Roundtable

Jim: Roundtable time again. And a lot to cover -- a lot -- including political races, a whistle-blower, the grifters and so much more.  Remember our e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com and we can also be reached via common_ills@yahoo.com.  Participating in our roundtable are  The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report;  Wally of The Daily Jot;  Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.

Jim (Con't): So let me start with Glenneth Greenwald.  We are so cruel to him, a reader e-mailed.  Why?  "For the love of God, why?"  Then adds, "Actually, you can be crueler to him, I can't stand him or his transphobia."

Dona: His transphobia is one reason we can't stand The Great Glenneth, the ultimate poser.

Jess: Another reason, b**ch doesn't know how to listen.  When he stormed out of THE INTERCEPT like the great drama queen he is, what a fool.  The outlet was refusing to publish his column.  He had in his contract, he insisted, that they had to.  Okay, idiot, you say you're an attorney but you're not smart enough to sue them for breach of contract?  What an idiot.  He's just an idiot and that's across the board.

Ty: I would agree.  And he looks awful.  That hair dye out of the box, those bad haircuts.  Is he trying to look like Suze Orman or just the stereotype of a lesbian in general?

Rebecca: That has me laughing.  I'll add that I don't care about his efforts to get sympathy as the Widow Miranda.  Back in the fall of 2022, C.I. repeatedly noted at THE COMMON ILLS, that Glenneth needed to get his ass to the hospital.  Instead, Glenneth elected to build a new talk show.  David Miranda's dead.  You weren't there for your  husband.  You were too busy trying to set up a RUMBLE talk show.  Your ego was greater than your heart.  So, chicken hawk Glenneth, you lost David Miranda.  And David was a good looking man.  You're never going to find anyone that good looking again.  And let's all hope you don't go for another huge age difference.  I don't know how you managed to land a 19 year old who was 19 years younger than you.  That's not happening again, chicken hawk.  

Kat: What is it Joe Tex and Carly Simon both sang? "You had better hold on to what you've got."  He didn't.  He didn't prize what he had.  And now he wants to wear the widow weeds and play the victim.  No.  He's heartless and he always was.

 

Jim: The reader noted that we were not Glenn fans.

Betty: THIRD or this community?  I mean Rebecca was the most sympathetic to him.  The rest of us were openly hostile.  We applauded him, for example, for the Snowden story that was dropped in his lap and the only bit of reporting he's ever really done.  But, no, we never forgot what a fake ass he was.  The original sin would be his support for the Iraq War and he compounded that by then lying for years and insisting that it wasn't true.  Poor Glenn he thought people -- and the internet -- didn't have memories.  Then there was his fake assery throughout 2007 and 2008 when he was trying to pass himself off as leftie as he rolldogged with that awful woman of FIREDOGLAKE.  She vouched for him and allowed him to pose left which was part of the whole destroy Hillary Clinton and bring in  Barack Obama as the party's presidential nominee.  

Jess: Agreed.  But for me, Mike will probably agree on this, it's his stupidity.  If you have a law degree -- Mike and I do -- and you read him, he's just so stupid.  How he ever passed a bar is anyone's guess.  He is an idiot.  He's the idiot in your class on torts, for example, quoting Ayn Rand.  He's a total idiot and it comes through in any piece he writes.  

Mike: Absolutely.  I also can't stand his smug little face.  He thinks he's made a wonderful point and does this little smirk -- like he's Rachel Maddow -- for a guy trying to act so tough and spitting on transgender people and drag queens, Glenneth sure seems to model himself after lesbians.  But he does that little smirk and I just want to punch his face in and say, "You didn't make a good point.  You don't know what you're talking about!"

Jim: Example? Anyone?  C.I.'s nodding so she'll speak in just a second.  Ava's ready to take notes.  C.I.?

C.I.: "In 1977, Carl Bernstein uncovered Operation Mockingbird, a secret collaboration between the CIA & US journalists to sell the American public on their Cold War agenda."  Shut the f**k up, you stupid idiot.  Glenneth Tweeted that.  He's so damn stupid. RAMPARTS exposed the operation in 1967.  The operation was furthered exposed and identified by name in the Congressional hearings held by the group known as The Church Committee. That would be 1975. That Congressional committee, chaired by Frank Church, was one of two Congressional committees exploring the abuses.  The other was the Pike Committee.  No one wants to talk about that. At any rate, Carl Bernstein, who I know, wrote a 1977 article for ROLLING STONE entitled "The CIA and the Media."  Long before people made it available online, we were noting in constantly in the early days of THE COMMON ILLS.  I know Carl, I know his report.  Elaine and I were spied on and we requested our files so we also know who the people posing as friends were.  At any rate, Carl's report was about the revelations of the CIA's relationship with the media.  This was a bit beyond -- a very large bit -- beyond what Glenneth maintains.  This wasn't just about selling cold war agendas.  He's a damn fool.  Can I expand on this topic? 

Jim: I'm thrilled you're talking.  Take as long as you want.

C.I.: Do we have any effect?  That's something you wonder if you're an activist.  It's a long road and it's easy to get depressed.  You're up against a system that sells war and that sells lies and you've got people who don't know a damn thing and should honestly shut their damn mouths.  One thing I like to point to if I'm feeling down is Jean Seberg.  When we started online most knew the American actress famous for BREATHLESS and AIRPORT and JOAN OF ARC among other films had been targeted by the US government.  But their understanding was completely wrong.  And left outlets were part of that.  They did not have the facts, they did not know what they were talking about. Joyce Harber was blamed for it by a bunch of idiots.  Jean didn't blame Joyce, Jean's husband didn't blame Joyce.  Joyce ran a blind item given to her by her editor at THE LOS ANGELS TIMES -- Bill Thomas.  The blind item said that she was pregnant by a Black Panther.  Joyce did not write a report about Jean.  She ran blind item.  Jean would probably have been the last guess for most Americans.  Jean wasn't famous enough.  Jane Fonda would have been the first guess -- actress, French husband and making a musical.  It was 1969's PAINT YOUR WAGON that Jean was making.  Jane was making the drama about dance marathons THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY that same year.  In addition, the public was not as aware of shooting schedules and who was making what back then.  E! did not exist.  There was not even a half hour entertainment program like ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, which didn't emerge until the 80s.  Joyce got blamed for it.  Joyce was scapegoated.  And this matters because it's not true and it matters because it was a government operation against Jean and the government used handlers to clear their name and blame Joyce.  Joyce was a gossip columnist.  The FBI had tried to plant items on many people.  Jane Fonda among them.  Joyce turned down those items and would have turned down the Jean one had it not come from her editor who vouched for the source -- without disclosing it.  Jean would miscarry as a result of press coverage.  And they got that right.  But they pinned it on Joyce.  A few people have started to get the story right.  It's taken forever.  THE LOS ANGELES TIMES still lies about it because their editor was working with the US government -- Susan King most recently lied about it.  Right before he died he was claiming not to remember who gave him the item he passed on to Joyce.  Joyce ran her blind item in May.  Jean miscarried in August.  Jean miscarried due to the CIA.  Jean was an American citizen the CIA targeted her and that's the need for the lie so that most Americans don't grasp how awful and evil the CIA is.  NEWSWEEK was overrun with CIA.  It was NEWSWEEK that published the 'news' that Jean was carrying a baby whose father was a Black Panther.  This was not a blind item.  This named Jean:

 

 Can a small-town girl from Iowa find happiness in Paris?  It seems so, despite the ups and downs of her marriage.  "It's wonderful," smiled movie actress Jean Seberg, 31, when reporters looked in on her in a hospital in Majorca, where she was recuperating from complications in her pregnancy.  "We are completely reconciled -- ironically just when our divorce papers are finally coming through."  She and French author Romain Gary, 56, are reportedly about to remarry even though the baby Jean expects in October is by another man -- a black activist she met in California.

 

 

C.I. (Con't): The 'reporter' was Edward Behr, his editor was Kermit Lansner. In addition, the liar -- who worked for the CIA -- claimed to not know anything about how that sentence -- that he wrote -- ended up being published.  And also to claim that he just included the detail and didn't mean for it to be printed.  Liar, damn liar.  He did it on purpose and he never spoke to Jean though he   quoted her saying this and that.  Repeating, he never spoke to Jean.  The whole thing was a US government operation against Jean.  The deflection onto Joyce was basically limited hangout.  'Yes, the government targeted Jean, but it was the FBI.'  The NEWSWEEK operation was overseas.  Jean was in Paris, Kermit was in Paris.  It was a CIA operation and the CIA has repeatedly used their journalists and their journalist contacts over the year to try to keep their name unattached.  And liars and whores help them with that.  How so?  By lying.  Again, Joyce's blind item did not identify Jean, Jean actually laughed about it.  And wasn't even sure that it was supposed to be her -- because she wasn't carrying a child by a Black Panther.  Jean and Romain Gary did not sue Joyce or THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.  When NEWSWEEK identified Jean, that's when she miscarried and it is NEWSWEEK that Romain and Jean sued. In France, this is known.  In France, this has always been known.  I remember being shocked to learn, in the '00s, that this lie was being repeated.  And it is a lie and because of pushback you can now see NEWSWEEK included in the story -- even when  most people want to avoid reality.  It was a CIA operation.  The US government did not like Jean Seberg's politics and they wanted to neutralize her.  Spreading the lie that she was pregnant by a Black Panther was thought to be all it would take.  Jane Fonda fought for and got an important scene in COMING HOME.  Sally is married to Bob -- that's Jane Fonda and Bruce Dern.  While he is in Vietnam, she ends up  having an affair with veteran Luke played by Jon Voight. A really important thing happens in the movie and most people miss it.  Luke and Sally are on the beach or at her place and the whole time military intelligence is following them.  Why?  Because Luke is anti-war activist.  When Bob comes home from Vietnam, how does he learn of the affair?  He's shown the photographs that were taken from the spying. All branches of the government were brought to bear on the anti-war movement.  It's a point that people often miss.  And it's overlooked that it was a CIA operation that successfully targeted Jean.  The FBI attempt only resulted in a blind item.  And they'd been working the Black Panther angle forever.  J. Edgar Hoover had authorized his agents to lie to gossip columnists about Jane Fonda -- especially outrageous statements that she made (she didn't make them) that they hoped would turn the American people against her.  Most of that never ended up in print because it was so outrageous.  But on Jean, and I'm trying to wind down --

Jim: Don't.  Take what you need.  We've covered this before and our readers love it when you bring it up.

C.I.: Doubt they will this time, they're probably thinking, "We know this already." But we're comfortable with what was done that we know of.  We're not calling out the FBI -- as a country -- for what they did to any of the people they tried to destroy for activism.  We should be.  And I don't regret calling out Janis Ian when Donald Trump was in the White House and she was suddenly an FBI fan.  Janis F**king Ian.  After what the FBI did to her family?  Outrageous.  But, with regards to sixties activists, we don't know half of what was done -- even if you made this your area of research and spent years on, you wouldn't know half of what was done.  And we exempt the CIA at our own peril.  It is not our friend.  It has not been our friend historically.  And they were the ones who targeted Jean successfully.  They publicly humiliated her and this was a shocker.  Jean with Romain but pregnant by a Black  activist!!! Romain wasn't the father?  Romain was the father of record.  Kermit claimed that he didn't mean for it to be published.  Lie.  And it didn't need to be included on background because it shouldn't have been published.  Even if it were true, it shouldn't have been published -- which is what the French court agreed to when they made NEWSWEEK pay damages.  It's a different world today but back in the 60s, if a man and woman presented him as the father of the child, nothing else mattered and printing otherwise was libel.  Edward lied at first that he put it in for background and wasn't supposed to be printed.  Confronted with the fact that he was supposed to have known about this before it went into print, he then claimed he didn't know it was in the article  and editor Kermit -- who damn well knew what libel was?  He lied that he didn't know about it even though he was the editor.  He had a fender bender, I believe on his scooter -- and missed out apparently on proof reading before forwarding the copy to the printing press.  They were working for the CIA and that's reality. This is a period that's an ugly period of the United States -- although it's probably much more common than we know.  And I'm not big on idiots lying and getting it wrong.  Glenn doesn't grasp that some of the journalists exposed by Carl in that article were CIA.  Not just linked, but they were CIA.  NEWSWEEK was very good about giving covers for CIA agents overseas -- they'd be able to pose as journalists.  ABC was another one.  Now it's pretty much everyone, but in terms of the sheer numbers -- the periodical -- magazine -- of choice was NEWSWEEK and the network of choice was ABC -- the history of ABC is a story that should be told.  It did not start out as the face of DISNEY.  It was a reactionary government backed network.  Various newspapers participated as well.  There is supposed to be a strict wall between the US government and our news media.  That's why, for example, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL fired Gina Chon as soon as they found out about Brett McGurk.  They were both married to other people when they began their affair in Iraq.  That wasn't the issue to the paper.  The issue was that Brett, a US government official, was vetting Gina's copy. Gina was reporting on Iraq and letting a US official vet her copy and do so before her editors even saw it.  A US government official was controlling the reporting.  It was outrageous.  And how corrupt is our 'left'?  CJR refused to cover it.  They did have a fit about a reporter on a local paper having an affair with a fire fighter and insisted that influenced her coverage.  And it was our own Martha who confronted them in the comments about how they were refusing to note Gina Chon when this story was much more important, the Bully Boy Bush administration had been lying to the media about Iraq and, turns out, Gina's reports from Iraq were being vetted by the US government.  Brett was determining not just what made it into print but also what information made it to Gina's editors.  I've got the tape of that firing -- as I've long noted -- and she got fired.  And good for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL for doing that.  It's a no-brainer but Gina was only one example and most of the others got to keep their head ducked down and their jobs.  And sorry that went on so long.  I am resisting the urge to note the CIA agent REUTERS gave credentials to in the '00s who was in Iraq but working for the CIA.  A friend at REUTERS outed the person which is why we noted it in real time at THE COMMON ILLS. This is not a thing of the past, this continues to this day.  Again, sorry I went on so long.

Jim: No problem.

Elaine: I'll just add that this is serious and that when someone like Glenn Greenwald distorts it, I'm not impressed.  I'm outraged.  He repeatedly fails to do the work required and then starts talking and -- hold on.  I'm thinking because C.I.'s looking me.  What?  Oh, Mike, right?  

C.I.: Yeah.

Elaine: I'd forgotten that.  Mike said that Glenn clearly didn't know the law and it was obvious when he tried to write about it.  So that's basically been the story of Glenn's life.  Yeah.  Good point. And Mike's made the point about Glenneth not knowing the law repeatedly at his site for several years now.

Cedric: If I could bring in something regarding Glenneth, I liked C.I.'s point about how everything's a conspiracy for Glenn and for John Stauber.  Nothing just happens for those two.  Everything happens because of a plot, a secret plot.

Jim: Right and that was in a roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin before people start scrolling going, "How did I miss that?"

Cedric: Right.  Everything's a conspiracy for Stauber and Glenneth.  It gets old, really quick.  Somethings are just accidents, somethings are just errors and somethings are just stupidity.  Are their government plots?  Absolutely.  But when you go to the well on that every time, it gets old and we see you as Chicken Little. 

Stan: Or Mel Gibson in CONSPIRACY THEORY!

Cedric: Right.  And, yeah, Mel got one of them right but he also got a ton wrong.  Not unlike Glenneth.

Ty: Connie L e-mailed asking when Ava and C.I. would get back to entertainment pieces?

Ava: We wish we were there.  We're not.  Each week something comes up.  This week, we're doing a new feature "Do You Know?" And our image will be the Diana Ross video for "Do You Know Where You're Going To?"  Why?  Because we're hoping to do a piece on Diana Ross.  For several weeks now, there's something we've wanted to note -- Kat even pointed that out at her site awhile back.  Diana is not getting credit for something.  One day, C.I. and I were talking and she said blank.  And I responded, "What?"  "Yeah, everybody knows that," was her reply.  I didn't.  She was already showing me where it was true -- I didn't doubt her -- but I said we needed to write about it.  We called out a hideous NETFLIX documentary that tried to blame Diana Ross for the death of Black cinema.  And not only was that claim wrong, it's also true that the documentary undersold Diana.  So since we've been unable to fold that into the news and public affairs pieces of late, we're trying to see if "Do You Know?" could be a regular feature or even just one more time so we can note an accomplishment that Diana holds.

Dona: Marcia, you had something you wanted to bring up.

Marcia: I did.  Nour Rahul (THE DETROIT FREE PRESS) reported, "Traverse City hair salon is receiving backlash after announcing on social media that its business will no longer serve transgender and queer people."  After that hideous Supreme Court decision that gave Lori Smith a pass on discrimination, we all knew this was coming.  And I just want to be on record waving the middle finger at all the fake asses -- that's Glenn Greenwald, that's Katie Halper, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal and his repulsive wife, serial plagiarist Chris Hedges, and so many others.  These people are people I will never trust or listen to again.  On the other hand, Kyle Kulinski and Sam Seder stepped up to the plate and I saw it and I stream them now because of it.  BLACK POWER MEDIA has covered the war on LGBTQ+ and so has DEMOCRACY NOW!, LEFTIST MAFIA, THE HUMANIST,  Olayemi Olurin, Karen Hunter and others deserve applause as well.  It has been a very educational experience watching LGBTQ+ members be targeted and efforts made to strip away their rights while people like Katie Halper ignored these very real issues to instead repeatedly platform Scott Ritter -- without telling her audience that he's a registered sex offender who went to prison after being convicted in court for pedophilia.  Or she's boring us with yet another segment on Roger Waters.  Am I missing something here?  I'm African-American.  I remember "Teacher leave those kids alone" being big in middle school -- child of the 70s here -- but, no, they weren't that big and there were so many groups who were bigger during the 70s -- Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, the 5th Dimension, the Commodores, Sly and the Family Stone, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Bee Gees, the Doobie Brothers and Earth, Wind and Fire come to mind easily.  Steely Dan.  Pink Floyd was old hat in the 70s.  But Katie treats him as though he's Michael Jackson and she's just listened to THRILLER for the first time in her life.

Betty: It could happen.  The Karen of the Faux Left probably hasn't listened to many Black artists.  While we're talking about her, is she banned these days?  I can't imagine JACOBIN or even Liza Featherstone putting up with Katie Halper's nonsense these days.  Who are her peers at this point?  She seems to be all alone of late, just like John Stauber.  

Rebecca: There are two points to that.  First, she's betrayed the left and we grasp that.  She's all over Jill Stein and Cornel West and   -- and that's hurt her.  The second thing is, she's lost the streams -- both on her own show and on USEFUL IDIOTS so people don't feel they need to kiss her ass anymore.  So, yeah, she is all alone.  I mean she's got the right-wing that she caters to now.  And that's on her.  She got too close to Matt Taibbi and Glenneth and Aaron.  She's with the grifters now.  You didn't see Liza Featherstone, for example, telling people to show up for a hate rally in DC where Nazis and other racists would share the stage with the likes of pedophile Scott Ritter.  Nope.  That's her crowd now.  And no self-respecting leftist is going to go for that nonsense.  Racism is wrong and we do not platform racists.  But remember, Katie now believes that race is just a construct invented to cause strife between people.  

Betty: I love being a construct.  Almost as much as I love these Karens who try to White-splain my life to me.  

Ann: Support.  The minute Katie got on that kick -- this was back when she seemed to be in love with Christian Parenti --

Rebecca: He got ugly so quick!  Physically ugly.  I wrote about that like fourteen years ago.  But for a brief fleeting moment, 2004 to 2006, he was very good looking.

Ann: If only Katie could have woken up, they might have been able to save her.  Maybe not, she's best friends with  .

Ruth: I love that link, by the way, serial plagiarist Chris Hedges.  THE NEW REPUBLIC documented how many people he plagiarized from.  Mr. Hedges is garbage.  He is a liar and he is a thief.

Jim: Do we want to talk about the lying part?

Ruth: I think Ava and C.I. covered it very well already.  But, yes, he is a liar.  He got The People's Party to agree to back Cornel West as their presidential nominee and himself as their vice presidential nominee.  Mr. Hedges was told no to that by his wife -- the only reason he did not end up on the ticket.  And then he writes this pieces and goes around to programs talking about his friend Cornel West and how this just happened and blah blah blah.  Never revealing, "Uh, actually, I was working behind the scenes, in the shadows to deceive everyone."  And he is just a liar and a fake.

Rebecca: And ugly as sin.  There was one snapshot a few weeks ago where C.I. was going off on Chrissie's jaundiced skin and bug eyes and I loved it.  He really is physically repugnant.  

Jess: He is.  But let's also remember what only MOTHER JONES, FAIR and us talk about: Judith Miller was not the writer at THE NEW YORK TIMES that established the link between 9/11 and Iraq -- the false link.  That was Chris Hedges.  He's the one who wrote that lie.  He likes to pretend like he was some truth warrior at THE NEW YORK TIMES.  Nope. 

Trina: And he was worse than Judith Miller.  Judith Miller believed the nutty stuff she wrote.  Chris Hedges knew better.  I can't stand him or his fake religion, quite honestly.  To read his books after he was fired from NYT, is to have to ignore the rank sexism and the efforts to control women.  I loved how in AMERICA: THE FAREWELL TOUR he worked up more anger at women than anyone else -- and anger over 50 SHADES OF GRAY.  That book really bothered him.  What a useless twit.

Stan: Was he fired from THE TIMES?

Ava: He would say he left.  The story there, supposedly, is that he was written up and publicly reprimanded and was then given the choice of resigning or being fired and he chose to resign.  

Jess: I've read Ava and C.I.'s piece so let me note that Hedges tried to gaslight American voters with regards to Cornel West and how he got the nomination.  And there was an e-mail asking why do we hate Cornel?  C.I. may --

C.I.: I do.  And I noted that long before this year.  I've been very clear that Tavis Smiley is a friend and I do not support the way Cornel turned his back on Tavis.  Tavis forgives, I don't.  You screw over a friend of mine and I don't forget it.  Not ever. 

Jess: And I can understand that and respect it.  But I'm a Green and my problem with Cornel stems from the fact that he's not a Green, that he's got no real ideas, that he thinks he can push ahead of Greens who have been working within the party for years and just steal our nomination.  I don't respect him and I will not give him the benefit of the doubt when Jill Stein, Ajamu Baraka and Chris Hedges tried to force my party to give him the nomination.  And they did try to force it.  And if C.I. hadn't been screaming to three people that day when Cornel and Chris were announcing he was the Green Party presidential nominee, I think he would have gotten his way.

C.I.: To be clear, the Green Party officials I was speaking with were already getting e-mails and calls the minute YOUTUBERs tried to present Cornel as the nominee.  

Jess: Okay.  But I was there when you were calling and I know what went down and you were the one repeatedly saying, "Excuse me, are you a real political party or not?  In 2016, the Democratic Party worked overtime to run off Bernie Sanders and gift Hillary with the presidential nomination.  In 2020, Barack worked behind the scenes to get everyone to announce they were bowing out so that Joe would get the support and not Bernie.  Are you that corrupt or does the Green Party really stand for something because you and I both know that you have lectured me for years with being what you say is a corrupt party."  

Ava: I think C.I. would say -- and my hand's hurting so she's taken over note taking for this transcript piece -- that she may have done her part to make sure that the officials kept their backbone but that it was the rank-and-file membership expressing their immediate outrage that this non-Green thought he should be gifted with the nomination that drove the point and made it clear that  no gifting could happen.  Rules are followed or you don't stand for anything.

Jess: But that's why I am so opposed to Cornel.  And I also can't stand Jill Stein.  She was an awful candidate in 2012 and 2016 -- at least in 2012, they forced her to take a real activist.  And, no, I don't mean Ajamu.  I mean Cheri Honkala, an for-real activist who works on real issues.  Jill Stein works on media appearences.  

Jim: Does anyone want to touch the topic of Ed Snowden?

Trina: I will.  

Dona: Okay, let me set it up first, Trina, by reading this from the Iraq snapshot today:

 

 

Let's get to the hack part.

It becomes harder and harder to defend Ed Snowden.

We defended him the minute the world knew who he was.  

And I keep seeing Ed issuing this statement or that statement and I also read his book and it's become seriously troubling.

I'm not upset with him for what he revealed.  I'm growing very angry over what he didn't reveal.

A short overview, Ed worked for the CIA and then was a contractor for the NSA.  The government was doing many illegal things.  Ed copied various documents on a drive -- see Oliver Stone's SNOWDEN which is a great movie.  He handed it over to Glenn Greenwald.  Glenn wrote about some of it and made a name for himself as a 'reporter.'  Not a columnist, a reporter.  And a big money man comes along and woos Glenneth from THE GUARDIAN to what becomes THE INTERCEPT.  And?

We were told all the documents would be reported on by THE INTERCEPT.  They have not been.  All this time later, they have not been.  Glenneth did not bother to do a damn thing.  Meanwhile, with this public promise, THE INTERCEPT attracted more whistle-blowers -- people who got burned by THE INTERCEPT who let the US government know -- intentionally or not -- that they had whistle-blower trying to come forward.  This is how Reality Winner ended up in prison.  

Now when all this whistle-blowers were suffering, Glenneth didn't say a word.  When he wrote his lengthy I-quit-THE-INTERCEPT-becaause-I'm-too-stupid-to-understand-what-breach-of-contract means, he finally noted that Reality was screwed by THE INTERCEPT.  On his way out the door and off of sugar daddy's payroll, he finally said something.

Too damn little, too damn late.

What does this have to do with Ed?

He keeps Tweeting.  Why the hell is he Tweeting?

If I were a whistle-blower and I knew that a little less than half of the revelations I had documented were reported on, if I knew that Glenneth wasn't going to cover it and that my information was now owned and buried within THE INTERCEPT?  I'd either focus on my life in Russia and stay offline or I'd be Tweeting daily about this program or that program that I tried to expose but that didn't get exposed.

I'm really losing any faith in Ed.  Again, if he'd gone radio silent, fine, I understand.  But he continues to try to be a public person and to Tweet about this and that and, honestly, Ed, you're not that interesting -- I read your autobiography, it was a snooze. You're not interesting.  But if you were authentic, then you'd be Tweeting to tell us what THE INTERCEPT will not reveal.

Or did you lose your inclination to be a whistle-blower?

He still reTweets Glenneth and he's a person begging to be misled, lied to and used and abused.

Sorry, I don't respect that.

And I have no respect for Glenneth who should be covering what was in those documents that never got reported on and should be calling out THE INTERCEPT for burying it.  But that would require acknowledging Glenn's role in all of this, his whoring for dollars.

 

 

 

Dona (Con't): Trina?

Trina: I agree 100%.  In 2014, you wanted to risk everything so the American people knew the truth.  But all we got was the partial truth because Glenneth used the rest of the records as a way to get a big payday out of FIRST LOOK which then became THE INTERCEPT.  I don't need Tweets from Ed Snowden today about this or that which is taking place in the US.  You don't live here, Ed.  If you want to Tweet, the only reason to Tweet about America, is to tell us what else you had originally planned to.  I don't need your thoughts on presidential candidates.  I never did.  You're a Libertarian and we'll never agree.  You're in Russia now.  Focus on your life there and stay off Twitter or use Twitter to tell the American people what you once swore we had a right to know.

Mike: That's a very good point.  I had an e-mail after the last roundtable where someone said I spoke too much.  Probably.  So I was trying hard not to this time.  But I agree with my mother.  Ed made this out to be the most important thing.  But we still don't know what was going on.  We know a little bit and that's it.  If it was so important then, it's still important.  And the only one censoring him today is?  Ed Snowden.  So, yeah, I agree.  I'm not an Ed Snowden devotee.  I supported his exposing government abuse.  So if he's going to censor himself on that year after year?  I've got other things to do and other things to focus on.  Thanks for the scraps, Ed.  I guess that all you had the guts to offer.  

Jim: Anybody think that's harsh?

Isaiah:  I do.  I also think it's more than justified.  The truth can be harsh and what Mike, Trina and C.I. are saying is both harsh and the truth.  Ed's undoing his own work by refusing to tell us what he insisted we had a right to know.

Jim: Okay.  Anything else?  

Wally: If I could just go back to the story Marcia brought up.  If you won't stand for the LGBTQ+ people, I don't have any use for you.  There is some 'ick' factor in the silence. They need to get over their 'ick' factor.  Do the Joe Rogans of this world think we don't find them 'ick'?  Grow up.  It's two adults in a relationship.  Grow the hell up.  There's also homophobia in the silence. People need to grow the hell up.  They also need to grasp that we are seeing your silence and what that tells us is that you're a fake ass and were we ever to need someone to stand up for us, you wouldn't be there because you weren't there as the right-wing declared war on the LGBTQ+ community.  

Ann: I want to add something to that part of the discussion.

Jim: Sure. Go.

Ann: Marianne Williamson.  She did address this war and I want to be sure she gets the recognition for that which she has earned.  

Jim: Good point.  And that's Ann, a Green, giving props to Marianne for doing the right thing that is apparently -- for too many other people -- just too much to do.  So thank you, Marianne who is running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  Okay, this is a rush transcript.  Thank you to Ava and C.I. who took notes.  I am responsible for this edition being late.  We went on vacation and I had so much fun -- especially with my dad -- that we extended it three more days.  I only got back today and they were waiting on me.  Best e-mail address to reach us at: common_ills@yahoo.com.