BREAKING: How the other tribe lives!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2018

Fruit of the New York Times:
Last Friday night, we got so sick of our own tribe's "cable news" recitations that we flipped over to watch Sean Hannity mouthing his.

It was The Day of The 16 Indictments—but on Hannity, it was also The Night of Uranium One and the scary uranium deal.
Hannity's opening monologue wandered about quite a bit. But less than three minutes into the speech, the incoherent "cable news" star was performing beneath this sign:
HANNITY OPENING MONOLOGUE
URANIUM ONE SCANDAL
At least for now, you can find the videotape here ("Examining key points from Russian indictments"). To review the transcript, click this.

Here's part of what The Other Half heard last Friday night. As you yourself have probably heard, we live in two different worlds:
HANNITY (2/16/18): All right. Let's start with what the media will not tell you tonight. Some of the biggest news in today's indictment is what is not included. It does not say that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians. It does not say that anybody on the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. It does not say that President Trump obstructed justice. It does not say that Donald Trump Jr. attempted to collude with the Russians.

Now the same goes for Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The biggest examples of Russian collusion for 2016 that we know about, that we have real concrete evidence of, is, one, Hillary Clinton, bought and paid for dossier. The one that used Russian government sources to peddle Russian propaganda, lies, to influence the American people in the past election in 2016.

And the other example of Russia collusion, number two, is that we know to be true, deals with Uranium One and Vladimir Putin and people he had on the ground in America involved in bribery and money laundering and kickback and racketeering schemes. It all took place in this country. We know all about that.

[...]

Now what this indictment shows is nothing short of a sophisticated effort by the Russians to gain influence in America. Now, we have been telling you this, about Vladimir Putin, about Russian operatives, about how they've been involved in sophisticated schemes. We have been going back to as early as 2009.

Remember, he had people, operatives on the ground with the purpose of breaking into America's uranium market. We also told you how those Russian operatives were involved and we knew it because we had an insider on the ground, an FBI informant, that they were involved in bribery, in kickbacks, and money laundering, racketeering, all in a scheme, yes, tied to Hillary Clinton.

Now, that's the deal with the Clinton State Department and the Obama administration. They ignored this FBI investigation, what this informant was telling them was going on in the inside. And inexplicably they approved, in 2010, giving Vladimir Putin control of over 20 percent of America's uranium market.

We had the informant warning us on the inside the entire time. Nobody listened. And the clueless media, they ignored this Russian interference.

Now, this only matters apparently if the Russians are involved, if you can use it to bludgeon President Trump politically.

Now, sadly, Putin and Russia, they were successful in 2010, they got the uranium. Now, even though we already had a shortage of uranium in America, we have to import uranium.

Now let's get back to the indictment. It lays out allegations that begin in 2014. Where Russian nationals, they were working together, with a troll farm located in St. Petersburg, Russia, trying to influence the election. Why wouldn't they after they got uranium?
Hannity's monologue was perhaps a bit incoherent. But as we sat and watched him working beneath that big large gigantic sign, we couldn't help thinking back to the role the New York Times played in this uranium gong show, which has now played out at Fox for years.

We've discussed it a million times, starting in real time, in June 2015. The New York Times ran an enormous, scary front-page report about the scary uranium deal. It ran an enormous 4400 words, starting on the paper's front page and eating two entire pages inside the paper.

If the work was actually meant as a real news report, it was the worst such report of all time. Here's the question we're going to ask you:

Have you ever seen the New York Times challenged about this going show?

The lead reporter on this gonger was, of course, Jo Becker. We have no idea why anyone with an ounce of sense would ever pay a lick of attention to anything Becker ever wrote again.

That said, Becker's report was an official collaboration with right-wing hack Peter Schweizer—an arrangement the Times has entered into for reasons which haven't been probed by our fiery liberal journalists.

In fact, the scary uranium deal wasn't scary at all. It wasn't engineered by Hillary Clinton. In fact, we know of no evidence that Clinton played any role in approving the deal at all.

Most career liberals have finally said that the hubbub about Uranium One has been the latest pseudo-scandal. But there it still is, all over Fox, and make no mistake:

As has happened so many other times, the ridiculous tale of the scary deal got its heft from the ludicrous work which appeared in the New York Times.

As for the Times, good God!

Over at New York magazine,
Jill Abramson has been discussing the latest fairy tale, in which Justice Thomas would be impeached. Over at Slate, she's wondering how her "generation" could have left the country in such a political mess, with Isaac Chotiner choosing to be polite.

To a very large extent, the political mess to which she refers was created by her own enormously incompetent former newspaper. Luckily, career liberal journalists all understand that such inconvenient truths must be ignored. Careers hang in the balance!

Uranium One gained its cachet in that ludicrous Times report. On cable news, Hayes and Goldstein described it as a "bombshell" that night.

The Times has been doing this forever. So have career liberal journalists.

Hannity played his own role Friday night. Anthropologists tell us that this may be the best our floundering species can do.

They look unhappy when they say this. But none of the academic giants challenge the gloomy consensus:

We just don't seem to be up to the task. The pay-offs are too damn high!

47 comments:

  1. I don't know if ad hominem hurts or helps, but it is certainly the order of the day here, and, with more sadness than rancor, it is impossible to escape the fact Bob Somerby is an idiot.

    If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. And really, neither does Bob Somerby. He has some strange score to settle with evil wise guy liberals, and those who check back in from time to time to see this car accident get nothing but this kind of garbage. And YES, yes, soon enough we will look away for good. I promise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "... soon enough we will look away for good. I promise."

      Ha ha! Oldie but goodie. From what I see below, even Real Greg wants to leave after the last sorry decade. Well, we'll miss your pointed comments, assuredly.

      Leroy

      Delete
    2. "Mark". How about I take my fist your face?

      Delete

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  2. Of course the New York Times report was challenged, at the time.

    Hannity’s report is garbage because the DOJ investigated the Uranium One deal and found no wrongdoing, Trump’s DOJ.

    Had the NY Times printed a retraction it wouldn’t change a word of Hannity’s spiel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Of course the New York Times report was challenged, at the time."

      Really? By what source? Was it the NYT? Give us a msm link, if you please.

      Amateur.

      Leroy

      Delete
    2. https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/joe-conason-clinton-cash-year-whitewater-article-1.2214580

      Delete
    3. Here's the Forbes article challenging the original (1/31/08) NYT article about the bogus uranium deal.

      https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/joe-conason-clinton-cash-year-whitewater-article-1.2214580

      Delete
    4. Sorry, I didn't clear my clipboard from before:

      https://www.forbes.com/2009/01/12/giustra-clinton-kazakhstan-pf-ii-in_rl_0912croesus_inl.html#787365bc28b1

      Delete
    5. Thanks for the links. Bob asks, “Have you ever seen the New York Times challenged about this going (sic) show?”

      My answer is no (because I didn’t really follow the story), but clearly others did – including Joe Conason, whom Bob and I hold in high esteem. Interesting that Conason’s byline seems to coincide with Bob’s posts at the time. As a rhetorical device, Bob’s question clearly failed in this case.

      Leroy

      Delete
    6. Conason published at National Memo which both Somerby and I read at the time.

      Delete
    7. "As a rhetorical device, Bob's question clearly failed in this case."

      And as rhetorical flourish, "Amateur" was a baseless cheap shot.

      Delete
  3. The first sentence explains why Bob has just not been worth much for a decade. He is only interested in holding the NYTs accountable, not Fox News. There are a lot of signs out there that Mueller has a lot of people rattled, and signs that the dreaded Rachel may have been correct all along must drive Bob crazy. I think that’s why he changed the channel.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Greg, some people want Bob to shift his focus. I'm not sure why. The WahoPost has famously self-branded as the "Paper of Record," and the Gray Lady is also viewed as a VERY IMPORTANT purveyor of information.

      Why go after low-hanging fruit like Fox? So many other people are already doing it. And scum like Hannity will glom onto NYT and WahoPost reports if it fits their narrative. So bad reporting never dies in the Fox fever-swamp.

      And Maddow… If she’s correct, about whatever, it certainly isn’t a result of anything she has done to shed light. She’s been unwatchable to me from almost since the beginning. Watching her on a regular basis would drive almost anybody crazy. In that regard, I would like to see Bob focus, well, a little less obsessively on her.

      Leroy

      Delete
    3. I would like to see Bob focus on who pays the media stars he's beating on, and why.

      Delete
    4. 'Why go after low-hanging fruit like Fox? So many other people are already doing it. '

      And nobody ever goes after the NYT, CNN or WaPo ! Not the President, not Fox, not CPAC, not the NRA, not Rush, not Sean. It is up to Bob to soldier on heroically attacking them alone without any fellow travelers, i.e. when he isn't nobly defending Moore and Trump.

      Somerby should be proud of his Trumptard credentials !

      Delete
  4. Hey, what did you expect? What goes around comes around... Fighting fire with fire, smear with smear...

    And in that respect, I must say: this neo-mccarthyism is certainly more amusing than the original one, where the victims just took it and didn't fight back.

    Or, to put it differently: first time as tragedy, second time as farce...

    ReplyDelete
  5. While the original Times Uranium One article is overly long, and sometimes unclear in its presentation of facts, no sane person would come away from the article thinking "Hillary sold out our uranium to Putin in return for bribes to the Clinton Foundation!"
    At best (or worst), the article suggests at least the potential for abuse, but clearly states they are not accusing Hillary of any wrongdoing. The basic facts of the actual government decision-making surrounding Uranium One are present and correct.

    It isn't a very good article, but it's miles away from Hannity's fever swamp depiction of the affair. Nor is it just a cut and paste from Schweitzer's book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think you read articles more carefully than most. In my experience, many Times readers read for tone...they get the message that the trusted Times reporter believes that there is something shady going on...of course, it hasn't (yet) been proved in a court of law, but, nudge, nudge, wink, wink...

      The fact that there really was no substance to the article makes little difference. See Whitewater.

      Delete
  6. Clinton Cash is responsible for Hannity's smear, not the NY Times.

    ReplyDelete
  7. For those of you still skeptical of how much malpractice went into Becker's Uranium One article, let me share the following. (I do not recall whether I got this originally from Bob or elsewhere...but it bears repeating).

    First the short version. A significant part of Becker's 2015 story involved suggestions that Bill Clinton flew to Almaty in 2005 to help Canadian mining magnate (and subsequent Clinton Foundation donor) Frank Giustra buy Uranium One. Strong support for that assertion came from Becker's claim that Clinton flew to Almaty with Giustra on Giustra's private plane. (I know that's not conclusive, but it's pretty much as conclusive as Becker got). The problem is that Becker had published that part of the story before, in 2008, and it had been pretty convincingly refuted by Forbes in 2009 through careful digging through flight plans and flight manifests. Bill Clinton had indeed been in Almaty around the time of a visit by Giustra, but not on the same days, and he had not flown on Giustra's plane, making it hard to link Clinton's visit to Giustra's transaction.

    That would seem to be pretty embarrassing for Becker, right? Another publication convincingly showing that she got that part of the story wrong? I find it hard to believe that she would not have known about the Forbes story ("Hey, Jo...did you see the Forbes article?"), or did not find it wounding enough to remember it. But there she was, repeating the same, debunked allegation in 2015. Recall the time line: 2008 Becker makes the original report; 2009 Forbes debunks it; 2015, Becker reiterates the same, debunked claim. I find it hard to construct a plausible story consistent with those facts that does not make Becker guilty of journalistic malpractice.

    Here are the details that fill out the short version. First, Becker's original, 2008 report, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html

    and here is the "bombshell" 2015 report that so exercises Bob:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

    Giustra posted a rebuttal of the 2015 version of the story:

    http://blog.ceo.ca/2015/04/23/statement-of-frank-giustra/

    ...in which he linked to the Forbes article that he claimed debunked the original, 2008 article:

    https://www.forbes.com/2009/01/12/giustra-clinton-kazakhstan-pf-ii-in_rl_0912croesus_inl.html

    Oddly, I find myself unable to follow that link to the Forbes article, but back in 2015, I did follow a link (I believe from this same Giustra rebuttal statement) to a Forbes article that I read. My recollection of the Forbes article is that it did indeed very plausibly refute Becker's claim that Clinton flew with Giustra in Giustra's plane, and established that Clinton's stay in Almaty was not the same as Giustra's. I don't recall whether there was overlap between Clinton's stay and Giustra's.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. See the "Not Perry" 950 comment above.

      Delete
    2. Thanks, Not Perry. Your link seems to be a longer string than mine...but neither yours nor mine seems to work for me. I hope I just need to restart, or there is some temporary problem at Forbes. Otherwise I might start to worry about a paranoia diagnosis.

      Delete
    3. Your input here helps a lot, thanks.

      Delete
    4. Nobody cares who flew in whose plane, Mark.

      Bill Clinton lobbied Nazarbayev on behalf of Giustra, and then got $100 mil from Giustra, and that's a fact.

      'Debunking' minor irrelevant details is only good for the true-believers/zombie-followers.

      Delete
    5. Mao - it's a fair question as to how important the "shared plane" lie is. At some level it matters not at all, since nothing actually alleged (as opposed to insinuated) in the article is actually wrong.

      However, 1) it seemed important enough to Becker to repeat, 2) It's the most compelling detail making Becker's assertions seem plausible. Reading Becker's 2015 article, she asserts that Bill Clinton assisted Giustra in closing the 2005 deal, but presents no actual evidence of that. The assertion that Bill flew into Almaty on Giustra's plane is by far the most telling detail that makes the insinuation of Clinton's involvement in the deal seem plausible...so I think the lie is pretty important in clothing the article in what little authority it possesses. Try reading it again, knowing that the assertion of the shared plane is probably a lie.

      Now try reading Giustra's rebuttal. If we accept his assertions as fact, then the whole discussion of the 2005 deal becomes silly...Giustra tells us that, in fact, WJC had no role in the 2005 deal (not that it's clear that there would be anything wrong with it if he had), and Giustra sold his interest in Uranium One long before HRC became SoS. But, of course, people lie, and not just NYT reporters. Should we believe Giustra, or Becker? Of the two, I have to say that Becker's plane lie seems to make Giustra the more believable...and his material assertions about the dates of sale of U1 are presumably checkable.

      So, Mao, what are we to make of your assertion: "Bill Clinton lobbied Nazarbayev on behalf of Giustra, and then got $100 mil from Giustra, and that's a fact."

      Did Bill Clinton lobby Nazarbayev on behalf of Giustra? It's actually worth quoting the key paragraphs from Becker in their entirety:

      "...Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra orchestrated his first big uranium deal, with Mr. Clinton at his side.

      "The two men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra’s private jet to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where they dined with the authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. [...deleted criticism of WJC relating to human rights monitoring, but nothing to do with U1...]

      "Within days of the visit, Mr. Giustra’s fledgling company, UrAsia Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal giving it stakes in three uranium mines controlled by the state-run uranium agency Kazatomprom"

      See? Becker never actually asserts that WJC lobbied on behalf of U1. But you have to read incredibly carefully to see that, because "....with Mr. Clinton at his side.", and because "The two men had flown aboard Mr. Giustra’s private jet...".

      So...did WJC lobby N for G? G says no, Clintons say no, and Becker actually doesn't say yes, but you think you know he did, because of the plane lie. See how it works?

      Delete
    6. Mao - It's also worth saying something about the second part of your assertion: "...and then got $100 mil from Giustra". Well...the Clinton foundation got $100 mil, and (Becker 2015) it got it in 2008, three years after the possible lobbying event. Three years is something of a delay for a corrupt quid pro quo, although I guess I cannot rule out corrupt intent if you require proof of innocence for every act. But the distinction between "Clinton" and "the Clinton Foundation" really is important. The foundation is a charity ostensibly constructed to channel money to do good works around the world. It presumably publishes audited accounts, and diverting the money to the Clintons themselves would presumably be a crime. It's tax-exempt, so using the money for non-charitable purposes would be a violation of tax law. I don't want to say that Giustra's contributing to the Clinton foundation did not have value to the Clintons, but it is a very long way from "Clinton got $100 mil". It's much closer to Bill having a favorite charity, like "Save the Children", and Giustra contributing $100 mil to that; the difference is that in this case the charity had Clinton in its name. I don't want to say that that's nothing...but it's a very long way from Giustra giving Clinton $100 mil.

      So, to summarize the 2005-related events: Clinton was in Almaty around the same time as one of Giustra's visits, the Clinton's and Giustra deny that he he was involved in the deal, while Becker lies in a way that leaves you with the impression that he was, even though she doesn't actually say it. Three years later, Giustra gives a bucket of money to a Charity with Clinton's name on it.

      Delete
    7. So, when Mao says, "that's a fact," it may not be a fact at all. That Mao. What a troll!

      Delete
    8. Indeed it may not be a fact...but Mao is the victim of sophisticated propaganda...slippery writing that is designed to deceive. Many of my decent, Democratic friends and relatives get taken in the same way, so I wouldn't want to call him names.

      As best I can tell, Bob S is essentially alone in showing us how we are all deceived by this kind of journalistic malpractice.

      Delete
    9. There is no obvious reason for Becker to lie. What she did there is called 'investigative journalism'. There was no anti-Clinton lobby or organized smear campaign in 2008; no reason whatsoever for Becker to risk her reputation. So, "while Becker lies in a way that leaves you with the impression" doesn't sound logical to me.

      The same, in this situation, obviously can't be said about Clinton and Giustra.

      "the Clinton foundation got $100 mil, and (Becker 2015) it got it in 2008, three years after the possible lobbying event"

      Well, $100 is not spare change to take out of your pocket and throw into a hat. It seems quite plausible to infer that it was pledged a few years before the actual transfer.

      As for 'oh, but it's for the children!' argument, I don't think we need to stoop to this level, do we?

      Delete
    10. Mao - "There was no anti-Clinton lobby or organized smear campaign in 2008". That is an assertion that readers of this blog would find surprising. Bob has made a strong case that there has been an anti-Clinton smear campaign since they first arrived in public life, and one conducted by the mainstream media, very much including the Times.

      "There is no obvious reason for Becker to lie". The motivation for the Times' Clinton antipathy is indeed obscure, but nonetheless it's there. Again, see this blog. For any journalist, there is, regrettably, a motivation to risk a lie if the lie turns your nothing-burger article into a "bombshell".

      The reason may be obscure, but why does motive matter if the evidence is there that she did lie? My assertion that she lied is based on 1) her having previously published the assertion, 2) its persuasive debunking in the Forbes article linked (but possibly unreachable at present, alas) and 3) the implausibility of Becker not knowing of the debunking. I will grant that it is possible, although implausible, that Becker did not know of the debunking or forgot about it, in which case she was merely badly wrong. I suppose we should also consider the possibility that the debunking is wrong. My recollection of the Forbes article is that it did a thorough job of demonstrating that Clinton was not on Giustra's flight to Almaty.

      Regarding your link to Conason's article, it does look to be inconsistent with my recollection of the (sadly unreachable, at least for me) Forbes article. My recollection is that the Forbes article was a very thorough job, so I would give much greater weight to Forbes...Conason could well be repeating other journalists, possibly Becker.

      Delete
    11. If the page I linked to is not a hoax, it can't be Conason repeating Becker, as it's from "Joe Conason,"The Dawning of a Different Sort of Post-Presidency," Esquire Magazine, December 1, 2005."

      As for the alleged motivations, I do indeed remember establishment's animosity towards, specifically, Bill Clinton - during his presidency (though obviously nowhere near what we see now vis-a-vis Trump), but to hit him in 2008, a decade later? With false accusations? Nah.

      Delete
    12. According to wikipedia, he was on that plane:
      "Conason profiled Bill Clinton for Esquire magazine in December 2005, after traveling to Africa with the former president and covering the inaugural conference of the Clinton Global Initiative.[29] The cover story, titled “The Third Term: The Dawning of a Different Sort of Post-Presidency", was later included in Best American Political Writing of 2006, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press.[30]"

      http://archive.esquire.com/issue/20051201 - paywall.

      Delete
    13. Mao - You are right, Conason cannot be quoting Becker.

      "According to wikipedia, he was on that plane"...I'm not sure I understand your argument. I don't think the Wikipedia quote is saying anything about flights to Almaty is it?

      Sadly, I'm too cheap to cross the Esquire paywall.

      Delete
    14. You are an ignorant ass, Mao. Nobody ever denied he left Kazakstan with Giustra on his way to India.

      The point in dispute was which the misrepresentation in the story that they arrived together in Kazakhstan on Giustra's plane.

      You're only about 4 years behind on this story, I guess the mail is slow in Latvia.

      But don't worry, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is getting right on this.
      The bodies are buried in the pizza restaurant basement with the Rose Law billing records next to Vince Foster's corpse.

      Delete
    15. mm - You added an important point to the discussion...Clinton may well have left with Giusta, even if he didn't arrive. To be honest, that does add a little to Becker's thesis, although it is fully consistent with Clinton having been there on other business and hitching a ride out with Giusta.

      You and I, mm, for a whole bunch of reasons only some of which involve planes, think this whole story from Becker is a fog of empty insinuation dishonestly written. But Mao seems to come from a different starting point. This is an opportunity for us to persuade him...and, heaven forbid, we might learn something from him. Perhaps there are parts of your post that wouldn't play much of a role in persuading Mao. Perhaps your post might even have been more persuasive if you had left those parts out?

      Delete
    16. Yeah, you're right: wikipedia talks about the trip to Africa, not China; I was reading too fast. The Esquire quote says "...private jet, owned by Frank Giustra, the former chairman of Lions Gate Entertainment. It waited to transport Clinton and his entourage, including Giustra, to Central Asia and then on to China".

      Anyway, from cursory googling I can't find any more specifics; maybe I'll try again later. But I'm sure Becker did the due diligence, with her access to lexisnexis and other tools...

      Delete
    17. Mark, thank you for that. Knock yourself out with Mao. I've been through this too many times to trust they have any actual intellectual honesty. This whole thing is a ridiculous illogical smear from top to bottom. Next time you discuss with Mao, ask him why the Great Donald J. Trump doesn't just seize those poor low grade uranium mines today, immediately if the deal was so bad for the US. Go ahead and ask him. bwahahahaha!!!!

      Delete
    18. The plane lie, Mark? THE PLANE LIE????
      From the 2008 NYT article:

      "In separate written responses, both men (Giustra and Clinton)said Mr. Giustra traveled with Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan, India and China to see first-hand the philanthropic work done by his foundation."

      It was not until 2009, in an article in Forbes, weitten by the brother of a Private Investigator who worked for Bill Clinton, that the "manifest" was "discovered" by a "journalist" and reported upon. And even then they did not dispute the two left Kazakhstan in Giustra's plane.

      Delete
    19. It's so cute how you use quotation marks around the words manifest and discovered.

      I'm sure you'll be able to produce those "separate written responses" very easily so we can see who is really lying, eh?

      Delete
    20. Anonymous - Two things to note: 1) your quote from Becker is Becker's paraphrase of those separate written responses, it is not a quote from those responses and 2) even Becker's paraphrase doesn't actually say they arrived on the same plane into Almaty on the September '05 trip.

      I know that could sound incredibly nit-picky. If you trust Becker, it must seem absurd. However, I count myself among those who have been misled too many times by mainstream journalists, and have learned to read what they say very closely. The process followed by Becker and too many others seems to be 1) decide on the narrative to be conveyed and 2) write the story in such a way that leaves the almost unavoidable impression that the chosen narrative is true, even if the evidence to support that narrative is weak.

      I expect you find my skepticism absurd, Anonymous...but read again my post of 2/21 10:40am. Did Becker say that WJC lobbied N on behalf of G? Or did she somehow persuade you that the lobbying happened without actually saying it?

      And did the false story about Clinton and Giustra arriving on the same plane play a part in leaving you with that false impression?

      One more data point on Becker's ability to paraphrase the subjects of her article. The 2015 Becker article contains the following:

      '(In a statement issued after this article appeared online, Mr. Giustra said he was “extremely proud” of his charitable work with Mr. Clinton, and he urged the media to focus on poverty, health care and “the real challenges of the world.”)'

      Although the on-line version of the NYT article contains many links to supporting articles, it does not link to Giustra's statement, which is here:

      http://blog.ceo.ca/2015/04/23/statement-of-frank-giustra/

      Giustra's statement was apparently posted on 4/23, the same day of the NYT article, and seven days prior to the last correction to the NYT article, so it would not seem to have been difficult for the Times to link to Giustra's statement.

      Read Giustra's response. Does Becker paragraph seem to you like a fair paraphrase? Is it worthy of note that Giustra's response itself links to the Forbes article that seems to debunk Becker's claim about the flight?

      I personally found that Giustra's response (especially the Forbes link) seriously undermined my confidence in Becker's article...is it possible that she left out the link because she felt the same way?

      Do you not feel that you have been manipulated and deceived by Becker? I do. Makes me want to take a shower.

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    21. So where do we stand on the truth or falsehood of Clinton arriving in Almaty on Giustra's plane on the date in question?

      We have Becker's unsourced assertion in both the 2008 and 2015 articles. (Unsourced: we are just told...we don't know what evidence Becker has)

      We have an unsourced quote from a 2005 article by Joe Conason (found by Mao, above)...with the Conason article now behind a pay wall.

      We have the Forbes article from 2009 (I can now access it again!) which presents a seemingly thorough analysis of the circumstances surrounding the whole U1 acquisition, and cites documentation to support the assertion that Clinton arrived four days after Giustra, and stayed less than a day.

      To my mind the Forbes article seems far more authoritative than the other articles...it is the only article that sources its assertions about the itineraries of the principals.

      If I were to guess (this is pure speculation!)...Conason made a relatively unimportant (for him) mistake...Becker picked it up and wove it into a tale she could insinuate but not support, and the "Flying in with Giustra" error became a story too good to check.

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  8. Our society built around satisfying the insatiable desires of a master race of plutocrats. The goal of our plutocrats is to own and control everything. Nothing else is permitted to get in the way of that goal. Our government is the property of plutocrats--so is our mass media. All our institution are either controlled by plutocrats or heavily manipulated by them to serve their interests.

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