3/15/2023

how much money did john stauber's group take from soros?

i don't get john stauber and his harping on george soros.


John Stauber
@JohnStauber
·
2h
.
@csis
is another entity funded by #Soros:





i don't like george soros.  but i didn't take money from him.




Stauber is the founder and former executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, which sponsors PR Watch and SourceWatch. Since the 1960s, he has worked with public interest, consumer, family farm, environmental and community organizations at the local, state and national level. He edits and writes for the Center's quarterly newsmagazine, PR Watch. He is also a member of the Liberty Tree Board of Advisers.


CMD states that it accepts donations from "individuals and philanthropic foundations through gifts and grants", but "no funding from for-profit corporations or grants from government agencies." It maintains a partial list of supporters on its website.[3]

In a column for Fox News, Dan Gainor wrote that CMD received $200,000 from the Open Society Institute (OSI), a grantmaking network founded by George Soros.[33] CMD stated that it received a grant from OSI "to continue work on national security issues".[3]

Fox News reported that in 2011 CMD received $865,000 in donations—$520,000, or 60% of 2011's total revenue—was received from the Schwab Charitable Fund, a donor advised fund which preserves the anonymity of donors by not disclosing individual donor names.[34]


so his center for media and democracy took $200,000 from george soros?

is john ever going to address that - or the other questionable donations?


let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


 Wednesday, March 15, 2023.  The antiwar movement?  If you can't be honest about what happened to it, you're never going to revive it.


They're trying to protect children, right?  That's the lie the bigots keep repeating as they go after the LGBTQ+ community and drag artists, that they're trying to protect children.

Hmm.



Hundreds of protesters, including armed white supremacists, and LGBT-community supporters descended on Wadsworth's Memorial Park on Saturday as a humanist group tried to put on a drag queen storytelling event for children.

[. . .]

White supremacist and white nationalist groups, including at least one participant wearing a Proud Boys hoodie, shouted racist and homophobic slurs at onlookers and others, including "Heil Hitler" and a man on a loudspeaker who chanted "Sieg" as protesters responded: "Heil!"





Neo-Nazis waved swastika flags while chanting "there will be blood" on Saturday during a protest against a drag queen story hour held in Wadsworth, Ohio, just west of Akron.



[. . .]

Drag events have been targeted by right-wing activists across the United States in recent months, with a particular focus on those accessible to children. In Tennessee, Republican lawmakers have voted to ban "adult cabaret performance" from public property, or any location which could be viewed by a child, with similar legislation being proposed in a number of other states like Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Footage from Saturday's event taken by documentary filmmaker Ford Fischer shows several different right-wing factions protesting against the drag show.

[. . .]

Speaking to the local website Cleveland.com, Aaron Reed, one of the drag show's organizers, said: "This is where the civil rights struggle of our generation is. Drag queens are not necessarily LGBTQ, but the Nazis don't know that. They see them as a symbol of queer folk and whether we like it or not, that's where the hate is focused right now."


These are the supporters of Mother Tucker Carlson.  People like the great Glenneth Greenwald can't be saved, they're in their own hell.  (At least until Tucker stops booking Glenneth as a guest, then Glenneth will tell us all just how much he hates Tucker -- the way he recently did with Amy Goodman.)  But you have to scratch your head over the John Stauber going down that same hate highway.



John Stauber used to present as a defender of people.  Today, he's one hopping the hatred caravan.  I get it, John, a lot of fake asses are on the left.  And they worked to ostracize you.  Doesn't defend your minimizing the attacks on LGBTQ+ people or your pathetic and disgusting embrace of racists.  And I'm sorry, but I won't fall for your nuclear screaming.


I don't play fear factor.  And I'm also old enough to remember various causes -- including protesting apartheid -- that needed to wait because we could have a nuclear war!!!!!


That's always nonsense.  The fact that we might have a nuclear war is never a reason to put off action on other issues.  Tacking action on other issues encourages actions on all issues -- Newton's First Law Of Motion: A body in motion tends to stay in motion.  


I've heard it before and it didn't intimidate me into silence back then nor does it today.  



 

We have got to use our voices.   

John Tweeted recently, "I am so old I can remember when lefties and progressives opposed the US establishment, its wars, propaganda and corporate globalism."

And I can remember when the turn happened and who led it.  And thing is, John, I called it out in real time while you never, ever did.  You do a few bitchy Tweets over a decade later but you'd never really address it.  To this day.
 

Yes, John, and you're such a coward that you can't talk about why that is.  In fact, you were among the cowards fleeing the stage when this happened.  That's what cowards do, after all.


I didn't flee and I didn't lie.  I stood in front of college audiences who sometimes boo-ed but I still told them Barack Obama -- excuse me, St. Barack -- was not the answer to any prayer and that they were being lied to, hustled and fooled.


Would have really helped if you could have done that.  But like Glenn Greenwald, you had no voice when it mattered.  


The anti-war effort is dead!!!! That's what you scream, right?  It's not dead, first off.  It was weakened.  


And it was weakened by whores you know very well, John .  Matthew Rothschild, for example.  


Does the left support wars and the US establishment?


I'm shocked.  Simply shocked.  It's not like all of you whores didn't encourage them to do that.  That's what the selling of St. Barack was all about.  


The corporate media needs to answer for selling the Iraq War.  We made that point yesterday.

Equally true, Panhandle Media (Beggar Media, if you prefer) needs to answer for selling a generation on the lie that Barack was anti-war, that Barack was brave, that Barack cared about the American people.  He didn't even care enough to end veterans' homelessness -- after promising to do so.  He knew the media -- big and small -- would give him a pass as they always did. 


And he knew that you who screams about George Sorors would take Soros money.  Are we not talking about 2011?  Is that off limits, John.


Sorry, I don't play well with others when others are whores.


George Soros is someone I called out long ago.  He made his money in an unseemly manner and he thinks he can buy democracy and reshape it.


I was calling him out when you weren't.  In fact, I was calling him out when you were taking his money.

Oops.  

John Stauber and people like him are why the wars drag on to this day.


Let's deal with the Afghanistan War in two paragraphs counting this one.  I don't give Joe Biden much credit for anything.  I will applaud him for ending the Afghanistan War.  I know that some whine that life is awful in Afghanistan now and blah blah blah.  It was awful before US troops pulled out.  Afghanistan was never 'liberated.'  A city or two -- US controlled -- had some pretense.  But US forces were on the ground and it never got better for the Afghanistan people.

How long were US forces supposed to stay on the ground?  Forever.  For a hundred years.  What's the answer there?  After two decades, there was nothing that they could accomplish.  It was foolish to keep them there.  It was financially unsound to continue the misadventure.  Joe became the first grown up in the room by ending that.


The Iraq War continues.  US forces continue to occupy Iraq.  Western media tries to pretend that only Iraqis linked to Iran oppose the US military presence.  


The resistance to the US presence has never crumbled in Iraq.


It did crumble in the US.  If John has to lie about it today, that's your sign that he's not a truth teller.
 

In the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's election as president, the most prominent peace group announced they were taking their toys and going home: United for Peace and Justice.  Fake ass Leslie Cagan and the others didn't have time for Iraq.  They'd used it to elect Democrats -- first allowing the party to take over Congress in the 2006 mid-terms and now, in 2008, retain control of Congress and add the White House.

Barack's victory, UFPJ insisted, meant all US troops would be coming home from Iraq.

They really were charlatans.  

Their lie did more to destroy the peace movement than anything else. 


And we called it out in real time.  We called it when it happened and we continued to call it out over the years.  Doing so in November of 2008 through most of 2012 was difficult because so many wanted to believe in St. Barack.  They'd been sold him by FAIR and UFPJ and THE NATION and Amy Goodman and all the rest.  

It took years before a few others finally began to tell the truth.  And when it did come, the truth was delivered by smaller outlets.  May 2011, RUSSIA TODAY's CROSSTALK explored the death of the antiwar movement in the United States in a story "ANTIWAR.RIP: AFTER 2 YEARS IN THE WHITE HOUSE BARACK OBAMA MADE BOTH OF BUSH WARS HIS OWN:"
 


Peter Lavelle: Alright, I usually like to reward the person who had to get up earliest for this program but we have two people from Los Angeles today.  But I'm going to go to Angela anyway.  Uhm, I read Antiwar.com every single day, many times a day, and you do a wonderful service.  But you know, Antiwar.com, that was something that really brought people together when Bush was going to war, an illegal war that he was pushing and mainstream followed along.  And now, and I think you're a wonderful success, but where is the antiwar movement today?  We have a lot more war.  If you read Antiwar.com, the United States is contemplating military action in even more places right now beyond Libya.  So Angela, what happened?
 
Angela Keaton: Well -- and I owe one of these anwers to one of these guests here today -- but the sobering, unfortunate answer is that neoconservatives and nationalists were right, it was an anti-Bush movement more than it was an antiwar movement. And that's where it went.  Barack Ob -- Partisanship is so strong in the US and Democrats are so wedded to Barack Obama and so afraid of weakening him, they will put up with any number of moral indecency to allow him to keep his vaunted position, including the situation and also because Barack Obama -- there's no leadup,  public leadup to Libya, so there's no chance for organization.  The fact that Democrats are afraid to criticize Obama and the fact that there was so little public debate on Libya says really terrible things about the future of democracy in the US. So this is a very -- it's actually, the whole situation is a bit of a microcosm, a reflection of what I think is actually going on in the US right now.
 
Peter Lavelle:  Thaddeus, if I can go to you, too, also in Los Angeles. The empire -- it's appetite for war is insatiable.  So was the antiwar movement really all about George W. Bush -- as Angela pointed out and as I'm sure Michael's going to tell us in a few minutes? Go ahead.
 
Thaddeus Russell: I agree with everything that Angela said. I think that, in a large part, the antiwar movement during Bush was really about, unfortunately, personality in a sense.  He was seen as sort of this disreputable, low brow Texan who was very crude in his ways but what we've gotten is an imperialist who is actually very refined and very articulate.  And I would just say, liberals now are basically the more effective -- and always have been -- the more effective imperialists than conservatives who usually tend to use brute force and very crude rhetoric.  So that, I think, is one reason but we can talk about many others for why there is no antiwar movement and why there are actually more wars now than before.




Liberal antiwar figures and organizations have consistently failed to grasp the nature of U.S. imperialism and the central role within it played by the Democratic Party.

The most important liberal antiwar coalition in the era of the "war on terror," United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), effectively closed up shop in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama--because its leaders believed that Obama and the Democrats would bring an end to Bush's wars.

Based on these illusions, it stopped organizing even before Obama withdrew from Iraq, failed to revive in opposition to his dramatic escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and did nothing to oppose his ever-expanding drone war. Today, support for Obama continues to paralyze many liberals from effectively opposing his imperialist policies. 


When these 'brave' voices want to say the peace movement is destroyed, they want to pretend like left activists just lost interest.



No, they were told to go home.  They were told everything was taken care of.


 

Prior to that, United for Peace and Justice was engaging in battles with ANSWER.  UFPJ wasn't a real group.  They were a collective dedicated to electing Democrats -- that's why NOW was part of it.  The National Organization of Women never again pretended to care about war after Barack got into the White House.


And let's remember as well that people didn't want to call out Barack.  They might get booed.  Oh, the horror.  I can take a crowd booing -- and I can usually turn them around and get them on my side.  But these cowards were too afraid to take on Barack.  That sent a message as well.


When Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House, we spoke in a loud voice and made demands.  When Barack became president, these cowards offered the most tentative criticism of him, they minimized and excused his actions over and over.


In 2011, Dahlia Wasfi spoke with Press TV (link has video that is not working currently) about the so-called withdrawal and stated, "We've heard time and again that when we reach a certain benchmark, US forces will withdraw from Iraq, but as most things that have come out of the mouth of the United States' government, it's dishonest. [. . .] We [US] intend to stay there as basically the vice-royalty in Iraq, as a colonial presence."  Dahlia was a strong voice and a rare voice.


Our biggest 'independent' media outlets elected to ignore Iraq after Barack was elected.  After Barack left the White House, liars couldn't tell you reality.  They'd been lying too long.  Which is how THE NATION ended up with a garbage editorial by Phyllis Bennis that we call out in  the February 22, 2018 snapshot:

 

It's a curious editorial -- one that leaves the impression that the Iraq War is over.

If it's over, Phyllis, why are US troops still on the ground in Iraq.

The editorial hits new lows of whorishness as it names various people -- all Republicans.  I'm sorry, Phyllis, but it was the Democratically controlled Senate, in 2002, that voted for the Iraq War.  Not only does she ignore that [fact], she also ignores certain key others.


We were supposed to applaud the garbage as these 'anti-war' voices re-emerged and wanted to talk Iraq but their knowledge base ended in 2008.  They're the ones who destroyed the peace movement.  

CODESTINK?  They ran cover for Barack.  They didn't confront him.  Not even Susan I-Need-Attention Davis went for attention until May 2013 -- a year after Barack re-elected to a second term.  She finally showed up to challenge him as he spoke (about Guantanamo which he never closed).  From the May 23, 2018 snapshot:



Instead of recognizing that fact, Barack, in his speech today, once again pretended that Congress was preventing anyone from leaving Guantanamo.  

US President Barack Obama: I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries.

 Medea Benjamin:  86 are cleared already! Release them today!

US President Barack Obama:  Where appropriate we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and our military justice system.  And we will insist that judicial review be available to every detainee -

 Medea Benjamin:  It's --

 US President Barack Obama:  Now, ma'am, let me finish.  Let me finish.  Let me finish, ma'am. This is part of free speech.  You being able to speak.  But also you listening and me being able to speak.

Flaunting their great ignorance, his howler monkeys applauded.  No, free speech does not include that Barack gets to "finish."  He wasn't interested in the woman finishing -- and doesn't that say it all?  Or, as Gilda Radner once put it on Saturday Night Live, "You selfish porkface, now I'll never be satisfied."  But the Constitution does not have a clause allowing anyone the right to finish.  Barack is such an idiot and the encouragement of this stupidity by the Cult of St. Barack goes a long way towards explaining why the administration is currently up to the neck in scandals.


El Paso Inc notes Barack also referred to the 68-year-old Medea Benjamin as "young lady."  I guess we should be grateful he didn't call her "sweetie" or  "best looking" or suggest that "periodically when she's feeling down . . ."

It's a historic moment for Medea Benjamin and CODEPINK -- it only took them five years to confront President Barack Obama.  In 2008, as Medea's co-founder Jodie Evans was bundling billions for Barack's campaign (and forgetting to reveal it to the rank and file in CODEPINK), she and Medea ordered 'bird dogging' of Barack's chief rival in the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination Hillary Clinton.  They attacked Hillary repeatedly, busting up one event after another.  They never did the same to Barack, not even after he was elected.  Some argued that CODEPINK was afraid to confront a bi-racial man.  That argument holds no water because they never worried how racist it might look for the various White women attacking African-American Condi Rice repeatedly in public.  No, they didn't attack him or hold him to any standard because they elected him, they used their organization to destroy his rivals and to put him into office.   


There was a thriving peace movement and then it was steered into elect Barack Obama.  It never recovered from that whoring.  It never recovered from a bunch of whores who repeatedly spent years covering for Barack, excusing Barack, etc, etc.


Liars like Norman Solomon who used their platforms in 'independent media' to whore for Barack.  Norman was smarter than most.  When appearing in corporate media in 2008, he would disclose that he was a delegate -- a pledged delegate for Barack Obama -- but when showing up on the PACIFICA RADIO programs and its ilk, he'd never disclose that.  In fact, PACIFICA RADIO did a whole debate 'analysis' for two hours and every guest on it was a Barack supporter but the listeners weren't allowed to know that and Larry Bensky didn't feel that was information that needed to be disclosed. 



Let's note SHADOW PROOF's video on the peace movement that streamed this week.



The following sites updated:



Posted by at

3/14/2023

john stauber whores for mother tucker

read mike's 'John Stauber flaunts his ignorance of women in history' if you haven't already.  john stauber's getting worse and worse.  he tweeted the following:



John Stauber
@JohnStauber
·
6h
Fear ⁦
@TuckerCarlson
⁩. Be very, very afraid! Hate anyone who takes him seriously or goes on his show. Orders from the ⁦
@nytimes
⁩ ⁦
@USProgressives
⁩ ⁦
@TheDemocrats
⁩ and all the #vbnmw lefties.




tucker carlson is a transphobe and a racist and a sexist.  these are not new developments.  how far from the left has john stauber traveled?

i used to respect him.  i have no use for him now.  you sort of get the feeling that, at this point, john would be defending don imus.  

it's shameful.  i have no idea what he actually believes in any more.  is he still pretending to care about the iraq war?  because he dropped that as a topic long, long ago.


it appears his left friends turned no him and he's decided to just lash out at the left ever since.


john pretends to care about climate change.  pretends? 

tucker carlson ridicules climate change.  so if john really gave a care about climate change, he wouldn't be mocking people for saying tucker needed to be avoidedl

and if he cared about climate change for real, he wouldn't be praising ron desantis. 



let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'


Tuesday, March 14, 2023.  CNN 'cleans up' history by omitting the role of the media in selling the Iraq War while Glenneth Greenwald makes clear that the greatest journalistic crime is not inviting him to appear on your program.


Maybe CNN deserves to  close shop?  If it can't serve the public, why does it need to exist?  To offer up garbage like this from Peter Bergen:

 

Two decades ago, on March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the US invasion of Iraq. Bush and senior administration officials had repeatedly told Americans that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction and that he was in league with al Qaeda.     

These claims resulted in most Americans believing that Saddam was involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks. A year after 9/11, two-thirds of Americans said that the Iraqi leader had helped the terrorists, according to Pew Research Center polling, even though there was not a shred of convincing evidence for this. Nor did he have the WMD alleged by US officials.   

Does the problem with that garbage float over everyone's head?



The press.  Working for CNN, Peter forgets to point the finger at the press.  How pathetic and shameful.  What a damn liar.  


BILL MOYERS JOURNAL documented the role of the press in the documentary BUYING THE WAR.  I'm not talking about anything hidden but lying whores like Bergen would prefer that it remain forgotten.


Here's the description of Moyers' BUYING THE WAR:


The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn’t have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on. How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 go largely unreported? “What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,” says Moyers. “How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?”

In 2004, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner. He was hailed by media stars as a “breathtaking” example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House’s claim that the war was won. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared, “We’re all neo-cons now;” NPR’s Bob Edwards said, “The war in Iraq is essentially over;” and Fortune magazine’s Jeff Birnbaum said, “It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context.”

“Buying the War” includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by The McClatchy Company in 2006.

In “Buying the War” Bill Moyers and producer Kathleen Hughes document the reporting of Walcott, Landay and Strobel, the Knight Ridder team that burrowed deep into the intelligence agencies to try and determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration’s case for war. “Many of the things that were said about Iraq didn’t make sense,” says Walcott. “And that really prompts you to ask, ‘Wait a minute. Is this true? Does everyone agree that this is true? Does anyone think this is not true?’”

In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. “I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda,” he tells Moyers. “Saddam…was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn’t believe it for an instant.”

The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. The New York Times reported on Iraq’s “worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,” but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet, his story citing the “lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons” got little play. In fact, throughout the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration’s claims were given prominence. “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in the Washington Post making the administration’s case for war,” says Howard Kurtz, the Post’s media critic. “But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions.”

“Buying the War” examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what’s changed? “More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration,” says the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus. “We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own.”

 

The media didn't do their job -- their defined job.  That wasn't an accident.  They bullied people intentionally.  Fall in line or the press would mow you over.  It was widespread.  As someone speaking out against the Iraq War since the month before it started, I heard one story after another as I visited various cities.  Early on I was doing press but I gave up on that because reality didn't make it into the corporate media.  But after the interview, people would want to confess.  An entertainment reporter for a daily newspaper in one of the top ten (population wise) cities in the country would explain guilt felt over an attack on Sheryl Crow in print.  Why did you write it?  Because the editor said to.  Why was Crow attacked?  For the most meager stand against the war.  Artists were attacked, films were attacked, music was attacked, all due to the fear that the voices against the war might break through.  


There's not a paper in the country whose hands are clean, there's not a network.  


Was anyone held accountable in the press?


Judith Miller.  Apparently, Judy not only wrote and co-wrote bad journalism, she also ran the NYT editorial board, ran the editorial boards for all papers, anchored and produced every network and cable news program and commanded the op-ed pages of every newspaper.

Everyone else is going to keep their head down for fear being held accountable.


But now, an the 20th anniversary approaches, CNN wants to pretend the press didn't have a role?  Wants to pretend the press didn't silence voices objecting to the war?  Wants to pretend they didn't platform voices cheerleading war?  The voices that they would go on to reward and still do?


In 2020, at CJR, Maria Bustillos noted:


In February 2003—a matter of days before the start of the war in Iraq—MSNBC axed Donahue’s primetime show, citing poor ratings. (Though it lagged behind its competitors on other networks, Donahue was then MSNBC’s highest-rated show.) 

It had been only eighteen months since 9/11, and so Donahue’s vocal opposition to the war was often cited in media reports as the real reason for his firing. Evidence emerged to support this contention. An internal memo leaked to allyourscreens.com’s Rick Ellis expressed fears of MSNBC becoming “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag.”

In the months after 9/11, NBC chief executive Bob Wright had “pointedly” told MSNBC news chief Neal Shapiro to challenge Fox from the right: “We have to be more conservative than they are.” Soon, “swirling graphics of the American flag” appeared on MSNBC alongside a new tagline, “America’s NewsChannel,” as Gabriel Sherman revealed years later in New York magazine.

“I was naive,” Donahue said when reached by phone recently. “I honestly thought I might survive because I was different. Nobody was knocking Don Rumsfeld except me, at the time.” MSNBC was then owned by General Electric, a huge defense contractor, and he suspects this was not an unrelated factor.



Here's Phil discussing it on DEMOCRACY NOW! in 2013.



JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Phil, I’d like to bring in another subject in terms of this whole issue, the—what happened to you, directly, as a host on MSNBC in the midst of the run-up to the war, and the responsibilities of the press in America and its—the mea culpas that have rarely been uttered by the pundits and by the journalists over what the American press did in the run-up to war.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, I think what happened to me, the biggest lesson, I think, is the—how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. This was a decision—my decision—the decision to release me came from far above. This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So, by the way, I had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn’t have Dennis Kucinich on alone. I was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost, when you look back on how—how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren’t good for business.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I had this unusual experience, Phil, in July of 2006. It was the 10th anniversary of MSNBC, and I was invited on Hardball by Chris Matthews to celebrate the 10th anniversary. I think first Brian Williams was on the show, and then the Israeli ambassador, and then I was on the show. And we were standing outside 30 Rock. It was a big deal. All the execs were on the top floor of 30 Rock, and they were all about to have a big party. And we were just coming out of a commercial.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to congratulate you, Chris, on 10 years of MSNBC, but I wish standing with you was Phil Donahue. He shouldn’t have been fired for expressing an antiwar point of view on the eve of the election. His point of view and the people brought on were also important.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I don’t know what the reasons were, but I doubt it was that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have the MS—the NBC memo, that was a secret memo—

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Oh, OK, good.

AMY GOODMAN: —that came out, that said they didn’t want him to be the face of this network, an antiwar face, at a time when the other networks were waving the flag.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Could I answer the question? I’d love to answer that question.

AMY GOODMAN: Phil Donahue is a great patriot.

AMY GOODMAN: I said there, Phil, you were a great patriot. We did have the NBC memo, the secret memo that said they didn’t want their flagship show to be you, when the other networks were waving the American flag.

PHIL DONAHUE: That’s what it said. And, by the way, that memo was written by a Republican focus group, a Republican counseling group that took the focus group and that revealed that most of the people in the focus group didn’t like me. But I saw that, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you were the most popular show.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, often we led the night for the—nobody burned the town down on MSNBC, including me. Fox just ran away with the ratings and continues to enjoy that success.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you watching MSNBC that night?

PHIL DONAHUE: I did. I saw it. And I called the kids. I said, “Hey!” I’m not sure I did it soon enough. But I certainly was grateful for—I mean, I needed the pat on the back at the time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Phil, the irony that MSNBC now is supposedly this liberal—

PHIL DONAHUE: It’s amazing, really.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —the liberal network now?

PHIL DONAHUE: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You wonder, though, if another—if another move to war came, how liberal it would remain.

PHIL DONAHUE: Well, you know, the coin of the realm is the size of the audience. It’s important to see this. When a broadcasting executive gets out of bed in the morning, before his foot hits the floor, his thoughts are ratings. “What are my ratings?” Not unlike Wall Street people, who get their—and CEOs, their first thought is the price of their stock. So, you know, what—and I was replaced by Michael Savage. So there was a desperate need to get numbers.


From the transcript to Bill Moyers' documentary:


WARREN STROBEL: The first rule of being an intelligence agent, or a journalist, and they're really not that different, is you're skeptical of defectors, because they have a reason to exaggerate. They want to increase their value to you. They probably want something from you. Doesn't mean they're lying, but you should be -- journalists are supposed to be skeptical, right? And I'm afraid the NEW YORK TIMES reporter in that case and a lot of other reporters were just not skeptical of what these defectors were saying. Nor was the Administration...

FOX NEWS ANCHOR (8/1/02): A former top Iraqi nuclear scientists tells congress Iraq could build three nuclear bombs by 2005.

CNN NEWS ANCHOR (12/21/01): Well, now another defector. A senior Iraqi intelligence official tells VANITY FAIR in an exclusive interview that Saddam Hussein has trained an elite fighting force in sabotage, urban warfare, hijacking and murder. David Rose wrote the story; he joins us now from London.

BILL MOYERS: IN VANITY FAIR'S DAVID ROSE, DEFECTORS FOUND ANOTHER EAGER BEAVER FOR THEIR CLAIMS. THE GLOSSY MAGAZINE, A FAVORITE OF MEDIA ELITES, GAVE HIM FOUR BIG SPREADS TO TELL DEFECTOR STORIES. THE TALK SHOWS LAPPED IT UP.

DAVID ROSE: (MSNBC 12/21/01) What the defector Al-Qurairy, a former brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service, told me is that these guys, there are twelve hundred in all and they've been trained to hijack trains, buses, ships and so forth...

JONATHAN LANDAY: As you track their stories, they become ever more fantastic, and they're the same people who are telling these stories, until you get to the most fantastic tales of all, which appeared in VANITY FAIR Magazine.

DAVID ROSE: The last training exercise was to blow up a full size mock up of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq.

JONATHAN LANDAY: Or, jumping into pits of fouled water and having to kill a dog with your bare teeth. I mean, and this was coming from people, who are appearing in all of these stories, and sometimes their rank would change.

LESLIE STAHL (60 MINUTES, CBS 3/3/02): Musawi told us that he has verified that this man was an officer in Iraq's ruthless intelligence service the Mukhabarat .

JONATHAN LANDAY: And, you're saying, "Wait a minute. There's something wrong here, because in this story he was a major, but in this story the guy's a colonel. And, in this story this was his function, but now he says in this story he was doing something else.

 

LESLIE STAHL: The defector is telling Musawi that in order to evade the UN inspectors Saddam Hussein put his biological weapons laboratories in trucks that the defector told us he personally bought from Renault.

LESLIE STAHL: Refrigerator trucks?

DEFECTOR: Yeah, yeah.

LESLIE STAHL: And how many?

DEFECTOR: Seven.

BILL MOYERS: LESLIE STAHL AND CBS RETRACTED THEIR STORY A YEAR AFTER THE INVASION WHEN NEARLY ALL THE EVIDENCE PRESENTED BY DEFECTORS PROVED TO BE FALSE.

VANITY FAIR'S ROSE LATER SAID HIGH GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS HAD CONFIRMED HIS STORIES. BUT THESE WERE THE VERY OFFICIALS WHO HAD BET ON CHALABI AS THEIR FAVORITE MAN O'WAR. TO THE KNIGHT RIDDER TEAM IT ALL SMELLED OF A CON GAME. 


It is dishonest, all these years later, for CNN to publish garbage like what Peter wrote.  The media was a willing partner in selling the illegal war.  Their lies destroyed their own credibility.  Their refusal, over 20 years later, to be honest about that continues to destroy their reputation.


A friend drew my attention to the great Glenneth Greenwald's put downs of Amy Goodman.  I'm not an Amy Goodman fan.  While Glenneth and others were whoring to get on DEMOCRACY NOW!, I was calling it out for refusing to cover Iraq.  Barack was now in the White House and they didn't care about Iraq.  At one point, in his first term, they brought on the idiot Raed Jarrar.  From Iraq, he'd long stopped paying attention and he gave an 'update' so wrong that Ava and I pointed out that news consumers would be better off without his commentary.  He was back on two weeks later because -- as Ava and I had pointed out -- things were heating up in Iraq even though he'd ignored them.  Now he tried to play catch up and made a fool of himself because he clearly didn't know what he was talking about.  

While a number of Green Party members who had their own sites online (longterm community members will know who I mean) stayed silent.  We called Amy out on her Green Party coverage.  She devoted a full week to the GOP convention and a full week to the Democratic Party's.  She gave a headline to the Green Party.  

We noted the influx of money into DN! and how it was corrupting.  We noted that PACIFICA needed to cancel their contract with Amy because no PACIFICA show was worth the millions PACIFICA was pumping into DEMOCRACY NOW!  And we noted that when PACIFICA paid the budget of a show, that show needed to belong to PACIFICA.  (Amy retains ownership of all episodes of DEMOCRACY NOW!)  Gal pal Leslie Cagan oversaw that robbery of PACIFICA RADIO.  

As those identified on the program as "oppressed" began contacting this site, Ava and I also took on Amy's misrepresentations of fact.  In one case, she had interviewed the mother of a child who had outlined what had happened.  What had happened was horrific enough but Amy had to 'improve' on it and toss aside all the woman had said in an interview.  Amy knew better than the mother what happened in this far from NYC story.  Or maybe Amy just thought she was better able to speak to racial violence than an African-American woman?  Maybe it was a bit of both?


Amy floated the lie -- with John Nichols -- that Hillary Clinton planned to overtake the 2004 DNC convention and steal the nomination.  That was 2004.  In 2008, she brought John Nichols on so he could lie about Hillary to pimp Barack.  AP had reported on Barack's advisor telling the Canadian government that Barack's talk about repealing NAFTA wasn't for real and he was just saying it for votes.  That was reality and truth.  And it was hurting Barack so Amy and John presented the lie that Barack didn't do that.  No, it was Hillary.  And John's story on this would be in THE NATION shortly.  The story never  ran because it never existed.  

Things get a little messy with Sally Jesse, Amy infamously once wrote.  Well they got to be flat out lies with Goody.  


Ava and I documented all of this.  Aaron Mate was part of the show then and never mentions it.  Glenn Greenwald was a regular guest and never covered it.  He kissed her ass while pretending he was independent.

I don't loathe Amy.  Maybe that's because I haven't whored?  There's nothing she's done wrong that I haven't called out.   Some are surprised that we've taken to posting her videos.  If Juan's in it and I know, it'll go up.  I knew Juan back in the day.  Which is why little boys just out of their nappies (Aaron and Max) better check themselves before they start trashing Juan.  Other than that, I'm not blindly posting any international story because she's become a war hawk.  That started with Libya -- and, again, Ava and I called her out in real time.  We mainly post her on domestic issues.  

But Glenneth thinks he proves something by posting Norman's whine.

That would ben White man Norman Finkelstein.  If you haven't already read it, Ava filled in for Trina last night with "Stacey Plaskett, the Norman Finkelstein of Congress" noting how Norman's pissing his panties over the fact that Amy Goodman prefers to have African-American voices speaking to African-American issues.  Norman made clear to Jared Ball on BLACK POWER MEDIA that Norman doesn't believe African-Americans are as smart as he is on the topic of what it is to be an African-American.

Yes, Norman is that pathetic.

Ava rightly noted that he was insulting to Angela Davis.  Apparently, her accomplishments don't matter.  All that matters was Norman wanted to have sex with her when he was a young man.

Thanks for . . . sharing?

So Glenneth grabs a section of Norman's book and informs you that the unnamed woman Norman's writing about is Amy Goodman.

I've told you forever and a day that Glenneth is a sexist.  

He proves it yet again.

Norman writes about how he was told he had harassed the woman.

"You look so young.  You could be one of Michael Jackson's playmates."

That's what Norman writes in the section Glenneth pimps.  That got Norman banned.

Good.

First off, we only have Norman's word for what he actually said and I've seen his interviews of late -- the mind is gone.  He can't get quotes right anymore -- even stuff he's quoted for years now gets mangled.

But think about the bravado when he was talking about Angela Davis and put it into the quote above and it's not as innocent as Norman wants to pretend.

Regardless, it offended a member of Amy's staff -- the woman who felt Norman was leering at her when he said it.  And she did feel he was leering at her.  I didn't have a lot of time this morning but I did make a phone call to confirm the incident took place -- the actual wording of the quote is in dispute but Norman clearly leered at her.

A creepy old man is leering at a young woman and making comments about "Michael Jackson's playmates."  I think she was right to be offended.  And Amy?  She was right to stick up for her staff.  I'm not afraid to call Amy out for anything.  If she deserved to be called out  over this, I'd be all over it -- and loving it.  

But she didn't do anything wrong.  An old man who thinks he's the White savior of a people who have never asked him to represent them has clearly begun serious mental decline.  (Ava's right that the voice is also going and Norman's aging at an accelerated rate -- exercise is important for all of us.)  


He wasn't just banned.  Amy Goodman told him he needed to apologize to her staff member that he had insulted.  I have done more talk show appearances in any given year than Norman's done his entire lifetime. There were three times I was informed I had hurt a staffer's feelings.  I was not threatened with expulsion.  But informed, I did go to the person (all men) and state I was sorry.  I didn't need to be threatened because I hadn't meant to hurt anyone's feelings and felt badly that someone had been hurt by me.  (The ones I intend to hurt never complain because they know I meant it.)  If Norman hadn't been harassing the woman, what was the harm in stating to her, "I'm so sorry about how that made you feel?"  

He was leering and stating that a woman was a "plaything."  He was offensive.  Just like his repeated use of the n-word -- over and over -- and his chuckling over it -- on BLACK POWER MEDIA was offensive.





That's the problem with the Normans -- they think they're cute and funny.  And, while young, maybe they are to some people.  But they age out of it.  And they age out of the modern world.  Norman's 69 and can't be bothered with keeping up with trends as recent as twenty years ago.  He's lost in this 'new' world.  It's his own damn fault.

I will call Amy out for many things.  I will never call her out for defending her staff.  That was an honorable position for her to take.  That Norman can't see that goes to the reality that he's aged out of present day.  For Glenneth not to see it goes to the fact that he's a sexist pig and always has been.  

Glenneth does neither himself nor Norman a favor by quoting Norman insisting that he "now fell into the same category as (Harvey) Weinstein and (Jeffrey) Epstein."  

How stupid are Greenwald and Finklestein?

They're not accused of harassment, Harvey and Jeffrey were accused of rape and assault.

The Glenneth and Norman don't grasp that difference goes to their injured male egos which are so butt hurt that they can't even see reality.  

Which would explain Glenneth describing her father as "rich" and referring to "all her siblings."  As I understand it, Amy has two brothers.  "All"?  Trina is one of eight siblings, I could see someone saying "all" with regards to them.  But to two?  Wouldn't the term be "both"?  As for rich, I understood she grew up in a well off family, not a rich one.  Maybe Glenneth is wearing wrong-side-of-the-track glasses as he envies others?  He's becoming a little more Bud Corliss with each passing year.  Someone tell David never to get a yacht with him (or go to the top of a tall building). 


Four years after Glenneth says he stopped getting invited on DEMOCRACY NOW!, he's willing to slam Amy.  What a 'truth teller,' how 'independent.'

Me?  I'll just keep singing Stevie Nicks, "Who in the world you think that you are fooling?  Well I've already done everything that you are doing."


Glenn, for those who forgot or never knew, was a cheerleader for the Iraq War.  Instead of getting honest about that, he uses his time to attack Amy Goodman not for what she said or did on air but because she doesn't invite him on as a guest anymore.  


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