It can be hard to make sense of the world today, but once again, I think ‘Team America World Police’ offers great wisdom for our democracy.
Seriously though, it seems that our politics are now unarguably an extension of the 19th and 20th century Russian revolutionary disinformation which springs from Russian Tsarists (who spread fascism, Aryanism, and Anti-Semitism); and their conflicts with Russian Bolsheviks (who spread communism, Marxism, and anti-capitalism). Russia seemed to control ‘both sides’ of extremist political discourse in the run up to World War II and it seems they may do so again.
Michael Avenatti is now having to deflect considerable criticism from both Democrats and Republicans that his actions around his representation of Julie Swetnick indirectly aided Brett Kavanaugh’s eventual ascendancy to the Supreme Court. While Avenatti has stood steadfastly by Swetnick, she has generally been eviscerated under public scrutiny. It is suggested that Avenatti’s actions in recklessly representing the flawed Swetnick and trying to grab the political spotlight for himself resulted in taking focus off of the more credible claims of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, allowing Republicans to focus on the ‘straw man’ of Swetnick’s weak character as a public figure. It seems in this case, that his tactics of social shaming rhetoric have backfired, perhaps permanently damaging his political standing.
I also just found that over the past month, Larry Flynt’s investigator Dan Moldea has been connecting with the press as well in the context of work Kavanaugh had done on Kenneth Starr’s Independent Counsel investigation into Bill Clinton — where Flynt and Moldea had come to Clinton’s rescue. In this case, Moldea is arguing not for a sex scandal (although his argument does derive from one), but for a lack of ethics regarding Clinton-era press leaks as being grounds for why Kavanaugh’s nomination should be questioned.
Here I find it important to point out that Moldea is basically the ‘standard bearer’ of the promotion of modern anti-conservative ‘Jimmy Hoffa’ conspiracy theories which emerged directly from Trotskyist-Communist labor narratives from the HUAC era and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of the 1930’s. Otherwise I think you might be able to chalk a lot of this up to harmless politics — when it may not actually be so. It creates a potential ‘Russian propaganda’ connection among the attempts to assail Judge Kavanaugh, and brings the story in line with the scope of this blog. Continue reading “Michael Avenatti and Dan Moldea vs. Nominee Brett Kavanaugh : The Muddy Wheelchair Tracks of Larry Flynt?”
In February 2018, YouTube started listing that ‘RT is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government’ on videos posted to RT’s YouTube channel. This change seems to be the consequence of attempts at enforcement of FARA-style regulation on social media in an attempt to curb the effects of state sponsored propaganda narratives. It also seems to be related to the near-unanimous assessment of the intelligence community as released in January 2017 that RT had been used as a malign influence vehicle for the Russian government campaign to subvert the 2016 US Presidential election.
Apparently, these findings were no ethical deterrent for the “Nostradamus of the legal scene”, Michael Avenatti – attorney for Stormy Daniels (aka Stephanie Clifford) – to appear on Larry King’s RT show on April 12, 2018 to make the case why he felt that it was common sense that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen would “roll over”; and that Cohen’s actions related to Stormy Daniels could lead to impeachment, or otherwise “end very, very badly” for the President.
In a back-to-back segment on the same program, Larry King also hosted former Congressman David Jolly (R-FL Pinellas). Jolly spoke on the matter of Paul Ryan’s announcement that he would not be seeking reelection (he had no on-air time with Avenatti, and the topics – although not necessarily the impeachment-orientated subject matter – of the discussions were different).
UPDATE: Mea culpa edit time. I stand by this analysis as written about Jim Carrey’s art, however I edited this post on 9/20/2018 to remove a persuasive passage in the conclusion which included what might be construed as advocacy for the deceased Cathriona White; Jim Carrey’s lover who apparently killed herself by drug overdose in 2015 after alleging Carrey had introduced her to sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, and mental abuse. She died from a combination of medications which had been prescribed to a fake name used by Carrey, but which Carrey alleged had been stolen from him. The removed passage from the blog was taken from the context of the below text as allegedly exchanged between White and Carrey in 2013.
Pyotr Verzilov, member of Voina and recently divorced husband of Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was (most likely) poisoned in a “non life threatening” manner and transported from Russia to Berlin, giving the Russian-Canadian artist a striking public parallel in the press with the notable poisonings of dissident figures like Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Kara Murza, and Sergei Skripal. No doubt this will have a lot of media trying to interview him, give him attention, etc.
However, I still advise caution about Verzilov who is noted by members of his former art group Voina as a “dexterous deceiver” “occupied with self-promotion”; and is accused of ratting out several members of the group to police, as well as subverting other anarchist-dissident movements. This could easily be a ploy for sympathy or relevance; as much as it could be some kind of Russian intelligence ruse; or even the work of an honest Russian nationalist who doesn’t get that Verzilov is possibly ‘one of their boys’.
I recently critiqued Jim Carrey in the context of his mercury-based vaccine conspiracism which seems connected to 1980’s Soviet propaganda; as well as his positioning relative to the legacy of Hollywood’s Popular Front and right-left conspiracism as I see it as a factor in modern Russian information warfare. Today, I am going to delve specifically into Carrey’s career as an artist since 2011 which I only briefly discussed in the prior essay. I believe the analysis strongly supports my prior observations – but also highlights an interesting recurring theme of Carrey’s presumable mental health related to messianic tendencies (I suggest you do not call him ‘JC’ if you meet him in order to minimize this).
It seems that internet audiences were only recently introduced to Carrey’s art in the context of the short documentary – I Needed Color (which since its release in August 2017 has got over 6 million views at the below Vimeo link). It’s noF for Fake, but it’s worth watching to get a sense for the artistic ‘Passion of the Carrey’.
I saw that Jim Carrey advocated for glorious “socialism” the other day . To be honest, as a cancer survivor, I am not opposed to the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). But knowing Carrey’s reputation as an advocate for the idea that vaccines cause autism, my honest first thought was ‘what kind of socialism is it where your medical system doesn’t provide vaccinations?’. I wasn’t really that familiar with this particular ‘brand’ of conspiracism but ‘vaccine truth’ had the ring of Soviet or Russian disinformation to me (much like ‘water fluoridation conspiracism’), so I dug into it a little.
There is a new documentary called “Active Measures” coming out about Trump and Russia on August 31; I took notice of it since it is being distributed by the same company that distributed Anthony Bourdain’s documentary, “Wasted: The Story of Food Waste” (Super LTD films). It will be interesting to see if it is any good, since this is apparently the first documentary made by the studio ‘Shooting Films‘ (SF). Certainly I am very interested in active measures myself.