Corporate-State Department of Injustice & Steven Donziger

The corporate state came for human rights lawyer Steven Donziger — and we’re next

He is the first person charged with any misdemeanor to be held under home confinement for more than two years. He is the first attorney ever to be charged with criminal contempt over a discovery dispute in a civil case where the attorney went into voluntary contempt to pursue an appeal. He is the first person to be prosecuted under Rule 42 (criminal contempt) by a private prosecutor with financial ties to the entity and industry that was a litigant in the underlying civil dispute that gave rise to the orders. He is the first person tried by a private prosecutor who had ex parte communications with the charging judge while that judge remained (and remains) unrecused on the criminal case.

Craig Murray Indicted for Blogging!

 

Dissident British ex-diplomat Craig Murray indicted for blog posts

Craig Murray, a former UK diplomat turned anti-war activist, has been charged with contempt of court for writing blog posts. He faces a possible two years in jail, with no jury and no freedom of speech defense permitted.

Unfunny Bits & Ruling-Class Contempt

 

Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels was recently the celeb royalty featured on Jerry Seinfeld’s car show, in an episode entitled: “Everybody likes to see the monkeys.” Now I wish I hadn’t bothered to tune in because now I have to respond.

The corporate overlord sensibility is prevalent, dripping from every annoyed grunt Michaels offers the inconsequential rabble. Instantly, I recalled how Tim Robbins and John Cusack had punched his number back in 1992. Michaels is a tool of social control, a buttress who defines what can be said to millions, and what cannot.

 

Michaels tipped his hand when Seinfeld challenged him on “alternative comics,” those “below 14th street” who don’t exist as far as SNL is concerned. The “alternative” is any alternative view to corporate whoredom, and Michaels sneers and scoffs his way through the idea that anyone but corporate-approved mindless, inconsequential distractions should matter.

Yes, he gleefully categorizes everyone and everything his show does as nothing more than monkeying around. And now we see the flaw in SNL as an institution. The boss believes in flinging poo and nothing beyond. He has no integrity on display, simply the desire to let the monkeys run amok for fun and profit. The world may burn to the ground elsewhere, but nothing relevant will appear in Lorne Michaels’ Monkey House. His show pretends to address issues, but it’s a pretense, a marketing strategy.

 

That’s why the show’s fakeness and vapidity are so entrenched and intractable. SNL cannot actually say anything meaningful; Michaels won’t allow it. It is not an “alternative,” to the rest of the corporate mainstream marketing propaganda but exists to reinforce it.

Even Michaels’ choice of restaurant reinforced his elite ruling-class view, escaping to where the coffees likely run $25 a cup, and no other diners were seen, or perhaps permitted. Michaels is a media mogul who decides for America what it can joke about each week, a propagandist, a puppeteer, a tool of social programming.

 

Anyone finding all this particularly unfunny?

 

NOT Supporting Their Own Troops

Nearly half of these veterans have waited more than five years for coverage, and one document indicated that nearly one-third of those who had been waiting have died.

Whistleblowers in the Department of Veterans Affairs

“VA leadership has repeatedly failed to respond to concerns raised by whistleblowers about patient care at VA,” Davis said in prepared testimony. “Despite the best efforts of truly committed employees at HEC and the Veterans Health Administration, who have risked their careers to stand up for veterans, management at all levels ignored or retaliated against them for exposing the truth.”

Few noticed that the first week of the Iraq War, in 2003, the Rethugs slipped through CUTS to the Veterans Administration. Even as they were manufacturing thousands of new casualties, they were cutting the medical funding for their own troops. I was shocked at the time at the brazen, disgusting, calculated evil. But that’s pretty much business as usual.