Tag Archives: OddBox

Vachel Lindsay Home in Springfield, Illinois

By various accounts, Vachel Lindsay is considered the founder of modern singing poetry, a mystic, and a prophet. Lindsay referred to himself simply as a “rhymer-designer.” From 1906 to 1912 he walked the country, preaching his “Gospel of Beauty” and developing a unique performance-style of poetry which he referred to as “the Higher Vaudeville.” 

He was born Nicholas Vachel Lindsay on November 10, 1879, in his family’s home at 603 South 5th Street in Springfield, Illinois. Lindsay was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, but after several years of study he convinced his parents that the medical profession wasn’t right for him. He moved to Chicago, then New York, to study art.

The graceful swooping lines of his handwriting often inspired his illustrations, which touch on topics such as worker rights, racial equality, and mysticism. In 1915, he wrote the first book of film criticism, titled The Art Of The Moving Picture, which was inspired in part by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Lindsay pushed to bring poetry out of the classroom and into the streets, and many artists say cite Lindsay among their inspirations, including Allen Ginsberg, Jeff Goldblum, Patti Smith, Langston Hughes, and Jack Kerouac. 

Vachel said, “everything begins and ends for me at 603,” which became true when he died in the house in 1931, directly above the room in which he was born. It has been said that the house is now haunted. All we can say about that is what Vachel himself said in his poem, “The Dream Of All Springfield Writers”: “I’ll haunt this town, though gone the maids and men, / The darling few, my friends and loves today. / My ghost returns bearing a great sword-pen.”

Lancaster Is Considering Restrictions On Feeding The Homeless In Public Spaces

Hide them from view and they aren’t a problem? Even more cruel. Feed the hungry, comfort the sick or imprisoned, love your neighbor, clothe the naked. Too hard to figure out?

5df18da3c92b3500089d4cbd-eight.jpgFile: Volunteer Katrina Onyekwelu prepares dinner for those staying at the Grace Resource Center’s Lancaster Community Homeless Shelter in May 2016. Grace Resources has taken a neutral stance on a controversial ordinance proposed in Lancaster that would restrict how food is distributed in public spaces. (Maya Sugarman/KPCC)

Battle lines are being drawn in the city of Lancaster over where and how homeless people can receive a meal. The High Desert city is considering an ordinance that would effectively ban feeding homeless people in most public spaces.

“Individuals and organizations conduct food distribution events on sidewalks and other public property,” city officials wrote in the council agenda announcing Ordinance No. 1071. “While their intentions are admirable, these events often obstruct the free flow of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and result in garbage and trash left on the public property after the distribution, creating hazards to public health and a visual blight.”

As currently drafted, the ordinance would prohibit food distribution from public sidewalks, streets and parking lots and allow individuals and groups to feed people in public parks, but only if they acquire both a park rental permit and a health permit from Los Angeles County. The proposed law would not impact food distribution on private property, like churches or homeless services sites.

City officials, including Mayor R. Rex Parris, framed the ordinance as necessary to address public health concerns.

“When people defecate on the street, when they defecate in doorways and especially when they do that in the parks and the children play in that, it is unacceptable,” Parris said at the crowded city council meeting Tuesday evening.

The meeting quickly turned contentious, with Parris verbally sparring with members of the public who spoke out against the proposed ordinance.

“The way the homeless situation is being managed in Southern California is just a crisis waiting to happen,” Mayor Parris told attendees during the meeting. Some in the crowd stirred in protest as the mayor raised his voice and continued:

“Let me tell you what a crisis is. A crisis is when children are dying as a result of disease.”

5df18da9c92b3500089d4cbf-eight.jpgLancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris, seen here in a 2013 file photo, verbally sparred with members of the public who spoke out against the proposed ordinance on Tuesday night. (Reed Saxon/AP)

The outcry from the crowd was intense, and in response the mayor called a recess. When the meeting resumed, Parris reiterated his view that the ordinance was drafted to keep the public safe.

“I am not going to have an epidemic in this city if I could fix it first,” he said, adding that if the ordinance were to become law, “not one person is going to go unfed that wouldn’t have been unfed anyway.”

Parris then opened the public comment period, saying that he hoped those speaking “will have a solution rather than just a complaint.”

When Regina Thomas got to the mic, she opened by saying she didn’t have a solution, but she did have a strong opinion about the city telling her where she could and could not help people in need.

“Everybody can’t go to this park or to this church to eat, because some people can’t move,” Thomas said, describing how she spent Thanksgiving Day driving around in the snow, passing out dozens of meals to homeless people.

“I’m not gonna stop doing it today. Not next week, not next year,” she said. “So lock me up today.”

Local pastor David Cowan argued his faith called him to help those in need where they were — not based on where city officials want them to be.

“I gotta go where the need is, and the need might be up under a bridge, the need might be in a brook, the need may be anywhere,” he said to applause from the crowd. “We gotta go feed them where they are… don’t penalize my people for going to feed people.”

Not all local organizations shared that sentiment. Jeremy Johnson, director of operations for

Resources, said he and the team at the service center were taking a neutral stance to the ordinance.

Johnson said he and his team recognize the great need to help the homeless in the Antelope Valley, adding that they are on track to provide roughly 35,000 hot meals and 20,000 bags of groceries this year. At the same time, he said he understands the city’s responsibility to maintain clean and orderly public spaces.

“I don’t believe that people are going to starve to death if this ordinance is implemented,” he told LAist. “I also believe that many of the homeless clients that we serve are pretty resourceful and will find places to eat, should those outreaches be banned.”

Lancaster city council members tabled the vote on the ordinance for a later date. City officials did not respond to a request for comment before publishing time.

This is not the first time Lancaster and its mayor have drawn criticism for how they’ve handled homelessness in the city.

In 2014, at Parris’ direction, Lancaster tried to shut down the local Metrolink station. Parris alleged the city of Los Angeles was putting homeless people on trains and exporting them to the Antelope Valley. KQED looked into those claims, but never found any evidence. Lancaster officials cited a survey they did at the train station but never provided any documents to support their claims.

And in an interview with the Antelope Valley Press this June, Parris doubled down on remarks he made to ABC7, calling homeless people “criminals and thugs” and advising residents to carry concealed firearms for protection.

Endless Fields of Unharvested Corn, As Seen From Space

Recently, a heavy snow carpeted the fields that stipple eastern North Dakota. Afterwards, satellite images captured wispy clouds and shadows above swaths of white. Images of agricultural communities near the squiggly Goose River, such as Hillsboro and Mayville, also revealed something else: a slew of little brown squares among the white ones, which made the landscape look like a patchwork of pixels. The flecks of brown turn out to be vast expanses of corn that never made it out of the field, and that will now spend the winter under a blanket of snow.

Despite the tidy beauty of the image, which was taken on the Landsat 7 satellite and published by the NASA Earth Observatory, this was a frustrating year for North Dakota’s corn farmers. Over the past five years, the state’s farmers have harvested an average of 85 percent of their corn by the middle of November, says Chris Hawthorn, a statistician in the crops branch of the National Agricultural Statistics Service. But this year, 57 percent of North Dakota’s corn was still in the fields in early-December, according to a Department of Agriculture report. That’s 1.88 million acres of corn lingering in limbo, according to the agriculture news site AgWeb.

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Generally, by this time of year, satellite images of the open prairie would reveal either bare soil or “a sea of white,” says Daryl Ritchison, director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network, a project run out of the School of Natural Resource Sciences at North Dakota State University. Now, because the corn is still standing in rows, stalk to stalk, the plants squeeze out the view of the snow from the air, writes Kathryn Hansen, a science communicator at the Earth Observatory. NASA’s photographs were taken from roughly 438 miles above the Earth’s surface.

Local farmers faced a double whammy of misfortune in 2019. “Corn was planted late due to a cold spring, so the crop started off behind,” says Joel Ransom, an extension agronomist at North Dakota State University. Then, a cold October and wet November slowed the drying process. Farmers usually harvest field corn when it has lost roughly half its moisture, and it’s typically turned into animal feed, ethanol, or corn syrup. “To do anything with the corn, it has to be dry,” says Ritchison—otherwise, “it’s just a bunch of mush,” and may get moldy. Farmers can nudge the drying process along themselves, with propane and other tools, but it’s costly. Ideally, Ransom says, “we depend on nature.”

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Still, corn generally fares pretty well under its chilly comforter. The crop soars several feet above the surface of the soil, so it can hold up okay if heavy snow and biting winds don’t splinter the stalks. Then again, roaming animals might chow down. Some kernels will split, Hawthorn says, and others might mildew.

Assuming that the winter doesn’t loosen its grip, farmers will simply have to wait. “There’s nothing farmers can do except leave the corn in the field,” Hawthorn adds. In the meantime, we can enjoy this high-tech view from high above.

في مثل هذا اليوم قبل ٣٢ عام انتفضنا..وجاءت اوسلو نفضتنا

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شكلت الانتفاضة الأولى مفصلا أكيدا في وعي جيل كامل من الفلسطينيين الذين عاشوا حلم التحرر من الاحتلال. كنت ابنة ١٥ ربيعا، تحولت احلامي الى ترقب لجني حصاد الحرية المطلقة من الاحتلال. فنحن شعب انتفض عن بكرة ابيه وحمل الحجر في مواجهة احتلال لم يرحم. كانت فلسطين المطبوعة في وجداني هي تلك التي تشكل حدودها الجليل والجولان من الشمال وبئر السبع من الجنوب. كانت كلمة إسرائيل كلمة غير محكية. كانوا يهودا سيرحلون عودة الى بلادهم، فإسرائيل ليست الا “طارئا”، “مؤقتا” الى زوال.

صار الحجر سلاحا نحمل فيه احلامنا ونقذف فيه كوابيسنا لنتخلص من احتلال قتم على حلم الحرية في نفوسنا.

كان اول حاجز، وتوالت أوامر منع التجول، وكان الضرب بالهراوات والرصاصات المطاطية. صار صكيك اقفال المحلات عندما تغلق الساعة الواحدة تماما، كصوت أجراس الكنائس مبشرا بحلول عيد.

جيل كامل تشكل وعيه نحو هذا التوجه للتحرر. فلقد حان وقت خلاصنا… كنا بسذاجة نفكر.

لم نكن نعرف ان ما كنا نزرعه من امل للحرية، كان يتم التخطيط لبيعنا وهم ما صار أوسلو.

كان حنيننا لناسنا في الغربة وأماكن اللجوء عظيم.

كانت هواجسنا من اجل علم فلسطين يرفرف على سارية او حتى على شباك منزل كالحلم المستحيل.

كان املنا بقيادة فلسطينية تحمل همنا وتفض الظلم عن ظهورنا طيلة عقود احتلال ظالم حقيقي وكبير.

سنوات من الانتفاضة صارت تشكل مظاهر حياتنا بكل اتجاهاتها. التعليم صار بالبيوت، واللباس صار متناغما مع انتفاضتنا، فكل فلسطيني معرض لأن يحمل الحجر في أي لحظة. معالم الحياة اقتصرت على ما تحتاجه الانتفاضة، فلا فرح مع شهيد قريب او جار معتقل او فتى جريح. توحدنا نحو املنا بحرية لا بد قادمة.

كبرنا وكبر الحلم نحو الحرية. ازدادت الحواجز وتحول من “طيارة” الى ثابتة.  وزاد القمع والظلم، فصارت الهراوات توجه لتكسير العظام والرصاصات المطاطية تضرب بالرؤوس. ازدادت الاعتقالات وكثر منع التجوال. وصمدنا بحجم ايماننا بانه لا بد للقيد ان ينكسر، بعدما انتصرنا كشعب لرغبتنا بالحياة.

كانت رغبتنا بالثورة تتأجج بوجود ثوارها المنتظرين للعودة. فانتفض وجداننا نحو انتفاضة يكللها ثوار فنوا حياتهم باللجوء من اجل قضيتنا وانتظرناهم بقدر انتظارنا للحرية.

انتظرنا المخلص منهم والمحرر والمحقق لنا حلم العودة.

انتظرنا تحرير فلسطين بعودتهم.

انتظرنا قيادة تصد عنا الرصاصات والهراوات.

انتظرنا انتصارا لانتفاضة شعب اعزل يقبع تحت اضطهاد وظلم احتلال.

وجاءت أوسلو…

تكسر الحلم فينا، كما تتكسر اجنحة طائر محلق نحو السماء.

واستبدلنا حلم الطيران والتحليق بالزحف على امل ان تنبت الاجنحة بوجود قيادة ستغذي امالنا وتحملنا نحو التحليق بتحقيق الحرية.

وصار الوطن علما مرفوعا بأرض محدودة على امل لمفاوضات تحولت مع السنوات الى القضية ونسينا القضية الاصلية.

وتقسمت الأرض الى مناطق، وزرعت المستوطنات بأراضينا وخلعت أشجار الزيتون.

ورفع العلم الفلسطيني ورفرف وفرحنا وانتصرنا لعلمنا.

صارت الحواجز معابرا، ودكت الأرض جدارا وأسلاك شائكة، وصار حلم المرور عن الحاجز بحجم حلم دولة آفلة.

وصار عندنا وزارات ووزراء، هيئات واستثمارات وبنوك ومؤسسات وامن وموظفين من مدراء ووكلاء وعقداء والوية بحجم وطن.

صار عندنا ابنية حديثة وقصور وحدائق ومتاحف ومعارض، وضعنا فيها امنياتنا بحلم وطن.

وانتخبنا رئيس وعشنا حلم الانتخابات والم رحيل رئيس رحلت معه الاحلام وانفضت الأوهام وصارت من لحظتها حياتنا نفض لمآسي تتراكم فتتناثر فتتشكل من جديد لتنفضنا كأشخاص وكشعب ووضعتنا في هذا الحال المقيت.

في مثل هذا اليوم قبل ثلاثة عقود، كنت احلم بهذا اليوم متخيلة نفسي وانا ام فخورة بجيلها الذي استطاع ان يدحض اضطهاد سنوات احتلال مباغت. كنت أرى في حلمي الربيعي فلسطين محررة من احتلال كان يقهر الحياة فينا ويقمع احلامنا وينهي امالنا. لأجد نفسي في حقيقة غاب عنها الربيع ولم نعش منها الا شتاء قاحل لا ينتهي. انفض من الانتفاضة أحلام الصبا، وابعثر اماني امام ابنائي لا يفهمون معانيها، لأحلام يرونها عبثية لجيل لا يمكن وصفه الا بالساذج.

ولم يبق من الحلم الا اسمه، ومن الانتفاضة الا ما تناثر من اثرها علينا بحاجز صار معبر ، وجدار صار يحدد ملامح مدننا وقرانا، وحلم بتصريح للدخول والخروج بلا تعطيل واثارة ، ومقاطعة صارت بها حدود السيادة وينتهي اليها حلم وطن ليس بالوطن من قريب ولا بعيد.

وطن منقسم على نفسه تحول العلم فيه الى علم حزب، وصارت حدود السيادة تشكل يوميا من قبل جندي بلا رتبة.

وطن يتناحر النزاع في داخله من كل الاتجاهات.

وطن نفضته أوسلو وصارت انتفاضته ذكرى لحلم لم ير النور.

 

Russiagate, Syria, and the Left

Once again, years of experience and research have been poured into an article challenging entrenched narratives on the anglophone institutional left, and once again, fear of retaliation from the purveyors of these entrenched narratives has made this challenge unpalatable even to left and liberal publishers with an obvious interest in countering them.

So, once again, the Antidote Writers Collective is pleased to participate in a decentralized effort to bring this challenge out into the open.

The following was initially published on CounterVortex with the understanding that the website’s publisher would be backed up by cross-posts from sympathetic websites in order to reduce the authoritarian left’s ability to target one vulnerable person with their classic arsenal of trolling, threats, abuse, and lawsuits.

Comrade of the zine Terry Burke has been a dedicated peace activist her entire life and has already heard the worst of it even from former comrades who have unthinkingly taken on Putinist narratives and allowed themselves to be played against the emergence of effective opposition to rising fascism in the United States. We salute her years of persistence and are proud to have her back. Enjoy.
Antidote Zine


Russiagate, Syria, and the Left

Terry Burke
CounterVortex

June 27, 2019

The last major national protest in the US was “Families Belong Together” in June 2018. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country demonstrated against the Trump administration’s policy of separating children and families at the border. People who had never protested before brought their families. It’s now a year later and the situation for immigrant families has only gotten worse. Where is the outrage?

Plans for an ICE raid targeting millions of immigrants. Initiating a military strike on Iran and then canceling it. Environmental policies that disregard climate change. Pulling the US out of treaties. Rising alt-right and nationalism around the world. Ignoring congressional subpoenas. Corrupt, incompetent people heading every federal agency. The list of destructive Trump policies seems endless.

Trump’s recent visit to London brought tens of thousands of protesters into the streets. Where are the protests in the US? Where are the coalitions in the US organizing against Trump’s anti-democratic, inhumane policies? Where is the left?

Part of the problem is the enormous amount of disinformation that has been specifically directed at the left, disinformation that most people don’t recognize. The disinfo uses anti-imperialist language and is posted on “left” and “progressive” sites that usually have nominally accurate stories on Palestine, Israel, climate change, corporate corruption, and other progressive issues. In addition to the disinfo media sites, respected left authors have confused their readers by dismissing Russiagate as a hoax, claiming that Russian interference in the US elections has been greatly exaggerated to provide the Democrats an excuse for Clinton’s loss.

Eight years of steady disinformation on Syria have created a split in the peace movement. The enormous amount of time and energy spent debating Syria could have gone to building the peace movement instead of dividing it. The doubts raised repeatedly about Russian interference and Mueller’s investigation have weakened the opposition to Trump. Some people don’t know which news sources they can trust. Others restrict themselves only to sources that support their ideological line.

Steve Bannon famously said, “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” That is exactly what has happened. There are thousands of new and unaccountable media organizations on the internet.

As Syria solidarity activists, we have been struggling against extensive, sophisticated disinformation regarding Syria for years—and it’s largely not from the US mainstream media. Syria is not Iraq, where the New York Times helped Bush lead us into war with fake information about WMDs. Syria is not Kuwait, where there were false stories planted about babies in incubators.

The mainstream media articles “demonizing” Assad are fundamentally true: his regime is one of the world’s most repressive, with a police and prison torture system of historic proportions. Unlike Iraq and Iran, and contrary to the propaganda claims, the CIA did not instigate a serious covert regime change operation in Syria. The US efforts in Syria are well documented in Shane Bauer’s recent two-part article for Mother Jones. He writes, “American involvement in Syria has been as fragmented and volatile as the conflict itself.” In this groundbreaking article, he documents how the US has spent billions, initially aiding the Free Syrian Army, but ultimately focused on combating ISIS, forbidding US-backed groups from fighting Assad’s forces.

His article corroborates the stories of anti-Assad Syrians of a genuine uprising against a brutal dictator evolving into a proxy war; of Assad bombing and starving civilians. The Syrian people were caught up in the fervor of the Arab Spring and surprised themselves (and the CIA) by going to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, demonstrating for democracy, overcoming their deep fears of reprisal.

However, most of the peace movement still doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the Syrian people’s eight-year struggle against the Assad dictatorship. There have been so many articles in “progressive” media promoting Assad’s narrative of another US regime change effort that they have buried the voices of Syrians.

The voices of Syrian communists, anarchists, democracy activists, writers, artists, intellectuals, and nonviolence activists have rarely been represented in “progressive” media. The majority of these media’s articles on Syria have been written by non-Syrians and they usually promote Assad’s line that he is protecting his sovereign country from US-backed terrorists.

Research from the University of Washington has shown how dominant the pro-Assad political messaging is from an “echo system” of sites that follow Russian, Iranian, and Syrian government-funded media. Researchers examined Twitter conversations about the White Helmets (a Syrian volunteer rescue group) in the summer of 2017. There were four times as many tweets from the echo system as there were from other media sources. Articles from the echo system claimed the White Helmets were a “propaganda construct,” “crisis actors” who staged events, and “they worked with or were themselves terrorists.”

The UW study noted that this echo system of sites claiming to be “independent” and “alternative” shared the same stories and writers. A few of these sites are Global ResearchRTMint Press NewsSputnik NewsFree Thought ProjectThe Anti-Media21st Century WireVeterans TodayZero Hedge, and many others.

For Syria activists, the UW research wasn’t a surprise. It confirmed our experiences over the last six years, that our struggle to get the truth out was up against a substantial, coordinated disinformation effort. We were familiar with this “echo-system” well before the UW study. While they claim to be “independent,” their political line was almost always the same on Syria, Crimea, Putin, and Trump. They played a role in electing Trump by bashing Clinton, equating Clinton and Trump, going easy on Trump, and disparaging voting.

While the sites claim to be funded by their readers and ads, they actually have very few ads and do not disclose information on their funding sources. In 2013, a former writer at Mint Press News, Joey LeMay, told BuzzFeed News, “It was incredibly secretive.” The article goes on to say there were “barely any ads on the website, and whenever LeMay asked about where they got their money, ‘it was brushed off as a non-issue. I would go home feeling not squeaky clean,’ he said.”

The sites in this echo system have all also posted numerous Russiagate articles. It’s understandable that progressives would question how extensive and effective Russian propaganda was in the 2016 elections. The mainstream media hasn’t examined Russian propaganda that targets the left. The UW research has not been mentioned in mainstream or progressive media. But it’s not an either/or proposition: we can criticize Clinton’s campaign and still acknowledge that Russian interference helped Trump win in an election where Clinton won the popular vote by a substantial margin.

The claim that a few Facebook ads bought with Russian rubles could have influenced the 2016 election may have seemed preposterous back in 2016. However, since then, there have been numerous exposés of Russia’s sophisticated use of social media and information warfare—something we had thought was mainly the province of our CIA.

While Russian disinformation is a new concern for Americans, not so for Europeans. In June 2017 the Washington Post reported that “across the [European] continent, counterintelligence officials, legislators, researchers, and journalists have devoted years—in some cases, decades—to the development of ways to counter Russian disinformation, hacking and trolling.” There have been numerous articles on how Swedenthe Baltic statesFinlandGermany, France, Italy, and others are dealing with Russian cyber attempts to influence elections and sway popular opinion.

When well-known left writers like Glenn GreenwaldMatt TaibbiKatrina vanden HeuvelNorman Solomon, and Max Blumenthal immediately denounced the evidence of Russian interference back in 2016, it had a silencing effect. After that, few well-known left writers pursued the serious possibility of effective Russian involvement. In the two and a half years since Trump’s election, there have continued to be new articles and research on Russian bots, trolls, Twitter campaigns, fake accounts, and continued Russian interference in the EU, but the Russiagate authors have ignored this information. Dark Money author Jane Mayer has also written on how Russia helped elect Trump.

After the release of the highly biased Barr summary which seemed to vindicate them, Chris HedgesGlenn GreenwaldStephen CohenMatt TaibbiAaron MatePaul Street in Counterpunch, and Katie Halper from FAIR castigated the US press for its extensive coverage of the Russia/Trump allegations.

However, they wrote nothing revising their Russiagate-is-a-hoax position after the subsequent release of the redacted Mueller report in April and Mueller’s public statement in May. The Mueller report explicitly documents extensive Russian interference in the 2016 elections, but they have refused to acknowledge this.

Greenwald wrote on April 18 that “the actions in which Trump engaged were simply not enough for Mueller to conclude that he was guilty of criminal obstruction.” After Mueller clearly stated on May 29 that he would not exonerate the president for obstruction of justice, Greenwald wrote a series of articles on Brazil and wrote nothing to correct his earlier misstatements about obstruction.

It is critical to understand that the Russiagate narrative is Trump’s narrative. By insisting for over two years that Russian interference was overblown, these authors have been defending the worst president in US history.

The UW-identified echo system of “alternative” media sites has also had numerous articles promoting Russiagate skepticism and Barr’s disingenuous summary of the Mueller Report. Global ResearchMint Press NewsFree Thought ProjectThe Anti-MediaZero Hedge21st Century WireActivist Post, and others have also continued to argue for the Russiagate conspiracy thesis, despite Mueller’s statement and all the information on Russian cyberwarfare.

Even Fox News occasionally departs from supporting Trump’s position on Russian interference, as summed up in a May 2019 Newsweek headline: “Fox News Legal Analyst Says Mueller Evidence Against Trump ‘Remarkably Similar’ to Nixon, Clinton Impeachment Charges.” But the left’s Russiagate skeptics have not conceded anything. Stephen Cohen recently wrote that Russiagate “is the worst and […] the most fraudulent political scandal in American history.”

The echo system and the Russiagate authors have published very little criticism of Putin’s Russia. They have many articles criticizing the US mainstream media, the corporate ownership of US media, “censorship” by Facebook and YouTube, but nothing on the new law in Russia whereby people can be jailed for fifteen days for “disrespecting” the Russian government online. An open internet in the US means there are thousands of sites with articles criticizing the US, but even one site with critical articles in Russia could result in fines and jail time. The difference is dramatic, and there have been no articles from the Russiagate skeptics on this oppressive law.

It’s rarely mentioned that Hedges has had a weekly show on RT (formerly Russia Today) since June 2016, which is funded by the Russian government. He’s scathing in his criticism of the US, but it’s hard to find his criticisms of Russia. After the Barr summary, he chastised the US press for “one of the most shameful periods in modern American journalism” and somehow never mentions the Russian restrictions on “disrespecting” the Russian government online.

Rania Khalek is also paid by the Russian government. Her site In the Now is one of three that were recently exposed as being owned by RT. Facebook briefly took them down until a small mention of RT’s involvement was placed on the page – a mention most people will never notice.

It is difficult to determine the motivation of the Russiagate writers and the echo system. Kate Starbird at the University of Washington writes about the echo system that “[their] efforts […] consist of diverse individuals and organizations who are driven by a variety of different motivations (including political, financial, and ideological).”

There is a certain amount of hyperbole to the Russiagate articles. The investigation is blamed for “Manufacturing War with Russia,” for “Endangering American Security,” for “Media Malpractice,” for being “This Generation’s WMD,” for “Target[ing] Any Dissent in US,” and so forth. When examining these authors’ lists of articles, one would prefer they had spent as much analysis on the dangers of a Trump presidency as they have spent on promoting their Russiagate thesis.

Stephen Cohen talks about the origins of the allegation that Trump was an agent of the Kremlin. Was it “begun somewhere high up in America by people who didn’t want a pro-détente president?” He suggests that “this originated with Brennan and the CIA.” It is all speculation, with no corroborating evidence.

For a starkly different perspective, consult authoritarianism scholars Sarah Kendzior or Timothy Snyder’s interviews, writings, and videos for detailed documentation of Trump’s dealings with Russia. They have been warning for the last three years about the dangers of the US sliding into autocracy under Trump. They have researched Trump’s ties to Russia in the decades before the 2016 elections and have tried to warn us about what is coming.

Contrast Cohen’s speculation with Snyder’s detailed factual information. Snyder is a Yale historian who wrote The Road to Unfreedom about Russia’s return to an authoritarian government under Putin and the rise of nationalism in Europe and America. He has put together a series of videos to explain what is happening here and internationally. In a concise Twitter thread, he documents fifty very specific reasons (with citations) why Trump owes a debt to Putin. He discusses the people in Trump’s campaign and in the Trump administration: “It is astounding how many of them are more directly connected to the Russian Federation than to the US.”

Kendzior lived in Uzbekistan during its transition from democracy to autocratic rule. When she started covering the Trump campaign in 2016, it reminded her of what she’d seen from the regime in Uzbekistan. Her website and podcast Gaslit Nation, which she presents together with journalist Andrea Chalupa, is an unparalleled source of information about Trump and his Russian connections and crimes. Kendzior and Chalupa advocate impeachment hearings so that the rest of the country can learn about these crimes.

Snyder and Kendzior have no doubts about the Trump-Russia collusion. There are other independent authors and researchers who are documenting and exposing what’s happening. Even without the Mueller report, there is an enormous amount of public information about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin, Russian interference, and the loss of our democracy.

When Syria solidarity activists first read the November 2016 Washington Post article about Russian propaganda influencing the 2016 elections, we were relieved. Finally, the Russian propaganda we had struggled against for years was being exposed! We assumed the propaganda on Syria would also be exposed. We thought the propaganda sites on the internet would be discredited.

We didn’t anticipate that prominent left writers would immediately denounce the Russian propaganda story as the “new McCarthyism” and Russiagate and that they would still be defending this narrative two and a half years later, in the face of so much evidence.

We didn’t understand how difficult it would be for the techies at Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to discern propaganda from the truth and how clumsy they would be in taking down sites, usually with almost no explanation, and occasionally taking down legitimate sites at the same time.

From our viewpoint as Syria solidarity activists, we are still in the same position now as we were in November 2016. Disinformation still dominates the internet. Syrian and Russian planes have been bombing civilians in Idlib for the last month, initially bombing twenty-five hospitals. While Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International have condemned the strikes on hospitals, sounding the alarm, there is no international pressure on Russia and Syria to end them. The echo system of media sites is distracting the left with disinformation about Assad’s 2018 chemical attack on civilians in Douma being supposedly “staged” by the rebels.

The persistent Russiagate articles from prominent left writers have many progressives feeling unsure what to believe. It has put us in the strange position of claiming that a former FBI director is more trustworthy than Chris Hedges or Stephen Cohen. But there is much more information validating what Mueller has reported than there is for the Russiagate skeptics and Trump.

There is no easy solution to the problem of massive disinformation on the internet. Certainly, we should be listening to the voices of progressive Syrians, Venezuelans, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Sudanese, not media pages that follow Putin’s line. Information about who is funding web pages would be one step towards transparency. Independent university research labs could evaluate the accuracy of media sites.

Another voice we should be listening to now is the authoritarianism scholar based in St. Louis. Sarah Kendzior says the Trump administration is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government and he should be impeached. It’s time for us to be in the streets.

Terry Burke is an activist with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria (CISPOS) in Minneapolis. Thanks to Comrade Ed Sutton and Antidote Zine for the heads-up. The article has been edited slightly to meet this website’s unwritten standards. Photograph by the Russian Reader, December 15, 2018, Ligovsky Prospect, Petersburg. In Russian slang, the word deza means “disinformation.”

Woman Challenging Rep. Ilhan Omar Officially Kicked Off Twitter After Multiple Threatening and Islamophobic Posts

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Congressional candidate Danielle Stella was banned from Twitter after calling for the trial and hanging of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who Stella is challenging for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district next year. Stella has been spreading a conspiracy theory that Omar shared intelligence with Iran.

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