Using a survivor's past mistakes to discredit them is an ancient patriarchal standard I hoped we'd made progress dismantling. Yet, here we are: nearly the entire political spectrum of American media will use any mistake against you to shame you into obscurity. #MeToo
#TaraReade
6:37 PM · May 15, 2020Twitter Web App
I don't know what to say here.
Let me start by saying thank you to everyone in the community who has written about this issue already:
I wish I could be C.I. And I cringe when I type that because I know that puts so much on her and I know we all do that to her.
If you haven't read her piece yet, please do. She talks about her assault when she was a child. That was so brave of her. She's written about it before for many years but I know she feels like she's cutting open a vein when she has to address that. And yet she does.
It was important as Politico attacked Tara Reade that the point be made that there is not one kind of survivor and that we do not all experience the same things and that we do not have to play the perfect victim to have been assaulted.
I saw the Politico rape culture garbage at the same time that Elaine and C.I. wrote their pieces.
And I wanted to write about it here. I would start and I would stop. And I would delay and postpone and anything but writing about this.
I can talk about this topic when things feel safe. But not when it's active.
When it's active, it is fresh and brings back everything I went through.
I'm not talking about my rape, I'm talking the lead up to the trial and the trial itself. I got very lucky and the system worked in that my rapist was convicted. But before that took place, he had smeared me and attacked my character. That was especially hard to sit through in court.
So seeing Tara being smeared now, being victimized by rape culture, I just want to bury my head in the sand. A week or two from now, I could easily write about this topic because I would be used to it and calmer. But talk about right now and talk about a trigger.
Politico has attacked Tara -- and Michael Tracey and other dirt bags have gone along. They won't investigate the actual rape charge, grasp that. But they will try to tear her character apart.
Sorry but you don't have to be a nun or Mother Tereasa to be raped.
You can be flawed and be raped.
The nonsense that is being promoted is rape culture and it is appalling.
And this is why MeToo and Times Up are a joke now. They refused to stand up for Tara and now rape culture is becoming the norm. Thank you, Alyssa Milano, for betraying survivors.
I told my truth and had to battle to do so. It kills me that so much work has been done by the press to attack Tara Reade for the 'crime' of being poor and so little work has been done to address the charge of assault.
I wish I could write something better than this. I wish I could be C.I. and just open that vein and do so without hesitation because it's what's needed. And I'm sorry that she has to do that and so many of us depend on her doing that. It's not fair to her.
And it's not fair to any of us that Politico and Michael Tracey and others are promoting rape culture.
That does not make for a better world or a safer world.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, May 15, 2020. Joe Biden tells people not to vote for him
(again, he tells them this), an old bully uses THE NATION to attack a
Howie Hawkins supporter, and much more.
Sharon Delgado writes the editors of THE UNION to note:
Tara has accused Joe Biden of assault. Many of us find Tara credible. That number has only increased since she did her interview with Megyn Kelly which was posted on Megyn's YOUTUBE CHANNEL last Friday evening.
Though it has not yet been a full week (that'll be around 6:30 pm EST tonight), the interview already has over 851,000 streams on Megyn's channel alone. In addition, it has aired on many TV outlets -- in part and in full.
Joe has been on TV. On MORNING JOE, he insisted he didn't do anything -- as best he could recall. Then he repeated that when GOOD MORNING AMERICA tossed a minor question at him. On THE LAST WORD last night, he again issued a denial. As Christo Avialis explains below, a majority of voters believe Tara.
On THE LAST WORD, Joe offered a solution, "If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me." And while some will not vote for him because they believe Tara, others feel more can be done.
And many are also calling for an investigation. Unlike the editorial board of THE NEW YORK TIMES, most aren't calling for the DNC to conduct the investigation. Instead, many backing this avenue insist it should be an independent investigation.
Joe keeps insisting that Tara should be vetted but also insisting that vetting should not go on in his own papers stored at the University of Delaware. He's always hidin', that Joe Biden.
In other political news, Clintonite Peter Dreier brings his old man smell to THE NATION where he types:
Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the provocative and popular socialist Jacobin magazine, tweeted last week that he intends to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in November. And yes, it matters. Jacobin has a considerable reach. It claims to have a paid print circulation of 50,000, while its website draws over 2 million visitors a month. Jacobin is particularly influential among young leftists, with more-radical-than-thou tendencies that reflect the idealism of recent recruits to left-wing ideas. It was near-messianic in its devotion to Bernie Sanders’s candidacy.
The danger here is obvious. It only takes a small number of votes in key swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, and Florida—where the margin of victory could be a few thousand or a few hundred votes, to hand Donald Trump a victory, as we saw in 2016. In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin over Clinton was 22,748 votes, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 31,072 votes. In Michigan, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein got 51,463 votes.
Who the hell cares you musty old man?
First, no one owns someone else's vote. If a candidate wants a vote, they need to campaign for it. If they're unable to reach the voter then a candidate has failed at their most important job: attracting voters.
Second, your vote is your vote and you are allowed to use it however you want. You can -- I always encourage this -- vote for anyone who speaks to you. You can also chose not to vote. You can vote some form of protest vote. And you can let someone bully you into voting for candidate X.
But it's your vote and how you choose to vote is your business.
Third, Bhaskar Sunara isn't a Democrat. How dare elderly Peter Dreier try to shame him into voting for Biden. This is a point that Dreier doesn't get from the nursing home of his mind, not everyone in this country is either a Democrat or a Republican. As Ann likes to point out, her parents are Greens, she was raised a Green. That's a hard reality for Peter Dreier to accept because he doesn't accept any events that happened after 1970.
Howie Hawkins is running for the Green Party's presidential nomination. He doesn't have the nomination yet. Dario Hunter is still in the race. But Ann will vote Green because she is a Green. Idiots like Dreier don't get that and think they can bully people like Ann into dropping their beliefs and their political party to vote for Joe Biden. That's nonsense. (In fairness, we should note that the disaster that was David Cobb's 2004 presidential campaign included Cobb urging voters not to vote for him if they lived in a 'swing' state.)
Bullies like Dreier need to be called out.
He has no business shaming anyone for their choice of who to vote for. If you want to go after politicians (Dreier only goes after Republican politicians), that's fine. But stop attacking We The People. And stop attacking democracy and freedom. That's what you do when you try to bully someone into voting your way.
It's a sign of just how weak a candidate Joe Biden is that his supporters have to resort to shaming and bullying to try to drum up support for their pathetic candidate.
Chris Hedges interviewed Howie Hawkins earlier this week.
I don't care who you vote for. I'm not here, this site doesn't exist, to order you how to vote. I do hope, however you vote or not vote, what you do is what you believe in. If you believe in the way you use your vote then it is never wasted.
You can visit JACOBIN and read their arguments. We've highlighted them before and will highlight them again. David Sirota is someone we highlighted a great deal. He is now working with JACOBIN and you can find his work there.
Site issue. We're not doing Tweets here -- not a post full of Tweets. If you use Google Chrome, it's not a problem. But I'm tired of the people who don't use it e-mailing the public account to complain. Martha and Shirley are the main ones working the public account and they have enough to do without having to explain that it is Twitter and their 'blue check' nonsense that causes a big black box on reposted Tweets if you're viewing this site through Firefox of something else.
In Iraq, the big news remains Mustafa Al-Kadhimi who became prime minister on May 7th. Abdulrahman Al-Rashed (ARAB NEWS) offers:
Al-Kadhimi’s most difficult tasks will be to save Iraq from Tehran, which wants to control its neighbor, and to steer his country away from the dangers resulting from the US-Iran conflict. This escalated after Washington revealed Tehran’s intention to cause political and security chaos in Baghdad. Soon after, the US assassinated Soleimani, Iran’s most prominent military leader, and several militia leaders, which was followed by an escalation of protests against the American military presence in Iraq. This was the highest level of confrontation on Iraqi soil.
Soon after Al-Kadhimi was confirmed as prime minister, the US government announced that, as an exception to its sanctions, it had given Iraq permission to buy oil from Iran. The move was designed to encourage the Iranians to curb their disruptive activities in Iraq.
However, Al-Kadhimi inherits the same problems that faced his predecessors, Haider Abadi and Adel Abdul Mahdi. Iran has infiltrated Iraq’s security, military and religious institutions. Sectarian and regional rifts have grown and corruption has increased. Government fiscal deficits have multiplied as a result of the collapse in oil prices and the recent street protests, which could return at any time.
The new prime minister needs to build public confidence in the government and secure the cooperation of parliament to meet the demands of demonstrators. He will also have to quickly control the militias and “restore prestige to the military and security institutions,” as he himself said on Tuesday.
At GULF NEWS, Osama al-Sharif notes:
The Atlantic Council had a discussion yesterday with Luay al-Khatteeb who, until the new prime minister formed his new cabinet, had been Iraq's Minister of Electricity.
We'll close with this short video from Amal Clooney.
The following sites updated:
Sharon Delgado writes the editors of THE UNION to note:
Since Tara Reade is local,
I need to say publicly here in my community, as a survivor of sexual
assault myself, that I support her right to speak out and abhor the way
she has been insulted, abused, and threatened.
Not
only are these attacks traumatic for her and for other survivors, they
have a chilling effect on anyone who might consider sharing similar
stories — about Joe Biden or anyone else.
People
who support a woman’s right to tell their stories must be careful not
to turn it into a partisan issue. I don’t want Donald Trump to win
reelection, but I also don’t want the Me Too Movement to lose ground.
The movement was finally challenging the centuries-old narrative that
women (and children) need to keep silence when sexually assaulted or be
subject to questions and comments that imply that they are lying, all to
cast doubt on their accusations and to protect the man.
Tara has accused Joe Biden of assault. Many of us find Tara credible. That number has only increased since she did her interview with Megyn Kelly which was posted on Megyn's YOUTUBE CHANNEL last Friday evening.
Though it has not yet been a full week (that'll be around 6:30 pm EST tonight), the interview already has over 851,000 streams on Megyn's channel alone. In addition, it has aired on many TV outlets -- in part and in full.
Joe has been on TV. On MORNING JOE, he insisted he didn't do anything -- as best he could recall. Then he repeated that when GOOD MORNING AMERICA tossed a minor question at him. On THE LAST WORD last night, he again issued a denial. As Christo Avialis explains below, a majority of voters believe Tara.
On THE LAST WORD, Joe offered a solution, "If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me." And while some will not vote for him because they believe Tara, others feel more can be done.
And many are also calling for an investigation. Unlike the editorial board of THE NEW YORK TIMES, most aren't calling for the DNC to conduct the investigation. Instead, many backing this avenue insist it should be an independent investigation.
Joe keeps insisting that Tara should be vetted but also insisting that vetting should not go on in his own papers stored at the University of Delaware. He's always hidin', that Joe Biden.
In other political news, Clintonite Peter Dreier brings his old man smell to THE NATION where he types:
Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of the provocative and popular socialist Jacobin magazine, tweeted last week that he intends to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in November. And yes, it matters. Jacobin has a considerable reach. It claims to have a paid print circulation of 50,000, while its website draws over 2 million visitors a month. Jacobin is particularly influential among young leftists, with more-radical-than-thou tendencies that reflect the idealism of recent recruits to left-wing ideas. It was near-messianic in its devotion to Bernie Sanders’s candidacy.
The danger here is obvious. It only takes a small number of votes in key swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, Iowa, and Florida—where the margin of victory could be a few thousand or a few hundred votes, to hand Donald Trump a victory, as we saw in 2016. In Wisconsin, Trump’s margin over Clinton was 22,748 votes, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein won 31,072 votes. In Michigan, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, while Stein got 51,463 votes.
Who the hell cares you musty old man?
First, no one owns someone else's vote. If a candidate wants a vote, they need to campaign for it. If they're unable to reach the voter then a candidate has failed at their most important job: attracting voters.
Second, your vote is your vote and you are allowed to use it however you want. You can -- I always encourage this -- vote for anyone who speaks to you. You can also chose not to vote. You can vote some form of protest vote. And you can let someone bully you into voting for candidate X.
But it's your vote and how you choose to vote is your business.
Third, Bhaskar Sunara isn't a Democrat. How dare elderly Peter Dreier try to shame him into voting for Biden. This is a point that Dreier doesn't get from the nursing home of his mind, not everyone in this country is either a Democrat or a Republican. As Ann likes to point out, her parents are Greens, she was raised a Green. That's a hard reality for Peter Dreier to accept because he doesn't accept any events that happened after 1970.
Howie Hawkins is running for the Green Party's presidential nomination. He doesn't have the nomination yet. Dario Hunter is still in the race. But Ann will vote Green because she is a Green. Idiots like Dreier don't get that and think they can bully people like Ann into dropping their beliefs and their political party to vote for Joe Biden. That's nonsense. (In fairness, we should note that the disaster that was David Cobb's 2004 presidential campaign included Cobb urging voters not to vote for him if they lived in a 'swing' state.)
Bullies like Dreier need to be called out.
He has no business shaming anyone for their choice of who to vote for. If you want to go after politicians (Dreier only goes after Republican politicians), that's fine. But stop attacking We The People. And stop attacking democracy and freedom. That's what you do when you try to bully someone into voting your way.
It's a sign of just how weak a candidate Joe Biden is that his supporters have to resort to shaming and bullying to try to drum up support for their pathetic candidate.
Chris Hedges interviewed Howie Hawkins earlier this week.
I don't care who you vote for. I'm not here, this site doesn't exist, to order you how to vote. I do hope, however you vote or not vote, what you do is what you believe in. If you believe in the way you use your vote then it is never wasted.
You can visit JACOBIN and read their arguments. We've highlighted them before and will highlight them again. David Sirota is someone we highlighted a great deal. He is now working with JACOBIN and you can find his work there.
Site issue. We're not doing Tweets here -- not a post full of Tweets. If you use Google Chrome, it's not a problem. But I'm tired of the people who don't use it e-mailing the public account to complain. Martha and Shirley are the main ones working the public account and they have enough to do without having to explain that it is Twitter and their 'blue check' nonsense that causes a big black box on reposted Tweets if you're viewing this site through Firefox of something else.
In Iraq, the big news remains Mustafa Al-Kadhimi who became prime minister on May 7th. Abdulrahman Al-Rashed (ARAB NEWS) offers:
Al-Kadhimi’s most difficult tasks will be to save Iraq from Tehran, which wants to control its neighbor, and to steer his country away from the dangers resulting from the US-Iran conflict. This escalated after Washington revealed Tehran’s intention to cause political and security chaos in Baghdad. Soon after, the US assassinated Soleimani, Iran’s most prominent military leader, and several militia leaders, which was followed by an escalation of protests against the American military presence in Iraq. This was the highest level of confrontation on Iraqi soil.
Soon after Al-Kadhimi was confirmed as prime minister, the US government announced that, as an exception to its sanctions, it had given Iraq permission to buy oil from Iran. The move was designed to encourage the Iranians to curb their disruptive activities in Iraq.
However, Al-Kadhimi inherits the same problems that faced his predecessors, Haider Abadi and Adel Abdul Mahdi. Iran has infiltrated Iraq’s security, military and religious institutions. Sectarian and regional rifts have grown and corruption has increased. Government fiscal deficits have multiplied as a result of the collapse in oil prices and the recent street protests, which could return at any time.
The new prime minister needs to build public confidence in the government and secure the cooperation of parliament to meet the demands of demonstrators. He will also have to quickly control the militias and “restore prestige to the military and security institutions,” as he himself said on Tuesday.
At GULF NEWS, Osama al-Sharif notes:
Kadhimi, a former journalist and a fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein,
has never joined a political party and until his nomination held the
important job of head of the National Intelligence Service.
Most importantly his nomination was backed by both Washington and
Tehran; paving the way for breaking of the stalemate that derailed the
nomination of two ideologically opposed predecessors; Mohammed Tawfik
Alawi, a former communications minister, and Adnan Al-Zurfi, the
governor of Najaf.
[. . .]
[. . .]
But while Kadhimi was able to navigate his way through a divided
parliament — he picked mostly independents and technocrats as ministers
although he followed the same ethno-sectarian quota system shunned by
protesters — lawmakers had delayed approval of seven key portfolios,
including foreign affairs and oil. This could turn to be his Achilles
heel.
In his first address Kadhimi promised the Iraqi people to oversee
early elections, contain the spread of the coronavirus, pass an
“exceptional” budget law, stem out corruption, bringing armed groups
under the control of the state, and repatriate the displaced.
The Atlantic Council had a discussion yesterday with Luay al-Khatteeb who, until the new prime minister formed his new cabinet, had been Iraq's Minister of Electricity.
We'll close with this short video from Amal Clooney.
The following sites updated:
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Regina Carter And Alvester Garnett: Alone Together Duets33 minutes ago
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I believe Tara6 hours ago
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Howie8 hours ago
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The unmasking9 hours ago
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Congress' hush money scandal9 hours ago
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Odetta9 hours ago
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Bernie seems to think we stupid9 hours ago
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Featured Panelists: May 15, 202014 hours ago
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