Wednesday, December 05, 2018

Linda Ronstadt

  1. Jerry Brown, Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, Jackson Brown
  2. Now playing: Linda Ronstadt - You're No Good - Come listen at !
  3. Linda Ronstadt, citing health issues, cancels tour, Morristown appearance
  4. Linda Ronstadt - "It's So Easy" (Official Music Video) より
  5. [14:15] LINDA RONSTADT & JAMES INGRAM - SOMEWHERE OUT THERE [radiko]
  6. Replying to 
    Would love to go!! But out here in Sac. Cal. Home of the Brown recluse. He only came out in the 70d, 80s cause his novia was Linda Ronstadt. Got her Citizenship then he brought her family. Then with Reagan orchestrated the emancipation of 45k illegals and left the gates open.
  7. Linda Ronstadt ~ 'You're No Good' from the album Very Best Of Linda Ronstadt [2002]
  8. Missing my girl ... Linda Ronstadt - Blue Bayou via
  9. -UP Linda Ronstadt, WHEN WILL I BE LOVED



Linda.  She was one of the great singers of the 20th century.


Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Wednesday, December 5, 2018.  The press mourning for a War Criminal continues.


Via CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX, we'll note this from (Women's) March On the Pentagon:


We at (W)MOP are vehemently opposed to wars and war criminals and, with few exceptions, every US president falls into the latter category.

We are also vehemently opposed to the lionization of each war criminal as they finally pass from this mortal coil and we are also opposed to the fact that most of them die prosperous and peaceful and not rotting in Guantanamo or Ft. Leavenworth.

Donald Trump has declared Weds, December 5th as a "national day of mourning for George HW Bush," the 41st War Criminal in Chief. (W)MOP is not calling for a day of rejoicing, as we just plan on going on with our normal lives, trying to end war and the calumny of the US Empire.

So we at (W)MOP are declaring a National Day of Un-mourning on December 5th, 2018.

George HW Bush's record is there for anyone to see, and to us it's appalling and we mourn each and every one of the US Empire's victims during his reign of terror, most particularly as Director of the terrorist organization called the Central Intelligence Agency; Vice Present and President of the USA, and as the father of at least one more War Criminal in Chief and many other criminals.

The interesting thing about the "legacy" of George HW Bush, though, is that we look at his record with horror, while the rest of the country looks at it with respect and honor.

We are sure there are millions of people around the world, in Panama and Iraq, for example, who agree with us and are not mourning GHWB, either.

We have to make it NOT NORMAL to be a war criminal, and not honor them by naming airports and roads after these thugs. 


One thing we can sadly agree with about the rhetoric around the death of GHWB: He was a "great American," and we need to make that phrase stand for something different: peace for all, prosperity for all, good health for all and a sustainable planet where these things can happen.

***



Poppy Bush is a War Criminal -- dead or alive, he is a War Criminal.  He earned the title.  At COUNTERPUNCH, Anthony DiMaggio offers a lengthy corrective to the war machine known as the corporate press.  We'll note this on the Gulf War:


The lofty rhetoric employed by the president hardly matched the history of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Numerous distortions were presented as fact, and inconvenient truths were ignored by political elites and the media. One of the highest profile distortions was the claim that Iraqi troops threw Kuwaiti premature babies to the floor, while stealing their incubators. Reporting by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation found there was no evidence these events occurred. What of the testimony from the Kuwait girl, Nayirah? This 15-year old girl was not a neutral bystander, but the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. She was part of the Kuwaiti government’s effort to get back into power, and was coached to deliver her lines in front of the Congressional committee by the U.S. public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton, as part of the “Citizens for a Free Kuwait” astroturf “movement” funded by the Kuwaiti government, which allocated millions of dollars to a propaganda campaign aimed at cultivating public war support. In reaction to this deception, Amnesty International condemned President Bush for his “opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement.” However, the details of this deception emerged too late to make a difference in deterring support for war.
What about the comparison between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler, and the claim that Iraq threatened U.S. national security? Although Iraq did retain a nuclear program prior to the 1991 Gulf war, there was little evidence one way or another in the early 1990s regarding the state of the program. The lack of details meant the Bush administration had little direct insight into whether a nuclear threat existed, despite public claims otherwise. President Bush also warned that Iraq was amassing massive numbers of troops along the Iraq-Saudi border, and that potential aggression against Saudi Arabia merited war. Commercial satellite photos from 1990, however, revealed that there was no confirmable build-up of Iraqi troops on the Saudi border at the time.
Bush’s comparison of Hussein to Hitler was also propagandistic. There’s no doubt that Hussein was an aggressive, repressive dictator, as seen in his attacks on Iran, Kuwait, and his own people. But Hussein’s criminality was minor league compared to the most criminal authoritarian regimes in history. Hussein was a regional aggressor, not a global one. The Nazis were the largest existential threat the U.S. faced in its history. By contrast, although Iraq possessed the fourth largest military in the world in 1990, that military was technologically three-quarters of a century behind the U.S. military. The dominant tactic used by the Iraqis in the conflict with Iran was trench warfare, which had not been used by the U.S. and its allies since World War I. Iraqis hiding in trenches were no match for U.S. stealth bombers, fighter-jets, and tanks. U.S. tanks, fitted with plows, rode up to the trenches, burying Iraqi troops alive, and killing hundreds. Thousands more died on the “Highway of Death” between Iraq and Kuwait. Retreating Iraqi military convoys were savaged by U.S. fighter-jets, leading to mass incinerations and an image of devastation that became an enduring symbol of the war’s one-sided destructiveness, wrought almost entirely against Iraqis. U.S. fighter jets referred to their attack runs against Iraqi vehicles as a “Turkey shoot,” indicating the severity of the slaughter. While an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Iraqi troops were killed in the conflict, 147 U.S. deaths in were recorded – translating into an imbalance of between 68-to-1 to 82-to-1. The 1991 Gulf War and the Second World War were also radically different in their duration. The U.S. defeated Iraq in just five weeks of fighting in 1991. In contrast, the Second World War spanned from 1939 to 1945, and the U.S. involvement extended for three-and-a-half years, from late 1941 through mid-1945. In short, Bush’s comparison of Hussein and Hitler was an incredible achievement of propaganda.
The Bush administration also deceived the public on Iraq’s chemical weapons. The U.S. provided billions in military and economic aid to Iraq during the 1980s, up until Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. was a supporter of Hussein’s regime during the worst of his atrocities, before, during, and after the gassing of Halabja in 1988. The issue barely appeared in the news in the run-up to the Gulf War, but it was more often reported following the invasion of Kuwait, since the gassing played into the United States’ own narrative that it was concerned with human rights in Kuwait.But the U.S. was anything but concerned with the victims of Hussein’s crimes when the deaths occurred – his victims were pawns in a geopolitical power game between the U.S. and Iraq.
Looking at past support for Hussein, one sees U.S. fingerprints all over the Iraqi chemical attacks on the Kurds and against Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war. President Bush, working with Senators such as Republican Bob Dole, fought against the instituting of sanctions against Iraq after the Halabja gassing. Furthermore, as reported by the New York Times in 2002, discussions with “senior military officers” revealed that the Reagan administration secretly provided “critical battle planning assistance [to Iraq against Iran] at a time when American intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war.” ABC’s Nightline reported in 1992 that the “Reagan/Bush administrations permitted – and frequently encouraged – the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual use technology (allowing Iraq to develop chemical weapons), chemicals, and weapons to Iraq.” In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, U.S. officials removed thousands of pages from U.N. reports that documented how the U.S. supplied the components for developing chemical weapons. As the German newspaper Die Tageszetung reported:
“The missing pages [of the U.N. report] implicated twenty-four U.S. based corporations and the successive Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. administration in connection with the illegal supplying of Saddam Hussein government with myriad weapons of mass destruction and the training to use them.”
The Bush administration enabled the chemical weapons atrocities committed by Hussein. Widespread recognition of this harsh reality, however, did not materialize in the run-up to the 2003 invasion, as it threatened to undermine the narrative that the U.S. was concerned with human rights in Iraq.
Finally, what of President Bush’s insistence that oil was not a significant interest of the U.S.? Available evidence shows this claim was a lie, told to obscure U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East. Now-declassified government documents reveal that oil interests were of central concern to the president. National Security Directive 26, signed by President Bush in 1989, stated that
“Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area [of which Iraq was one in 1989] are vital to U.S. national security. The United States remains committed to defending its vital interests in the region, if necessary and appropriate through the use of U.S. military force, against the Soviet Union or any other power with interests inimical [contrary] to our own.”

At the time, Bush wrote that “normal relations between the U.S. and Iraq would serve our longer-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East.” National Security Directive 54, which Bush signed in January 1991, also declared that Middle East oil was vital to U.S. national security and that it remained committed to using force to defend “its” interest [Iraqi oil presumably belongs to the United States]. The Bush administration reversed course, however, declaring in the document that “Iraq, by virtue of its unprovoked invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and its subsequent brutal occupation, is clearly a power with interests inimical to our own.” The two NSD documents reveal that the primary U.S. concern in Iraq was oil, and that Bush was willing to marginalize Iraqi human rights atrocities in pursuit of neocolonial interests. The documents also revealed that the U.S. was committed to the use of force in the name of dominating Iraqi oil, contrary to President Bush’s public lies.


Also at COUNTERPUNCH, you can refer to Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn's "Air Cocaine: Poppy Bush, the Contras and a Secret Airbase in the Backwoods of Arkansas," Chris Floyd's "Criminal History: BCCI, the Bushes … and Mueller," Ted Rall's "The Amazing GWHB Hagiography" and St. Clair's "How Poppy Bush’s Brother, “Uncle Bucky,” Made a Killing Off the Iraq Wars."  At WSWS, check out Patrick Martin's "A “kinder, gentler” imperialist butcher, dead at 94Media, political establishment laud George H. W. Bush" and Genevieve Leigh's "Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren glorify the late President Bush."

Outside the US, the propaganda is less intense.  Hadani Ditmars (THE NEW ARAB) offers:

As the hagiography of the late George Bush Senior continues, I remember my first trip to Baghdad in 1997, when crossing the threshold of the Al Rashid hotel necessitated stepping on a mosaic tiled image of the former American president framed by the words "Bush is Criminal".

The memory of the "highway of death", where American and allied forces participated in a turkey shoot of retreating Iraq forces (and some civilians), leaving corpses rotting for miles in the desert, was still fresh in the minds of Iraqis.


Deemed a contravention of the Third Geneva Convention by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, the massacre had also made a widow of a woman I befriended at the hotel. Ahlam worked as a hairdresser at the Al Rashid hotel salon, and told me about her husband's death on the highway, and her subsequent struggle to raise two children in sanctions-plagued Iraq, one new year's eve in 1998.

Even fresher in the Iraqi memory then was the three-day bombing campaign instigated not by a member of the Bush Republican dynasty, but by Bill Clinton - some said in an effort to distract attention from the Lewinsky scandal.

Clinton, together with his UK counterparts, oversaw the draconian sanctions regime in Iraq that starved a captive population - already held hostage to wrecked infrastructure bombed by Bush the First - increased Saddam's power, wiped out the middle class, destroyed what had been the best public health and education systems in the Arab world, and stopped items like chlorine, vital to water purification in a desert country, (as well as oxygen tanks, spare parts for generators, and even stethoscopes) from entering the country as so called "dual use" items.

When half a million Iraqi children subsequently died from water-borne diseases, Madeleine Albright - Clinton's then secretary of state - infamously told 60 Minutes, "it was worth the price".

Comparing American presidents - Republican or Democrats - and their callous disregard for the lives of Iraqis can often feel like a macabre game of "spot the difference".




And M Baqir Mohie El-Deen (COMMDIGINEWS) shares:

U.S. media reports that moments before President Bush passed away, he was surrounded by family and close friends. This is something he denied to millions of Iraqis. President Bush stated that he wants to go to heaven. Mr. Bush, I hope you make it to heaven since living in the United States sheltered you from witnessing the suffering you caused onto the millions of Iraqis.
For in heaven, they will welcome you at the pearly gates.


That's in reference to the Gulf War.  The Iraq War that started in March of 2003 continues and US troops remain on Iraqi soil.

[Infographic] US Expands Herir Military Airbase in Iraq's
 
 



Also continuing?  The protests in Basra.


Search results
Demonstrators in Iraq's Basra wear yellow vests, echoing Paris protests
 
 
Demonstrators in Iraq's Basra wear yellow vests, echoing Paris protests
 
 
This is a fact: Protesters in Basra wore yellow vests in protests against the corruption of the former governor in Summer 2015.
 
 
again 14 activists arrested. With all the blocs rivalry, divisions, protests, etc, I don't think the gov.will last for a long time.
 
 
Credible report says that Iran has despatched death squads into Iraq to eliminate key opponent voices within Iraq. It is worth noting that several civic protestors were murdered during recent protests in Basra for jobs, services&justices
 
 



How come no headline like this was posted on French people viewing and subsequently mimicking protests in Iran, Basra, or Jordan for example? Why is the narrative always that Middle Easterners are looking towards the west for inspiration? What a BS pretense.
 
 



Basra teachers, youth continue protests demanding employment, basic services
 
 




Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM) notes, "Protests in Basra continued, where security forces used weapons to scatter a crowd intent on storming the governor’s office. Separately, an altercation between protestors and Basra Governor Asaad al-Eidani became physical; a cameraman was arrested for filming the incident."


Another continuing feature?  The new prime minister, Adil Abdul al-Mahdi, still can't form a Cabinet.  The most recent promise had been yesterday the Cabinet would be filled -- instead it once again did not happen.


Astute minister predicts in wake of lack of cabinet formation , weakness of cabinet and of consensus around pm
 
 


Today’s uncooked attempt by new to present his 8 remaining ministers to the for the new cabinet ended in total failure.
 
 



Vote on remaining cabinet positions delayed until Thursday (Dec. 6) after Council of Representatives looses quorum amid boycotts, scuffle
 
 



In other news, Chloe Cornish and Asser Khattab (IRISH TIMES) report:

A recent US defence department report said an effective clandestine Islamic State organisation “appears to be taking hold”, four years after the group controlled swaths of Syria, as much as a third of Iraq, and declared a caliphate.
A suspected Islamic State roadside bomb in Mosul killed at least three schoolchildren late last month and a car bomb killed at least five people in the city of Tikrit in mid-November. Attacks in oil-rich Kirkuk province so far this year have more than doubled from 2017, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Between 2014 and 2017 Islamic State, also known as Isis, was driven out of areas it controlled in Iraq by the western-backed Iraqi army alongside Kurdish forces and Shia militias, many supported by Iran. Western jets also pounded Isis-held territory, reducing swaths of cities to rubble.

The bombings did not drive ISIS out.  They sent them underground, they caused them to regroup.  But all the bombs destroyed was the civilians, the buildings, the infrastructure.



New content at THIRD:



The following community sites -- plus Cindy Sheehan, Jody Watley, GORILLA RADIO -- updated:




  • Tuesday, December 04, 2018

    Mind control, the CIA and other topics

    Have you listened to the latest GUNS & BUTTER?  It's really interesting.  Her guest is an author named Jay Dyer and they discuss the mind programming and other topics and reference points include THE PARALLAX VIEW, CLOCKWORK ORANGE, EYES WIDE SHUT and CHINATOWN.

    It's a really interesting show.


    Also of interest is Jacob C. Hornberger's article at INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE which asks the question how does the CIA have the 'right' to assassinate anyone:



    In 1947, the CIA was called into existence as part of this new national-security state. President Truman, the president who was responsible for the federal government’s conversion to a national-security state, intended for the CIA to be strictly an intelligence-gathering agency. But someone slipped a bit of nebulous language into the law that called the CIA into existence, which the CIA seized upon to justify the adoption of omnipotent powers, including the power to assassinate people with impunity, so long as the assassination was to protect “national security.” Needless to say, the CIA had the omnipotent power to make that determination.

    As monumental as the conversion to a national-security state was, it was not done through a constitutional amendment. The Constitution continued to be the supreme law that governed the operations of the federal government, including the CIA. Thus, since the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to assassinate people and since the Fifth Amendment expressly prohibited the federal government from assassinating people, the US Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary had the responsibility to declare the CIA’s power to assassinate people unconstitutional.

    Unfortunately, however, in a national-security state power is everything and especially omnipotent power. Recognizing that as a practical matter, there would be no way that the federal judiciary could keep the CIA from assassinating people in the name of protecting “national security,” the federal courts went silent or even supportive.

    In 1989 the Cold War ended. Yet, we still have a national-security state and we still have a CIA with the power to assassinate people, including Americans. Why is that?


    Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

     
    Tuesday, December 4, 2018.  "All that I have is that I saw.  I saw without being afraid and without turning away.  And that I didn't forgive the unforgivable."


    Replying to 
    Invaded Panama. Invaded Iraq (the first time) on a lie. Withheld evidence from Iran/Contra hearings. Highway of Death. We ignore the horrible things former politicians did, "honor them for their service" when they die, then wonder why the next ones are worse.





    That's the man some are mourning, a true War Criminal.

    And you can't mourn a War Criminal without a lot of lies.  Which is how we get Barbra Streisand. 


    Two years ago this week, I was honored to invite our 41st President and First Lady to my first ever concert in Texas. They came to my dressing room before the show and we exchanged gifts. I’m glad he and Barbara are together again. RIP. 🙏🏻





    I'm so glad you made nice, Babsy.

    Let's see when did you do your live concert again?  Hmm, September 1986.  Why again?  You were so scared to perform live but you were more scared about what might happen to our planet if the Reagan-Bush years continued into Bush years, remember now?

    Remember any of the crap you said at the time?

    The reality of War Criminal George H.W. Bush does not get "kinder and gentler" if you just zoom in to his domestic activities.  He campaigned on racism (the Willie Horton ads) and he campaigned on sexism.  He especially campaigned on sexism because he had the 'wimp factor' issue to overcome.  From Susan Faludi's BACKLASH: THE UNDECLARED WAR AGAINST AMERICAN WOMEN:

    Rather than meeting the demands of women, the GOP men struck macho stands that they hoped would impress their own sex.  Bush hoped especially to prove his manly mettle to members of the press corps, who seemed as obsessed with the "wimp factor" as the male politicians they were covering.  "I get furious," Bush assured them.  "I go ballistic.  I really do and I bawl people out.  Of course, everyone's running for cover."  He even predicted, more wistfully than assertively, "Maybe I'll turn out to be a Teddy Roosevelt."
    During the race, Bush's campaign managers dismissed questions about women's rights; they were too trivial to warrant comment, they said.  "We're not running around and dealing with a lot of so-called women's issues," Bush's press secretary indignantly told the New York Times.  When Bush summoned a group of elected officials to advise him during the campaign, only one was a woman.  While the candidate claimed that opposition to abortion was a cornerstone of his campaign, he didn't give this critical concern of women's much apparent thought.  When asked in a televised debate if he was "prepared to brand a woman a criminal for this decision," he said, "I haven't storted out the penalties."  His one seeming nod in the direction of working women's needs during the campaign was a penny-ante child care proposal that would give the poorest working families about $20 a week in tax breaks.  This pocket change was supposed to pay for basic child care that, on average, costs four times as much.  In the end, the Bush campaign's only real gesture to women was,incredibly, the selection of Dan Quayle.  His youthful blond looks, Republican leaders told journalists, would surely charm the ladies.



    I'm sorry, unlike Barbra I don't support abortion rights one moment and, the next, shed tears and offer praise for a man who tried to destroy women's rights.  George H.W. Bush was despicable.   The April 1988 and April 1992 abortion right marches in DC?  We had to take to the streets to push back against Poppy Bush and all the other sickos who thought they could control women's bodies.


    Some women were repeatedly targeted by Poppy Bush.  This was especially true if the women were women of color and/or gay.  Kevin Naff (WASHINGTON BLADE) remembers how homophobic Poppy was:



    There’s nothing more galling than revisionist history and last weekend’s reactions to the death of former President George H.W. Bush brought an onslaught of it to many social media feeds and, more predictably, to mainstream media.
    I was stunned to see my own feeds filled with tributes to the 41st president — some written by gay men. And on World AIDS Day, no less.
    Even the Advocate — once a leading critic of the Reagan-Bush administrations — joined this chorus of glossing over Bush’s anti-LGBTQ record. In an Advocate story posted on World AIDS Day about Bush’s death, the word “AIDS” appears just once in a reference to Reagan. The headline describes Bush as “no enemy of LGBTQ people.”

    Chris Johnson (WASHINGTON BLADE) reports:


    Gay former Rep. Barney Frank, whose 32-year tenure in Congress included the George H.W. Bush administration from 1989 to 1992, told the Washington Blade in an interview Saturday the late former president “was bad” on LGBT rights and “wouldn’t do anything” to advance them.
    “I asked him, for example, to rescind the Eisenhower rule that said we couldn’t get security clearances,” Frank said. “He refused to do it. Bill Clinton did a few years later.”
    Frank also said Bush refused to roll back military’s ban on gay service members, which was administrative and not statutory in the days before the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law of 1993.
    “Bush was simply unsupportive on any issue,” Frank added.
    [. . .]


    Larry Kramer, a longtime activist against HIV/AIDS, was succinct in response to a Blade email inquiry on whether Bush deserves credit for signing the Ryan White Care Act into law.
    “I will not give him credit for anything,” Kramer said. “He hated us.”

    Poor Barbra Streisand.  Yet again, Larry Kramer's telling truths and Babsie's hedging her bets.  One stands for LGBTQ rights and the other just uses gays to try to prop up her dying career.


    Sometimes it's as basic as you tell the truth or you lie.  You stand up or you whore.  As Rose says in Jane Smiley's A THOUSAND ACRES (Michelle Pfeiffer gives an incredible performance as Rose in the film version which recently came out on Blu Ray), "All that I have is that I saw.  I saw without being afraid and without turning away.  And that I didn't forgive the unforgivable."

    Rose can make that claim.  Whores like Barbra Streisand cannot.

    More than any other Americans, the Bush Crime Family destroyed the country of Iraq and left so many people damaged.  Raya al-Jadir (INDEPENDENT) explores realities for the disabled and challenged in Iraq:



    Years of wars, economic sanctions and corruption have dominated life in Iraq and contributed greatly to the fact that the disabled community is simply not a priority for the government. Poverty rates in Iraq are on the rise, affecting 35 per cent of the population according to the ministry of planning, meaning many are unable to afford education or healthcare.

    Official statistics indicate that there are more than 1.3 million disabled people in Iraq (3 per cent of the population); campaigners however believe the real number is three times that. Although Iraq is party to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, media activist Ali Adil says: “In Iraq, many persons with disabilities continue to suffer from marginalisation and lack of access to their basic rights, in addition to community discrimination.”
    On paper, every disabled person in Iraq is in receipt of a financial allowance regardless of whether the person is in employment or not – this amounts to approximately £66 a month. The stipend depends on the assessed severity of the person’s disability and to qualify Iraqis have to go through various consultations and medical examinations. As one activist who works with the British Council in Iraq informed me, “This long and bureaucratic system is almost 'disabling' the disabled person.”
    Specialist care and services are either inaccessible or non-existent. Families often choose to home school their children in an effort not to send them to mainstream schools which are ill equipped to provide support or tackle discrimination.

    Accessing healthcare has also become out of reach for many who cannot afford to pay. Rahma, a four year old girl, has phenylketonuria (PKU) a genetic condition that can lead to a build-up of the amino acid phenylalanine, which untreated can lead to brain damage and seizures. A protein-limited diet and supplements can prevent serious build ups, but these are not available in Iraq; her mother has to order it from abroad costing her more than £400 per month.


    Here's a cold hard reality, the Iraqis above?  They didn't get 30 minutes of airtime over the weekend but Poppy Bush got non-stop praise on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and it will continue today.  It's an informercial selling War Criminals and war.  And useless whores like Barbie Streisand -- now 92% plastic thanks to all the fillers in her face -- will rush to identify with the criminals.  Barbara is not of the people and if you missed that, while she was promoting her album (Sour) WALLS, she sat down for an interview and explained why so many Republicans saw her in concert -- "They're the only ones who can afford the tickets!"  She thought that was funny.  She claims to be a Democrat, she claims to be a feminist, she claims to love her fans.  But she's perfectly fine with charging outrageous prices that guarantee only the very wealthy can see her.


    Corruption, it inflicts more than just governments.  But it does inflict governments -- the US, certainly, and it's puppet Iraq.

    At the end of October, Adil Adel al-Mahdi was moved from prime minister-designate to prime minister despite his inability to form a full Cabinet.  He still doesn't have a full Cabinet, despite constantly promising 'next week.'  John Davison and Ahmed Rasheed (REUTERS) report:


    The two largest parliamentary groupings to emerge after the vote in May - one led by populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the other by Iranian-backed militia leader Hadi al-Amiri - formed a tacit alliance in October when they picked a president and approved 14 out of 22 cabinet ministers.
    But since then there has been stalemate, mainly over the empty interior ministry post dominated for years by allies of Amiri, who are backing the former head of a paramilitary force supported by Tehran. Sadr meanwhile says no one with a political affiliation should get the post.
    A vote in parliament to fill the vacant ministries in Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s cabinet has been repeatedly put back.  


    RUDAW reports that al-Mahdi's finally come up with choices for his eight empty Cabinet posts:


    Dara Nuradin – Ministry of Justice

    Falih Fayadh – Ministry of Interior

    Faysal Jarba – Ministry of Defense

    Qusay Abdulwahab Suheil – Ministry of Higher Education

    Saba Khayradin Tani – Ministry of Education

    Abdulamir Hamdani – Ministry of Culture

    Nouri Natiq Dlemi – Ministry of Planning

    Hanna Immanuel Gorgis – Ministry of Immigrants and Immigration



    But nominees require a vote in Parliament.


    PM has arrived at the parliament building. On the agenda is a vote on the remaining 8 cabinet positions, including Defence & Interior.
     
     



    Breaking: MPs say only six out of the eight remaining ministers will be voted on today; the two ministeries excluded are the Defense and Interior Ministries due to discord over the candidates
     
     



    Huge walkout in 's parliament in protest over candidates for his half empty cabinet.Bif crisis is looming.
     
     



    Meanwhile, the flooding continues in Iraq.

    Iraq: Families flee Mosul homes following flash floods
     
     



    ALJAZEERA notes:


    Nearly 85 families have fled their homes in various areas of the northern city of Mosul over the weekend, following two days of flash floods, an Iraqi civil defence official said on Monday.
    The heavy rain paralysed traffic, causing widespread disruption, with schools and offices closed.

    Six bridges and 300 tents in the Nimrud refugee camp were reportedly damaged as a result of the heavy rainfall.


    Local sources: Floods caused by the heavy rains that hit Iraq recently; have destroyed more than (340) tents for the displaced people in (Hammam Alalil)Camp south of Nineveh, hence dozens of families of Mosul are returning to the camps in Erbil in the north of the country.
     
     



    The following community sites -- plus BLACK AGENDA REPORT, NPR MUSIC, Cindy Sheehan and Jody Watley -- updated: