Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

VARIETY is so stupid and so sexist

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Jen Reads The Papers."

Because they are small minded men. "Alex, what's why did VARIETY write that obit?" Ethan Shanfeld tells you Brooks Arthur has passed away. He fails to tell you that he engineered and produced Janis Ian's million-plus selling album BETWEEN THE LINES which contained the top three pop hit "At Seventeen." Brooks also produced Janis' acclaimed album STARS and AFTERTONES which was a hit here in the US but which became the best selling album by a woman ever in Japan.

Ethan does note:

Arthur was a highly respected producer who engineered hits such as Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” on which he sang backup. Throughout his career, he worked with artists including the Grateful Dead, Art Garfunkel, Burt Bacharach, Dusty Springfield, Liza Minnelli and Peggy Lee, and he gathered 20 Grammy nominations — including three wins — as well as an Oscar nod for “Glory of Love” from “The Karate Kid II.”

Here's Brooks' production with Janis Ian of "In The Winter."

And here's the biggest single (in terms of charting) he ever produced, Janis Ian's "At Seventeen."

It must be sad to be so stupid to think you can write about Brooks Arthur passing yet not know of BETWEEN THE LINES.

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

Tuesday, October 11, 2022. As the world calls for Joe Biden to end the persecution of Julian Assange, word emerges that Julian now has COVID 19 as a result of being imprisoned in the UK gulag.

Starting with Julian Assange.

US President Joe Biden continues his ongoing persecution of Julian Assange. Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs. And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own. For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:

A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.

Thomas Scripps (WSWS) reports:

Julian Assange has contracted COVID-19. He received the test result Saturday, on the day several thousand people formed a human chain around Parliament in London to protest his persecution.

His wife, Stella, told the press, “I am obviously worried about him and the next few days will be crucial for his general health. He is now locked in his cell for 24 hours a day.” She said Assange had been feeling ill throughout the week and developed a fever and cough on Friday.

Assange’s infection confirms the repeated warnings of medical professionals and his legal team that his health and life are endangered by his wrongful imprisonment. It must lend renewed urgency to the demand for his immediate release.

Just months before the pandemic, over 100 doctors signed an open letter to the British government warning that Assange’s life was at risk while he was kept in HMP Belmarsh—the UK’s top-security prison. When COVID-19 began to spread rapidly throughout Britain, one of the lead signatories, Dr Stephen Frost, told the World Socialist Web Site, “Given what we know about this case, Mrs Assange is right to be concerned. Julian Assange, because he is immuno-compromised, following years of arbitrary detention first in the Ecuadorian Embassy and latterly in Belmarsh prison, is necessarily at higher risk of contracting any viral or bacterial infection, including infection by coronavirus.

“He should be released on bail immediately, so that he can access the health care which he urgently requires. The UK government is effectively playing Russian roulette with Julian Assange’s life.”

Another doctor, Lissa Johnson, explained, “As long ago as 2015 medical and human rights experts warned that anything more than a trivial illness could prove fatal for Julian Assange. His health is even more fragile now, and the coronavirus only renders those warnings more urgent and more dire.”

She added, “If Julian Assange does succumb to coronavirus or any other catastrophic illness in prison, it will not be an accident. It will be a foreseeable result of prolonged psychological torture and wilful medical neglect.”

At WSWS, Nick Barrickman speaks with whistle-blower John Kiriakou about Julian:

WSWS: Can you shed some light on what Assange has exposed to the public about the US government, and also speak about the current situation and how this is significant for the political situation today?

John Kiriakou: Sure. Assange’s first major exposure was the Chelsea Manning revelations back in 2010. This was tens of thousands of diplomatic cables. Diplomatic cables almost never have anything to do with national security. They are generally accounts of conversations between US diplomats and host-government officials.

Julian, by releasing those documents, embarrassed some US ambassadors, State Department officials. But there was no damage to national security. The government has never alleged that there was damage to national security. That got Julian on the Department of Justice’s radar.

In 2013, [former National Security Agency contractor] Edward Snowden released revelations [about the NSA’s warrantless spying on the population] in concert with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras in the British Guardian and Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. From the perspective of the intelligence community, that was a bit more damaging. Still, there was no CIA information that was compromised.

WSWS: There is a constant argument you hear from defenders of government secrets that the reason this information cannot be disclosed is that it saves lives of people working undercover, “behind enemy lines.”

JK: They say that all the time: “You have the blood of American soldiers on your hands.” Name one American soldier whose blood is on my hands. They said that to [former NSA official and whistleblower] Thomas Drake. He released unclassified information and they said he had the blood of American troops on his hands.

But, regarding WikiLeaks, that revelation ramped it up to a “tier one” threat. Then the Hillary Clinton revelations from the Democratic National Committee emerged. We learned through Julian Assange that Hillary Clinton rigged the Democratic primaries to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. That turned the Democrats against WikiLeaks.

But “Vault 7” really pushed things over the edge. Joshua Schulte, a hacker employed by the CIA, was alleged to have taken thousands of documents that exposed the modern day “Crown Jewels” of the CIA.

WSWS: Could you explain the significance of Vault 7 to some of our readers who might be less informed about this episode?

JK: Vault 7 revealed that the CIA can, for instance, defeat any encryption technology. The CIA can take over your Smart TV and make it double-back as a microphone even when it’s turned off. The CIA can remotely take control of your car. For what reason? To drive you off a cliff? Into a tree? Off a bridge? Why would they even need the technology to do that? That was when they decided to prosecute Assange.

You might have heard one of the speakers [at the DOJ rally] say that, as bad as the Obama administration was toward whistleblowers—they prosecuted eight of us—it didn’t indict Julian. The Trump administration indicted Julian. Really, the force behind that indictment was [former Trump CIA director and Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo.

Do you remember when Pompeo [in April 2017] called WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service”? There was a reason that he did that. Many in the media at the time missed the fact that those were carefully chosen words.

The reason he did that is because if the CIA is going after a foreign intelligence service, state or non-state, that makes it a counterintelligence operation. Counterintelligence operations are the only covert operations that don’t have to be reported to the oversight committees. The reason for that is to guard against the possibility that a member of the committee is a foreign spy.

Counterintelligence operations are the most sensitive things that the CIA does. The fewer people that know about them, the better. If you’re not reporting them to the oversight committees, then there’s nobody to tell you “you can’t do that.”

That’s when you come up with ideas, maybe, to murder Julian Assange in the streets of central London. Or maybe shoot out the tires on a Russian diplomatic flight were he to board one. You come up with all of these cockamamie ideas that are clearly illegal and there’s nobody to tell you “no.”

This is an excerpt of the speech Chris Hedges gave on Saturday at a DC rally for Julian:

The engine driving the lynching of Julian is not here on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is in Langley, Virginia, located at a complex we will never be allowed to surround – the Central Intelligence Agency. It is driven by a secretive inner state, one where we do not count in the mad pursuit of empire and ruthless exploitation. Because the machine of this modern leviathan was exposed by Julian and WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge.

The United States has undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning democracy. The real centers of power, in the corporate, military and national security sectors, were humiliated and embarrassed by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant corruption, here and around the globe, were laid bare in troves of leaked documents.

We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about whom we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary. The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all of the levers of power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched and photographed population in human history. When the government watches you 24-hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the relationship between a master and a slave. Julian was long a target, of course, but when WikiLeaks published the documents known as Vault 7, which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses to monitor our phones, televisions and even cars, he — and journalism itself — was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any investigations into the inner workings of power that might hold the ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and replace it with the cant fed to the mob.

I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. I am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.” Wholesale surveillance. Torture. Coups. Black sites. Black propaganda. Militarized police. Militarized drones. Assassinations. Wars. Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a refusal to address the climate emergency and a virtual tax boycott for the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep us in bondage, victims of a corporate neo-feudalism. And they have perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. The tyranny imposed on others is imposed on us.

From its inception, the CIA carried out assassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including that of U.S. citizens, activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance. The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its own armed units and drone program, death squads and a vast archipelago of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and disappeared.

The U.S. allocates a secret black budget of about $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to kidnap, torture and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why, since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of Julian in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed kidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business. Senator Frank Church — after examining the heavily redacted CIA documents released to his committee — defined the CIA’s “covert activity” as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies and consorting with known torturers and international terrorists.”

At the Saturday rally in London, MP Jeremy Corbyn spoke:

In a message to Biden, Corbyn said Saturday: ‘You won a presidential election against an extremely intolerant right-wing president. You won that with the support of millions of Americans who want to live in a free, open, democratic society.’

‘Are you really wanting your administration to be the one that imprisons a journalist for telling the truth about wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and the environmental destruction by big business and arms companies in so many parts of the world?’ he asked. ‘Think of your place in history. Are you to go down in history as the president who put a journalist in prison on a triple life sentence? Or, will you get your place in history as the man who stood up for free speech?’

Turning to Iraq . . .

We'll note this statement the US State Dept issued yesterday:

A year ago, Iraqis voted in credible early elections with the hope that they would result in a government that reflects the will of the Iraqi people. Since then, Iraq’s leaders have been unable to resolve their political differences. The United States supports a broad and inclusive dialogue to forge a common path forward.

We join the many friends of Iraq to emphasize again that violence is not acceptable and call on all parties to peacefully and inclusively forge a path out of the current political impasse.

Meanwhile, the United States remains committed to partnering with the government and people of Iraq to promote economic growth and create more jobs, to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS, to root out corruption, and to increase resiliency to the effects of climate change.

AFP reports:

Iraq's parliament will meet on Thursday to "elect the President of the Republic", a press release from speaker Mohammed al-Halbussi's office said on Tuesday, after months of political impasse.

More than a year after the last general election in Iraq, Halbussi's office said Thursday's parliamentary session would have "a single item on the agenda, the election of the President of the Republic".

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Lorie Smith's Special Rights" went up last night and the following sites updated:

Monday, October 10, 2022

Charlie Puth

Earlier tonight, Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Lorie Smith's Special Rights" went up.

Charlie Puth has a new video.

He also has a story to tell:

Charlie Puth is sharing what he says was his experience at Ellen DeGeneres' eleveneleven label.

The Grammy Award nominee, 30, said he "didn't hear from anybody" at the now-defunct label after recording his first EP, as he reflected on the early years of his career during the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, following Greyson Chance's alleged similar experience.

"We both have different experiences, me versus Greyson," Puth explained. "But I do agree with him that nobody was really present, certainly after the creation of my first demo EP. I didn't really hear from anybody after that. Not putting any blame just on one person, but from a collective, all the people that were in that room, they just disappeared."

After launching a successful YouTube channel in 2009, he and Emily Luther signed with DeGeneres' eleveneleven when she saw their cover of Adele's "Someone Like You." The Emmy Award-winning talk show host, 64, launched the label in May 2010 with Mike Hamlin, and the company was defunct by 2012.

Ellen keeps getting bad press. Hard to believe she hasn't earned it.

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

Monday, October 10, 2022. A year later, the UN suddenly frets over Iraq -- and let's get honest about ourselves with regards to our lack of support for Will Lehman and the film BROS.

Last week, Tom O'Conner (NEWSWEEK) reported:

As U.S. officials roundly condemn the ongoing series of Iranian strikes against Kurdish rivals in northern Iraq, Washington has also expressed concern over a separate Turkish campaign against Kurdish forces in the same region.

[. . .]

"We have repeatedly expressed our concerns regarding Turkish operations in Iraq," a State Department spokesperson told Newsweek, "urging that the government of Turkey coordinate more closely with Iraqi authorities on cross-border military operations against terrorist targets."

Concerns. Concerns? Yeah.

According to RUDAW, the government of Turkey is admitting to the murder:

The Turkish ambassador to Iraq said Sunday that members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and associates of the group are Ankara’s targets in response to the recent assassination of a women’s rights activist in the city of Sulaimani.

Rights activist Nagihan Akarsel, who had ideological ties to the PKK, was shot multiple times and killed in Sulaimani on Tuesday by assailants in the city’s Bakhtiyari neighborhood. Her ties to the Kurdish armed group quickly led droves of people on social media to blame Turkey for her death.

“Those who are affiliated with the PKK are indeed our targets,” Turkish Ambassador Ali Riza Guney said in response to a question from Rudaw’s Payam Sarbast during a press conference in the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil.

It can't be used to promote war (the way a death in Iran has been), so Nagihan's murder doesn't get US press attention. NEWS.AM notes:

Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MİT), met with the Iraqi Turkmen Front earlier this week, raising questions from Iraqi opposition politicians over his visit in mid-September, Ahval writes.

Fidan's visit to the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region, Erbil, on Oct. 4 coincided with the killing of Kurdish figure Nagihan Akarsel in a shootout in Sulaymaniyah province, the Kurdish website Medya News reported.

The Iraqi coordination structure, an opposition body made up of Shiite parties, has called for an investigation, and a member of the structure, Turki Sedan, said the visit was organized without notifying Iraq's central government.

Meanwhile, today is October 10th. A year ago, Iraq went to the polls and voted. Still no prime minister, still no president, still no cabinet of ministers.

Speaking to the United Nations last week, the US Deputy Rep to the UN, Ambassador Richard Mills, noted that climate change was one of the challenges Iraq is facing, "Complicated challenges face the next government -- including passing a budget, developing oil and gas legislation that is acceptable to the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government, improving the provision of electricity, combatting climate change, promoting private sector development and job growth, and increasing women’s participation in the workforce."

The next government? A year after the elections and they're still hoping it pull together to form a government.

If they paid attention, they wouldn't be surprised by how this all went down. Dropping back to the October 11, 2022 snapshot (the day after the election):

Starting with this from the BBC.

He opens with The October Revolution -- the protesters who are part of a movement that began in the fall of 2019.

Murad Shishani: They presented, sort of, a package of demands, as they told me. This package included an early election but the government, the authorities, they just only this one condition. They asked for fighting corruption. They asked for disarming the militias. They asked for political reform, more engagement for youth. Therefore, as the government, they didn't meet all these demands from the protesters, then the boycotting campaigns have been becoming more stronger, they are today in Iraq. And this is what we've noticed in a city like Mosul which has been liberated four years ago from the so-called Islamic State. But that devastation is still there so people were reluctant to go to the polling stations today.

It's interesting, isn't it? How he noted the protesters and their demands -- unmet -- that might lower voter turnout but, while noting them, never notes that the government response to them -- the physical response -- also depressed turnout because the physical response included attacking the protesters, kidnapping the protesters, disappearing the protesters and killing the protesters. AP notes it in most of their reports. For example, "Although authorities gave in and called the early elections, the death toll and the heavy-handed crackdown -- as well as a string of targeted assassinations -- prompted many who took part in the protests to later call for a boycott of the vote."

[. . .]

John Davidson and Ahmed Rasheed (REUTERS) report, "Iraq's parliamentary election on Sunday drew one of the smallest turnouts for years, electoral officials indicated, with the low participation suggesting dwindling trust in political leaders and the democratic system brought in by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion." The political leadership has been corrupt. With the billions in oil revenues that the government of Iraq takes in yearly, there is no reason why poverty should exist in Iraq. But not only does it exist, it is actually increasing. The corrupt leaders have taken public monies. That money, for example, has bought multiple sports cars and homes in Europe for Ahmed al-Maliki, son of forever thug and former prime minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki whose (mis)leadership and paranoia helped create ISIS and led to its seizure of Mosul and other areas in 2014. The corruption has continued and worsened. Long cited by Transparency International as one of the five most corrupt nations in the world, Iraq's governmental corruption is now so bad that President Saleh, addressing the United Nations last month, called it one of the greatest security threats to the country.

ALJAZEERA notes, "Two electoral commission officials said the nationwide turnout of eligible voters was 19 percent by midday. Turnout was 44.5 percent in the last election in 2018." Since 2018? The October Revolution. That movement of mainly Shi'ite protesters began in 2019 protesting the corruption, the lack of jobs, the lack of dependable public services (such as electricity and potable water). Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim (WASHINGTON POST) observe:

In effect, Sunday’s election was a referendum on that system, and most Iraqis chose to stay home.

Despite a months-long campaign and millions of dollars spent by foreign governments including the United States to boost trust in the voting process, Iraq’s electoral commission said turnout by midday was only around 20 percent and that it had risen only slowly through the afternoon.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi came to office last year vowing early elections after mass protests ousted his predecessor, Adel Abdul Mahdi, in 2019. On Sunday, voters trickled to the polls through some of the streets where security forces had fired live ammunition into crowds and killed 600 during the months-long protests.

Realities were briefly noted by the bulk of the press in the immediate aftermath of the election and then they got to whoring. It was never a legitimate election but goodness how they whored cult leader Moqtada al-Sadr and pretended that he had some sort of mandate -- despite the very low turnout, despite the fact that his coalition achieved less than they had the previous election cycle.

They whored and whored some more.

The other parties and coalitions didn't have to go along with Moqtada because there were press claims but what trumped those claims was reality and Moqtada never had reality on his side. Were it not for the press whoring -- so-called reporting that read like slavish devotion to Moqtada -- I'm talking western press here -- maybe he would have realized sooner that not only was not a kingmaker (a term the press couldn't stop pimping) but that he wasn't even competent.

As the political stalemate continued and Moqtada's frustrations mounted, he began throwing tantrums.

One of the most infamous? If they didn't do what he wanted, he was pulling every member of his coalition out of Parliament! They would resign in mass!

The response was a yawn.

Idiot Moqtada then forced the resignations.

All that happened were the second place in those elections then got sworn in.

Moqtada had a bigger fit then -- he'd shut himself out of the process.

And efforts to get the courts to overturn this didn't work. Nor did his efforts to get the courts to dissolve the Parliament. He never should have believed his press. Through non-stop use of the term, they'd convinced him he was a "kingmaker."

He was -- and remains -- a pathetic nothing and he's been humored more than long enough. A brutal thug responsible for the deaths of many -- Iraqis and Americans -- got paid off by the US State Dept in August of 2021 to drop his opposition to the elections and urge his cult to show up and vote.

The whole thing's sickening -- including the US government treating him as someone worthy of US tax dollars.

It's a year later and there's no government.

AFP notes today, "A year since Iraq's last elections, it remains without not only a new government but a budget too, obstructing much-needed reforms and infrastructure projects in the oil-rich but war-ravaged country." Daniel Stewart (360 NEWS) runs with:

The United Nations warned Monday that "Iraq is running out of time" in the face of the serious political crisis rocking the country and called on all parties to "dialogue without preconditions" to form a government, one year after the holding of early parliamentary elections.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) has recalled that "one year ago, Iraqis went to the polls in the hope of charting a new future for the country" and stressed that the elections were called "under public pressure through nationwide protests in which hundreds of young Iraqis lost their lives and thousands were injured".

"Unfortunately, this reaffirmation of democracy was followed by a policy of division, generating bitter disillusionment among the population," the mission said in its communiqué, in which it stressed that "this long crisis is generating more instability".

"The latest developments are proof. Moreover, it threatens the livelihood of the people," it has warned, before stressing that "the approval of the Budgets for 2023 are imperative" and regretting that the "tireless efforts" to move towards stability have not borne fruit.

To which the world should respond, "Oh, shut up." It's been a year. Now you're worried? You've been a pathetic and useless presence in Iraq. And that's long before we factor in all the stroking of Moqtada, all the humoring of him.

You've disgraced yourselves. No one needs you to now hop on your pony, ride in circles and scream crisis.

The elections were a joke a year ago. Instead of admitting that reality, you pimped Moqtada as an answer. The only thing Moqtada is ever an answer to is the riddle: What won't flush down the toilet?

Various outlets are quoting UNAMI issuing this nonsense "The protracted crisis is breeding further instability, and recent events are a testament to that." And noting UNAMI now declares Iraq to be "running out of time."

Now. A year later.

The UN, like the police, always comes late if they come at all?

A year later and now the United Nations wants to play the hysteric.

It abandoned the people for 12 months now. Let's not pretend that they in anyway helped. They abandoned the people with their hopes that a government -- a bad one -- would be formed and they could return to ignoring the abuses that the Iraqi people live with daily. UNAMI has not helped the Iraqi people. It exist solely to provide cover for whatever monstrosity gets cobbled together and then they issue "We call on . . ." statements. They've done for the Iraqi people and today they stand exposed as the do-nothing that they are.

Now I've got a problem. Just found something in the spam folder. I don't mind putting it in here but it actually goes to a larger issue.

Brothers and sisters,

On October 17, in less than two weeks, ballots will begin going out for the first-ever direct elections of the leadership of the United Auto Workers. If you are a UAW member, I urge you to make sure your local has your current mailing address by tomorrow (Friday, October 7) so that you can receive your ballot as early as possible.

This is a historic opportunity for rank-and-file workers to express our opposition to the entire bureaucracy, which has sold us out for decades, rammed through contracts we opposed and defied the will of the membership.

For this reason, the UAW apparatus has done everything it can to keep workers in the dark about the election and the positions of the candidates. I have spoken to many workers who do not even know that an election is being held.

A week and a half ago, I participated in a debate among the candidates for UAW president. But the UAW apparatus has done virtually nothing to inform workers that there was a debate, and only about 1.5 percent of UAW workers and retirees have watched the video. The UAW doesn’t want anyone to watch the debate because it so thoroughly exposed incumbent President Ray Curry and Co. as pro-corporate enemies of the working class, who have as little connection to rank-and-file workers as the man on the moon.

My campaign is about establishing a new base of power through the building of rank-and-file committees of workers in every plant and workplace to fight for what we need, not what the UAW bureaucracy and the companies say is acceptable. We must assert our will and our interests. We must unite all workers in the UAW with workers throughout the country and around the world who are confronting the same issues and face the same enemies.

The election itself is a critical stage in this battle. The bureaucrats in the UAW want as little participation in this election by rank-and-file workers as possible. They opposed the referendum for direct elections because they know that the apparatus is universally despised by the rank and file.

The situation will not change unless we act. As workers, we have tremendous strength, but nobody is going to fight for what we need but ourselves. This is the purpose of my campaign, but I am not a miracle worker. You must make the decision to take up this fight.

This is why I am calling on you to form a rank-and-file election committee in your workplace.

These committees will accomplish the following:

Distribute information throughout your workplace on how to participate in the election, including what workers must do to ensure that they get a ballot and when they have to send it in. You can view and share frequently asked questions about the UAW elections on my website at willforuawpresident.org/uawelections.
Make sure that all workers watch the presidential candidates’ debate, which I have posted on my website here.
Organize meetings of workers in your plant or workplace to discuss the issues in the election and what demands we must fight for to secure our interests.
Set up informational pickets outside your workplace to distribute information and promote my rank-and-file campaign for UAW president.
Lay the foundation for the rank-and-file networks that are necessary to continue to fight for what we need once the election is over.
I am asking you today: write to my campaign at willforuawpresident@gmail.com or text (267) 225-6633 for assistance in setting up an election committee. Tell me where you work and what you think we must fight for in this election and beyond. I will do everything I can to assist you in setting up a committee at your workplace and to link your committee to similar committees that are being set up across the country.

Fellow rank-and-file workers: If we are going to fight for what we need, we cannot allow the initiative to remain in the hands of the apparatus. We must organize ourselves! Contact my campaign and build a rank-and-file election committee today!

Thank you,
Will Lehman

P.S. I want to do everything I can to make sure workers are informed—about the elections, about my campaign, and about the strikes and other struggles workers are launching. But to do that, I need your financial support. If you agree with what I’m fighting for, then donate as much as you can to my campaign today.

Donate

Okay, when are we ever going to work together? Here in the US, when are we going to drop the s**t and work together? In the abstract, a Socialist in charge of the UAW is something we on the left are supposed to be able to get on board with. So why the hell aren't we?

Seems like this campaign should be getting support.

And I was planning on not mentioning it today but you know I'm going there now: BROS.

Straight-allies, that's what we're supposed to be. But we're so pathetic we couldn't even buy a ticket to a hilarious comedy. That was beyond our politics. Beyond our abilities.

The best thing for the UAW would be to have a Socialist president at this point. But there's no push for him online from so-called left allies. And there was no real push with regards to BROS.

Yeah, I saw a few times, you might have seen it as well.

But there was no real push.

I think back, to ahead of DOBBS, when the LGBTQ community was supporting ROE V WADE. It didn't apply to most of them. As Ava and I noted when that awful NETFLIX special aired, unless someone got raped, they probably weren't going to need an abortion -- someone in the LGBTQ community. We thought the support from the community was great but we also thought that LGBTQ comedians should also be focusing on the issues impacting their community. I stand by that call because I'm not seeing a push by feminist leaders or by Planned Parenthood or anyone else to be an ally to the LGBTQ community right now.

I am seeing vicious hate online. I am seeing smears and attacks on gay people -- including Billy Eichner who's only 'crime' is making a wonderful film.

We want allies. We want support. But apparently, we can't give it. Rude, nasty things are being said about LGBTQs and conclusions are being drawn regarding BROS. We didn't support the movie and now right wingers are running with that because the message is straight allies aren't going to push back.

That's outrageous and we should be ashamed of ourselves. We've been pathetic and disgusting.

Most Americans -- even in this economy -- can afford to buy a ticket to a movie as a political act.

The failure of straight allies to support BROS is fueling a backlash.

And again, it's the same with Will Lehman. He's a Socialist. We should be on board. Yeah, put him in charge of the UAW, let's see if he can get something done.

That should be our attitude.

But when it's our turn to be allies, we tend to have other things to do. All you people -- and I'm referring to drive-byes more than the TCI community -- who claim to be left and then vote centrist politicians, this is where you could make a difference without doing that much at all -- you could support Will. Wouldn't have to stop praising Hillary or pretending that Nancy Pelosi was the height of left action. You could continue in your delusions and still support Will.

But you won't.

Just like you didn't support Billy and now want to pretend like the hideous being said online have nothing to do with you. They have everything to do with you and it is now time for you to figure out if you're life has any meaning or you just want to tick off the rest of your days being a useless piece of crap.

And on that happy note, the following sites updated: