At the congressional swearing in ceremony for the Tea Party wave, I saw David Koch leaving the building and got a short interview. Every other political interview Koch ever gave was carefully screened. This one wasn't.
This interview apparently angered him. Shortly after they hired private investigators & operatives and I got harassed for over a year. An old high school media account got hacked, they hosted a website calling me a liar, edited my Wiki, a Koch blogger smeared me almost every day.
Tfw you trigger one of the world's wealthiest and right-wing billionaires.
Also, read @JaneMayerNYer's book Dark Money, she was able to detail similar tactics they used against her. Koch had a very sophisticated operation to try to discredit and intimidate a number of critics and journalists.
@JaneMayerNYer The handler here is Tim Phillips, the president of David Koch's political org, "Americans for Prosperity." I was the first to report that Koch was using AFP to organize "grassroots" Tea Party events and had written over two dozen stories from 2009-2010 detailing its activities.
@JaneMayerNYer BTW Tim in the video claims I am from Virginia, which is not true. I was born and raised in Maryland. Although my family is from Virginia, which he somehow knew.
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Exclusive -- we obtained leaked high-level internal Israeli gov docs. Emails and memos show effort to influence American policy & politics while evading FARA foreign agent lobby disclosure law. Published in partnership with The Guardian & Jack Poulson. substack-proxy.glitch.me/articles/www-l…
The memos show that the Israeli gov covertly retained Sandler Reiff, the firm of the former DNC general counsel. The Israeli legal advisors settled on developing a third party proxy to channel Israeli gov funds to American advocacy groups.
The secret discussions reached legal advisors to Netanyahu and deputy attorney general. In 2018, given the increased FARA enforcement wave on Trump officials, Israeli gov lawyers warned a new advocacy campaign focused on passing anti-BDS laws could trigger a DOJ investigation.
US & NATO have 12x Russia's defense budget, yet Russia produces 3x the artillery munitions vital for the Ukraine war. How is America so easily outpaced by Russia, which has a fraction of our economy & defense spending? It's partially a story of corporate consolidation 🧵
155mm artillery casings are made at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, which was converted during the Korean war. The plant was acquired by General Dynamics in 2006 during a mergers & acquisition spree, w/ GD buying other artillery munition firms to nearly corner the market.
General Dynamics, after buying out competitors, starting consolidating and closing plants. The Scranton plant had rounds of layoffs in 2010 and another in 2012, removing skilled machinist workers.
U.S. foreign aid money is flowing into Ukraine to fund a network of anti-disinfo watchdogs and journalists, who are helping the government demonize opponents, pass censorship laws, and smear pro-peace Americans as Russian agents. New investigation🧵
USAID funded Ukrainian media are helping Facebook remove alleged Russian disinfo content. The same groups, without evidence, claim Americans favoring a diplomatic solution to the conflict — Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Glenn Greenwald, etc — are Russian propaganda agents
USAID and NED, which spun off from the CIA, openly touts investments in Ukraine media w/ helping fuel the pro-NATO revolt in Ukraine in 2014 & w/ helping win the current information war against Russia today. Yet the “independent” media the US funds is highly political.
DHS official Brian Murphy was in the news for building dossiers of critical journalists. Now he’s helping British AI firm Logically into the U.S. to identify “problematic” 2024 election narratives to scrub social media. I have a new investigation into the censorship firm:
Logically AI scans social media for “misinfo” like many orgs. Unlike others, they partner w/ Meta, anything they flag is automatically shadowbanned or factchecked. They operate a news-style website and are testing generative AI for bots that attack alleged misinfo posts.
In the UK, the British gov gave contracts to Logicially to fight pandemic disinfo. Instead, the group flagged academics & activists who criticized vaccine passports, lockdowns, other forms of policy dissent. Logically said the lab leak theory was a dangerous “conspiracy theory.”
I talked previously to several lawmakers in Congress who explained that devotion to Israel -- including U.S. weapons and money -- is part of their religious belief, grounded in the Bible. This dynamic separates Israel-Palestine from a lot of other geopolitical concerns.
Also interviewed Robert Jeffress, the megachurch pastor who gave the official opening prayer moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. He advises American politicians, says support for Israel is critical for bringing an end times final war, Jesus returning to slay non-believers.
Note Jeffress forced me to wear a mask to go backstage with him. Not my choice. These are clips from Praying for Armageddon, a new film that looks at the role of Christian Zionism in shaping U.S. policy towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. prayingforarmageddon.com
Ibram Kendi’s anti-racist institute at Boston University promised scholarship and data, but produced virtually nothing. Now they’re laying everyone off.
Kendi’s contribution to the discourse is the toxic and poorly argued idea, articulated in “How to be an Antiracist,” that *every* racial disparity is inherently the byproduct of racism. He just laid off his black workforce, doesn’t that make him a racist, given the disparity?
The entire article is incredible. Kendi promised a book fair, then gave up. Promised scholarship, nothing appeared. Promised data projects, then the only one that launched, a COVID tracker, went defunct in March 2021. How do you raise that much and produce so little?