Note: In 2021, I’m blogging once a week, typically on weekends, but I’m more or less skipping this week (Sunday Jun 27 through Saturday July 3) due to travel. This entry, something of a placeholder, is number 26 of 52. We’re halfway through the year! So far, counting today’s non-entry entry as a missed post, I’ve missed only 3 posts in 2021.That means halfway through 2021, I’ve posted to my blog 23 times so far this year!
Photo by me, 23 June ’21, from Mt Emily Recreation Area, NE Oregon
I’m travelling this weekend, so I’ll get back to blog-posting in earnest next weekend. In the meantime, I’ll leave any readers out there with two videos.
First is the 34-second TV promo from the 1990s for a Season 3 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Hollow Pursuits.” So far, of Star Trek — I grew up in a Star Wars household, so I didn’t watch the better franchise until recently — I’ve completed The Original Series, The Animated Series, the first five movies, and the first three seasons of The Next Generation, and besides the wonderful fourth movie The Voyage Home (better known as the one with the whales), “Hollow Pursuits” is my favorite Star Trek story. I think the episode, which introduces the Lt. Barclay character, is amazing, but you wouldn’t know it from the hilariously ridiculous promo clip, which focuses on things other than the thought-provoking and empathy-generating story. Which I’ll admit, plot-wise, is over the top, in that so-bad-it’s-good campy way. Don’t be fooled by the goofy promo clip! Watch the actual episode someday, especially if you’re interested in mental health topics. It says a lot about psychosis and recovery: just replace the external, computer-created Holodeck room with a holodeck of extreme fantasy/delusion/escape inside a person’s head, but in either case keep the important help of social support and meaningful work.
“She’s accelerating out of control!”
Second is the music video, about five and a half minutes long, for the song “Johnny & the Sea” by one of my favorite musicians working today, Jordan Reyne. Here’s her Wikipedia entry. I could have picked any number of her songs, but while I was travelling through eastern Washington state and Northeast Oregon recently, “Johnny & the Sea” repeatedly came to my mind. I like her lyric lines “It’s through nausea and fear that we come to know how we are made” and “You forget how to swim once your life doesn’t throw you too far.” If you like the song, I recommend checking out the rest of her music, for instance the whole album that has “Johnny & the Sea” as its opening track, 2012’s Children of a Factory Nation. I love so many of the songs on that disc (to use an outdated term), but if you’re in a hurry, maybe check out “Wait (I Run Too Slow).” Or, for a more recent song of hers, listen to 2017’s “Birth Ritual.” What sticks out to me in her music are her vocals, her lyrics, her compositional style, and how well she plays her acoustic guitar (idk how she manages to get that bright percussive attack sound!). So yeah, everything about her music :-) She is her own person with her own unique style.
“none of these is as intimate with Earth as those who live on, live with, breathe and drift in its seas” — Theodore Sturgeon
Maybe I should someday post to my blog reviews of Star Trek, and more reviews of music…
Note: In 2021, I’m blogging once a week, typically on weekends. This is entry 25 of 52. All the nature photos in this post were taken by me on 23 June 2021 at the Mt. Emily Recreation Area (MERA) in northeast Oregon’s Union county, on/near the Red Apple and Rock Garden trails.
Note (added early July ’21): Regarding the media noise around “critical race theory,” readers might find this hyperlink worth looking at: https://pastebin.com/Ex3AmsEz. It’s a collection of a hundred or so thought-provoking questions on the topic of race, for instance: “How many races do you think there are? What are they?“
This week’s post will be a little shorter than usual due to travel. I’m even going to arrange into quick separate paragraphs my observations of northeast Oregon, where I’ve been staying for nearly a week now, mostly in the towns of La Grande and Pendleton. That’s after a few days in central Washington state, namely East Wenatchee and the Tri-Cities.
Not so good stuff about NE Oregon
Rightwing Signs of the Times) La Grande, Pendleton, and surrounding areas are predominately right-wing, with very few exceptions. Most of the exceptions are in the places you’d expect: the public libraries, the shops dedicated to bicycling, the hiking stores, and so on. In such rare blue/green oases, individuals mask up against coronavirus. Elsewhere, almost no one wears masks whatsoever. Some of the signs and bumper stickers I’ve seen have included: “Hey NFL, we don’t kneel here”; “Welfare: It’s not a career”; and “Trump 2024!” Despite such macho braggadocio, almost all the adult males in the area are visibly out of shape, dramatically so. There’s a health food store or two in Union county, and a farmers market, but generally throughout the region, most of the food offerings aren’t healthy. I guess the fast food and psychopharmaceuticals, in wide use across the country, don’t care what political words come out of someone’s mouth when they’re inflicting metabolic syndrome and other adverse effects on human bodies. Can’t do a wingnut march for Trump if you’re melting in a global warming heat wave while poisoned by corporate drugs and pseudo-food.
Radio Free Crazy) Meanwhile, stations on both the AM and FM airwaves in northeast Oregon are currently railing every single day against “critical race theory,” the right-wing boogeyman of the month. At one point, a radio show host drove himself into a rabid fury ranting against the Federal Aviation Administration recommending in a 217-page June 2021 report that the agency use genderless language (for instance, “aviator” instead of “airman”; “flight deck” instead of “cockpit”). The report argues an inclusive environment would draw more employment candidates, including women, into the industry. Although the news item is real, the examples (aviator, flight deck) that the host harped on felt really reheated from the distant past, given this 1992 George Carlin skit on a similar subject. The radio host claimed that the proposed language-changes would only attract coddled weaklings to the airline industry, thus jeopardizing passengers’ safety since during turbulence or other hazards, the coddled weaklings would not be able to fly with sufficient machoness, yadda yadda. The host also said the F.A.A./news articles were citing nonexistent or secretive research, but the 217-page report footnotesplenty of research on aviation employment trends and related topics. It’s wild that following the changes to defamation and fairness media laws in the United States over the past century, someone like the conservative radio “news” host can just say completely false things (e.g., that the research was nonexistent or secretive) and get away with it, no consequences at all, except when the public delivers them, such as via shunning.
Bumfuzzled Jesus Swords) There’s also a lot of that old-time religion in northeast Oregon. On the streetsides stand churches for every mainstream Christian denomination. Religious pastors preaching on the radio. Pastor Jeff Wickwire, who runs a church in my birth town, Fort Worth Texas, managed to follow me to northeast Oregon yesterday via the airwaves, his voice jabbing at me like a pointed finger out of my vehicle’s speakers. Wickwire was warning of protests and riots that “no one stops” and that make churchgoers “feel hunted.” The answer to the civil unrest, Wickwire explained, is to “Run to Jesus! Run to Jesus!” for “when we are confused, He is not confused,” and indeed, “when we are bumfuzzled, He is not bumfuzzled.” In an October 2018 sermon, Wickwire states that homosexuality is “against natural law, flying in the face of God’s intent for the two genders.” That makes me wonder if maybe Wickwire himself is secretly bumfuzzled… Also, I think it was Wickwire who a few days ago on his radio show (I’ve been listening to the radio here out of curiosity) discoursed at length about how the physical Bible book is a metaphorical armory, and the sayings of God within it are metaphorical swords. So when the Christian soldier is confronted by a heathen like myself, the Christian is supposed to strike with a sword by quoting a Bible passage. So that’s why when I get long messages from Christians, they’re studded with quotations followed with scriptural citations in parentheses. I just thought it was an odd tic, like maybe the Christian letter-writer just personally enjoyed or found comfort in writing out the quotations and citations, but now I know there’s a belief system behind it, the whole idea that a saying of God from the Bible is powerful enough and persuasive enough to be a sword to use in battle with unbelievers. “But I still don’t care!” (The sayings of Douglas, blog post 26 June 2021).
Prison) I have some photos and thoughts to share about Pendleton’s federal prison, the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, but that content will have to wait for another day.
Good stuff about NE Oregon
What You See Is What You Get) Locals in northeast Oregon are really lacking in guile, which is very refreshing after spending most of my time in the past five-six years living in a major urban city (Seattle), where undertones of rent, roommates, and careers seem to haunt conversations, too often adding a “war of all against all” vibe to interactions. I’ve been asking northeastern Oregonians highly unusual, highly specific questions for my fiction research, and — with the exception of some wary military veterans in the airport bar (I assume they were following longstanding military training to regard strangers’ questions with caution) — the NE Oregon residents have been free with their answers. They sometimes say rightwinger one-liners that would drop the jaws of someone not accustomed to red states, but at least you hear their garbage upfront and direct. Unlike liberals denying their hypocrisies, the red Oregonian locals aren’t particularly duplicitous. They seem not to have any reason to expect threats. When I said I work for Seattle Public Schools, one said, “Any place would be better than there!” and then continued on with rural friendliness. That being said, after Trump’s four years, people should know better than to treat these extreme reactionaries as laughable curios. They’re people, too. And they have significant political power. See for instance this May 2021 NYT article about the Greater Idaho Movement. And I imagine they’d treat me very differently if I weren’t a white guy. Hispanics are the largest minority here, but I’ve seen extremely few of other minorities in this region known for white supremacy.
News From Mother Nature) Nature in northeast Oregon is amazingly beautiful. I’ve enjoyed great views of the Grande Ronde Valley, and on Wednesday I went running on the Red Apple and Rock Garden trails in the Mount Emily Recreation Area. The whole time on those trails, I encountered no one else. You can see my photos of the area in this post, and you can see even more of my photos of the area on my tiny instagram: https://instagram.com/omgdouglaslucas. I never had an instagram account until a little over a year ago. I was applying to some ProPublica paid-job or other; the application asked me to provide the URL of my instagram account, so I created one from scratch. Probably “omg[name]” is not what ProPublica The Proper had in mind, but whatever, not getting the gig is probably for the best: I can’t imagine having to use language I strongly disagree with, like “American” instead of “USian.”
I’m Getting Sleepy) I’ve more thoughts about good stuff in this region, but they’ll have to wait for another day. Also, thankfully I’m obtaining some great research info for my fiction-writing project, so that’s nice.
News blasts: Belarus and United States
Belarus. My blog post last week includes a news blast that quickly explains the situation in Belarus. I’d just like to add this week two youtube embeds that provide more information from the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. The first is just under six minutes in length. It’s Tsikhanouskaya’s TED talk from November 2020 entitled “How to be fearless in the face of authoritarianism.” She talks about how, to lose fear of authoritarians, members of the public have to show up for each other, by supporting one another, by attending rallies, and so on. It reminds me a little of Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the section where Gandhi describes how there’s a threshold point where the public loses fear of being jailed. Once they no longer fear jail, great things can be accomplished. I do think the jails in India during his day were not mammoth in size and scope like U.S. prisons are today, which makes a huge tactical difference. Still, the point Tsikhanouskaya made last November is somewhat similar to Gandhi’s back then. In order to lose their fear of authoritarians, people have to be very strongly connected with each other and must stand up for themselves and others. Being strongly connected with others doesn’t necessarily mean being an extrovert or cooperating directly with others. You can be connected with others via memories, re-reading old letters, having photos of loved ones, connecting with nonhuman things such as houseplants, Nature, etc. You can collaborate indirectly as in stigmergy. Now, the opposite of what Tsikhanouskaya (and Gandhi) say would be the attitude a friend JG—– expressed to me several times, when he kept asking me why I find whistleblowers worth reporting on. It was along the lines of, be smart, don’t stick your neck out, that’s the only way to go through life, else prison or other bad consequences. That attitude is also expressed by a character in Ursula K. Le Guin’s story “The Finder.” Her novella tells of a young man with special powers who, unusually, also has a strong sense of ethics. Like his father, he works as a shipbuilder, but when he learns a ship he’s tasked to build will be used by slavers, he no longer wants to be complicit and tries to figure out a way to interfere with the ship’s construction. Yet his father warns him: “You think I can turn the King’s [work] order down? You want to see me sent to row with the slaves in the galley we’re building? Use your head, boy!” I find JG—– and the fictional father’s emphasis on “reason” and “logic” strange. Anyway, the father is pointing out a tactical concern, that if either of them disobey, they’ll be caught, and in fact, the protagonist, despite scheming a clever way through the dilemma, does get caught for disobeying. So the tactical concerns do matter. But it’s interesting how little, offline, I hear people discuss ethical dilemmas beyond what to do in quarrels with friends (which are important too). I think this is because people have become comfortable with being essentially treated like zoo animals in cages, go to paid-job, sit in desk, come home, watch television, go to bed, repeat. Inside, though, they still have a spark wanting liberation; everybody does, and it just gets suppressed to varying degrees in varying ways. So while showing people, comfortable with their cages, something like this Tsikhanouskaya TED talk, they find various ways of ignoring or changing the subject. Yet they consume fiction where, for instance, the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew goes around saving the day (in some episodes, anyhow). Imagine if a message of despair, pleading for rescue, came from a planet, and listening to it, Captain Picard just shrugged and said “Who cares? I’ll be in the Holodeck pretending to be a detective, fuck them” and the Enterprise starship just flies right past the pleading planet. Audiences would revolt. And yet they accept the same of themselves and each other in real life. Fiction seems to keep the spark alive, but then too often the spark doesn’t catch fire. We don’t discuss this whole topic enough, I think, in the United States. The second video is from 9 June 2021. It’s about 110 minutes long. It’s the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing on US Policy on Belarus. The first 60 minutes or so consist of the US ambassador to Belarus Julie Fisher talking with the foreign relations committee. From about 72 minutes in, to the end, it’s primarily Tsikhanouskaya talking with them, though some portions of the hearing focus on Radio Free Europe president and CEO Jamie Fly. It’s annoying to hear the US senators wax on, throughout the hearing, about protecting press freedom and civil liberties, when the US abridges those domestically and elsewhere so frequently, but simultaneously, the tankie position influenced by Russian state media that anything the US supports — in this case, free elections replacing the dictatorship in Belarus, Tsikhanouskaya’s chief goal — must be bad, is parochial brain damage resulting from not seeing a globe with 190+ countries and shifting alliances beyond a 1960s Cold War bipolar order, where any particular country can do horrible things and sometimes take good positions also, if only out of self-interest. It’s like: rightwingers on the northeastern Oregon airwaves insist the US is the uniquely best country; tankies insist it’s the uniquely worst country, and neither really engage with topics on their own merits. On June 21, joint sanctions were imposed by the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States against the Putin-protected Belarusian dictator Lukashenka. Of course, while things look increasingly optimistic for Belarus and Tsikhanouskaya now, things might go bad in the future, but hopefully not. In the Senate hearing, Tsikhanouskaya concisely says “I would like to ask to add to the record an expanded list of suggested steps on the situation in Belarus by the US and other nations. These actions would help build up the momentum to launch a transition to elections, exactly what Belarusians demand. Otherwise, Lukashenka and other dictators around the world will feel impunity to freely break international norms to crush their opponents.” Ending impunity is the important point. My quick search didn’t turn up her expanded list of suggested steps; anybody have a link for it, if it’s available? If not, it’d make a good FOIA request. Also in the hearing, Senator Chris Coons (R-DE) asks her “I’d be interested if I might, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, in hearing from you about how you assess the extent of Russian influence in Belarus; how exactly it’s exerted; and how Russian support of the Lukashenka regime is changing Belarusian civil society at this time.” She answers: “At the moment, the Kremlin supports Lukashenka diplomatically, politically, and, you know, financially somehow. But I have to say, we want friendly relations with all the countries, including Russia, and propaganda is trying to show us that we are against Russia but this is not true. We are against dictatorship. And it depends on the Belarusians which pathway they will choose in free and fair elections.” Her reference to a pathway might refer to the Belarus-Russia union state, but I’m not sure. I wish she had said more, especially about that “you know, financially somehow” part!
United States – Current legislation to repeal the 2002 AUMF. In this news blast, I’m mostly summarizing the analysis article “Are US ‘Forever Wars’ about to end? US House pushes to repeal the 2002 war authorization” by YAC.news, as well as this Defense News article and this WaPo article. The US constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress. However, that power began eroding in 1991 with the Gulf War-era Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). In 2001, following 9/11, a second AUMF was passed — with only one federal legislator voting against, Barbara Lee (D-CA) — that moved the power to launch wars from Congress to the presidency, more or less completely. This legal magic was partly accomplished by reams of paperwork that changed going after terrorists from happening under a law enforcement paradigm to happening under a war paradigm; in other words, instead of arresting terrorists, they became military opponents. (Terrorists were occasionally military targets prior to 9/11, but usually they were considered law enforcement suspects, not military enemies.) In 2002, a third AUMF was passed revolving around the US plans to lead an invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a US government lie. So, three AUMFs, legally cited in the US as justification for Bush II-era electronic mass surveillance, Obama-era drone strikes, kidnappings, and torture, and Trump-era occupation of Kurdish-controlled Syrian oilfields and assassination of Iran’s top commander Qasem Soleiman. The AUMFs are the legalese-magic justification for the whole permanent war thing, where US presidents are constantly sending JSOC special forces and who knows who else (maybe these?) into whichever country, without having to explain it to Congress (who are in theory the public’s representatives; in other words, the AUMFs provide for the White House launching secret wars without having to justify them to the US public). Some of my relatives were born shortly after 9/11, so the United States has technically been at war, often secretly, in multiple countries, against the vague noun “terror,” for their entire lives. Massive Pentagon and spy agency budgets, Congressional legislators suddenly discovering their own country has a thousand-something troops in, say, Niger, and so on. All while the public is blasted with propaganda about the need to unquestioningly worship soldiers, who agree to kill strangers based on the orders of other strangers, sometimes trusting that this will all somehow defend their loved ones, proof not much provided. So it’s pretty remarkable that earlier this month, on June 17, the US House voted on a bipartisan basis to repeal the 2002 AUMF. The 2002 AUMF is no longer relevant since the Iraq war officially ended in 2011 and the Saddam Hussein regime has not existed since 2003. The Senate is supposed to take up the matter in mid-July; here are some more details about the upcoming Senate vote, with the thorny matter being getting enough votes from Republican senators, who typically do love them some war. I’m seeing divided commentary regarding how much repealing just the 2002 AUMF, with the other two staying in force, would actually change things, but for sure it’d at minimum be a good start, if only symbolically, to reigning in the expansive and secretive White House war powers and returning to Congress the authority to declare war, meaning launching a war has to once again be debated publicly. Imagine that.
In the past few months as part of journaling and mental health recovery, I’ve been slowly creating a timeline of my life and the lives of those relevant to me. It starts with birth dates for some of my great-grandparents and continues to the present. It looks like the below excerpt (but here I’m adding redactions and obfuscating some specifics, for privacy):
Aug 24, 1998 (age 1█.█): Private therapist Dr Barry Norman refers me to private psychiatrist Dr Tom Murphy ██ ██, 1999 (age 1█.█): A sibling of mine [name] and [name] marry in █████, Texas ██ ██, 2000 (age 1█.█) A nephew of mine [name] is born in ████, Texas
I hope to add many, many more entries into the timeline as the years go on; it’s still pretty sparse.
All the same, I’ve learned quite a lot from building the timeline .txt document brick by brick to the degree I have. For instance, I never realized the Apollo 11 landing — when humans first walked on the moon — was less than a decade and a half away past-ward from my birth. Previously, I’d pictured families watching astronaut Neil Armstrong utter his famous line from the lunar surface on televisions in homes that must have looked like Revolutionary Road 1950s stage sets. But instead, Neil & Buzz & Michael Collins did their celestial thing quite close to when I showed up on this particular planet (in my current bodily form, anyhow).
I also hadn’t ever deeply thought about some pretty key forces beyond my control that explain my life to a powerful extent, such as the event/date when my biological parents married (those youthful Southern marriages, those multigenerational Southern novels!). I also hadn’t ever seen the important temporal proximity some dates have to one another. For example, imagine a big medical event (e.g., a surgery) happening soon after another event (e.g., a breakup with a romantic partner). That temporal connection can hold clues explaining what exactly was going on for a person in a certain time frame. Unfortunately, life dates are typically siloed by category, with medical events stored in one file, and breakups as entries punctuating a separate social media profile, the two categories never to meet. Yet we live through our various events at once, holistically, so to understand ourselves, our world, each other, we gotta bring together into one timeline the disparate dates … Or, it helps provide a sense of multigenerational continuity to discuss with parents, while they’re still alive, what their wedding was like, and how their marriage played out (sadly, it seems people typically discuss weddings far more than marriages). Instead, a crucial event like a wedding too often remains something that never even enters the offspring’s consciousness. You get the point.
Or maybe people don’t get the point: often, when I ask others if they remember whether a certain event happened on this date or that date, they frequently don’t remember, not just the topic I’m inquiring about, but their entire lives: “it’s all a blur,” they say. That doesn’t help a person steer! Here’s an analogy. If you’re trying to cook a meal, taking food from unprepared to prepared, and you don’t even know what kind of food it is that you’re planning to cook — steak? broccoli? quinoa? bread? — then you don’t know if you need a grill, a steamer, an oven, or what. So if you are, to yourself, “all a blur,” and you’re having mental health problems that you’re trying to improve, be it alcoholism or manic psychosis or procrastination or anything else, then how are you going to select what to do to take a blur from troubled to firing on all cylinders?
I understand, though. The notion of putting together something like a personal/family timeline — which a mentor once suggested to me over a decade ago, couching it in terms of writing a memoir — used to feel too threatening/overwhelming. So I rejected such advice fairly quickly, not even knowing that I was feeling threatened and overwhelmed (no such thing as “social emotional learning” in Fort Worth private schools, unlike Seattle Public Schools, not to say that public education SEL is fantastic necessarily). Although, when I resisted helpful suggestions, or resist them even nowadays, I still had/have awareness of what’s good for me. When encountering a great idea that at first was too threatening/overwhelming (such as going vegan, which I initially learned about in philosophy undergrad), I usually did have the sense (and even would tell the other person aloud), as I was pushing the concept away, that I did aspire to eventually implement it (I did go vegan years later: here have a beet root smoothie). The lesson is, if someone recommends a beneficial possibility, but it feels overwhelming, yet you know there’s merit to it, say so, and return to it later once stronger.
What people are really talking about when they say their lives are “all a blur” is dissociation. That was an impossible-to-understand vocab word for me, for a long time. I think dissociation can be defined in two ways: how it appears from a first-person, psychological perspective, and how it operates, analyzed from a systemic, sociological point of view. In the daily first-person navigating through life, dissociation means tuning out, especially in the face of overwhelming emotion or distress (unless emotion/experience has been dulled by any combo of causes ranging from garbage quasi-food, to psychopharmaceuticals praised upon their introduction by the medical industry as chemical lobotomies, to exhausting paid-jobs, to widespreadpoisonouspollution). In the social-structures sociological perspective, dissociation means being severed from companionship, allies, society, or being torn apart from our internal selves that are composed of interactions with the world/others (that might seem contradictory, how can a self be made of interactions?, but what exists that’s not interactive? I’ll wait). Torn apart from those internal interactive selves, forced to serve corporations and their ancillaries. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans in small tribes chilled and gathered berries and did horrible things too, but this whole deal of staring almost every waking hour into glowing screens answering nonstop Microsoft Teams notifications about stupid comments that don’t even relate to the reader in order to obtain imaginary numbers in an abstract bank account to hand over the fictitious digits to a typed-up rental corporation that exists merely on a piece of paper, or else… yeah, I mean, next to the enjoyable experience of climbing across rocks on a beachside in the summer sun (leave out this Seattle pollen tho plz), how dissociated, torn apart from our relationships with Nature and our interests, is remote paid-work, resulting in such distress that we mentally tune out from our own lives, reducing them to “all a blur”?
Creating the timeline has made me feel much more connected with both my own life and the generations of lives around me, past and future — and the helpful connection is in large part because the timeline is factual. Before the timeline, I knew my father was a general practitioner doctor. What I should make of his occupation, though, became the commodified/co-opted province of a stream of (conventional) psychiatrists, therapists, caseworkers, well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) friends trying to help as I flailed about, asking for advice (what Dr Terry Lynch calls ‘other-referral’), not knowing what to do next since the material from which I was working, namely myself, was “all a blur.” I had to listen to these myriad other people’s ever-changing, vague, inconsistent opinions on what I should think of my father and his profession. Now, however, I have the factual bullet-point on the timeline: on such-and-such date, my father at age such-and-such graduated with honors from such-and-such medical school in such-and-such city, etc. It might not seem like much, but it actually is quite a lot. In our supposedly post-fact world, it’s a solid fact of the universe that nobody owns and nobody can run their mouth telling me what it means and by the way, cough up hundreds of dollars per session and swallow corporate tranquilizers that shrink brains, or else. Given a beneficial timeline listing facts, I can see why it is sometimes said that hard news should clearly be separated from opinion, or why inquiries, tribunals, and other investigations often strive to focus strictly on the facts alone. Facts can speak for themselves.
I hope that I, and others, will add corporate wrongdoing to the timelines we make, since corporate crimes are extremely impactful on our lives and preventing us from changing in the ways we want to change, developing in the ways we want to develop. I’m curious what corporations poisoned environments familiar to me and those close to me, and when, and how. It’s interesting to me that many years ago, when I was researching the Stratfor emails and that Austin-based spy firm’s clients who were operating in Mexico, I created a lengthy timeline about Mexican history to help me understand that country — timelines are a typical tool journalists and researchers use to understand the world — but I didn’t have the wherewithal to make a timeline to understand myself, or how corporations in my own city were impacting me and those I cared about. Thankfully, it’s becoming much more acceptable to talk loudly about corporate crimes, and even to talk about avenging them. I remember a decade ago, in the Occupy Wall Street era, acquaintances (whether online or in person) would jump on me for just talking about (let alone talking positively about) sit-ins or take-the-highway protests or writing prisoners, etc. Nowadays, while quite a significant degree of ostracism still results from praising resistance fiercely, the Trump experience has made even the comformists/cowards/careerists hesitant to publicly diss activists. It’s not just Texas vs. Seattle, either, judging from what I see Texan friends/acquaintances saying online. There’s still much more improvement to be had, whether a lot at once or baby steps. Don’t care too much, don’t think too hard, get a job any job, you know there really is a lot of good television lately that transforms lives into unperceivable blurs just won’t cut it. Because military dictatorship may well be coming to this country next, or USians might learn to engage consciously with other countries, not just in the ways they unknowingly already do. And finally, sensible action feels better than anxiety.
News blasts
United States. On August 31 in Dallas, a Marine asked military general & Trump advisor Michael Flynn “why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here” i.e. the Tatmadaw military overthrew and arrested the democratically elected civilian government in that country last February. The crowd cheered. Flynn answered, “It should happen here.” The crowd cheered again. 30-second video of this embedded below. Be prepared to stop these oligarchs (naming names).
Short video shows Michael Flynn saying the military should establish a dictatorship in the United States
Also regarding Texas-based Elon Musk, a four-minute Anonymous youtube video, uploaded yesterday by original source anonews.co and amplified today by YAC, drags the shit out of the techbros’ favorite billionaire and his inflated reputation. Optional subtitles included.
Myanmar. The News Blasts in my last two posts included Myanmar. If you’re unfamiliar with what’s happening in that country, you might want to review those posts before continuing with this bullet point. Back on May 26, US resource corporation Chevron and French resource corporation Total suspended cash dividend payments that would have gone to the junta, but that’s only 10% of the revenues from the country’s Yadana natural gas pipeline project that Total, Chevron, Thailand’s publicly owned PTT, and Myanmar’s publicly owned MOGE (Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise) are partners in, so the suspension is merely a step in the right direction. On June 1, Myanmar’s military re-opened schools by force, even though much of the public is far more interested in toppling the junta to restore democracy and/or the National Unity Government (declared terrorist and treasonous by the junta). But the presence of tanks and other regime forces during the re-opening did not stop students from protesting the “military slave education system.” Youth, many Generation Z, engaged in flash protests instead of going to school, criticizing the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) and expressing sympathy with the country’s oppressed Rohingya people, against whom a genocide has been waged. Youthful protestors also showed their disapproval of the junta holding students captive, one sign reading “Are you reopening schools for dogs to attend after you have been jailing students?” Propaganda photos emerged of soldiers replacing teachers as kids supposedly learned happily, but in many cities, schools were actually largely empty. Since June 1, strikes, protests, and boycotts have continued. Meanwhile, due to transportation costs, cash shortages, and general instability, food prices in Myanmar are skyrocketing, plaguing people with worry. And the junta keeps restricting Internet access. However, passionate people in Myanmar still find ways around the censorship, spreading information online. Hopefully those with corporate media platforms in the U.S., such as the commentariat and literati, will admit they should assist in amplifying those brave voices. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — member states are Brunel, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam — has been looked to for months by the United Nations, western countries, and China as a potential mediator between the Tatmadaw and the National Unity Government, but on June 4, because ASEAN was meeting with the junta rather than the ousted government, the National Unity Government’s foreign minister Moe Zaw Oo, said “We have little confidence in ASEAN’s efforts. All of our hopes are gone.” Moe Zaw Oo’s streamed press conference was disrupted by the junta’s censorship of the Internet. That same day, deposed Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been under house arrest in the capital city of Naypyitaw, was moved by the junta to an unknown location, according to her legal team. The National Unity Government’s defence minister, Khin Ma Ma Myo, did say, referring to ethnic armed militias, “The NUG government will call for a war at some point. When that time comes, we must work together to defeat the junta.” Many urban protestors are moving to rebel-held jungle to train for that possible war. A two-minute AFP News Agency video is embedded immediately below.
AFP video of urban protestors now training in rebel-held jungle
Junta propaganda picture of soldiers replacing teachers. Source
Junta propaganda picture of soldier showing schoolkid a gun. Source
Students in Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, protesting the “military slave education system” on June 1 Source
June 1 protest in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, with three-finger democracy salute. Source
More June 1 protestors in Yangon. Note “Gen Z” on sign. Source
Youth in Yangon’s Insein Township on May 31 protesting the re-opening of school when students remain jailed for opposing the junta. Source
Nigeria. On June 1, the Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, a general who ruled the country in the early ’80s through a military coup, tweeted multiple times in reference to pro-Biafra separatists. Buhari’s Trump-like, bombastic tweets accused the separatists of “evil objectives” and seeking the “destruction of the system” and attacking electoral offices along with critical infrastructure. Buhari tweeted “Whoever wants the destruction of the system will soon have the shock of their lives.” One tweet in particular, pictured below, read “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.” On June 3, Twitter, citing its terms of service against abusive behavior, removed that particular Buhari tweet. On June 4, Buhari, again like Trump, retaliated by throwing a fit and trying to shut down Twitter, attempting to prevent Nigeria’s 200 million inhabitants from accessing the microblogging service that’s t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶s̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ an important forum humanity has t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶l̶o̶b̶a̶l̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶m̶o̶n̶s̶ for public discussion (̶r̶e̶d̶d̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶t̶u̶b̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶l̶o̶g̶o̶s̶p̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶l̶o̶s̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶h̶i̶n̶d̶)̶. Ironically, the Nigerian Ministry of Information and Culture announced the Twitter black-out … on Twitter. The ministry’s head, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, complained that Twitter was inciting violence and spreading “fake news.” Some Nigerians using VPNs have been able to circumvent the Twitter shutdown, and continue to do so, defying Abubakar Malami, the country’s Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, who ordered the “immediate prosecution” of any Nigerian members of the public accessing Twitter. Buhari’s efforts at shutting down Twitter have drawn widespread international condemnation. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a leader of pro-Biafra separatists, also had his June 2 tweet firing back at Buhari, pictured below, removed by Twitter today, for terms of service violation. Articles for more info and context include two at Reuters and one at the New York Times. However, you can also search Nigeria’s plentiful newspapers (written in English) by going to https://news.google.com and typing in a search term, e.g. “twitter”, followed by site:.ng to restrict the search to news sites with the top level domain for Nigeria.
The tweet by the Nigerian president that Twitter deleted
“His” people? Anyway, this is the tweet by the pro-Biafra separatist leader that Twitter deleted today
— Fed Min of Info & Cu (@FMICNigeria) June 4, 2021
China. 32 years ago today, the unidentified protestor since nicknamed “Tank Man” blocked Chinese tanks leaving Tiananmen Square where pro-democracy activists were massacred, a subject the Chinese Communist Party still censors with the ongoing help of Microsoft and other big tech companies. CCP atrocities continue, including the current genocide of the Uyghurs. An estimated million Uyghur people are being held by the Chinese government in concentration camps. Embedded below, just under three minutes of footage of Tank Man, the iconic photo of him, and a more zoomed-out image showing just how many tanks he stood in front of.
Note: I published this review on 31 May 2020. It received substantial attention, including more than 1,300 retweets of my tweet announcing the post. Now, on 7 June 2020, I’m updating the review a little. Adding a table of contents, the #OpDeathEaters goals, links to research on RMS and Bill Gates and others, more stuff, plus some copyediting and proofreading. Thanks!(Note also that today 7 June 2020 it’s reported that the United States Department of InJustice is demanding the United Kingdom hand over Prince Andrew to appear in court over Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking links.)
Table of contents
Intro – #OpDeathEaters trending; the common denominator for street executions by cops and child rape by pedosadists is impunity
What “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” does sorta right
What “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” does wrong
Practical and realistic solutions to impunity
Recommended reading
Epstein survivor Maria Farmer: “2020 is the year when…”
Intro
Today (31 May 2020), #OpDeathEaters trends on Twitter. The three tweets in just a bit below, all regarding the trending, address how the hashtag and Anonymous operation, founded in 2014 by Heather Marsh as a continuation and amalgamation of earlier ops she’d previously initiated (#OpGabon, #OpRohingya, #OpCanary, #OpGTMO, as well as others), pre-dated the Pizzagate and QAnon efforts to drown it out, and like previous waves, gains traction now.
Illustrating academic credibility, here are excerpts from criminology professor Dr Michael Salter’s book published by Routledge in 2016, Crime, Justice and Social Media, discussing #OpDeathEaters’ goals and more than half a decade of ongoing online public research drawn from court pleadings and investigative journalism reports and similar reputable sources, by thousands of accountholders, into child trafficking by the powerful. The #OpDeathEaters Frequently Asked Questions is also a good place to start; it’s from 2014.
Holy shit #OpDeathEaters is trending. After all these years. After Pizzagate and QAnon were created to drown it out with noise. Breaking out into the open. To those who come across the hashtag, read Heather Marsh's books, she started OpDeathEaters.
#Anonymous is hitting the U.S. government from all vectors right now. Police departments nationwide are monitoring their cybersecurity and Trump is very agitated about the Epstein case resurfacing after investing so much time and money to kill the story among other things.
Tonight (31 May 2020), the US cable television channel Investigation Discovery, known for true crime programming, airs at 9 p.m. Eastern a three-hour special called “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” The first third was released on 25 May 2020 online, but the show as a whole premiers tonight. A marketing staffperson from Investigation Discovery gave me advance access to video screener files of the entire special. I watched it early, to review it for you here in this post.
Why do Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing international child trafficking networks associated with him and many others matter while, during more than 100,000 pandemic deaths here in the United States, this country is on fire like a Seattle cop car photographed yesterday (30 May 2020), pictured below the following stark New York Times front page from 24 May 2020 with a pic superimposed over it of Trump on one of his many golf outings as president. “What better place to make backroom deals, blackmail guests, and contact transnational organized crime assets than in the middle of an empty golf course and resort”, @YourAnonCentral tweeted 7 Sept 2019.
Simply put, Jeffrey Epstein and all the other powerful pedosadists matter presently because (among other reasons) the common problem with both VIPredators raping kids and street executions of black people is impunity: the exemption from punishment or consequences. This tweet from @YourAnonCentral, an account I recommend you follow on Twitter, explains:
What does Epstein have to do with Black Lives Matter? it's a testament to the impunity given to those in power that believe that we are property they can sell & destroy as they please. Their impunity is why they murder black people and traffick children. We can all stop them.
You can skip the Investigation Discovery special if you want, unless you want full details on the program, because I’ll tell you my take on what the program does sorta right, what it does wrong, and most importantly, link you to better readings on the topic and practical, realistic solutions for ending impunity. That way tonight you can fill, or support those who are filling, the streets.
Also currently happening (7 June 2020), #opTrumpTweets: twitter users replying to Donald Trump’s tweets, posting #OpDeathEaters information. In other words, lately if you click on one of Trump’s individual tweets, the top reply may well be about evidence of his pedosadism. See this thread from @OpDeathEaters, an account I reckon you might should follow, for more:
#opTrumpTweets is working. Trump is not afraid of your insults, he is afraid of getting Epsteined by attracting too much attention to his organized crime buddies. https://t.co/nPi6iwPUmm
What “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” does sorta right
The special opens effectively with audio from Jane Doe 3 talking with police: “Jeffrey’s gonna get me. You guys realize that, right? He’s gonna figure this out, and he’s gonna … I’m not safe now. You understand that, right? I’m not safe.” If humanity doesn’t value the lives of children, then logically, we go extinct.
The special incorporates many of the photos linking idols with Jeffrey Epstein, which effectively make the clear point of the blackmail power of pedosadist networks. Below, I provide screenshots from the program:
Jeffrey Epstein, former US president Bill Clinton
Dirty Dersh (Harvard Law School’s Alan Dershowitz) and Jeffrey Epstein
Fugitive pimp for child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, with scared Elon Musk
Prince Andrew walking in New York City with Jeffrey Epstein
Trump and Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein, and fugitive Ghislaine Maxwell
Donald Trump looks like he’s trying to impress arms-folded Jeffrey Epstein. This was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in 1992.
The special also includes some good to great quotes from various interviewees. I reproduce them below.
Lawyer for Epstein victims, Lisa Bloom: “We are talking about at a minimum hundred of victims, potentially thousands — I believe it was probably thousands of victims. Because I believe those who came forward are just the tip of the iceberg. Most of them are never going to want to come forward.”
Writer Conchita Sarnoff: “The Epstein case goes from Palm Beach to New York to the White House to Buckingham Palace. Where you have politicians [image of Bill Clinton shown], business leaders [image of Bill Gates shown], opinion makers [image of Elon Musk with Ghislaine Maxwell shown], very powerful people implicated [image of Prince Andrew shown] in one way or another — is so expansive, it is a global case. It crosses the political barrier and it is the longest-running child sex trafficking case in US legal history to date.”
Writer Conchita Sarnoff: “What this case has, I think, shown is that we live in a society with two systems of justice: one for the rich, and one for the poor. And Epstein knew this all along.”
TV journalist Diane Dimond: “All these people, from federal prosecutors to politicians to prison officials, say ‘There will be accountability’ — really? I don’t see any indictments. No accountability at all.”
Lawyer for Epstein victims Spencer Kuvin (I believe this is an outtake): “Now that the world is coming to a realization that really what’s, you know, happening by powerful men, by wealthy men, abusing young women and taking advantage of young women.”
Writer Conchita Sarnoff (I believe this is an outtake): “government officials looked the other way; and newspaper editors and networks; and everyone looked the other way, for many years.” She also says (I believe in another outtake) the case implicates “politicians, bankers, heads of universities, heads of think tanks”
The special also includes the deposition footage where Jeffrey Epstein is asked about his notoriously “egg-shaped” (or oval-shaped) penis. This is an important fact about Jeffrey Epstein because 1) especially back then, a way of corroborating his victims’ stories, and 2) it’s a weapon for keeping the story in the news. The question-asker during the deposition is lawyer for Epstein victims Spencer Kuvin, who explains in the special that 3) it was a power move by him against Epstein (Eggstein?). “I wanted Epstein to know that despite his wealth, despite his power, and despite who he felt he held influence over, I didn’t care. I didn’t care who he was; he wasn’t going to intimidate me. And I was going to ask him the most personal, embarrassing question I could possibly think of.” and “My hope was, the question alone would get him upset, that he’d slip up, he’d get mad at me. And he essentially pled the fifth to every question that was asked of him.”
Spray #JeffreyEggstein on the White House.
The special at least mentions the flight logs (published by Gawker in 2015) for Jeffrey Epstein’s private plane which according to multiple of his associates had secret surveillance equipment installed (for blackmail). Among those on that jet in 2002 and 2003, for a flight to Africa, Bill Clinton (soon after his White House terms ended), entertainers Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and from the Obama administration, Obama appointee Gayle Smith.
Finally, given that most investigative journalism doesn’t include victims’ voices much or center them, except as impersonal blocks of hard-to-hear Jane Doe voices on police tapes that then well-dressed WASP-y professional interviewees explain to the camera lenses, “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” presented more from victims, especially Maria Farmer, than I expected.
The audience is shown recorded footage of Epstein victim Chauntae Davis answering a reporter: “Do I feel his death is an appropriate punishment? Absolutely not. It gives nobody justice, and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.”
Maria Farmer gets airtime to say: “I would love to see justice in the form of every co-conspirator needs to be behind bars. They belong there. They’re criminals.”
There’s more great stuff from Maria Farmer regarding her paintings of Epstein’s network and victims/survivors. I will share much of that at the end of this post.
However, the good aspects of this special, most of which honestly anyone can find with some decent Internet searches, don’t make up for the wrongs.
What “Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?” does wrong
The special shows images of intellectual property oppressor Bill Gates but does not discuss him. Here’s a thread with #OpDeathEaters research on the Microsoft founder.
Bill Gates praised child Jeffrey Epstein’s 'lifestyle' as "intriguing" "A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late" Bill Gates on an evening he spent with Epstein. The daughter was 15. #OpDeathEatershttps://t.co/VJGJzzR6yp
Click through to see more #OpDeathEaters research into Bill Gates
Nor does the special touch another ‘tech god,’ Richard M. Stallman aka RMS. Here’s an #OpDeathEaters thread with research into him.
RMS advocated paedosadism and wrote, “I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children" arguing children can consent to their own rape and continued "parents are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing" #OpDeathEatershttps://t.co/ql4frELG3d
Click through to see many more pedosadism quotes and sources for RMS
The pro-pedosadism payoff of keeping the focus mostly on Jeffrey Epstein as an individual personality is that he becomes a fall guy, and audiences do not look at the ongoing global child trafficking networks. The special fails in this regard, though not as badly as I feared, because it does talk at least some about other individuals, such as Brunel (see below), at least a tiny bit, perhaps a reflection of pressure from interviewees, increasingly sophisticated Internet-attuned audiences, etc. Still, to really keep up with these ongoing global child trafficking networks in a dynamic way as we must, we need a framework for a global commons for public data collaboration, namely GetGee.
There are plenty of other powerful pedosadists the special avoids. Click to this @OpDeathEaters thread and page up or page down to see links to threads investigating particular VIPredators. Today (7 June 2020), @OpDeathEaters tweeted: Despite the fact that Epstein is a far bigger story than media is trying to reduce it to, Epstein is not that big a deal compared to many – Demmink, Kashoggi, Berlusconi, Gaddafi, Bongo, Brunel, so many in Russia and China … networks in every state and industry. #opDeathEaters
Searching twitter for @OpDeathEaters tweets or #OpDeathEaters tweets is another great way to find information on whichever VIPredator. For example, in January, I ridiculed FOX News personality Tucker Carlson for giving airtime to a pseudo-expert warning of the “global tyranny of the metric system,” but I neglected to check for #OpDeathEaters research into Carlson. It’s easy to do. After logging in to twitter (which seems to yield better search results), at https://search.twitter.com just type “tucker carlson from:OpDeathEaters” or “tucker carlson from:OpDeathEatersUS” or “tucker carlson from:YourAnonCentral”. You can also try https://twitter.com/search-advanced or study online how to improve search techniques for social media. Whenever you’re thinking or writing about some celebully or other, it should become a habit to search #OpDeathEaters or from:OpDeathEaters on twitter to see the real story behind the personality.
The special uses a great deal of false, soft, go-to-sleep language that normalizes pedosadism. This thread from the @OpDeathEaters twitter account, which you should follow along with the United States-specific @OpDeathEatersUS account, teaches you the basics.
The following threads explain #opDeathEaters Long Term Goal 2: Challenge the propaganda and framing of paedosadism and trafficking as isolated 'mental illness','personal life' or 'sex scandals' instead of an industrial,international, organized crime network. pic.twitter.com/oPUHKXflJk
How the organized propaganda of the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was developed with the help of the UK government and the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in the US: The Other Battle For the Internet by Heather Marsh. #OpDeathEatershttps://t.co/s9olRwN9Pd
For more about how language controls your thoughts and you have a right to change your words and own your thoughts, consult authors George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, Heather Marsh, or a good dictionary, particularly etymologies.
Below, examples of offending, false language from “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” Often, the key problem is the false language conflates sex with rape.
Forensic pathologist Cyril H. Wecht is given airtime to say “the kinds of crimes that Jeffrey Epstein was charged with — fooling around with 14, 15, 16 year old girls.” Epstein was not “fooling around,” he was raping children.
For Jeffrey Epstein’s death circumstances in jail, the special discusses US attorney general William P. Barr saying “I was appalled […] perfect storm of screw-ups.” The special doesn’t explain that “perfect storm of screw-ups” is obvious bullshit meant to evoke sympathy for imaginary kindhearted authorities and their accidental blundering, and further, William P. Barr’s ridiculous focus on William P. Barr’s emotions, limbic system, etc, whether he was or was not appalled or perhaps shocked or would it be startled? No one should give a shit about complicit Barr’s alleged emotional reaction to Epstein’s death circumstances; his dialogue is a ploy to redirect attention toward the feelings of a person in a fancy suit, him. Don’t let these people redirect.
Over images of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, the special at one point describes Epstein as being connected with “big name people, famous people,” thus putting some of the most powerful people in the world on par with Kim Kardashian, the Real Housewives of $City, etc. It may have been a mistake of that particular interviewee — from my own appearances in documentaries, sometimes you get one try; the camera’s there for ninety minutes on an afternoon, and in my experience and from reading, filmmakers have way too much power over the final version relative to interviewees — but audiences hearing such language endlessly makes generations forget or fear using or even just reading other words: criminal conspirator.rapist. pedosadist.
Epstein “should have been safe there” somebody in the documentary said of MCC jail which locked up Epstein. No. Whether it’s prisons (hear activist Azzurra Crispino discuss prison conditions on Democracy Now!) or psych wards (see Disability Rights Washington’s May 2020 report on the hospital to jail pipeline), nobody who’s not trying to propagandize thinks such lockups are safe. Doesn’t take a genius.
TV journalist Ashleigh Banfield says Epstein was “hiding his sexual proclivities” Raping kids is not a sexual proclivity; sex is not an attack. Epstein was covering up his participation in raping and child trafficking in hopes of capturing more prey, escaping reprisals, etc.
Someone (I forget who) in the special describes Jean Luc Brunel, owner of the MC2 modeling agency, as a “French modeling scout” rather than accused child trafficker. I would have to watch again, but I believe the special does not say that Brunel actually owns MC2; I believe it uses vague language. More on Brunel.
There are also the completely wrong interviewees. To take just one example, convicted debt collector and Epstein financier partner Steven Hoffenberg says in the special that “The victims are getting zero right now.” Interview others, especially more Epstein victims who if they require more protection to go on camera must therefore be furnished more protection. More on “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” interviewee Steven Hoffenberg:
“ In 2016 Steven Hoffenberg pursued his most pro-Trump effort yet — launching a Super PAC to elect Donald Trump president.” — Wendy Siegelman https://t.co/qz9J0ub8Ql
The sensationalizing throughout the special belongs to entertainment, not education. Spooky tech noir music to get your heart racing plays in the background of “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” as a deep male voice slowly narrates about how an ultra-rich pedo somehow associated with ‘famous people’ ‘fools around’ with young girls and gets away with it. That does not nurture the individual minds and social environments required for the public to impose justice.
Finally, the special completely evades the work of thousands of #OpDeathEaters participants and the op’s founder Heather Marsh, not mentioning it whatsoever, when in fact in February 2018, on an Oxford Union panel about whistleblowing, which that supposed “last bastion of free speech” immediately censored, Marsh told the audience all about Epstein. Before the Miami Herald‘s Epstein reporting months later. Note to the intelligentsia and commentariat, exploiting the unpaid backbone of investigative journalism—the world’s lovely social media sleuths and autodidacts—does not end well, especially since we outnumber and outsmart you. See the suggested reading below for more on Heather Marsh’s censored Oxford Union panel. For now, I’ll just embed the audio of her portion and excerpt from her transcript of what she said on the censored panel about Jeffrey Epstein and the former Oxford Union president and UK prime minister Ted Heath.
Jeffrey Epstein is a man in the United States known to have raped and trafficked dozens or hundreds or who knows how many children. The US Attorney General at the time, Alberto Gonzales, said he would have instructed the US Justice Department to “pursue justice without making a political mess”. Epstein’s little black book contains people like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew. There is only one way to interpret that directive and that is impunity for anyone above a certain social strata or anyone with blackmail on them. The Pentagon, since 2010, has refused to investigate, at that time it was over 1700 cases, of child abuse media they have found on Pentagon computers. The people in the US are finally starting to talk about all the taxpayer funded NDA’s that protect people in congress against reports of rape and sexual assault. California alone has reportedly paid more than $25 million in the last three years to buy criminal impunity for their politicians. In the UK, you have your own child rape inquiry where UK police have spoken many times of investigations which have a strata they can’t go above – where those above that strata are referred to as the Untouchables, protected by the Official Secrets Act and many other layers of secrecy. Your former Oxford Union president and UK Prime Minister, Ted Heath, how many people came forward and said they were his victims as children, but there was never an investigation during his lifetime. So security for them means immunity from criminal prosecution, not just for their actions against so-called enemies but against anyone.
Practical and realistic solutions to impunity
Now, the portion so often left out of corporate edutainment describing a problem: how to solve it.
Yesterday (30 May 2020), protesters in Minneapolis and Atlanta posted on social media images of child soldiers. It is unclear if these kids are with JROTC or white supremacist families or what. But allowing your VIPredators, with all their power over conditioning systems from corporate media megaphones to video games to textbooks, to rape kids, logically leads eventually to this from your neighbors and even your own kids.
The objective of Operation Death Eaters is an internationally linked, independent, victim-led pedosadist inquiry / tribunal which is in no way affiliated with all of the institutions of power which have created and run this industry. Here are the eighteen long-term goals of #OpDeathEaters. Goal #5: Clearly define possible independent inquiry options for each country and build support for them.
But what’s an inquiry or tribunal? People might remember the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II. But let’s hold off on tribunals for now, since convictions require public examinations and discussions of evidence, and dive into inquiries, which make those examinations and discussions happen.
To explain what inquires are, let’s start with a very familiar phenomenon that they are not. Remember Obama’s Look forward not back regarding torture by the Bush II administration? That’s when Obama repeatedly explained there would be no prosecutions, and thus only impunity and normalization, for torture. In the United States, something like 1% of people in the country have a security clearance (think top secret; to see the deep state, go to https://www.usajobs.gov/search and filter job openings by required security clearance). These individuals are part of a parallel un-society, where torture is accepted and practiced. Because Obama announced we would have no public inquiry into why the United States “tortured some folks” as he put it, when you’re trying to talk radical politics with salaried liberals at board game night, there’s a good chance that one of them or someone they’re close to has a security clearance for accessing classified information and doesn’t like what you’re saying (and that’s the end of it, if you’re lucky). A person you pass on the sidewalk might be, or might have a family member who is, involved in torturing people (including assisting with the infrastructure for it as a contractor). To date, there’s been no reckoning with this reality as a country because of Obama’s Look forward not back (among other reasons). It’s the same with the pacto del olvido (pact of forgetting) in Spain, where that country in 1975-1977 decided to avoid dealing with the legacy of their 1939 to 1975 dictator Francisco Franco. A third example would be in families or small communities where a person who behaves strangely gets labelled / scapegoated as the identified patient with a psychosis diagnosis, but all the (anti)social and other forces (such as pollution) pressuring that person into that strange behavior remain elephants in the room, skeletons in the closet, etc. Street executions, torture, and dictatorships are also, relative to healthy prosocial people, psychoses.
Collectively turning a blind eye — with formal announcements like Look forward not back, pacto del olvido, or a psychiatric diagnosis — is the opposite of an inquiry, whereas an inquiry is the public participating in a hearing and discussion of the evidence, the accusations of wrongdoing. During inquiries, everyone publicly links together the past, present, and future to ask, who were we, that certain things happened (street executions or torture or pedosadism), and what can we do about it now to ensure it never happens again in the future?
There are examples of inquiries, or efforts toward them, on both the small family/community level and for entire countries and planetwide. For instance, in Finland, the Open Dialogue method, under experimentation for implementation in the United States, is getting the best documented results for first episode psychosis (mental health): 85+% of the people helped by Open Dialogue never have a psychotic break again and never need psychiatric drugs. In Open Dialogue, if a person acts bizarrely, say a teenager at a family home, the mental health professionals head over instantly (not: schedule a thousand-dollar appointment for two months later after the patient’s psych ward lockup and the professional’s ski trip). The Open Dialogue practitioners maybe given the teen a benzo for sleep. While he’s sleeping, his family or friends might say to the professionals: “Let me tell you what really happened.” In other words, control the narrative and cover up wrongdoing. The Open Dialogue professionals don’t permit this. No one can begin until everyone can participate. Then, once the person who was in an altered state wakes and is calmer thanks to sleep, everyone gathers to have a small-scale inquiry. What happened? Is the coach at the school abusive? Let’s get that coach present to hear what he says about the accusation of abuse. Is the food at home causing the teenager distress? What can we do differently, together? It’s the same on the country or global level. For example, consider the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which took place as apartheid was formally ending in that country. With varying degrees of success and failure, the South African TRC required human rights violators from both the white supremacist reactionaries and the revolutionary liberation movements to—on live television, on live radio, and with the victims’ families present and participating—confess their crimes in detail (while asking for limited amnesty). Inquiries and their similar cousin, truth and reconciliation commissions, existed prior to the South African TRC, but in studying and discussing how to set up such solutions, the South African TRC is a landmark people often start from.
“Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?” didn’t get anywhere remotely close to this, but there’s every reason for us all to now work, in our various little and big ways, to create independent, internationally linked, victim-led inquires and/or tribunals to stop the impunity of street executions by cops, the impunity of torture, and the impunity of the common denominator that catches the most powerful wrongdoers in the net, pedosadism.
Recommended reading
Writer Conchita Sarnoff’s book TrafficKing: The Jeffrey Epstein case
"Conchita Sarnoff, executive director of the Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking, claims that publishers refuse to release her book,"
Heather Marsh (May 2018): Transcript of whistleblowing panel censored by Oxford Union and her analysis of that censorship. See also my article about the censorship and my contribution to Boing Boing about calling a home of David Shedd, the CIA senior management panelist who demanded the panel disappear.
Bound intro and volume one of the South African TRC on my carpet alongside other books you might should read!
I’ve only read some material on the South African TRC but here’s what I’ve found thought provoking and informative so far. The book A Country Unmasked by Alex Boraine, TRC’s deputy chairperson, the documentary Long Night’s Journey Into Day (try Kanopy.com and your public library for access), and the South African TRC official website, including the official TRC report and the online register of reconciliation where members of the public formally apologize, sometimes at length, for turning a blind eye and not doing more to help themselves and others overcome apartheid.
And now, from “Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?”, over to Epstein victim—and survivor—Maria Farmer for the mic drop.
Epstein survivor Maria Farmer: “2020 is the year when…”
The Investigation Discovery special concludes with Epstein victim/survivor Maria Farmer talking about her artwork. First she shows her painting of Epstein and his network.
Fugitive and pimp for Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, defined in a painting by Maria Farmer
Dirty Dersh (Harvard Law School’s Alan Dershowitz) defined in a painting by Maria Farmer
Epstein stuck into a UFO, painted by Maria Farmer
Then Maria Farmer shows artworks from her project to paint Epstein victims/survivors.
She explains: “I’m doing a series, drawing all the women, all their portraits. Honoring them, because they’re victims, but they’re also survivors. I’m giving them each a drawing so that they know that they matter. We’re binding together, and there’s strength in numbers, let me tell you something! They’re not getting away with it anymore. 2020 is the year the predators become the prey.”
Note: In 2020, I’m writing 52 blog posts, one per week, released on Mondays or so. This is Week 20’s post. It continues last week’s Part 1 post about whistleblower Dr. Bright’s testimony.
Note: When in Texas I first began doubting the political party duopoly in the United States, the best argument against leaving the mainstream corporate culture seemed former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s: “There is no alternative” to biz, lesser evilism, etc. Since then, I’ve found and learned to see many good things too often drowned out by the volume of the duopoly and corporations. If you search my website, twitter, or just ask me (email dal@riseup.net or comment on my blog), I can point you to plenty of prosocial projects to participate in. Soon I’ll write a blog post listing projects I recommend organized by subject matter, etc.
Note: Regarding this post, yes I know conventional science/medicine, like alternative science/medicine, often leaves a lot to be desired to say the least, but I unfortunately don’t have time to get into that part of things in this particular post. If you want material on that topic, please see these by others, for starters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
“It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us” — intensive care physician Dr. Daniele Macchini, in translation from Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in Bergamo, Italy, Friday 6 March 2020. (Additional attribution information.)
Same day as Dr. Daniele Macchini’s testimony from Italy, “Q: Mr. President, you were shaking a lot of hands today, taking a lot of posed pictures. Are you protecting yourself at all? How are you — how are you staying away from germs? THE PRESIDENT: Not at all. No, not at all. Not at all. […] Q: Have you considered not having campaign rallies? THE PRESIDENT: No, I haven’t. […] Q: Isn’t it a risk if there’s that many people close together? THE PRESIDENT: It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all.” Transcript provided by White House of Friday 6 March 2020 remarks by Donald Trump after tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Georgia.
A week prior at a rally, Trump said: “[T]he Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs [… The Democrats] have no clue, they don’t have any clue. […] this [disagreeing with him regarding coronavirus] is their new hoax.” Transcript of Trump rally Friday 28 February 2020 in North Charleston, South Carolina. I aim to help replace the Democratic Party and the Republican Party with prosocial self-governance (representative governance is by definition not self-governance); the point is, Trump called disagreeing with him on coronavirus creating a hoax.
Print out on my kitchen floor of the 5 May Washington Post version of Dr. Bright’s exhibits
Following my post last week providing an overview of Dr. Rick Bright’s background and whistleblower complaint, as well as the wider context of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, I’d planned to dig into his complaint to give you a rundown of it. Then in his testimony to Congress on 14 May 2020, he discussed the evidentiary exhibits he submitted along with his complaint. Finding those (some pictured above) turned out more time consuming and interesting than I anticipated. This quick post explains what’s up with his missing exhibits and what we can do about it.
Bibliography versus secrecy
Dr. Bright submitted his whistleblower complaint to the federal Office of Special Counsel on 5 May 2020, along with an unknown number of evidentiary exhibits. In case you’re not familiar, in law an exhibit is basically physical or documentary evidence; in this case, it’s evidence, such as emails, substantiating what he says in the complaint. The law firm representing Dr. Bright publicized his whistleblower complaint, with redactions and no exhibits; I mirrored that file here. On the same day Dr. Bright filed his complaint, the Washington Post‘s Yasmeen Abutaleb (Twitter; yasmeen.abutaleb@washpost.com ) and Laurie McGinley (Twitter; laurie.mcginley@washpost.com ) wrote about it, and linked a document WaPo published containing 27 of his exhibits. The Washington Post exhibits document (which I mirrored here) stops after Exhibit 60. That means, assuming Dr. Bright used a typical sequential numbering scheme and stopped after Exhibit 60, that 33 exhibits are missing, blocked from our view. So where are they?
Step one to finding the blocked exhibits: get organized. On 18 May 2020, I made a list showing which exhibits of his are missing from and which are included in the Washington Post exhibits document. The two journalists bylined on the Washington Post article haven’t replied to mytweets or emails seeking any additional information or clarification, but like politicians, ‘verified’ blue checkmark journalists often respond to volume, so you can contact them too; that’s why their contact info is in the above paragraph. Here’s a screenshot of my list to give you an idea what I’m yammering about.
A portion of my list
In Dr. Bright’s testimony to the federal House energy and commerce subcommittee on health (C-SPAN transcript; Rev.com transcript), he explained that he / his lawyer didn’t give some of his exhibits to the Congressmembers (i.e., he / his lawyer gave them only to the Office of Special Counsel), due to privacy and legal concerns. But Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), chairing the hearing, asked him: “Would you be willing to share the other exhibits once you remove personally identifiable information?” He said “Yes.” Except, whether that means to Congressmembers or to the rest of us—the documents rightfully belong to the public—remains unclear, unless of course we demand or take them (see below).
Via MuckRock, I today submitted a public records request to the Office of Special Counsel for all the exhibits.
To recap: Dr. Bright’s whistleblower complaint is accompanied by exhibits, probably a total of 60. The Washington Post published some of them (less than half, 27). Where are the rest (more than half, 33)? Dr. Bright told Rep. Eshoo he’d make them available. But make them available to Congress — or to us?
Task suggestions
If you’d like to help find the exhibits, our records we’re so far wrongfully barred from seeing, below are some task suggestions toward that goal. Remember, science-y studies and common sense repeatedly demonstrate that (informed) action feels better than anxiety.
Ask the Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb (Twitter; yasmeen.abutaleb@washpost.com ) and Laurie McGinley (Twitter; laurie.mcginley@washpost.com ) about the full set of exhibits. Where are they, do they have them, give them to us, why not, do it now! etc.
Ask Dr. Rick Bright on Twitter the same thing. Look, I’m grateful for his whistleblowing too, but if in his testimony to the federal Congress he meant just giving the exhibits to them—and if so, they were speaking as if we don’t exist—I don’t appreciate that and neither should you, since we’re the victims here.
File open records requests for the exhibits. You can use MuckRock or submit them the old fashioned way. I hit up the Office of Special Counsel already but the more the better the odds they’ll hand the docs over. Somebody should try the relevant Congresspersons and subcommittee(s) too.
Stop asking and just take the fucking things, while trying not to get arrested in the process. (Example.)
Garnet yams + tempeh + broccoli, steamed
That’s it until next week. When today I wasn’t writing this post, talking with friends/family, pitching an article, and listening to music, I was cooking. Below, pics of what I made. The seasonings are celtic salt, black pepper, dill weed, garlic powder, sesame seeds, and lemon juice. Be sure to get your tempeh in a glutenfree variety, and then this meal will be vegan and gluten free.
Got that knife from the dollar store!
Throwing everything in the steamer makes cooking and cleaning healthy and efficient
Lightlife makes the only glutenfree tempeh I’ve found in Seattle so far
Note: In 2020, I’m writing 52 blog posts, one per week, released on Mondays or so. This Wednesday post is for Week 19!
Note: When in Texas I first began doubting the political party duopoly in the United States, the best argument against leaving the mainstream corporate culture seemed former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s: “There is no alternative” to biz, lesser evilism, etc. Since then, I’ve found and learned to see many good things too often drowned out by the volume of the duopoly and corporations. If you search my website, twitter, or just ask me (email dal@riseup.net or comment on my blog), I can point you to plenty of prosocial projects to participate in. Soon I’ll write a blog post listing projects I recommend organized by subject matter, etc.
Note: Regarding this post, yes I know conventional science/medicine, like alternative science/medicine, often leaves a lot to be desired to say the least, but I unfortunately don’t have time to get into that part of things in this particular post. If you want material on that topic, please see these by others, for starters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
“It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us” — intensive care physician Dr. Daniele Macchini, in translation from Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in Bergamo, Italy, Friday 6 March 2020. (Additional attribution information.)
Same day as Dr. Daniele Macchini’s testimony from Italy, “Q: Mr. President, you were shaking a lot of hands today, taking a lot of posed pictures. Are you protecting yourself at all? How are you — how are you staying away from germs? THE PRESIDENT: Not at all. No, not at all. Not at all. […] Q: Have you considered not having campaign rallies? THE PRESIDENT: No, I haven’t. […] Q: Isn’t it a risk if there’s that many people close together? THE PRESIDENT: It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all.” Transcript provided by White House of Friday 6 March 2020 remarks by Donald Trump after tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Georgia.
A week prior at a rally, Trump said: “[T]he Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs [… The Democrats] have no clue, they don’t have any clue. […] this [disagreeing with him regarding coronavirus] is their new hoax.” Transcript of Trump rally Friday 28 February 2020 in North Charleston, South Carolina. I aim to help replace the Democratic Party and the Republican Party with prosocial self-governance (representative governance is by definition not self-governance); the point is, Trump called disagreeing with him on coronavirus creating a hoax.
Overview
Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright is scheduled to testify before the United States federal House of Representatives on Thursday 14 May 2020 at a hearing titled “Protecting Scientific Integrity in the COVID-19 Response.” The hearing starts at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (here in Seattle, that’s 7 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time). Find the House committee on energy and commerce webpage for the hearing here. You should be able to watch the hearing live online at this easy-to-remember URL: https://live.house.gov. It should be archived by C-SPAN here-ish, and maybe C-SPAN will stream it live online thereabouts as well. Here’s the PDF of Dr. Bright’s four pages of written testimony for the hearing; here’s his 89-page whistleblower complaint PDF.
In sum, Dr. Bright, a lifelong public servant and scientist to whom the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave its top award, and who as director of the US Department of Health of Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) spent years and years working on global pandemic preparedness capacity and response, formally stated to the US Office of Special Counsel this month that he was retaliated against by his supervisor Dr. Robert Kadlec as punishment for insisting “on scientifically-vetted proposals” to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and for pushing “for a more aggressive agency response to COVID-19” (among other related reasons), so he wants his position at BARDA reinstated — and that’s all putting it in really polite bureaucratic legalese, when the details, discussed/excerpted below, are far more frightening: Team Trump sometimes succeeded in stopping, slowing, ignoring, or taking away the practical protective measures Dr. Bright was fighting for, and instead Team Trump is trying to give you and those you care about treatment, even potentially fatal treatment, backed by zero evidence, zero clinical trials, no nothing except dolla dolla bills and secondary euphoria for his cronies. Though such sociopathy is right on track with history blue or red, read Dr. Bright’s whistleblower complaint and written testimony, watch his testimony live or afterward, and then dosomething informed about it.
Unless canceled, the testimony will happen at a time when the overt United States trade economy (as opposed to, say, covert human/rape traffickingexchanges or non-communist, prosocial sharing economy, or other daily facts typically not included in economist statistics) has just lost from the pandemic something like 20-22 million paid-jobs in a single month (April 2020), more than the country has ever lost in a single month throughout history (including the Great Depression) — and that’s downplaying the continuing crash, since the calculations rely on official statistics leaving out certain measures of people existing outside paid-work. Reuters journalist Ann Saphir explained the granular details quite well in an 8 May 2020 article, except then from the article’s first three paragraphs disappeared the all-important “perspective” of how this particular wiping out of paid-jobs compares with every past wiping out of paid-jobs in the U.S.: it’s eliminated more by a factor of 10 to 12. Since the piece still does not note this unadmitted change (among others) — already a Seattleite told me over the phone she didn’t know about the paid-job implosion, so it’s important for people to have this information accurately — I asked Ann Saphir in twotweets and an email to explain, but she hasn’t responded; will update if she does. I emailed Jennifer 8. Lee from the faded NewsDiffs.org project for pointers to ongoing projects that, like NewsDiffs once did, track unadmitted changes on mega-media websites, much like the time in 2013 when I asked NewsDiffs to track unadmitted changes on wikileaks.org as that hierarchical organization of Julian Assadnge’s was turning into the crap it is now (I stayed on NewsDiffs about this for a year until in 2014 NewsDiffs finally replied to me to decline), to see if the Internet can track unadmitted changes to Reuters articles, but I haven’t found a suitable project so far. It’s crucial because if you email someone an article, you have no guarantee that what they see is what you saw, and also sharing a hyperlink can lead to a criminal indictment, so there’s also no guarantee that the hyperlink you paste still leads to the same content it once did by the time the Department of Justice gets around to clicking it, a poorly understood issue. Ann Saphir I love your article! Just put the “perspective” back and explain what happened with the unadmitted changes and why!
I cooked lentils while writing this post…
If the trade economy’s collapse weren’t enough of a rude awakening, Dr. Bright’s testimony is also scheduled to come at a time when according to John Hopkins University, as of 13 May 2020 in the United States COVID-19 has killed some 77,200 people, far outstripping in less than half a year 58,220 people, the grand total number across decades of US military deaths in the entire Vietnam War. By the way, according to AviSchiffmann’sglobal tracker dashboard, as of 13 May 2020 Vietnam reports a grand total for their confirmed COVID-19 cases, only 288, and on 8 May 2020, Reuters reported (at least they did on 13 May 2020 when I last clicked to their article!): “After proclaiming success in containing the coronavirus, Vietnam is positioning itself as a safe place to do business, capitalising on demand from international manufacturers looking to diversify their supply chains away from China.” Although the 77,200 deaths in the United States is a shockingly high number, that sad figure is simultaneously not even a third the quantity of the population of the city of Lubbock, Texas. That’s why many do not yet personally know someone COVID-19 killed or someone who has even showed symptoms, thus explaining, in addition to the international propaganda whether from this country or elsewhere, why I reckon some individuals I interact with are telling me novel coronavirus is a myth, etc. However, a lowball estimate for the total number of United States COVID-19 deaths by the end of this year, well, say roughly 750,000 — three-quarters of a million people — easily (if you’re not familiar with twitter, when checking out those last three links to an autodidact’s tweets, expand by clicking “Show this thread”). The total U.S. population is something like 329 million individuals. Barring dramatic change from, say, the public reading Dr. Bright’s whistleblower complaint and watching his 14 May 2020 testimony at https://live.house.gov and responding not by fearfully requesting but instead by forcingchange, a fourth of a percent of USians will be killed by COVID-19 come 31 Dec 2020, bare minimum. The average person in the United States knows around 600 people. Obviously regions and lives differ wildly, but via back of napkin calculations and averaging things out, by New Years Eve 2020, pretty much everyone in this country who’s still alive will personally know at least one person, probably more, novel coronavirus will have killed. Once no longer deniable, this body count, still unimaginable in practical terms today (“What are you preparing for? What are you preparing for? What are you preparing for?” a Washingtonian demanded of me in February when I started sharing info on the disease the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020; “it’s just the flu; won’t affect my life”) will place us in a very different rhetorical space than we’re in today. Lobotomizing yourself into a lemming by chanting “You care too much” and “You know, there really is a lot of good TV lately” might for the first time no longer be in. And nope, the United States has nowhere near enough hospital beds to handle what’s coming at exponentially faster and faster rates.
Behind the lentils, that’s turmeric-y cauliflower in garlic-y tomato sauce with ginger and olive oil and other stuffs
So to summarize the wider context around Dr. Bright’s testimony:
Trade crash: By a factor of 10 to 12, the United States just lost the most paid-jobs in a single month in its history ever
Pandemic: Pretty much any US resident still alive on New Years Eve 2020 will personally know at least one, probably more, individuals COVID-19 killed
Responsibility: As always, informed action urgently required now from each and every person
Dr. Bright’s biography
Wider context set, back to Dr. Rick Bright’s testimony on Thursday 14 May 2020 10 a.m. Eastern. Here’s (again) the 89-page PDF of the formal whistleblower complaint he filed to the US Office of Special Counsel on 5 May 2020, and here’s (again) a PDF of his four pages of written testimony. But who’s this Dr. Bright and why should you care? After all, many folks are incredibly busy trying to educate their squirming kids and fight off their drug-addicted deadbeat husbands and organize a neighborhood pod to resist their absentee landlords. Let me try to give you a short version.
Dr. Bright — whose monosyllabic aptronym, in the court of public opinion, might be an ace up the sleeve to trump Trump — is according to his written testimony:
a career public servant and a scientist who has spent 25 years of my career focused on addressing pandemic outbreaks. I received my bachelor’s degree with honors in both biology and physical sciences from Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama. I earned my PhD in Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis from Emory University in Georgia. My dissertation was focused on pandemic avian influenza. I have spent my entire career leading teams of scientists in drugs, diagnostics and vaccine development — in the government with CDC and BARDA, for a global non-profit organization and also in the biotechnology industry. Regardless of my position, my job and my entire professional focus has been on saving lives. My professional background has prepared me for a moment like this – to confront and defeat a deadly virus like COVID-19 that threatens Americans and people around the globe. I joined the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in 2010 and from November of 2016 until April 21 of this year, I had the privilege of serving our country as its Director. During the time I was Director of BARDA we successfully partnered with private industry to achieve an unprecedented number of FDA approvals for medical countermeasures against a wide variety of national health security threats.
Dr. Rick Bright’s official headshot from the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, of the US Dept of Health and Human Services, that is, before, as his whistleblower complaint explains, “they had taken Dr. Bright’s name and image off” and lied to his staff that he’d supposedly “accepted a new job” elsewhere, leaving only the image and bio of the ex-military Dr. Robert Kadlec, Dr. Bright’s supervisor who got rid of him after Dr. Bright successfully stood up to his pro-death bullshit repeatedly including to members of Congress and White House staff. Don’t like that? Tell the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response on twitter what you think while you watch Dr. Bright’s testimony
Dr. Bright’s whistleblower complaint gives more of his background:
He began his career researching viruses, immunology, vaccine development, and antiviral drugs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”), then transitioned into the biotechnology industry to oversee vaccine and immunology programs as the Director of Immunology at Altea Therapeutics. In 2003, the CDC recruited Dr. Bright to return and he worked to evaluate the comparative merits of antiviral drugs and developed rapid tests for antiviral drug resistance to help combat avian flu. In recognition of his exemplary work, the CDC awarded Dr. Bright the Charles C. Shepard Science Award for Scientific Excellence – the most prestigious scientific award CDC confers. […]
In 2010, Dr. Bright joined the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) as a Program Lead within the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (“BARDA”) Influenza Division International Program. In this role, he was responsible for expanding pandemic preparedness capacity to 12 developing countries, providing each with tools and capabilities to respond to a pandemic. […]
Dr. Bright transformed BARDA into a larger, more stable, and better funded organization, hyper-focused on the single mission of developing drugs and vaccines to save lives. Dr. Bright worked tirelessly to lead a highly skilled technical team of government and industry partners in this mission. His efforts and successes were recognized and reflected in performance appraisals in which he was consistently given the highest possible ratings. See Bright Performance Evaluations, attached hereto as Exhibit 1. Dr. Bright and his team responded to the Zika and Ebola outbreaks and developed diagnostic tests, therapeutics, and vaccines that are being used today. When COVID-19 emerged as a global threat, Dr. Bright was uniquely positioned to lead BARDA in its crucial work of combating this existential public health threat.
But then what happened, right?
Dr. Bright sticks up for himself and you
Dr. Bright’s whistleblower complaint says — the first 26 pages are mostly this and bureaucratic paperwork details — that in April 2020 his supervisor Dr. Robert Kadlec and others “involuntarily removed” him from his “position as Director of BARDA and transferred” him to the National Institutes of Health without warning or explanation why as retaliation because he “insisted on scientifically-vetted proposals, and […] pushed for a more aggressive agency response to COVID-19.” The complaint continues, saying his “supervisor became furious when Congress appropriated billions of dollars directly to” Dr. Bright’s office and when he spoke with members of Congress. They liked, not Dr. Kadlec’s work, but Dr. Bright’s.
Health, right here, except?. Yet it’s missing steamed red potatoes, and there’s no more room…
Dr. Bright asks on PDF page 24 from the Office of Special Counsel “a stay, to be returned to my position as BARDA Director, followed by a full investigation.” On 8/9 May 2020, the New York Times reported that Dr. Bright’s lawyers said that, after looking at the complaint, the Office of Special Counsel did last week make “a threshold determination” that the Department of Health and Human Services “violated the Whistleblower Protection Act by removing Dr. Bright from his position because he made protected disclosures in the best interest of the American public” but this is nonbinding and useless if Trump and the public ignore. Here’s a 49-tweet thread helpfully exploring a 36-page OSS sabotage field manual from 1944 if, say, you’re pissed, ready to admit watching Frasier is downright boring, and you have handy a pair of pliers and some courage.
Now that pages 1 – 26 are finished, PDF pages 84 to 89 of Dr. Bright’s whistleblower complaint helpfully explain acronyms and job titles to go with various names, leaving us with pages 27 – 83: the 56-odd-page addendum submitted by Dr. Bright / his lawyers. This is the real protein of his whistleblower complaint.
To be continued…
This writer needs to go to sleep! I’ll post Part 2 soon, hopefully tomorrow, including what became of my lentils. Remember: https://live.house.gov Thursday 14 May 2020 at 10 a.m. Eastern.
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