Barry Eisler
@barryeisler
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Fulltime novelist, sometime flâneur, former CIA
San Francisco Bay Area
Joined March 2009
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception. "Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight. "The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He talked a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. "Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall. "They were rogue cops and shakedown artists. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it. "It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time. "Here's to them."
Everybody go read James Ellroy's novel American Tabloid about the political ferment of the early 1960s Then meet back here to discuss
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Feel like Anthony Hopkins was offscreen saying, "That's enough, Congressman." (IYKYK)
76 year old Democratic congressman John Larson suffers medical episode while speaking on the House floor, freezing for nearly a minute.
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Highly recommended. The footnotes are optional!
Regarding USAID's role in destroying Russia's economy in the 1990s, and overthrowing governments in Croatia, Serbia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine (twice), it's all in my book Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine
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RT @aaronjmate: Washington Post headline: "Independent media in Russia, Ukraine lose their funding with USAID freeze" The headline should…
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RT @0rf: It's a verifiably true story with no profanity or graphic imagery. Please share until @TeamYouTube responds!
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RT @martyrmade: Bernie, the Squad, Fetterman... Democrats love to LARP as rebels bucking the system, but when the chips are down they all d…
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RT @Glenn_Diesen: The Atlantic cover in 2001: "Russia is Finished" (narrative for the next 24 years), now the same script is applied to Chi…
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If you want to know what the system really is, look what it did to @Thomas_Drake1. The pomp and pageantry and the pretty speeches...all just a head fake. As novelist Andrew Vachss used to say: behavior is the truth.
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RT @0rf: Hey @TeamYouTube, Why is Tom Drake's story of being framed by the government, "not suitable" for ads?
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RT @Glenn_Diesen: Financial Times: If you do not support the US government financing "independent" opposition media around the world and hi…
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RT @mtracey: If there was ever an issue that cultural liberals would be well-served to strategically concede on, it's "Trans in Sports," wh…
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@RnaudBertrand I fear that in such matters, an irony and self-awareness deficit is prerequisite.
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@richbarrett @saikatc And a maximum age instead of just the constitutional minimums. But better yet, lotteries instead of elections. Could we really do worse?
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Have a feeling you will enjoy this, @wimdemeere
I don’t know much about Bitcoin, but my friend @rdnxyz does, and he’s generous enough to take some time to teach me. This will be the first of a series that will hopefully lift my veil of ignorance. (Link below)
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RT @JohnKiriakou: The story of NSA whistleblower Tom Drake (@Thomas_Drake1). A brave patriot who exposed the National Security Agency's ill…
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RT @0rf: Whistleblower Thomas Drake commends Tulsi Gabbard for refusing to call Snowden a "traitor". "I commend her. I have to say it. I c…
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@kenklippenstein I can't keep including these in the new book, it's going to be nothing but footnotes 😂
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