Dec 2, 2019 – On Fault Lines today, I talk about two important financial corruption stories the U.S. press ignores. Both involve the offshore system that western banks and governments protect, the first in the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey and Cyprus, the second in Antigua.
La Tanya Hall is a classy cabaret singer whose moody voice ranges from low to high in dulcet tones with a distinctive jazzy inflection. Songs are delivered with a mellow, honeyed often understated sound which sometimes has a hint of New Orleans.
You could have been, literally, blown away by this year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Winds of 20mph and higher gusts forced the high-flying balloons to dip low. You could see the cord-handlers struggling. Here‘s low-flying Nutcracker and Smokey Bear.
They couldn‘t have picked a better title to describe the leading Democrats and Republicans, one side defending a leader who sets a record for lying and the other doing so more subtly with fakery supported by a Deep State outraged that it can‘t make policy.
The costumes seem South Asian and place the dancers in a real world. In the first piece, “Tilted Arc,” there is a lively pulsating South Asian sound created by classical piano and horn, and the dancers exude energy.
I knew Bella Abzug, so my reaction to this play is deeper and more personal than it might otherwise be. I started out wondering how a guy could create the story of a feminist woman. Would this slip into drag?
Nov 24, 2019 – Two years after I wrote the first exposé of fraudster William Browder and his Magnitsky hoax published by the investigative website 100Reporters, and after growing social media and some alternative media reports about his fabrications, a major western publication, the German Der Spiegel, has run a story by Benjamin Bidder, a reporter posted to Russia for seven years, who exposes Browder as a fraud and his Magnistky story as a fake.
Nov 22, 2019 – There have been revealed links between lawyers representing Julian Assange, William Browder and his collaborators, and the U.S. government.
Here is an article. And here is an audio interview on Fault Lines.
Consortium News, Nov 21, 2019 – Part of the ongoing U.S. demonization of the Nicolas Maduro government of Venezuela is to accuse it of corruption. In 2017, for example, U.S. prosecutors charged five former Venezuelan officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) with soliciting bribes in exchange for helping vendors win favorable treatment from state oil company PdVSA from 2011 to 2015. (Hugo Chávez was president 2006 to 2013, and Maduro became president in 2013.)
However, there‘s another example of PdVSA bribery that the U.S. never felt compelled to pursue. It is the alleged and never investigated Halliburton bribery of Venezuelan oil company officials in the late 1990s when Halliburton was run by Dick Cheney, who would leave it to become vice-president under George W. Bush.
This is an amazing play. With Robert Schenkkan‘s 2014 “All the Way,” first part of his Lyndon Johnson story, it is among the most important historic American plays.
It could be a Shakespeare play, a tragedy that engulfs a complex, larger-than-life figure. And one who is brought down by his own hubris. The story moves between the civil rights movement and the American war against Vietnam. And because I knew some of the characters, I have strong feelings about it.
Nov 6, 2019 – What happens when a major U.S. law firm helps a client steal billions from his victims in the largest Ponzi scheme after Bernie Madoff? When it‘s a well-connected U.S. law firm, nobody goes to jail and it has to settle only for less than 1 percent of the take. And of course, this will be all over the front pages, right? Well, no. You probably don‘t know about it.
Serafina Delle Rose (Marisa Tomei) is traditional and feminist at the same time. And sensual. Traditional means Sicilian earthy, because she and her husband are Sicilians living on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, between New Orleans and Mobile, in an area populated by their countrymen. It is 1950, and they have the sensibility of Sicilian peasants.
Nov 4, 2019 – This is the 30th anniversary of Cabaret Conventions, the iconic yearly gathering of the best cabaret singers and their fans in New York to celebrate and promote an art form that started centuries ago and was noted in France back in the 1900s. It is sponsored by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, named after the great American jazz singer.
Nov 4, 2019 – The network of lawyers in conflicting roles in Browder, Assange and U.S. government cases raises questions about Julian Assange‘s defense.
This is the best annual party for New Yorkers. And price of entry is only your costume which depends on imagination, or a trip to a costume store if you lack the former.
Ntozake Shange‘s 1975 play is a dramatized and choreographed consciousness-raising session. This is about blacks, so it includes a lot of race specific cultural facts. It could have been about women of any race or ethnic group. If you were a feminist in the 70s, you were likely in a consciousness-raising group. I was. This was a powerful, visionary play for its time, and it gets a worthy revival at the Public Theater.
In Tracy Letts‘ story of mid-life crisis, Wheeler (Ian Barford) is a guy of 50 who was ditched by his wife and still can‘t figure it out. He has a lot of the traits that should make trendy folks of his age like him. He likes Miles, Coltrane, Ella. Hates rock. Likes Fellini and Bergman. Hates movies made for men with 13-year-old minds. Likes to think of himself as sensitive, viz a photo he took of a child in a hospital years ago. He‘s acceptable-looking, with only a hint of a paunch.
Oct 25, 2019 – Ben Brandon and Alex Bailin are London lawyers who have co-authored a fake story based on fabrications by William Browder about Russia‘s legal action against his tax evasion and the death of his accountant, Sergei Magnitsky. The writers of this London Times op ed managed to put eight lies into just five opening lines.
The forbidden is sweet. Especially when it comes to Gerard Alessandrini‘s Forbidden Broadway musical parodies. This is their 37th year, and as some years are skipped, aficionados look forward to them like a vintage Premier Cru. Good music. Check. Clever book. Check. Terrific performers. Check.
I don‘t know what the title means. And I don‘t know what the play is supposed to mean. Other than that Reality Winner is a loser. And so is the “conceiver” and director Tina Satter, who decided that a Q&A with a couple of FBI agents was enough to be a play. About someone with security clearance who downloaded a classified report and sent it to some media. Without telling us what it was about. Or who she sent it to. Or why.
Oct 12, 2019 – For mainstream media, “disinformation” is something the Russians do, and maybe the Chinese. When I confronted three mainstream journalists – two who made seamless moves into the U.S. government –with fake news by the New York Times, they presented pitiful excuses. It was on the Trump phone call to the Ukraine president, now considered to be the key reason for a Trump impeachment, so truth matters.
Oct 9, 2019 – A member of Congress you thought was a liberal is caught up in a Russiaphobe con-job. His name is Jim McGovern, and he is a congressman from Massachusetts. I thought he was pretty decent, so how has he bought into the Browder hoax?
Sept 30, 2019 – Guest: Lucy Komisar. A deep dive into the story behind the “Magnitsky Hoax”. Lucy tells the story of Bill Browder, Hermitage (his hedge fund) and how he managed to create a massive political weapon called the Magnitsky Act to protect himself and his benefactors and to use against others. The story also involves shell companies, tax havens, money laundering, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Robert Maxwell, Gasprom, HSBC, Natalia Veselnitskya, the Trump Tower meeting, the resurgence of the Cold War with Russia, Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and more.
What happens to the partner of a 50-year marriage living without the other? What if the husband dies and the wife survives? What if the wife dies? What would each do? How would each cope? How would their children, in this case grown daughters, react?
Sept 23, 2019 – Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s speech in Washington Square Park was a stunner. On Monday (Sept 16), she threw down a gauntlet against America’s staggering and paralyzing political corruption. She said she wanted to plant signs in front of federal buildings, not for sale!
