On its anniversary, it's clear that #MeToo is a failure and it's a failure for many, many reasons.
Women
represent only a quarter of all film directors working in the European
film industry, according to a new study by the Strasbourg-based European
Audiovisual Observatory (EAO).
The report coincides with the fifth anniversary this month of the launch of the #MeToo movement
in 2017, which at the same time as sounding the alarm about sexual
harassment in the film business also put the spotlight on gender inequality as one of the underlying causes.
That's
a completely different issue from harassment and assault. I'm not
saying it's not a major issue but it's not the same issue and the
inability to focus (see Ava and C.I.'s "
MEDIA: Male norms, Russia hate and lots of excuses" for how actresses at the
Oscars chose to defocus) is one of the reasons that #MeToo is a failure.
Another
reason? Supposed victims like Tara Reade who demand support and demand
you believe them but then turn around and promote convicted pedophile
Scott Ritter on their Twitter feed. She was supposedly felt up or
fingered by Joe Biden. If true, she's very ill and needs help because
Scott Ritter is a convicted offender, a registered sex offender. Yet
she promotes him. Women like her are a reason #MeToo is a failure.
Institutional
nutcases make up yet another reason. The worthless women of Time's Up
who took a lot of money and used it to protect Democratic politicians --
Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, etc -- from accountability. They betrayed
women, they betrayed victims. They betrayed the movement. Roberta A. Kaplan is one who the internal report found was guilty of working to blame the women coming forward regarding abuse by Andrew Cuomo. Some make her a hero -- or try to -- because she represents E. Jean Carroll. Roberta is no hero, she is a deeply disgusting individual who the women accusing Cuomo should be suing for what she did to them.
Excess
is also on the list. Scott Ritter had his day in court and was found
guilty. Others did not have a day in court. Others were attacked and
the notion of innocent until proved guilty went out the window. Amber
may have posed as MeToo victim but she was not one. Johnny Depp was the
victim. Time and again, the movement was used to go after various men
and sometimes they weren't guilty.
You
may think, Rose McGowan, that Woody Allen is guilty of something but
two investigations cleared him of molestation. You muddy the waters
when you confuse your friendship with Ronan Farrow for case law.
Equally true, reading the press on Kevin Spacey makes me think some
people need to get a grip.
I also don't believe Anthony Rapp and maybe that's
because I know the actor whose testimony refutes Anthony? (John
Barrowman.) I don't believe Anthony.
I
also think a huge part of the response to Kevin on the part of the
press was homophobia. He was attacked, please remember, for coming out
as gay when Rapp made his charges.
Probably
the main reason #MeToo failed was the rush to elevate some victims
while ignoring (or attacking) others. Alyssa Milano attacking Tara
Reade as a liar about being assaulted, for example, or Anthony Edwards
comes forward about being assaulted as a child and no one wants to talk
about it or honor his survival.
Time
and again, MeToo was used by a bunch of forgotten actresses whose
career was over to get press -- you know who I mean. It was not about
what it should have been -- helping survivors.
The problem, Margaret and Dan insist, with journalism
today is that Watergate led to 'gotcha coverage' and this bred mistrust
in government.
No, shoulder the stupidity, don't wave it around in front of people.
Tricky
Dick authorizing illegal spying, compiling an enemies list, ordering
the Watergate break-in and much more bred mistrust in government. These were crimes -- carried out by the government.
Watergate
was followed by a brief period of real investigative journalism which
quickly stopped -- Katharine Graham, then publisher of THE WASHINGTON
POST, gave the notorious speech about how it was time to once again hold
journalists in check. A detail that Sullivan also seems unaware of.
Over
and over, in this book by a journalist, the media is the problem.
Never for suppressing the truth, you understand, but for reporting.
Let me grab credit for their wonderful book review. They were riffing on the book for a friend who hadn't read it (a film director) and I had been doing notes to myself about what files I needed to update when their riffing started so I just let it record.
A day later when they weren't sure what they'd be covering at THIRD, I told them they should review that book. They said no. I said they made some very funny points and they said they didn't remember. Then I said, I taped a good five minutes of it.
Really?
So they transcribed from the recording and then added a little bit around it.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Tuesday, October 18, 2022. The world watches as Joe Biden continues to
persecute Julian Assange, a historic discovery takes place in Iraq and
the missing billions continue to raise eyebrows.
Dear Home Secretary Braverman and Attorney General Garland,
We,
a group of over 300 doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and other
health care professionals from more than 35 countries, are deeply
concerned that the ongoing extradition threatens not only the health of
Julian Assange, but also the health of our democracy. For the sake of
both, we implore you to drop the charges and release Mr. Assange from
Belmarsh prison immediately.
In calling for Mr. Assange’s
freedom, we join the ever-growing chorus of protest [1], including the
thousands of people around the world [2] who demonstrated on October 8,
2022 against Mr. Assange’s detention in the UK and his attempted
extradition to the US.
The threats to Mr. Assange’s health are
the cumulative result of extraordinarily cruel, unusual, degrading and
inhuman conditions imposed on him. This includes:
- more than
ten years of arbitrary detention, with extended periods of solitary
confinement in a high security prison despite never having been
convicted of a crime;
- character assassination campaigns in the media;
- a
relentless persecution that systematically violated the rule of law and
due process, and had little basis in fact, as documented by the former
UN Rapporteur on Torture;
- illegal surveillance in the
Ecuadorian embassy which included the video recording of his legal and
medical consultations [3]; and
- being targeted in plans of the CIA to kidnap and assassinate him [4].
In
addition, Mr. Assange has faced the firepower of at least three US
government entities involved in the effort to extradite him, including
the Department of Justice overseeing the attempted prosecution, the CIA
conducting illegal surveillance and drawing up plans for kidnap and
assassination, and the FBI overseeing and greenlighting computer crimes
in Iceland committed by a hacker in a scheme to falsely implicate Mr.
Assange, as corroborated by the government of Iceland [5].
Adding
to the stress of a lawless persecution, Mr. Assange has also lived with
the knowledge of the impossibility of a fair trial if extradited to the
US. The public interest served by the publications in question
(including the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs) was overwhelming and
helped bring the catastrophic war in Iraq to a close. Yet, perversely,
public interest may not be considered in prosecutions under the
Espionage Act. In addition, no national security defendant has ever been
acquitted in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Mr. Assange would
be tried [6].
These conditions are collectively tantamount to
psychological torture, as assessed by the former United Nations
Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer [7], and other medical experts in the
field, including Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira [8] and Dr Pau
Pérez-Sales [9].
As health care professionals we have an ethical
obligation to denounce torture where we see it, and to seek to end it.
That is why we have called for an end to the persecution of Julian
Assange since our founding three years ago, and why we again call for an
end to his extradition once and for all.
The psychological
torture resulting from these abuses has been grinding down Mr. Assange’s
mental and physical health for over a decade. This has generated not
only the risk of suicide, which would be further aggravated by the
brutal conditions in US prisons. It also increases the risk of physical
illnesses like cardiovascular disease, known to increase under
conditions of psychological stress [10]. Confirming these concerns, Mr.
Assange has already experienced a mini-stroke, which occurred on the
first day of his extradition hearing in the UK High Court.
Compounding
these health injustices, Mr. Assange was reported to have tested
positive for Covid-19 on October 8, 2022. Given his chronic lung
ailment, Mr. Assange may be at increased risk of serious illness
resulting from Covid infection. In addition, Mr. Assange’s mental health
is placed at further risk by the solitary confinement he has been
forced to endure since his positive Covid test.
It is a travesty
that a remand prisoner never convicted of a crime is languishing in
Britain’s most notorious high security prison, when he shouldn’t have
been imprisoned in the first place. The critical nature of Mr. Assange’s
physical and psychological health underscores the need for his
immediate release from prison. Only then can he receive the independent,
high-quality, consistent health care which he requires, and which
cannot be provided in a high security prison. Releasing Julian Assange
will also bring to a close a case that is damaging press freedom across
the globe and judicial integrity in the UK and the US.
For all
these reasons, we request that you urgently intervene to end the
extradition process and ensure Julian Assange is promptly released.
We
look forward to hearing from you and would be grateful for a prompt
response in light of the serious and urgent subject matter. Please
address your reply to info@doctorsforassange.org.
Yours sincerely,
Doctors for Assange
Doctors
for Assange is a group of over 300 medical professionals from 35
countries formed in October 2019 to voice concerns about the health of
Julian Assange and to condemn the violations of his right to health, to
doctor-patient confidentiality and to be free from torture.
Doctors for Assange. End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. The Lancet 2020; 395: e44–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30383-4
Doctors for Assange. The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. The Lancet 2020; 396: p22-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31444-6
References:
[1]
Reporters without borders lead a coalition of 16 organisations in
urging the Home Secretary to urgently intervene in Assange extradition https://rsf.org/en/uk-rsf-leads-coalition-16-organisations-urging-home-secretary-suella-braverman-urgently-intervene
[2] Thousands surround the British parliament on 08/10/2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJfU4QL1Fw
[3] US agencies spying on Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfWoIAsIn6Y
[4] CIA plans against Wikileaks https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html
[5] Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment https://stundin.is/grein/13627
[6] Melzer, Nils (2022) The trial of Julian Assange, published by Verso Books
[7] Nils Melzer confirms psychological torture of Julian Assange at a session of the UN https://youtu.be/UGqVx_L-Y7M?t=267
[8]
Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira is Full Professor (of Forensic Medicine,
Forensic Sciences, Ethics and Medical Law) at the Faculty of Medicine of
the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and at the Faculty of Health
Sciences of the University of Beira Interior. https://www.uc.pt/fmuc/pessoas/docentes/DNVieira; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Duarte-Vieira
[9] Dr Pau Perez-Sales is a psychiatrist and director of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid‘s Post-Doctoral Degree in Mental Health in Political Violence and Catastrophe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pau_P%C3%A9rez-Sales; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pau-Perez-Sales
[10]
Clinical study on the correlation between psychological stress and
systemic inflammation as a major factor for cardiovascular disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36115323/
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
•
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical
evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or
ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric
shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.
Because the machine of this modern Leviathan was exposed by Julian and
WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge. The United States has undergone a
corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning
democracy. The real centers of power in the corporate, military, and national security sectors were humiliated and embarrassed
by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the
democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant
corruption here and around the globe were laid bare in troves of leaked
documents. We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about
who we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary.
The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality
rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all of the levers of
power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched, and
photographed population in human history. When the government watches
you 24 hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the
relationship between a master and a slave.
Julian was long a target, of course. When WikiLeaks published the
documents known as Vault 7 which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses
to monitor our phones, televisions, and even cars, he and journalism
itself was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any
investigation into the inner workings of power that might hold the
ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and
replace it with a cant fed to the mob.
I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches
of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. I
am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of
repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanon called the wretched of
the earth. Wholesale surveillance, torture, coups, black sites, black
propaganda, militarized police, militarized drones, assassinations,
wars.
Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back
to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through
deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the
abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a
refusal to address the climate emergency, and a virtual tax boycott for
the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep
us in bondage, victims of a corporate neo-feudalism, and they have
perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. Tyranny imposed on
others is now imposed on us.
From its inception the CIA carried out assassinations, coups,
torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including on that of US citizens,
activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the
Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes,
especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance.
The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its
own armed units and drone program, death squads, and a vast archipelago
of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and
disappeared.
The US allocates a secret black budget of $50 billion a year to hide
multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National
Security Agency, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, usually
beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to
kidnap, torture, and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why,
since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of
Julian and the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed
kidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business.
Senator Frank Church, after examining the heavily redacted CIA
documents released to his committee, defined the CIA’s covert activity,
and I quote, as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail,
bribery, the spreading of lies, and consorting with known torturers and
international terrorists.”
All despotisms mask state persecution with sham court proceedings.
The show trials and troikas in Stalin’s Soviet Union, the raving Nazi
judges in fascist Germany, the denunciation rallies in Mao’s China.
State crime is cloaked in a faux legality; judicial farce. Julian is
extradited and sentenced. And given the Lubyanka-like proclivities of
the Eastern District of Virginia – This is a near certainty – It means
that those of us who have published classified material, as I did when I
worked for the New York Times, will become criminals
It means that the iron curtain will be pulled down to mask the abuses
of power. It means that the state, which through special administrative
measures, or SAMs, anti-terrorism laws, and the Espionage Act have
created our homegrown version of Stalin’s Article 58, can imprison
anyone anywhere in the world who dares commit the crime of telling the
truth. We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to
fight against powerful subterranean forces that, in demanding Julian’s
extradition and life imprisonment, have declared war on journalism. We
are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to fight for
the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.
We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to
dismantle the wholesale Stasi-like state surveillance erected across the
West. We are here today for Julian [applause], but we are also here to
overthrow – And let me repeat that word for the benefit of those in the
FBI and Homeland Security who have come here to monitor us: overthrow…
The corporate state and create a government of the people by the people
and for the people that will cherish, rather than persecute, the best
among us.
An Iraqi-American excavation team has unearthed a monumental rock-carving relief in a major archaeological site in the northern city of Mosul.
The
carvings were found at Mashki Gate, or Al Maska in Arabic, one of the
monumental gates for the old city of Nineveh, the imperial capital and
most populous city of the Assyrian Empire.
The reliefs date back to the era of the Assyrian King Sinharib who reigned from 705 to 681 BC, Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage director Dr Laith Majid Hussein said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the theft of over 2 billion euros remains a scandal in Iraq.
ANF NEWS reports:
A huge corruption scandal is looming in Iraq: unknown persons have
stolen the equivalent of almost 2.6 billion euros from the Iraqi tax
authorities' account. The theft was announced by Oil Minister Ihsan
Abdul-Jabbar at the weekend and has since been confirmed by Prime
Minister-elect Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Jabbar said an investigation by the Treasury Department, which he
headed until his resignation this week, found that "a certain group,"
without specifying details, had the money stolen from an IRS bank fund
at Rafidain Bank.
Earlier, the Iraqi Treasury released a document showing the alleged
theft. The letter caused a stir: it shows that the money had been
withdrawn between September 2021 and August 2022. It was deposited using
247 checks into the accounts of five different companies and withdrawn
immediately. Rafidain Bank said it had nothing to do with the theft. Its
job was limited to "disbursing the General Tax Administration's bonds
in its branches after verifying the validity of their issuance,"
according to the largest Iraqi bank, which also has branches in Cairo,
Beirut and Abu Dhabi.
UN
Special Representative for Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has urged
authorities to recover $2.5 billion that was embezzled from the tax
authority, the latest corruption scandal to rock the country.
The case was revealed on Saturday
by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, who ordered an investigation when
he was acting finance minister. Documents related to the investigation
have been leaked to the media.
Winding down, we'll note this Tweet from Billy Eichner.
Not sure where else it will be available -- it'll be announced on
the BROS site later today -- but AMAZON has it for rental -- $19.999 -- and iTunes has it for $19.99 rental and $24.99 to purchase.
The following sites updated:
