SocraticGadfly: Alleged hard-hitting journos give Gabbard pass on Palestine, Middle East, Kashmir

October 28, 2019

Alleged hard-hitting journos give Gabbard pass
on Palestine, Middle East, Kashmir

I've already tackled Michael Tracey and his Ron Paul-tard background for his reason for running Tulsi Gabbard up the flagpole and uncritically supporting her.

So, who now?

By name, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Maté and Mark Ames off the top of my head. We maybe surely throw in Max Blumenthal while we're at it, though I don't follow him as much. I'm just taking a guess and a gander. Feel free to nominate others yourselves. I've started calling them outside-the-box stenos, reflecting on their self-presentation of thinking outside the mainstream media box on foreign policy, while at the same time engaging in their own form of groupthink stenography, often twosiderism based, trying to "own" #TheResistance, as I've already called them out for doing on Ukraine.. Zack Beauchamp at Vox, on the new Gabbard vs Hillary Clinton dust-up, calls them anti-imperialist leftists.

I prefer my own less neutral term. One big reason? I'm an anti-imperialist myself, without being a steno, a fucking idiot, and for all I know about them, maybe Seth Rich conspiracy theorists.

Also of note? The piece is generally good overall, though I have some differences with Zack on chemical warfare in Syria, as far as who done it, and who claims who done it — no, not all conspiracy theorists, Zack. Other than that, though, especially near the end where he gets into "horseshoe theory" being extended into foreign policy, he's got some points. He could have gone even further down this road, pointing out the perils of #twosiderism.

Per the header, Taibbi's already done a softball interview with her where he didn't ask about the first two issues.

And, while she may have been doing National Guard duty in the middle of August and been unavailable for interviews, none of the three has tweeted a thing about how Hindutva-supporter Gabbard might need to say something about Hindutva-lover Indian PM Narendra Modi's basic destruction of the current government — and pending destruction of the current society — of Kashmir.

That, and many more things in the list, are all in my Tulsi Kool-Aid, #TulsiTwerkers and Tulsi's not the peace candidate blog posts, all with plenty of links.

All three claim the MSM gets her wrong on Assad. I'd say half-wrong, not wrong. None of the three note that she also has been uncritically close to Egyptian strongman President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. But, Robert Fisk, who I'd easily trust over any of the three above, HAS noted just that, most recently when Sisi's predecessor, Mohamed Morsi, died in very strange circumstances earlier this year.

Because the MSM still has a large element of Zionism and hasn't really called her out on it, none of the three musketeers has Tweeted critically, or written, about her pro-AIPAC, anti-BDS House resolution vote. Ditto on her claim that Palestinians use people as human shields.

None have asked about her support for drone warfare or torture.

Nor has any of the three noted that this allegedly anti-establishment, anti-Deep State candidate is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Gentlemen, you're losing credibility.

Now, if only a site like Washington Babylon and Ken Silverstein would pick up this thread.

Someplace actually outside the box? Mondoweiss says that two and only two Democratic presidential candidates have explicitly talked about cutting U.S. foreign aid to Israel. Guess what? Neither Bernie Sanders nor Pete Buttigieg is named Tulsi Gabbard.

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Actually, on the parallel issue of McResistance, or being reflexively against it, we do need to mention another person by name with Maté - Benjamin Norton.

On the Ukrainian kerfuffle, Aaron first started saying it was perhaps either a Trumpian trap game for Dems or else just more Mueller type stuff. So I tweeted him this from Silverstein. Then, a day later, he clearly pulled in his horns with this tweet:
Overton Window movement isn't just left-to-right politically. It includes other things like this.

So, I Tweeted Aaron and Max this from Silverstein with the "ask" that they have him on the show.

(Also of note: Aaron deleted the tweet I first quote-tweeted.)

And, I guess we need to add Yasha Levine to the list, too. Aaron retweeted:
Fact is, Yasha, that several people, including myself, asked Vogel how he was making this claim and others pointed out facts to undermine it.

And, of course, Michael Tracey is there:

Says the man with the extremely deliberately poor track record of peddling Tulsi Gabbard Kool-Aid lies and calling Lyin Ted, Booger Cruz, Rafael Cruz "charming" (and likely to be the Prez nominee in 2016) in 2014. That's Michael Tracey for you, folks!

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Update, Nov. 1: I'm wondering how the OTB stenos, along with regular Tulsi stans, are reacting to her vote FOR the House Dems' impeachment resolution.

Update, Nov. 8: Aaron got kicked on his former news site, The Real News over his twosider-stanning. (Watch out, world, "stanning" is going to get attached to more!) Matt also got a bit of kicking. Ryan Cooper and William Rivers Pitt are pretty insightful themselves. So, contra this DSA Rose who's still part of the duopoly, and where I saw the link:
I'll take them first.

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at Monday, October 28, 2019 Posted by Gadfly

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