All Quiet on the Western Front (2022): A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A fantastic film that tells a story that is as relevant today as it’s ever been.

It is morbidly ironic that as German director Edward Berger’s bleak and beautiful new remake of the classic World War I film All Quiet on the Western Front begins streaming on Netflix, that all is most definitely not quiet on Europe’s Eastern front.

It’s not insignificant that the movie, a remake of the 1930 Academy Award Best Picture winner based on the 1929 novel of the same name, which recounts the tale of a group of young German men intoxicated by the fantasy of fighting in World War I who are then eviscerated by the brutal reality of it, should premiere while a vicious war rages on Europe’s Eastern front between Ukraine and Russia.

The lesson of the book and all film iterations of All Quiet of the Western Front is that war is a fruitless, savage endeavor that, like an insatiable, gruesome beast, devours men’s bodies as it mangles their spirits and souls.

Of course, we know all of this to be true about war, and yet, we in the West, in the U.S. in particular, are such thoroughly disinformed, misinformed and propagandized Russo-phobic war fetishists and superhero fantasists that we convulse with glee at the notion of escalating the war in Ukraine – a war which we started via the U.S. backed Maidan coup and ensuing slaughter of ethnic Russians in the Donbas, up to and including calling for more muscular American military intervention and even the use of nuclear weapons.

This is all madness…but as All Quiet on the Western Front teaches us, all war is madness, and some form of extreme psychosis is required to participate in it. Berger’s two-and-a-half-hour film effectively captures this madness, from the young men’s giddy rush to enlist at all costs to their grim death sprint out of the open air coffin trenches and across the hell of no man’s land.

The movie is exquisitely and exceptionally photographed, and that cinematic beauty juxtaposed against the inhuman brutality of the behavior captured in the frame is jarring and deeply unnerving.

Berger also uses a technique which I almost always find off-putting but which works here, which is using modern music in a period piece. The music is a grinding, industrial guitar that accompanies the young German men as they take their first few steps out of the fantasy of war and into the reality of it. This music is used sparingly throughout, but it is remarkably effective in conveying the sense of this war, as is true of all wars, as being a mindless meat grinder, industrial in its level of dehumanization and carnage.

The opening of the film, of which I will refrain from revealing the specifics, is simple yet extraordinary in transmitting this same sensation of war as mass murder incorporated, and it sets the stage for the rest of the film to expound upon that thesis.

The battle scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front are realistic, disturbing and exceedingly well-executed. Director Berger and his cinematographer James Friend are able to maintain audience orientation while never sacrificing artistic vision. The battles look, and therefore feel, grounded, gritty and gruesome.

Cinematographer Friend masterfully lights and composes his frame not only in the battle scenes but in the quieter moments. There are shots of landscapes, trees and the sky in this film that would look right at home in a Malick movie or framed in a museum.

The acting, particularly Felix Kammerer as the lead Paul Baumer and Albrecht Schuch as Kat, are terrific as both men bring quiet intensity and sensitivity to their roles. Kammerer’s mastery of the thousand-yard stare and Schuch’s innate humanity elevate their performances and the movie.

The rest of the cast are subtle and superb as well, bringing life to what in lesser hands would be well-worn war movie stereotypes.

The film is not perfect though, as the narrative break aways to follow the ceasefire negotiations among the German contingent of bureaucrats, headed by the great Daniel Bruhl as Matthias Erzberger, feel like they should be in a different movie. These sections are interesting, but they break the spell of the film by removing the viewer from the myopic madness in the muck and mire of the front lines. I understand the desire to want to take a glimpse of things from 10,000 feet so to speak, but in this case, it works against the film’s better interests and drama.

That said, the rest of the movie is glorious as it vibrates with a sort of dramatic Malickian chaos mixed with existential inevitability that is captivating, compelling, exhausting and unnerving.

This movie should be mandatory viewing for Americans, the majority of whom are vociferous cheerleaders for the current war in Ukraine. These American idiots with Ukrainian flags in their Twitter bios are no different that the young German men at the center of All Quiet on the Western Front eager to prove their worth and courage, except, of course, that those Germans didn’t just pose and preen about war on social media, they actually went and fought and died in it.

The neo-con, armchair tough guys who’ve gotten us into every war of my lifetime, of which we’ve won none, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now Ukraine, are like the bloated and bloviating military bureaucrats in All Quiet on the Western Front as they’re eager for other men to pay dearly for the exorbitant faux-nationalist checks that their flag-waving egos were so excited to write. The neo-cons con is to destroy their host nation from within as they accuse dissenters from the self-destruction of being traitors (or in the case of Ukraine - Putin shills and apologists) . These nefarious neo-cons always demand other, more masculine, working class men sacrifice their bodies, minds and souls for the sake of the neo-con’s fragile eggshell egos and deep-seated genital insecurities.

If you follow media narratives throughout history, this war in Ukraine has all the markings of America’s typical modern war psyops/propaganda playbook. There’s scaremongering using the delusional domino theory about some expansionist enemy/ideology, be it communism (Vietnam), Islamism (Afghanistan/Iraq) or Putinism (Russia), that will conquer the earth if the U.S. don’t role play as Churchill to some new Hitler. And there’s always a new Hitler, an alleged madman who is a history breaking tyrant that is simultaneously an evil genius and an incorrigible, bloodthirsty idiot. Today it’s the media-crafted Bond villain Putin. Before him it was the madman Saddam, or the madman Qadaffi, or the madman Bin Laden, or the madman Ho Chi Minh and on and on and on.

Will watching All Quiet on the Western Front wake up American morons from the establishment media’s Russo-phobic propaganda spell and remove from the memory hole the U.S.’s and Ukraine’s role in starting and enflaming this war? No, probably not. Nor will it disabuse Americans of the notion that they are the good guys and that this is a good war, as there are no good wars and there are no good guys fighting in them.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a fantastic movie, but it’s not a miracle worker and it would take a miracle for America and the rest of the West to wake up from their propaganda-fueled dream of the war in Ukraine as history-making hero machine and to see it for what it really is, a senseless, money-making meat grinder, which contains within it the possibility of a worldwide war of unimaginable carnage.

All Quiet on the Western Front is Germany’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature. It most definitely deserves to be nominated, and in my mind is thus far the number one contender for the award.

You should watch All Quiet on the Western Front because it’s an excellent film, and also because it contains lessons that we in the West should already know but apparently need to learn over again, and fast…namely, that war is hell and only devils want it.

©2022

The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An unforgettable true story turned into a completely forgettable motion picture.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is the amazing, nearly unbelievable, true story of John “Chickie” Donohue, a seemingly dim-witted, ne’er do well merchant mariner from Inwood in New York City, who decides to show his support by traveling to Vietnam in 1968 to deliver beer to his neighborhood buddies serving in the war.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever, which is written and directed by Peter Farrelly and stars Zac Efron and is currently streaming on Apple TV +, is a really great story…but unfortunately, it’s a bad movie.

Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary) won a Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar four years ago for Green Book, his much-maligned movie on race relations, which was also set in New York City in the 1960’s and dealt with a conservative seeing the light and embracing a more progressive vision.

Green Book wasn’t as bad as the interminably aggrieved victimhood brigade would have you believe, but it also definitely wasn’t Best Picture material (although with the laughable CODA winning the award last year who the hell knows what a Best Picture worthy movie is anymore). Green Book was basically a well-crafted, well-acted, rather simple-minded movie about hope for humanity, no wonder it was so hated in our current awful age.

With The Greatest Beer Run Ever, Farrelly seems to, in the wake of the Green Book criticisms, be trying to either bolster his much tarnished liberal bona fides or give a mea culpa for his perceived sins against the new woke religion. Whatever he’s trying to do…he fails miserably.

Green Book, for all its shortcomings, worked as a piece of middlebrow entertainment masquerading as upper middle-class art, because it featured two really terrific actors, Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali (who won a Best Supporting Actor for his work). The Greatest Beer Run Ever is not so blessed, as it stars poor Zac Efron.

Efron seems like a nice guy, and I have absolutely no animus towards him whatsoever and wish him nothing but success. But the truth is he’s an extremely limited actor and those limitations are laid bare in this film.

Efron’s Chickie is like a more handsome, street-smart Forest Gump who stumbles through history oblivious to his own buffoonery. As one Sergeant says upon meeting Chickie in a war zone, “don’t worry about him, some people are just too stupid to get killed.”

As for Efron, he’s a good-looking kid (“kid” – he’s 34!) but he’s utterly devoid of charisma and magnetism. He almost seems to be trying to hide in front of the camera. Emotionally he’s a black hole from which no life or light escapes. And his dismal New Yawk accent is come and go for the first third of the film and then disappears completely for no apparent reason.

To be clear, Efron isn’t the only bad actor in the movie. The entire supporting cast, with two notable exceptions, are simply dreadful.  The egregiously amateurish cast are either over-the-top caricatures or underwhelming to the point of invisibility.

In particular, Chickie’s group of friends in New York are portrayed by a collection of the worst actors I can remember seeing in a mainstream movie and their accents are less New York than they are a rancid stew of Providence, Boston and Maine. I won’t name any of them out of some twisted sense of compassion, but holy shit they are embarrassingly bad.

The two notable exceptions regarding the abysmal acting are Bill Murray as The Colonel, a World War II vet who runs the local bar, and Russell Crowe, as a journalist in Vietnam. Murray and Crowe are not particularly exceptional in their roles, but whenever they are on-screen a sense of relief comes over the viewer as they know at least they’re in the hands of professionals. Murray and Crowe feel at home on the screen, whereas everyone else, most notably Zac Efron, does not.

To be fair to Efron, Farelly’s script and his direction are no help either as they’re utterly atrocious.

There are major plot points and dramatic moments throughout the movie that need to be earned but simply never are, like when Chickie makes the decision to go to Vietnam, it just sort of happens…and everything, particularly the crucial emotional beats, are as vacuous as that.

Another grating thing about the movie is that a major plot point is Chickie must carry a bevy of beers (Pabst Blue Ribbon cans) in a duffle bag across the ocean and all over Vietnam. Beers are heavy, but Chickie’s wondrous bag always seems nearly weightless and empty, but he continuously pulls beer after beer after beer out of it like it’s a magic hat.

If that bag were realistic, and Chickie had to lug it around and decide between dumping out beers or staying true to his mission, then the story and his burden would take on great meaning. The duffle bag literally could’ve been Chickie’s (and America’s) cross to bear across the globe for the sin of the Vietnam war…but instead it’s just a ticky-tack prop that draws viewers out of the reality of this astounding true story.

Another major issue is that Farrelly’s tone through much of the movie is whimsical, and it undermines the horror of the war we see unfolding before us and it all feels…unseemly. There’s a scene like this at the front lines in Vietnam which is so poorly choreographed and directed, and tonally off-kilter, that I found it repulsive.

What’s so grating about The Greatest Beer Run Ever is that it really could have, and should have, been great.

As I watched I kept thinking of how amazing this film would’ve been if it were made in the 1970’s, when the topic, a conservative ‘Road to Damascus’ moment regarding the crime and calamity that was the Vietnam war, would have more cultural resonance, meaning and impact. Imagine a movie like that directed by someone like Hal Ashby and starring Jack Nicholson, I mean God-damn…THAT would’ve been worth seeing!

But instead, we get this rather pathetic modern-day effort from Farrelly and Efron that feels almost instantaneously forgettable.  

To be fair, there are a few sequences that I thought were well done, most notably when Chickie runs into a little Vietnamese girl in a field and tries to interact with her. The scene is shot without sound with music playing over it and it’s easily the best and most profound scene in the film. Another interesting visual is what I will call “the falling-man” shot…which was very reminiscent of 9-11 and therefore was loaded with uncomfortable but insightful symbolism.

What is most interesting to me about the rather uninteresting The Greatest Beer Run Ever though, is that Farrelly was attempting to make somewhat of an anti-war movie in an age when anti-war movies are so rare as to be extinct. The reason for this is two-fold…first, the Pentagon and intelligence community control Hollywood and the messages about the military and war that it produces – and anti-war sentiment is not on their agenda. This manifests in movies and tv shows like Top Gun: Maverick and Seal Team getting made and movies like Oliver Stone’s long planned project on the My Lai massacre not finding funding. Secondly, the anti-war movement in America, along with Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party and the rest of the populist movements of both left and right, have been successfully co-opted and crushed by the establishment, resulting in the anti-war movement being virtually non-existent today.  

Anti-war sentiment is now anathema in America, as liberals – long the vanguard in anti-war movements, have been so easily conditioned to demand blood lust, most notably against Russia. The same liberals I marched with against the Iraq war in 2003 are now ignoring the War in Yemen and demanding all-out war in Ukraine – up to and including nuclear war, and unthinkingly regurgitate vapid establishment propaganda like children reciting their A-B-C’s.

If you apply logic and dare to question establishment propaganda, like the obvious inanities of the Ghost of Kiev, or the Snake Island buffoonery, or the less obvious but equally dubious claims of the Bucha massacre, or the supposed Russian rape camps, or you speak out against the U.S. escalating the war by sending billions upon billions of dollars to Ukraine (in the form of weaponry) and sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines, you’ll be reflexively tarred and feathered as a shill or stooge for Putin.

People have become deathly allergic to context (and thinking), so if you point out the fact that the U.S. instigated the illegal coup in Ukraine in 2014 ,and later broke the Minsk Peace agreements, and point out the fact that Ukraine killed 14,000 ethnic Russians (who were Ukrainian citizens) in the Donbas in the eight years after the coup, and that the Ukrainian government is riddled with fascists who banned the Russian language and shut down media outlets and opposing political parties, you’re just a useful idiot on Putin’s payroll.

This sort of shallow, simple-minded, historically illiterate, Manichean, knee-jerk jackassery used to be what liberals called out on the right and righteously fought against, but now liberals act exactly like flag-waving, McCarthy-ite right-wingers demanding all those with opposing views slavishly obey the establishment line or be branded a traitor or Russian sympathizer, or both. These empty-headed, emotionalist liberal fools are afflicted with the same disease they used to fight against, and are completely blind to their reactionist Russo-phobic conditioning.

The co-opting of the anti-war left by neo-con war mongers and neo-liberal corporatists is a calamity and will be catastrophic for the health of our nation, and may well lead to another world war and all of us to a fiery death.

On that less than pleasant note, let’s return to an equally unpleasant but much less important topic…The Greatest Beer Run Ever.

In more skilled and gifted-hands The Greatest Beer Run Ever could have made salient points on these weighty and vital issues and held a mirror up to reveal the madness that has engulfed America and its anti-anti-war discourse and actions. But unfortunately, Peter Farrelly lacks the needed craft, talent and courage to make such a meaningful movie, and instead churns out this flaccid, flimsy, D-level nonsense that will come and go with no one noticing.

The bottom line is that The Greatest Beer Run ever is a missed opportunity, and you would be wise to miss it too.

©2022

The Film 'Come and See', the Russian Psyche, and the War in Ukraine

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT NOW. Arguably the greatest war film, and greatest anti-war film, ever made.

‘COME AND SEE’ IS VITAL TO UNDERSTANDING THE RUSSIAN PSYCHE REGARDING THE WAR IN UKRAINE

A few years ago, in order to commemorate the 75th anniversary of V.E. Day, I wrote a list of the best war films ever made that was published at RT.com, an English-language Russian news outlet. I got a lot of feedback on my list, as readers shared their favorite war films and compared them to mine. Interestingly, I was inundated with emails and comments from Russian readers who were outraged I failed to have Come and See, the 1985 Soviet war film directed by Elem Klimov, not only not on my list, but not at the top of it.

The truth was I hadn’t seen Come and See because it isn’t widely or easily available here in the U.S. The film, which for years was nearly impossible to find on any streaming service, is now available on the Criterion Channel (which is wonderful and a must have service for any cinephile). Having finally watched the movie I can now say that those Russian readers were right and I was wrong…Come and See deserves to be on the top of the list of best war films ever made. It is a terrible injustice that the film has thus far remained mostly undiscovered in the West as it is an astonishing piece of cinematic art.

I think now, as the war in Ukraine rages into its second month, it’s most imperative that Westerners watch Come and See in order to better understand historical context and how it effects the collective Russian psyche regarding perceived enemies on its western border.

The dramatically scintillating Come and See is unquestionably a cinematic masterpiece, and I don’t use that word lightly. The film chronicles the odyssey of Florian Gaishun, a young teenage boy trying to survive the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Republic of Belarus in 1943.

Florian is eager to join a rag tag group of Soviet partisans in a guerrilla war against the Nazis. But his mother, afraid to be left alone in their small village with two young twin daughters, is adamant he stays home.

But once Florian discovers a discarded but usable weapon buried in the dirt, the partisans come to his house and officially conscript him into service.

Thus begins Florian’s coming of age story, which is a trial by fire where a Focke-Wulf 189 German reconnaissance plane haunts the skies above his head like a blood-thirsty vulture and Nazi savagery dominates and decimates the fragile world around him.

Florian is thrust into most harrowing journey through the brutality of war and the darkness of the human heart, and must endure the most hellacious of circumstances and devastating of tragedies.

It’s impossible to adequately describe Florian’s gruesome crucifixion upon the cross of war, and the ungodly horrors he must suffer. The viewer must simply bear witness to them too and suffer the same visceral anguish as Florian.

The film boasts two terrific performances, one from Aleksei Kravchenko as Florian, and the other Olga Miranova as Glasha.

Kravchenko’s face over the course of the film is a roadmap of the horrors he’s experienced. His ‘thousand-yard stare’ is a monument to the soul-crushing and heartbreaking ordeal he’s undergone.

Miranova is electrifying as Glasha, a young woman Florian meets in the early days of his time with the partisan guerrillas. Miranova is like a beautiful, gaping wound walking the earth, trying to avoid catastrophe but sentenced to an endless parade of calamities.

Director Klimov pulls no punches on Come and See, as he masterfully, using a variety of clever and intriguing filmmaking techniques, such as a split diopter lens and the use of reduced sound to heighten drama, tells Florian’s tale. Klimov’s brilliant direction immerses the viewer in the hell of war, as well as expresses the collective rage against the Nazis that unleashed a wave of brutality and barbarity against the Soviets that is staggering to contemplate.

This is why it’s so imperative that Westerners watch Come and See, because it so forcefully conveys the palpable fear, anxiety and angst left on the Soviet/Russian psyche by the barbarity of the Nazi invasion forty years after it happened, as well as today.

Hitler sent his very best divisions when he invaded the Soviet Union because he understood that to win the wider war the Nazis needed to destroy the USSR and usurp its plethora of resources, most notably oil and wheat, which would then fuel and feed Hitler’s war machine.

Hitler, like Napoleon before him, found out the hard way that invading Russia is never a good idea, as the winters are brutal and the people made of extraordinarily stern and resilient stuff.

Roughly 30 million Soviets died in World War II (compared to about 418,000 Americans), but their deaths were not in vain as it was the Soviets who broke the Nazi war machine’s back and won World War II. But there isn’t a Russian family that didn’t suffer immensely during the war and for generations after, and the psychological damage from that trauma still resonates today.

In the West, when we hear talk of Russia wanting to “de-nazify” Ukraine, it sounds like a vacuous talking point. To Russians it deeply resonates though because it’s driven by a palpable existential fear – a fear perfectly captured in Come and See.

My intention here is not to try and change any minds regarding the war in Ukraine, as I’m aware enough to know that when emotions are as inflamed as they are now, and the bullshit propaganda is piling up so high you need wings to stay above it, as it is now, appealing to reason and logic is a fool’s errand.

But what I am here to do is to try and get people to watch Come and See for its cinematic mastery, and its collective cultural insights, so that they can at least understand the deeper psychological and historical context of Russia’s actions and impulses.

For instance, most people in the US don’t know this but in 2014 the US backed a coup in Ukraine that overthrew a democratically elected government. The overthrown government was more inclined to Russia’s viewpoint, and the newly-installed government was beholden to the US.

To Americans, that bit of history is largely unknown, but to Russians it’s not only well-known, but deeply troubling and anxiety-inducing.

The same is true of the fact that the newly installed Ukrainian government sat idly by as 42 pro-Russian activists were burned alive in the Trade Union House in Odessa, Ukraine post-coup in 2014, something which most Americans don’t know but that Russians know all too well (and which is remarkably reminscernt of one of the more horrifying scenes in Come and See).

Another example, which most Americans don’t know but of which Russians are keenly aware, is that this same US installed Ukrainian government then banned the Russian language and went to war with ethnic Russians in the Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine. Since that war started in 2014, nearly 14,000 people, mostly ethnic Russians, including women and children, have been killed.

Another piece of historical context largely ignored in the US is that when Russia and Ukraine signed a ceasefire/peace agreement called the Minsk Agreements (Minsk Protocol signed in 2014, and Minsk II – a ceasefire signed in 2015), it seemed peace was possible, but Ukraine and the US ignored those agreements and the slaughter of ethnic Russians continued in the Donbass.

To watch Come and See gives Americans an opportunity to see the developments in Ukraine through the eyes of Russians. To Russians, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, which western media reported on extensively for years as a battalion of devilishly devout Nazis but which now ignores that context, is not an outlier, but the crux of the issue. As evidenced by the brutal wholesale slaughter of an entire Belorussian village in Come and See, which the film informs us was something that happened to 628 Belorussian villages at the hands of the Nazis during the war, Nazi bloodthirst isn’t a speculative talking point to Russians, it’s a historical fact and a traumatic trigger.

The way Russians see it, the US installed a Nazi friendly regime in Ukraine, and Russians remember what the Nazis did the last time they had power in the region…and it was genocidal in its scope and scale and demonic in its unabashed cruelty.

When Russians see pro-Russian activists burned alive in Odessa, and ethnic Russians massacred in the Donbass, the horrors of World War II as exquisitely captured in Come and See are conjured in all their grueling and gruesome savagery.

I understand that many Americans, fed a hearty diet of establishment media Zelensky worship as well as ludicrous propagandistic tales of the Ghost of Kiev and the Heroes of Snake Island, might watch Come and See and interpret it very differently. For instance, Americans might watch Come and See and believe Putin to be Hitler and the modern-day Russians in Ukraine the equivalent of the Nazis in Belarus in 1943.

I disagree with that assessment and find it to be historically illiterate and painfully myopic, but that said, I completely understand why, after years of relentless Russo-phobic propaganda, people would be conditioned to feel that way.

Regardless of how you interpret Come and See, I whole-heartedly encourage you to watch it. By being one of the greatest war movies of all-time, Come and See succeeds in being the greatest anti-war movie of all-time.

As for the war in Ukraine…like all wars, I hate it and vehemently oppose it. I understand why it’s happening, what triggered it, the wider forces at play in it and the stakes involved in it, but I despise war in all its brutality and callousness and inhumanity.

I know most people don’t believe in this sort of thing anymore, and frankly I don’t blame them, but I ardently and earnestly pray every day that the war in Ukraine ends and an everlasting peace is found and prospers. Ukraine is nothing but a boiling cauldron of suffering, and the last thing this world needs is more suffering, the brilliant Come and See is a testament to that fact.

©2022

Spitting Image, BoJo's Penis, and Fear of a Black Puppet

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 37 seconds

Spitting Image, the savagely satirical puppet show from the 80’s and 90’s, is making a comeback in Autumn. But already it’s on the defensive due to a hyper-sensitive climate where there’s always someone offended about something.

Spitting Image, the satirical television puppet show which made a name for itself on ITV from 1984 to 1996 for its brutal caricatures of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Major and the Royal Family among many others, is attempting a comeback on BritBox UK this Autumn. 

Now would seem a perfect time for the show to re-appear, as there is an abundance of prime comedy targets among the world’s politicians and celebrities.

In an era that boasts the buffoonery of Boris Johnson, Trump and the dead-eyed rambling of Joe Biden, as well as the relentless narcissism of the entertainment industry elite, one would think that satire should thrive.

But navigating the minefield of comedy in today’s hypersensitive age of suffocating political correctness is a perilous venture bordering on a suicide mission, and if early reports are any indication, Spitting Image is doomed to wind up legless in the graveyard of comedy failure.

Just this week it was revealed that Spitting Image produced a short trailer for their overlords at ITV that featured a scene where Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin wrestle naked in a sauna.

In the scene, BoJo and Trump are revealed to have tiny puppet peckers while Putin has the python-esque appendage of a Russian Dirk Diggler, which sounds both hysterically funny and most likely phallically accurate.

That scene of presidential and prime ministerial penises, or penii, or gaggle of penis, whatever the proper term may be, horrified the stuffed shirts at ITV who quickly gave it a hard no…demanding re-shoots sans genitalia.

The censoriousness of the corporate clowns at ITV is not the least bit surprising, and is actually something that the creatives at Spitting Image can use to their advantage, but the real comedy calamity for the show will be its own self-censorship.

An example of which came earlier this month when reports surfaced that the show’s producers had a ‘curious meeting’ with their ITV bosses to talk about how to properly depict black celebrities in order avoid a “racism row”.

Spitting Image’s raison d’etre has always been fearlessly cutting comedy combined with grotesquely distorted puppets caricaturing to humorous heights. But now the show is preemptively acting to make sure that its depictions of black celebrities like Kanye West, Beyonce and Meghan Markle are delicate enough to be palatably un-offensive? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

This sort of self-censoring is and always will be the death of comedy. How can you effectively be funny if you’re constantly looking over your shoulder afraid of offending someone, somewhere over something?

If comedy were a fistfight…and it often times is, Spitting Image is heading into the brawl having tied one hand behind its own back out of racial deference, with the other hand tied by ITV out of corporate cowardice.

It is ironic that Spitting Image has run afoul of ITV with its depiction of Boris’s tiny Johnson, because with the show’s self-censorship it is definitely proving it no longer has balls.

There is no shame in being censored by ITV, hell it should be a badge of honor for any comedian or comedy show, but Spitting Image should be ashamed of neutering its own comedy instincts to the point of impotence with its paternalistic double standard when it comes to the black celebrities it means to caricature.

If the show can’t eviscerate famous people of different races and ethnicities with its caricatures with equal aplomb, then what is the purpose of it?

The satire of Spitting Image does serve a purpose…it helps to humble public figures who think they are God’s gift to the populace, and assists the hoi polloi in blowing off steam by laughing at the foibles and frailty of their supposed betters.

But when the show attempts to appease the delicate sensibilities of certain people or groups of people, then it just becomes a flaccid exercise in safely controlled, establishment-friendly, pseudo-comedy.

Yes, there will be jokes, but the comedy no longer reveals any greater truths or higher purpose…it simply maintains the status quo and reinforces the protective barriers around whatever the culture considers a sacred cow.

Spitting Image, like all comedy, should be in the business of slaughtering sacred cows and transforming them into delicious meals of highbrow filet mignon or lowbrow burgers, both of which satiate certain audience’s hunger for humor.

Without its signature devil may care attitude when it comes to offending its political and celebrity targets, Spitting Image might as well be The Muppets discussing how gentrification has ruined Sesame Street…a self-indulgent, toothless and useless comedy exercise.

Testicular fortitude has always been a necessity for comedy greatness. Monty Python, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and Frankie Boyle all had or have it in abundance.

Spitting Image used to have it, but between the quick trigger finger of the censors at ITV and the show’s own Orwellian self-censoring, it may have castrated its own comedy bollocks.

Hopefully it hasn’t, because without their comedy bollocks, Spitting Image doesn’t stand a chance of regaining its relevance, which would be tragic since the world could sure use a good laugh.

 A version of this show was originally published at RT.

©2020

Meathead Beats the Dead Horse of Collusion

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 27 seconds

Hollywood is churning out all-star videos in order to try and convince Americans that Trump is guilty of “collusion”.

For the last three months there has been a bombshell story hiding in plain sight about an obscure government document that has been criminally under-reported by the establishment press. Thankfully Hollywood is here to save the day and shed some much needed light on this ever-elusive information.

The document I am referring to, of course, is The Mueller Report, which according to Academy Award nominated filmmaker and Hillary Clinton fanatic Rob Reiner, is an absolute mystery to ordinary (non-famous) Americans. In a patriotic act the equivalent of storming the beach on D-Day, Reiner has done a truly courageous and heroic thing to bring attention to this long ignored story…he made a five-minute video with his Hollywood friends.

On Thursday, June 20th, a group named Now This put out the video directed by Reiner, that features celebrities such as Robert DeNiro, Laurence Fishburne and even former president-on-tv Martin Sheen, highlighting what they believe to be the criminality of Trump exposed in the report.

Reiner has been in the vanguard of Hollywood’s pro-Hillary contingent and is a vociferous proponent of Trump and Russia’s collusion in the 2016 election. In 2017, he teamed with Bush administration war criminal David Frum to start a group called Committee to Investigate Russia. This group also put out a video, one that starred former president-in-the-movies, Morgan Freeman, and it boldly declared that “We Are At War” with Russia.

With that statement in mind it should come as no surprise that Rob Reiner came to fame in the 1970’s playing a character named Meathead on All in the Family. It is nice to know he is still living up to the moniker. Reiner is Hollywood royalty, being the son of comedy legend Carl Reiner, then a tv star in the aforementioned Meathead years, and then becoming one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers, having directed hits like This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally and A Few Good Men.

In his most recent work, the Now This - Mueller Report video, Reiner tries to use his moviemaking prowess to make the argument that Trump is guilty of “collusion” but that no one realizes this because they haven’t actually read the Mueller Report. The video starts off on very shaky logical ground when just 44 seconds in Rosie Perez emphatically declares, “virtually no one has read” the report. It pains me to point out to Meathead and Ms. Perez, which could be the title of a future buddy cop movie, that the Mueller Report has been published by three different publishing companies, and all three of those versions currently sit on the New York Times best seller list at #1,#5 and #12. 

Reiner’s claim also ignores the fact that the press has reported on “virtually” nothing but Mueller’s investigation for the last two and a half years. Considering the plethora of Mueller stories to the point of saturation in the media, the putting out of this video by Reiner is an act of animal cruelty worse than anything seen at Santa Anita racetrack because at least at the track they properly dispose of their dead horses instead of continuing to beat them.

In an amusing bit of irony, Reiner and his Hollywood cohorts who claim no one has read the report, prove themselves to either have not read it or not understood it when they repeatedly claim that Trump is proven guilt of “collusion” within its pages. The numerous references to “collusion” made me think of Reiner’s classic comedy The Princess Bride and the character Inigo Montoya who says in the film, “you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Collusion” is a nebulous word in the context of the Trump/Russia story and people who use it only do so to disinform and distract. As the Mueller Report states it did not use “collusion” in their assessment of potential criminality because “collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States code”.

Reiner and company intentionally say “collusion” instead of the more specific colloquial term ‘coordinated’, or the detailed legal term ‘conspiracy’, in order to mislead viewers about the contents of the Mueller Report. This obfuscation is proven by the report when it clearly states, “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian Government in its election interference activities”.

In Reiner’s video Cliff Notes version of the report he also holds up Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates meeting up with a “Russian agent” in a cigar bar in New York City in order to give him polling information as a sort of smoking gun. The video fails to mention the “Russian agent’s” name, which is Konstantin Kilimnik, maybe because he is also Ukrainian and clearly isn’t a “Russian Agent” because he was actually a “sensitive” intelligence asset for the U.S. State Department who would report to them on Ukrainian and Russian matters.

This insinuation of criminality is as equally obtuse as, and reminiscent of, the dim-witted band members from Reiner’s iconic rock and roll mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, recalling the numerous deaths of their drummers through the years, such as the one who “died in a bizarre gardening accident” that authorities felt was “best left unsolved”, or the drummer who died when he “choked on vomit” but they didn’t know whose vomit it was because “you can’t really dust for vomit”.

The video also declares that Trump officials met with 200 Russian “operatives” and that this again is proof of “collusion”. In Reiner’s Cold War addled mind, every Russian is an “operative” or agent or asset, such as lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who is described in the video as a “Putin-connected Russian lawyer”, no doubt her “Putin-connection” comes from simply being Russian. 

The sort of Russophobic prejudice displayed by Reiner was best articulated by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, when in 2017 he said, “…Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.”

It is obvious that the gullible Reiner has fallen prey to the insidiously deceptive media narrative of Russiagate which is the equivalent of his film The Princess Bride, where liberals are Princess Buttercup and Robert Mueller is the hero Westley, who will save them from the evil Prince Humperdinck, who is Trump.

This current insipid Reiner video is a symptom of the delusional orgy of ecstatic Trump and Russia hating in which Democrats have indulged in recent years. Like in When Harry Met Sally when an older woman (played by Rob Reiner’s actual mother, Estelle) in a diner, who witnesses Sally demonstrate to Harry how she fakes an orgasm, masterfully deadpans the line “I’ll have what she’s having”, liberals watch Rachel Maddow’s orgasmic Russiagate coverage and declare, “I’ll have what she’s having”. The Democrat hysteria over Trump and Russia results in a dangerously distorted perception of reality, a perfect example is the perilous Reiner statement “We are at War” with Russia.

The reality is that because of the intensity of Reiner’s slavish, sycophantic worship of Hillary Clinton, no matter how many political videos he makes, he will convince no one of anything except the fact that he is a rabid political dog chasing his own tail who is close to collapsing onto the floor in a dizzied state of exhaustion and madness. That is the truth, and to quote Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men, Rob Reiner simply “can’t handle the truth!”

 A version of this article was originally published on June 27, 2019 at RT.com.

©2019

Russiagate: Puzzlements and Lost Causes

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes 11 seconds

On Sunday, March 24, 2019, Attorney General William Barr released a brief summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s findings regarding the Russiagate matter. According to Barr’s summary, while Mueller makes no determination regarding obstruction of justice, the special prosecutor does declare that there was no collusion or conspiracy between Trump, his campaign, and the Russian government during the 2016 election.

This finding came as a great shock to the mainstream media and many Democrats who had been touting Russiagate as a weapon to bring down Trump’s presidency. It would seem, at least according to Barr’s summary, that these folks were wrong.

The reality appears to be that Russiagate was a ruse, a hoax perpetuated by the establishment media over the last two and half years and swallowed whole by the vast majority of liberals. This Russiagate fraud came about through the perfect combination of mendacity and greed on the part of the media and Democratic elites and confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, denial and delusion on the part of the #Resistance, liberals and anti-Trumpists.

Not everyone was wrong about Russiagate though, as people like Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate, Michael Tracey, Matt Taibbi, Caitlyn Johnstone, Jimmy Dore and others maintained a healthy and accurate skepticism regarding the Russiagate claims being made by the establishment press and Democrats. You know who else didn’t buy into the Russiagate hype? Me.

My first comments on the Russiagate story came in December of 2016 after Donald Trump’s upset win in the presidential election, when I wrote an article about how Democrats, liberals and progressives should proceed in the age of Trump. This article, the contents of which led to me being ex-communicated from the Church of the Woke and expelled from the Society of the Right Thinking, was titled “A Practical Handbook to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Trump”. Here is an excerpt from that piece.

The final point I will make to you is this...I know this story circulating lately about Russia interfering with the election in Trump's favor is tantalizing, but please do not embrace it. I am telling you, the more you want a story to be true the more skeptical you should be of it. This "Russia hacked our election" story…is fools gold. These stories being breathlessly reported by the establishment media are all based on unnamed official sources. Please just wait until there is actual, tangible evidence put forth, and even then be very, very skeptical. This whole Russia hacking episode reeks of the wishful thinking that was going around (especially in establishment media circles) in the build up to the Iraq war. There was no evidence then either, but people wanted those stories to be true so they gave them the benefit of the doubt. This Russia story is even less credible at the moment and even more dangerous…Do not fall for this Russia story trap. Don't do it, one way or another you will live to regret it. I promise you that.

That was published in December of 2016. For nearly two and a half years now I have consistently preached skepticism regarding the Russiagate story, and for nearly two and a half years I and other Russiagate skeptics like Greenwald, Mate, Taibbi et al, have been persistently attacked for that position and have had such slurs as Putin shill, traitor and the worst of all…Trump supporter, thrown at us.

Yul Brenner sums up my feelings toward Russiagate best with a song…and yes…I am aware that Yul Brenner was Russian.

It would seem, at least on the surface, that in regards to Russiagate I was right and my numerous detractors were wrong. Of course the possibility certainly exists that Barr’s summary is directly at odds with Mueller’s findings, and I have no doubt that Mueller’s report contains much more damage to Trump than Barr lets on. But with that said, it seems highly unlikely that Mueller would quietly sit by and let Barr distort his work without speaking up*. Proof of this is that this past January Mueller broke his silence to shoot down a Buzzfeed story claiming that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, so he is obviously comfortable pushing back against falsehoods being disseminated in the public sphere. (*Please see Addendum at the bottom of this article)

Even though Mueller has found “no collusion or conspiracy” regarding Russiagate, it is also worth noting that from day one I have never trusted Robert Mueller and have repeatedly warned Democrats about embracing him (it should also be noted that I don’t trust Barr either, as both Barr and Mueller are creatures of the deep state who are right at home in the swamp) . I have often reminded liberals of Mueller’s long list of “problematic” behavior, such as his pushing the Iraq/WMD lie, his abuse of civil liberties and rounding up of Muslims after 9-11 and his botching of the post 9-11 Anthrax investigation. But instead of being wary of Mueller, the #Resistance deified and sainted him, putting him on a pedestal like some golden calf they could worship. St. Mueller was, to mix various horror story metaphors, the noble Van Helsing who had the silver bullet that would bring down the Trumpenstein monster. The #Resistance believed in him faithfully and fully…and since he hasn’t given them Trump’s head on a platter as they expected, they are left with egg on their faces.

Obviously, I was not shocked by Mueller’s alleged findings as I have been saying all along that it was clear there has not been any evidence brought forth that would substantiate the “collusion” claim. Sure there have been a lot of news stories and pundits claiming to know for a fact that Trump did “collude” with Russia, but there was never any solid evidence to back up this speculation. I was certainly always open to the possibility of collusion and open to any evidence brought forth, but none ever was.

CONSPIRACY THEORY

One big indicator that the media was more interested in conjuring Russian boogey men in order to knee-cap Trump and less interested in the Truth, was the language they used regarding Russiagate. The term “collusion” is a non-legal word that was continuously bandied about but is so amorphous that it could mean just about anything. The proper term for what was alleged in Russiagate is Conspiracy. Conspiracy is not only an accurate descriptive term but also a clearly defined legal term.

When the media refused to call Russiagate a conspiracy, it was a strong hint that there wasn’t much evidence underlying their conjecture. The reason for this is that you can twist “facts” to fit a nebulous charge like “collusion”, but it is much harder to do the same thing to a specific legal charge like conspiracy.

The other, and maybe more telling, reason that the word conspiracy was never used is that the media has spent the last sixty years or so denigrating the term and turning it into a cudgel to be used against enemies of the establishment. From the JFK assassination to 9-11 and beyond, anyone who deviates from the establishment narrative is labelled a “conspiracy theorist” in order to destroy their credibility without ever engaging their actual arguments. The problem for the media now though, is that Russiagate was an alleged conspiracy, and media speculation on Russiagate is the definition of a CONSPIRACY THEORY…because it theorizes a conspiracy.

As I wrote in September of 2017 in an article titled “The Media Hates Conspiracy Theories…Except When They Don’t”,

If the Russians did collude with Trump and interfere in the election, than that is most definitely a...conspiracy, but interestingly enough, the news media are very careful to not ever call the Russia story a "conspiracy". The establishment has so systematically and thoroughly degraded the word conspiracy that they cannot even use it when they are alleging an honest to goodness conspiracy in which they themselves actually believe. 

The failure of the corporate media to call Russigate what it is/was…a conspiracy theory…was a giant red flag that the story was at best being manipulated and at worst manufactured. The semantics used by the corporate media around certain stories, like Russiagate, is extremely enlightening as the choice of words they use, and don’t use, reveals a great deal about motive and intent. For instance, since Attorney General William Barr’s letter regarding the Mueller report came out declaring “no collusion”, the establishment press has referred to Barr as Trump’s “hand-picked” Attorney General. This indicates an intent to deceive the viewer/reader as anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of civics knows that ALL ATTORNEY GENERALS ARE HAND-PICKED…that is how you get the job. By adding the qualifier that Barr is “hand-picked” you can quickly deduce that the person saying that phrase is not an honest broker and is twisting facts to fit an agenda.

In terms of the “conspiracy theory” idea, another blurb from my September 2017 article,

As a result of the distinction between official and alternative conspiracies, we get Rachel Maddow whole-heartedly embracing the Russian election conspiracy theory to the point that she makes Glenn Beck look like Walter Cronkite and Sean Hannity look like Edward R. Murrow. Maddow sees Russians behind every single thing that happens and furiously reports it as though she's found the Lindberg baby in the arms of Jimmy Hoffa. This should not be surprising though, as when it comes to the "officially" sanctioned Russian conspiracy theory, anything goes. Even the most stodgy of old school media entities have embraced the most batshit conspiracy peddlers in regards to the Russian story, one need look no further than the New York Times op-ed page where the certifiably insane Louise Mensch was allowed to write a piece, as proof of that.

Maddow may end up being totally right about Russia, and everything she is reporting true, but there has not been any solid, tangible evidence put forward to date to corroborate the claims of Russian interference she embraces. None.

What is ironic is that the same media that refused to describe Russiagate as a conspiracy theory, were quick to equate it with two events that attract quite a bit of conspiracy theories. Many in the establishment pundit class described the alleged Russian election interference as the modern day equivalent of “Pearl Harbor” or “9-11” and as an “act of war”. Of course, thousands of Americans died heinous deaths at Pearl Harbor and on 9-11, so the analogy was always painfully hyperbolic as well as very extremely dangerous since if it were an “act of war” that would mean we would be obligated TO GO TO WAR WITH RUSSIA. Once again, these sorts of semantic flourishes such as relating Russiagate to 9-11 or Pearl Harbor and calling the alleged interference an act of war, reveal a stark dishonesty and lack of credibility.

Regarding Russiagate and 9-11 comparisons, it is interesting that in terms of evidence, there is considerably more evidence in the public domain that 9-11 was an “inside job”, which is another amorphous term like “collusion”, than there is that Trump conspired with Russia or even that Russia ever hacked the DNC or interfered in the election at all.

Even though that is the case, the media would never in a million years allow people to come on cable networks and espouse the belief that 9-11 was an “inside job”, and they sure as hell would never make that the official position of their networks and dedicate years of coverage to it like they did with the conspiracy theory of Russiagate. The New York Times would never grant a “conspiracy theorist” like Alex Jones the prestigious position of space on their op-ed page to speculate on Bush being involved with the 9-11 hijackers through his family’s connection with the House of Saud…but they did basically the same thing when they let certifiable conspiracy loon and fantasist Louise Mensch write an op-ed about Russiagate.

RUSSOPHOBIA, MICROWAVE WEAPONS AND CRICKETS

The truth is that the establishment media loathes all “conspiracy theories” except for the ones they love. And when they love a conspiracy theory they don’t call it a conspiracy theory…they simply call it news. Russiagate is obviously one example of that, but there are a plethora of other Russia related stories that fit the bill as well.

Remember the story that broke this past September where both the New York Times and NBC News breathlessly reported that the reason that a group of U.S. “diplomats” in Cuba had fallen ill was because the Russians had attacked them with a mysterious microwave weapon? I wrote an article for CounterPunch in September titled “A Curious Case of Mystery Attacks, Microwaves and Media Manipulation”, shredding those “microwave attack” stories as being obvious nonsense and anti-Russian propaganda.

After meticulously dismantling the outrageous claims made in these news reports about a “Russian mystery microwave attack”, I ended my piece with this,

These incidents may very well be proven to be attacks, and Russia may ultimately be responsible for them, but we should wait for actual evidence and not accept whispered innuendo wrapped in a slavish deference to intelligence agency authority as proof…

Similar to the delirious fever for war in the lead up to Iraq, the media are currently suffering from a virulent hysteria, this time of the anti-Russian variety. Now more than ever it is imperative to maintain a healthy and vigilant skepticism whenever Russia is blamed for misdeeds but there is a dearth or absence of concrete evidence. If we succumb to the corporate media’s Siren’s call of compulsive Russia blaming, our new Cold war may just turn very hot, and that will be a catastrophe for all of us.

Months later it was reported that scientists studying the incidents and illnesses that sparked the
”microwave weapon” speculation, now conclude that they are not the result of a “microwave attack”, but rather a reaction to the noise made by a particular type of cricket during mating season.

The “collusion” claims made by the media seemed to me to be very similar to the “microwave weapon attack” story in that they fell flat on their face upon closer inspection. There is a long list of similarly dubious anti-Russian stories in recent years and they all crumble upon even the most rudimentary examination. There was “Russia hacked the Vermont electrical grid”, “Russia hacked C-Span”, “DNC emails were altered”, “Russian spy-harlot used sex to infiltrate America”, “Russia could turn off the heat in the U.S.”, “Michael Cohen went to Prague”, “Manafort visited Assange” and on and on and on. These stories all garnered lots of attention and lots of headlines and then a few days or weeks later had to be retracted or amended because they were at best misleading and at worst outright fabrications.

ASSESSING THE ASSESSMENT

Just like these other fabulist anti-Russia stories, Russiagate was bound to collapse because it was built on an unstable foundation that was devoid of facts and evidence and rife with innuendo and assumption. The founding document of Russiagate is the aptly titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections”. This assessment, which was published on January 6, 2016, was such a flimsy, tenuous and superficial document that it was utterly startling, and frankly alarming, to witness it being taken so seriously.

The document contains not a single shred of hard evidence of Russian interference in the election, and only uses outdated and specious claims against the Russian news channel RT as proof of Russia’s nefarious actions and intents during the 2016 election. For example, here is a quote from an article I wrote in January of 2017 titled “Through the Looking Glass” where I describe the case made in the assessment for Russia’s guilt regarding election interference. (FULL DISCLOSURE - While I was not a contributing writer for RT at the time I wrote “Through the Looking Glass”, I am now.)

Another section…will come as quite a shock to liberals and Democrats…in the lead up to the 2012, again, to be clear, this is not the 2016 election but the 2012 election, RT aired a documentary on Occupy Wall Street that the report described like this…"RT framed the movement (Occupy Wall Street) as a fight against the ruling class and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations". Is there any rational and uncompromised human being on the planet who would describe the US political system any other way?

…other parts…of the report say that RT "alleges widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use" in America. Another part says that RT is attacking the US by criticizing "alleged Wall street greed." Let that one sink in for a minute. I hope liberals and Democrats are starting to understand how this report, and the intelligence community that prepared it, are not your friends, not by a long shot. Neither are they friends of Truth. 

Every single liberal I spoke with about the assessment agreed with it fully…but not surprisingly none of them had ever laid eyes on it. I encouraged everyone to read it but most never did. I would ask these liberals if they were against fracking and police brutality and supportive of Occupy Wall Street and to a person they all said they were…and when I informed them that the assessment asserted that RT covering those subjects was evidence of a nefarious Russian plot to undermine American democracy, they were left befuddled. To me it was obvious that the intelligence community was using anti-Trump hatred and fervor among the #Resistance as a way to surreptitiously criminalize left wing political beliefs through this assessment. Of course people thought I was crazy and ignored my warnings and instead put their faith in the intel community and eventually in St. Mueller.

Without fail, the media and Democrat talking point regarding the assessment was that it was “all 17 intelligence agencies” that declared that Russia interfered in the election. This establishment media talking point of “all 17 intelligence agencies” quickly became the chorus of the hit song “Intel Assessment”, the first single off of the album Russiagate, and was meant to stifle dissent, debate or questioning of the assessment and its findings. Everybody sang this tune…from establishment court jesters on Late Night TV to the journalists at tony institutions like the New York Times to the blathering buffoons of cable news and cocktail party goers who wanted to sound informed. Of course, the problem was that the talking point was patently false. It wasn’t “all 17 intel agencies”, it was parts of four intel agencies…the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with specifically selected analysts from the NSA, CIA and FBI. This is just one of many false narratives that were implanted into the public consciousness by the media and that became ingrained in individual’s minds and solidified as “fact”.

CONFIRMATION BIAS

Speaking of people’s minds, this might be a good time to examine why it was that so many people, in the media and out, fell for the Russiagate hoax hook, line and sinker. I believe that the main reason for this is our old nemesis confirmation bias.

The reason the #Resistance embraced the assessment (even when they never read it) is because the assessment told them what they wanted to hear, and since the assessment made them feel better they didn’t want to dig deeper into it out of the fear they may find out it wasn’t the truth. This is how confirmation bias works.

The intel assessment in particular, and Russiagate in general, confirmed all of the biases of the #Resistance and the establishment. It allowed these folks to believe that Trump didn’t legitimately win, Hillary didn’t lose and more importantly, that they weren’t so spectacularly wrong.

Russiagate had a convenient scapegoat for all that ailed the #Resistance and the establishment…namely Russia. Russia had put Trump in office and Russia had denied Hillary her rightful place on the throne, because of this belief any and all stories and speculation about Russia (and Trump) were immediately assumed to be true. All Russia related claims weren’t taken as truth because after a reasoned weighing of the evidence conclusions were drawn, but rather because those claims on their face simply made people feel better.

Declaring that Russia hacked the election, the DNC, C-Span, Vermont, American diplomat’s brains and all the rest, made people feel good…or at least gave them a brief reprieve from their Trump induced anxiety, fury or depression from which they suffered. That is what confirmation bias does, it excludes negative information that challenges your bias and heightens positive information that confirms it in order to buttress your belief system.

Confirmation bias is radioactive to the critical thinking function. This is why it is so dangerous for the #Resistance. Immediately after Trump’s victory there was a tsunami of “unfriending” in liberal circles where anyone who disagreed with Clinton supporters was exiled, I know this because it happened to me and some of my compatriots. Instead of self-examination in the wake of Hillary’s loss, Clinton supporters doubled down on their confirmation bias and tightened the lock on their echo chamber…which is part of the reason why they lost in the first place. It was in this echo chamber that Russiagate was born and prospered, like a fungus thriving in the darkness of intentional ignorance.

It is in these hermetically sealed echo chambers where “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy thinking” flourish because ideas are never challenged and sharpened but rather are coddled and grow flaccid. The echo chamber insidiously replaces critical thinking with a proud and defiant emotionalism.

The lesson of all this is quite clear…allegedly ”serious” people love to denigrate conspiracy theories…except when those conspiracy theories confirm their biases. If a conspiracy theory tells people what they want to hear then it will gain traction in whatever community needs for it to be believed regardless of how tenuous the supporting evidence for it may be. In the case of the Russiagate conspiracy theory, it told millions of Democrats and establishmentarians exactly what they wanted to hear….that Trump was the lowest of the low, a traitor who only won by cheating…which made them feel good and allowed them to ignore their responsibility in his victory.

MEDIA MALPRACTICE

Media con artists and grifters, like the vacuous and repugnant frauds Luke Harding, Malcolm Nance, Jonathon Chait and David Corn or the coterie of professional liars from the intelligence community like John Brennan, James Clapper and Jeremy Bash or the journalistic poseurs at CNN or MSNBC, like the ridiculous Rachel Maddow. Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes and Chris Matthews, and at The New York Times and the Washington Post, pushed a plethora of Russiagate bullshit stories and narratives for all they were worth and made millions and billions by doing nothing more than making anti-Trumpists feel good by confirming their biases.

Harding, Nance and Corn all wrote books about the Russiagate story that alleged to show the “truth” but were little more than shallow and shameless attempts to pad their bank account at the expense of their #Resistance marks. The Mueller report has decimated the credibility of these men and their books, but that has only forced them to double down on their extravagant claims. And of course, no one in the media is being held accountable for their journalistic malpractice and malfeasance.

Speaking of malfeasance, former head of the CIA John Brennan was lionized by the corporate press as a paragon of truth and honor when he declared Trump a traitor. When Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance last year, the media reacted as if Trump had sodomized Brennan on national television and excoriated the president for being so petty to a “true American hero”.

As I wrote in regards to the media and the #Resistance (in this case at a taping of Bill Maher’s HBO show) fawning over Brennan in an article last August titled “In a Fit of Anti-Trump Pique, Liberals Shamelessly Embrace Deep State Criminals”,

The nadir for the #Resistance occurred shortly thereafter as Brennan rumbled on stage and was greeted by the eruption of a raucous standing ovation by the liberal audience, with Little Bill calling it a "well-deserved standing ovation". Only in the bizarre universe where a silver-spooned, multi-bankrupted, reality television star is president does a former CIA director who has committed crimes and war crimes such as implementing and covering up Bush's rendition and torture regime, spying on the U.S. Senate and masterminding Obama's deadly drone program, get a delirious ovation from those on the left.

Brennan was deeply involved in Russiagate, as he was Director of the CIA when the alleged election meddling occurred. Brennan then used his “intel insider status” to get a job at MSNBC as a talking head and then spent his time on air making outrageous claims about Trump and the devious Russians. Now that Mueller has cleared Trump of collusion, Brennan says he must’ve gotten “bad information”…or as I have been warning for years now, maybe he is just a bad guy who is prone to lying…his history seems to back my assertion. Of course, liberals ignored my warnings on Brennan (and Mueller) because what Brennan told them confirmed their bias and made them feel better.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was the ringmaster of the cable news circus that was Russiagate. Maddow peddled any and all Russophobic conspiracy theory she could get her hands on and her audience ate it up. Maddow’s ratings shot to the penthouse as her integrity went to the bottom of the septic tank. Maddow exploited her audience’s desire for denial by going full Glenn Beck…and you never want to go full Glenn Beck. It is obvious that Maddow made the business decision to tell people what they wanted to hear (confirm their bias) as opposed to the journalistic decision to tell people the Truth.

What is so repugnant to me is that Maddow, Nance, Corn, Harding, Brennan and the rest of the corporate media lap dogs all preyed upon the grief of hurt Democrats in the wake of Trump’s election and sold them a bill of goods regarding Russiagate. MSNBC, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post and the rest of the corporate media exploited vulnerable people who were in pain for their own aggrandizement and monetary gain. These media con-artists did what all con-artists do, they told their marks exactly what they wanted to hear in order to bilk them and enrich themselves.

RUSSIAGATE AUTOPSY - HOW AND WHY

The foundation from which this perfect storm of fraud called Russiagate took root, grew and raged among the elite as well as the rank and file Democrats and liberals was the deep, profound and disorienting grief that staunch supporters of Hillary Clinton fell into after Trump’s 2016 election victory.

Some liberals (women in particular), with a large assist from the media, projected a great deal of cultural, political, psychological and personal meaning onto Hillary Clinton and her 2016 candidacy, understandably so considering she was the first woman to be a presidential candidate from a major party. These supporters projected themselves onto Hillary and she became an avatar and an archetypal symbol for their hopes, dreams, struggles and lives.

These projections fostered a deeply personal and powerful emotional attachment to Hillary among some voters (most particularly, but not exclusively, female Democrats). The problem with this type of projection and archetypal emotional connection is that it often breeds an emotionalism that leads to a crippling of the critical thinking function…and so it was with these particular type of Clinton supporters. The simple idea that Hillary could lose to, in their eyes, such a repugnant, sexist pig as Trump, was entirely inconceivable to these type of Hillary supporters (in the media and the public) because their projections and emotional attachment, and its accompanying emotionalism, caused a myopia and historical amnesia that led them to be blinded to reality on the ground.

TRAUMA

Due to this emotionally induced blindness, when Clinton lost the electoral college to Trump it wasn’t just a defeat or disappointment or shock to these Clinton projectors/supporters…it was a trauma….and I do not use that term lightly. Trauma is derived from the Greek word trauma, which means “ a wound, a hurt; a defeat”, and Clinton projectors/supporters suffered a trauma in every sense of the word as they were “wounded”, “hurt” and “defeated”.

In psychological terms, Hillary’s defeat to Trump felt like an actual physical or sexual assault upon these Clinton projectors/supporters. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true, and proof of it is that Clinton projectors/supporters have been suffering from post traumatic stress for the past two and a half years.

If you look at the symptoms of PTSD they read like a perfect descriptor of Clinton projectors/supporters behavior since Trump defeated Hillary.

1. IRRITABLE OR AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR - Since Trump’s victory and Hillary’s defeat, Clinton projector/supporters have ranted and raved incessantly, called all Trump voters racist and misogynyst, advocated the punching of alt-right members and cheered when it happened, and also shouted at and banned right wing public figures from restaurants and certain spaces. Russiagate was also a form of this symptom of PTSD as evidenced by the wildly aggressive charges and conspiracies being bandied about by supposedly serious journalists.

2. RECKLESS AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR - This is Russiagate in a nutshell. Instead of being rational and logical, Clinton projectors/supporters in the media and the general public threw ever more wild accusations at Trump thinking that Mueller would be the tool by which to remove him from office. The story was a nothing burger from day one…a total farce…but Clinton projectors/supporters were blind to it…and now they have handed Trump a powerful weapon for his reelection. Russiagate is a wonderful example of reckless and self-destructive behavior and cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face.

3. HYPERVIGILANCE - This again took the form of Russiagate, as the media and Clinton true believers saw Russian boogey men and women around every corner. Rachel Maddow and her fans are the poster children for this form of nonsensical and hysterical hypervigilance.

4. EXAGGERATED STARTLE RESPONSE - Again…this is Russiagate in a nutshell as it is an entirely exaggerated startle response. See Rachel Maddow and her co-”conspirators” in the establishment press who are so quick to turn everything Trump does into a Russian conspiracy and the apocalypse. Clinton supporters also pretend like everything was fine before Trump and have an exaggerated startle response when he acts just like every other asshole president we’ve had.

ON DEATH AND DYING

Besides suffering from Trump related PTSD, Clinton projectors/supporters are also suffering from grief. All losses are accompanied by grief of one form or another, and political losses are no different. When reality does not conform to your dreams, then there is a grieving that occurs…but in the case of Hillary projectors/supporters, that grief was much, much more intense than usual. A female candidate didn’t just lose, which would be bad enough as it would signal or reinforce feelings of personal unworthiness among Hillary’s projectors/supporters, but she lost to a man deemed to be not just a misogynist but an abhorrent sexual predator and racist monster. Hillary’s loss seen through this lens, which is the lens that the Hillary projectors/supporters used, was a catastrophic political, moral and ethical defeat, a personal repudiation and a trauma.

In the wake of Hillary’s loss, these projectors/supporters dove into the deep end of the grief pool with the added complication of the burden of PTSD, and the result was that they frothed and flailed and raged about desperately looking for something for which to grasp. The Clinton campaign and the media tossed them a lifebuoy with “Russiagate” written on the side of it and these projector/supporters grabbed on to it with a maniacal fervor.

According to the Kubler-Ross model, there are five stages of grief that in chronological order are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages of grief never quite go in as linear a fashion as one might expect. Grief is usually a one step forward, two steps back type of process where the stage you are in can change from moment to moment and day to day, sometimes moving forward, sometimes moving back.

In the case of Clinton projectors/supporters, Russiagate short-circuited the grief cycle and created a grief vortex where they repeatedly vacillate between denial and anger. Russiagate allowed these wounded, confused, traumatized and grieving Clinton projectors/supporters to cling to the hope that none of it had happened, that none of it was real and that they had been “right” all along. The problem is that reality and time inevitably transform an open system of hope into the closed system of denial. Some of these Clinton projectors/supporters became such dead-enders that they still defiantly declare that Hillary should be sworn in because she is the rightfully and duly elected president…which is a very clear indication of denial winning the day.

HELLO, COG DIS MY OLD FRIEND

The bottom line was this, that Clinton projectors/supporters were in such pain in the wake of Trump’s victory that they would do anything to alleviate that pain. One way to alleviate that pain was through confirmation bias, another was through outright denial, and yet another was through our old friend cognitive dissonance.

As I wrote in my article “Truth, Justice and the Curious Case of Chris Kyle” back in 2014,

Cognitive Dissonance is "psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously". People will contort in all sorts of ways to avoid seeing the uncomfortable truth that is right in front of their eyes and facing that conflict.

In the case of Chris Kyle, his supporters vociferously attacked me for pointing out the incongruity of his tall tales regarding his shooting of two carjackers, his “discovery” of WMD’s in Iraq and a plethora of other lies. These Kyle supporters were struggling with the discomfort of reading information that was at odds with their previously held belief. In order to alleviate that discomfort, they ignored the new information and attacked the source of it…me.

In the case of the 2016 election, Clinton supporters suffered from a similar malady where they simply could not accept that Hillary lost the election, and maybe even more importantly, that Trump actually won it. They were so emotionally attached to Clinton and their dream of a female President that the new information, Trump’s win, caused tremendous psychological discomfort…and in order to alleviate that discomfort they simply denied the new information with the delusion of Russiagate.

Clinton projectors/supporters simply cannot accept the reality of Trump as president and Hillary as defeated because it is so damaging to their identity and their cosmology. So instead they suspend their disbelief by short circuiting their critical thinking, and embrace the delusion of Russiagate.

When news stories appeared that alleged to show Trump’s guilt regarding collusion, liberals would celebrate like it was Christmas morning and pass the stories around like gifts. Days, or even hours later, when those stories were shot down, liberals simply ignored the new information, preferring to live in the delusion upholding grandeur of the original story.

The most glaring example of this is the infamous Steele Dossier, which alleged all sorts of suspicious activity on the part of Trump…the most embarrassing being the supposed “pee tape”. The Steele Dossier has been thoroughly debunked, so much so that even establishment shills like Michael Isikoff, who wrote an entire book with David Corn based upon the presumption that the Steele Dossier was accurate, have now declared it to be totally false. But liberals still cling to the Steele Dossier as if it is the gospel truth, and most believe that Trump is “compromised” (and in attempts to sound sophisticated use terms like “Kompromat”) by the Russians who have “pee tape” or something much worse on him.

The Steele Dossier claimed that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague to collude with Russians and the media and liberals clung to this story as damning evidence of collusion. But when Cohen flipped on Trump he testified under oath before Congress he swore he had never been to Prague. Instead of accepting and integrating this new information, liberals and the corporate media instead posited that Cohen was telling the truth in his testimony about everything except the Prague stuff…this is what cognitive dissonance looks like in action.

More from my Chris Kyle article,

What usually occurs when people are presented with new information that clashes with their strongly held belief, is that they "seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists."

Russiagate was the magic bullet for Clinton projectors/supporters and the #Resistance because it allowed them to alleviate their cognitive dissonance through confirmation bias, which allowed them to live in a state of denial and delusion.

Russiagate may have felt like a lifesaver at the time for these traumatized and hurting Clinton projectors/supporters, but as I pointed out right after the election, it was not a life jacket but an albatross. Denial is normal and natural when grieving, but if you stay in it too long you never evolve and heal from the wound. In the case of Russiagate, the #Resistance and the Clinton projectors/supporters, denial became an addiction that needed to be fed to be maintained in order to keep the pain of reality at bay. This addiction, like all addictions when they are so acute, was accompanied by hysteria, mania and delusion.

NEO-CONNING

The biggest winners in the Russiagate fiasco are not the Trumps, but the neo-cons, who have long wished for a revived war with Russia, be it cold or hot, and now they have not only their conservative cohorts on board but a plethora of supposed liberals who have been duped by Russiagate.

In a fevered attempt to take down Trump through Russiagate, the #Resistance made the calamitous mistake when they whole-heartedly embraced and rehabilitated the neo-cons from the Bush administration who lied us into Iraq and who were aided and abetted in that crime by the same corporate media that has been pushing Russiagate. The Decider himself, George W. Bush, has even been rehabilitated and transformed from being a war criminal and worst president ever to being hailed as a man of great principle and deep character all because he gave a candy to Michelle Obama at a funeral.

Other neo-cons, such as the reprehensible Bill Kristol and David Frum, are now held in the highest esteem by those who should know better just because they oppose Trump on stylistic grounds. Besides reviving the neo-cons and exorcising their Iraq ghosts, the #Resistance also warmly embraced the neo-liberals and their economics which gave us the 2008 housing collapse and the big bailouts among other notable disasters. Russiagate makes for strange bedfellows…but the #Resistance is going to find out that when you sleep with war criminals and banking fraud pigs, you wake up with blood on your hands and smelling like shit.

CONSEQUENCES

The long-term consequences of going all in on Russiagate for the #Resistance, Clinton projectors/supporters and the media are dire.

In their fever and fervor to bring down Trump, the media have handed him a gift of epic proportions by stripping themselves of any last vestiges of credibility they had left. Trump’s favorite claim is that of “fake news”, and when something comes out that makes him look bad, he labels it “fake news” and the media and #Resistance goes crazy. Now with Russiagate, the media have propagated the motherload of “fake news” and have legitimized Trump’s future claims of “fake news”, thus neutering themselves as a functioning and vital part of our Republic.

The Russiagate fiasco is a weapon that Trump will now use to bludgeon his enemies and to protect himself from any further charges of wrong doing (of which, I am sure, there are a lot), and it is entirely the fault of the fourth estate and the #Resistance for having gotten out ahead of themselves and the evidence.

Sadly, just as with their utter failure regarding the Iraq War and WMD’s, the media will face no consequences for their miscarriage of journalism in the case of Russiagate. The loudest media voices that got it wrong…AGAIN…will simply fail upwards and maintain their standing as guardians of the establishment just as they did after the Iraq/WMD mess. The corporate media in America is so tainted and so toxic that it is a cancer on our culture and simply cannot be trusted at all anymore…and that is dangerous for our Republic.

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

While the media is certainly to blame for this Russia-Gate fiasco, at some point people need to take responsibility for their own thinking, or lack thereof. How many times does the media have to reveal itself to be a mendacious propaganda machine before people wake up and push back? The media malpractice in their coverage of the Iraq War/WMD lies, the housing collapse, the Chris Kyle fabrications, the cavalcade of anti-Russian misreporting, the Jussie Smollett nonsense, the Russiagate fraud, how many more times does the media have to prove itself to be untrustworthy before people start holding them accountable?

And this is not some frivolous question, this is crucial for the survival of the Republic. If the press cannot function with some semblance of impartiality, journalistic quality and professionalism then an authoritarian will simply use the public’s distrust and disgust with them to his advantage and will further erode our already tenuous civil liberties….oh wait…that is already happening!

That is the most frustrating thing about the Russiagate horseshit…it has aided, abetted and emboldened Trump. This shouldn’t be surprising since the corporate media were already complicit in getting Trump elected the first time, but now with their incessant shrieking about the Russiagate “collusion” hoax they have given Trump a great boost for 2020.

At this point in the Russiagate story It isn’t about people having more knowledge in regards to Russia, or Trump or the media, it is about knowledge of oneself. Why do you believe what you believe…and where does your loyalty lie? If it lies anywhere besides the Truth, you are bound to be suckered by something or someone. Remember…if you desperately want something to be true, you should be particularly wary of those who you tell it is.

Regardless of how things go forward from here and whether the report gets released (which I hope it does) or if it gets buried, I ask the #Resistance to listen to me now. I warned you two years ago and you ignored me. Don’t make that same mistake again. My advice to you now is to stop being so God-damn emotional and weak. Get tough. Get rational. Get logical. Get strategic. And most importantly pledge your loyalty not to your party, ideology, country or identity but rather to the Truth. It will serve you and America much better in the long run.

ADDENDUM

As I was writing this piece this week a story titled “Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed” broke in the New York Times that claimed that people from the Mueller team were frustrated over Attorney General Bill Barr’s summary of their findings, and claimed that Mueller’s report is much more damaging to Trump that Barr makes it seem.

Well…that isn’t really what the New York Times article says…but that is how it is being “reported” in its headline and by cable news outlets like MSNBC. In fact, in an odd confluence of events, I was watching MSNBC when the story broke and got to see in real time how dubious their journalism really is as Chris Matthews “paraphrased” the Times article by saying that Mueller’s team is finally speaking up after two years of silence.

Here is the first paragraph of the Times article which caused such a stir.

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney general William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

That is one hell of a paragraph…so let’s break it down.

Cable news and other media have declared that this story is really bad news for Trump because Mueller’s team is finally speaking out and is saying the report will be damning of the President. Of course, upon closer inspection, virtually none of the cable news pontification is even remotely backed up by the facts stated in the article.

For instance…even though the media is claiming this is Mueller’s team breaking their monk like silence…they aren’t. This isn’t Mueller’s team speaking out…these claims are allegedly being made by “associates” of Mueller’s investigators, not the investigators themselves. Beyond that, in that opening paragraph the Times also makes it clear that the sources for the story are “government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations”.

So let’s be perfectly clear as to what this story claims…that “government officials and others” have heard from “associates” of members of the Mueller team, that said Mueller team members believe that the Attorney General “failed to adequately portray their findings”.

This is like a bad game of telephone where the esteemed New York Times reports on third and fourth hand information that was allegedly told to “associates” of investigators on Mueller’s team, and then those “associates” told associates of theirs who are “government officials and others” who then told the New York Times who are now telling us.

Not surprisingly, MSNBC, CNN and the Washington Post all followed up the Times story with equally explosive claims but with similarly distant and dubious sourcing.

It is absolutely stunning when you break down the story and its sourcing and then consider the shock waves of glee this report sent through cable news and the #Resistance. Bill Maher, who is the id and village idiot of the center left, just last night was touting on his HBO show that treason is back on the table and so is collusion, all based on this extremely vacuous and flimsy report in the Times…which clearly states that the finding of “no collusion” is not in contention.

Maher is the hackneyed comedy version of cognitive dissonance with bad skin as on his show last week, the first since the Mueller Report was submitted and the Barr synopsis came out, he declared that he doesn’t need Mueller’s report because he KNOWS Trump is a traitor! This is textbook Cognitive Dissonance, where people “seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists."

This story and the media and the #Resistance’s rapturous response to it proves once again the seriousness of the maladies from which they suffer. This report and the liberal response to it highlights the conformation bias, cognitive dissonance, denial and delusion which I wrote about above. It is also emblematic of the media’s blatant dishonesty and unprofessionalism. This story is just one more piece of evidence for the thesis I laid out in the above article.

It is also a damning indictment that the #Resistance and its media cohorts like Bill Maher and MSNBC are irredeemable and a hopeless lost cause.

MY BEST GUESS

When discussing my skepticism regarding this whole issue, I am often asked what it is that I believe regarding Trump, Russia, collusion and the rest of it. Well, what I think is this…and this is entirely and purely speculation…that Trump is certainly “guilty” of obstruction of justice. I mean, Trump is a walking obstruction of justice…but the problem is that if there is no underlying crime, that makes both the legal and political case for obstruction much more difficult.

In addition, I have yet to see any clear evidence of the underlying claim that Russia hacked the DNC server and the Clinton campaign emails. In fact there has been no evidence released that even shows that the DNC server was hacked at all. Now that doesn’t mean the server wasn’t hacked, it may have been, it just means I haven’t seen any evidence of it. It also doesn’t mean that if it was hacked, that Russia hacked it, it just means I haven’t seen any evidence of those claims. I am not alone in my skepticism regarding the alleged hack, as the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group which includes Ray McGovern, Colleen Rowley, Mike Gravel, Philip Giraldi, Larry Johnson, John Kiriakou and Lawrence Wilkerson among many others, have stated their skepticism as well regarding this claim of a hack that is now assumed to be true despite the paucity of evidence for it.

And finally, in regards to the charge that Russia “interfered” in our election, I would say that the evidence put forth thus far is woefully inadequate to the point of absurdity. The Facebook and Twitter meme operation allegedly run by Russia is an absolute joke and is not proof of Russian interference in anything at all.

If people are serious about identifying and punishing nations for interference and meddling in our electoral and political process, then there are two criminal states that should be the entire focus of attention…Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which a nefarious actors in our political process with tentacles into the highest echelons of power in America.

As I stated earlier and as I stated throughout the last two and half years in all of my writing…I am open to evidence of Russian interference in the election and any conspiracy with Trump or anyone else…and will gladly scrutinize that evidence if and when it comes forward, and accept it if it is credible. But until it comes forward I maintain the only logical and rational position there is, and that is of maintaining a pronounced skepticism towards these and all evidence-free claims.

For a glance at my previous writings on Russiagate over the last few years, here are some links.

Joe McCarthy Was Right!! Shocking Revelations From a Manchurian Op-Ed Writer

Deconstructing Criticism of Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews

The Media Hates Conspiracy Theories…Except When They Don’t

Stephen Colbert Goes to Russia Looking For Laughs

Has the Fear of Putin Seized Hollywood?

Echoes of Totalitarianism in #MeToo and Russia-Gate

Hollywood’s Malicious Propaganda Dehumanizes All Russians

Captain America v Trump in Battle of the Useful idiots

In a Fit of Anti-Trump Pique, Liberals Shamelessly Embrace Deep-State Criminals

A Curious Case of Mystery Attacks, Microwave Weapons and Media Manipulation

©2019

Hollywood's Malicious Propaganda Dehumanizes All Russians

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes 23 seconds

A closer inspection of America’s relentless Russo-phobic propaganda campaign reveals that it isn’t just the news media spreading hatred of Russia and Russians, but Hollywood as well.

America’s unrelenting propaganda assault on Russia began by demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin is routinely blamed for every evil that occurs under the sun, and according to the establishment media, there is nothing too evil that the Bond super-villain Putin cannot accomplish.

The U.S. likes to personalize their enemy into one caricature so that Americans have an effigy onto which they can project their fear and loathing. A brief glance at recent history shows this to be true as the U.S. used the same playbook with Bin Laden, Saddam Hussien, Muamar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Il.

Sometimes, when an enemy lacks the requisite charismatically evil leader to fit the propaganda bill, the U.S. will demonize whole peoples, for example the Japanese in World War II. The dehumanizing of the Japanese is what convinced Americans to accept the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the use of nuclear weapons on Japan to end that war, this is in marked contrast to American’s attitudes towards German-Americans.

In the current propaganda war with Russia, the U.S. seems to be taking a unique hybrid approach. Putin is certainly held up as an icon of evil but Russians and people of Russian descent are also being demonized and in some very insidious and disturbing ways.

For instance, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, recently told NBC in an interview, “…the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain-favor, whatever...”

Clapper’s statement maligns all Russians, even Russian-Americans, as genetically duplicitous and diabolical. Such repulsive xenophobia isn’t just good old-fashioned American Russia hating, it is fast becoming U.S. policy. 

For instance, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election has deemed all people “of Russian descent or nationality” to be potential targets of their investigation. There are 3 million Russian-Americans in the U.S., and according to the Senate Intel Committee, they are now all suspect.

In the same vein, Senator Dianne Feinstein demanded that Facebook turn over to the Senate any data related to “Russia connected accounts”. Feinstein broadly defines Russia connected accounts as “a person or entity…that may be in some way connected to Russia, including by user language setting, user currency or other payment method.”

Feinstein and Clapper’s Russo-phobia and totalitarian instincts are chilling, and they will find little resistance from the American people who are being surreptitiously indoctrinated by Hollywood to believe that Russians are inherently devious miscreants.

It has been well established that Hollywood is the propaganda wing of the Pentagon and the intelligence community and has effectively indoctrinated Americans to whole-heartedly support America’s belligerent militarism and to see the U.S. as always the well-intentioned hero.

So it is no surprise that Richard Stengel, former Managing Editor of Time magazine (2006-2013) and Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs under President Obama (2014-2016), saw the success of the Pentagon-Hollywood alliance in shaping public opinion and tried to emulate it. It was revealed in a trove of hacked Sony emails released by Wikileaks, that in 2014, while officially serving in the Obama administration, Stengel approached Hollywood studios asking for help in countering “Russian narratives”.

Stengel was wise to ask for Hollywood’s assistance, as entertainment is a much more insidious form of propaganda than “fake news”. It is designed to manipulate emotions and audiences have been conditioned to allow it to do so. Viewers willingly let their guard down and suspend their disbelief when they watch a film or television show, and therefore their critical thinking function is reduced and they become much more pliable and vulnerable to propaganda. 

It is in this state of vulnerability when their emotions are triggered and their conscious mind is bypassed, that the nefarious ideas of the propagandist are implanted in the viewer’s unconscious. This is why businesses pay so much money for “product placement” in films and why the Pentagon has embedded itself so deeply into the entertainment industry, because audiences are much more susceptible to subtle and unconscious propaganda messages when they watch entertainment. The Pentagon has long understood and benefitted from this and those who wish to foment anti-Russian sentiment understand it too and are currently using Hollywood to spread that vile message.

The extent to which Stengel’s conversations with Hollywood bigwigs convinced the studios to act is not yet fully known, but since he made his plea to the studios, Hollywood has churned out a steady stream of filmsthat has portrayed Russians as a deplorable people.

Some of the most prominent of them were Child 44 (2015), the story about a Russian child killer starring Tom Hardy, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (2015) starring Tim Hanks and Atomic Blonde (2017) starring Charlize Theron, both about nefarious Cold War Russian spies, and Bitter Harvest (2017), the story of famine induced by Josef Stalin upon Ukrainians in the 1930’s. These films, all set during the Cold War (except for Bitter Harvest), uniformly portray Russians as treacherous, vicious, malicious and merciless.

On television, there has been the recurring anti-Russian storyline on the hit Netflix show House of Cards, where a remorseless and repugnant Putin-esque Russian leader cynically destroys people’s lives.

Last month the newest batch of Russian themed films and television shows hit screens both big and small with the same theme of degrading and dehumanizing the Russian people as their propaganda predecessors.

Red Sparrow is the story of a former ballerina turned Russian super spy trained in the sexual arts and stars the highest paid actress in the world, Jennifer Lawrence. The Death of Stalin is a dark comedy about the power struggle in the Soviet Union to fill the void after Stalin’s death. And the hit FX television show The Americans is about a couple living in Cold War America in the 1980’s who are actually deep undercover Soviet spies.

Red Sparrow is a prime example of Hollywood’s attempt to incite Americans to distrust and dislike the Russian people. The film is set in modern day Russia but feels decidedly Cold War in its depiction of the country as a bleak frozen tundra inhabited by the most paranoid and despicable of people.

Every Russian man in the film is a vicious murderer, pedophile, rapist or traitor…and in the case of the lead villain played by Matthias Schoenaerts, not coincidentally a Vladimir Putin look-a-like, all of the above.

Red Sparrow’s Russian women fare no better as they are all cold-blooded, conniving, manipulative whores who are only proficient at sex, ballet or both. Regardless of gender, all of the Russians in Red Sparrow are beasts never to be trusted.

The Death of Stalin is a considerably better film than Red Sparrow, but that only means it is a more effective propaganda tool.

In the film, under a veneer of humor, all Russians are portrayed as deceitful, corrupt, unscrupulous monsters only interested in selling out their comrades, gaining power and then brutally abusing it.

In The Death of Stalin, as in Red Sparrow, the theme of Russian men as sexual degenerates, sadists, rapists or pedophiles, insidiously courses through the narrative.

The television show The Americans by its premise alone also ingrains in its audience the idea that Russians are not to be trusted because they are instinctively a deceptive and plotting people.

The trudging up of the Cold War is an easy propaganda device that triggers old anti-communist and anti-Soviet fears among Americans. It is striking to note that Hollywood is portraying Russians solely in terms of the Cold War but not in regards to World War II. That is because Russia’s role in defeating Hitler and ending the war in the Pacific is a heroic one and would undermine the foundation of Cold War enmity upon which the current Russo-phobic narrative is built.

As Hollywood and the news media indoctrinate Americans with an anti-Russian animus, U.S. audiences will become even more susceptible to stories, like the Skripal poisoning, that feed the anti-Russian narrative no matter how tenuous or divorced from the facts they may be.

The endgame of the current wave of anti-Russian propaganda is for Americans to be emotionally conditioned to believe that Russians are capable of anything, and thus, must be stopped by any means necessary.

The problem of Hollywood and America’s Russo-phobia will only get worse, and that is troubling for all of us, because in this current climate, a war with Russia seems not only possible, but likely, and that is a movie without a happy ending. 

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2018

Red Sparrow: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. No need to see this movie. If you are mildly intrigued by the premise or by the opportunity to see Jennifer Lawrence in her birthday suit, then watch it on Netflix or cable, but arm yourself with very low expectations.

Red Sparrow, directed by Francis Lawrence and written by Justin Haythe (based on the book of the same name by Justin Matthews), is the story of Dominika Egorova, a former ballerina turned Russian intelligence officer who uses her seductive charms to try and uncover the identity of a mole. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence as Dominika, with supporting turns from Joel Edgerton, Mary Louise Parker, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons and Matthias Shoenaerts. 

When I first saw the trailer for Red Sparrow I was intrigued because I am a fan of Jennifer Lawrence and respect her work as an actress. In addition, I enjoy a good spy story (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one of my sneaky favorite movies of the last bunch of years) and am a bit of a Russophile as well. My Russophilia mostly manifests itself in my choice of literature as I am a sucker for Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov and the rest but I can also appreciate a good Russian narrative in film as well. 

Days before I went to see Red Sparrow, a friend of mine, the venerable Spyder Le Frenchy, who is an incorrigible pervert, alerted me that he saw Jennifer Lawrence on 60 Minutes say that she appears naked in Red Sparrow. Spyder hasn't been to a movie in a decade, but with Ms. Lawrence's revealing revelation Red Sparrow became a must see movie event for him. I went to see the movie for reasons other than Ms. Lawrence's exposed flesh, but that being said, her nakedness was not something that would deter me from seeing the movie. 

Perversion aside, as a cinephile I found Red Sparrow to be mind-numbingly banal and completely underwhelming. In terms of perversion, I texted Spyder Le Frenchy after the movie and told him that if he is aroused by tedious, boring and incoherent things, then Red Sparrow is definitely the movie for him. 

I understood what Red Sparrow was trying to do, it was trying to be a sexy star vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence. Wrapped in a cloak of Hollywood celebrity (Ms. Lawrence) and allegedly timely drama, the film is also surreptitiously a piece of propaganda meant to reinforce the Russophobia of our age. The truth is, the pieces are all in place for Red Sparrow to be a smash hit, it has the highest paid actress in the world, a stellar cast, and a relevant and potentially compelling story based on a successful book, but in execution, Red Sparrow is a lifeless and stale mess of a movie. 

Jennifer Lawrence is a terrific actress, dynamic screen presence and a luminous beauty, but she is so burdened by the guttural Russian accent she uses in Red Sparrow that her magnetism seems to evaporate right before your eyes. Ms. Lawrence's accent also occasionally goes in and out seemingly at random, so much so that there were moments where I wondered if her character were doing it intentionally for some secret spy reason…rest assured, she wasn't. 

Ms. Lawrence's performance is ultimately shallow, hollow and rings flat throughout. It felt to me like she was a movie star mailing it in the majority of the time. Ms. Lawrence is certainly a beautiful woman and the camera loves her, but for an actress playing a professional seductress, she struck me as the opposite of smoldering, in fact she came across as remarkably frigid and unsexy. All of the supposedly steamy romance in the film is suffocatingly dull, tedious and entirely devoid of allure, passion or eroticism. 

The cast of Red Sparrow is a group of acting heavy hitters, but every single one of them gives sub-par, entirely forgettable performances. Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons, Mary Louise Parker and Charlotte Rampling are, like Jenifer Lawrence, good actors who do bad work in this ice-cold clunker. 

Besides the cast's flaccid work, Red Sparrow's script is also a disaster area. Incoherent is the most pleasant way to describe the numerous twists and turns that all go nowhere at a monotonous snails pace. All of the characters are written as flat, one-dimensional stereotypes, and the narrative is a dull maze of standard spy movie tropes. 

The film is also a pretty heavy-handed piece of anti-Russian propaganda. Russia is presented as a bitter, monolithic, Orwellian tundra populated by equally cold, conniving and vicious human beings. Every single Russian man in the film is an irredeemable degenerate. Some are rapists, or pedophiles, or killers, and some are all three, but all are reprehensible. Russian women don't fare much better in Red Sparrow. According to the movie, Russian women are uniformly lying, manipulative, cold-hearted vengeful whores devoid of genuine human emotion who are proficient only at sex, violence…and occasionally ballet.

The Russia of Red Sparrow is decidedly Cold War era even though the film is set in the present day. Vladimir Putin is never mentioned by name, although a "Russian President" looms over the film's proceedings like a chemical weapons cloud. Red Sparrow's "Russian President" is portrayed in conversation as a cross between Stalin, Sauron and Scrooge…sans the charm. 

Interestingly enough, actor Matthias Shoenaerts plays a pivotal role in the film, and he is a dead ringer for Putin. Casting a Putin look-a-like in the film's most nefarious role did not happen by coincidence, that I can assure you. Shoenaerts is intentionally meant to represent Putin and his character's actions are meant to embarrass and humiliate him. 

The propaganda of Red Sparrow is what I would deem Reinforcement Propaganda, which means that it is not meant to instigate negative feelings toward Russia, but to reinforce and solidify previously planted negative feelings already in the collective. The most recent round of  Instigative Propaganda (not to be confused with Provocation Propaganda) against Russia started in the U.S. media in earnest in 2014 and has been relentless ever since.

Red Sparrow takes the foundation developed by this round of Instigative Propaganda (2014) and makes it manifest by simply dramatizing what the viewer has been taught to assume is true. That is the beauty of Reinforcement Propaganda, it builds upon Foundational and Instigative Propaganda and solidifies preconceived assumptions among the indoctrinated. In this case, the current coordinated propaganda war against Russia was built upon the much earlier Foundational Propaganda of the Cold War and anti-communist movements, which was heightened with the newest round of Instigation Propaganda started in 2014 (media coverage of the Sochi Olympics and Ukrainian Coup being notable examples). Now Red Sparrow is part of the Reinforcement Wave, that buttresses layers of disinformation that preceded it, and normalizes it through entertainment. 

All of that said, just because a film is propaganda doesn't mean it is automatically bad. Some propaganda, the most effective kind, is encased in a superior film. To be clear, Red Sparrow is not a bad film because it is propaganda, it is a bad film because it is a bad film. 

As for the specifics of why Red Sparrow is a bad film, I think it is because director Francis Lawrence lacks any vision whatsoever and…is not good at directing. A strong directorial hand may have been able to reign in this unruly film, but the clueless Mr. Lawrence is ill-equipped for such duty. A quality filmmaker of skill would've been able to, through mastery of craft, at least build tension and suspense with this story, but the cinematically impotent Mr. Lawrence is entirely incapable of such a task. Besides poor direction, the film also has no distinctive look to it and the cinematography of Jo Willems is so common as to be listless.  

In conclusion, Red Sparrow is little more than a poorly crafted, middle of the road, bland piece of Hollywood studio junk. Jennifer Lawrence may be a big movie star and the highest paid actress in the world, but even her star power is unable to keep this film's head artistically or financially above water. Red Sparrow could have been at least a halfway entertaining, if not a downright good movie, but due to weak direction and a horrendous script the film is ultimately a wasted opportunity, and a complete waste of your precious time. If you really want to see some creative and imaginative espionage drama involving Russians, my advice is to tune in to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC ( or any cable news talking empty-head) any night of the week, she'll have enough speculative, evidence-free, cloak and dagger Russo-phobic red meat to satiate all of your deepest xenophobic desires.

©2018

Has the Fear of Putin Seized Hollywood?

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 04 seconds

Is Hollywood cowering from their most frightening bogeyman Vladimir Putin, or is the business of anti-Russian propaganda stronger than ever?

 Los Angeles is a very strange place to live. The weather is almost always sunny, comfortable and clear, leaving the city in a state of perpetual summer. On the rare occasion it does rain, the local media cover it as though the apocalypse were underway. This glorious weather may sound heavenly to those who suffer with brutally humid summers or bitterly cold winters, or both, but it has a downside to it, namely it can be terribly disorienting.

The longer you live here the more disorienting it becomes as you are rendered incapable of remembering if something in your past occurred on the Fourth of July or Christmas Eve, as those days, and nearly every other day, look exactly the same. 

This disorientation is heightened by the constant influx of beautiful young people who come to the land of milk and honey to find their fame and fortune. This yearly harvest of fresh blood combined with the interminable glorious weather leads many Angelenos to live in a state of surreality, where their imagination and the real world morph into one. 

An example of this bewildering condition where fantasy and reality blur, occurred this past Wednesday, July 19, when The Hollywood Reporter published an article provocatively titled “Vladimir Putin Cut From Two Upcoming Hollywood Movies”. Upon reading the headline I wondered if the Russian President was moonlighting as an actor and had felt the bitter sting of being left on the cutting room floor. Sadly, as entertaining as that premise may be, upon reading the article it was revealed that was not the case.

What the article did claim was that Hollywood studios are so petrified of retaliatory hacking by Vladimir Putin, they will not even mention his name in two upcoming Russian-themed films, The Red Sparrow and Kursk, for fear of angering him.

Apparently, Putin has become a kind of Creature from the Black Lagoon, or in this case the Black Sea, who if provoked, will rise from the depths to terrorize the innocent folk of Tinsel town. And like the citizens of Tokyo in a Godzilla movie, the studio big wigs are doing all they can not to agitate the great beast Putin in order to save their hides.

Studio executives are not exactly known for their profiles in courage, but the level of Putin-phobia described in this article is bizarre to say the least. That said, it would be understandable for Hollywood to cower in fear of Putin considering the steady diet of anti-Russian hysteria that they are continually fed by the mainstream media. The establishment press has turned Putin into a combination of Darth Vader, Sauron, Lord Voldemort and Hannibal Lecter, an omnipotent purveyor of evil who not only controls Trump, but aches for global domination and eats America’s elections with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

A case in point of the media’s voracious appetite for anti-Russian stories is that the aforementioned Hollywood Reporter article with its Putin headline, which was printed in an industry periodical and geared toward entertainment professionals, quickly spread and was reported on by standard news outlets across the globe, with similarly misleading headlines.

If Hollywood is afraid of hacking, it is not entirely unfounded, as Sony was the victim of a devastating hack. That hack occurred in 2014 and was blamed on North Korea who was allegedly trying to stop the release of The Interview, a comedy about trying to assassinate leader Kim Jong-Un.

One illuminating piece of information to come out of the 2014 Sony hack was that a senior U.S. State Department official, Richard Stengel, was actively trying to get Hollywood studios to create anti-Russian propaganda. This is an intriguing piece of information to keep in mind when digging through The Hollywood Reporter- Putin story in question.

The Hollywood Reporter article says that, despite their apparent fear of hacking reprisals, “the film industry is finding the Russia theme too irresistible to ignore” right now. The article mentions no fewer than 8 Russia-themed films that are either in production or in the pipeline. The list of films includes the previously mentioned Jennifer Lawrence vehicle Red Sparrow and the true story of a Russian submarine disaster, Kursk, along with a Wonder Woman sequel where Wonder Woman goes back in time to fight the Soviets, a Rocky spin-off with a Russian villain, a potential Mikhail Gorbachev bio-pic, and films with titles such as The Tracking of a Russian Spy, How to Catch a Russian Spy and The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

 Combined with Russian portrayals in recent feature films such as the dreadful Child 44 and the abysmal Bitter Harvest, and in television shows like House of Cards, which featured a Pussy Riot cameo and a recurring evil Russian leader meant to be Putin, and it seems as though the State Department were successful in their quest for assistance from Hollywood in the propaganda department.

No doubt the greatest propaganda comes from the news media though, and I have to include The Hollywood Reporter in that category.  Upon closer inspection it becomes very clear that this ‘fear of Putin hacking’ story is little more than “fake news”.

The only person quoted in the article who makes any mention of Putin and hacking concerns is Ajay Arora, who does not work in the film business, but rather runs a computer security firm. Mr. Arora being the only source for the Putin claim is absurd, since his company stands to gain mightily by stoking the fears of studio executives over hacking.

The article also states that, “Insiders describe the moves (to excise Putin) as ‘creative choices’, but by avoiding Putin, Fox is also steering clear of any Russian hackers who might protest.” This is quite a remarkable sentence, as the writer quotes people who are speaking anonymously and are therefore free to speak their mind, but who say it is a “creative choice” to remove Putin, and yet she sticks to her premise, despite a lack of any evidence that hacking is the real reason for Putin being removed from the pictures.

The writer makes the rather illogical case that Russia-themed stories are blossoming everywhere in Hollywood, but the film industry is so scared of Vladimir Putin hacking them they won’t even mention his name in a movie. I guess Putin is so narcissistically evil that he will only retaliate against those that speak ill of him but not his nation, and Hollywood executives know this and are confident in this knowledge. This is obviously, absolutely and completely preposterous.

The Hollywood Reporter article ends by claiming, “But while Hollywood is willing to feed the public's hunger for all things Russia, studios will likely continue to play it safe when it comes to depicting the current leadership. After all, even Oliver Stone, who directed the pro-Russia documentary series The Putin Interviews, left the president out of last year's Snowden.”

Yes, even that America-hating, pro-Russian shill Oliver Stone cut any mention of Putin from his film Snowden! In fact, Oliver Stone was so afraid of Putin he went to Russia and interviewed him for a four-hour documentary.  Wait…what? The article’s final paragraph is a perfect synopsis of the incoherence of the entire story.

The writer of this Hollywood Reporter article is guilty of not writing an article around the provable facts of the story, but rather manufacturing a story to suit her preconceived narrative. No doubt she had to search far and wide to scrounge up the agreeable quote from Mr. Arora that quenched the thirst of her hypothesis.

Does that approach to journalism sound familiar? A great number of mainstream journalists have done the same thing over the last three years in regards to most any Russian story. Open the New York Times or the Washington Post and you will read lots and lots of assumptions, innuendo and self-serving opinions regarding Russia, but very few facts.

This sort of rancid propaganda and lazy journalism serves no purpose but to feed the fever of Russian hysteria, and foster a Dr. Strangelovian paranoia over fear of Putin contaminating our precious bodily fluids, namely our “sacred” elections.

When powerful institutions that shape our culture, like Hollywood and the media, set out to incite hatred against Russia and its people, it can only end badly. The spate of shamelessly one-sided news reporting and the villainous portrayals of Russians in entertainment have ignited an anti-Russian frenzy and panic that borders on delirium. The dehumanization of Russians is now at a fever pitch and will grow into madness, and from that madness will come war.

The Hollywood Reporter fantasy of Putin hacking movie studios is but a symptom of a wider disease that will inevitability lead to catastrophe. Cue Slim Pickens and his nuclear bronco ride to our oblivion. 

This article was previously published on Sunday, July 23, 2017 at RT.

©2017

Deconstructing Criticism of Oliver Stone's "The Putin Interviews"

Estimated Reading Time : 7 minutes 38 seconds

Showtime recently released a four part interview titled The Putin Interviews, which are a collection of four, one hour conversations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and iconic American filmmaker Oliver Stone. The documentary series has generated a great deal of backlash against Mr. Stone, which should come as no surprise since controversy has long been his artistic companion. 

Oliver Stone's feature films like Salvador, Platoon, JFK, Nixon, W. and Snowden have attracted much criticism from establishment sources who despise Stone's contrarian views and political beliefs. When he got into making documentaries and interviewing political figures, the knives that were already out for him got considerably sharper and longer. Stone's interviews with Fidel Castro (Commandante, Looking for Fidel) and South American leftist leaders (South of the Border) and his historical documentary Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States, were pilloried in the mainstream media and by the powers that be, and that continues with his Putin interview. 

Google "Stone and Putin" and a plethora of attacks against the director and his interview with Putin will pop up. Stone went on Stephen Colbert's show recently and was laughed at by the audience and his host for having the temerity to question the establishment narrative when it comes to "the tyrannical dictator" Putin and Russia. 

These attacks are to be expected, the American public has been so heavily propagandized against the Russians and Putin in recent history that audiences are simply incapable of even contemplating questioning that powerful narrative. Add to that the fact that any opposing views to the official mainstream story are quickly exiled or labelled the work of Russian agents or dupes, and it is easy to see why any stance that is not even pro-Russia, but not anti-Russia is laughed at, suffocated or ignored.

Which brings us to this past Sunday, June 25, 2017. The New York Times ran an Op-ed from a contributing writer, Masha Gessen, titled "How Putin Seduced Oliver Stone - and Trump". Ms. Gessen is an outspoken anti-Putin Russian exile and LGBTQ advocate. She is well-respected by the establishment media, having written a book about Putin ("The Man Without a Face"), and is often a guest on cable news, or a contributing writer to some of our "finest" establishment magazines and newspapers, like the New York Times and the New Yorker, where she has a piece published this week as well. 

Ms. Gessen's op-ed is a remarkable thing to behold in that it is entirely at odds with itself, is devoid of any substance or insight and is a shameless hit piece. For a woman held in such high regard by people in power, she reveals herself to be a shallow and rather vacuous thinker with little value beyond being a propaganda asset. 

The opening line of her Times piece states, "Watching four hours of Oliver Stone interviewing Vladimir Putin is not a lesson in journalism." I assume Ms. Gessen thinks she is being clever here, but she shows her hand as being completely ignorant in regards to filmmaking. Oliver Stone is not a journalist, he is a filmmaker and documentarian. Those are two very different things. A journalist searches for THE story, while a documentarian tells A story that brings insight to THE story. Stone's approach to this interview is just like his approach to his feature films, he is seeking the counter-myth to the prevailing establishment myth. He is not here to regurgitate the official mainstream story that is repeated ad infinitum in the press and on cable news every night, he is looking for the alternative view. 

Stone has made his mark in cinema by seeking the contrarian narrative in the face of conventional thoughts and beliefs. So when America was in love with itself and its unquestioned moral purity in the 1980's, Stone directed Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July, films that shatter the American myth of good intentioned superiority. 

With Stone's 1991 masterpiece JFK, he explicitly states that the film is a counter myth to the establishment myth of the Warren Commission. Even with his biography of Nixon, a man Stone should have reviled, he goes contrarian and paints a heartbreakingly human portrait of a man he could have easily caricatured as a villain. 

And so it is with Stone's documentaries as well. His interviews with Castro, South American leftists and now Putin, are meant to challenge the prevailing conventional wisdom and narrative of the establishment. That Ms. Gessen is too blind to see that reveals either her bias or her ignorance. If Ms. Gessen wanted the same old Russia bashing story, she could watch Megyn Kelly interview Putin. 

Gessen then follows that opening line with this beauty, "The four part series contains many dull exchanges and even more filler, like footage of the two men watching Dr. Strangelove together."  This sentence alone reveals Ms. Gessen is in so far over her head in regards to cinema that she will never make it back to shore. 

The scene where Stone and Putin watch Strangelove is a piece of cinematic brilliance that nearly made me fall over laughing. The juxtaposition of Putin, this alleged dictator and tyrant, sitting for two hours watching a cold war Kubrick dark comedy about U.S. - Russian relations and war, is priceless entertainment. This entire sequence wasn't filler, it was symbolically the heart of the documentary. America of today, with its anti-Russian hysteria, has turned into a nation of General Jack D. Ripper's who are fearful of those Rooskies tainting our precious bodily fluids (our "sacred" elections!!). For Gessen to not get the joke, and to not understand the nuance and brilliance of that sequence exposes her as being either humorless or intentionally obtuse. 

Ms. Gessen then gets into the meat of her anti-Stone/Putin piece by laying out how "a powerful, wealthy American man can hold affection for the tyrannical, corrupt leader of a hostile nation." This sentence is riddled with assumptions that are never proven and say more about the writer than its subject. Just to remind Ms. Gessen, America and Russia are not at war. Russia is only a "hostile nation" to those that declare it to be but never prove it. Unlike the U.S., Russia is not currently moving troops and equipment to America's border, or illegally invading and bombing (Syria) one of America's allies. That Ms. Gessen just assumes her thinking to be true shows us that she expects her readership to be of the same mind set as she, which means she isn't here to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with her, the marker of a weak writer and flaccid argument if there ever was one. 

Ms. Gessen then lays out five conditions that need to exist for someone like Stone (and by never explained but magical extension Trump) to be duped by Putin. They are, in order...

1. Ignorance : Ms. Gessen attempts to lay out the case that Stone is so ill-informed that he is little more than a wounded mouse being toyed with by the big, bad cat Putin. Her two examples of this are, when Putin claims that Russia has hundreds of television outlets, and so the idea that he controls them is absurd, and that Ukrainian Special Forces kidnapped ethnic Russians in East Ukraine. Ms. Gessen says these two things a egregiously incorrect…although she never provides any information or links to prove this fact. Maybe they are totally wrong, that is certainly possible, if not likely, but after four hours of conversation, THAT is the most powerful evidence you can find to back up your claims of ignorance? That makes for a very shoddy case at best, and does not speak well of Ms. Gessen's anti-Stone/Putin case. 

2. Love of Power and Grandeur : Condition number two seems self-explanatory enough, Stone was seduced by the power of Putin's position and the grandeur and opulence of his life. Ms. Gessen references Putin's stable of horses and Stone's fawning over Putin's hockey prowess. 

Then, in a bizarre jump, Ms. Gessen references an exchange where Stone challenges Putin over his LGBTQ stances, something which has made him enemy number one in some precincts here in America. Gessen claims Putin responds by declaring his desirability and homophobia which makes both men laugh. I was surprised when I saw this exchange because Putin actually stated that there are no laws against homosexuals in Russia, a fact that most Americans will probably not know. He then said that he is very traditional and prefers a traditional marriage and children, but that adults can do as they please. 

Look, people can disagree on their interpretation of Putin in this exchange, and no doubt Ms. Gessen, an LGBTQ advocate, has a predisposition to dislike Putin on this issue, but that is besides the point to me. My point is this…what does Putin's stance on gay issues have to do with Power and Grandeur? Because it is so haphazard, it feels like Ms. Gessen just wants to bring the LGBTQ issue up so she does it here because it won't fit anywhere else. Again, this undermines her argument and makes it rather incoherent. 

Later in this section, Gessen pulls a trick out of her bag that is a doozy. She pulls the old "weasel word" routine to make her point. She states that, "At the conclusion of the episode, Mr. Stone recites to Mr. Putin the Russian president’s own speech about the annexation of Crimea. Mr. Stone seems to enjoy having Mr. Putin’s words in his mouth. Mr. Putin is clearly pleased to hear his own speech, albeit in English." 

Two things here…the first is, the phrase "Mr. Stone seems to enjoy having Mr. Putin's words in his mouth" struck me as…pardon the pun…queer. It was reminiscent of Stephen Colbert's "cockholster" joke regarding Trump and Putin. A not-so-subtle dig at Putin's alleged homophobia and Stone's supposed infatuation with the man. 

The other thing is that Ms. Gessen uses the word "seems". "Seems" is a weasel word that lets you speculate as to what is in someones mind. It is a cheap and easy stunt to pull to simply project what you want into someones motives or thought process without having to take responsibility for having done so. When Ms. Gessen says it "seems" Stone likes Putin's words in his mouth, she is imagining and making up things in order to make her argument more powerful where facts are not present to do so. Again, in a four hour conversation if you have to conjure up boogie men and pretend to read people's minds to make your case, you have a very weak case indeed. 

3. Shared Prejudice : This is by far my favorite condition, because it reveals Ms. Gessen to be an absolute and utter intellectual fraud. In this section, Ms. Gessen claims that Stone and Putin are both "terrified" of Muslims and that this "shared prejudice" is what binds them together. It might have been a good idea for Ms. Gessen to take two seconds and learn a little something about Oliver Stone before writing this piece, like the fun little fact that his son Sean is a Shia Muslim. Does Ms. Gessen know that? I'd bet not, which reveals not only the weakness of her argument, but her laziness as well. 

She finishes this section with another dip in the pool of weasel words. She says that "Mr. Putin practically appears to be the savior of the white race." Can you find the weasel words readers?  How about…"practically appears". So Putin isn't exactly the savior of the white race, he just "appears" to be, and even less he "practically appears" to be. This is a giant red flag signaling Ms. Gessen's un-seriousness and the vacuity of her argument. 

4. An Inability or Unwillingness to Separate Fact From Fiction : In this section Ms. Gessen takes Stone to task for believing a bunch of nonsense about assassination plots against Putin. She writes, "There had been more plots against Mr. Putin, says Mr. Stone, than against Fidel Castro. “There is a legitimate five I’ve heard about,” he says confidently. This is remarkable, because journalists who have covered Mr. Putin — including me — have not heard of five, four or even one attempt to assassinate the Russian president".

This should be Ms. Gessen's strong suit, as someone who has covered Putin she should know the facts about these things and her insight would be useful for those of us that are ignorant of the facts, among whom she includes Stone. But even before she ends that sentence she destroys her credibility by writing in parenthesis, " (though Russian law enforcement has claimed to have foiled a plot or two)". Ummm…wait…what?

Here is the full sentence again…" This is remarkable, because journalists who have covered Mr. Putin — including me — have not heard of five, four or even one attempt to assassinate the Russian president (though Russian law enforcement has claimed to have foiled a plot or two)."

So Ms. Gessen has "not heard of five, four or even one attempt to assassinate the Russian president", except she then says Russian law enforcement claimed to "have foiled a plot or two". So that means there is at least a "plot or two" she has heard of, which means her previous statement is self-debunked and utter nonsense. And again…the nebulous sort of language she uses…like "foiled a plot or two". Which is it…one or two?…or maybe more?…maybe five, like Stone said. Ms. Gessen's credibility has left the building and she ain't coming out for an encore.

5. Moral Neutrality : Ms. Gessen finishes her piece by destroying the argument she made to open her piece. In attempting to prove Mr. Stone's and Mr. Putin's "moral neutrality", she cites a sequence where Stone questions Putin about Stalin. Ms. Gessen writes,  

"A quote from Episode 4 illustrates how this approach works: “Stalin was a product of his time,” Mr. Putin says. “You can demonize him all you want, or, on the other hand, talk about his contributions to victory over Nazism. But the excessive demonization of Stalin is just one way to attack the Soviet Union and Russia, to suggest that today’s Russia carries the birthmarks of Stalinism. Everyone has one kind of birthmark or another. So what?”

So what, that is, if Russia increasingly idolizes the man who killed millions of Soviet citizens and confined tens of millions to concentration camps? So nothing, apparently. “Your father, your mother, admired him, right?” Mr. Stone says. “Of course,” Mr. Putin says." 

Ms. Gessen started her piece by excoriating Stone for not getting Putin to say anything worthwhile, but here Stone gets Putin to say quite clearly that his parents, and most likely by extension him, respected Stalin. That "seems" quite revealing of Putin to me, but what the hell do I know?

That Putin couches his answer about Stalin by speaking of his victory over the Nazi's should come as no surprise. The Soviets lost 30 million people fighting the Nazi's and winning the war.  Stalin was a monster, no doubt, but he in fact, DID defeat Nazism. 

Think of it this way, America massacred and slaughtered millions upon millions of Native Americans, and imprisoned the others into concentration camps where hunger, disease and poverty nearly wiped them off the face of the planet.That is America's "birthmark". Does that make anyone who thinks America is a wonderful country, like, one would assume Ms. Gessen who emigrated here, a proponent of the dreaded "moral neutrality" of which she writes? No, it means that things are not always black and white, and that two things can be true at the same time. Nuance, Ms. Gessen, is not the enemy.  

Ms. Gessen concludes her piece by writing, "Of course, Oliver Stone is not Donald Trump. But he shares with him a certain way of seeing the world and being in the world — and the luxury of persisting in this way of being, and even making a spectacle of it."

These last lines, upon closer examination, mean absolutely nothing. Just for fun, let's take a look at them and see what we can decipher. "Mr. Stone is not Mr. Trump." This is the most logical sentence in the entire piece. No, Oliver Stone is NOT Donald Trump. They are two different people with two different bodies living two different lives. "But he shares with him a certain way of seeing the world and being in the world". Weasel word alert!! Can you find it? You got it…"certain". A "certain way" of seeing and being in the world. What way is that? It would really be helpful if Ms. Gessen explained what that "way" is because it is pivotal to her argument, yet she, for some unknown reason, never clarifies what that way is…odd. 

This mysterious "way", like the rest of Ms. Gessen's mystical and mythical argument, never materializes in her writing and so we are left with little more than a muddied, muddled and fuzzy diatribe that is light on fact and insight and reeks with the stench of emotionalism. 

I do not doubt Ms. Gessen's sincerity, I only doubt her intellect and writing ability. It "seems" to me that "maybe" due to Ms. Gessen's personal feelings about Russia, Putin and his LGBTQ beliefs, she let her emotions over ride her intellect, and thus her argument and her op-ed suffer grievously and are rendered moot as a result. 

As for Oliver Stone and his Putin Interviews, I commend Stone for having the courage, just as he did with Fidel Castro, to go straight to the eye of the storm to find the truth rather than relying on our compromised media and their endless propaganda. Regardless of what you may think of the Russian president, I believe Stone's Putin Interviews should be mandatory viewing for any and all Americans. As inundated as we are with anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda, it is important to see another side of the story if only to give us more information to make up our minds about this man who dominates our news, but about whom we know so little.

Putin may be the ultimate villain the media make him out to be, but permitting him to be portrayed as a cartoon Dr. Evil gives us no strategic or tactical advantage when sizing up our alleged greatest enemy. Or maybe, just maybe, we haven't been told the whole truth about Vladimir Putin and Russia, and Oliver Stone's interview is a window into a world that has existed all along, that we have not been inclined, or permitted, to see. Your best bet is to watch the whole thing and judge for yourself. 

***To see another example of the New York Times running an anti-Russian hit piece like Ms. Gessen's, please read this awful "news" piece by the repugnant Jason Zinoman about comedian Lee Camp, but first, read Camp's awesome response to it so you can slog through the bullshit more easily. It is well worth your time and will help you read between the lines of the propaganda that permeates our everyday, courtesy of the establishment media and The New York Times. ****

©2017

JOE McCARTHY WAS RIGHT!! Shocking Revelations From a Manchurian Op-Ed Writer

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 03 seconds

Last night a reader emailed me a tweet that commented on former CIA director John Brennan's testimony to the House Intelligence Committee earlier in the day. The tweet read...

"Brennan: Russians use RT as well as individual op-ed writers who are on the Russian payroll in order to advance Russia's interests". 

Upon seeing the tweet my blood ran cold, my heart nearly stopped and my mind raced. As my tweet sending reader knows full well, since January of this year I have occasionally contributed to RT, the Russian-based website and news channel, by *GASP* writing op-eds for them. 

I quickly tried to gather myself and went to investigate Brennan's testimony further. I had to unravel this story and follow it wherever it led, let the truth prevail or the heavens fall. 

After reviewing Brennan's answers to the committee, the sentence that jumped out at me most was when the stern faced former director said, "Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path, do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late."

Once again my blood ran cold, my heart nearly stopped and my mind raced. Was I, as an occasional op-ed contributor to RT, on the "treasonous path" and simply unaware of it? Was I an unwitting traitor hell-bent on destroying America from the inside as a Manchurian Op-Ed writer? I decided to take a long, hard look at myself to see if I was as John Brennan described, an inadvertent traitor and Russian collaborator.

I must admit that I was shocked and appalled at what I found as I dug into this story. As is always the case, John Brennan, and the rest of our remarkably infallible Intelligence Community, were right on the money. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that I had, in fact, been writing articles on RT for the last five months that were skeptical of the official Washington narrative regarding Russia. How dare I question the group think coming from the establishment in Washington and the mainstream media? What was wrong with me? I think we all know the answer to that question…don't we comrades?

The thing that disturbed me the most was that, for years prior to getting published at RT, I had been writing articles that questioned the establishment's Russia narrative on my own website, which means that I was doing it...FOR FREE!! So, before I ever received my first paycheck signed by my best friend and confidante, Vladimir Putin, I had been shilling for his takeover of the free world gratis. The only conclusion one can draw is that I must have been Kompromised…oops…I mean, compromised, much earlier on than I believed. 

As my investigation went even deeper I discovered, with the help of some kind-hearted commenters and emailers that had been so gracious as to reach out to me, that I was, in fact "a useful idiot" for Putin and the Russians. This lifted my spirits enormously, as being a "useful idiot" was a big promotion for me since I have been a "use-less idiot" for the overwhelming majority of my life. I hope this promotion comes with an increase in pay grade as well, as I've really had my eye on a super sweet jet ski for a while now!!

As difficult as it was to unearth the fact that I am a Russian created Manchurian Op-Ed Writer, the harder part was peeling the layers back upon the conspiracy of which, unbeknownst to me, I had been such a crucial part. I began to wonder…who was my handler? Is it the old Russian lady I say hello to on my morning walk as I pass by the local nursing home? I bet it is…she wears a lot of perfume, probably to cover the stench of treachery that emanates from her evil Russian flesh.

The deeper I investigated, the more concerned I became. The TV has told over and over again how the Russians are masters of "trade craft" in the art of spying, which means I must be a master spy, since I am not even aware that I am one. Obviously, the fact is, by not being aware I am a Russian spy, that proves that I am a Russian spy. Secondly, how did I know that this cover of Time magazine shown on the left, which purports to show the Kremlin taking over the White House, is actually not the Kremlin but St. Basil's Cathedral. How the hell did I know that? Once again, we all know the answer to that, don't we my commie-pinko comrades. 

So it is a fact, I am a Russian spy, and, just like Russian meddling in the election, of that there can zero doubt or questioning regardless of any lack of evidence. Tangible proof is not needed for this "assertion" because it is so self-explanatory. But the question becomes, who else besides me is in on this conspiracy? 

I went back and read the unclassified Intel Community report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election in order to find out who my other co-conspirators might be. The report, brought to congress by then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, says that RT is a Russian propaganda arm meant to disrupt American democracy.

The proof Clapper's report presented for Russian election interference was that in 2012 and 2016 RT had done stories on "alleged US election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities". CBS and PBS had also done extensive stories on those same exact topics, as did most every other American news outlet. The Russian contagion is worse than I thought. The clues were always there, hiding in plain sight, I mean Dan Rather and those commies at Public Broadcasting being Russian spies is not exactly shocking. 

Clapper's report also used as proof of Russian election meddling the fact that the channel had "highlighted a lack of democracy in the United States" and had "broadcast, hosted and advertised third party candidate debates". The Russians are so nefarious that they were able to scuttle our democracy by highlighting our democracy. The evil genius of that is staggering.

In addition, the report states that RT undermined our 2016 election by airing a documentary on Occupy Wall Street that the report described like this…"RT framed the movement (Occupy Wall Street) as a fight against the ruling class and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations". Obviously, this proves that Putin is Satan. No more need be said about it. 

The report also declares that RT alleged "widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use" along with alleging "Wall Street greed." Those snakes over at MSNBC did the same thing, thus revealing their true intentions. Chris Hayes is a four-eyes, wonky piece of RED SCUM! 

And finally, the Clapper report's coup-de-grace was that RT had attacked our democracy by "running anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts of public health." Josh Fox, I have bad news comrade, you have been compromised! Abort mission, ABORT!! Light all of America's water on fire and head back to Moscow!

After re-reading Brennan's testimony and Clapper's report I realized the overwhelming enormity of the Russian conspiracy to destroy American democracy. The list of unwitting traitors committing treason against America at Russia's behest is gargantuan. The list includes but is not limited to, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, McNeil AND Lehrer, nearly every major news outlet in the country, third party candidates, third party voters, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Environmentalists, Bernie Sanders, Josh Fox, all liberals, all progressives, most democrats, people of conscience, and the ring leader, Dan Rather, who instigated the entire operation simply by uttering the code word implanted in all of our brains by our Russian overlords…"Courage". 

After discovering the true nature of this vast conspiracy I sat down to catch my breath, only to be overcome once again with dread. If I and the rest of my comrades were the unwitting treasonous traitors that Clapper and Brennan said we were, who else is in on it? How far had the Russian contagion spread? As I pondered this question, an ominous feeling came over me, for the answer was right in front of my nose. 

James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, lied to congress in 2013 about mass surveillance of Americans by the NSA. When Clapper was asked if the NSA was collecting data on millions of Americans he replied, "No…not WITTINGLY". OH…MY…GOD. Clapper is in on it. As is the entire National Security Agency. Those sneaky Rooskies have really done it this time!

Thank goodness that we still have good, honorable Americans who will fight this scourge of Russian inspired treason, men like former CIA director John Brennan, the man who instigated my entire investigation. But wait…Brennan and his CIA spied on the Senate when the Senate was investigating and writing the Torture Report that implicated the CIA. Was Brennan a witting or unwitting traitor when he did that? And was it at the behest of Dr. Evil, Vladimir Putin? The answer is obvious…Brennan artfully plied his trade craft during his testimony to congress yesterday, only a conniving Russian can be such a master spy. Brennan, I am sorry comrade, but you have been compromised. 

Sadly for me, my in-depth investigation reveals that in my role as a Manchurian Op-Ed Writer, I am not as pivotal as I thought I was in the Russian takedown of American democracy. Do I play a part? Yes, but I am no James Clapper or John Brennan. I am just some fool looking for the truth. My dreams of being a "useful idiot" are eclipsed by the work of Brennan, Clapper and the media. I return, crestfallen, to my previously held position of "use-less idiot". Damn...I really had my heart set on that jet ski. 

©2017

Through the Looking Glass : Truth and Lies in Week One of 2017

Estimated Reading Time : 8 Minutes 44 Seconds

Week one of 2017 is in the books and boy oh boy was it a doozy. This most bizarre week no doubt portends the strangeness of the year to come. We are only one week into this new year and we are already through the looking glass where up is down, left is right, lie is truth, good is bad and nothing seems to make any sense whatsoever. What am I talking about…well…let's recount the week and discover the ways our world has gone topsy turvy. 

The big news of the week was the "Russia Hacking" story. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before congress and assured everyone that the Russian government in general, and Putin in particular, were indeed behind the hacking of the election against Hillary Clinton. DNI Clapper followed that up by releasing a "report" by the CIA, FBI and NSA that was meant to prove his case for Russian hacking. None of that is very weird, but what was weird was how many republicans were skeptical of the intelligence community claims and how many democrats unquestioningly embraced the intelligence community claims. 

I have read the intelligence report, have you? Did you notice anything funny about the CIA report on Russian hacking into the election? Maybe I am crazy, but there is absolutely zero evidence in that report of Russian hacking or tampering in the election at all. Nothing. It is like the book reports I used to turn in in high school when I didn't read the book…which was always, because reading is for nerds. What would happen is that I wouldn't read the book and then I'd get the Cliff Notes, but I wouldn't even read those, just give them a half-assed skimming over the night before the report was due. Then I would just scratch a bunch of bullshit together in homeroom and hope to sneak by without anyone noticing I had no idea what I was talking about….sort of like what the Intelligence community just did with their hacking report. DNI Clapper turned in one hell of a whopper of a book report the other day and boy is he hoping no one actually reads it with a critical eye. What the Intelligence community did was make a bunch of assumptions, toss in some innuendo, and then played it off as some shocking new information of official Russian guilt and then let the media, and democrats, run with it. The media, of course, excitedly exclaimed that not only is this report proof that Russia hacked the election for Trump, but that Putin himself was the one who ran the whole operation…Dr. Evil style!! This entire episode is utter madness. Anyone who believes that evidence-free report needs to have their head examined. The intelligence community has been deceiving, propagandizing and fooling the populace for decades and yet the democrats cling to their every word because it means they didn't really lose the election!! 

Democrats jumped at the chance to take Clapper at his word without any evidence because it means they aren't as huge a train-wreck of a party as they fear they may be. See it wasn't their shitty candidate, or their shitty campaign, or their vacuous ideas, or their myopic political vision, no it was Putin and the mustache-twirling Russians fault that they lost. I warned democrats against embracing this Russia hacking story because it was too good to be true, and I stand by that. And if democrats would actually read the declassified report, they might not be so enamored with the intelligence community and their conclusions as to who is an enemy of the state. Let's go through the report quickly to see what I am talking about. 

First off, as I already stated, there is zero evidence presented. This report is simply a piece of paper that is meant to make "official" the leaks, which are nothing more than innuendo, that have been published across the media for weeks. The media are treating it like it is manna from heaven, but it is really regurgitated nonsense that contains nothing new. In addition to presenting zero evidence, the "sources" the document provides for their background information are embarrassingly absurd. The report uses an open source document from the internet to make their case that Russia had intent to hack the election. I am not kidding, go look at it.  The "Annex A" section (starting on Page 6, ironically enough) spends the majority of its time attacking the television channel RT (Russia Today) and blaming it for being such an effective propaganda tool for Putin to destroy American democracy. The majority of the report, in fact, is analysis of RT, which takes up 7 of the 25 pages of the report, in contrast to the actual meat of the report which takes up 5 pages.

RT is a lightning rod for the establishment as they often report on things the mainstream media would just as soon ignore. Anytime the mainstream media mention RT, they always describe it as "Kremlin controlled RT" or "Kremlin financed RT" or "Kremlin backed RT", which is pretty funny. I wonder why they don't describe the BBC as "Westminster financed or backed or controlled", or the US networks as "Washington financed, backed or controlled" or the cable channels as "Wall Street financed, backed or controlled"? Any time you hear a talking head describe RT as "Kremlin backed" immediately dismiss them as they are shoveling propaganda. Another sure fire sign of a propagandist is if they describe Putin as "former head of the KGB Putin". Yes, Putin was formerly the head of the KGB, but George HW Bush was formerly the head of the CIA, and yet no one describes him as "former head of the CIA George HW Bush", and they do not describe his son as "son of the former head of the CIA George HW Bush".  It is a simple propaganda ploy to trigger fear and distrust in the viewer and taint the story.

Getting back to the report…if democrats or liberals who are supporting it haven't read it yet,  they really should. The report gives a variety of examples of how RT attacked and undermined America's beloved democracy, the funny thing is though that many of those examples are from 2012, not 2016. Here are some of the more entertaining ones. The report states that in the lead up to the 2012 election RT introduced a new show, "Breaking the Set", hosted by Abby Martin, which "overwhelmingly focused on criticism of US and western governments". See you cannot criticize the US or western governments, that is an attack on America and democracy. Another way to look at it is that Abby Martin committed the crime of journalism. Shame on her! The hysterical part of this whole "Breaking the Set" thing being put in a report about Russian interference in the 2016 election is that "Breaking the Set" stopped airing two years before the 2016 election. Someone please buy James Clapper a calendar…and a TV Guide.

The next section of "Annex A" tells us that RT, in the lead up to the 2012 election, not the 2016 election, had the temerity to report on "alleged US election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities". Can you believe the gall of a news agency reporting on the possibility of election fraud and voting machine vulnerabilities in the lead up to an election? RT is out of control!! You know who else reported on voting machine vulnerabilities, except unlike RT it wasn't in relation to the 2012 election, but the 2016 election? CBS and PBS just to name two. I wonder if they are Russian spies too? Probably…commie bastards!!

In the next part of Annex A, the report tells us that RT, in an effort to "highlight a lack of democracy in the United States" had "broadcast, hosted and advertised third party candidate debates". What monsters!! The lesson here is that when you are through the looking glass, more candidates, more debate and more democracy actually is an attack on democracy. According to the intel community, war is peace, slavery is freedom and ignorance is strength!!

Another section of Annex A will come as quite a shock to liberals and democrats…but in the lead up to the 2012, again, to be clear, this is not the 2016 election but the 2012 election, RT aired a documentary on Occupy Wall Street that the report described like this…"RT framed the movement (Occupy Wall Street) as a fight against the ruling class and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations". Is there any rational and un-compromised human being on the planet who would describe the US political system any other way?

Some other parts of the Annex A section of the report say that RT "alleges widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality and drone use" in America. Another part says that RT is attacking the US by criticizing "alleged Wall street greed." Let that one sink in for a minute. I hope liberals and democrats are starting to understand how this report, and the intelligence community that prepared it, are not your friends, not by a long shot. Neither are they friends of Truth. 

And finally, the report claims that RT is attacking US democracy by "running anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts of public health." That is just outrageous!! How many liberals or democrats have seen Josh Fox's excellent documentary "Gasland"? Probably a lot of them. Well, they should realize that the intelligence community that they are so enamored with right now, thinks JOSH FOX IS JOSEF STALIN!! In essence, the intel community thinks Josh Fox will kill you and eat your children!! HBO is a tool of Putin!!

So, according to this report on election interference by the Russians in the 2016 election, the intelligence community writes a report that cites a russian news channel's reporting FROM 2012, that is basically in line with liberal or left leaning political positions. And democrats and the media are falling all over themselves to praise this report for its thoroughness and seriousness and attack anyone, even Glenn Greenwald, who questions in it the least. Rachel Maddow was nearly orgasmic when the report was released this week, and interestingly enough she said you should go read it, but she curiously told her viewers to only read the meat of it, which is 5 pages, and skip the "sources and methods" section, because that is longer and boring and confusing. Annex A is the sources and methods section where they only talk about RT. In other words, there are no sources, and there are no methods, there is only old speculation and assumptions. The Intel community, just like me in high school, didn't read the book or even skim the Cliff Notes, and yet the media are determined to make you not notice that. Do democrats and liberals not know this stuff? Have they not read the report? Maybe they should read it before embracing it. Dear liberals, please go read the report. Know what you are signing on to when you endorse this report. What you are signing onto to is the criminalization of your own beliefs and your own eventual demise.

It isn't only Rachel Maddow's coverage of the report and Clapper's testimony that has been both breathless and despicable.  On MSNBC the consistently deplorable Joy Ried, who is such a vacuous dimwit that she has quickly shot up that hapless network's ladder in record time, asked some bumpkin republican congressman from Nowheresville, USA whether he believed the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper or Julian Assange in regard to the Russian hacking allegations. It was an obvious "gotcha" type of moment that cable tv lives for…and watching this dope squirm was what was intended. There is just one problem with Ms. Reid's question and premise…and that is that any rational, sane human being would believe Julian Assange over DNI Clapper in a heartbeat, you know why? Because Julian Assange has never lied to them. Never. You may dislike what he has done, but he has never lied. Clapper? Clapper can't open his mouth without a swarm of lies flying out. Clapper lied to congress, which is a felony, just a few years ago in relation to the Snowden material. Has everyone lost their minds and memory all at once? Apparently the answer is yes. Assange has, at great personal expense, exposed US war crimes, Clapper, at great personal reward, has covered up his own and other war crimes. And I know it is in style at the moment to dismiss and demean Assange due to personal distaste for him, but those sex crimes charges against him reek of Intelligence community handy work.  If you think the US intel community wouldn't try and frame someone  by any means necessary, that they see as a mortal threat, you are incredibly naive.

And then there is the highest ranking democrat in the country, the loathsome Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. Schumer went on Rachel Maddow's show last week and said that Trump better be careful because the intelligence community has "six ways to sunday to get back at you if you cross them." Think about that statement for a second. Democrats are holding up the intelligence community as the bastion of professionalism and patriotism and in the same breath are claiming the Intel community will circumvent the constitution and extra-judicially "get back" at their political enemies. If I said that same statement people would call me a conspiracy theorist and dismiss me out of hand. The ranking democrat in the country, Chuck Schumer, just said that the intelligence community will exact revenge on President Trump if he challenges them and no one bats an eye. Want to know two presidents who got on the wrong side of the intelligence community? Kennedy and Nixon. Remember how their presidency's ended? Kennedy's brains were splattered all over Jackie's nice pink suit in Dealey Plaza, and tricky Dick ignominiously gave us the "v" for victory sign and then flew off into historical oblivion after resigning. Both Kennedy's assassination and Nixon's impeachment had intelligence agency fingerprints all over them, and even some of the same intelligence operative fingerprints (I'm looking at you E. Howard Hunt). But of course thinking that, never mind saying it out loud, gets you labelled a "conspiracy theorist" and taken off the "serious person" list. But now we have the ranking Democrat directly saying it out loud on national television as a threat to the president-elect of the United States. I do not know how exactly this will play out, but I guarantee you that it will not end well. 

Speaking of repugnant Senators, John McCain and his common-law wife,  Senator Lindsay Graham aka The Southern Dandy, of course are banging the war drums claiming Russia's alleged hacking is an act of war. McCain and Graham are hawks who have never meet a war they didn't love. Democrats and liberals are empowering the war party by embracing this evidence-free report. You want a war with Russia, keep on taking the intel community at their word and I promise you will get one. It is what they want and they have convinced you that is what you want too.

Fake news has also been a major talking point of the media and even the intel community in the last week. As with the Russian hacking story, the fake news story is most bizarre. The mainstream media has claimed that fake news is what lead to Trump beating Clinton, as voters were misinformed as to the real facts and stories. The media have used a plethora of polls that say that Trump voters were terribly misinformed about the election, for instance overwhelming numbers of Trump voters believe he won the popular vote. As we know, this is not true, and so the media have used this point to say that fake news tainted the well so to speak. Of course, the media fail to mention their own part in misinforming the populace and how that is reflected in the media. For instance, there are polls that show how Clinton voters now believe that Russia actually hacked voting machines and changed votes in Trump's favor. This is untrue, even by the flimsy intel report standards, but the media would never blame themselves for this mis-information. 

In addition, the main generator of fake news, is the mainstream media. Just in the last few weeks the Washington Post has published the fakey-ist of fake news stories which much fanfare, but only after time and attention has passed have they sent out little noticed retractions. The WaPo stories were about the alleged fake news generated by Russian propaganda sources about the US election. The  PropOrNot Russian propaganda website lists made by an unnamed and unchecked source, which the Post published without questioning, is total nonsense. The other story was about Russian hacking as well, this time about how the Rooskies hacked into the Vermont power grid!! The story was absurd on its face but that didn't stop everyone from re-tweeting it and spreading it and shouting form the mountain tops about it. Of course, when the story turned out to be untrue, the Post didn't hype that fact, they sheepishly put a small disclaimer on top of it. The damage was done already…which is how fake news works. It is all about manufacturing consensus, consent and content…which is exactly why the Russia hacking the election story is fake news as well. The lack of evidence and proof don't matter to people because the story tells them what they want to hear, and the damage is done. Truth has no meaning in an empire of lies, and we are the ruling empire at the moment.

Speaking of truth, there has also been a great deal of talk about how with Donald Trump as president we now live in a post-truth world, where Truth or facts don't matter.  That may be true, but it isn't entirely Trump's doing…as the Washington Post keeps proving over and over again. Even the aforementioned Joy Reid, a vociferous attack dog against fake news and post-truth Trump, is guilty of spreading fake news and not correcting to fact. Ms. Reid, and the ludicrous "Russia" expert, the sleepy-eyed, charlatan Malcolm Nance, spread the lie pre-election that the DNC emails were proven to have been tampered with and altered. This is factually untrue, but Ms. Reid and Mr. Nance have never retracted those statements. Just like Trump, they have little regard for Truth.

The bottom line is this regarding the intel report, fake news and our post-truth world, if you take anything at face value you are a fool. Only a dupe or a dope, or both, would believe a word the intel community tells them. A brief look at recent and not-so recent history shows us that the American intelligence community are professional liars who will do anything and everything to obscure and destroy the Truth. Remember Clapper lying about surveillance? Remember the Iraq War? Remember the torture report and all the dirty tricks surrounding it? Remember the Gulf War? Remember Iran-Contra? Remember Nicaragua? El Salvador? Venezuela? Brazil? Argentina? Cuba? Iran and the Shah? Vietnam? Laos? Cambodia? I mean, c'mon, how dumb do you have to be to fall for the intel community bullshit again?

And in terms of Russia and Putin, it is most certainly possible that they hacked the election. I have no illusions about Putin being some saint, but regardless of that, what I demand in relation to any news or charges is evidence. I have yet to see compelling evidence that Russia shot down MH-17, or invaded Ukraine or committed war crimes in Syria or hacked the US election. That doesn't mean they definitely didn't do those things, only that I have not seen compelling evidence that they did. And until I see evidence I will not believe those claims, and neither should you. 

This past week is a wonderful launching pad for the chaos, disorder and madness to be unleashed in 2017. The media is abysmal, do not trust a word they say. The intel community are professional liars…never believe them…ever. Trump is incapable of telling any truth, ignore everything he utters. Trust nothing and no one. If someone makes a claim demand to actually SEE the evidence, not some report that is meant to appease people who will never read it and is void of any proof. Demand to see actual, tangible evidence, or consider it a lie.

And finally, if you are dismayed about the post-truth world we now inhabit, make it a practice to be loyal to the Truth above all else. Be loyal to the Truth above ideology, political party and even country. The Truth shall set you free, so stop being a slave to the lies and disinformation coming from "official sources". We are through the looking glass here people, we need to cast off wishful thinking and anchor ourselves to Truth or all will be lost. The road ahead is going to be very disorienting, I mean just last week Sarah Palin wrote an apology to Julian Assange and told people to go see Oliver Stone's Snowden… we are most definitely through the looking glass. Maybe if we can hold onto the Truth for dear life, we might just be able to make it through all of this madness.

©2017

THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : Court Jester As Propaganda Tool

****ESTIMATED READING TIME : 15 MINUTES****

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS QUESTIONABLE LANGAUGE. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL TRIGGER WARNING…MOTHERFUCKERS!!

On a Sunday night last April, after finishing a session with my final client of the day (yes, I work on Sundays!!), I heated up some chicken and pasta, plopped myself down on the couch and tuned in to John Oliver's HBO weekly comedy show "Last Week Tonight". Oliver's main topic was the Internal Revenue Service, which makes sense since this was that most dreaded time of the year, tax time. Oliver's premise was that the I.R.S. is hated, but desperately needed, and terribly underfunded. He made the analogy that the I.R.S. is the "anus of the country", saying "you may not like to talk about it but you really need it to work." It's a clever anal-ogy*, which was no surprise since John Oliver is nothing if not clever…and an asshole.

*anal-ology…GET IT? See how clever I was there?

To start at the beginning, I am one of those rare people who through the years have not religiously watched Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show". Nor did I watch much of Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report". I am in a tiny minority in the world I inhabit when it comes to my viewing habits of Comedy Central political shows, I readily admit that. I'm not sure exactly sure why, I have nothing against either man, but I just never thought, or remembered, to watch their shows. Regardless, I only rarely watched, and because of that I was not familiar with John Oliver.

When John Oliver's HBO show came out, I missed the entire first season. The biggest reason I missed it is probably the same reason I didn't watch "The Daily Show", namely, because it never occurred to me to watch. Coming in a very close second for why I missed it is…I didn't have HBO at the time, so I was incapable of watching. I was aware of the show though because the media was gushing in its praise of the program and of Oliver. Nearly every media outlet did glowing pieces on Oliver, ebullient in their praise of him and the show, calling it, "smart, funny and insightful!" 

In no time at all, "Last Week Tonight" became a big hit and Oliver the darling of the hipster/intellectual/cool kid set. The mainstream media slobbered all over him, adorning him with the type of praise once only reserved for Saint Jon Stewart, the Patron Saint of Thinking People Everywhere™.  It was at this point that I got HBO, so the John Oliver option was suddenly on the table. So, I decided to check out "This Week Tonight" and see what all the fuss was about.

Season two of "Last Week Tonight"  started off innocuously enough, or so I thought. Oliver made fun of some racist tweets made by the Argentinian president while on her trip to China. He also talked about the closing of Radio Shack and the Republican congressman who decorated his office like Downton Abbey. It was clever enough if not a bit cloying, but as expected it was funny in a "man shooting fish in a barrel", substance-free way. In my opinion it was amusing enough, but not very "insightful". Oliver finished the show by doing a seemingly mundane bit about Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. The bit included a video of Correa hosting a live talk show where he answers questions from the audience and pontificates on whatever topic he feels like. In the video, Correa (in Spanish, or as they say in Spanish, En Espanol) singled out a young Ecuadorian man who had tweeted that he wished President Correa were dead. Correa gave out the young man's name to his audience and told people to flood the mans Facebook and Twitter accounts. John Oliver excoriated Correa for bullying the poor, young man. He then showed a funny, weird and completely out of context clip of a creepy clown embracing Correa during one of these live talk shows. Oliver relentlessly mocked Correa, and he did it very, very well.  

After the show ended, out of pure curiosity, I looked Correa up on the internet. I knew nothing about him and frankly, very little about Ecuador. I was pretty shocked too see what kind of a man Correa was and what he had accomplished in his life. Correa isn't the tin-pot dictator and bully Oliver made him out to be, not in the least. Here are some of the highlights of Correa's public life. After resigning in protest over corruption as finance minister from the previous administration and being widely regarded as the most respected and trusted person in the country, he was voted into the Presidency in 2006 and took office in 2007. Upon becoming President, Correa immediately poked his finger into the eye of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), The World Bank, and the U.S. He declared Ecuador's national debt illegitimate since it was contracted by corrupt and despotic prior regimes. Correa then said that Ecuador would default on $3 Billion worth of bonds. He pledged to fight creditors in international court and reduced the price of outstanding bonds by 60%. He then refused to renew the U.S. lease of Eloy Alfaro Air Base in Manta, Ecuador, thus ending the U.S. military presence in the country. If Correa wanted to make enemies, he certainly succeeded. He not only made enemies, he made enemies with the most powerful country, military and financial institutions in the world. To make matters worse, for the U.S. anyway, Correa greatly reduced Ecuador's rampant unemployment and poverty, solidifying his popularity in the country. 

In addition to all that, Correa also took on foreign oil companies because they failed to meet environmental and investment regulations. He restructured the country's finances in order to increase spending on social programs, rather than on foreign debt, and set out to protect and support the indigenous Quechua Indians of Ecuador, a long brutalized people. In other words, Correa was a champion for justice and for the people of Ecuador. These might be things that John Oliver's audience might want to know about the man, but Brave Sir John Oliver had no interest in informing his audience, only propagandizing them.

If you still think Brave Sir John was doing the right thing by calling out Correa for his "bullying" of a citizen who was wishing him dead, you should look more closely at the historical context of Correa's comments. A brief perusal of South and Central American history shows us that colonialism has devastated the continent. Up to and including this century, the U.S. has been behind some of the most brutal and insidious policies in the region. Correa is an Ecuadorean nationalist, which means the U.S. government, military, Wall Street and Oil companies hate him, because he puts the Ecuadorian people first. When you see John Oliver ridiculing Rafael Correa for being a "bully" when someone publicly states they want to see him dead, keep in mind the history of U.S. backed assassination of people like fellow Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos and Panamanian President Omar Torrijos to name just two of many, or the U.S. backed coups and wars that litter South and Central American history (Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras to name a few). Then keep in mind it is not Correa who is the bully.

John Oliver is the weapon used those by those in power to ridicule Correa in the eyes of the mostly liberal Americans who, if they knew anything about him, would, or should, greatly admire him. But now Correa is little more than a punchline, and if and when he is 'killed in a plane crash', or 'overthrown by a popular revolt', or 'hangs himself in his jail cell'* or a civil war or coup breaks out in Ecuador, Americans, liberal Americans in particular, will just nod and say "hey, thats that despotic clown we saw on John Oliver". The man who stood up for his country and the weakest of its people, and wouldn't be bullied by military or corporate empire is now a joke. Mission accomplished John Oliver, true dissent from the American establishment group-think, is now strangled in the cradle.

Oliver is just the newest propaganda tool of the American Empire, at home and abroad. So when Oliver was mocking Correa, he was intentionally doing the IMF's, World Bank's, U.S. Government's, Military's, Wall Street's and the Oil Company's dirty work. Way to go Brave Sir John, instead of bullying the bullies, you are bullying for the Bullies. Good work. 

John Oliver's greatest skill as host of "Last Week Tonight" is in reassuring his audience that they are, in fact, as smart as they think they are, and most definitely smarter than everyone else. What Oliver is really doing with his show is inoculating his audience from thinking critically. Oliver serves up the very bitter pill of American Empire and Citizen Subservience wrapped in a delicious serving of liberal red meat. His audience is too enamored with it's own delusions of superiority to realize that they are, in fact, just like those ridiculous Fox News viewers they love to hate, in that they too are gullible rubes lapping up gobs of American Imperialism by the bucketload. What the hell am I talking about? How can everyone's favorite, goofy, Brit really be a propaganda tool? That's how propaganda works. If it is obvious, it isn't any good. "Last Week Tonight" is really good propaganda because the show, and its host John Oliver pretend to be truth tellers against propaganda.

Oliver sells himself as the brave and noble truth teller, a much needed check to the power of the mainstream media. But Oliver only mimics speaking truth to power and standing up for the little guy. He appears to plant his flag on the high ground of rational thought, moral superiority and common sense, and waves it with a robust sense of self-satisfaction. This is all little more than theatrics though, because the reality is that John Oliver doesn't speak truth to power, he is merely a puppet of power, a useful idiot, a weapon they use to pacify and control those who believe themselves to be well informed and deeply critical thinkers. The stark truth is that John Oliver doesn't stand up for the little guy, he consistently kisses up and kicks down. And as for being a symbol of rational thinking, Oliver instead waves a red flag of emotion in front of liberals in order to get them on his side and then feeds them misinformation, disinformation and propaganda while they are in their highly emotional state.

"Last Week Tonight's" formula is obvious to any one with a nose for media manipulation, and it executes that formula with a surgical precision week in and week out. Oliver lures 'intellectuals' in with a wonkish bit on a very specific topic, be it infrastructure, the I.R.S., FIFA, NCAA, voting rights in U.S. territories or patents, and then, like a pied piper, once he gets the viewer hooked, he leads them to the establishment narrative he really wants to sell them, usually in the form of a foreign policy or intelligence issue, and they, wanting to not be seen as stupid, unquestioningly accept the story he is selling. If you also notice, when Brave Sir John does critique something "American", it is always and every time a critique of a that very specific thing, and never a critique of America. 

Another thing to take notice of are what type of targets and topics Brave Sir John decides to take on. Just as a quick example of how Brave Sir John earned that nickname...he has taken on both FIFA and the NCAA, two organizations that are universally loathed by every single person who has even the most remote knowledge of them, with the handful of corrupt men running them being the lone exceptions. Another example of Brave Sir John's tremendous, steadfast courage was when he took on both racism (he literally said "fuck racism!!" in regards to Ferguson, Missouri, I shit you not) and cigarette companies. Taking on racism and cigarette companies!! What truly brave stance to take…IN 1964.

Regardless of Brave Sir John's weak kneed choices in segment topics, he never fails to to be a propaganda tool when it comes to the issues that really count. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. So let's take a taste of John Oliver's rotten and rancid pudding, shall we, and see what we come up with. 

On episode two of season two, Oliver followed up his initial mocking of Correa with another flurry of attacks prompted by Correa actually defending himself against Oliver's baseless buffoonery the week before.

Episode three had Oliver belittling another countries finance minister, this time Greece, who had the temerity to take on the IMF. What a strange coincidence? Three episodes into season three and John Oliver had attacked enemies of the IMF on all three episodes. In this episode, he said Greece's finance minister looked like "Pitbull's uncle", looked "slimy" and probably smelled like "scented lube". All very funny stuff, but once again he was attacking the underdog, not the big bad bully of colonialism and empire. There is comedy to be found in the horror of the Greek economy, but it isn't the cheap kind at the expense of its finance minister. Why didn't Oliver make fun of Goldman Sachs engineering the whole Greek fiasco and then looting the public coffers once Greece was bailed out? Or JP Morgan? Why not make fun of the IMF, which basically ran an extortion racket that oversaw the entire Greek collapse? Is that not funny to John Oliver? Would his self described intellectual audience not "get it", like they "get" his making fun of the way the finance minister dresses and looks? Why not make fun of Germany for accomplishing what Hitler never did, conquering and ruling all of Europe without having to fire a single shot, by bailing out their reckless banks at the expense of the Greeks? The reason why Oliver wouldn't take that approach to the issue is obvious, it is contrary to the narrative the establishment is feeding the populace. Oliver's job is not to challenge the establishment narrative, but to reinforce it.

Episode three turned out to be a propaganda tour-de-force, as it also gave us Oliver's brave and cutting edge stance on Ukraine. His stance, not surprisingly, is identical to the mainstream media's and U.S. governments official stance…that EVIL PUTIN™ started that horrific war. What a brave and shocking stance to take!! The real comedy here is that anyone with the slightest bit of sense, curiosity and courage knows that the U.S. intelligence community started the Maidan protests and the civil war in Ukraine. The U.S. planned, funded and executed the whole thing, from soup to nuts. In a genuine piece of comedy completely ignored by Brave Sir John, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught on tape during one of her phone calls saying as much. Even some Government-friendly media outlets like the BBC have reported that the snipers on rooftops at the Maidan who shot and killed protestors, weren't government forces, but rather some shadowy group attached to the protesters who were trying to start a revolution.

A great way to smell an establishment rat is to listen to them when they speak of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. has been at war with Russia for at least the bunch of years. The war started out purely in the form of propaganda (remember the Socchi Olympics and the media assault on all things Russian?), and has now morhped into a proxy shooting war in Ukraine and Syria. As many people who have senselessly died in these terrible wars, one of the greatest casualties has been the truth. There is, believe it or not, comedy to be found in Ukraine, Syria, Putin et al, but it is in the way the establishment group-think has to contort reality in order to make it fit their preconceived narrative. John Oliver is more than happy to ignore the contorting, and just mouth the same old party line in regards to these deadly serious issues. 

Now, you may be thinking, wait, Putin is a tyrant and a monster!! He wants the Soviet Union to come back and he wants to dominate Europe!! Look, I am not making the case that Putin is some saint, but like Correa, he is a true nationalist, and he is certainly not half of what the U.S. media and officialdom have painted him to be. For instance, there have been multiple accusations by the powers that be here in the U.S. that Putin has sent Russian troops into Ukraine. The problem is that there is no proof of this. It would be nice to have proof, because, as I am fond of saying, "proof proves things." But the charge has been made so often that it is now taken for granted that it is reality. It isn't reality, it is establishment fiction and propaganda.

The same is true of MH- 17, the plane shot down over Ukraine, killing all aboard. The U.S. said in the immediate aftermath of the shoot down that it had proof that Russia or Russian backed separatists shot down the plane. Again, there is no proof of this, and for some strange reason, the U.S. seems to have lost it's evidence because out hasn't released it. Maybe Russians did shoot the plane down, but there is no PROOF that they did. "Proof proves things!"  But again, this charge has been repeated so often by the media and establishment that it is taken as completely true.

The charge that Putin had a second rate political rival, Boris Nemtsov, assassinated in Moscow also became a part of the establishment narrative, and not surprisingly, there is no proof that is true ( Remember..."Proof proves things!!"), nor is there much logical sense to the accusation when you take Nemtsov's lack of political standing or threat to Putin into the equation. That didn't stop John Oliver on episode 4, from doing an entirely predictable bit about it though, that was completely uncritical of the U.S. official narrative. John Oliver, if he so wished, could have a field day holding the U.S. government's feet to the fire regarding their statements and actions in regards to Russia and Putin, but he has no interest in doing that. His only interest is in buttressing the story being told by those in power because he is not a truth teller, he is a lap-dog to power.

The most glaring example of Oliver being an incurious lap-dog for the establishment, was when he travelled to Russia and interviewed whistleblower Edward Snowden. The interview was so confrontational, and so obviously a piece of contrived propaganda that I was left slack jawed at the audacity of it. The propaganda script was easy to see from the get-go as Oliver started off the bit by playing like he was scared to death by just being in Russia. He was, in particular, very frightened because…shudder...across the way was the old KGB building from back in the Soviet Union days. He quivered like a nubile starlet in a horror film at the thought that the KGB, which has been defunct for over twenty years, might come and get him. He also was worried that they were 'eavesdropping'  and 'listening' to his conversations, even going so far as to talk to the imaginary microphones hidden in the room. This was particularly odd since the Russians aren't the ones who are proven to eavesdrop, THE U.S.. is the country that does that!! "Proof proves things…like NSA spying!!"

For some reason, Oliver also played up the drama that Snowden was an hour late for the interview. This was so strange as Oliver made it seem like a huge piece of intrigue, but the reality is that people sometimes get stuck in traffic, it happens. But Oliver made it out to be an intensely dramatic moment which was odd in and of itself. When Snowden showed, Oliver proved himself to be an even bigger douchebag than I had already thought he was. He proceeded to be completely adversarial, and frankly rude, to Snowden, even holding him accountable for the New York Times screwing up an article and putting out some classified information on ISIS in Mosul. He blamed Snowden for the mistake and called the situation a "major fuck up". This is just the most twisted and tortured sort of anti-logic imaginable, but it is right in line with the contortions propaganda salesmen routinely peddle. You see…according to Oliver, the U.S. government reads all our emails and listens to our phone calls, but Snowden is the bad guy because THE NEW YORK TIMES FUCKED UP. Got it, thanks again Brave Sir John for the "insight".

Things went downhill from there as Oliver proceeded to minimize the importance of the information Snowden released because it was "too complex" for regular people to really understand. He also dropped in a beauty of a throw away statement, namely that Julian Assange, creator of Wikileaks, was a "bad" guy and not likable. Good to know, Brave Sir John, thanks again for that nearly subliminal "insight" that is devoid of any context. He then proceeded to say it is hard to "wrap your head around perfect privacy vs perfect security."  Great straw man from Brave Sir John, as that is an entirely false argument. "Perfect security" is an impossibility, while "perfect privacy" is not.

Brave Sir John then followed this up by showing videos of people interviewed in Times Square who had no idea who Snowden was or what information he released. Oliver assured the viewer that these interviews were COMPLETELY representative!! Trust him!! Brave Sir John would never lie!! This is the oldest trick in the book in order to bolster your preconceived opinion…go and watch, if you dare, Bill O'Reilly's segment, "Water's World",  if you don't believe me. Or any "man on the street" segment on any two-bit show anywhere. This nonsense was followed by Oliver undermining the vital importance of the NSA survelience issue by reducing it to a bit on "dick pics". That is some solid, top notch, "insightful" comedy from America's favorite rat-faced, establishment lap-dog. Oliver succeeded in doing what Snowden himself said in the film Citizenfour the media would do to him to obfuscate the NSA spying issue, they would make the story about him and not about the NSA spying. Brave Sir John played that game plan perfectly. 

In response to the Oliver piece, all the cable channels, officialdom's own public relations department, did stories on the interview and sure enough, they all took shots at Snowden and diminished his truly brave work and service. On Chris Matthews reliably revolting show, he had a group of guests on, each more repugnant than the next, who all took the same courageous stance that John Oliver took, that Edward Snowden was a "leaker", and not a "whistleblower". Washington Post Establishment shill extraordinaire, the achingly ambitious yet utterly vacuous Jonathon Capehart, ended the Chris Mathews show segment by declaring Edward Snowden was "smug". Thanks for the thoughtful analysis Jonathon, have you ever heard of the phrase, "pot calling the kettle black?"

The most disturbing part of the entire Snowden affair happened a few days later, when I overheard some very liberal friends talking about Oliver's interview with Snowden. These true- blue liberals lapped up everything John Oliver had fed them. One of them kept mis-stating that Snowden "was the 'wiki-leaks' guy", showing that Oliver's disinformation and obfuscation campaign was a huge success with his target audience. Of course my liberal friends, like the rest of Brave Sir John's audience, think they are astoundingly well informed, but are, in reality, really dangerously mis-informed.

Oliver has proven, with his constant regurgitation of establishment narratives, on Putin, Snowden and Correa in particular, that he is a propaganda tool for the powers that be. If you watch his show closely enough, you will notice that John Oliver never, ever questions the things the Establishment holds dear... U.S. foreign policy, the Intelligence community, Israel, capitalism, The War on Terror, or the establishment itself. Brave Sir John is, at heart, a corporatist and Imperialist, which should come as no surprise since he is currently an employee of Time-Warner. 

It is important to understand that John Oliver is the symptom, not the disease, which is ironic because Brave Sir John only feels comfortable pointing out very specific symptoms on his show, and never the bigger disease. This is what the intelligence community does, they co-opt popular culture to their benefit in order to shape opinion. They manipulate, dominate, and misinform people through pop culture, media and film. It isn't just Brave Sir John, it is Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and even...gasp…Jon Stewart!! I know people will have a tough time swallowing the charge against Jon Stewart, but go take a look at his interview with Kathryn Bigelow, director of Zero Dark Thirty, a well known propaganda piece, the day after the Senate Torture report came out showing that her film was filled with convenient lies for the intelligence community. Stewart and Bill Maher both had the same reaction to Bigelow when they interviewed her in the same week, they both ignored the torture and propaganda issue and instead let Bigelow plug her work involving African elephants. Stewart started his interview by bringing up the torture topic and asking her thoughts, and Bigelow simply replied, "it's been a tough week"...End of discussion, Stewart dropped the subject…NOW let's talk elephants!! It was truly bizarre on Stewarts part, but at least he asked her thoughts, Bill Maher ignored the topic altogether when Bigelow was on his show later in the week.

These "clowns", Oliver, Stewart, Colbert and Maher shape and form public opinion and thought, particularly on the political left. These guys and their imitators are insidious because they use the ruse of being rebellious comedians who scrutinize authority to actually cover their vehement defense and cultural enforcement of all things establishment. It is all the more insipid because these men are held up, and hold themselves up, as a vital check and balance to establishment authority. These clowns only play the role of court jester, but never have the courage to actually speak the truth to the ruling powers or challenge their authority. They are less like the court jesters of old and more like the court eunuchs. They are more interested in staying relevant and in good graces with the establishment than in growing a pair of balls and telling the truth.

Do I think that CIA operatives are sitting in the writers room at HBO or Comedy Central…no…well..probably not. That is not necessarily how it works. But I would say that John Oliver, Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert wouldn't have their jobs on television if they weren't vociferous establishmentarians. Would some corporate entity with a television channel have given a weekly or daily show to George Carlin or Bill Hicks when they were alive or if they were alive today? Not in a million years, because those guys directly challenged the establishment, their foundation of power and their false narratives. They didn't dance and giggle around specific symptoms like John Oliver, they punched hard and often by diagnosing the whole god-damned disease. And where are the Carlin's and Hick's of this new generation of comedians? They might be out there, but they won't be getting work on corporate television anytime soon. Guys like Carlin and Hicks are anathema to the corporatist, imperial system and the powers that be who run it. Dangerous comedians will be frozen out of the process entirely. That's how the game works.

In a normal world, comedy is found in being contrarian. But not with the comedy or propaganda we get from Brave Sir John and his ilk. Brave Sir John just tells people what they want to hear…that they are really, really smart!! That what they read in the New York Times and Washington Post is true!! Oh…and they are really smart BECAUSE they read the NY Times and Washington Post and can regurgitate the establishment party line on all matters big and small!! In reality, John Oliver and his ilk are cowards. They won't take on true power, which makes John Oliver in particular…and I'll use a British term here he will definitely be able to understand…a fecking twat.

"Last Week Tonight" begins its third season tonight, Sunday, February 14. I will be tuning in to watch if only to observe and note the propaganda that Brave Sir John will be selling. I will try and keep a running tally as season three progresses. If you watch the show, and if you like the show, watch it with a sharply critical eye. Watch how Brave Sir John lulls you into a false sense of liberal camaraderie and superiority, and then pay attention when he sells you the Establishment line. 

I know some of you may think I'm crazy, or an idiot, or both, well rest assured, you are in good and crowded company. But understand, I am not asking that you agree with me in thinking that John Oliver is a propaganda tool for the establishment, I am simply asking you to BE CONSCIOUS AND AWARE when you watch his show. There is more going with on with "Last Week Tonight" than meets the eye. Wake up and see through the bullshit you're being fed, whether it's the mainstream media or an "alternative" comedian who is feeding it to you.

I leave you know with a relevant quote from the wonderful writer and intellectual Chris Hedges.

"Those few who acknowledge the death of our democracy, the needless suffering inflicted on the poor and the working class in the name of austerity, and the crimes of empire—in short those who name our present and past reality—are whitewashed out of the public sphere. If you pay homage to the fiction of the democratic state and the supposed “virtues” of the nation, including its right to wage endless imperial war, you get huge fees, tenure, a television perch, book, film or recording contracts, grants and prizes, investors for your theater project or praise as an pundit, artist or public intellectual. The pseudo-politicians, pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-artists know what to say and what not to say. They offer the veneer of criticism—comedians such as Stephen Colbert do this—without naming the cause of our malaise. And they are used by the elites as attack dogs to discredit and destroy genuine dissent. This is not, as James Madison warned, the prologue to a farce or a tragedy; we are living both farce and tragedy." - Chris Hedges, The Great Forgetting 1/10/2016

EPISODE 2 : THE JOHN OLVIER TWIST : THE DRUMPF AFFAIR AND LITTLE BILL MAHER'S POWER FETISH

EPISODE 3 : THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : WAXING BRAZILIAN AND WANING CREDIBILITY

EPISODE 4 : THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : OUT-TRUMPING TRUMP ON THE GREAT WALL OF TRUMP

EPISODE 5 : THE JOHN OLIVER TWIST : THINGS SAID AND UNSAID

©2016