In a shockingly brazen display of authoritarianism, police arrested a CNN reporter named Omar Jimenez the other day while he was live on air covering the protest of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis.

The arrest was preceded by hours of sycophantic police-worshipping CNN coverage and followed by days of self-righteous preening by the entire corporate media machine about the crucial role of journalism in a free society, with one Washington Post article going so far as to compare the CNN crew to George Floyd himself. Unlike Floyd, Jimenez was back on camera an hour later giving glowing reviews to the police who’d just inexcusably arrested him.

In its report on Jimenez’s arrest, The New York Times made a claim that was truly shocking in its inaccuracy and naivety.

“It is common in autocratic countries for journalists to be swept up in arrests during protests and riots, but rare in the United States, where news gathering is protected by the First Amendment,” claimed the article’s authors Michael Grynbaum and Marc Santora.

Independent reporters were quick to point out the absurdity of the claim.

“I’ve been reporting on protests for a few years now and I can say for sure that journalists being ‘swept up in arrests during protests and riots’ isn’t anywhere near ‘rare’,” tweeted independent journalist Ashoka Jegroo in response.

“The New York Times falsely and bizarrely stated today that journalists are rarely arrested at protests in the United States,” responded journalist Ford Fischer, who consistently covers US protests of all sorts.

“That’s news to me…….. because I was arrested multiple times at protests,” tweeted We Are Change‘s Luke Rudkowski.

“As an independent journalist who was arrested during the Eric Garner and Mike Brown protests in NYC, I’ll say this: Omar Jimenez’s experience is a common and understood risk independent journalists take (especially POC journos) in the US,” tweeted Andrew J Padilla. “Power to Omar Jimenez but sadly this is not a shock.”

Indeed, only an insulated corporate media writer who is entirely unacquainted with protests in the United States would ever believe such a thing is rare. It may be rare for well-paid reporters on a major platform to be arrested live on national television, but you’ll find many reports of many journalists being routinelyswept up” in any major protest anywhere in America in recent years.

“The most dangerous place to be a journalist in America is at a protest,” reported the Columbia Journalism Review back in 2017. “That’s a key early takeaway from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a nonpartisan website launched in August that documents press freedom incidents around the country. As of mid-September, the database had logged 20 arrests and 21 physical attacks on journalists this year, most of them at public demonstrations.”

It should surprise no one, then, that this image The New York Times paints for us–the image of the United States as a journalism-revering enemy of autocratic oppression–has been turned into a complete joke in a matter of hours by subsequent events.

“My Freedom of the Press colleagues at the US Press Freedom Tracker are investigating over twenty press freedom violations just from the last two days: reporters arrested, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets,” reads a recent tweet from Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director Trevor Timm, who then added, “Did I say twenty? It’s more likely double or triple that — and disturbingly, probably many more by the end of the night.”

Freedom of the Press Foundation is a press freedoms advocacy nonprofit. US Press Freedom Tracker is a site dedicated to documenting press freedom violations in the United States.

To list just a few of the known occurrences in the last 24 hours of this thing which, according to The New York Times, only occurs in autocratic nations:

A WCCO photojournalist named Tom Aviles was arrested covering the protest in Minneapolis while clearly identifying himself as a member of the press, after being struck with a rubber bullet.

A Huffington Post reporter named Christopher Mattias was arrested and jailed covering the protest in New York while clearly wearing his press credentials around his neck.

The Convo Couch‘s Fiorella Isabel was arrested, handcuffed and cited while reporting on the protest in Los Angeles. “They didn’t care I was press,” Isabel reported. “They put the cuffs on so tight my hand is super red and they treated everyone like criminals.”

Two photojournalists named Ellen Schmidt and Bridget Bennett were arrested while covering the protest in Las Vegas and had to post a $1000 cash bond to be released.

An NBC journalist named Simon Moya-Smith was pepper sprayed and arrested while covering the Minneapolis protest, despite repeatedly identifying himself as a reporter multiple times.

A CNN commentator and columnist named Keith Boykin was arrested and jailed for six hours covering the protest in New York. “The police locked me in tight zip ties that bruised my wrists. They held me in a van for an hour. Then a hot police bus for an hour. Then they took me to 1 Police Plaza and held me in a jail cell with about 35 others with no social distancing and many of the others unmasked,” Boykin reports.

Mind you these are just arrests from the past day. This isn’t even touching on the many journalists who’ve been shot by police with rubber bullets, pepper balls and pepper spray while identifying themselves as members of the press during these protests.

This is all in the United States, where these things do not happen. Because the United States is not an autocratic country.

“It is common in autocratic countries for journalists to be swept up in arrests during protests and riots, but rare in the United States, where news gathering is protected by the First Amendment.”

The American supremacist worldview which would prompt someone to write something so idiotic is the same American supremacist worldview a reporter needs to espouse in order to get hired and promoted in a high-profile outlet like The New York Times. It is also the same American supremacist worldview which sees New York Times reporters cheerleading imperialist war after imperialist war, “humanitarian” intervention after “humanitarian” intervention, sanctions regime after sanctions regime, propaganda campaign after propaganda campaign.

The people who are on the ground documenting the important events which are unfolding across America are doing real news reporting, and they are providing an important service to society. The people who write American supremacist spin jobs for The New York Times are not doing real news reporting, and are actually detrimental to society.

But guess who’ll be getting more money and awards?

That’s what’s keeping the people asleep, right there.

Hopefully they are finding a way to wake up.

___________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either YoutubesoundcloudApple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypalpurchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Liked it? Take a second to support Caitlin Johnstone on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!

66 responses to “Many US Journalists Arrested After New York Times Falsely Claims That Doesn’t Happen In America”

  1. AHHHHHH!!!! I absolutely love this article. Where can a single guy find a woman with a mind like yours??? SERIOUSLY.

  2. A few days ago, my local newspaper published an Associated Press article with a headline like “reporters attacked”, without indicating by who. In the article, it starts by claiming several cases of attacks on reporters by protesters. Then only if you read farther does it say anything about attacks on reporters by police.
    My local newspaper is such a useless rag, I’m glad I stopped paying for a subscription years ago. I would only read a bit if I find it in the recycle bin.

    1. Oh, hey, I see Glenn Greenwald tweeted a link to an article, “We Crunched the Numbers: Police — Not Protesters — Are Overwhelmingly Responsible for Attacking Journalists”. They count 83 percent of assaults on journalists were by police. That’s not even counting all the false arrests, which were all by police. Also the non-police attacks on journalists were not all by protesters, such as one by Nazis.
      https://theintercept.com/2020/06/04/journalists-attacked-police-george-floyd-protests/
      .
      It also notes the Freedom of the Press Foundation is now investigating 280 press freedom violations in the past week.

  3. it is very hard to pray for these evil ones as the Lord’s prayer says to do – elon musk who said he was selling all his possession, but he didn’t say he was giving it to the poor and the Cuomo brother who is a tv newscaster and who broke down in an interview and said he hated what he was doing but went back to cnn after much pressure I am sure. The Lord said that He was not willing that any should parish so I just say the words to this hymn, esp the last verse by John Ellerton.

    1 We sing the glorious conquest
    before Damascus gate,
    when Saul, the church’s spoiler,
    came breathing threats and hate;
    the rav’ning wolf rushed forward
    full early to the prey;
    but lo! the Shepherd met him,
    and bound him fast today.

    2 O glory most excelling
    that smote across his path!
    O light that pierced and blinded
    the zealot in his wrath!
    O voice that spake unto him
    the calm, reproving word!
    O love that sought and held him
    the bondman of his Lord!

    3 O Wisdom ord’ring all things
    in order strong and sweet,
    what nobler spoil was ever
    cast at the victor’s feet?
    What wiser master-builder
    e’er wrought at your employ
    than he, till now so furious
    your building to destroy?

    4 Lord, teach your church the lesson,
    still in her darkest hour
    of weakness and of danger,
    to trust your hidden pow’r:
    your grace by ways mysterious
    the wrath of man can bind,
    and in your boldest foeman
    your chosen saint can find.

    https://forum.musicasacra.com/forum/discussion/1276/hymns-for-the-conversion-of-st.-paul/p1

    https://hymnary.org/page/fetch/HPEC1940/153/high

  4. A little bit of an update from the Freedom of the Press Foundation, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker June Newsletter, which I received yesterday:
    .
    “Say his name: George Floyd protests:

    To put some perspective on the unprecedented nature of the weekend’s attacks on journalists, the Tracker documented 100-150 press freedom violations in the United States per year, for the last 3 years. We are currently investigating more than 100 from just the last three days.

    We’re coordinating with partners to compile incidents, which can be found here as published.”
    https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/?tags=111
    .
    “In latest media escalation between China and the U.S, the State Department announced it was restricting the duration of visas of Chinese journalists working in the United States for non-American outlets.”
    https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/state-department-classifies-five-chinese-state-run-outlets-as-foreign-missions/

  5. “To the American people: the world has heard your outcry over the state of oppression. The world is standing with you,” Mousavi stated at a news conference in Tehran. “And to the American officials and police: stop violence against your people and let them breathe.”
    The spokesman accused the U.S. of promoting and exporting violence, and regretted the way people in that country “who peacefully seek respect and no more violence, are being suppressed indiscriminately and met with utmost violence.”
    — Statements of Abbas Mousavi, spokesperson, Foreign Ministry of Iran.
    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Iran-Calls-On-The-US-To-Stop-Internal-Oppression-20200601-0017.html

  6. “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

    https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Romans-8-26/

  7. Remember when Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! was assaulted and arrested by Minneapolis cops along with Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar and dozens of other journalists in 2008? (I had forgotten Minneapolis cops were involved, though the incident was in St. Paul.) Democracy Now! reposted this video and transcript from 2011 reporting on their lawsuit against the cops, which Democracy Now! won. Their settlement agreement included mandatory training for the cops on how to handle the press. I see that worked great.

    https://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/4/press_freedom_victory_democracy_now_wins

    I also recall Sharif Abdel Kouddous moved to Egypt to cover the Arab Spring protests, and I have not heard about him being assaulted or arrested outside the U.S.

  8. We admire the courage of protesters against injustice, oppression and fascist sociopaths who control the world. But sad to say, their courage, time and energy does not achieve much. Courageous, indignant people think they can defeat “the powers that be” through their protests and their votes but that is a waste their time and energy trying to fight evil and correct the harm which evil people cause. Wise people don’t waste time in a rigged fight which we cannot win because good people fight and play by the rules which these evil people enforce but do not follow themselves. Wise people get out of the way, leave good people to waste their time, money and energy fighting evil people and after the battle is over when both good and evil people have finished fighting and both have lost everything they were fighting over including their lives, wise people will come out of their corners and hideouts and build a new and glorious civilization without hindrance from evil people. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf

  9. Whenever you are facing government officials, demand …
    R-E-S-P-E-C-T-!-!-!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGXU7268Z50
    Ah! Freedom!
    Freedom!
    Ah …. well, Aretha does it so much better. 🙂

  10. American regime,
    Stop killing us in our own country, and stop trying to steal all of our stuff.

    1. It is very rare that you can stop a thief merely by asking nicely.

      1. It is even rarer that you can stop a serial killer by asking nicely.

        1. So what are the options? You wouldn’t want to be rude. What would people think?

  11. The NYT practices what I would call “embedded journalism”, a term introduced in the first Gulf War. What they should have written is that it is rare for an embedded journalist to be arrested. The United States used to be more of a nation of laws, but today the police do what they want. Citizens citing their constitutional rights are treated as uppity by the police, who can get angry. The police never personally pay for committing crimes. If the state is successfully sued by a police victim, the taxpayer is stuck paying the fine, not the police officer. My favorite violation of the constitution are “free speech zones”:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

    I used to think the constitution applied to all the territory of the United States but apparently free speech is limited to caged areas called “free speech zones”. These areas can show up near the Democratic National Convention for the political protests, a safe distance from the convention and the press, so no one is disturbed.

    1. One of the unusual things about this current murder is that the police officer was not given a free paid vacation. That is the usual punishment for police murder. The police department announces that that the officer has been placed on ‘suspension’. This is always a ‘suspension with pay’…… otherwise known as free, extra paid vacation days.
      Before this is done, the murderer will likely sue the city and demand compensation for being denied the free paid vacation that is typically paid to officers who successfully kill a citizen.

      1. There is a giant divide between the worlds Americans live in; most Americans do not get a paid vacation for committing murder.

        And it is only thanks to cell phones that the public has become aware of this long standing problem. This tells you how shot the American political system is.

    2. By definition, as soon as they created the first “free speech zone”, they declared all of the nation outside of that fence as a “non-free speech zone”.

  12. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
    R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

    The effects of poverty are not benign. Poverty that ‘sets in’, poverty that is passed from one generation to the next, becomes more than merely the lack of the secure necessities of life. When poverty is handed down from generation to generation, it can evolve, distressingly quickly, into cultural deprivation.
    …..

    People can become deprived of the basic enculturation of civilization itself. People become deprived of any genuine sense of the basic moral foundation of civil society itself. If society treats them, their lives, and their children’s lives, with such deadly indignity, why should they feel any obligations to follow ANY social rules?
    …..

    Multi-generational poverty is like a disease. It does not make people ‘noble’. Quite the opposite. It infects people’s souls and spirits. It makes them ‘base’, and even ‘brutal’, (more brute-like).
    …..

    People are encultured with the basic morality of human civilization, (or not), well before we reach school age. Share your toys. Be nice. Consider other people’s interests, not just your own. You don’t just get to act however you want. There are rules. The Basic Rule is that we must treat one another as we would have others treat us. We must be tolerant of one another’s human faults and foibles, as we hope others will be tolerant of ours.
    …..

    Our nation, the United States, maintains internal Colonies of Misery, populated by tens of millions of our poorest fellow countrymen and counrywomen, (as many as 80 million people, or more, in the Hard Colonies, and their expanding margins, in every major US city).
    …..

    Predatory neo-Liberal Capitalism has devastated the unsophisticated Colony populations. Corporate pirates squeeze all the profit they can out of each Colony. Rich people make easy profits off poor people’s needs and desires. Poor people often pay the highest prices on basic consumer goods and services. And then the corporations take that profit out of the Colony, to spend and/or invest elsewhere.
    …..

    Affirmative action takes ‘the best and the brightest’ out of The Colonies. Thus, the remaining people’s lives are steadily further impoverished, their culture further deprived, by the resulting culturally induced ‘brain drain’.
    …..

    It costs more to live in The Colonies than jobs pay. ‘Good Jobs’, jobs that can support a family in dignity, just don’t exist, at ALL. It doesn’t matter how hard you might be willing to work. Even two desperate but highly motivated parents, trying to work two jobs each, four jobs trying to support one family, with small children, trying to keep a family going in a world of “steel-eyed death” … and still we gotta’ choose between paying the heat, or the rent, or for the baby’s medicine, when the old car needs a brake job. You gotta do the brake job so you can keep getting to, and between, the jobs. And that money to fix the old car has to come from not paying something else. The kids’ll just have to keep wearing the shoes that are already too small.
    …..

    We work like dogs, and still the wolf comes ‘round sniffing at our threshold late most every night. Crushing anxiety, fear for one’s own safety, and/or for one’s children’s safety and health, permanently permeates most everyone’s reality.
    …..

    People are scared and angry. People get angrier the more they get tired of feeling scared all the time.
    …..

    In the brutal conditions of the vast US internal Colonies of Misery, Bad Spirit roams free. Primitive brutal (brute-like) tribalism rules the streets. Deadly violence is a common and ‘normal’ business practice, in the drug, sex, and gambling ‘vice’ trades and markets that divide territory to be ‘governed’ by local gangs, and their chieftains of various ranks.
    …..

    The lack of an economic base, the lack of good jobs that can support families in human dignity, coupled with the economic imposition of welfare bureaucracy, which often provides people with directly self-contradictory/self-abnegating motivations, has devastated family structure. Too many children are deprived of the loving nurture of a family that is their human birthright. That loving family, which far too many children, millions upon millions of children in our Colonies of Misery, do not have, is where children learn ‘the basics’ of human civilization. When children are not raised in a nurturing environment, the children often become ‘uneducable’. They can’t be educated because they lack the basic sense of ‘civil’ discipline that ‘civil’ education requires. (When teachers spend most of their time just trying to get children to sit still, be quiet, and pay attention, little time for actual education remains).
    …..

    When people lose their birthright of family love and nurture, what we call ‘civilization’ is all too often not ‘enculturated’ into them. Lacking any sense of acceptance of a Basic Social Contract, a sense of acceptance of a set of moral rules that comprises ‘civilization’, people are left to be guided only by their base human/animal instincts.
    …..

    Life in our nation’s Colonies of Misery is ‘brutal’. When people are not enculturated with ‘civilization’, we revert to our human nature as ‘brutes’, as primitive animals.
    …..

    Uneducated and unsophisticated human people live by their animal instincts.
    …..

    In the currently prevailing ‘brutal’ conditions of our nation’s Colonies of Misery, deadly violence is always threatening people as they go about their daily lives. People are heavily armed. There are zones within the Colonies of Misery where the Police are afraid to go. People have little or no access to the Rule of Law itself. A harried overworked hack of a Public Defender represents many people’s only access to ‘The Law’, their only access to anything even resembling ‘justice’.
    …..

    When the police fear the people, they become more ‘brutal’, more authoritarian, in self-defense.
    …..

    Then the people’s fear increases, of the ‘now-more-brutal’ police. And they, the people, then become more brutal themselves, in retaliation. Mutual fear and brutality become the ‘norm’. Brutality then feeds on itself. This is a classic ‘vicious cycle’. The worse it gets, the worse it gets.
    …..

    “At the end of your shift, make sure you go home alive”, will always be any decent and well-trained police’s mantra.
    …..

    “Better convicted by 12 than carried by 6”, (a saying well-known to any police), is a grim assessment of the very real kinds of decisions that police are sometimes forced to make.
    …..

    When justice prevails, police do justice. They are public servants. They regard themselves that way. When justice prevails, the public regards the police as highly valued public servants.
    …..

    When moral and spiritual corruption prevails, life becomes more brutal, and life or death for police, on any shift, becomes more often determined by split-second decisions. I don’t want to be “convicted by 12”, any police surely tells herself or himself. But even MORE I sure the heck want to go home from my shift, home to my own family, alive.
    …..

    I don’t want to be “carried by 6”.
    …..

    How much sacrifice is it fair to ask from individual police? In confronting a heavily armed public, in a society in which inequality and generalized, (and in fact nearly universal), corruption prevails, and the Bad Spirit of gross injustice permeates the air itself, is it fair to ask police, people working for a paycheck, to not prioritize their own safety?
    …..

    In an unjust society, police will do injustice. Police must en’force’ an unjust society on the people.
    …..

    In a just society, however, police would do justice. When laws are just, people welcome law enforcement.
    …..

    Police are ‘hired hands’. They are people who earn a paycheck. They do what their bosses tell them, and train them, to do. Unjust societies have unjust bosses. The unjust bosses order the police to do unjust things.
    …..

    In a truly democratic society, the people, the citizens, are the Police’s bosses.
    …..

    Blaming the police, the hired help, (rather than the policy makers, the bosses), for not being able to police the inherently unjust Colonies of Misery justly, makes no more sense than blaming the waiter for the chef’s poorly cooked meal, or blaming the messenger for the message.
    …..

    The police are just working people themselves. They are fallible people. Some are depraved. Most are just average decent folks. A few are ‘extraordinary’ people. Folks is jes’ folks. Police are trained, as quasi ‘soldiers’, but even most every soldier has folks she or he loves. Folks is jes’ folks. In both lines of trenches.
    …..

    In the brutal violent atmosphere on our nation’s ‘mean streets’, among the teeming millions of prisoners in the Colonies of Misery that our nation maintains in EVERY major city, the Police are no more than “pawns in their game”.

    *****

    Must Be Hercules
    –Allen Toissant
    …..

    “The cause of fear, is fear its self
    Check our your own back yard before you check out someone else
    Railroad track, in my neighborhood
    Ain’t no trains around that part just ain’t no good
    Wanna know, what’s going down,
    When the pimp on the corner looks like the sharpest cat in town
    …..

    Jungle rule, can’t be no fool
    Might get caught by the hook or the crook
    No time for cool (but times r’ cool)
    Look out Jake what you say
    What you carrying brother
    I hope you’re clean cause the man is mean
    Don’t come no further brother
    …..

    Jungle rule, can’t be no fool
    The Devil is on the loose, no cool
    Got your feet in the sand
    Got to be down with the cats around
    And you still gotta’ face The Man
    …..

    Pitching rocks catching stones
    How can I survive, what’s going on
    Beg, steal, borrow
    Somehow I’ve gotta’ make it ’til tomorrow
    …..

    We all know the answer will come out in time
    I might even carry some of your load along with mine
    Thank you ma’am, mister please
    But I must be Hercules (must be Hercules)
    Must be Hercules (must be Hercules)
    …..

    Can’t depend on no one else
    Comin’ up the hard way I gotta save myself”
    …..
    –Allen Toissaint
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGGRi2CEFu8

    As our nation convulses through yet another Mass Media-contrived mass mob hysteria, if our objective be self-awareness, we might ask ourselves what part we ourselves have played, and/or are playing, in creating or contributing to the hysteria.
    …..

    Does irrational, unreasoning, passion-driven mass mob hysteria EVER contribute to solving complex human conditions through ANYTHING other than the most brutal means leading to the most brutal ends?
    …..

    When the Mass Media are enthusiastically supporting the propagation of mass mob hysteria, is that a sign that maybe mass mob hysteria is in the Mass Media Barons’ own interests, and very much NOT in the interests of the Common People?
    …..

    What is the objective of those on The Left who seem to think that The Left must itself maximize the mass mob hysteria that its own Enemy, the Mass Media Barons, are propagating?
    …..

    What ‘good’ do the people on the Left think it does the Left, when the Left aligns itself in action with the Mass Media Barons?
    …..

    Do we think it’s more likely that the Mass Media Barons just all ‘went stupid’, and just decided to advance ‘the revolution’ for awhile? Or is it more likely that they think that fomenting these kinds of mass mob hysterias serve their longer-term “divide and rule” strategy, and they are very happy to have the Marionette Left’s help in keeping the Common People divided and at each other’s throats?

    1. Pretty accurate snapshot of America 2020. When I was a young man in the late 60s/early 70s, many young people, especially on the then-affordable college campuses, learned to see a similar picture, condemned it, and vowed to pour their lives into changing and improving it. But once out of school, most of them (not all) forgot this commitment to tackle head on pressing issues of social justice and instead poured their working lives into strengthening and maxing out the evil system they had seen through and vowed to oppose and alter. You would have to dig deeply into American history to try to find a generation that started out more idealistic and rebellious than the Boomers. Yet the terrible truth is that exploitative Fordist capitalism morphed into plutocratic neoliberalism ON OUR WATCH and with, in so many cases, our enthusiastic participation. All generalizations become false when pushed too far, but one that’s true enough to haunt me is the massive Boomer sell-out, at least among those who were on those campuses in the 60s and 70s. So many chose to forget what they’d learned, to forget what they’d committed themselves to do, and instead pursued as adults the hedonistic current of the youth culture that had co-existed uneasily with the idealistic current, wealth and status soon becoming the new high. Apart from largely cosmetic changes–allowing a minority of minorities into the game; making sex/drugs/rock n’ roll core components of American culture, etc.–the system remained not merely in place but devolved into even more obscene wealth disparity and crippling austerity for all but the elites and their courtiers, whose own share of the pie has by now enlarged to damn near all of it. Had many in my generation, the first in which working class kids had widespread access to higher ed and its “consciousness raising,” remained true as adults to the values they had embraced in their youth, had thrown their working lives into challenging the system they had seen through, had striven relentlessly, no doubt at personal cost, to build a better, more beautiful world–IF THEY HAD DONE WHAT THEY SAID THEY WOULD DO–we likely still wouldn’t have seen the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but the snapshot of America 2020 provided by Caliban would be a picture somewhat less sickening to look at. How can my aging, ailing generation, especially those now in gated retirement enclaves and planning their next cruise, dare to remember the music of their youth, to endure to listen to it?

    2. Lost me at ‘cultural depravity’.
      What a strange term. No frigging idea what it means.
      Depravity is defined as moral degeneration. Interestingly, it is a term far more frequently applied to the rich than to the poor. When I looked up the definition in a dictionary, the first example listed referred to the depravity of the idle rich. A common theme in literature over the centuries has been the depravity of the elite.
      Putting the word ‘cultural’ in front of it seems to make it apply to culture. Unfortunately, it has a similarity to the abortion of right-wing, fascist rhetoric to call any book that Adolf Hitler didn’t burn as “cultural Marxism”.
      And, there doesn’t seem to be any known relationship between poverty and a lack of culture. 100 years of poverty and segregation and racism ended with the creation of American Blues and American Jazz, the poetry of Langston Hughes and a strong thriving culture. When money and power controls culture, what results is stuff portraits on the wall of the mansion, and playing the same music for centuries. There does not seem to be a relationship between poverty and a lack of culture. If you want depravity, read the libraries full of books that tell you that royal families should rule and that capitalism says you have to die for the factory owners profit.

      1. R Zwarich ('Caliban') Avatar
        R Zwarich (‘Caliban’)

        You’re not a very good reader, Mr. Elwood. The term used is cultural “deprivation”, not ‘depravity’. I suppose the reader(s) I was addressing were not ones who would get “lost” over a term that is not even used, and then would write a couple hundred words parsing the meaning of the term that was never even used.

        Nice straw man you built for yourself to discuss with yourself, though. Sorry my comments whizzed by you. Thanks for making the effort.

  13. Main Stream Media does not need a sponsor, investor, or an audience. It has the Federal Reserve Bank. In short, a Government Instillation. Narcissist preening in the mirror while it lays down its false claim to ‘love of Liberty’.

  14. They shot Halsey with a rubber bullet. I didn’t like Halsey until just now.

  15. Things have not changed at all, but have just been updated, and the Washington Post is – along with the New York Times – still one of the two essential news-reads in Americas newsrooms, and is doing its job for the people who control the CIA and the Pentagon, unchanged since 1948, to keep the hate going against not only Russia but any nation that is friendly toward it, such as Chile 1973, Iraq 2003, Syria 2011, Ukraine 2014, Venezuela 2012, and China.
    All of that U.S. aggression was based on lies, but, apparently, the American public never gets the important message, which is that we are now living in a dictatorship and it constantly lies. This magnificent article can be read here:
    How the Washington Post Does Propaganda These Days by Eric Zuesse!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/31/how-the-washington-post-does-propaganda-these-days/

  16. Here’s what the arrest of Ofc. Derek Chauvez means in the Land of the Free.
    — The Prosecutors can choose to charge him directly, or send the case to a Grand Jury. The Grand Jury is pulled from the Jury Selection Pool. Prosecutors frequently do not charge police officers directly, like they do after any normal arrest.
    — When the case goes to the Grand Jury, this is a secret proceeding. The only people in the room are the prosecutors, the judge, and the Grand jury (plus court employees). The family of George Floyd will have no presence in the room, nor any ability to present evidence.
    — Remembers, Prosecutors and Police work closely together all the time. The Prosecutors on this case likely know Ofc Chauvez personally, and have coached him on how to testify in many other cases.
    — Sometimes one gets the empression that the prosecutors are very half-hearted in their presentation to the Grand Jury, and this leads to the Grand Jury deciding not to sent the case to trial.
    — If the case does go to trial, the case involves the Prosecutors against the Defense attorneys of Ofc. Floyd. The family of George Floyd will not have a legal voice in the case. They might get a chance to testify, but only if they were an eye-witness to the killing. The impact on the family has zero weight in the trial. The family of George Floyd will have to rely on the Prosecutors (who know and work with the officer) to present the case against the officer and get a conviction. The British have a concept of a Private Prosecution where the family goes to court directly against the killer in a criminal trial. The American system has no such option.
    — If a guilty verdict is reached, then the family might get to testify at the sentencing phase. Laws have been passed allowing for victim impact to be considered.
    — If a guilty verdict is appealed by the officers lawyers, the appeal is handled by the Prosecutors.
    — If an innocent verdict is rendered, it is the prosecutors alone who get to decide whether to file an appeal. The family of George Floyd has no voice in the process.
    — The only stage where the family of George Floyd can go to court is in a Civil wrongful death suit with no criminal penalties at stake for the killer. At state would be the likelihood of the city of Minneapollis having to pay a damage claim.
    — IIRC, the killer of Michael Brown in St. Louis was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from rich fascists raising money for him, and hundreds of thousands more from Mickey Mouse News (aka ABC) paying him for a TV interview.
    The odds of Ofc Chauvez avoiding prison and ending up with a big pile of money are very high if things stay the way they are in the Land of the Free (with the world’s biggest prison population)

  17. When a society relies on the discretion of individual police officers to determine civil rights, then you have to know that democratic principles are going to be in the toilet.

  18. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    Today, incidents like the “arrest” of a reporter might be seen by some as shocking. Instead, this is business as usual. Very soon, this kind of strong-arming will be seen by the public as totally routine and commonplace and necessary.

    There has been a war on the press in the USA at least since the Vietnam War. The powers-that-be lost control of the narrative that the war was progressing in the USA’s favor when the respected reporter Walter Cronkite saw for himself that narrative was bull-leavings and he turned against that war. And the rest of America followed him. The powers-that-be learned from that and began to bring in and cozy up to the major media networks and they became partners. Some independent media remained as holdouts and pesky annoyances to the Big Powers. But slowly and surely, these independent voices were either co-opted or are being silenced.

    The “arrest” of a media person is a deliberate performance to send a message both to the holdout media and to the general public: Follow Orders in the Land of the Free or you’re going to get yours. And in an atmosphere of people who already believe that the media is nothing but fake news anyway, a great segment of the world public will be cheering on those who are working to snuff out the last embers of anything resembling a real journalist or commentator.

    Orwell’s boot is getting closer to our faces every moment. “These boots are made for walking. And that’s just what they’ll do”… They’ll be walking over me… and walking over you.

    1. Who ever said the press gets to go wherever they want whenever they want. That is a fantasy. The press were embedded with the military during armed conflict not running across the battlefield on their own. The press runs into s riot and think they should be protected. Sorry. no. That shows you the hutzpah of the press today.

  19. Trump could be gone in a week, maybe two.
    America is that close. We might soon be seeing the sight of a helicopter leaving the White House.
    Nobody ever sees revolutions coming. A few weeks back, nobody saw this coming. Then there is a spark. Idiotic bullying cops are usually on hand to provide a spark.
    Then you see all the people who were claiming to be vanguards of the next revolution sprinting behind the crowds trying to catch up.
    Trump could be gone in a week.
    After that, it is of course a big mess. VP’s frequently try to form a new government, but that almost never works, and this one is a fool. The opposition might try to seize power. The elections aren”t far away, but by now the Republicans need a new candidate. Its surprising that they haven’t already asked Trump to leave. I guess Q is there with a machine gun guarding the doors to the Oval Office to keep them out.
    Fascinating that its the Republicans who lost control of their party.
    Fascinating that it turns out to be a health care crisis that topples America. So, it turns out that the weakness of the American Fourth Reich was their failure to create a modern health care system. Amazing.
    Trump could be gone in a week.
    What will you tell your grandchildren when they asked what you did during the Revolution?

    1. Wishful thinking. More likely the secret service mows down a couple hundred people as rhey rush the white house. Going inside that place armed is suicide.

    2. “What will you tell your grandchildren when they asked what you did during the Revolution?” you ask…..Well, I hope to tell them that the cities that hired and kept dirty racist cops across the country appear to have decades of democratic mayors, city council members, secretary of states, and often decades of democratic governors. I hope to tell my grandchildren that I was part of the woke who noticed the pattern of the democratic racism and I help others get woke.

    3. The events of the last 4 days just reelected Trump.

  20. Barbara Mullin Avatar
    Barbara Mullin

    No wonder we don’t hear the Clintons coming to the defense of George Soros. Chelsea has married into the Soros family.

  21. Please take a moment to look at it from the police point of view. They want peace and order not demonstrations and rioting. Thus if you are in the area it is guilt by association. Sort of like arresting the cleaning lady when you raid a den of prostitution. They have no time for debate and questions. Gather everyone up and sort it out later. Which is preferable to the military which is to shoot and sort the bodies afterwards. Arresting a newscaster and releasing them later after questioning is no big violation of your rights. It is simply the most expedient method in a tense situation. Also you interrupted their donut break. What do you expect.

  22. JULIAN ASSANGE !!!!
    The elephant in the room.
    If the Press thought they should have special treatment, the treatment of Julian Assange should have shattered that myth.
    Maybe if all of these people weren’t so silent about Julian Assange’s situation, I would care more.
    The number of US journalists who have protested about Assange’s treatment is pathetic and restricted to the independent media, not amongst the corporate or main stream media.
    Having said that … of course we should be appalled … but we should also wonder if violence against the Press has intensified since Assange was targetted.

    1. You are confusing the MSM with a journalist. The press get a story and carry it to their editor. If it is dicey it goes up the ladder and is often sqashed. A journalist breaks important news the world must know. Dont mistake the jounalist Assange with the MSM. Journalists are removed or punished severely not the press which is part of the problem.

    2. I was viciously attacked on Twitter for pointing out that giant elephant

  23. Tommorow morning the members of the United States Congress will be crawling all over each other with “new laws” limiting ” the press” and banning “protest demonstrations” that they were waiting for the “right opportunity” to present. The “owners and the masters” own the streets of this country and they have the “firepower” to prove it. The violence and looting is what they were all hoping for.

    Somewhere along the road of the United States of Americas development, corporations were blessed with not only “personhood,” but with the power to sanction what sort of messages were permissible to enter the public realm. Let us be clear: This sort of corporate control, which borders on pure fascism, has no place in a democracy.
    There is no need to ask. There is no need to be polite. There is no need to debate. It is only necessary to point to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution for this fundamental human right, inscribed into law over 200 years ago, to be returned to the American people.
    “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
    So how did it come to be that such a straightforward and unambiguous command has become so unattainable in reality? This relevant article can be read here:
    Silicon Valley Has Effectively Banned the Freedom of Speech. It Is Time We Take It Back by Robert Bridge!
    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/31/silicon-valley-has-effectively-banned-the-freedom-speech-time-we-take-back/

  24. Existential Constant Avatar
    Existential Constant

    We are living in the most significant times ever, because it is a time of great collapse.
    Either humanity disappears or a totally new way of life arrives.
    These moments are very critical, it is the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered.
    A new vision is needed.
    It was never needed as much as it is needed now, because the time is very limited.
    We are sitting on a massive amount of nuclear weapons.
    The capacity to destroy this earth is so vast that you cannot even imagine for what we have gathered such a capacity to destroy.
    Politicians are so unconscious that they can do anything to keep their power, their respectability, even if it means war with China and blowing up the whole world.
    They can risk anything to save their egos.
    And these are the people who naturally reach to the positions of power, because they are the only seekers of power.
    No creative, intelligent person seeks power.
    No intelligent person is interested in dominating others.
    Their first interest is to know thyself.
    So the people with the highest quality of intelligence go towards mysticism, and the most mediocre go after power.
    That power can be worldly, political, it can be of money, it can be of holding spiritual domination over millions of people, but the basic urge is to dominate more and more people.
    This urge arises because they don’t know themselves, and they don’t want to know that they don’t know themselves.
    They are so afraid of becoming aware of the ignorance that prevails in the very center of their being.
    They escape from this darkness through these methods – lust for money, lust for power, lust for respectability, honor.
    And a person who has darkness within themselves can do anything destructive.
    These people are completely asleep.
    In their sleep these psychopathic politicians, and their sociopathic scientists are making nuclear bombs, biological weapons, not knowing what they are doing.
    Only one thing keeps them moving, and that is more power, more power.
    And whoever comes in their way has to be destroyed.
    They don’t know anything else.
    They are barbarians who have not evolved into human beings.
    Yes, they can destroy the whole world, they are already prepared to do so.
    Are we going to stop them?
    For millennia humanity has lived only under the illusion of freedom.
    But there is no such thing as freedom as far as the history of humanity up to now is concerned.
    Slaveries have changed, new forms of slavery have taken their place, but freedom has not happened.
    Freedom is still a dream.
    Each mind is programmed to be that of a slave, it is not ready to function in freedom.
    That’s where the roots of the problems are.
    Thousands of years of slavery have given a certain conditioning to the mind.
    It understands only one language, the language of the jungle.
    Whosoever is powerful is right.
    “Might is right.”
    If there is nobody to dictate to it, if there is nobody to boss it about, then the mind knows no way to function, what to do, what not to do.
    It has no inner guidance.
    There was a time that people were being sold in the markets just like any other commodity.
    We thought that was slavery, and it took thousands of years to get rid of it, but we could only get rid of the form.
    The content remained.
    Spiritual slavery is the most dangerous because it is not obvious from outside.
    Your hands are not handcuffed.
    The chains are not visible, they are deep in your mind, and they have been perpetually enforced through education from the very childhood.
    I don’t see there is any freedom anywhere.
    And freedom is the greatest value and the greatest achievement in life.
    Everyone should be free from all kinds of fetters – political, economic, psychological, spiritual.
    Unless we can create a world which is really free, we are living only in an illusion of freedom.
    There used to be imperial political dependence all over the world.
    Those empires have collapsed and that has given a great illusion to nations, that now they have freedom.
    And whenever some illusion is beautiful you want it to be true, you want to believe in it, but whether you believe in it or not, an illusion is an illusion, it makes no difference.
    This world is dominated by insane people with insane objectives, who are all basically inferior but are trying to cover up their inferiority with some kind of power, any kind of power.
    They have created many ways.
    But these people are all trembling inside, worried that they will be found out, that their power will collapse, and just a push is that is needed!
    They know that inside themselves there is nothing, and outside there is always a great competition for power.
    One has to understand that this tremendous urge to power is arising from an aching emptiness within themselves.
    When will humanity learn that each revolution turns always into anti-revolution?
    It is time we should understand how this happens, why this happens at all, that each revolution, each struggle against injustice, finally turns into injustice itself, becomes anti-revolutionary.
    When you are powerless, it is easy to fight against injustice.
    The moment you become powerful, you forget all about injustice.
    Then repressed desires to dominate assert themselves.
    Then your unconscious takes over, and you start doing the same things that were done before by the enemies against whom you had been struggling.
    You had staked your very life for it!
    Power does not corrupt.
    It is the corrupted people who become attracted towards power.
    It is the people who would like to do things which they cannot do while they are not in power.
    The moment they are in power, their whole repressed mind asserts itself.
    Power is not the cause of corruption, but only the opportunity for its expression.
    Remember, the criminal and the politician are the always same type of people.
    If the criminal becomes politically successful he is a great leader.
    If the politician cannot succeed in being in power he becomes a criminal.
    They are destructive people, their whole effort is to dominate others.
    Politics is destructive.
    It is the most ugly phenomenon.
    The politician is continuously in search of enhancing their ego.
    They need others’ attention.
    Millions of people have to feed their ego.
    The politician lives in this.
    They want many people to look up to them so their ego is enhanced.
    They are afraid of going within because they know inside themselves there is nothing but emptiness.
    They do not know who they are.
    They collect their information about themselves from others’ eyes, from what they say.
    If they say “You are a great person” they believe they are a great person.
    The politician is the poorest person in the world, the most empty, the most hollow, stuffed with straw and nothing else.
    Scarecrows look great on bonfires!

    1. We are seeing certain states begin to collapse. Eventually the more stable states will seal their borders from the collapsing states. This may take weeks months or years. It is how collapse happens.

  25. Harry S Nydick Avatar
    Harry S Nydick

    Just as the Washington Post (WaPo) is the outlet (read that ‘mouthpiece’) for the deep state, the New York Times, which used to be revered for its honesty and depth of investigation (before reporting) is the mouthpiece for the establishment. It’s reputation has suffered a mortal blow, in the eyes of many, over the last 20 or so years.
    I for one have come to place more credence on the information printed on a box of Wheaties than to anything printed in the New York Slimes (times).

    1. Barbara Mullin Avatar
      Barbara Mullin

      Judith Miller style reporting supporting Dick Cheney will go down in history.

  26. The journalist haven’t a leg to stand on if they want to complain about the police. When the police locked up Julian, fellow journalists cheered the police on, by doing so they proved that being a journalist wasn’t about anything at all other than a popularity contest, so I cheer the police on this one; beat the crap out of those shit journalists.

    1. The sooner they do that the sooner they will stop running around in the middle of a riot. The side effect of lowering the status of the press in the public eye, the less sypathy they will get. Jounslistscare admired, the MSM is despised.

  27. Though, admittedly, without journalistic credentials, I was arrested at a demonstration against the visit of Bill Clinton to Oslo, Norway back in 1999. A freelance writer who’d written for The independent a couple of times, several Norwegian journalists vouched for me, but I was still handcuffed tight enough to hurt before being bundled off to prison, where I was held in a cell until 3 am. I was released into the pouring rain, in the knowledge it would be almost impossible to find a cab in that part of Oslo at that time of morning. The good thing about it was that a small gathering of teenage girls sheltering under a tree applauded me as I came out. When I explained I hadn’t been actually demonstrating, they told me it didn’t matter, they were waiting to welcome everyone who’d been arrested. They arrest you everywhere and anywhere. And it’s being going on for a very long time. It’s just about to get even worse.

    1. Barbara Mullin Avatar
      Barbara Mullin

      You are so much more honest than Joe Biden who has spent a career faking his social justice activities.

  28. If well funded, bought and paid for, centrally organized activist leaders/agitators and bussed in “rent-a-mobs” exist and are forever standing by to throw gasoline on any nasty smoldering situation, it is the “Free Press” which always arrives to provide the necessary oxygen to light up the town and make it all worth fully funding. One can almost see the directions being given in the background… “roll the cameras, cue rioters and looters, it’s smash, grab and burn time”. Really, if the press never showed, many such things particularly in distant, offset locations to the initiating activity would get little or no oxygen, at least IMHO. Cops themselves know this and really don’t care much for the gasoline and oxygen either one. Politicians, on the other hand, appear to be quite happy to watch those neighborhoods burn knowing their actual supporters can then buy up the resulting ash piles on the cheap.

    Q. Why must NYC and other major cities burn when some unquestionably bad cops openly execute someone on a Minneapolis street? A. Because the lights better and “if it bleeds, it leads”. Why do both reporters and the aforementioned bought and paid for organized riot teams flock into remote madhouses at every such opportunity that feeds their narrative? Hey, apparently the Covid 19 scary thing is wearing thin and the commoners/peasants are too dense to really get worried much about a war with China. To complicate the matter, Trump keeps exposing the quite real crimes against himself, General Flynn, numerous other individuals, the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law committed by the very real deep state/Globalist cabal inclusive of the previous administration and worst of all, of late Trump’s minions have the nerve to release actual evidence including names! If anyone missed this particular “news” it is probably because the “news” sources they pay attention to are complicit Globalist Cabal members who judiciously ignore things they don’t like to see reported. That said, this works both ways, but how about those November elections?

  29. Minnesota > democrat governor, US senators, majority of US representatives, state attorney general > Minneapolis > democrat mayor, council, district attorney, police chief > this is Soros/antics/DNC theater

  30. What else should we expect? America is a police state. Cops are trained in israhell to treat Americans the same way Israhell treats the Palestinian people…..like shit. Every day, every hour some fat bloated pig on steroids wearing a badge of authorituh and worse a gun, tortures, abuses, murders, robs, rapes and generally terrorizes Americans into submission.
    They all have qualified immunity. Which means they can do with you as they want. No questions asked, no trial, only promotion.
    All cops are pigs. period. They’re swine, soldiers for the deep state, which in truth makes them another standing army. Which is what they are. A standing army. One you should fear as they have nothing to hold them back. No law, no rights, no Constitution…they are a law unto themselves and their job is to terrorize Americans into submission. NO different than in any other dictatorship whether it was under Joe Stalin, the Duvaliers of Haiti or red China.
    The western media is a laughing stock. CNN, WaPo and NY Times are all worthless as journalism goes. Bought and sold, owned by zionist traitors, they twist, lie, repeat propaganda and distort everything. Nothing they say or print should ever be believed.
    They are the “kept press”. The First Amendment is meaningless. The Bill of Rights is doomed.
    Just remember to keep your hands on the steering wheel and you won’t get shot!

  31. I’m gonna love watching your kind disappear into the shit-can of history. It’s where you belong, with all the other dead Nazis and their ‘master race’ idiocy.

    Seriously, go rot and take your moronic fellow travelers with you.

  32. Again, a “dead accurate report” on the common abuse of journalists by police in any and every state” of America, land of the free, home of the brave. I’ve been threatened with arrest numerous times, merely for suggesting my being stopped, for a traffic stop, was entirely capricious, and without any cause.
    I don’t go out and protest, mainly because only the ten or twelve neighbors I have, wouldn’t notice, too far from the road, and I gave up on cities in 76, when I enlisted, specifically to get out of Chicago, forever.
    I began carrying a gun there, at 12, after my Dad and I were robbed at gunpoint, car stolen, Dad’s wallet, watch and our junk car stolen found days later sans tires.
    Our police have been brutal, criminal, long before I was born in 57, I marched in civil rights protests in Chicago, as a teen, after Dr. King was executed by the CIA, along with Malcolm X, JFK, and ultimately RFK.
    We’ve ceased being “citizens”, in the main, chosen to be serfs, and without the majority willing to stand on our rights, we have only those we will defend. I stand in defense of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, anyone who exposes the crimes of our Military and more specifically, our government, since it’s antics are largely hidden by secrecy, even more than military crimes.
    We, as Americans, have utterly failed to defend each other, and by this, we’ve welcomed the assault on each other, by allowing each to stand on their own, and be taken down. I am outraged by the deliberate murder of a Minnesota man, murdered by a policeman, kneeling on his throat, 8 minutes, while three other officers committed treason, failing to fulfill their oaths, and stop the murder. They never should have been fired, but indicted, for murder and primary, and co-conspirators, in uniform, as “peace officers”, being held to a higher standard, because of their oaths, that one would hold a general robber, or even deliberate murderer. I’ve lived under an oath before God, since age 10, becoming a Boy Scout, I haven’t rescinded that oath “Before God” so it stands, and I consider my oath entering the Marines, as merely an extension of the previous, more complex, greater responsibility, and enduring unless or until I rescind it, or pass for final judgement. There is no reason for such action, and no excuse, but unless we, American People, choose to support these charges, those murderers, and common criminals, will simply get away with their abuse of power. We are, for the most part, a cowed and servile populace, willing to go into hiding, on the word of a liar, thief, in no way, qualified doctor, Fauci, and his evil female sidekick, who are responsible for our current lockdown, and continuing the destruction of our failing economy. I wish this passing external to the U.S. made a difference, however for the most part, Americans choose what the will condemn based on “main-stream news”, few are even willing to discover the truth about anything of importance.
    We, regular Americans, have allowed our government assume authority no government should ever have, and we daily, pay the price for doing so. We don’t deserve to have the country we once had, I’ve been appalled at our “state of affairs” since age six, returning home after four years between Barcelona, and Naples, finding monopoly money, instead of gold and silver, as the Constitution demands, constrains, and never finding any good thing about state or central, not federal government any time since 62.
    If we could make these charges stick, the perps go to jail, we could have the least bit of opportunity to regain control of our country, but we won’t, and we won’t. The end of the “roller coaster ride” is rapidly approaching, and many “won’t get off”, they will be removed, their places washed down to conceal the blood.
    Semper Fidelis,
    John McClain
    Vanceboro, NC, USA

    1. Thanks John McClain for once again giving us the benefit of your experience and perspective. I sincerely hope that liberty and justice for all will prevail in the face of this ongoing, seemingly endless evil which has befallen us. God Bless America!

      P.S. My daughter asked why I refer to that guy as Dr. Faustus.

    2. On your coattails, today, John. I second your statement, even though I was born in ’58.
      http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/showdown-on-titanic.html
      Paul Craig Roberts on coronavirus as a sort of probe into the political realities of the USA in 2020.
      https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/05/26/the-campaign-against-hcq/
      ​ ​At a time when accurate information is essential, the waters are instead muddied by disinformation in the service of political, ideological, and profit agendas. The irresponsibility of those putting their self-interests first is extraordinary. It indicates that the social bond between people that made America a country has been dissolved by greed, multiculturalism, and Identity Politics. America has become a country without a common interest. It is a narcissistic state.
      ​ ​This article is limited to the campaign against HCQ. HCQ—hydroxychloroquine—has been in use for 65 years for the prevention or treatment of malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis. It is officially labeled a safe drug. Many doctors treating Covid patients have found and reported HCQ, when used early enough together with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin to be an effective and safe treatment.
      I have reported and made available many of the reports of HCQ’s efficacy and safety.
      MYSTERY surrounds why an anti-malaria drug is not being tested as a Covid-19 treatment in combination with zinc, which doctors say is crucial for efficacy.
      ​ ​As we reported recently, President Trump revealed he was taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alongside zinc after reports that many doctors are doing the same to help ward off Covid-19.
      ​ ​Criticism of the President rose sharply after a non-randomised study published in the Lancet said that HCQ provided no benefit to hospitalised Covid-19 patients while being linked to increased deaths.
      ​ ​What the mainstream media did not point out is that the Lancet study failed to test HCQ with zinc. Other experts have found zinc to be vital for efficacy in this context.
      ​ ​Zinc, available as an over-the-counter supplement, has long been seen as an immune-system booster that helps develop immune cells, or antibodies, and can strengthen the body’s response to a virus.
      ​ ​American infectious disease specialist Joseph Rahimian explained that, in relation to Covid-19, zinc ‘does the heavy lifting and is the primary substance attacking the pathogen’. HCQ is said to work as a delivery system​ ​for zinc in fighting coronavirus.
      https://conservativewoman.co.uk/malaria-drug-and-zinc-the-missing-link/

      ​Charles Hugh Smith: Social Media’s Plantation of the Mind (explains PCR’s observations above, maybe?)
      In the classic Plantation, everything is managed by those in charge to benefit the owners. Workers are forced to buy their necessities at The Company Store, and since the entire town and plantation is owned by the corporation, there’s no private ownership of land or housing; everyone is a serf, beholden to the owners, and since costs are artificially high at The Company Store (due to the lack of competition), the serfs have to go into debt to survive: they become debt-serfs…​
      To perfect this colonization of the mind, social media has persuaded users that they no longer need unfettered access to the entire World Wide Web/Internet: we’ll give you everything you want right here on our Plantation of the Mind…
      Once you control the politics of experience, the user isn’t even aware that what they now consider “obvious” has been molded by the plantation owners to maximize their private profits. In social media’s Plantation of the Mind, users are assured they have complete access to everything that is “fact” and “safe,” when in reality everything they see has been filtered to the benefit of the Plantation owners and their political allies in the state hierarchy.
      https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay20/social-media-plantation5-20.html

      ​Indian Punchline looks at the effects of coronavirus on a crumbling global e

      1. Indian Punchline looks at the effects of coronavirus on a crumbling global empire, which is losing face. Thanks Eleni.
        ​ ​The sluice gates have opened, as it were, on world politics after the ‘timeout’ through the past 2-3 months due to Covid-19. The spectacle of America’s epic war with Covid-19 under President Donald Trump’s watch creates a range of emotions in the world community — ranging from sympathy and pity to horror and derison.
        This will have consequences.
        ​ ​The pandemic has accelerated the main currents of international politics: the US’ national security strategy vis-a-vis Russia and China, the two ‘revisionist’ powers in Washington’s crosshairs; the Russia-China entente that has become an increasingly significant factor in global politics; the steady unraveling of the transatlantic alliance; and, most important, the decline of the US as a hegemonic superpower.
        ​ ​The most dramatic template is, unsurprisingly, the US-Russia-China triangle. The US-China tensions have increased and so is Washington’s prolonged standoff with Russia. This is driving Moscow and Beijing toward each other.​..
        ​ Clearly, against the backdrop of the reset of the Franco-German axis lately and taking into account Germany’s traditionally strong relations with China, the French move to harmonise with China over Hong Kong can be seen as a calculated move to differentiate Europe’s policies vis-a-vis rising China from those of the US.
        https://indianpunchline.com/covid-19-impacts-global-alignments/

      2. Barbara Mullin Avatar
        Barbara Mullin

        Recently on a Democracy Now show, Juan Gonzalez reported that it was standard practice in a New Brunswick Hospital to give that drug to the patient’s with the Corona virus. Juan asked if this was
        some kind of research project and the doctor said no. We do hear about side effects such as heart
        arrhythmias which indicates that it all ought to be under a doctor’s order and not just on your own.
        Juan’s mother had been hospitalized for the virus and asked that his mother not be given this drug.
        She has recovered.

  33. Yeah that’s stupid and crazy. All of your comments are stupid and crazy.

    1. I only wish that all who comment on your blog (so helpful to our struggles to think clearly and for ourselves) would do as I do and not so much as glance at any comment by this obvious troll. I know that since this is your website, you are obliged to monitor it (albeit with admirable restraint) and thus must yourself forego this luxury.

  34. CNN is just a biased mainstream “news” service. Sorry, they get no sympathy from me.

    1. “Bias” is not really the right word to use here. Something like “CIA asset” gets closer to the truth.

  35. Important post. I just want to mention. Here in France, they are discussing a bill that would target people filming police actions – if something is filmed and shown on the Internet, social media, TV etc. – the person filming the scene would face up to 15 years in prison and fines. This is no joke and follows many police actions filmed in the last few years of violence against the yellow vests and much more. I spent a night in jail for filming when I was told not to. What happens in the USA now is being watched by around the world and pro cop; nationalist sentiments are heating up. A dangerous time.

    1. But also, for this relic from the 60s, an EXCITING time. We saw many cities burn when I was young, but the crowds involved were almost entirely black. Yet this time around, the videos show almost as many white faces as black. So with regard to the oppressive conditions that trigger such outrage, there has been little progress, perhaps even regress. But with regard to those who feel the frustration and are willing to act out against the oppression, it seems that FINALLY we have that “rainbow coalition.” IMHO, this bodes well.

    2. The best way to get public aporoval for unlimited force is to make them afraid. Everyone wearing a mask today is more than ready to give away their freedom for extreme police force. These riots are part two of the patriot act. People will applaud an armed cop or military on every corner with cameras filming them 24/7. Make people afraid and we will see concentration camps reappear again similar to WW2 when all japanese were rounded up and incarcerated. That was only 80 years ago. How soon we forget.

  36. Media myths aren’t harmless. They can scare people, reinforce their biases and become tools of manipulation. Media-driven myths are tales of doubtful authenticity, false or improbable claims masquerading as factual. In a way, they are the junk food of journalism—alluring and delicious, perhaps, but not especially wholesome or nourishing.
    .
    Media-driven myths are neither trivial nor innocuous. They can and do have adverse consequences. Notably, they tend to distort understanding of the role and function of journalism in American society, conferring on the news media far more power and influence than they necessarily wield. Media myths often emerge from an eagerness to find influence and lasting significance in what journalists do, and they tend to give credit where credit is not entirely due. The heroic-journalist myth of Watergate is a telling example.
    .
    Media myths also tend to minimize or negate complexity in historical events and present simplistic and misleading interpretations instead. Edward Murrow no more took down Joseph McCarthy than Walter Cronkite swayed a president’s views about the war in Vietnam. Yet those and other media myths endure, in part, because they are reductive: they offer unambiguous, easily remembered explanations of complex historic events. Similarly, media myths invite indulgence in the “golden age fallacy,” the flawed but enticing belief that there really was a time when journalism and its practitioners were respected and inspiring—the time, say, of Murrow or Cronkite or Woodward and Bernstein. Confronting media myths discourages the tendency to regard prominent journalists in extreme terms—as heroes or villains. Piercing the myths surrounding Murrow and Cronkite render them less Olympian and less remote.
    .
    Another hazard of media myths lies in their capacity to feed stereotypes. The misleading if euphonic epithet, bra burning, emerged from a demonstration on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1968 to become a shorthand way of denigrating the emergent feminist movement and dismissing it as trivial and even a bit odd. The widely misreported pandemic of “crack babies” in the late 1980s and early 1990s seemed to confirm the worst pathologies associated with inner-city poor people. The highly exaggerated news reports of nightmarish violence and wanton criminality in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2005 defamed a battered city and impugned its residents at a time of their deep despair.
    .
    Lets shatter some myths:
    http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file

    1. A few of my observations. Around 1970 they passed laws to basically close all insane asylums and treat them with outpatient treatment. I thought, wow these people will end up homeless or in prison. Almost one third of inmates today are considered mentally ill. The homeless population has skyrocketed within two generations.
      When drug use, not mariijuana but serious drug use skyrocketed in the 80s I thought that America will begin to collapse in the next generation or two as drug babies proliferate.
      When 9/11 occurred and the war on terror began, I thought our freedoms were going to begin to dissapear.
      When COVID 19 appeared and everyone rushed out to put on a mask and gloves I thought the world is full of idiots.
      Havent changed my mind on any of it to this day.

  37. Barbara Mullin Avatar
    Barbara Mullin

    No wonder we don’t hear the New York Times coming to the defense of Julian Assange.

Leave a Reply to Newton Finn Cancel reply

Trending