks like it was written by someone, who has only just found out what the Internet is and that it helps people. It’s like the Saturday Night Live sketch about the caveman, who says he just a simple man and doesn’t understand your modern ways.
He also makes the point that perhaps if the New York Times paid the same attention to their own affairs and developing their audience, they wouldn’t now have to sell off several of the floors in their 8th Avenue office block.

The Republicans hate the New York Times, as they somehow perceive it as a ‘liberal’ paper. But Counterpunch has repeatedly shown how it has a very corporatist, very pro-War bias. It was consistently for the Iraq invasion, and Chris Hedges, the Socialist journo and war correspondent, was sacked because he wrote opposing the War. Much of this new ‘Red Scare’ about supposed Russian interference comes from the corporate Democrats trying to find a scapegoat for Killary’s failure to win the American presidency, supported by some very unpleasant, extremely right-wing organisations. Like the Von Mises Institute, which used to publish pro-eugenics material and argued that Americans shouldn’t have a welfare state, because it would just keep the biologically unfit alive. Like Blacks. You won’t be surprised to hear that they also subscribed to pseudo-scientific racism, and so put out article which supposedly showed how Blacks were thicker than Whites etc. These are the people that Killary and her supporters have now allied with in their determination to close down RT and other left-wing or alternative media news outlets.

Is Trump Barely Able to Read?

My thanks to Joanna, one of the long-time commenters on this blog, for posting this in one of her comments.

In this piece from the David Pakman Show, Pakman and one of his producers, Pat, discuss the considerable evidence that Trump is functionally barely literate. There are clips of Mark Fisher, an American journalist, discussing how he asked Trump if he was preparing for the presidency by reading the biographies of the great American presidents. Trump said something about reading one about Nixon, and another, but Fisher himself doubted he had ever read a book from cover to cover. Trump also said that he had never read a biography, but regretted this. Visitors to Trump have remarked that there weren’t any books on his desk, or on the shelves at his home or indeed anywhere else. Jeffrey Schwartz, who ghost-wrote Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal, stated that he didn’t believe Trump had ever read a book since he was in school. Washington insiders have said that The Donald actually has difficulty reading the documents and executive orders placed in front of him. He usually just scans the first page. Further evidence for this comes from clips from a court case, in which the opposition lawyer asks Drumpf to read a lease. Trump’s own lawyer objects to it, and Trump looks it over, remarks on its length, and then proceeds to give a summary of what’s on the page. Apparently, he doesn’t even send his tweets himself. He dictates them to a secretary in the next room, and she sends them for him. There’s also a clip with the writers from the comedy show, Saturday Night Live, in which they talk about how Trump had difficulty reading the scripts when he was guest host. And it’s also been said that the reason why Trump watches so much television, and gets so much of his information from it, is because he can’t or doesn’t read books and papers. There’s also a clip, which shows Trump very obviously not using a teleprompter at one of his rallies. Pakman argues that this isn’t because he’s particularly keen to speak ad lib. It’s because he has difficulty reading what’s on there.

Pakman’s producer, Pat, finally makes the point here that what’s shocking isn’t Trump’s inability to read, but his lack of intellectual curiosity. He doesn’t even send away for talking books, so he can hear things read to him.

This is truly astonishing. And frightening. People have been making jokes since forever and a day about the stupidity of politicians, but many have been people of real intellectual distinction. Churchill wrote his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. JFK apparently could write a sentence of Latin with one hand while writing a sentence in Greek with the other. Even Nixon was no intellectual slouch. He was crooked and a monstrous imperialist thug, whose regime was responsible for the deaths of untold millions in the Vietnam War and Fascist coups across the world, and he really wasn’t intellectually capable of being president. But he wasn’t thick either. Bill Clinton was far from stupid, though he was also responsible for some of the worst policies passed by an American president, such as gutting further what remained of the American welfare system after Reagan, quite apart from highly questionable foreign policy decisions.

On the other hand, there are a long line of chiefly Republican presidents, who have been suspected of being thick and incompetent. Like Ronald Reagan, even before the poor fellow was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Not The Nine O’clock News sang songs about his epic stupidity. There was a long-running sketch on Spitting Image, in which his aides go in search of his missing brain. Then in the early part of this century, he was followed into the Oval Office by George Dubya, who had been an illiterate drunk smashed out of his skull on recreational chemicals. Dubya at least gave up the booze and drugs, and was credited as reading. He still struck everyone as being so stupid, that when one person made up the rumour that he only had an IQ of 85, it was widely believed. And at one point it looked like America would get a female vice-president in the shape of Sarah Palin, who has a reputation for monumental stupidity. One American commenter described his candidacy for the presidency or vice-presidency to a ‘post turtle’. What’s a post turtle? He explained that if you go to the Deep South, ever so often on the roads you see a turtle stuck on a fence post. The turtle’s got no right to be there, doesn’t know how it got there, and you don’t know what moron put it there. And that summed up Palin’s bid for supreme power.

And now we have Donald Trump, a sexist, misogynist, islamophobic Fascist, a narcissistic megalomaniac, who seems unable to read or comprehend the documents put in front of him.

He is massively unfit for office, and the fact that he’s in it points to a deeply troubling strand of anti-intellectualism in the Republican Party. The late comedian Bill Hicks used to joke that there was a streak of anti-intellectualism in America, and that it began the same year Reagan was elected. He had a point. Reagan got into power by presenting the image of a down-home ordinary bloke, offering his folksy wisdom in place of the complicated and simply wrong ideas offered by those affecting to be cleverer than the rest of us. And this is a powerfully attractive approach. No-one likes the feeling that they’re being condescended to by someone impressed with their own intelligence, or being treated with contempt. And the right, both in America and in Britain, try to capitalise on this anti-intellectualism. You think of all the times the Tories have tried to persuade the public that you don’t need to know about fancy economic theories to understand the economy, just commonsense household management. Left-wing economists have tried to point out that, in fact, you do need to understand economics as it is definitely not like balancing a household budget. But still they carry on, using the metaphor of household budgeting to justifying cutting services and privatising the NHS.

And now Trump, who appears to be barely literate, is in the White House. Pakman points out that it seems that Trump spoke at the level of a fourth grade schoolboy, not because he was trying to talk to ordinary Americans at their level, but because his reading level is that of a fourth grade schoolboy. It’s been said that politician is the one job that doesn’t require qualifications. Well, intelligence doesn’t guarantee that someone will make the right decisions. But in a complex world, in which power relationships between countries are so delicate that a misstep could start an international incident or even another war, we do need intellectual ability in our leaders and their advisers. We need politicos, who have the ability to obtain the knowledge of world affairs they need, not just from the broadcast news, but from foreign policy documents, even simply from reading the papers.

Trump seems incapable of this, and it puts us all in danger. He really does need to go.

Vox Political: Pro-Israel Figures and Groups Should Be Investigated after Israeli Embassy ‘Take Down’ Comments

Mike over at Vox Political has posted another good article, stating that pro-Israel groups should be subjected to a public inquiry after Shai Masot, the senior political officer at the Israeli embassy, was recorded by Al Jazeera TV talking about how he wanted Sir Alan Duncan and other, unnamed MPs, ‘taken down’. Masot made the comments in October last year when he met Maria Strizzolo, an aide to education minister Robert Halfon, and an undercover reporter, referred to as ‘Robin’, in a restaurant.

Halfon is a former political director of Conservative Friends of Israel, and ‘Robin’ was posing as a pro-Israel activist, who had set up the meeting to find out how he could help combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. The meeting, and Masot’s comments, were recorded as part of an investigation by the Arab news agency.

Masot asked Strizzolo if he could give her some names of MPs that he would liked to have taken down. Strizzolo replied that all MPs had something to hide. Masot then carried on ‘I have some MPs. She knows which MPs I want to take down’, and then mentioned Alan Duncan specifically.

He also discussed Boris Johnson, saying he was ‘basically good’, but then qualifying it by saying ‘He just doesn’t care. He is an idiot… If something real happened it won’t be his fault .. it will be Alan Duncan. Duncan is impossible to rebuff… he has a lot of friends’.

The Israeli embassy issued a statement saying it rejects the comments about Duncan, and claimed they were made by a junior embassy employee who was not an Israeli diplomat. Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador, also apologised and, like the embassy, stated they were unacceptable.

The Foreign Office has stated that they consider the issue closed. The Labour party, however, has rightly demanded an inquiry. Masot has previously admitted that he has set up party political and fake grassroots pro-Israel organisations, like Labour Friends of Israel. Duncan was specifically mentioned as someone the Israelis wanted removed because he has criticised their construction of illegal settlements in occupied Palestine.

Mike in his post asks the questions how many other politicians have also been subject to Israeli interference, how Britain can protect against further interference from the Israelis, and whether the pro-Israeli organisations set up by Masot were responsible for the smearing of Labour politicians on false charges of anti-Semitism. Until an inquiry is held and it’s known how far this rot has progressed, it’s unclear whether any of the claims about anti-Semitism, Zionism or Israel have any validity at all.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/01/09/pro-israel-groups-and-figures-should-face-inquiry-after-take-down-video-leak/

This issue of Israeli interference in British political affairs deserves an investigation for several reasons. Firstly, the statement that Masot was a junior embassy employee is rubbish. If he’s the senior political officer, then by definition he’s not one of the junior staff. Secondly, the Israelis have been involved in the internal affairs of the Labour party. The anti-Semitism smears were made against Labour members, who were sympathetic to the Palestinians and critical of Israeli colonialism and brutality. Many of those who made the smears were members of Zionist organisations, such as the Labour Friends of Israel. And one of the leaders of these organisations had been a director in the Israeli embassy.

It’s interesting to see the Labour party demand an inquiry, as this could result in some very unpleasant material coming to light for the Blairites. Tony Blair and New Labour were, according to Lobster, financed through the Labour Friends of Israel, and by Israeli business people through connections arranged by Lord Levy and the Israeli embassy.

And the Israeli state in Britain has previous in interfering in strictly internal British affairs. There was, you will recall, a case a few years ago in which the Israelis were caught over here spying on British citizens in Blighty itself. This is quite contrary to accepted international diplomacy, which prohibits friendly countries from spying on each other. This did not, however, result in any punishment for the Israelis, save the metaphorical ‘slap on the wrist’, because they apologised.

This is in stark contrast to their treatment by Maggie Thatcher, when she caught them spying against Brits during her tenure at No. 10. The Israeli spy base was closed, and I think a whole slew of Israeli diplomats came close to being thrown out of the country. But when they were caught again this century, nothing happened. I have a feeling the incident might have occurred when Blair was in power, in which case he probably didn’t want to sour his own personal good relations with his sponsors in the Israeli state.

It’s also possible to contrast the treatment of this Israeli diplomat, who has clearly been caught trying to interfere with the appointment of British MPs, with all the yelling over the other side of the Atlantic about the Russians interfering in internal American politics. The FBI, CIA and the Democrats under Obama have accused Putin of meddling with the conduct of American democracy through leaking details of Hillary Clinton’s corrupt deals with Wall Street. Despite their claims, there’s no real evidence that Putin was behind the leaks, and the former British diplomat, who took custody of the leaked information, has said that it all came from dissatisfied Democrat insiders.

Beyond this, Shrillary and her team have been claiming that Trump is somehow a tool of Putin because one of his staffers also has business dealings with the Russian president. Hence, some of the more hysterical Democrats have demanded that Trump should be tried for treason. Saturday Night Live, the American comedy show, even had a sketch with Putin referring to Trump as ‘the Manchurian candidate’, in other words, an undercover Russian agent ready to his bidding once he gets into power.

Now compare this outrage, whose basis in fact remains extremely tenuous, with the lack of similar concern and anger over the real interference that this interview implies has been exercised by the Israelis. Strizzolo has resigned, but no-one has demanded to know what connection her employer, Halfon, has in this affair, if any, or how many other British politicians and public servants have been keen to do the bidding of the Israelis against other British politicos. The Israelis frequently try to deflect criticism by claiming that they are unfairly singled out for opprobrium, while other regimes equally guilty of human rights violations are allowed to go with minimal criticism. This episode shows that, when it comes to meddling, or allegedly meddling, in the internal affairs of friendly nations, the opposite is true: Israel is treated far more leniently than other countries.

Mass Rallies Across State Capitols in America Tomorrow to Persuade Republicans against Installing Trump

This is awesome. In this video from TYT Politics, The Young Turks interview Kai Newkirk and Tania Maduro, the spokespeople for Democracy Spring, about the mass rallies that are set to be held tomorrow to persuade Republican electors not to install Donald Trump as the next president of the US.

The blurb for the protests states

In order for Republican Electors to vote tomorrow, Dec. 19 on whether or not to install Donald Trump as the United States president, they will need to go to their state capitols where concerned citizens will be waiting to greet them, hoping turn them against the reality-TV start turned demagogue turned president-Elect. Kai Newkirk and Tania Maduro of Democracy Spring and December19.us explain their strategy to use 51 public demonstrations to remind the Electors of their Constitutional duty to deliberate upon whether or not the electoral vote leader is fit to hold the highest office in the land.

Their argument includes (1) reports from the FBI and the CIA that Russian spies intervened in the election to help Trump win, (2) Trump has failed to disclose financial conflicts of interest that may prevent him from protecting the interests of the United States, and (3) Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.

Newkirk and Maduro state that Trump should not be president, not just because of his racism and sexism, but because of his unstable, aggressive character. They fear that when he gets into power, he will install an official, who will try to ban Democracy Spring and its efforts to get corporate money out of politics. They state that they will try to engage with Republican electors by saying that they have to vote with their conscience, but Trump is not just a danger to people like them (the protesters) but to all Americans, to the world, and to the climate. They realise that many Republicans are unhappy about vile character and its defects.

Interspersed with the interview is clips showing the Orange Fuhrer actually beating someone up at a wrestling or boxing match, and a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Putin describes him as ‘the best candidate … the Manchurian candidate’. They not that the Electoral College was put in to protect America from potential Manchurian candidates. The organisers also show how you can join the protests by logging on to their website and looking up one near you.

I’m fully behind Democracy Spring and their efforts to oust Trump.I don’t believe that he is a Manchurian candidate, and indeed the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has said that all the material published by WikiLeaks did not come from the Russians, but by disgruntled Democratic insiders. Similarly, the Electoral College was set up to preserve the power of the slave states, who did not want their slaves counted as full human beings.

But the organisers are right: Trump is a vicious bigot, who has drawn any number of Fascists and misogynists out of the woodwork and put them in his cabinet. He is indeed a danger to America, the environment and the world. And there are a number of Republican Electors, who have already decided that he is too much for their stomachs to bear. I hope tomorrow we will see many more of them.