NY Times - Another 'Prize' Winning 'News' Series Revealed To Be Complete Fiction - Islamic Executioner of Syria - Did Not Travel To Syria (NPR) 24 Dec 2020

 

"The New York Times has concluded that the episodes of Caliphate that presented Chaudhry's claims did not meet our standards for accuracy." Translation - a narrative fiction was crafted to support the NYT 'humanitarian imperialism' push for US 'peacekeeping' action in Syria. The war propaganda turned out to be manufactured along with the consent.

Late last week, The New York Times issued one of its biggest mea culpas in years. The nation's leading newspaper returned a Peabody award and a citation as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize after retracting the core of its hit podcast series Caliphate.

In seeking to restore faith in its journalism, however, The Times may have demonstrated the persistence of some of the problems at the heart of this scandal. The paper's top editor participated in a podcast to help correct the record and to say, as he put it, "we got it wrong."

Yet The Times' 30-minute corrective podcast was hosted by its leading audio star, who was, away from the microphone, simultaneously doing damage control on a controversy that proved close to home.

To help restore trust, Michael Barbaro, host of The Times' news podcast The Daily, interviewed Executive Editor Dean Baquet. Barbaro also spoke with investigative correspondent Mark Mazzetti, who had led a team of New York Times journalists that went back and re-reported the story the podcast had told. Article continues after sponsor message

"Our goal in producing this corrective audio episode was to make sure we provided our podcast listeners with the same level of transparency and accountability we gave print and online readers," said New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades-Ha. "It was a new approach for us, but we are committed to applying the same rigorous journalistic standards across all of our platforms." (Baquet declined to comment for this story.)

Caliphate made its debut in spring of 2018. It explored ISIS and the lure and threat of terrorism, driven by host Rukmini Callimachi, a much-celebrated Times reporter. It focused greatly on a young-Canadian-Pakistani, Shehroze Chaudhry, who claimed to have been an executioner for ISIS in Syria. The Caliphate team made him the main character in the series, despite clear signs he was lying.

This fall, Canadian authorities filed federal charges saying Chaudhry had lied about being an ISIS executioner. The ensuing front-page treatment from Mazzetti and his colleagues found no evidence Chaudhry killed anyone, joined ISIS or even ever traveled to Syria.

In other words, the narrative propelling Caliphate collapsed.

The Times published a written Editor's Note atop each episode of the series and an additional story on internal debates stirred by the reporting by Callimachi and her team. And Barbaro narrated a version of the Editor's Note that now plays before the opening lines of each episode. He says, "The Times has concluded that the episodes of Caliphate that presented Chaudhry's claims did not meet our standards for accuracy."

Professional And Personal Ties With 'Caliphate' Crew

On his corrective podcast in which he questioned Baquet about that collapse, however, Barbaro did not disclose several key facts about his own connection to those who created the discredited Caliphate series. (Barbaro declined to comment for this story.)

Back in 2018, The Daily ran the first episodes of Caliphate as part of its own podcast. Barbaro introduced the new series: "From The New York Times and the team that brought you The Daily, this is Caliphate."

Andy Mills, a key producer behind the launch of The Daily, helped drive the sound and feel of Caliphate. From the outset, Mills became Callimachi's sidekick on the air, testing her microphones, prodding translators, questioning sources. Others joined Caliphate from The Daily as well.

Among them was Caliphate's executive producer, Lisa Tobin. She had held the same role at The Daily and is now the executive producer of audio at The Times.

Off the air, Barbaro and Tobin are engaged to be married.

Their relationship is no secret; it has been documented in other outlets from The New York Post's Page Six gossip column, where it was first disclosed, to the pages of The Hollywood Reporter.

Yet those listening to Barbaro press Baquet would not have known that the host is engaged to the executive producer of the very series whose flaws he was dissecting.

Indeed, listeners of The Daily would not necessarily have known about the corrective episode at all, as it flowed only to listeners of Caliphate, not the feed of the much larger audience for The Daily. (Times spokeswoman Rhoades-Ha says the episode was promoted on The Times' homepage, mobile page and through other digital channels to drive traffic to it.)

Barbaro Emerges As Major Star For New York Times

In switching four years ago from the politics beat to become The Times' first daily audio host, Barbaro has evolved into one of the newspaper's most recognizable stars. The Times says more than 4 million listeners download his podcast each day. It has won the paper new awards, subscribers and revenues.

Barbaro is known for being fiercely proud of his team. Off microphone last weekend, Barbaro weighed in on Twitter to do damage control for Caliphate — or, as he put it, to correct the record. He argued that NPR was wrong to say that the newspaper retracted the series. (NPR's initial headline stated: " 'N.Y. Times' Retracts Hit Podcast Series 'Caliphate' On ISIS Executioner"; it later tweaked the headline to read: " 'N.Y. Times' Retracts Core Of Hit Podcast Series 'Caliphate'.") 'New York Times' Retracts Core Of Hit Podcast Series 'Caliphate' On ISIS Media 'New York Times' Retracts Core Of Hit Podcast Series 'Caliphate' On ISIS

Baquet told NPR on Friday that it did constitute a retraction "for the parts that were about Chaudhry and his history and his background. Yeah, I think it is. Sure does."

Caliphate was divided into a prologue and 10 chapters (though the ninth was split into two parts). The prologue and seven chapters were largely devoted to what The Times now believes is Chaudhry's fictions about being a killer for ISIS. Two chapters mentioned Chaudhry. Only one, the ninth chapter about a Yazidi girl held in captivity for three years by ISIS, failed to do so.

Privately, Barbaro repeatedly pressed at least four journalists Friday to temper their critiques of The Times and how they framed what happened. I know, because I was one of them.

So was NPR host and former Middle East correspondent Lulu Garcia-Navarro, whom he admonished to demonstrate restraint and warned was hurting the feelings of people at the newspaper.

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple also received multiple direct messages from Barbaro, especially about his use of the word "retract" on Twitter to describe what happened.

"I happen to believe that in this instance that it is a sign of The New York Times' integrity, that they took this step," said Wemple, who has written extensively about Caliphate. "They should embrace that they retracted it instead of ... tiptoeing around this idea."

Beyond that, Wemple said, The Times should not have assigned Barbaro to interview Baquet about a scandal that he had such close ties to.

"I think it's disqualifying and it's certainly blinding," Wemple said in an interview. "I don't think Michael should have been involved in, you know, in this particular aspect of it. But he is the voice of The New York Times."

Even so, plenty of colleagues at The Times who have rich experiences in podcasting or broadcasting could have pinch-hit: tech columnist Kara Swisher has a podcast through the opinion section; business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin co-hosts a morning show for CNBC; media columnist Ben Smith, who has written about Caliphate previously, used to host a podcast for BuzzFeed; Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham co-host a culture podcast for The Times produced apart from The Daily.

Wemple and Garcia-Navarro are among those on social media (and in Wemple's case, in print) who have challenged The Times' judgment, particularly in dismissing critics of Callimachi's work.

Echoes Of Baquet's Lessons From Caliphate

Barbaro's ability to hold multiple roles has echoes of what went awry in Caliphate.

Last week, Baquet told NPR that Callimachi's faith in her story and her subject overrode warnings from colleagues.

"She's a powerful reporter who we imbued with a great deal of power and authority," Baquet said in a wide-ranging interview about the debacle. "She was regarded at that moment as, you know, as big a deal ISIS reporter as there was in the world. And there's no question that that was one of the driving forces of the story."

Baquet told NPR that newsroom leaders did not subject the series to sufficient scrutiny because they were not accustomed to editing audio with the same rigor they apply to print reporting. "Because this was a different form, people like me and some of my top deputies didn't feel as comfortable, and that's why that fell through the cracks," Baquet said.

Baquet confirmed to NPR that he had reassigned Callimachi from the terrorism beat, calling her a talented reporter but saying it would be too much to ask readers to trust her stories on that subject. He would not specify any other repercussions or reassignments.

On Monday, The Daily offered a special episode to listeners about the radio host Delilah.

Barbaro yielded the host's chair to two colleagues. One of them was Andy Mills, the former Caliphate producer.

Disclosure: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik's wife is co-founder of an independent podcast production company that created two limited-run podcast series for The New York Times. She played no role in, and had no personal knowledge of, the Caliphate series.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/24/949906978/star-hosts-ties-cloud-n-y-times-effort-to-restore-trust-after-podcast-scandal

The Death of Worker Vanguards

 

Patrick J. Buchanan: Are 'Never Trumpers' the Future of the GOP? Not If Past Is Prologue - 23 Dec 2020

(Atheists Outraged At Christian Support for Trump - Christians Believe That All  Men Are Sinners)

Denouncing the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill as a parsimonious "disgrace" and hinting at an Alamo-style finish on Jan. 6, when Congress votes to declare Joe Biden the next president, Donald Trump is not going to go quietly.

The anti-Trumpers and "Never Trumpers" celebrating at Christmas 2020, in this "dark winter" of Joe Biden's depiction, are assuring each other that Trumpism and Trump are dead and gone for good in four weeks.

The future of the GOP, they suggest, belongs to the Republicans who resisted and renounced Trump through the last five years of his candidacy and presidency.

As for those cowards and collaborators who stood by Trump and refused to repudiate him, they will, in turn, be repudiated by history and the American electorate alike.

The wish, here, is very much the father to the thought.

For if the past is any guide, not only are the reports of the death of Trumpism premature, the probability is that Trumpism has put down roots in our national politics that are not soon, if ever, going to be pulled up.

For those of us of a certain age, a comparable situation arose at Christmas 1964. Barry Goldwater had just been crushed in a 44-state landslide, winning the votes of only 27 million Americans. The senator had carried only five states of the Deep South and his home state of Arizona.

The establishment saw in the crushing of Goldwater the defeat and rout of the "extremist" movement that had produced him. "The Party That Lost Its Head" was the title of a widely hailed post-election book by two Ripon Society Republicans.

The establishment consensus was that Govs. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, William Scranton of Pennsylvania and George Romney of Michigan were the future of the party, if it was to have a future.

What followed?

Richard Nixon, who had stood by Goldwater when the party's liberal elite abandoned him, would lead the GOP to recapture 47 House seats in 1966, take the presidency in 1968, and run up a 49 state landslide in 1972.

Thus began a period of GOP presidential ascendancy, with Nixon, Reagan and Bush I winning five of six elections from 1968 to 1988, until the first baby boomer president, Bill Clinton, arrived on the scene.

And while there are differences between now and then, there are many similarities.

Do the anti-Trumpers or "Never Trumpers" represent the future of the GOP? If so, where is the postwar precedent for this? No Republican who turned his back on Goldwater was ever nominated for president or vice president following Goldwater's defeat.

When President Gerald Ford put Rockefeller on his ticket after taking over from President Nixon, the Kansas City convention of 1976 demanded Rockefeller's removal as the price of party unity.

Rockefeller was sacrificed, as the right had demanded.

Four years after Ford's defeat, Mr. Conservative himself, Ronald Reagan, Goldwater's most effective surrogate in 1964, was nominated and won successive landslides in 1980 and 1984.

Other factors and forces point to the probability that Trumpism has a major role in the party's future.

Where Presidents Truman, Nixon, and George W. Bush left office with approval ratings in the 20s, Trump's approval rating is still in the 40s, where it has been for the duration of his presidency.

Second, the issues that propelled Trump to the nomination and the Oval Office still resonate with the American people.

Among them are mass migration, insecure borders and dependency upon foreign imports for the necessities of our national life.

Moreover, there is shrinking support for a foreign policy that has us tied down militarily in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East, to fight if need be, in the defense of scores of nations, few of which have a direct bearing on the national security of the United States.

Another issue Trump elevated and exploited that is more acute now than in 2016, is a distrust of the media, the "deep state" and the political, cultural and academic establishments that have alienated the 74 million who voted for Trump.

And if the past is prologue, the Republican Party will make a major comeback in 2022.

Consider. Two years after his smashing victory over Goldwater, LBJ and his party lost 47 House seats. Ronald Reagan, after his landslide in 1980, lost 26 House seats in 1982. After routing Bush I in 1992, Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats and the Senate. Two years after winning the presidency, Barack Obama lost both the House and Senate in 2014.

Is it likely Joe Biden will be celebrating his 80th birthday after making history by leading his party to control of Congress in 2022?

For Republicans, the nomination of 2024 is a prize to be sought.

However, if one has spent the last four years trashing Trump, it may be as out of reach as it was for Rocky.

Christian prayer group and Native Americans face off at Ohio's Serpent Mound - by Cameron Knight (Cincinnati Enquirer) 21 Dec 2020

 

 

Deputies were called Sunday when a Christian prayer group and Native Americans faced off Sunday at the Great Serpent Mound, the Native American national historic site in southern Ohio.

The Native American leader who was there says they were trying to protect a sacred site that belonged to their ancestors.

The leader of the prayer group says the mound is a place where dark energy is released into the world.

"I'm not calling the Indians dark," Dave Daubenmire told The Enquirer. "This has nothing to do with the Indians."

Daubenmire leads Pass the Salt Ministries out of Hebron, Ohio, about a two-hour drive from the snake-shaped mound which could have been built as long ago as 320 BC.

Led by Daubenmire, the group was there on the Winter Solstice "praying down (the) Satanic serpent mounds," according to the group's YouTube video recording the event titled "PAGANS TRY TO PREVENT PRAYER."

'You need to leave' 

Videos posted by both groups show the encounter. 

Members of the American Indian Movement of Ohio, including the group executive director Philip Yenyo, heard about the plans for the event in advance and met the Daubenmire's group in the parking lot.

"You need to leave. You have no right and no business doing this on this sacred site where our ancestors are buried," Yenyo said in the video "You're not going any further."  

A man began approaching Yenyo repeatedly telling him not to touch him; the man appears to push Yenyo who is blocking his path. Someone says, "Get out of my way. Last time I tell you."

 

"Don't tell me to get out of the way on my own land," Yenyo said. "It's our birthright. It's our sacred site."

"It's public land," a member of the prayer group said. "This land will be taken in the name of Jesus."

"This land was already taken a long time ago," Yenyo said. "You people keep taking it."

 

The prayer group made their way past Yenyo and Native Americans and began praying at the mound.

At least one member of the prayer group climbed onto the mound and was asked to get down by a staff member at the site. The land is owned by a nonprofit.  

"We welcome all beliefs and all ceremonies, but we do ask you to stay off the sacred mound," the woman said. 

The leaders of the group complied.

'We believe these are dark places' 

On Monday, The Enquirer interviewed Yenyo and Daubenmire.

"It's a sacred site for us, but other people with other faith beliefs think they have the right to go there and do their ceremonies. In our opinion, they don't," Yenyo said. "It would be like me going into a church and doing my ceremonies in that church – disregarding and disrespecting their believes."

Yenyo of Cleveland said that people with "new age" beliefs and Wiccans also practice unwelcome ceremonies there.

"There's still people buried there. That whole place is sacred," Yenyo said. "That's a problem with Ohio.  There's no teeth and no bite to any protections for these sites."

"I just kept backing up and trying to stand in their way," Yenyo said. "We were really outnumbered. We were just trying to stand in their way."

The American Indian Movement has chapters all over the country. The group was founded in 1968 and split into two factions in the 1990s. Iniitally formed to address poverty and police brutality, the group now broadly advocates for indigenous rights.

Daubenmire said his group just came to pray and didn't know the Yenyo and other Native Americans would be there.

"There's a series of mounds like this all across the midwest. We believe that these are, for lack of a better term, we believe these are dark places," Daubenmire said. "I'm not calling the Indians dark. This has nothing to do with the Indians. We went there because we believe dark energy is released there."

He said the winter solstice is the darkest day of the year.

"For those in the occult – I'm not calling the Indians the occult – it's a high holiday," Daubenmire said. "We went there to pray over this area. We believe the dark side holds ceremonies on these days."

 

He said the Native American group was disruptive of their prayers and yelled at them as they were praying. He said they were the "aggressors" in the situation.

Deputies summoned, but no arrests

The Adams County Sheriff confirmed that it sent deputies to the site to respond to the conflict. According to Yenyo and Daubenmire, no one was arrested.

Daubenmire, who goes by "Coach Dave" due to his former work as a football coach, said his organization has a national reach through its website coachdavelive.com which broadcasts daily "huddles" at 7 a.m. They also use social media heavily, but Daubenmire noted the group occasionally gets banned from various platforms.

He said his ministry is focused on the scriptural and spiritual role of Christians in the culture.

Daubenmire has made headlines many times before – from a "homophobic rant" against Chicago's mayor to another rant saying Black Christians who voted for Obama were not acting Christian. He has denounced the "sissification" of boys and rails against the "deep state" and the "plandemic" on his Facebook page.  

The Columbus Dispatch reported that the American Civil Liberties Union sued Daubenmire's former employer, London High School, after complaints he forced his football players to pray. The case was settled out of court.

"They call it a cultural war," he told The Enquirer Monday. "We would call it a spiritual war,"  

 

About the Great Serpent Mound

The 1,348-foot long Great Serpent Mound sits on a ridge along Brush Creek near rural Peebles, Ohio.

The earthwork depicts a snake and an oval structure at the snake's mouth, which has been interpreted as an egg, the sun, a frog or possibly just a platform.

There's debate among archaeologists about the age of the structure with some evidence pointing toward the Adena Culture and other evidence pointing toward the younger Fort Ancient Culture.

It has been submitted to the United Nations to be listed as UNESCO world heritage site.

The non-profit Ohio History Connection, formerly known as the Ohio Historical Society, owns the mound.

”Serpent Mound is well-known and visited by many people of different faiths and religions. However, there is no question it is a sacred American Indian site,” the organization said in a statement Monday. “In 2017 we discontinued the lighting of the Serpent Mound during the Winter Solstice – a decision that was reached after conversations with leaders of multiple tribal nations with Ohio ties. Yesterday’s incident is a reminder that there is more work to do to preserve and share the site in the most appropriate ways.”

The statement said the non-profit is committed to working with tribal leaders to offer the public a better understanding of Serpent Mound.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/12/21/christian-prayer-group-and-native-americans-face-off-serpent-mound/3992503001/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why on Earth Is Someone Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts? (NYTimes) 21 Dec 2020

 A phishing scam with unclear motive or payoff is targeting authors, agents and editors big and small, baffling the publishing industry.

By Elizabeth A. Harris and Nicole Perlroth

Earlier this month, the book industry website Publishers Marketplace announced that Little, Brown would be publishing “Re-Entry,” a novel by James Hannaham about a transgender woman paroled from a men’s prison. The book would be edited by Ben George.

Two days later, Mr. Hannaham got an email from Mr. George, asking him to send the latest draft of his manuscript. 

The email came to an address on Mr. Hannaham’s website that he rarely uses, so he opened up his usual account, attached the document, typed in Mr. George’s email address and a little note, and hit send.
 

“Then Ben called me,” Mr. Hannaham said, “to say, ‘That wasn’t me.’”

Mr. Hannaham was just one of countless targets in a mysterious international phishing scam that has been tricking writers, editors, agents and anyone in their orbit into sharing unpublished book manuscripts. It isn’t clear who the thief or thieves are, or even how they might profit from the scheme. 

High-profile authors like Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan have been targeted, along with celebrities like Ethan Hawke. But short story collections and works by little-known debut writers have been attacked as well, even though they would have no obvious value on the black market.

In fact, the manuscripts do not appear to wind up on the black market at all, or anywhere on the dark web, and no ransoms have been demanded. When copies of the manuscripts get out, they just seem to vanish. So why is this happening?

“The real mystery is the endgame,” said Daniel Halpern, the founder of Ecco, who has been the recipient of these emails and has also been impersonated in them. “It seems like no one knows anything beyond the fact of it, and that, I guess you could say, is alarming.”

Whoever the thief is, he or she knows how publishing works, and has mapped out the connections between authors and the constellation of agents, publishers and editors who would have access to their material. This person understands the path a manuscript takes from submission to publication, and is at ease with insider lingo like “ms” instead of manuscript.

Emails are tailored so they appear to be sent by a particular agent writing to one of her authors, or an editor contacting a scout, with tiny changes made to the domain names — like penguinrandornhouse.com instead of penguinrandomhouse.com, an “rn” in place of an “m” — that are masked, and so only visible when the target hits reply.

“They know who our clients are, they know how we interact with our clients, where sub-agents fit in and where primary agents fit in,” said Catherine Eccles, owner of a literary scouting agency in London. “They’re very, very good.”

This phishing exercise began at least three years ago, and has targeted authors, agents and publishers in places like Sweden, Taiwan, Israel and Italy. This year, the volume of these emails exploded in the United States, reaching even higher levels in the fall around the time of the Frankfurt Book Fair, which, like most everything else this year, was held online.

Books targeted include “Such a Fun Age,” by Kiley Reid, “The Sign For Home,” by Blair Fell, “A Bright Ray of Darkness,” by Ethan Hawke, and “Hush” by Dylan Farrow. Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, two of the biggest publishers, have sent out warnings about the scam.

Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, the author of the debut novel “The Nest,” was targeted in 2018 by someone pretending to be her agent, Henry Dunow. The emails began about eight months after she had sold her second novel based on a sample of the manuscript called a “partial.”

Often, these phishing emails make use of public information, like book deals announced online, including on social media. Ms. Sweeney’s second book, however, hadn’t yet been announced anywhere, but the phisher knew about it in detail, down to Ms. Sweeney’s deadline and the names of the novel’s  main characters.

“Hi Cynthia,” the email began. “I loved the partial and I can’t wait to know what happens next to Flora, Julian and Margot. You told me you would have a draft around this time. Can you share it?”
It was signed, “Henry.”

The note struck Ms. Sweeney as odd, so she forwarded it to her agent. “He freaked out,” she said. She did not reply to the scammer, but the emails kept coming. Finally, she said, she wrote back, asking the person to leave her alone.

Instead, Ms. Sweeney got this response: “It’s me, Henry. How could I know about your new novel??”
“It’s so befuddling because it’s not like fiction is driving our economy,” Ms. Sweeney said. “Ultimately, how do you monetize a manuscript that you don’t own?”

Ms. Sweeney’s first book was a best seller, so she, like well-known authors Jo Nesbo and Michael J. Fox, may be an obvious choice. But the scammer has also requested experimental novels, short story collections and recently sold books by first-time authors. Meanwhile, Bob Woodward’s book “Rage,” which came out in September, was never targeted, Mr. Woodward said.

“If this were just targeting the John Grishams and the J.K. Rowlings, you could come up with a different theory,” said Dan Strone, chief executive of the literary agency Trident Media Group. “But when you’re talking about the value of a debut author, there is literally no immediate value in putting it on the internet, because nobody has heard of this person.”
 

One of the leading theories in the publishing world, which is rife with speculation over the thefts, is that they are the work of someone in the literary scouting community. Scouts arrange for the sale of book rights to international publishers as well as to film and television producers, and what their clients pay for is early access to information — so an unedited manuscript, for example, would have value to them.
 

“The pattern it resembles is what I do,” said Kelly Farber, a literary scout, “which is I get everything.”
Cybercriminals regularly trade pirated movies and books on the dark web, alongside stolen passwords and Social Security numbers. Yet a broad search of dark web channels, like the Pirate Warez website, an underground forum for pirated goods, didn’t yield anything meaningful when searching for “manuscripts,” “unpublished” or “upcoming book,” or the titles of several purloined manuscripts.
 

In the past, cybercriminals who lifted Hollywood scripts and screenplays turned a profit by posting them online and charging impatient fans fees to access them. In 2014, someone posted Quentin Tarantino’s script for “The Hateful Eight” online, and it eventually found its way to Gawker. Mr. Tarantino threatened to end production before it had even begun. Oren Peli, the screenwriter behind the 

“Paranormal Activity” film franchise, saw his script outlines end up on the internet.
None of that seems to be happening with the stolen book manuscripts. Apparently nobody has posted them online out of spite or tried to entice eager fans to turn over their credit card information in exchange for an early glimpse. There have been no ransom demands of the authors by extortionists threatening to dump the authors’ years of work online if they don’t pay up. In this absence, and with no clear monetization strategy to the thief’s or thieves’ efforts, cybersecurity experts have been left scratching their heads.
 

The scammer's ever-so-slight variations on registered websites are a tried-and-true tactic. In an attempt to steal the manuscript for Mr. Nesbo’s “Knife,” the thief sent email from Salornonsson.com, a domain designed to mimic Salomonsson, the Swedish literary agency. The domain was registered with GoDaddy, using a computer whose IP address had never been picked up in previous phishing scams, spam campaigns or cyberattacks. But whoever is behind the phishing emails is keeping their tools current: They had set up the domain in June 2018 and re-registered it as recently as Nov. 25 this year.
 

“The trouble they went to — fabricating conversations with trusted people and sort of acting as if they are filling in the target on those conversations to grant themselves credibility — definitely demonstrates very specific targeting, and probably more effort than we see in most phishing emails,” said Roman Sannikov, a threat analyst at Recorded Future whom The Times asked to review the emails.
 

The thefts have rattled some once-trusting literati and left publishing professionals unsure of whom they can trust. For authors, the stakes couldn’t be higher: This is their unfinished work, still littered with typos and plot lines that would not survive a final edit, pried out into the open before it’s ready.
 

“You feel violated,” Mr. Hannaham said. “I don’t want anyone to know how bad the early drafts of things are.”

...................

https://archive.vn/vEuar

Can Democracy Hold Us Together? - by Pat Buchanan • 22 Dec 2020

 

If America were a company and not a country, we would have long ago dissolved the corporation, split the blanket, and gone our separate ways.

What still holds this disputatious and divided people together?

Consider. In announcing the $900 billion stimulus bill to deal with the pandemic, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not mention that the gifts for her distressed countrymen and women at Christmas would have been twice as large had she taken

President Trump’s offer of $1.8 trillion in October.

Why did the speaker slap that offer away?

“The President only wants his name on a check to go out before Election Day and for the market to go up,” she told House Democrats.

Rather than let Donald Trump take credit, Pelosi stiffed millions of Americans.

Sunday, however, the speaker took time for a statement to hail the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue from Statuary Hall. “Welcome news,” said the speaker. “Congress will continue our work to rid the Capitol of homages to hate.”

Lee had stood in a place of honor in the Capitol for decades. When exactly did the statue of the general become a homage to hate?

Both episodes point up an unpleasant truth.

Our dysfunctional American family agrees upon less and less.

By mid-November, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 52% of Republicans thought Donald Trump had “rightfully won.” Sixty-eight percent of Republicans thought the election was “rigged.” A third of independents, and even 10% of Democrats, agreed.

This month, a Fox poll found that a third of all registered voters believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, with 78% of those who voted for Trump expressing that view.

In the long term, not only is the election of 2020 going to be suspect. Also, belief in one of the sacraments of secular democracy, universal suffrage, is going to suffer.

Moreover, the issues that divide us now go increasingly to the faith of what defines us as a nation and a people.

A slice of our intellectual elite emphatically agrees with the New York Times’ Project 1619, which decrees that the real birth date of this nation was neither 1776 nor 1789, but the year that the first slave ship arrived in Virginia.

To this influential cohort, enslavement of Black people brought from Africa and dispossession and destruction of the indigenous tribes that European settlers found here are the defining events of our history.

And all who participated in these crimes against humanity or refused to condemn them are undeserving of exaltation.

Not only Lee, but Columbus and Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, TR and Wilson are all racist white men whose disgraceful and even criminal conduct disqualifies them from a place of honor in the American pantheon of 2020. All statues of such men need to come down to cleanse us of the stain of having honored them.

Pelosi says that such statues are “homages to hate.”

She may not have thought so five or 10 years ago, but she believes that now.

What has taken place is a mass conversion.

Yet, there is another America that still cherishes the nation these men created. And, as did their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors, these Americans have shown a willingness to fight and die in her defense.

Thus do we Americans disagree on the most fundamental of issues.

Was America, is America, with all its sins and virtues and all its achievements, a country to be cherished, loved and defended? Or is America a country of whose history we should all be ashamed?

Part of America also believes that discovery in the Constitution of a woman’s right to an abortion and a right of homosexuals to marry were major milestones of progress toward a more moral America.

Others see these as long strides away from the Christian country we used to be, a social and moral decline toward the same quiet death that has come to other civilizations and nations that went before us.

In short, we Americans disagree on whether our country is a good and great nation worth defending, or a place that needs a deep cultural cleansing of its sins.

And we have no common code of morality. One side is rooted in modernism and secularism and the other in the teachings of the Old and New Testament, Christian tradition and a natural law written on the human heart that is superior to man-made law.

People who disagree upon such basic beliefs naturally drift apart, as we Americans are doing today.

Political questions arise out of these fundamental differences, and they are not insignificant.

Can a republic as fractured and splintered as ours is — racially, ethnically, politically, culturally, morally — with a population who do not share the same belief about whether their nation is good and great or failed and evil, endure? And for how long?

What successful models from history do we see of nations that took the kind of risks we are taking with our republic?

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Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture Jones Manoel

 

Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture

Jones Manoel

2020-06-12

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There is a fundamental contradiction in many of the Marxist studies that are produced in the West. Every time that they speak of Marxism in Asia — in China, Korea or Vietnam — or when they speak of popular movements in Africa such as in Egypt or Libya, they highlight the influence of religion on these political movements and the national adaptation of Marxism. When any Marxist researcher studies, for example, Chinese Marxism, they are obliged to address the influence of Confucius’ philosophy on Chinese culture in a general manner and on Chinese Marxism in particular. Likewise, the influence that Islam has on many African countries is always taken into account in analysis of socialist nations such as Algeria.

When the time comes to look at Marxism in Western politics, however, the influence of Christianity in the construction of the symbolic, subjective and theoretical universe of this Marxism is rarely taken into account. It is as if in Asia, Confucianism has an influence on politics, in Africa, Islam has an influence on politics, but in Brazil, in the US, in France, in Portugal, Christianity does not perform a similar role in forming historic subjectivity. This is a mistake for a very simple and objective reason, which Antonio Gramsci points out in several different passages of Prison Notebooks: the Catholic Church is the longest operating institution in the West. No other institution has managed to stay alive for so long with the capacity to disseminate and circulate ideas and concepts, through a body of intellectual priests, bishops and theologians, organized within a bureaucracy like the Catholic Church has. So it is impossible to speak seriously about Marxism, politics, subjectivity, culture, and the symbolic field in the West without incorporating the role of Christianity in each social formation, in each specific country as elements of analysis.

I believe it is impossible to understand the phenomenon that is poorly described as “populism” (a term which I do not use), of this relationship of the popular classes with people like Lula, Getúlio Vargas, Miguel Arraes, Brizola, Perón, Velasco Ibarra, and Hugo Chávez without understanding the basic configurations of the Catholic relationship between devotees and saints. Obviously this is not the only explanation, but there is a symbolic element in the political structure of this relationship. I have been thinking about this for a long time. It is not my idea — Domenico Losurdo and Roland Boer have written about how the fetish for defeat is one of the fundamental characteristics of Western Marxism and how this is a misunderstood derivative of Christian culture.

There is a great tendency in the eastern left, according to Perry Anderson, to separate western and eastern Marxism. Western Marxism is basically a kind of Marxism which has, as a key characteristic, never exercised political power. It is a Marxism that has, more and more frequently, concerned itself with philosophical and aesthetic issues. It has pulled back, for example, from criticism of political economy and the problem of the conquest of political power. More and more it has taken a historic distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cuba and so forth. This western Marxism considers itself to be superior to eastern Marxism because it hasn’t tarnished Marxism by transforming it into an ideology of the State like, for example, Soviet Marxism, and it has never been authoritarian, totalitarian or violent. This Marxism preserves the purity of theory to the detriment of the fact that it has never produced a revolution anywhere on the face of the Earth — this is a very important point. Wherever a victorious socialist revolution has taken place in the West, like Cuba, it is much more closely associated with the so-called eastern Marxism than with this western Marxism produced in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of South America. This Marxism is proud of its purity, and this is the first elemental characteristic that derives from Christianity.

Gramsci shows that one of the main historical concerns of the Catholic Church has been to control the reading and the diffusion of Christianity, blocking the rise and spread of popular, autonomous and base level interpretations and thereby saving the purity of the historic doctrine. Therefore, the Catholic Church can say that Christianity is love, equality, loving thy neighbor, compassion and non-violence, despite the fact that it has been a fundamental weapon in the legitimization of slavery, the crusades and colonialism, and despite the coziness of various elements of the Catholic Church with Nazi-fascism and the military dictatorships. There is a constant throughout the entire history of Christianity which is that these elements don’t corrupt the doctrine. They are either false expressions of Christianity, or they are facts, like potatoes in a sack, that have no theoretical, political or, most importantly, theological meaning. So, the fact that history denies the affirmation that Christianity is based on compassion and peace does not change or challenge the doctrine.

Many Marxists act the same way. Their biggest worry is the purity of the doctrine. Every time that historical facts challenge the doctrine or show the complexity of the practical operationality of elements of the theory, they deny that these elements are part of the story of Marxist theory and doctrine. This is, for example, what doctrines of betrayal are built on. Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism”. Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism. The revolution is only a revolution during that glorious moment of taking political power. Starting from the moment of building a new social order, it’s over. Revolution is always a political process which has two moments: a moment of destruction of the old capitalist order and taking power, and a moment of building a new order. The contradictions, the problems, the failures, the mistakes, sometimes even the crimes, mainly happen during this moment of building the new order. So when the time comes to evaluate the building of a new social order — which is where, apparently, the practice always appears to stray from the purity of theory — the specific appears corrupted in the face of the universal. It is at this point that the idea of betrayal is evoked, that the idea of counter revolution is evoked, and that the idea of State Capitalism appears in order to preserve the purity of theory.

A great example of this was when the Soviet Union entered its process of terminal crisis. As the end of the Soviet Union approached many western Marxists announced that it was a great event in the history of Marxism because finally Marxism was liberated from that experiment that was born during the October Revolution, that distorted Marxism, that transformed Marxism into a mere State ideology. Now, without having to explain the ball and chain of the Soviet Union, Marxism could finally be liberated and reach its emancipatory potential.

Another factor that is very common in the western left is to treat suffering and extreme poverty as elements of superiority. It is very common in Western leftist culture to support martyrs and suffering. Everyone today likes Salvador Allende. Why? Salvador Allende is a victim, a martyr. He was assassinated in Pinochet’s coup d’ etat. When Hugo Chávez was alive, many sectors of the left turned their nose up at him. If he had been killed, for example, in the 2002 Coup attempt, he would be adored by the immense majority of the western left today, as a symbol of suffering and martyrdom. Since he continued exercising power as leader of a political process which, by necessity, had various contradictions, he was increasingly abandoned, as time passed — I don’t even have to mention what has happened to Maduro here. These same sectors which celebrate and support the idea of Allende because he defended democratic socialism do not see or do not want to see that Allende governed almost entirely through decrees. At the time, the Chilean constitution had a legal mechanism which enabled the executive branch to govern by decrees that did not have to be approved by parliament or the Supreme Court. So Allende was able to make laws through decrees which bypassed Congress and the Supreme Court. Since Allende did not have a majority in Congress and suffered a lot from the bourgeois opposition, he basically governed through decree throughout his entire mandate. This kind of action today is enough justification to label any left leader that practices it as authoritarian, to compare him to Trump, Bolsonaro, or Orban. If Allende was alive today he would also be criticized, but he died.

Another example of this is the situation with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. To most western leftists, Che Guevara represents a rebel dreamer. In real life he was not, but they have built this image around him. Che Guevara died immolated in the jungles of Bolivia, so now he is a symbol of sacrifice, martyrdom and the agony of defeat. Fidel stayed in Cuba as leader of the Cuban Revolution and all of the contradictions of this process. Today he is viewed as a bureaucrat, without charm or appeal, by many if not the majority of the western left. Che Guevara is an eternal symbol of resistance, of dreaming, of utopia that is unfulfilled because of death.

Another example of this is the contrast in how the People’s Republic of Korea is treated compared to Palestine. Both nations engaged in the same struggle — the anti-colonial fight for national independence. In the case of Korea, the struggle was made from a socialist perspective. Korea succeeded, despite being a country that is fractured by imperialism. It has an economy that is relatively strong, with a reasonably high level of industrialization, a very strong national army and capacity to launch nuclear weapons. So, Korea is not a defenseless nation. Palestinians are a people who are deeply oppressed, in a situation of extreme poverty, that don’t have a national economy because they don’t have a national state. They don’t have an army or military or economic power. Therefore, Palestine is the total incarnation of the metaphor of David vs Goliath, except that this David doesn’t have a chance of beating Goliath in political and military conflict. Therefore, almost everyone in the international left likes Palestine. People become ecstatic looking at those images — which I don’t think are very fantastic — of a child or teenager using a sling to launch a rock at a tank. Look, this is a clear example of heroism but it is also a symbol of barbarism. This is a people who do not have the capacity to defend themselves facing an imperialist colonial power that is armed to the teeth. They do not have an equal capacity of resistance, but this is romanticized. Western leftists like this situation of oppression, suffering and martyrdom.

Another very well known case is that of Vietnam. Everyone supported Vietnam when it was under attack, being destroyed and bombed for over 30 years. Vietnam beat Japan in WW2, then had to fight France, and then had to fight the United States. It passed 30 straight years without being able to build a damn school or hospital because a bomb would drop, first from France and then the United States, and destroy it. When the country was finally able to beat all of the colonial and neocolonial powers and have the opportunity to start planning, to build highways, electrical systems, schools and universities without having bombs land on them the next day and destroy everything that was being done, the country was abandoned by the majority of the left. It lost its charm, it lost its enchantment. There is a fetish for defeat in the western left. It is an idea that defeat is something majestic.

A clear example of this fetish is in the case of the coup in Bolivia. Slavoj Žižek, the famous critical thinker, wrote an article called Bolivia: the Anatomy of a Coup, and what was his big concern? It was to show that Evo Morales was democratic, that Evo Morales did not purge or jail traitors during coup attempts in the past, and that now these same people committed a coup against him. In other words, Žižek praises the very element which led to the defeat of the revolution in Bolivia as proof of ethical and moral superiority. Look how marvelous Bolivia is today. Every day an activist is murdered or jailed, but they have the moral consolation of not have been repressive or authoritarian with the Bolivian bourgeoisie.

A third element that is common in the western left comes from the Christian concept that salvation is not a product of a person’s actions, but a decision made by God. It is the notion that, although you work to do good deeds, to follow biblical law, to be a good person and so forth, your salvation is a decision of God’s. Subjective efforts related to the central point of Marxism, which is the conquest of political power (as Lenin said, “everything outside of political power is an illusion”), have been devalued due to this influence from Christian culture, even though the majority of Marxist intellectuals are atheists. Instead, the highest value becomes an eternal position of resistance, which produces a sense of pride. When Bernie Sanders lost the democratic primary for the second time, a renowned Marxist professor at the University of São Paulo posted on Facebook, “We fought like never before. We lost as usual but the fight continues. Now, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez is the future of Socialism in the United States.” The Marxist logic of thinking of all political conflicts in terms of strategy, tactics, coalition politics, programs, of critically analyzing mistakes to avoid making them again, of hitting the enemy from a political or even military standpoint in order to take power has simply vanished, replaced by an eternal movement of resistance as if it were proof of divine grace. The very logic that should be the essence of politics, which is the logic of strategy, is devalued as resistance becomes an end in itself.

Together, the three elements that I just described create a kind of narcissistic orgasm of defeat and purity. The subject takes pride in not having any relationship with the entire historic concrete movement of the working class socialist and liberation revolutions. They take pride in not having any theoretical or political connection to the revolutions in China, Russia, Vietnam, Algeria, Mozambique and Angola. They are, instead, proud of the supposed purity that their theory is not contaminated by the hardship of exercising power, by the contradictions of historical processes. Being pure is what provokes this narcissistic orgasm. This purity is what makes them feel superior. It makes them feel that they have a privileged moral and ethical standpoint compared to the other leftists who, for example, recognize the Chinese Revolution or the Cuban revolution and, therefore, accept authoritarianism and accept an economy that is not based on the total realization of self-management. This kind of Marxism has no critical power. It can produce and does produce a lot of good analysis of reality but it is incapable of producing a movement that is strategic and revolutionary that aims to take political power. Therefore, the process of rebuilding a revolutionary Marxism in the West has to recognize these symbolic elements, which have become ingrained in Western Marxism, that were smuggled in as contraband from Christianity. These elements have to be submitted to radical criticism and surpassed.

 https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/