Gabbard Gabbard Hey
Donald Trump's pick for DNI raises concerns, but liberals aren't paying attention to the real danger
Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s selection for Director of National Intelligence, is a dangerous choice for the position—but not for the reason liberals say she is.
I’ve been following Gabbard for a decade. Her far-right politics, barely disguised behind a veneer of progressive rhetoric, have never been far away. And now, with a likely appointment to the Trump Cabinet, she’s poised to use her power to promote her conservative and Islamophobic ideology on a national scale.
But for liberals, the real danger is based on conspiracy theories. And that’s a problem, especially as the country faces another four years of a GOP White House.
As I wrote at TruthDig last month:
By focusing on thinly sourced hearsay and conspiracies, Democrats are opening the door to reruns of the failed Russiagate obsession of 2016-2020. This is, after all, the exact playbook that took up so much energy during the first Trump administration. The result was a waste of resources and time that could have been used to organize and resist in more meaningful ways that would have challenged some central tenets of the overall U.S. political system. But that kind of politics doesn’t boost the careers of Resistance heroes in the media and online — and it makes wealthy donors uncomfortable. Indulging fictions that can be teased and unspooled over the months and years is better business than actually addressing the crises facing the party and the nation.
My forthcoming book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, got another favorable review. Library Journal called it, “An incisive analysis of the influence of money and big-tech executives in right-wing media.”
Remember, the more preorders the better! Get yours today by ordering through whatever online bookstore you prefer or at your local independent shop.
More to come soon…
𝗔𝗻 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗜𝘀 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗢𝘂𝘁 𝗔𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁 𝗧𝘂𝗹𝘀𝗶 𝗚𝗮𝗯𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗱—𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗺 𝗕𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗳𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 🚨
Mouaz Moustafa, a leading expert on Syrian dictator Assad’s atrocities and the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, is raising dire concerns about Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Moustafa has briefed U.S. officials, worked with high-level defectors like “Caesar,” and helped shape policy to confront Assad’s brutal regime. His testimony isn’t just credible—it’s damning.
Who is Caesar? A former Syrian military photographer, Caesar defected from Assad’s regime, smuggling out over 55,000 graphic photos documenting the torture, starvation, and murder of civilians in Assad’s prisons. The images are almost too horrific to describe—corpses emaciated from starvation, mangled by torture, or burned beyond recognition. Caesar’s evidence, authenticated by the FBI, became a cornerstone in exposing Assad’s war crimes and led to the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which imposes sanctions on Assad and his enablers. Caesar remains in hiding, as his revelations put him at immense personal risk.
Moustafa, who worked closely with Caesar to bring these atrocities to light, has met with Gabbard multiple times, and what he saw was chilling. She dismissed overwhelming evidence of Assad’s war crimes, including Caesar’s photos and testimony from survivors, such as two young girls covered in burns who had lost their families to Assad’s bombs. When these children, scarred from head to toe, told Gabbard it was Assad and Russia who had destroyed their lives, her response was appalling: “How do you know it was Assad and Russia, not ISIS?” This absurd question ignored the facts and the trauma of children who had no reason to lie—and, oh, by the way. ISIS doesn’t have planes, Tulsi. How do you not know this?!
Worse, Gabbard took an unsanctioned trip to Syria, met with Assad, and echoed propaganda straight from Russia and Iran.
Moustafa warns that putting Gabbard in charge of U.S. intelligence would be a global disaster. Allies like the UK and Australia might stop sharing secrets, fearing their intel could end up in adversaries’ hands. The damage to democracy and security would be catastrophic.
📄 Read my Open Letter to Tulsi Gabbard to understand why this nomination must be stopped. The stakes couldn’t be higher. 🛑
https://patricemersault.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-tulsi-gabbard-the
Dear Eoin Higgins,
I'll be seeking out your forthcoming book in any event. Yet, given my current antennae out in alt press I can't help but ask whether Neo-ReactionaryX (dba NRX) and anti-democratic (if that ain't redundant) High Tech influencer Curtis Yarvin is on your radar? He seems to slip past the levels of reportage and critique that should've stunted his growth from likeable plain-spoken low-level High Tech Big Influencer via his alter-ego in blogosphere as Mencius Moldbug to a well-targeted longer growth trajectory source of bid-net influence.
Here's just a few references, in case you've not stumbled onto his various presentations on a wide variety of platforms including the mainstream and of course well-funded and now tactically adroit at insinuating himself into normally inattentive to Public Affairs insular groupings of large scale even Cult Scale Rock Band fandom with his alternative blogospheric moniker dba "....Unqualified Reservations, where he wrote hundreds of thousands of words of political theory in dense, allusive, and occasionally playful prose." :
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/curtis-yarvin-trump
https://unherd.com/watch-listen/welcome-to-the-dark-enlightenment/
https://unherd.com/newsroom/curtis-yarvin-schools-tucker-in-neoreaction/
While the critical opposition to the substance of Curtis Yarvin's alt and High Tech demagoguery has been shunted off to the lower alt media fringes like this posting of indie muck raking the podcast now video-streaming and archiving via U. of Tube dba YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpEg4LS3CT0&t=2523s
" Part Two: Curtis Yarvin: The Philosopher Behind J.D. Vance | BEHIND THE BASTARDS
Behind the Bastards
110K subscribers
86,553 views Sep 20, 2024 Behind the Bastards
🛎 If You're New Subscribe ► https://bit.ly/BtBSubscribe
"Part Two: Curtis Yarvin: The Philosopher Behind J.D. Vance | BEHIND THE BASTARDS"
"Robert (Madison Evans) concludes the story of Curtis Yarvin, and explains to Ed Helms how he went from pseudonymous weirdo with a blog to part of the right-wing power structure."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Evans_(journalist)
"....is an American anarchist author, journalist, and podcast host who has reported on global conflicts and online extremism. A former editor at the humor website Cracked.com, Evans now writes for the investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat while working on several podcasts, including Behind the Bastards, Behind the Police, Behind the Insurrections, It Could Happen Here, The Women's War, and Worst Year Ever. In 2021 he published his first novel, After the Revolution (AK Press 2022) first as a serialized podcast."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrrsnFT-LNo
"JD Vance, Curtis Yarvin, and the End of Democracy
Wisecrack
3.12M subscribers
224,355 views Oct 18, 2024 #jdvance #philosophy #politics
The Philosophy and Theology of JD Vance
"There is a new wave of right-wing philosophers and theologians advocating for things like turning America into a non-democratic corporate monarchy ruled by a CEO, or merging the state into the Church and replacing our legal system with the Ten Commandments. And the scariest part is that these thinkers have the ear of people like vice presidential nominee JD Vance, and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. We’ll explore it in this video on Curtis Yarvin, Christian Nationalism, and the End of Democracy."
No need for alarmism while some substantive opposition with "RIZ" (Charisma) to face down the
End small "d" Democracy Movement (especially in High Tech and other corporate-captured Elite sectors) could both stop the Big if low profile MO(mentum) and create a very much needed TEACHABLE MOMENT (one of Barak Obama's more enduring legacies is that meme....).
Especially since American Monarchism and Neo-Reactionary (NRX) movements have virtually no direct media news imprint and yet keeps growing its strategically targeted and pinpoint loci of penetration via academics and astute use of the very Academic\Journalistic\Multi-Media CATHEDRAL that Curtis Yarvin and the Neo-Reactionary influencers have turned into quite a (pardon the mixed metaphor) TROJAN GOLEM drawing such interest at the gates of SILICON VALLEY clear across our fruited plain of low-wage illegal migrant labor and the far reaches of our Boots Riley-limned in his near underground indie Oakland-set Dystopian movie satire made for a Service Industry and Call Center relegated last de-industrialized and outsourced work force hiring in SORRY TO BOTHER YOU..... demographic known to hustlers of all stripes, colors, factions, movements and classes as SLACKER NATION.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdCPvMNKvhE
Boots Riley on How His Hit Movie “Sorry to Bother You” Slams Capitalism & Offers Solutions
Democracy Now!
2.42M subscribers
83,766 views Jul 17, 2018
https://democracynow.org - "We continue our interview with Boots Riley, writer and director of “Sorry To Bother You,” his new film about an evil telemarketing company, a corporation making millions off of slave labor, and one Oakland man at the center of it all who discovers a secret that threatens all of humankind. His dystopian social satire is being hailed as one of the best movies of the summer. Riley is a poet, rapper, songwriter, producer, screenwriter, humorist, political organizer, community activist, lecturer and public speaker—best known as the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club."
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n981Nd_a-sc
"Boots Riley: On Elections and Mass Movements | Part 2 of 2
Laura Flanders & Friends
61.8K subscribers
4,384 views Oct 2, 2015
"Part two of our interview with Boots Riley, a poet, lyricist, MC, screenwriter, activist, organizer, radical, and founder and frontman of Oakland based hip hop group The Coup. Boots Riley was also one of the most influential voices and leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is the only known musical artist whose surveillance by intelligence agents has been exposed due to Wikileaks documents."
"In this clip: Boots talks about why elections and politicians don't get him excited, the confrontation between Black Lives Matter and politicians, including Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton."
Heads up
Health and balance in 2025
Resist while we still have a pulse in opposition politics
and legitimate alt cathedral of our own to help counter the Corporate Caliphate!
Tio Mitchito
Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee