NBC reports:

“A bill banning “revenge porn” — nude or sexual photos, generally of former wives or girlfriends, posted online by an angry ex — has been signed into law by California’s governor, but the chief advocate for the legislation says it doesn’t go far enough to help victims.

The law makes it a misdemeanor to post nude photos of someone else online without their permission, and the person posting the photos or videos must have done so with the intent of causing emotional distress or humiliation. A conviction could result in six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.”

Comment:

Hear, hear! So nice to know that Americans themselves are so much more sensible than the posse of free-speech fundamentalists, one of whom is calling this the “rape of liberty” (Brian Wilson, at LRC).

If that inaccurate analysis is typical, I’d say we have a bigger problem with the rape of language.

Wilson starts his exercise in confused thinking quoting Congreve (“hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”), although the point of revenge sex, as he himself acknowledges in para 2, is that it’s an act most often committed by scorned men, not women.

Hint: Porn involving their own selves isn’t usually a means by which women “revenge” themselves, is it?

Of course, the confusion has already begun in the article’s title:

“The first amendment is not a guardian of taste” it reads.

Taste?

Since when did posting nude, sexual pictures of someone online (caps: ONLINE), without their permission, become a matter of taste?

It’s a matter of aggression against them.

It takes their most private physical images and disseminates them permanently, to the entire world, to be recycled forever in the most salacious contexts.

It is as though you took your clothes off in a public restroom or doctor’s office, only to find that tapes were running, sending the images all over the world. Or, imagine that your husband took a picture of the moment you delivered a baby, and that picture was then sent all over the world. It might not cause people to stalk you (or it might); it might not give you the label of slut, but it would certainly cause you intense distress.

Then there are the cases where the images are not even real. They are photo-shopped. Or the emails are spoofed or misconstrued. They are then sent to the target, anonymously, with threatening messages.

I know how that works. It was done to me. Material was taken from private conversations and emails, misconstrued,  and used to threaten me….even though there was no substance to any of the threats.

Any more than there is substance to all the multiple posts calling me CIA, RAW, a prostitute, and stock fraud.

A casual remark, cut and pasted, can be made to look like something else. A vulgar image can be tacked onto a name; a baseless innuendo can destroy a reputation.

People have committed suicide over less.

Mr. Wilson is quite right on one thing, though.

This isn’t rape. It’s much, much worse than rape.

The emotional pain of rape can last for years, even if the actual event has been obliterated from memory. But it ends. The physical effects end even sooner.  If there is no disease transmitted or baby created, they end with the healing of injured tissues, in a few weeks or months.

That is one solace. And there is another.

Beside the victim and the perpetrator, no one else needs to know about this most private crime, a crime which is treated, and has been treated for most of civilization, as if it humiliates and shames the victim more than it shames the perpetrator.

And what’s more, rape has always been treated as if it humiliates and shames the victim’s family, despite changing mores in this regard over the last half century.

But a virtual rape of the internet kind is NEVER erased.

It is never healed, because it is forever visible. It is the most private of injuries occurring in the most public of venues.

Dr. Jacobs will live with her boyfriend’s cyber-crime every second of her life.  It will affect every decision in her life, every relationship she has, from peer interaction… to marriage.. to her relationship with her children.

It will have an impact on every career move she makes, every public word she speaks.

She has been permanently “disfigured” in those areas.

The closest comparison to “revenge porn” as a crime is acid-throwing in Asia. The same kind of  mentality is behind both. The attitude of the scorned men: “If  I can’t have her, she’ll not be fit for anyone else to have.”

In one, the face is mutilated for ever. In the other, the moral life is mutilated.

In my estimation, the moral harm in virtual rape is even greater than in acid-throwing.  An injured face can be repaired to pass in society.  The injury to Ms. Jacobs is well-nigh beyond repair.

I can understand Marxists and atheists arguing the opposite. They, as a rule, can see nothing beyond what they can touch, smell, and shove up an orifice.

But LRC is supposed to cater to Christian libertarians as well. No Christian libertarian could ever argue that injuries to the body are worse than injuries to the moral life of a human being.

And, since the net is the most public forum ever devised, it stands to reason that virtual offenses are in fact the  stuff of public adjudication, libertarian cant notwithstanding.

Virtual rape is so devastating in its effects that the intelligence agencies have put it to use, not least, because unthinking people  will tend to gloss over it and pass it off as not “rape-rape,” as Whoopie Goldberg, to her everlasting disgrace, put it.

That is the same reason the intelligence agencies use “no-touch” (mental or psycho-sexual) torture.  Virtual torture is every bit as bad as “real” (physical) torture….but it provides useful cover, when discovered, because it doesn’t “look” as bad as the real deal.

Of course, it is much worse.  Cyber-rape is rape of a type too profound for us to fully grasp, because our paradigms are still materialistic, still Marxist. It is the body all the way, with us.

And that is where the danger lies, because let’s not forget the bigger picture – where we are at this moment: We are in a war, not so much against another country, as against ourselves.

A war of culture, in a sense, but not the one that divides red state from blue.

We are in a war of culture dividing those who get what’s at stake…. and those who don’t.

What is at stake is the possibility of freedom itself. It is the soul.

War is being waged against our own minds and souls all the time.

Cyber-crime, hand-in-glove with propaganda and disinformation,  is in the vanguard of that war.

And, Dr. Holly Jacobs has just won a battle against it.

She’s a hero for that. I applaud her.

If you want to help Holly Jacobs and the millions of young women (and men and children) world-wide whose dignity of person has been irreparably injured by the CRIME of revenge porn, please sign here.

Dr. John “Ray” Christopher, whose herbal formulas cleared the path for the renaissance of alternative medicine in the US, was also a conscientious objector and an apostle of racial harmony, years ahead of his time.

When World War II broke out, and just a few months after the Christopher’s were married, Ray received a draft notice on his doorstep summoning him to active duty. A 35-year-old man, divorced and newly married, with two families to support, he reported for service but requested status as a conscientious objector, presenting his Word of Wisdom booklet as evidence of his firm beliefs.

“I’ll serve my country with pride on the front lines,” he said, “I’ll carry stretchers that can save people. But I will not carry a gun. I cannot kill another human being.” During basic training, he was told to carry a gun on night watch, but he refused. The officer thrust a night stick at him, but he shook his head, and refused to carry a night stick, too, because you could kill people with a night stick. The officer ordered Ray to be confined to quarters under guard till next morning, when he was tried for his rebellion. The officer hearing the case slapped his palm sharply on the table and shouted, “This is ridiculous! A conscientious objector that won’t carry a nightstick? What if everyone in the world felt as you do?”

“Then there would be no war” Ray answered.

“That’s the answer I needed,” the officer responded. “Take this card. It shows that you are a conscientious objector, and no one will challenge you again.”

From Fort Douglas, Utah, Ray traveled to North Fort at Washington’s Fort Lewis, where he was assigned to supervise a medical dispensary. Here was more irony­ Raymond Christopher, a buck private, gave orders to pharmacists and therapists, all of whom outranked him. Even the cleaning boy outranked him. Ray, in charge of the entire operation, served under a Major Shumate.

At first Ray felt frustrated and angry. Having learned and seen so much healing using natural methods and nutrition (he had all ready helped many people), here he was confined to use standard medical treatments. He knew that there are better ways. He saw cases among the soldiers that he knew would quickly respond to natural treatments. However, Major Shumate was firmly against any such treatments. So he spent his time observing the effects of orthodox medications, seeing first hand the futility of the treatment. He saw that standard medicine only treats symptoms instead of the cause of disease. But one day a soldier came to the dispensary with a supposedly incurable condition, and this changed the course of his life.

At a staff meeting, composed of the heads of eight dispensaries, Major Shumate, a private dermatologist in civilian life, said he had never seen a case of contagious impetigo so severe. The soldier had been hospitalized nine times, where his case had cleared up temporarily, but it always flared up when he was released. Specialists from the eastern U.S. had been called in, but nothing had worked.

Major Shumate brought the soldier in, and’ except for Ray, they all gasped with horror. The soldier’s head had been shaved as much as possible, but wherever the stubble of hair grew, the scalp was covered with a crusty scab nearly an inch thick.

“What a beautiful case of impetigo!” exclaimed Ray (who had never seen one quite that bad).

“You must be a born doctor,” said Shumate, slapping him on the shoulder, “It’s one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, too. But unfortunately, we have to release this man from the army.”

“I object to that!” cried the soldier, “I came into this army a clean man. I caught this thing while I was here, and now you’re asking me to take this filth home to my wife and children. I won’t do it.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do,” responded Shumate, “We’ve done everything possible. We’ve used every cure medical science has to offer, and nothing has worked. We have to give you a release, and it will be an honorable discharge.”

“Wait,” Ray said. “That man can be healed.”

Shumate whirled to face him. “None of your blasted herbs!” The other officers rolled their eyes and guffawed.

The soldier spoke up. “I should have something to say about this. I don’t care if he puts horse manure on my head, as long as he heals me.”

Shumate paused, and then said, “All right. If you sign papers releasing the government and the army from any liability, you can try this treatment.”

The papers were signed, and the soldier was placed under twenty-four hour military police surveillance to prevent escape. As the meeting broke up, one of the officers jeered, “When will the big unveiling be?”

“Monday morning!” Ray snapped back, without really thinking. Then he realized­ he just had one week. Here, far from home without the herbs that he generally used, he had to treat the worst case of impetigo he had ever seen. Immediately he called a Salt Lake friend who had a black walnut tree in his backyard. He explained his dilemma, and his friend agreed to gather the black walnut husks, even though the ground was covered with snow. They were transported overnight to Fort Lewis. Ray picked them up in the morning­ sopping wet, which could weaken their potency. Not only that, but Ray only had rubbing alcohol, not grain alcohol, which was not available through the army medical system. And instead of fourteen days to macerate the tincture, he figured he could take only two days. He carried the tincture with him, shaking it vigorously all the time.

At last he strained the tincture and made a compress to fit over the soldier’s head like a football helmet. He left instructions that the compress should be kept wet with the tincture for the rest of the week. He also wrote a prescription to the mess sergeant, for wholesome foods for the soldier to eat.

All too soon Monday morning arrived, and the dispensary heads all met, ready to ridicule Ray for his herbal treatments. “Everybody ready?” asked Shumate in a mocking tone. “Private Christopher, are you ready to show us your miracle?”

“I’m ready,” responded Ray, feeling nervous but determined. “I haven’t seen him yet, but we’ll take a look.”

The guards ushered the soldier in, and Ray skillfully cut away the adhesive tape. As he lifted the compress off, the scab came off with it, and the soldier’s scalp was as clean and pure as a baby’s. The impetigo was gone, with no scarring.

The officers all gasped. Shumate shouted; “I’ve never seen anything like this in all my medical practice!” He took Ray aside. “I’ve misjudged you, Private Christopher,” he admitted. “From this day on you have full permission to practice with herbs. Set yourself up a laboratory here. Do whatever you like as long as you’re under my jurisdiction at Fort Lewis.”

And with that Ray became the only practicing herbalist in the United States Army during World War II. His black walnut tincture became famous, not only to cure impetigo, but for fungus infection and jungle rot. When soldiers learned that Private Christopher could cure jungle rot, his patient load multiplied tenfold. Eventually this tincture was successful in curing scrofula, eczema, ringworm, shingles, and chronic boils.

During his time at the dispensary, Ray started his personal search for an herb that could relieve his own serious health problem, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries, which he had suffered since adolescence. He began working with cayenne, which is high in calcium and vitamin C. He found that cayenne is one of the best remedies for the heart. He saw that it restores and retains the elasticity of the blood vessels, correcting or preventing hardening of the arteries and preserving the health of the circulatory system. Ray also found that cayenne equalized blood circulation and brought blood pressure to normal. He even found that cayenne was powerful enough to stop a heart attack in progress. In later years, carrying cayenne in his herbal doctor’s bag, he never lost a person to a heart attack. He remembered one woman who had suffered from heart problems for eighteen years. She had taken powerful heart medication for more than seven years. After starting cayenne , she was able to stop this medication within months. Her varicose veins also completely cleared.

Soon Ray added ginger, parsley, golden seal, garlic and Siberian ginseng root to cayenne to create a formula called Blood Circulation Formula , which equalizes blood pressure and builds the health of the circulatory system. This formula, along with a healthy diet and lifestyle, prolonged Ray’s own life many years after the doctors’ predictions. At age 45, ten years after the doctors predicted he would die, Ray had a full physical examination. The doctors were astounded to see that he had the blood pressure of a healthy teenager. Just before his death, Ray’s blood pressure at seventy years was that of a young man in his twenties.

During World War II, racial prejudice was still rampant. Ray began to understand and feel the distress of the black soldiers who were treated so negatively at the dispensaries. Black soldiers often suffered physical agony in silence rather than go there. But soon word spread that the dispensary head at Fort Lewis was different; within months he was seeing dozens of black soldiers every day. They received kindness as well as the superior care from herbal treatment.”

From thirdestatesundayreview, some truth-telling about Naomi Wolf’s “Beauty Myth,” the book from which the rest of her career has derived most of its impetus. Seems she forget to put quotation marks and a footnote under a lot of the good stuff:

“The Beauty Myth, the ‘book’ that made her a ‘name’. Parts of it are dead on arrival, others sparkle. Isn’t it past time that Naomi gave credit where it’s due? The parts that work in the book, she ‘borrowed’ from Judith N. Shklar.

All of the sparkling literary and historical critiques are ones Shklar built her lectures around. Naomi’s largely gotten away with her ‘borrowed’ passages. People whisper about it and laugh about it, but few bother to call her out on it. Shklar is deceased but, too bad for Naomi, Shklar’s The Faces Of Injustice (based on one set of lectures) came out in 1990, a year before The Beauty Myth and based on a series of lectures given in 1988. (Filled with examples Shklar’s students — including the famous political theorist who is the most vocal about Naomi’s ‘borrowing’ — can tell you were present for over a decade in the woman’s lectures.)

The Faces Of Injustice is a masterpiece, one of the finest works of political theory published in the 1990s. (Disclosure, one of us — C.I. — knew Shklar and The Common Ills is named after one of Shklar’s key phrases for what plagues societies. We both know Naomi — and work hard to avoid her.) Shklar’s book is the best sections of The Beauty Myth with none of the faltering moments where Naomi tries to think for herself.”

I

More perceptive Moldbuggery, this time on the need to substitute for the grand narrative of the power-mongers your own uncorrected vision, duly paying the price for your clear sight by turning invisible to the mass-es…not to mention the mass-ah…of the plantation:

Technology, Communism and the Brown Scare:

“I’ll tell you what the real emotion behind the Arab Spring was.  Actually, Beavis can tell you better.  “Fire is cool,” said Beavis.  Fire is indeed cool.  Americans were bored and needed some better CNN.  They wanted to see shit burn.  Shit indeed burned, and is still burning.  Which was cool.  So they got what they wanted.  Not too different from the crowd in the Colosseum, just less honest about how they satisfy their very simple chimp/human needs.

And it’s not just sadism that motivates callous altruism.  Another source of venal satisfaction is that when you help people, or appear to help them, you become a patron.  You gain ownership over them.  When you help overthrow the dictator of Egypt, for example, you become in a sense the new government of Egypt.  The old dictator was a strongman – the new dictator is a weakman, because he owes his job to someone else. That someone is you – the collective you, but you nonetheless.  If you decide you don’t like your weakman, it’s easy to find another weakman.

The fear that someone, somewhere, is exercising power over someone else, is one of the most basic cues of the callous-altruist mentality.  Let me kill the master and free the slave.  Out of altruism!   Not sadism or ambition, of course.  My hands are pure.

But slavery is simply dependence, and the default state of the newly “freed” slave is to be dependent on his new master – you, because you killed the old master.  So your sadism itch is scratched, because you get to kill; and your ambition itch is scratched, because you become a slavemaster.

(A slavemaster?  You may not tell your dependent what to do all day.  But if you pay him to do nothing, he is still your slave – you may not ask him to work today, but you could tomorrow.  He would have to obey your commands or starve.  In other words, he’s a slave.  And of course, there’s one thing you’ve surely bought – his vote.)

When Higginson and friends tried this experiment in the 1860s, roughly a fourth of the slaves died as a consequence of the operation.  Not to mention all the other people killed.  Naturally, since America is a communist country, this episode – which might under other regimes be viewed as an outbreak of mass criminal insanity – is considered one of the most glorious in our glorious history.

And this is why you don’t want to be a part of the lynch mob.  Even if you think there aren’t enough women programmers and there should be more.  It is not your forebrain that lusts for power.  It is your hindbrain.  Forebrain… must… control… hindbrain.

As for the mob’s victims, who already understand this stuff – there’s an easy way to not get purged.  Don’t play the fool.  What is attacking you, though it seems like a frivolous phenomenon, is anything but.   This is an active volcano which has claimed hundreds of millions of lives.  Just firing you is a small, small thing for it.  Just destroying your life – very easy.  Don’t mess with it.  If you can avoid a fight with it, do.

And if you can’t, don’t be defensive.  Attack.  If possible, attack in depth and preemptively.  (What do you think I’m doing here?)  One of the things that this evil machine is capable of, for example, is covering up hatefacts – realities that embarrass it or contradict its narrative.  Your goal in attacking it is to embarrass and contradict it, creating a counter-narrative that it cannot incorporate into its own entertainment product.  If you succeed, you will be covered up as well – which is exactly what you want.  So the purpose of your attack is not to draw attention, but to avoid attention.”

My Comment:

Again, Mr. Moldbug echoes my own sentiments.

The goal of activism shouldn’t be to occupy the visible space of the establishment media on a smaller scale by bringing publicity to a certain position, for instance.

You can’t fight the state using the methods of the state.

Your goal should be the exact opposite. Not to gain prominence. But to abjure it.

To vanish. To disappear. And to take the handful who can still see you, along with you, when you disappear. First, imaginatively. Then, literally.

Your goal is to join the invisibility that clings to the dark underbelly of  the public realm… join it and keep joining it…so that it increases, drop by drop – a pool of inchoate truth seeping out from under the steel girders of bureaucracy and ideology.

In that sense, this blog is the anti-Wikileaks and, if I had a press,  it wouldn’t call itself the Sunshine Press. Sunshine suggests openness…transparency, another watch-word of the powers that be.

I raise a cheer here for obscurity, darkness,  secrecy.

From Mark Mitchell, another compelling chapter on the BCCI bank and its vast criminal network.  Don’t overlook the paragraphs describing how the Klebnikov Project, ostensibly devoted to uncovering the facts about the murder of Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov, was sabotaged from within by another Forbes journalist:

The Global Bust-Out, Chapter 8:

“Pundits and journalists in Russia have opposing views about Berezovsky and his “exile” in London. One view has it that Berezovsky elevated Putin to the presidency, but in doing so, he miscalculated, failing to realize  that Putin would not return the favor by allowing Berezovsky and his associates to continue looting Russia, and would, to the contrary, crack down on the oligarchs and strip of them of the power they wielded over the Russian government. The other view has it that Putin’s move against Berezovsky was a ruse, intended only to score political points, and that Putin and Berezovsky secretly maintained close relations. In support of the latter point of view, pundits and media in Russia report that Putin and Berezovsky continued in the years following 2000 to hold secret meetings, and that Berezovsky continued to have business dealings with elements of the Russian intelligence services.

In further support of the latter view, pundits and media in Russia also note that oligarchs and crime syndicates that were among Berezovsky’s closest business partners, and which, along with Berezovsky, played important roles in elevating Putin to the presidency in 1999, continue to this day to operate in Russia with the apparent protection of the Putin government, and in partnership with the powerful Russian intelligence services. Therefore, it cannot be possible, or so it is argued, that Berezovsky, during his years as an “exile” in London, genuinely desired to remove Putin from the presidency.

It might even be (in the view of some Russian pundits) that Berezovsky moved to London not to lead a dissident movement against the Putin government, but to serve Putin as some sort of master spy, seizing control of the dissident movement so as to defuse it, and meanwhile leading the expansion of Russian influence into Britain and other Western nations. Alternatively, some suggest that Berezovsky had been an agent of Western governments at the time when he was the most powerful man in Russia, and Putin became aware of this, one reason why Putin forced Berezovsky to leave Russia, even though it was Berezovsky who had orchestrated Putin’s rise to power. We will see that there is no question that Berezovsky was an asset of Western governments, including the regime in Washington, but the nature of his relationship with Putin after his move to London remains a matter of debate.

Either way, the party line put forth by most major U.S. news organizations is patently false, and it says a lot about the state of the U.S. media that the only mainstream journalist to report the truth about Berezovsky was Paul Klebnikov, author of the 2000 book (“The Godfather of the Kremlin”) and other writings about Berezovsky’s criminality. Even more disturbing is the fact that Klebnikov (who had reported receiving death threats from Berezovsky) was, in 2004, gunned down on a Moscow street, and when he was killed, many of his fellow American journalists did not see fit to report that Klebnikov’s seminal work had linked Berezovsky to organized crime.

For a long time, the last word on Klebnikov’s murder was a 2007 story in Forbes Magazine (the magazine that had employed Klebnikov at the time when he was killed), and this story, authored by a journalist named Gary Weiss, did not even mention Berezovsky’s name, much less the fact that Klebnikov had devoted most of his career to exposing Berezovsky’s criminality. Only after Berezovsky himself was dead did Forbes Magazine publish a story suggesting that Berezovsky had, in fact, been a likely suspect in the murder of Klebnikov. There could be no greater evidence of the timidity of Forbes magazine’s editors than that they could not bring themselves to name a likely suspect in the murder of their own reporter until after the suspect was dead.

All the more appalling was that Forbes had previously given the last word on the subject of Klebnikov’s murder to the journalist Gary Weiss, who was meanwhile helping direct the activities of an outfit called The Klebnikov Project, which had been established by some of America’s most prominent journalists, ostensibly to investigate Klebnikov’s murder, and ostensibly to send a strong message that America’s most prominent journalists would not tolerate the murder of one of their own, and would indeed expose any and all miscreants who would dare so much as threaten a journalist or otherwise seek to infringe upon the freedom of the press. Incredibly, not one of those prominent journalists, in the many stories that they published about Klebnikov’s murder, reported that Berezovsky had threatened to murder Klebnikov, and nor did they report that Klebnikov’s seminal work had not only exposed Berezovsky’s ties to organized crime, but had also linked Berezovsky to multiple murders.

In addition, of course, not one of those prominent American journalists reported that Berezovsky was a likely suspect in Klebnikov’s murder, which was quite in contrast to journalists in Russia, where there is still a free press, and where numerous journalists had not only exposed Berezovsky’s ties to organized crime and had not only indentified Berezovsky as the likely suspect in Klebnikov’s murder, but had also linked Berezovsky to the murders of other journalists besides. All the more incredible was the fact that Gary Weiss, the prominent journalist who helped direct The Klebnikov Project (and who, until after Berezovsky’s death, had the last word in Forbes magazine on Klebnikov’s murder) had previously been employed by the lawyers of none other than…Boris Berezovsky.

Not only that, but Weiss (the journalist who hijacked The Klebnikov Project, an outfit ostensibly devoted to protecting freedom of the press) had been employed by Berezovsky’s lawyers to help quash freedom of the press. More specifically, Weiss (the journalist who also hijacked the Klebnikov Project, which was ostensibly investigating the murder of Paul Klebnikov) had been employed by Berezovsky’s lawyers to provide assistance to a libel lawsuit that Berezovsky had filed against…Paul Klebnikov. In addition, Weiss had been employed (by Berezovsky) to lead a smear campaign aimed at trashing Klebnikov’s reputation.

As part of this campaign, Weiss had authored dozens of anonymous internet reviews trashing Klebnikov’s book, and in these reviews (which DeepCapture reporter and computer technologist Judd Bagley traced to Gary Weiss’s IP address) maintained (falsely) that Klebnikov had fabricated the information in his book linking Berezovsky to organized crime. And if you think we have a free press in this nation, consider that The Klebnikov Project (set up by America’s most prominent journalists to expose those who threaten freedom of the press) not only failed to expose Berezovsky (who threatened the free press), but was, in fact, enthusiastically supported by none other than…Berezovsky.

Meanwhile, many of America’s leading news organizations (e.g. the Wall Street Journal) had come to be owned by people (e.g. Rupert Murdoch) who were among Berezovsky’s closest associates. In addition, the major U.S. news organizations seemed to view with total approval or indifference the fact that Berezovsky (who, after all, was some kind of democracy activist) had meddled in our own democracy, becoming one of the largest  donors (or, rather, buyers) of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Equally important, the major U.S. news organizations completely ignored the massive damage that Berezovsky and his mafia associates did to the U.S. economy during all those years while Berezovsky was ostensibly employed full-time as a Russian “exile” and “dissident” in the mold of the heroic Solzhenitsyn.

* * * * * * * * *

In any event, though the information has never appeared in any major U.S. news organization, it has been widely reported elsewhere, and confirmed to be true by numerous prominent investigators, that Berezovsky did (as Klebnikov reported in his book) build his business empire in partnership with leading Russian and Chechen organized crime syndicates. It has also been confirmed to be true (as Klebnikov reported in his book) that Berezovsky, more specifically, built his business empire in partnership with the Mogilevich organization (led by Semion Mogilevich, often referred to as “the most dangerous mobster in the world”) and a Chechen organized crime syndicate who leaders were (in addition to being mobsters) notorious terrorists, trained by trained by Osama bin Laden’s operation and by U.S. military contractors who took their orders from a faction of the regime in Washington.

Berezovsky himself admitted to investing more than $1 million with a Chechen terrorist named Shamil Basaev, who had once planted a radioactive materials in a Moscow park, informing the Russian police that next time the radioactive materials would be exploded as a so-called “dirty bomb,” thereby afflicting thousands of people with deadly radioactive poisoning. In 2004, Basaev did one better by leading a horrific terrorist attack on an elementary school in Beslan, Russia. That atrocity resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people, most of them young children, though there is debate over whether the children were killed by Basaev and his associates, or by Russian police who stormed the school in a botched attempt to rescue the children whom Basaev was holding hostage.

That same year, 2004, of course, Klebnikov, was murdered. That murder has never been solved, and nor have the murders of numerous Russian journalists who reported extensively on Berezovsky. One of those journalists was named Anna Politkovskaya, and when she was assassinated in 2006, it was widely assumed in Russia that her mistake had been to report the same story that Klebnikov had reported. Politkovskaya had been regarded as being Russia’s best investigative journalist, and the American media establishment conferred upon her numerous awards for her reporting and for her efforts to maintain press freedoms in Russia. However, America’s free press failed to inform the public that Politkovskaya’s seminal investigative reporting had been about Berezovsky’s ties to Chechen organized crime and his role in securing the presidency for Vladimir Putin.

Scott Creighton on left-gate keeper journalists:

“Jeremy Scahill shouldn’t be condemned for making a statement that distances himself from this issue. [Lila: 9/11 research]

After all, Jeremy has books to sell. And who am I to tell someone how much wealth they have to sacrifice to help get our country back.

Yes, he takes on Blackwater. But nothing changes when you take on Blackwater, except their name. They are still getting contracts, still cashing the checks. In fact, they are bigger and more powerful since Jeremy wrote his now famous book.

And so is Jeremy Scahill.  In a way, you can say… the longer the “War on terror” goes on, the longer Blackwater will be gaming the system, and THEREFORE… the longer Jeremy Scahill remains an employed literary hero.

But he should be condemned for his attitude and making the ridiculous claim that people like myself and Richard Gage and David Ray Griffin are “insulting” the families of the victims of 9/11.  This is the kind of straw-man attack that “debunkers” have been using for years now. The fact is, the victims on 9/11 died horribly. Some first responders are STILL dying horribly because the Bush administration LIED about the air quality and now the Obama administration STILL won’t help them get the medical attention they need.

But in the end, I don’t know how it is supposed to hurt someone less if they think an “angry Muslim” terrorist killed their loved one, as opposed to a “greedy fascist” terrorist.  It’s still a terrorist act and whether or not it was brought about by Muslims in a cave or neocons who wrote in 2000,  “The process of transformation.” The plan said, “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Perhaps the families of the victims of 9/11 are somehow different from those of the victims of the anthrax attacks. We all know that the story of Dr. Ivins as the “mad doctor” is bullshit. I think even Jeremy Scahill has to admit that.

So what is the difference?  The difference is, the Nation magazine won’t tear up your contract if you write about Dr. Ivins being framed.  That’s the difference.

So yeah, Jeremy Scahill gets a little mad at the people who ask him about 9/11. He gets mad because he feels like we should be polite enough to recognize that he can’t admit the story is bullshit because if he does it will cost him money.  I guess he feels like the questions he gets asked are an imposition… but I guess that is somehow different from when  he is trying to get the truth out about Eric Prince and Blackwater. Some how that is all different I suppose but forgive me if I can’t really see it.

Here’s the real difference… going after Blackwater or some congressman and his greed is one thing. It doesn’t end anything.

But you go after 9/11… well that’s different.

The Global war on Terror is over.. the militarization of the nation is over… the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are both over… the Drone industry dries up… the investigations start… the plea bargains start… the snitching starts… the BIPARTISAN NEOLIBERALIZATION OF AMERICA ENDS… and one more curious thing…

Once the truth comes out, people are going to eventually start asking why all our “serious” investigative journalists like… Jeremy Scahill… missed something so goddamned obvious.

Not only did they miss it, they made up shit to attack people who were actually trying to investigate it; trying to tell people.

So one day, when this does all come out, after all the confessions and the accusations and the trials, one day the attention of the angry population will eventually turn to our “serious” investigative journalists like Goodman, like Taibbi, like … Scahill…

… and they will be asked to account for how they chose their careers and their “respectability” over the Truth.  A truth I know they feel in their hearts.

Knowing a day of atonement like that is coming, is bound to piss anyone off. Even Jeremy Scahill.

So I am not angry, fellow advocates, I feel sorry for him. Like all the other douche bags.”

My Comment:

I’ll just add here that I think Taibbi is quite a bit better than the other two, not just in writing ability, but in terms of what he covers. I cannot actually listen to Amy Goodman straight through. Her partisanship and obvious bias are so distressing.

At the Daily Paul, an alert reader expresses my own skepticism about the supposed hit job on Michael Hastings.

Really? For taking down a Pentagon general to exonerate a US President….in the faux-alternative Rolling Stone magazine at that? Really?

They blow up a popular, talented, white, middle-class journalist, with connections at every major media outlet and likely in the Pentagon as well, for that?

And they do it after making sure to let you know (pssst, wink!), via a military officer (who happens to be the journalist’s friend) that the FBI was following the journalist…. and the FBI,  of course, plants a car bomb on the guy, just after interviewing all his friends…

And said journalist turns out to be  connected to Super-Snitch Edward Snowden; to Julian Assange & his Wikileaks circus; to Jeremy Scahill, nemesis of  Blackwater and himself a close friend of Glenn Greenwald (also a fan of Assange and Snowden);  to the Freedom of the Press foundation – the same press outfit that sports Greenwald and Laura Poitras on its board and supported Manning and Assange at the very time it was bringing Edward Snowden to the public’s attention; and to Barret Brown, a self-proclaimed spokesman for Anonymous, who researched and posted the HBGary emails outed by a subgroup of Anonymous, the hacker collective that backs Assange and Manning).

Yikes.

Cointelpro alright. Only, in my estimation, Hastings was less likely to have been a target than he was to have been a player.

So here’s the reader at Daily Paul:

“How many of you really know who Michael Hastings is?

I was very intrigued by the Michael Hastings tragedy especially because he seemed linked to Snowden who really drew my interest in recent days. I first learned about Hasting through this post:
http://www.dailypaul.com/289627/michael-hastings-dead-at-33

There is a video on that thread that showed Hastings as a Ron Paul supporter which immediately hooked me. In that video he continued to share fascinating stories about Afghanistan and a very emotional human story about the family of a dead soldier.. He seemed genuine.

Then some oddities started popping up. The last person who tweeted that he was with Michael Hastings is Jeremy Scahill who I researched and immediately suspected as a left war gatekeeper and controlled opposition for reasons I mentioned in the above thread.

Then I looked into Hastings and found out he had a very unusual story about losing his wife in the Afghan war and wrote a book about it: I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story
(Many of the negative Amazon reviews suggest the book was mainly about him and very little about her.)

Then I realized his current wife Elise Jordan was a speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2008–2009 and very connected with George W Bush.

Then I read an interview with Julian Assange (who I always suspected as cointelpro):
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/julian-assange-the…
I came away just as unimpressed with Wikileaks from this story as before.

Then finally I read Hasting’s famous Rolling Stone piece about McChrystal:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-genera…
First off how could Michael Hastings have so much access?

I couldn’t help feeling after reading the Runaway General that the article was a very carefully crafted propaganda piece aimed at the political left to remove Obama from blame and scapegoat McCrystal (who took one for the team.) The general public was growing weary of the war and the story was a basis for the Obama apologists who would say: “It wasn’t Obama’s war…he was removed from what was going on and was reluctant. It was the General’s war..” Furthermore there is a part about how the General was protective of innocent Afghan civilians, how innocent casualties were limited in contrast to how the Russians killed millions. Can you believe that? I couldn’t help but believe this is an incredibly well-crafted war propaganda piece!!!

I think I wanted to believe this story, but now I’m a skeptic again. I wonder how great the web of lies could be? Are many of these journalists intelligence operatives, controlled opposition and gatekeepers? Are these fake stories? Actors? Are fake CIA operative deaths used to promote fear? These are just questions I have… *Sigh*…”

Links between Anonymous and elite companies, proposed on deep politics forum:

“First off let’s start with the latest Anon video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyKE9…layer_embedded
entitled: A99 #OpESR RICO Class Action Lawsuit Against the Federal Reserve

In this video you will see an invitation message to go to www.fss34.com to chat.

Let’s start from there —> fss34.com

Domain listing is protected by domain privacy company in Nova Scotia, Canada.

“Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.

Whois Agent (gmbpmrlhdq@whoisprivacyprotect.com)

+1.9027492060

Fax: +1.9027495405

PO Box 841

C/O fss34.com

Yarmouth, NS B5A 4K5

CA”

That company has a fax contact of a UPS store fax box in Bellevue Washington USA.

” Whois Privacy Protection Services, Inc.

Whois Agent ()

Fax:

PMB 368, 14150 NE 20th St – F1

Bellevue, WA 98007

US”

REF LINK: http://www.superpages.com/bp/Bellevu…0135213050.htm

You might remember this very same government tactic used by the CIA not long ago.

Remember CIA Agent Davis who was arrested for killing 2 ISI Agents in Pakistan. His dummy background info on his private company also lead to a UPS Store.

What’s in a name or a handle?? gmbpmrlhdq@whoisprivacyprotect.com

I found some interesting correlations regarding the prefix: gmbpmrlhdq

It can be broken up into abbreviations

GM (General Motors) BP (British Petroleum) Mr. L & HDQ (Headquarters)

How are all these abbreviations connected ???

Philip A. Laskawy = Mr. L ???

Even Mr. Laskawy fits into all the abbreviations with his contacts.

Mr. Laskawy is currently head of Ernst & Young LLP who handles accounts for British Petroleum.
REF LINK: http://www.ey.com/UK/en/Industries/O…il-and-Gas-EYe

Mr. Laskawy is also former Board Chairman for General Motors up til 2009.
REF LINK: http://www.gm.com/company/aboutGM/bo…p_laskawy.html

So how does it fit with the Bellevue WA Fax box at the UPS Store???

Ernst & Young LLP has an office in Bellevue WA.

CAP GEMINI ERNST & YOUNG

10500 NE 8TH ST

BELLEVUE, WA 98004-4345

gm|bp|mrl|hdq = GM, BP, Mr. Laskawy, Headquarters

So why would the elites be tied to an Anon video ???

I bet Mr. L never thought that one would be figured out and on to internet censorship !!!

Some more interesting facts worthy of note.

Mr. L’s company Ernst & Young also has ties with AT&T and Verizon.

Why is this significant ???
These 2 companies are the 2 biggest internet providers in the US.

Verizon paid E&Y over $35 Million in 2008

REF LINK: http://investor.verizon.com/financia…8/proxy10.html

AT&T also had them under contract in 2008

REF LINK: http://www.att.com/gen/investor-relations?pid=13112

You may also remember E&Y from the Enron Scandal ???

They were also probed by the Feds for their involvement with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

REF LINK: www.foxbusiness.com… industries/finance/ernst–young-probed-role-lehman-bankruptcy/

So we have a connection between Mr. L, AT&T, Verizon and Anon.

Mr. L, the middle man ??? circumstantial ??? maybe, but there’s more

Remember that Ernst & Young Office in Bellevue WA ??? The fax box at the UPS Store in Bellevue, WA ???

The name of the E&Y Office in Bellevue WA is Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Cap Gemini short for Capital Gemini.

In a move to create a global computer services consulting firm, Cap Gemini S.A. of France announced today that it was acquiring the consulting practice of Ernst & Young, one of the world’s largest accounting firms, in a deal worth $11.1 billion.

Cap Gemini said it would pay 375 million euros, or $362 million, in cash and issue up to 43.5 million new shares, if all the consulting businesses of Ernst & Young accept the offer.

The stock will be divided among Ernst & Young’s 1,000 consulting partners, who will then work for Cap Gemini, and the 4,000 accounting and tax partners that will remain with the auditing firm. About a third of the shares will go to the consulting partners and another third to the accounting and tax partners, who must sell their stock within five years. The remainder will go to finance Ernst & Young’s pension plan and to pay for a variety of other expenses, including tax bills and transaction costs.

<span class=” fbUnderline”>REF LINK</span>: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/01/bu…-business.html

Notice, their specialty ?????

Global Computer Services !!!

Also ties in with internet censorship.

If the internet gets regulated, who do you think the Gov will turn to for the infrastructure and resources to govern the internet ???

Cap Gemini ????

They are the leader in the field.

Internet Censorship means billions of dollars to Cap Gemini in contracts for the gov.

Anon’s connections to Cap Gemini makes it a global internet conspiracy with Anon acting as the strong arm to reach that destination.

And how much did Cap Gemini pay Ernst & Young for this ???

$11.1 Billion

Is this what control of the net is worth to them ???

For $11.1 Billion, you can buy a lot of hackers

It is my belief that Cap Gemini intends to make billions off of internet censorship like Haliburton made billions off the Gulf War.

But this is all just theory. Or is it ???

You decide and do your own research

Update: I should add here that I have since writing this looked at the video of the car crash again. I’m not knowledgeable about cars at all, so this is just a random opinion, but I found the way the car veered off and exploded a bit eerie. Unnatural.

I don’t think that means the government took him out, though. I think, I’d need to know more about the security camera that caught the image and whether a certain kind of distortion is to be expected.

On the other hand, I can’t get rid of the feeling that there was something stagey about the whole thing.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

There was a lot of talk on the blogs about the death  in a car crash of journalist Michael Hastings, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine.

I didn’t post any of the theories about his death, because I got the distinct impression that they were largely speculation….and possibly disinformation.

Hastings wrote terrific reports, but he was too much an “establishment alternative” (Rolling Stone Magazine, Polk award etc.) for me to think he’d strayed far enough to warrant some kind of hit.

Now we have news that both the autopsy report and the family confirm that the reporter, a one-time meth addict, had slid back into taking drugs and was also taking medical marijuana for post-traumatic stress disorder, acquired during his years reporting on the Iraq war.  The report shows traces of amphetamines and marijuana in his blood, but also states that they were not the cause of his death. The evidence from the report and witness accounts from family members suggest that Hastings’ death was caused by crashing his car while driving at high-speed (at least 80 MPH, possibly 100 MPH or higher). What caused the speeding? No one can say for sure. But a troubled state of mind, exacerbated or caused by drug usage might well have led to the reckless driving, which was uncharacteristic of the reporter, from accounts from his family.

“Family members said Hastings had been using the hallucinogenic DMT recently, though the drug was not detected in a blood test after the crash.

The names of family members who spoke to investigators were redacted in the report.

The report said a family member had last seen Hastings passed out at home about three hours before the crash. The person said Hastings had been smoking marijuana the night before the crash.” (FoxNews.com)

Julian Assange, supposedly the epitome of Rage Against the Machine, is now hell-bent, it seems, on joining the Machine.

His Wikileaks Party, not content with dissing the Aussie Greens and cozying up with right-wing parties down under (take that, all you lefty groupies of Julian)…or with infighting over its own lack of ..er…transparency and democracy…..has now reinvented itself as a bastion of realpolitik and fervent advocate of MORE defense and intel to preserve Australian sovereignty.

Yes, you read that right. Aussie sovereignty is what really turns Assange on.

How art the mighty fallen.

Only a few short years ago, Assange was supposed to be the beacon of a new post-national age of justice sans frontieres.

Today, alas, his party manifesto sounds as if it could have been manufactured by some government apparatchik.

Perhaps it was.

More from Raoul Heinrichs:

“Launched in March this year, the WikiLeaks Party is contesting seven Senate seats in Australia’s upcoming federal election. The evolution has been a strange one. As Sam Roggeveen put to Assange himself in a recent video forum, rather than ‘raging against the machine’, WikiLeaks now finds itself eagerly trying to join it.

To that end, a new constitution and policy platform have been drawn up, and a user-friendly website has been launched that alludes to WikiLeaks’ distinctively raw online aesthetic without fully embracing it.

The hacktivists, meanwhile, have retreated back into their darkened basements, replaced by candidates from an altogether different milieu. Beyond Assange, who remains the figurehead, these are older and less controversial figures: academics, journalists, lawyers and human rights activists. Each is steadfastly committed to the enhancement of accountability, transparency and justice, though presumably less by the freewheeling, anarchistic means traditionally associated with WikiLeaks than by the formal structures embodied in Australia’s system of parliamentary oversight.

……After revelations this week that WikiLeaks has allocated preferences in NSW and WA to a slew of right-wing parties over the Greens, the job may have become even harder. Leslie Cannold, the second Victorian candidate and designated replacement for Assange, has already resigned. With the party now facing an existential crisis over claims of infighting and a lack of transparent and accountable decision making, more are expected to leave. In short, the WikiLeaks Party now needs a miracle……

..With its collective brainpower understandably devoted to other issues, the Party has not fully articulated its position on foreign affairs. A quick review of its policy platform and the public statements of its lead candidates, however, does reveal a certain level of coherence and, surprisingly, a worldview only lightly infused with the philosophy and conspiratorial mindset we associate with WikiLeaks. Indeed, the most striking thing about the Party’s outlook on foreign policy is its overriding sense of moderation. There is throughout a conspicuous absence of radicalism and utopian ideology…….

Its platform extols the importance of a foreign policy ‘based on human rights and international law’, on resolving conflict before it escalates into violence, and on the need for Australia to play a role as a ‘good international citizen’. But these are virtually axiomatic principles in Australian foreign policy, and they could just as easily be read out of the ALP handbook. Beyond this, the Party evinces no concrete attachment to any really big ideas — to isolationism, pacifism or international cosmopolitanism, or even to the more mainstream tenets of liberal institutionalism, which emphasise communication and transparency as a means of fostering peaceful relations among states.

Instead, the party’s foreign policy views appear to have been formulated with a conventional, if realistic, model in mind: an international system of states, animated by mistrust and the ever-present risk of conflict. Unsurprisingly, then, the dominant concern seems to be about enhancing Australia’s security and independence (in other words, its sovereignty).

In this vein, the WikiLeaks Party has no fundamental objection to the traditional instruments of national power, so long as their purpose and activities are more openly known and consistent with a higher standard of official transparency and individual privacy. ‘Our regional security alliances are very important’, noted Assange last week in Google Hangout. ‘[W]here the public is aware of it, we should have as many alliances as possible…and the US should be a factor in our alliances, so should Europe, so should the region.’

For Assange, the issue is not so much about divesting Australia of its alliance with the US as about redressing what he sees as problematic dynamics within it — namely, a lack of dignity and respect for Australia, a lack of reciprocity on the part of the US, and a situation in which the alliance operates in conflict with the individual freedoms and privacy of Australians to the point of constituting an abrogation of Australian sovereignty.

For Alison Broinowski, a WikiLeaks candidate in NSW and a career diplomat and academic, the concerns go even further. Echoing the Party’s official admonition against blindly following allies into ‘disastrous illegal wars’, she is concerned that the US alliance will necessitate Australian participation in yet another conflict, possibly against Iran. At that point, she argues, ‘we repeat the disasters of Iraq all over again, including the manipulation of information in the headlong rush to war, with serious consequences for Australia’s moral standing and strategic position in the world.’ While Assange and Broinowski would prefer a more circumscribed alliance, not least to disrupt what they see as a creeping, increasingly indiscriminate surveillance program that lies at its heart, neither calls for its wholesale dissolution.

Nor is there a general aversion to Australia’s military forces and intelligence agencies. To the contrary, Assange has recently flagged increased defence spending as a potentially necessary means of mitigating the risks to Australia in an era of American decline. ‘The Australian military has the most important task in Australia’, notes Assange, ‘and the Australian intelligence agencies are related to it, which is (to) ensure that Australian sovereignty isn’t compromised’.”