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June 10, 2022 - Jimmy Dore Show
57:47
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Here we're doing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles on June 11th.
And then we're going to Chicago, Sacramento, and San Diego on July 16th for the taping of my new special.
Go to JimmyDoorCounty.com for a link for all tickets.
See you there.
See you there.
So we showed you this joke, right?
Every girl is by.
You just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual.
Not the greatest joke, not the worst joke.
Dave Weigel retweeted it at the Washington Post.
He's the Washington Post guy.
And then his colleague who works, also works at the Washington Post, someone named Felicia Sumnes.
How do you say her name?
Sumnes.
Sanmez.
Sanmez.
So she's an unhinged maniac, I found out.
Turns out she's a pretty unhinged.
She's the worst thing that you could think of someone like her being.
She retweets it.
It says, fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.
At first, I thought he was quoting a Billie Eilis song.
Apparently, it's some kind of joke.
And by the way, she says, fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.
It is fantastic to work at an outlet where they don't police your retweets, isn't it?
It does sound pretty fantastic, actually.
Oh, wait a minute.
She's being sarcastic.
Okay.
So Dave Weigel had to immediately apologize.
I just removed that retweet.
I'm really sorry.
Doesn't matter.
They suspended him, right?
They suspended him because she got upset.
Look at her smiling like, this is why I got into journalism.
Oh.
Now, the irony is this guy, Dave Weigel, had previously defended her.
He had defended her because when Kobe Bryant died, she tweeted out he's a rapist, right?
Let's remember.
He said we shouldn't forget his allegations.
Yes, that's what she said.
She said we shouldn't forget his allegations.
So Washington Post, Dave Weigel, defended her after the Kobe treat.
And 20 bucks, it's because he thought he was going to get laid.
All right.
That's me.
Very clear.
David Weigel, benched without pay for a month on Monday, defended his fellow political reporter Felicia Sumdez in an early 2020 when she was suspended by the paper after posting a tweet linking to a 2016 story detailing rape allegations against the NBA superstar.
So now what is actually, what is actually, you know, I think it was Voltaire once said, I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will not defend your right to say it, nor return the favor if you defend my right to say things.
I think that's what it was.
So here's the, there's an article in Vanity Fair called The Cluster F inside the Washington Post social media meltdown.
So this became, it became a big thing.
So on Tuesday afternoon, Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsy tweeted that he was proud to work at the paper, a place filled with many terrific people who are smart and collegial.
There it is.
So after she did this, so after she did, she went on a tear.
I'll show you some of her tweets, but she went on a tear trying to get him fired.
She got him suspended.
And then she tried to get another employee fired for telling her to cool it.
And so it became a big thing.
And that's why Vanity Fair did this article.
It's a big cluster F inside the Washington Post.
And then what the Washington Post did was they sent out a memo to their people who work for them.
Hey, start saying nice things about the Washington Post.
And so they started doing it.
Josh Dawsy was the first one.
And no institution is perfect, including the Post.
But the place is filled with many terrific people who are smart and collegial.
I'm proud to work here.
And then four minutes later, reporter Rosalynn Helderman tweeted that she was proud to work at the Post, which is always striving to be better than it was yesterday.
There she is.
It's got good people who work hard to do important journalism.
And I'm proud to work here.
Oh, she put her own words into it.
I see.
She made it her own.
Yeah.
So smart and collegial, I think, means craven and careerist.
I think that's what that means.
Six minutes later, another reporter, Amy Gardner, she tweeted how she was proud to work at the paper, followed by other top journalists at the publication, including Matt Visor, Carol Leonig, and Dan Balls.
Nice name, Dan.
I stand with balls.
And you got to live a lot of balls that fucking tweet that out.
So anyway, what's funny about all, and here's another one.
I'll give you one more.
The Post is not perfect.
No institute.
It's Ashley Parker.
But I'm proud to work here.
I love coming to work almost every single day and knowing that my colleagues are collegial, collaborative, and fun humans, not to mention talented journalists who are always striving to do better.
So they all did their own version of that same, those same talking points are in there.
They even use a lot of the same words.
We're all striving to do better.
They're collegial and all that.
Did you notice they're all proud to work at the Washington Post, but not with Dave Weigel?
Not one Dave Weigel's an okay guy to protect the Post.
So the public outpouring of Post Pride, which I'm told political reporters were urging one another to take part in, followed executive editor Sally Busby's memo reiterating workplace policies and promoting collegiality among staff.
So I love these tweets, they had to urge each other to take part in a gently suggesting this vicious ding bat might be toxic.
So Dave Weigel, a national political correspondent, is as of Monday suspended without pay for the next month after retweeting a sexist tweet last week, which he then probably is unshared and apologized for after a colleague called him out both on company slack and publicly.
You know who that is.
So Glenn Gringo goes, this is just weird and creepy.
Why are they all posting identical language about how proud they are to work at the Washington Post?
Like from a script handed down by a cult leader.
And then he links to all their tweets.
He says, I suppose this is how these Washington Post reporters have decided to condemn Felicia for her five days of maniacal attacks on her maniacal.
I like to say maniacal.
I thought so.
Maniacal attacks on her.
Boy, that makes me laugh deep in my stomach.
Maniacal attacks on her colleagues And attempt to get several fired.
But it's bizarre how they all use the same coordinated, cryptic language and waited this long.
Cowardly.
So they all had to do their own Bilderberg meeting to decide how to turn about this.
Yes.
Guess what?
So this person says, when you send out suggested copy to all your digital volunteers, and they all use the first suggested tweet.
So this person's making fun of the Washington Post reporters who were tweeting out nice things about working at the Washington Post because it came from, they're saying, why did you just kind of verbatim rewipe just post what they told you in a memo?
And guess who retweeted it?
Felicia Sunmez.
Oh my God.
She retweeted this, making fun of all the rest of the people who work at Washington Post who were saying what a nice collegial place it is to work at the Washington Post.
She retweets somebody taking a swipe at everybody at the Washington Post.
Didn't Kayla Rinse do this with the people trying to help her dumb story?
This is the post Felicia is now mocking all of her newsroom colleagues for using identical language to defend management against her.
May this never end.
The vindictive sociopathy of these vipers on vivid display here is what prevails in all of these liberal corporate outlets.
He's 100% right.
I think a backlash is coming.
I think this kind of shit is starting to turn.
I think it's starting to turn, and I think it's starting to turn with Johnny Depp, Joe Biden, and now Dave, MF, and Weigel.
It's starting to turn.
This was inflation as well, you know?
Yeah.
Hours after news of Weigel's suspension broke Monday, that colleague, political reporter Felicia Sunmez, was urged, but political reporter Felicia Sumner was urging the paper to take action against a different colleague, Jose Del Rio, who on Saturday took A. Matt Sonmez for the cruelty you regularly unleash against colleagues.
He made this point after commending her for your bravery and sharing your story.
I support your fight against retribution for doing so.
So that didn't save him.
She still tried to get him fired.
He commended her bravery.
Did you see that?
So he says down here, he says, Felicia, because she tweets out this thing, trying to get him fired.
And he says, Felicia, we all mess up from time to time.
Engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague is neither a good look nor is particularly effective.
It turns the language of inclusivity into clout chasing and bullying.
I don't think this is appropriate.
Whoa, boy.
You know why?
Because this is, he didn't DM her this message.
Right.
He put this, so that's how they must be really sick of her.
Yeah.
To do something this loud.
Believe me, the people at the Washington Post are sick of her, but the Washington Post is afraid to fire her, just like they, because of the Taylor Lorentz culture we live in now.
And everybody's called, but I'm telling you, the tide is turning.
Wait, did they get a call from Space from Jeff Bezos to clear this up?
Here she does.
She retweets him.
She goes, Up there.
So he had, he finally blocked her.
And he's like, and he said, then people started coming at Pim, and he's just saying, hey, look, I'm just trying to try to get back to conviviality.
And he says, I'll end here where I began.
Let's be kinder to each other.
I really believe empathy is necessary.
She retweets that, still trying to get him fired, retweets it again and says, it's hard for me to understand why the Washington Post hasn't done anything about these tweets in which one of its employees mischaracterizes his own actions and accuses a colleague of clout chasing and bullying for publicly objecting to sexism.
Says, is this who we are?
Well, what about you retweeting that thing that humiliated all of your colleagues?
She's a maniac.
And of course, she works for the fucking Washington Post.
They're all mental cases.
Look at there was no unrelenting series of attacks.
She's posted an unrelenting series of her attacks.
Yes.
So predictable.
Felicia Sunmez carried on a public four-day crusade to get her colleague Dave Weigel suspended without pay.
Of course, her bloodlust isn't satisfied.
Now she's publicly demanding that the Washington Post editors discipline another reporter for having politely objected to her outbursts.
These are all out of order, Kurt, which is why I can't do them.
Okay.
It does stand on its own.
Yes.
The post-drama spilling out publicly onto Twitter has upended the newsroom where there's no shortage of opinions on the continued fallout.
I think Felicia was initially right.
That was a gross Dave Weigel tweet.
No, it wasn't.
Gross.
Get some girls tweet.
First of all, that joke is being proven correct because she's a bipolar maniac.
Wait, you know what?
I think she doesn't mean the tweet was gross.
I think his nickname around the office is Gross Dave Weigel.
Oh, that's it.
His nickname is gross.
That's it.
All right.
And that was a gross Dave.
What did Gross Dave say now?
What's Gross Dave doing with his month of suspension?
You know what?
Don't defend me, Gross Dave.
Whenever he wants to kill me for my Kobe sweep.
That's what they call it.
Oh, no.
That's what they call it.
That's his name.
Gross Dave's mustache.
Grocing.
He's got some crumbs in his stash.
The gross Dave Weigel Weigled tweet, and we were all grateful she called attention to it.
One post staffer told me the problem the staffer added was in continuing to make it an issue and go after more and more colleagues.
How can you imagine working at a place like that?
She was only supposed to destroy one person's life.
That's right.
Not everybody.
Yeah, they still won't acknowledge the dominoes of once you censor one person, it then becomes ridiculous.
And it just literally happened the entire process to them in one hit.
In one hit, Michael Tracy says, last year, Felicia Sunmez accused me of trying to silence trauma survivors like herself.
By the way, Felicia, people who like to call themselves trauma survivors, you know, we're all trauma survivors as a virtue of just being alive.
We've all had trauma.
All of us have had trauma.
If you're a human being and you're alive, you've had trauma.
So you're not special and your pain, Felicia.
I know if no one's ever told you this, but your pain is fucking ordinary.
It's ordinary.
You're not, you don't have special Trauma.
What you do is cause special trauma to other people by getting them fucking fired because you're a maniac, bipolar nutcase.
So the rest of this tweet, luckily, she couldn't run to my employer and demand I be punished, but she has successfully seized institutional veto power at the Washington Post using emotional terrorism tactics.
That's what this is.
Go ahead, what?
Look for her at next year's Bilderberg meeting.
That's right.
Sagar and Jetty says, after Sagar and Jetty of the Hudson Institute, the Neocon Hudson Institute, after much deliberation, I've decided I'm now pro-Felicia Sumners.
He's really not.
He's really kidding.
It's a joke.
And then now Ryan Grimm will tell you that I don't get the joke.
Her behavior is just taking the woke therapeutic language in the workplace to its logical conclusion.
Her actions now force cowardly management to reckon with what their policies actually look like in practice.
So what he's saying is he's saying this is actually a good moment because now everybody gets a good, is that what he, correct me if I'm wrong.
He's saying, I agree.
I'm enjoying it immensely.
Because everybody gets to see what the what the logical progression of these kind of policies and this kind of culture is.
Now everybody's, you want everybody to get fired at the Washington Post?
Is that, am I, I'm not misinterpreting what he's saying.
Am I?
I stood by and said nothing, but when they got to Gross Dave, I said, And just so you know about how mental she is, she had sex with a colleague and they were both drunk.
She then got that guy fired because she said he took advantage of her because she couldn't give consent because she was drunk.
He was also drunk.
So she got that guy fired and ruined his career.
And then she called herself a victim.
And so then the Washington Post, after she got that guy fired at the Washington Post for having sex, she had sex with him voluntarily and then got him fucking fired afterwards for fucking her.
Well, I'm sure there was some kind of power dynamic horseshit too thrown into the mix.
And then so then the Washington Post wouldn't let her cover stories like that about harassment and stuff because she wouldn't be impartial because she was a victim herself.
She sued the Washington Post over it.
The judge tossed it out with prejudice, meaning she can't bring it up again.
And yet the Washington Post is still shitting their pants over her and still suspending fucking reporters because of her.
Why don't you fucking fire her?
Why don't they fire her?
I know why.
Because this is the culture that they like.
This scold culture where the worst thing you could do is tell a joke that offends a mental person.
Well, these are like useful maniacs.
You know, let's say we got to destroy the gray zone.
Like, this is the kind of maniacs you go to.
And everybody goes to them.
I think they get, because I've seen this in every genre of everything.
My friend that complained about a Star Wars movie got put on a pipeline to the alt-right list for it.
They all pay these maniacs.
They're like just professional shills all.
It's like, yes.
That's what it is now.
PR.
Yeah.
Well, it's like you can't destroy us by proving we're a vehicle for the FSB.
So just try something much easier in this culture.
Sexual blackmail.
I mean, which is kind of a spook tactic.
Well, I think they're mad about Amber Heard losing because that was what got affected.
Yeah.
Maniacs like that who try to do just last minute make up some and then you find out they're the potential abuser that kind of stuff.
We should call it a Kasparian.
I think we should call that wild compared to this.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
Well, that's because she couldn't get me fired.
But believe me, she would have tried if she could.
Anyway, there it is.
So this is a big watershed moment in the culture.
I think it's, I think people are, I think people are, even people at the Washington Post are kind of sick of it.
It seems like we'll see.
Because this always gets couched as if you don't like someone like her, you're a Trumper, right?
Because that's how everything gets reported.
Even the Amber Heard thing, maniacs over at the Young Turks were trying to make it a, oh, if you're for Johnny Depp, you're a right-winger.
That's because that's because it's crazy Kasparian.
Is that what she said?
That's what the Young Turks were saying.
Yes.
They're trying to make it into a right-wing, left-wing thing, the Johnny Depp Amber Heard thing.
Yes, they were doing that.
Time's up.
Time's up.
What a crazy story.
It reminds me so much of the last 15 years working in progressive media.
I mean, I had to start my own outlet because so many of the places I'd worked in or around were sabotaged and destroyed by felicias like this, like complete sociopaths who loved wrecking everything,
who stood for nothing and found some little in-group of fellow sociopaths to destroy either to like take aim at people who they disagreed with or who were senior to them and it gave them meaning.
I just saw one progressive institution after another collapse under the weight of these whack jobs.
One example was, I mean, I watched it at the nation.
I basically cleared out of there and I'd always tried to stay away from the office and just stay out of all the drama there.
But I remember Katha Pollett, very similar character, you know, self-proclaimed feminist columnist.
She just decided to wage this war on Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames, accusing them of being rapist because of satirical, kind of baudy columns they wrote back at the exile when they were in Moscow.
And the real reason she was doing it, working with Joan Walsh, another Felicia who had been basically brought in to be the voice of the Democratic Party, just a complete propagandist for the DNC and the Hillary campaign.
They were just upset that the publisher, Katrina Vandenhoe, was married to the leading Russia expert in the United States, Stephen Cohen, who is warning against a new Cold War and opposing Russia Gate.
And they were saying, oh, he's a Trumper.
And they saw Taibbi and Mark Ames also as two pro-Russia.
So they started accusing them of being rapists.
Matt Taibbi, I think, was on book tour at the time or had just come out with a book about the police murder of Eric Garland.
And basically, this campaign sabotaged his book tour.
It led to, I think, Kathy Pollard having to issue public retractions, but they continued waging war inside the nation to get their way and to push like new Cold War hostility.
But they were using sex as a way to get their way.
And I saw it in so many institutions.
I mean, I'm not ready to go public about it all.
Maybe someday I'll write about the whole thing, but it was one after another.
I mean, we should ask: what happened to the real news?
Where is it today?
It's gone.
Where's Truthdig?
It's gone.
Where is Alternate?
Gone.
What happened to the Nation Institute?
Gone.
What happened to the New Republic?
What happened there?
I mean, a lot of it all comes back to this kind of culture of canceling and exploiting sexual issues so that sociopaths who have no talent and who believe in nothing can get their way.
And that's really why so many writers are moving to Substack because no one can do this to them there.
Why I have one, I mean, it's not the real reason I have the gray zone.
The reason I started it is because we write about things that are impossible to write about anywhere in mainstream media or to report on, even in whatever's left of progressive media, because they're all imperialist.
But there's also the fact that I don't have to deal with that bullshit culture anymore.
It's also why I don't want to live in Brooklyn and be around all of those impulsive characters, the vice crowd.
Jesus.
I mean, this culture has worked its way into mainstream media and it's now become a cancer at the heart of these August legacy institutions that say democracy dies in darkness.
It's also in the New York Times.
And the NPR is not only infested by these kinds of people, it's controlled by them.
You can just tell from the kind of content they pump out every day.
And the public is sick of it.
That's why more and more people are turning to Substack and alternative media.
Max, you're like the third or fourth reporter that I know that have specifically mentioned this massive thing that happened in all the left-wing journalism of deliberate, like fake things to move somebody out of the way for extra power.
And they organized, like, the fourth guy who taught, tell me about this.
Every major progressive flagship online institution that I worked with was sabotaged on the basis of what I consider to be utter bullshit by sociopaths.
And the other thing about it is that most of the people working there weren't going along with it, but they were terrified.
I remember just the terror experience talking to people and they were like, just keep your head down.
Just don't say anything.
I was like, yeah, I don't want to deal with this shit.
I just want to report on international politics.
I don't want to deal with this.
But people were like, they were so afraid.
That's why you see all those Washington Post reporters issuing these statements that like Amazon PR agents told them to write because they don't want to be accused of any, who knows what lies can be concocted by one arsonist within the building that will tear their lives apart.
Yeah, no, they're absolute cowards.
They won't call these any of these people out and talk about it.
I mean, it really would require them all coming together as a group and taking a stand.
And they're not willing to do that.
And the Washington Post institutions like that attract cowards because they are stenographers for power who just want media jobs in a shrinking, collapsing, and widely hated industry.
Yeah, right.
They don't want to say anything until the PR department told them what to say.
Why would you be a reporter if that's how you are?
Like, I can't say anything until the company tells me.
All right.
Basically, like, if you spend some years in an institution, and I'm not even like necessarily presenting my own experience here.
If you spend years in an instant media institution and you're like, you're not married or whatever, you're going to wind up maybe like sleeping with some of your colleagues because everybody gets drunk together and they have this little insular world.
Yeah.
And then if you start coming under, you know, then you then people know your secrets and people know your shit.
And then you, then, when all this starts happening and one person decides to sabotage everything, you become afraid that that will come out and you just keep your head down and you're silent.
And it is a very, it creates a kind of almost totalitarian atmosphere where only the silent survive.
And even if they've done nothing wrong, maybe they don't want their current partner to know about that to come out on social media.
Well, I can forgive that guy.
The people that come out and join in with it, I assume those guys are literal rapists.
Like it has like, I, for one, think this is great.
Yeah.
I think you did something.
That's what I assume.
I'm always suspect of those guys.
That's right.
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So, this is a great story that shows you how they undermine even independent media.
Who do I mean?
I mean, the security state, the warmongers, and the corporate propagandists.
There's a great story about that.
And it's about the gray zone.
And this guy, Paul Mason, he had a secret project against the gray zone, right?
Because the gray zone tells the truth about foreign policy, and they can't have that, right?
They can't have the truth being told about Syria or Palestine or Ukraine or Venezuela or anything.
And so this guy is well, here's the headline: Paul Mason's covert intelligence linked to a plot to destroy the gray zone exposed.
So they got some emails.
So, well, here's the story.
In a series of recent columns, Mason called for the state-enforced suppression of facts and perspectives he considers overly sympathetic to the Kremlin and demanded that state action against members of the media that oppose the NATO line on Ukraine.
He placed the gray zone at the top of his fantasy censorship target list.
That's his term?
My term.
Oh, I was hoping it was on the top of the list fantasy censorship.
So here's the email, and here's what it says: The Gray Zone, meanwhile, has learned through anonymously leaked emails and documents that Mason has been engaged in a malicious, secret campaign that aims to enlist the British state and friendly intelligence cutouts to undermine, censor, and even criminalize anti-war dissenters.
In one leaked email, Mason thundered for the relentless deplatforming of the gray zone and the creation of a kind of permanent rebuttal operation to discredit the gray zone.
The gray zone.
So if they're doing this to the gray zone, they're doing this to everybody.
This is a war we're not in.
Like, how would it even harm in any way?
America's not fighting in this war.
Why would he need to be here we go?
Well, in another celebrity, in another email, the celebrity journalist declared that the far-left rogue academics is who I'm after.
So we just featured a story about them going after a British professor for telling the truth about Syria.
And this is him.
The rants that he is motivated by the rant that he is motivated by fear of an emergent left anti-imperialist identity, which will be attractive because liberalism doesn't know how to counter it.
So, yeah.
So most people are going to be anti-imperialist.
So this is, so this guy, that's the guy that we're talking about.
We found his email.
Max Blumenthal in the Grey Zone got through his emails.
And he joined up with this guy.
He's joined his covert crusade with this guy, Emil Khan.
That's him right there, Emil Khan, the founder of a shadowy intelligence contractor called Valent Projects.
In the cachet of leaked emails, Khan proposed to Mason.
So this guy proposes to him the initiation of a clever John Oliver style stunt that makes the Gray Zone a laughingstock.
Now, what makes this stand out to me so much is that when I told Chris Hedges, I said, well, what would happen if a guy like me ran for president?
Because people are urging me to run for president.
And Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning Chris Hedges, said to me that they would turn you into a joke.
That's what they're, they would take a clip that you said or they would invent something and then they would turn you into a punchline and a joke.
And that's exactly what they quoted or quoted as trying to do to Grey Zone.
That's exactly, they wanted to turn them into a laughingstock, a joke, a punchline.
And they also wanted to go full nuclear legal to squeeze them financially, like cutting off the sources of funding, like Patreon, PayPal, stuff like that.
So they can't use those things.
Or a lawsuit.
Or a lawsuit.
They've already been done to us in what's right.
And you won that lawsuit, but got dismissed, right?
Correct.
The Gray Zone has previously.
Now, who is this guy?
So, you know, who is this guy, Paul Mason?
The Grey Zone has previously revealed Khan's.
Oh, I'm sorry, this guy, Khan.
The Gray Zone has previously revealed Khan's extensive involvement in the Syrian dirty war, during which he provided public relations guidance to jihadist groups, trained anti-government activists and communication strategies, and secretly oversaw supposed citizen journalist collectives backed by foreign governments.
His goal was to flood international media with pro-opposition propaganda, destabilize the government of Bashar Assad, and ready the ground for Western regime change.
So this guy was trying to, he's doing all the propaganda so we could do a regime change in Syria that they've wanted to do for decades.
The same techniques of manipulation and information warfare that Khan honed in Syria were turned against Western citizens when he oversaw a British quasi-state-funded AstroTurf YouTube project designed to counter public skepticism of COVID-related restrictions.
I think I got caught up in that.
Who they should have got for that?
The big idea with Donny Deutsch to brainstorm some big ideas.
Big ideas.
Together, Khan and that guy Mason plotted to assemble a coalition of anti-gray zone actors, including the United States and the UK government-funded open source outlet Bellingcat, which Mason revealingly described as a channel for Intel service input by proxy.
Max, tell me why that's interesting because I don't even understand what that means.
So tell me what.
It should be the banner in place of democracy dies in the darkness.
It should say Intel service input by proxy.
So tell me what that means, Max, and why is that important?
It just means it's like a dumpster for NATO intelligence services to get stuff out in the media.
Okay.
This is a guy who is an insider who obviously knows Bellingcat.
And this is how he refers to them in private in the most candid terms possible as Intel service by proxy.
So in other words, they are a proxy of the U.S. and UK intelligence services in his.
Yeah, so they're just, so if you see somebody from Bellingcat, you might as well be looking at someone from the CIA or the MI6 or something like that.
They are the most celebrated media organization in the West, I would say.
Bellingcat.
But by no one you've ever met in life.
Yeah.
The only people who like them are like media hacks and services.
I mean, it's not like they have some popular base that Bellingcat came at us.
They tried to say that I was getting paid off by Assad.
That's what Bellingcat tried to say.
I never heard of them until I saw your show.
Yes.
One time.
I know a lot of media people.
Well, now they just got a puff piece at 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago, and we covered it.
So then he goes on to say Khan Khan, that guy Khan, he proposed convening the de facto victims of Grey Zone Memorial Foundation.
What the F?
That's kind of a joke.
It was a snappy John Oliver clever joke.
Yeah.
That was our attempted humor.
Oh, that's your joke?
You know, referring to the victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in DC.
Oh, okay.
Boy, I don't know.
That's a very narrow audience for that joke.
Yeah.
Okay.
Grey zoners know that.
Holy shit.
Basically, he was trying to get everyone who had been hurt or exposed by the Grey Zone together, who had a vendetta in a room so that they could plot their master plan to take us down.
You know, you know how you always hear these kind of people accusing someone of like, oh, they did an organized campaign to whatever, you know, Johnny Dubbed did that.
That's because they all do this.
They all get these crazy things.
Like, no one would be that insane.
Yes, they are that.
Max, pull your mic a little closer to your mouth, just a little.
I'm like practically swallowing it.
No, no, bring it up a little closer.
It's too far.
This is just shit Like Disney does.
Like, isn't it just the government?
All these companies just get these crazy things together to try to ruin people.
So, get this.
This is from one of their emails.
Number three, Grey Zone is not just pushing disinfo.
It is doxing and exposing counter-disinfo actors, hence their attacks on Valent.
There's been similar ops by other others against British soft power institutions.
This makes me believe the work should be done.
So, the work meaning to discredit the gray zone.
That's the work he means.
The work should be done by white label organizations operating with firm InfoSec.
What does that mean, Max?
Information security.
And by the way, sorry, I was on my Mac Mac mic, built-in mic, but I'm on the mic that you see presently.
So, basically, there's a huge irony to what he's saying here, which is that we need like information security.
These guys, they always talk about OPSEC, operational security.
They like to feel like they're agents out there in the field.
And here they are having their emails exposed to the public.
So, obviously, they're not good at it.
So, what does white label organization mean?
Like, you know, top of the line security firms.
Like, we're just going to bring in the best.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
And, you know, we're going to have clean phones.
You know, our phones aren't going to, there'll be like burner phones.
No one will know whose phones they are because we're going to be operating in clandestine fashion.
So they'll get the gray zone.
We're operating in the gray zone.
They have this new concept called gray zone warfare, where it's like warfare that doesn't quite reach conventional level.
And he thinks that he's like in a Jean-Le Carré novel.
And so this was him saying that they're going to use burner phones, Proton Mail.
They're going to do all this in secret.
They're going to try to take you down in secret.
So this is an email from a Proton mail account, and everybody in the UK is reading it right now.
Paul Mason's name is trending on Twitter.
Who ran this operation, Anna Kasparian?
So what he's doing.
So if you were really doing something wrong and you guys were really spreading disinformation, why would he have to take you down in secret?
Why would he have to do that in a clandestine way?
He wouldn't, right?
This is all this.
This reveals.
This reveals that what he's doing is bullshit, right, Max?
Well, Aaron Mate offered to debate Paul Mason when he published a piece in the New Statesman calling for state action to take down the gray zone and other what he called pro-Kremlin left publications.
If we were publishing misinformation and lying left and right, I mean, Paul Mason's, he's always on British news programs.
He's fairly charismatic.
He could take us down in public and just discredit us.
But he actually says in one email that we need to avoid toe-to-toe engagement and do this through, you know, constant attacks and clandestine operations.
He doesn't want to debate us.
And the real, it's because he knows that what we're saying is true.
His problem is that it's making an impact.
That first line that he says, he said it's not just disinformation.
Can I, we, oh, I got Max.
Was that say, Jimmy, the top line again?
It says Grey Zone is not just pushing disinformation.
It is doxing and exposing counter-disinformation actors.
You're exposing their shit.
That's what he's saying.
So he's admitting that Grey Zone is being effective and exposing their propagandists, their pro-war propagandists, military-industrial complex, security state bullshit.
That's what that's what that says, right?
Yeah, and then they all, you know, he uses like Taylor Lorenz language throughout this whole, all these emails, doxing.
Like, we don't dox anyone.
We actually covered up the email addresses on all of these.
So we're not publishing people's personal information.
And he then accuses us of bullying and cyber stalking and harassment.
It's just using that whole language of violence when what's really happening is just journalism.
Journalism.
He's doing it while he's planning a harassment campaign.
Yes.
Correct.
It is Taylor.
There's a whole school of this.
Yes.
So they accuse you of doing what they're doing.
Right.
He was enthused by the latter prospect, submitting that it should be combined with relentless deplatforming, including cutting off the gray zone from donation sources such as PayPal in the matter of consortium news and Mint Press and setting up a kind of permanent rebuttal operation.
So this is what that, this is their goal, that they try to discredit.
They've done that.
That's not working.
They try to do it to me.
It's not working.
And here they're going to go after, they went after a freaking consortium news and Mint Press's funding.
So they could do this to anybody.
So at the snap of a finger, the people, the guy who runs PayPal and the guy who runs Patreon could just cut you off.
And they've done it to other people.
And they don't have to answer to anybody.
And they can just do that because they're a private company.
And so they're sitting there trying to figure a way how to do that to Grey Zone.
And don't think they haven't tried that there aren't people like this in conjunction with the security state in secret trying to do that to independent news people all over YouTube.
His director, his directorate source said the British government would be averse to sending a rep. Oh, so this is that meeting, right?
So then he convenes this meeting of all the people that they want.
They're talking about the meeting.
I don't know if it ever took place.
So he's talking about having a meeting of all the people the Grey Zone have exposed in their proxies.
And he said the source said that the British government would be adverse to sending a representative to the gathering as it could jeopardize outcomes later.
Like, we don't want to tip our hand, let people know what we're doing.
Nonetheless, they advocated convening people targeted by the Gray Zone to collate evidence that could be submitted to OFCOM, Britain's communications regulator, and or a digital cultural media and sports, the name of both a government department.
So what they wanted to do is tattle on you to the government regulators in Britain that control actually communication.
They actually, they don't have free speech like we have here in the United States, and they could get you kicked off all the stuff, right?
But idiots don't realize that these, that Ofscom, that British body does not have any jurisdiction over YouTube, which is and your website, right?
Right.
Which is where you, which is where you appear.
So they're just dumb.
It's laughable.
I mean, they don't have jurisdiction over any website, as far as I know.
It's broadcast media that Ofcom primarily deals with in the UK.
We're not based in the UK.
I mean, I like going there and whatnot.
I mean, if they want to take me out of the UK, fine, but this is just laughable.
Oh, well, go on.
This is even funnier.
Well, he responds.
So he responded today on Twitter.
And by the way, you can't respond to this.
He doesn't let anybody respond.
He did that thing where you can't respond to it.
Look at him.
He's in a hostage video in the upper right hand.
So this is not, this is not a well person.
He says, I've been targeted by a Russian hack and leak operation.
Also, I saw a sexist retweet.
Last week, an attempt was made to hack my encrypted and secure email account.
The circumstance that there wasn't an attempt.
It happened.
It happened.
The circumstances of the attack suggest it is highly likely that a Russian state or a state-backed unit carried out the attack.
I have informed the police and the NCSC.
Today, materials purporting to be emails and other content from me were published by the Gray Zone.
So that's the stuff we're showing you right now.
And he says, in the process, Grey Zone may have risked exposure of my confidential journalistic sources.
I guess too bad.
I make no comment on such materials.
And you know why?
Because they're true.
Because they're your actual emails.
This is the way he's actually kind of confirming that the emails are true by saying this.
He says, I make no comment on such materials, which may be altered or faked.
He's not saying they are altered or faked because they're not.
This is a pretty long non-comment, by the way.
That's what Malcolm Nance said about the Podesta emails.
He said they're probably fake or altered.
But this guy, he's not even saying probably.
He's saying may.
They may have.
Oh, no.
Down below.
Down below.
They may be altered or faked.
Gray Zone's publication has the effect of assisting a Russian state-backed hack and leak disinformation campaign.
Every time something happens, you just blame Russia.
Isn't that nice?
Gas prices, inflation.
My email got hacked.
Not in Russia.
Oh, I got caught calling people homophobic names.
Russia.
That's what Joanne Reed did.
My determination to expose and counter Russian disinformation campaigns and attacks on our democracy is well known.
I will not be deterred from this.
I think you are being.
I urge my colleagues in the labor and trade union movement to remain vigilant against the information war being waged upon us.
And that's why you didn't let anybody respond to that.
That's why, because you know what you're saying is true.
Anyway, Max, what would you like to say about his rebuttal?
Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, go to Paul Mason's Twitter account and he's kind of trying to coast through this, posting some recent columns, and every column is just getting ratioed to hell on the UK left because they're furious because he composed this chart of enemies.
This, yeah.
Why do they always make that chart?
All of them do that.
They all do this.
It's a crazy chart, and not everything connects.
But if you look to the left, there's the Russian and Chinese government.
And then, you know, you start to get into like Code Pink and the Morning Star newspaper.
And all Diane Abbott, this member of parliament who supported Jeremy Corbyn, is on there.
Summer.
Stop the wars.
Jeremy Corbyn.
Kavara Media is up there.
This is like a crazy person who would make Corbinite media group.
And then you see in the white, all the way to the right, it says at the top: Muslim community.
Muslim community.
The young network left and the black communities in there.
Black community.
George Orwell snitched on Paul Robeson.
Paul Mason's snitching on the entire black community.
Yes.
So we have to be suspicious of the entire black community, the entire Scottish nation, all the trade unions, the labor left, young networked left, and the Muslim community, according to that guy.
So is that what that's saying?
Why don't not just list all the names?
Like, what do the lines do?
Well, what he's saying with the lines and what he's doing here is he's constructing a scenario, which he sincerely believes is true, in which the Russian and Chinese governments are using the entire UK grassroots left, either as useful idiots or as willing tools to influence labor's key constituencies who are to the right and corrupt them,
and calling those key constituencies themselves useful tools of the Russian and Chinese government to destroy British democracy.
And therefore, the left has to be neutralized.
That's what Mason is saying.
And at the center of that list is the most important figure, Jeremy Corbyn, who Mason says in these emails is he's afraid that Corbyn will start a new party with Laura Pitcock.
And so Mason is someone who claimed to be one of Corbyn's most esteemed media supporters, but he has been plotting against him in private all along, it appears.
There are other recordings showing Mason grumbling about Corbyn.
And now we know that he sees Corbyn, according to this chart, as public enemy number one and someone who he wants to plot against with intelligence contractors from Bellingcat to Emil Khan.
And that's why the British public needs to have this information.
It needs to know this about Paul Mason because Paul Mason has just announced a run for a parliament seat on the labor ticket.
So these emails have an enormous interest.
They are enormously interesting and important for the public to see.
We don't, I can't say that they're a Russian hacker leak operation.
I don't know if Russia has anything to do with it.
But what I do know is that the public has a need for transparency here when someone is operating in such a malicious fashion against not just the gray zone, but the entire UK left and seeking to involve the state in a clandestine assault.
This is the attack on democracy.
The attack on democracy is coming from Paul Mason himself.
He is a threat to British democracy, not the figures and organizations listed on that chart.
So it's real.
This is all very real.
And now we, and so when you do work like you do, you're going to get targeted.
We have been targeted.
And I know for a fact we've been targeted by intelligence-linked elements in the UK.
I know who they are.
I know this has been going on for years, specifically since we started exposing the Syrian White Helmets operation.
But now we have the receipts.
We have the hard details of plans for a new operation.
It vindicates everything I've been saying.
And so you're not going to tell me who the Russian was who gave you those emails, right?
Well, there it is.
Great story.
Thanks for revealing that guy.
By the way, what's weird is, let me show you this.
I forgot to point this out.
This motherfucker follows me.
Yeah, yeah.
See, Mason, he blocked me for a long time because I occasionally would mock the stupid stuff he would say about like the need to infuse more public funds into the British arms industry.
You just say, and then, you know, while posing as a leftist, he said he blocked me.
He was very thin-skinned, but then recently he started following all of us because he's monitoring us and he believes we're all part of this anti-imperialist identity operation to crush liberalism.
So, oh, is that so that so?
That's like him trying to monitor me?
I thought that was like, but I was monitoring you.
I'm also following him, and I don't remember following him.
So, maybe he must have liked one of my tweets or something, and he was a blue check.
And I thought he was a real lefty, so maybe I followed him or something.
I wonder why I'm following him.
Maybe this really is one big clever John Oliver-style stunt.
Well, one of the most comical aspects of it is that Emil Khan actually reached out to Nina Jankowicz, off-Broadway star and disgraced former head of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board for advice on this whole operation.
Just a spoonful of Grey Zone.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know what Mary Poppins song she sang back to him, but it was this is the person that they're consulting as an expert.
Yes, and they were like, Who's behind consortium news?
That's what Emil Khan was saying.
It's always like, Who's behind this?
Who's behind that?
Because they can't imagine that anyone would come to these, arrive at these opinions or news on their own from an authentic point of view, or that thousands of people wouldn't support us.
I mean, like, I have librarians sending me $20 checks, like people of retired people supporting us, like from across America, who just believe the same thing that we believe that we don't want to live in an empire where we're sending $40 billion to Ukraine and we can't even have basic Medicare paid for by our government.
We don't, I mean, what is so crazy, and that we don't, we're not falling for all your deceptions.
We're going to expose them.
I don't need some guy from the FSB to hand me a briefcase full of money to get me to do that.
They do, and so they're projecting from the from like the British state or whatever.
They do, and so they're projecting their own sensibility onto us.
And that's why they're so paranoid about us because they live, as Kit Clarenberg wrote in this piece I co-authored with him.
And props to Kit for pulling all this together.
I mean, he's one of the sharpest reporters on these issues today.
As Kit wrote, they're living in a wilderness of mirrors, and that's why they're getting so humiliated right now because reality is breaking through.
Well, I'm glad to have you on and expose a tool like Paul Mason.
Now, he says he's running for parliament.
Yep.
And with a very clear intention to wage his war for military intervention in Ukraine and against disinformation pro-Kremlin actors, meaning the entire UK grassroots left.
He wants to wage that war inside parliament.
What is the Fromm Prize?
I think it's named for Eric Fromm.
I don't know if Eric Fromm would really support what Paul Mason is doing, but the David Fromm Prize.
it's more like he had the, yeah, more like the David from parts.
Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
Jimmy is president, Joe Boyd.
Oh, Mr. President, how are things going?
Jimmy, things are going fantastic.
Really and truly.
Is that so?
Because I understand your approval ratings are plummeting.
This is unfortunately true.
But there's no need for our administration to panic.
And why would that be?
Well, Jimmy, Chris Shalicia recently broke.
You know, Chris Salinz.
He's a smart guy.
He's a real Einstein when it comes to politics and governance.
A great A egghead.
Anyway, he wrote an op-ed saying my low poll numbers are a feature, not a glitch of the Biden administration.
Are you shitting me?
Are you, are you, what?
And what did he and what?
What in the I didn't, why did you, and what did he mean by this?
Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
How do you hear the entire phone call?
You got to become a premium member.
Go to JimmyDoorComedy.com, sign up.
It's the most affordable premium program in the business.
All the voices performed today by the one and the only of the inimitable, Mike McRae, who can be found at MikeMcRae.com.
That's it for this week.
You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
Don't freak out!
I'm not kidding.
Don't freak out!
Don't freak out!
Do not freak out!
Don't freak out.
Do not, do not, do not.
Do not freak.
Do not freak.
Do not freak out.
Don't bring out.
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