In May 2013 I resigned from PEN America over the appointment of former State Department official Suzanne Nossel. A decade later, PEN America has become a propaganda arm of the state.
OMG, this disgrace is another example of total collapse:
"Nossel stands for none of these ideals. She is a former corporate lawyer, listed as a “contributor” to the Federalist Society, who worked for McKinsey & Company and as vice president of U.S. business development for Bertelsmann"
I fly in much smaller circles, but I've fought EXACTLY the same corruption of the environmental community. I once spent my soul there, but am sickened by the corporate and democratic sycophants who now "lead" the organizations I worked for.
Over the past four years, as censorship and suppression related to the Covid event was laid bare, Pen America had absolutely nothing to say about the suffocation of dissent by corporate-state partnerships, or outright violations of the First Amendment. According to its mission, it should have but it has become a tool of the establishment. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116663/witnesses/HHRG-118-HM09-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20231213.pdf
I've done that many times and for many years. A recent example:
"Of course, there is no consideration of the military’s emission of greenhouse gases during their “mission” or from conducting these “training operations”, or the GHG emissions associated with “controlled burns” and routine fires these “training operations” create, or the impact on carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation.
And oops! Looks like I buried the lede: Did I mention that the US military is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases?
Research by social scientists from Durham University and Lancaster University shows the US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries.
The majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting routinely focuses on civilian energy use and fuel consumption, not on the US military. This new study, published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, calculates part of the US military’s impact on climate change through critical analysis of its global logistical supply chains."
NJ DEP & NJ Conservation Foundation Partner With Military To Burn NJ Forests – No Consideration of Climate Impacts
The USA was still-born the day it began. It was founded on death and destruction and will continue it megalomaniac murderous mayhem until it kills us all. The co-opting of Pen America is just another nail in the coffin. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes.
The USA was not still born it was murdered by greed and avarice and a lie about pie in the sky when you die. Jefferson, Franklin , Paine believed in life not pie in the sky when you die.
Thank you so much for writing this! I did not know. I encouraged my young fledgling granddaughter to join them 10 years ago because of all those members I respected (sounds like most now gone from PEN). I will forward this to her.
I'm wondering how someone the likes of Nossel can fool so many smart intelligent people - at PEN, at Amnesty, etc.? She must be one of the growing number of very smooth, very convincing charismatic narcissistic sociopaths this country is producing in all fields in these convoluted and morally stunted times. When such people target you, their cunning and utter (appearance of) belief in whatever they are saying sound completely convincing. (maybe she has wealth and certainly potential donor connections as well.) I think of the sorcerer Saruman (Trump, Biden, et al) speaking from his tower, his voice impossible to resist, but the trees of the forest warning that his mind was made of "metal and wheels" (CEO in modern parlance) from long study of the arts of his enemies in the Empire of Sauron.
I'm surprised she (as PEN) didn't say: "“our 'thoughts and prayers are with' the suffering endured by so many Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” The systematic tools of seduction, control and overreach into all areas of the arts, writing, educational institutions, media, by this Military Industrial Colonial Empire are truly frightening. I'm reminded of my Palestinian friend, Salam Khalili, a journalist and artist in East Jerusalem who wrote and painted what he saw, for which he was arrested right after the 1967 six day war and tortured in prison for 7 years (freed by Amnesty and later dying young from of his wounds). He said that for years the IDF would break into artists/writers homes in the middle of the night and confiscate and burn all of their art, printing presses, and also that for many years artists were not even allowed to use red, black, white or green paint!
We need to take what has happened to PEN, the media, and the book banning now taking place very seriously - for the future, for Life on Mother Earth and especially as empowered responses, like the letter to PEN you describe, to the martyrdom of our brothers and sisters in Gaza. Countless people around the world are waking up because of the Palestinians! This has never happened before on this scale.
I, Ann Wright, John Walsh and others helped expose to Amnesty Int'l-USA that their then Director Suzanne Nossel was a Madeliene Albright warhawk protegee who had helped upend the "Goldstone Report", who got Goldstone himself to recant on his earlier findings of Israel's war crimes in one of their earlier bombings of Gaza:
Wow, she has crafted quite a cover! The sentence: 'She has frequently visited relatives in Israel, saying “It's a place where I feel very comfortable and at home."' Yes, we can see why.
Thank you so much for exposing her! It's still remarkable that Amnesty did not ferret this out, and one hopes they did some housecleaning of their Board of Directors.
This a disgrace, a disgrace which sums up the true state of the arts in amerika's dying empire.
I normally am at pains to condemn all zionists be they xtians or jews for their enabling of a blatant genocide which has been apparent to anyone who cares to properly examine the ersatz state of israel's political structure for the past 70 years; however this time I m forced to ask the question.
Given that the vast majority of amerikan zionists are xtians, why is that only jewish amerikans occupy leadership positions in those organisations which zionists' israeli masters deem most appropriate for infiltration? We have seen this time and time again in media, culture especially film & TV and government eg the state department whose higher echelons are chocka with jewish zionists occupying senior positions.
I do not believe I have any racist intent in asking this question, rather it is the zionist's mistrust of gentiles, even those who support them which encourages the ersatz state's leaders to a strategy where only followers of their religion are deemed to be trustworthy enough to take up a role they otherwise deem "too important" to entrust to a gentile, lest that gentile have a change of heart.
This is ironic given the number of jews all over this planet who sickened by the ersatz state's murderous regime are eschewing the heresy that is zionism in favour of a more traditional view of their belief.
All this stupid strategy has succeeded in doing is to arouse the ire of those prone to xenophobia into believing amerika is being subjected to some great jewish conspiracy, thereby increasing anti-semitism. I know very well that this was a strategy oft used by hasbarites who, following instructiions have polluted many blogs with rank judeophobia in the hope that decent people will tar all posts to the blog as being blatantly 'ant-semitic' (their code word for judeophobia).
Hasbara failed in this as many posters were tracked down and their true background exposed. But now that the vast majority of humans in this world are appalled at zionist tyranny & slaughter in Gaza, this is an extremely dangerous activity for people will look at plants like Suzanne Nossel, see that she is a jew and wrongly conclude that the 'jewish conspiracy' theory has substance.
There will be chaos and destruction for all jews, zionist or no, if judeophobia does become as problematic as it was immediately post WW2 when political leaders in amerika & europe decided they could "kill two birds with one stone". So it was planned to force jewish refugees into Palestine rather than provide the safety and security of the leaders' own nations, a respite offered to many nazi war criminals but not their victims, so that the new jewish ersatz state would be USuk's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the heart of the best resource stealing territory on the planet.
Yet it will be the poor strategies of zionists who must also bear the blame if that does in fact occur. Calling us all out as racists for opposing this horror on ordinary decent Palestinians creates "a boy who cried wolf" situation whereby if actual judeophobia does surface in a meaningful way, few will be listening.
Wake up Ms Nossel, consider then comprehend the perilous path you and your bosses are carelessly treading.
"Wake up Ms. Nossel" and don't dare to vote democrat:
"Donald Trump: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump’s remark as “unadulterated antisemitism.” Trump made the comment on a podcast hosted by former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, who has faced accusations of antisemitism, as well. In 2017, the Jewish newspaper The Forward reported that Gorka had ties to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group and that he supported an antisemitic and racist paramilitary militia in Hungary while he served as a Hungarian politician." democracynow.org (3/20/24)
Donald Duck was funny and not divisive like this new duck.
There is only one thing to do. To carry on the proud tradition of PEN, form a new group PEN-FFS (PEN For Free Speech) and contact former PEN members to join. A small subscription fee would help kick start it. Of course FFS has a different meaning - but that too.
More and more evidence that the first amendment right to freedom of the press is being shut down and the U.S. media being taken over by the government to control the flow of information to the public at large. The U.S. is quickly heading for a fascist takeover soon, if the voters don't come to their senses, even if Trump doesn't make it out of the RNC gate. The democrats are just as guilty of subverting the media as the GOP. They just hide it better.
I have been doing a series of podcasts on the MAGA movement in the last few weeks and going forward. If anyone is interested, look up The Village Oak Tree on any podcast mobile app and on YouTube under the Crann na beatha channel. The only way to stop this takeover of our government is to be aware of how it's being done and stop them with our votes on election days. Time is running out.
Organizations like PEN advocating for free speech and free discourse should take no sides for political parties, candidates, or in wars, etc. The moment they do, they become mouthpieces for certain viewpoints and shills for certain causes, and such necessities amplifying certain favored voices while silencing others – that is to say, censorship.
An important issue not addressed by Hedges or asked by any of those responding to his excellent essay is how in Hell did this vile harridan ever get the job in the first place. I think its an extremely important article as very little attention, media or otherwise, is being devoted to widespread efforts to suppress free speech by our government or various interest groups, as in this case the Israel Lobby. Once again, i'd be interested in learning about the backstory of her hiring such as identification and description of PEN Board members who secured her selection.
“I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to give your opinion”….. from an episode of All in the Family. Fifty years later and we are following the wrong path! Free speech is being destroyed by Corporate America and all extreme right wing ideologists….. 1984 (George Orwell). The boot of this ideology will soon crush us!
So a bunch of activist writers on the side of hating Israel and by proxy hating Israel Jews, demanded in an open letter that the free-speech organization PEN America release a statement about Palestinian writers killed in Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza and “name their murderer: Israel, a Zionist colonial state funded by the U.S. government.” They say that if PEN does not “take an actual stand against an actual genocide,” the group should disband.
So because PEN does not take their side, they are boycotting it.
Well, not only should they boycott but they should be banned from any and all associations for free speech journalism and just stick to their toxic anti-Israel and anti-Jew activism. We will know them for whom they really are.
NO organization that subscribes to journalist free speech should allow activists, especially those driven by hate, to dictate their principles.
OMG, this disgrace is another example of total collapse:
"Nossel stands for none of these ideals. She is a former corporate lawyer, listed as a “contributor” to the Federalist Society, who worked for McKinsey & Company and as vice president of U.S. business development for Bertelsmann"
I fly in much smaller circles, but I've fought EXACTLY the same corruption of the environmental community. I once spent my soul there, but am sickened by the corporate and democratic sycophants who now "lead" the organizations I worked for.
Over the past four years, as censorship and suppression related to the Covid event was laid bare, Pen America had absolutely nothing to say about the suffocation of dissent by corporate-state partnerships, or outright violations of the First Amendment. According to its mission, it should have but it has become a tool of the establishment. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116663/witnesses/HHRG-118-HM09-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20231213.pdf
Point out that the US military is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses on the planet and watch the fur fly.
I've done that many times and for many years. A recent example:
"Of course, there is no consideration of the military’s emission of greenhouse gases during their “mission” or from conducting these “training operations”, or the GHG emissions associated with “controlled burns” and routine fires these “training operations” create, or the impact on carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation.
And oops! Looks like I buried the lede: Did I mention that the US military is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases?
Research by social scientists from Durham University and Lancaster University shows the US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries.
The majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting routinely focuses on civilian energy use and fuel consumption, not on the US military. This new study, published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, calculates part of the US military’s impact on climate change through critical analysis of its global logistical supply chains."
NJ DEP & NJ Conservation Foundation Partner With Military To Burn NJ Forests – No Consideration of Climate Impacts
http://www.wolfenotes.com/2019/12/nj-dep-nj-conservation-foundation-partner-with-military-to-burn-nj-forests/
The USA was still-born the day it began. It was founded on death and destruction and will continue it megalomaniac murderous mayhem until it kills us all. The co-opting of Pen America is just another nail in the coffin. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes.
The USA was not still born it was murdered by greed and avarice and a lie about pie in the sky when you die. Jefferson, Franklin , Paine believed in life not pie in the sky when you die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIQpuKHHI-E
I know the second verse of the Star Spangled banner. It is a homge to injustice and servitude
I know America needs a national anthem that unites. I know the real story of Fort McHenry is unAmerican.
How about a real American Anthem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUjr8EVgBg
Why does this surprise you? The Establishment categorizes its enemies as follows: whom to co-opt, whom to buy off, whom to neutralize, whom to ignore.
Thank you so much for writing this! I did not know. I encouraged my young fledgling granddaughter to join them 10 years ago because of all those members I respected (sounds like most now gone from PEN). I will forward this to her.
I'm wondering how someone the likes of Nossel can fool so many smart intelligent people - at PEN, at Amnesty, etc.? She must be one of the growing number of very smooth, very convincing charismatic narcissistic sociopaths this country is producing in all fields in these convoluted and morally stunted times. When such people target you, their cunning and utter (appearance of) belief in whatever they are saying sound completely convincing. (maybe she has wealth and certainly potential donor connections as well.) I think of the sorcerer Saruman (Trump, Biden, et al) speaking from his tower, his voice impossible to resist, but the trees of the forest warning that his mind was made of "metal and wheels" (CEO in modern parlance) from long study of the arts of his enemies in the Empire of Sauron.
I'm surprised she (as PEN) didn't say: "“our 'thoughts and prayers are with' the suffering endured by so many Palestinian civilians in Gaza.” The systematic tools of seduction, control and overreach into all areas of the arts, writing, educational institutions, media, by this Military Industrial Colonial Empire are truly frightening. I'm reminded of my Palestinian friend, Salam Khalili, a journalist and artist in East Jerusalem who wrote and painted what he saw, for which he was arrested right after the 1967 six day war and tortured in prison for 7 years (freed by Amnesty and later dying young from of his wounds). He said that for years the IDF would break into artists/writers homes in the middle of the night and confiscate and burn all of their art, printing presses, and also that for many years artists were not even allowed to use red, black, white or green paint!
We need to take what has happened to PEN, the media, and the book banning now taking place very seriously - for the future, for Life on Mother Earth and especially as empowered responses, like the letter to PEN you describe, to the martyrdom of our brothers and sisters in Gaza. Countless people around the world are waking up because of the Palestinians! This has never happened before on this scale.
I, Ann Wright, John Walsh and others helped expose to Amnesty Int'l-USA that their then Director Suzanne Nossel was a Madeliene Albright warhawk protegee who had helped upend the "Goldstone Report", who got Goldstone himself to recant on his earlier findings of Israel's war crimes in one of their earlier bombings of Gaza:
https://went2thebridge.blogspot.com/2012/12/victory-amnesty-usa-head-suzanne-nossel.html
Wow, she has crafted quite a cover! The sentence: 'She has frequently visited relatives in Israel, saying “It's a place where I feel very comfortable and at home."' Yes, we can see why.
Thank you so much for exposing her! It's still remarkable that Amnesty did not ferret this out, and one hopes they did some housecleaning of their Board of Directors.
This a disgrace, a disgrace which sums up the true state of the arts in amerika's dying empire.
I normally am at pains to condemn all zionists be they xtians or jews for their enabling of a blatant genocide which has been apparent to anyone who cares to properly examine the ersatz state of israel's political structure for the past 70 years; however this time I m forced to ask the question.
Given that the vast majority of amerikan zionists are xtians, why is that only jewish amerikans occupy leadership positions in those organisations which zionists' israeli masters deem most appropriate for infiltration? We have seen this time and time again in media, culture especially film & TV and government eg the state department whose higher echelons are chocka with jewish zionists occupying senior positions.
I do not believe I have any racist intent in asking this question, rather it is the zionist's mistrust of gentiles, even those who support them which encourages the ersatz state's leaders to a strategy where only followers of their religion are deemed to be trustworthy enough to take up a role they otherwise deem "too important" to entrust to a gentile, lest that gentile have a change of heart.
This is ironic given the number of jews all over this planet who sickened by the ersatz state's murderous regime are eschewing the heresy that is zionism in favour of a more traditional view of their belief.
All this stupid strategy has succeeded in doing is to arouse the ire of those prone to xenophobia into believing amerika is being subjected to some great jewish conspiracy, thereby increasing anti-semitism. I know very well that this was a strategy oft used by hasbarites who, following instructiions have polluted many blogs with rank judeophobia in the hope that decent people will tar all posts to the blog as being blatantly 'ant-semitic' (their code word for judeophobia).
Hasbara failed in this as many posters were tracked down and their true background exposed. But now that the vast majority of humans in this world are appalled at zionist tyranny & slaughter in Gaza, this is an extremely dangerous activity for people will look at plants like Suzanne Nossel, see that she is a jew and wrongly conclude that the 'jewish conspiracy' theory has substance.
There will be chaos and destruction for all jews, zionist or no, if judeophobia does become as problematic as it was immediately post WW2 when political leaders in amerika & europe decided they could "kill two birds with one stone". So it was planned to force jewish refugees into Palestine rather than provide the safety and security of the leaders' own nations, a respite offered to many nazi war criminals but not their victims, so that the new jewish ersatz state would be USuk's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the heart of the best resource stealing territory on the planet.
Yet it will be the poor strategies of zionists who must also bear the blame if that does in fact occur. Calling us all out as racists for opposing this horror on ordinary decent Palestinians creates "a boy who cried wolf" situation whereby if actual judeophobia does surface in a meaningful way, few will be listening.
Wake up Ms Nossel, consider then comprehend the perilous path you and your bosses are carelessly treading.
"Wake up Ms. Nossel" and don't dare to vote democrat:
"Donald Trump: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump’s remark as “unadulterated antisemitism.” Trump made the comment on a podcast hosted by former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, who has faced accusations of antisemitism, as well. In 2017, the Jewish newspaper The Forward reported that Gorka had ties to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group and that he supported an antisemitic and racist paramilitary militia in Hungary while he served as a Hungarian politician." democracynow.org (3/20/24)
Donald Duck was funny and not divisive like this new duck.
Everything the US touches, it corrupts to the purposes of the empire.
There is only one thing to do. To carry on the proud tradition of PEN, form a new group PEN-FFS (PEN For Free Speech) and contact former PEN members to join. A small subscription fee would help kick start it. Of course FFS has a different meaning - but that too.
More and more evidence that the first amendment right to freedom of the press is being shut down and the U.S. media being taken over by the government to control the flow of information to the public at large. The U.S. is quickly heading for a fascist takeover soon, if the voters don't come to their senses, even if Trump doesn't make it out of the RNC gate. The democrats are just as guilty of subverting the media as the GOP. They just hide it better.
I have been doing a series of podcasts on the MAGA movement in the last few weeks and going forward. If anyone is interested, look up The Village Oak Tree on any podcast mobile app and on YouTube under the Crann na beatha channel. The only way to stop this takeover of our government is to be aware of how it's being done and stop them with our votes on election days. Time is running out.
Yes, I and other co-writers helped expose to Amnesty International that their then Director Suzanne Nossel was the Madeleine Albright warhawk protegee who worked to upend the "Goldstone Report" which got Goldstone himself to recant when his report initially documented Israel's war crimes in an earlier carpet bombing of Gaza. https://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/18/amnestys-shilling-for-us-wars/ and https://went2thebridge.blogspot.com/2012/12/victory-amnesty-usa-head-suzanne-nossel.html
Organizations like PEN advocating for free speech and free discourse should take no sides for political parties, candidates, or in wars, etc. The moment they do, they become mouthpieces for certain viewpoints and shills for certain causes, and such necessities amplifying certain favored voices while silencing others – that is to say, censorship.
what is the best alternative to a failing org like PEN?
An important issue not addressed by Hedges or asked by any of those responding to his excellent essay is how in Hell did this vile harridan ever get the job in the first place. I think its an extremely important article as very little attention, media or otherwise, is being devoted to widespread efforts to suppress free speech by our government or various interest groups, as in this case the Israel Lobby. Once again, i'd be interested in learning about the backstory of her hiring such as identification and description of PEN Board members who secured her selection.
Can you hear a PEN drop?
“I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to give your opinion”….. from an episode of All in the Family. Fifty years later and we are following the wrong path! Free speech is being destroyed by Corporate America and all extreme right wing ideologists….. 1984 (George Orwell). The boot of this ideology will soon crush us!
So a bunch of activist writers on the side of hating Israel and by proxy hating Israel Jews, demanded in an open letter that the free-speech organization PEN America release a statement about Palestinian writers killed in Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza and “name their murderer: Israel, a Zionist colonial state funded by the U.S. government.” They say that if PEN does not “take an actual stand against an actual genocide,” the group should disband.
So because PEN does not take their side, they are boycotting it.
Well, not only should they boycott but they should be banned from any and all associations for free speech journalism and just stick to their toxic anti-Israel and anti-Jew activism. We will know them for whom they really are.
NO organization that subscribes to journalist free speech should allow activists, especially those driven by hate, to dictate their principles.
The PEN is as mighty as its approval by the corporate state sword.