Revisting the JFK Coup

JFK Revisited... You can now watch the trailer for Oliver Stone's eye-opening new documentary about the JFK assassination -- which, I'm told, has finally found a U.S. distributor. I'm honored to be included in the film, along with such leading JFK truth-tellers as Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Gary Aguilar, John Newman and Jefferson Morley.

Stone's 1991 dramatic feature, JFK, blew the American people's minds (including mine) and forced Congress to release thousands of Kennedy documents, many of which I used in writing my books Brothers and The Devil's Chessboard. (Many other relevant Kennedy documents are STILL being hidden by the CIA, in blatant defiance of the law.)

Watch the trailer -- and the documentary when it comes out. You have a right to your own history.

(Thanks to producer-writer James DiEugenio, who made JFK Revisited possible.)

Bannon and Trump: Lock Them Up!

Now that Congress has finally found Steve Bannon in contempt, it's long past time to prosecute Donald Trump for his myriad crimes against democracy. As David Brock points out on today's NYT editorial page, Trump never went away -- despite liberals' head-in-the-sand wishes. And his incendiary statements about his "stolen" presidential election are the peak of his criminal offensive.

"The insurrection took place on Nov. 3, Election Day," Trump has lied. "Jan. 6 was the protest!"

Trump continues to aggressively sabotage American democracy. And the Republican Party has become his willing tool, with its dozens of voter suppression laws, its constant cries of election fraud, and its scorched-earth strategy to contest (or recall) every winning Democratic candidate.

As Brock writes, the Republicans are no longer a "normal" party -- and Trump is far from a normal political leader. He's a thuggish despot, and he means to take back America.

We need to wake up and stop him.

A Three-Dot Item on John & Yoko

I miss John Lennon. And I miss Herb Caen! The glory days of newspaper columnists are long gone. Nowadays cities don't know what they are any longer, in part because of the disappearance of the likes of Caen in SF, and NYC's Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin. Anyway, here's a great Herb Caen item about Lennon and Yoko Ono's stay in Frisco in 1972. (I know, I know, Caen said never to call it that -- but he wasn't always right.) The item was undoubtedly slipped to Caen by Facebook friend Craig Pyes, who always had (and has) a nose for news.

Rachel Maddow, Voice of the People

If you want to know what's wrong with the "liberal media," just take a look at Rachel Maddow's new $30 million annual deal with NBCUniversal. Maddow, who will reportedly step away from her nightly show next year, is actually being paid a lot more to work a lot less.

In The Paper (an excellent movie about the glory days of New York newspapers), Robert Duvall, playing an ink-stained managing editor, says to a disgruntled colleague, "People like us don't make the money." That's true of nearly all journalists -- but not ones like Maddow.

Journalists who make $30 million a year are owned. Oh, I'm sure Maddow doesn't see it that way. But she is a corporate asset. Maybe she would compulsively bash the Russians anyway. Maybe she would still have policed the Democratic Party, making sure that the likes of Bernie Sanders and other outspoken socialists never got anywhere near the top. But that $30 million a year ensures that she will remain a voice of the Democratic establishment, at a time when we desperately need unbought, articulate media voices.

When I was running Salon, I could've sold out to Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I could have turned Salon into a small satellite of the New York Times or Time-Warner. But (as my family often wryly reminds me), I never got rich off my media venture. We remained rigorously and giddily independent. And years later, I still have no regrets -- even though at age 70, I have no family savings to speak of.

Some journalists value their work higher than their bank accounts. Near the end of the film version of The Crucible (another good movie), the character played by Daniel Day-Lewis says he can't sign a bogus confession "because it's my name." He says it with great agony because it means he will be executed. I never faced the same life-or-death stakes. But that scene deeply moved me.

Laughing all the way to the bank

Zoom in for the Next American Revolution

Native American warrior Madonna Thunder Hawk (pictured with her daughter Marcy Gilbert) will be one of the highlights on the UC Santa Cruz Zoom panel on revolutionary activism then and now. It's happening Tuesday evening at 5:30 PM Pacific time. And you can register for free here.

Madonna will be joined by radical legends Heather Booth, Dolores Huerta, and Bill Zimmerman -- all of whom are featured in the new book by Margaret Talbot and me, By the Light of Burning Dreams. Join us!

I Watched Chappelle’s Show - And… It’s Complicated

OK, I actually watched Dave Chappelle's show last night ("The Closer"). And, as they say in Facebookland, it's complicated. Yes, he walks a knife's edge and sometimes goes gleefully falling off. He insults (or provokes) not just LGBTQ people but his "Asian brothers and sisters," women, Jews and others. That's what edgy comics do -- and Chappelle is one of our edgiest... and best.

So I understand the anger of LGBTQ people, who see the show as a clear-cut case of further victimization. But here's the thing. I don't think it is. I think Chappelle -- in his sometimes crude, fucked-up but brilliant way -- is trying to spark a dialogue between the LGBTQ and African-American communities. (The fact that many trans people are Black seems to confuse him.)

Bottom line: is Chappelle "transphobic?" No. Should he be cancelled? Hell, no!

But I DO wish he'd use his scathing talents against the truly powerful more often. (At one point in the show, Chappelle approvingly quotes a trans friend saying that Dave does not hit up or down.) Tearing to shreds the likes of McConnell, Manchin and Sinema and our whole corrupt, money-driven political system; soulless Big Oil, Big Tech and Big Pharma corporate masters; merchants of death (the makers of military weapons marketed for overseas and domestic use); reactionary Texas and Florida lawmakers; the CIA; and the bloodthirsty, perpetual, imperial American war machine.

Now THAT would make me laugh.

Chappelle and Netflix: Hit Up, Not Down

Media gatekeepers agonistes... Netflix execs are on the defensive for strongly defending comic Dave Chappelle's new stand-up show, in which he again goes off on trans people, women and lesbians. I'm going to watch Chappelle's show (while I still can), because I'm a big fan of his comic brilliance and because I hate being told what to watch -- whether it's by Republican mullahs or by cancel culture lefties. But I must confess, I'm getting tired of Chappelle hitting down -- pummeling people who have very little voice in how America is actually run. People who are often the targets of discrimination and even violence. Chappelle is at his cutting best when he trashes white racism and the smugness of the powerful. But trans people? Come on, Dave, pick on someone your own size -- or bigger.

While we're on this theme, Netflix chief execs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos should stop giving themselves credit for being so brave. If you're a regular viewer of Netflix -- or other streaming services like Amazon's Prime Video -- you know how safe and banal they generally are. Take the subject of war and espionage, my own areas of interest. When have these big entertainment channels ever offered truly challenging shows on national security? The answer is never. All of their programs -- whether documentaries or dramas -- look like they've been vetted by the big CIA office in Hollywood. Their Cold War spy thrillers always present the Americans as dashing heroes and their enemies as dark villains. Our spies are never shown overthrowing democratic governments or assassinating elected leaders. (For a reality check on the CIA, read my book The Devil's Chessboard.)

It's time for Chappelle -- and for Hastings and Sarandos -- to begin hitting up. If they've got real guts.

The Progressive Caucus vs. the Hyde Amendment

Men are hypocrites. And sometimes they get exposed. When I was running Salon back in 1998, we revealed that Rep. Henry Hyde — the Republican leader of the House Judiciary Committee who was sitting in judgment on President Bill Clinton for his sexual recklessness with a White House intern — was himself guilty of an adulterous affair with beautician Cherie Snodgrass that broke up her family with three young children. When Hyde tried to write off the destructive, five-year affair as a “youthful indiscretion” — though he was in his 40s at the time — he became the laughingstock of late-night TV. Salon did not venture lightly into the shark-infested waters of sexual politics. But we decided that Hyde’s sexual hypocrisy — at a critical juncture for the nation when even the New York Times was heralding him as a “lion of Congress” — made him fair game.

But Henry Hyde has gone down in history for another rank exercise in sexual hypocrisy — the so-called Hyde Amendment that for decades has cut off Medicaid funding for poor women needing abortions. President Joe Biden finally decided not to renew the noxious amendment. But Senator Joe Manchin, the wolf in Democratic clothing, is trying to hold the president hostage on his Build Back Better legislation by (among other things) forcing him to revive the Hyde Amendment.

To the credit of the House Progressive Caucus, they are standing firm against Manchin’s bullying. Caucus leader Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, one of the Congress members who recently spoke out about her own experience with abortion, vowed that progressive legislators will not cave to Manchin’s demand on the Hyde Amendment — and so far Biden has been siding with them. (Caucus members are willing to make some compromises on the funding of social programs, front-loading the expenditures.)

For too long, men in Washington like Henry Hyde, Joe Manchin — and Brett Kavanaugh — have been dictating women’s reproductive decisions, after availing themselves of women’s bodies. It’s time to end this revolting male supremacy. Politicians like these should get their grubby hands off women’s bodies, once and for all.

The media picked up on Salon’s expose.

$enator Kyrsten $inema Is All About the Benjamins, Baby

Everyone knows that Senator Joe Manchin might as well have corporate decals all over his business suits like a NASCAR driver. But Senator Kyrsten Sinema -- the OTHER, less infamous Democrat on the verge of sabotaging President Joe Biden's national renewal bills -- is just as owned by corporate America. Among her main objections to Biden's bills, says Sinema, is they would tax the wealthy to pay for social spending and they would also control Big Pharma profiteering. Both of these provisions are hugely popular with voters, including Republicans and independents. So don't buy Sinema's line that she is trying to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate in purple Arizona. Sinema's opposition to Biden's bedrock legislation is all about the Benjamins.

Among Sinema's corporate underwriters are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the main Big Pharma lobbying group, which also happen to be leading the campaign against Biden's legislation. In addition, Sinema is financed by Goldman Sachs, Comcast, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Alphabet (the corporate parent of "don't do evil" Google) and other big business brand names.

Sinema began her political career as a Green Party activist and she identifies as bisexual. So she's cool, right? That's what Emily's List, the backer of women candidates, and the LGBTQ Victory Fund, and the League of Conservation Voters think. They've all given money to her, proving once again that single-issue politics will be the death of the progressive cause in America.

As long as Big Money can buy politicians like Kyrsten Sinema, there will be no sweeping progress in America. We are doomed as a nation to keep driving on crumbling roads and bridges, to endure devastating climate havoc, to underinvest in education and our children's future -- in short, to be a backward shithole of a country where the rich get richer and the rest of us get fucked.

But, hey, Kyrsten sure looks sassy in those lavender dresses, doesn't she?

The CIA Wanted to Kill Julian Assange Too

A big round of applause to Yahoo News (!) and the Intercept for breaking this story on how President Trump's CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. (The spy agency also contemplated targeting journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, who aided whistleblower Edward Snowden, as enemies of the state,)

The CIA is a dangerous, rogue agency and has been ever since it was created -- as Presidents Truman (who reluctantly approved its founding) and Kennedy (we know what happened to him) publicly stated. JFK should've followed through on his threat to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." But Kennedy's enemies -- led by Allen Dulles, the psychotic former CIA chief -- shattered his head in Dallas before he could remake the national security state.

Now there is no presidential will to rein in the CIA. And there is no popular movement to wind down the U.S. empire. We're truly fucked.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo considered Assange a legitimate assassination target

Defeat Racist Republican Recall Campaigns

Cheers to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips for calling it like it is. The Republican efforts to recall progressive elected officials -- like SF District Attorney Chesa Boudin -- are part of a Jim Crow revival to disenfranchise Black voters. Funded by fat-cat hedge fund and Silicon Valley billionaires, these recall campaigns double down on their cynical racism by hiring African Americans to gather signatures for the recall initiatives. Despite their shameless racial window dressing, these Republican recall campaigns generally harm minority citizens. Boudin, for instance, has taken steps to reduce the city's nonviolent prison population, which is disproportionately nonwhite and poor, through alternative programs. America's teeming prison-industrial complex is another grotesque manifestation of the new Jim Crow era. As Van Jones declared years ago, we need more books and fewer iron bars.

If the big-money Republican effort to oust Chesa Boudin gets on the ballot this fall, voters should overwhelmingly defeat it -- just as Californians crushed the recall campaign against Gov. Gavin Newsom. As Phillips wrote, these recalls are racist attacks on our democracy by elite white interests. By contrast, Chesa Boudin is For the People.

Criminalizing the Climate Crisis - It’s Time to Name Names

The mainstream media finally recognizes that the global climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity. But newspapers and news channels still refrain from pointing fingers at the chief culprits behind the rapidly escalating meltdown, namely Big Oil executives and their political puppets, who are STILL lobbying against deep climate reforms as the world burns and drowns. We know that MORE THAN FOUR DECADES have passed since Exxon managers were informed by their own scientists about fossil fuel burning's contribution to environmental catastrophe. And yet they did nothing -- or rather these executives did worse than nothing, bankrolling climate crisis denial campaigns and pliable politicians who blocked serious reform efforts. ExxonMobil, under current CEO Darren Woods, continues to lobby against legislative measures to deter environmental disaster.

So kudos to journalist (and friend) Mark Hertsgaard, who is helping lead a media effort to criminalize the powerful men who are destroying Earth. As Mark points out in this article, there is no better time than the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow in November to name these global criminals and to demand they finally be brought to justice. The climate crisis is a crime beat. A small number of corporate executives and politicians are profiting enormously from humanity's growing distress. No more.

Wanted for crimes against nature and humanity: Big Oil CEO Darren Woods

Whew! I’m Turning 70!

Goodbye to the swinging 60s. On Wednesday I’m turning 70. And I’m hugely relieved that I made it this far. I should’ve been dead by now… several times. As I wrote in my memoir, Between Heaven and Hell, I was fully prepared to check out in November 2017 when I had my stroke. I was saying serene farewells to my family as they gathered around my hospital bed. But just like Al Pacino in The Godfather, when you think you’re out, they pull you back in. I have a very insistent — persistent — family.

All in all, I’m glad to still be alive — despite it all. Despite a country and a world that seems to keep finding fresh hells. A dismayed friend told me yesterday that his 92-year-old mother thinks this is the worst America’s ever been in her lifetime. I’m not sure about that. I remember the assassinations and bloody uprisings and endless foreign war and dark shadow of the Bomb — yes, the swinging 60s. But back then we also had a movement and a counterculture and the music. What do we have today? A world on fire. A Republican America that has gone completely bonkers. And a woke cancel culture that cannibalizes itself. Ugh.

And yet we beat on, boats against the current. I take pleasure in the creative achievements of those around me. Our Bernal Heights bungalow continues to churn out movies, books, music videos, street art, pop-up meals, etc. If dreams were thunder and lightning was desire, this old house would’ve burned down a long time ago. During the ‘60s and ‘70s, right here in San Francisco, we tried to build an alternate reality, inside the dying flesh of the old world. And we partly succeeded. (I wrote about it in Season of the Witch.) We’re still doing that at our house, like countless other families, collectives, bands.

The goal is the same, I’ve told my family and friends. To survive, to thrive, we need to go tribal. We need to take care of each other. We need to create the new world that we want to live in.

I couldn’t be there on the Paramount lot when my son Joe recently directed a music video for a big singer, which will be out later this year. (He’s between movies.) But I loved hearing how he assembled a crew of esteemed friends, family members and colleagues, and what a fun ship he reportedly captained. When he was a boy, Joe watched my wife, Camille Peri, and I do the same thing with many of our closest friends in journalism, after we launched Salon, the pioneering web publication. We were always on the verge of bankruptcy, often the target of Republican vipers. But we sailed merrily on together for a decade. (Miraculously, Salon still sails on today with a mostly different crew.)

So what are my words of wisdom as I approach the 70th-year milestone? Celebrate your survival. Stick with your tribe. Inhabit the world you desire.

I’m from Hollywood originally. I’ve always wanted my books to become movies, TV series. I’ve always believed the best story wins. And now my dream is coming true. At age 70, I’m suddenly a screenwriter and a producer. You live long enough and impossible things start to happen. Go figure.

Btw, this is a photo of me, at age 23 I’m guessing. I lived in a Venice, California bungalow with the creative and beautiful Zheutlin sisters. I always look stoned in old photos. But we were just high on life. I suppose I still am.

I’m a Californian First - An American Second

Today’s recall election in the biggest state in the union brought it home for me — again. I’m a Californian first and foremost. So I voted no. No on Trumpism, climate denial, public health selfishness, scientific ignorance, racial bigotry, misogyny… in short, all the “values” that animate Red State America. Seventy-four million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2020. He only lost reelection — after everything that Americans knew about him — because of a record turnout for Joe Biden. That’s why I can’t proudly call myself an American.

It’s true that California, once you leave the deep-blue cities, is also Trump territory. And we had to suffer through a Republican recall campaign — another assault on our electoral system — because of California’s wacky populism, despite the fact that Republicans are becoming as extinct as the state’s once mighty grizzly bear. But Gavin Newsom is going to win BIG today, because a lopsided majority of my fellow state citizens embraces facts and progress, instead of the shibboleths of the past.

Look, Gavin Newsom will NEVER be a hero of the left. He will never place PG&E under state ownership no matter how many wildfires that the big utility sparks through its mismanagement. He will never crack down on Airbnb and greedy landlords, no matter how bad the homeless crisis and evictions become. He will never do the research on the RFK assassination case that would prompt him to uphold the parole of Sirhan Sirhan. But he is still more advanced than any other state leader in America.

Back in 2017, when I was writing a column for the San Francisco Chronicle, I did a pointed interview with then Lieutenant Governor Newsom, pushing him hard on his cozy relations with the wealthy elite, his soft spot for Big Tech, and his reputation as a lightweight (or “haircut in search of a man,” as some critics unkindly put it). Newsom held his own, and after the column was published did the smart political thing by texting me. “Appreciated the balance in today’s article — good/tough questions,” he wrote.

As a media entrepreneur and San Francisco journalist, I had known Gavin over the years and always found him interesting, even when wanting. Back in 2004, when my publication Salon threw a party at the Democratic Convention in Boston, every party bigwig in attendance — including openly gay Rep. Barney Frank — snubbed Newsom, not wanting to be photographed with the San Francisco mayor who had given George W. Bush and Karl Rove a big wedge issue by legalizing same-sex marriage. My political editor Joan Walsh and I, feeling sorry for Newsom, greeted him and had a drink with him, or he might have been left all alone at the party. Sometimes Gavin does the right thing, even when it’s not the political thing.

That’s why I replied this way to his text in 2017: “I’m rooting for you to be the JFK/RFK I know is inside you.” I knew that would mean a lot to him — his dad, a state politico, had worked on Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 presidential primary campaign. And Gavin clearly was touched by what I texted. “I appreciate that, seriously!” he wrote back.

I’m still rooting for Gavin. Yesterday, on the campaign stump in Long Beach, he found his voice. He connected with his audience in a much more visceral way than the sometimes wonky, dyslexic politician has in the past. I want him to crush the Republican recall — as he probably will. Then I want him to continue making California a beacon of national enlightenment, as the governors of Texas and Florida and Red State America drag their citizenry backwards to a dark past.

I no longer expect big things from America. Joe Biden’s incremental opposition to our massive social and ecological collapse is about as good as we’re going to get in my lifetime. But I do expect California to keep lighting the way forward. We need to keep Gavin Newsom in office. And we need to keep pushing him to do the right thing.

Yes, Joe Biden IS a Gold Star Father

You gotta LOVE the New York Times (not). In its latest cri du coeur for America's rapidly declining empire, the Times features a Sunday front-page story by Katie Rogers attacking President Biden for still mourning the loss of his eldest son, Beau. Serving with the Delaware National Guard, Beau Biden was stationed on Balad Air Base in Iraq, where Dick Cheney's firm, the military contractor Halliburton, burned 140 tons of waste a day -- including body parts, used bandages and other medical garbage, plastics, old tires, you name it -- in open-air burn pits.

The Times quotes William McGurn -- a speechwriter for President George W. Bush (both of whom should burn in an open pit of Hell) -- who had the temerity to scold President Biden in a Wall Street Journal column. "Mr. Biden is not a Gold Star father and should stop playing one on TV," sneered McGurn.

But Joe Biden IS a Gold Star father -- and he should come out and say it loud and clear. As he himself suspects, his son Beau died from a rare brain cancer 18 moths after returning home from Iraq after inhaling the toxic fumes from the Balad burn pits day in and day out. As veterans groups now suing the Pentagon and Halliburton know, countless numbers of U.S. soldiers -- as well as Iraqi and Afghan people -- were poisoned by the fumes from the burn pits.

Army veteran Joseph Hickman conducted a lengthy investigation of the burn pit medical crisis -- which he calls the Agent Orange scandal of the War on Terror. His work resulted in a book that I had the honor of editing.

Thousands of sick and dying veterans and their families know the truth. So does Joe Biden. His son was another victim of the endless war in the Middle East. He died from the “friendly smoke” — as I call it — of war. As a Gold Start parent, Joe Biden should let the world know about his son's sacrifice.

And yes, fuck the New York Times, which lacked the courage to even mention the burn pit scandal, despite widespread knowledge about the circumstances of Beau's death.

Joe Biden bids farewell to his son Beau

Apocalypse Now?

When I was a high school senior at Oakwood School in North Hollywood, I was cast in the lead role of a musical by my talented classmate Richard Saul called Apocalypso! As I recall, it was a crazy mashup of a Fred Astaire spectacle and an end-of-the-world drama. (I was cast because I was the new guy in the artsy school, after being forced out of a military prep school. I could sing but wasn’t much of a dancer.) Dystopia was always in the back of our young minds then. There was always the shadow of the Bomb, of course. But, as we usually forget, the 1960s and early ‘70s were also a graveyard of dreams: endless war, assassinations, racial uprisings. And still, it all seems like a rosy dawn compared to the grim realities of today.

The climate crisis is now officially front-page news. Every day. Hurricanes, biblical downpours, drought, hellfires, orange skies… end of world stuff. But the human race — or more specifically our political and corporate elites — have proven incompetent to deal with these apocalyptic threats. While President Biden tries to push through a massive public works bill to bolster our overwhelmed infrastructure, what are the executives of Disney, Pfizer, ExxonMobil and countless other corporate brand names doing? They’re lobbying against the essential bill, because it modestly raises corporate taxes. A bill that is already hanging by a thread because the science and reality-denying Republicans are only one senator away from blocking any and all progress in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the New York Times — which is supposed to be the voice of reason in America — seems more hysterical about the Taliban than the actual end of the world. The Times revealed its true imperial colors by freaking out over President Biden’s declaration that the era of U.S. overreach in the world is over. As Biden boldly put it, the U.S. must no longer launch “major military operations to remake other countries.” Times reporter Mark Landler scrambled to get a platoon of pundits to denounce Biden’s anti-imperial policy, including, get this, Tony Blair (!) That’s right, the former British PM so disgraced by his groveling partnership with the Bush-Cheney war juggernaut that he can’t show his face in public in England.

Meanwhile, House Democrats sided with Republicans to beat back a Biden attempt to modestly cut the Pentagon budget. It’s enough to make you give up on pathetic American democracy.

I never thought I’d say this, but old, doddering Joe Biden might be our last chance to save America. He seems a different man in the White House. He’s 78. He lost a beloved son to that endless war in the Middle East. He seems to be a man scuffed by life and as it nears the end, with nothing to lose. Yes, he’s still a corporate toady in some respects. Yes, he’s still too enamored of the long-dead rituals and niceties of Capitol Hill. But there’s some kind of new bold streak in the man that feels like our last best hope.

So I’ll say it again. Fuck the New York Times and all the whining voices of neoliberalism. I’m with Joe. I have kids and maybe someday grandkids too. I want them to live.

The New York Times’ Endless Bloodlust

Thanks to independent journalists like Matt Taibbi (whose newsletter TK News is an indispensable daily read -- subscribe today), the mainstream media has been shamed (to the extent that corporate media HAS any shame) into acknowledging the military-industrial connections of their Afghanistan national security "experts." Not only did favorite New York Times and Washington Post quote machines and TV talking heads like Meghan O'Sullivan and Jeh Johnson keep the U.S. in the forever war -- they're also profiting from the endless bloodletting in the region by sitting on the boards of weapons manufacturers like Raytheon.

After helping pave the road to endless war with its false reporting on Saddam's nonexistent WMD (hell, let's go back to the 1950s, with its jingoistic reporting that helped the CIA overthrow democracy in Iran), does the New York Times have ANY conscience when it comes to the slaughterhouse of the Middle East? Um, the short answer is no. Just read the Times' daily drumbeat against President Biden for withdrawing AFTER 20 YEARS (!) from Afghanistan.

It must be said: the New York Times is one of America's most shrill warmongers. I'd say "Shame on them" -- but their executive leadership has no shame.

Matt Taibbi on a recent episode of Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti’s Breaking Points

Ed Asner Had Spunk

Ed Asner had spunk -- and I LOVE spunk. Asner died on Sunday at age 91 after a long career as an actor and political activist. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ed back in 1982 with fellow Mother Jones editor (and friend) Mark Dowie. Asner's TV show, Lou Grant, in which he played a hard-nosed newspaper editor, had just been canceled by CBS, obviously for political reasons during the Reagan era. And Ed was not going gently into the night. He had used the show -- and his platform as president of the Screen Actors Guild (a union my father Lyle had cofounded) -- to go after Reagan's savage war policies in Central America as well as the age of greed that his administration ushered in.

In the photo below, Asner had just turned the table on us, asking Dowie a tough question about Mother Jones (I forget what it was) and Mark wisely passed the buck to the junior editor -- me. That's why I have that deer-in-the-headlights look.

Years later, I saw Asner again at a Los Angeles fundraiser for Salon, the online progressive publication I founded in 1995. Ed would always show up for a good cause, speaking to crowds large and small with his trademark growl that hid a heart of gold. He was a true Hollywood hero -- and they're not many of those around.

Btw, speaking of Mark Dowie, he and I remain friends after 40 years, Mark and his wife -- painter Wendy Schwartz -- dropped by a houseboat on Tomales Bay that my wife, writer Camille Peri, and I are living and working in this week. (Better air here in smoky California.) We talked about our Mother Jones days (when we edited and went drinking, and drinking, with Christopher Hitchens), journalistic ethics, and why some journalists and pals (like Hitch) crossed the line and went to the dark side.

Ed Asner wasn't a real journalist. But he played the kind of one on TV that all of us ink-stained wretches should emulate.

Free Sirhan Sirhan

The backlash has already started against the recommendation by a California parole board panel to free Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968. But it's a long-overdue decision -- even if it was based largely on Sirhan's advanced age (77), instead of the fact that he is innocent of killing RFK. Yes, as Sirhan admitted to the parole panel, he is guilty of firing a gun in the crowded pantry of the Ambassador Hotel that night. But, as Sirhan repeated, he has no memory of the tragic events of that night. For good reason. Sirhan was a programmed decoy -- the true assassin fired the fatal bullet into the back of Kennedy's skull at point-blank range, while Sirhan was firing wildly several feet in front of the senator.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting of RFK, including those who wrestled Sirhan for his gun (two of whom I interviewed for my 2007 book Brothers), later stated there was no way that Sirhan was positioned to fire the fatal bullet. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County coroner who performed the autopsy on Senator Kennedy, came to the same conclusion. Writing in his 1983 memoir, which was ignored by the media, Dr. Noguchi stated that the forensics (including ballistics evidence showing at least 12 shots were fired that night, while Sirhan's gun held only 8 bullets) "indicated there may have been a second gunman... Thus I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy."

My own research has led me to the conclusion that RFK's assassination was organized by CIA contractor Robert Maheu, who recruited Mafia hitmen to kill Fidel Castro, among other tasks for the spy agency. Maheu (whom I interviewed in his Las Vegas home near the end of his life) also conveniently owned a private security firm that I believe was detailed to the Ambassador Hotel that night. The man who fired the fatal shot into the back of RFK's head was posing as a security guard. Maheu's gunmen were positioned all over the hotel that night, following Kennedy's victory in the decisive California presidential primary. There was no way that RFK was going to survive that night.

Most independent researchers who have closely studied the RFK case have concluded that despite the hypnotic actions of Sirhan that night, he is not the assassin of Robert Kennedy. These dogged authors and researchers who are still active (including Shane O'Sullivan, Lisa Pease and Paul Schrade, the UAW official who was struck in the head by a bullet during the wild fusillade but recovered) -- as well as two sons of RFK -- all support the release of Sirhan Sirhan.

The California parole panel's recommendation must be upheld by Governor Gavin Newsom, who has other things on his mind now. But as soon as Newsom withstands the loony Republican recall, he must do the right thing and free Sirhan Sirhan.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared victory in the 1968 California primary shortly before he was shot.

Music for Your Soul

It’s politics-free day here at The Show… because man or woman or none of the above cannot live by conflict alone. As my regular readers know, I’m a big music enthusiast — in fact, the sweet sound keeps me going through it all. I particularly love Celtic music and classic R&B and soul — like Aretha, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder etc. I enjoy some neo-soul too, like Dennis Lloyd’s “The Way.” And I’m always searching for new Irish music that infuses new life into that ancient wine jug. And so, my friends, I’m here to sing the praises of the new album by Northern Ireland’s Joshua Burnside, who pairs beautifully on his latest outing with Laura Quirke.

Listen to this ballad, “Far Away the Hills Are Green,” a simple tune with their voices accompanied only by banjo and fiddle. It gets more haunting with each listen. I told my son Nat that I want it played at my funeral. Because that’s the sentimental way that Irishmen like me think.

Politics will break your heart. But music gives you reason to live. It connects us to something ineffable deep inside us. It’s how I get in touch with myself, with all of humanity — and with the other side. (And, btw, rest in cool jazz heaven, Charlie Watts.)

Here’s some additional Joshua Burnside songs for your playlist, and a couple of other new masters of the Celtic sound for a bonus:

1. “Rana the Fortunate” — also from Half-light, the new EP by Burnside & Quirke

2. “A Man of High Renown”

3. “Tunnels, Pt. 2”

4. “Idle Mind” Anna Mieke

5. “The Place I Left Behind” The Deep Dark Woods

6. “Back Alley Blues” Ditto

Quirke & Burnside