Journalists From The United States

"For several years the scathing articles by Lincoln Steffens under the general title of "The Shame of our Cities" had been appearing in McClure's Magazine, and they exposed the bribed and the bribing of municipal government. Seemingly one city was as rotten as another."

"Last week, Narendra Modi suddenly announced an unprecedented three-week lockdown for India’s 1.3 billion people, setting off a rash of panic buying and creating confusion about how the millions of poor Indians in the country’s informal sector are supposed to support themselves. The lockdown has left vast numbers of migrant workers stranded and hungry. Reports of police abuses quickly surfaced."

"Hungary’s parliament on Monday passed the emergency law, [...] allowing President Viktor Orbán to rule by decree for an indefinite period. This arguably makes Hungary the first dictatorship within the EU and the first democracy to fall victim to the coronavirus."

"The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people."

"It may not just be dictatorships that are playing this game. Given its proximity to China, high elderly population, and high smoking rate, Japan would seem to be highly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Yet the number of cases and deaths in the country has been conspicuously low until recent days—perhaps suspiciously low. Japan, which has not adopted widespread testing or the kinds of strict social distancing measures seen elsewhere, saw the number of cases spike dramatically since it was announced last week that the 2020 Olympics would be postponed."

"I have seen the Future, and it works."

"Lincoln Steffens, his papers seized by Wilson, secretly came to tell the people of what had happened in Russia."

"Soviet Russia was a revolutionary government with an evolutionary plan. Their plan was, not by direct action to resist such evils as poverty and riches, graft, privilege, tyranny, and war, but to seek out and remove the causes of them. They were not practicing what we and they preached. They were not trying to establish political democracy, legal liberty and negotiated peace — not now. They were at present only laying a basis for these good things. They had set up a dictatorship, supported by a small, trained minority, to make and maintain for a few generations a scientific rearrangement of economic forces which would result in economic democracy first and political democracy last."

"The 1918 flu almost certainly didn’t originate in Spain. One popular theory for how it acquired the “Spanish” name posits that Spain was the only country where you could read about the disease. That’s because Spain remained neutral during World War I, and therefore its newspapers weren’t censoring any information deemed harmful to national morale. The disease was also rampaging through other countries, including France, Germany, Britain, and the United States, but those governments suppressed or downplayed reports on the extent of the damage. Accurate and timely information is vital to combating a pandemic, but still, some countries’ first impulses are to cover up the spread of the disease."

"It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning."

"Vladimir Putin’s government has also been accused of downplaying the severity of the outbreak. Officially, there have been 2,337 cases in Russia—very low by international standards—but low testing rates make it hard to know for sure. Critics suggest that a suspiciously nationwide uptick in pneumonia cases in recent weeks actually consists of undiagnosed COVID-19 cases. Aggressive measures put in place to punish the spread of “false” information on the outbreak online may also be preventing media outlets from publishing accurate information. After moving much more slowly than other governments to order lockdowns and social distancing measures, Russia is finally implementing new rules as the number of cases has grown rapidly in recent days. Putin, who was highly visible while touting the government’s efforts to contain the disease’s spread early on, was conspicuously absent when it was time to deliver the bad news. The impending crisis has not stopped Russia’s government from scoring a propaganda coup by shipping medical supplies to other countries—including the U.S."

"What is most extraordinary about these actions is that union officials have not called them. In some cases, there is no union. In other cases, such as auto, there is a union and workers are forced to strike against it as well as the company. In certain cases, such as the Bath shipyard, it seems that union officials may have tacitly supported the workers’ walkouts, though the situation is unclear. Sometimes these unofficial strikes violate a union’s contractual non-strike provisions or in the case of public employees such s may also violate the law. Yet workers have organised themselves to carry them out with few resources beyond social media and traditional word-of-mouth, in order to protect their health and to save their jobs."

"Wildcat strikes can be looked upon from two sides. The wildcat strike usually erupts either because there is no union or the union’s leaders have failed to provide leadership to fight the boss. Leftists have sometimes romanticised the wildcat as the authentic expression of the workers’ will, an act that developed spontaneously out of the workers’ resistance to the boss. Some see it as the harbinger of the general strike that will overthrow capitalism and bring the workers to power. At the same time, one has to recognise that workers had to go on a wildcat strike because they hadn’t taken control of their union and couldn’t use the union as the expression of their power. The wildcat is both an expression of workers’ direct power at the point of production, but also a demonstration of their failure – because of the power of the bosses and the labour bureaucracy – to build a democratically controlled union that could express their will."

"When workers recognise this, at least in a period of social upheaval, they have in the past sometimes attempted to take power in their unions and turn them into fighting organisations. Wildcat strikes then can become the source of energy that fuels rank-and-file movements, as has been the case in heavy industry for more than a century and among public employees for 75 years. The great advance of American workers in the 1930s that led to the founding of the and a vast expansion of the derived from just such wildcat strikes in the rubber plants, the auto industry, among electrical workers and many others. Workers walked out by the thousands, some occupied their plants, while others created mass picket lines, fought scabs and police. Wildcat strikes spread during the Depression decade like a virus through the United States, drawing in small industrial shops and retail workers. A similar thing happened in the 1960s and 1970s with teachers and public employees who walked out in illegal strikes to found their unions. Rank-and-file upheavals also transformed the in the 1970s and shook up other unions as well."

"Surely there must be other such strikes and sit-ins that haven’t been covered by the press, and we know there are many other protests by all sorts of workers, particularly important among them teachers and nurses, though we do not include those in this discussion, important as they are. The wildcat strike holds a particular place in the history and theory of the labour movement, as well as today reaction to the bosses and the government during the coronavirus pandemic. We notice that these strikes involve both highly skilled and highly paid workers – such as those at the ’ Bath shipyard – and also lower paid workers such as those at the Purdue chicken processing plant in Georgia and the bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon. One can make the case that black workers – Pittsburgh sanitation, Kathleen, Georgia, Purdue chick, and Memphis Teamsters – play a leading role in the strikes. Yet workers at Bath shipyard are overwhelmingly white, while autoworkers are black, Arab, white and Latino, and GE’s Lynn jet engine plant also has a racially mixed workforce. No doubt workers of all genders can be found in these protest, and we hear both men and women giving voice to the workers’ concerns. While the central demands are about workers’ health, we can see that already they begin to raise demands about wages, benefits and working conditions, as well as job security."

"As a White House Press Secretary you made multiple public statements from the White House and elsewhere about purported fraud in the November 2020 election, which individuals who attacked the U.S. Capitol echoed on Jan. 6"

"Across the United States, we are seeing workers walk off the job in wildcat strikes in response to the employers’ failure either to shut down the workplace or to make it safe. The strikes are too few to call them a strike wave, but we should be aware that on their own initiative workers are taking what practically is the most powerful action they can: withdrawing their labour. The strikes are taking place in both the private and , in both unionised and non-union s large and small."

"For 150 years, workers have struck over safety and health in myriad industries, most memorably in the twentieth century the miners’ strike over black lung. But we have not seen anything exactly like this before – wildcat strikes over health and safety in response to an epidemic, with workers making strong demands on the employers and sometimes winning. And these strikes are taking place in the midst of politicians’ ignorant and sometimes deceitful statements and government failures at all levels. Consequently, these strikes – even when only directed at a particular employer – have not only an economic but also a political character. We’re now seeing such strikes in a variety of industries in several states."

"That would be a question more for the White House."

"I Don't Call on Activists"

"If you can loot businesses, burn down buildings, engage in protests, you can also go to a Christmas party. You can celebrate the holiday of Christmas and you can do it responsibly."

"The president's never seen that video"

"We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama?"

"At President @realDonaldTrump’s direction, the National Guard is on the way along with other federal protective services. We reiterate President Trump’s call against violence and to remain peaceful."

"I will never lie to you. You have my word on that."

"Those who violently besieged our Capitol are the opposite of everything this administration stands for."

"We know most of our forefathers, all of our main Founding Fathers, were against slavery, recognized the evils of it."

"These young women are inspiring, confident, and strong. Can’t wait for this year!!!"

"Joe Biden, one of the things he is remarkable at is really kind of being a man of the people and resonating with middle class voters. Feeling like—coming off as human. His gaffes—as much as we make fun of them—to a certain extent they make him look human. So not, since he's likable... I think at the end of the day, probably Joe, although if Trump is against Joe, I think the juxtaposition of kind of the man of the people and kind of this tycoon, is a problem. Although Donald Trump's remarkably coming off as a man of the people despite being this wealthy business tycoon."

"Fmr. White House Press Secretary. Author of "For Such a Time as This" OUT NOW! Order a copy below!"

"Last October, Congress passed the , putting $700 billion into the hands of the Treasury Department to bail out the nation’s banks at a moment of vanishing credit and peak financial panic. Over the next three months, Treasury poured nearly $239 billion into 296 of the nation’s 8,000 banks. The money went to big banks. It went to small banks. It went to banks that desperately wanted the money. It went to banks that didn’t want the money at all but had been ordered by Treasury to take it anyway. It went to banks that were quite happy to accept the windfall, and used the money simply to buy other banks. Some banks received as much as $45 billion, others as little as $1.5 million. Sixty-seven percent went to eight institutions; 33 percent went to the rest. And that was just the money that went to banks. Tens of billions more went to other companies... But once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it. The Treasury Department knew where it had sent the money, but nothing about what was done with it. Did the money aid the recovery? Was it spent for the purposes Congress intended? Did it save banks from collapse? Paulson’s Treasury Department had no idea, and didn’t seem to care. It never required the banks to explain what they did with this unprecedented infusion of capital."

"The animal agriculture industry is one of the most powerful industries on the planet. I think most people in this country are aware of the influence of money and industry on politics, and we really see that clearly on display with this industry in particular. Most people would be shocked to learn that animal rights and environmental activists are the number one domestic terrorism threat according to the FBI. … It’s a difficult question to answer, why these groups are at the top of the FBI’s priorities. I think a big part of it is that they, more than really any other social movements today, are directly threatening corporate profits. When we try to find out how factory farms and how animal agriculture is polluting the environment, they try to claim exemptions to that information, either under "national security terms" or "public safety", "trademark issues", "it’s a business secret". We've seen all these attempts to keep people in the dark about what they’re actually doing."

"We simply cannot ignore the devastating environmental impact of our diet any longer. The good news—yes, there is good news—is that we make a difference at every meal."

"I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story."

"Looking back, she draws parallels between the regimes of Hitler in Germany and Lenin in Russia and Trump — particularly regarding their mass appeal, scapegoating and manipulation of language. She references books, such as those by... Anne Applebaum and... Hannah Arendt... In explaining how social media can both be manipulated and manipulate us, she quotes... Jaron Lanier and... . ...She includes novelists... George Orwell for , F. Scott Fitzgerald for greed, Thomas Pynchon for paranoia, David Foster Wallace for irony and insincerity, Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth... The passages she pulls from Zweig about life... during Hitler’s rise are striking. So too is what she takes from Victor Klemperer... on the decay of language in the Nazi era. ...Kakutani lays a surprising measure of the blame for fake news on postmodernism. ...Where she might have tracked money and right-wing think politics ([e.g.,] ’s Dark Money), the role of race and racism ([e.g.,] Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me) or the widening gap between rich and poor (using Capital by Thomas Piketty) — postmodernism is instead in her sights throughout. ...[S]he credits "recruiting a real American to hold a sign depicting Clinton and a phony... quotation attributed to her" to postmodern "Surkovian stagecraft," rather than recognizing... antecedents in Nixon’s dirty tricksters."

"The Trump White House's preference for loyalty and ideological lock-step over knowledge is on display throughout the administration. Unqualified judges and agency heads were appointed because of , political connections, or a determination to undercut agencies that stood in the way of Trump's massive deregulatory plans benefiting the fossil fuel industry and wealthy donors."

"Donald Trump has battled many a journalist, but he has not yet faced as eloquent and coruscating an authority as Michiko Kakutani, the fearless book critic of The New York Times for three and a half decades, who left the paper last year to write The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump."

"Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times revered chief book critic, announced she was stepping down from her post... after 38 years, marking the end of a career that inspired both admiration and fear in the hearts of the writers whose books she reviewed. Kakutani was America’s most powerful literary critic, someone who... wielded immense influence over the careers of both budding and established novelists."

"Combined with Trump's subversion of long-time alliances and trade accords and his steady undermining of democratic ideals, the carelessness with which his administration treated foreign policy led to world confidence in U.S. leadership plummeting in 2017 to a new low of 30 percent (below China and just above Russia) according to a Gallup pole."

"[T]he Times chief daily book critic announced that she would be leaving her regular reviewing post after thirty-eight years at the paper, marking the end of a literary era. Her assessments of novels and memoirs, works of history, biography, politics, and poetry have guided generations of American readers, and the prospect of getting a Kakutani review has been the hope and fear of more writers than could possibly be counted... What made her scary to writers made her reliable to readers... Her name long ago entered the lexicon as a verb (“to be Kakutanied”), a signifier of the ultimate cultural prestige."

"Trump and nationalist, anti-immigrant leaders on the right in Europe... would inflame... feelings of fear and anger and , offering s instead of solutions..."

"The assault on truth and reason that reached fever pitch during the first year of the Trump presidency had been incubating for years on the fringe right. Clinton haters... and Tea Party paranoids who claimed that environmentalists wanted to control the temperature of your home and the color of your cars... hooked up, during the 2016 campaign, with Breitbart bloggers and alt-right trolls. And with Trump's winning of the Republican nomination and the presidency, the extremist views of his most radical supporters—their racial and religious intolerance, their detestation of the government, and their embrace of conspiracy thinking and misinformation—went mainstream."

"Trump, who launched his political career by shamelessly promoting birtherism and who has spoken approvingly of the conspiracy theorist and Alex Jones, presided over an administration that became, in its first year, the very embodiment of anti-Enlightenment principles, reputing the values of rationalism, tolerance, and empiricism in both its policies and its modus operandi—a reflection of the commander-in-chief's erratic, impulsive decision-making style based not on knowledge but upon instinct, whim, and preconceived (and often delusional) notions of how the world operates."

"Truth is a cornerstone of our democracy. ...[T]ruth is one of the things that separates us from an ...."

"For decades now, objectivity—or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth—has been falling out of favor. ...This has been going on since a solar system of right-wing news sites orbiting around Fox News and consolidated its gravitational hold over the Republican base, and it's been exponentially accelerated by social media, which connects users with like-minded members and supplies them with customized news feeds that reinforce their preconceptions, allowing them to live in ever narrower, windowless silos."

"Trump made no effort to rectify his ignorance of domestic and foreign policy... His former chief strategist Stephen Bannon has said the Trump only "reads to reinforce"... [W]ritten versions of the president's daily brief... he reportedly rarely if ever reads. Instead, the president seems to prefer getting his information from Fox News—in particular, the sycophantic morning show Fox and Friends—and from sources like Breitbart News and the National Enquirer. He reportedly spends as much as eight hours a day watching television..."

"Alongside [the] optimistic vision of America as a nation that could become a shining "city upon a hill," there's also been a dark, irrational counter-theme in U.S. history, which has now reasserted itself with a vengeance—to the point where reason not only is being undermined but seems to have been tossed out of the window, along with facts, informed debate, and deliberative policy making. Science is under attack, and so is expertise of every sort—be it expertise in foreign policy, national security, economics, or education."

"[[Relativism|[R]elativism]] has been ascendant since the s began in the 1960s. Back then, it was embraced by the , eager to expose the biases of Western, bourgeois, male dominated thinking; and by academics promoting the gospel of postmodernism... Since then, relativistic arguments have been hijacked by the populist Right, including creationists and climate change deniers who insist that their views be taught alongside "science-based" theories."

"[I]t's not just fake news either: it's also fake science (manufactured by climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers), fake history (promoted by Holocaust revisionists and white supremicists), fake Americans on Facebook (created by Russian trolls), and fake followers and "likes" on social media (generated by bots)."

"The Washington Post calculated that Trump] made 2,140 false or misleading claims during the first year in office—an average of 5.9 a day. His lies... are only the brightest blinking light of many warnings of his assault on democratic institutions and norms. He routinely assails the press, the justice system, and the civil servants who make our government tick."