I'll do another music review this month -- maybe more than one, but at least one more. That was a question in the e-mails. Another was about Joni Mitchell at the Grammys last night.
Love Joni's music but I took a pass. Her cry for censorship went against everything she ever stood for -- and all the many remarks over the years about her hearty upbringing and how it had an effect on her. So I'm just not in the mood for Joni. I have my vinyl albums on wooden bookcases. Saturday, I moved her albums to the shelf I never touch because I don't plan on listening to her anytime soon.
It's hard when you watch people betray what they believe in. In a few months, hopefully, I'll be able to listen to her again.
I guess we'll see.
Right now, let me note Diana Ross. This is her latest video "I Still Believe."
And here are two /tweets from Diana:
The story of this young man and his mother really touched me. A mother’s love is beautiful and a very special love indeed. Kayla and Louie, keep shining and smiling! It was so lovely to see you. Thank you to all who sent me their TikTok video. #DianaRossThankYou#BeautifulLove
Monday, April 4, 2022. As the political stalemate continues in Iraq, Ayad Allawi is hospitalized, Julian Assange gets another court date and much more.
Over the weekend a video from BREAKTHROUGH NEWS almost made it up at this site. Almost. The host listed a number of ongoing wars in her opening. She did not list Iraq. I believe she even listed the Afghanistan War -- a war that US forces are supposedly out of -- but she didn't list Iraq.
This is the "Iraw dnapshot" and while vatrious people are willng to betray Iraq, I'm not. US troops remain on the ground in Iraq, the war there continues. This woman has a history of getting Iraq wrong. Over and over. And now she can't even list it as an ongoing war?
No, I'll stand with the people of Iraq, thank you.
We are read -- and cited -- in Iraq (including regularly by one Iraqi newspaper). I'm not going to betray those human beings with a video that erases them and treats them as though they are nothing.
Ayad allawi. Social media has him in the hospital with his condition deteriorating.. Allawi was the man who was supposed to be prime minister in 2010. Iraqis were tired of the divisions and wanted a united front. That's whythey backed the bran new party Iraqiya which had a place for everyone, regardless of sect, regardless of gender, regardless of divisions. It wasn't just lip service. They had Shiites and Sunnis. They had women in important roles. It was a rejection of the fundamentalism that the US had imposed upon them.
And Allawi should be prime minister. But Nouri, the incumbent, would not allow it to happen. Nouri's loss came as a surprise to some. He haede bribed ahead of the election -- heavily bribed. Certainly NPR was susprised since they put Quil Lawrence on air less than 48 hours after voting and Quil declared a big win for Nouri. There was no big win when the votes were counted, not for Nouri.
And he refused to step down. That was something Gen Ray Odierno had warned of -- then the top US commander in Iraq. Then-US Ambassador Chirs Pig-Pen Hill, roused himself from his daily naps long enough to insist that wouldn't happen and, besides, Nouri would win. Chris was wrong on both counts.
Eight months of a political stalemeate followed. Despite the US government originally insisting that the will of the Iraqi people would be followed, the US went back on that. Then-Vice President Joe Biden would oversee The Erbil Agreement, a contract that overturned the vote and gave Nouri a second term.
Joe would insist to Allawi's face that this was good because it guaranteed that Allawi would be over national secuirty (among other things). When the Parliament finally met to name a president and to designate a prime minister, Allawyi's people walked out as Nouri immediately made indications he would not honor the contract.
Barack Obama himself then called Allawi and implored him to get his MPs back into the Parliament, he promised that the contract had the full backing of the US government. It would be enforced.
It wasn't. That was November. By January, Nouri's spokesperson (who would later flee the country when Nouri turned on him) insisted that the contract was illegal (it probably was) and NOuri would not be bound by it.
Nouri would use it to get his second term and then he would discard it.
Iraq could have moved forward on a mission of uniting further and leaving the violent divisions behind.
But Joe and Barack saw to it that didn't happen.
Now, as Iraq is once again in the midst of another political stalemate, an important voice is side-lined and may be about to pass away.
At a time when Iraq really needs him.
Though Iraq held elections October 10th, Iraq still doesn't have a new prime minister -- they don't even have a prime minister-designate. Moqtada al-Sadr wants that person to be his cousin but the cleric and cult leader has failed for months not to form a large enough coalition for a new government. He hasn't even been able to see his nominee for president (actually nominees -- the first was struck down by the Iraqi court) be confirmed -- which is actually the step required before you can even move on to the topic of prime minister.
Last week, Moqtada finally announced he was going to step away for forty days to see if anyone else could form a government. The KDP and the Sunnis supporting Moqtada immediately stated that they would remain firm with Moqtada.
Well . . .
Their leaders said that. The goal now is for opposing groups to try to peel away that support. In the past that hasn't been difficult. Who was it that mastered peeling away support? Getting members to step away from their leaders?
Oh, Nouri.
Nouri al-Maliki, former prime minister and forever thug. Two terms as prime minister -- elected neither time. First time 2006 and he was supported by Bully Boy Bush due to the infamous CIA profile on him which found his motivating force was paranoia which, the CIA believed, could be used to manipulate and control him. In 2010, the voters tried to kick him out of office but the US government wanted him to remain prime minister. So Joe Biden oversaw the negotiations of The Erbil Agreement which tossed aside the votes and gave Nouri a second term. President Barack Obama had put Joe in charge of Iraq and -- like an Academy Award Board Governor -- when a test came up, Joe failed.
The second term led to the rise of ISIS in Iraq.
NRT Tweets:
The leader of the State of Law Coalition, Nouri al-Maliki, said on Wednesday talks will begin between allied political parties to take initiative toward negotiations between all factions. #NRTnews
In The Video.. The arrival of the head of the State of Law coalition, Nouri Al-Maliki, to the Shiite framework meeting room in Al-Amiri's office.
#Iraq
Perhaps the most detested man in Iraq, former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, has exploited the deadlock to insist that his faction must be part of any future “consensus” government — even though the leader of the largest faction, Moqtada Al-Sadr, has insisted on Maliki’s exclusion because of the numerous catastrophes he has inflicted upon Iraq at the bidding of Iran and sectarian militants. Sadr told Maliki and Hashd leaders: “I will not reach consensus with you. Consensus means putting an end to the country… What you describe as political deadlock is better than agreeing with you and dividing the cake with you.” Nevertheless, the result is likely to be indefinite deadlock.
Joe Biden has done so much damage to Iraq.
He does a great deal of damage period. He continues to persecute Julian Assange because Julian carried out the 'crime' of journalism. Joe, if you haven't noticed, doesn't care for journalists or journalism ("he's a real son of a bitch," for example). Julian exposed US War Crimes in Iraq and Joe wants to punish him for reporting on that.
The UK’s Westminster Magistrate’s Court has set a hearing for April 20 to authorize the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, where he is accused of espionage and could face up to 175 years in prison. for the publication of classified official documents.
“The Westminster Magistrate’s Court has set the hearing to issue the extradition order for Julian Assange to the United States for Wednesday, April 20,” WikiLeaks itself explained in a message posted on Twitter.
“The order will then go to (British Home Secretary Priti) Patel for approval. Assange’s defense will be able to present allegations to Patel” until May 18, the organization added.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Pro-War Munchkin Mila" went up earlier this morning. The following sites updated:
Earlier this week ("Will Smith should rot in hell"), I noted Christine McVie plans to release a solo album this June. It is an album of her re-recording the hits she wrote for Fleetwood Mac. An e-mail came in saying that it was too bad she never had a solo hit.
Actually, she's had four hits. She's not Stevie Nicks, no. Stevie is the most successful member of the band when it comes to a solo career -- both in terms of hit singles and in terms of album sales. Lindsey Buckingham is the worst of the three. Christine is in the middle.
"Got A Hold On Me" is her biggest solo single -- number ten on the pop charts, number one on the rock chart and number one on the adult contemporary chart.
"Love Will Show Us How" is her second biggest solo single -- number 30 on the top forty; 24 on the rock chart and 32 on the a.c. chart.
"One In A Million" made it to number 27 on the rock chart.
All three songs are from her 1984 album CHRISTINE MCVIE. In 2004, she released another solo album IN THE MEANTIME. From that album, "Friend" made it to number 29 on the rock chart.
Four solo hits isn't bad. Like Lindsey, Christine's only gold and platinum singles and albums are with Fleetwood Mac. On BILLBOARD's Hot 100 (basis for the top forty), she's had 13 (ten in the top forty), while on the rock chart she's had 16 hit singles, and on the a.c. chart she's had 11 hits. And that doesn't include her top five top forty hit duet with Kenny Loggins ("Whenever I Call You Friend") or her top forty hit with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers ("Needles and Pins"), the number one hit with Destiny's Child ("Bootylicious"), the top forty rock hit with Sheryl Crow (D'mo, C'Mp
Facebook’s censorship of the video “No Third World War! Against the
Ukraine war, NATO aggression and German rearmament!” by the
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) has
provoked strong condemnation by workers and young people. Under the
hashtag #StopCensoringSocialism, supporters have opposed this act of
political censorship. Under conditions where the threat of a nuclear
world war between NATO and Russia is extremely great, they are speaking
out against the silencing of anti-war voices.
A video statement
by SGP Chairman Christoph Vandreier—which explains the political
motives behind the deletion of the original video and highlights its
importance in the fight against war—received more than 1,200 views and
dozens of “likes” on Tiktok within a few hours. The video was also
widely distributed on Instagram. “This censorship is not only directed
against us, but against the mass opposition to a world war,” says
Vandreier. The socialist anti-war perspective of the SGP “is to be
banned and censored in the midst of deafening war propaganda for a third
world war.”
Through the World Socialist Web Site and
the SGP’s Twitter and other social media accounts, we received protest
statements and solidarity messages, some of which we report here. We
call on all readers to post their own statements under
#StopCensoringSocialism and #DefendSGP and to stand up against
censorship and the threat of a third world war.
So
much has to be censored and so much has to be disappeared for
governments to get their way. If you can't fool the people, you can't
launch endless wars -- wars that steal from the pubic treasury and
ensure that the needs of the people will not be met. Andre Damon (WSWS) observes:
With the proxy war between US/NATO and Russia over Ukraine now in its
second month, the social consequences of the conflict are coming into
sharper focus.
All over the world, governments are massively
increasing military spending. The German government has tripled its
military budget with the aim of making the German army the largest in
Europe. France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Australia are all
implementing or planning major increases in expenditures on war.
However, nowhere is this process clearer than in the United States,
the center of world imperialism. On Monday, the White House announced
the largest US military budget in American history, focused
overwhelmingly on preparations to fight a war with Russia and China.
The
budget proposes spending $813 billion on the US military, up from $782
billion in 2022. When the costs of the Department of Veterans Affairs
and the cost of debt from previous defense spending is added in, the
figure rises to over $1 trillion. And that is not to mention the
hundreds of billions spent on federal, state, and local police forces
and the United States’ intelligence apparatus.
The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Writing in Newsweek,
Lindsay Koshgarian of the Institute for Policy Studies noted, “The U.S.
alone already spends 12 times more on its military than Russia. When
combined with Europe’s biggest military spenders, the U.S. and its
allies on the continent outspend Russia by at least 15 to 1.”
We
can't have Medicare For All in the US. We can't have debt fogiveness.
We can't even address homelessness. Grasp that what passes for the
evening news fails to address the homeless crisis. Every broadcast
should deal with that reality but instead they ignore it and condone
it. Their silence makes it seem normal. There is no excuse for the
United States to have a homelss population and yet, rather than address
that, hundreds of billions of dollars are going each year to war and war
making.
The homeless population is only going to
increase. But we can't address that reality. And, in fact, inflation
has been pooh-pahhed and dismissed. We stood alone in calling out the
nonsense offered on the Democratic-lite site that the COVID checks were
"raises.' That those tiny checks made for an increase in wages. And
we've watched supposed economists who love to play populist and pretend
to be 'progressive' go out of their way over the last six months to
normalize the outages that are taking place, to dimsiss them, to
minimize them. At the end of the day, they have revealed themselves to
not be on the side of the people -- the ones they depend upon to have a
career because corpoarte media is not airing these whores -- but on the
side of the elected Democratic power strugture and they are apologist
for that structure. Patrick Martin (WSWS) points out:
The rising cost of living will force the average American household to
spend $5,200 more a year just to buy the same goods and services as last
year, according to a report released Thursday by Bloomberg Economics.
This comes to an average of $433 a month robbed from the pockets of
workers and their families, under conditions where 60 percent of the US
population cannot afford an unexpected expense of $500.
. This staggering fact demonstrates the human cost of the rise in the
rate of inflation, which hit a 40-year record of 7.9 percent in
December. The rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index slipped
slightly to 7.5 percent in January and 6.4 percent in February, but it
is still well above the forecast of both the Federal Reserve and the
Biden administration.
The core inflation rate, not counting food
and energy prices, which fluctuate more from month to month, stood at 6
percent in January and 5.4 percent in February, according to figures
released by the federal Department of Commerce Thursday. This means that
regardless of efforts by the Biden administration to manipulate
temporarily the price of gasoline at the pump, the reduction in the
living standards of the working class will continue.
Bloomberg
Economics—part of the publishing empire of billionaire Michael
Bloomberg—pointed out the benefits for capitalist employers of the
inflation “tax” on workers. “Accelerated depletion of savings will
increase the urgency for those staying on the sidelines to join the
labor force, and the resulting increase in labor supply will likely
dampen wage growth,” the authors of the report said.
Patrick
Martin is a journalist. That's not an attack. My point is that
Patrick Martin can address reality while whores like Dean Baker can't
(this week's latest from dean Baker was more whoring distortions
insisted "the economy has bounced back" -- again, Dean Baker's not
making a living via the corporate media. He's a cheap whore who lies
for the Democratic Party and hopes they'll keep him afloat for tricking
voters. Robert Reich was always a known whore. People are just
starting to catch on with regards to Dean Baker.
But
certainly this food crisis has to be taken seriously. It has to be
taken seriously in the first place in the United States of America. You
have millions of people who exist on food stamps, millions of people
who are food insecure, You have prices going through the roof not only
because of the eastern European crisis but also because of pre-existing
supply chain glitches that has ships lined up as if it's the Long Island
Expressway.off the coast of Los Angels' Long Beach trying to deliver
goods but apparently unable to do so. So the hunger question in this
country will be exacerbated certainly by this crisis. That's not to
mention what will happen overseas. Already, in Egypt, you see rumblings
with regard to the point that a significant percentage of the bread
that is the stuff of life in Cairo comes from the agricultural fields of
Ukraine and Russia. That is problematic as we speak and so therefore
it can lead to disruption in Egypt. And so this crisis? Obviously, the
planners in the State Dept did not think through everything that went
in to making a deicison to heighten tensions with Moscow and Russia on
the Ukraine border.
But,
by all means, continue to depend on Dean Baker because he's billed as
our 'friend.' He's not. He's a con artist and a whore. These are life
and death matters and clowns are an extravagance that the people just
can't afford.
Reailty can be found with ELETRONIC INTIFADA.
The
government of Ukraine had to be white-washed or they wouldn't have been
able to do their marketing blitz passed off as news in order to sell
war to a people.
As soon as the Biden Administration took power, the plan to escalate
the situation in Ukraine was executed — a plan that included a clear
understanding of the nature of forces behind the newly elected
presidential front man for the right-wing Ukrainian oligarchs and U.S.
forces that engineered his election. The Biden Administration also
understood that the most effective military forces in Ukraine were
grouped around and/or associated with various ultra-right and neo-Nazi
elements. But who cared when the commitment to “full spectrum dominance”
and interests of U.S. finance and corporate transnational capital are
driving U.S. policy in Ukraine?
We, the colonized, the working class, the oppressed, must be as
cold-blooded and sober in our analysis and actions. Look at how they
lied to the public on the existence of ultra-right forces in Ukraine and
the nature of that corrupt regime. We will not lie to the people, but
we have to separate ourselves from the propaganda when attempting to
understand the world.
The U.S. press loudly proclaiming that there was no neo-Nazi
influence in Ukraine even though it was common knowledge in the United
States and Europe for years that there was always a problem with the
extremist nationalist elements in that country. Because of that, the
line taken by the U.S. state and the capitalist press after the U.S.
engineered coup in 2014 with the extreme right and neo-Nazi forces at
the center of the action, was that while those forces’ presence in the
street actions was never disputed, the line was that their political
significance in the government was minimal.
That line was taken because the historical record was replete with
references to the role of the ultra-right in Ukrainian politics since
world-war II. And that not only did Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and
literal neo-Nazis end up in the new post-coup government in 2014, but
the press, human rights organizations, the governments of Europe, and
the U.S. were aware of the nature of those forces
That is what made the new line by the liberal corporate press that
there was not an issue with the extreme right in Ukraine so bizarre.
Apparently, to buttress their drive to war, the new narrative required
that the Ukrainian state be represented as the innocent victim of the
mad Vladimir Putin, and the presence of ultra-right forces, including
neo-Nazis, as a figment of his imagination.
Yet, there is always a method to the madness, in this case the real madness of U.S. imperialism.
Also refer to Patrkic Martin's two-part series (Part One | Part Two) at WSWS on the marketing of this war by the Democratic Party for many, many years now.
To
sell lies to the people, you have to censor the truth -- thereby
explaining US President Joe Biden's continued persecution of Julian
Assange for the 'crime' of journalism. Also explaining the
disappearance of Chris Hedges from YOUTUBE. At SCHEERPOST, Chris notes:
The entire archive of On Contact, the
Emmy-nominated show I hosted for six years for RT America and RT
International, has been disappeared from YouTube. Gone is the interview
with Nathaniel Philbrick on his book about George Washington. Gone is
the discussion with Kai Bird on his biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Gone is my exploration with Professor Sam Slote from Trinity College
Dublin of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Gone is the show with Benjamin Moser
on his biography of Susan Sontag. Gone is the show with Stephen Kinzer
on his book on John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles. Gone are the
interviews with the social critics Cornel West, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky,
Gerald Horne, Wendy Brown, Paul Street, Gabriel Rockwell, Naomi Wolff
and Slavoj Zizek. Gone are the interviews with the novelists Russell
Banks and Salar Abdoh. Gone is the interview with Kevin Sharp, a former
federal judge, on the case of Leonard Peltier. Gone are the interviews
with economists David Harvey and Richard Wolff. Gone are the interviews
with the combat veterans and West Point graduates Danny Sjursen and Eric
Edstrom about our wars in the Middle East. Gone are the discussions
with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Gone are the
voices of those who are being persecuted and marginalized, including the
human rights attorney Steven Donziger and the political prisoner Mumia
Abu Jamal. None of the shows I did on mass incarceration, where I
interviewed those released from our prisons, are any longer on YouTube.
Gone are the shows with the cartoonists Joe Sacco and Dwayne Booth.
Melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind.
I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In
totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was done
in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard time
seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of
Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of
the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed,
there is not one show that dealt with Russia. I was on RT because, as a
vocal critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the
two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted. I
was on RT for the same reason the dissident Vaclav Havel, who I knew,
was on Voice of America during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
It was that or not be heard. Havel had no more love for the policies of
Washington than I have for those of Moscow.
Are we a more informed and better society because of this wholesale
censorship? Is this a world we want to inhabit where those who know
everything about us and about whom we know nothing can instantly erase
us? If this happens to me, it can happen to you, to any critic anywhere
who challenges the dominant narrative. And that is where we are headed
as the ruling elites refuse to respond to the disenfranchisement and
suffering of the working class, opting not for social and political
change or the curbing of the rapacious power and obscene wealth of our
oligarchic rulers, but instead imposing iron control over information,
as if that will solve the mounting social unrest and vast political and
social divides.
As reported previously by the World Socialist Web Site, the
Russian state-funded cable news network RT America was shut down in the
US on March 3 and all 120 of its employees were laid off at offices
located in New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Miami.
Although
the management of the news channel said the network had experienced
“unforeseen business-interruption events,” the abrupt shutdown of RT
America was no doubt part of the anti-Russian offensive mounted by
corporate media outlets and governments aligned with the US and NATO in
the proxy war being fought in Ukraine against the regime in Moscow.
Among the RT America programs terminated were several popular left-wing and anti-war TV shows including Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp and On Contact
with Chris Hedges. These programs were specifically targeted for
censorship because they adopted an anti-war standpoint that was opposed
to the narrative developed by the ruling political establishment in the
US and Europe.
This campaign to silence voices critical of the
role of imperialism in provoking the war in Ukraine has been extended to
the removal of video content from YouTube, podcasts from Spotify and
other censorship measures by the social media platforms Facebook and
Twitter.
There's another way to censor. Drop
coverage. You know, the way the same US corpoarte media that sold the
Iraq War by spewing endless lies now avoids covering the results of
their actions.
A powerful Iraqi Shia cleric has decided to step back for the next 40
days and give his Iran-backed rivals the chance to form the country's
next government.
The surprising decision on Thursday by Muqtada al
Sadr comes against the backdrop of a persisting political deadlock in
Iraq, five months after general elections.
Sadr's offer came in a
tweet, in which he also called on his followers not to interfere
"neither positively not negatively" as his rivals form the Coordination
Framework, a coalition of Iran-backed Shia parties, try to cobble
together a cabinet.
This translates into a nod to Sadr's rivals to
pursue the cleric's Kurdish and Sunni allies in possible negotiations.
There was no immediate response from the Coordination Framework to
Sadr's offer.
When they're not lying, they're
selling State Dept talking points -- regardless of whether or not
they're factual. No one in their right mind who knew Iraq's recent
history would have expected Moqtada al-Sadr to be a 'kingmaker' who was
going to pull together a government following the election. But three
failed attempts now since the October 10th election and we're still not
seeing the corporate press admit to the fact that they got it wrong.
They got it wrong because they parotted the US State Dept -- the same
State Dept that paid (bribed) Moqtada back in August -- but they looked
the other way on that too.
Grasp how offensive that was. Making fun of gay people, using them as a joke. Calling them "the gays." He's garbage, he really is. And the Academy Award people gave him an Oscar?
He's garbage, he's trash.
Only filth would make comments like that. He was a success and he was riding high. He then elected to pick on people who were hated just for who they were.
Thursday, March 31, 2022.. Robert Pether remains in an Iraqi jail,
Julian Assange remains persecuted, Iraq still can't name a president and
Jada Pinkett remains bald.
Kicking off with the
assault of Chris Rock, let's note this from Jimmy Dore about how Will
Smith's assault is now encouraging others to call for assaulting
comedians.
I like Jonathan Turley but I think he's missed the boat on one issue.
He
rightly documents the attacks on free speech. So far, however, he has
not written of Will Smith attacking Chris Rock at the Oscars. Maybe he
is doing a column on it?
If so, he may be holding the topic for that reason.
But
I would argue that all the attacks on free speech, all the
self-righteous grand-standing to justify censoring people. We see that
in the attack, we see that in some of the responses to the attack.
I support free speech.
What Will Smith did was outrageous. Some of the reactions to the assault have been even more outrageous.
This is part of the attack on free speech. It's also something more.
I'm
remembering having to learn the name of Nicholas Sandman. My life was
fine without ever knowing his name. But he was made into a national
incident and a monster by the same group that's defening Will and
talking how hard it is on Jada Pankitt. Nicholas didn't do anything to
warrant the outrage or the hate heaped on him. But Will slapped Chris
Rock on a national statge -- that Will wasn't supposed to be on -- in
front of the whole world and lairs and whores want to pretend like it's
okay?
I've read that garbage THE WASHINGTON POST
published from the dumb idiot who wanted to argue in favor of Jada and
tell you it was race and sexism and Jada was the victim.
You
stupid f**king idiot. You are the reason outlets used to argue that
women couldn't cover abortion -- they were women and they could get
pregnant so they couldn't be objective was the claim.. We saw that same
thing with the idiot in Congress who Tweeted applauding the assualt
because she's bald too.
Get over yourselves. Being
bald? If that's the worst thing in your life, you should be thanking
your higher power, personal god, whatever that this is all you're
facing.
And stop applauding Will for 'defending' his wife while claiming to be a feminist.
A woman needs rescued? That's offensive. A woman can't handle words? That's offensive.
You certainly are trapped in your gender roles as you stumble around at the corner of race and gender.
And
you miss the reality of the actual trope that's at play -- because you
can't/won't refute the systematic racism of the system you are electing
to endorse, embrace and play with it.
A woman needs defending, you argue, so Will was alright to do what he did.
Hmm.
As you spew your garbage endlessly, do you not realize what you're doing?
Because
the way I see it, violence gainst a Black man is again being justified
because someone claims a woman's 'honor' has been besmirched.
Emmett
Till wasn't an exception, he's just one of the few that's widely
known. Time and again, Black men were targeted in the US with the claim
that they had dishonored a woman in some way. Women? We can defend
ourselves. Claiming otherwise is a cute way for men to justify
attacking others. Claiming that we can't defend ourselves -- not even
from words -- is sexism.
But that reality is ignored and Chris Rock is attacked.
Chris Rock deserved to be attacked because he's Black?
I'd
drop your faux feminism and your academic nonsense and grasp the
reality of the situation. Violence against a Black man is once again
being justified and minimized.
Don't tell me
#BlackLivesMatter when you think it is perfectly acceptable for Chris
Rock to be assaulted while performing an act he was asked by the Academy
to perform on live television.
Chris Rock has been
very nice about this and very kind. And who's sticking up for him? (I
know Chris Rock and consider him a friend.) No one. Whores like
Pee-Pee in his mouth Diddy lied -- and I told you he was lying -- to
protect Will Smith. Who's defending Chris.
Chris was the one attacked.
And Jada, ya still bald.
And it's still not the end of the world, and you're still not going to die from it.
Chris
was invited on that stage. Will was not. Chris was doing exactly
what he was asked to do by the Academy. And he got assaulted. There's
no excuse for that. There's no defense for that. And shame on anyone
applauding that attack and not grasping that they are falling into the
historical racist construct that says it is okay to assault a Black man
to defend a woman's 'honor.'
An attack on free speech
is what the persecution of Julian Assange is all about. US President
Joe Biden continues to persecute the journalist for opening the truth up
to the world. Attacking Julian is about intimidating any journalist in
the future with knowledge of War Crimes carried out by the US so that
the journalist will not report them.
In marked contrast to the war in Ukraine, the Iraqi war was covered by journalists embedded with the invading forces.
Civilian deaths were dismissed as “collateral damage”.
When WikiLeaks showed us what “collateral damage” looked like from
the perspective of Iraqi civilians, releasing a video of a massacre by
an Apache helicopter gun crew of Iraqi civilians and two Reuter
journalists, Julian Assange called it Collateral Murder.
This intervention played an important role in ending the illegal UK, U.S. and Australian invasion of a sovereign nation,
and because of this, the war criminals he exposed are destroying Julian
Assange with the consent of the Australian Government, claiming he is
the criminal.
But Assange was a hero for peace.
For the Apache helicopter crew, the civilians on the ground were dehumanised. Like boys playing a computer game, they exclaimed “light ‘em up!” as they blew apart their victims from their unseen platform a mile in the sky.
When a good samaritan stopped to help those still living, he and his
children were ruthlessly machine-gunned. The crew blamed their father,
saying he shouldn’t have brought children to a war zone.
Let's note two reports from 60 MINUTES>
And let's note that this 60 MINUTES in
Austrtalia. In the US, nothing. In the US, whose president is
persecuting Julian Assange? Silence.
Julian's
'crime' is journalism. He is targed by the president of the United
States. And you have to look to 60 MINUTES in aonther country to get
coverage.
Julian remains persecuted. And the silence goes a long, long way towards explaining why that continues.
Hard working, principled journalists — who’d be legends and treasures
in a long lost era of good press ethics in society — and their sources
are paying a high price out of their human rights under the aegis of a
craven new age of US imperialism. Most modern states bar the integration
of legitimate journalistic activity with the penal code, like those
currently being deployed to get Julian Assange. But in the data age,
with less developed laws around the link between technology and sources,
criminalisation is being embraced, or at least is being seized upon in
the moment before laws and regulation are clarified and tightened up to
get Assange.
But it stinks. For one evidence cited in attempts to justify his
arrest and pursuit under the law are at best dubious, at worst
slanderous. Moreover in a zeitgeist defined by Brexit negotiations
steeped deep in the rhetoric of protecting parliamentary sovereignty it
ought to worry us British courts are willing to yield to the whims of US
courts who are willing to put Assange away for life, or kill him, for
the crime of doing journalism.
It’s time that the establishment drops pretences and stops using the
phrase “no man is above the law” as if the mantra is still meaningful.
Either justice is a right or its not. For so many, conspicuously all in
the business of exposing corruption, they don’t get it. It’s time to
reform society’s treatment of whistleblowers and remove all legal
obstructions to their freedoms.
“I mean what I say when I say it!” Those words were spoken by
president elect Joe Biden in December 2020 during a meeting with a group
described as “civil rights leaders.” Video of the meeting was leaked and Biden’s insulting and dismissive
attitude towards Black people was clear even to those who ignored this
tendency he has shown throughout his 50 years of public life.
Biden did us a favor by revealing himself and by telling us to pay
attention when he speaks. That advice should be followed no matter how
strange his words may seem. Even in his bad tempered confusion, Biden
always reveals what he is doing.
He recently made news for all the wrong reasons during his recent
trip to Europe where he attended a combination G7 summit and NATO
meeting in Brussels followed by a trip to Poland.
At the NATO meeting he rather nonchalantly informed the people of the world that they will all suffer
because of the misguided effort to punish Russia with sanctions. “With
regard to food shortages, yes we did talk about food shortages and it’s
going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon
Russia. It's imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including
European countries and our country as well. And because both Russia and
Ukraine have been the bread basket of Europe in terms of wheat for
example.” Ukraine won’t have a good harvest in the near future and
Russia won’t be able to sell what it grows. That means rising prices for
those scarce wheat products that may still be available. Biden’s casual
tone is an indication he thinks people and governments all over the
world should accept the oncoming disaster he created without complaint.
Not content to disrupt global food supplies he also announced his future plans for Ukraine. He said this to 82nd Airborne
troops stationed in Poland. "And you’re going to see when you’re
there. And you — some — some of you have been there. You’re going to
see — you’re going to see women, young people standing — standing the
middle of — in front of a damn tank, just saying, 'I’m not leaving. I’m
holding my ground.' They’re incredible." Why are U.S. troops going to
see anything in Ukraine? He tried to clean it up with “you may have
already seen it” but he was saying that he intends to have US troops
deployed in a country where Russia already has forces. His photo
opportunity turned into the announcement of a hot war.
The most remarkable Biden statement that his apologists call a “gaffe”
also took place in Poland. He gave what was supposed to be a
conventional speech portraying the U.S. as the beacon of freedom and
democracy while Russia is really bad. His remarks should have been
fairly standard and unexceptional but as always Biden told us what he
was up to. In referring to Vladimir Putin he said, "This man cannot
remain in power."
The clarifications and backpedaling were immediate, but no one could
unhear Biden’s words. Despite all denials to the contrary, Biden is
after regime change against the Russian government and his actions prove
it. The very idea that Russia’s government will fall because of
sanctions pressure is ludicrous. But once again, Biden gave a heads up
in July 2021.
“When I was with Mr. Putin, who has a real problem. He's sitting on
top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing
else. Nothing else. Their economy is, what, the eighth smallest in the
world now, largest in the world? He knows he's in real trouble, which
makes him even more dangerous, in my view."
As the
US government pursues conflict with Russia, the site of the ongoing war
that the US started, Iraq, gets worse and worse. As we noted yesterday,
for the third time this year, Iraq held a session of Parliament to
elect a president. nd for the the third time -- this year -- they
failed to do so.
This year. We're in the third month of this year.
Three times, they have failed.
The
parliamentary election was held when? October 10th. And they are
supposed to move quickly. They didn't. That is why they are now almost
two months beyond the date set in their own Constitution for naming a
president.
They can't name a prime minister until they have a president.
Follwing
the results of October 10th, too many corporate outlets in the west
tried to spin reality. Reailty was that the turnout was the lowest
ever. Further reality is that turn out has gone repeatedly ever since
Joe Biden (via The Erbil Agreement) overturned the 2010 election
results. The people didn't want Nouri al-Maliki to have a seond term.
The White House did. The result was the rise of ISIS, yes. But it
also resulted in an eroison of trust in the ballot box -- something many
of us were warning of at that time.
The whorish
corporate press wanted to name Moqtada al-Sadr a victor, hurrah! A
kingmaker, they called him. They didn't bother to note that not only
did he not win enough seats to form a government on his own but that his
group also got less votes than they did in the previous elections.
Moqtada
was hailed by the western press -- as though he'd never been
responsible for the deaths of US troops, as though he'd never attacked
Iraq's LGBTQ community, as though he wasn't attempting to curtail the
rights of women. all of that was washed away.
Reality, Moqtada's not a kingmaker.
Reality,
Nouri al-Maliki continues to stall and delay him. What Nouri's not
personally carrying out is other people copying Nouri's previous plays.
And
Moqtada, hailed by the corporate press backin October, still can't form
a government. We're tend days away from April 10th, ten days away six
months since the elections. And the political stalemate continues.
None
of this is surprising if anyone had paid attention. We did. I'm not
suprised at all and I said over and over that Moqtada was not a
kingmaker, that nothing indicated he was, that facts argued he had lost
support. But facts and today's corporate press are at opposite ends.
They're openly hostile to one another.
The western press that sold the illegal war still can't get the facts right all this time later.
Six months after Iraq's parliamentary vote, the war-scarred country
is no closer to electing a president amid a bitter political stalemate
that has thrown institutions into limbo.
Wrangling between rival
Muslim Shiite blocs in the assembly on Wednesday scuppered the
legislature's third attempt to elect a head of state.
Though a
largely ceremonial role, the president determines the country's next
prime minister who will in turn form a cabinet to be voted in by an
absolute majority of lawmakers.
- What is the hold-up? -
A schism running through the so-called "Shiite house" of Iraqi politics lies at the heart of the impasse.
Firebrand
Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has long claimed the largest bloc in
parliament, with 73 seats out of the 329-member legislature.
But
his bloc does not have enough members to establish a clear majority --
forcing him to reach out to form an untraditional alliance.
Eschewing
the more predictable grouping with other Shiite factions, Sadr has
chosen to ally with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Sunni
parties to form a coalition dubbed "Saving the Homeland", with 155
seats.
The coalition backs KDP candidate Rebar Ahmed for the
presidency -- a post reserved for Kurds, while the post of prime
minister by convention goes to a Shiite.
Shirking the tradition of
forming a "consensus government" between Shiite parties, Sadr hopes to
put forth a "majority government" led by his cousin, Iraq's ambassador
to Britain Jaafar al-Sadr.
This has placed his coalition at
loggerheads with the Coordination Framework -- a powerful force that
includes former premier Nuri al-Maliki's party and the Iran-backed Fatah
Alliance, the political arm of the Shiite-led former paramilitary group
Hashed al-Shaabi.
The
stalemate continues. So does the imprisonment of an Austrailan
citizen. Robert Pether was imprisoned in IRaq with no access to justice
or fairness. He was locked away and his medical needs were ignored.
He remains impisoned. THE GUARDIAN notes that the United Nations has called his imprisonment and that of his collegaue Khalid Radwan an "enfoced disappearance." Erin Pearson (THE AGE) reports:
A
United Nations body is calling for the immediate and unconditional
release of Australian man Robert Pether from an Iraqi jail cell, finding
his detention contravenes international law.
A
report from the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention this month
found the imprisonment of Mr Pether and his colleague Khalid Radwan to
be arbitrary and in contravention of international law.
The
report found the men were “lured” into returning to Iraq on the pretext
of assisting in an investigation and “arbitrarily detained, without any
legal basis” ever since.
Mr
Pether, an Australian engineer and father of three, was arrested in
Iraq alongside an Egyptian colleague in April. They were both later
jailed following a dispute between their employer and the Central Bank of Iraq.
The
working group said it was of the opinion the men were then forcibly
“disappeared” during the first few days of their detention and their
capacity to defend themselves was “undermined and compromised” during
subsequent court proceedings.
Maybe ahead of
next year's Academy Awards, Mila can announce that she once again
misspoke about what country she was from and that, this time, it was
really Australia and then she can ask for a moment of silence to honor
the persecuted Robert Pether and Julian Assange?
