Susan Collins make her excuses for voting for Brett Kavanaugh upon whom the NYT based its sandbagging reporting about Graham Platner.
You can hear it in her own words.
The NYT has to be held accountable for its Republican ratfucking now and for literally decades in the past. If it were 1972, they'd probably be doing it for Nixon working with Gordon Liddy and his goons.
THE WORD UP HERE IN MAINE is that the woman who made the NYT published allegations about Graham Platner being "rough" with her is a Susan Collins supporter but it wouldn't surprise me. According to the Bangor Daily News, hardly famous as a liberal paper here:
Platner campaign has called Fifield, who works for a conservative group, “a longtime GOP operative who’s dedicated her career to electing Republicans.”
“She’s the person who’s been telling people this from the beginning,” Platner said on Thursday, referring to the claim that he knew about his chest tattoo.
If that is accurate, the NYT basing any part of its reporting on what she claims just shows what a rag the NYT is and that its credibility should have gone with its history of sandabagging Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2016 election WITH FALSE REPORTING as it should have decades earlier with its similar reporting of lies and innuendos and clearly Republican favoring "reporting" and "opinion journalism." I have pointed out for decades now that Hillary Clinton, among her other accomplishments, IS THE MOST THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATED AND EXONERATED PERSON IN AMERICAN HISTORY, the goddamned NYT was some of the worst of those hurling everything they could against her and it all proving THROUGH TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF CONGRESSIONAL AND "JUSTICE" DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATIONS, PROVING IT WAS FALSE. They're doing the same thing, in a smaller way, against Graham Platner.
What them trying to get Susan Collins back in is protecting the Sulzberger's and other mega-rich NYT connected millionaires and billionaires stake in the Republican-fascist tax giveaways, as, indeed, their role in sandbagging Joe Biden with lies and innuendo were.
Graham Platner has, also, released the fact that he exposed his infamous tattoo, which he and I'll bet easily 99% of normal American's would think was a "skull and crossbones" at his brothers' wedding to a Jewish Woman, in front of her Jewish family, and pointed out that he'd never have done that if he knew that it was also associated with Nazism. To most Americans a skull an crossbones are more likely to be associated with pirates and, or so I was told BY SOMEONE FROM MAINE WHO'D NEVER HEARD OF A TOTENKOPF
Anyone who puts any trust in the NYT is as stupid as anyone who would put any trust in FOX Lies or the Sinclair group. They're taking dictation from Republican operatives, for fucksake.
The other day I was thinking about how Andrew McCabe was about the only G man I could think of who I respected at all, and today I realized that he kind of looked like one of the men I found very attractive, Gildas Boclé who is also one of my favorite bass players. I don't think that's the reason I respect Mr. McCabe, that was because of his integrity and honesty. Though the looks don't hurt. I look at them and think, oh, to be younger, sort of, again. I guess that's a pride month themed post, if not a true confession. My personal life doesn't get much more tabloidy than that.
I also found on an old drive three much earlier Youtubes of duo performances of Gildas Boclé and the spectacularly fine guitarist Nelson Veras, which aren't online anymore. Back then Nelson Veras was playing with an enormously long thumbnail on his right hand. It's kind of strange looking but he played spectacularly well. I didn't buy one of the wonderful Godin nylon string electrics that he played but I did buy one of their much less expensive parlor guitar models, the Motif. If you buy one, string it with lighter gague strings than it comes with, it's a great guitar but my bridge came off during a dry spell. It's a good guitar but that was a real pain in the neck.
HERE IS HIS instructional video on how to reproduce Kristi Noem's makeup look.
As you may remember, when those pictures of Bryon Noem's play time balloon breast pics were made public, I said that if he watched Landon Reid's videos he'd have done what is so seldom done in drag, managing to look classy. I've learned more about makeup in the past several months than I ever knew (or wanted to know) and it's pretty impressive how much someone so young does know about that and many other things. I've also posted from his series of creepy conservative men who go into his direct messaging because they mistake him for a woman. I'll post some of those too over the next few weeks.
Just for the record, he identifies as a gay man who dresses in drag, not a Transwoman. I used to wonder why drag artists so seldom went for a classy look or, even more so, why they never went for the "woman who wears sensible shoes" look. I'd like to see what he'd do in that latter regard as he has mastered the classy drag look. For the record, you find those in his "Creepy Conservative Men Who Come Into My DM Because They Think I'm A Woman" series. Not in this one where he reproduces the look of right wing Women and men, most of whom are rich or would be rich trash.
I LOVE HUNTER BIDEN and have nothing but contempt for Jake Tapper.
Keith Edwards' video from late last night, in which he reads Hunter Biden's tweets saying he recently celebrated his seventh anniversary of sobriety, for which I will praise Mr. Biden for publicizing. With all the cultural AND EVER MORE SO COMMERCIAL encouragement to use addictive substances and engage in addictive behaviors, I SAY WE NEED ALL THE POSITIVE PRESENTATION OF SOBRIETY AND NON-ADDICTION AS POSSIBLE. Figured I should say that after the topic of yesterday's first post.
Many happy and sober returns of the day, Hunter Biden. Sobriety is such a better life than the opposite. We need for everyone to hear that truth being told.
He also goes after that asshole, Tapper, who went after Dr. Jill Biden for her book which contradicts his piece of crap that claimed Joe Biden was mentally disabled, something that asshole, Tapper, doesn't do in the same way that the media doesn't do much for the most clearly mentally ill, and now also demented and dangerous president the United States has ever had.
Before going on more, here's the video.
If he used a 2028 run to go after Republicans and hammer them in his generally clear headed way, and he promised at the start to support whoever DEMOCRATS chose to run, I'd be in favor of it. We need someone to run other than Gavin Newsom, who does not have the backs of the destitute and the poor and wouldn't be good on clawing back the jillions given to billionaires. That's a deal breaker for me. Though I will vote for whoever the Democrat is because I know whoever the Republicans run will be far, far, entirely far worse. Something the legacy media, including cabloid crap, would only be too happy with, aged expat Hollywood heartthrobs who have the money to bug out to a vineyard in Provence, too.
Thrasaline - What if a toy take 'em i'th' heels now, and they run all away, and cry the Devil take the hindmost?* Beaumont and Fletcher: Philaster; Or, Love Lies a Bleeding
AS A CRITIC of the kind of "classical liberalism" which takes its meaning from the 18th century "enlightenment" instead of the earlier Scriptural meaning which was based in liberal provision for the destitute and poor and unfavored, the weak of mind, etc. one of the things I most despise about it is the lie that people are to always be taken as "rational actors" or "rational agents" and that the law, the legal system and politics is to always pretend that they are and every choice they make is to be considered in terms of a formal contract.
What that is is lawyer-lies to argue that those their wealthy clients entrap, rob, destroy through unillegalized theft and enslavement are merely giving those pretended to be rational agents what they want. Well, in some cases that is arguably the case though in those cases when corporations and individuals use that most notably successful but not all that insightful areas of psychology, the PR industry, to tempt, lie, gull, entrap and fleece People who are vulnerable, lawyers, judges and, ultimately that most corrupt body of all US lawyers, "justices" pretend to not understand exactly what is going on. They simply take the attitude "not my problem" a they act for the crooks and con men, those whose business is based on even the worst of conning, entrapping, robbing and destroying those on the basis that those vulnerable to those consciously used tactics are "rational agents" even though the entirety of human history proves that is a lie. That was understood from time immemorial as the story of Eve being gulled by the snake and Adam, the dope, going along with it is the quintessential model of that.
I have told you about the People in my family destroyed by alcoholism, I suspect nearly every family has closer or more distant relations about whom that same story could be told. I didn't tell you of my sister whose death was certainly hastened and made worse by her inhalation of second-hand smoke from her husband and, tragically, enough, her children. And now I have another family member, an adoptive nephew, who I found out yesterday has fallen victim to online gambling to ruinous, perhaps eventually, suicidal effect - we're worried about that. I won't go into details except to say that I strongly suspect he's not going to pull out of it, he's the kind who is vulnerable to such things. I know this won't get back to him so I'll tell you that much.
That was one of the things I disagreed with the late Barney Frank about more strongly than many other things we disagreed about, in looking for quotes from him in support of his notable and, I hold, infamous support for that dangerous, non-productive, and known to be addictive industry, a quick Duck Duck search for that showed that gambling sites and magazines widely noted his passing as a champion of their industry. I'll pass by most of what I read to give you some of this article that show what I mean in terms of such "classical liberalism."
Barney Frank, the former Congressman known for his push to legalize online poker, has passed away. His efforts sparked debate among advocates and detractors alike, revealing differing views on his impact and methods during his tenure.
A Divided Legacy
Frank's history in Congress is marked by his controversial lobbying efforts. Supporters hailed him as a pivotal figure in making online poker accessible, but critics accused him of being more of a con artist than a true crusader. "He took cash to lobby; he wasn't very effective," one commentator noted.
Despite this, his legacy in gambling legislation remains significant. The regulation of online poker and betting has progressively shaped the industry, moving it closer to legitimacy.
Note that sentence "He took cash to lobby; he wasn't very effective," I would like to know how much of that cash was in the form of campaign donations, a direct consequence of the corruption that the ACLU and NYCU and other "civil liberties" groups had a hand in bringing when they supported the Supreme Court decision that made "money=speech" and destroying CLEAN ELECTION legislation in Buckley vs Valeo. I recall Frank noting in his witty way that politicians were pretended to be the only group of human beings who were, the Court and "civil libertarians" pretended were to be expected to take large amounts of money without giving anything in return. Only, unlike me, I don't recall Frank ever admitting that it was the Court and "civil libertarians" who were peddling that lie. I don't, by the way, think it enhances Frank's moral reputation that he clearly saw that lie but went along with it when it came to the gambling industry. Such are the moral compromises that come with such liberalism as opposed to the older form of it, such "classical liberalism" such "liberty."
And later the article points to more of how that corruption is baked into our "liberal democracy."
A New Era for Online Poker
As the online poker landscape continues to evolve, discussions around regulation are expected to gain traction after Frank’s passing. There's speculation that additional states might push towards legalization to tap into potential tax revenue. Expect state legislators to rethink their positions as public interest increases.
I'm old enough to remember that it was the one state that my state borders, New Hampshire, that used to be the only state that had a state lottery. And that was to "support education" because, famously lacking both a state income and sales tax, all of the support for government fell onto things like the state liquor store monopoly and local property taxes. As politicians started running exclusively on "cutting taxes" - and never forget, New Hampshire is probably the most Republican of the New England states - this is the kind of thing they have turned to. And it certainly didn't remain just to fund "education." But, then, these days my state is as much in the thick of that as any, with state approved casinos. I'm told the one close to me, which we were told would bring in lots and lots of out of state gamblers has pretty much only Maine license plates in the parking lot.
Crossover from History: The Shift in Civil Rights
Looking back, the civil rights movement offers an interesting parallel. Just as figures like Barney Frank sparked discussions on gambling, civil rights leaders illuminated the ethical ambiguities in politics. Both movements reveal tension between progressive changes and pushback from more traditional factions.
First, the use of "progressive changes" to describe a libertarian position on gambling is historically ironic and journalistically inept because gambling, along with such things as prostitution and drinking, was one of the foremost targets of the progressive era's political attempt to regulate it, if not wipe it out. That was a reaction, in all three cases, to the actual destructive consequences in real lives of all three. The "tradition" in the United States, at least in so far as alcohol and gambling, had been hard libertarian. I have, of course, generated some heat by pointing out there is nothing about the certain consequences of such things, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual enslavement, alcoholism, the consequences that come with drinking even among those who aren't alcoholics, which can be considered to be a matter of a "right" to suffer them. And even more so when those and similar issues are combined as they so often are in the prostitution and porn industries, the incidence of addiction and suicide and murder in that bastion of "civil liberties" championship is really rather telling as to the actual character of that ideology.
In American history, it was those who insisted on having a realistic view of such "liberties" such ""rights"" who were the ones who weren't in any way tied to tradition. I've seen all three fairly closely, in those I've known, I've know people who were part of the porn industry, one of the first men I knew who died of AIDS was a porn "model." I have a grand-niece who became an addict and, as her own mother told it to me, "a blow-job prostitute living beneath a bush in the Fens, in Boston." She was one of the luckier ones, though it did result in her contracting hepatitis C, she has, so far, successfully been treated for her opiate addiction and is under treatment and working a job. She is, by the way, the only one in my very large family who has had a serious addiction problem who has succeeded in staying off of it for, now, more than a decade. The alcoholics in my family, with possibly one exception, have, uniformly, only stopped when they died from it. I thank God with some regularity that none of them have killed anyone in a car accident. We don't have a lot of experience with gambling addictions in my family, the superstitious belief in luck isn't notably strong in the strain of Irish Catholicism we were brought up in. At least not to the extent we'd bet money on it.
And getting back to the role that such liberties-loving law-making is peddled, we were told all kinds of yarns in that regard, one of them which I believe I remember Barney Frank repeating was that "it's better to legalize it and regulate it." If he didn't say it someone else certainly did because I've heard it continually since I started paying attention to politics in my infancy. Well, if there's one thing you can count on in the intrinsically corrupt, "civil liberties" "corporate person-hood" "money=speech" dirty money politics that the "civil liberties" industry and the most corrupt of all the branches of the Federal government, the Supreme Court have brought us to, it is that any attempt at regulation will either not be allowed at all, or will fall, whether under Supreme Court ruling or by a more corrupt Congress and executive, as the industry involved seeks to get ever more favorable conditions for their money making. You can bet on even the most dangerous and ruinous and addictive activity tied to profits being ever more able to do that without having to worry much about regulation. THAT IS HOW TOTALLY CORRUPT OUR CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM IS.
* You hardly ever hear the answer to that.
Dion- Then the same Devil take the foremost too, and sowce him for his breakfast.
The consequences for libertarianism eventually hurt everyone, you can't depend on your "rational agency" to escape that for yourself. Don't be a sucker for that superstition.
Update: A lot of the current increase in addiction and its consequences is a direct result of the Supreme Courts "civil liberties" legislating from the bench. I haven't looked to see if the ACLU or other "civil liberties" lawyer groups weighed in on the case. That makes it a consequence of the Constitutional order and, worse the Marbury type of Supreme Court usurpation of law making (nullification being a part of law making) from the bench.
In 2018, a Supreme Court ruling struck down a federal sports betting ban, and gambling skyrocketed in subsequent years. Today, about 22% of Americans—and 48% of men ages 18–49—report having at least one online sportsbook account, according to the Siena Research Institute. As of December 2025, 31 states, plus Washington, D.C., allow for some form of online sports betting.
“We’re referring to it as the largest and fastest explosion of gambling the country has ever seen,” says Cait Huble, MA, MBA, director of public affairs for the National Council on Problem Gambling. “We’re a decade behind other addictions in terms of public understanding, which is going to lead to a lot of real-world harm.”
Gambling disorder falls in the same diagnostic category as drug and alcohol use disorders. One in five people with a gambling disorder attempt or complete suicide, an even higher risk than with other substance use disorders. Gambling tends to occur alongside other behavioral health conditions, such as problem alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, adds Christopher Welsh, MD, medical director of the Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling. Plus, mobile sports betting skews heavily toward younger male users, a population already facing higher rates of suicide and loneliness.
Identifying someone with disordered gambling can be tricky, and many people don’t know how or when to seek help, says University of Nebraska-Lincoln drug and alcohol educator Jon Gayer, PhD.
“You know when someone’s drunk,” he says. “You don’t know when someone’s stepped away and placed a $100 bet on the phone and then come back to dinner.”
But those behaviors can quickly devolve into problematic outcomes, says Elizabeth Thielen, LPC, a gambling counselor in Illinois. She’s listened to numerous accounts of students gambling away financial aid awards or blowing off their classes. Underage students will log on under a parent’s account or ask an older classmate to funnel bets through their app.
“They’re losing sleep, their attendance is slipping, and they’re being harassed and threatened if they owe money,” she says.
Taking it right to Susan Collins' voting record and her disgraceful deflection when that's put in her face. Blaming those who chose to serve instead of her many votes to support Republican-fascist wars of profit no matter how wrong, criminal and ruinous they were.
None of the previous Democrats who ran against her, some of them good politicians, would have been indelicate enough to say it this plainly. It's why many of the more genteel Democrats are nervous about him but most of us here are glad to hear it.
leads me to wonder if the destruction of the NASA rocket program, resulting in dependence on Elon and, he hopes, Bezos, was a product of Nixon's really, really, really stupid idea of the space shuttle, the design of which was altered by such things as the self-interest of Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch and industry based in Utah. I seem to remember one of the chief designers quit when such pressures got them to change the design from being made with titanium to aluminum, which is why they needed those ceramic tiles that caused the deaths and disasters and delays and cost overruns. I recall reading that such Senatorial involvement with things led to that decision.
After being kind of a space geek up until the end of the Apollo years, I can't say I've kept up much with it. So I don't really know the territory. It's the kind of thing you might think I'd depend on "AI" to help me research in a fraction of the time it would take me to do it the more reliable and old fashioned way, but, no.
Anyone know of any such reliable research into why we are depending on Elon and Bezos to such disastrous and ruinous and dangerous effect? Those billionaires and their fixation with their own junk!
on a larger screen to see what needed editing, I saw something that, to my shame, I hadn't noted before.
Notice how he put it, Oliver Ellsworth, CHIEF "justice," notable lawyer, jurist, framer and diplomat when he was talking of human beings IN TERMS OF THEM BEING ENSLAVED AND WORKED TO DEATH IN SUCH NUMBERS.
As slaves also multiply so fast in Virginia & & Maryland that it is cheaper to raise than import them,
"cheaper to raise than import them," like you'd say about radishes or lettuces. Literally human lives as commodities, the trade in which is to be a matter of economic advantage for the aristocrats, both financier and slave-holder-driver. Human beings as herd animals and objects for use and trade.
whilst in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary,
"FOREIGN SUPPLIES" are necessary where so many of them die from being worked to death in the "sickly rice swamps," the death rate exceeding the birth rate.
if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards S. Carolina & Georgia. Let us not intermeddle.
"Unjust towards S. Carolina and Georgia" UNJUST! TOWARDS THE SLAVE-HOLDERS IN THE TWO STATES! IF THEY DON'T ALLOW THEM TO IMPORT HUMAN BEINGS KIDNAPPED AND HUMAN TRAFFICKED, THE WHITE ARISTOCRATIC ELITE OF GEORGIA AND SOUTH CAROLINA, THE RICE BARONS ON THEIR WAY TO BEING AMONG THE RICHEST HUMAN BEINGS ON THE PLANET DUE TO THEIR SLAVING.
That is the kind of thinking that went into the founding, the framing the writing and adoption of the Constitution of the United States.
"Let us not intermeddle," in the same way the Roberts Court's New Taney Six doesn't want too "intermeddle" as the descendants of the slavers in the slave states prevent Black People, the descandants of the slaves who were treated that property from the possibility of getting their due representation in the Congress. No doubt on their way to giving a green ligtht to the full range of Black voter suppression that was the practice of the antebellum period and the Supreme Court sanctioned Jim Crow, now being revived in John (Roberts) Crow. Every one of the New Taney Six, Roberts, Alito, Thomas Goresuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett should have their names and reputations tied to Taney's and his Dred Scott majority every single time they're mentioned, individually and collectively.
I GOOGLED "what did James Madison say about slave revolts" and in glancing at the "AI" which I would rather not come up as it is an abominable use of resources and often just reguritates bad research from most often-clicked on sites and saw something that looked both familiar and a little dodgy. :
Kind Treatment as a Deterrent: Rather than just relying on force, Madison suggested to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the "danger of insurrections from foreign influence" should actually act as a "motive to kind treatment of the slaves". He believed avoiding excessive cruelty would reduce the likelihood of mass rebellions.
If the "AI" had the research skills of an intelligent high school Sophomore, he'd have looked for the primary document and read that. though it had been included in Madison's notes on the deliberation of the drafting of the Constitution, it wasn't something he said but was was part of what should be considered an infamous statement by Oliver Ellsworth (the drafter of much of Article 3 of the Constitution, the Judiciary Act, which gives us some the now more regrettable aspects of the judiciary, and the second Chief "justice" of the Supreme Court) in support of the importation of slaves because so many of them were worked to death in the rice swamps of South Carolina and Georgia. Essentially endorsing an act that would gain infamy when it was such as the Krupps and Farbens and others who worked slaves to death for their profit during WWII. It should be common knowledge that such thinking and intent as that went into the framing of the Constitution.*
Mr. ELSWORTH. As he had never owned a slave could not judge of the effects of slavery on character: He said however that if it was to be considered in a moral light we ought to go farther and free those already in the Country. -As slaves also multiply so fast in Virginia & & Maryland that it is cheaper to raise than import them, whilst in the sickly rice swamps foreign supplies are necessary, if we go no farther than is urged, we shall be unjust towards S. Carolina & Georgia. Let us not intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our Country. Provision is already made in Connecticut for abolishing it. And the abolition has already taken place in Massachusetts. As to the danger of insurrections from foreign influence, that will become a motive to kind treatment of the slaves.
Oddly, the "AI" links to the White House Historical Society website in a rather revealing article about how James and Dolly Madison treated the slaves held by them, it's not pretty reading though it's presented in probably as pretty a way as they dared to present it during the last decade. But in my quick reading of it I didn't find any reference to the passage quoted.
* Another reference given by "AI" in that search went to an NPR article dealing with the fact that the Second Amendment, far from being anything to do with freedom in the face of an oppressive government, was actually written for the benefit and safety of slave-holders in slave states who were afraid of slave rebellions.
It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising. And ... James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias — and those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts. ... The Second Amendment really provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed, that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings.
The drafting of the "Bill of Rights" included such "rights" as the right of slave-holders to suppress those held in slavery from attempting to do what the founders and framers had done, or rather the free Black men and landless white and recent immigrant men who formed the backbone of the Revolutionary Army had done for the slave-holders and aristocrats, fight for THEIR rights.
Maybe in the month leading up to the massive lie of the 250th, I should do more on the founding and framing. When you look at it with an eye to the fact that most of the framers and founders were deeply morally corrupt - as all slave-holders and financiers are - you can see why we are living with such corruption now.
It's a novella, not a play but it's what I got to listening to as I was looking for something to re-start the SNRD series I've let lapse since Trump II started. I always enjoy Simak's settings which you can imagine finding in some run-down section of a small town, the kind of place that doesn't have the slightest idea of fashion or sophistication.
If you're expecting George Clooney and his partner to write a play about this, I would suggest holding your breath might be dangerous for your health.
I DIDN'T CLICK ON THIS video yesterday when it started showing up on the sidebar while I was listening to the news. Once I did I have to ask why the ADL and other groups aren't required to register as agents of a foreign country, Israel, which is the largest recipient of US aid. I wonder what argument could be made that groups that worked in tandum with the Israeli government are under a legal requirement to register as agents of a foreign government. In looking at that for this post, I was surprised to find you don't have to get direct money from a foreign government to be a foreign agent.
What they are doing is exactly the same thing that Red Channels did, what other private groups did in drawing up blacklists starting in the late 1940s and targeting, among others, university and other teachers. What is clearly going on now is Americans are being put on a new blacklist and we are going through the current equivalent to the 1940s-60s red scare. WITH CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS OF THE HUAC VARIETY. If you think that term is too much, you can listen to the reading of this three year old article documenting that it is exactly what we are going through from The Nation.*
Professor Robinson is a sociology professor of global studies, with special expertise in Latin America. This interview largely focuses on his troubles in 2009 when two Jewish students took offense at critical material about Israel in his curriculum and reported him to local pro-Israel groups. Soon the full force of the national/international Israel lobby became involved and sought to get him fired, even including the head of the Anti-Defamation League (Abe Foxman) making a cross-country trip to convene with highest level university officials to get Robinson removed from its faculty.
Initially, Robinson was accused of being an antisemite until it was discovered that he was, in fact, Jewish.
In this interview, professor Robinson discusses the story of his struggle for academic freedom and how he nearly lost his faculty position because of critical material about Israel he presented to his class; widespread censorship and self-censorship about the Israel-Palestine conflict in the academic world; the declared “New Antisemitism” that is merely criticism of Israel and its policies; Israel’s activism in supporting despotic regimes in Latin America; the “dirty and underhanded” efforts by the Anti-Defamation League to control discourse about Israel; “eerie parallels” between the Nazi control of the Warsaw ghetto and Israeli control of Gaza (Robinson makes these comparisons 15 years ago); pro-Israel propaganda organizations on campus; the “tragedy” of widespread Jewish association and identification with the state of Israel; among other issues.
About seven years after this interview, in 2017, Robinson co-edited a book called “We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel's Critics.” Judging by information about this volume today on the internet, it seems – not surprisingly – to have to been largely ignored and never received much attention or media reviews.
* Here is some of what you can read at The Nation without having a subscription:
It was a scene reminiscent of the Red Scare days, of grainy black-and-white television images of political witch hunts by the old House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). But rather than hunting for disloyal communist sympathizers, committee members at early December’s hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce were instead hunting for university presidents disloyal to Israel. “Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?” quipped New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. “You can see the trap.”
What is missing from Congress are hearings into the decades of illegal anti-Palestinian espionage, covert action, and blacklisting of Americans within the United States by the Israeli government and its domestic collaborators—actions far more serious and damaging than campus semantics. As noted in my earlier articles for The Nation, they range from dispatching a secret agent to interfere in a presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump; to launching a covert operation within the US targeting academics and others who support a boycott of Israel; to conducting a massive operation to spy on and “crush” pro-Palestinian students throughout the country; to establishing a secret Israeli-run troll farm across the US to harass anyone critical of Israel; to hiring Americans to secretly spy on American students and report back to Israeli intelligence. And then there is Canary Mission, a massive blacklisting and doxxing operation directed from Israel that targets students and professors critical of Israeli policies, and then launches slanderous charges against them—charges designed to embarrass and humiliate them and damage their future employability. All secretly funded by wealthy Jewish Americans and Jewish American foundations.
Following the October 7 Hamas attack and the launch of Israel’s war in Gaza, members of Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (HPSC) sponsored a letter addressing the conflict. “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” it said. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced.” The letter was cosigned by 33 other student organizations and published in The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. Almost immediately, Canary Mission created online profiles for members of the Crimson’s editorial board (though a few likely already had one from when the Crimson endorsed divestment), along with profiles of the leaders of the HPSC and other campus clubs that cosigned the letter. The goal of the blacklist was to dox those named, encourage their harassment, and limit their future employment prospects.
Peter Thiel will give him his permission to resign as VP. Not with him getting this close to being in the position that Elon Musk was, having his puppet as president of the US with the dictatorial impunity that the Roberts Court gave Trump. Thiel will never be this close to that much power, ever again, and he's a psycopath with Musk sized dreams of world domination.
I don't think Vance would willingly give up his obviously excellent chance to be president once Trump croaks, which it's looking every day more likely he will before much more time has passed.
Whether or not Vance will run in 2028 is a more open question, it would depend on him grasping back some of he loss of support that has happened under the corruption and disasters that Trump II has brought to the Republican-fascists.
Me? I'm hoping Trump doesn't die. In my fantasy of fantasies he would survive the year, that a Democratic Congress with a super-majority of Democrats in the Senate, completing the impeachments that should have succeeded during Trump I and removing him from office in the utter shame and criminality that would serve the world, justice and American democracy the best. Then they could deal with Vance, who would probably pardon Trump, though he might be smart enough to understand that that was likely what cost Gerald Ford election to the presidency in 1976.
My greatest wish would be for Democrats in the house to replace their leader before that happens with someone who might be a better leader and a better third in line for the presidency. I'm not impressed with Jeffries, he's too much of a lawyer, too cautious, too establishment, too timid. I would be a lot more confident in Joe Neguse having that position.
BEFORE WATCHING THAT ARROGANT, CONCEITED LIAR AND FOOL let me point out that along with Viktor Orban and Steve Mnuchin, Bessent was a George Soros protogee. To show you how reliable that billionaire's judgement about "civil society" is.
I will add hypocrite, the FAGA asshole is a gay man married to a gay man with adopted children in a Republican-fascist state which, if Trump and the Republicans had their way, would be a marriage and adoption as illegal as Clarence Thomas' marriage were if his Constitutional theories had held.
I posted this because I hope that picture of he grinning asshole holding up the funny money with Trump's puss on it becomes his unofficial and perpetual portrait.
THAT MFer WHO ARGUED BUCKLEY V VALEO the ruling that made American elections safe for the kind of dirty money that forced Nixon to resign fifty two years ago, Joel Gora, is a member of the fascist Federalist Society and, so far as I can discern, the Cato Institute and has regularly lectured on free speechyness for those whore houses for oligachy. His career as a "civil liberties lawyer" stinks of promoting dirty politics on behalf of those who can pay very, very well and supporting some of the filthiest of filth, what the Federalist fascists have produced in their promotion of the likes of the Roberts Courts New-Taney six.
I've mentioned before that Ephraim London who, likewise, made his reputation on such "civil liberties" was the asshole who the liar and fabulist (not to mention the gal who tried to cheat Martin Luther King jr. out of a legacy left to him) Lillian Hellmann, hired when she brought suit against Mary McCarthy for telling the truth that she was a fucking liar. The hag didn't expect to win, she wanted to drag it out long enough to ruin McCarthy for telling the truth about her. That asshole lawyer also represented her when she was trying to steal the money Dorothy Parker left to MLK jr. in her will - Parker was sharp but she fell for Hellman's act.
Alan Dershowitz, well, I'll go into details if you're unfamiliar with that total asshole. But you can look him up. His "civil liberties" reputation was largely if not entirely a matter of arguing cases favoring porn. His more recent activities have included trying to get academics blackballed because he didn't like what they freely AND WITH GREAT CARE TO DOCUMENT wrote and said. Like so many a "civil libertarian" he likes to threaten to sue to try to intimidate but seldom, if ever, carries through.
I could go on naming names and giving particulars on the famous "civil libertarians" and their relationship with "free speech" and promoting filth in our political lives and law.
This has been a response.
Update: I take back "blackballed." What I should have said in regard to the Dersh is "blacklisted."
