2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call
DOCUMENT OVERVIEW I TO ACCESS THE THREE WEEKLY CALLS via the Internet II TO ACCESS OTHER CALLS SUPPORTED BY 2013 Rainbow Roundtable III OPENING MEDITATION; HOUSEKEEPING; ACCESS TO PODCAST; MAYAN CALENDAR IV HARD NEWS
I TO ACCESS THE THREE WEEKLY CALLS via the Internet
A BBS RADIO Go To www.bbsradio.com; click on “64K Listen”
* Thursday: Stargate Round Table Host: MariettaRobert 6 pm Pacific / 9 pm Eastern
By phone, call 1-605-475-1600, then hit ‘ 2’ for Station 2
* Friday: Friday Night Hard News Hosts: Tara & Rama 6 pm Pacific / 9 pm Eastern
By phone, call 1-605-475-1600, then hit ‘ 2’ for Station 2
One Hour conference Call: 1-641-741-1704 Access Code: 353 863#
* Saturday: History of our Galactic World & NESARA Hosts: Tara & Rama 1:30 pm Pacific / 4:30 pm Eastern
By phone, call 1-605-475-1600, then hit ‘ 2’ for Station 2 One Hour conference Call: 1-641-715-3650 – Access Code: 353 863#
Call to interact / ask questions: Canada & US: STATION 2 1- 888-429-5471 Direct 323-744-4841 International: 530 - 413-9537
Also Available: BBS Phone Line: NO PIN REQUIRED: this line is very, very clear!
C Skype: BBSradio2
D Archives for the 3 Programs listed above: ● To access the FREE BBS archives for any of these programs: • Go to BBSRadio.com/ Station 2; scroll down on LHS; click on Live Talk Radio Shows • Scroll through the pages to Hard News on Friday with Tara and Rama; click on “Archives” • Clicking on those words takes you to the listing of all program archives, the latest one being at the top. • You can download the program to your own computer or listen directly.
E Archives, both written and audio, also exist on the 2013 website: http://2013rainbowroundtable.ning.com/ look under the “Archives” tab for written notes plus audio recordings of the conference calls plus the entire podcast.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 1 / 42 II TO ACCESS OTHER CALLS SUPPORTED BY 2013 Rainbow Roundtable
A Sunday, Mondays: 9 – 10:30 EST Cheryl Croci's Activation Calls By telephone only: 1 – 605-475-5950; PIN 972400#
B Tuesdays, 2Nd & 4th of each month: Ashtar on the Road; Ashtar Legacy Calls 9:00 – 10:30 pm EST Host is Fran
http://www.ashtarontheroad.com/ashtarteleconferences.html To access by Phone: ▪ 1 – 559 – 726 – 1300; PIN 972400# ▪ Call is free [except for long distance charges]
via HD Conferencing: 712-770-4160 PIN # 980339 [always the same] https://www.freeconferencecallhd.com/hd- conferencing/
via Skype Click on the VOIP button and enter what they ask for: https://www.freeconferencecallhd.com/hd-conferencing/
C Wednesdays: 7:00 – 9:00 EST The Friends of The Aboriginal Moabite Nation Call By telephone only: 1–712-432-0900 PIN 666238# Replay# [good for 1 wk] 1-712-432-0990 PIN 66238#
D Every 2nd Wednesday The Abundance Call 5:45 PM Pacific / 8:45 PM Eastern 60-minute conference call with the Collective, a group of Angelic and Galactic beings, channeled by Caroline Oceana Ryan
To be notified: email [email protected] with the message "YES to Abundance!"
III OPENING MEDITATION; HOUSEKEEPING; ACCESS TO PODCAST; MAYAN CALENDAR
A. Opening Meditation: Rainbird
B. Housekeeping: Rainbird
BBS: • A listener-supported radio program; we can access program archives on BBS • The radio program costs $300 per week. NEED $179 for this week, and $399 for this week. BBS has archives, and there are archives on 2013 Rainbow Roundtable too.
• Go to BBSradio.com/Station2; find listing for Hard News call; find Paypal button • BBS appreciates getting checks through the mail – no fees taken off by Paypal • NO COST TO ACCESS BBS ARCHIVES for either of the 2 T & R PROGRAMS, or the Thursday night program/MariettaRobert's Stargate Round Table
• The mailing address for those who do not like paying electronically: NO ADDRESS YET FOR [Please put “Attention Don” on the envelope] BBS YET – use paypal [Please note inside that it's for T&R; MR]
MariettaRobert: • Please remember to support MariettaRobert's show, too • You can also book a session with MR for a transformational clearing. MR’s phone number: 317-773-0061 for help in dispersing the BBS bill for 2018
[email protected] and make a contribution to her too
T & R: Their full-time, life-time commitment is to be tuned in to what is really going on behind the artificial world we see around us. They don't ask for
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 2 / 42 anything but they do require food, gas, a home, and access to BBS Radio in order to get this information out to the world.
• Donations via Paypal button on the homepage of 2013 Rainbow Roundtable
FOOD MONEY: They need $150 food next week VIA PAYPAL OR See the PAGE ON 2013 Roundtable
BASICS: ODDS’N SODS, GAS – some funds required here! ]All tolled: $1500 RENT is due on the 31st ]
• Please notify T & R if you're sending something: k oran999@ comcast.net
• Rama's mailing address for cheques, Money orders: Ram D Berkowitz PO Box 280 Santa Cruz, NM 87567
• phone contact for funding for is via MariettaRobert Pickett: 317-773-0061 or by e-mail: [email protected]
• Remember you can book a session with Mother, as well!
• Donations to the Fresh Produce Fund for Tara & Rama - now on the 2013 Rainbow Roundtable website thru Caroline Oceana Ryan
** http://2013rainbowroundtable.ning.com/page/donate ** • Your donation supports an account set up for Tara & Rama with Beneficial Farms Community Supported Agriculture in Santa Fe, NM • These funds are used exclusively to maintain this weekly account for a steady supply of fresh produce to Tara and Rama. They and the sponsors are very grateful for your assistance.
BENEFICIAL FARMS – $150 is required to place an order - BY MONDAY NOON • Each donation of $15 really helps; donations can be made in as many multiples as you wish. • Use 2013 Rainbow Roundtable and as link to their Paypal account – click on the word CHANGE and then choose the option of family and friends so Paypal does not take off a fee. Let Rama by e-mail that you are sending any donations by e-mail: [email protected]
FREEMART: Rama and Tara are being helped by this account: they get their supplements there. The returns also help 2013 Rainbow Roundtable https: // www. shop freemart.com/tarram a/c # 7000
• all the products have much to offer, so take a look! • Freemart is a private shoppers club; it’s FREE TO JOIN – check out the heading called READ MORE for the good information it has
C: Access To Podcast: The following audio link allows you to listen to the entire program. https://bbsradio.com/podcast/hard-news-friday-july-19-2019
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 3 / 42 D. Mayan Calendar: Rainbird (Names of glyphs were given last week)
• Go to https://www.spacestationplaza.com – to locate specific days & lots more information: on the home page, you can find out what your Mayan signature is while there, look and see where the wave began: that is the birth wave
• to learn about the Mayan Calendar, Go to https://www.spacestationplaza.com which will link you further to www.lawoftime.org website for further information.
Rainbird begins with Cimi Drum and short invocation, then presents next week’s Mayan Calendar.
We’re in the first wave of a new 260 days Tzolkein - and 260 days is the cycle of the development of a human being
19th Fri - 7 Manik - the blue resonant hand – deer, too - 7, 7, 7 – kin 7, tribe 7,sacred tone, 7
20th Sat - 8 LAMAT Kin 8, Tribe 8, Yellow galactic star – the 5 so-called unlucky days in the Mayan calendar. 8 is the stargate – a visionary aspect – the illumination of humankind – the opening of the stargate. Gift is journeying, having the power to see beyond the gate
21st Sun – 9 MULUC – Rama’s galactic signaure is 8 CUAC - Muluc is the moon; gifts is our contact with spirit, working with telepathy
22nd Mon - 10 OC – white planetary dog day! 10, 10, 10! This is an artistic aspect - 10 is about manifestion; dog energy is unconditional love. Healing the pain of the past – awareness of past lives, our loyalty to human life.
23rd Tues – 11 CHUEN – blue spectral monkey day – it’s ab out letting go – shifting. The artistic aspects of Chuen the monkey – innonced, spontaneity, let go of mistrust
24th Wed - 12 EB – yellow crystal human day – 12 EB is the human, a healing aspect. Our work is the enlightenment of human kind, we ARE the healing servant warriors
25th Thur – 13 BEN - red cosmic skywalker13-13-13 AND the DAY OUT OF TIME about our focus, striving to clarity. We work with the ability to bend dimensions
26th Fri - 1 IX – start of new galactic year – white magnetic energy and we carry the energy for the 260 days. A new wave; a visionary aspect; clarity of mind and purpose – gift of being the shaman – being in accordance with divine will – let go of personal power issues: we are the shaman and the priest
HARD NEWS
T, R: Learned yesterday that fairies like chocolate
R: the big story is unravellling - • 50 years ago, first man on the moon-Neil Armstrong; all the other landings have been faked on a movie sound stage . . .
R called the radio today and told them there were glass structures on the moon, not built by man, and present there for a long, long time! • Sent them to Dr Richard Hoagland’s website
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 4 / 42 • The larger piece about this is we’re getting disclosure all the time now: the disclosure of their crimes against humanity may be priority #1 and the galactics coming in to help chill the madness (not being spoken of)
Talked to Dr Z today: a galactic who looks like a kindly scientist – • has been to all the deep underground bases; • says there are lots of ships around the sun, and the anomolies that they bring, and the quandry happening in this part of the solar system where there is no discussion about our visitors who come in peace and wish to help us • Dr Greer says we are the ones making this happen, as we are doing the meditations and calling them in – his new movie about Close Encounters of the 5th Kind: people getting healed as they make contact
• They are our family, have travelled light years to get here, & come through the portal of the sun. As we saw Captain Kirk and Spock do a loop around the sun and go through the portal: it’s about the quantum physics of the sun – our sun is cold fusion – not hot; a different kind of hot – nuclear fusion is not nuclear fission. • If we are in 12D light body and blaze like the sun, we could stand on the sun and not be affected by the solar flares – it’s about being a physical light being & having a light body, even though at the 12th dimension, we can be balls of light or we can take on the shape of a light body
Dr Z: starting to talk of this stuff on NPR – listened to a discussion about something being seen coming through the sun
R: the US is claiming Iran shot a drone towards a US ship, and they shot it down – • and Iran said they did no such thing – about brinkmanship games – Gulf of Tonkin comes to mind: Ashtar has said NO NUKES !!
T: Another article about the US going to send 500 military to Saudi Arabia – what’s that about? It’s from CNN
T: Cuomo said to a Drumpf supporter: The facts are not your friend! • Scaramucci said if Drumpg continues, he;ll lose my support R: He’s a member of the international crime syndicate!
• Trump let the crowd chant “Send her back” for 13.5 seconds – before he indicated to stop Prof Z said he’s crossed the line and that is being said across the planet • Van Jones said you’re going down the sewer dude! • Trump is causing the Republicans to break ranks with him R: the Republicans are dinosaurs that are dying . . .. • It is logical to understand that we are moving up in octave: the war inside the heart has ended; the face of evil we see every day is called Fascism
David Badosh wrote an article called the new civil rights movement • Professor Jason Stanley, writer of books on fascism and how it works – took to Twitter – this is the face of evil; Wed night Drumpf carried on his assault on the 4 lawmakers, women of colour – journalists must not be . . . • Trump has gone too far by letting the crowds chant ‘send her back’ about Ilhan – and Ilhan quoted Maya Angelou in an answering tweet:
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 5 / 42 Audio: Maya Angelou reading her poem, choral/musical background
T: Amy goodman had on an amazing person today: Offical Secret is the name of the documentary – a lady / a whistleblower - about Blair and Bush convincing 6 countries to vote so that they could go to the War in Iraq – coming out on August 31st
CONFERENCE CALL To re-listen to this Conference Call, go to http://2013rainbowroundtable.ning.com/page/audio and click on July 19, 2019
CA/Ca: talks of a reporter called Ben Stein – this will play out in a way that is not obvious • Epstein is so deep into it – it’s documented in the press that his little black book has all names of the 13 families in it! T: he is an asset of the netanyahu and the Khazarian mafia - he was killed and cloned and they let him be an open door; when he was at the expensive school called Dalton, the head master was AG Barr’s father! Ca/CA: Epstein is so much in the middle – and he hangs out with Robert Maxwell’s daughter – looks like Robert may have been a double or triple agent – grimy to the hilt! R: Robert answered to Ahaud Barack a general in the israeli army: a white 50” albino dragon • He also controls Epstein – ties into the upper echelon of the 13 families – Baron von Rothschild ties into this • Ancient Aliens is compromised – some stories true, and not so true – highly dramatized – has to do with the convoluted story of the fallen angels – it’s not the real trtuh - • as Dr Greer says, the ones are here to help us; this is not the story in Ancient Aliens
T: underground tunnls from Epstein’s Manhatten ap’t to the deep Underground Bases; there are cities under the earth which have land speeders so people there can go all under the earth and the ocean and get rid of the bodies when they are done with the personal Ca/CA: are they letting Epstein go? T: whatever they are trying to do, all is coming down at the same time. • The Vatican bank is the bank of all banks – and their child trafficking, mass graves, pedophiila – drug running, gun running – all underground and not being seen • Rockerfeller Sr – there were 20 clones of him and he’d show up in 20 places – this thing with Epstein will tie into all of it • Cohen sitting in jail – and the lady who lied before Congress – Hope Hicks – • they are saying in terms of the lies, this is a huge story: that Drumpf and Hicks need to be in jail for sedition at the least, treason at the most – • callers to Thom Hartmann show are talking about all of this!
• Mueller is next Wed (24th ) then all in Congress, etc gone on 7 weeks vacation: date of interview put back so they can leave and avoid questions . . . • Yet what goes on between then and 9/11 – and the film coming out: Official Secrets • Amy talked to 4 people about the film today – it’s about Tony blair and George Bush Jr with a focus on the lady on the show today:
• The Squad: Drumpf is afraid of Ilhan Omar: “she opens her mouth, and he cringes” - from someone on Thom Hartmann’s show
Reading: T reads the comic strip [SEE BELOW] 2019-07-18 Cartoon: Patriotic Americans send malcontent Trump back to where he's originally from
T: describes the woman called Catherine Gunn who was on Amy’s show today
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 6 / 42 • She had a memo come across her desk which she grabbed and tore off the top of; the memo said Pres Bush Jr and Tony Blair were trying to get the UN to go along with war in Iraq • She intercepted the memo which threatened the ambassadors of the 6 countries. • Martin Bright and Ed Z was also an English newspaper – Ed Z got hold of
• The movie will be playing all around the place on Aug 30 • August 29 is the anni of the 2005 Katrina hurricane • August 31 is the anni of the death of Lady Di, Dodi, Henri Paul (clones of)
Ca/RB: when did we know Dodi and Di were cloned and still alive? T: doesn’t know – yet William and Harry know • when did the Queen find out that clones were killed – in the last 5-6 years. • They didn’t know for a long time . . . . they DID do an autopsy – in 2003, on Journal News, now DW news out of Berlin – the autopsy results: not the same DNA, blood not the same; they must be clones: this segment was never repeated! ! ! ! R: the KOE knows the whole story – and was writing about 9/11 being an inside job.
R: When all is said and done, Dodi and Di will come forward after the NESARA announcement – it’s about the healing of the East and the West – this is about waking up to galactic awareness: we’re talking to each other!
• When peace is declared, something happens to the atmosphere – at the moment those realms are descending into matter, and we are rising in energy
• This movie completely cooks their goose! Official Secrets
• Thom Hartmann has been on one humungous rant lately – and more ranty by the second! ! !
Reading: WH officials want to shut down the refugee program next year – and deny a whole country of people (Iraqis) who helped the US military in the war
• T give the background on Katherine Gunn
• abovethelaw.com – Eli Mystal – on AM Joy – talking about a guy called Jay L – who represented Epstein: a 53 page indictment which proved all Epstein did the first time • talked about the 2 tier justice system, and we saw this in the Kavanaugh hearings – they all played sex games together with the high school girls
Elie Mystal: SDNY Is Waiting With Cuffs For Trump
Maya Wiley: last week on AM Joy – a long string of offences against Drumpf
Ca/De: calls still getting dropped: new equipment coming next Friday – will be Exfinity, not Dish – will have a land line, not by cell phone . . .
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 7 / 42 • Question is about how to catch those doing the raping with girls tied down etc etc etc
T: We have friends who are 150 million years in advance of this time/space continuum ! ! ! !
B B S RADIO
Audio:
THE BIGGER PICTURE by Patricia Cota-Robles www.eraofpeace.org
VLOG 123 A POWERFUL HEALING OPPORTUNITY AND THE FULL MOON LUNAR ECLIPSE
MOTHER / ALCYONE [M / A]
Greetings in the Light of the Most Radiant One. In the Office of the Christ and only in the Office of the Christ, we invoke the loving energies of St Germain and the Violet Flame.
Greetings, Children of Ra! It is time we have that cup of tea We keep talking about. Yet gotta do some explaining first. It’s about the Greater Story that we are all equal with each other and the Universe. • This illusion of less than is just that: yes, it’s a challenge when we only have 2 strands of DNA working up to 6, 12. As Patti talks about - the 12 solar strands of DNA are already activated within us, and the difference we are making on this planet can visibly be felt – it won’t go away. • The stories about Us and it’s not about Them: we are them, and they are us: we are All One in this story, whether we come from Earth or not. That’s the key. Most of us here are not rom earth, yet we volunteered to show up at this time, eons upon eons upon eons ago. Many of us are beginning to remember. And that is a good thing.
• The time now - as we have passed this eclipse, approaching 8-8-8 Lions gate; as more portals open, Mercury goes direct, and we move into Leo – it is about the sun energy. That’s the key – the gold dust. • They want to be immortal – the 13 families – yet they are not immortal, and the truth of the matter is all of us, including them, are getting moved by the energies. They do not like it one bit because it’s not under [their] control: they have no control of this story
T: about being out of control: it was 115* in the shade in DC today, expecting it to stay over 100* for some time now – that’s trippy!
M/A: It is about climate disruption, consciousness, and conflict – with everything going on in between. As we kill the conflict, the consciousness kicks in; the climate kicks in as we talk to the sky, the earth, the water, the ether – Love is the answer • It is these 5 elements that make up physical matter, you could say, that move into the higher realms of anti-matter and how this . . . Theresa Bullard, Mystery Teachings, [Gaia TV] explains it so well about what’s happening with the 12 strands that are awakened now within us, and miracles of the most wonderful kind are unravelling in a good way. As more comes out about . . .
T: and the president and his men are unravelling too . . .
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 8 / 42 M/A: They are unravelling in another way
T: the Iranian deputy foreign minister said: “We have not lost any drones in the Straits of Hormuz or anywhere else– I am worried that the USS Boxer have shot down their own UAS drone by mistake!”
M/A: Trying to play with the energies and say look over here, while I stick my hand in your daughter’s pants. Sorry to be graphic, Commanders! • Not to make jokes: we comprehend the gravity of this moment in time – this is why They are here at this moment in our story where Her story and His story get healed. • That we equalize the playing field if you will. At the end of this cycle/yuga, They have returned as it has been said: we are in Sat Yuga, yet the dance of Kali, Shiva, Dirga, Pele, Mother Sekhmet continues at the moment, as this cosmic dance of uncreation/ re-creation is the story. • They are unravelling themselves out of existence, painful as it may seem. Why would someone want to unravel themselves out of existence? T: They can’t stop now because there is always someone who will get after them on their own side – called cannibalism!
M/A: The immortals that are above these fallen angels, called the Celestials and the Great Silent Watchers that were here from the beginning, like Lord Indra, Lady Master Cyclopeia – they only have one giant eye in their forehead and they are 50’ feet tall or maybe 100’ : they are in charge of entire land masses on various planets throughout the 27 other galaxies surrounding this galaxy. • They are here to help Beloved Ancient, Eternal and Supreme of Days Planetary Logos, and Helios and Vesta, and Lady Victory to clean up the goo, as it were. Like in Ghostbusters, earth got a little slimed and We are helping to clean up the slime. T: In the meantime France has gotten into a space war thing; George Galloway gave us a piece of his mind about this . . .
M/A: wanting to get in on the story of who’s going to talk about our visitors first and it won’t be Jabba the Hutt
T: and last week: Turkey got its first instalment of the S400 Defence package from Russia, and now India has just bought one! Where is Dr Keshe patrol? M/A: they are playing with the end story as we have said
T: and in the meantime, 21 cities running out of water: by next year, 100 Million people with no water! What, what . . . . M/A: there are transfigurations going on with the planet – let’s say rivers and energies are being moved by Treebeard and a few other folks. Treebeard and the ants have the abilities to change the course of rivers and streams, along with the other rock people and the stone people and the elven lords - and things can be rearranged in this present space/time moment. As we talk to the trees, rocks and grass, they will listen as they are us and we are them and everybody . . . • As Nassim has talked about: there’s enough water and a few greedy life forms are playing with this story. It is over – disclosure about Us and our Sun and how much we are interrelated with the plasma that comes from the sun. It is no accident – hemoglobin, plasma, blood, sun, plasma, ribbons of living love, living light – We are not saying to go stand in a plasma field, by any means • What We are saying is: talk to the sun and get in touch with these energies of Creator Source – it’s in our neighbourhood - 93,000 miles away yet it takes 8 minutes for the light of that radiant being that is showering us with creation right now.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 9 / 42 • That is Creator Source and we are reflections of that. We are becoming sons and daughters of the most high!
• We will tell you a little story. It is about the fact that it is hard in this present consciousness to comprehend: how do we go from this physical body to something like that called the sun? So as we rise to the occasion as Patti talks about every single week, we are moving on up and we are becoming physical suns. It is a fact. The science, the quantum physics of it are being revealed within our own DNA structure; as we interact with it, this temple here has so many miracles within it at this present moment – why are we looking for it out there? It’s right here. • The adventures within this body are amazing to behold
T: and so are the misadventures of some egos . . . . M/A: that’s another story – when you get lost . . . T: the story of the governor in Puerto Rico – and Drumpf is insisting he gave them millions of dollars and he is playing pedophile games with little boys • the US congress gave $ 92 M to them, much of it squandered never to be seen again – we need to get the [correct] story Can we expedite their shenanigans?
M/A: What she can say about this – it’s a cycle of – like the Tower of Babel, it is this unintelligent noise that is going on at the moment because thay are out of sync with the sound of the Universe in Harmony with All That Is. • It’s like the sound of the Great Bell, and the one hand clapping – if you’re not in sync with that, you’ve got some shit to deal with. You clean it up by healing from within – • At this moment, they are out of time, out of moments - not out of love – yet Our time is this moment when we take these folks back to Dracos, and it is rapidly in our midst where the truth will be revealed about the fallen angels and how we live in such a prolific universe of incredible peace and love and joy and wisdom, and a few folks screwed it up and played master of the universe and the great sorcerer has caught them in their own trap - can’t use evil to entrap the universe – it will eat you alive. The darkness, the evil is consuming them – send more love. Blaze the Violet Fire, as LM Omena talked about (and say it) 3x • As these energies pour in fron Great Central Sun . . . earth worms do very nciely to regenerate the soil – cats love earth worms - T: Birdies love them better. Read some time ago that good rich soil does not necessarily have earthworms • someone turned Confucius into an earthworm! ! ! M/A: That’s why she’s saying – think about what is going to happen: it is about the ancient story you cannot travel around the galaxy and rape, pillage and plunder and get away with it
T: a huge kelp mass that is going from the west coast of Africa to the south coast of South America and moving up to Central America
M/A: Has to do with the chemical imbalance in the ocean
T: the kelp is growing exponentially; average size of one string is 6 M long and is being fed by the rich black silty earth stuff – Bolsonaro is completely clear cutting the Amazon and all the rich soil is going into the ocean and the whole tourism thing is going to hell in a hand basket • things are going fast because all these things are showing up . . . M/A: all the crimes aganst the goddess – cannot extract our own femininity: it is an integral part of the story and this is why She is saying in this moment: something has changed, after this eclipse. Watch it unravel –
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 10 / 42 • the Black Goddess will return. She’s the one who has some solutions, yet things gotta get a little fixed along the way. T: How much worse does it get before it gets better?
M/A: for the record, Mueller gonna talk next week – maybe a few crumbs might leak out that will turn into tsunamis T: yet they will be rushing off on holiday on Friday
M/A: there is nowhere they can go that She and others are not in their midst • It is this realm in which we co-exist with all of the beauty and joy that’s being expressed by nature and nature’s god at this moment. And at the same time, the exacerbations of what has been done coming to the forefront
T: What did Prof Z say to Rama? M/A: What he said is ‘yes, the Aboriginal Moabite people of this North and South Amexum will receive their reparations, along with the first nations who were here first.’ • Nothing to do with Faction 2: this is about the return of Admiral Sanada Kumara, whom they call Daigonaweda who comes, and we talk about peace; we get the nations together and pass the peace pipe and sing with the drum, and thank mother god and father sky for our moment here: we are still alive. • We’re not going away; We are here to be part of the story – and We don’t like Friskies cat food: the GMO food that is fed to the animals here . . . • At the moment, there are things happening that - they are faster than She can describe for us with this slow speaking voice - which are about the transfigurations in these cells here • the adventures that await us in these temples of the Living Goddess, All That Is, Creator Source – it is is perfection and we are perfection in these temples; it is how perfection is – running out of words - • As Ram Dass calls it: ‘the fierce grace of Lady Kali’ that comes with her Shaktipat and changes it so that new creations can form at this time of great transfiguration with our sun and within us and me, and Pinky Lee. • As we listen to the voices in our cell, all the cells speak; the particles speak; the light that is pouring in at this time, has never been here before because it is a different kind of light, and it is changing the physical template of these cells. • Enough said. What is going to happen here and is happening: as we let that frog, we might see god. T: Ok I’m looking at her right now! You must admit it’s quite a bunch of kiddos you’ve got here!
M/A: The secrets of the universe are right in our midst, and it’s about the abundance of the magic we have with our 12 strands as creator gods and goddesses of the Most High, we are immortals, and that might be alien to quite a few of us, yet get used to it -
Both: Greetings in the Light of the Most Radiant One! Kadoish, kadoish, Kadoish, Adonai Sabboth, . . . .
Rama Returns: Has been to sick bay on Lady Master Athena’s ship to sit in the healing rays for the planet - the purple, the gold, and the 3 fold rays • the Light that is pouring in – has no words: it is so awesome to behold! T: glad to hear of it, and so will be a lot of people – talks of Caroline Oceana Ryan and The Collective and the encouraging message in the face of what we are looking at . . . R: it has to unravel so we can see how we bought the Great Lie when Switch – he made a deal with Agent Smith, eating the steak and drinking some wine, and ended up becoming Agent Smith – and then Neo took care of him! Oh my! Yes, he saw the different energy there
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 11 / 42 2018-08-08 Thom Hartmann Book Club: Warrior IS - Harley L. Zephier and Robin L. Zephier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSbiEQp6aFM
The Greasy Grass Battle aka the Little Bighorn Battle on June 25, 1876 was an epic encounter and clash of cultures.The experience and display of warrior spirit resulted in the defeat of the Seventh Cavalry and Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
The world has searched for the answers to the questions of “why”, “how” and “who else” was also on the hill known as Last Stand Hill.
Our book WARRIOR IS provides the answers to these questions. The coming battle ignites global interest and intrigue, to become a lasting inspiration for books, historical documentation, and speculation. Hundreds of thousands of people from across the world will visit the site of the conflict.
Tunkasila (Grandfather) was born in 1849 in He Sapa (the Sacred Black Hills of South Dakota).His name is Mato Niyanpi (Saved By Bear), his culture is Mnincoju of the Lakota Nation.
The origin of the Lakota begins with Wind Cave in He Sapa. It is here, where we left the Spirit world and entered the physical world of existence. We are Earth woman and Earth man in her honor, the keepers of the land. Co-existence with all life is Creator's asking.We believe in the hoop, or Circle of Life. All of Creator's beings are needed, and contribute to life on Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth). Our lands were pristine and pure, offering abundant sustenance. Reverence and respect were practiced by the human.A civilization with proven tradition and culture emerged.
Tradition is the foundation of Lakota society.Mato Niyanpi would learn and grow with these teachings in body, mind, and spirit, thus becoming a member of certain warrior societies. He was a man connected to the Wakinyan (Thunder Beings), supported by ritual, medicine, and ceremony. Tunkasila chose his path in life, to walk with prayer and belief. Mato Niyanpi carried his Cannumpa (pipe) for peace and creation.
A dark cloud would come over the Lakota Nation.The United States Government was preparing to remove the indigenous from their land.The judicial, executive, and legislative processes against the people began.Greed, profit, and possession of natural resources takes center stage politically.The government approach was executed with treaties.Negotiations between only selected tribal leaders, military, and designated officials ensued.The treaties were pieces of paper which were full of lies, deception, corruption, and were always broken.There was no benefit in their signing to the Lakota, or other tribal Nations.
Gold was found in the Black Hills. This fueled a very emotionally charged Washington D.C. Drastic measures were proposed and approved, the final decision being genocide. The implementation of genocidal practice would threaten the very existence of the Lakota Nation. It would be recognizable in every part of their lives. Freedom of movement, subsistence, and most importantly, their prayer to Unci Maka, were being destroyed.
The atrocities suffered by our relatives during this time frame were unimaginable.Confinement to reservations and agencies which were essentially prison camps; where starvation, disease, inhumane personal violations, torture, murder, and massacre were methods of deprivation.In defense, the Lakota and a number of related Tribal Nations would come together as one.Warriors talked, prayed, and decided to go to battle.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 12 / 42 Mato Niyanpi is called upon by his relatives, and Creator, to perform an act of commitment and courage.Tunkasila has a face-to-face confrontation with Custer on Last Stand Hill. Mato Niyanpi is the proud Lakota warrior who killed Lt. Col. George A. Custer. In the taking of his human presence from Unci Maka, Mato Niyanpi became, and continues to be, the Spirit Keeper of Custer. Creator called this union for our future together as human beings, living in peace, unity, tolerance and love
2019-07-19 Thom Hartmann Program Can Bernie Sanders Unite a Divided America? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COZtuk8sxFA
Donald Trump has divided America can Bernie Sanders unite us again? The Vermont Senator and 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders wants to offer the opposite to the Trump campaign, uniting the divided America Trump is creating
AUDIO: Democracy Now – July 19, 2019 [SEE BELOW FOR THE TRANSCRIPTS FROM DEMOCRACY NOW]
AUDIO: KEISER REPORT Frackers scrounging for more debt (E1411) 2019-07-18 https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/464439-frackers-debt-companies-production/ https://soundcloud.com/rttv/keiser-report-frackers-scrounging-for-more-debt
In this episode of the Summer Solutions 2019 for the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss the ‘gusher of red ink’ bankrupting fracking companies across the shale plays. Despite the record production numbers, frackers are losing more and more investment money at a more and more rapid pace than ever before. This has left big fracking producers scrounging for money from Wall Street and beyond.
Then, they are joined by Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen’s energy program, who proposes some solutions to this fracking Red Queen syndrome, debt-doom loop. They go over the data on renewable energy and find out just how much sense it makes for energy policy.
Check Keiser Report website for more: http://www.maxkeiser.com/
AUDIO: Redacted Tonight How to stay safe from ICE, Google’s still spying on you, making the Pentagon justify their military 2019-07-20 https://www.rt.com/shows/redacted-tonight-summary/464618-pentagon-justify-military-base/
Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/rttv/redacted-tonight-how-to-stay-safe-from-ice-googles-still- spying-on-you
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 13 / 42 Under Secretary of Defense David Norquist (R) speaks during a press briefing regarding the fiscal year 2019 defense budget request at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., February 2018 © Global Look Press / Ting Shen
The show opens this week with a look at recent activity from ICE. They have been pursuing a rapid agenda of deportation that’s seemingly attempting to rival the record of President Obama. Lee relays advice from the ACLU on what an undocumented immigrant should do if ICE shows up. In other news, he reports on the excesses of the CEO of Uber, spying from Google, and a messed up move from the charity store Goodwill.
Naomi Karavani brings you a story from the military industrial complex. The Pentagon, in an irregular move, is being told that they now have to justify any military base they build. And Natalie McGill finishes the episode off with a story of corruption from District Attorney offices across the country. Many of these offices are keeping money from accounts that are meant to help nonviolent offenders stay out of prison.
Closing: Rainbird
Music: The Hidden Sound of Existence | Sadhguru
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KBryb0wnlg
Sadhguru speaks about the nature of sound and form within existence. As a bell will produce a sound when struck, so too does every form has a sound attached to it. Sadhguru elaborates on this ancient science and how it can be used for one's wellbeing.
Sadhguru: Every… every form has a hidden sound within itself. When I say a hidden sound, the surface sound of an object will come out when you strike it. If you strike a gong, the sound that you hear, the sound that many of you hate because it rings at 04:45 in the morning, that is the surface sound of that object. There will be a hidden sound to the object. If one knows the hidden sound of an object or a form, rather, once you know the hidden sound of a certain form you find you also know the form, you find a certain access and a certain intimacy to that form. It is based on this that in this culture we named children like this. Feeling the fundamental reverb of a child, accordingly a name was given, so that by uttering the name, above all the child constantly hearing the name, will not become a closed life, will become an open possibility because constantly every time his name is uttered something touches him very deep down inside, not just a way of calling a person but a way of opening a person just by uttering the name.
The naming of a child, today has become the whim of the parents according to the fashion of the times; but till recently the naming of a child was not in the hands of the parents, always it was somebody else who knows little better who decided what the child should be called; because you’re naming a person for social and practical reasons but that’s not all because existence is just a complex amalgamation of reverberations. In this complex process of various types of vibrations, you also are one. If you just become just one more, you are like a grain of sand, nothing. In the vastness of this cosmic space, this little body is nothing. But if this hidden sound finds expression then this is like a key to everything. This not only opens me but it also opens the other, whatever I touch with this sound because this is my sacred key.
So every child when he’s born the parents were given the freedom to give them some pet name for their emotional satisfaction but his real name was given by somebody else who was supposed to know better than the parents, not always but… that’s due to lack of education, that’s due to discontinuance of culture, that is due to inefficient transmission from generation to generation; otherwise this is done by someone who knows what is the fundamental reverberation of this little child. So they wait for a certain period of time, they observe the child, they make other astrological calculations and arrive that this is the hidden sound of this child and that is what we should bring out because it is only in blossoming that, it is only in allowing that to flower and find expression this child will find full expression to his life; otherwise a seed that never sprouted, on the surface many things happened, that’s not it...... Read Full Transcript: http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/video/t...
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 14 / 42 INFORMATION RELATED TO THE NOTES
2019-07-18 Cartoon: Patriotic Americans send malcontent Trump back to where he's originally from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/18/1872300/-Cartoon-Patriotic-Americans-send-malcontent- Trump-back-to-where-he-s-originally-from?detail=emailLL
RubenBolling for Comics
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 15 / 42 YOU CAN join Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE! Be the first kid on your block to see each week's comic, get extra comics, sneak peeks, insider scoops, and lots of other stuff! JOIN TODAY!
YOU MIGHT follow @RubenBolling on the Twitters and a Face Book.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
2019-07-18 Ilhan Omar greeted at home state airport with rousing chant https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/18/1872870/-Ilhan-Omar-greeted-at-home-state- airport-with-rousing-chant?utm_campaign=trending
No, not that chant. This one:
*This* is America.#WelcomeHomeIlhan was chanted as Congresswoman @Ilhan arrived home to the Twin Cities this evening. pic.twitter.com/S088GQddwJ
— Koko (@Kokomothegreat) July 19, 2019
That feels pretty good, doesn’t it? I needed that. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
#WelcomeHomeIlhan
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 16 / 42 2019-07-19 Democracy Now Headlines July 19, 2019
Watch Headlines
70 Catholics Arrested in Capitol Hill Protest of Trump’s Immigration Policies Jul 19, 2019
In Washington, D.C., Capitol Police arrested 70 Catholic nuns and clergy Thursday as they held a nonviolent sit-in protest inside the Russell Senate Office Building against the Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers. More than a dozen protesters stood in a circle, holding the photographs of migrant children who have died in U.S. custody, and reciting their names. The latest protests came as immigrant communities across the U.S. have prepared for reported ICE raids that were scheduled to begin last weekend but have largely not materialized.
Asylum Seekers in Texas ICE Jail Launch Hunger Strike Jul 19, 2019
Meanwhile, a group of Indian asylum seekers in El Paso, Texas, have launched a hunger strike from inside an ICE immigration jail, demanding they be released while they appeal their deportation orders. One of the men told the Texas Monthly, “If I go back to India, I will be tortured and killed. I can die here.” It’s the second time this year that Indian men have led hunger strikes at the El Paso Processing Center.
House Democrats Grill Acting DHS Chief over Migrant Deaths and Squalid Jails Jul 19, 2019
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 17 / 42 Back on Capitol Hill, House Democrats grilled President Trump’s acting homeland security secretary Thursday over migrant family separations, the deaths of children taken into U.S. custody, and reports of squalid, overcrowded and dangerous conditions in U.S. immigration jails. This is House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings questioning the acting DHS chief Kevin McAleenan.
Rep. Elijah Cummings: “You feel like you’re doing a great job, right? Is that what you’re saying?”
Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “We’re doing our level best in a very challenging”—
Rep. Elijah Cummings: “What does that mean? What does that mean, when a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower? Come on, man! What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings!”
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Confronts DHS Chief over Racist & Sexist Border Patrol Posts Jul 19, 2019
Also at Thursday’s House Oversight hearing, Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confronted Kevin McAleenan over hateful messages shared by thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents on a private Facebook group. The group’s online discussions, exposed by ProPublica earlier this month, are full of homophobic, anti-immigrant and misogynistic content about migrants and asylum seekers, as well as racist attacks on Texas Representative Veronica Escobar and on Ocasio-Cortez, who is depicted in a photoshopped
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 18 / 42 image being sexually assaulted by President Trump. This is Congressmember Ocasio-Cortez questioning McAleenan.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Did you see the posts mocking migrant children’s deaths?”
Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “I did.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Did you see the posts planning physical harm to myself and Congresswoman Escobar?”
Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “Yes, and I directed an investigation within minutes of reading the article.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Did you see the images of officers circulating photoshopped images of my violent rape?”
Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “Yes, I did.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “Are those officers on the job today and responsible for the safety of migrant women and children?”
Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan: “So, there is an aggressive investigation on this issue proceeding. You’ve heard the chief of the Border Patrol, the most senior female official in law enforcement across the entire country, say that these posts do not meet our standards of conduct, and they will be followed up aggressively.”
Trump Disavows “Send Her Home” Chant After Racist Attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar Jul 19, 2019
President Trump sought to distance himself Thursday from racist chants made by his supporters at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday evening. Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump insisted that he “felt a little bit badly” about the chorus of “Send her back” directed at Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Somalia and came to the United States as a political refugee. She has been a U.S. citizen longer than the first lady, Melania Trump. Trump made the claim even though video of Wednesday evening’s incident shows he did nothing to intervene as his supporters chanted “Send her back!”
President Donald Trump: “Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds.”
Crowd: “Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back!”
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 19 / 42 Trump waited a full 13 seconds before continuing his verbal attack on Congressmember Omar. This came just three days after Trump attacked Omar and three other progressive Democratic congresswomen of color on Twitter, writing, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar Greeted in Minnesota with Chants of “Welcome Home” Jul 19, 2019
Speaking from Capitol Hill Thursday, Congressmember Ilhan Omar accused Trump of “spewing his fascist ideology onstage.” She later flew home to her district in Minnesota, where she was greeted at the Minneapolis airport by scores of supporters chanting “Welcome home, Ilhan!”
Rep. Ilhan Omar: “And when I said I was the president’s nightmare, well, you’re watching it now, because his nightmare is seeing a Somali immigrant refugee rise to Congress. … We are in the ring. We are in the people’s house. And we are going to continue to keep fighting until we have the America we know we all deserve. Thank you.”
Later that evening, Congressmember Omar tweeted, “Home sweet home.” On Thursday, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee asked the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, who also chairs the Capitol Police Board, to enhance security for “certain targeted members.” We’ll have more on President Trump’s latest racist remarks after headlines.
House Approves Minimum Wage Hike to $15 an Hour Jul 19, 2019
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 20 / 42 The House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, while ending sub-minimum wages for tipped workers. In the Senate, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will not allow a vote on the minimum wage.
Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Would Bring Overtime Pay, Union Rights Jul 19, 2019
Image Credit: Twitter: @domesticworkers
Meanwhile, domestic workers and their supporters are rallying behind a bill that would grant them the right to overtime pay, meal breaks and collective bargaining. Under federal labor law, domestic workers are excluded from many of the protections most workers receive; the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act would change that. The bill is co-sponsored by Washington Congressmember Pramila Jayapal and California senator and 2020 presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. This is Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
Ai-jen Poo: “The need for child care and elder care is exploding, especially as the Baby Boom generation ages and people live longer. These are jobs that are not going to be outsourced. They won’t be automated. These are going to be a large part of the jobs of the future. And now, thanks to all of you, we are going to make these jobs good jobs.”
Domestic workers are among the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. and suffer high rates of wage theft and sexual harassment on the job.
Trump to Nominate Anti-Union Lawyer Eugene Scalia as Labor Secretary Jul 19, 2019
Image Credit: Tom Williams / Getty Images
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 21 / 42 President Trump said Thursday he will nominate Eugene Scalia as his next secretary of labor. Scalia is the son of the late far-right Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. He previously served as the Labor Department’s top lawyer under President George W. Bush. As a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Scalia has a long history of opposing labor unions on behalf of corporate clients including Walmart. Much of Scalia’s legal work has been aimed at stopping the Dodd-Frank financial regulations enacted after the 2008 financial collapse. Last week, Alex Acosta resigned as labor secretary amid an uproar over the extremely lenient plea deal he granted to the wealthy serial child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein in 2008, when Acosta was a U.S. attorney in Florida.
Jeffrey Epstein Denied Bail Ahead of Sex Trafficking Trial Jul 19, 2019
Meanwhile, a federal judge in New York has denied bail to Jeffrey Epstein, declaring him a danger to the community and a significant flight risk. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman pointed to a raid by investigators on Epstein’s mansion earlier this month that found “piles of cash,” stashes of diamonds and an expired passport with Epstein’s photo next to someone else’s name listed under a Saudi address.
Iran Denies Trump’s Claim the U.S. Shot Down Iranian Drone Jul 19, 2019
Iran is denying President Trump’s claim that the U.S. military shot down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz. The competing claims came as the Trump administration demanded Iran immediately release an oil tanker seized in the Gulf by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Iranian state media said the foreign ship was carrying a million liters of oil being illegally smuggled out of Iran.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 22 / 42 Afghan Bombers Kill 20 in Attacks in Kandahar and Kabul Jul 19, 2019
In Afghanistan, at least 12 people were killed and almost 90 wounded Thursday as a pair of car bombs exploded at the gates of police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Hours later, at least eight people were killed and 33 others wounded when an explosion tore through the entrance to a university in the capital, Kabul. This comes as U.S. officials and the Taliban continue peace talks in Qatar aimed at ending the longest war in U.S. history—now in its 17th year.
Arson Attack in Kyoto, Japan, Kills 33
In Kyoto, Japan, 33 people were killed Thursday after a man burst into an animation studio, doused the three-story building with a flammable liquid and set it on fire. Police arrested a 41-year-old man after the arson attack on the Kyoto Animation company. Witnesses reportedly heard the suspect shout “they stole my ideas” and “they copied my novel” as police arrested him. If convicted, the man could face the death penalty.
Excessive Heat Warning Declared Across Much of U.S.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 23 / 42 Image Credit: National Weather Service
Back in the United States, the National Weather Service has declared an excessive heat warning for vast swaths of the Midwest and East Coast, with warnings that high humidity and triple-digit temperatures could combine to bring heat-related illnesses and deaths. In Washington, D.C., the heat index could reach 115 degrees this weekend, when some 290 million American are likely to experience temperatures above 90 degrees. This comes as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that worldwide surface temperatures last month were the highest ever recorded for the month of June—a finding consistent with global heating caused by human activity.
EPA Won’t Ban Toxic Pesticide Despite Link to Brain Damage in Children Jul 19, 2019
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday it will not ban the widely used pesticide chlorpyrifos, even though the agency’s own research shows it can cause brain damage in children. The Obama administration said it would ban the use of the toxic chemical in 2015, but the rule never took effect and was suspended in 2017 by then-EPA head Scott Pruitt.
Trump Administration Proposes Slashing Regulations for Nuclear Power Plants Jul 19, 2019
The Trump administration is preparing to roll back government regulations on nuclear power plants, with staffers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommending allowing the nuclear industry to carry out more “self-inspections” while slashing the size and scope of radiation-protection and emergency-preparedness inspections at nuclear plants.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 24 / 42 2019-07-19 Anti-Racist Historian: Attacks on Rep. Omar Rooted in Belief “America Is for White People”
Watch Full Show
Topics Donald Trump • Racism
GuestsIbram Kendi professor of history and international relations and founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He is the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Kendi’s forthcoming book is titled How to Be an Antiracist.
Links The Atlantic: "Am I an American?" • Ibram X. Kendi on Twitter
On Thursday, President Trump attempted to distance himself from the racist chant of “send her back” about Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar at a Trump campaign rally Wednesday in North Carolina. The chants rang across the rally in response to Trump’s own verbal attack against the congresswoman. He did nothing to intervene. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives narrowly passed a resolution condemning Trump’s racist remarks against Congressmembers Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez. We speak with Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University.
Transcript This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, President Trump attempted to distance himself from the racist chant “Send her back,” about Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, that ran out through his campaign rally Wednesday night in Greenville, North Carolina. In fact, he did nothing to intervene as the chant rang out, pausing a full 13 seconds, in response to his own verbal attack on the congresswoman.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Omar blamed the United States for the crisis in Venezuela. I mean, think of that one. And she looks down with contempt on the hard-working Americans, saying that ignorance is pervasive in many parts of this country. And obviously and importantly, Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds.
CROWD: Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back! Send her back!
AMY GOODMAN: Trump paused for a full 13 seconds for “Send her back” to ring out through the rally.
Trump’s remarks came one day after the House of Representatives voted to condemn his racist tweet telling four progressive congresswomen of color—freshman Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar—to “go back to the crime-infested places from which they came.” Three of the congresswomen were born in the United States. Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Somalia. She has been a citizen longer than first lady Melania Trump. Despite outrage about Trump’s tweets, the president doubled down on his racist attacks, saying the congresswomen were “hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down.”
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 25 / 42 Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday, Trump attempted to distance himself from his supporters’ chants.
JON KARL: When your supporters last night were chanting “Send her back,” why didn’t you stop them? Why didn’t you ask them to stop saying that?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, number one, I think I did. I started speaking very quickly. It really was a loud—I disagree with it, by the way. But it was quite a chant. And I felt a little bit badly about it. But I will say this: I did—and I started speaking very quickly. But it started up rather, rather fast, as you probably noticed.
JON KARL: So, you’ll tell your supporters never to say that again?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I would say that I—I was not happy with it. I disagree with it.
AMY GOODMAN: “I felt a little bit badly about it,” Trump said, though, again, pausing 13 seconds to allow the chant to ring out.
Minnesota Congressmember Ilhan Omar responded to the president’s actions while speaking to reporters Thursday.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: I want to make sure that every single person who is in this country, who’s aspiring to become part of the American fabric, understands that nothing this president says should be taken to heart. We are Americans as much as everyone else. This is our country, and we are where we belong. And I told people on my election night, in the great state of Minnesota we don’t just welcome refugees; we send them to represent us in Washington. And as much as he’s spewing his fascist ideology on stage, telling you, as citizens, to go back, because they don’t agree with his detrimental policies for our country, we tell people that here in the United States, dissent is patriotic. Here in the United States, disagreement is welcome. Debate is welcomed. And especially in the people’s house, all of our voices are uplifted and heard.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday night, Congressmember Omar arrived back in the Twin Cities in Minnesota to a crowd of supporters at the airport. Her constituents had a new chant to greet her: “Welcome home.”
OMAR SUPPORTERS: Welcome home, Ilhan! Welcome home, Ilhan! Welcome home, Ilhan! Welcome home, Ilhan!
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Omar retweeted this video Thursday night, writing, “Home sweet home.”
For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Ibram Kendi, professor of history and international relations and founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He’s the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. His forthcoming book, out in August, How to Be an Antiracist. In his latest piece in The Atlantic, headlined “Am I an American?” Professor Kendi writes, “President Trump’s tirade against four minority congresswomen prompts the question: Whom does he consider to be American?”
Professor Kendi, welcome back to Democracy Now! Respond to all that’s happened this week. The House didn’t censure President Trump, but it did criticize him for his attack on the four congresswomen, telling them to “go back” to their “crime-infested”—to “go back” to their “crime-infested” countries. And, of course, they’re all U.S. citizens.
IBRAM X. KENDI: Yeah, and, you know, I think my response to this week is I think we have to continuously recognize that there’s a certain segment of people in this country who imagine that the home of America is for white people, and that when people of color come into that home and criticize that home, they say, “How dare you come into my home and criticize my home? You might as well go back to your home.”
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 26 / 42 Well, what if it’s their home, too? And what if they have the right to criticize it, too? And what if they’re trying to make that home better? And I think this sort of week has showed us that—how we’re sort of imagining who is American and what is America. And, of course, that’s a debate, as you know, Amy, we’ve been having for a very long time in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: The title of your piece is “Am I an American?” Explain why you wrote that.
IBRAM X. KENDI: Well, I think, first and foremost, this idea of “go back to your country,” or, in my case, “go back to Africa,” is something that people of color and black people have been hearing really from the beginning of this country. And it’s always caused some of us to question, “Are we an American?” At the same time, particularly in our era, it is rare that a white person hears this idea, hears this sort of shout to “go back to your country,” because it’s assumed that they are an American. And so, I just wanted to really speak through and talk through and really think deeply about the literal impact that what Trump said is having on people, and connect that to the history of people being told to go back to their countries.
AMY GOODMAN: In your piece, “Am I an American?” you write, “I am tolerated until I am not. I can dine on American soil until I demand a role in remaking the menu that is killing me, like those four progressive congresswomen of color. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to get in line to be a Democrat, in the way I’m told by moderates away from Capitol Hill to get in line to be an American. I hear the moderate message of compliance, of assimilation, of being happy just dining. And I hear the message from the man with the blood-red hat defending the moderate and giving me an ultimatum.” Can you unpack that for us, Professor Kendi?
IBRAM X. KENDI: Sure. So, I wanted to really talk through and discuss the distinction between someone like Trump, who more or less says, as I write in the piece, that “If you do not act like a slave, then you are essentially not an American, and you need to go back to where you come from,” from the moderate, or even, to a certain extent, the liberal, who says, “You are an American, and this is the way you’re supposed to act as an American. You’re not supposed to speak Spanish. You’re not supposed to dress that way. You’re not supposed to look that way. You’re supposed to do this in order to essentially function in politics.” And so, one is essentially the—one is telling us to essentially be slaves, don’t ever critique or lead, while the other is essentially trying to assimilate us into this singular sense of what an American is.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you comment on the fear that these congresswomen now feel, because they have been so targeted? Democratic officials are afraid, for example, for the safety of Congressmember Omar, calling for authorities to evaluate her security, as well as the others.
IBRAM X. KENDI: I think these four congresswomen obviously are very well versed in American history, and even, of course, the racial terror and violence that still persists. And they know that the people who have been most likely to be affected by this violence, whether you’re talking about the lynching era or even whether you’re talking about the era of police violence today, are people who resist, are people who resist American policies, are the people who resist police officers, are the people who resist racism. And so, as four of the most sort of visible resisters of American racism and sexism and imperialism, it makes complete sense that they would fear violence happening one day to them.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about how the media’s been covering Trump’s racist attacks, and also the broader conversation about racism that’s emerged. People were particularly enraged that CNN had Richard Spencer on, the avowed white supremacist, to talk about Trump’s comments. In a news conference earlier this week, Congressmember Omar said, “This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it’s happening on national TV.” Professor Kendi, how can the media be anti-racist instead of complicit?
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 27 / 42 IBRAM X. KENDI: Well, I think the media should use words. You have words like “racist,” which is a descriptive term, which describes people who are expressing racist ideas that certain racial groups are better or worse than others, and people who are supporting racist policies that yield racial inequity. And then you have terms like “anti-racist,” which are people who express notions of anti-racist ideas, of racial equality, and support policies that yield racial equity.
And so, when reporters and journalists see people who are expressing racist ideas, they should describe that person as racist. When they see and hear people expressing anti-racist ideas, they should describe people who are expressing—who are being anti-racist. It is critical for the media to use words, to use descriptive terms, in the way they use it in other ways. I mean, they’re going to talk about this weekend as being very hot, as they should.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you about White House counselor Kellyanne Conway defending Trump’s racist tweets this week. When a reporter asked her about it, she responded by asking him his ethnicity.
ANDREW FEINBERG: If the president was not telling these four congresswomen to return to their supposed countries of origin, to which countries was he referring?
KELLYANNE CONWAY: What’s your ethnicity?
ANDREW FEINBERG: Why is that relevant to this—
KELLYANNE CONWAY: No, no, because I’m asking you a question. My ancestors are from Ireland and Italy.
ANDREW FEINBERG: Kellyanne, my own ethnicity is not relevant to the question I’m asking you. I am asking you a—
KELLYANNE CONWAY: No, no. It is, because you’re asking about—he said “originally.”
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Kellyanne Conway asking Andrew Feinberg, the White House reporter, his own ethnicity. Now, Ibram Kendi, you had an interesting—you raise an interesting point. You’re sort of flipping this around to the luxury of knowing where your family did come from, something many people, enslaved Americans, did not know, as they were forcibly taken from Africa and brought to this country.
IBRAM X. KENDI: Yeah, and I think that’s what makes it particularly painful for descendants of enslaved Africans, because I think many of us of course know that our ancestors are from Africa, but we cannot necessarily pinpoint exactly where. When we think of Africa, we think of, of course, Mother Africa, and many of us imagine Africa as, to a certain extent, a place of origin. But at the same time, we can’t pinpoint where. So, when you say “go back” to our country, it’s hard for us to not respond, “Well, what country?” Even if we were to go back to Africa, where would we go? And I think that’s what becomes—it just sort of reminds us of the slave trade, of the slave trade that millions of people were not only killed, but separated from their ancestors against their will. And now they’re saying to us, against their will—against our will, to go back to our country.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to end with Eric Swalwell. He just pulled out as a presidential contender, the congressmember from California. But he went to the House floor on Tuesday, just ahead of the House vote to condemn Trump’s attacks on the four Democratic congresswoman of color. He listed a number of Trump’s past racist comments. And as he did so, several Republicans interrupted him.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: We have an opportunity today to condemn or condone. Birtherism is racist. Saying a Mexican judge can’t be fair because of his heritage is racist. Saying immigrants from Mexico are rapists is racist. Saying there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 28 / 42 is racist. Calling African countries [bleep]hole countries is racist. And telling four members of this body to go home is racist.
REP. DOUG COLLINS: Madam Speaker, Madam Speaker, point of order.
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE DIANA DEGETTE: Gentleman will state his—
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: Do you think it’s not racist to say those things?
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE DIANA DEGETTE: Gentleman will state his point of order.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: Do you think it’s not racist?
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE DIANA DEGETTE: So, the gentleman will suspend. Gentleman will state his point of order.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: Is that what you’re saying right now, Mr. Collins?
UNIDENTIFIED: Gentleman will suspend!
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: Mr. Collins, is it not racist—
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE DIANA DEGETTE: Gentleman from—
REP. ERIC SWALWELL: —to say these things? Because you can say that right now.
UNIDENTIFIED: He’s out of order!
UNIDENTIFIED: He’s out of order.
UNIDENTIFIED: Order!
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE DIANA DEGETTE: The gentleman from California is out of order. The gentleman from—
UNIDENTIFIED: Out of order!
SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE DIANA DEGETTE: Gentleman from California shall suspend. For what purpose does the gentleman from Georgia rise?
REP. DOUG COLLINS: I make a point of order: The gentleman’s words are unparliamentary, and I request they be taken down.
UNIDENTIFIED: They’re President Trump’s words. They’re Trump’s words!
UNIDENTIFIED: Order.
UNIDENTIFIED: Order.
AMY GOODMAN: Very interestingly, Republicans interrupted him by citing an obscure House rule, a line contained in congressional rules that states, “References to racial or other discrimination on the part of the president are not in order.” The original rulebook banning the use of the word “racist” was written by Thomas
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 29 / 42 Jefferson, himself a slave owner, but any irony in that was apparently lost on the Republicans, and the resolution passed. You end your piece, “Am I an American?” by writing, Professor Kendi, “Maybe I should have been asking, 'Who controls America?' instead of 'Am I an American?'” Your final thoughts?
IBRAM X. KENDI: I wrote that because whoever controls in America—whoever controls America is really the one who’s going to determine who is an American.
And I should also add that when we say someone is being racist, we are not making a personal attack, as some of those House Republicans made the case. We’re describing them. So this isn’t about attacking anyone. This is describing what they’re saying. This is describing what they’re doing. This is not about what’s in somebody’s heart, what’s in somebody’s bones, what’s in someone’s organs. This is about what’s in their words and their actions. And that’s how we determine who is being racist or anti-racist.
AMY GOODMAN: Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. His forthcoming book, How to Be an Antiracist. And we’ll link to his piece in The Atlantic headlined “Am I an American?” Ibram Kendi will be back on Democracy Now! in just a few weeks when his book comes out.
This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. When we come back, a whistleblower joins us, who has lessons for us, an act she engaged in more than 15 years ago. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Clandestino” by Lila Downs, here in our Democracy Now! studio. To hear her performance and the interview, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
2019-07-19 In 2003, This U.K. Whistleblower Almost Stopped the Iraq Invasion. A New Film Tells Her Story 15 Years Later: How U.K. Whistleblower Katharine Gun Risked Everything to Leak a Damning Iraq War Memo Guests Gavin Hood South African filmmaker and director of Official Secrets. • Katharine Gun whistleblower and former specialist for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters. • Martin Bright British journalist. • Ed Vulliamy British journalist.
Image Credit: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
We speak with a British whistleblower whose attempts to expose lies about the Iraq invasion was called “the most important and courageous leak” in history by acclaimed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Katharine Gun was a young specialist working for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters when she exposed a highly confidential memo that revealed the United States was working with the United Kingdom to collect sensitive information on United Nations Security Council members in order to pressure them into supporting the Iraq invasion. Gun leaked the memo to the press in 2003, setting off a chain of events that jeopardized her freedom and safety, but also opened the door to putting the entire legality of the Iraq invasion on trial. Her life story is depicted in the new film “Official Secrets.” In Part 2 of our discussion, we speak with Katharine Gun; the British journalists who reported on Gun’s revelations in The Observer newspaper, Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy; and Gavin Hood, director of “Official Secrets.”
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 30 / 42 AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we bring you Part 2 of our extended look at a new film that’s out called Official Secrets, that’s coming out at the end of August, that tells the story of a British intelligence specialist, Katharine Gun, who risked everything to blow the whistle on U.S. dirty tricks at the United Nations in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003. At the time, Katharine Gun was working for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ. It’s the intelligence agency, like the NSA, the National Security Agency, in the U.S. She leaked a memo revealing that the United States was collaborating with Britain in collecting sensitive information on United Nations Security Council members, countries, in order to pressure the members, the ambassadors, into supporting the Iraq invasion of March 2003.
We continue our conversation now with Katharine Gun, the whistleblower and former employee of GCHQ. In the film, Official Secrets, she is played by Keira Knightley. We’re also joined by Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy, the two journalists who reported Gun’s revelations in The Observer newspaper, at a time when the paper was editorially openly supporting the Iraq invasion. Also with us, the director of Official Secrets, Gavin Hood.
It’s so great to have you all with us. I’m going to start with you, Gavin. Why did you choose to do this film? I watched you last night at one of the premieres of the film, a kind of secret showing of Official Secrets.
GAVIN HOOD: Secret.
AMY GOODMAN: And you actually said you hadn’t heard of Katharine Gun at the time, which is interesting in itself, because the story, in a sense, was almost killed for a bit.
GAVIN HOOD: That’s exactly right. I had made a film called Eye in the Sky, with the producer Ged Doherty, and we were looking for another project to do together. And Jed called me up and said, “Have you heard of Katharine Gun?” And you get this moment where you feel like you should have, because of the way he’s saying it. I’m going, “No, I—I don’t.” He said, “Just google Katharine Gun and official secrets.” So I googled “official secrets Katharine Gun,” because—the title of our film comes from the Official Secrets Act, which is what she breached when she leaked the memo. And I did this sort of dive. Before I knew it, I had spent two hours researching Katharine.
And I called Jed back, and I said, “This is an amazing way into how we got into the Iraq War, that—why isn’t it better known?” And he said—I said, “Could I come and meet Katharine? Do you think she’d meet with me?” Because I think we were both a little skeptical of each other. Jed didn’t sort of put the two of us together. We met in London. First day, what did you feel? Strange Hollywood person.
KATHARINE GUN: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, this has been going on for a number of years, and it always sort of ended up kind of petering out, so—
GAVIN HOOD: Other people had approached you before—
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah.
GAVIN HOOD: —to do films. Right.
KATHARINE GUN: And also, I’m just—well, whether it’s natural inclination or whether it’s what was kind of drummed into us at GCHQ, but it was, you know, this the sense of being private and not trusting journalists or people who are trying to ferret out information from you. So, of course, I was a little bit sort of reserved.
GAVIN HOOD: So, we meet the first day, and after a few hours I think we warmed to each other.
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah.
GAVIN HOOD: And then, for five days, I interviewed Katharine and just made notes. And we worked five, six hours every day. And then I went on to interview Martin and Ed and then Ben Emmerson, the lawyer. And
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 31 / 42 after about three weeks of this meeting these extraordinary people, I said to Jed, “I think I think I would like to do this.” And that’s where the story came from.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, you had to sell this. So give us the nut—the nutshell description of this story.
GAVIN HOOD: Well, for me, what I love about the story is actually, on the one hand, it’s got this huge global political relevance, and it resonates still today. But on the other hand, it’s just a deeply personal story about—and I hope Katharine will forgive me saying this—about an ordinary person, like one of us, who does something extraordinary.
So, from a dramatic point of view, you have someone who’s just going to their job every day, as most of us do, happens to be a spy working for GCHQ, but could have been a person working for an accounting firm or Enron or Boeing or any other organization, who sees something that is simply wrong, sees, you know, and says—
AMY GOODMAN: And that memo says?
GAVIN HOOD: —and says, “I’m going to speak up.”
AMY GOODMAN: What she discovers says?
GAVIN HOOD: What she discovers says—is a request from the NSA to GCHQ to hack, bug the private communications and the office communications of U.N. Security Council members, in particular the nonpermanent members, the more junior members. There are 15 members of that council, and there are these nonpermanent members who could swing the vote in favor of an invasion of Iraq in U.N. resolution.
AMY GOODMAN: And these ambassadors are the ambassadors of?
GAVIN HOOD: These are representatives at the U.N.—
AMY GOODMAN: Chile.
GAVIN HOOD: Chile, Bulgaria, Angola, Cameroon, Pakistan, Mexico. These folks—because there are two legal ways you can go to war in international law. The first is a U.N. resolution for war. We, as a collective group of countries, decide that we need to stop an event, a humanitarian disaster or a genocide or whatever. And the other way is the good, old-fashioned self-defense. We are defending ourselves.
Well, if Bush and Blair could have got a U.N. resolution, they would have had perfect cover for going to Iraq without having to bring up the WMD, the weapons of mass destruction, argument, because the whole weapons of mass destruction argument is the self-defense, that they needed a legal—you know, you do want to be going to war legally. Strange concept, but you do. And so, they’re first prize was get the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution saying that we, as a collective United Nations, are going to take out Saddam Hussein. No need for weapons of mass destruction arguments. No need to prove anything further.
AMY GOODMAN: Right.
GAVIN HOOD: They failed. And they failed, in part, I believe, because Katharine Gun leaked that memo. And it’s so—the nonpermanent members, who realized they were being hacked and their personal things were being—in order to try and blackmail them into a vote. You know, let’s say I—you’re a bit of a gambler, aren’t you? You’re a bit—
AMY GOODMAN: So, there is an uproar. And you said in places like Chile—
GAVIN HOOD: There’s an outrage. And they say, “We’re not even going to vote on this resolution.” And the next day, we invade. I mean, that’s why Martin—I remember Martin and Ed. This was a huge story, crushed by a bigger story. The biggest story was: Who cares why we’re in the war? Look at those bombs falling on Baghdad. And all of a sudden the news media is not interested in how we got into the war. They’re watching,
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 32 / 42 you know, video games and bombs landing on Baghdad—shock and awe. So a very big story got crushed very quickly.
AMY GOODMAN: And your feelings at that time, Katharine? You didn’t know what would happen with this memo you leaked to someone, who gave it to someone, but you knew you felt it was—I mean, you weren’t part of a movement. You didn’t have that kind of support. You hardly told anybody what you had done. But this gets out, and suddenly you see it on the front page of The Observer when you go to buy, what, milk in the morning for you and your husband. You come home. You’re terrified. And now you go back into work. You think everyone sees on your face that you’re the leaker. But you are—is this part of the film true, where you have the authorities come in and say, “We’re questioning everyone, because someone here did this.”
KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, they knew, in fact, GCHQ, I think, because there’s this system whereby, you know, before the news goes to print, the government and various organizations get the front pages, so they know what’s—like, before it goes to press. So, GCHQ had been aware of this for over 24 hours, and they were waiting for everybody to come back into work on Monday, and they were prepared.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what did you do when they said, “We’re going to take each one of you into a room.”
KATHARINE GUN: Well, I mean, it’s terrifying. But as it happened, I wasn’t called up on Monday. I was called up on Tuesday. So I saw people going in and coming out and going in and coming out. And then, on Tuesday, they called me in, and I went in. And I just—I just determined to deny it. You know, my initial instinct was I’ve got to remain anonymous. And so I did. I denied it.
And I don’t know how authentic it appeared to the person interviewing me, but I just felt terrible. I felt awful after I denied it. And I went back, and I felt worse that day at home. I mean, I literally—I couldn’t eat. And I had already not been able to eat for about 24 hours. So I was in a dreadful state.
And my husband was desperately worried about what was going on. You know, he couldn’t—and it was the first time he had heard about it. He didn’t know I had leaked this memo. So, of course, it was just—you know, he was kind of thinking—he knew I worked for the intelligence services, but he didn’t know what that was. And all of a sudden his safe, you know, this civil servant wife is in a whole lot of bother that he never expected to have to deal with.
ED VULLIAMY: A whole lot of bother.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, you decide to go back and reveal—who was it that was questioning you? Which agency was it?
KATHARINE GUN: It was GCHQ internal security, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you go in.
KATHARINE GUN: So, on Wednesday morning, I called in sick. But then I thought, “Well, no, I just can’t go on calling in sick.” So I went in, and my manager said, you know, “Katharine, you look dreadful. Why did you come in? I thought you said you’re sick.” And I said, “I need to talk to you.” And so we went into a small room, and I just said, “I did it.” And then she put her arm around me and went, “Oh, Katharine.” And then I burst out crying.
AMY GOODMAN: But you weren’t sorry.
KATHARINE GUN: No, I felt a huge sense of relief after I had, you know, confessed.
AMY GOODMAN: So then you have Scotland Yard taking over.
KATHARINE GUN: Mm-hmm. So, they immediately—well, first of all, my manager said, “What would you like to do?” And I said, “Well, pfff, what can I do?” You know, we have to tell internal security. And so, we
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 33 / 42 went down together to internal security, and they called Scotland Yard. And we had to sit and wait for two hours while they winged it down from London.
AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened? You’re—
KATHARINE GUN: And then I was taken away—
AMY GOODMAN: —arrested?
KATHARINE GUN: —to police custody, yes, and kept overnight in a police cell.
AMY GOODMAN: And did they say they were going to charge you with the Official Secrets Act?
KATHARINE GUN: No, nothing at—well, they said they were arresting me on suspicion of breaking the Official Secrets Act.
AMY GOODMAN: And when did that come out? Now, Martin, at this point, you’ve defended your story.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The networks, like Fox, and The Drudge Report, CNN refused to interview you, saying that this couldn’t be a real memo because, unfortunately, your newspaper translated it into British.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, they didn’t even say why. You know, these things happen. Sometimes you break stories, and networks ring you and say they want to interview you, and then they drop you because of the agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: Right.
MARTIN BRIGHT: You know, I mean, you don’t want to get too conspiratorial about this. But, you know, these things happen.
AMY GOODMAN: But once everyone did, you knew.
MARTIN BRIGHT: But once everyone did, there was—we knew that there was something—there was something going on.
AMY GOODMAN: And so—go ahead.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, I was—of course, the irony of the situation is that when we heard that a GCHQ employee, a 27-year-old GCHQ employee, Mandarin translator, I think we even said at the time, had been arrested, we were absolutely delighted, because we knew for sure that we had a big story at that point. We knew for sure—
AMY GOODMAN: This was the proof.
MARTIN BRIGHT: —this was the real deal. You know, any tiny lingering doubts we had about whether this was a sophisticated Russian forgery, as some people suggested, or, you know—we absolutely knew that this was real. I mean, obviously, at that point, then felt very sorry that someone had been arrested, but it was a huge relief at the time.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Katharine, as all of this is unfolding, the U.S. and Britain bomb Iraq.
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re watching that on television.
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Whatever you tried to do didn’t succeed. What were your thoughts then?
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 34 / 42 KATHARINE GUN: Devastation. I felt awful. In fact, I—you know, I couldn’t bear to watch the scenes. But, you know, it—
AMY GOODMAN: What did you think about your own prime minister?
KATHARINE GUN: Need I say more? I mean, really, these people need to be held accountable for what they’ve done.
GAVIN HOOD: They do.
AMY GOODMAN: Martin, you went on to work with Tony Blair, didn’t you?
MARTIN BRIGHT: I did, yes. I mean, not the greatest decision of my life, I have to say.
AMY GOODMAN: You only lasted what? About five months or something?
MARTIN BRIGHT: I had lasted about—
AMY GOODMAN: What was it called? The Tony Blair Conscience Fund or something?
MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, if only.
ED VULLIAMY: An oxymoron.
KATHARINE GUN: Oh lord.
MARTIN BRIGHT: No, it was the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
AMY GOODMAN: Faith Foundation.
MARTIN BRIGHT: I have an abiding interest in the link between religion and conflict. And I was tasked to set up a website to look into this. So, I thought it would be great. But, I mean, I ended up being a whistleblower myself within that organization. So…
AMY GOODMAN: But so, did you have any conversations with the former prime minister at the time, Tony Blair?
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you’re the guy who broke the story that showed that Britain was collaborating with the U.S. in trying to get dirt on U.S. ambassadors—
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —to get them to vote for the war in Iraq, which ended up killing—what do you say at the end of the film? Something like—
GAVIN HOOD: Almost a million. Almost a million Iraqis. You know, the conservative estimates are 125,000 up to a million. So, 600,000 Iraqi people died. I think the number is—and forgive me, I should have the figure—three-and-a-half thousand British and American soldiers, 37,000 wounded. You know, this is hundreds of thousands of people killed. Never mind the number injured. It’s millions.
MARTIN BRIGHT: OK, you’re making me feel really bad about going to work for him now. But, yes, I did. I had, you know, encounters with Blair.
I mean, my initial encounter with him at the Faith Foundation was extremely concerning, in fact, because he said that what he wanted me to do was develop a heat map, you know, an interactive map of all the madrassas, you know, Islamic schools, around the world, with my tiny team of two or three interns, showing —and he looked me in the eye, and he said, “I want you to be able—I want people who are looking on our website to be able to see how radical those madrassas are, by color coding.”
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 35 / 42 And I can remember sitting back and thinking, “This guy is not all there. How am I possibly going to do that? I mean, MI6 couldn’t do that. You know, banks of civil servants couldn’t do that. So how am I, with my tiny team of researchers, going to do anything like that?” And so, it’s one of those moments where you realize—I mean, the chill went up my spine, like I thought, “I’ve got to get out of here.” So, yes, that was not a good moment, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: That was 2014. But let’s go back to the moment. So, you get this memo. You don’t know who the GCHQ person is.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: She’s then arrested. At first they don’t name you, but then they do. When do you first meet, you, the person who exposed this story, Martin Bright, and Katharine Gun?
MARTIN BRIGHT: Not until around the time of the trial. And so, a lot, a lot later.
AMY GOODMAN: So, before the time of the trial, Katharine, you—they have clamped down on you. You cannot talk to anyone about your intelligence work. And they attempt to deport your husband, who is a?
KATHARINE GUN: Actually, time-wise, I was bailed for eight months. So I was bailed until November, when they charged me. After they charged me, that’s when they tried to deport my husband.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, he goes in for a regular check-in. He was Kurdish—he is Kurdish.
KATHARINE GUN: Well, he’s Turkish, from a Kurdish background, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Turkish Kurd, mm-hmm.
KATHARINE GUN: And yeah, because—anyway, he was going in every week to basically prove that he was still resident or that they could pinpoint where he was.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you actually in the car with him, waiting for him to go in for his check-in?
KATHARINE GUN: I was waiting outside in the police station, yes. And he didn’t come back out again.
AMY GOODMAN: So you just thought this was routine. You weren’t particularly worried. You were just waiting.
KATHARINE GUN: Oh, no. I was—no, as soon as he didn’t come out, I—
AMY GOODMAN: No, you thought it was routine when he walked in.
KATHARINE GUN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course I did, yes. And when he didn’t come out, I was panicking, you know, and I ran inside. And they had already taken him down into the custody suite, which is, by the way, where I had been before. But anyway.
GAVIN HOOD: Same cell.
KATHARINE GUN: I don’t know. Yeah, so it was panic stations after that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, they’re processing him. They’re going to send him back to Turkey.
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, and he had no money in his pocket. And, you know, he had nothing on him. They were just going to pick him up, and took him out. And so, I immediately went home, and I—and at the time, actually, well, my dad was staying with me, because it was Chinese New Year, and he was back from Taiwan, and he was supporting me, so he was at home. As soon as I opened the door and he saw me coming in, and he could see something was wrong, and then—and I said, “They’ve taken him.” And he went, “The bastards!” So, anyway, I was on the phone. I was calling Nigel Jones, my MP.
AMY GOODMAN: Your representative.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 36 / 42 KATHARINE GUN: My MP, yes, at the time. And I managed to get through to his assistant. And they said they would try their best. And yeah, it was absolutely terrifying.
AMY GOODMAN: You succeeded in preventing his deportation. But let’s talk about that moment in the courthouse. Is that when you both met?
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, around that time. I mean, we certainly did meet in the courthouse. And yeah, it was—
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you think, when—before you had seen Katharine and met her, what did you imagine she would be like, this young woman, 27-year-old woman of conscience, who—
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I must say, when I found out how young she was, it did take me by surprise, and the fact that she was a translator. I mean, we had imagined all sorts of things about who our source might be. We thought maybe it would be some crusty old senior guy from a rival agency. We thought that maybe it would be a security expert who had got wind of this, or someone, I mean, relatively senior within GCHQ who was worried about what was going on, and, you know. But to discover that it was such a young and such a junior employee was extraordinary to us, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you tell Katharine at that time?
MARTIN BRIGHT: Well, I mean, I think at that time, you know—we knew, I suppose, by that point, that our paths were destined to cross. I mean, I don’t think we imagined that we would be still friends and still talking about it 14, 15 years later. But yeah, I mean, I was hugely impressed. And I had to thank her for—I mean, you know, in totally selfish terms, helping me break the biggest story of my life. But it was, yeah, a moment of great humility, actually.
AMY GOODMAN: And a story that could have saved so many lives, except—
MARTIN BRIGHT: We did—I tell you what, though, we did feel that we had failed. I mean, I think we did feel that we journalistically—you know, we could have done more as a newspaper. We could have—you know, you always have regrets, don’t you? When you think, “Oh, well, I wish we tried hard with the American—with our American colleagues. I wish we’d pushed it harder with the boss class within The Observer.” You know, in the end, there was a feeling, I think, what—I know that Katharine and I have talked about this a lot. There was a feeling of—as what you felt, Ed, in this case, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Ed Vulliamy, you were the U.S. correspondent for The Observer. You’re the guy who got the goods on the author of the memo in the NSA, who wrote to GCHQ and said, “We’re going to bug the U.N. ambassadors.”
ED VULLIAMY: Yes. And as Martin has just said, and as Katharine put it so well in the film, you know, wars, unlike football and basketball games, do not end when the whistle blows. Sorry, no pun intended, Katharine. And nor do newspaper stories. And what’s so marvelous about what Gavin’s done is to just sort of bring this back into the present. It’s all so resonant. Iraq now, nightmare. The people who went in and smashed it up in 2003, do they watch the news? How do—do they join the dots?
I was the U.S. correspondent indeed, but very soon I was in Najaf, Nasiriyah, Fallujah, unembedded, watching this bloody carnage, this—the implosion of this country. We can all have a view on Saddam Hussein and whether he should be deposed or not. I mean, no one’s going to—no crocodile tears over that. But this is not the issue. The war did not end when George W. Bush said, “Mission accomplished.” It was only just beginning. And nor did the story end.
These were, as I said before, bitter times. I had had my own story on the fabrication of the weapons of mass destruction, the existence of a shadow intelligence-cooking agency within the Pentagon, which we at The
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 37 / 42 Observer had for five months before Sy Hersh, with great respect to Sy, published it in The New Yorker. You know, we had it in October 2002. This was all cooked up, unpublished and—
AMY GOODMAN: And this is a critical moment, when you say October, because that’s when the U.S. Senate voted to authorize war.
ED VULLIAMY: Thank you. That’s [inaudible]—
AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton among them.
ED VULLIAMY: —said on the program, I filed that story seven times. I could not get it in. A very good book by Britain’s most decorated journalist, called Nick Davies, called Flat Earth News—it’s about the British press, but it applies everywhere—realized that actually the then-editors of our paper were effectively accountable to the Tony Blair enforcement machine.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. I mean, you’re talking about the editorial leadership of The Observer, the editor-in-chief—
ED VULLIAMY: Yes, at the time.
AMY GOODMAN: —the person in charge of news.
ED VULLIAMY: At the time, yes, the editor and the political—
AMY GOODMAN: The people Martin was fighting to get this story out.
ED VULLIAMY: Yes, the people who were giving Martin traction to get this story out, and who effectively, according to Mr. Davies’s book, censored mine, about the cooking-up of the WMD and the fact that we knew Saddam didn’t have any. I mean, this is difficult for me to say this, but, for those of your viewers who are interested in what happens in the media—Martin and I, here we are, doing our best—the two people involved, who are in the film—
AMY GOODMAN: The top people are?
ED VULLIAMY: The top people are, respectively, managing editor of the Daily Mail, which is a sort of rather —
AMY GOODMAN: So, who is that?
ED VULLIAMY: Mr. Alton, screechy, ultra-right-wing. It’s a paper that supported fascism between the wars, and sort of still does, in its way.
AMY GOODMAN: And Alton went from The Observer and ultimately made his way—
ED VULLIAMY: Via various—via Rupert Murdoch’s Times, yes. And Mr.—
AMY GOODMAN: So, the Daily Mail, very sympathetic also to President Trump.
ED VULLIAMY: Yes. Well, extremely. And Mr. Ahmed is now the editorial director of the BBC, the revered BBC.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain who he is.
ED VULLIAMY: Well, he was the political editor at the time, who was giving me a lot of trouble over getting my cooked intelligence story into the paper. Mr. Davies, in his book, has done more recently—
AMY GOODMAN: And he said to you, Martin, at least in the film, “This will jeopardize our access.”
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 38 / 42 ED VULLIAMY: But my point is not against Mr. Ahmed. Good for him. But it may say more about the BBC than it does about him, that with this track record you can get to the top. So, I just lay that out, really. So, you know, it doesn’t end, as Martin said. This is, sadly, a story of failure.
AMY GOODMAN: And the U.S. is still in Iraq.
ED VULLIAMY: It’s a story of endeavor, to no avail. But as we said last night, this is the purpose of Albert Camus’s great story La Peste, when Dr. Rieux is given the child dying of plague. He knows he can’t save the child. Does he try to treat it? Of course he does. That’s our job.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, the story doesn’t end. There are lots of loose ends here still. There are plenty of opportunities here for other journalists to take up the baton and find out what really happened. We still don’t know who Frank Koza is, or he’s still not given a public interview about about what went on. And we still don’t know why the British government dropped the case. We still don’t know who within the American administration ordered the operation. So, lots of leads there.
AMY GOODMAN: So, and we want to get to all that, but now—we want to get to all that, but right now you’re showing this film around the country. It opens on August 30th. And you had a showing in San Francisco.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: The San Francisco Film Festival. Explain what happened at the Q&A, Martin.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yes, we had a great, a dramatic moment at the Q&A session. It was shown in the Castro Theatre. It was a very big audience, lovely, lovely theater. And towards the end of the Q&A session, an elderly gentleman put up his hand and said, “I’m very interested in the issue of Frank Koza. You want to know where he is?”
AMY GOODMAN: This is the NSA guy who wrote the memo.
MARTIN BRIGHT: Yeah, who wrote the memo. “You want to know where he is?” he said. “I think you’ll find he’s hiding in plain sight.” And there was a dramatic hush in the audience. And through the lights, I couldn’t quite see who the guy was. And at the end of the Q&A, I went to try and find him, and he’d gone. So, was that Frank Koza? We will never know. But he certainly was suggesting that people would know.
AMY GOODMAN: Gavin, introduce us to Ben Emmerson.
GAVIN HOOD: Ben Emmerson. Ben Emmerson is—
AMY GOODMAN: Who is played in the film by?
GAVIN HOOD: By Ralph Fiennes. Ralph Fiennes, fantastic, wonderful actor. Ralph Fiennes plays Ben Emmerson. I mean, couldn’t have been happier with the casting choice, because Ben Emmerson is a force of nature, absolute force of nature, and a great international lawyer. And he was the barrister who ultimately put the case before the court, as short as that trial was, on behalf of Katharine, and came up with a truly original defense to the Official Secrets Act, which is the defense of necessity.
Now, the defense of necessity is usually used in very more simple circumstances. For example, you’re racing to the hospital with your wife. She’s pregnant. You’re breaking the speed limit. You get pulled over. The cop says, you know, “Here’s your ticket.” You’re guilty of breaking the speed, but you’re guilty of a crime. Your defense becomes: It was necessary to break the law in order to achieve a higher purpose, which is the saving of human life. And a fireman does that if he bashes your house down to get to you.
Never used in the idea of, you’ve broken the law, breached the Official Secrets Act. She’s confessed to breaching the Official Secrets Act. There’s no doubt. What’s the defense? There are almost no defenses to this act. And Ben comes up with this idea. He says, “Wait a minute. If the war was illegal and she broke the
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 39 / 42 law in order to expose an illegal war and potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives, I can use this defense of necessity”—that’s usually used in more mundane, dare I say, contexts—”in this great political trial.”
And so he says, “All right, now I need to know whether the war was legal or illegal.” And he says, “I need to find out what Lord Goldsmith’s, the attorney-general’s, legal position was in the run-up to that war. What was he telling Blair until the 11th hour, where he changed his mind, it seems, at the 11th hour, and said, 'Oh, well, you can justify on the basis of Resolution 678 from 1991,' this fringe idea that no decent international lawyer”—and I’m an ex-lawyer—”believes to be even remotely sensible?”
And he says, “I need to”—so, I’m interviewing Ben in a pizza shop, right? And I’m saying, “Ben, but how did you know, when you called for those documents, that they’d be there?” And there’s this pause. And he says, “Well, I called Elizabeth Wilmshurst,” who is the assistant attorney general, who had resigned. And she hadn’t said why she had resigned. And so he went to Elizabeth and had a cup of tea, as you do in England. And, he says to me, she explained that Goldsmith’s position—if I called for those documents, I would find out that he had been consistently saying that war without a U.N. resolution would be illegal.
And I went back to Martin. I said, “I think I’ve got a scoop, Martin. I think I found like the missing piece.” Anyway, that’s why the scene—
AMY GOODMAN: Wait. So, this woman—
GAVIN HOOD: —is in the movie.
AMY GOODMAN: This amazing moment—
GAVIN HOOD: This amazing lawyer, with great dignity—Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who’s in the movie, Ralph Fiennes playing Ben Emmerson—has the cup of tea with her.
AMY GOODMAN: Works for the attorney general.
GAVIN HOOD: She did work for the attorney general, right up until a matter of weeks or so before the war, at which point, when he changed his mind, under massive pressure, having visited Washington and spoken to Gonzales and all the various lawyers who worked for Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney, and they’d sold him on this idea of using Resolution 678, which authorized the 1991 Gulf War, and said, “Really, that war didn’t end, and we’re really still at war with Iraq. And we can say that, you know, that”—so, he comes back, under all this pressure. He gets more and more pressure from Blair. And at some point, with great respect to Lord Goldsmith, he caves. Ed Vulliamy’s character, played by Rhys Ifans in the film, says, you know, he effing caved at the time when his country needed him most. And, with great respect, I think he did. You know, you’re the attorney general. Be consistent. This is not—this fringe idea of the war has never ended since 1991, what nonsense.
And so, but there’s another irony about the position of the attorney general, which is, the director of public prosecutions in Britain generally has real autonomy in deciding what cases to prosecute, except in cases of the Official Secrets Act, when he or she must get the authorization of the attorney general to prosecute. So, in the film, when the director of public prosecutions says to Ben Emmerson, trying to wiggle out of it, “Listen, it wasn’t my decision to prosecute.” That’s actually true. He would have had to have the authority of Lord Goldsmith to prosecute. So, Lord Goldsmith decides to prosecute Katharine Gun. Ben Emmerson decides the way to defend Katharine Gun is to ask for Lord Goldsmith’s documents. Lord Goldsmith must have said—I mean, I imagine. I wish I could have written that scene. Somebody says, “Lord Goldsmith, the defense to your charge against Katharine Gun is they want your documents.” Case dropped. Maybe? I would love to know. Some journalist needs to go and have a hardcore interview with Lord Goldsmith. “Why did you drop the case? You authorized her prosecution. The law requires you to. They called for your documents. And the case was dropped.” Anyway.
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 40 / 42 AMY GOODMAN: And, Katharine, describe that moment, when you come into court in this very dramatic way—but this is not just a feature film; this is your life—and you’re facing years in prison, your husband not there because you’re concerned he will become the story as a refugee in Britain. So, you are there standing alone in the dock.
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah. It’s incredibly daunting, you know.
AMY GOODMAN: They said you could have pled. They said, “Plead out.”
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: “We don’t want you to go to jail for years. Plead out. Maybe there will be sympathy.”
KATHARINE GUN: Thank god I didn’t.
AMY GOODMAN: But what caused you to say no?
KATHARINE GUN: Well, OK, I know I was guilty in the facts of the matter. Right? But deep inside me, I didn’t feel guilty. You know, I felt vindicated. I felt that I had done the morally right thing to do. And also, I didn’t want to even risk having a criminal record. You know, I mean, once it’s—if you plead guilty and you go away for three months, and it’s, you know, maybe not so bad as going away for two years, but still I would have had a record. So, no, I mean, I didn’t want to say I was guilty when I didn’t feel guilty. And I didn’t want to have a record.
AMY GOODMAN: The horror of what you did not succeed in preventing, though, which was the deaths of so many in Iraq, and that continues today, but you certainly touched the conscience of not just the nation, but the world, in what you did, talking about what woman—what one woman could do. I wanted to go to the making of the film—Keira Knightley, did you meet with her?—and also ask you, Gavin, about Keira taking on this role.
KATHARINE GUN: Yeah, I was very excited to meet Keira in London before they started shooting. And, of course, I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for her to come in, and I had no idea what to expect. But she sails in with Gavin and comes straight up to me and goes, “Oh, Katharine!” and gives me a big hug. And that was it. You know, I felt totally at ease in her company. And so, we talked about motherhood and all sorts of things, but I was just so impressed with how intelligent she was and how incisive she was in getting to the crux of the matter. And really, you know, she had so many questions for me, and she really genuinely wanted to know about the whole situation.
AMY GOODMAN: How rarely a woman actress, an actor, gets to play, you know, the protagonist, the solid, strong hero, Gavin.
GAVIN HOOD: Well, it’s interesting you say that, because one of things Keira said to me that drew her to the script was, first of all, that she didn’t have to wear a corset, because she does all these period dramas. But jokes aside, the reason she said to me—the reason I constantly find myself going—
AMY GOODMAN: You mean period dramas of strong women have to be a hundred years ago.
GAVIN HOOD: Yes, strong women. Yes. She said, you know, it’s ironic that here we are in the age when women now have the vote, and they’re supposed to be—and we’re all supposed to be equal, and yet so many roles are still about women being the sidekick, women being raped, so much violence, use it—you know, a woman who’s in jeopardy. And she said, “I have to go, mostly—to find strong female characters, I have to go back 100 and 200 years and wear a corset to play a strong female character.” And she said, “This is—I want to do this, because it’s a strong female character not in a corset. I don’t have to be in makeup or wardrobe for hours.” And she just said what she loved about Katharine is—and I hope this isn’t said the wrong way, and I keep saying it—she’s one of us. She’s ordinary. She’s just wearing her jeans and jumpers, you know, to work. She’s not wearing tons of makeup. And she said, “Gavin, I don’t want to wear makeup. All I want to do
2019-07-19 Friday Hard News Call 41 / 42 is feel the emotions that this young woman felt, and don’t want to be fussed over.” And it was great. You know, you’re not waiting for someone for hours in makeup. She’s out. We’re on the set. And all we were focused on was what might it felt like in this moment to have been Katharine. That was in this moment, moment by moment, as the story evolves, what would it feel like if you were in her shoes.
AMY GOODMAN: Katharine, has your 11-year-old daughter seen the film?
KATHARINE GUN: No, she hasn’t. I hope, when she’s ready for this story, she will. She’s beginning to understand the issues, but she hasn’t seen it yet.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Ed, you see what’s going on in this country, in the United States, not to mention where you’re from, in Britain. In a way, President Trump has been a gift for the previous president, George W. Bush, because it has really rehabilitated his reputation. You have the U.S. in the longest war in U.S. history, in Afghanistan. You have the Iraq War continuing today, 16 years after George W. Bush, knowing there were not weapons of mass destruction, invades Iraq with Britain.
ED VULLIAMY: Yes. I mean, this—I don’t want this to sound sanctimonious. I think. as Katharine knows, it can be tougher to be right than to be wrong sometimes, if on those lucky occasions that one is right. I’m sure that what Katharine felt when in 2010 we found out that Lord Goldsmith had declared the war, in his advice, illegal, must have been pretty painful for Katharine to hear, as it was for me when Congress said, I think around 2004, '05, we knew, actually, there were no weapons of mass destruction. I felt like saying, “I tried to tell you this seven times, and you would not let me print it.” You know, it's tough.
Your question about now, this is all terribly relevant. I mean, the pack of cards has gone from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria. The implosion continues. Indeed, your point about Bush is right. And the situation, the toxic abomination of Brexit in our country, has sort of rehabilitated Blair in a sort of bizarre way. He’s repackaged himself as sort of the European.
The difference, I think, is that here—and your program and your viewers are testimony to this—you have an opposition. It is loud, clear, confident, creative, interesting. Whatever you think of Kamala Harris, you can say, “Which America do you want? White bread, white Trump, white, or this America, the one of every color, creed?” You know, we don’t have that. We have sort of, you know, “I want to take my country back from all those Portuguese nurses and Polish plumbers, that we really must get rid of, and sort of what’s best for Britain.” You know, we don’t have an opposition in our country, whereas you do in yours, thank god.
AMY GOODMAN: Martin Bright.
MARTIN BRIGHT: I mean, there are a series of questions of accountability here. And looking back, it’s easy to be nostalgic about how things were with Bush and Blair, because it looks like these people were easier to hold to account. Now, what we were doing when we were breaking this story was we were attempting to show that our governments had lied to us. If we found other information, it may have been different, but this information seemed to show us that we’d been lied to. And that mattered, because, for all their faults, it seems to me that Tony Blair and George Bush understood that if they were caught out in a lie, that was a problem for them. They knew the difference between truth, lies and propaganda. They may have chosen to push those boundaries, but they did know the difference, and they knew that it mattered if they were caught.
I think our problem now, and I think this applies on both sides of the Atlantic, is that we have populist politicians for whom that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you catch them out in a lie, because they don’t care, because they lie as a matter of course, and they change what they say from day to day. Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to hold them to account. It just means that the job is even more difficult than it was before.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, and I want to thank you all so much for being with us, Katharine Gun, the whistleblower; Observer journalists at the time, Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy; and Gavin Hood, who is the director of Official Secrets, the story of Katharine Gun revealing the lies that led to the Iraq War on both sides of the ocean, in Britain and the United States, and led to so many deaths.
This is Democracy Now! To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. The film, Official Secrets, comes out officially at the end of August.
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