According to Carlson this is the first interview Kennedy has done for 15 years without mentioning vaccines. (I imagine this was at RFK’s behest)
It’s in 3 parts. The other should be on the link below
Jeremy Hammond comments
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Caitlin Johnstone on the Carlson Kennedy interview
Not a fan of either of these guys but Kennedy’s breakdown of the Ukraine conflict beginning around 12:30 is as lucid as any I’ve ever heard.
Why she’s not a fan of RFK jr. Two reasons I can see. His Israel stance she thinks is unrpincipled, she says he could criticize Israel without being cancelled by the media.
I don’t know about his backers though - probably a different attitude there.
Second reason is she isn’t up to date with her covid/vaccine boosters narrative. SO probably underestimates his hefty contribution to the corporation-restraining narrative, which is absent from the other candidates. Probably not left wing enough for her - in the old sense, and I think she might underestimate the capture of what was the real left in the US and UK (due to her vaccine narrative opposition hesitancy 
), and probably Oz too. Might be pining for Bernie…
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Johnstone proved herself a fraud during covid. After years of proclaiming herself pro civil liberties and pro freedom of speech she was silent or worse when doctors were being fired in Australia, journalists were being censored, slandered and de platformed world wide, forced vaxx was underway, etc. She proved to me that the establishment is perfectly fine with anti imperial anti war and anticapitalist viewpoints, because they are not threatening, but when a big anti freedom marketing campaign is underway for Medical Fascism it’s a requirement for the fraudulent ‘left’ to shut up or push the BigPharma wagon up the hill.
Put Johnstone and Maté and Chomsky and Hedges and MediaLens and the rest, 'in the bin, it ain’t a sin, and throw ‘em out the door, and don’t let them back in’.
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Alternative theory - all of these people were acting on genuinely held beliefs. Of course, with their analytical strengths and their history of doubting governments, and doubting the media, they ought to have known better. There had to be doubts. They didn’t do what they would normally do and check it all out.
It could be that’s where their guilt really lies, if they didn’t want to lose support by going somewhere their support wouldn’t agree with. But they all made their names by criticising people who avoid the truth.
Caitlin Johnstone criticizes RFK jr for his position on I/P but she is in a similar position regarding covid.
In the area of science it might be a bit more difficult to swim against the tide from a position of ignorance. Some like Jonathan Cook and John Campbell made the effort belatedly, I agree the others shied away.
OTOH Kennedy perhaps has less excuse, as realities of the Israeli occupation of Palestine he could discover if he wanted. I’ve a feeling that if he came out as a critic of Israel it would put him out of the race.
Whichever one of covid or I/P you’re up to speed on, it would seem more important or at least more pressing than the other.
Who are we left with if we can’t endorse the most useful critics of the various narratives on an individual basis?
The sage RG always said people should be allowed one blind spot - one ‘hotbutton issue’.
TBH, I can see his point more clearly after covid.
Cheers
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Evvy I’d say the opposite, they were NOT acting on quite public STATED BELIEFS. That’s the main point. Chomsky’s ‘anarchist belief’ in the evil of state/corporate power just ‘poof’, disappeared? Johnstone’s otf stated ‘passionate belief in freedom of speech’ as evidenced by her defense of Assange just ‘poof’ disappeared? She accused me of ‘bullying’ and blocked me for quite politely saying this to her back in 2021. Not 2020 (ie she had time to do some research and notice the censorship and slander and deplatforming of covid dissidents). And she reported me to Twitter for ‘bullying’ and I was suspended for a month before being ‘cleared’. And honestly, I was quite polite in my challenge.
I’ll just go with the surface evidence: they’re frauds. Watch what they do when the new Bio Security State Scare gets ramped up again.
As to Kennedy, he’s no longer just another state/corporate critic. We must assume he REALLY WANTS to be President and thus have the power, some power, to affect imperial policy and corporate dominated domestic policy. You must imagine yourself REALLY WANTING TO BE PRESIDENT of the USA.
Nobody can be President of the USA without appeasing the Zionist lobby. Nobody. Impossible. So it doesn’t really matter if Kennedy is sincere or not, he’s appeasing the Zionist lobby because he really wants to be president. He doesn’t just want to ‘affect the national conversation’.
So we must ask ourselves, is his appeasement of the zionist lobby proof that he will NOT change his main policy goal, reduce regulatory capture? Or proof that he WILL change that policy goal?
I can respect anyone who jettisons Kennedy at this point, and also respect anyone pro Palestinian who supports Kennedy despite his groveling to the Zionists.
Hi Everyman
Okay…Kennedy can justify his position to himself. What about the others?
The justification which I think permeates all the covid shy violets is that the disease might be so serious that rights will cost lives.
Obviously an objective view of the covid narrative would not justify shutting down medical opinion, locking down life systems and attempts to force medication on unwilling people - and the rest. But from the viewpoint of the ill-informed caguht in the screaming noise of the narrative, it might have been. What if covid really was the bubonic plague? They thought the emergency trumped the rights, though partly this was a cop-out as the information was there and they stopped short of even using the low hanging fruit.
In practice of course, suspension or removal of rights has rarely been justified, because we have disaster capitalists running the show and either creating or seizing the opportunities.
Somewhere in there, there should have been loud bells a ringing among the anticapitalist thought leaders, who somehow were unable to see that Big Capital via Pharma was running the covid show for their own interests.
I see this limitation as a steadier rather than a fatal flaw. The people leading oppositional thought on the endless war machine are not doing it out of a pact to ease the path of totalitarianism via covid and other scams. On Russia/Ukraine they hit as hard as they are able. Just like Kennedy only moderates his view on covid, vaccines and pharma on a tactical level. Noticeably more nuanced since his presidential run.
In my view the solution is not to ‘adopt’ them in the overall sense the first place, then they don’t have to be immediately dumped when they transgress. To use what’s good without insisting on elusive perfection. I realize that’s a bit grating but with Kennedy telling us about illegal Palestinian settlements in Israel, and good covid material coming from Republicans (some of whom are trying to bring a bill to extend the death penalty to women who have abortions) I don’t see how else to function.
So I respect Kennedy and your list of ‘covid let-downs’ equally. I can respect them as people for what they do do, while recognizing topic-specific limitations. I don’t know anyone in the public eye who doesn’t neglect one important front.
If feeling the need to be reading people who are say, ‘decent human beings’, ‘One hot button allowed’ a la Rhis is much sager advice than I realized at first. These are big subjects spanning a lot ot the political and moral spectrum, and to face and act the ‘wrong way’ on two or more might be too much.
Cheers
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I understand your position Evvy but to me there is a great difference between somebody credibly running for President in the USA (I mean, he has a chance to win, slim but a chance) and a political columnist.
Why would the ‘left’ miss the obvious issue of regulatory capture? They certainly didn’t miss it in the past. What could be their motivations? I don’t know, and I think we can NOT know. How in the world can one person credibly represent with complete accuracy the true motivations of a complete stranger? Even courts of law find it almost impossible. So I don’t really care so much about motivations unless like the Kennedy case it seems obvious, I mean, it doesn’t matter because I accept that any credible run for the office requires an effort to please the zionist lobby.
I’ve become perhaps quite simplistic since they took away, from one day to the next, my human rights. I was healthy on Tuesday, fine. I was healthy on Wednesday, they prevented me from travelling, from working, from socializing, and they tried to jab my children. This was after they locked everybody down and criminalized normal activity. So, my simplistic reaction, I name the frauds who didn’t speak up for my freedom and I ignore them and encourage others to do the same. Why should I not be simplistic in my opinions concerning people who supported the violent suppression of my human rights?
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Hi Everyman
Certainly understandable. Maybe I am being too forgiving. Though Kennedy has always supported Israel. He’s had long enough to look into it all. But there are barriers - political, social, cultural, and familial. Probably even professional ones. What if you were a Palestinian ‘anti-vaxxer’ ? I can’t see the how the harsh view leaves any room for bands of isolated people each with their own grievance doing anything but thinking or acting (probably not acting) separately. How can they ever join forces?
Here’s a couple of things to support my view.
- A recent post from highly regarded substacker Matthew Crawford.
Malone's Accusations and Victim Cries - by Mathew Crawford
See how many people he mentions in this post, in non constructive references. I think this started when a Dr Breggin (covid narrative challenger) denounced Robert Malone (covid narrative challenger) as some kind of gatekeeper. Soon there’s a lawsuit and a polarised opposition, many of them criticizing each other too. Now they post about each other.
It’s not the only such example.
- The GICs (
RG), whether its warmongering politicians and defence contractors or giant conglomoerates of crooked tech/financiers (they will intersect), always present a united front.
United by common self-interest, they will always win against such fragmented opposition. Even when things start to fall apart (as the covid narrative should have) there isn’t pressure to help it complete the process, so it self-repairs like the Terminator.
So BBC staff can chat about whether enough people are taking the boosters, instead of having to cover nine-sigma excess death events.
So I think we need to see ourselves as facing a certain way, and, in the face of such an adverse force, support those facing in a way that is roughly in opposition to that force. As the force isn’t constant in one direction, ‘roughly in opposition’ will have to do or we are like minnows unto sharks.
I would concede that your position has a certain individual ‘morality’, but I’d argue for a collective viewpoint, hoping for the best achievable moral outcome. I hope that makes sense!
Cheers
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