Ann's Mega Dub

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

The two Charmed shows

The two Charmed shows?

Both were disappointing.

The first two seasons of the reboot and the first and final season of the original were the best in my opinion.

Of all the actresses on the show, I'd argue the finest was Shannen Doherty.

There would have been no Charmed without her and anyone who tells you differently is rewriting history.

Alyssa Milano did not pull in viewers. Don't pretend. She was on Who's The Boss and was not popular enough for a spin-off -- though they tried that backdoor pilot.

She then joined Melrose Place and was awful. That is why she left the show. She came on when Sidney left and was seen as a very disappointing substitute. When David Charvet's character died, people blamed her.

Most people don't know this or remember it. But let me be clear on this and the reactions. I watched Melrose at those Melrose watching parties. You'd drink and watch the show and eat. And Alyssa was booed loudly. Everyone found her annoying.

That's why her character disappeared.

No, the reason to watch was Shannen. She was a strong actress and she also pulled in the drama publicity because, after being fired from 90210, she was now working with Aaron Spelling again.

Shannen's Pru nailed the show down. Holly Marie Combs would come into her own and become one of the top three actresses on either show. But she was still feeling out the part in the first season. Alyssa was annoying. Shannen nailed down Pru and nailed down the show.

When she was fired at the end of season three, Alyssa was rightly blamed. She'd gone to Aaron and demanded that he fire Shannen or she was going to walk.

He should have let her walk.

Season four was bad and season five was worse and six got even worse. These are the years Rose McGowan joined the show.

Rose was not the problem. She brought some solid energy to the show. She could act, she could charm, she was wonderful.

The problem was all the emphasis on Phoebe. Every episode seemed to cater to Alyssa's character. And she wasn't interesting. Alyssa can't act. She can recite lines. She can make her eyes go big or thin based upon the 'emotion' she feels she needs to deliver.

There is never a character onscreen with Alyssa.

I doubt Holly Marie is Piper in real life. She acted the role. I'm sure she pulled some from her own life. I'm pretty sure she pulled certain things from others -- she'd observe people, friends or strangers, and bring that into Piper. It's why Piper gets more and more complex as the show continues. Holly Marie created a layered character who was as real as anyone you know in your own life (but with magic powers). That's a real feat.

Rose did the same. She was not the innocent she played. She'd lived a wild life (good for her) but she was an actress and she was coming into a long running show and she looked to see what kind of character would be different but would fit in. Paige was real acting.

And that's why Phoebe as a mermaid or as genie or as this or that was so awful.

They'd come up with these stunt premises and they'd give them to Alyssa who couldn't even create a character in a normal setting.

She has no craft. She has no skill. She has the talent of a child actor, as Ava and C.I. have pointed out, and she shows up like a good little kid knowing her lines and thinking that's all she needs to do.

That's why they won't hire her today. She's gotten a lot older. She's not longer fresh and shining. And she never bothered to study her craft.

What's acceptable for a child actor isn't for an adult. Alyssa coasted on her looks for a long time. She can't anymore.

On the reboot, Maggie was the Phoebe character. And the show got worse as it went along because Sarah Jefferey became the focus. And that made no sense.

She's a little better as an actress than Alyssa but Alyssa did have beauty. It got boring and tiresome as this or that man was mooning over Phoebe. But you didn't think, "This would never happen."

With Sarah, you did think that. She put on a lot of weight and she got that hideous perm. She looked like a fat sausage about to explode out of its casing.

So an episode where three or four men are fawning over her?

Again, Alyssa, for all her faults, could have made that work. Sarah didn't have the beauty. You'd say she had a pretty smile or pretty face. That's all you'd say.

But the reboot used the same nonsense that the original did for Alyssa. And, again, we saw real actresses suffer. Madeleine Mantock was the best actress on the reboot and she sideline far too often. Melonie Diaz was a strong actress and they really destroyed Mel. They made her a lesbian and then, after that step, refused to let her play on an equal field. To prevent showing romantic scenes for Mel, they'd do things like make the character pregnant (don't ask) and as the show went on and on and we saw Maggie hitting everything under the sun, it really became too much to deal with Mel. I think Matt on the original Melrose Place in the 90s had a more active love life than Mel did.

The reboot started off strong in season one and two was still worth watching.

By season three, the homophobia -- that's what refusing to treat Mel in the same manner they did her sisters -- and the constant focus on Maggie had ruined the show.

And, to be clear, this was popcorn TV. It was candy corn. This was not deep drama -- not the reboot, not the original. The actress on the original (with the exception of Shannen) seem to think they were doing amazing and ground breaking TV -- they weren't.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, June 22, 2022. The persecution of Julian Assange is a war on the press and a war on the truth, Moqtada al-Sadr remains out of power, and much more.

Around the world, everyone watches as US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange. The Geneva Press Club Tweets:

#Journalists associations, medias, editors in chief, mobilize on June 22, 11 AM CEST in Geneva to #FreeAssange @wikileaks
 after UK ordered today his extradition. In violation of #HumanRights and #pressfreedom. Sign up here

pressclub.ch

Club suisse de la presse - Geneva Press Club

7:43 AM · Jun 17, 2022

This persecution of Julian is about silencing the press. Monday April 5, 2010, WIKILEAKS released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. That is when the persecution begins. It was an intimidation carried out by multiple presidents starting with Barack Obama, continuing with Donald Trump and now the baton for killing the press has been handed off to Joe Biden. This has had the effect of scaring off many traditional news outlets. They once partnered with Julian to report and now they act as though they've never heard of him. Saving their own asses? They may think that. If they do, they're dead wrong. An attack on Julian is an attack on all. And if the attack on Julian is not loudly and publicly rebuked, you can be sure that next up will be THE WASHINGTON POST or THE MIAMI HERALD or some other institution -- despite the US Constitution -- the same one that's being ignored in this attack on Julian.

Jonathan Cook (DISSIDENT VOICE) details how certain press assets of the CIA in the UK delivered lies to the public as truth:

We now know, courtesy of a Yahoo News investigation, that through 2017 the CIA hatched various schemes either to assassinate Assange or to kidnap him in one of its illegal “extraordinary rendition” operations, so he could be permanently locked up in the US, out of public view.

We can surmise that the CIA also believed it needed to prepare the ground for such a rogue operation by bringing the public on board. According to Yahoo’s investigation, the CIA believed Assange’s seizure might require a gun battle on the streets of London.

It was at this point, it seems, that Cadwalladr and the Guardian were encouraged to add their own weight to the cause of further turning public opinion against Assange.

According to her witness statement, “a confidential source in [the] US” suggested – at the very time the CIA was mulling over these various plots – that she write about a supposed visit by Farage to Assange in the embassy. The story ran in the Guardian under the headline “When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange.”

In the article, Cadwalladr offers a strong hint as to who had been treating her as a confidant: the one source mentioned in the piece is “a highly placed contact with links to US intelligence”. In other words, the CIA almost certainly fed her the agency’s angle on the story.

In the piece, Cadwalladr threads together her and the CIA’s claims of “a political alignment between WikiLeaks’ ideology, UKIP’s ideology and Trump’s ideology”. Behind the scenes, she suggests, was the hidden hand of the Kremlin, guiding them all in a malign plot to fatally undermine British democracy.

She quotes her “highly placed contact” claiming that Farage and Assange’s alleged face-to-face meeting was necessary to pass information of their nefarious plot “in ways and places that cannot be monitored”.

Except of course, as her “highly placed contact” knew – and as we now know, thanks to exposes by the Grayzone website – that was a lie. In tandem with its plot to kill or kidnap Assange, the CIA illegally installed cameras inside, as well as outside, the embassy. His every move in the embassy was monitored – even in the toilet block.

The reality was that the CIA was bugging and videoing Assange’s every conversation in the embassy, even the face-to-face ones. If the CIA actually had a recording of Assange and Farage meeting and discussing a Kremlin-inspired plot, it would have found a way to make it public by now.

Far more plausible is what Farage and WikiLeaks say: that such a meeting never happened. Farage visited the embassy to try to interview Assange for his LBC radio show but was denied access. That can be easily confirmed because by then the Ecuadorian embassy was allying with the US and refusing Assange any contact with visitors apart from his lawyers.

The war on Julian is a war on the press and a war on the truth.

Kevin Gosztola discussed the issues in the video below.

US House Rep Ilhan Omar Tweets:

The prosecution of Assange is still indefensible!

Quote Tweet

Ilhan Omar

@IlhanMN

 · Dec 15, 2021

On his show @mehdirhasan makes the case for why the prosecution of Assange is indefensible. Give it a listen

4:44 PM · Jun 18, 2022

At TRUTHOUT, Marjorie Cohn notes, "This the first time the United States has prosecuted a journalist or media outlet for publishing classified information. The extradition, trial and conviction of Julian Assange would have frightening ramifications for investigative journalism. On June 17, the editorial board of The Guardian wrote, 'This action potentially opens the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington'."

Turning to Iraq, the government remains without a prime minister, without a president, all this time after the October 10th elections. Some in the western media are apparently butt hurt over getting it so wrong last fall when they praised Moqtada al-Sadr as a "kingmaker" and ran all these puff pieces on the man who leads a cult, on the man responsible for the deaths of US troops, on the man who has terrorized minority groups in Iraq, etc. If you missed it, after months of being unable to form a government, Moqtada announced he was taking his toys and going home. The 73 MPs in his bloc have resigned from Parliament.

Now the western press whores are trying to sell that as a victory.

Moqtada has a master plan! He's playing three dimensional chess! This will force everyone to bend to his will!

Dubious claims at best.

Moqtada couldn't hack and he left. Arabic social media has been addressing it for the last two weeks. The government in Iran put pressure on the KDP leadership (the Barzani family) and Moqtada was about to experience a very public break in coalition. The KDP got a huge number of votes. Without them, Moqtada was nowhere near getting enough members in his coalition to form a government.

It would have been an even bigger failure so Moqtada elected to take his toys and go home -- hoping there was a least one shred of dignity left that he could cover himself in. (There wasn't.)

So what happens now? At THE WASHINGTON POST, Renad Mansour and Benedict Robin-D’Cruz look at the prospects:

After winning last year’s election, Sadr appeared to be in the driver’s seat of Iraqi politics — and claimed to be on a path to form a majority government and sideline his main rivals, former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and parts of the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Eight months later, Sadr seems to be walking away from the government-formation process, throwing Iraqi politics into uncertain terrain.

What’s his end game? Our interviews with senior figures within Sadr’s group suggest he may now focus on leading protests against political opponents. The protest space is where Sadr has been uniquely powerful as the leader of one of the largest Islamist movements in the region, organized around his personal authority as a charismatic, religious figurehead.

For Iraq, the result now may be further political instability — and potentially another early election. But more critically, the approaching summer will put added pressures on Iraq’s government amid scorching heat and growing public anger over the lack of jobs and basic services. This summer may see a repeat of last year’s blackouts, for instance — and protests. And supply disruptions could exacerbate ongoing protests over unemployment, wages and working conditions in the public sector.

A replay of the delicate balancing act that served Sadr well in the past seems likely. He reportedly will now try to retain his influence across the government’s most powerful institutions while rallying anti-establishment protests in the streets. But will it work this time?

It's a strong piece. At last, a report at THE POST treats Nouri al-Maliki as the instrument of power he remains. I think he's a thug. My thoughts don't do a damn thing to alter the power he does and the power that he's used in 2021 and still today. It was a huge mistake for the US media to impose a blackout on Nouri in order to sell Moqtada as some form of leader. They also note -- as we've for years now -- Moqtada is not the protest leader. He controls his cult, yes. The October Revolution that emerged in 2019 was not led by him. He attempted to co-opt it and, when he failed, he began attacking them. These were young Shi'ites. Too many e-mails come into the public account that still don't grasp that point. Sunnis were not part of The October Revolution. Moqtada's hold on the average Shiite was never that strong to begin with. It's grown weaker. (As has his hold on his cult which is why he got so many fewer votes this go round. Despite ordering his cult to vote in these elections.)

So let's add to the analysis with some other basics.

Nearly 20 years after he emerged as the angry young man opposed to US forces, he's no longer young. He does not speak for the youth. Nor do they want him to. He wants to be the face of protests. He wanted that in 2019 so he tried to co-opt the movement. He realized in early 2020 that he couldn't, so he attacked the movement. By the time he was ordering them, April 2020, to not allow males and females to protest together, they were openly laughing at him and carrying protest signs that ridiculed him.

His aging out as the 'voice of youth' is not uncommon in any country. It is especially not uncommon in a country where so many have died due to the war that the median age is now is now 21-years-old.

Here's another reality he's going to have to come up against.

If he starts the protests up again, his cult will turn out, yes. Other Shi'ites? He's going to be protesting against a new government. How is that going to work this summer?

Let's say everything breaks the way they need it for Nouri's group. So in 30 days or so, they're in power. And there's Moqtada, in early August, calling them out for what they haven't done?

They will only have been in power a few weeks and the entire country is aware that it was Moqtada who, for over eight months, was unable to deliver. That it was Moqtada who finally stepped aside and quit. That had he done this earlier, a government could have been formed before the obscene summer heat hit Iraq.

Anything can hapen. But Moqtada's got a lot of negatives and they make his ability to recapture the days of 2005 much, much more difficult.

We'll wind down with this from Ms.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Why Did the FBI Do Nothing for 10 Years About Jeffrey Epstein?

From last night, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "YOUTUBE Loves Hosting Registered Sex Offenders."

I'm going to note this video about dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and how the FBI looked the other way.

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange, Hillary Clinton continues to be annoying, climate change hits Iraq hard, and much more.

US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange.

In the video above, from Australia's ABC, Julian's brother Gabriel implores Joe to end the persecution.

Though the prime minister of Australia has stated previously that this persecution is wrong and needs to end, he shrinks on the world stage unable to defend one of his country's own citizens now that he's prime minister. Aden-Jay Wood (GBN) notes:

But the brother of Mr Assange, Gabriel Shipton, believes the case has “gone on too long” and “could be ended so easily.”

He added in an interview on GB News’ Mark Steyn: “Joe Biden could just drop these charges, move on, just let it go and Julian could walk free.”

AP notes, "The Australian government has been under mounting pressure to intervene since the British government last week ordered Assange's extradition to the United States on spying charges. [. . .] Albanese, who came to power at elections a month ago, declined to say whether he had spoken to President Joe Biden about the case."

In the authoritarian political system that exists in Russia, it can be very hard to learn the truth about what the government is up to, let alone force it to change its behavior or obtain any sort of justice for its crimes. This makes government leaks, the whistleblowers who leak them, and the journalists and press outlets that publish them, all the more vital.

It also means all of those entities have a big target on their backs. So let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say Moscow has engaged in a years-long attempt to catch and imprison the man responsible for publishing a series of massive leaks that proved deeply embarrassing to the Kremlin.

Though he’s not a Russian national, has never lived in the country, nor was he there when he committed his supposed “crime,” the Russian government has taken the radical step of trying to have him extradited to its soil, so it can put him through a trial that’s a foregone conclusion and imprison him for god knows how long — effectively asserting the right to prosecute and jail any journalist anywhere in the world if they happen to publish something that displeases Russia’s ruling elite.

What was it that displeased them? One was the several tranches of secret documents he released about the various wars Moscow has fought in the twenty-first century, revealing war crimes we never knew about, a civilian death toll higher than we thought, and various cover-ups and behind-the-scenes subterfuge. Another was the decades worth of diplomatic cables that gave us unprecedented insight into the workings of Russian and other nations’ foreign policy.

But maybe his greatest crime in the minds of the country’s ruling class was publishing scandalous information about the corruption and political manipulation of one section of the political elite, embarrassing revelations almost certainly fed to him by an adversarial foreign power with its own particular motivations.

The Kremlin has gone to extraordinary lengths to punish these acts of truth-telling, and to deter any future ones. It pressured PayPal to cut off payments to him, gave immunity to a criminal and sex offender if he helped them catch him, and used its assets in the hacker world to attack a foreign government’s websites and create the pretext for its security services to enter the country he was staying in. It eventually forced him to spend seven years in a foreign embassy to avoid capture by Russian authorities, leading to the partial unravelling of his sanity. Once they finally caught him, they promptly imprisoned him without charge for the next three years, some of it spent in solitary confinement, a vicious form of torture. As a result of Moscow’s actions, when he finally showed up to his extradition trial, he struggled to say his name and age, and the extreme stress ultimately caused him to have a stroke.

All for the crime of exposing war crimes and corruption.

If you haven't caught on yet, the evil Russia above? It's not Russia. That's what the US government is doing to Julian.

The editorial board of THE HINDU observes:

Yet, the dogged pursuit of Mr. Assange has been renewed by the Biden administration. The only guarantee that it has provided is that it will not hold him in a maximum security prison, which has strict confinement rules, and that if convicted, he could serve his sentence in his native Australia if he requested it. Its position runs counter to its stated aim of bringing the U.S. back to the forefront of world democracies that promote values enshrined in the West as pivotal, such as freedom of expression accorded to the press. Subjecting Mr. Assange to trial will be a blow against media freedom in the U.S. and will also criminalise investigative journalism, particularly one that is pointed at the inner workings of the deep state. Mr. Assange’s representatives have filed an appeal before the British High Court. With the present Labor party-led Australian government — Mr. Assange remains an Australian citizen — also expressing its displeasure at the continued pursuit, the onus is on the British judiciary to do right by him.

Amnesty International has called out the move to extradite Julian:

Responding to the news that the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has certified Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act, Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General said:

“Allowing Julian Assange to be extradited to the US would put him at great risk and sends a chilling message to journalists the world over.”

“If the extradition proceeds, Amnesty International is extremely concerned that Assange faces a high risk of prolonged solitary confinement, which would violate the prohibition on torture or other ill treatment. Diplomatic assurances provided by the US that Assange will not be kept in solitary confinement cannot be taken on face value given previous history.”

“We call on the UK to refrain from extraditing Julian Assange, for the US to drop the charges, and for Assange to be freed.”

Julian Assange is likely to further appeal the extradition on separate grounds that it violates his right to freedom of expression.

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:       

+44 20 7413 5566       

email: press@amnesty.org        

twitter: @amnestypress 

The world is watching, Joe Biden, as you terrorize Julian and as you try to burn the US Constitution.

The world is watching.

As people converse about Joe's advanced age and whether he would be up for the job of a second term, while Joy Behar hisses and stamps her feet and calls for the conversation to end because she doesn't like it, a really important point is being missed.

Joe can't run for office again.

Not unless we're going to have another pandemic.

That's the only reason he won last time.

When he was forced to be onstage, either his eye exploded, his dentures slipped loose, he made one stupid remark after another, he got angry and looked crazy? Are people forgetting the debates?

Are they forgetting that he had to hide in his basement?

Joe can't run, he can't campaign. He's too old. He's too cranky. And people don't like him. The polls make that clear right now, yes. But it's also true that on the campaign trail, people didn't like him He was constantly getting into fights with potential voters. And he couldn't draw crowds. People have better things to do then go see someone in mental decline offer excuses for why the working people of America are constantly being screwed over.

If 2024 demanded real campaigning, the type we've had for every campaign except 2020, Joe's not up to it. Before the pandemic hit, it was obvious he wasn't up for campaigning. Four years older, and he's going to be this time? All the 'energy shots' in the world won't manage to keep him up. They will keep him cranky, as they did in 2020. And someday that will be the big news. Historians will talk about it, how the campaign insisted upon 'energy shots' to keep Joe awake. It's like the shots JFK got for 'his back' that the press ignored in real time.

On elections, maybe it's time the press said enough to Hillary Clinton, told her to sit that fat ass down and maybe focus on that marriage with that husband who continues to stray?

Hillary wants you to vote. She wants the transgender community to disappear.

We've wanted Hillary to disappear for years but she's never taken a hint.

She wants to say that elections are important.

The press should hold her feet to the fire.

The obvious should be pointed out. She wants to whine about CNN or this person or that person promoting Donald Trump in 2016. We all know she and her campaign wanted that to happen and they promoted Donald. Underestimating just how much the American public loathed her, they were convinced she could win against Donald.

She was wrong.

If she wants to give advice now about how important elections are, the press should shoot back that maybe she should have realized that before she attempted to elevate who she perceived as the worst candidate in the bunch because she thought it would be an easy win.

Donald Trump got the nomination. Maybe he would have anyway. But let's not deny the reality that she and her campaign worked to get him that nomination.

Instead of begging the country's forgiveness, she wants to pretend like it didn't happen.

And she wants to tell others that they are harming elections.

Neither the transgender community nor anyone who advocates for their rights is harming the Democratic Party's chances in the next election. That's reality.

Hillary Clinton harmed the party's chances when she and her team came up with the strategy to get the media to elevate Donald so she could have an easy win.

Last night, "Editorial: Iraq and climate change" went up at THIRD and we'll note this section:

CNN gushed today over the finds in a newly emerged city. Not to rain on the parade but the reason we're seeing the ancient city is that the Tigris River has dried up so much that the city was visible again for the first time in centuries -- plural. That's not a good thing.

This is also the first year that Iraq's seen Lake Sawa dry up.

These are not good things for the Iraqi people.

And this is only going to get worse in the immediate future.

Another major sandstorm is predicted in the next few days. Iraq's seen these repeatedly this year. People have to go inside. Some that don't make it in time end up hospitalized. Iraq's always had sandstorms but they haven't been as frequent and as massive as the ones this year.

Temperatures are rising and the water is disappearing.

Back in March, Jason Beaubien (NPR) noted:

A report from the European Union Institute of Security Studies projects that the number of days when temperatures in Baghdad hit 120 degrees will go from roughly 14 per year to more than 40 over the next two decades.

The study forecasts that the Iraqi capital, which is already seeing longer heat waves each summer and higher peak temperatures, will be one of the places hardest hit by global warming.

Baghdad set a new record high of 125.2 degrees on July 28, 2020. The next day it cooled down to 124.

This morning, Aland Qaradaxi (RUDAW) reports, "The water flowing into the Alwan dam in Khanaqin has decreased sharply due to the presence of mud and silt, as well as Iran’s building of dams which has restricted the water flow, leading to only two cubic meters of water entering the dam daily." RUDAW also notes, "The level of Erbil’s underground water has decreased around 500 meters over the past two decades, the Kurdistan Region’s ministry of municipalities and tourism warned on Friday."

There are all these issues and yet Iraq, eight months after the October 10th elections, still can't name a prime minister or president.

Maybe it wouldn't matter if they could?

It's not like the previous governments in Iraq have ever done a damn thing.

AFP notes, "A cholera outbreak in Iraq has infected at least 13 people and scores more suspected cases have been sent for analysis, most from the northern Kurdistan region, health officials said on Sunday."

TELUGUSTOP.COM reminds, "Cholera is an extremely virulent disease, whose symptoms in its most severe form include a rapid onset of watery diarrhoea and dehydration that can lead to death.The disease is acquired by consuming food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae."

Today is June 21st. The first official day of summer in the US. What happens every summer at this site? We note the cholera outbreaks in Iraq. Sometimes it's a 'minor' summer. Sometimes, like 2015, it's major. But why are they happening? Why are they still happening?

Because one failed government after another has refused to ensure that the Iraqi people have potable water. The 13 diagnosed -- and the nearly 4,000 in the same province who have sought medical care at hospitals already this month -- have resulted in what? An ambitious project to finally bring Iraq's infrastructure up to date? No. The same public reminder to boil water and that you, the individual, not the government, are responsible for ensuring that your water is safe to drink -- by boiling it first.

It's not like Iraq's not dealing with other health crisis. IRAQI NEWS AGENCY reports 305 new cases of COVID in Iraq.

New content at THIRD:

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "YOUTUBE Loves Hosting Registered Sex Offenders" went up last night and the following sites updated:

Monday, June 20, 2022

We go to Kamala Harris for an answer

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS SPOKE WITH THESE REPORTERS -- MUST CREDIT BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S BIG MIX -- ABOUT THE STATE OF THE INTERNET. WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT.

V.P. HARRIS: WELL THANK YOU FOR FINALLY GETTING AROUND TO INTERVIEWING ME. YOU KNOW PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN ISN'T THE ONLY ONE WORKING IN THIS WHITE HOUSE. AND I AM A LIVING, BREATHING PERSON. I AM NOT A ROBOT. I HAVE NOT BEEN PROGRAMMED WITH A STREAM OF PAT RESPONSES. I AM NOT A ROBOT. IF SOMEONE TELLS YOU I AM A ROBOT, THEY ARE WRONG. I AM NOT A ROBOT. I AM A LIVING, BREATHING PERSON. I AM NOT A ROBOT.

US: YES, VICE PRESIDENT, WE WANTED TO SPEAK TO YOU ABOUT SPOKE ABOUT THE EMPOWERMENT THE INTERNET CAN PROVIDE.

VP: AT THE CEO SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS, YES. I ATTENDED AND SPOKE. AS A PERSON, NOT AS A ROBOT. I AM NOT A ROBOT.

US: YOU USED AN EXAMPLE OF HOW A WOMAN IN HONDURAS, RURAL HONDURAS, COULD BE EMPOWERED. IT CAN EMPOWER AND IT CAN HARM. LAST WEEK, THE WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCED A NEW TASK FORCE THAT WOULD BE EXAMINING "CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ONLINE HARASSMENT, MASS SHOOTINGS AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND MEMBERS OF THE LGBT COMMUNITY."

VP: CORRECT AND I AM HEADING THAT TASK FORCE. IT IS AN IMPORTANT JOB AND WOULD NOT BE HANDED OVER TO A ROBOT. WHY DO YOU ASK?

US: IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE MAKING THE INTERNET SAFER -- A TASK WE THINK IS IMPOSSIBLE AND WILL ULTIMATELY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD -- WHY DON'T YOU BAN REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA. LIKE SCOTT PIG RITTER. THREE TIMES ARRESTED, CONVICTED AND SENT TO PRISON AND NOW A REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER. HE ATTEMPTED TO HOOK UP WITH UNDERAGE GIRLS AND HE UTITLIZED THE INTERNET FOR THAT. BUT NOW, NOT ONLY DO PEOPLE LIKE JIMMY DORE BRING HIM ON HIS SHOW, HE ALSO JUST STARTED HIS OWN SHOW ON YOUTUBE. AT THE VERY LEAST, SHOULDN'T HIS APPEARANCES AND YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND TWITTER FEED COME WITH A WARNING THAT HE IS A REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER.

VP: WELL. AGAIN, THIS IS ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOUR VOICE, YOUR EXPERIENCCE, YOUR TRUTH, CANNOT BE SUPPRESSED AND IT MUST BE HEARD, RIGHT? I -- AT SOME POINT -- YOU KNOW -- WE ARE GOING TO THE BORDER. WE'VE BEEN TO THE BORDER. SO THIS WHOLE -- THIS WHOLE -- THIS WHOLE THING ABOUT THE BORDER. WE'VE BEEN TO THE BORDER. WE'VE BEEN TO THE BORDER.

US: HUH?

VP: UKRAINE IS A COUNTRY IN EUROPE. IT EXISTS NEXT TO ANOTHER COUNTRY CALLED RUSSIA. RUSSIA IS A BIGGER COUNTRY. RUSSIA IS A POWERFUL COUNTRY. RUSSIA DECIDED TO INVADE AQ SMALLER COUNTRY CALLE DUKRAINE. SO BASICALLY THAT'S WRONG.

US: OKAY, UH, WHAT ABOUT THE SCOTT RITTER ISSUE?

VP: WHEN WE TALK ABOUT OUR CHILDREN -- I KNOW FOR THIS GROUP, WE ALL BELIEVE THAT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THE CHILDREN OF THE COMMUNITY, THEY ARE A CHILDREN OF THE COMMUNITY.

US: VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS, ARE YOU OKAY?

VP: YES AND I AM NOT A ROBOT. I AM A LIVING, BREATHING HUMAN BEING. I AM NOT A ROBOT. THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS, WHICH IS WHY WE WILL WORK TOGETHER AND CONTINUE TO WORK TOGETHER TO ADDRESS THESE ISSUES, TO TACKLE THESE CHALLENGES, AND TO WORK TOGETHER AS WE CONTINUE TO WORK, OPERATING FROM THE NEW NORMS, RULES AND AGREEMENTS THAT WE WILL CONVENT TO WORK TOGETHER ON TO GALVANIZE GLOBAL ACTION. WITH THAT, I THANK YOU ALL. THIS IS A MATTER OF URGEN PRIORITY FOR ALL OF US, AND I KNOW WE WILL WORK ON THIS TOGETHER.

SUDDENLY, THERE WAS A WHIRRING AND A BUZZING. WITH A JOLT AND A JERK, VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS TURNED TO THE SIDE AND WITH A BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP BACKED UP BEFORE SUDDENLY WHIZZING AND WHIRLING OFF TOWARDS THE OVAL.

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

The persecution of Julian Assange continues. Oscar Grenfell (WSWS) reports:

On Friday, British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that she has approved WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States. Assange’s family, including his wife, Stella Moris, immediately declared that they would fight the decision, including through a further British legal appeal.

If Assange is extradited, he faces 18 charges under the Espionage Act and 175 years imprisonment for publishing what the American government and the British courts acknowledge was true information exposing US foreign policy.

When it comes to Ukraine, the US and its allies continuously claim that they are defending democracy against Russian “authoritarianism.” On the basis of these assertions, the Biden administration has funneled tens of billions of dollars in weaponry to the Ukrainian government, in what has become a US-NATO proxy war against Russia.

In the Asia-Pacific, Washington and its allies similarly assert that they are defending “freedom” in opposition to Chinese “autocracy.”

The persecution of Assange exposes all of these statements as complete lies used to justify a program of aggressive militarism and war.

In the heart of Britain, Assange, a journalist, is imprisoned in a maximum-security prison without charge, while the US seeks his extradition for exposing its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange’s legal and democratic rights have been continuously attacked. There is clear evidence that the US oversaw a massive spying operation against Assange, while he was a political refugee in Ecuador London’s embassy. This included illegal surveillance of his privileged communications with lawyers.

Last September, Yahoo! News reported that in 2017, the Trump administration and the CIA discussed kidnapping or assassinating Assange in London. The article was based on the statements of 30 former US officials.

Outgoing United Nations Rapporteur Nils Melzer has repeatedly branded the US and British treatment of Assange as torture. Hundreds of doctors have demanded Assange’s freedom and warned of his deteriorating health.

Despite all of this, the Biden administration has continued the prosecution and the British courts have facilitated it. The contradiction between the supposed US-led campaign for “freedom” in Ukraine, and its determination to lock Assange away, is a staggering display of imperialist hypocrisy.

Kevin Gosztola (SHADOWPROOF) explains that Patel and the Home Office made the decision that press freedom is "an act capable of 'far more serious damage' than traditional espionage." Max Blumenthal Tweeted:

Mainstream US reporters could have led a drum beat for freeing Assange but most kept silent or defamed him as a digital terrorist and/or Russian asset. The US msm has thus colluded in one the worst assaults on a free press of our time and share responsibility for his extradition.

12:00 PM · Jun 17, 2022

Glenn Greenwald (SUBSTACK) notes, "An extremely unusual unanimity among press freedom and civil liberties groups was formed in early 2021 to urge the Biden administration to cease its prosecution of Assange, but Biden officials — despite spending the Trump years masquerading as press freedom advocates — ignored them (an interview conducted last week with Stella Assange by my husband, the Brazilian Congressman David Miranda, on Brazil's Press Freedom Day, regarding the latest developments and toll this has taken on the Assange family, can be seen here)." Saturday, Oscar Grenfell (WSWS) reported:

Meanwhile, El Pais reported last week that Britain is obstructing the Spanish National High Court from examining other allegations of illegal spying on Assange’s legal team.

Taken together, the various abuses to which Assange has been subjected, and the protracted character of his persecution, brand it as one of the political crimes of the century.

Speaking at yesterday’s press conference, Assange’s wife Stella Moris said the British legal process was being “used to prolong Julian’s suffering.” Britain, she said, “should not be engaging in persecution on behalf of a foreign power that is out for revenge… that foreign power committed crimes which Julian put into the sunlight.”

Moris vowed, “we’re going to fight this,” including through a final appeal within the British set-up. Robinson explained that this would focus on the political nature of the prosecution, its contravention of the British-US extradition treaty and the various abuses, including the CIA plots against Assange.

Together with Moris and WikiLeaks, press groups, journalists’ associations and international rights groups warned that Patel’s decision represents a frontal onslaught on core rights that will be deployed against others.

American whistleblower, Edward Snowden, who exposed mass NSA spying, tweeted: “Hard to believe, but it looks real. Every serious press freedom group in the world has protested this. It is an appalling symbol of how far the British and American governments’ commitment to human rights has declined.”

Well-known Australian investigative journalist John Pilger posted: “Home Secretary Priti Patel has approved the extradition of Julian #Assange to an American hellhole. A new appeal will now challenge the political rottenness of British ‘justice.’ Either we raise our voices as never before, or our silence colludes in the death of an heroic man.”