Chrissy Teigen, Twitter’s former queen of stinging repartee who once gave as good as she got in a 280-character feud with (then) President Donald Trump, sounded a much more measured tone in her first online post since May 12.
“It has been a VERY humbling few weeks,” Teigen began in a post to Medium which she also shared to her over 50 million followers on social media. She was referring to the fallout from the controversy surrounding old tweets that showed her cyber bullying former reality star Courtney Stodden.
The Lip Sync Battle co-host went on to say that, in the time since her last post, “I’ve been sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment, the ultimate ‘sit here and think about what you’ve done.'”
Oh, just shut up. No one believes you. You grandstand on Twitter and act so holier than thou but the truth is you online bullied someone who wasn't even 18. You're scum and you're trash and, Chrissy, it's not that easy.
Now here's Chris Hedges:
A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice.
This why we are here tonight. Yes, all of us who know and admire Julian decry his prolonged suffering and the suffering of his family. Yes, we demand that the many wrongs and injustices that have been visited upon him be ended. Yes, we honor him up for his courage and his integrity. But the battle for Julian’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Julian and his family, but for us.
Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Julian, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence.
The long campaign against Julian and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations.
I was in the London courtroom when Julian was being tried by Judge Vanessa Baraitser, an updated version of the Queen of Hearts in Alice-in Wonderland demanding the sentence before pronouncing the verdict. It was judicial farce. There was no legal basis to hold Julian in prison. There was no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the U.S. Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Julian in the embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Julian and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Julian is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.
The U.S. government directed, as Craig Murray so eloquently documented, the London prosecutor James Lewis. Lewis presented these directives to Baraitser. Baraitser adopted them as her legal decision. It was judicial pantomime. Lewis and the judge insisted they were not attempting to criminalize journalists and muzzle the press while they busily set up the legal framework to criminalize journalists and muzzle the press. And that is why the court worked so hard to mask the proceedings from the public, limiting access to the courtroom to a handful of observers and making it hard and at times impossible to access the trial online. It was a tawdry show trial, not an example of the best of English jurisprudence but the Lubyanka.
Julian needs to be free.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, June 14, 2021. The October Revolution accomplished what few ever have and yet the media continues to undercut it -- even when supposedly praising it.
In October, Iraq is expected to hold parliamentary elections. October is also the month that, in 2019, the October Revolution took off. It is still active. Neslines Institute's COUNTOURS podcast recently addressed The October Revolution.
Nick Heras: What is the greatest impact that the movement is having on decision makers in Baghdad.it has had?
Jane Arraf: Thanks, Nick. I think, you know, that we have to remember that the greatest impact is that it's changed some f the decision makers because this is a movement that actually toppled a government. It achieved one of the main things that it wanted to. Now we can and will talk about how it's probably been downhill from there but there's a prime minister who came to power simply because protesters demanded the toppling of the previous prime minister and Shia religious figures concurred, they said they had lost trust in him. So that's the main part of it.
We'll stop her there.
It bears reminding that Jane was completely wrong about The October Movement in real time. Jane's been covering Iraq forever. Her 'scoops' have been miniscule. She has broken no real news ever. She started covering Iraq for CNN and when Saddam Hussein was in power and, as the then-head of CNN infamously revealed in his infamous column for THE NEW YORK TIMES (Eason Jordan's "The News We Kept To Ourselves"), CNN deliberately censored and watered down its coverage in order to remain in Iraq. It's the lesson she's taken with her, don't rock the boat. Don't cover anything a sitting government in Iraq doesn't want covered. It's why she's worked for so many outlets lately: She doesn't deliver.
She fails to be covering what's necessary, she uses her coverage to minimize what's going on.
That was especially clear on October 25, 2019. From that day's snapshot:
In this report (different from above), Jane insisted that the government was not firing on people. Really?
In addition, Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports, "Iraqi police fired live shots into the air as well as rubber bullets and
dozens of tear gas canisters on Friday to disperse thousands of
protesters on the streets of Baghdad, sending young demonstrators
running for cover and enveloping a main bridge in the capital with thick
white smoke. One protester was killed and dozens were injured in the
first hours of the protest, security officials said."
The first one killed is said to have been hit with a tear canister. The
video above is supposed to be of that protester after he was hit.
In fairness to Jane, the use of "live shots" and "rubber bullets" may
have taken place as more protesters assembled. Her reports were both
filed (the two for NPR above) as the protesters began assembling. The
bullets may have taken place after the assembling was complete and the
protests were in full swing. Yesterday, Jane Tweeted:
At least two people have died as protests intensified in Iraq,
with security forces using tear gas to repel demonstrators from
approaching government buildings Friday, a member of the Independent
High Commission for Human Rights of Iraq has told CNN. The official added that at least 95 other people were suffering from the effects of exposure to tear gas."
The protests have been down hill since then, Jane?
The protests have been strong and it takes a real western ass to argue otherwise. They turn out, they show up. This is despite a wave of assassinations targeting them. This despite a world press that largely ignores them. This despite their peaceful camps being burned to the ground. This despite the pandemic that's effected Iraq the same it has the rest of the world.
But Jane grades on a curve -- a curve that's always in favor of the sitting govenrment.
But even Jane has to admit tha they toppled a government. They did that but you really wouldn't grasp that if you followed the world press. It got very little attention.
They overhtrew the government and did so without resorting to bullets or bombs.
And that's huge.
Unless you are a western journalist.
How many millions and millions of dollars did the US government spend -- not their dollars, it was the taxpayers' money -- to overthrow Saddam Hussein? How many Iraqis and Americans had to die in order to overthrow Saddam Hussein?
But The October Revolution overthrew the prime minister of Iraq and did so without resorting to bombs or bullets.
Let's move over to another topic that we've been covering for months -- one also largely ignored by the western media.
Thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq are worried they will be forced to leave their camp in the northern Nineveh province, which hosts nearly 2,400 families, rights groups and refugees have told Al Jazeera.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis took shelter in refugee camps in Nineveh province, forced from their homes by the war against the ISIL (ISIS) armed group. ISIL was defeated in 2017 nearly three years after it took over large swaths of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.Most of the camps in the province have since been shut down but Jedaa Camp, about 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of Mosul city, still hosts refugees who are afraid to go back to their homes because of the security situation.
“Authorities are telling each family in the camp to leave. They’re pressuring us to fill security clearance and compensation papers that we would need after we leave the camp,” Wedad Ahmed, 53, told Al Jazeera from the Jedaa Camp.
“I have four children and my mother-in-law with me in the tent. My husband died in a mortar attack three years ago,” she said, adding that she has nowhere to go.
Activists and aid groups on the ground, who wished to remain anonymous, said on Monday that the Ministry of Displacement and Migration had instructed the camp mukhtars – men who often serve as heads of their communities – to inform all families from Tal Abta, al-Mahalabiya and al-Jaban districts to depart immediately.
The above? Real issues. Sadly, we have to talk now about a distraction, someone who lies and lies and covers for imperialism.
"F**ck, Aaron Mate!" snarls Ana Kasparian.
Someone should have put that cur on a leash long ago. I'm going to repeat, JACOBIN needs to remove her from their podcast. Yes, f-Aaron Mate is from a TYT 'performance.' But she's too hateful, she's too abrasive and she shouldn't be pat of JACOBIN. We haven't noted them once since her attack on Katie Halper and, as we noted then, she crossed a line. She carried out that attack on a JACOBIN platform and it didn't belong there. She is a cur. SHe really should be pulled from all media. But at the very least, JACOBIN should pull her from their site.
Mad Maddie's best friend should stick to Mad Maddie and she and Albright can give one another clitoral orgasms until the end of time while laughing about the dead Iraqis. But she doesn't need to be on JACOBIN. She cheapens JACOBIN and they don't need a podcast host who prevents them from gaining new listeners. They don't need it. They never need it?
Her praise for Madeline Albright, her scraping and bowing to a War Criminal should have had her pulled from JACOBIN all by itself.
She's trash. She's a liar who attacks. TYT is a joke. But let's watch JACOBIN ride down the toilet with her because they don't have the brains to protect their own brand.
JACOBIN, the world is watching you. There may be a few idiotic Americans stupid enough to tolerate your association with Ana. But the global world will not. She's too cozy to too many War Criminals, she's an apoligist and a liar for empire. And the world won't forget it. More to the point, these people will spend their lives educating even the most unaware American on reality. And when that happens, JACOBIN's attachment to their own personal Judy Miller will not be forgotten or forgiven. She's tanked your brand.
I made very clear that she did not belong at JACOBIN after her attack on Katie Halper and that I was done with JACOBIN while they were associated with her. As a result, I've heard from various left outfits and they may not have the guts to say so publicly but they're as appalled by JACOBIN's association with Ana as I am.
JACOBIN's destroying themselves. It's past time for them to cut Ana loose. It's not like she'll be unemployed. She'll stil have her TYT job. ANd I'm sure she'll continue to be paid to make nice and play footsie with War Criminals like Mad Maddie Albright.
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