Film review: All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone (2016)

I recently watched this documentary that takes the first part of its title from the credo of legendary investigative journalist I. F. (“Izzy”) Stone (1907-1989) that every journalist should take to heart. Stone said that all governments lie all the time. He said that while governments sometimes told the truth, the burden was on them to prove that to you. The documentary discusses how following that belief made Stone one of the most influential journalists of his time and the inspiration for some of the best journalists who came after him. Although he started out working for newspapers and magazines, he is best remembered for the period from 1953 to 1971 during which he published his own newsletter I. F. Stone’s Weekly out of his home, with his wife as his business manager. The newsletter was considered a must-read by fellow journalists and by anyone interested in serious news. Marilyn Monroe (who in real life was not at all like the ditzy blonde of her film image) reportedly bought subscriptions for every member of Congress.
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Interesting scenario of presidential succession

The US has an inordinately long time interval between the presidential election, held the day after the first Monday in November of quadrennial years, and January 20 of the following year when the new president is sworn in. This is a ridiculously long transition time, allowing for all manner of shenanigans by the outgoing president. In most parliamentary democracies, like the UK for example, the transition is made the very next day and seems to go pretty smoothly. James Robenalt argues that if Trump loses in November, he should resign immediately and have Joe Biden become president.
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When leaders don’t lead

Donald Trump loves to boast that he’s a decisive leader. But most of that self-image comes from him thinking that sending out a tweet about something is equivalent to having actually done something. In reality many of those tweet message were false, irrelevant to any substantive issue, impossible to carry out, or were slow-walked or even contradicted by his advisors and members of his administration. But no matter, in his mind, and the minds of his supporters, he has ‘acted’ like a strong and forceful leader. But such smoke and mirrors can only be taken so far and the big problem for him is the coronavirus because that is something that cannot be controlled by tweets and here Trump’s indecisiveness and lack of action are increasingly manifest.
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Test cricket is back

All you cricket fans out there among the blog’s readers (yes, both of you) will be pleased to learn that Test cricket has begun again. In the US there are a lot of debates going on about when and how to bring back professional sports, discussions that struggle to keep up with the changing rate of covid-19 infections. I had assumed that cricket was also on hiatus and so was surprised that a Test match, the highest level of international cricket that lasts five days, had come back with the West Indies scheduled to play three Tests in England. The first Test began on Wednesday and ends today this article explains what changes have been made as a result of the covid-19 virus.
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Really CVS?

The US pharmacy chain CVS is notorious for its long receipts that feature discounts for all manner of future purchases of other products, and this has been the subject of much ridicule for some time. You would think that it might have responded by cutting down on the waste. But just yesterday I went in there and bought a single item and the receipt was even longer than I remembered from my last visit. When I got home, I measured the receipt and it was three feet long! Just for a single item!

I’m pretty sure that I am not the only person annoyed by this kind of waste.

Supreme Court rules on Trump’s tax returns

The US Supreme Court on Thursday issued its last opinions for the term and much attention has focused on the two 7-2 opinions concerning Trump’s tax returns. In one case in which Congress sought Trump’s tax returns, the court returned the case to the lower court saying that the judge should consider the separation of powers question. In the other case, the court said that documents pertaining to Trump’s financial records that were being held by his banks and accountants were not immune from grand jury investigations.
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Trump’s re-election campaign off to a wobbly start

Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20th was to be the big event that kicked off his re-election campaign. Oklahoma is a deep Republican state so choosing it had to be for reasons other than hoping to win its electoral votes in November, since that seemed to be assured. The more likely reason was that it would be easy in such a state to draw tens of thousands of enthusiastic Trump supporters to a packed stadium and overflow area to show how beloved the Dear Leader was.

But the wheels came off that effort rather quickly. First, the initial date of June 19th was the date celebrated by the black community as the real end of slavery and his holding a rally that would be full of his racist, white nationalist, and xenophobic supporters must have struck even some of his similar-minded campaign staff as a bit much. So it was switched to the next day. But it was too late because attention was now focused on the fact that in 1921 Tulsa was the scene of one of the worst massacres of black people in America and that ugly history was then papered over. That story dominated the news.
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Big win for Native American sovereignty

The history of the US is that of its government making promises to Native Americans and then breaking them whenever they felt like it, usually because they wanted to grab land and resources. Given this long history of betrayals, yesterday’s US Supreme Court 5-4 decision that the US government had to honor its treaty commitments to Native Americans came as a big surprise. In this case, the court ruled that as far as federal criminal law is concerned, about half of the state of Oklahoma had to be considered as part of the Creek Nation reservation. (You can read the opinion here.)
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Top military chief condemns the confederacy

I was taken by surprise yesterday when general Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military person in the US, issued a strong condemnation of the confederacy in his congressional testimony, calling it an “act of treason” and confederate leaders as traitors. This was surprising because Donald Trump, who is the commander in chief of the US armed forces and thus Milley’s ultimate boss, has opposed the removal of monuments and other symbols of the confederacy using coded language aimed to appeal to white nationalists, such as “protecting the nation’s heritage” and “preserving history”. In particular, Trump said that he would oppose the renaming of military bases named after confederate leaders, even to the extent of threatening to veto any defense bill that contains such provisions. Since Trump likes to pander to the military, he is unlikely to condemn Milley’s remarks the way he would have done if anyone else had made those statements. But it must rankle him.

But Milley was unequivocal.
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The weird border wall being built privately

Donald Trump’s fixation with building his stupid wall along the Mexico border is enabling grifters to make money, and ProPublica describes one such effort.

The length of the border between the US and Mexico in Texas consists of the Rio Grande, so an imaginary line along the middle of the river marks the boundary. Of course, you cannot build in the river so the fence has to be built on land inside the US creating a weird no-man’s land between the fence and the river, land that belongs to the US but will become unusable, depriving the owners of the land of its use. Furthermore, since at times the river overflows and floods the banks creating swamps, the fence has to be built well inside US territory. In one region, the US government fence is more than a mile from the river.
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