View on Threads
That's Tabitha of TABITHA SPEAKS. We will note her YOUTUBE VIDOES. Above is from her INSTAGRAM and her THREADS accounts.
THREADS has a user number of 200 million currently.
TWITTER? Again, I don't work for Elon Musk. I don't have to go along with his New Diet Coke. It has an estimated 600 million users.
Friday was the post analysis ZOOM on what worked and what didn't and where we needed to focus our money and attention and where we needed to cut back or cut out completely. I've done those call lately only with regards to my state's political races. The last one I took part in nationally had been 2004. That conversation led to me starting this site.
I am 20 years older. I am tired. As Betty noted, I had an injection in one eye on Friday and got the other one cauterized due to retinal bleeds. I've got others things to focus on, thank you very much.
I can't tell you what TikTok did or didn't do with regards to the election. Tabitha can and does. I don't have time to learn TikTok. And I honestly don't care to. I don't have that kind of time and already spent too much of it online. Tabitha and others have it covered and they do it very well.
We started out here, in the aftermath of a disaster election which John Kerry lost to Bully Boy Bush. So I've seen this dance routine going on right now in the MSM before. Corporate media was once our focus. The Iraq snapshot -- which will become the snapshot probably in January -- I'm waiting for one member of Congress to leave -- became a daily post -- Monday through Friday -- a few months in. When the did happen, we did our two posts each morning focusing on corporate media and critiquing it. We have continued to cover corporate media.
That's generally when the corporate media is getting it wrong and our blessed 'independent' media is overlooking and failing to critique it. The students in the US protesting the genocide in Gaza? We covered it -- repeatedly. And we covered it in a way and manner that people could understand -- as opposed to the useless ranting and raving that so many left outlets were providing. Jane Fonda produced political movies. She knew the journey the audience could understand was A to B. Jane continues to act in films (and TV) but she doesn't produce anymore. That's not an insult, I'm just trying to explain why I'm saying it past tense.
Clint Eastwood has played the same character in every film. As a man, he never got attacked with "The Clint Syndrome." No, VANITY FAIR only did that to Jane Fonda and Goldie Hawn -- even though neither was playing the same role in film after film or giving the same performance in film after film.
But Jane was attacked for playing a variety of women (not the same character and not the same performance in each role) who moved from point A to point B as she was awakened by the events around her. COMING HOME finds her as a military wife who just wants her husband to be safe but it awakened to what the wounded veterans are experiencing. And the subplot people rarely noted -- this was important to Jane, I'll come back to that -- of how military intelligence was spying on her character and outs her affair to her husband when he returns from Vietnam.
Jane is one of the few American citizens who has successfully sued the government for spying on her. That subplot was important to her and that's why it's in there. Even today, so many uninformed people pretend they know about spying on Americans and they'll note the FBI or they'll note the CIA. They never really note military intelligence -- even though that is where the CIA was born -- in fact Katrina vanden Heuvel -- wait. Let me go to Wikipedia and see if she's covered it up again. NATION interns and her assistants are given the task of cleaning up her Wikipedia entry.
They've done it again:
and William vanden Heuvel, an attorney, former US ambassador, member of John F. Kennedy's administration, businessman, and author.[1]
Oh, is that what her father was? Her grandfather, as I've noted many times, was an agent who got rich stealing Black artists commission and also offering them as cheap as possible to night clubs to get more money for his White artists: You can have _____ for union scale if you'll give me a thousand or more for ______. Jules Stein didn't believe in equal pay for equal work. He believed in keeping White artists rich and demanding the most money in the world for them and he'd toss the people willing to pay those fees a Black artist or two that the clubs could pay crumbs too. They'd get a Lena Horne at a discount so that Jules could demand a lot more money for Frank Sinatra.
But her father was a spy and part of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) which came along during WWII and went on to morph into the CIA. This is from CIA Director Allen Dulles and was issued upon the passing of William Donovan (William vanden Heuvel's boss and mentor), issued on March 30, 1959:
The man more responsible than any other for the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency has passed away. Major General William J. Donovan died at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington on Sunday afternoon, February 8th. His last trial was undoubtedly the severest of his life, for he had been desperately ill for nearly three years and the enforced quiet was hard on this amazing man of action.
But even in his declining days Bill Donovan knew that his work was being carried on. The President awarded him the National Security Medal in recognition of his creation of the central intelligence concept. A striking oil portrait of him was completed and he was able to come see it in the reception room of our present administration official.
Donovan, the mentor and boss of Katrina's trashy father, argued for the OSS to continue after WWII -- which is did, as the CIA:
In October 1944 he produced a paper entitled "The Basis for a Permanent World-Wide Intelligence Service." This document which created the Central Intelligence Group in 1946 and the National Security Act of 1947 which established the Central Intelligence Agency.
Katrina wants that information buried. Probably because THE NATION has always gone soft on the CIA and because leftists generally don't trust the CIA because it's history of coups and murders and would naturally expand that distrust to Katrina if they knew her real history.
So we're supposed to ignore -- really we're not supposed to know of them or speak of them -- her father's OSS connections, William Donovan getting her father a law firm position (that served as a cover from time to time) is to be forgotten. Katrina can erase her father's history from WIKIPEDIA, but 2019 did see the publication of her father's own book -- which few people bothered to read -- HOPE AND HISTORY: A MEMOIR OF TUMULTOUS TIMES.
We're also supposed to ignore that her dad wasn't the only family spy. Or that -- and this was new to me, it came up in the Friday call -- that she has her own Epstein connection that she doesn't speak of. Ghislaine Maxwell had a lot of friends via her father who was a spy -- double or triple agent according to the UK government.
Also don't forget that, in 1980, her father got red paint tossed on him by activists who considered him a warmonger. Katty van van doesn't want to talk about that either but the suit he was wearing -- red paint still visible -- remains on display in the US State Dept.
So, yeah, Katty van van (mis)uses resources that are for THE NATION magazine to task employees and interns with monitoring her WIKIPEDIA page.
Anyway, that's why THE NATION is always so weak on the CIA when compared to other publications like THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, etc.
But maybe she'll visit Ghizzy Pants Maxwell in prison and they can play catch up?
Who knows. People like Katty van van do their best to ensure the American people don't.
In THE CHINA SYNDROME, Jane plays a reporter who just wants to get off the fluff beat but is awakened to the very real dangers of nuclear energy. In 9 TO 5, she's a homemaker going into the world of employment who discovers how bad things are and, with new eyes not exposed to corporate corruption and degradation of employees, teams up with Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin to make changes that would benefit the workforce but that employers resist. In films that she didn't produce but starred in -- such as FUN WITH DICK AND JANE, COMES A HORESMAN, AGNES OF GOD and earlier films from before she started producing films, she also played characters who experience a political awakening -- KLUTE, TOUT VA BIEN, A DOLL'S HOUSE, etc,
So the point is there's an awakening. And awakenings generally come slowly. This is what the Gaza Freaks never grasp. They didn't grasp it in 2006 and they don't grasp it today. It's why they turn people off and it's why their actions actually harm Palestinians.
Gaza Freaks does not refer to college students. Gaza Freaks are generally media personalities -- on the lowest rung of the media -- and faux activists whose entire lives are spent trying to get media attention. Not for the issues they pretend to be interested in but for themselves.
Think of their 'activism' as nothing more than their desire to get two or three more photos of themselves in the school yearbook.
Anyway, I'm off on a tangent but at least it didn't grab anything Ava and I are hoping to cover at THIRD.
We covered the college students and that brough in covering the corporate media -- which was my point. Corporate media made a lot of mistakes in its coverage. Some components of it learned on the job. I would argue what they actually learned was that it wasn't the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, or 10s anymore. The default US media positing in those decades was Palestinians bad and not even human while the Israeli government was staffed by angels sent from heaven.
The corporate media began to do a better job as the coverage continued this year while the Gaza Freaks got worse and worse to the point that they were now alarming Americans. Hamas, for example, is not to be defended or praised. It is classified as a terrorist organization. If you're trying to help the Palestinian people in the midst of a genocide, you don't make comments justifying a group classified as a terrorist organization.
You, at ELECTRONIC INTIFADA, for example, may be the expert on Palestinians -- or think you are -- but your coverage was often highly unhelpful. Let's say it was accurate. 100% accurate -- unlike any other media outlet, you were 100% correct in everything you said.
Your coverage was still unhelpful. Basics are needed. You introduced concepts poorly and often times with little explanation. No, you did not lose me. I know this issue -- it's been Rebecca big issue going back to our college days. And her coverage this year was so much better than EI or anyone else.
Why? It's not just the facts. Rebecca made her money in public relations. She knows how to sell. And she knew how to keep it simple. She knew that the audience reading her had not spent decades on this issue in most cases. She knew that she had to wait for them to be able to stand and let them learn to walk.
Whereas EI and others wanted everyone to get up the next day and run a marathon.
It was overwhelming, it was too much and, sorry EI, but sometimes you were flat out wrong.
Instead of bringing the audience along, you pimped and pushed and shoved and acted like idiots and freaks.
I get it, people are dying. But I'm not an EI idiot. I never was stupid enough to think the genocide was going to stop in 2024.
We were not at that point in the US where enough Americans were demanding that. It would most likely take another year. We were not at critical mass.
And then you started pulling your nonsense stunts and the people you were turning on and attracting this very important cause got turned off because Hamas is not candy and rainbows.
Is there a political reason for the armed wing of Hamas to exist? I'm not talking about the aspect that governs in Gaza. I'm talking about the armed wing.
Yes, there is a reason and those of us who've studied political theory grasp that.
But there are so many things that I would pull out of each snapshot before they posted because I would grasp as I finished dictating the snapshot that we weren't there yet.
Terrorism is not an instigating action. It is a response.
Understanding that does not mean I approve of Hamas or that I support violence.
EI wasn't the worst offender but they were bad. I would like to return to noting them and their videos at some point because Nora Barrows-Friedman has worked on this issue for decades and she's very smart and she's a very kind person. But even Nora lost her footing on this issue and I'm so disgusted with the damage Ali did that I may never note EI here again.
I understand the impatience. I can allow that a lot of the mistakes made resulted from the need to end the genocide quickly.
My days of apartheid began with South Africa. In college, I did think it would fall immediately if we could just get everything out to the American people and that would force the US government to stop backing the government of South Africa.
In the early days, I'm sure I turned off more people than I turned on.
But then I learned (and grew) and grasped that overwhelming people with facts over and over isn't really helping. That's why daily death tolls in a war don't really help. You have to convey the inhumanity of what's taking place and give people time to process.
And people were listening and starting to grasp what was taken place but then they get Hamas dumped on them or talk -- and there was a lot of talk -- that it was okay to kill Israelis. You've lost the audience now, you've lost the narrative, you're now the crazy person on YOUTUBE calling for the deaths of Israeli people.
.
In some cases, that wasn't what you were trying to say. In some cases, speakers were trying to say that any group being targeted and attacked, has a right to respond or saying that the response is a natural outcome from being targeted with violence.
You should have grasped that your statements were not clear and, that at times, actually called for or justified violence.
If you are attacked, you have the right to defend yourself.
And that's everyone. But you Gaza Freaks didn't grasp that and don't grasp where America is on the Middle East. Israelis were attacked. And when you were unclear or openly celebrating that -- and, yes, some of you in America on YOUTUBE were openly celebrating it -- like that idiot college professor who did a Tweet celebrating the October 6th attack in real time and then wanted to whine that people didn't understand the context.
YOU PROVIDED NO CONTEXT. You did a Tweet. You stupid idiot, that didn't help the Palestinian people.
And the minute Gaza Freaks started that crap, they started losing support. They also lost support because of DEMOCRACY NOW!
A full hour on Gaza. Day after day. There were other stories going on.
But they'd do three segments on Gaza.
And do that after fatigue on the topic had already set in.
Did you see me note Jane Fonda's films above?
Guess what? Some people reading this entry right now are reading because of that.
Some are reading because of Katty van van commentary. Some are reading hoping I'll get back to Twitter -- I'm getting there.
But when you offer nothing but Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, you make clear that you don't understand how communication works. If you're EI, that is your focus and your full time focus. That's fine. Your audience knows that. You're not going to build beyond that audience but that's the outcome you've chosen and it's an important outcome. But DEMOCRACY NOW! is supposed to cover a great many topics.
Over the years, people have e-mailed here asking how to they start a blog. In the early days, I responded myself. Now I'll dictate a reply if the person seems genuine. I tell them I don't know how. I' tell them that one thing that worked was quoting Joni Mitchell lyrics. In the early days, it was quoting, no videos. I had to look, YOUTUBE starts a year after this site. And it was probably at least two years after it started before I knew of it or used it.
So we'd note a song -- because I love music -- and it was often a woman because I don't believe we use our spaces to just continue the existing discrimination online. And Joni was one of those and people would respond that Joni got quoted, people would respond that they liked that song or that Joni was their favorite.
And Joni is beloved and she's a great talent and I love many of her albums --- I think FOR THE ROSES is my favorite, at least this year -- the water imagery and the descriptions are really connecting with me this year. So if we were the 270,999 web site praising Bob Dylan that day? There was no need for us.
We call out the left media here when it needs it. That's THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES, etc.
On Gaza? I believe to this day we are the only ones -- that's what e-mails tell me -- that called out a segment aired nationally by a huge media conglomerate where they spoke with 'students' attacking students protesting on behalf of Gaza. They were presented as just average students. But they weren't. Both had been against the students protesting on behalf of the Palestinians for months and a quick check of their Twitter feeds would have established that reality. There's no way the media conglomerate didn't know. One of the two students even worked for Bari Weis. But that wasn't in the segment. These were just two students on a campus that a reporter just happened to come across and the two weren't political or anything.
That was a damn lie and a violation of every journalistic standard. NEXSTAR MEDIA owns more TV stations in this country than any other media conglomerate. 197 stations pumped that garbage report to their viewers.
And where was FAIR or anyone else?
That's something that needs to be answered. The first violation was NEXTAR's actions. The second was FAIR and other left outlets ignoring it.
A report filled with lies that trashed students protesting a genocide and this report aired on 'local' 'news' on everyone of NEXSTAR's 197 TV stations across the country.
The owner of the most TV stations in the country and they're right wing and FAIR -- presenting itself as the progressive watchdog -- doesn't cover this.
They've only covered NEXSTAR five times. Twice in 2017. Once in 2018. Once in 2022 when they fired someone for criticizing Israel. And in 2023? They included a single sentence on NEXSTAR (it was about the same firing they noted in 2022).
But they were nowhere to be found this year. Let's drop back to the snapshot that went up here May 1st:
Bari Weis and Laura Loomer groupies/employees were presented as average students in a report that attacked college protesters with the two 'average' students attacking their peers in order to make the audience falsely believe that the average students had turned on the protesters -- no, two right-wing paid operatives had attacked the protesters since the protests started months before. But that 'local' report aired on 197 TV stations around the country.
We should not be the only people on the left calling it out.
Again, I'm not going to learn TikTok or other things. We've got our focus defined here.
Tesla. I wouldn't take one of those cars if you gave it to me. When Elon Musk's true nature finally emerged for others, Alyssa Milano made a big deal about how she was selling her Tesla now.
Who was that supposed to have helped?
All she did was put the car on the market. It's not like she had it destroyed -- that would have been a real action.
And some people talked about leaving TWITTER during this time as well. Some actually did.
I don't like Elon. I know two women he slept with -- one of whom I hate -- and I know that he's not packing much and that he's lousy in the sack. I met him once. I was introduced to him and we were supposed to shake hands.
Rebecca will tell you that I am a psychic. I am not. She loves to tell the Enron story -- she and her husband had invested heavily (this is husband number two and three -- the man she is with now -- they divorced after this happened and then remarried two years later) and I'm visiting and the more they talk about Enron, the sicker I feel and I'm telling them to drop that stock immediately. Which they do about a month before it crashed. That wasn't me being psychic. That was no one should put that much money into any single stock -- that high a percentage of their money --and it was probably that I'd heard negative things about Enron. Another story she's shared online for years now is my meeting Elon as he was being fluffed and praised by media whores (including on the left). I was introduced to him at a party and we started to shake hands and I immediately pulled my hand away as soon as our hands touched.
That did happen. I did turn immediately around and walk off and I did tell everyone he's a fake and he's evil. But I was also looking in his eyes when this happened and I'd argue his eyes gave him away as garbage and evil.
So I've never been a fan. I'm on Twitter. Only to promote Paul Rudnick's Tweets. That's the only reason I got on. I know Paul and he's a great guy and a mutual friend started mentioning his Twitter feed and why didn't I ever highlight his Tweets?
So I got on Twitter for that reason.
And we've noted Tweets since at least 2016 -- not Paul's, I didn't have a Twitter account then. I have no idea when Twitter started but I'm sure it had been around for a few years before I caught up. Looked it up, 2006 -- so ten years before I ever knew of it or at least looked at it.
It wasn't that important to me.
But in the Friday Zoom, we discussed how Elon misused the money he made. We talked about the racism on Twitter -- racism that's allowed and encouraged. Now that he's in bed with Trump and MAGA (and now that I knew his White face embraced apartheid in South Africa) -- why were we, on the left, doing anything to assist him? To enrich him? To put money in his hands that he then put into electing Trump?
So we're done here with Twitter. Now I didn't realize until doing this entry that when I pull from older snapshots, I may be pulling Twitter. If so, we'll leave it in like I did above. And I'm certainly not going back through over 51,000 posts up here to pull it out of older posts.
But I'm not going to be promoting Twitter or Tweets in any new post. We quote COMMON DREAMS here and I will pull out any Tweets they include.
THREADS is part of the FACEBOOK nonsense. I'm not on FACEBOOK and never would be for a number of reasons. I don't believe Mark Zuckerberg is a 'good guy.' But this is about hitting Elon where it hurts so I'll gladly embrace THREADS. If everyone walked away from Twitter, that would be wonderful, let me check something though.
Okay, figured that. Alyssa Milano is the biggest fake ass in the entertainment industry. So she dumped her Telsa to show (faux) outrage over Elon. But she's kept her Twitter account. She can't put her money where her mouth is, can she?
If she hadn't made the show out of getting rid of her Tesla, I wouldn't say something. I'd assume that maybe it hadn't occurred to her. I should have stopped putting Tweets in here. I didn't get it until we were brainstorming and Twitter came up.
Using THREADS and promoting it is one way to hit back at Elon.
I'm hitting back in every way I can. For example? I'm not a nice person.
Someone's probably going to be reported as a heart attack death. It wasn't. The man killed himself. This MAGA money man molested his daughter and his wife excused it. And his now adult daughter has struggled repeatedly because who wants to accept that their own father raped them?
Her mother had told her that it was wrong but it was just her dad loved her so much, she was the most important thing to him blah blah blah. He was an adult male who raped her starting when she was 13 years old and he was her own father.
The daughter learned that she wasn't the only one her father raped. He raped her sister also. Well . . .her half-sister. He'd hidden that child from his wife and his daughter that thought she was his only child. When the half-sister contacted me, I helped her contact her never-before-met sister.
One less MAGA in the world -- and this one was a rapist who raped his own daughters. Yeah, I'm not feeling sad about his death.
One more thing -- and no one wants to be done with this entry more than me -- other thing if you're starting your own site, make it a conversation, people enjoy that. One more thing, Buffy Sainte Marie. We noted one song of hers today. "Soldier Blue."
It was a last minute thing. We were going to note the Lovett guy but right after I scheduled that video for posting, something just said check that out and make sure. I did. He can do that. But not at this site. It's far too soon for our community to be making jokes about the election or jokes or 'jokes' about Kamala. So I quickly went with that Buffy video.
And that one because she's singing on a soundtrack capturing a character in the film. I've been meaning to note her again for some time but I wanted to give a heads up first before I included her in the Saturday rotation again. But, again, I needed something to go up in the place of another video.
If you're late to the party, Buffy probably lied about being a Native American.
It's destroyed her reputation. Bob Dylan has always said "trust the art and not the artist."
And he would say that because Bob lied about his beginning as well -- created a whole fake history for himself that only got exposed after he was famous.
I'm not trying to attack him for that. Let me get this up and I'll come back in and I'll finish on Buffy but I'm looking at the time and I know some people are going to feel I posted late as it is. This post is now complete, FYI. Read on for the Buffy part.
A lot of people in that era made up stories. And a lot of people were encouraged by management to make up stories. I don't know that Buffy -- if she made it up -- was encouraged by anyone to make up anything.
But I want to repeat what I noted when the scandal came out.
First, I don't know if it's true or false.
I don't like Buffy as a person, I've shared that before -- when the scandal broke, yes, but all the way back to 2008. I don't like her as a person, I never have. I didn't trust her.
As an artist, I've praised her.
I stand by that praise. If she lied, that is hurtful to Native Americans. I don't buy the argument that she benefited from lying. She may have in Canada. I'm talking about in the US, though.
It wasn't a plus for her to be represented as a Native American in this country. The sixties was not a time for artists who were considered 'exotic.' Read that non-White. Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and a few others broke through. Certainly Barbra Streisand broke through. But most didn't.
If she had just falsely claimed to be Native American, that would be one thing; however, she actually worked on Native American issues and did so throughout her career.
Is she telling the truth? Everyone wants to say she was lying.
I find that interesting, this 100% belief that she's lying. And I find it interesting because she was a declared enemy of the United States. Richard Nixon actively worked to destroy her career. She has claimed that LBJ also did. I've never believed that. That's not me fanning for LBJ. I was not an LBJ fan. But when she's lying, I can usually tell and when she talks about LBJ, all the ticks she gets when she lies show up. So I never believed the LBJ part.
But Nixon wanted her destroyed. And she was spied on and harassed. And I just find it strange that, with all his spying resources, that Tricky Dick didn't discover she was lying about being Native American and expose her to destroy her power within the movement.
"SHE'S LYING!" Wouldn't that be the thing to do? Nixon and J Edgar? They worked to smear people in gossip columns -- Jane Fonda, pops up in this entry again, Jane was targeted by the Nixon administration.
So that's why I won't say that she's lying about being a Native American.
If she is?
She fooled Tricky Dick, enemy of the people. And, according to her, she would have fooled LBJ as well because if he was trying to destroy her, he certainly would have had her researched.
So if she lied, she fooled two war mongers, she outsmarted them both. Respect.
But the main issue remains for me that the only time I've ever really believed Buffy is when she's spoken of being molested.
I believe 100% that she was molested by family members -- I said members, not member.
I believe her on that. I always have.
If you were molested -- like the MAGA man's daughter we noted above -- by your own family, you would do anything in the world to try to get through that. Getting through that could include reinventing yourself. She could have a mental break. She could be knowingly lying. But it would be expected and understood that someone molested by a family member would run for that with every bit of strength and energy she had.
If she lied, her work -- her continued work -- over the decades for Native American causes might have been motivated by guilt. Whatever motivated it, that work exists and it stands.
I will castigate people for many things. But (a) I do believe trust the art and not the artist and (b) a rape victim -- especially when the rape was also incest -- deserves a little more understanding than what we've allowed Buffy.
She's written some important songs and we'll continue to note her the way we do other important female musical artists.
The following sites updated:
-
-
Grifter Giuliani4 hours ago
-
-
-
-
-
-
Done with ALJAZEERA23 hours ago
-
Trump Is Back, Now What?1 day ago
