More Speech Which You Don't Like On "More Speech" - Hate Mail

IN MY EXPERIENCE there have been no louder objectors to me telling the truth about "free speech"  absolutism than the "free speech" champions.   I am almost always told I should shut up, either explicitly or implicitly.   And most of them are reliably in the "more speech" club.   As I said the other day,  the right to tell the truth is about the only absolute form of "free speech" which doesn't carry dangers, except, arguably, in the most fraught of circumstances when telling the truth can get someone killed.  The Supreme Court invented "right to lie" is probably about in direct inverse in the percentages of good as opposed to bad applications of it, hardly ever being good even if at times arguably innocuous.  

"More speech" was, famously, an invention of that hero of progressives, the Supreme Court associate "justice" Louis Brandeis, or so I have always been told.   The case was the famous 1927 Whitney v California in which, ironically, Brandeis issued a concurring opinion with the majority who upheld the conviction of a wealthy Marxist by the state of California who was accused of wanting to start one of those totally futile, often spoiler "third parties" which have in almost every case where they've had an effect, helped the enemies of workers, minorities and equality.    

The money paragraph is this one.

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom.  Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution. It is therefore always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it..

There are a number of hypocrisies in that paragraph,   Which should have been obvious to Brandeis due to his own, life history.   Here from the "Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University:

Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856–1941) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Bohemia after 1848. At age 18, Louis Brandeis enrolled in Harvard Law School, graduating first in his class in 1877. 

Louis Brandeis was born into the pre-Civil War South, in a slave state.  He certainly was old enough to remember the Civil War.   He grew up and lived his entire life in a country in which lynching was an epidemic if not a pandemic.  THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A LYNCHING IN THE UNITED STATES WHICH WAS NOT A PRODUCT OF FREE SPEECH,  hate speech, lies,  exactly the kind of thing I favor removing from our mass media and discourse.   By the time Brandeis wrote that paragraph,  there had been thousands of lynchings, especially of Black People, men and Women and Children, though of many white People, especially those of local ethnic minorities.  

By the way, you should read the article from the "Free Speech Center" because it shows that Brandeis was hardly consistent in his "free speech" shtick. 

You may point out something that I never, ever hear mentioned by the "more speech" Chatty Cathys, that Brandes in giving them that truncated slogan conditioned it on there being "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, .  . . "  Even in that most famous ruling, he conditioned it, he didn't present it in absolutist terms.   

Of course, in real life, there so often isn't time to apply that "process of education" to avert such evil BECAUSE THE "PROCESS OF EDUCATION" HAS ALREADY PREDISPOSED THE LYNCH MOB TO COMMIT MURDER.    Any such "education speech" has already been flooded with "more education speech" educating and indoctrinating in racism, hatred, predisposition to believe lies, etc.  And the results are deadly for those in whom THAT "more speech" has resulted in their death.  

That is something that the superbly educated and informed lawyer of good will, Louis Brandeis certainly was aware of because even in the year before he issued that ruling there were 30 documented lynchings in the United States,  a period when the KKK was resurgent and, with the consequence of the speech which had led to that resurgence,  speech magnified and spread with all of the organs of "free press" and the innovations of public relations was not defeated by an effective and timely - even over the period of years - "process of education."  

And it is far worse than that because if there is one thing that is obvious about those he certainly meant by "those who won our independence by revolution" in the context of a Supreme Court case, he didn't mean the free Black Men, the many landless, Poor White Men and others who actually fought in the Revolutionary War, he meant the aristocrats and slave-holders who wrote the Constitution who had had some role in fomenting the Revolution.  It is clear from both the actions of the Continental Congress who administered the affairs of the revolutionary movement and those who, independence being won, wrote the Constitution largely in reaction to the Revolutionary soldiers who found they had been cheated and exploited and revolted against the several states, that they certainly didn't favor the free speech of Black People, Native Americans, any Poor Whites who had serious objections to things.   That certainly includes the likes of James Madison, the so-called father of the Bill of Rights who certainly had no intention of his creation enhancing the "more speech" of his or his classes' slaves.   The ones whose descendants were so often lynched as a consequence of abundant "free speech." 

That last list, with additions of many other groups,  are exactly the same groups who today suffer the consequences of the "more speech" that more money buys in the free press who are owned by oligarchs and which, unsurprisingly, use their more and more and more and more speech than any poor or even middle-class individual or cash-starved non-profit group which doesn't serve the oligarchy can ever have. 

The years in which that "more speech" has been the rallying cry of the "civil liberties" pros and amateurs have been exactly the years that have seen the destruction of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and myriads of other hard-won progress against that tide of American Constitutional decision making, resulting in Republican-fascist administrations and congresses who have appointed the white supremacist Roberts Court - that slogan has failed the test of time and history. 

The problem with the slogan of "more speech" is that, especially after the First Amendment rulings of the Supreme Court starting with Sullivan v NYT,  and most of all in the line of rulings after Buckly v Valeo,  the "more speech" is countered by more ad more and more . . . speech bought with billions and millions and exploiting the worst weaknesses of human beings in exactly the way that makes con men successful,  sleazy advertising profitable and which fuels lynch mobs AND TRUMP'S INSURRECTIONIST THUGS ON JANUARY 6, 2021. 

You can take your "more speech" and shove it up your ass.  Or that of any member of the Supreme Court you choose. 

I don't have much respect for much of any members of the Supreme Court, almost every one who you'd expect me to have any respect for have either written or concurred in terrible injustices or taken obviously cowardly actions or, even more often, inactions.   The year before he wrote his famous phrase, Brandeis concurred with Holmes Buck v Bell decision which he cited the very next year in one of his dissents.   And that goes right back to the start with the likes of Oliver Ellsworth, John Marshall and Joseph Storey.  I don't like lawyers.  They are in the profession of lying, generally for those who can pay the most.   The whole thing is fruit of the poison tree.  We need a new Constitution, not least of which is a "First Amendment" that makes it clear there is no such a thing as a court protected "right to lie." 

Our Filthy Dirty And Dangerous Democracy Destroying Politics Is A Direct Result Of The Dangerously Written First Amendment

HERE IS BERNIE SANDERS with whom I agree on many things - but not everything -  on the combined "money speech" in even primary races targeting a Republican with whom, like Bernie Sanders,  I have little in common though we agree entirely on at least two key issues,  the Epstein criminals being exposed and the disastrous Trump-Republican-fascist war on Iran.

If you want more particulars on where the FRICKIN' NINETEEN-MILLION DOLLARS - ON A PRIMARY! came from,  here from the NYT.  

Supporters of Mr. Trump, as well as pro-Israel groups that are unhappy with Mr. Massie over his opposition to the war with Iran, have spent heavily to defeat the congressman.

They and other advertisers have laid out nearly $19 million against Mr. Massie or in favor of Mr. Gallrein. Last summer, Mr. Trump’s aides even started a super PAC, MAGA KY, for the purpose of ousting Mr. Massie, drawing support from the Republican megadonor Paul Singer and a super PAC heavily funded by Miriam Adelson, another megadonor and supporter of Mr. Trump. Two pro-Israel groups, including one tied to the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent over $9 million against him.

After the crimes of Nixon, his campaign, his campaign donors were revealed,  the role of dirty money in American politics at levels that were shocking fifty five years ago BUT WHICH ARE ROUTINE TODAY,  a bi-partisan group of House members and Senators passed sweeping CLEAN ELECTION campaign laws so that that kind of thing couldn't happen ever again.   

Only the Supreme Court wiped out that CLEAN ELECTIONS LEGISLATION,  BI-PARTISAN LEGISLATION PASSED TO MAKE OUR ELECTIONS SYSTEM HONEST,  they did so by not only claiming it was a violation of "free speech" but inventing the absurd, dishonest AND ENTIRELY CORRUPT concept that billionaire and millionaire money equaled "speech" and so the Congress was barred by the sacred cow of Constitutional worship, the First Amendment.    And in that they had the full support of the ACLU, the NYCU and other "civil liberties" entities such as Joel Gora (the lawyer who argued the case in favor of dirty money),  Stewart Mott, Eugene McCarthy,  as well as fascist Republicans such as James Buckley (brother of the fascist and white supremacist William F. Buckley)  whose name names the case, Buckley v Valeo.  

That is why the likes of AIPAC,  Mariam Adelson, Paul Singer, - whose motives, support of the war that Netanyahu got Trump to wage are obvious - and so many others whose motives are opaque but likely as dangerous, are pouring billions into buying us dirty government - it's all because of the mid-1970s "civil liberties" lawyer-liars and the fat-headed members of the Supreme Court - including some of the more ill considered heroes of liberalism on the Court and off of it.   I have no doubt that many an Epstein-Maxwell client may have put money on Massie's opponent hoping to keep their names hidden. 

You won't get much of that from the media WHO ARE ENORMOUS FINANCIAL WINNERS FROM OUR DIRTY POLITICS THROUGH AD BUYS as well as beneficiaries of them being freed by "civil liberties" rulings to lie with impunity.  I doubt you'll ever hear the best of them point this out, not Rachel Maddow, not Keith Olbermann, but that "FREE SPEECH" is the direct source of our dangerously anti-democratic politics.   The old answer that such lies can be effectively countered with "more speech" is a quaint notion, the kind of notion that pretends that even massive demonstrations with hundreds of thousands, millions, even, can compete with the continual broadcast and online lie campaigns and the billionaire and millionaire money.   IF THAT OLD LEFTISH, CIVIL LIBERTISH LIE OF "MORE SPEECH" WERE TRUE WE WOULDN'T HAVE LOST THE ELECTIONS THAT RESULTED IN CITIZENS UNITED and the many other cases that flowed from Buckley v Valeo that have systematically made our politics more and more corrupt,  First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, McCutcheon v. FEC, Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett  and other rulings by the most corrupt entity in American politics throughout history, the Supreme Court and their followers in lower courts. 

This, by the way, also answers the question as to why I use the phrase "civil liberties" and, especially,  "civil liberties lawyers" with utter and complete contempt.   So many of them care nothing for real equality, for clean politics, for good governance, so many of them are total hypocrites, such as the older members of the ACLU and its affiliates, such big names as Joel Gora, Ephraim London, Alan Dershowitz,  most of them were either OK with all of that corruption or they supported it the results as they basked in the media adoration of their "civil liberties" BS.   As mentioned, they freed the media to lie and to collect all that dirty money in ad buys, so why would they tell the truth about it?   Though I'm fully prepared to believe a few of them simply never thought the issue through to its final consequences in the real life of those who are destroyed, oppressed and ruined by what that money in politics buys for those who spend it. 

Two Epitaphs On A Politican by Hilaire Belloc

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

Another on the Same

This, the last ornament among the peers,
Bribed, bullied, swindled and blackmailed for years:
But Death's what even Politicians fail
To bribe or swindle, bully or blackmail.

This Is The Danger I Warned About As The Zionists Destroy The Potency And Accuracy Of The Word "Antisemitism"

BELOW IS A COMMENT I JUST FOUND on this Youtube talking about the increasingly angry mood of the public in Germany.  I include my response to the comment 

Katja Hoyer, author of Beyond the Wall and Weimar, joins Will Lloyd to discuss the reception of her history books in Germany and the country's political situation.

Here is the typically neo-Nazi comment, including the "Lebensraum666" pseudonym and echoing 1920s-40s Nazism. 

@lebenstraum666
5 hours ago
West fails to understand Jewish Privilege. To even bring up the JQ today is condemned as anti-Semitic. Modern or Jewish 'science' is mathematics-based and has displaced genuine science.
Unless this is understood, the Western masses' continuous fall into debt-based poverty cannot and will not be reversed.
1

Reply
Anthony McCarthy
​ @lebenstraum666    You are an idiot.  "Jewish 'science'" is mathematics-based and has displaced genuine science."    That would be a surprise to scientists from Copernicus to Galileo and Kepler and Newton and Max Planclk.   Science has been intimately tied to mathematics since classical times.     As for the rest of it,  neo-Nazi garbage.   There is plenty to criticize and condemn and fight against when the question is Israel AS MANY JEWS DO,  Targeting "Jews" in this way is far stupider than blaming the billionaires and millionaires who are the real dangers most of whom are not Jews and many of whom are your fellow antisemites. 

Zionists have increased the danger of this with their dishonest use of words to shield Israel from its Nazi-like crimes and they and their allies and tools using everything from badly considered laws and the mass media in their attempt to shield Israel from legitimate criticism and targeting.   The neo-Nazis, no doubt, saw this as the golden opportunity that it is to help them recruit AS HAS THE AMERICAN FASCIST, WHITE SUPREMACIST FORM OF INDIGENOUS FASCISM.    It has entered mainstream American RIGHT WING media and propaganda while the Zionists target peace marchers and demonstrators and those who call for defunding the Israeli state.   

How to read William Blake's "Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion"

 

Susanne Sklar and Mark Vernon explore William Blake's late, great poem, "Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion"
"Of the Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awakening to Eternal Life," Blake tells us the epic is about.
Albion features, as does the heroine Jersualem, as well as Jesus.
So how did Blake weave together these figures? How can the poem be read? What is its message and theology? What insights does it offer today?

Susanne's book is "Blake's 'Jerusalem' As Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body".

Mark's book is "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination."

This Guy Is My Hero

 

I'd Better Make This Clear That THIS Is Not Anything Like My Criticism Of The First Amendment

IN THAT CLIP in my earlier post,  you would have heard the Israeli tech billionaire entrepreneur and architect of Israel's use of "AI"  and the such,  I have not been able to find out how closely he might or might not be associated with the Israeli "AI"  that has notably leveled entire neighborhoods when their "AI" says there might be an individual or small number of People they want to kill there.

That clip went viral, though it was generally too clipped as will happen on the internet. 

Shlomo Kramer calling for OUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH, here in the United States to be modified to HIS liking is something that I disagree with.  He should butt out of it. 

I know it’s difficult to hear, but it’s time to limit the First Amendment in order to protect it....I mean that we need to control the platforms, all the social platforms. We need to stack, rank the authenticity of every person that expresses themselves online and take control over what they are saying, based on that ranking.

My critique of the First Amendment is, first, made as an internal critic,  I'm an American citizen who has lived under it my entire life and watched its distortion by the Supreme Court, its weaponization by Republican-fascists, the oligarchs, the white supremacists, the male supremacists, etc. and its use in creating such malignant lies as the "right to lie,"  "the right to spread hate" and the whole list I wrote about a few days ago,  I am generally opposed to anything that would target People for telling the truth or advocating equality, democracy, good-will and the common good, a list which is anathema to the oligarchs and their allies.   And, I'm willing to bet, a large percentage of the American judiciary after the Leonard Leo scheme. 

In the fuller context of what Shlomo Kramer said on that occasion, he clearly was, at least in that instance, talking about cyber security against the kinds of attacks that the U.S. has been under with Russian and other paid trolls to ratfuck American websites, which is hardly confined to Putin's paid trolls.   China is known to do the same, both internally and internationally.

It is funny to hear someone who is such a part of the Israeli establishment telling us that because  I have absolutely no doubt that Israel does it, they certainly have an overt program of propaganda in the US, in Britain (listen to this exchange with Natasha Hausdorff, a lawyer-liar who is really trying to shut down freedom of speech in Britain and Owen Jones as a prime example of that).  And listen to her outrageous lies and, especially, her now typical use of the ever less meaningful phrase "blood libel"  for People telling the truth about Israel's crimes against humanity, genocide, apartheid, etc.  And, don't forget, she does so as a lawyer, the head of one of Britain's premier vehicles for banning speech and outlawing individuals,  UK Lawyers for Israel.   I have no doubt that much of that activity here is either financed by Israel, the largest recipient of US money in the world,  under the present government that should be considered political money laundering using US funds to swing US elections, or it is coordinated by the Israeli government and its agents.  

The problem with Kramer's idea is that it has so many problems and would certainly be a field day for governments, corporations, well-financed fascist and other ideologically malignant entities targeting anyone making any comment or posting any information they didn't like.   If you don't think that lists of People to target for harassment, doxxing,  swatting, . . . you know, what those named in public by Trump are faced with, becoming ubiquitous if such exposure was made.    

If such decisions are to be made, billionaire cyber-entrepreneurs and cyber-sci-guys are probably about the last ones I'd trust to come up with something.   They're the ones who think "AI" should be choosing the targets for fully automated drones - ONE OF THE THINGS THAT POPE LEO SPECIFICALLY CITED AS AMONG THE GREATEST DANGERS OF "AI."   As I've said before, hearing one of the early reports on that one morning back when I still listened to NPR was the thing that made me go from a skeptic of "artificial intelligence" to an opponent of it.   It was one of the things that led to me re-reading Joseph Weizenbaum's early warnings and many others whose warnings a half century ago are turning out to be ever truer. 

The first thing to do is to allow People slandered by the media to sue them for damages large enough to effectively prevent the media from continuing that.   In this age of billionaire ownership, at the obscene levels of wealth they've accumulated, those damages would have to be enormous and the whores in black robes in the judiciary and on the Supreme Court would certainly shield them from that.   And along with that there would have to be effectively punitive SLAP laws that would prevent dishonest or frivolous lawsuits being brought in order to silence People when they tell the truth.   That recent case in which "Chud the builder" was banned by the judge from paying his bail with the huge number of racist dollars he's raised on a go-fund-me type of site from his online racism, is worth looking at,  though I would bet you that he successfully appeals that and higher courts overturn that. 

Leo's Speech Introducing His Encyclical As Compared To the Tech Bros

 

And here's a little of the billionaire tech bros, the AI owners and the greatest danger to equality, democracy and life hinting and more about their intentions. 

Notice how long it took J.D. Vance's owner,  Peter Thiel to start answering the question that he'd like the human race to endure, and then the answer wasn't "Don't be stupdid, YES!"   HE'S ABOUT TO BE THE POWER BEHIND THE EYE MAKEUP!   If you needed any evidence that all of this,  "AI,"  the legal framework that allows billionaire tech bros to buy our elections and so the country - and the US isn't the only one where that's true, the judiciary that is certain to protect them and not us.

I don't think there is anything except the Catholic Church that has any chance of helping us survive and defeat these billionaire oligarch crackpots and the sci-whores who work for them.  

Listening To This Video About How Billionaire Nepo Baby David Ellison

has denied that he's going to replace the racist "free speech" fraud and liar and journalistically incompetent Whorey Beiss after her disaster destruction of the CBS brand,  I realized something that should be a matter of law when we're talking "press freedom." 

NO MEDIA CORPORATION should ever be considered part of the "free press" if their owners have billions and billions, enough billions so they don't have to care about the quality and credibility and honesty of the media operations they buy up or - yeah, right, found themselves BECAUSE THEIR FINANCIAL AND IDEOLOGICAL INTERESTS ARE BOUND TO LEAD TO THEM FINANCING IDEOLOGICAL AND FINANCIALLY ADVANTAGEOUS LIES.  AND SUPPRESSING UNPROFITABLE OR UNSATISFYING TRUTH.    

I said, at Youtube:

She is such a whiny, obnoxious faux victim who has ridden her ideological racism and incompetence to ever higher profits.

But a commentator called "community gardener 17" said it perfectly:

Bari Weiss, the Delores Umbridge working for Ellisons, is doing what they hired her to do.Ellisons do not care about ratings. They care about eliminating access to truth.

It's something that is as true of Bezos and the Washington Post, Soon-Shiong and the LA Times, and just about all of the billioaire-millionire non-journalists who have bought out the legacy media.  

I don't trust any media which is not owned by someone who has to care about the truth and honesty of the operation BECAUSE I HAVE SEEN WHAT THE BILLIONAIRE-MILLIONAIRE OWNERSHIP HAS LED TO.  

Trump, RFK, Musk and Republican-fascists Have Endangered The World And The United States With Another Possible Pandemic

 

Black and Brown Women Disruptors in Healthcare and Beyond, Dr. Haydée Brown and Dr. Sonya Sloan break down the growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, explaining why this rare strain is raising alarms among global health experts. They examine how cuts to public health infrastructure, weakened disease surveillance, and reduced international coordination have left the world more vulnerable to outbreaks, while highlighting why Black and Brown communities are often the first to suffer when healthcare systems and early-warning networks fail.

The "Press" Has Gone From Bare Knuckles To Being Such A Delicate Princess - Hate Mail

SPEAKING OF PRINCESSES.   I'm old enough and have enough of my marbles left that I recall the during the furor over the 1980  British-WGBH "documentary,"*  Death of a Princess inspired by the execution of a 19-year-old Saudi princess and her lover for adultery,  the House of Saud, the dictators of Saudi Arabia, objected and tried hard, directly and through British and American oil companies to get the broadcast of it suppressed.  That suppression was resisted by PBS and stations around the country - it was the Carter administration, after all.   If it had come a year or two later during the Reagan years I doubt they'd have mounted such a robustly independent course because Reagan's goons and their patrons in the oil industry would have suppressed it.

I mention that because I remember very well listening to a public radio program in which the journalist Elizabeth Drew (bless her, still with us at 90 and, I gather still working) was asked about the controversy and the fears that Saudi Arabia might mount another oil embargo like it had earlier in the decade, causing economic havoc.   The film was said to violate their customs and cultural practices.   Elizabeth Drew said,  well, the United States has our customs and cultural practices and one of those was that the government didn't meddle in the free press.   No doubt you, as I did then, smiled and nodded in agreement with that wise observation from a nationally respected journalist.  But, as I noted, that was in 1980 and that distinction was already breaking down through the corporate ownership and control of the mass media - which PBS and NPR were already influenced by - and which now, under the billionaire-buying of the media, such as Bezos buying, gutting and discrediting  Elizabeth Drew hometown paper and the Ellisons have been doing what they and Bari Weiss have been doing at CBS and are about to do at CNN.  I could mention virtually every other major newspaper and network in the country and the erasure of the line between billionaires and multi-millionaires and their companies and Republican-fascist run government.   And I would include, very much, the still family owned 2026 New York Times which, in 1980 would certainly have been considered a journalistic whore house.   As I understand she still writes for them on occasion,  well for the Book Review.  I don't know if she has commented on that destruction of her profession,  I don't follow that kind of journalism much, these days. 

The "free press" isn't a human being, it isn't an animal, it doesn't have rights.  It is an artificial entity, a corporation, corporations cannot have rights,  they are given privileges that the idiots of the First Congress,  Madison among them, misnamed "rights" and their stupidity was obvious in giving them that privilege without stipulating they only got that to the extent that they served equality,** democracy and the public good.   It is among the most glaring of stupidities in the so-called Bill of Rights, along with the idiotically worded Second Amendment which is now a license for mass murderers to bear arms. 

There should be no "right to lie" tolerated in the media.   If you fear that would suppress "opinion journalism" WELL FOR FUCKSAKE YES!  LET'S SUPPRESS IT!   It's destroyed the reporting of fact and sunk the journalistic collection of fact.   It has led us to this hell we are in right now. 

* At best you might consider it a very unjournalistic drama-documentary with a lot of reenactment of interviews of those too fearful to appear on camera and, as I recall, some dramatic scenes, including the executions.   Though, as I recall, they presented it as the princess being beheaded when she was shot by firing squad.   Presented as a documentary, it was actually a somewhat abysmal exercise for what would become a far better series of investigative journalism,  Frontline.   If you're specifically interested in that 46 year old controversy and what it tells about the dangers of journalism depending on fictionalization widely mistaken for reporting of fact,  the only slightly less troubling presenting of fact through fictionalized narrative and the enormous danger to telling the truth of that being dependent on the largess of oil and other malignant corporations you can read this interesting and informative paper at the Frontline website.  

**  Madison was not in favor of a bill of rights, he was forced to promise one to his constituents in Virginia in order to gull them into voting to adopt the Constitution.   Once he did that he had to deliver as a member of the First Congress but it should never be imagined that he or his fellow slave-holders and crooked financiers in the First Congress ever meant any of it to serve equality or, really, democracy.   It is one of the ironies of the adoption of the Constitution how Madison and the rest of the framers constantly expressed their fears of majorities when the government they have set up has given us the tyranny of the minority, especially that minority they were most fearful for, the wealthy, the white, the male, the WASP.    I'll add the most rural over the large majority as can be seen in the putrid distortion that the Senate is in which the smallest 21 states have more 39 times more representation  than the state of California.   And you can make comparisons to other large population states as compared to the least populous states.   Not to mention that now, under the Roberts Court reinstatement of voter suppression, many of the states, including the third largest of Florida, is actively bringing back the worst of anti-democracy denial of representation to very large percentages of their own populations.   

Note:  Elizabeth Drew's book about Nixon's Watergate scandal, the investigation of it and his resignation,   Washington Journal, is vastly superior to the famous All The Presidents Men.   It is a sign of how degenerate our media and our culture is that it is largely ignored or forgotten as that far inferior, cinematically structured (at Robert Redford's suggestion) and egotistical account of two reporters investigation is constantly referenced.  I am not going to pretend I don't think a lot of that is due to it being two guys own story instead of a woman's factual reporting.   As with "Death of a Princess"  when you make a movie of something, the facts tend to suffer. 

Death Wish

ANYONE ELSE GET THE FEELING that the Republican-fascists in Congress are hoping Trump is dead before they get back from the Republican-fascist called vacation they're all on?   I mean the latest one,  I've lost count how many of those there have been in this Congress. 

"What do you want to replace free speech with?" - A Response

"FREE SPEECH" IS ANOTHER PHRASE that has come to mean something it should never have meant.   As I pointed out it has come to mean a "right to lie."   It has also come to mean a right to swindle, a right to deceive, a right to con, a right to encourage the worst in us for political gain by the liars, the con men the swindlers, the haters and the greedy.  

Free speech in so far as it would be important enough to codify in a constitution should mean a right to tell the truth.   But that right also comes with responsibilities,  the first of those in a democracy which also applies to all rights,  you can only safely exercise that right to the extent you accept the right of others to tell the truth.   

Above all, it also comes with the serious responsibility to discern what is true, without that just meaning what you want to be true or what you will assert to be true without caring if it is really true.    It also does not mean what lawyers an judges and "justices" twist that into,  something between seeming plausibility to whatever someone they want to pretend to believe says.   That's why you can have the spectacle of the Roberts Court pretending to believe that John Sauer's lying  assertion of presidential immunity which includes a president having a right to commit murder - AS TRUMP WAS EFFECTIVELY GIVEN IN TRUMP V USA.  

I'll say that everything Trump II has done, from the worst such as  the murders of Latin American fishermen, the murders of Iranian school girls, and down to the merely sensibly and aesthetically appalling acts of demolishing the East Wing or painting the Reflecting Pool (which, by the way, should never have been installed, it was a really stupid idea because it wouldn't work in DC) or Trump's Nazi style arch to himself IS A DIRECT PRODUCT OF THE SIX REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS ON THE SUPREME COURT WHO ACHIEVED THEIR UNITARY EXECUTIVE.    If it hadn't been Trump doing it, it would have been the next Republican-fascist.   Imagine what Nixon,  Reagan, Bush I or Bush II would have done with such immunity from the law.   I dare say even a Biden or Obama would have probably given in to the temptation to use such power in ways that the Republican-fascists on the Court wouldn't like,  though, I'm absolutely certain,  that those thugs in black robes would have found some lawery-liarly way to make THAT different. 

Anyone who believes Trump isn't getting kickbacks from the contractors who are being hired to do everything from the demolition to turning the pool a putrid shade of aqua is too gullible to take seriously.   Though it's certain the courts will, in many cases, pretend to be that gullible.   Let's stipulate that watching the lawyers, judges and, worst of all, "justices" over the past twenty-five years has led to me truly and honestly hating that profession. 

When you magnify the "right to lie," the "right to spread hate,"  the "right to appeal to the worst in People"  the "right to con People,"  with the "right of the free press" (which is a legal myth giving "rights" to a corporate entity which cannot have rights, which adhere only to natural living beings) it makes everything under our idiot Constitution worse and the criminal regime of law, habit, norms and perverted scruples that have arisen out of that poisoned ground,  it does nothing but magnify the danger enormously. 

When you combine all of this in the line of rulings that flow from Sullivan v New York Times, the truly evil Buckley v Valeo (which made money = speech and so gave billionaires and millionaires millions and billions more of it than mere mortals have) and combine those with other such novelties such as in Citizens United,  the whole thing destroys equality and democracy.   

All of that is a creation of lawyers and judges and "justices" whose profession is based in lying for the maximum profit and benefit of whoever the lawyers, judges and, worst of all, "justices" want to profit and benefit.  And in a lot of cases, that means nothing more than those who are paying them.    And along the way,  they can get other pudding headed lawyers, judges and "justices" who mistake the norms and scruples of their dishonest profession as a substitute for morality, to pretend that they are wallowing in virtue.   AND THEY GET ON TALK SHOWS AND ON THE MEDIA THEY'VE FREED TO LIE AND PEDDLE THAT BULL SHIT TO THE STUPIDER MEMBERS OF THE LEFT who then are afraid to reign in the evils of lying, peddling hatred, conning people by appealing to the worst of them, etc.

There is no political or legal exposition of "rights" which is safely executed without there being overriding limits in morality and, in that first and foremost prerequisite for real democracy and legitimate government and law, equality.    The milieu of late 18th century "enlightenment" scientism and materialism (and atheism) - as was the real faith of most of the framers or they wouldn't have been slave holders and crooked financiers - was probably about the worst time in Western history to be framing such articles to be in a constitution.   The First Congress under the, by then, cynical slave-holder Madison did a really crap job of it.   They gave us minor and vague late 18th century poetry of the kind that harkened back to the minor poetry of earlier in the century.  It turns out to suck in reality. 

There, I said it. 

You Might Want To Watch This Ten Minute Documentary On The Fraud That TP Is Before Youtube Removes It

 Inside Turning Point's Ghost Chapters

It's An Irony of History

that the British Labour Party was started by the Christian socialist and lay preacher turned politician Keir Hardie and it's being destroyed under the government of the atheist and former "civil liberties" lawyer-liar Keir Starmer.    The common name is the irony,  I think the fact that it was someone who is a professional liar and atheist may, while not being a pattern is, at least, not all that surprising.  

If I had time I might go into the example of how, as Keir Hardie learned that the Liberal Party he had joined sought to use the working People to get their vote by betraying them collapsed and a new party of, by and for workers needed to replace them,  perhaps what is happening as the British Green Party seems to be, at least for now, rising as Starmer and his fellow crooks, thugs and traitors may have destroyed the Labour Party.    I think that original history of its formation has some important lessons for the Democratic Party here, especially what I see as the danger its lawyers pose for the kind of sweeping change we need.  And the current implosion of Labour in Britain is a practical example of something like that.  Lawyers, almost to a person, are trained to serve those with the most money,  I never knew anyone who went to law school who didn't have the goal of making a lot of money and those are the ones who they serve to get it.   That is so baked into the legal profession that its bias and corrupt intent form a kind of substitute for what we might consider "ethics,"  itself a concept I think is inferior to actual morality.   Most of those I've met who went to law school and decided to not practice law did so because they were disgusted with what the job consisted of in that regard.  

While I am entirely in favor of the government operating under egalitarian secularism,  mistaking secularism as any kind of an adequate substitute for revealed morality tends to lead to amorality and, in the fullness of time, immorality.    That's how the whited sepulchers in black robes sitting on the Supreme Court can do such evil under that kind of substitution, lying the entire time.   It's the kind of thing that they used to invent that moral atrocity as virtue "the right to lie."  It's how I first noticed the depravity of that concept hearing a far more moral lawyer using it as if it were not an apparent and perverted contradiction of morality. 

This is a response - I seem to be getting some new and especially angry hate mailers, not the usual ones.

Update:  You might want to listen to this interview with Paul Holden who has written an extensively documented revelation of the corruption of the billionaire-millionaire financed campaign to take over the Labour Party and turn it into the obscene atrocity it's become under Keir Starmer.   

This passage about how "antisemitism" under the kind of distortion that the IHRA got so many governments to turn int to law turned it into was used to target members of the Labour left MANY OF THEM JEWS, SOME OF THEM WHO LOST MANY FAMILY MEMBERS IN THE HOLOCAUST as being "antisemites"   Here's the second example that Paul Holden gives.  Here's my quick and dirty editing of the Youtube automated transcript:

I end the section on the HRC report because what I what I think is that is the way that antisemitism, the Labour Party was treated by all factions, but I think particularly by the Labor Party's rightwing was it produced all these incredibly toxic malignant outcomes. One of those toxic malignant outcomes was the number of Jewish people who are repeatedly almost systematically accused of anti-semitism in the Labour party which I think is outrageous. And the the the example that that I have in the book and it still sometimes it upsets me so much when I read this example is a woman by the name of Reva Joffy. Um and Reva Joffy lived in Keir Stamer's constituency, was part of the Labour party, knew Keir Starmer personally, uh went to branch meetings and CLP meetings and uh she's accused of anti-semitism in 2021 and she receives her accusation of antisemitism on her deathbed, literally on her deathbed. She's got a couple days left to live,  who's been suffering from like a a terminal illness and she was this you know very vivacious woman and she's basically talking about how she gets this letter accusing of antisemitism and the allegation against her accusing of anti-semitism is that she called Israel an apartheid  state.  but she has to answer on her deathbed the allegation she's antisemitic that's it.  But she has basically said that Israel is in apartheid state so it's one of the last things she does before she dies is that she writes this letter And she says, "What are you thinking? What are you thinking doing? What are you doing? Of course, I'm an anti-semite. This is a mad mad mad thing to send me." And this is one of the last things she has to do in her life. 

Now, I have the party files that show how that complaint was initiated. One of the complaintants in her case was a man by the name of David Goldstein. David Gorstein is not real.  David Gorstein is a madeup name. David Goldstein is the madeup name and identity of a man by the name of Ewan Phillips who's a spokesperson for labor against anti-semitism right now you  Ewan Phillips has been approached about this he's been asked and he said yes I've created this identity.  I never pretended to be Jewish while I was doing so,  although I think most people will see that name or a lot of people will read that name and say Goldstein sounds pretty Jewish so what you have is you have somebody who's made up the name David Goldstein to submit a complaint of anti-semitism against an elderly Jewish woman who said Israel is an apartheid state. That elderly Jewish woman on her deathbed is investigated of anti-semitism. One of the last things she ever writes is a letter to the Labor Party explaining why she's anti-semitic and then she dies.

And it gets even worse. It gets even worse because her son, who agreed to be interviewed for the book and and I I met him in person for the first time last night and was very emotional, was deeply deeply offended by the situation. And he he was so hurt by the fact that his mother was being accused of antisemitism and died under investigation for antisemitism that he wrote to the Labour Party and he said to the Labour Party repeatedly, "Please, she's dead. She's clearly not anti-semitic. Please close this case.  Please just tell me that at least internally you've resolved this. You've closed this. You've dealt with it somehow. I want to get some closure on this. And nobody has ever responded to him in the Labor Party. He wrote directly to Keir Starmer and Starmer didn't respond. Then he got friends in his constituency who knew Keir Starmer to write to Keir Starmer and Stamer diddn't respond. And those are the sort of malignant outcomes that come I think from the way in which antisemitism in the Labor Party was used and and abused. And I think and the reason I tell that story is because I think it speaks to the HRC example of them recklessly, you know, they they say this is very serious and then within half an hour they're undermining the seriousness of what they've said is serious by breaking all those rules and then this sort of thing happens.  I think it speaks

to like a like a an almost an inhumanity but also a just a total [lack?] of like ethical scruples about like a really fundamental key material issue that people do face antisemitism.  It undermines the fight against antisemitism so profoundly that I sometimes I'm just I'm just gobsmacked by it. I just I sometimes I don't know how to even interpret it and understand it.

You should listen to the entire thing, especially the other story of a Jewish member of the Labour left being similarly targeted and how the man behind the throne,  the putrid Morgan McSweeney used "antisemitism" largely manufacturing the "antisemitism" crisis in Labour during the leadership of Jeremey Corbyn,  then used the excuse of having to heal the wounds that McSweeney and Starmer and their moneybags created and publicized to support and cover up the crimes of the Israeli government and military.   It is certainly one of the most sordid and morally depraved political stories I know of under what is called "liberal democracy."    You can also listen to the journalist, Owen Jones, noting how his profession is as much a part of that corruption as could be possible. 

Pity That They Didn't Include This In The Protestant Canon Of The Bible It's So True And Apt

WATCHING THE DROOLING IDIOT who rules the United States and who our idiot Constitution keeps in office as he rushes us headlong into total disaster,  I thought of this passage from what I grew up with calling The Book of Wisdom, more widely known as Sirach, these days. 

5 Whoever loves gold won’t be declared just,
    and whoever pursues profits
    will be led astray by them.
6 Many have been ruined because of gold,
    and their destruction has met them head-on.
7 It’s a stumbling block for those
who are possessed by it,
    and it will take
    every senseless person captive.

 Sirach 31:5-7  Common English Bible

It's not a perfect work but it's got its moments.   This is one of those. 

The Fine Congressman Barney Frank Has Died

BARNEY FRANK IS SOMEONE I AGREED WITH on many of the most important issues of the day and I also, generally agreed with him on the strategy of doing what was possible, making progress when that was possible without getting too far out ahead of where the majority of voters seemed to be.   "Seemed" does a lot of work in that formulation because I know I'm not that good at knowing what is really possible on many issues and,  I dare say, as good as he was Barney Frank wasn't infallible in discerning that, either.   Despite my regret at the successful use of marriage equality for Lesbians and Gay men in 2004 by Repubilcan-fascists to thwart Democrats taking the House until 2006 and possibly toppling the criminal regime of Bush II,  I was rather stunned at how fast that issue moved forward despite everything.   I still think we'd be far, far ahead if Democrats had won the elections that year, we wouldn't have the fascist Supreme Court who are always willing to send us back to what should now be called John (as in "Roberts") Crow,  the state nationalizing Womens' bodies, turning a Republican-fascist criminal, insurrectionist and fascist into an immune monarch and the rest of it.   If marriage equality had waited two years and it had not led to the fascists winning that election, all of those groups, including LGBTQ+ People would be far better off. 

Frank was a capitalist, he made some statements in favor of inequality as a force that fuels economics, which I absolutely reject.   I am a radical egalitarian and a democrat and a Christian socialist, though I don't think the word is useful for similar reasons laid out in my morning post.   I had some serious disagreements with him over economic and financial policy.   Though many of the things he promoted and pushed and got adopted into law made things far more equal, far more democratic and were in line with many of the goals of Christian socialism.  

He'd recently relocated to Maine, living about ten miles from me.  I don't know how closely he followed Maine politics but his endorsement of Janet Mills strikes me as a mistake, though we will see in November.   I think the failure of her campaign, which was hardly a campaign, may well have made things a lot easier for Susan Collins.   I had occasion to look at the past races with a number of far better politicians, such as Tom Allen,  Chellie Pingree and Joe Brennan lost to her.    I will repeat, I've never seen anyone who has excited voters in Maine like Graham Platner has.   I think that he is an economic populist with a strong sense of egalitarian fairness has done what conventional politics isn't going to do.  Barney Frank, whatever else he was, was a master of conventional politics.  

He was also very funny, very fast and witty and,  not infrequently, wise.   A collection of his witticisms,  even those whose context put a time limit on the appreciation for them, would be worth assembling.   You'd have to know a lot of the history of the 1990s and the attempts of Republicans during the Gingrich era to bring down Bill Clinton to get many of the zingers he got off during the interminable hearings.   The exchange when he tied some scumbags that Clinton's administration were stupid enough to keep on when they could have fired them when they came to office, as, in fact, every Republican administration did, was epic.   Him finally asking the would be "good Republican" Jim Leach of Iowa, "What's a nice guy like you doing in a party like this," still makes me smile. 

I suspect that one thing he found out was that there is a heaven and,  I'd guess, to his surprise he was let in.   I liked him very much.   I already missed him in so many of the hearings that have happened in the past 14 years.   My condolenses to his husband and his sister the estimable Ann Lewis.  

Hate Mail - The Word That Has Really Changed In Definition Is The "Z" Word And That Was The Doing Of The Zionists Themselves.

TO BE A ZIONIST IN 2026 is to support genocide, apartheid, the use of torture and, as it is being more covered by mainstream media, sexual torture and rape.   I would like to see the percentage of Zionists who have condemned all of those - wait, I would like to see any evidence that any of that has happened under the guise of Zionism in 2026.   

The IHRA in its attempt to shield the Israeli government by distorting the word "antisemitism" to mean the condemnation of the crimes against humanity, the war crimes, the apartheid and Lebesraum policies and practices of the Israeli government has made the word mean absolutely nothing.

Now they're turning the term "blood libel" into the same thing,  a term that used to mean a specific thing being turned into a shield and weapon to prevent anyone discussing the documented crimes - OFTEN GLEEFULLY DOCUMENTED BY MEMBERS OF THE IDF, THEIR SUPPORTERS, "SETTLERS" AND MEMBERS OF THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT - and accusations awaiting investigation made by sources whether of unknown credibility or of highest credibility.  

I'm not much bothered by being called names, to start with, I'm especially not much bothered by being called out with such words turned meaningless through such transparently dishonest motivations.   

What you are is a supporter of the genocide, apartheid, torture, sexual torture and rape committed by a government.   The kind of thing which was rightly condemned when the crimes of the Nazis were exposed, the crimes of the Stalinists, the crimes of the various fascist governments in Latin America, in Africa, Asia, etc.   I'm just treating Israel like I would any other state.   You see, unlike you,  I'm against all of that everywhere, every time, no matter what the country pretends it is.   

The Potentially Pandemic Effects Of Us Electing A Malicious Idiot Crook And Him Appointing A K Guzzling Billionaire Crook

 to slash government funds.   

Are Left Channels On Youtube Being Targeted To Drive Them Out Of Business?