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May 21, 2020 | www.unz.com
"Nature seems made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Hatred alone is immortal." ~William Hazlitt, 1826
No human feeling has been more maligned, slandered, abused, and misappropriated in contemporary culture than the humble and dignified hatred. Wars have been declared against it. Legislation seeks everywhere to strangle it. It has been presented as the source of all evils, and as the great enemy of our time. This primordial emotion is the red-headed stepchild of our contemporary psychological spectrum and the exile of our political language, ever-present but covered up out of embarrassment, shame, or subterfuge. Entire categories of crime and speech have been segregated under the rubric of Hate, and set aside for especially harsh punishment. "Hate facts" are provable realities allegedly tainted with hate, and thus represent aspects of material existence deemed so awful they are denied despite their evident truth.
Hate, it would seem, just can't get a break. Few are willing to speak on its behalf, even among those classed primarily as "haters." The latter are apt to protest to deaf ears that they don't hate anyone but merely love their own kind. All of this denial and disavowal occurs despite the fact hate is as crucial to human existence, if not more so, as love. It is omnipresent.
Without hate, you have no history and no literature, no passion and no capacity for action. The plot of the Iliad essentially revolves around the wait for Achilles to reach an optimal state of hatred that then morphs into martial ecstasy and final victory. Imagine Hamlet merely possessing a mediocre dislike of his uncle Claudius. Without Ahab's detestation of the whale there is no Moby Dick . Even if it were true that love makes the world go round, it would appear that hate greases the axle. It's time for an exploration from a justified hater.
The Genealogy of Postmodern Morals
The origin of the contemporary war on hate is worthy of some consideration. Religion, contra Nietzsche, doesn't offer a complete explanation. Take the Bible, for instance, which for the most part offers no injunction against enmity, intense dislike, or revenge except in cases of silent resentment in fraternal, co-ethnic, or communal relationships (Lev. 19:17, 1 John 3:15). The Hebrew god is said to be a hater of lying (Ps. 119:163) and the Psalmist professes to hate his enemies (Ps.139:22) with a "perfect hatred." Ecclesiastes (Ecc. 3:8) mentions, without judgment or further commentary, that there is "a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace." The entire history of the Jewish people can be read as involving a quite shameless hatred for the rest of humanity. The only exception in the Bible is located within the "love thy enemy" section of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:44) which, given that it was most probably written while the persecutions under Nero were ongoing, was likely inserted to both promote non-violent resistance and represent a further denial that Christians were a danger to Roman authority (alongside "render under Caesar" etc., also in Matthew). It sits uneasily with much of the rest of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, which makes Nietzsche's critique of the entirety of these religions as exemplifying unique slave moralities, based almost entirely on amplifications of the concepts of loving one's enemy and "turning the other cheek," seem rather tendentious. [1] I tend to concur with Roger Scruton's assessment of Nietzsche's fixation here that it was both "obsessive, if not tedious." See Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy (1995).
Opposition to hatred, and being kind to one's enemies, can as easily be found among the ancient Stoics and the Buddhists. For Nietzsche, although he focused overwhelmingly on Judaism and Christianity, these were all positions of life-denial, weakness, and dishonesty. Certainly these responses were weaker than simply hating your enemy. For the Stoics, the goal was individual happiness, and resentment and intense dislike were viewed simply as burdensome barriers to that goal -- better to be rid of the enemy, yes, but also to be rid of negative feelings for them. For the Buddhists, the soft, supple branch that bends with the fall of heavy snow is more likely to survive winter than the brittle branch that resists and then snaps under increasing weight. Giving way, if necessary, to enemies, was therefore viewed as a form of tactical strength and a means to survival and happiness.
These positions are ultimately weak and evasive in my opinion, because they reject the principles of overcoming obstacles and engaging in direct competition with opponents. Hatred is only a psychological burden when it can't be fulfilled, thus involving not only hate of the other for their provocation, but hate of the self for the inability to obtain resolution. The mental burden of hatred is found predominantly in the latter, and many flee from it into perverse and ultimately insincere forms of forgiveness. When they "forgive their enemies" they are rather forgiving themselves for not overcoming their enemies . [2] This kind of thinking has expanded rapidly in modernity because justice has become an increasingly watered down and impersonal affair in which individual access to adequate retribution is frustrated. The Stoic and Buddhist approaches are therefore weak not simply because of their superficial rejection of hatred, but because their rejections are themselves evidence of intrinsic weakness in the rejector. If history tells us only one thing, however, it is that no man, and no religion, is immune to the arising of hate, and few escape it altogether. Differences in outward expression, in Christianity, Buddhism, Stoicism, or Judaism thereafter are mere points of tactics.
Unlike Nietzsche, I don't think specific answers for our current situation can be found so clearly in religion, or even in the distant past. Hate, and the flight from hate among the weak and cowardly, have been with us from the beginning of time, even if it is worsening in the present age. Contemporary hypocrisy and widespread dishonesty in relation to hatred is primarily a result of decadence in modernity...
anonymous [521] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 7:28 pm GMT
@brabantian Sounds like this dolt plagiarized speech on war given by former NYT war reporter Chris Hedges.Art , says: Show Comment May 20, 2020 at 7:33 pm GMThttps://www.youtube.com/embed/OuBb0XVBnLI?start=306&feature=oembed
Hate is found in most every scientific list of human emotions. Hate is natural. The universe put hate into our list of human options. Sometimes hate is needed to spur action. Most people are not inclined to violence. But there comes a time when violence is called for – and hate is appropriate.Disgust is another human emotion...
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Oct 07, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
In a fiery speech announcing her decision, Collins ripped unsupported claims by Avenatti's client, Julie Swetnick, that Kavanaugh facilitated a Cosby-esque "gang rape" operation while in high school.
Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important . I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that, when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape .
This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others . That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness. -Sen. Susan Collins
Paracelsus , 38 minutes ago link
FBaggins , 1 hour ago linkI didn't really care much about the stuff alleged to have been done by Kavanaugh thirty-five years ago. Arguing with a close family friend I stated that there was nothing I found more tiresome than the old lawyers tactic of springing something on you at the last possible minute, leaving a steaming pile of turds in the middle of your desk, and then expecting to be taken seriously. Decorum? Rules of debate? How about the laws of discovery, sharing info amongst colleagues?
Just because this was not a criminal trial is no reason to throw out the rules for policy making, the nomination process, which both sides have adhered to in the past. People were comparing this to the Anita Hill fiasco during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Delay, interrupt, stall, maximum media exposure. Never any evidence or criminal charges to point to.
In criminal trials there is the process of discovery by which the admission of evidence at the last minute is strongly ill advised, and can result in it being tossed out. Sen. Feinstein would be aware of all the rules and procedures, but she feels above it all.
bh2 , 3 hours ago linkHey Avenatti! If you and your client had any idea of what the truth is no one would every have heard of her or of you. Don't give us this ******** that you were just representing your client. If you had a brain you would have known she was FOS from the get go, and if you were honest you never would have represented her. So what is it? Are you just stupid or are you dishonest, or both?
The Terrible Sweal , 3 hours ago linkPeople who make salacious claims unconfirmed or outright denied by their own named "witnesses" tend to get sued for defamation. And the lawyers they rode in on.
... ... ...
platyops , 4 hours ago linkThree women advance fabricated allegations and the #resistance, Demonrats, Third Wavers and cucks blame one male lawyer.
They just can't learn.
Debt Slave , 4 hours ago linkMichael Avenatti is not a nice man at all. He was a factor in making the accusations seem like a circus. No one takes him seriously as he slinks around the gutters.
trutherator , 5 hours ago linkI sure am glad that Avenatti was stupid enough to represent a lunatic like Swetnick.
RictaviousPorkchop , 6 hours ago linkAvenatti is the scapegoat. The Ford story was already fast breaking down, and the secret polygraph and the secret therapist notes and her ex-boyfriend should have made more noise in the Senate.
... ... ...
KingTut , 6 hours ago linkThis filth needs to be disbarred.
inosent , 7 hours ago linkThey embraced this puke and revelled in his garbage accusations. Now they need a scapegoat, and he's it. God forbid Feinstein get raked over the coals for screwing this thing up. The was a political hit, and everyone knew it. But the GOP are so spineless that a high-school-drunken-grope-fest brought them to their knees. Fortunately, the Dems stayed true to form and blew themselves up.
What I do not understand is how could they be so stupid as to endorse the Avenatti slime factory in the first place? TONE DEAF.
Kidbuck , 5 hours ago linkAvenatti needs to be disbarred. To file a complaint for his breach of professional responsibility, suborning perjury, and engaging in acts of moral turpitude:
http://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/forms/2017_ComplaintFormENG_201701.pdf
If enough complaints are filed with the CA state bar, he may get disbarred.
Attorneys ALREADY have a really bad rep. Part of professional responsibility is to uphold the integrity of the legal profession. The ONLY thing Avenatti did was to make every attorney look like a complete shyster sleazeball, which given I just took the bar exam and will probably become an attorney soon, I find immensely offensive.
Here is his license information:
John_Coltrane , 6 hours ago linkThe MSM gave these clowns face time and the morons of America watched and believed...
TemporarySecurity , 5 hours ago linkThe Demonrats used false sexual allegations against Roy Moore coupled with ballot box cheating (their typical mode) to win a senate seat in conservative Alabama. So, since their main national platform of open borders is so repugnant to any normal taxpaying voter, this is their only strategy. They simply got caught. All the allegations against both Kavanaugh and Moore were fabricated and the proof is the Soros' paid lawyers who represented them all. And Feinstein and Schumer conspired in this farce. And independent voters know it!
They're just pissed they got caught in their fraud and this energized the R. base which will lead to a red wave in a few weeks. And just think of the political commercial possibilities for any Demonrat senator hoping to prevail if they vote against Kavanaugh. I expect the final confirmation vote won't as close as the vote for cloture for this reason.
MoreFreedom , 6 hours ago linkBe careful, Roy Moore was a different story. There was evidence including him saying he liked to date high school age girls as a 30 year old along with multiple other people who remembered what was alleged. Not just Democrat operatives. Morals were not that different then than now. Was he guilty of a crime no, could reasonable people still dislike his morals sure. I grew up close to that era and thought the college age kids hanging around HS girls was nasty. Moore verified as a 30 year old he liked them young.
Ford 0 corroborating evidence. By lumping in Moore with Kavanaugh you are giving credence to believe the victim because all you are following the "patriarchy" of believing the accused regardless of evidence.
Totally_Disillusioned , 7 hours ago linkThe Democrats have a long history of making last minute sexual misconduct allegations against their political opponents, always without any evidence or corroboration. And sexual misconduct allegations that pale in comparison to what a lot of Democrats have been alleged to do (rape allegations against Clinton, Kennedy having an affair that left a woman dead, John Conyers for settling sexual harassment allegations with taxpayer money, Hillary for trashing victims, or consider Weinstein and other famous/rich Democrat donors or newsmen). I'd bet most of these allegations against Republicans were simply made up for political purposes because they were plausible, couldn't be disproven, and couldn't be proven. Ford's allegations fit the pattern.
The charges are always last minute, to deny the accused an opportunity to defend themselves. Kavanaugh provided an excellent defense that would be good court room drama in a movie, when no one in the GOP was willing to defend him, and too afraid of being accused of not believing a victim and attacking them.
What's really going on are the Democrats in charge, are looking to deflect the attention from what they did, to Avanetti because Avanetti did the same, except the charges of his client, weren't believable, even though they couln't be proven or disproven. They don't want to take the blame, for what voters might do in the midterms.
One thing's for sure, you don't see Democrats calling for indicting and prosecuting false accusers. They're teaching people to bear false witness for their personal purposes.
putupjob , 7 hours ago link" Gang rape mastermind " might have been a bridge too far"
was this great or what?
avenatti gave the diversion, the clutter, the political sideshow so that all charges could be swept away and completely fake and uncorroborated. there was no provable basis for the ford charges, but the crazy swetnick stories simplified brooming the whole thing.
we can only hope that avenatti will be back in 2020, to run for president, and to come marching with his parade of **** stars and "wronged" women who spend all their time performing in strip clubs.
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Dec 08, 2016 | www.sott.net
Once in a while, it's normal to have a fleeting moment where you question your own sanity, like when you're severely sleep deprived or stressed out . But if a relationship leaves you constantly second-guessing your own instincts and feelings, you may be a victim of a sophisticated form of emotional abuse : gaslighting. Like other types of abuse, gaslighting can happen in all sorts of relationships, including personal, romantic, and professional.
Ben Michaelis, PhD, a New York City-based clinical psychologist, has worked with victims of gaslighting. For one of his patients-we'll call her Marie-the gaslighting began when her husband shouted another woman's name during sex. When she tried to discuss the incident with him, he flatly denied what he'd said and told Marie she was hearing things. Marie figured she must have had too much to drink. But then the lying continued: Marie's husband would change his alibi constantly , and when Marie questioned him, he'd say she was acting delusional. It wasn't until almost a year later when Marie realized her husband had been hiding an affair the whole time.
"[Gaslighting] is like someone saying the sky is green over and over again, and at first you'll be like 'no, no,'" says Gail Saltz, MD a psychiatrist and host of the podcast The Power of Different . "Then over time the person starts to manipulate you into saying 'I guess I can't really see what color the sky is.' It's just this sense of unreality."
Acknowledging you're a victim of gaslighting like Marie did can be tricky at first, says Michaelis, who is the author of Your Next Big Thing: 10 Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy. "Initially, if someone is insisting on a reality that is different from your own, you'll think, Why was I off that day? Was I tired? "
As the gaslighting continues, victims begin to question themselves and their judgment more and more. Michaelis says this can go on for months or even years before they realize they're being gaslighted. "People who experience gaslighting may show obsessive-compulsive symptoms because they want to constantly check themselves and recheck themselves," says Dr. Michaelis. The confidence-depleting nature of gaslighting could contribute to increased anxiety in many or all aspects of a victim's life, not only in the relationship. Many gaslighting victims berate themselves or feel the need to apologize all the time, explains Dr. Saltz.
Gaslighting can manifest in a workplace environment as well. "Your boss may use gaslighting to hide a mistake or cover up information they didn't mean to share," says Michaelis. "It can also be a passive-aggressive gesture used among peers who are competing."
If you realize you're being gaslighted, the first thing you need to recognize is that a gaslighter may not be conscious of the effects of their actions, especially if they have issues with being wrong or out of control. In this case, confronting the gaslighter could work. Michaelis suggests conducting all conversations you have with the gaslighter in a recorded format, like through email or text. Then, when gaslighting occurs, tell the person what they originally said. "If they continue do deny what they said, you can supply the recorded evidence so they have a concrete understanding of what happened," says Michaelis. This method works best when confronting a friend or partner.
In professional relationships, Michaelis suggests reaching out to a third party, like human resources, which can make the confrontation more objective. You can take this route in your personal relationships as well by enlisting a friend or family member to help. "If you find it happening to you, be thoughtful of the person's motivations," Michaelis says. "They don't usually do it out of pure ill-will. It usually correlates with trying to cover something up, so first try to repair the relationship if it's worth it."
If confrontation fails and ending the relationship is an option, Dr. Saltz recommends doing so. Michaelis agrees: "All relationships are changeable. Maybe not immediately, but they are changeable or severable if need be ," he says.
If you have to stick it out with a gaslighter, though, try to boost your confidence with the support of good friends. "If you're having a hard time changing the situation, they can bolster your reality otherwise," says Michaelis. In a work environment, you should also be wary of what information you share with a gaslighter . Michaelis suggests withholding personal life details with a gaslighting co-worker or boss to protect yourself from emotional abuse in the office.
No matter which method you choose, it's important to take control of reality again, says Dr. Saltz. This involves setting limits that stop gaslighting attempts in their tracks . For example, if your boss calls you overly sensitive when you ask, "Why won't you let me work on big company projects?" demand true feedback rather than accepting blame on your character. "It's holding the line for what you're wanting to achieve," Dr. Saltz says, "and not buying into accusations intended to knock down self-confidence."
Comment: Many psychiatric professionals agree that even strong, intelligent, confident, and stable people can become vulnerable to this form of emotional manipulation. Intelligence and emotions are not the same thing and a gaslighters' key maneuver is to prey on emotion rather than intelligence. Gaslighting is a specific, conscious, deliberate tactic of manipulation and control.
- My husband convinced me I was insane
- Behind the Headlines: Predators Among Us - Interview With Dr. Anna Salter
- Are you easy prey for a psychopath?
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Oct 05, 2018 | smallbusiness.chron.com
If you are accused of harassment in the workplace, it is important to carefully consider your next moves. Your initial reaction might be to vehemently defend yourself against the claims; however, try to keep a cool and calm head and approach the situation professionally. The more hotly you protest the charges and the angrier you get, the less inclined people may be to listen to your side of the story. Talk to a Lawyer
Book a consultation with a lawyer. If the matter can't be resolved via simple mediation within the workplace, you have to be sure to protect yourself and your job. A lawyer can advise you of your legal rights and give you an idea of how to best proceed with such allegations presented against you.
Write it DownProvide a written account of what happened from your point of view. While this may differ from the account of the person claiming the harassment, it is important that you at least get your side of the story out. A written statement doing so gives human resources and/or management something to refer to during the investigation.
Tell the TruthBe honest. If you know you did what the accusers say you did, be honest and the ensuing punishment may be less harsh. Talk to your manager about what happened, admit to what you did wrong and provide solutions for how to avoid further incidents. Most important: stop the "harassing" behavior immediately. The situation may worsen if it continues, whether you feel it is actual harassment or not.
Provide WitnessesProvide an alibi and/or witnesses, if the claims are not true. If someone says you harassed them at a time when you know you were in a meeting or talking to someone in his office, then say so. Supply the name of any witnesses who can provide you an alibi. If there were other people around at the time that the alleged harassment took place, ask them to speak up on your behalf.
Stay CalmAvoid retaliating in any way. Particularly if you have been falsely accused, you may feel angry, frustrated and more emotional than usual because of what you are going through. Don't take any adverse reaction against the person that made the allegations or do anything that might be perceived as retaliatory.
Draw Attention to Your HistoryGive an accounting of your track record with the company. If you've been accused of something you know you didn't do and you have a clean personnel file, explain to your manager that you've been with the company "X" amount of years, have never had a problem with another employee and have always treated others with the utmost respect. Your record could work in your favor.
Consult with HRConsult with your human resources representative to determine how to best proceed according to company policy. Explain your side of the story and focus on what you can do to resolve the matter quickly and focus on your job. A human resources rep might be able to mediate in the matter and get it settled without having to take things further; she may also advise you of the steps you need to take or explain that there is nothing more you can do while the company investigates.
Tip
- Whatever you do, don't confront the accuser. This may provide additional fodder for the allegations against you and anything you say might be misconstrued and used against you later.
- Also, don't discuss the case with other people in the workplace, as the gossip may in turn spur the allegations against you.
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Sep 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Victor Davis Johnson via NationalReview.com,
Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.
George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are living it right now.
Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its "resistance" is undermining an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the proper president would be elected -- the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology. Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy- or girlfriend, or co-workers.
But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford's accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In Orwell's world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry, rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Instead, regimented ideology -- the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of one's life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality -- warps everything from the use of language to private life.
Oceania's RulesSenator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election year.
Rejecting Kavanaugh proved a hard task given that he had a long record of judicial opinions and writings -- and there was nothing much in them that would indicate anything but a sharp mind, much less any ideological, racial, or sexual intolerance. His personal life was impeccable, his family admirable.
Kavanaugh was no combative Robert Bork, but congenial, and he patiently answered all the questions asked of him, despite constant demonstrations and pre-planned street-theater interruptions from the Senate gallery and often obnoxious grandstanding by "I am Spartacus" Democratic senators.
So Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed unless a bombshell revelation derailed the vote. And so we got a bombshell.
Weeks earlier, Senator Diane Feinstein had received a written allegation against Kavanaugh of sexual battery by an accuser who wished to remain anonymous. Feinstein sat on it for nearly two months, probably because she thought the charges were either spurious or unprovable. Until a few days ago, she mysteriously refused to release the full text of the redacted complaint , and she has said she does not know whether the very accusations that she purveyed are believable. Was she reluctant to memorialize the accusations by formally submitting them to the Senate Judiciary Committee, because doing so makes Ford subject to possible criminal liability if the charges prove demonstrably untrue?
The gambit was clearly to use the charges as a last-chance effort to stop the nomination -- but only if Kavanaugh survived the cross examinations during the confirmation hearing. Then, in extremis , Feinstein finally referenced the charge, hoping to keep it anonymous, but, at the same time, to hint of its serious nature and thereby to force a delay in the confirmation. Think something McCarthesque, like "I have here in my hand the name . . ."
Delay would mean that the confirmation vote could be put off until after the midterm election, and a few jeopardized Democratic senators in Trump states would not have to go on record voting no on Kavanaugh. Or the insidious innuendos, rumor, and gossip about Kavanaugh would help to bleed him to death by a thousand leaks and, by association, tank Republican chances at retaining the House. (Republicans may or may not lose the House over the confirmation circus, but they most surely will lose their base and, with it, the Congress if they do not confirm Kavanaugh.)
Feinstein's anonymous trick did not work. So pressure mounted to reveal or leak Ford's identity and thereby force an Anita-Hill–like inquest that might at least show old white men Republican senators as insensitive to a vulnerable and victimized woman.
The problem, of course, was that, under traditional notions of jurisprudence, Ford's allegations simply were not provable. But America soon discovered that civic and government norms no longer follow the Western legal tradition. In Orwellian terms, Kavanaugh was now at the mercy of the state. He was tagged with sexual battery at first by an anonymous accuser, and then upon revelation of her identity, by a left-wing, political activist psychology professor and her more left-wing, more politically active lawyer.
Newspeak and DoublethinkStatue of limitations? It does not exist. An incident 36 years ago apparently is as fresh today as it was when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford 15.
Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. Kavanaugh is accused and thereby guilty. The accuser faces no doubt. In Orwellian America, the accused must first present his defense, even though he does not quite know what he is being charged with. Then the accuser and her legal team pour over his testimony to prepare her accusation.
Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. Ford could name neither the location of the alleged assault nor the date or time. She had no idea how she arrived or left the scene of the alleged crime. There is no physical evidence of an attack. And such lacunae in her memory mattered no longer at all.
Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. Ford said to her therapist 6 years ago (30 years after the alleged incident) that there were four would-be attackers, at least as recorded in the therapist's notes.
But now she has claimed that there were only two assaulters: Kavanaugh and a friend. In truth, all four people -- now including a female -- named in her accusations as either assaulters or witnesses have insisted that they have no knowledge of the event, much less of wrongdoing wherever and whenever Ford claims the act took place. That they deny knowledge is at times used as proof by Ford's lawyers that the event 36 years was traumatic.
An incident at 15 is so seared into her lifelong memory that at 52 Ford has no memory of any of the events or details surrounding that unnamed day, except that she is positive that 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, along with four? three? two? others, was harassing her. She has no idea where or when she was assaulted but still assures that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were drunk, but that she and the others (?) merely had only the proverbial teenage "one beer." Most people are more likely to know where they were at a party than the exact number of alcoholic beverages they consumed -- but not so much about either after 36 years.
Testimony? No longer relevant. It doesn't matter that Kavanaugh and the other alleged suspect both deny the allegations and have no memory of being in the same locale with Ford 36 years ago. In sum, all the supposed partiers, both male and female, now swear, under penalty of felony, that they have no memory of any of the incidents that Ford claims occurred so long ago. That Ford cannot produce a single witness to confirm her narrative or refute theirs is likewise of no concern. So far, she has singularly not submitted a formal affidavit or given a deposition that would be subject to legal exposure if untrue.
Again, the ideological trumps the empirical. "All women must be believed" is the testament, and individuals bow to the collective. Except, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, there are ideological exceptions -- such as Bill Clinton, Keith Ellison, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Biden. The slogan of Ford's psychodrama is "All women must be believed, but some women are more believable than others." That an assertion becomes fact due to the prevailing ideology and gender of the accuser marks the destruction of our entire system of justice.
Rights of the accused? They too do not exist. In the American version of 1984 , the accuser, a.k.a. the more ideologically correct party, dictates to authorities the circumstances under which she will be investigated and cross-examined: She will demand all sorts of special considerations of privacy and exemptions; Kavanaugh will be forced to return and face cameras and the public to prove that he was not then, and has never been since, a sexual assaulter.
In our 1984 world, the accused is considered guilty if merely charged, and the accuser is a victim who can ruin a life but must not under any circumstance be made uncomfortable in proving her charges.
Doublespeak abounds. "Victim" solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. The media and political operatives went in a nanosecond from charging that she was groped and "assaulted" to the claim that she was "raped."
In our 1984, the phrase "must be believed" is doublespeak for "must never face cross-examination."
Ford should be believed or not believed on the basis of evidence , not her position, gender, or politics. I certainly did not believe Joe Biden, simply because he was a U.S. senator, when, as Neal Kinnock's doppelganger, he claimed that he came from a long line of coal miners -- any more than I believed that Senator Corey Booker really had a gang-banger Socratic confidant named "T-Bone," or that would-be senator Richard Blumenthal was an anguished Vietnam combat vet or that Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Native American. (Do we need a 25th Amendment for unhinged senators?) Wanting to believe something from someone who is ideologically correct does not translate into confirmation of truth.
Ford supposedly in her originally anonymous accusation had insisted that she had sought "medical treatment" for her assault. The natural assumption is that such a term would mean that, soon after the attack, the victim sought a doctor's or emergency room's help to address either her physical or mental injuries -- records might therefore be a powerful refutation of Kavanaugh's denials.
But "medical treatment" now means that 30 years after the alleged assault, Ford sought counseling for some sort of "relationship" or "companion" therapy, or what might legitimately be termed "marriage counseling." And in the course of her discussions with her therapist about her marriage, she first spoke of her alleged assault three decades earlier. She did not then name Kavanaugh to her therapist, whose notes are at odds with Ford's current version.
Memory HolesThen we come to Orwell's idea of "memory holes," or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.
Shortly after Ford was named, suddenly her prior well-publicized and self-referential social-media revelations vanished, as if she'd never held her minor-league but confident pro-Sanders, anti-Trump opinions . And much of her media and social-media accounts were erased as well.
Similarly, one moment the New York Times -- just coming off an embarrassing lie in reporting that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had ordered new $50,000 office drapes on the government dime -- reported that Kavanaugh's alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, had confirmed Ford's allegation. Indeed, in a sensational scoop, according to the Times , Judge told the Judiciary Committee that he does remember the episode and has nothing more to say. In fact, Judge told the committee the very opposite: that he does not remember the episode . Forty minutes later, the Times embarrassing narrative vanished down the memory hole.
The online versions of some of the yearbooks of Ford's high school from the early 1980s vanished as well. At times, they had seemed to take a perverse pride in the reputation of the all-girls school for underage drinking, carousing, and, on rarer occasions, "passing out" at parties. Such activities were supposed to be the monopoly and condemnatory landscape of the "frat boy" and spoiled-white-kid Kavanaugh -- and certainly not the environment in which the noble Ford navigated. Seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh was to play the role of a falling-down drunk; Ford, with impressive powers of memory of an event 36 years past, assures us that as a circumspect 15-year-old, she had only "one beer."
A former teenage friend of Ford's sent out a flurry of social-media postings, allegedly confirming that Ford's ordeal was well known to her friends in 1982 and so her assault narrative must therefore be confirmed. Then, when challenged on some of her incoherent details (schools are not in session during summertime, and Ford is on record as not telling anyone of the incident for 30 years), she mysteriously claimed that she no longer could stand by her earlier assertions, which likewise soon vanished from her social-media account. Apparently, she had assumed that in 2018 Oceania ideologically correct citizens merely needed to lodge an accusation and it would be believed, without any obligation on her part to substantiate her charges.
When a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, followed Ford seven days later to allege another sexual incident with the teenage Kavanaugh, at Yale 35 years ago, it was no surprise that she followed the now normal Orwellian boilerplate : None of those whom she named as witnesses could either confirm her charges or even remember the alleged event. She had altered her narrative after consultations with lawyers and handlers. She too confesses to underage drinking during the alleged event. She too is currently a social and progressive political activist. The only difference from Ford's narrative is that Ramirez's accusation was deemed not credible enough to be reported even by the New York Times , which recently retracted false stories about witness Mark Judge in the Ford case, and which falsely reported that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had charged the government for $50,000 office drapes.
As in 1984 , "truths" in these sorts of allegations do not exist unless they align with the larger "Truth" of the progressive project. In our case, the overarching Truth mandates that, in a supposedly misogynist society, women must always be believed in all their accusations and should be exempt from all counter-examinations.
Little "truths" -- such as the right of the accused, the need to produce evidence, insistence on cross-examination, and due process -- are counterrevolutionary constructs and the refuge of reactionary hold-outs who are enemies of the people. Or in the words of Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono:
Guess who's perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It's the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country, "Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change."
The View 's Joy Behar was more honest about the larger Truth: "These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women," Behar exclaimed. "They're protecting a man who is probably guilty." We thank Behar for the concession "probably."
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no longer in America . We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
- All Comments 30
NiggaPleeze , 10 seconds ago
Debt Slave , 16 seconds agoNational Review? Really? Does it get more evil than them?
Jkweb007 , 37 seconds agoAccording to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17.
Well half the country are idiots but the important thing to remember in our democracy is that the idiots have the right to vote. And here we are today.
No wonder the founders believed that democracy was a stupid idea. But we know better than they did, right?
herbivore , 1 minute agoIt is hard for me to believe 50% when in America you are presumed innocent till proven guilty. Is this the spanish inquizition or salem witch trials. If he floats he was innocent. I am shocked that people in congress would make statements, she must be believed, I believe he is guilty. These are people who represent and stand for the constitution that many died in the defense of life liberty and the persuit of happiness. It may be time for that mlilitia that our founding fathers endorsed. If Kavanaugh is rebuked for these accusation our freedom, free speech may be next.
GOSPLAN HERO , 4 minutes agoPeter Griffin knows what's what:
THORAX , 6 minutes agoJust another day in USSA.
opport.knocks , 20 minutes agoOne more confirmation that the so called "social justice warriors" -like last night's goons' who shamefully interrupted Senator Cruz's night out with his wife at a private restaurant- are Orwell's projected fascists!
Aubiekong , 23 minutes agoBush 2 was in the big chair when he and his cabinet started the USA down the full Orwellian path (Patriot Act, post 911). Kavanaugh and his wife were both members of that government team.
If there is any reason to dismiss him, that would be it, not this post-pubescent sex crap.
If I was a cynical person, I would say this whole exercise is to deflect attention away from that part of his "swampy" past.
CheapBastard , 15 minutes agoWe lost the republic when we allowed the liberals to staff the ministry of education...
my new username , 23 minutes agoMy neighbor is a high school teacher. I asked her if she was giving students time off to protest this and she looked at me and said, "Just the opposite. I have given them a 10 page seminar paper to write on the meaning of Due Process."
So there IS hope.
BlackChicken , 23 minutes agoThis is criminal contempt for the due lawful process of the Congress.
These are unlawful attempts and conspiracies to subvert justice.
So we need to start arresting, trying, convicting and punishing the criminals.
Jus7tme , 22 minutes agoTruth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.
This needs to end, not later, NOW.
Be careful what you wish for leftists, I'll dedicate my remaining years to torture you with it.
Duc888 , 29 minutes ago>>the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
I think Orwell was in 1949 was warning about a fascist totalitarian hell, not a socialist one, but nice try rewriting history.
CheapBastard , 19 minutes agoWTF ever happened to "innocent until PROVEN guilty"?
Schumer said before the confirmation hearings even began he would not let Kavanaugh become SC justice no matter what.
Dems are so tolerant, open minded and respectful of due process, aren't they.
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Oct 05, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Deltaeus , October 2, 2018 at 4:38 pm
Wow. I'm saddened that so many people carelessly toss aside the best parts of our civilisation such as the presumption of innocence. Accusers have to prove their charges.
Imagine Joe Lauria is accused by someone of something heinous. Anyone who doesn't like Joe can now comment on social media about how he looks like the type of guy who would do that. Anyone who disagrees with him might be motivated to do that. They can suggest psychological reasons for his atrocious behaviour. The accuser does not need to prove anything – just some lurid details and a tearful interview are enough, and the rest of us can no longer see his by-line without remembering all of the innocent children he molested.
See? What I just insinuated is completely untrue. Joe is an honest and good man, but anyone can smear him at any time and ruin his livelihood. Its easy. And Joe just made it easier with this article.
Please, think about what it is like to be unfairly accused. Perhaps in the abstract you can shrug, but talk to anyone who has actually been the victim of false allegations, and you will realise how powerless you are in that situation. Your only protection is the civilised idea that you are innocent until proven guilty, and if you destroy that, well, that would be a shame.
irina , October 2, 2018 at 10:53 pm
Have you ever experienced a false accusation ? I have, and I didn't even know it.
For many years, my mother in law sincerely believed that her grandson was not her son's child. This was patently untrue, but I was clueless because no one (we lived surrounded by her immediate family) told me, although the women all gossiped behind my back. You can only imagine how this affected all my familial relationships. She never did come clean about this situation (her thinking was affected by long term steroid use) but did eventually apologize to me (without precisely stating why) the year our son turned thirteen, at which point he started strongly resembling his dad (her son).
False accusations are a very serious thing, and we are accepting them all too glibly.
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Dec 09, 2018 | www.rt.com
The #MeToo movement was supposed to make life easier for women in the workplace. It was all about respect and making real abusers pay a price for their behavior. But is it possible to have too much of a good thing?
One of the aims of the movement was to force a change in the conduct of men who said and did sexually inappropriate things in the workplace -- a concept which few people could quibble with. A year on from its beginnings, however, it seems the movement has morphed into something else entirely -- and ironically, it's hurting both men and women.
The 'Pence Effect' and 'gender segregation'
The #MeToo movement has taken down men across a wide spectrum of industries -- but so far, Wall Street has avoided a huge public scandal -- despite its reputation for being, well, a fairly sexist and male-oriented environment. So why has it escaped the #MeToo spotlight?
Two female reporters for Bloomberg interviewed 30 Wall Street executives and found that while it's true that women might be afraid to speak up for fear of losing their careers, men are also so afraid of being falsely accused that they won't even have dinner, or even one-to-one business meetings with a female colleague. They worry that a simple comment or gesture could be misinterpreted. "It's creating a sense of walking on eggshells," one Morgan Stanley executive said.Bloomberg dubbed the phenomenon the 'Pence Effect' after the US vice president who previously admitted that he would never dine alone with any woman other than his wife. British actor Taron Egerton recently also said he now avoided being alone with women for fear of finding himself in #MeToo's crosshairs.
I remember when a woman I was friendly/kind with perceived me as someone who wanted "more." She wrote me a message about how she was uncomfortable. I'm gay. https://t.co/7z0X7Dwzkp
-- Andy C. Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) December 4, 2018All these extreme strategies being adopted by men to avoid falling victim to an unjust #MeToo scandal are creating a kind of "gender segregation" on Wall Street, the reporters say.
Hurting women's progress?
The most ironic outcome of a movement that was supposed to be about women's empowerment is that now, even hiring a woman on Wall Street has become an "unknown risk," according to one wealth advisor, who said there is always a concern that a woman might take something said to her in the wrong way.
With men occupying the most senior positions on Wall Street, women need male mentors who can teach them the ropes and help them advance their careers, but what happens when men are afraid to play that role with their younger female colleagues? The unintended consequence of the #MeToo movement on Wall Street could be the stifling of women's progress and a sanitization of the workplace to the point of not even being able to have a private meeting with the door closed.
Another irony is that while men may think they are avoiding one type of scandal, could find themselves facing another: Discrimination complaints.
"A Wall Street rule for the #MeToo era: Avoid women at all cost." https://t.co/TCGk9UzT4R "Secular sharia" has arrived, as I predicted here: https://t.co/TTrWY6ML34 pic.twitter.com/YpEz78iamJ
-- Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) December 3, 2018"If men avoid working or traveling with women alone, or stop mentoring women for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, those men are going to back out of a sexual harassment complaint and right into a sex discrimination complaint," Stephen Zweig, an employment attorney with FordHarrison told Bloomberg.
Not all men are responding to the #MeToo movement by fearfully cutting themselves off from women, however. "Just try not to be an asshole," one said, while another added: "It's really not that hard."
It might not be that simple, however. It seems there is no escape from the grip of the #MeToo movement. One of the movements most recent victims of the viral hashtag movement is not a man, but a song -- the time-honored classic 'Baby It's Cold Outside' -- which is being banished from American radio stations because it has a "rapey" vibe.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
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Nov 29, 2017 | www.bbc.com
Nicole spent years living with a charming man, but she always seemed to be doing something wrong. Eventually she began to realise that it wasn't her that was the problem, it was him - and when she met one of his previous girlfriends, Elizabeth, everything made sense. Here Nicole tells her story, followed by Elizabeth.
Other people seem to manage it, sharing a life with someone, content and peaceful in each other's company. But the thought of a relationship still terrifies me. Many years on, I still well up with panic at the mention of my ex's name - that charming man who I feared and adored in equal measure.
A charming, beautiful, successful man had made me his. He was everything I could ever dream of. He was a high-flyer, his charisma was magnetic and I was entranced. When I was with the charming man doors opened for us and the best tables suddenly became available. We travelled the world for his work, staying at the best hotels and eating at the finest restaurants. He seemed to be able to charm his way through life in any language.
But I failed him.
I ruined everything: dinners, conversations, evenings out, holidays - by mentioning an ex's name, getting my purse out in front of his friends or wanting to carry my own passport and money when we were overseas.
He could be furious for days. My inappropriate behaviour had shown him up, he didn't know if he could continue being with someone like me, he could do so much better.
I also ruined birthdays and Christmases, simply by being "too stupid and cruel" to understand what was best for him.
He wanted me to buy him expensive presents: "It's just £4,000, use your savings," he would say.
"But those are life savings," I replied. "I can't touch them, it's impossible. I want to make you happy but I can't afford that."
The charming man cried - I had let him down and nothing I did could make up for it.
He didn't sleep much, so neither did I. I was not allowed to "ruin his night" by going to sleep before him. If I did, he woke me in the early hours, wanting to talk about our relationship and what I was doing wrong. I was exhausted. I felt like I was going through life in a blur, catching sleep whenever and wherever I could. The disabled loo at work became a refuge for a lunchtime nap.
Why didn't I leave sooner? Well, he was charming and my family loved him. And I was at an age where life was a blur of engagements and weddings. Well-meaning relatives would tell me that I was next. The tick-tocking sound of my biological clock got louder as the weddings made way for christenings.
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Aug 07, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
I figured that since 'gaslighting' is a relatively new term, and although I already had a general idea what it meant from context, it would be best to look it up. I was surprised to learn the concept of ' gaslighting ' has been around since 1938.
"a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief."
In America's case, gaslighting – like charity – begins at home, and the full force of US government efforts to convince the skeptical that America is more powerful and influential than ever, is still kicking ass and taking names, is felt by Americans.
yalensis August 1, 2019 at 4:17 pm
The 1944 film with Ingrid Bergman is quite brilliant. It sort of defines the worst thing that one human being can do to another, short of killing them.
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Jan 12, 2019 | www.amazon.com
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, horrifying, and richly detailed account of corporate ambition gone awry. May 22, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase I started this book and could not put it down. It's a horrifying true story of a driven entrepreneur whose only overriding goal was to become insanely rich. And she would do anything, any unimagineable thing, to get there.Elizabeth Holmes leveraged her family's high profile connections to draw in early investors and supporters, who were not very inquisitive on details, nor very skeptical in nature. Drawing on the good name and reputation of these early supporters, she was able to build an impressive roster of other supporters with stellar reputations in tech and venture capital circles. From there, it was just a matter of stage managing the house of cards she was building.
Holmes crafted a Potemkin village that had fooled investors, customers, and visiting dignitaries. Her product demonstrations were outright theater, staged managed illusions worthy of David Copperfield. Theranos employees in on the ruse were assured it was just temporary, until the actual product could be perfected and the results repeatable. That day would never come. Those on the outside who also worked in this field had well founded and grave doubts about how Theranos could be touting a product that seemingly defied both logic and physics. Their suspicions, proven to be correct, was that it was too good to be true.
Without a trace of guilt or regret, she induced powerful tech workers to leave lucrative careers at other major tech firms, giving up millions in stock options, to come work for Theranos, surely knowing the whole thing would collapse one day. When skeptical board members asked to see data affirming the effectiveness of their product, Holmes would defer, saying those papers were in perpetual legal review. Some employees, when they were no longer useful to her, or deemed disloyal, were immediately and unceremoniously marched out.
This is a real life thriller, the story of someone who is a true diabolical movie villain. Holmes is portrayed vividly as a paranoid sociopath who could also be disarming, charmingly manipulative, utterly ruthless and devoid of conscience. This is a tale of corporate greed and lack of regulatory oversight gone all awry.
Elizabeth M. Rogers 5.0 out of 5 stars The Impossible Revealed May 21, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Very interesting read about the fraud that is Elizabeth Holmes. For those of us in the clinical lab industry, we knew that all the tests she claimed could be performed accurately and less expensive from a capillary sample was just simply not true. It was just a matter of time for the truth about her and the impossibility of what she claimed, to finally be revealed. Great investigative reporting John Carryrou!lb136 VINE VOICE 5.0 out of 5 stars The tale of the naked empress May 25, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
The first time I saw her was in the New York Times monthly "T" magazine. She was a young blonde with big blue eyes clad in black. I poured myself another drink and checked out the article on her.Turned out she was one of those Silicon Valley bright young things--name of Elizabeth Holmes, and she was supposed to be "one of the five visionary tech entrepreneurs who is changing the world." Her game had something to do with blood tests. Seemed she'd started one of those companies that "disrupt" business. Companies they call Unicorns that start up with over a billion and hope to sucker the average Joe into buying stock in them. I admit this one made sense to me--blood tests are big business, and this Holmes seemed to have found a way to run blood tests for multiple conditions on one device, and simply by taking blood with a finger prick. No more needles in the vein.
I'll level with you. I didn't see how it was at all possible, but this was the mid teens, and I was just getting used to putting my credit card in a slot in the machine instead of swiping it through. Always something new, right?
So I mentally tipped my hat to her and went on with my life. And then faster than Aaron Judge can loft one out of the park, the Times issued a correction. There was some question about whether her technology worked at all. And before I could even bundle up the print magazine for recycling she had been disappeared from the web version. So now I repegged her as a grifter and thought no more about her until I read . . .
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"Bad Blood." John Carreyrou is the reporter who had written the Wall Street Journal article that took down the Empress of Silicon Valley. He takes you through the story and paces it like a film noir suspense tale. You know the kind--the one where you know who the bad guys are from the starter's gun and you wait to see how they get caught. He begins in the middle with one of Holmes's signature firings. She would abruptly fire anyone who began to catch on and/or didn't show enough adoration. Then he takes you quickly through her early years (she dropped out of Stanford to start working on her invention--a portable blood-testing machine that never did work properly) and on to the founding of her company. He describes her blue eyed unblinking stare, her unusually deep voice (that, too, seems to have been put on), and those black turtlenecks that came from her adoration of Steve Jobs.
This Elizabeth, too, had a Raleigh--but she made the mistake the Virgin Queen never did: this dude was her lover, too. And she made him #2 in her company. Nearly all saw through him, and feared him. Together they made the mistake of not letting employees in the various departments communicate with those in other departments, which made research and development complicated more than somewhat (yes, they did actually try to create this portable blood test machine the big con started only when they realized they couldn't do it).
With charm, guile, promises, and an impressive board (Secretary of Defense Mattis and Henry Kissinger were once on it) that had no voting power she had secured contracts from Safeway and Walgreens for walk-in wellness clinics, and kept getting investors to hand money over to her. She finally went public. So Holmes had to produce . . . something. But she couldn't. And with that, the whole thing started to unravel. Some of the people she hired realized the tests weren't working -- healthy patients tested positive for conditions they didn't have. Or vice versa.
And they ratted her out . . . to Carreyrou, who exposed her in The Wall Street Journal. At that point, at about the two-thirds mark, the author, previously writing in third-person omniscient, takes over the narration in the first person as the con comes crashing down.
Even though you know how it turned out, it's all very suspenseful, filled with people departing the company escorted by armed guards, lawyers practiced in the arts of intimidation who've been given more power than perhaps they deserve, and a few people with the courage to expose fraud--fraud that could have harmed people.
In the epilogue Carreyrou wonders if Holmes "fits the clinical profile" of a sociopath, but states he will "leave it to the psychologists to decide." Then while conceding that "she had a vision she genuinely believed in," he adds that "there's no question that her moral compass was badly askew." He concludes: "Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference. If there was collateral damage on her way to riches and fame, so be it."
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NOTES AND ASIDES: Per IMDb: A film version based on this book is "in development." Adam McKay ("The Big Short") will direct. I'm sure you will easily guess who will be playing Holmes.
Beau's Mom 5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling page turner about the rise and rapid fall of the first female billionaire tech entrepreneur May 27, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
I have followed Mr. Carreyrou's brilliant series of articles in the Wall Street Journal on Theranos over past several years, and signed up for the book as soon as it was published. This is his first book, and it does not disappoint. It is a suspenseful read that I tore through in just a few days. The story of Elizabeth Holmes is an extremely compelling one, and I understand that Jennifer Lawrence is being considered to play her in a future film. Holmes' single-mindedness, charisma and powers of persuasion are epic, but ultimately her lack of knowledge, morals and or any true empathy for patients are her undoing. What the future holds for her will be very interesting to see.My only complaint about the book, and it is a minor one, is that one of the most powerful stories from the WSJ was not told in its entirety. There was a published story about Tyler Shultz, the grandson of George Shultz, that went into far more detail about how he resisted the incredible pressure that the Theranos attorneys put him under. His grandfather refused to side with him, and at first his parents refused as well, but they eventually realized that he was right and mortgaged their home to pay for his legal defense. The bravery of that young man in his early 20's, to stand his ground against the most powerful law firm in the country, his former Secretary of State grandfather and his own parents, moved me to tears. It is worth searching for that story online. I feel confident that Mr. Carreyrou will score a third Pulitzer for his reporting on Theranos.
Dennis Mabrey 5.0 out of 5 stars They need to do jail time.... the whole lot of em. May 29, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Few people mentioned in this book come out looking good. Holmes, her wacky boyfriend Sunny, Holmes's brother and his 'Frat Pack', and certainly the 'great men' on the board of directors such as George Shultz and Henry Kissinger who really performed no oversight of Holmes's and Sonny's actions in any way. They are all a big bunch of despicable clowns with broken moral compasses.However, there are some good people here... one of whom is Shultz's own grandson who was one of the whistleblowers. It is a bit of a sad story to read that George Shultz sided Theranos over his own grandson. A number of engineers and lab workers came out and told their stories as well and we should be thankful they did. The shoddy lab conditions produced test results that misdiagnosed many people.
And then there was David Boise.... the 'super lawyer' who hired people from Black Cube (former Israeli agents) to go out and spy and intimidate people. There is a special place in hell for lawyers and I am sure there will be an even more 'special place' for the likes of David Boise.
If you think everyone around you is a sociopath you might not want to read this book. It will only confirm your suspicions. That said...I could not put the book down. I read it in one night until the sun came up.
Graham M. Flower 5.0 out of 5 stars Description of an Extreme Corporate Culture that created its own inevitable downfall. June 6, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
I read this book because I know one of the professors whose lab she was associated with at Stanford. Its a pretty fascinating story. I've worked in tech for 39 years and for about 7 different tech companies. I've seen some workplaces that have some of the silo problems described here and some organizations that were quite dictatorial but I've not seen an organization that had the extreme intolerance of dissent that this one had. The author does a good job of mapping out the landscape. An extremely persuasive Ceo who was able to charm powerful people and leverage them into giving her credibility and a culture internally of extreme suppression of dissent.I've never experienced anything like the sorts of tactics used on departing employees to prevent them from commenting on the internal issues. In my experience the management is primarily focused upon not having an employee take proprietary secrets out the door and clearly this is a problem that has occurred, but here the Ceo and Coo seem to have wanted to suppress negative information that included just negative comments about the general state of development of the devices and even wanted to prevent employees from taking documentation of their own complaints about internal views about things like the robustness of laboratory practices that had little real proprietary value to the company.
In the end Ms Holmes missed a key lesson from her idol Steve Jobs, the product has to work and it has to work well if you are going to disrupt an entire industry. It sort of looks like Elizabeth followed an electronics or software playbook (in the extreme) while not completely recognizing that this wasn't going to fly in the medical space.
It is true that dictatorial organizations that suppress dissent tend to become heavily politicized with leaders who are removed from problems at the bottom and sycophantic middle management and they tend to have higher levels of turnover as this one did.
i'd say that Mr Carryrou does an excellent job of bringing out the pathologies of this organization from the point of view of the bulk of employees, what cannot completely be discerned is exactly how disconnected the leadership really was here. It is amazing that Ms Holmes was able to charm so many important people for so long. In the end it was the reality of the poor performance of the product that showed up, and it is fairly obvious that even had this author not started the fall, the fall from grace was inevitable.
YumYum 5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! May 28, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Oh my- this is a fantastic book. It is a quick read because it is so fascinating. I've followed Holmes since she was on the cover of magazines wondering just what she was doing. I've worked on an IRB committee (research ethics),and the entire time I was reading this book I was shocked at the lack of ethics on the parts of almost everyone in the story. They KNEW they were going to use this machine; they knew it wasn't ready; they knew Holmes was lying and deceiving and then ritually firing people who found her out, but not ONE person went to the FDA or even the SEC or FBI or whomever to say it was a fraud? And it was quite a fraud. One that was using human beings in its testing. The writing is compelling, and the story is so unreal that you can hardly believe it is true. Somehow it seems to boil down to greed. If this were fiction, you'd laugh in spots at how preposterous it seems. But it isn't fiction. It is a terrible saga of deception and manipulation, and it proves that when money is involved, people see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear.Drwo 5.0 out of 5 stars Whatever You Should Be Doing, You Will Probably Blow It Off to Finish This Book June 18, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This book is a mixture of jaw dropping hubris, charisma run amok, and the gullibility of those who should know better.For those unfamiliar with this story, the short version is: Elizabeth Holmes, 19 years' old, drops out of Stanford to form a company and then raises hundreds of millions of dollars based on her vision of how a single drop of blood tied to proprietary technology could revolutionize medical diagnostics. The original vision became an almost beside the point issue to keeping everyone, including her board members and employees, in the dark about failure - and failure it was.
The long story, this book, explains how the company, Theranos, valued at something like $9B at it's height in 2012 and 2013, went to zero because the technology Elizabeth was selling to investors didn't actually exist. Frightening in its scope, Elizabeth Holmes presented herself as a brilliant inventor, scientist and entrepreneur, a photogenic genius out to make people's lives better.
The private Elizabeth, paranoid and secretive, created a bizarre work environment where highly educated, qualified professionals were fired for attempting to explain something she needed to know but didn't want to hear, or to express any opinion counter to her own. She then threatened them, sending many into debt defending lawsuits made from whole cloth. Installing her boyfriend as overseer, neither of them having any scientific qualifications or training, neither had real interest in building a team to work towards a shared vision. Hundreds of millions of investor money were swallowed up with no resulting innovation. At first, they obscured, then they lied and kept right on lying.
Although investors always risk disappointment, it's doubtful many expected a company with hundreds of millions of dollars to work with accomplishing nothing at all. Unlike Bernie Madoff, who kept his scam close to the chest, Theranos hired specialists, at one time as many as 800 employees, and then refused to let them work together.
John Carreyrou, relentless in his pursuit of this story, stood up to the constant threats and produced brilliant research and what should be a cautionary tale for future board members, employees and investors, encouraging them to do some rudimentary investigation before taking the "Well, he drank the kool-aid, so it must be good," attitude, but they probably won't.
Stealthy 5.0 out of 5 stars LOCK HER UP! August 28, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
My neck is sore from shaking my head, left-to-right, in total disbelief of all that happened with Elizabeth Holmes, Sunny Balwani and Theranos. What a piece of work! I kept telling my husband about this book and he finally said, "Stop! I'm going to read the book for myself."Elizabeth Holmes: narcissistic, a sociopath, suffering from delusions of grandeur, paranoid, a mean bully, retaliatory, a pathological liar, exploitative and downright ruthless. She is living proof that 85% of workplace bullying comes from Women.
The high-powered people that were totally Bamboozled by this woman is just incredulous – George Schultz, James Mattis, Henry Kissinger, executives at Walgreen's, Safeway and too many others to mention here. Their level of incompetence and blind trust makes them look pathetic.
Bravo to Tyler Schultz for standing up against the face of evil: Elizabeth and Sunny at Theranos, their high powered and intimidating attorneys, his parents and his grandfather, George Schultz.
The book was easy to read. Despite having a HUGE cast of characters, they were easy to keep track of and John C. did a great job reminding the reader of who this person was if mentioned later in the book. The technical lab stuff was clearly explained and easy to follow.
John Carreyrou:
I agree with another reviewer that we will be needing a sequel. Even if we catch pieces of the future of this saga here and there via the TV news, newspapers, magazines, Mad Money, "60 Minutes, etc., it just isn't the same until it is all pulled together like you did in this book. You did a fantastic job! I can't wait to see you interview Elizabeth from prison just like Diana Henriques did with Bernie Madoff.Wittgenstein 5.0 out of 5 stars The Art of the Con June 7, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Read this book. Or, rather, start to read it and you will never put it down. While I knew vaguely that the Silicon Valley wunderkind Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos had run into major regulatory problems, I had no idea of the breadth and depth of the fraud she and her co-conspirators committed. The Wall Street Journal reporter who first broke the story has now written a page turning report that not only damns Holmes, but also people she fooled into supporting her such as the current Secretary of Defense and two former Secretaries of State. And for those who believe, as I do, that David Boies' incompetence in Bush v Gore cost Gore the election, will not be surprised to learn that he was one of the principal enablers of the fraud not just as her attorney, but as a major shareholder and Board Member. I repeat, read this book. One last point that the author and more importantly his original sources emphasize -- this was not just a financial fraud, but a fraud that put patients' lives at risk. Scary. So when you hear about some magical new medical solution, make sure your BS meter is well tuned before you buy into the claims.
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Oct 05, 2018 | www.unz.com
anon [107] Disclaimer , says: October 5, 2018 at 1:18 am GMT
Alcohol, Memory, and the Hippocampus
[In adolescents] . . . cognitive processes are exquisitely sensitive to the effects of chemicals such as alcohol. Among the most serious problems is the disruption of memory, or the ability to recall information that was previously learned. When a person drinks alcohol, (s)he can have a "blackout."
A blackout can involve a small memory disruption, like forgetting someone's name, or it can be more serious -- the person might not be able to remember key details of an event that happened while drinking. An inability to remember the entire event is common when a person drinks 5 or more drinks in a single sitting ("binge").. . . The ability of alcohol to cause short term memory problems and blackouts is due to its effects on an area of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a structure that is vital to learning and the formation of memory.
Thus without a properly functioning hippocampus learning and memory become problematic. https://sites.duke.edu/apep/module-3-alcohol-cell-suicide-and-the-adolescent-brain/content-alcohol-memory-and-the-hippocampus/
Christine Ford claims her difficulties in her first years in college were due to "trauma" from the attempted rape. A professor of psychology, Ford used impressive big words, (iirc) stating that endocrine imprints such traumatic memories on the hippocampus.
So does alcohol.
Why did no one ask Christine Beasley Ford how much and how often she drank in high school and in college?
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Sep 26, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Of eight murder cases in Virginia in the eighties and nineties that I know something about, seven were capital murder. The men involved--they were all men, the actual perpetrators.These were: Clagett, Elliott, Thomas, Lester, Tate, Soering, Shambaugh (and Hyman uncharged.) Hulbert was first degree, life without parole. The cases all had something in common.
The crimes happened because of a man's obsessive love or empathy for a girl or a woman. Hulbert told me that himself. "I am an empath." It has been adjudicated that Clagett, Thomas, Hulbert, Tate and Soering committed the murders after having been asked and agreeing, or after having been pressured into it. ("If at first you don't succeed, cry, cry again.")
In several of these cases the perpetrators actually received direct orders from the woman. Something must be done. Do it. In some cases the pressure lasted for months.
In Lester's case his accomplice stood trial but was acquitted of the most serious charges. She is free and has gone on to better things. In two of these cases, Elliott's and Hyman/Shambaugh's, the women for whom it was done would never have wanted it to happen. There were children involved and it is fair to say they have paid a price. The men were military types in the Shambaugh case, and Hyman seems to have gone ballistic at the challenge from a son-in-law. So it was not exactly about empathy. It was also Jew versus Pole.
He hired Shambaugh to do a contract killing for $20,000. When he saw he had made some fatal mistakes, and was going to be charged, he committed suicide, killing his wife moments before he turned the shotgun on himself. Shambaugh was convicted as an accessory and could very well have been paroled last year. Hulbert, Lester, Tate, and Soering are serving very long prison terms. Perhaps some of them will never get out of prison alive. Clagett, Elliott, Thomas were executed. Clagett had terrible remorse. I knew him fairly well.
Recently I was reminded of something I read in 'The Devil's Dictionary' (by Ambrose Bierce). I just found it:
"Witch, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil.
(2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil."
There is always the question in these cases, of course, of psychopathy. It runs all through the eight cases. And I , for one, do not forget that it has been speculated that the selective murder of independent women who wanted to live alone outside the mainstream of life in Medieval Germany with their gardens, herbals, birds and cats somehow weakened the character of the population, clamping on a kind of leaden conformism.
Johannes Kepler's mother was accused of witchcraft in Freiburg, and for six years this brilliant astronomer was obsessed with keeping his mother from being burned alive. Finally, they worked out a deal, because it was becoming an embarrassment to the authorities. Kepler's mother was told that she was free to go and that the charges were being dropped. But she must go into exile, away from Freiburg. She flatly refused to leave her home. I forget how it ended.
But as to Ambrose Bierce's second definition, yes, to me the wickedness was astounding in one case. It is an accurate definition. But there was a BPD in the case also-- a Borderline Personality Disorder. In my view, psychopathy overrides everything--I mean by that, everything moral, ethical, lawful, decent, even common sense, even the most basic prudence about deadly dangerous things.
So there were ways that I understood one of these women, one who accepted me as a visitor. Needless to say, a number of them are in the DOC. But that's not quite what I am talking about.
Recently I looked back into M. Scott Peck's 'People of the Lie'. There are some good lines in it. "Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs."
He considers the possibility of making evil a subcategory or special variant of the DSM manual!
Just one little thing. In one case I felt something spooky --just as they tell you in the story books. Where? Well, say in Henry James, for example, as in 'The Turn of the Screw'. What I mean is: I felt real evil. I had a couple of long conversations. Very attractive. Whatever it was, I just dropped the whole thing.
[Jan 12, 2019] Bad Blood Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup Published on Jan 12, 2019 | www.amazon.com
[Oct 05, 2018] Alcohol, Memory, and the Hippocampus Published on Oct 05, 2018 | www.unz.com
[Sep 26, 2018] In several murder cases the perpetrators actually received direct orders from the woman Published on Sep 26, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Films look to me no less education then books and web pages. They depict female bullies in action and allow you to watch from the safe distance some pretty realistic depiction of their tricks and attack tactics:
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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