Wednesday, April 5, 2023. Duncan Campbell's ridiculous attack on Katrina vanden Heuvel, realties on Iraq, and much more.
I'm
late to the party and all I really brought along was scorn and dismay.
Just learned of Duncan Campbell's garbage. I've known
Duncan for years and would prefer not to have to call him out here.
I've done
so once before. So if I'm doing it now, you know it's big.
It's about
this that went up in February -- again, late to the party, I admit.
As
I grab a drink, let me start off with, "Katrina, you were warned years
ago about that backstabbing Katha
Pollitt." That's how I learned about Duncan's article. A friend
called to say, "You'll never believe what that [_____] is
reTweeting." The blank is Katha Pollitt -- failed writer, laughable
'poetess,' full on racist (remember she used her column to lecture the
NAACP that representation didn't matter), lard face (her face has
pockets of lard on it, it's very unsettling), all round nightmare.
If
she hadn't been eager to reTweet about Duncan Campbell's bad article, I
never would have known about it because it wouldn't have been news.
Anti-feminist Katha reTweeting it made it news because, unlike the
uneducated and naive, actual feminists know Katha's not a feminist.
She's ugly and she uses the false stereotype that all feminists are ugly
to pass for a feminist. But the racism involved in her work (and in
her life, let's be honest) makes it clear that she's no feminist. I
can't not mention Abeer here, sorry. When I spoke to Alexander Cockburn
in dismay over the fact that 'feminist' Katha wasn't writing about the
young girl in Iraq who was gang raped by US troops while her parents and
younger sister were being murdered -- and then she was murdered, he
agreed it was outrageous. He also wrote about Abeer right after. Katha
didn't. As she got more and more pressure -- and as real feminists --
not rich spoiled bitches who used the summer of 2006 to post photos of
themselves in bikinis on private beaches -- began complaining as well,
Katha finally wrote about Abeer.
A whole
column? No. A single-sentence in a column. That's Katha' 'feminist'
contribution. Oh well, at least for a half-hour or so her ex was safe
from her stalking while she banged out the same useless column.
That
Katha's one of Duncan's sources in the articles is not a surprise.
It's the prediction come to life. Again, Katrina, you were warned.
Duncan
Campbell believes in the disproven Russia-gate nonsense. And he's
written at least one article -- I don't have time for the second --
that's supposed to be about that.
But it's not
about that. It probably can't be about that because the Russia-gate
story was always garbage. We never bought into it. Trump's winning in
2016 was not a surprise to anyone paying attention. We were in one
state after another and it was obvious he was going to win the GOP
primary and, by September of 2016, it was obvious he was going to win
the election. There are reasons for that -- including Hillary's awful
campaign -- but I guess if you weren't in America -- Duncan wasn't --
you wouldn't grasp reality, even all this time later.
Since he can't offer up facts, he focuses on ripping apart Katrina vanden Heuvel.
As
noted many times before here, I knew Katrina's mother and I knew her
grandfather and I know her. I knew Stephen F. Cohen as well. I've
called Katrina out here many times. I'm sure I will again. There's
some of that which will probably be referred to in a little bit.
But
Duncan tries to build a case against Katrina that never develops.
She's the publisher and owner of THE NATION magazine. He's a faded
writer who couldn't even get his attack published for over two years.
So
Duncan wants you to know that Katrina was 'taken in' by Russia and
that she printed Stephen F. Cohen's opinion pieces without vetting them
through proper channels and blah blah blah.
Duncan's never been all that bright to begin with.
He's hit a new low even for him.
I
think Katrina can be called an expert on Russia. It's one of her
fields. Duncan refuses to give her credit for that, please note.
Now I too have griped about Katrina over the Russia-Gate nonsense. Unlike Duncan, I have griped
that she didn't do enough. I was referring to her own comments and to
what I saw as underwhelming coverage because I felt she should have been
standing up much taller and being much louder.
I honestly didn't think that a Duncan Campbell would come along.
She may have been right to play it cautious -- I don't think so, but she may have been right -- in terms of as a publisher.
I'm
real sorry that all this time later, Duncan can't admit that he's wrong
because he is. He's got a bunch of strung together garbage that adds
up to nothing. Well that makes sense. He's a mainstream reporter and
he's offering more of the same garbage that the mainstream fed the
country (and the world) for years.
Katrina
is the owner of THE NATION -- Duncan got that right. She does, in that
role, sometimes kill pieces. When she killed the piece on DiFi's
corruption, I called her out here.
I've
known her for years but that's not given any special pull here. I
dubbed her "the peace resister," for example, over THE NATION's refusal
to cover war resisters.
I've
noted that Stephen didn't feel he was getting special treatment -- from
his wife's magazine -- and I've noted that I was rather mad at her over
this.
So I'm not an apologist for Katrina.
Duncan needs to apologize, however.
Katrina's
an expert on Russia. Her husband was an expert (he has passed away --
though Duncan's just published article acts as though Stephen's still
alive -- shoddy journalism).
She owns the magazine. In the end, like it or not, that gives her the final say. She's the owner and publisher.
And I don't see anything in Duncan's efforts to paint her as biased that sticks.
She
didn't want your crappy article. Well, if it's taken you almost three
years to publish it (online), obviously no one else did either. Maybe
retire, Duncan. There was a time, back in the '00s, when if you'd done
that, your name wouldn't be such a joke.
Instead
you're attacking Katrina with claims and doing it in such a plodding
manner that it doesn't even make it as bitchy. At least entertain us,
Duncan.
I don't think she
needed Stephen fact checked (and I only have Duncan's word that Stephen
wasn't fact checked). His articles were akin to what you might get in
one of his lectures or during office hours. That's not meant as an
insult. Stephen was trying to make a difference and grasped that the
more stilted anything sounded, the less it would be read. He attempted
to keep it on a conversational level as much as possible (which was also
why he was fine with any of his verbal statements on the topic being
written up).
It didn't need fact checking, these were topics he was an expert on and had long, long spoken to.
THE
NATION has a better past than THE PROGRESSIVE (much better) but I've
called out past eras before -- call them out here and at THIRD. I've
never felt the need to 'red-bait' the memory of a dead woman -- Freda
Kirchwey.
I
have no idea why Duncan wants to go there. Except that it's easier to
attack her then face the fact that he's really got nothing on Katrina.
So instead, he serves up that Freda's past -- the same way elements of
the US government attempted to smear her decades ago. They weren't
anymore successful than Duncan at proving anything but, like Duncan,
they worked hard to smear her.
Katrina
never worked with Freda, there's no reason to bring her up. (She died
in 1976, and was gone from the publication long before Katrina joined it
in the 90s.) Duncan's got nothing so he tries to create some 'guilt by
association.' It's nonsense.
He
then appears to be trying to paint Katrina as someone with dual
loyalties. Katrina does love the country of Russia. It's not a rival
to the US for
her. She is firmly rooted in the US. And for him to imply otherwise
really ticks me off and, as noted before, I knew Katrina's mother and
grandfather. (I also knew her father, I never liked him.) Russia is an
area of interest to her (that's why she's an expert on it). There are
no dual loyalties and it's really irritating the way Duncan tries to
infer that there is while refusing to have the guts to flat out make the
charge.
Duncan's
acting like an idiot who thinks he's building a case. What does it
matter that Katrina went on RT in 2008? I believe she was also on
BLOOMBERG TV that year -- in fact, I know she was, we did a piece at
THIRD and we promoted the BLOOMBERG appearance ahead of time. I knew
nothing of RT until 2011 when Adam Kokesh was doing a show on there. I
did watch that show and I probably promoted it -- and it featured, in
the opening, a portrait we did of Adam for THIRD. Adam is an Iraq War
resister. I applaud him to this day. I applaud him and his spirit. If
he was still on RT today, we'd note the show.
I
have no idea why Duncan thinks he can slime Katrina for appearing on
RT. Abby Martin worked on RT. We noted her. Chris Hedges worked there
and we noted his program. I was friends with Larry King for years and,
of course, I noted his program on RT. I don't really get where Duncan
gets off sliming RT.
I
see Duncan trashing Stephen for 2014. I don't see Duncan noting
Victoria Nuland's recorded comments. I don't see him mentioning her
once. I guess some people get scared or they turn into whores. Again,
the best thing for Duncan would have been to have retired in the '00s.
Instead, he doesn't want to note Nuland or how the US overthrew the
elected government of Ukraine in 2014.
Duncan castigates Katrina as follows:
She
described the Washington Post, to which she contributes a weekly
column, as “like Pravda on the Potomac—it is a regime change newspaper.”
Duncan,
"Pravda on the Potomac"? Katrina didn't originate that phrase.
Online, they trace it back to the 70s and the right-wing. It predates
the 70s and I heard Abby Hoffman call it that repeatedly.
"It
is a regime change newspaper." Yes, she's right. That's what it is
and what it's always been. If this is news to you now, Duncan, I'm
worried about your mind because you used to know that. How pathetic you
have become to sell out everything you believe in.
Sorry, Katrina's right..
He has nothing in the end. So many words, thousands, and he has nothing to say.
Katrina is bad, Katrina is evil. That's what he wants to say.
But he can't back it up.
While
slamming her for printing Stephen's writing, he notes of Russia-gate,
"In response, vanden Heuvel decided to air all the competing views."
I fault Katrina for that as well -- and have already done so here. I fault her for that because it was upsetting to Stephen.
I
fault her for that as a friend of Stephen's -- again, he passed away,
back in 2020, though you'd never know it from Duncan's article that was
published last February.
But as a publisher?
"In response, vanden Heuvel decided to air all the competing views"?
That's not something to fault a publisher for. That's something to
applaud, that's something every outlet should strive for.
When
THE NATION can't make the bills, who reaches into their own pocket?
Katrina. That's another thing you can't fault her for.
Duncan
thinks he has some amazing story. He's got nothing. He's pulled down
his pants and we're all pointing and laughing at how little he's
showing.
I have had many problems with
Katrina over the years and will probably continue to do so. But she
didn't do anything wrong with regards to Russia-gate as a publisher. As
a publisher, she presented a wide range of options, a wide range of
views. As a publisher, she kept the magazine focused -- look at THE
PROGRESSIVE if you want to see how quickly two decades can be wasted.
Duncan
is an embarrassment and Katha needs to be fired. Judging by her
actions, she's unhappy being at THE NATION. So fire her already. As I
said a long time ago, no one is going to hire her. She offers nothing.
She never has. She's useless and an embarrassment. Now she's taken it
upon herself to carry her grudge with the magazine -- a longstanding
one -- public. Fine. She's not happy, let her go. At 73, she really
should be retiring anyway.
“One of my earliest memories is from a week or so before the
invasion,” Meethak al-Khatib, an Iraqi journalist and filmmaker, tells
Al Jazeera. “I came into our living room. My uncle had come over. He was
putting duct tape on all the windows. I asked him why he was doing
that. He said so the glass will not turn to shrapnel. While he was doing
that, on our TV was the last time I saw Saddam as president.”
On March 19, 2003, a United States-led coalition began bombing Iraq. One day later, a ground invasion began. Al-Khatib was seven years old.
At the time, al-Khatib and his family lived in Ramadi, 110km (70
miles) west of Baghdad. They left their home during the early onset of
the invasion, but the family was unable to meet their basic needs in
Heet, a city in Al-Anbar province, so they returned to Ramadi to find
that US forces had set up a base next to the family home.
As the report notes, one of the biggest products of the war was the creation of the internally displaced in Iraq.
The number of internally
displaced people (IDPs) rose from zero registered in 2003 to 2.6 million
in 2007.
By the time the US announced an end to its combat operations in December 2011, the number of Iraqi IDPs stood at 1.3 million.
However, with the rise, advance and fall of ISIL from 2013 to 2019,
the number of IDPs increased again, reaching a peak of 4.4 million in
2015.
As of 2022, there were nearly 1.2 million internally displaced people across the country.
It's
a reality that, for example, PBS refuses to acknowledge while they keep
purposely selecting guests who are pro-war to come on and insist that
the Iraq War was right and good and wonderful. The Iraq War has also
produced external refugees, people who have to flee the country.
ALJAZEERA notes:
In a Jordanian church, Sarah Nael is sewing a shirt for “Rafedin”, a
project that has provided dozens of women who fled violence in
neighbouring Iraq with skills to earn a living.
Many of the women escaped the extreme violence carried out by the
ISIL (ISIS) armed group’s self-declared “caliphate” that cut across
swaths of Iraq and Syria, eventually ending up in Jordan – where they
found themselves without work.
“Life here is very, very difficult, if we don’t work, we can’t live,”
said Nael, a 25-year-old Christian from the northern Iraqi town of
Qaraqosh, who joined the Rafedin sewing project two years ago.
Rafedin is based at St Joseph Catholic Church in the Jordanian
capital, Amman, where it was set up in 2016 by Italian priest Mario
Cornioli, along with Italian designers and tailors.
The products, including dresses, jackets, belts and ties, are sold in Amman and Italy to raise funds.
For refugees, barred from seeking regular work, the project provides
them with a way to supplement assistance from the United Nations.
More
realities that THE NEWSHOUR can't cover. PBS' NEWSHOUR can only speak
to War Hawks -- male, of course. Gone are the days of pretending to
care about women -- gone with the anchoring by Gwen and Judy. So
realities about women don't get noted.
At MERIP, Zahra Ali explains:
The US-led invasion is one node in a longer story of Iraq’s eroding
welfare state and its outsized impact on Iraqi women. In 2003, Iraq was
already in survival mode. Still not recovered from the Iraq-Iran war and
the US-led coalition bombings during the first Gulf War, it had also
faced over a decade of UN sanctions, some of the most drastic ever
imposed on a country. Sanctions constituted what philosopher Joy Gordon has called “the invisible war.”[1]
Sanctions altered the social fabric of Iraqi society, destroyed the
middle class and plunged the majority of the population into poverty.
The Iraqi state, historically a major employer, could no longer rely on
its main source of revenue, oil sales. It cut employees’ salaries as
well as essential public services. As has been well-documented,
sanctions also played a central role in the development of everyday
corruption and in the formation of mafia-like groups connected to the
Baath regime.
Prior to the sanctions, Iraqi women were among the most educated in
the region and worked in almost all sectors, although predominantly in
the public sector. They took advantage of strong state services, such as
higher education, health care, childcare and public transportation.
Since 2003, however, public services have been mostly privatized, which
has left them dysfunctional or absent. The dire conditions in
post-invasion Iraq are not the result simply of neoliberalism, where
aggressive privatization is often related to public land grabbing and
violent dispossession. Iraq used to have robust and functioning
infrastructure before it was destroyed by US-led wars. Women can no
longer rely on universal health care and supported childcare. Every
aspect of life in Iraq is costly, including access to running water,
electricity, childcare and basic health care. Women’s employment has
plummeted with the collapse of the public sector. These changes have
impacted all Iraqis, but it is women who are disproportionately affected
and who are already facing challenges from legal discrimination and
heteropatriarchal societal norms.
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