Well, part of it makes sense. But I agree with Chomsky who said that the
Ukraine thing is impeachable, but pursuing it at this point may be politically
unwise. Roger Stone is a very unpleasant character who's done all sorts of
unsavory things. But I'm not sure what his big crime is. What I think is that
if the Democratic Party were what it pretends to be, it would have begun
attempting to rid the country of Trump when he first proposed his Muslim ban.
They wouldn't have done all this Russia and Ukraine stuff. They would have gone
after him for the real crimes: the immigration stuff, his use of the presidency
for his financial gain, his installing family members in positions for which
they were unqualified, his incitement of people to riot and to violence. But
I'm reading that book about the Dems, We've Got People, and clearly, the party
is not what it represents itself to be.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2019 5:46 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Media's Obsession With Personalities
Blah, blah and more blah.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/6/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not sure I agree with all of the points he makes.
MiriamThe Media’s Obsession With Personalities
November 5, 2019
Roger Stone is playing a key role in the Democrats’ attempt to revive
the discredited “collusion” story, writes Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Jury selection began Tuesday in Washington in the trial of political
operative Roger Stone on charges of obstructing justice and lying to
Congress. But instead of focusing on those narrow charges, the
corporate media is trying to make this about Stone’s personality while
attempting to revive the discredited allegation of collusion between
the Trump campaign and Russia.
The media has a long history of putting personality above facts.
Judgement should be reserved to what people say and what they do.
Instead we’ve seen character assassination of many people, including
imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, rather than a truthful
examination of his actions and the dangerous charges against him for
practicing journalism. There is the same obsession with the
personalities of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, for instance, rather
than objectively examining their actions, particularly on foreign
policy. In the same way, Barack Obama’s personality was elevated to
cover up for his foreign policy disasters in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Yemen
and in building tensions with Russia.
Stone on his way to court in February. (Victoria Pickering/Flickr.)
Now Stone, by all appearances a sleazy operative in a town full of
sleazy operatives for both parties, is portrayed by The New York Times
as a “swashbuckling and abrasive political trickster for decades” and
“eccentric and flamboyant.” Stone is still innocent until proven
otherwise. It’s becoming harder to find, but serious reporting about a
person on trial would ditch the adjectives.
The reporting on Stone has little to do with the actual charges
against him, but rather serves the purpose of reviving a narrative the
media falsely pushed for two years: that the Trump campaign colluded
with Russia to turn the 2016 election.
Newsweek reported Tuesday:
“Stone, 67, is at the center of the question of whether the Trump
campaign conspired or cooperated with WikiLeaks or Russia to leak
stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary
Clinton’s campaign during the
2016 election.”
At least The New York Times admitted,
“Mr. Mueller’s investigation found insufficient evidence to charge
anyone tied to the Trump campaign with criminally conspiring with
WikiLeaks or the Russians to damage the campaign of Hillary Clinton.
But as documents released last week by the Justice Department
underscore, Trump campaign aides were elated when WikiLeaks began
publishing emails that the Russians stole from Democrats.”
Of course they were elated as any campaign would be if such damaging,
and true, information came out about its opponent. Is elation now a crime?
The Democrats’ and the media’s allegation against Stone, though it is
not in his indictment, is that he somehow knew about coming WikiLeaks
releases and told Trump about them. Even if he did, is it a crime if
he had nothing to do with obtaining the emails? Stone knew about the
coming WikiLeaks releases because Assange had already announced they
were coming. The Times reported:
“Mr. Stone later insisted that he never had any inside information
from WikiLeaks, and his claims were simply ‘posture, bluff and hype.’”
The Only Russiagate Crime
Assange in 2014, while in the Ecuadorian Embassy. (Cancillería del
Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Aside from the technical charges against Stone on lying and
obstructing justice regarding his alleged efforts to learn what
WikiLeaks was preparing to release, the only crime in this whole story
is the stealing of the DNC and Podesta emails. It has never been
proven in court who did it, and probably never will, despite the Times
and other corporate media saying flatly that Russia did it.
Earlier in Stone’s legal process his lawyers filed a motion to try to
prove that Russia did not hack the DNC and Podesta emails. The motion
revealed that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC and
Clinton campaign, never completed its report, and only gave a redacted
draft to the FBI blaming Russia. The FBI was never allowed to examine
the DNC server itself.
In the end, though, it doesn’t matter if it were a hack or a leak by
an insider. That’s because the emails WikiLeaks released were
accurate. When documents check out it is irrelevant who the source is.
That’s why WikiLeaks set up an anonymous drop box, copied by big media
like The Wall Street Journal and others. Had the emails been
counterfeit and disinformation was inserted into a U.S. election by a
foreign power that would be sabotage.
But
that is not what happened.
The attempt to stir up the thoroughly discredited charge of collusion
appears to be part of the defense strategy of those whose reputations
were thoroughly discredited by maniacally pushing that false charge
for more than two years. This includes legions of journalists. But
principal among them are intelligence agency officials who laundered
this “collusion”
disinformation campaign through the mainstream media.
Faced now with a criminal investigation into how the Russiagate
conspiracy theory originated intelligence officers and their
accomplices in the media and in the Democratic Party are mounting a
defense by launching an offensive in the form of impeachment
proceedings against Trump that is based on an allegation of conducting
routine, corrupt U.S. foreign policy.
Stone may be just a footnote to this historic partisan battle that may
scar the nation for a generation. But he has the personality to be the
poster boy for the Democrats’ lost cause.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former
correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times
of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at
joelauria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and followed on Twitter @unjoe .