William Rivers Pitt
William Rivers Pitt (born November 9, 1971) is an author, senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, was co-written with Dahr Jamail.
Quotes
- Someday, if we survive the mess we’ve made of the planet, someone will compile a detailed sociological examination of how this constant torrent of mind bombs came to affect the population. For many, I fear, the ultimate result is inaction due to confusion, consternation and livid frustration.
- It’s not “fake news,” because “fake news” is almost always real news the president doesn’t want you to know. This is bad noise aimed with purpose and intent... We are deliberately polluted by a sewage spigot of cognitive dissonance and rank nonsense pouring into our minds on a daily basis... This is bad noise aimed with purpose and intent. Half the country ingests this swill and then, for example, abandons their right to vote because the pursuit of finding the point to it all requires hip waders and a stronger stomach than most possess. It’s the Gish Gallop deployed nationally, and it has proven to be brutally effective.
- There is a name missing from that Al Jazeera report (on the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution)...That name is Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran... deposed and imprisoned at the behest of powerful interests by Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill over access to Iranian oil. Western politicians and the mainstream journalists... shy away from the name Mosaddegh, for his name is an incantation summoning the bloody specter of blowback and the carnage that comes whenever the game of thrones is played for petroleum... “Mosaddegh” is a condemnation, a warning, and a lesson yet to be heeded by those in Washington, D.C., who believe their power and wealth means they can outrun consequences.
- Those 40 years of failure belong to the United States and Britain, to actions taken 66 years ago by politicians who also believed they could run through the raindrops as they played God for profit with the lives of others. The suffering of the Iranian people has “Made in the USA” and “God Save the Queen” stamped across it, a history lesson inked in blood. Remember the name Mohammad Mosaddegh the next time you hear a politician or businessman talk about bringing freedom somewhere. Like as not there’s a buck to be turned, and the bodies will be buried where they drop. All the oil money in the whole wide world cannot outrun consequences.
"Can Trump’s Wall Survive His Fake Emergency?" Truthout (16 February 2019)
"Can Trump’s Wall Survive His Fake Emergency?" Truthout (16 February 2019)
- If you’re going to cause a constitutional crisis, you may as well make it fun, right?...When Trump unleashed a disorganized, rambling, snarling, sniff-riddled word cloud on China, Korea, Syria, missiles, Obama, wars, duct tape, “bob” wire, Democrats, singsong Beat poetry, caravans and the stock market while announcing his illegal emergency declaration, it wasn’t fun. It was surreal to the point of brown-acid psychedelia, and it was perfectly terrifying in the main, but it wasn’t fun...
- One of the most significant obstacles Trump’s declaration will face is sure to come from landowners, particularly in Texas. “More than 90 lawsuits involving landowners opposing the federal seizure of their property in South Texas remain open from 2008,” reports Ron Nixon for The New York Times. “The property owners have the support of many Texas politicians...and their opposition to a border wall could delay any construction by years while lawsuits wind through the court system.”
- Everything about this border wall situation — Trump’s extralegal tantrum, the craven capitulation of McConnell and the Republicans, the shameless lies, the howling mobs, all of it — is a disgrace... Most disgraceful of all is the idea of the wall itself: a monument to vicious nativism, white nationalism, toxic masculinity and perfect cowardice.
