It's bad enough that Bob Dylan got an award (Nobel) because he's not done anything of true importance since the sixties and, even then, we're dealing with him ripping off old melodies.
But to read drivel like this from Jeffrey St. Clair?
+ The announcement that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature induced much carping from uptight academics about the alleged degeneration of the award. How dare they honor a rock singer? My question is what took them so long? The crusty Nobel committee should have recognized the role of popular music at least 35 years ago and given the prize to Bob Marley. Even Dylan would probably admit that Smokey Robinson should have been in line ahead of him.
+ Still Dylan deserves the recognition. He’s the greatest white blues singer and probably the best songwriter of the rock era. My favorites from across the decades: Masters of War, Highway 61 Revisited, Just Like Tom Thumb Blues, Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again, I Want You, All Along the Watchtower, The Man in Me, Forever Young, I Shall be Released, If You See Her Say Hello, This Wheel’s on Fire, Tears of Rage, Hurricane, Precious Angel, Blind Willie McTell, Julius & Ethyl, Heart of Mine, Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight, Dark Eyes, Everything is Broken, Love Sick, Not Dark Yet.
+ But I hope he tells the committee to shove it, as did Jean-Paul Sartre. If not, I trust he will stay in character and mumble Dylanesque obscurities to a mystified audience.
Dylan is not a great singer.
Blues or otherwise.
Around "Lay Lady Lay" he start keening.
And, of course, for the last forty years, he wheezes his way through a song.
There's no point to him.
And isn't it telling that Jeffrey names two to give us a triad,, Bob, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley.
Not a woman among them.
Not even feminist John Lennon who wrote better songs and sang better than Bob Dylan ever could.
Along with John Lennon, I'd say Joni Mitchell deserved the award.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, October 14, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, Haider al-Abadi
is said to survive an assassination attempt, the refugees and
displacements that Mosul liberation or 'liberation' will create is a
given and should be addressed now, and much more.
US President Barack Obama is hoping to both bolster his legacy and deliver the election to War Hawk Hillary Clinton via a 'victory' in Mosul.
Mosul was seized by the Islamic State in June of 2014. Over two years later, it's suddenly time, a month before the US presidential election, to liberate or 'liberate' it.
And you get US government spokespersons trying to gin up US public interest with press releases like "Liberating Mosul Will Be Iraq's Biggest Fight, OIR Spokesman Says."
So -- get this -- the US government is preparing.
Preparing for propaganda, preparing for using Iraq, preparing for lying . . .
Preparing for everything, apparently, except helping Iraqis.
Reminder:
US President Barack Obama is hoping to both bolster his legacy and deliver the election to War Hawk Hillary Clinton via a 'victory' in Mosul.
Mosul was seized by the Islamic State in June of 2014. Over two years later, it's suddenly time, a month before the US presidential election, to liberate or 'liberate' it.
And you get US government spokespersons trying to gin up US public interest with press releases like "Liberating Mosul Will Be Iraq's Biggest Fight, OIR Spokesman Says."
So -- get this -- the US government is preparing.
Preparing for propaganda, preparing for using Iraq, preparing for lying . . .
Preparing for everything, apparently, except helping Iraqis.
Reminder:
UNICEF Iraq يونيسف 
Iraq's already got a displacement crisis.
Liberating or 'liberating' Mosul will result in more displacement.
This is a known. Where is the preparation by Barack to deal with that?
We call for genuinely safe routes for civilians to escape #Mosul fighting & get to the shelter/help they need: oxf.am/Z6y8 #Iraq
Save the Children UK
An assault on Mosul risks 600,000 children's lives.
Children will be in the line of fire - unless we act now save.tc/b6Ux304XRX5 #Iraq
Many are warning what's coming. There's no excuse for Barack's failure to prepare for this. The White House better get on it and if they fail in this task the news outlets might want to try to remember there's supposed to be a difference between journalism and hagiography.
And Ken Roth better ask himself if pimping for Hillary Clinton is worth short changing human lives? I'm talking about the failure of Human Rights Watch to warn of this impending disaster while Roth sends his 'coded' Tweets of support to Hillary (which include pimping the lie that WikiLeak's revelations are due to Russian hackers). Roth would do better to focus on humanity and stop cheapening his reputation with election politics.
The timing of Mosul faces complications due to the ongoing animosity between the governments of Iraq and Turkey. Turkey has troops in Iraq. The government of Iraq wants them out. Turkey is refusing to remove the troops.
Birce Bora (ALJAZEERA) observes, "Only weeks before Iraqi troops and their local and international partners start their push to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), the leaders of Turkey and Iraq have been caught in a war of words that could derail the Mosul liberation efforts."
In other news out of Iraq today, there's this:
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi survived an assassination attempt today.
#Iraq
THE BAGHDAD POST apparently has the exclusive, if the attempt took place.
What is known and established by others right now is that Haider al-Abadi was in Kirkuk earlier today.
Iraqi Day
#Iraq PM walking around in Al Basheer district southwest #Kirkuk and now back in Kirkuk govt complex.
#تحرير_الموصل
#ولد_الملحه_بالحدباء
Mohammed Jabaal (BAGHDAD POST) reports that there was a shelling on a post where al-Abadi had been ten minutes prior. No one was injured in the shelling.
Haider was put in check on Tuesday by Iraq's federal courts who overturned his decision (unconstitutional decision) to do away with the post of vice president. This means that Osama al-Nujaifi, Ayad Allawi and Nouri al-Maliki remain vice presidents.
Nouri is the former prime minister and thug of Iraq whose actions -- persecuting the Sunni people, among his many actions -- nearly destroyed Iraq.
So it's no surprise that this is one response to the news:
Middle East Monitor
Iraqi Shia cleric calls for demonstrations against Maliki’s return to a vice presidential position. | #Iraq
Moqtada and Nouri have long been foes and rivals for control of the Shia population.
And the US Defense Dept announced Thursday:
Strikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Huwayjah, a strike destroyed an ISIL boat and a vehicle bomb.
-- Near Rutbah, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed three vehicles.
-- Near Bashir, a strike engaged an ISIL staging area and destroyed two ISIL-held buildings, two fighting positions, two tunnels, a storage cache and an ammunition cache.
-- Near Beiji, a strike destroyed two ISIL ammunition caches, two vehicles, a mortar system and a tunnel entrance.
-- Near Kisik, two strikes destroyed three ISIL tunnel entrances and damaged another tunnel.
-- Near Mosul, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle.
-- Near Qayyarah, two strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units and destroyed three supply caches, two vehicles, two mortar systems, two rocket systems and a heavy machine gun.
-- Near Sultan Abdallah, a strike destroyed five ISIL homemade explosive caches, two vehicles and an artillery system and suppressed a mortar position.
Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.
I know a few people are posting this morning.
I'll add the following community sites posted when they go up:
iraq
