“Sometimes you have sex with a woman who’s not your wife, and there’s a disagreement about what happened, and you just have to write a check and make it go away.” – Harvey Weinstein
trisection! So this is about Harvey Weinstein & powerful, moneyed serial sexual offenders/rapists that use “professional” territories for their sexual crimes. Secondly it is about the interdiction, sabotage, silent killing & neutralization of reporting/news/stories & indeed – crimes – by ‘extracurricular intervention’, or better still: corruption. Thirdly it concerns commercial espionage, private surveillance & Israel’s increasing expansion & commodification of this dirty, dangerous & intensely immoral threat & desecration of/to civil liberties & human rights which can be brought by any asshole with the dollars to spew, as this book clearly demonstrates (a serial rapist, bully & sociopath).
“Look, – You know who Harvey Weinstein is. I know who Harvey Weinstein is. But i’m in the industry. I don’t know that normal Americans do.”
This superb investigation is compiled by Ronan Farrow, the estranged step son of Woody Allen. Gay, pretentious, soft-left & well versed/accommodated with the keepers of the carousel, it would be very’ very easy to bat this guy into snowflake disposal … but where & whatever your pallet may tolerate/favour – this guy has done a magnificent feat of investigative reporting into an extremely necessary, risky & difficult subject/target. It also took considerable balls, more than you may assume, as Harvey was a madman, enormously powerful & eventually; fighting for his survival/freedom.
“Rich and powerful people get a pass. I see it every day in my own practice.”
“Because I don’t feel comfortable,” she told him. “I’m your employee.” “For fucks sake Ally!” He shouted. “For fucks sake, you can massage my thighs!”
Weinstein of course was a gigantic movie mogul who wielded tremendous power & leverage in Hollywood & beyond. He had decades of industry entrenchment & fusing, all furnished with artistic & commercial success & endless schmooze, washed over with favours, mutual alliances & time to fortify his power-brokering & interlinking consolidation of power. It was an “empire” of sorts. Externally, he was the constantly laughing man with a passion for cinematic art & all things film, but those that knew the man – & were not fortunate enough to be in his exclusion zone – knew there was another Harvey – the abusive bully, the egomaniac, the vindictive tyrant, & worse still; the fucking rapist!
“Weinstein’s legal argument, in order of ascending absurdity and descending seriousness, was that anything negative about him was defamatory”
“I don’t even think it’s about protecting his friends, it’s just, ‘This guy is powerful, I’m getting these calls, I don’t need this problem.” – “He doesn’t know it’s not ethical.” – NBC coward executive
The man was mad. I am not sure it was so much sexual gratification that he was after, as just some deranged exercise in power & a perverse sense of entitlement. Terrorizing the women, “having his way” even if it was as pathetic as whacking onto the locked door that his cowering victim had fled behind, which seemed to be sufficient enough. The power to act out these often abrupt, intemperate explosions of repulsive, inappropriate sexual imposition – and get away with it! In some ways he seemed closer to a flasher’s psychology. Although he was much’ much more dangerous. Many women suffered life altering trauma because of this warped, power-drunk shit.
“Weinstein used large financial settlements with strict nondisclosure agreements to prevent criminal proceedings and public revelation.”
“This is one of the most blatant and naked exercises of corporate spin I have encountered in WP and I have encountered a lot.”
How did he get away with it? Money & power. Non Disclosure Agreements (NDA), covert financial settlements, hush money. Exactly like that cunt in the Whitehouse. Also, it took a whole colony of caitiffs to look the other way, act as a lure, alert his lawyers, “kill” the story & pretend it was all normal.
“She said that it was almost ludicrously embedded in the corporate culture; that there was essentially a pimp on company payroll with only the thinnest job description to cover for his role procuring women for their boss.” – “Was it common knowledge that he was being, to use the term you used ‘predatory’ around women?
“Absolutely, she aid. everybody knew.”
“ She described the encounters as “one-sided and ‘onanistic’ ”.
I took a personal interest in this book because of its in-depth research into an apex example of blacklisting, exclusion & the extinguishing of a persons career based on a powerful individuals personal grudge (something I know very’ very well). Rebuffing Weinstein’s bathrobe moments, upsetting him or irking his ire in anyway would generally meet with ruthless & silent (behind the scenes) career assassination or the severe curtailment of work related prospects & opportunities. Emerging, or even well established actresses would find themselves obstructed & stonewalled – sidelined & secluded. Explanations would generally never be available…some would guess, others would struggle to cognate how such sweeping marginalization, artificial suppression & ostracising could impair or destroy their livelihoods based on one man’s heinous manipulation & the willing abetting of cowardly industry infrastructure that supported this corruption, however reticent or disapproving it’s collusion may or may not have been. It certainly is not just the movie industry, or America, or women only that suffer “inexplicable” repression, expulsion or career negation by some secret directive, belched from the jowls of some power-fuck shit-face that has “lined the track”, & his minions of compliant “bottom line” ass-covering shit-crawlers. Do you remember The Consulting Association (TCA)?
“He kept saying,” ‘If I can get a network to kill a story, how hard can a newspaper be?” – “He was triumphant.” “It was the kind of thing he’d be yelling at us. He’d say, ‘I got them to kill the fucking story, I’m the only one getting anything done here.”
Farrow’s own experience, with senior personnel from his own media firm being in the pocket of Harvey’s crusty slacks, & his determined defiance, which eventually results in him leaving the news organization to pursue the story independently. He sets an excellent example. Always, always, always go with the truth, no matter the repercussions.
“I know that everybody – I mean everybody – in Hollywood knows that it’s happening.” – “He’s not even really hiding. I mean, the way he does it, so many people are involved and see what’s happening. But everyone’s too scared to say anything.”
Harvey’s offensive against farrow as the investigation into his criminality intensifies is just as crucial a topic as everything else. His sprawling, incognito networks that penetrated so many media outlets & had safely secured so many powerful people – who could of course use that same power to influence those that were not already in the fold. But he went even further. On the advice of ex Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Harvey conscripted the filth-sodden Israeli spy firm Black Cube. In a private capacity, in an attempt to scupper consequences for very serious, recidivist rapes, sexual harassment & molestation, criminality, intimidation & corruption – he hired ex Israeli intelligence personnel to target Ronan & the victims that were willing to testify about the abuse they had suffered at his hands. Black Cube could of declined on “ethical” grounds, but of course, they went right in.
“As a survivor of sexual abuse, I feel like I am working for a media cabal akin to the Vatican.”
“I just live in terror”, she said. “ And after your story about the spies, I got even more scared. I knew who I was up against. And the shady shit they did.”
Black Cube is a commercial company. A “private investigator” swelling with ex-Intelligence operatives gone mercenary. Psy-ops, disruption, espionage, sabotage & beyond – all on the market for any one with the lucre (obviously, only the very rich can afford them). as Farrow decries – “What did it say about the gulf between the powerful and the powerless that wealthy individuals could intimidate, surveil, and conceal on such a vast scale?” Black Cube were involved in targeting opponents of the Trump Disintegration’s obscene & paralogical decision to veto the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. So operating in the interests of mass rapists & nuclear war enthusiasts/extinction advocates – wonderful. Along with fellow Israeli commercial “intelligence firm” NSO Group (& there are many’ many more as Israel explodes & exports this new market/global disservice) who are credited with selling the technology to Saudi Arabia, so they can brutally murder, de-limb & dissolve US citizens (Jamal Khashoggi) & transfer advanced malware to Jeff Bezos, along with other tyrannical japes & cyber dystopia hi-jinks that threaten all of us. NSO is currently being sued by WhatsApp for illegal surveillance & serious data abuses against a slew of human rights campaigners & journalists. Yes! that’s the same WhatsApp that has it’s own notoriety for grossly unethical (to say the very least) practices around data & privacy incursions etc, which will give you some idea of just how extreme, malign & illicit NSO criminality is.
“She is terrified and will not engage.”
“where he’s never admitted guilt, but large sums of money are paid. You need those documents. But the victims are never allowed to keep them.” – “they often stipulated financially devastating liquidated damages as a penalty for breach, and contained arbitration clauses that allowed them to be enforced secretly, rather than in court.”
this is legal? zero regulation? Is it even monitored? From “protecting the people” (the justification & ostensible singular purpose of intelligence agencies) to “protecting the perpetrators” anywhere! – In return for huge sums of cash. The despot/kleptocrats private security institution. The human rights & security implications for the world due to this “innovation” now on the free market is absolutely hysterical. Israel – of course! A ‘state’ who’s origins & everyday actions are glowing with baked in criminality, terrorism, the annihilation of human rights & racism by law. “extraordinary exemption” & pure, unabashed rogue-statery in-exremis, what else could we expect but the corrupting influence & international prostitution of its perfected “global leadership” in oppression, chicanery, subterfuge, deception & honed criminality & extraordinary exercises of anti-freedom abnormality via irregular means.
As Farrow reports – “ “- founded in 2010 by Dan Zorella and Dr. Avi Yanus, who had been on emails with Weinstein’s lawyers. Zorella and Yanus were both veterans of a secretive Israeli intelligence unit. From the beginning, Black Cube had close connections to Israel’s military and intelligence leadership. Meir Dagan, the legendary former director of Mossad, sat on the company’s advisory board until his death, in 2016. Dagan once pitched Black Cube’s services to a tycoon by saying: I can find a personal Mossad for you.”
“everyone told me the guy could close all the doors for me.”
so heinous, sickening & errant is Black Cube’s actions & existence, that two of it’s members (& a third ex-member) actually defect & end up supplying Farrow with information about their proceedings against him as they are so uncomfortable with it. It is that bad. & it is. An outlaw rapist, who caused so much suffering, & used herculean corrupt practices & absurd wealth to continue this reign of sexual criminality, was facilitated, defended, protected, shielded, abetted, aided, covered, supported & bolstered by an arm of Israeli military/intelligence, operating under a commercial capacity in return for money. They were willing accessories to Weinstein’s crimes & profited from their collusion & abetting, & the whole bunch of them should be facing extradition & prosecution charges accordingly. They are guilty as fuck & complicit on the highest level.
an incredible piece of work. & an early warning of the kind of epic “tyrant services” & “commercial criminality” that is being pushed into the market sphere by this spectacular outlaw outpost.
As for Trump, his unbroken excretion of mass document shredding, story stifling, illegitimate love-child, NDA spewing, hush money spurting, covert abortion pay-offs, witness intimidation cess-spire is never far from his Harvey counterpart.
Ronan Farrow, 2019, Little, Brown & Company/Fleet, 414 pages